"My poor boy: Don't look like that, be patient awhile. To-morrow; I promise you that it will be to-morrow."
She, who in former times had dared the most atrocious scandal with tranquil lack of shame, hesitated and stammered as she spoke of the next day. She seemed like a young girl struggling between love and a fear of compromising her future in society.
To-morrow! To-morrow he might come at three in the afternoon.... No, not at three; four o'clock was better. Valeria surely would have gone out by that time.She would send her maid to Nice to do some shopping; the gardener and his wife would be busy outside the house.
"But in Heaven's name, be careful! If you can manage so that the neighbors don't see you, it will be much better."
And the famous Prince Lubimoff visibly moved, like a boy planning his initiation into love, and prematurely stirred by its mysteries, assented to this counsel.
He insisted, in spite of her protests, on going with her to the gate of the Villa.
"If you were any one else, all right! It is quite natural that a friend should accompany me at such an hour; but you!... I am afraid that every one will guess our secret."
It was not until the gate was closed and Alicia's adorable figure was lost in the darkness, that the Prince could decide to go away.
He was obliged to walk the long distance to Villa Sirena, and nevertheless the road seemed short to him. Memories and promises accompanied him. His step had never been lighter, he seemed to be advancing through air in which the laws of gravitation had been lessened, on a planet wrapped in a perpetual night of springtime, in which the air, the dim trees and the objects lost in the darkness about him, vibrated with a poetic rhythm.
His sleep was restless, but he arose serene and in high spirits. He remembered the errand Alicia had asked him to do. She needed a warrior, with a revolver if possible, to escort her in transferring her fortune from the Club vaults to the bank. The Colonel, deeply impressed at her stroke of luck, went out to perform this task. "Poor Duchess! In the end God always protects the good."
Michael spent the entire morning attending to hispersonal adornment. His attempts at leading a simple, country life in retirement at Villa Sirena had not made him forget the hygienic care to which he was accustomed since his childhood. But now it was a question of something more; he wanted to make himself look well, and heighten with exquisite and intimate attentions the individuality of his physique, which he suddenly felt had been rather roughly treated by time.
He had his old valet go over the wardrobe he had acquired in former days. He remembered certain under-garments that had merited women's praise. He was as desirous for novelty and seductiveness as a woman dressing for a long-awaited rendezvous. Besides, he chose a suit that he had never worn before in Monte Carlo, a new hat, and a modest tie. He recalled her apprehension, and her request that he should enter unseen.
As he was doing all this, a sinking feeling, of lack of confidence in himself, began to assail him. It was the feeling of uneasiness like that of a student before examination, like that of a dramatist watching from the wings for the fate of his play, like that of a man about to fight a duel. He had spent so many weeks desiring without avail! He had renounced love so long ago! And the thought of Alicia aroused in him both eagerness and terror.
The Colonel returned about noon. He had performed his duties. He told the news with modest brevity, as though he had just accomplished something very important. Michael almost envied him, because he had seen Alicia. "How is she?"
"Beautiful, as beautiful as ever. Somewhat pale, as was natural after such an excitement as that of last night! But gay, very happy, talking constantly about the Marquis. It is easy to guess that she feels a strong affection for him."
They had lunch alone. Spadoni was going out in society, after his triumph. Perhaps he was in Beaulieu with his new friends, the Englishmen. Toledo had met Castro going into the Hôtel de Paris, where Doña Clorinda lived. Doubtless they were having lunch together to talk over the winnings of the Duchess. Atilio had even pretended he did not understand when the Colonel talked to him about the event. Envy, of course! The Prince shrugged his shoulders. People were mere phantoms as far as he was concerned, and evil passions were illusions. There were only two realities: he and what was awaiting him.
After lunch he dressed with such attention to the minutest details that the absurdity of it made him smile. He even changed his tie, after he was dressed, looking for another of a quieter color. "Half-past two." He looked at himself from head to foot in the mirror: a dark gray suit, tan shoes, and a light felt hat with broad brim turned down to protect his eyes from the sun. No one had ever seen Prince Lubimoff dressed in such a manner. From a distance one might have taken him for one of the travelers who visit the Riviera in passing, and come to make the acquaintance of roulette at Monte Carlo in an afternoon, and go away again immediately.
Three o'clock! He left Villa Sirena. It was a long way and he wanted to walk it. The exercise would fortify his will and dispel the doubt which was assailing him anew. He thought of how he had performed the same supreme intimate act so many times in former years, as something ordinary and almost mechanical. His suspicious isolation during the last few months seemed to have numbed him. He felt the lack of confidence of an athlete who has left off exercising and doubts whether he can summon all his former strength again. Fear atthe mere idea of a failure restored his confidence. Such a thing was impossible! Forward march!
On reaching Monte Carlo, he climbed the long stone steps as far as the streets of Beausoleil. He considered it advisable to go out of his way thus to carry out in the fullest detail the counsels of prudence that Alicia had given him.
He planned to enter her street from above, where there were no houses. In this way he would avoid any of her neighbors who at that hour might be going down town.
Above the building plots where houses were going up and the stairways which were winding down the slope, he could overlook a large expanse of sea, and on the shore the groves of the gardens, with a bird's-eye view of the huge mass of the Casino, with its green tiles and the yellow cupolas of its halls, the wide square, the little circular garden of the "Camembert," and around it numerous people the size of ants.
The Prince had a feeling of pity for those pigmies. Unhappy men! They were going to gamble, to shut themselves up between four walls, under artificial light, with no other dreams than those of money. For him something better was awaiting; for a few hours he was going to experience the one interesting intoxication of life. Then he laughed with pity at a certain lunatic, his double, who had tried to found a club group of "women's enemies." Imagine hating love, and trying to live without women; poor Prince Lubimoff!
It was now four o'clock. Passing among tiny gardens which seemed miles away from a crowded city, he entered Alicia's street. The red roof of Villa Rosa was peeping out from among the trees, almost at his feet. He kept on descending. His legs trembled slightly, and he stopped for a moment to regain his poise, raising his hand to his breast. Rounding a bend, all of the streetthat was built up appeared, straight and gently sloping down to where it joined one of the avenues of Monte Carlo.
No one was in sight, and he hastened to slip into Villa Rosa before any neighbors appeared. He passed the gardens rapidly, with the air of a man afraid of being late at a game of cards. He found the gate half open. It was a good sign: Alicia had thought of facilitating his entry.
He crossed the little garden, and thought he saw the frightened face of the gardener, peeping over some shrubbery for a moment, then hiding again precipitously. There was something strange about that man's curiosity and his look of fear. But he was hurrying away, and the Prince was pleased at his discretion.
With a flutter of emotion, he climbed the four steps of the door. With each one there awoke in his imagination a fresh dream picture, softly rose-colored like women's flesh, a sweet unconfessable vision which suddenly brought back his past. More with his memory than with his sense of smell, he perceived in the atmosphere a well-known perfume, her perfume. Everything seemed to be whirling about him with hazy contours. There was a buzzing in his ears; desire electrified him drawing his muscles taut, just as in his happiest days. And with the bearing of a conqueror, he pushed open the door, which was unlocked.
A woman came forward to meet him in the vestibule, a woman whose presence caused him to draw back.
