Читать книгу The Kingmakers - Burton Egbert Stevenson - Страница 7

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THE opera at Monte Carlo is housed in the end of the Casino building nearest the Hotel de Paris, so that the Countess Rémond and her two companions had only to cross the street. It was to the private entrance that the baron led the way. Here the prince paused.

“Do you require me any longer?” he asked.

“Perhaps you would better go in and be seen with us for a moment,” said the baron.

The prince nodded curtly, and the three followed a deferential, gold-laced flunkey up the red-carpeted stair, and into a box.

It is a masterpiece of its kind, this opera house, the work of that Charles Garnier who built the Paris opera, and whose style, if too gay and florid for a temple dedicated to the classics, is admirably suited to the frivolous atmosphere of Monte Carlo. Outside it is a medley of columns, mosaics, lyres, masks and minarets; inside, of gilding, garlands, friezes and frescoes. Vigorous young women support the domed ceiling, naked youths perch precariously on the cornices; one is confused and intimidated by the riot of colour and decoration. But gradually one gets used to it, and the auditorium itself is admirable—a single floor of comfortable seats stretching below the boxes down to the stage.

There are three large boxes, the central one, with gilded canopy, being reserved for Monaco’s Prince. It was into one of the others that the baron’s party was shown; and the baron, after assisting the countess to a seat, himself sat down and looked out across the audience toward the stage. The prince refused the chair proffered by the attendant, and stood leaning against the side of the box as though poised for flight.

The play had proceeded to the second act, and Scarpia was explaining his evil designs to Tosca, while her lover was being melodiously tortured off-stage. The baron looked only long enough to see that Della Rizza was singing Tosca and Dinh-Gilly Scarpia, and then, having heard them many times, he turned his attention from the stage to the audience.

This audience, with the reputation of being the most blasé in the world, was lolling in its seats, listening perfunctorily to the music, and almost visibly digesting a too-generous dinner. Not until Scarpia had died, with a last convulsion, and Tosca had placed the candles on either side of his head, and the curtain had come down and the lights gone up, did it stir. Then it rose to its feet as by a common impulse and surged forth into the pillared atrium to walk up and down and get a little gentle exercise and look itself over.

But the baron did not rise. Instead he drew his chair further back into the recesses of the box.

“Go, my prince,” he said, “and take a look at the ladies. Only, I pray you, do not enter the rooms. I have an affair of importance to discuss with our dear countess.”

The prince disappeared in an instant and the baron leaned back with a sigh.

“If he were only more serious,” he said; “but he resembles that great-great-uncle for whom he was named—intelligent, generous, but entirely mad when it comes to women and games of chance.”

“His father was also a little like that, was he not?” asked the countess, with a smile.

“Yes—it is true,” and the baron sighed again; “but he was also more earnest, more interested in affairs of state. It was a great blow to the king when he was killed—suddenly—like that—his eldest son. He knew nothing about it until they came bringing the body. Now all his hopes are centred in this boy, who causes us so many anxieties.”

“He is still young,” the countess pointed out; “and he is at least discreet—one hears nothing of his love affairs.”

“Ah, there at least we have been fortunate,” said the baron. “For some years now there has been only one. It has grown more serious than I like, yet it is far better than the ruinous affairs in which he might have been involved. But to the gambling there is no end as long as he can find a sou in his pocket. He has a sort of vertigo when he sees the tables, with the wheels going round and the banknotes falling here and there and the croupiers calling the numbers—a vertigo, that is how he describes it. Fortunately at present he has no money and I know no one of whom he can borrow. His debts, I think, have reached the limit. There is perhaps some comfort in that!” he added grimly.

During this discourse, as before that evening, the countess listened as though waiting for a cue and finding none.

“Why did you send for me?” she asked abruptly.

“Because I have need of you.”

“Of course—but in what way?”

“We are preparing to place the king back on his throne.”

She shrugged sceptically.

“And I take it for granted,” went on the baron, with a sudden unveiling of his eyes, “that you would not be sorry to see Jeneski punished—his work undone, his dream broken.”

Her face was livid as she returned his look.

“Yes,” she said thickly, “I should be glad of that.”

“I thought so,” said the baron, and polished his glass abstractedly.

“But it is impossible.”

“It is not impossible—it is all but arranged. One little impulse more and it is done. You will supply that impulse.”

“I warn you,” said the countess, “that I shall have to know everything before I consent.”

“You shall know everything,” agreed the baron; “and furthermore I can promise you, if we succeed, not only—shall we say satisfaction?—but a material reward—a substantial one.”

“We can speak of that later,” said the countess, “after I have consented. But why do you come to me? What is it I can do?”

“I come to you,” replied the baron, “in the first place because you are a clever woman, and in the second place because you have lived in America for a long time, and I suppose you understand that people. As for me, I confess I never do.”

“You mean the women?”

“But naturally. The men—they are not difficult to understand. Though I sometimes wonder if they can really be as simple as they appear.”

“They are,” said the countess. “Children. Bad ones, sometimes, but still children, good at heart.”

“They seem so to me,” agreed the baron.

“Then it is not this M. Selden?”

