Читать книгу The Kingmakers - Burton Egbert Stevenson - Страница 8

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THIS time it was the baron who attended and the countess who was distraught. The story he had told her had awakened memories and emotions deeper, more violent, than he suspected, and though she managed to keep her face serene, she was on fire within. Whereas the baron, assured that he was making progress, could abandon himself to a new sensation, the pleasure of hearing “E lucevan le stelle” incomparably sung by a voice as smooth, as soft, as iridescent as the satin in old Flemish paintings. For John McCormack was making his début as Mario that evening, and it was not until this moment that he found himself.

And the audience sat spellbound and listened.

There was no resisting the wild applause, which refused to be silenced. Perhaps the singer, after the shortcomings of the earlier acts, welcomed the opportunity to show what he could do. At any rate, he nodded to M. Lauweryns, who was waiting expectantly with raised baton.

“It is not possible for him to sing it again like that!” cried an excited woman’s voice; but he did, perhaps even a shade more perfectly.

“Come, let us go,” said the baron, when it was over. “Let us keep that voice fresh in our ears. It is a pity he is so uncouth,” he added, as he laid the countess’s wrap about her shoulders. “It must annoy him very much. Now let us look for that scapegrace of mine.”

They descended together to the atrium, but the prince was not among the people loitering there. The public gaming rooms beyond were jammed with the usual sordid crowd—shabby old men and women to whom the tables were the breath of life, who spent week after week, month after month, watching the wheel and recording every play, in the hope of discovering a system; cheap adventurers, striving to pick up a few francs; half-starved shop-girls, risking their last little notes with trembling hands; harpies of the underworld, trying to attach themselves to any man who seemed to be winning; all the ugly, tattered, repulsive fringes of society....

“He would not be here,” said the baron, and hastened through the tainted atmosphere to the private rooms beyond.

But neither was the prince there, and after a vain look around, the baron had a word with the chief inspector.

“M. le Prince was here,” said the inspector, “but only for a moment. He met some one he knew—a young man, a newcomer, an American apparently, not yet known to the attendants. They went away together—perhaps to the Sporting Club.”

“Thank you; we shall see,” said the baron.

As he turned away, the countess, who had listened to all this with the utmost indifference, suppressed a slight yawn.

“If you will see me to my hotel,” she suggested.

The baron came back with a start to the obligations of the moment.

“You see how it is!” he protested. “I am no longer myself. These affairs grow too much for me—it is a sign that I am getting old. You will forgive me, will you not?”

“But, yes—run along and search for your prince.”

“Confound the prince,” said the baron. “Let us go to Ciro’s—I am sure you are thirsty. Besides, I have still much to say to you.”

The countess hesitated. It would not do to be too docile to this Lappo—a little discipline might strengthen her position.

“Prove that you forgive me,” he urged.

“Very well,” she agreed. After all, she wanted to hear what he had still to tell her.

“Alors,” he went on, half to himself, as they moved together back through the rooms, “the worst that he can do is to borrow some money from this new friend. One debt more—that is nothing; there are already so many!”

The countess looked at him with a little smile.

“Why do you do it?” she asked.

“Do what?”

“Annoy yourself in this way. If your country chooses to be a republic, why not go and amuse yourself somewhere else? Paris is much livelier than Goritza.”

“It is in my blood,” said the baron, with a shrug of helplessness. “My great-grandfather placed the first Ghita on the throne and established the kingdom; my grandfather enlarged it; my father consolidated it. It was left for me to see it fall to pieces, in company with so many others. I cannot go away and leave it; something inside me, something stronger than myself, compels me to labour, to expend myself, to set it up again. It is a duty I cannot escape.”

“A curse, rather!” corrected the countess.

“Perhaps so. Yes, perhaps it is a curse. Yet I have had my moments,” and he fell silent, smiling at recollection of some of them.

The attendants saluted respectfully as they passed through the doors and down the steps, out into the night. To the right, Ciro’s great electric sign flamed high against the sky, dimming the stars. The countess glanced at it with a shiver of repulsion at thought of the crowded restaurant.

“Let us not go to Ciro’s,” she said, impulsively. “I prefer the terrace.”

