John's first caller at the Milan was, in a way, a surprise to him. He was sitting smoking an after-breakfast pipe on the following morning, and gazing at the telephone directory, when his bell rang. He opened the door to find the Prince of Seyre standing outside.
"I pay you a very early visit, I fear," the latter began.
"Not at all," John replied, taking the pipe from his mouth and throwing open the door. "It is very good of you to come and see me."
The prince followed John into the little sitting room. He was dressed, as usual, with scrupulous care. His white linen gaiters were immaculate, his trousers were perfectly creased, the hang of his coat had engaged the care of an artist. His tie was of a deep shade of violet, fastened with a wonderful pearl, and his fingers were perhaps a trifle overmanicured. He wore a bunch of Parma violets in his buttonhole, and he carried with him a very faint but unusual perfume, which seemed to John like the odor of delicate green tea. It was just these details, and the slowness of his speech, which alone accentuated his foreign origin.
"It occurred to me," he said, as he seated himself in an easy chair, "that if you are really intending to make this experiment in town life of which Miss Maurel spoke, I might be of some assistance to you. There arecertain matters, quite unimportant in themselves, concerning which a little advice in the beginning may save you trouble."
"Very good of you, I am sure," John repeated. "To tell you the truth, I was just looking through the telephone directory to see if I could come across the name of a tailor I used to have some things from."
"If it pleases you to place yourself in my hands," the prince suggested, "I will introduce you to my own tradespeople. I have made the selection with some care."
"That will suit me admirably," John declared. "If you will just give me the addresses—I couldn't think of taking up your time."
"I have, fortunately, an idle morning," the prince said, "and it is entirely at your disposal. At half past one I believe we are both lunching with Miss Maurel."
John was conscious of a momentary sense of annoyance. Histête-à-têtewith Louise seemed farther off than ever. At the prince's suggestion, however, he fetched his hat and gloves and entered the former's automobile, which was waiting below.
"Miss Maurel!" the prince remarked, as they glided off westward, "is, I believe, inviting a few friends to meet you. If you would feel more comfortable in town clothes, I think the tailor to whom I am taking you will be able to arrange that. He makes special preparations for such emergencies."
"I will do what you think best," John agreed.
They spent the morning in the neighborhood of Bond Street, and John laid the foundations of a wardrobe more extensive than any he had ever dreamed of possessing. At half past one they were shown into Louise's little dressing room. There were three or fourmen already present, standing around their hostess and sipping some faint yellow cordial from long Venetian glasses.
Louise came forward to meet them, and made a little grimace as she remarked the change in John's appearance.
"Honestly, I don't know you, and I don't believe I like you at all!" she exclaimed. "How dare you transform yourself into a tailor's dummy in this fashion?"
"It was entirely out of respect to you," John said.
"In fact," the prince added, "we considered that we had achieved rather a success."
"I suppose I must look upon your effort as a compliment," Louise sighed, "but it seems queer to lose even so much of you. Shall you take up our manners and our habits, Mr. Strangewey, as easily as you wear our clothes?"
"That I cannot promise," he replied.
"The brain should adapt itself at least as readily as the body," the prince remarked.
M. Graillot, who was one of the three men present, turned around.
"Who is talking platitudes?" he demanded. "I write plays, and that is my monopoly. Ah, it is the prince, I see! And our young friend who interrupted us at rehearsal yesterday."
"And whom I am anxious to have you meet again," Louise intervened. "You remember his name, perhaps—Mr. John Strangewey."
Graillot held out his left hand to the prince and his right to John.
"Mr. Strangewey," he said, "I congratulate you! Any person who has the good fortune to interest Miss Maurel is to be congratulated. Yet must I look at youand feel myself puzzled. You are not an artist—no? You do not paint or write?"
John shook his head.
"Mr. Strangewey's claim to distinction is that he is just an ordinary man," Louise observed. "Such a relief, you know, after all you clever people! And that reminds me, Miles," she added, turning to the actor, "I asked you here, too, especially to meet Mr. Strangewey again. Mr. Faraday is one of the most dangerous guides in London a young man could have. He knows everybody and everything unknowable and yet worth knowing. I present him to you as a hero. He is going to make love to me three hours a night for very many nights, we hope."
John shook hands with everybody and sipped the contents of the glass which had been handed to him. Then a butler opened the door and announced luncheon. Louise offered her hand to the prince, who stepped back.
"It shall be the privilege of the stranger within our gates," he decided.
Louise turned to John with a little smile.
"Let me show you, then, the way to my dining room. I ought to apologize for not asking some women to meet you. I tried two on the telephone, but they were engaged."
"I will restore the balance," the prince promised, turning from the contemplation of one of the prints hanging in the hall. "I am giving a supper party to-night for Mr. Strangewey, and I will promise him a preponderance of your charming sex."
"Am I invited?" Louise inquired.
The prince shook his head.
"Alas, no!"
They passed into a small dining room, and here againJohn noticed that an absolute simplicity was paramount. The carpet was of some dark, almost indistinguishable color. The walls were white, hung with three or four French etchings in black reed frames. At one end a curved window looked out upon a vista of green trees and shrubs, and the recess was completely filled in with what appeared to be almost a grotto of flowers. The round table, covered with an exquisitely fine cloth, was very simply laid. There was a little glass of the finest quality, and a very little silver. For flowers there was only one bowl, a brilliant patch of some scarlet exotic, in the center.
"A supper party to which I am not invited," said Louise, as she took her place at the table and motioned John to a seat by her side, "fills me with curiosity. Who are to be your guests, prince?"
"Calavera and her sprites," the prince announced.
Louise paused for a moment in the act of helping herself tohors d'oeuvres. She glanced toward the prince. He was busy studying the menu through his eyeglass.
"By her sprites you mean—"
"The young ladies of her wonderful ballet," the prince replied. "I am also dipping into musical comedy for a few of my guests. Calavera, however, is to be thepièce de résistance."
The prince dropped his eye-glass and glanced toward his hostess. For a moment their eyes met. Louise's lips were faintly curled. It was almost as if a challenge had passed between them.
