Have I been fair to you? Did I keep my word? Surely you must now, in your heart, acquit me of treachery—of any premeditated violence toward you.I never dreamed that those men would come to my310stateroom. That planhadbeen discussed, but was abandoned because it appeared impossible to get hold of you.And also—may I admit it without being misunderstood?—I absolutely refused to permit any attempt involving your death.When the trap shut on you, there in my stateroom, it shut also on me. I was totally unprepared; I was averse to murder; and also I had given you my word of honour.Judge, then, of my shame and desperation—my anger at being entrapped in a false position involving the loss in your eyes of my personal honour!It was unbearable: and I did what I could to make it clear to you that I had not betrayed you. But my comrades do not yet know that I had any part in it; do not yet understand why the ship was not blown to splinters. They are satisfied that I made a mistake in the rendezvous. And, so far, no suspicion attaches to me; they believe the mechanism of the clock failed them. And perhaps it is well for me that they believe this.It is, no doubt, a matter of indifference to you how the others and I reached safety. I have no delusions concerning any personal and kindly feeling on your part toward me. But one thing you can not—dare not—believe, and that is that I proved treacherous to you and false to my own ideas of honour.And now let me say one more thing to you—let me say it out of a—friendship—for which you care nothing—could not care anything. And that is this: your task is accomplished. You could not possibly have succeeded. There is no chance for recovery of those papers. Your mission is definitely ended.Now, I beg of you to return to America. Keep clear of entanglement in these events which are beginning to happen in such rapid succession in Europe. They do not concern you; you have nothing to do with them, no interest in them. Your entry into affairs which can not concern you would be insulting effrontery and foolish bravado.I beg you to heed this warning. I know you to be personally courageous; I suppose that fear of consequences would not deter you from intrusion into any affair, however dangerous; but I dare hope that perhaps311in your heart there may have been born a little spark of friendliness—a faint warmth of recognition for a woman who took some slight chance with death to prove to you that her word of honour is not lightly given or lightly broken.So, if you please, our ways part here with this letter sent to you by hand.I shall not forget the rash but generous boy I knew who called meScheherazade.
Have I been fair to you? Did I keep my word? Surely you must now, in your heart, acquit me of treachery—of any premeditated violence toward you.
I never dreamed that those men would come to my310stateroom. That planhadbeen discussed, but was abandoned because it appeared impossible to get hold of you.
And also—may I admit it without being misunderstood?—I absolutely refused to permit any attempt involving your death.
When the trap shut on you, there in my stateroom, it shut also on me. I was totally unprepared; I was averse to murder; and also I had given you my word of honour.
Judge, then, of my shame and desperation—my anger at being entrapped in a false position involving the loss in your eyes of my personal honour!
It was unbearable: and I did what I could to make it clear to you that I had not betrayed you. But my comrades do not yet know that I had any part in it; do not yet understand why the ship was not blown to splinters. They are satisfied that I made a mistake in the rendezvous. And, so far, no suspicion attaches to me; they believe the mechanism of the clock failed them. And perhaps it is well for me that they believe this.
It is, no doubt, a matter of indifference to you how the others and I reached safety. I have no delusions concerning any personal and kindly feeling on your part toward me. But one thing you can not—dare not—believe, and that is that I proved treacherous to you and false to my own ideas of honour.
And now let me say one more thing to you—let me say it out of a—friendship—for which you care nothing—could not care anything. And that is this: your task is accomplished. You could not possibly have succeeded. There is no chance for recovery of those papers. Your mission is definitely ended.
Now, I beg of you to return to America. Keep clear of entanglement in these events which are beginning to happen in such rapid succession in Europe. They do not concern you; you have nothing to do with them, no interest in them. Your entry into affairs which can not concern you would be insulting effrontery and foolish bravado.
I beg you to heed this warning. I know you to be personally courageous; I suppose that fear of consequences would not deter you from intrusion into any affair, however dangerous; but I dare hope that perhaps311in your heart there may have been born a little spark of friendliness—a faint warmth of recognition for a woman who took some slight chance with death to prove to you that her word of honour is not lightly given or lightly broken.
So, if you please, our ways part here with this letter sent to you by hand.
I shall not forget the rash but generous boy I knew who called me
Scheherazade.
312CHAPTER XXVIIITOGETHER
He sat there, holding the letter and looking absently over it at the little dog who had gone to sleep again. There was no sound in the room save the faint whisper of the tea-kettle. The sunny garden outside was very still, too; the blackbird appeared to doze on his peach twig; the kitten had settled down with eyes half closed and tail tucked under flank.
