“I think he is quite right to take every precaution,” she declared.
“Good tennis?” he asked.
“No one was playing well,” she replied. “The Princess insisted that she was too excited about to-night.”
“It is very kind of everyone to be so interested in my party,” he said earnestly. “I shall never forget how charming everyone has been down here. The way I was rushed away from Beaulieu, too. It was marvellous! Tell me why you are looking so serious, Miss Haskell?”
“Well, just at that moment,” she confided, “I was thinking how well you spoke English.”
“All my family are born linguists,” he told her. “We seem to have all the minor accomplishments and yet we cannot keep out of mischief.”
“Have you any idea what is going to happen to you to-morrow?”
“Not the slightest. Has Domiloff made up his mind to throw me to the lions?”
“That is rather his idea,” she replied, “only the lions in your case will be the tourist steamer that’s lying off the harbour.”
Rudolph shuddered.
“I would rather stay here. It is something to say, for I am inclined towards cowardice, you know, yet I would rather face a certain amount of danger and remain here.”
“I don’t think that the Baron wants you to remain here,” she told him.
“You seem to want me to go,” he complained gloomily.
“I do not,” she assured him. “I like talking to you. I should miss you very much.”
He smiled across at her from his place, a queer smile, for at that moment it seemed to make his pale, drawn features almost like the features of a sick man.
“Then come with me,” he invited. “You said you came here wanting a holiday. I will give you one. We need not take any notice of the people on the boat. I will show you Athens as it ought to be shown. I have friends there and I know that we should be perfectly safe—”
“My dear man,” she interrupted, “how do you suppose I could get ready to go round the world as companion to a strange man with less than twelve hours’ notice? We American girls may be adventurous, Mr. Sagastrada, but we don’t do that sort of thing!”
“Why not?”
She shrugged her shoulders. He persisted.
“Why not? What is there against it?”
“It might bore me. I don’t care about personally conducted cruises.”
“I will save you from that,” he promised. “I will be your guide.”
“I wonder where you would lead me.”
He rose suddenly to his feet. The light had flamed into his soft dark eyes.
“This room is insufferably hot,” he declared. “Forgive me.”
He threw open the French windows. His outstretched hand invited her to his side. Below was the Casino blazing with lights. The stars were pale in a filmy sky, but the moon, a deep orange red, was every moment becoming more evident. The mantle of hills seemed like a vast velvety blanket through which little pinholes of lights were beginning to show themselves.
“Someone painted this,” he muttered. “Every one of the scenes in The Divine Comedy. It is not real—it could not be. Look out there.”
He pointed to where, eastwards from the Casino, the great liner was lying with lights blazing from every porthole. The wind which fanned their cheeks, a little dry with the heat of the room, brought with it a flavour of the sea and the flowering shrubs from the gardens.
“Our refuge,” he pointed out, with a wave of the hand downwards.
“Not mine, necessarily,” she replied. “Yours—perhaps.”
“Why will you not come with me—Joan?” he asked.
“Why should I?” she answered. “I am not in need of safety. I have no enemies that I know of. Life here is marvellously pleasant.”
“It will not be so amusing when I have gone,” he assured her.
“Someone will take your place. Life is like that. Before the smoke from those three stacks has finished fouling the skies, I shall have found someone else to talk nonsense to and you will be only thinking of the joy of not having to listen for footsteps behind you or peer round the corners in the unlighted places.”
“I shall be lonely,” he said.
“So might I be if I came with you.”
His sensitive lips twitched and she would have recalled the words if it had not been too late.
“I’m sorry,” she went on, “but to-night I am indulging in a fit of profound egoism. They say that a woman can never learn to be happy until she has learnt to be selfish. Men seem somehow or other to have drifted into the idea that the only place for a woman in the world is to become the willing or unwilling partner of a man’s passion, or his sentiment, or if he is a weakling his nurse. I don’t see any reason, Rudolph, why I should leave Monte Carlo and travel round the world in that steamer with you just to make you a little lighter-hearted.”
“Do you know what they said about you the other day?” he asked abruptly.
“Don’t disturb my good opinion of myself,” she begged.
“They said that you were a girl with a delightful disposition, that you were charming in every way, but that you were American to the backbone and that meant that you would never be capable of sacrifice.”
“Why should I make sacrifices?” she demanded. “People make them for the sake of love or strong duty. I am not impelled by either. I am here in the world to be made happy and to help myself to happiness in the sanest possible way. I don’t think that it would be a sane way if I packed my steamer trunks and came on board with you at six o’clock to-morrow morning.”
He passed his arm around her waist. She made no effort to draw away but when he leaned down she offered only her cheek to his lips.
“Well, neither of us is any good at pretending, anyhow,” he sighed. “You are a real mistress of what I suppose they call the new materialism. Have you ever heard, I wonder, of the passion that waits on opportunity?”
“I don’t think,” she confided, “that I should care for that sort of passion.”
“Are you capable of passion at all?” he asked.
“Absolutely,” she assured him.
