Читать книгу Jeremiah and the Princess - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 4

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By chance Jere witnessed the greeting between the Princess and the man whose arrival seemed to have so greatly upset her. He was a few minutes late in descending, and most of the guests had already assembled in the lounge when he made his appearance. Joe Dimsdale, whose father was a director of the Strole Bank, called to him.

“Hello, Jere. Come and join us,” he invited. “You’re staying in the house, of course, so you don’t have to go rushing after Alice. You remember Colonel Grogner?”

“Sure,” Jere answered. “Met him with you at the Racquets Club the other day, didn’t I? A very nice game you played too, Colonel.”

“Very good of you to say so,” was the pleasantly spoken reply. “In games, however, as I have found to my cost, we foreigners are usually at a disadvantage with you.”

A footman handed them cocktails and there was a moment’s pause. Jere took advantage of the opportunity to study his new acquaintance carefully. Grogner was a man of slightly over medium height, with a good figure and excellent, if somewhat stiff, carriage. He was older than he had seemed in the distance. His face was oval in shape, and the fixed monocle served at any rate as a disguise for his natural expression. His brown hair, sprinkled with grey and brushed straight back from his forehead, was skimpy in places, but it remained the only positive indication of his age. The lines at the corners of his lips took the upward turn of cruelty, otherwise, Jere decided, his appearance was harmless enough. He spoke English perfectly and with only the slightest accent.

“How do you mean, at a disadvantage?” Jere asked.

“Well, for one thing, I do not think that we possess your aptitude for games,” Grogner explained. “And for another, our military service interferes a good deal with our pursuit of them. All the spare time of our young men for two or three years goes to their training.”

“A rotten waste of time,” Joe Dimsdale observed.

“If you had frontiers to defend you might not think so,” Grogner reminded him. “I believe that during a certain period of the war our townsmen of Pletz slept in greater security when they remembered the training of the lads who were up in the mountains to defend them.”

There was a certain amount of commotion at the further end of the room. The Baroness had made her appearance with Marya, and Alice Hansard, who had been awaiting her, hurried forward with Count de Brett by her side. Joe Dimsdale and Colonel Grogner, the only other guests from outside who were dining, followed in their train. De Brett was greeted as an old friend, Dimsdale as a neighbour and intimate of their hostess. Alice turned to Grogner.

“You probably know Colonel Grogner,” she said, “as he comes from your part of the world, Marya.”

Grogner clicked his heels and bowed from a few feet away. The Princess watched him with unchanging expression. When he approached she held her hand so high that he had scarcely to bend his head to touch it with his lips.

“We are a long way from home, Princess,” he said. “Nevertheless it is a great pleasure to greet you here.”

“I see you in Pletz so seldom,” Marya replied coldly, “that I was not sure whether you still considered it your home.”

“Surely, Princess! I was born there and I have fought with the Jakovian army. I only retired at the King’s urgent request to take up the post of Chief of the Police.”

“One forgets,” the Princess murmured without change of countenance.

Grogner turned to the Baroness, whose reception was somewhat more gracious, and Marya at once moved on. For a single moment Jere believed that she was coming to him. Words of greeting were already upon his lips, but without even a smile or a glance she passed on and joined a little group in the background. Joe Dimsdale strolled up to Jere.

“Say, they must live in a funny way over in those Eastern European countries,” he observed. “I thought two people coming from a one-horse State like Jakovia would have fallen upon one another’s necks, meeting right away out here. Seemed more like a question of daggers with the little Princess.”

“Princesses have their fancies, I suppose,” Jere remarked.

“Grogner evidently isn’t one of them! I’ll hand it to him, though, he went through it without flinching. I expect his father doesn’t quite come up to the social standard of court circles.”

Alice Hansard, a flush of annoyance upon her face, came hurrying up and drew Jere on one side.

“Such a nuisance, my dear Jere,” she exclaimed. “You didn’t have any trouble with Marya, did you?”

“Not that I know of,” he replied, with a sinking heart.

“Well, it isn’t like her to upset things at the last moment. This is only a house-party, you know, and absolutely informal, so I put you next her.”

“And she objects?” Jere asked quickly.

Alice hesitated.

“Something like it,” she admitted. “Anyway, you’ll have to have the Van Heydens—you’re fond of them I know. Sorry. It’s upset my whole table and I must go and warn some of the others.”

Jere lit a cigarette and strolled out on to the terrace. He had a sick longing to hurry over to the garage, take out his Packard and drive off to a little bachelor fishing place he possessed sixty miles away. The thought of the noisy Van Heyden girls, whom he had always previously found amusing enough, was suddenly repugnant. His eyes dwelt longingly upon the long, low front of the garage. Suddenly he realised the impossibility of it. In the background he heard the butler announcing dinner.

The meal, served on the southernmost of the wide sweeping terraces, was certainly a gay and festive one. The table itself was a dream of flowers and hidden lights, and fairy lanterns were hanging all around in the pillared spaces. A small orchestra, the most popular in New York at the moment, was playing behind a screen of flowering shrubs, and dancing between the courses began almost as soon as the cold lobster soup was served. Everybody was gay, and Jere, after an abstracted few moments, set his teeth and developed the party-spirit to his hostess’ complete satisfaction. He danced with nearly every one at the table, but towards Marya, who danced only once with her host, he scarcely glanced at all. In the middle of a tango he asked a question of Alice Hansard.