The young man sat there with his letter in his hand and eyes lost in retrospection for a while.
In his hand lay evidence that the gang which had followed him, and through which he no longer doubted that he had been robbed, was now in Paris.
And yet he could not give this information to the Princess Naïa. Here was a letter which he could not show. Something within him forbade it, some instinct which he did not trouble to analyse.
And this instinct sent the letter into his breast pocket as a light sound came to his ears; and the next instant Rue Carew entered the further drawing-room.
The little West Highland terrier looked up, wagged that section of him which did duty as a tail, and watched her as Neeland rose to seat her at the tea-table.
“Sandy,” she said to the little dog, “if you care to say ‘Down with the Sultan,’ I shall bestow one lump of sugar upon you.”
“Yap-yap!” said the little dog.313
“Give it to him, please––” Rue handed the sugar to Neeland, who delivered it gravely.
“That’s because I want Sandy to like you,” she added.
Neeland regarded the little dog and addressed him politely:
“I shouldn’t dare call you Sandy on such brief acquaintance,” he said; “but may I salute you as Alexander? Thank you, Alexander.”
He patted the dog, whose tail made a slight, sketchy motion of approval.
“Now,” said Rue Carew, “you are friends, and we shall all be very happy together, I’m sure.... Princess Naïa said we were not to wait. Tell me how to fix your tea.”
He explained. About to begin on a butteredcroissant, he desisted abruptly and rose to receive the Princess, who entered with the light, springy step characteristic of her, gowned in one of those Parisian afternoon creations which never are seen outside that capital, and never will be.
“Far too charming to be real,” commented Neeland. “You are a pretty fairy story, Princess Naïa, and your gown is a miracle tale which never was true.”
He had not dared any such flippancy with Rue Carew, and the girl, who knew she was exquisitely gowned, felt an odd little pang in her heart as this young man’s praise of the Princess Mistchenka fell so easily and gaily from his lips. He might have noticed her gown, as it had been chosen with many doubts, much hesitation, and anxious consideration, for him.
She flushed a little at the momentary trace of envy:
“Youaretoo lovely for words,” she said, rising. But the Princess gently forced her to resume her seat.314
“If this young man has any discrimination,” she said, “he won’t hesitate with the golden apple, Ruhannah.”
Rue laughed and flushed:
“He hasn’t noticed my gown, and I wore it for him to notice,” she said. “But he was too deeply interested in Sandy and in tea andcroissants––”
“Ididnotice it!” said Neeland. And, to that young man’s surprise and annoyance, his face grew hot with embarrassment. What on earth possessed him to blush like a plow-boy! He suddenly felt like one, too, and turned sharply to the little dog, perplexed, irritated with himself and his behaviour.
Behind him the Princess was saying:
“The car is here. I shan’t stop for tea, dear. In case anything happens, I am at the Embassy.”
“The Russian Embassy,” repeated Rue.
“Yes. I may be a little late. We are to dine hereen familleat eight. You will entertain James––
“James!” she repeated, addressing him. “Do you think Ruhannah sufficiently interesting to entertain you while I am absent?”
But all his aplomb, his lack of self-consciousness, seemed to be gone; and Neeland made some reply which seemed to him both obvious and dull. And hated himself because he found himself so unaccountably abashed, realising that he was afraid of the opinions that this young girl might entertain concerning him.
“I’m going,” said the Princess. “Au revoir, dear; good-bye, James––”
She looked at him keenly when he turned to face her, smiled, still considering him as though she had unexpectedly discovered a new feature in his expressive face.
Whatever it was she discovered seemed to make her smile a trifle more mechanical; she turned slowly to315Rue Carew, hesitated, then, nodding a gay adieu, turned and left the room with Neeland at her elbow.
“I’ll tuck you in,” he began; but she said:
“Thanks; Marotte will do that.” And left him at the door.
When the car had driven away down the rue Soleil d’Or, Neeland returned to the little drawing-room where Rue was indulging Sandy with small bits of sugar.
He took up cup and butteredcroissant, and for a little while nothing was said, except to Sandy who, upon invitation, repeated his opinion of the Sultan and snapped in the offered emolument with unsatiated satisfaction.
To Rue Carew as well as to Neeland there seemed to be a slight constraint between them—something not entirely new to her since they had met again after two years.
In the two years of her absence she had been very faithful to the memory of his kindness; constant in the friendship which she had given him unasked—given him first, she sometimes thought, when she was a little child in a ragged pink frock, and he was a wonderful young man who had taken the trouble to cross the pasture and warn her out of range of the guns.