"Mr. Strangewey," she said, turning to John, "let me warn you. You are to meet to-night a woman for whom kings are reported to sigh in vain, at whose feet thejeunesse doréeof the world pours out its riches.Is it kind of the prince, I wonder, to try and seal your fate so soon?"
John laughed easily. He met the challenge in her eyes and answered it.
"If you are talking of the great Calavera," he said, "she will be far too wonderful a lady to take any notice of a yokel like myself. And besides—"
"Besides?" the prince intervened.
"I have only seen her photographs and read of her," John remarked, "but I don't think she would attract me very much."
They all laughed. Graillot leaned across the table.
"My young friend," he exclaimed, "pray to your presiding genius, the presiding genius that won for you the friendship of our hostess, that Calavera never hears that speech, or within a week you will be at her chariot-wheels! I have seen many women and loved many, but there are none like Calavera. In her way she is the greatest artist that ever breathed. As for her beauty, wait till you see her! She has a body which makes me close my eyes and dream of Greece; eyes such as one seldom sees save in a few parts of southern Spain; and as for her smile—well, if I go on I shall begin to tell stories of her victims and neglect my lunch."
The conversation drifted away to reminiscences of other great dancers. Louise, under its cover, devoted her attention to her guest,
"First of all," she asked, "tell me how you like my little friend?"
"I think she is charming," John answered without hesitation. "We went to a supper club last night and stayed there till about half past three."
"A supper club?"
John nodded.
"I have forgotten the name of the place, but they made me a member. It was great fun. We had some more champagne, and Sophy danced. I found a young man there whom I used to know."
"Really," said Louise, "I am not sure that I approve of this! A supper club with Sophy until half past three in the morning!"
He looked at her quickly.
"You don't mind?"
"My dear man, why should I mind?" she returned. "What concern is it of mine if you and Sophy care to amuse each other? It is exactly what I hoped for."
"That's all right, then," John declared, with a sigh of relief. "Do you know," he went on, lowering his voice, "that I am just a little disappointed about today?"
"Disappointed? After I have taken the trouble to give a luncheon party for you?"
"I should have thought it a greater compliment, and liked it better, if you had asked me to lunch with you alone," he said.
She shook her head.
"It would have been a wasted opportunity. You have come up to London with a purpose. You have an experiment to make, an experiment in living. All these men can help you."
"The greater part of my experiment," he pointed out, "needs the help of only one person, and that person is you."
She moved a little uneasily in her chair. It might have been his fancy, but he imagined that she glanced under her eyelids toward the Prince of Seyre. The prince, however, had turned almost ostentatiously awayfrom her. He was leaning across the table, talking to Faraday.
"You have not lost your gift of plain speech," she observed.
"I hope I never shall," he declared. "It seems to me to be the simplest and the best plan, after all, to say what you feel and to ask for what you want."
"So delightful in Cumberland and Utopia," she sighed; "so impracticable here!"
"Then since we can't find Utopia, come back to Cumberland," he suggested.
A reminiscent smile played for a moment about her lips.
"I wonder," she murmured, "whether I shall ever again see that dear, wonderful old house of yours, and the mist on the hills, and the stars shining here and there through it, and the moon coming up in the distance!"
"All these things you will see again," he assured her confidently. "It is because I want you to see them again that I am here."
"Just now, at this minute, I feel a longing for them," she whispered, looking across the table, out of the window, to the softly waving trees.
At the close of the luncheon, a servant handed around coffee and liqueurs. The prince turned to Louise.
"You must not keep our young friend too late," he said. "He has appointments with his tailor and other myrmidons who have undertaken to adorn his person."
"Alas," replied Louise, rising, "I, too, have to go early to my dressmaker's. Do the honors for me, prince, will you?—and I will make my adieus now."
They all rose. She nodded to Graillot and Faraday.The prince moved to stand by the door. For a moment she and John were detached from the others.
"I want to see you alone," he said under his breath. "When can I?"
She hesitated.
"I am so busy!" she murmured. "Next week there are rehearsals nearly every minute of the day."
"To-morrow," John said insistently. "You have no rehearsals then. I must see you. I must talk to you without this crowd."
It was his moment. Her half-formed resolutions fell away before the compelling ring in his voice and the earnest pleading in his eyes.
"I will be in," she promised, "to-morrow at six o'clock."
After the departure of her guests, Louise seemed to forget the pressing appointment with her dressmaker. She stood before the window of her drawing-room, looking down into the street. She saw Faraday hail a taxicab and drive off by himself. She watched the prince courteously motion John to precede him into his waiting automobile. She saw the two men seat themselves side by side, and the footman close the door and take his place beside the chauffeur. She watched until the car took its place in the stream of traffic and disappeared. The sense of uneasiness which had brought her to the window was unaccountable, but it seemed in some way deepened by their departure together. Then a voice from just behind suddenly startled her.
"Lest your reverie, dear lady, should end in spoken words not meant for my ears, I, who often give myself up to reveries, hasten to acquaint you with the fact of my presence."
She turned quickly around. It was Graillot who had returned noiselessly into the room.
"You?" she exclaimed. "Why, I thought you were the first to leave."
"I returned," Graillot explained. "An impulse brought me back. A thought came into my mind. I wanted to share it with you as a proof of the sentiment which I feel exists between us. It is my firm belief thatthe same thought, in a different guise, was traveling through your mind, as you watched the departure of your guests."
She motioned him to a place upon the couch, close to where she had already seated herself.
"Come," she invited, "prove to me that you are a thought-reader!"
He sank back in his corner. His hands, with their short, stubby fingers, were clasped in front of him. His eyes, wide open and alert, seemed fixed upon her with the ingenuous inquisitiveness of a child.
"To begin, then, I find our friend, the Prince of Seyre, a most interesting, I might almost say a most fascinating, study."
