CHAPTER XXVII
FROM FOUR TO FIVE
The Princess Mistchenka and Rue Carew had retired to their respectiverooms for that hour between four and five in the afternoon, which theaverage woman devotes to cat-naps or to that aimless feminine fussingwhich must ever remain a mystery to man.
The afternoon had turned very warm; Neeland, in his room, lay on thelounge in his undershirt and trousers, having arrived so far towardbathing and changing his attire.
No breeze stirred the lattice blinds hanging over both open windows;the semi-dusk of the room was pierced here and there by slender shaftsof sunlight which lay almost white across the carpet and striped theopposite wall; the rue Soleil d'Or was very silent in the Julyafternoon.
And Neeland lay there thinking about all that had happened to him andtrying to bring it home to himself and make it seem plausible andreal; and could not.
For even now the last ten days of his life seemed like a story he hadread concerning someone else. Nor did it seem to him that hepersonally had known all those people concerned in this wild,exaggerated, grotesque story. They, too, took their places on theprinted page, appearing, lingering, disappearing, reappearing, aschapter succeeded chapter in a romance too obvious, too palpablysensational to win the confidence and credulity of a young man oftoday.
Fed to repletion on noisy contemporary fiction, his finer perceptionblunted by the daily and raucous yell of the New York press, hisimagination too long over-strained by Broadway drama and now flaccidand incapable of further response to its leering or shrieking appeal,the din of twentieth-century art fell on nerveless ears and on a brainbenumbed and sceptical.
And so when everything that he had found grotesque, illogical,laboured, obvious, and clamorously redundant in literature and thedrama began to happen and continued to happen in real life to him--andwent on happening and involving himself and others all around him inthe pleasant July sunshine of 1914, this young man, madeintellectually _blase_, found himself without sufficient capacity tocomprehend it.
There was another matter with which his mind was struggling as he laythere, his head cradled on one elbow, watching the thin blue spiralsfrom his cigarette mount straight to the ceiling, and that was themetamorphosis of Rue Carew.
Where was the thin girl he remembered--with her untidy chestnut hairand freckles, and a rather sweet mouth--dressed in garments the onlymission of which was to cover a flat chest and frail body and limbswhose too rapid growth had outstripped maturity?
To search for her he went back to the beginning, where a little girlin a pink print dress, bare-legged and hatless, loitered along anancient rail fence and looked up shyly at him as he warned her to keepout of range of the fusillade from the bushes across the pasture.
He thought of her again at the noisy party in Gayfield on that whitenight in winter; visualised the tall, shy, overgrown girl who dancedwith him and made no complaint when her slim foot was trodden on. Andagain he remembered the sleigh and the sleighbells clashing andtinkling under the moon; the light from her doorway, and how she stoodlooking back at him; and how, on the mischievous impulse of themoment, he had gone back and kissed her----
At the memory an odd sensation came over him, scaring him a little.How on earth had he ever had the temerity to do such a thing to her!
And, as he thought of this exquisite, slender, clear-eyed young girlwho had greeted him at the Paris terminal--this charming embodiment ofall that is fresh and sweet and fearless--in her perfect hat and gownof _mondaine_ youth and fashion, the memory of his temerity appalledhim.
Imagine his taking an unencouraged liberty now!
Nor could he dare imagine encouragement from the Rue Carew soamazingly revealed to him.
Out of what, in heaven's name, had this lovely girl developed? Out ofa shy, ragged, bare-legged child, haunting the wild blackberry tanglesin Brookhollow?
Out of the frail, charmingly awkward, pathetic, freckled mill-hand inher home-made party clothes, the rather sweet expression of whosemouth once led him to impudent indiscretion?
Out of what had she been evolved--this young girl whom he had leftjust now standing beside her boudoir door with the Princess Naia's armaround her waist? Out of the frightened, white-lipped, shabby girl whohad come dragging her trembling limbs and her suitcase up the darkstairway outside his studio? Out of the young thing with sagging hair,crouched in an armchair beside his desk, where her cheap hat lay withtwo cheap hatpins sticking in the crown? Out of the fragile figureburied in the bedclothes of a stateroom berth, holding out to him athin, bare arm in voiceless adieu?
And Neeland lay there thinking, his head on his elbow, the other armextended--from the fingers of which the burnt-out cigarette presentlyfell to the floor.
He thought to himself:
"She is absolutely beautiful; there's no denying that. It's not herclothes or the way she does her hair, or her voice, or the way shemoves, or how she looks at a man; it's the whole business. And thewhole bally business is a miracle, that's all. Good Lord! And to thinkI ever had the nerve--the _nerve_!"