Valeria! What was she doing there? What sort of a farce was this?
The young woman tried to speak, and he, too, wished to speak at the same time. But neither was able.
Another woman appeared, opening the door abruptly. It was Alicia, with her clothes in disorder and her hairwildly streaming. On seeing the Prince, she raised her arms and came forward, impetuous and silent, as though to embrace him. At last!... What did he care if Valeria were present: he did not see her. On the other hand, Alicia seemed different to him; taller than ever, and paler, with eyes that suddenly inspired fear.
Her arms fell about him, and immediately her whole body seemed to totter, bereft of strength. He felt a panting breast against his own; her arms were as cold as those of a corpse; a rain of hot tears began to bathe his neck.
"Michael! Michael!" Alicia groaned.
It was all she could say. She was choking, the sobs catching in her throat as though a strangling lump were fixed within it.
The Prince was obliged to summon all his strength to sustain the inert body. A voice sounded in his ear, with the same low monotonous tone that is heard in a chamber of death.
It was that of Valeria, who was also weeping, feeling afresh the contagion of tears.
"He is dead! He died a month ago!"
And she showed him a little yellow paper that had arrived half an hour before: a telegram from Madrid.
SPADONI, after greeting Novoa in the Casino square, told him about the dreams which were troubling his sleep, and about his disillusionment on awakening.
"It is your fault, professor. When we were living together at Villa Sirena, I used to listen to the interesting things you knew and talked about and then I would go peacefully to sleep. Now I am practically alone. The Prince and Castro are unbearably ill-humored; they talk scarcely at all and pay no attention whatever to me. As you yourself would say, I lead an 'inner life,' always alone with my thoughts; and when I spend the night there, I sleep badly, and suffer from dreams, which are very wonderful in the beginning, but turn out very sad in the end. Oh, what wonderful evenings we used to spend, talking about scientific things!"
Novoa smiled. In the eyes of the musician, gambling and its mysteries were scientific matters. All the paradoxes that he had taken delight in uttering had been stored up in the mind of the pianist as irrefutable truths. Novoa tried to head him off by asking for news of the Prince. But Spadoni, absorbed in his mania, continued:
"Last night's dream was terrible, and nevertheless it could not have begun better. I had the secret of your infinitesimal errors; I had mastered the hidden laws of chance and was King of the world. I had a special train, composed of a sleeping car, a drawing-room car, a dining car, a swimming-pool car, and goodness knows how many special kinds of cars! It was a regular palace on wheels that was always awaiting me at the railwaystation, with the engine constantly keeping up steam, ready to start at any moment. I got out of the train in all the cities famous for gambling, just as a person gets out of an automobile. And seeing me coming, the owners of the Casinos, the employees, and even the green tables fairly trembled. 'Hurrah for the Avenger!' all those who had lost their money shouted in the anteroom. But I passed on, serene as a god, without paying any attention to these ovations from the common herd. Imagine what it would cost the possessor of the secret of the infinitesimal errors to win! My twelve secretaries placed on the various tables a million or two, following my instructions. 'Ready, play!' I walked about like Napoleon, giving orders to my marshals. In half an hour, they declared the bank was broken and the Casino bankrupt. 'The house is closing its doors!' shouted the employees, just as in a church when the services are over. And on coming out, the same starving wretches who had greeted me with acclamations rushed on the guards escorting me, with sudden hate, trying to kill me. The place where their fortunes were buried was closed to them forever. Now they could not return the next day and lose more money with the vague hope of squaring accounts. I had taken away all their hopes."
"Exactly," said Novoa.
"Also I had a yacht, which was larger than Prince Lubimoff's; something in the nature of a first-class cruiser. And I needed one that size, for a band of followers as large as mine. I had with me hordes of secretaries, a crowd of strong-arm men whose duty it was to defend me and my treasure, and a great number of blasé people, who considered me a very interesting person, and followed me all over the globe, like that misanthropic fellow who followed a lion tamer from city to city, hoping that the wild beasts might some day devourhim. There was no longer a single Casino functioning in Europe: the one at San Sebastian had been turned into a convent; the one at Ostend was being used as a laboratory for experiments on oyster culture. In all the bathing resorts and all medicinal springs, people became interested exclusively in taking care of their health; and when they wanted distraction, they went to the promenades and played marbles and other children's games. In the meantime I went traveling through the Americas and the South Seas, breaking one bank after another, in all the big gambling houses. I was followed by journalists who made up another army larger than my own. The newspapers and the cable and telegraph agencies announced my arrival in advance, making a great stir. 'The invincible Spadoni is coming!' And the gaming establishments, feeling their end was near, tried to exploit their death agony by selling seats at fabulous prices to every one who wanted to witness my triumph. In the United States a steel king, or a king of something or other, gave a hundred thousand dollars for a seat, in order to follow my irresistible playing close at hand. Never before had such a sum been paid to see the long hair of a concert singer or the diamonds of a soprano."
"And how about Monte Carlo?" asked Novoa, interested by the gambler's wild dreams.
"We are coming to that. I kept Monte Carlo to the end of my trip, thinking of the money that I had lost here. The fatter I let the victim grow, the greater would be my vengeance. And such business as Monte Carlo was doing! Since there was no gambling left anywhere else in the world, all the gamblers gathered here from every part of the globe. The city had grown, until it reached the summits of the Alps; the forty millions that the Casino used to win in favorable years, had now becomefour thousand million. The stockholders were marrying persons of royal blood: two Balkan kings were declaring war, quarreling over the hand of the daughter of a fourth Vice-President of the company that was managing the Casino. The equilibrium of Europe was imperiled: the great powers were dreaming of annexing Monaco in the name of ancient historical and ethnological rights, since they had all had and still had many people of their race living on that tiny piece of land. But suddenly the Invincible appeared."
Spadoni, as though still dreaming, looked at the Casino, the Square, the entrance to the terrace, and the curving slope of the avenue which descended to the harbor. He could see it all, perhaps no differently than he had seen it in his imagination.
"What a crowd there was! For six months previously the whole world had talked of nothing else. 'Are you going to see the fun?' 'Aren't you going?' Cook's Agency had announced in every country of the globe an inexpensive trip 'personally conducted' to witness this world event. The Paris-Lyon-Mediterranean was giving round trip tickets at reduced prices, and all Paris was on hand. The owners of hotels and restaurants, out of gratitude, were placing my portrait in the most conspicuous part of the dining rooms, which were always filled. The newspapers published my biography, and in mentioning my wealth were obliged to break their columns, placing a line of zeros clear across the page, and even then there was not sufficient space. I forgot to tell you that I found myself obliged to establish a bank, just to take care of my treasures. And whenever the Bank of London or the Bank of France were pressed for money, they sent me a polite note, asking me to get them out of their difficulty."
Novoa laughed at the naïve way in which the pianistrelated his greatness. He still seemed obsessed by his dream.