“Tell me,” he begged, “why do you suppose the Princess asked you who was the richest young man here?”

“I should imagine from the idlest curiosity,” she replied. “I don’t see what else it could have been. If it had been any other girl, of course, one might have had a guess, but Marya is terribly proud and, for what it is worth, she would succeed King Phillip if he died without any children. A wretched life, I should think, but there you are.”

Jere gritted his teeth and went for it. Alice, after all, was an old pal and one of the best.

“You don’t suppose then that she’d marry a commoner?”

Alice shook her head firmly.

“Cut it out, my dear Jere,” she advised. “I know Marya and I know how sweet she is, but she’s perfectly icy about some things. Did you see the way she received Grogner?”

“I’ll say I did,” Jere agreed. “So did everyone else. What’s wrong with him, I wonder?”

“How can one guess? His father is Prime Minister of Jakovia, her own country, and they tell me that this young man was a very distinguished soldier, and could have been Commander-in-Chief if he had chosen. Not that the Jakovian army amounts to anything, I suppose, but still—there you are. Jakovia is Marya’s pet hobby.”

They paused for a moment as the music died away. Mrs. Hansard cast a hostess’ glance towards the table, and finding that everything was well, led Jere to the end of the terrace.

“You’re such a man of the world, Jere, with your life at Washington and your little spurt into diplomacy and all that—you can’t think of anything you could have said to upset Marya, can you?”

“Not a thing,” he declared gloomily. “She didn’t seem to be particularly what one might call sympathetic—not compared with our kids at any rate—but we got on fairly well until she saw that fellow Grogner arrive. After that she seemed to pass away from me into another world.”

“And you’ve really fallen for her?”

“Sure,” he confessed. “All the same, what’s the use of it? When a girl takes the trouble to get her place at dinner changed rather than sit next you, it doesn’t seem very encouraging, does it?”

Alice shook her pretty head. She was a very sympathetic person.

“I should cut it out, Jere,” she advised him. “There’s obviously something wrong between you, and in any case what would be the good of it unless you’re just out for a few days’ flirtation?”

“People of royal birth have married commoners,” he ventured.

“Not quite commoners, my dear. And in any case Marya isn’t one of that sort. She’s as beautiful as a picture, and she has temperament and all that kind of thing—there’s gipsy blood in the royal family of Jakovia, you know—but she’s as proud as Lucifer himself.”

“It’s the wrong sort of pride,” Jere said sternly.

Alice patted his hand.

“Try and persuade her so, then,” she suggested, leading him back to the table. “I warn you, though, you’ll only be asking for trouble.”

The festivities continued until a late hour. There was dancing on the terrace, billiards indoors, flirting in the gardens, and cool drinks in abundance everywhere. But no Marya. Jere, in despair, sought out his hostess.

“I’m not getting a chance,” he complained. “What have you done with the Princess?”

Alice shook her head at him helplessly.

“Why can’t you flirt with me or one of those nice Van Heyden twins, you silly boy?” she demanded. “I wish I hadn’t asked Marya here at all. I don’t think I should have thought of it, only I heard that she was coming to stay with her aunt, and the Baroness—although she is a royalist all right—is no extremist. She never gives any trouble.”

“But where is the Princess?” Jere persisted.

“My dear,” his hostess told him, “she went to her room two hours ago. She was most punctilious. She had that one dance with Tom and after dinner one with Count de Brett. Directly afterwards she went to her room, and if you ask me why, I believe it was to avoid dancing with any of the others.”

“She’ll dance with me before I go,” Jere said grimly.

“Well, I wish you luck,” Alice declared. “In the meantime, as Marya is probably by this time asleep, hadn’t you better cut in on Stella and Tom? Stella hates dancing with a married man—wearing out shoe leather for nothing, as she told Tom before they started.”

Jere accepted the hint and did his duty. The arrival of a carloadful of young men, however, week-ending at a neighbouring Country Club, soon set him free again. He pulled a basket chair up to the edge of the balcony looking down upon the sea. Here, in the midst of all the gaiety, he seemed to have found complete seclusion. He was round the corner from the bar and just outside the compass of the dance music, and the young people who were in a more flirtatious mood seemed to have sought the greater privacy of the grounds. There were two even, as he saw, leaning back in his chair, climbing the grassy slope to the thatched summer-house overlooking the Sound. The man paused for a moment—it might have been to light a cigarette—the two fell out of line. Jere felt his heart give a sudden jump. He leaned forward, his hands gripping the edge of the stone balcony. The girl was standing almost in the path of the moonlight. Surely there wasn’t anyone else so slim, so youthful, amongst the guests! He recognised the man—a cousin of Tom Hansard’s—and his forehead suddenly went damp. They were going into the summer-house—Sidney Hansard, whom even his sister-in-law called a roué, and——

He heard the sound of light footsteps behind, but he was too absorbed to notice them. He was conscious of the perfume of lilies, but even that was powerless to disturb his moment of agony. Then he heard a voice and he turned slowly round. Marya was standing by his side.