He had always held his unique place in her memory and in her innocent affections; she had written to him again and again, in spite of his evident lack of interest in the girl to whom he had been kind. Rare, brief letters from him were read and reread, and laid away with her best-loved treasures. And when the prospect of actually seeing him again presented itself, she had been so frankly excited and happy that the Princess Mistchenka could find in the girl’s unfeigned delight316nothing except a young girl’s touching and slightly amusing hero-worship.
But with her first exclamation when she caught sight of him at the terminal, something about her preconceived ideas of him, and her memory of him, was suddenly and subtly altered, even while his name fell from her excited lips.
Because she had suddenly realised that he was even more wonderful than she had expected or remembered, and that she did not know him at all—that she had no knowledge of this tall, handsome, well-built young fellow with his sunburnt features and his air of smiling aloofness and of graceful assurance, almost fascinating and a trifle disturbing.
Which had made the girl rather grave and timid, uncertain of the estimation in which he might hold her; no longer so sure of any encouragement from him in her perfectly obvious attitude of a friend of former days.
And so, shyly admiring, uncertain, inclined to warm response at any advance from this wonderful young man, the girl had been trying to adjust herself to this new incarnation of a certain James Neeland who had won her gratitude and who had awed her, too, from the time when, as a little girl, she had first beheld him.
She lifted her golden-grey eyes to him; a little unexpected sensation not wholly unpleasant checked her speech for a moment.
This was odd, even unaccountable. Such awkwardness, such disquieting and provincial timidity wouldn’t do.
“Would you mind telling me a little about Brookhollow?” she ventured.
Certainly he would tell her. He laid aside his plate317and tea cup and told her of his visits there when he had walked over from Neeland’s Mills in the pleasant summer weather.
Nothing had changed, he assured her; mill-dam and pond and bridge, and the rushing creek below were exactly as she knew them; her house stood there at the crossroads, silent and closed in the sunshine, and under the high moon; pickerel and sunfish still haunted the shallow pond; partridges still frequented the alders and willows across her pasture; fireflies sailed through the summer night; and the crows congregated in the evening woods and talked over the events of the day.
“And my cat? You wrote that you would take care of Adoniram.”
“Adoniram is an aged patriarch and occupies the place of honour in my father’s house,” he said.
“He is well?”
“Oh, yes. He prefers his food cut finely, that is all.”
“I don’t suppose he will live very long.”
“He’s pretty old,” admitted Neeland.
She sighed and looked out of the window at the kitten in the garden. And, after an interval of silence:
“Our plot in the cemetery—is it—pretty?”
“It is beautiful,” he said, “under the great trees. It is well cared for. I had them plant the shrubs and flowers you mentioned in the list you sent me.”
“Thank you.” She lifted her eyes again to him. “I wonder if you realise how—how splendid you have always been to me.”
Surprised, he reddened, and said awkwardly that he had done nothing. Where was the easy, gay and debonaire assurance of this fluent young man? He was finding nothing to say to Rue Carew, or saying what318he said as crudely and uncouthly as any haymaker in Gayfield.
He looked up, exasperated, and met her eyes squarely. And Rue Carew blushed.
They both looked elsewhere at once, but in the girl’s breast a new pulse beat; a new instinct stirred, blindly importuning her for recognition; a new confusion threatened the ordered serenity of her mind, vaguely menacing it with unaccustomed questions.
Then the instinct of self-command returned; she found composure with an effort.
“You haven’t asked me,” she said, “about my work. Would you like to know?”
He said he would; and she told him—chary of self-praise, yet eager that he should know that her masters had spoken well of her.
“And you know,” she said, “every week, now, I contribute a drawing to the illustrated paper I wrote to you about. I sent one off yesterday. But,” and she laughed shyly, “my nostrils are no longer filled with pride, because I am not contented with myself any more. I wish to do—oh, so much better work!”
“Of course. Contentment in creative work means that we have nothing more to create.”
She nodded and smiled:
“The youngest born is the most tenderly cherished—until a new one comes. It is that way with me; I am all love and devotion and tenderness and self-sacrifice while fussing over my youngest. Then a still younger comes, and I become like a heartless cat and drive away all progeny except the newly born.”
She sighed and smiled and looked up at him:
“It can’t be helped, I suppose—that is, if one’s going to have more progeny.”319
“It’s our penalty for producing. Only the newest counts. And those to come are to be miracles. But they never are.”
She nodded seriously.