"My yacht was obliged to anchor outside the harbor among other ships. There were many trans-Atlantic liners there: four from the United States, one from Japan, another from South America, and a few from Australia and New Zealand, all filled with travelers who had come from the other hemisphere to see Spadoni. After greeting Monaco with a twenty-one-gun salute, I sprang ashore amid the hurrahs of the foreign sailors. You easily understand that a man like myself could not arrive at the Casino seated in a mere automobile. Who hasn't an automobile now-a-days! On the dock there was waiting for me a single seated carriage which I was to drive myself, but a carriage with gilded wheels, drawn by six women, six beautiful women, all of them celebrated, whose pictures figured not only in the principal illustrated papers, but also on perfumery bottles and cigar boxes."
The Professor was extremely amused. He noticed the satisfaction with which the pianist dwelt on this detail of his triumphal entry. The degradation of these six elegant and famous women seemed to flatter his woman-hating propensities. He spoke with a coolly revengeful look, as though witnessing the abject humiliation of his greatest and deadliest enemy.
"It was merely a matter of paying the price: and I was not going to bargain over a million more or less. The one thing that annoyed me was having to choose among several thousand beauties who were clamoring to be selected. I was obliged to risk offending many big theater managers, business men, and statesmen, by rejecting the many ladies whom they recommended to me. A monarch even withdrew the title of Duke which he had just given me, because I had refused his favorite'friend.' All six wore the latest frocks designed in theRue de la Paix. The reporters, cameras in hand, were taking snap shots of the gowns which were to set the latest style. Besides, their harness was covered with pearls, diamonds, and every sort of precious stone, and they were careful not to injure them, knowing that at the end of their trot they would be able to keep the gems as souvenirs. I had a large whip to use on occasion: a whip of flowers, to be sure. One must always be chivalrous with ladies."
He smiled ironically. Once more Novoa noted his look of rancorous misogyny.
"But inside, the whip was made of sharp steel; and lashing my six handsome steeds, we started out. What a long time it took to climb the slope making our way through the crowd! The foreigners greeted me with acclamations. The sounds of the clicking cameras blended into an endless buzzing. Every one wanted to carry away the image of the king of the world. I could pick out the natives of the city by their sad faces. The men were imploring me with their glances, like miserable captives; the women held up their children; the old men fell on their knees. I was the conqueror who, in ruining the Casino, was utterly destroying their home land, condemning them to poverty and hardship. The square was black with people. On getting out of my vehicle, I saw that the steps of the Casino were filled with a great delegation. First of all, was Monsieur Blanc; next, his general staff of advisors, the principal stockholders, the inspectors, and the entire body ofcroupiers, all dressed in black, with long alpaca coats of a funereal cut. In the background were well known people, whose presence there might move me. In order to recall to my mind the fact that I had been a mere pianist, they had waiting for me there, baton in hand, directors of concerts andoperas, orchestra soloists with their instruments; singers—the men with swords at their belts, the women with long trains, and all of them painted and bewigged; girls from the ballet, with pale pink legs and masses of tulle standing out horizontally from their waists. Instructed in advance, they were all ready to groan.
"'One word with you, Signor Spadoni.'
"It was Monsieur Blanc who took me aside, and handed me a small paper.
"'Take this and don't go in.'
"I looked at the paper: a check for a million. Humph! What can a man do with a million? And on noticing that I was crumpling it, and throwing it on the ground, the master of the Casino gave me another paper.
"'Make it five then, and go away.'
"Since this did not move me either, he kept on taking checks from all his pockets: ten million, fifteen, forty....
"My twelve counselors came forward with huge purses filled with bank notes; my escort cleared the way among the imploring crowd on the stairway; my horses were getting impatient, because certain connoisseurs had availed themselves of the crowding to take liberties with them.
"'One more word, Signor Spadoni: the last. We will cause a revolution, we will dethrone Albert, and give the crown of Monaco to you. If you like, you might marry the daughter of an Emperor: with money you can do anything. We have it and so have you....'
"'I have told you no! What I want is to get into that Casino, bust the whole business, and take away the keys.'
"This threat tore from him the supreme concession.
"'You shall be my partner; I will give you fifty per cent of the winnings. Don't you want to? Well then, seventy-five.'
"On seeing that I continued to advance up the stairwaywithout listening to him, he raised a whistle to his lips. On his face was a look of a Samson, clutching the columns of the Temple. He would rather die than see his house bankrupt! A terrible explosion resounded, as though the world were being rent apart. They had mined with all the high-power explosives of the war, the Casino, the square, and the whole city. I was blown off my feet and driven, dazed, up into the clouds, but I was still able to see how Monte Carlo was disappearing, and even the dock of Monaco, as the sea in one enormous wave, was sweeping over the site of the vanished land. And when I came down to earth again...."
"You woke up," said Novoa.
"Yes, I woke up, and on the floor beside my bed; and I could hear Castro's voice in the corridor calling me names for having spoiled his sleep by my cries. Don't laugh, Professor. It is very sad to dream of such grandeur, as though you had had it in hand, and then to find yourself as poor as yesterday, as poor as ever, and besides with bad luck still clinging to you."
This mention of poverty and bad luck by Spadoni caused Novoa to protest. People still recalled his amazing fortune as the banker in the Sporting Club. That had been an epoch-making night. Besides, he knew through Valeria that the Duchess had made him a handsome present.
"Wonderful Duchess!" the pianist said enthusiastically, "Always a great lady. Poor woman, in the midst of her despair she remembered me. 'Take this, Spadoni, and I hope you have lots of luck.' She gave me twenty thousand francs. If I were to ask her for a hundred thousand she would give them to me just the same. And to think she is so unfortunate!"
As the Professor still looked at him questioningly, he continued:
"Well, then; of the twenty thousand francs I haven't even a hundred left."
The same evening he had hurried to the Sporting Club to repeat his great deeds. He had never happened to have so much capital before, not even when he returned from his concert tour in South America. The terrible Greek was there, and in spite of the admiration Spadoni paid His Eminence, the Helene treated the musician with implacable hostility. "Bank!" said the Greek on seeing the pianist in the banker's chair, with fifteen thousand! With what remained the musician had struggled along for a few days as a mere bettor, and now the Duchess' generous gift was merely a memory.
"If she would only return to work! I am sure that I would be once more the man I was that night, with her behind me. But who would dare talk to her about gambling."
They both lamented Alicia's misfortune. Since the day the telegram arrived telling of the death of her protégé, she had been a different woman. Spadoni attributed her overwhelming grief over a young soldier who did not belong to her family to her excessively kind heart. The Professor assented, with an enigmatic air. In her sudden burst of grief, Alicia had doubtless let a portion of her secret escape in the presence of Valeria, and the latter probably had told Novoa about it.
Then they talked about the isolation in which the Duchess was living.
"It has been a month since any one has seen her," said Spadoni. "People are beginning to forget about her; a good many people think she has gone away. That's the way Monte Carlo is: quite tiny for those who go to the Casino, and rub elbows all day long; enormous, like a great metropolis, for those who do not come near the gambling rooms. The Prince frequently asks me abouther with a great deal of interest. It seems he has not been able to see her since the afternoon of the telegram."
Novoa repeated his enigmatic look on hearing Lubimoff's name. He knew through Valeria that Michael had gone repeatedly to Villa Rosa, without being admitted. And more than that; the Duchess had shuddered in terror at the thought of his visit. "I don't want to see him, Valeria; tell him I am not in." Colonel Toledo had suffered the same fate; obliged to hand his card, sometimes to the Duchess' friend and at other times to the gardener. Several letters from the Prince had remained unanswered. Alicia showed a firm determination not to see her relative, as though his presence might quicken the grief that was keeping her away from society.