“Certainly,” assented the baron. “We shall be taken for lovers. If I were ten years younger....”

“Do not be silly.”

“You will be warm enough?”

“Oh, yes,” she said, and together they turned to the left, around the end of the building, and down the steps to the terrace which overlooks the sea. They found a seat just back of the balustrade, and sat for a moment without speaking, looking out into the night, warm, jewelled, scented like a woman.

To the right glowed the green and red beacons marking the harbour entrance, and above them a string of lights mounted along the road to the summit of the rock where the Prince of Monaco has his palace and his great museum. In front of them stretched the Mediterranean, faintly phosphorescent, breaking into white here and there, and lapping rhythmically against the rocky beach. To the left, another row of lights marked the road along the shore, stretching far out into the water along the western edge of Cap Martin.

The beauty, the silence, the repose, fell like a balm upon the baron’s troubled spirit. He exhaled slowly from his lungs the fetid air of the casino, and took a long breath of the perfumed night. Some of his years fell from him—his memory, at least, turned back to another night, long ago, when he had sat, with the only woman he had ever loved beside him, on the terrace at Montreaux, looking out across Lake Leman. Love and the baron—one could smile, now, to find those words together; but there had been a time....

And perhaps Vera, Countess Rémond, also had her momentary vision; but she was younger and so less sentimental than the baron—she, also, had her pressing problems!—and it was she who broke the spell.

“You were saying you needed my help,” she said. “Is it to bewitch this American copper king into giving you his money? In that case, I warn you that I shall try first to get it for myself!”

The baron, who had come back to the present with a start, looked about him to make sure they could not be overheard; but the terrace was deserted save for a few other couples snuggled together on the benches and a blue-coated gardien pacing solemnly up and down.

“No,” he said; “it is not that at all. This king, like all kings, was mortal. You had not heard?”

“I have heard nothing.”

“He has been dead nearly a year.”

“Ah,” said the countess, understanding suddenly; “it is the widow.”

“Yes—a terrifying woman.”

The countess smiled at his tone.

“Is it she who is ambitious?”

“Immeasurably!”

“So you are going to marry her to the king!”

“No,” said the baron, rubbing his ear thoughtfully. “I had considered that—the lady would not be difficult; but the king rebelled. He pointed out that he had married once for the good of his kingdom, and that once was all that could be demanded of any man. Besides, that would be a little too—a little too—well, not exactly in the best taste. And finally, the Ghitas have a law that never shall the head of the house marry a widow. Of course, in an affair of this importance, these fine-drawn questions of taste might be disregarded, and the king could always abrogate the law. But he is inexorable—not even to regain his throne will he marry a middle-aged American widow.”

“No doubt he fears to appear ridiculous,” suggested the countess.

“Oh, the good Pietro never cared much about appearances,” said the baron. “What he fears is to lose his freedom. I do not blame him,” he added impartially.

“Well, then,” asked the countess, “what is it you propose?”

“There is the prince,” said the baron.

“But surely you do not suppose that he will marry a middle-aged American widow!”

“Oh, no,” said the baron; “he will marry the daughter.”

He was gazing out across the water and so did not see the sudden wave of colour which flooded the woman’s face, and then receded, leaving it deadly white. She sat very still, as though holding herself with iron bands, and turned her head away, and took a slow, deep, tremulous breath. Then she touched her handkerchief to her lips, and when she took it away, there was a tiny stain of blood upon it.

“Will she consent?” she asked in a muffled voice.

“I am not sure,” said the baron; “it is there I am baffled. It is there I count upon you.”

“Yes—go on.”

“Her mother does all she can to persuade her, but unfortunately it seems that in America girls are permitted to choose for themselves.”

“Yes,” said the countess, a little breathlessly; “what does she say?”

“She says very little; she sits and listens, looking very far away. She is an unusual girl; she could be charming if she wished. For some reason, she does not wish. It is strange in one so young. Also she has brains—perhaps her father’s; certainly not her mother’s.”

“The alliance has been proposed to her then?”

