The Dark Star

CHAPTER XXIX

EN FAMILLE

The Princess Mistchenka came leisurely and gracefully downstairs a little before eight that evening, much pleased with her hair, complexion, and gown.

She found Neeland alone in the music-room, standing in the attitude of the conventional Englishman with his back to the fireless grate and his hands clasped loosely behind him, waiting to be led out and fed.

The direct glance of undisguised admiration with which he greeted the Princess Naïa confirmed the impression she herself had received from her mirror, and brought an additional dash of colour into her delicate brunette face.

“Is there any doubt that you are quite the prettiest objet d’art in Paris?” he enquired anxiously, taking her hand; and her dark eyes were very friendly as he saluted her finger-tips with the reverent and slightly exaggerated appreciation of a connoisseur in sculpture.

“You hopeless Irishman,” she laughed. “It’s fortunate for women that you’re never serious, even with yourself.”

“Princess Naïa,” he remonstrated, “can nothing short of kissing you convince you of my sincerity and–”

“Impudence?” she interrupted smilingly. “Oh, yes, I’m convinced, James, that, lacking other material, you’d make love to a hitching post.”

His hurt expression and protesting gesture appealed to the universe against misinterpretation, but the Princess Mistchenka laughed again unfeelingly, and seated herself at the piano.

“Some day,” she said, striking a lively chord or two, “I hope you’ll catch it, young man. You’re altogether too free and easy with your feminine friends… What do you think of Rue Carew?”

“An astounding and enchanting transformation. I haven’t yet recovered my breath.”

“When you do, you’ll talk nonsense to the child, I suppose.”

“Princess! Have I ever–”

“You talk little else, dear friend, when God sends a pretty fool to listen!” She looked up at him from the keyboard over which her hands were nervously wandering. “I ought to know,” she said; “I also have listened.” She laughed carelessly, but her glance lingered for an instant on his face, and her mirth did not sound quite spontaneous to either of them.

Two years ago there had been an April evening after the opera, when, in taking leave of her in her little salon, her hand had perhaps retained his a fraction of a second longer than she quite intended; and he had, inadvertently, kissed her.

He had thought of it as a charming and agreeable incident; what the Princess Naïa Mistchenka thought of it she never volunteered. But she so managed that he never again was presented with a similar opportunity.

Perhaps they both were thinking of this rather ancient episode now, for his face was touched with a mischievously reminiscent smile, and she had lowered her head a trifle over the keyboard where her slim, ivory-tinted hands still idly searched after elusive harmonies in the subdued light of the single lamp.

“There’s a man dining with us,” she remarked, “who has the same irresponsible and casual views on life and manners which you entertain. No doubt you’ll get along very well together.”

“Who is he?”

“A Captain Sengoun, one of our attachés. It’s likely you’ll find a congenial soul in this same Cossack whom we all call Alak.” She added maliciously: “His only logic is the impulse of the moment, and he is known as Prince Erlik among his familiars. Erlik was the Devil, you know–”

He was announced at that moment, and came marching in – a dark, handsome, wiry young man with winning black eyes and a little black moustache just shadowing his short upper lip – and a head shaped to contain the devil himself – the most reckless looking head, Neeland thought, that he ever had beheld in all his life.

But the young fellow’s frank smile was utterly irresistible, and his straight manner of facing one, and of looking directly into the eyes of the person he addressed in his almost too perfect English, won any listener immediately.

He bowed formally over Princess Naïa’s hand, turned squarely on Neeland when he was named to the American, and exchanged a firm clasp with him. Then, to the Princess:

“I am late? No? Fancy, Princess – that great booby, Izzet Bey, must stop me at the club, and I exceedingly pressed to dress and entirely out of humour with all Turks. ‘Eh bien, mon vieux!’ said he in his mincing manner of a nervous pelican, ‘they’re warming up the Balkan boilers with Austrian pine. But I hear they’re full of snow.’ And I said to him: ‘Snow boils very nicely if the fire is sufficiently persistent!’ And I think Izzet Bey will find it so!” – with a quick laugh of explanation to Neeland: “He meant Russian snow, you see; and that boils beautifully if they keep on stoking the boiler with Austrian fuel.”

The Princess shrugged:

“What schoolboy repartée! Why did you answer him at all, Alak?”

“Well,” explained the attaché, “as I was due here at eight I hadn’t time to take him by the nose, had I?”