Spadoni, unaware of all this, continued to praise the Duchess.
"A noble heart! She always has to have some unfortunate person around to look after. Since the death of her aviator, she seems to be feeling a deep affection for that Lieutenant of the Foreign Legion, the Spaniard who is so ill, and who may die almost any moment, like the other man. He spends whole days at Villa Rosa; he lunches and dines there; and if the Duchess takes a walk in the mountains, it is always with him. He does everything but sleep at the Villa! When he doesn't show up for some time, she immediately sends a messenger to the Officers' Hotel."
The Professor remained silent, but knew that Spadoni was telling the truth. It agreed with what Valeria had been telling. Martinez was constantly at Villa Rosa, often against his will. The Duchess needed his presence, but nevertheless on seeing him, she would burst into sobs and tears. But the poor boy, with a submission born of awe, accompanied her in her voluntary seclusion,deeply thankful that such a great lady should take an interest in him.
"Doña Clorinda must be furious," continued the pianist, with malignant joy such as rivalry among women always aroused in him. "She no longer has any influence over Martinez, in spite of the fact that she was the one who discovered him. The other woman has cut her out. Weeks go by and the 'General' doesn't get a chance to see her Lieutenant; I believe she has given him up, as a matter of fact. She criticizes her former friend for this monopolizing, which she considers 'dangerous.' They even tell me that she accuses the Duchess of flirting with the poor boy, of arousing false hopes in him, and of still worse things. Quite absurd! Women are terrible when they hate. Imagine! A poor officer—practically a dead man...."
Novoa said nothing, so that the pianist would stop talking. He was afraid Spadoni might say some awful thing, repeating Doña Clorinda's gossip, with the rancorous joy of a woman-hater. Novoa, through his relations with Valeria, considered himself a partisan of the Duchess, and could not tolerate anything being said against her.
They separated after a few minutes more of inconsequential talk.
That evening Spadoni spoke to the Prince about his conversation with the Professor, and it gave him a pretext for repeating what Doña Clorinda thought of her former friend. But immediately the pianist repented of having done this, seeing the look of wrath which Lubimoff gave him.
"What a cad," thought Michael, "peddling around a lot of female gossip, just because he has a grouch against women in general."
He understood how Alicia might feel interested in the soldier. His youth and his uniform reminded her of her son. Besides, Martinez was alone in the world, a foreigner, a piece of wreckage from the war, a man whom every one considered irrevocably condemned to death.
Yet Michael could not avoid an immediate feeling of jealousy toward the poor young fellow who was friendless and ill. Martinez was living constantly by Alicia's side, while he himself was unable to gain admittance to the Villa, even as a mere visitor. Why?
He had spent several weeks making conjectures, and watching for a chance to meet Alicia. Since the afternoon when he had held her in his arms, drying her tears and restraining her from hurting herself, as she writhed in grief, and kissing her on the brow, with brotherly compassion, the gate of Villa Rosa had closed behind him forever. "Come to-morrow," groaned Alicia on saying good-by to him. And the following day Valeria had halted him with the embarrassed look of a person telling a lie. "The Duchess cannot receive you. The Duchess wants to be alone." And this inexplicable refusal had been repeated each successive day, with increasing sharpness. At present the gardener, who was the only one who came to answer the bell, talked with him through the gate.
This rejection caused him to commit a great number of childish and humiliating actions. He circled about the neighborhood of the Villa like a jealous husband, facing the curiosity of the passersby, and taking advantage of the most absurd pretexts to disguise the real object of his vigil, hurriedly concealing himself whenever the gate opened, and any one left the house. This vigilance had only served to arouse his anger. Twice Michael had been obliged to hide himself while Lieutenant Martinez, erectin the old uniform which the Prince had given him and which was rather a bad fit, steadied his weak sick body in a desire to appear proud and healthy, and entered Villa Rosa through the wide-open gate, as though he were the owner.
One afternoon he had seen them from a distance, the Lieutenant and Alicia, in a hired carriage, which was going in the other direction, on the opposite side of the street, toward the Heights of La Turbie. She was looking after the wounded man, taking him, in maternal solicitude, to a spot where he could breathe the upland air. And the Prince might just as well have not existed!
In vain he wrote her letters, and his torment was even greater owing to the fact that he could not talk openly with his friends. The Colonel, obedient to his veiled suggestions, had unavailingly paid several calls on the Duchess.
"What unexplainable grief!" said Don Marcos. "It is impossible to understand such despair over a young aviator who was merely a protégé of hers. Unless, perhaps, he were her...." But his sense of delicacy would not allow him to insist on such an ignoble suspicion.
Nor could the Prince talk with Atilio. In the latter's eyes, the prisoner who had died in Germany was the same young man he had known in Paris before the war: the Duchess' lover, who followed her everywhere and danced with her at the Tango teas. Besides, Michael felt afraid of what Castro might add, reflecting the "General's" way of thinking.
The latter, at first, on learning of Alicia's despair, had felt like forgetting the quarrels of the past, and had gone of her own accord to Villa Rosa to console the Duchess. Since the "General" was very patriotic, the boy who had died in Germany seemed to her a hero. But the sudden monopolizing of the Spanish Lieutenant,and the passionate sympathy which obliged Martinez to spend all day with the Duchess, renewed Doña Clorinda's cool hostility.
The Prince guessed what she and her friend were thinking, and what Castro might tell if he dared talk to him about Alicia. "She has just lost a lover, and while she is weeping with theatrical vehemence, she is getting ready for another, as young as the first. A crime indeed, since poor Martinez is condemned to death, and only prolongs his days, thanks to absolute quiet. The slightest emotion means death to him."
Lubimoff could not tell the truth. His secret was Alicia's. Only they two knew the true identity of the prisoner who had died in Germany, and as long as she kept silent, he must do the same.
One night, the Colonel gave him some interesting news. At nightfall, when he was returning from the Casino, he had seen the Duchess de Delille from the street car. Dressed in mourning she was getting out of a hired carriage, in the Boulevard des Moulins, opposite the church of St. Charles. Later she had ascended the steps leading to the place of worship: she was doubtless going to pray for her protégé. And Don Marcos said this with a certain emotion, as though the visit to the church cancelled all the gossip he had been hearing in the previous few days.
Michael had a presentiment that this would be the means of rescuing him from his incertitude. He would meet Alicia at the church. And the following day, toward evening, he began to walk up and down the Boulevard des Moulins, without losing sight of the one church in Monte Carlo, the place of worship of gamblers and wealthy people, which seemed to maintain a certain rivalry with the Cathedral of silent, ancient Monaco.
This continual going and coming finally caught theattention of the shopkeepers on the street and of their clerks, girls with hair dressed high on their heads in a complicated fashion, who seemed to be dreaming behind the counters, waiting for some millionaire to lift them from their position of unjust obscurity. "Prince Lubimoff!" They all knew him, and his fame was such that immediately a hundred eyes curiously sought the object of his promenading. Doubtless it was a woman. On the deserted balconies women's heads began to appear, following his maneuvers more or less overtly. Window shades went up, revealing behind the panes questioning eyes and smiling lips. "Might it be for me?" This unexpressed question seemed to spread from one window to the next.