Louise did not reply. After a moment's pause he continued:
"Let me tell you something which may or may not be unknown to you. A matter of eighty years ago, there was first kindled in the country places of France that fire which ultimately blazed over the whole land, devastating, murderous, anarchic, yet purifying. The family seat of the house of Seyre was near Orléans. In that region were many oppressors of the poor who, when they heard the mutterings of the storm, shivered for their safety. Upon not one of them did that furious mob of men and women pause to waste a single moment of their time. Without even a spoken word save one simultaneous, unanimous yell, they grouped together from all quarters—from every hamlet, from every homestead, men and women and even children—and moved in one solid body upon the Château de Seyre. The old prince would have been burned alive but for a servant who threw him a pistol, with which he blew out his brains, spitting at the mob. One of the sons wascaught and torn almost to pieces. Only the father of our friend, the present Prince of Seyre, escaped."
"Why do you tell me all this?" Louise asked, shivering. "It is such a chapter of horrors!"
"It illustrates a point," Graillot replied. "Among the whole aristocracy of France there was no family so loathed and detested as theseigneursof Seyre. Those at thechâteau, and others who were arrested in Paris, met their death with singular contempt and calm. Eugène of Seyre, whose character in my small way I have studied, is of the same breed."
Louise took up a fan which lay on the table by her side, and waved it carelessly in front of her face.
"One does so love," she murmured, "to hear one's friends discussed in this friendly spirit!"
"It is because Eugène of Seyre is a friend of yours that I am talking to you in this fashion," Graillot continued. "You have also another friend—this young man from Cumberland."
"Well?"
"In him," Graillot went on, "one perceives all the primitive qualities which go to the making of splendid manhood. Physically he is almost perfect, for which alone we owe him a debt of gratitude. He has, if I judge him rightly, all the qualities possessed by men who have been brought up free from the taint of cities, from the smear of our spurious over-civilization. He is chivalrous and unsuspicious. He is also, unfortunately for him, the enemy of the prince."
Louise laid down her fan. She no longer tried to conceal her agitation.
"Why are you so melodramatic?" she demanded. "They have scarcely spoken. This is, I think, their third meeting."
"When two friends," Graillot declared, "desire the same woman, then all of friendship that there may have been between them is buried. When two others, who are so far from being friends that they possess opposite qualities, opposite characters, opposite characteristics, also desire the same woman—"
"Don't!" Louise interrupted, with a sudden little scream. "Don't! You are talking wildly. You must not say such things!"
Graillot leaned forward. He shook his head very slowly; his heavy hand rested upon her shoulder.
"Ah, no, dear lady," he insisted, "I am not talking wildly. I am Graillot, who for thirty years have written dramas on one subject and one subject only—men and women. It has been given to me to study many varying types of the human race, to watch the outcome of many strange situations. I have watched the prince draw you nearer and nearer to him. What there is or may be between you I do not know. It is not for me to know. But if not now, some day Eugène of Seyre means you to be his, and he is not a person to be lightly resisted. Now from the skies there looms up this sudden obstacle."
"You do not realize," Louise protested, almost eagerly, "how slight is my acquaintance with Mr. Strangewey. I once spent the night and a few hours of the next morning at his house in Cumberland, and that is all I have ever seen of him. How can his presence here be of any serious import to Eugène?"
"As to that," Graillot replied, "I say nothing. If what I have suggested does not exist, then for the first time in my life I have made a mistake; but I do not think I have. You may not realize it, but there is before you one of those struggles that make or mar thelife of women of every age. As for the men, I will only say this, and it is because of it that I have spoken at all—I am a lover of fair play, and the struggle is not even. The younger man may hold every card in the pack, but Eugène of Seyre has learned how to win tricks without aces. I stayed behind to say this to you, Louise. You know the young man and I do not. It is you who must warn him."
"Warn him?" Louise repeated, with upraised eyebrows. "Dear master, aren't we just a little—do you—melodramatic? The age of duels is past, also the age of hired bravos and assassins."
"Agreed," Graillot interrupted, "but the weapons of to-day are more dangerous. It is the souls of their enemies that men attack. If I were a friend of that young man's I would say to him: 'Beware, not of the enmity of Eugène of Seyre, but of his friendship!' And now, dear lady, I have finished. I lingered behind because the world holds no more sincere admirer of yourself and your genius than I. Don't ring. May I not let myself out?"
"Stop!" Louise begged.
Graillot resumed his seat. He watched with an almost painful curiosity the changes in Louise's face, which was convulsed by a storm of passionate apprehension. Yet behind it all he could see the truth. There was something softer in her face than he had ever perceived before, a tenderer light than he had ever seen in her eyes. He sighed and looked down at the carpet.
Louise rose presently and walked abruptly to the window. Then she came back and reseated herself by his side.
"You are the one friend I have in life who understands,dear master," she said. "Do I weary you if I speak?"
He looked steadfastly into her eyes. His plain, bearded face was heavy-browed, lined, tired a little with the coming of age.
"Louise," he declared, "it is only because I dare not lift my thoughts and eyes any higher that I count myself the greatest friend you ever could have in life!"
She caught at his hand, her head drooped a little.
"Don't overpower me," she faltered. "I can't—no, I can't!"
He watched in silence the twitching of her lips, the filling of her eyes. A momentary remorse struck him. Why should he afflict her at this moment with his own secret? He closed his eyes, and deliberately shut out the vision which had lured his tongue into the byways of unwonted sentiment. He spoke firmly and without emotion.
"Louise," he begged, "let me be your confidant! No man knows more of the game of life as it is played out between men and women. There is no one in whom you can place a greater trust."
Her fingers clutched his, her nails dug into his palm, but he did not flinch.
"I do not know," she murmured, her voice trembling with agitation. "That is the truth of it all. I do not know where to go for guidance or inspiration. Life has suddenly become mysterious. Men seem always so strong and sure. It is only we poor women who lose our bearings."
Graillot patted her hands tenderly. Then he rose to his feet.
"You are not going?" she asked him.
"Dear Louise," he said, "I am going, because thetime when I can help is not yet. Listen! More harm has been done in this world by advice than in any other way. I have no advice to give you. You have one sure and certain guide, and that is your own heart, your own instincts, your own sweet consciousness of what is best. I leave you to that. If trouble comes, I am always ready!"