Rue Carew entered and went to the Princess to make amends:

“I’m so sorry to be late!” – turned to smile at Neeland, then offered her hand to the Russian. “How do you do, Prince Erlik?” she said with the careless and gay cordiality of old acquaintance. “I heard you say something about Colonel Izzet Bey’s nose as I came in.”

Captain Sengoun bowed over her slender white hand:

“The Mohammedan nose of Izzet Bey is an admirable bit of Oriental architecture, Miss Carew. Why should it surprise you to hear me extol its bizarre beauty?”

“Anyway,” said the girl, “I’m contented that you left devilry for revelry.” And, Marotte announcing dinner, she took the arm of Captain Sengoun as the Princess took Neeland’s.

Like all Russians and some Cossacks, Prince Alak ate and drank as though it were the most delightful experience in life; and he did it with a whole-souled heartiness and satisfaction that was flattering to any hostess and almost fascinating to anybody observing him.

His teeth were even and very white; his appetite splendid: when he did his goblet the honour of noticing it at all, it was to drain it; when he resumed knife and fork he used them as gaily, as gracefully, and as thoroughly as he used his sabre on various occasions.

He had taken an instant liking to Neeland, who seemed entirely inclined to return it; and he talked a great deal to the American but with a nice division of attention for the two ladies on either side.

“You know, Alak,” said the Princess, “you need not torture yourself by trying to converse with discretion; because Mr. Neeland knows about many matters which concern us all.”

“Ah! That is delightful! And indeed I was already quite assured of Mr. Neeland’s intelligent sympathy in the present state of European affairs.”

“He’s done a little more than express sympathy,” remarked the Princess; and she gave a humorous outline of Neeland’s part in the affair of the olive-wood box.

“Fancy!” exclaimed Captain Sengoun. “That impudent canaille! Yes; I heard at the Embassy what happened to that accursed box this morning. Of course it is a misfortune, but as for me, personally, I don’t care–”

“It doesn’t happen to concern you personally, Prince Erlik,” said Princess Naïa dryly.

“No,” he admitted, unabashed by the snub, “it does not touch me. Cavalry cannot operate on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Therefore, God be thanked, I shall be elsewhere when the snow boils.”

Rue tuned to Neeland:

“His one idea of diplomacy and war is a thousand Kuban Cossacks at full speed.”

“And that is an excellent idea, is it not, Kazatchka?” he said, smiling impudently at the Princess, who only laughed at the familiarity.

“I hope,” added Captain Sengoun, “that I may live to gallop through a few miles of diplomacy at full speed before they consign me to the Opolchina.” Turning to Neeland, “The reserve – the old man’s home, you know. God forbid!” And he drained his goblet and looked defiantly at Rue Carew.

“A Cossack is a Cossack,” said the Princess, “be he Terek or Kuban, Don or Astrachan, and they all know as much about diplomacy as Prince Erlik – or Izzet Bey’s nose… James, you are unusually silent, dear friend. Are you regretting those papers?”

“It’s a pity,” he said. But he had not been thinking of the lost papers; Rue Carew’s beauty preoccupied him. The girl was in black, which made her skin dazzling, and reddened the chestnut colour of her hair.

Her superb young figure revealed an unsuspected loveliness where the snowy symmetry of neck and shoulders and arms was delicately accented by the filmy black of her gown.

He had never seen such a beautiful girl; she seemed more wonderful, more strange, more aloof than ever. And this was what preoccupied and entirely engaged his mind, and troubled it, so that his smile had a tendency to become indefinite and his conversation mechanical at times.

Captain Sengoun drained one more of numerous goblets; gazed sentimentally at the Princess, then with equal sentiment at Rue Carew.

“As for me,” he said, with a carelessly happy gesture toward the infinite, “plans are plans, and if they’re stolen, tant pis! But there are always Tartars in Tartary and Turks in Turkey. And, while there are, there’s hope for a poor devil of a Cossack who wants to say a prayer in St. Sophia before he’s gathered to his ancestors.”

“Have any measures been taken at your Embassy to trace the plans?” asked Neeland of the Princess.

“Of course,” she said simply.

“Plans,” remarked Sengoun, “are not worth the tcherkeske of an honest Caucasian! A Khirgize pony knows more than any diplomat; and my magaika is better than both!”

“All the same,” said Rue Carew, “with those stolen plans in your Embassy, Prince Erlik, you might even gallop a sotnia of your Cossacks to the top of Achi-Baba.”

“By heaven! I’d like to try!” he exclaimed, his black eyes ablaze.

“There are dongas,” observed the Princess dryly.