Annoyed by such curiosity, he ascended the double row of steps from the tiny deserted square in front of the church, using the same strategy there as when he had lurked in the neighborhood of Villa Rosa. He peeped into the interior of the sanctuary, dotted with red by a number of lighted tapers. There were only two women, within, both of them dressed in mourning and kneeling. They were women of lowly fortune, wives or mothers of men killed in the war. On returning to the little square, he passed the time reading and re-reading the headlines of all the papers displayed on the newsstand. Then he started off down a street, turned into another, walked across the square with an air of unconcern, and hid behind a corner, taking care not to lose sight of the entrance to the church. It was not bad waiting there: there were no passersby. The traffic on the nearby boulevard was invisible, as though going on in the depths of a ditch. Through the low branches of some trees, he could just see the roofs of carriages and street cars.
Night fell and she did not come.
The following day Michael returned, but discreetly,so as not to arouse the curiosity of the shopkeepers. He remained for long hours in the little square in that old part of the city, with none to watch him save a melancholy old woman who sold newspapers at a stand that had no customers. Nor did Alicia come this time.
The third day, when he was beginning to doubt whether there was any use of waiting, Alicia's head and shoulders suddenly appeared above the line of the top step. Then her whole body emerged, by waves, so to speak, as her feet advanced from step to step. Night was falling. On the façades of the buildings on the boulevard, above the green mass of the trees, the fugitive sun drew a golden brush stroke along the rows of roofs.
It was his heart that recognized her even before his eyes, just as on the day when he had seen her at a distance in the carriage accompanied by the officer. He had a feeling of shock at her black bonnet, with a long mourning veil falling on her shoulders. The emotion he felt on seeing her and the spying habit he had recently acquired, caused him to draw back, and she entered the church without seeing him. Ah, now he had her! This time she could not escape, he would have a great many things to tell her, very, very many! But at the same time he became rancorously conscious of the just indictment against her which he had prepared in advance; and, in spite of himself, he felt afraid, desperately afraid of the possibility that she might meet him with a curt reply, or perhaps not speak to him at all.
He allowed a long time to elapse. Then he was torn by the desire of seeing her again, even from a distance, and he entered the church, but cautiously, trying to avoid a premature encounter.
He advanced between a double row of deserted benches. There in the background were the same women who had been there the other day, still kneeling, as thoughtheir grief were unconscious of the lapse of time. In the darkness the pale gold of the altar pieces became gradually distinguishable, and two masses of color, two clusters of flags—those of the Allied countries, which adorned the high altar. On seeing the two praying figures alone in the church, and in motionless silence, he thought that Alicia must have fled through an exit of which he was unaware. But she appeared from a door on the side, followed by an acolyte who was carrying two tapers. Alicia seemed to be watching how the tapers were lighted and placed in their sockets in front of the Virgin. Then she knelt, remaining in a rigid posture on her knees.
Some time went by. And Michael watched her, as she became, like the two poor women, a mere shape in black, motionless in prayer and supplication. The only distinguishing features of her person that he could make out, were the soles of her elegant shoes, two tiny light-colored tongues, which stood out against the black silk of her skirt. He could also see her white neck writhing from time to time, as though trying to throw off the twining veil of sorrow.
He felt that the rancor which had caused him to desire this meeting was vanishing. Poor woman! He knew, and no one else knew, the identity of the young man whose death she had come to mourn in this temple. A picture of the Princess Lubimoff suddenly arose in his memory, vague and covered with the dust of oblivion. The Princess had been insane; but she was his mother, and he had loved her so dearly!
Immediately afterward his egotism revolted against this feeling. It was natural for Alicia to weep for her son, but it was not natural that she should have broken with him without any explanation whatsoever.
Mechanically he advanced toward the high altar, desiringto see her closer at hand. A slight movement as she prayed caused him to retrace his steps. It was better that she should not recognize him. He considered it preferable to wait for her outside the church, with the advantage of taking her by surprise, without allowing her time to invent excuses to justify her conduct.
It was beginning to grow late, when Alicia came out, running straight into Michael Fedor who was blocking her path.
Not the slightest quiver revealed any feeling of surprise.
"You!" she said simply.
She was very pale, and her eyes were red and moist, as though she had just been weeping.
Perhaps she had seen him within the church, and was expecting this meeting on coming out. The natural manner in which she greeted his presence was for him a just disappointment.
He felt he must speak at once, relieving himself of the burden of complaint and accusation, which had been gathering within him during the preceding days. There were so many, that they clouded his thoughts. But Alicia, as though afraid of what he was going to say, came forward and began to talk in sad, monotonous tones.
She had been coming to this church several afternoons as she suddenly felt the need of leaving Villa Rosa with its terrible memories. Oh, the arrival of that telegram!
"Now I am a believer," she announced simply.
Immediately afterward she corrected the statement, rather through humility than pride. She wanted to be a believer, but in reality she was not. She remembered the mother, poor, simple-minded Doña Mercedes! What would she not give to have the confidence in the Great Beyond which that good lady had had! That faith,which in former days had provoked her laughter, seemed to her now like something superior. What a pity she could not feel the resignation of humble souls! The irreligiousness of her happy days still remained with her. Those who enjoy the pleasant things of life do not remember death, nor do they think of what may be beyond. No one feels religious sentiments in his soul at a dance, at a banquet, or at a rendezvous with a lover! She had to believe, because she was unhappy! She clung to religion as an invalid condemned to death by the doctors in whom he believes, implores in despair the services of a quack, in whom he has no faith.
"Grief makes mystics of us," she continued. "What I regret is not being able to be one in the way that others are. I pray, but resignation does not come to my aid."
She revolted against the thought of annihilation at death. That flesh of her flesh was rotting in an unknown cemetery in Germany! And was that the end? Could it be there was nothing more? Would she die in turn and never meet again in a superior existence the son in whom she had concentrated all her love of life? Would they both be blotted out of reality, like two infinitesimal points, like two atoms, whose life means nothing?
"I must believe," she said with all the energy of her maternal egotism. "My one consolation lies in the hope that we shall meet again in a better world: a world that knows no wars, nor death. But suddenly my confidence fails, and all I see is annihilation—annihilation! I am greatly to be pitied, Michael."
These words did not move the Prince, in spite of the despair which Alicia put into them. His amorous yearning let him think only of the present.
"And I," he said in a reproachful tone. "You deserted me in the greatest moment of our lives! You are unhappy;all the more reason that you should not drive me from you. I can put cheer into your life. I can guess what you are thinking. No, no, I do not insist on talking to you of love. Perhaps later on, but now!... Now, I want to be your comrade, your brother, whatever you want me to be, but at your side. Why do you avoid me? Why do you shut your door to me as you would to a stranger?"
And incoherently he continued his laments, his protests, his rancor, at her unexplainable estrangement.
"Am I to blame for your misfortune?" he finally asked. "Am I a different man to-day than I was the last time we saw each other?"
She shook her head sadly. She could not convince Michael no matter how much she might talk; it was beyond her strength to explain her new feelings. She seemed dismayed at the obstacle which had arisen between them.