Her voice was perfectly calm but something more electric had crept into the atmosphere. The breeze might have become chillier, for she suddenly shivered in his half tentative embrace.
“Listen,” he begged. “I shall make you an offer.”
She shook her head.
“Not of marriage.”
“No, not of marriage,” he agreed. “I am going to try and imitate your magnificent materialism.”
“It will be a thorny path for you,” she warned him. “I am in a hypersensitive frame of mind. I shall be quick to take offence.”
“Nevertheless, I proceed without fear,” he declared. “The thought of that boat, of six months alone without sympathy, without friends, without any of the graces of life, chills me. I would rather stay here and risk my very existence. I ask you to come with me, Joan, and to be or become my companion in any way you will. You shall have your own suite. The Baron has made enquiries for me and there are half-a-dozen vacant. It shall be at the far end of the ship from mine, if you like. You must give me as much of your time as you can spare. I must see you every day. For the rest, you are there and I am there and anything that might come to pass would be born of the closer communion between our thoughts and minds as the days passed on. I make no condition that you become my mistress. If I become your lover it will be because fate directs it. At the end of the voyage we shall have found one another out. Neither of us can prophesy, but one thing I do believe—if great things come to either of us they will come to both.”
“Have you done much love making of this sort?” she asked, with a delightful little smile which robbed her words of everything that was bitter.
“It is my first essay,” he assured her. “I marvel at my own courage. I marvel still more at the effrontery with which I must conclude. If we part at the end of the voyage, which is very poss
ible, I shall want to have one memory always with me and that will be that I have made your path through life a little easier. Money to me simply represents the counters with which one gambles on the board of happiness. You will leave me a rich woman. That is my one condition and you must accept it.”
“But, my dear man, I have not promised to go,” she declared. “You don’t think I could make up my mind in a minute? It is the most extraordinary decision any girl ever had to make. Listen to that steamer hooting now. When it hoots at something after dawn to-morrow I may be on board!”
“You will let me know,” he said, “before the night has passed. I have an idea, somehow or other, that it will be a night of adventure. The greatest adventure of all will be those few words from you.”
They both heard the door open. They were standing close together but they remained unflurried.
“I am not your lady’s maid, dear Miss Joan,” the Baron said, “so I do not know how long you take to make your toilette, which, mark you, must be one of the most ravishing you have ever attempted to-night.”
She waved her hand and departed. She felt him watching her but she kept her eyes averted. Domiloff closed the door.
“Sagastrada,” he said, as he turned round, “I hope to God you are going to be sensible in this matter.”
“So far,” the young man replied, still looking with a curious sense of disappointment at the closed door, “I think I have been almost too sensible.”
CHAPTER XVII
Table of Contents
THE secret of the popularity which Rudolph Sagastrada achieved so completely on the night of his banquet was without a doubt due to what Lord Henry Lancaster, who was not in the best of humours that evening, described as his almost too perfect manners. As host to a cosmopolitan gathering, many of whom were unknown to him, he never made a faux pas and his soft, well-modulated voice possessed a clarity of tone and distinction which seemed to prevail in whatever language he spoke. One of his guests, a famous Admiral, asked him bluntly:
“Why are you giving us this Lucullan feast, Mr. Sagastrada? I hear you are only a passing visitor so we shan’t even have a chance of returning your hospitality.”
“The reason for my offering you this homely meal is quite a simple one,” Rudolph replied graciously. “This is one of the few parts of Europe where I am almost a stranger, and my entertainment is meant to be a slight return for the kindness I have received from some of you. I think you all know, as nothing travels faster than this kind of news here, that I was snatched from the arms of desperadoes in Beaulieu and since then our patron saint, Baron Domiloff, has been looking after me like an elder brother. And you need not think, any of you,” he went on, smiling at the Admiral’s wife, “that you are being entertained by a criminal, because I am one of the most innocent persons in the world of any sin against anybody or any country. I am just a refugee.”
“But not a penniless one,” Léon de Hochepierre ventured.
“Quite true,” Rudolph admitted. “I did not happen to have my fortune in my pocket when the blow fell. It is the only advantage I know of being a banker,” he went on. “No one can wipe you out at one fell swoop.”
Lydia Domiloff, who, although extremely reserved in her manners and deportment, was one of the most popular as well as almost the most beautiful woman in the Principality, leaned forward in her place.
“You must not let yourself be deceived, Monsieur, by my husband’s apparent kindliness,” she said. “Just now he is making a great fight in this little corner of the world and everyone with moneybags—especially of your profession—is welcome here.”
Rudolph shook his head.
“Dear Baroness,” he rejoined, “there is a swift answer to that. The Baron, your husband, is doing his utmost to get rid of me! Even a few hours ago, he made the most odious suggestion. It was that I should embark upon the tourist steamer which is riding the seas there on the other side of the Casino and take a tour round the world—I, who love the quiet spots and who would be perfectly content never to see one yard more of the world than I already know.”
“Then my husband, for all our sakes,” the Baroness replied, “should be ashamed of himself.”