“I know it. There are dongas every twenty yards; and Turkish gorse that would stop a charging bull! My answer is, mount! trot! gallop! and hurrah for Achi-Baba!”

“Very picturesque, Alak. But wouldn’t it be nicer to be able to come back again and tell us all about it?”

“As for that,” he said with his full-throated, engaging laugh, “no need to worry, Princess, for the newspapers would tell the story. What is this Gallipoli country, anyway, that makes our Chancellery wag its respected head and frown and whisper in corners and take little notes on its newly laundered cuffs?

“I know the European and Asiatic shores with their forts – Kilid Bahr, Chimilik, Kum Kale, Dardanos. I know what those Germans have been about with their barbed wire and mobile mortar batteries. What do we want of their plans, then–”

“Nothing, Prince Erlik!” said Rue, laughing. “It suffices that you be appointed adviser in general to his majesty the Czar.”

Sengoun laughed with all his might.

“And an excellent thing that would be, Miss Carew. What we need in Russia,” he added with a bow to the Princess, “are, first of all, more Kazatchkee, then myself to execute any commands with which my incomparable Princess might deign to honour me.”

“Then I command you to go and smoke cigarettes in the music-room and play some of your Cossack songs on the piano for Mr. Neeland until Miss Carew and I rejoin you,” said the Princess, rising.

At the door there was a moment of ceremony; then Sengoun, passing his arm through Neeland’s with boyish confidence that his quickly given friendship was welcome, sauntered off to the music-room where presently he was playing the piano and singing some of the entrancing songs of his own people in a voice that, cultivated, might have made a fortune for him:

Still echoing the wild air, and playing with both hands in spite of the lighted cigarette between his fingers, he glanced over his shoulder at Neeland:

“A very old, old song,” he explained, “made in the days of the great invasion when all the world was fighting anybody who would fight back. I made it into English. It’s quite nice, I think.”

His naïve pleasure in his own translation amused Neeland immensely, and he said that he considered it a fine piece of verse.

“Yes,” said Sengoun, “but you ought to hear a love song I made out of odd fragments I picked up here and there. I call it ‘Samarcand’; or rather ‘Samarcand Mahfouzeh,’ which means, ‘Samarcand the Well Guarded’:

Sengoun, still playing, flung over his shoulder:

“A Tartar song from the Turcoman. I borrowed it and put new clothes on it. Nice, isn’t it?”

“Enchanting!” replied Neeland, laughing in spite of himself.

Rue Carew, with her snowy shoulders and red-gold hair, came drifting in, consigning them to their seats with a gesture, and giving them to understand that she had come to hear the singing.

So Sengoun continued his sketchy, haphazard recital, waving his cigarette now and then for emphasis, and conversing frequently over his shoulder while Rue Carew leaned on the piano and gravely watched his nimble fingers alternately punish and caress the keyboard.

After a little while the Princess Mistchenka came in saying that she had letters to write. They conversed, however, for nearly an hour before she rose, and Captain Sengoun gracefully accepted his congé.

“I’ll walk with you, if you like,” suggested Neeland.

“With pleasure, my dear fellow! The night is beautiful, and I am just beginning to wake up.”

“Ask Marotte to give you a key, then,” suggested the Princess, going. At the foot of the stairs, however, she paused to exchange a few words with Captain Sengoun in a low voice; and Neeland, returning with his latchkey, went over to where Rue stood by the lamplit table absently looking over an evening paper.

As he came up beside her, the girl lifted her beautiful, golden-grey eyes.

“Are you going out?”

“Yes, I thought I’d walk a bit with Captain Sengoun.”

“It’s rather a long distance to the Russian Embassy. Besides–” She hesitated, and he waited. She glanced absently over the paper for a moment, then, not raising her eyes: “I’m – I – the theft of that box today – perhaps my nerves have suffered a little – but do you think it quite prudent for you to go out alone at night?”

“Why, I am going out with Captain Sengoun!” he said, surprised at her troubled face.

“But you will have to return alone.”

He laughed, but they both had flushed a little.

Had it been any other woman in the world, he had not hesitated gaily to challenge the shy and charming solicitude expressed in his behalf – make of it his capital, his argument to force that pretty duel to which one day, all youth is destined.

He found himself now without a word to say, nor daring to entertain any assumption concerning the words she had uttered.

Dumb, awkward, afraid, he became conscious that something in this young girl had silenced within him any inclination to gay effrontery, any talent for casual gallantry. Her lifted eyes, with their clear, half shy regard, had killed all fluency of tongue in him – slain utterly that light good-humour with which he had encountered women heretofore.