During the remainder of that afternoon and evening John was oppressed by a vague sense of the splendor of his surroundings and his companion's mysterious capacity for achieving impossibilities. Their visits to the tailors, the shirt-makers, the hosiers, and the boot-makers almost resembled a royal progress. All difficulties were waved aside. That night he dined, clothed like other men from head to foot, in the lofty dining room of one of the most exclusive clubs in London. The prince proved an agreeable if somewhat reticent companion. He introduced John to many well-known people, always with that little note of personal interest in his few words of presentation which gave a certain significance to the ceremony.
From the club, where the question of John's proposed membership, the prince acting as his sponsor, was favorably discussed with several members of the committee, they drove to Covent Garden, and for the first time in his life John entered the famous opera-house. The prince, preceded by an attendant, led the way to a box upon the second tier. A woman turned her head as they entered and stretched out her hand, which the prince raised to his lips.
"You see, I have taken you at your word, Eugène," she remarked. "So many evenings I have looked longingly from my stall at your empty box. To-night I summoned up all my courage, and here I am!"
"You give me a double pleasure, dear lady," the prince declared. "Not only is it a joy to be your host, but you give me also the opportunity of presenting to you my friend, John Strangewey. Strangewey, this is my very distant relative and very dear friend, Lady Hilda Mulloch."
Lady Hilda smiled graciously at John. She was apparently of a little less than middle age, with dark bands of chestnut hair surmounted by a tiara. Her face was the face of a clever and still beautiful woman; her figure slender and dignified; her voice low and delightful.
"Are you paying your nightly homage to Calavera, Mr. Strangewey, or are you only an occasional visitor?" she asked.
"This is my first visit of any sort to Covent Garden," John told her.
She looked at him with as much surprise as good breeding permitted. John, who had not as yet sat down, seemed almost preternaturally tall in that small box, with its low ceiling. He was looking around the house with the enthusiasm of a boy. Lady Hilda glanced away from him toward the prince, and smiled; then she looked back at John. There was something like admiration in her face.
"Do you live abroad?" she asked.
John shook his head.
"I live in Cumberland," he said. "Many people here seem to think that that is the same thing. My brother and I have a farm there."
"But you visit London occasionally, surely?"
"I have not been in London," John told her, "since I passed through it on my way home from Oxford, eight years ago."
"But why not?" she persisted.
John laughed a little.
"Well, really," he admitted, "when I come to think of it seriously, I scarcely know. I have lived alone with an elder brother, who hates London and would be very unhappy if I got into the way of coming up regularly. I fancy that I have rather grown into his way of thinking. I am quite satisfied—or rather I have been quite satisfied—to live down there all the year round."
"I have never heard anything so extraordinary in my life!" the woman declared frankly. "Is it the prince who has induced you to break out of your seclusion?"
"Our young friend," the prince explained, "finds himself suddenly in altered circumstances. He has been left a large fortune, and has come to spend it. Incidentally, I hope, he has come to see something more of your sex than is possible among his mountain wilds. He has come, in short, to look a little way into life."
Lady Hilda leaned back in her chair.
"How romantic!"
"The prince amuses himself," John assured her. "I don't suppose I shall stay very long in London. I want just to try it for a time."
She looked at him almost wistfully. She was a woman with brains; a woman notorious for the freedom of her life, for her intellectual gifts, for her almost brutal disregard of the conventions of her class. The psychological interest of John Strangewey's situation appealed to her powerfully. Besides, she had a weakness for handsome men.
"Of course, it all sounds like a fairy tale," she declared. "Tell me exactly, please, how long you have been in London."
"About forty-eight hours," he answered.
"And what did you do last night?"
"I dined with two friends, we went to the Palace, and one of them took me to a supper club."
She made a little grimace.
"You began in somewhat obvious fashion," she remarked.
"I can vouch for the friends," the prince observed, smiling.
"At any rate," said Lady Hilda, "I am glad to think that I shall be able to watch you when you see Calavera dance for the first time."
The curtain rang up upon one of the most gorgeous and sensuous of the Russian ballets. John, who by their joint insistence was occupying the front chair in the box, leaned forward in his place, his eyes steadfastly fixed upon the stage. Both the prince and Lady Hilda, in the background, although they occasionally glanced at the performance, devoted most of their attention to watching him.
As the story progressed and the music grew in passion and voluptuousness, they distinctly saw his almost militant protest. They saw the knitting of his firm mouth and the slight contraction of his eyebrows. The prince and his friend exchanged glances. She drew her chair a little farther back, and he followed her example.
"Where did you find anything so wonderful as this?" she murmured.
"Lost among the hills in Cumberland," the prince replied. "I have an estate up there—in fact, he and I are joint lords of the manor of the village in which he has lived."
"And you?" she whispered, glancing at John to be sure that she was not overheard. "Where do you comein? An educator of the young? I don't seem to see you in that rôle!"
A very rare and by no means pleasant smile twisted the corners of his lips for a moment.
"It is a long story."
"Can I be brought in?" she asked.
He nodded.
"It rests with you. It would suit my plans."
She toyed with her fan for a moment, looked restlessly at the stage and back again at John. Then she rose from her place and stood before the looking-glass. From the greater obscurity of the box she motioned to the prince.
John remained entirely heedless of their movements. His eyes were still riveted upon the stage, fascinated with the wonderful coloring, the realization of a new art.
"You and I," Lady Hilda whispered, "do not need to play about with the truth, Eugène. What are you doing this for?"
"The idlest whim," the prince assured her quietly. "Look at him. Think for a moment of his position—absolutely without experience, entirely ignorant about women, with a fortune one only dreams of, and probably the handsomest animal in London. What is going to become of him?"
"I think I understand a little," she confessed.
"I think you do," the prince assented. "He has views, this young man. It is my humor to see them dissipated. The modernSir Galahadalways irritated me a little."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"They'll never give him a chance, these women," she said. "Much better hand him over to me."