“Sheer humanity on my part,” Domiloff declared. “I do not know how many spies may be present at this table,—I was told only the other day that Monte Carlo was full of them,—but it is very certain that our young host is better in retreat for a little time.”
“Retreat!” Rudolph laughed. “And you recommend a tourist steamer!”
“There is sometimes safety in crowds, provided it is the right sort of crowd,” Townleyes observed. “Seriously, though, as an ex-politician, I think these political upheavals and denouncements, terrifying though they may seem, are speedily forgotten.”
Rudolph turned towards the Princess.
“It is permitted that we dance, Madame?” he asked.
“It is for you to say,” she replied.
“Then, may I have the pleasure?”
They joined the small crowd already upon the floor.
“Something disturbs you,” she remarked.
He hesitated.
“Well, perhaps,” he admitted. “Many people have made merry at their own feast when the writing has been upon the wall but it is not too amusing to hear it talked about.”
She leaned a little closer to him.
“You don’t think it is really as serious as that?” she asked, her big eyes softening as she looked up into his face.
“Who can tell? Domiloff seems to have got it firmly into his head that this fellow, General Müller, is going to whisk me off by some means or other and if he cannot succeed by the ordinary methods that I am likely to make one of those graceful disappearances—the sort of thing, you know, that has happened here before.”
“What have you done so terrible beside being a great deal too rich?” she enquired.
“Well, we have not subscribed to the Chancellor’s doctrines of finance, for one thing,” he admitted. “I certainly did finance Paul Rothmann’s wonderful journal, as you know. He proclaimed boldly that the Chancellor’s doctrines represented Imperialism carried to excess, and constituted a thoroughly unsound political faith.”
“Léon is sometimes a thoughtful person,” she remarked. “He finds in Dictatorship the only barrier against anarchy and Bolshevism.”
“But has he satisfied himself,” Rudolph asked, “that what he looks upon as anarchy and Bolshevism, properly diluted, might not produce as sound a form of government as any kind of Imperialism?”
“You startling person,” she exclaimed. “Don’t tell me that you are an anarchist!”
“I have been accused of being a communist,” he confided. “That is pretty well the same thing, is it not? A communist banker. I was cartooned once in a so-called humorous paper as the greatest living paradox—a communist banker.”
“All too serious for me,” she sighed. “No more talk of that sort, please. I like you, Rudolph Sagastrada, and we don’t want you to go away. Shall we take you up to our château in the mountains and hide you until this tempest is over?”
“It would be marvellous,” he answered wistfully. “A few years ago I was a fierce politician. I really felt that I was making my way slowly but thoroughly into the great beating heart of the world. Since then I have been disillusioned. It is the things beautiful that I should like to seek and with them peace. Spain has sickened the whole world of bloodshed. If I go on that cruise and if we come into any of the unspoilt parts of the world I shall get off and buy an island. I am only dangerous to those fellows, after all, in Europe. If I once get out of it and my money disappears, my power and influence will go with it. . . . The only trouble is that in those outlying parts I shall find no one whose voice is so like music as yours, Princess, and whose feet move so wonderfully to it.”
“You are a very precocious young man,” she said, “to have become at your age such a power in politics that they send people down here to hunt you to deat
h, to be able to quote your wonderful Heine and to have browsed in so many beautiful places, actual places and imaginary, and to talk as you talk. No wonder you are in trouble already. You began to live too soon.”
“Well, I can assure you that I have not the least desire to leave off living,” he said, “only I should like to live my own way.”
“You should marry someone not without imagination but healthy and beautiful and with plenty of common sense like Joan Haskell.”
“I wonder,” he replied. “She is splendid in her way, of course, but I sometimes think she is more akin to the type of your friend Lord Henry.”
“I don’t think that Henry will ever marry,” she said. “But we must not forget your dinner. The quails are arriving. Does that sound greedy?”
They returned to their places. Conversation was flowing now more smoothly. World subjects were eschewed, Dolly Parker had started a violent flirtation with Hayden Smith. The Baroness, who was seated next to the dullest Duke but one in the peerage, was becoming more abstracted than ever, and her husband, some distance away, was talking seriously to Joan Haskell. . . .
From his small round table set against the wall on the other side of the restaurant Mr. Ardrossen had a complete view of the room. He seemed to be watching nobody and yet he had the air of seeing everyone and everything. General Müller, with his small suite, was seated not far away. His was by far the grimmest and most unbending personality amongst the diners. Céline, who had decided to retire from the whole performance at the opera and take an evening’s vacation, was restless and annoyed because so far Rudolph Sagastrada had not asked to be presented. Her dark eyes were full of the most unaccustomed displeasure. She was crumbling to pieces her toast Melba with restless, nervous fingers.
“It is because the young man is in some sort of trouble that I promised to sing,” she told her companion peevishly. “The Baron promised that he would bring him to me early in the evening. He has not been here. I watched him dance with the Princess de Hochepierre de Martelle and he never so much as glanced in my direction. What is there about that little doll of a woman, I ask myself, that men should forget to look at others when they dance with her?”
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