"Leave me, forget me; it is the best that you can do. No; you haven't changed, my poor boy. What harm could you have done me, you who are so kind, so generous? You have helped me to learn the horrible truth; it was through you that I discovered it; and although it is killing me, I feel that it is preferable to uncertainty. You are not to blame, you have done all that I asked you to do. But listen to me, I beg of you: do not seek me, avoid meeting me, leave me! It is the last favor I ask of you. It is only away from you that I can find a certain peace of mind."
Michael's voice lost its tones of supplication and began to quiver with a vibration of anger. How could he be an obstacle to her tranquillity? Hadn't he just said that he wanted to be a comrade in her misfortune, without desires, oblivious of love, with a sweet dispassionate affection, like that of friendship? Now that she wasunhappy he felt more vehemently a desire to be by her side. What absurd caprice made her avoid him?
Alicia looked at him with tearful eyes, which reflected the hesitations of her thoughts. Finally she seemed to have made up her mind.
"You haven't changed," she said, in a subdued voice, "but I am different. Misfortune has made another woman of me. I do not recognize myself. I am dominated by a fixed idea. An absurd one it may well be; if I tell it to you, I know that you will protest with holy indignation. No; you are not to blame; but it is better for me not to see you. Your presence increases my remorse. Seeing you, I feel extraordinary shame, a desire to die, to kill myself. I have a feeling of suspicion that it was I who killed my son. I remember all that took place between us; and I recognize God's punishment."
Lubimoff's anger vanished at these inexplicable words. Automatically he took her hands with caressing gentleness, as though they were those of a poor sick patient at the height of delirious ravings. She should be calm! What was she saying? What remorse was she talking about? Her gloved hands, in passive resignation offered no resistance to his touch; but suddenly they woke to life, violently freeing themselves from those of Michael, as though they had just received a hard shock. "No! No!" And the Prince had a sort of feeling that there was a current of repulsion between them, something that he had never experienced until then: the fear of his person.
He remained so disconcerted and humiliated by this movement of withdrawal, that he did not know what to say. She took advantage of his silence to go on talking, but as though she did not see the man who was standing before her eyes.
"When I remember all that ... what a shame! My son, my poor boy, living like a slave, suffering from hunger, being whipped, he, who was so noble and so handsome ... and his mother here acting like a young girl, going into ecstasies over ideal love, taking poetic promenades through the gardens, exchanging kisses. An old woman's romantic fancies. The gambling follies might even be pardoned. I thought of him as I played; the money was for him; but love!... it seems impossible that I could have done all that while my son was a prisoner and I was getting no news from him. What diabolical spell was upon me? And God has punished me; and if not God, whoever or whatever it may be; fate, a mysterious power which makes us expiate our shortcomings, call it anything you like."
Michael attempted to protest, but she went on talking:
"I know what you are going to tell me; but it won't do any good. All that you might say I have said to myself again and again, to convince myself that my belief is absurd. And what would that prove? All that we are not acquainted with is absurd, and we know so little! No; my remorse can never be overcome. No matter what you may say will not keep me from spending my sleepless nights puzzling things out, and thinking of certain dates in my recent life. When I began to be interested in you, my son was still alive, and I forgot him. When we were walking through the gardens of San Martino, he was perhaps suffering the agonies of hunger, and martyrdom, and I like the heroine in a novel, like a crazy schoolgirl, was kissing you, and making you promises! Besides, the arrival of the telegram the same afternoon that you were going to come, seemed like something definitive in my life! Don't you see the intervention of a superior power, the punishment for my badness?"
The Prince tried to speak again, but in vain.
"That is why I am avoiding you; that is why I have not replied to your letters. You are not to blame; but you mean remorse to me, and your presence recalls my crime. Besides, I know myself; I am only a poor, weak woman, the very personification of thoughtlessness, and neglect. If I were to accept you as a comrade in grief, since I am not indifferent to you, perhaps I might give in to what you want. And that would be horrible, still more horrible even than what has gone before; one of those offenses which people maddened by passion commit against natural laws. Don't try to see me; I don't want to see you. If I had been a true mother, thinking only of him ... who knows!... Perhaps he would still be alive. But some one was bent on punishing me for my unnatural conduct, and that some one killed him, so that I might awaken, at the very moment when in my shameful love, I felt myself happiest."
Michael no longer cared to say anything. He looked at this woman with pity and dismay in his eyes. He recalled the Princess Lubimoff with her extravagant beliefs in the mysterious; and of Alicia's own mother, with her religious manias. Whatever he might try to say would be useless. That absurd and sorrowing conviction of hers had opened a gap between them like a gulf that could be bridged over only by time.
The silence of the Prince caused her to lose the nervous exaltation that had made her express herself with such fervor.
"Leave me now," she murmured gently. "What could I do for you? I am only a woman now; I am an old woman, centuries old, as old as sorrow itself. You need a sweetheart, and I am simply a bad mother, a mother tormented with remorse."
Her renunciation of the past, and the feeling that she was only a despairing mother caused her voice to breakwith a groan, and at the same time her eyes filled with tears. With a timid hand Michael drew away the handkerchief that she had raised to her face to hide her weeping. He murmured incoherent phrases, with the intention of consoling her; but immediately he was mastered once more by anger.
"If you really were alone," he said in bitter tones, "I could wait, and perhaps time would silence the after scruples that torment you. But your loneliness is a lie. A man enters your house at all hours as though it were his own, while I must go away, so that, as you say, you may recover your tranquillity."
With a feminine instinct, Alicia had hastened to raise the handkerchief to her face again, on feeling herself free from Michael's hand. She felt she must be ugly with her watery eyes, her pale lips, and her nose red with weeping. But the words of the Prince gave her such a shock of surprise, such a desire to refute the offensive supposition, that she took the wrinkled batiste from her face.
"You are referring to Martinez? Poor boy!"
He was giving up the gay society of his comrades, their promenades in company, and even the parties to which the convalescent officers were invited, to come and be bored at Villa Rosa beside a woman who could do nothing but weep. When she wanted to come to church she had to oblige him to go for an hour or two to join his comrades-in-arms in the ante-room at the Casino. The visits of the invalided soldier meant so much to her. They were pure charity on his part.
"I dream that he is my son. His age and his uniform aid in this illusion. You have never had any children; it is impossible for you to know the necessity we feel, when we have lost them, to transfer our bereaved affection to other beings, imagining that they look like thosewho are gone. I need to go on being a mother, nor can I be anything else; and this unhappy boy never knew his own mother. He has no one in the world, and is as much alone as I am. Please, let me enjoy a little illusion wherever I can find it. The poor fellow is so grateful for my affection! He feels so happy beside me! Remember: he is condemned to death, and only maternal care, and pleasant quiet surroundings, can possibly prolong his days."
She wanted to accomplish this task, perhaps for a selfish reason, to obliterate from her memory, with a great generous deed, all the evil she had done before. She wanted him to be her son, a son born of her grief, to whom she might devote everything that it was now impossible for her to do for her real son.
Now, Michael, too, was silent, realizing the uselessness of insisting any further. He knew Alicia's character. Behind her plaintive voice, he guessed the resolute will to keep by her side that young man who refreshed her maternal feelings and was at the same time a means of consolation for the remorse which she had taken upon herself.