He said:

“I hadn’t thought myself in any danger whatever. Is there any reason for me to expect further trouble?”

Rue raised her troubled eyes:

“Has it occurred to you that they might think you capable of redrawing parts of the stolen plans from memory?”

“It had never occurred to me,” he admitted, surprised. “But I believe I could remember a little about one or two of the more general maps.”

“The Princess means to ask you, tomorrow, to draw for her what you can remember. And that made me think about you now – whether the others might not suspect you capable of remembering enough to do them harm… And so – do you think it prudent to go out tonight?”

“Yes,” he replied, quite sincerely, “it is all right. You see I know Paris very well.”

She did not look convinced, but Sengoun came up and she bade them both good night and went away with the Princess Mistchenka.

As, arm in arm, the two young men sauntered around the corner of the rue Soleil d’Or, two men who had been sitting on a marble bench beside the sun-dial fountain rose and strolled after them.

CHAPTER XXX

JARDIN RUSSE

At midnight the two young men had not yet parted. For, as Sengoun explained, the hour for parting was already past, and it was too late to consider it now. And Neeland thought so, too, what with the laughter and the music, and the soft night breezes to counsel folly, and the city’s haunting brilliancy stretching away in bewitching perspectives still unexplored.

From every fairy lamp the lustrous capital signalled to youth her invitation, her challenge, and her menace. Like some jewelled sorceress – some dreaming Circe by the river bank, pondering new spells – so Paris lay in all her mystery and beauty under the July stars.

Sengoun, his arm through Neeland’s, had become affectionately confidential. He explained that he really was a nocturnal creature; that now he had completely waked up; that his habits were due to a passion for astronomy, and that the stars he had discovered at odd hours of the early morning were more amazing than any celestial bodies ever before identified.

But Neeland, whose head and heart were already occupied, declined to study any constellations; and they drifted through the bluish lustre of white arc-lights and the clustered yellow glare of incandescent lamps toward a splash of iridescent glory among the chestnut trees, where music sounded and tables stood amid flowers and grass and little slender fountains which balanced silver globes upon their jets.

The waiters were in Russian peasant dress; the orchestra was Russian gipsy; the bill of fare was Russian; and there was only champagne to be had.

Balalaika orchestra and spectators were singing some evidently familiar song – one of those rushing, clattering, clashing choruses of the Steppes; and Sengoun sang too, with all his might, when he and Neeland were seated, which was thirsty work.

Two fascinating Russian gipsy girls were dancing – slim, tawny, supple creatures in their scarlet and their jingling bangles. After a deafening storm of applause, their flashing smiles swept the audience, and, linking arms, they sauntered off between the tables under the trees.

“I wish to dance,” remarked Sengoun. “My legs will kick over something if I don’t.”

They were playing an American dance – a sort of skating step; people rose; couple after couple took the floor; and Sengoun looked around for a partner. He discovered no eligible partner likely to favour him without a quarrel with her escort; and he was debating with Neeland whether a row would be worth while, when the gipsy girls sauntered by.

“Oh,” he said gaily, “a pretty Tzigane can save my life if she will!”

And the girls laughed and Sengoun led one of them out at a reckless pace.

The other smiled and looked at Neeland, and, seating herself, leaned on the table watching the whirl on the floor.

“Don’t you dance?” she asked, with a sidelong glance out of her splendid black eyes.

“Yes; but I’m likely to do most of my dancing on your pretty feet.”

“Merci! In that case I prefer a cigarette.”

She selected one from his case, lighted it, folded her arms on the table, and continued to gaze at the dancers.

“I’m tired tonight,” she remarked.

“You dance beautifully.”

“Thank you.”

Sengoun, flushed and satisfied, came back with his gipsy partner when the music ceased.

“Now I hope we may have some more singing!” he exclaimed, as they seated themselves and a waiter filled their great, bubble-shaped glasses.

And he did sing at the top of his delightful voice when the balalaikas swept out into a ringing and familiar song, and the two gipsy girls sang, too – laughed and sang, holding the frosty goblets high in the sparkling light.

It was evident to Neeland that the song was a favourite one with Russians. Sengoun was quite overcome; they all touched goblets.

“Brava, my little Tziganes!” he said with happy emotion. “My little compatriots! My little tawny panthers of the Caucasus! What do you call yourselves in this bandbox of a country where two steps backward take you across any frontier?”

His dancing partner laughed till her sequins jingled from throat to ankle:

“They call us Fifi and Nini,” she replied. “Ask yourself why!”