“No—though he is important also. Unfortunately at this moment it is the question of a woman—two women—perhaps even three women! It is a difficult matter—very difficult; but there is one thing that simplifies it—one of these women is very ambitious and very ignorant.”

“That goes without saying,” commented the countess, “if she is a rich American. But if you will cease speaking in riddles....”

The baron laughed.

“Here is the history,” he said; “it is a peculiar one, such as could happen nowhere but in America. This woman, when she was quite young, worked as a waitress in a public restaurant at a place in the western part of the United States called Denver. She met there one day a young man who was a miner, married him and went back with him into the mountains to search for gold. That was admirable, was it not? They kept searching for a long time, and they did not find any gold, but at last they found copper—a mountain of it. My informant tells me that this is not an exaggeration—that it was really a mountain, though it is there no longer.

“This young man had no money, and to develop a mine of copper, even when you have it all together in one mountain, takes a great deal. For a long time nobody believed his story about this mountain, but at last he secured enough money from some men in Denver to build a little mill. But it was not profitable, partly because it was far from the market and the railroad would not extend itself for such a small mill, but principally because it was necessary to pay so high wages to the men who worked the mill. It was very hard to get any men at all, and they could charge what they pleased. So the mill had to be closed, and it looked as though the man had failed—that he would have to sell his mountain for a very small sum. The years were passing; neither the man nor the woman were as young as they had been—especially the woman. She had had two children. She was discouraged. She wanted him to sell. But he would not.

“Now regard how strange are the ways of providence. One day a young man came to him and said, ‘I hear you cannot work your mill because labour is so dear.’

“‘That is so,’ said the other.

“‘Then I have a proposal to make. I have some friends in the country from which I come, strong, active young men like myself, who wish to come to America, but who have no money. If you will bring them to America, they will work for you for two years and you will give them but to eat and sleep. After that, we will arrange a fair wage.’

“Eh bien, the man raised money enough to bring to America twenty of these young men, and they went to work for him. They worked well, and soon twenty more were brought over, and then fifty more, and then a hundred more. At the end of five years, a little city had grown up at the foot of that mountain of copper, and the man who had made the proposal to bring over the first ones governed it. And all the men in that city came from my country.”

The baron paused for a moment to enjoy the start of surprise which the countess could not wholly repress.

“So it is that story you are telling me!” she said.

“Shall I go on?”

She nodded and settled a little farther back into the shadow.

“The people were well treated,” continued the baron. “They lived better than they had ever lived; they saved money and sent it home that their families might join them. But beyond everything, they piled up a great, an enormous fortune for the man who had discovered the mountain. And his wife soon forgot that she had at one time worked in a restaurant.”

“Ah, yes,” murmured the countess, with a strange smile; “and her children never knew it!”

“Perhaps so,” agreed the baron, searching her face with his keen eyes. “I do not know. But at last we began to suspect that we had been wrong to permit so many of our young men to go to America to work for this man of copper, though we had been glad enough at the time, since we had no work for them at home. But they were always writing back about America, about how well things were there—about liberty! Some of them came back from time to time and talked too much and too wildly. The climax which we should have foreseen came at last. A bomb was thrown at the king.”

The baron paused as though to contemplate—to say a prayer before—an act so terrible, so sacrilegious.

“Continue, my friend,” encouraged the countess. “I find this history immensely entertaining.”

“No doubt you already know most of it,” suggested the baron.

“Even if I do, it gains new interest from your manner of telling. Please go on.”

“As for the rest, I will be brief. We found that that bomb had been thrown by a man who had come back from America expressly for that purpose. He said so, quite frankly. He told us that another would succeed where he had failed—that our country was to be made a republic like America. We laughed and hanged him—but it gave us to think. So we sent agents to America. They unearthed for us the history which I have just recounted, and they found it was indeed true that over there they were plotting against us. Their leader—the man who ruled them, who organized them, who collected their money, who furnished all the brains—was a radical, an anarchist, who, fifteen years before, had been forced to flee from Goritza for his life.”

“And who is now the president of the new republic,” broke in the countess. “In a word, Jeneski.”

“It is true; the world sometimes seems to me to be upside down,” and the baron rubbed a puzzled hand over his head. “I do not yet know how it happened—but in those last days of the war, when everything was falling to pieces, but when we thought ourselves firmly re-established, he suddenly appeared, won over what was left of the army, and in an hour we were fleeing for the frontier.”

“With the crown jewels and the contents of the treasury,” said the countess.

The baron smiled a deprecatory smile.

“The treasury was all but empty, and as for the jewels, they belonged to the king. Besides, their value has been much exaggerated. Most unfortunately. If they had been worth more, my task would be an easier one.”

The countess smiled. It was impossible to be annoyed with the baron.

“Please finish the story,” she said.

The audience was beginning to filter back into its seats for the last act.

“There is but a word more. As I said just now, I am going to place the king back on his throne.”

“Then the jewels are not all sold?”

“Alas—long since!”

“Well?”

The baron’s eyes were burning as he leaned forward toward her.

“Well—do you know what I propose? The most ironic coup in history! I propose to use for our king the millions heaped up for that king of copper by the very men who are now ruling in our stead. Superb, is it not?”

She was staring at him, striving to understand.

But before she could speak, the lights went out, there came a sharp rap from the conductor, and the orchestra began.