“When there is a better light I should like to show you some of my studies,” she ventured. “No, not now. I am too vain to risk anything except the kindest of morning lights. Because I do hope for your approval––”
“I know they’re good,” he said. And, half laughingly: “I’m beginning to find out that you’re a rather wonderful and formidable and overpowering girl, Ruhannah.”
“You don’t think so!” she exclaimed, enchanted. “Doyou? Oh, dear! Then I feel that I ought to show you my pictures and set you right immediately––” She sprang to her feet. “I’ll get them; I’ll be only a moment––”
She was gone before he discovered anything to say, leaving him to walk up and down the deserted room and think about her as clearly as his somewhat dislocated thoughts permitted, until she returned with both arms full of portfolios, boards, and panels.
“Now,” she said with a breathless smile, “you may mortify my pride and rebuke my vanity. I deserve it; I need it; but Oh!—don’t be too severe––”
“Are you serious?” he asked, looking up in astonishment from the first astonishing drawing in colour which he held between his hands.
“Serious? Of course––” She met his eyes anxiously, then her own became incredulous and the swift colour dyed her face.
“Do youlikemy work?” she asked in a fainter voice.320
“Likeit!” He continued to stare at the bewildering grace and colour of the work, turned to another and lifted it to the light:
“What’s this?” he demanded.
“A monotype.”
“Youdid it?”
“Y-yes.”
He seemed unable to take his eyes from it—from the exquisite figures there in the sun on the bank of the brimming river under an iris-tinted April sky.
“What do you call it, Rue?”
“Baroque.”
He continued to scrutinise it in silence, then drew another carton prepared for oil from the sheaf on the sofa.
Over autumn woods, in a windy sky, high-flying crows were buffeted and blown about. From the stark trees a few phantom leaves clung, fluttering; and the whole scene was possessed by sinuous, whirling forms—mere glimpses of supple, exquisite shapes tossing, curling, flowing through the naked woodland. A delicate finger caught at a dead leaf here; there frail arms clutched at a bending, wind-tossed bough; grey sky and ghostly forest were obsessed, bewitched by the winnowing, driving torrent of airy, half seen spirits.
“The Winds,” he said mechanically.
He looked at another—a sketch of the Princess Naïa. And somehow it made him think of vast skies and endless plains and the tumult of surging men and rattling lances.
“A Cossack,” he said, half to himself. “I never before realised it.” And he laid it aside and turned to the next.
“I haven’t brought any life studies or school321drawings,” she said. “I thought I’d just show you the—the results of them and of—of whatever is in me.”
“I’m just beginning to understand what is in you,” he said.
“Tell me—what is it?” she asked, almost timidly.
“Tellyou?” He rose, stood by the window looking out, then turned to her:
“What canItell you?” he added with a short laugh. “What have I to say to a girl who can do—these—after two years abroad?”
Sheer happiness kept her silent. She had not dared hope for such approval. Even now she dared not permit herself to accept it.
“I have so much to say,” she ventured, “and such an appalling amount of work before I can learn to say it––”
“Your work is—stunning!” he said bluntly.
“You don’t think so!” she exclaimed incredulously.
“Indeed I do! Look at what you have done in two years. Yes, grant all your aptitude and talents, just look what you’veaccomplishedand where youare! Look at you yourself, too—what a stunning, bewildering sort of girl you’ve developed into!”
“Jim Neeland!”
“Certainly, Jim Neeland, of Neeland’s Mills, who has had years more study than you have, more years of advantage, and who now is an illustrator without anything in particular to distinguish him from the several thousand other American illustrators––”
“Jim! Your work is charming!”
“How doyouknow?”
“Because I have everything you ever did! I sent for the magazines and cut them out; and they are in my scrapbook––”322
She hesitated, breathless, smiling back at him out of her beautiful golden-grey eyes as though challenging him to doubt her loyalty or her belief in him.
It was rather curious, too, for the girl was unusually intelligent and discriminating; and Neeland’s work was very, very commonplace.
His face had become rather sober, but the smile still lurked on his lips.
“Rue,” he said, “you are wonderfully kind. But I’m afraid I know about my work. I can draw pretty well, according to school standards; and I approach pretty nearly the same standards in painting. Probably that is why I became an instructor at the Art League. But, so far, I haven’t done anything better than what is called ‘acceptable.’”
“I don’t agree with you,” she said warmly.
“It’s very kind of you not to.” He laughed and walked to the window again, and stood there looking out across the sunny garden. “Of course,” he added over his shoulder, “I expect to get along all right. Mediocrity has the best of chances, you know.”