The prince smiled enigmatically, and Lady Hilda returned to her seat. John was still leaning forward with his eyes fixed upon Calavera, who was dancing alone now. The ballet was drawing toward the end. The music had reached its climax of wild and passionate sensuousness, dominated and inspired by the woman whose every movement and every glance seemed part of some occult, dimly understood language.
When the curtain rang down, John, like many others, was confused. Nevertheless, after that first breathless pause, he stood up and joined in the tumultuous applause.
"Well?" the prince asked.
John shook his head. "I don't know," he answered.
"Neither does any one else," Lady Hilda said. "Don't try to analyze your impressions for our benefit, Mr. Strangewey. I am exactly in your position, and I have been here a dozen times. Even to us hardened men and women of the world, this Russian music came as a surprise. There were parts of it you did not like, though, weren't there?"
"There were parts of it I hated," John agreed. "There were passages that seemed to aim at discord in every sense of the word."
She nodded sympathetically. They were on their way down the broad staircase.
"I wonder," she murmured, "whether I am going to be asked out to supper?"
"Alas, not to-night, dear lady," the prince regretted. "I am having a few friends at Seyre House."
She shot a glance at him and shrugged her shoulders. She was evidently displeased.
"How much too bad!" she exclaimed. "I am not at all sure that it is right of you to invite Mr. Strangeweyto one of your orgies. A respectable little supper at the Carlton, and a cigarette in my library afterward, would have been a great deal better for both of you—certainly for Mr. Strangewey. I think I shall run away with him, as it is!"
The prince shrugged his shoulders.
"It is unfortunate," he sighed, "but we are both engaged. If you will give us the opportunity some other evening—"
"I am not at all sure that I shall have anything more to do with you, Eugène," she declared. "You are not behaving nicely. Will you come and see me while you are in town, Mr. Strangewey?" she added, turning to John. "I suppose you can be trusted to reach No. 21 Pont Street without your Mephistophelian chaperon?"
"I should like to very much," he replied. "I think," he added, a little hesitatingly, "that I have read one of your books of travel. It is very interesting to meet you."
"So my fame has really reached Cumberland!" she laughed. "You must come and talk to me one afternoon quite soon. Will you? I want so much to hear your impressions of London. I am always in between six and seven; or if you want to come earlier, I will try to be in if you telephone."
"I will come with pleasure," John promised.
They stood for a few moments in the crowded vestibule until Lady Hilda Mulloch's car was called. The prince stood back, allowing John to escort her to the door. She detained him for a moment after she had taken her seat, and leaned out of the window, her fingers still in his hand.
"Be careful!" she whispered. "The prince's supper parties are just a little—shall I say banal? There are better things if one waits!"
The reception-rooms of Seyre House, by some people considered the finest in London, were crowded that night by a brilliant and cosmopolitan assembly. For some time John stood by the prince's side and was introduced to more people than he had ever met before in his life. Presently, however, he was discovered by his friend Amerton.
"Queer thing your being here, a friend of the prince and all that!" the young man remarked. "Where's Miss Sophy this evening?"
"I haven't seen her," John replied. "I don't believe she is invited."
"Did you hear that Calavera is coming?" Amerton inquired.
John nodded.
"She's expected any moment. I wonder what she's like off the stage!"
"You wait and see," Lord Amerton sighed. "There isn't another woman in Europe to touch her. Why, they say that even our host is one of her victims. Like to be introduced to some of the girls, or shall we go and have a drink?"
John was hesitating when he felt a hand upon his shoulder. The prince's voice sounded in his ear.
"Strangewey," he said, "I am privileged to present you to Mme. Aida Calavera.Madame, this is the friend of whom I spoke to you."
John turned away from the little group of girls and young men toward whom Amerton had been leading him. Even though the prince's speech had given him a moment's breathing-space, he felt himself constrained to pause before he made his bow of ceremony.
The woman was different from anything he had imagined, from anything he had ever seen. In the ballet a writhing, sensuous figure with every gesture a note in the octave of passion, here she seemed the very personification of a negative and striking immobility. She was slender, not so tall as she had seemed upon the stage, dressed in white from head to foot. Her face was almost marblelike in its pallor, her smooth, black hair was drawn tightly over her ears, and her eyes were of the deepest shade of blue.
During that momentary pause, while he searched among a confused mixture of sensations for some formula of polite speech, John found time to liken her in his mind to something Egyptian. She raised her hand, as he bowed, with a gesture almost royal in its condescension. The prince, with quiet tact, bridged over the moment during which John struggled in vain for something to say.
"Mr. Strangewey," he remarked, "paid his first visit to Covent Garden to-night. He has seen his first ballet, as we moderns understand the term. I cannot help envying him that delight. He naturally finds it difficult to realize this additional good fortune. Will you excuse me for one moment?"
The prince departed to welcome some later arrivals. The noisy little group standing close at hand, from which John had been diverted, passed on into the refreshment-room, and the two were, for a few moments, almost isolated.
Even then John felt himself tongue-tied. Standing where she was, with that background of dark oil-paintings lit only by shaded electric lamps, she was more than ever like a wonderful old Egyptian statue into which some measure of slow-moving life had been breathed. He recognized almost with wonder the absence of any ornament of any sort on her neck or fingers.
"You were pleased with the performance, I hope?"
Her voice was in character with her personality. It was extremely low, scarcely louder than a whisper. To his surprise, it was almost wholly free from any foreign accent.
"It was very wonderful," John answered.
"You understood the story?"
"Only partly," he confessed.
"Would you have recognized me, seeing me as you do now?"
"Never in the world," he assured her.
"Tell me why I am so different off the stage."
"On the stage," he replied, "you seem to me to be the embodiment of wild movement. Here, you seem—forgive me—to be a statue. I can scarcely believe that you walked across the room."
"It is my pose," she said calmly.
"Then you are a great actress as well as a great dancer," he declared.
For the first time the plastic calm of her features seemed disturbed. She smiled, but even her smile seemed to him more like some mechanically contrived alteration in the facial expression of a statue than anything natural or spontaneous.
"The prince tells me," she continued, "that you are a stranger in London. Give me your arm. We will walk to a quieter place. In a few moments we are tobe disturbed for supper. One eats so often and so much in this country. Why do I say that, though? It is not so bad as in Russia."