“I came to see whether you would care to dance with me,” she asked him.

For a moment his poise had gone. He stared at her blankly. Then he remembered that other carload of young people—a girl, not yet even a debutante, about whom everyone was talking—and once more the blood went singing through his veins. Those few seconds had taught him something, however. It was no longer possible to deceive himself. Something in life was fixed. It was the impossible for him or nothing.

“I should like to dance with you better than anything in the world,” he assured her.

It was half an hour before they returned to the same place, Jere bringing an extra chair and two long tumblers in which the ice tinkled as he walked. He arranged the latter on the edge of the balcony and drew the chairs into the shadow.

“You are the best dancer I have ever known,” she told him graciously.

“And I have realised the greatest pleasure in dancing I have ever felt.”

She listened to the distant music, to the chirping of the insects in the gardens beneath, she looked at the red tips of the cigarettes dotted like stationary fireflies at every corner, and she sighed.

“Life out here seems very gay and easy,” she reflected.

“Then why won’t you try it?” he asked.

She looked at him questioningly. Jere kept his head.

“I mean,” he explained, “if your aunt decides not to go to Europe, why don’t you stay here for a few months?”

She shook her head.

“Whatever happens, I must return to Europe myself,” she said. “I have important affairs to look after.”

“You are very young,” he ventured, “to take your responsibilities so seriously.”

“The sense of responsibility,” she confided, “has been with nearly every member of my family for many generations. It is in our hearts and our blood. We cannot escape from it if we would. We have to follow where it leads. I can understand,” she went on, “out here, where life is entirely different, it must be hard to appreciate this business of hereditary succession. You must find it hard to understand the influence of an ancestry of a thousand years. Nevertheless, you are all so cultivated and appreciative that I think you can almost visualise it for others.”

“I don’t want to appreciate it and I don’t want to visualise it,” Jere declared stubbornly. “If I were a prince I would be quite reconciled to your being a princess. As I am only an ordinary person—well, I wish that you were only an ordinary person, too.”

“But you are not an ordinary person,” she objected. “You have great wealth and that means that you have great power. You have also culture and understanding. You could do great things if you had the necessary ambition.”

“Could I become a prince?”

“Am I a fairy?” she smiled.

“I think that you must be,” he told her. “You seem to have changed everything in my life so easily and yet so irretrievably.”

He turned to look at her, leaning back in her chair, only half to be seen in the partially obscured moonlight, so perfect in her posture, so slim and elegant in her outline, so like an opening flower in the freshness and sweetness of her. Her fingers were resting upon the arm of the chair. He conquered the temptation to hold them, however tenderly, with a prodigious effort.

“Is it my fancy,” she asked, breaking that—to him—dangerous pause, “or are we inclined to talk foolishly?”

He struggled against the swimming of his senses. There would be other nights, he told himself. Everything, he knew, was to be lost by a single false gesture.

“Let us come down to earth then, if you insist,” he proposed. “Tell me why you changed your place at table.”

“It pleased me to do it,” she answered somewhat coldly.

“But why didn’t you wish to sit next me?” he persisted.

It seemed to him that she receded even further away.

“If you wish to continue on terms of friendship with me,” she said, “you must not ask so many questions. I am not accustomed to them. I do what I think well and what pleases me.”

He remained silent. He was in reality a very spoilt young man himself and he was undergoing an entirely new experience. She looked at his face and laughed softly.

“You are in a bad temper,” she declared. “You had better go away and find one of those other young ladies who are tired of dancing and who would like to wander in the garden.”

“I don’t want to do anything of the sort,” he replied. “You must admit, though,” he went on, “that you are rather a hard hitter. Let me down gently, please.”

“Very well,” she agreed. “I will spoil you for once. I will answer your question. I did not wish that Colonel Grogner, who had already seen us together on the way up from the summer-house, should imagine that we were on particularly friendly terms. To have had you seated next me would have been unusual and might have indicated something of the sort.”

“And what business is it of Colonel Grogner’s?” Jere demanded.

“You have had all the explanation you are going to have,” she told him. “In two minutes I am going inside. How long are you staying?”

“As long as you are.”

She accepted the reply literally.

“I shall stay for three days. After that my aunt and I are going back for a time to Washington. In the autumn I am hoping that she will come with me to Europe. If I like you as much on the last evening of my visit, and if you humour what I daresay you consider in your own mind to be only my prejudices, I will take you a little way into my confidence on a certain matter.”

“Must you wait until the end of the visit?” he sighed.

She rose to her feet with scarcely a visible effort and gave him her upraised hand.

“It will be best so, I think,” she said. “There is one other thing I must say to you—if between now and then you see anything of Colonel Grogner or receive any messages from him, I beg that you will let me know at once.”

“He is going back to New York to-morrow morning,” Jere confided.

“So he announced,” she replied. “There is nothing, however, to prevent him changing his mind.”