“You arenotmediocre!”
“No, I don’t think I am. But my work is. And, do you know,” he continued thoughtfully, “that is very often the case with a man who is better equipped to act than to tell with pen or pencil how others act. I’m beginning to be afraid that I’m that sort, because I’m afraid that I get more enjoyment out of doing things than in explaining with pencil and paint how they are done.”
But Rue Carew, seated on the arm of her chair, slowly shook her head:
“I don’t think that those are the only alternatives; do you?”323
“What other is there?”
She said, a little shyly:
“I think it is all right todothings if you like; make exact pictures of how things are done if you choose; but it seems to me that if one really has anything to say, one should show in one’s pictures how thingsmightbe oroughtto be. Don’t you?”
He seemed surprised and interested in her logic, and she took courage to speak again in her pretty, deprecating way:
“If the function of painting and literature is to reflect reality, a mirror would do as well, wouldn’t it? But to reflect what might be or what ought to be requires something more, doesn’t it?”
“Imagination. Yes.”
“A mind, anyway.... That is what I have thought; but I’m not at all sure I am right.”
“I don’t know. The mind ought to be a mirror reflecting only the essentials of reality.”
“Andthatrequires imagination, doesn’t it?” she asked. “You see you have put it much better than I have.”
“Have I?” he returned, smiling. “After a while you’ll persuade me that I possess your imagination, Rue. But I don’t.”
“You do, Jim––”
“I’m sorry; I don’t. You construct, I copy; you create, I ring changes on what already is; you dissect, I skate over the surface of things—Oh, Lord! I don’t know what’s lacking in me!” he added with gay pretence of despair which possibly was less feigned than real. “But I know this, Rue Carew! I’d rather experience something interesting than make a picture of it. And I suppose that confession is fatal.”324
“Why, Jim?”
“Because with me the pleasures of reality are substituted for the pleasures of imagination. Not that I don’t like to draw and paint. But my ambition in painting is and always has been bounded by the visible. And, although that does not prevent me from appreciation—from understanding and admiring your work, for example—it sets an impregnable limit to any such aspiration on my part––”
His mobile and youthful features had become very grave; he stood a moment with lowered head as though what he was thinking of depressed him; then the quick smile came into his face and cleared it, and he said gaily:
“I’m an artisticDobbin; a reliable, respectable sort of Fido on whom editors can depend; that’s all. Don’t feel sorry for me,” he added, laughing; “my work will be very much in demand.”
325CHAPTER XXIXEN FAMILLE
The Princess Mistchenka came leisurely and gracefully downstairs a little before eight that evening, much pleased with her hair, complexion, and gown.
She found Neeland alone in the music-room, standing in the attitude of the conventional Englishman with his back to the fireless grate and his hands clasped loosely behind him, waiting to be led out and fed.
The direct glance of undisguised admiration with which he greeted the Princess Naïa confirmed the impression she herself had received from her mirror, and brought an additional dash of colour into her delicate brunette face.
“Is there any doubt that you are quite the prettiestobjet d’artin Paris?” he enquired anxiously, taking her hand; and her dark eyes were very friendly as he saluted her finger-tips with the reverent and slightly exaggerated appreciation of a connoisseur in sculpture.
“You hopeless Irishman,” she laughed. “It’s fortunate for women that you’re never serious, even with yourself.”
“Princess Naïa,” he remonstrated, “can nothing short of kissing you convince you of my sincerity and––”
“Impudence?” she interrupted smilingly. “Oh, yes, I’m convinced, James, that, lacking other material, you’d make love to a hitching post.”326
His hurt expression and protesting gesture appealed to the universe against misinterpretation, but the Princess Mistchenka laughed again unfeelingly, and seated herself at the piano.
“Some day,” she said, striking a lively chord or two, “I hope you’ll catch it, young man. You’re altogether too free and easy with your feminine friends.... What do you think of Rue Carew?”
“An astounding and enchanting transformation. I haven’t yet recovered my breath.”
“When you do, you’ll talk nonsense to the child, I suppose.”
“Princess! Have I ever––”
“You talk little else, dear friend, when God sends a pretty fool to listen!” She looked up at him from the keyboard over which her hands were nervously wandering. “I ought to know,” she said; “Ialso have listened.” She laughed carelessly, but her glance lingered for an instant on his face, and her mirth did not sound quite spontaneous to either of them.
Two years ago there had been an April evening after the opera, when, in taking leave of her in her littlesalon, her hand had perhaps retained his a fraction of a second longer than she quite intended; and he had, inadvertently, kissed her.