They passed across the polished wood floor into a little room with Oriental fittings, where a lamp was swinging from the ceiling, giving out a dim but pleasant light. The place was empty, and the sound of the music and voices seemed to come from a distance. She sank down upon a divan back among the shadows, and motioned John to sit by her side.
"You have come to find out, to understand—is that not so?" she inquired. "What you know of life, the prince tells me, you have learned from books. Now you have come to discover what more than that there is to be learned in the world of men and women."
"Did the prince tell you all this?" John asked.
"He did," she admitted. "He seems much interested in you."
"He has been very kind," John said.
She turned her head slowly and looked at him.
"A young man to whom the prince chooses to be kind is, in a way, fortunate," she said. "I think he knows more of life than any other person whom I ever met."
"You have known him for long?"
"In Budapest, five years ago; in Russia, the season afterward; then in Paris; in Petersburg again, and now in London. The prince has been a faithful friend. He came once from Florence to Petersburg, to be present at my first night at the opera. Always he impresses me the same way. There is very little in life, in men or in women, which he does not understand. Let us return to what we were speaking about. I find it very interesting."
"You are very kind," John declared.
"What you will learn here," she went on, "depends very much upon yourself. Are you intelligent? Perhaps not very," she added, looking at him critically. "You have brains, however, without a doubt. You have also what places you at onceen rapportwith the cult of the moment—you are wonderfully good-looking."
John moved a little uneasily in his place. He felt that the dancer's eyes were fixed upon him, and he was feverishly anxious not to respond to the invitation of their gaze. He was conscious, too, of the queer, indefinable fascination of her near presence in the dimly lighted room.
"What you will learn," she proceeded, "depends very much upon your desires. If you seek for the best, and are content with nothing else, you will find it. But so few men are content to wait!"
"I intend to," John said simply.
"Look at me, please," she ordered.
Once more he was compelled to look into her deep-blue eyes. The incomprehensible smile was still upon her lips.
"You have loved?"
"No," he answered, taken a little aback by the abruptness of the question.
"You grow more wonderful! How old are you, may I ask?"
"Twenty-eight."
"At the present moment, then, you are free from any distracting thoughts about women? You have no entanglements?"
"I have nothing of the sort," John declared, almost irritably. "There is one person who has made a wonderful change in my life. I believe I could say that Iam absolutely certain of my feelings for her, but so far she has not given me much encouragement. Tell me,madame, why do you ask me these questions?"
"Because it interests me," she replied. "Why do you not insist that this lady should tell you the truth?"
"I have come to London to insist," he told her, "but I have been here only forty-eight hours."
"So you are waiting?"
"I am waiting," he assented.
"So many people spend their lives doing that," she went on presently. "It does not appeal to me. The moment I make up my mind that I want a thing, I take it. The moment I make up my mind to give, I give."
John was suddenly conscious of the closeness of the atmosphere. The fingers of his hands were clenched tightly together. He swore to himself that he would not look into this woman's face. He listened to the band which was playing in the balcony of the great hall, to the murmur of the voices, the shouts of laughter. He told himself that Mme. Calavera was amusing herself with him.
"The prince's party," she continued, after a long pause, "seems to be a great success, to judge by the noise they are making. So many people shout and laugh when they are happy. I myself find a more perfect expression of happiness in silence."
She was leaning a little back in her place. One arm was resting upon a pile of cushions, the other hung loosely over the side of the divan. John felt a sudden desire to rise to his feet, and a simultaneous consciousness that his feet seemed to be made of lead.
"You may hold my fingers," she said; "and pleasekeep your face turned toward me. Why are you nervous? I am not very formidable."
He took her fingers, very much as the prince had done upon her arrival, and pressed them formally to his lips. Then he released them and rose.
"You know," he confessed, "I am very stupid at this sort of thing. Shall we go back to the reception rooms? I shall be the most unpopular man here if I keep you any longer."
The smile deepened slightly. Little lines appeared at the sides of her eyes. So far from being annoyed, he could see that she was laughing.
"Joseph," she mocked, "I am not tempting you, really! Do sit down. I have met men in many countries, but none like you. So you do not wish to accept those small privileges which a woman may offer when she chooses?"
"I believe—in fact, I am almost certain—that I love the woman I have come to London to see," John declared.
"You get more and more interesting," she murmured. "Don't you realize that your love for one woman should make you kind to all?"
"No, I don't," he answered bluntly.
"Come," she said, "do not be afraid of me. I will not make love to you—seriously. You must be kind to me because everybody spoils me. After supper there are one or two more questions I must ask you. Do you know that I am going to dance here? Never before have I danced in a private house in England. Except upon the stage, I like to dance only to those whom I love!"
The little space between the curtains was suddenly darkened. John turned eagerly around, and, to hisimmense relief, recognized the prince. Their host came forward to where they were sitting, and held out his arm to Calavera.
"Dear lady," he announced, "supper is served. Will you do me this great honor?"
She rose to her feet. The prince turned to John.
"This is my privilege as host," he explained; "but if you will follow us, you will find some consolation in store for you."
"Well?" the prince asked, as he handed Aida Calavera to her place at his right hand.
"I think not," she replied.
He raised his eyebrows slightly. For a moment he glanced down the supper-table with the care of a punctilious host, to see that his guests were properly seated. He addressed a few trivialities to the musical-comedy star who was sitting on his left. Then he leaned once more toward the great dancer.
"You surprise me," he said. "I should have thought that the enterprise would have commended itself to you. You do not doubt the facts?"
"They are obvious enough," she replied. "The young man is all that you say, even more ingenuous than I had believed possible, but I fancy I must be getting old. He tried to tell me that he was in love with another woman, and I felt suddenly powerless. I think I must be getting to that age when one prefers to achieve one's conquests with the lifting of a finger."
The prince sighed.
"I shall never understand your sex!" he declared. "I should have supposed that the slight effort of resistance such a young man might make would have provided just the necessary stimulus to complete his subjection."
She turned her beautiful head and looked at the prince through narrowed eyes.