The consideration of his powerlessness finally irritated him, made him feel a cruel desire to hurt that woman.
"You are doing wrong, Alicia. Society is unaware of your secret. You know what people said before about you and your son. You laughed, yourself, finding such a mistake amusing. Now the equivocation continues with more reason. Many people imagine you have substituted another young man for the young man that died."
Alicia lost her sad serenity.
"How disgusting!" she said. "How can they think that. Poor Martinez! He is so good! So respectful!"
Then she continued arrogantly:
"Let them say what they like! I want to forget society; let society forget me. I am dead as far as people are concerned."
But Michael in his spite still dwelt on the subject.
"The other man was your son, and I knew he was. This man is not, and I know the power of seduction that you exercise, even against your will. Remember 'the old men on the wall.'"
Wherever she went, men's glances would cling to her rhythmic body; and that young man, that queer fellow, would finally....
He was unable to continue.
"You, too!" she exclaimed. "Good-by, don't come after me. I shall always think of you; but it is better for us not to see each other. Don't bear me a grudge. Perhaps some day!..." And she resolutely turned her back on him, and descended the steps toward the boulevard.
The Prince remained motionless for a few minutes. Then he advanced toward the top step, but all he could see was a carriage with the hood raised, and two horses starting to trot away.
And the meeting with Alicia he had so ardently desired had come to this! The feeling of spite caused him to judge himself harshly; he hadn't known how to talk. Later he recalled all his reasoning and his accusations, and felt amazed at the slight effect they had had on her. Yes, indeed, she was a different woman. Some one had changed her; some one was to blame for this absurd situation.
He spent a great part of that night reflecting. It did not occur to him to blame Alicia. He even repented of his angry words. Unhappy woman! Her extreme over-sensitiveness was causing her to find reason for shame and remorse in all that she had ever done.
"Besides, women," he continued to himself, "at the least nervous shock lose their logical faculty first of all."
He felt a need of concentrating all his anger on some one besides her; and Michael, never imagining that he himself had lost his logical faculty, put the responsibility for everything on Martinez. The latter was the one person to blame. If he had not come between them, Alicia, on finding herself alone in misfortune, would have sought once more the support of the Prince. What a gift the "General" had made them, presenting this adventurer!
His reason vainly argued that it was not the officer who was seeking Alicia, but the latter who was keeping him in her home, cutting him off from his old friendships. Lubimoff was not willing to give up his spite. It was Martinez and no one else who had come between them.
Up to that time he had not paid much attention to the boy whom Toledo called the "hero." There were so many heroes at that moment! In his hatred he began to strip him of the prestige given him by his deeds and his misfortune, Michael saw him without his uniform, without his war crosses and his wounds, such as he must have been before the war; a poor employee, a business clerk, whose dreams of love had never gone beyond a milliner or a stenographer. And this was the interesting personage who had the temerity to face him! Prince Michael Fedor Lubimoff. What intolerable times!
The following day he walked about his garden all morning, resolved never to return to Monte Carlo. He was filled with scorn at the thought of the tenderness with which Alicia had spoken of her protégé. It was better that he should not encounter him. But in the afternoon the loneliness of his beautiful Villa weighed on him. It seemed deserted. Atilio, the pianist, and even the Colonel were all at the Casino. He, too, decided to go, to mingle with the crowd which was dividing its attentionbetween the hazards of war and the hazards of chance.
In the anteroom he walked toward the groups who were gathered around the bulletin board reading the latest telegrams. The crowd considered the news good, since it was not extremely bad as on the preceding days. The Allies had stopped the enemy's advance, holding them at a standstill on the ground they had just conquered. The bombardment of Paris with long range guns was still continuing. And that was all.
There was a man making comments in a loud voice. It was Toledo, who, as was his custom every afternoon, was giving a lecture on strategy to a semi-circle of admirers. With his back to the Prince, he was spouting a stream of clear optimism, with a simple faith that misfortune and reverses could not move.
"Now they have nailed them in their tracks: they won't advance any farther. In a short time will be the counter-attack. I am sure of it; it is clear as daylight to me."
Don Marcos rubbed his hands, and slyly winked one eye.
"And the Americans are coming and coming. There are days when as many as ten thousand of them are landed here. A wonderful people! I have always said so! That fellow Wilson is a great man. I know him well."
They all listened with delight to this voice of hope that refreshed their hearts before they gave themselves up to the strain and stress of roulette andtrente et quarante. He talked with the authority of a man who has influential connections, and is informed of everything. "He knew Wilson," he had just said so himself. Besides, he was a Colonel—although none of them knewin what army—an expert, capable of expressing an unfounded opinion. And many of them lost no time in hastening to the gambling rooms to repeat his views, as though they had just received some inside information.
The Prince withdrew, afraid that his presence might put an end to that professional triumph of Toledo, which was repeated every day.
As he walked about the anteroom before entering the gaming halls, he saw beside a column, a group of French officers, all of whom were convalescents. Denied the permission to go any further, because of their uniform, they were standing there, looking with a certain envy on the civilians. A few of them were standing erect, without any visible infirmity, with the sharp features of an eagle, aquiline nose, bold eyes, and wild mustache. Others, with youthful faces, were bent over like ailing men, leaning on canes, and wearing wrinkled uniforms much too large for their sunken chests. Each time they decided to move their legs they made a long pause as though to muster every bit of their will power available. Some of them had come to Monaco as incurables, after a long captivity in Germany. The rest came from hospitals on the firing line. On the faces of all of them was an expression of joyous bewilderment at finding themselves in this corner of the earth, that was like a Paradise, where people seemed to have forgotten the rest of the world, and women's eyes followed them with enigmatic glances, half amorous and half maternal!
One of the soldiers raised his hand to his cap to salute the Prince. The latter looked at the yellowish color of hiskepis, then at his uniform which was of the same color, and at the multi-colored line of decorations. It was Martinez, the lieutenant in the Foreign Legion, who was saluting him with a certain timidity, but pleasedat the same time that his comrades were seeing him on friendly terms with the famous personage, who was so much talked about on the Riviera.
Michael returned his greeting mechanically and went on. That moment remained fixed in his memory all his life. Age and the discretion that accompanies it seemed to fall from him like dry bark from a tree in springtime. He felt as though he were back in his youth. For a few moments he was the same Captain Lubimoff of the imperial Guards, who had trampled on obstacles and braved scandal when any one opposed his will.
He turned to look at the group of officers from a distance. That little insignificant Lieutenant, who looked like a bookkeeper, promoted by mobilization, was his enemy! It seemed as though he were seeing him for the first time. Lost among his companions he appeared even more insignificant than when he visited Villa Sirena.
Michael remained motionless, with his glance fixed on the group. "You are going to do something foolish," admonished a voice within him. And there passed through his memory the image of stern Saldaña, kindly and tolerant with the weak, like every one who is sure of his strength. He recalled one of his sayings which had never before crossed his mind: "A gentleman must be kind and never take unfair advantage of his strength." He was sure that his father had said that to him when he was a child. But immediately the duality of his inner being expressed itself through another voice which was stronger and more imperious, a woman's voice like that of the other counselor of his youth: "Spend; don't deny yourself anything, put yourself above everybody; always remember that you are a Lubimoff." And he saw the dead Princess, not the Mary Stuart with her theatrical mourning robes, but the dominating and still beautiful woman, the one who had overwhelmed herhusband "the hero" with her rage, and turned the Paris residence upside down.