He had thought of it as a charming and agreeable incident; what the Princess Naïa Mistchenka thought of it she never volunteered. But she so managed that he never again was presented with a similar opportunity.
Perhaps they both were thinking of this rather ancient episode now, for his face was touched with a mischievously reminiscent smile, and she had lowered her head a trifle over the keyboard where her slim, ivory-tinted327hands still idly searched after elusive harmonies in the subdued light of the single lamp.
“There’s a man dining with us,” she remarked, “who has the same irresponsible and casual views on life and manners which you entertain. No doubt you’ll get along very well together.”
“Who is he?”
“A Captain Sengoun, one of our attachés. It’s likely you’ll find a congenial soul in this same Cossack whom we all call Alak.” She added maliciously: “His only logic is the impulse of the moment, and he is known as Prince Erlik among his familiars. Erlik was the Devil, you know––”
He was announced at that moment, and came marching in—a dark, handsome, wiry young man with winning black eyes and a little black moustache just shadowing his short upper lip—and a head shaped to contain the devil himself—the most reckless looking head, Neeland thought, that he ever had beheld in all his life.
But the young fellow’s frank smile was utterly irresistible, and his straight manner of facing one, and of looking directly into the eyes of the person he addressed in his almost too perfect English, won any listener immediately.
He bowed formally over Princess Naïa’s hand, turned squarely on Neeland when he was named to the American, and exchanged a firm clasp with him. Then, to the Princess:
“I am late? No? Fancy, Princess—that great booby, Izzet Bey, must stop me at the club, and I exceedingly pressed to dress and entirely out of humour with all Turks. ‘Eh bien, mon vieux!’ said he in his mincing manner of a nervous pelican, ‘they’re warming up the Balkan boilers with Austrian pine. But I hear328they’re full of snow.’ And I said to him: ‘Snow boils very nicely if the fire is sufficiently persistent!’ And I think Izzet Bey will find it so!”—with a quick laugh of explanation to Neeland: “He meant Russian snow, you see; and that boils beautifully if they keep on stoking the boiler with Austrian fuel.”
The Princess shrugged:
“What schoolboy repartée! Why did you answer him at all, Alak?”
“Well,” explained the attaché, “as I was due here at eight I hadn’t time to take him by the nose, had I?”
Rue Carew entered and went to the Princess to make amends:
“I’m so sorry to be late!”—turned to smile at Neeland, then offered her hand to the Russian. “How do you do, Prince Erlik?” she said with the careless and gay cordiality of old acquaintance. “I heard you say something about Colonel Izzet Bey’s nose as I came in.”
Captain Sengoun bowed over her slender white hand:
“The Mohammedan nose of Izzet Bey is an admirable bit of Oriental architecture, Miss Carew. Why should it surprise you to hear me extol its bizarre beauty?”
“Anyway,” said the girl, “I’m contented that you left devilry for revelry.” And, Marotte announcing dinner, she took the arm of Captain Sengoun as the Princess took Neeland’s.
Like all Russians and some Cossacks, Prince Alak ate and drank as though it were the most delightful experience in life; and he did it with a whole-souled heartiness and satisfaction that was flattering to any hostess and almost fascinating to anybody observing him.
His teeth were even and very white; his appetite329splendid: when he did his goblet the honour of noticing it at all, it was to drain it; when he resumed knife and fork he used them as gaily, as gracefully, and as thoroughly as he used his sabre on various occasions.
He had taken an instant liking to Neeland, who seemed entirely inclined to return it; and he talked a great deal to the American but with a nice division of attention for the two ladies on either side.
“You know, Alak,” said the Princess, “you need not torture yourself by trying to converse with discretion; because Mr. Neeland knows about many matters which concern us all.”
“Ah! That is delightful! And indeed I was already quite assured of Mr. Neeland’s intelligent sympathy in the present state of European affairs.”
“He’s done a little more than express sympathy,” remarked the Princess; and she gave a humorous outline of Neeland’s part in the affair of the olive-wood box.
“Fancy!” exclaimed Captain Sengoun. “That impudentcanaille! Yes; I heard at the Embassy what happened to that accursed box this morning. Of course it is a misfortune, but as for me, personally, I don’t care––”
“It doesn’t happen to concern you personally, Prince Erlik,” said Princess Naïa dryly.
“No,” he admitted, unabashed by the snub, “it does not touch me. Cavalry cannot operate on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Therefore, God be thanked, I shall be elsewhere when the snow boils.”