"After all," she asked, "what should I gain? I amnot like a child who robs an insect of life for a few moments' amusement. Even if I have no conscience, it gives me no pleasure to be wanton. Besides, the young man is, in his way, a splendid work of art. Why should I be vandal enough to destroy it? I shall ask you another question."
The prince slowly sipped the wine from the glass that he was holding to his lips. Then he set it down deliberately.
"Why not?"
"What is your interest? Is it a bet, a whim, or—enmity?"
"You may count it the latter," the prince replied deliberately.
Calavera laughed softly to herself.
"Now, for the first time," she confessed, "I feel interest. This is where one realizes that we live in the most impossible age of all history. The great noble who seeks to destroy the poor young man from the country is powerless to wreak harm upon him. You can neither make him a pauper nor have him beaten to death. Why are there princes any longer, I wonder? You are only as other men."
"It is an unhappy reflection, but it is the truth," the prince admitted. "My ancestors would have disposed of this young man as I should a troublesome fly, and it would have cost them no more than a few silver pieces and a cask of wine. To-day, alas, conditions are different. It will cost me more."
She trifled for a moment with the salad upon her plate, which as yet she had scarcely tasted.
"I am feeling," she remarked, "magnificently Oriental—like Cleopatra. The sensation pleases me. We are bargaining, are we not—"
"We shall not bargain," the prince interrupted softly. "It is you who shall name your price."
She raised her eyes and dropped them again.
"The prince has spoken," she murmured.
He touched her fingers for a moment with his, as if to seal their compact; then he turned once more to the lady upon his left.
Seyre House was one of the few mansions in London which boasted a banqueting-hall as well as a picture-gallery. Although the long table was laid for forty guests, it still seemed, with its shaded lights and its profusion of flowers, like an oasis of color in the middle of the huge, somberly lighted apartment. The penny illustrated papers, whose contributors know more of the doings of London society than anybody else, always hinted in mysterious terms at the saturnalian character of the prince's supper parties. John, who had heard a few whispers beforehand, and whose interest in his surroundings was keen and intense, wondered whether this company of beautiful women and elegant men were indeed a modern revival of those wonderful creations of Boccaccio, to whom they had so often been likened.
Some of the faces of the guests were well known to him through their published photographs; to others he had been presented by the prince upon their arrival. He was seated between a young American star of musical comedy and a lady who had only recently dropped from the social firmament through the medium of the divorce-court, to return to the theater of her earlier fame. Both showed every desire to converse with him between the intervals of eating and drinking, but were constantly brought to a pause by John's lack of knowledge of current topics. After her third glass of champagne,the lady who had recently been a countess announced her intention of taking him under her wing.
"Some one must tell you all about things," she insisted. "What you need is a guide and a chaperon. Won't I do?"
"Perfectly," he agreed.
"Fair play!" protested the young lady on his left, whose name was Rosie Sharon. "I spoke to him first!"
"Jolly bad luck!" Lord Amerton drawled from the other side of the table. "Neither of you have an earthly. He's booked. Saw him out with her the other evening."
"I sha'n't eat any more supper," Rosie Sharon pouted, pushing away her plate.
"You ought to have told us about her at once," the lady who had been a countess declared severely.
John preserved his equanimity.
"It is to be presumed," he murmured, "that you ladies are both free from any present attachment?"
"Got you there!" Amerton chuckled. "What about Billy?"
Rosie Sharon sighed.
"We don't come to the prince's supper parties to remember our ties," she declared. "Let's all go on talking nonsense, please. Even if my heart is broken, I could never resist the prince'spâté!"
Apparently every one was of the same mind. The hum of laughter steadily grew. Jokes, mostly in the nature of personalities, were freely bandied across the table. It was becoming obvious that the contributors to the penny illustrated papers knew what they were talking about. Under shelter of the fire of conversation, the prince leaned toward his companion and reopened their previous discussion.
"Do you know," he began, "I am inclined to be somewhat disappointed by your lack of enthusiasm in a certain direction!"
"I have disappointed many men in my time," she replied. "Do you doubt my power, now that I have promised to exercise it?"
"Who could?" he replied courteously. "Yet this young man poses, I believe, as something of a St. Anthony. He may give you trouble."
"He is then, what you call a prig?"
"A most complete and perfect specimen, even in this nation of prigs!"
"All that you tell me," she sighed, "makes the enterprise seem easier. It is, after all, rather like the lioness and the mouse, isn't it?"
The prince made no reply, but upon his lips there lingered a faintly incredulous smile. The woman by his side leaned back in her place. She had the air of accepting a challenge.
"After supper," she said, "we will see!"
A single chord of music in a minor key floated across the room, soft at first, swelling later into a volume of sound, then dying away and ceasing altogether. John, standing momentarily alone in a corner of the picture-gallery, found it almost incredible that this wildly hilarious throng of men and women could so soon, and without a single admonitory word, break off in the midst of their conversation, stifle their mirth, almost hold their breath, in obedience to this unspoken appeal for silence. Every light in the place was suddenly extinguished. There remained only the shaded lamps overhanging the pictures.
Not a whisper was heard in the room. John, lookingaround him in astonishment, was conscious only of the half-suppressed breathing of the men and women who lined the walls, or were still standing in little groups at the end of the long hall. Again there came the music, this time merged in a low but insistent clamor of other instruments. Then, suddenly, through the door at the farther end of the room came a dimly seen figure in white. The place seemed wrapped in a mystical twilight, with long black rays of deeper shadow lying across the floor. There was a little murmur of tense voices, and then again silence.
For a few moments the figure in white was motionless. Then, without any visible commencement, she seemed suddenly to blend into the waves of low, passionate music. The dance itself was without form or definite movement. She seemed at first like some white, limbless spirit, floating here and there across the dark bars of shadow at the calling of the melody. There was no apparent effort of the body. She was merely a beautiful, unearthly shape. It was like the flitting of a white moth through the blackness of a moonless summer night.
