Читать книгу The Kingmakers - Burton Egbert Stevenson - Страница 10

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SELDEN did not attempt to explain to himself his sudden interest in this fascinating unknown, but he was determined to find out about her all that he could. His first impulse had been to chide Davis for not introducing him, but he suppressed it. If the lady was married—and especially if she was married to a Ghita—Davis might not have felt himself a free agent, though Selden doubted if he was even aware of the continental point of view in that regard. More probably it was merely lack of savoir faire. Even without an introduction, the lady had not hesitated to address him. She was not, then, too much bound by convention. But this was not a drawing-room—it was the Sporting Club at Monte Carlo. And she was not drinking tea; she was playing chemin-de-fer. These were points that were worth thinking over.

Selden offered Davis a cigarette, before lighting one himself, but Davis did not see it. His eyes were still fixed on the door through which the women had disappeared. Evidently the net was already around him.

“So she is married, is she?” Selden remarked casually. “Is her husband with her here?”

“What?” and Davis came to himself with a start. “Yes—that is, she’s not exactly married, either—not as we understand it. You see, it’s like this....”

He stopped abruptly.

“I am sorry to have been so long,” said the baron’s voice, and Selden looked up to find him and the prince smiling down at them. At least the baron was smiling, most urbanely; but it was difficult to tell whether it was good-humour or suppressed chagrin that parted the prince’s lips. “You have amused each other, I hope?”

“Oh, yes,” said Selden; “we have been having a most interesting time.”

“Good!” and the baron sank down again into his chair, and polished his glass thoughtfully. “It is disgusting, but even here affairs of state sometimes intrude.”

The prince had resumed his seat against the wall and looked moodily at the champagne bottle. It was empty.

Selden caught the eye of the attentive waiter, who nodded and hurried away. He felt that he was upon the threshold of a most interesting disclosure, which a little more wine might precipitate. To be married, and at the same time not to be married! He was conscious that his objection to champagne confidences had considerably diminished. Besides, he wanted an excuse to stay awhile longer.

But a sudden silence had fallen upon Davis. He evidently felt himself back again in the infant class, and he glanced at the baron from time to time with a certain uneasiness, as a bad boy might glance at his master. The prince was also silent, staring fixedly at the table in front of him, his lips pursed, his brows contracted in a frown. As for the baron, he was puffing thoughtfully at a cigarette, his eyes on the ceiling, immersed perhaps in those affairs of state of which he had spoken.

So they remained until the waiter brought the new bottle and filled fresh glasses.

The stimulant seemed to nerve the prince to do something he did not in the least want to do. He produced a bulky envelope from his pocket and handed it to Davis.

“I am very happy,” he said, “to be able to repay you.”

Davis took the envelope, evidently astonished, and glanced at the figures written upon it.

“But look here,” he protested, “I don’t want this—I don’t need it—I’d rather you kept it.”

“Impossible!” said the prince. “It is a debt of honour. I might not again be in position to repay it.”

“Oh, all right, if you look at it that way,” said Davis sulkily, and started to cram the envelope into his pocket.

“You find the amount correct, I trust?” put in the baron smoothly.

Davis glanced at the envelope again.

“As a matter of fact, I think it’s too much,” he said.

“But you have kept a memorandum?”

“Yes—since the prince insisted!” and he drew a little memorandum book from his pocket.

Selden could scarcely repress a smile. There is nothing more characteristic of the confirmed borrower than insistence on keeping meticulous accounts. To enter the amount in a book is almost like placing it in a bank. It proves how conscientious one is.

“Please check it over,” suggested the baron.

Davis did so.

“It’s just as I thought,” he said. “You’ve given me ten thousand francs too much.”

The prince got out his own memorandum book, monogrammed in gold on the back, turned over the pages till he found the right one, and compared the accounts.

“Ah, see,” he said; “you forgot to make this entry on the sixteenth—ten thousand francs.”

“Please make it now,” said the baron, “and mark the amount paid, after verifying the sum in the envelope.”

Davis, his face redder than ever, made the entry, then broke open the envelope and drew out a packet of thousand-franc notes—at least fifty or sixty of them—ran through them with shaking fingers, nodded, stuffed them into his pocket and wrote Paid in large letters across the memorandum.

“It would be as well to add the date,” said the baron.

Davis complied impatiently, and returned the book to his pocket.

“I hope you are satisfied,” he said.

The baron nodded good-naturedly and lighted another cigarette.

“Yes—you are very good to humour me. Perhaps I may seem bourgeois,” he went on to Selden, “but it annoys me to have debts of that sort hanging over us, for they are the most embarrassing of all. I know that many people call us adventurers, robbers, and other hard names. They say we never pay our debts. It is a lie. I admit,” he added, with a smile, “that sometimes our money does not hold out and our creditors have to wait, but they expect that, and place it in the bill. In the end they are always paid.” He paused and glanced at his watch. “One o’clock! I must be getting back to Nice. You will come with me, my prince?”

“No,” said the prince; “I will return later with M. Davis.”

“But I want to try my luck first,” said Davis, and rose to his feet, evidently glad of an excuse to get away. “I also have an inspiration.”

“I hope it may be a good one,” said Danilo, and rose too. “I will come with you and see. Good night, M. Selden. I hope to meet you again.”

“You’ll be sure to hear from my sister!” said Davis, and the two hurried away like boys released from school.

The baron watched them with a look between a smile and a frown; then he settled back into his chair, apparently in no hurry to start for home.

“Is it that you know the sister of M. Davis?” he asked casually.