Rue tuned to Neeland:
“His one idea of diplomacy and war is a thousand Kuban Cossacks at full speed.”
“And that is an excellent idea, is it not, Kazatchka?”330he said, smiling impudently at the Princess, who only laughed at the familiarity.
“I hope,” added Captain Sengoun, “that I may live to gallop through a few miles of diplomacy at full speed before they consign me to the Opolchina.” Turning to Neeland, “The reserve—the old man’s home, you know. God forbid!” And he drained his goblet and looked defiantly at Rue Carew.
“A Cossack is a Cossack,” said the Princess, “be he Terek or Kuban, Don or Astrachan, and they all know as much about diplomacy as Prince Erlik—or Izzet Bey’s nose.... James, you are unusually silent, dear friend. Are you regretting those papers?”
“It’s a pity,” he said. But he had not been thinking of the lost papers; Rue Carew’s beauty preoccupied him. The girl was in black, which made her skin dazzling, and reddened the chestnut colour of her hair.
Her superb young figure revealed an unsuspected loveliness where the snowy symmetry of neck and shoulders and arms was delicately accented by the filmy black of her gown.
He had never seen such a beautiful girl; she seemed more wonderful, more strange, more aloof than ever. And this was what preoccupied and entirely engaged his mind, and troubled it, so that his smile had a tendency to become indefinite and his conversation mechanical at times.
Captain Sengoun drained one more of numerous goblets; gazed sentimentally at the Princess, then with equal sentiment at Rue Carew.
“As for me,” he said, with a carelessly happy gesture toward the infinite, “plans are plans, and if they’re stolen,tant pis! But there are always Tartars in Tartary and Turks in Turkey. And, while there are,331there’s hope for a poor devil of a Cossack who wants to say a prayer in St. Sophia before he’s gathered to his ancestors.”
“Have any measures been taken at your Embassy to trace the plans?” asked Neeland of the Princess.
“Of course,” she said simply.
“Plans,” remarked Sengoun, “are not worth thetcherkeskeof an honest Caucasian! A Khirgize pony knows more than any diplomat; and mymagaikais better than both!”
“All the same,” said Rue Carew, “with those stolen plans in your Embassy, Prince Erlik, you might even gallop asotniaof your Cossacks to the top of Achi-Baba.”
“By heaven! I’d like to try!” he exclaimed, his black eyes ablaze.
“There aredongas,” observed the Princess dryly.
“I know it. There aredongasevery twenty yards; and Turkish gorse that would stop a charging bull! My answer is, mount! trot! gallop! and hurrah for Achi-Baba!”
“Very picturesque, Alak. But wouldn’t it be nicer to be able to come back again and tell us all about it?”
“As for that,” he said with his full-throated, engaging laugh, “no need to worry, Princess, for the newspapers would tell the story. What is this Gallipoli country, anyway, that makes our Chancellery wag its respected head and frown and whisper in corners and take little notes on its newly laundered cuffs?
“I know the European and Asiatic shores with their forts—Kilid Bahr, Chimilik, Kum Kale, Dardanos. I know what those Germans have been about with their barbed wire and mobile mortar batteries. What do we want of their plans, then––”332
“Nothing, Prince Erlik!” said Rue, laughing. “It suffices that you be appointed adviser in general to his majesty the Czar.”
Sengoun laughed with all his might.
“And an excellent thing that would be, Miss Carew. What we need in Russia,” he added with a bow to the Princess, “are, first of all, more Kazatchkee, then myself to execute any commands with which my incomparable Princess might deign to honour me.”
“Then I command you to go and smoke cigarettes in the music-room and play some of your Cossack songs on the piano for Mr. Neeland until Miss Carew and I rejoin you,” said the Princess, rising.
At the door there was a moment of ceremony; then Sengoun, passing his arm through Neeland’s with boyish confidence that his quickly given friendship was welcome, sauntered off to the music-room where presently he was playing the piano and singing some of the entrancing songs of his own people in a voice that, cultivated, might have made a fortune for him:
“We are but horsemen,And God is great.We hunt on hill and fenThe fierce Kerait,Naiman and Eighur,Tartar and Khiounnou,Leopard and TigerFlee at our view-halloo;We are but horsemenCleansing the hill and fenWhere wild men hide—Wild beasts abide,Mongol and Baïaghod,Turkoman, Taïdjigod,Each in his den.333The skies are blue,The plains are wide,Over the fens the horsemen ride!”