He swung himself to a sitting posture, sat gazing into space for a fewmoments, then continued to undress by pulling off one shoe, lighting acigarette, and regarding his other foot fixedly.
That is the manner in which the vast majority of young men do theirdeepest thinking.
However, before five o'clock he had scrubbed himself and arrayed hiswell constructed person in fresh linen and outer clothing; and now hesauntered out through the hallway and down the stairs to the reardrawing-room, where a tea-table had been brought in and teaparaphernalia arranged. Although the lamp under the kettle had beenlighted, nobody was in the room except a West Highland terrier curledup on a lounge, who, without lifting his snow-white head, regardedNeeland out of the wisest and most penetrating eyes the young man hadever encountered.
Here was a personality! Here was a dog not to be approached lightly orwith flippant familiarity. No! That small, long, short-legged bodywith its thatch of wiry white hair was fairly instinct with dignity,wisdom, and uncompromising self-respect.
"That dog," thought Neeland, venturing to seat himself on a chairopposite, "is a Presbyterian if ever there was one. And I, for one,haven't the courage to address him until he deigns to speak to me."
He looked respectfully at the dog, glanced at the kettle which hadbegun to sizzle a little, then looked out of the long windows into thelittle walled garden where a few slender fruit trees grew along thewalls in the rear of well-kept flower beds, now gay with phlox,larkspur, poppies, and heliotrope, and edged with the biggest andbluest pansies he had ever beheld.
On the wall a Peacock butterfly spread its brown velvet and gorgeouslyeyed wings to the sun's warmth; a blackbird with brilliant yellow billstood astride a peach twig and poured out a bubbling and incessantmelody full of fluted grace notes. And on the grass oval a kittenfrisked with the ghosts of last month's dandelions, racing after thedrifting fluff and occasionally keeling over to attack its own tail,after the enchanting manner of all kittens.
A step behind him and Neeland turned. It was Marotte, the butler, whopresented a thick, sealed envelope to him on his salver, bent to turndown the flame under the singing silver kettle, and withdrew without asound.
Neeland glanced at the letter in perplexity, opened the envelope andthe twice-folded sheets of letter paper inside, and read this oddcommunication:
* * * * *
Have I been fair to you? Did I keep my word? Surely you must now, inyour heart, acquit me of treachery--of any premeditated violencetoward you.
I never dreamed that those men would come to my stateroom. That plan_had_ been discussed, but was abandoned because it appeared impossibleto get hold of you.
And also--may I admit it without being misunderstood?--I absolutelyrefused to permit any attempt involving your death.
When the trap shut on you, there in my stateroom, it shut also on me.I was totally unprepared; I was averse to murder; and
also I had givenyou my word of honour.
Judge, then, of my shame and desperation--my anger at being entrappedin a false position involving the loss in your eyes of my personalhonour!
It was unbearable: and I did what I could to make it clear to you thatI had not betrayed you. But my comrades do not yet know that I had anypart in it; do not yet understand why the ship was not blown tosplinters. They are satisfied that I made a mistake in the rendezvous.And, so far, no suspicion attaches to me; they believe the mechanismof the clock failed them. And perhaps it is well for me that theybelieve this.
It is, no doubt, a matter of indifference to you how the others and Ireached safety. I have no delusions concerning any personal and kindlyfeeling on your part toward me. But one thing you can not--darenot--believe, and that is that I proved treacherous to you and falseto my own ideas of honour.
And now let me say one more thing to you--let me say it out ofa--friendship--for which you care nothing--could not care anything.And that is this: your task is accomplished. You could not possiblyhave succeeded. There is no chance for recovery of those papers. Yourmission is definitely ended.
Now, I beg of you to return to America. Keep clear of entanglement inthese events which are beginning to happen in such rapid succession inEurope. They do not concern you; you have nothing to do with them, nointerest in them. Your entry into affairs which can not concern youwould be insulting effrontery and foolish bravado.
I beg you to heed this warning. I know you to be personallycourageous; I suppose that fear of consequences would not deter youfrom intrusion into any affair, however dangerous; but I dare hopethat perhaps in your heart there may have been born a little spark offriendliness--a faint warmth of recognition for a woman who took someslight chance with death to prove to you that her word of honour isnot lightly given or lightly broken.
So, if you please, our ways part here with this letter sent to you byhand.
I shall not forget the rash but generous boy I knew who called me
Scheherazade.
The Dark Star Page 29