“No, not at all; but he says his sister has been reading those articles of mine which annoyed you so much, and was interested in them—though I can’t imagine why.”

“Ah, yes,” said the baron thoughtfully. “Well, it is true. As it happens, I know the sister of M. Davis, and have even discussed those articles with her. She is a most intelligent young lady, and she was deeply impressed by your point of view.”

“But why on earth should she be interested?”

“Ah, that!” said the baron, with a shrug. “Americans are interested in so many things. Believe me, M. Selden, I am quite sincere in saying that I found your articles admirable. It is true they annoyed me—the more so because I found them so good. But you took M. Jeneski’s theories too much for granted. He is an able man—yes; but he is also an idealist. He does not see the practical difficulties in the way of carrying out his programme.”

“Perhaps they are not so serious as you think,” suggested Selden.

“Eh, bien, let us look at them for a moment. In the first place, you, as an American, are prepossessed in favour of a republic. Is it not so?”

“I suppose so.”

“The word means so much to you that sometimes you mistake the word for the thing it signifies. In my country they have as yet only the word. Jeneski, supported by the army, sets up a government and calls it a republic—that is all. It is not in any sense a republic; it is a military despotism.”

“They are going to have elections next month,” Selden pointed out.

“But how many people will vote at those elections? Very few outside the capital. Even they will be intimidated by the army, and will be afraid to vote, except for the government. For do not forget that not only does the army vote, but it will be in control of the polling-places. If all the people had the opportunity to vote without being terrorized or intimidated, and were given a free choice between Jeneski and the king, do you know whom they would choose? They would choose the king.”

“Very possibly,” Selden admitted. “They have all heard of the king, and very few have heard of Jeneski. Fewer still have any idea as yet of what a republic means.”

“No, and they will never have,” said the baron, “because it is not possible to give them a real republic. They must first be educated—they must be taught how to govern themselves. And it will be impossible to teach them because they will need all their efforts to keep themselves from starving.”

“Well, they must take the chance,” said Selden, “even if it requires generations. As I see it, the one outstanding result of the war is the triumph of democracy. If the people of Europe lose that, they have lost everything. As long as they hold on to it, no matter at what sacrifice, the war is worth all it cost them.”

“But democracy does not necessarily mean a republic—that is a thing which Americans find very difficult to understand. There is England, for example—there is Holland, Belgium, Norway, Sweden. They are not republics, but they are none the less democracies—more truly so in some respects, perhaps, even than your own. I, too, recognize the triumph of democracy, and I rejoice in it; but that does not mean that we must place the government of the country in the hands of a mob. Quite the contrary. There is no despotism worse than mob despotism—nothing further removed from the spirit of democracy. When I speak of restoration,” he went on, “when I work for it, as I am working now, I do not mean the restoration of old autocracies, of outworn rights and privileges. I mean the restoration of order and enlightened government. A government must above all things have intelligence.”

“Jeneski has intelligence,” Selden pointed out.

“But he has no resources. A government must also have resources.”

“Well,” Selden began, and hesitated.

“I know what is in your mind,” said Lappo quickly. “You are thinking that neither has the king any resources. That is true for the moment, and as long as it is true, he will not seek to go back. But if resources accrue to him, as they perhaps may, I say to you that Jeneski will be committing a crime against his country if he continues to oppose him.”

He paused and glanced mechanically at his watch.

“Come,” he said, starting to his feet, “I must be going. Pardon me for talking so much at such an hour! But it is a thing very near to my heart.”

“I have been deeply interested,” Selden hastened to assure him.

“I am most anxious for you to meet the king. He is not at all what people suppose him. He is—but you shall see for yourself. Ah, they never quit gambling in this place!” he added, as they passed through the door into the outer room.

The wheels were still turning without interruption. The crowd was greater than ever, but neither Davis nor Danilo was in sight. Selden suspected that they were in the inner sanctum dedicated to baccara, and he rather expected the baron to look them up. But that worthy seemed to have dismissed them from his mind.

“You shall hear from me soon,” he said, and held out his hand.

“I am going too,” said Selden, resolutely beating back the desire to stay, to get another glimpse of that clever, unusual face; and together he and the baron went down the stair and got their coats.

“I am arranging a small dinner for to-morrow evening,” said the baron suddenly, as they stood on the steps outside, waiting for his car. “If you are free, I should be very pleased to have you join us.”

“Thank you. I shall be glad to.”

“Good. I will let you know the time and place. Till to-morrow, then!” and the baron stepped into his car with a wave of the hand.

Selden stood for a moment looking after it, as it sped down the slope toward the Condamine. Then he turned the other way toward his hotel.

A strange man, the baron. More royalist than the king, more concerned for the prince than the prince was for himself, a courtier to the bone, a man who knew the secrets of every court, the skeletons in every closet.

And most probably not without skeletons in his own!

Well, there were few closets without a skeleton of some sort.

What, Selden wondered, was the skeleton in the closet of the Countess Rémond? That grim tragedy in the wood behind Bouresches?

And what game was the baron playing? Working for a restoration—yes; but why had he compelled the prince to return those many thousands of francs to Davis in so summary a fashion? Most extraordinary that—as though he were trying to impress some one with his probity.

Davis, perhaps; but why should he care to impress Davis? Who, after all, was Davis?

And who was Madame Ghita?

Pondering these and other questions, Selden mounted to his room and went to bed. He could find an answer to none of them, but he had a sense of pleasurable excitement, for he felt that, in some strange way, he had been drawn into an extraordinary drama.

And its most interesting personage was undoubtedly Madame Ghita.