Still echoing the wild air, and playing with both hands in spite of the lighted cigarette between his fingers, he glanced over his shoulder at Neeland:
“A very old, old song,” he explained, “made in the days of the great invasion when all the world was fighting anybody who would fight back. I made it into English. It’s quite nice, I think.”
His naïve pleasure in his own translation amused Neeland immensely, and he said that he considered it a fine piece of verse.
“Yes,” said Sengoun, “but you ought to hear a love song I made out of odd fragments I picked up here and there. I call it ‘Samarcand’; or rather ‘Samarcand Mahfouzeh,’ which means, ‘Samarcand the Well Guarded’:
“‘Outside my guarded doorWhose voice repeats my name?’‘The voice thou hast heard beforeUnder the white moon’s flame!And thy name is my song; and my song is ever the same!’“‘How many warriors, dead,Have sung the song you sing?Some by an arrow were sped;Some by a dagger’s sting.’‘Like a bird in the night is my song—a bird on the wing!’“‘Ahmed and Yucouf bled!A dead king blocks my door!’‘If thy halls and walls be red,Shall Samarcand ask more?Or my song shall cleanse thy house or my heart’s blood foul thy floor!’334“‘Now hast thou conquered me!Humbly thy captive, I.My soul escapes to thee;My body here must lie;Ride!—with thy song, and my soul in thy arms; and let me die.’”
Sengoun, still playing, flung over his shoulder:
“A Tartar song from the Turcoman. I borrowed it and put new clothes on it. Nice, isn’t it?”
“Enchanting!” replied Neeland, laughing in spite of himself.
Rue Carew, with her snowy shoulders and red-gold hair, came drifting in, consigning them to their seats with a gesture, and giving them to understand that she had come to hear the singing.
So Sengoun continued his sketchy, haphazard recital, waving his cigarette now and then for emphasis, and conversing frequently over his shoulder while Rue Carew leaned on the piano and gravely watched his nimble fingers alternately punish and caress the keyboard.
After a little while the Princess Mistchenka came in saying that she had letters to write. They conversed, however, for nearly an hour before she rose, and Captain Sengoun gracefully accepted hiscongé.
“I’ll walk with you, if you like,” suggested Neeland.
“With pleasure, my dear fellow! The night is beautiful, and I am just beginning to wake up.”
“Ask Marotte to give you a key, then,” suggested the Princess, going. At the foot of the stairs, however, she paused to exchange a few words with Captain Sengoun in a low voice; and Neeland, returning with his latchkey, went over to where Rue stood by the lamplit table absently looking over an evening paper.335
As he came up beside her, the girl lifted her beautiful, golden-grey eyes.
“Are you going out?”
“Yes, I thought I’d walk a bit with Captain Sengoun.”
“It’s rather a long distance to the Russian Embassy. Besides––” She hesitated, and he waited. She glanced absently over the paper for a moment, then, not raising her eyes: “I’m—I—the theft of that box today—perhaps my nerves have suffered a little—but do you think it quite prudent for you to go out alone at night?”
“Why, I am going out with Captain Sengoun!” he said, surprised at her troubled face.
“But you will have to return alone.”
He laughed, but they both had flushed a little.
Had it been any other woman in the world, he had not hesitated gaily to challenge the shy and charming solicitude expressed in his behalf—make of it his capital, his argument to force that pretty duel to which one day, all youth is destined.
He found himself now without a word to say, nor daring to entertain any assumption concerning the words she had uttered.
Dumb, awkward, afraid, he became conscious that something in this young girl had silenced within him any inclination to gay effrontery, any talent for casual gallantry. Her lifted eyes, with their clear, half shy regard, had killed all fluency of tongue in him—slain utterly that light good-humour with which he had encountered women heretofore.
He said:
“I hadn’t thought myself in any danger whatever. Is there any reason for me to expect further trouble?”336
Rue raised her troubled eyes:
“Has it occurred to you thattheymight think you capable of redrawing parts of the stolen plans from memory?”
“It had never occurred to me,” he admitted, surprised. “But I believe I could remember a little about one or two of the more general maps.”
“The Princess means to ask you, tomorrow, to draw for her what you can remember. And that made me think about you now—whether theothersmight not suspect you capable of remembering enough to do them harm.... And so—do you think it prudent to go out tonight?”
“Yes,” he replied, quite sincerely, “it is all right. You see I know Paris very well.”
She did not look convinced, but Sengoun came up and she bade them both good night and went away with the Princess Mistchenka.
As, arm in arm, the two young men sauntered around the corner of the rue Soleil d’Or, two men who had been sitting on a marble bench beside the sun-dial fountain rose and strolled after them.