The impression it made upon John was indescribable. He watched with straining eyes, conscious of a deep sense of pleasure. Here was something appealing insistently to his love of beauty pure and simple; a new joy, a new grace, something which thrilled him and which left no aftermath of uneasy thoughts.
The music suddenly faded away into nothing. With no more effort than when she had glided into her poem of movement, the dancer stood in a pose of perfect stillness. There were a few moments of tense silence. Then came a crash of chords, and the slender white figure launched into the dance.
Her motions became more animated, more human.With feet which seemed never to meet the earth, she glided toward the corner where John was standing. He caught the smoldering fire in her eyes as she danced within a few feet of him. He felt a catch in his breath. Some subtle and only half-expressed emotion shook his whole being, seemed to tear at the locked chamber of his soul.
She had flung her arms forward, so near that they almost touched him. He could have sworn that her lips had called his name. He felt himself bewitched, filled with an insane longing to throw out his arms in response to her passionate, unspoken invitation, in obedience to the clamoring of his seething senses. He had forgotten, even, that any one else was in the room.
Then, suddenly, the music stopped. The lights flared out from the ceiling and from every corner of the apartment. Slender and erect, her arms hanging limply at her sides, without a touch of color in her cheeks or a coil of her black hair disarranged, without a sign of heat or disturbance or passion in her face, John found Aida Calavera standing within a few feet of him, her eyes seeking for his. She laid her fingers upon his arm. The room was ringing with shouts of applause, in which John unconsciously joined. Every one was trying to press forward toward her. With her left hand she waved them back.
"If I have pleased you," she said, "I am so glad! I go now to rest for a little time."
She tightened her clasp upon her companion's arm, and they passed out of the picture-gallery and down a long corridor. John felt as if he were walking in a dream. Volition seemed to have left him. He only knew that the still, white hand upon his arm seemed like a vise burning into his flesh.
She led him to the end of the corridor, through another door, into a small room furnished in plain but comfortable fashion.
"We will invade the prince's own sanctum," she murmured. "Before I dance, I drink nothing but water. Now I want some champagne. Will you fetch me some, and bring it to me yourself?"
She sank back upon a divan as she spoke. John turned to leave the room, but she called him back.
"Come here," she invited, "close to my side! I can wait for the champagne. Tell me, why you are so silent? And my dancing—that pleased you?"
He felt the words stick in his throat. The sight of her cold, alluring beauty, shining out of her eyes, proclaiming itself and her wishes from her parted lips, filled him with a sudden resentment. He hated himself for the tumult which raged within him, and her for having aroused it.
"Your dancing was indeed wonderful," he stammered.
"It was for you!" she whispered, her voice growing softer and lower. "It was for you I danced. Did you not feel it?"
Her arms stole toward him. The unnatural calm with which she had finished her dance seemed suddenly to pass. Her bosom was rising and falling more quickly. There was a faint spot of color in her cheek.
"It was wonderful," he told her. "I will get you the champagne."
Her lips were parted. She smiled up at him.
"Go quickly," she whispered, "and come back quickly! I wait for you."
He left the room and passed out again into the picture-gallery before he had the least idea where he was. The band was playing a waltz, and one or two coupleswere dancing. The people seemed suddenly to have become like puppets in some strange, unreal dream. He felt an almost feverish longing for the open air, for a long draft of the fresh sweetness of the night, far away from this overheated atmosphere charged with unnamable things.
As he passed through the farther doorway he came face to face with the prince.
"Where are you going?" the latter asked.
"Mme. Calavera has asked me to get her some champagne," he answered.
The prince smiled.
"I will see that it is sent to her at once," he promised. "You are in my sanctum, are you not? You can pursue yourtête-à-têtethere without interruption. You are a very much envied man!"
"Mme. Calavera is there," John replied. "As for me, I am afraid I shall have to go now."
The smile faded from the prince's lips. His eyebrows came slowly together.
"You are leaving?" he repeated.
"I must!" John insisted. "I can't help it. Forgive my behaving like a boor, but I must go. Good night!"
The prince stretched out his hand, but he was too late.
It was twenty minutes past two o'clock when John left Grosvenor Square, and it was twenty minutes to five when a sleepy hall-porter took him up in the lift to his rooms on the fourth floor at the Milan. The intervening space of time was never anything to him but an ugly and tangled sheaf of memories.
His first overwhelming desire had been simply to escape from that enervating and perfervid atmosphere,to feel the morning air cool upon his forehead, to drink in great gulps of the fresh, windy sweetness. He felt as if poison had been poured into his veins, as if he had tampered with the unclean things of life.
He found himself, after a few minutes' hurried walking, in Piccadilly. The shadows that flitted by him, lingering as he approached and offering their stereotyped greeting, filled him with a new horror. He turned abruptly down Duke Street and made his way to St. James's Park. From here he walked slowly eastward. When he reached the Strand, however, the storm in his soul was still unabated. He turned away from the Milan. The turmoil of his passions drove him to the thoughts of flight. Half an hour later he entered St. Pancras Station.
"What time is the next train north to Kendal or Carlisle?" he inquired.
The porter stared at him. John's evening clothes were spattered with mud, the rain-drops were glistening on his coat and face, his new silk hat was ruined. It was not only his clothes, however, which attracted the man's attention. There was the strained look of a fugitive in John's face, a fugitive flying from some threatened fate.
"The newspaper train at five thirty is the earliest, sir," he said. "I don't know whether you can get to Kendal by it, but it stops at Carlisle."
John looked at the clock. There was an hour to wait. He wandered about the station, gloomy, chill, deserted. The place sickened him, and he strolled out into the streets again. By chance he left the station by the same exit as on the day of his arrival in London. He stopped short.
How could he have forgotten, even for a moment?This was not the world which he had come to discover. This was just some plague-spot upon which he had stumbled. Through the murky dawn and across the ugly streets he looked into Louise's drawing-room. She would be there waiting for him on the morrow!
Louise! The thought of her was like a sweet, purifying stimulant. He felt the throbbing of his nerves soothed. He felt himself growing calm. The terror of the last few hours was like a nightmare which had passed. He summoned a taxicab and was driven to the Milan. His wanderings for the night were over.