Suddenly he found himself near the group of officers, and again his eyes met those of Martinez. The latter came toward him with a smile of interrogation. Michael realized that he had beckoned to the soldier, without being aware of what he was doing, through an impulse of will which seemed entirely detached from his reason.
"So much the worse! Let's get through with the business!"
With a certain haste, he took the young man toward the vestibule of the Casino as though anxious to avoid the presence of the groups who were filling the anteroom.
"Lieutenant, I have something to say to you.... I must ... ask a favor of you."
He stammered, not knowing how to express the command which he himself felt was absurd.
This vacillation, together with the trembling in his voice, finally irritated him.
They stopped beside the glass door at the entrance. Martinez was no longer smiling, as he gazed in amazement at the hard look and the pallor of the Prince.
"In a word," the latter said resolutely; "what I have to ask you is that you pay fewer visits at the house of the Duchess de Delille. If you should refrain entirely from going to see her, it would be even better." And he paused, breathing with a certain freedom, after having expressed this demand.
An expression of amazement gradually took possession of Martinez' face. He hesitated for a moment, with his eyes fixed on Lubimoff's. No, it was not a jest: the hostile look of this man who had always treated him with amiable indifference, the sharpness of his tone, and a certain trembling of his right hand, indicated that hehad expressed his real thoughts, and that behind these thoughts lay enormous depths of hatred against him.
His surprise caused him to talk with timidity. He visited the Duchess because the lady asked him to come and see her every day. He had often felt his assiduity might prove to be a nuisance, but every attempt he had made to break off his visits had been fruitless. He scarcely left her for a few hours but the good lady had him sent for. She was as kind to him as a mother. Suddenly his humble tone vanished. His eyes guessed in those of the man who had stopped him something that he himself had never imagined. The Lieutenant seemed transfigured, as though rising to the same level as the Prince. His eyes shone with the same wild splendor as the other man's; his body stiffened with the tension of a spring about to be released; his nostrils quivered nervously. The little clerk, with his timid bearing, recovered the air of gallant bravery of the fighting man. His voice sounded harsh, as he went on talking.
He would go wherever he was asked, wherever he felt like going, without recognizing the right of any man to interfere in his actions. The Duchess was the only one who could close her door to him. Why did the Prince interfere in that lady's affairs without consulting her first?
"I am related to her," said Michael, inwardly hesitating somewhat at making use of the relationship which he had often preferred to deny.
They both found themselves on the other side of the entry, on the platform above the steps of the Casino, in the open air, opposite the groves of the square and the groups of passersby who were walking about the "Camembert." They were obliged to stand aside, in order not to disturb those who were entering and coming out.
"Besides," continued the Prince, "it is my duty to shield her from gossip. I cannot permit that. Seeing you in there at all hours, they should suppose...."
He almost regretted these words on noticing the double effect that they had on the young man. First he became indignant. Had any one dared gossip about that great lady who had been such a saint in his eyes? But this protest was accompanied by a certain unconscious satisfaction, by childish pride, as though he were flattered, in spite of everything that his name should be connected in absurd conjecture with that of the Duchess. It seemed that Martinez had just been revealed to himself, giving substance and a name to the obscure sentiments that until then, in an embryonic stage, had pulsed unrecognized within him.
The jealous mind of the Prince guessed, with keen penetration, everything that the other man was thinking, and this added fuel to his wrath. What impudence in this little clerk to take up Alicia's defense? What a conceited show he was making of his love for her!
"If any one takes the liberty of talking about the Duchess," said the Lieutenant, "if anybody dares to gossip because she does me the honor of receiving me in her home—the greatest honor in my life!—I will take it on my shoulders to punish whoever invents such a lie, no matter how high up he may be, no matter how powerful he may think himself to be!"
Lubimoff listened impatiently. Now it was Martinez daring to attack him. Those last words had carried a threat for him.
Besides, the Prince felt irritated at his own clumsiness. His imprudent action had served merely to open this young man's eyes, and make him think of the possibilities of many things which he had never yet imagined, and which if he had imagined them, he would have cast asideimmediately as foolish. And now no less than the Prince Lubimoff had elected to show this cheap Lieutenant that, in the opinion of gossips, such things were possible.
The tone in which the officer defended Alicia aroused his anger even more. He divined in it great pride, the vanity of a poor fellow who had known love adventures only in books, and who suddenly found himself in supposed relations with a Duchess, as the rival of a Prince. How glorious for an upstart!
"Boy ..." said Lubimoff, in a hard voice.
This simple word, which was the term in which waiters were addressed in the hotels, was followed by a haughty look of overwhelming superiority, which seemed to sweep away everything extraordinary which the war had given Martinez: his uniform, his decorations, and his glorious wounds. For the Prince the officer no longer existed: there only remained the poor vagabond of a few years before, wandering from one hemisphere to another in quest of bread. "Boy," he repeated in a tone that brought back all the class distinction and social gradations of dead centuries, so that the man whom he had accosted might realize the enormous separation between him and the man to whom he deigned to give advice——
"Boy, let's come to the point—. And if I were to order you not to return to that house? And if I demand that...?"
He was unable to finish the sentence. His threatening voice, harsh as a cry of command, roused the indignation of the man in uniform. To have faced death for three long years, among thousands of comrades who were now lying in the ground; to have learned to set little store on life, as something proved worthless at every moment on the battlefield; to have stripped himself forever, by dint of frightful adventures and awful wounds, of that fear which the instinct of self-preservation puts in allbeings, only to the end that now, in a pleasure resort, at the door of the most luxurious of gambling houses, a man, rich and powerful, but who had never done anything useful in his whole life, should dare to threaten him!...
"You say that to me!" he said, stammering with rage. "You give orders to me!"
Michael felt a hand seize him by the lapel of his coat. It was like a bird, tremulous and aggressive, pausing for an instant in its blind impulse, before flying upward. He was aware of the blow that was coming, and raised his arm instinctively, both hands met as that of the young man whirled close to the face of the Prince. The latter, who was stronger, seized the ascending hand and held it motionless, in a firm grip, while at the same time he smiled in a gruesome fashion. His eyes contracted as his eyebrows arched in the smile. They became again the eyes of an Asiatic. His nostrils dilated as he breathed like a stallion. The remote ancestors of the Princess Lubimoff must have smiled thus in their moments of anger.
"Enough: I consider that I have received it," he said slowly, "Name two friends to confer with mine!"
And freeing that hand of Martinez, he turned his back on him, after making a deep bow. The movements of both men had been rapid. Only one of the doorkeepers, with his official cap, standing guard on the platform above the steps, had guessed that anything had happened; but his professional experience advised him to remain passive as long as there were no blows. He imagined that it was merely a dispute over some gambling affair. It would all be settled by an explanation, and forgotten after a winning! He had seen so many such things!
Prince Lubimoff reënters the Casino. He crosses the vestibule and the anteroom holding his head high,but without seeing any one, gazing straight ahead, with a faraway expression.