“Yes; it is arranged. It waits only upon her consent. And she hesitates. It is very strange. There seem to be two forces at work in her, one urging her on, one holding her back. It is not ambition that urges her on, I am sure of that; and it is not love—the prince leaves her indifferent. But whatever it is, I feel that it will win—unless something happens.”

“What can happen?” asked the countess.

“Ah, madame,” sighed the baron, “it is a situation of infinite delicatesse. The scales are so nicely balanced that a breath will sway them. If I could only comprehend the psychology of the American young woman. Does she know more than she should, or less than she should? What really goes on inside her head? I confess I sometimes grow confused talking to this one! Then there is the prince,” added the baron, sighing again. “He is already married.”

“I have heard so,” nodded the countess.

“Morganatically—which is, of course, no marriage at all, and much better than indiscriminate affairs. It is, as I have explained to the mother, like marrying a man who has been divorced. Americans do not object to that. But what I fear—what must not take place—is a scene, an encounter. That would ruin everything.”

“She is here, then?”

“She is at the Hotel de Paris. She goes by the name of Madame Ghita.”

“The prince sees her?”

“But of course. He has been extraordinarily faithful. That is what I meant when I said that his affair had become too serious. But I can manage that—he will not dare disobey his grandfather.”

“Well,” asked the countess a little impatiently, “what is it you want me to do?”

“Two things,” said the baron. “You will permit me to introduce you to Madame Davis and her daughter. You are the sort of friend they need to instruct them in savoir faire, to make of them, so far as it is possible, women of the world. You will show them the absurdity of the provincial point of view.”

“Yes; and the other?”

“To speak to this woman whom the prince married in Paris; to gain her confidence, if you can; to convince her that her interest lies in keeping quiet—that otherwise the prince will be a pauper unable to give her a son. I will empower you to make her a definite offer—a most generous one.”

“I should think you could do that more effectively yourself,” said the countess.

“I have tried,” said the baron, sadly; “but to me she will not listen. She speaks of such a thing as love.”

“Women do, sometimes!” commented the countess.

“And I am disarmed,” added the baron, “because I admire her; because my heart speaks for her. She is a remarkable woman—much too clever for the prince. But you will see.”

“You have said no word of M. Selden,” the countess pointed out. “Why did you send me such elaborate instructions with regard to him—even some of his articles to read?”

The baron laughed softly.

“If I may say so,” he answered, “I am something of an artist. I like my pictures to be complete and harmonious. We must consider how the world, and especially England, will receive the announcement of this marriage, for its object will be at once plain to every one. Selden is a man of great influence; his articles are read everywhere. I have sometimes even fancied that he is responsible for the reluctance which Mlle. Davis shows.”

“In what way?”

“It seems that she has read his glowing account of our new republic. We have discussed it together, and I have pointed out his errors; but she is not convinced. If he could be brought to our point of view, and would tell her so, I am certain the affair would be settled. Moreover, an article or two in the proper vein would do much to influence public opinion.”

“He does not seem easily impressed,” said the countess, reflectively.

“I do not expect you to impress him,” explained the baron hastily. “It would be folly to think of approaching him in that way. But I hope to prove to him that the king, with millions in his hands, can do much more for our country than Jeneski. And it is true—what we propose is for the country’s good. I am certain I can make him see it.”

“But my part?”

“Will be to keep him amused. Impress him, if you can—but be very careful. Above all, talk to him and find out what he is thinking.”

The countess gazed unseeingly out across the water; at last the baron’s intentions lay clear before her.

“Well?” he asked.

“My dear baron,” said the countess, “I have not forgotten all I owe to you....”

“Ah, when one begins in that tone!” interjected the baron, with a gesture of disappointment.

“But wait. I am not refusing. I am only asking myself whether I can really be of service. If I can, you may rely upon me. As you know, I have my own reasons.”

A little convulsion ran across her face. The baron was looking at her keenly.

“Yes?”

“First I must meet these Americans and this Madame Ghita. After that we shall see!”

The baron took her hand and raised it to his lips.

“You have given me an enchanted hour, my dear,” he said, “but....”

“I understand,” she laughed. “One hour is all you can allow yourself!”

“It is true,” he assented dismally.

The countess rose.

“Take me to my hotel,” she said; “then you can go search for your scapegrace!”