A Son of the Immortals, Louis Tracy [mobi ebook reader txt] 📗

It was passing strange that crooked little Felix Poluski, ex-Nihilist, the wildest firebrand ever driven out of Warsaw, and the only living artist who could put on canvas the gleam of heaven that lights the Virgin's face in the "Immaculate Conception," should justify his nickname of Le Bourdon by humming those two lines.

"I hope you are not a prophet, Felix," said Joan with a catch in her throat.

"No, ma belle, no prophet, merely an avenger, a slayer of Kings. I see you have just routed one."

She turned and looked into the deepset eyes of the old hunchback, and for the first time noted that they were gray and very bright and piercing. At the same time the fancy crossed her mind that perhaps Henri Quatre had had blue eyes, bold yet tender, like unto Alec's.

"So you too are aware that Monsieur Delgrado is a Prince?" she said, letting her thought bubble forth at random.

"Some folk call him that, and it is the worst thing I know of him so far. It may spoil him in time; but at present I find him a nice young man."

Joan swung round to her picture. "If Alec had the chance of becoming a King, he would be a very good one," she said loyally.

Poluski's wizened cheeks puckered into a grin. He glanced at the easel and thence to the picture on the wall.

"Perfectly, my dear Joan," he said. "And, by the bones of Kosciusko, you have chosen a proper subject, The Fortune Teller! Were you filling our warrior with dreams of empire? Well, well, I don't know which is more potent with monarchs, woman or dynamite. In Alec's case I fancy I should bet on the woman. Here, for example, is one that shook Heaven, and I have always thought that Eve was not given fair treatment, or she would surely have twisted the serpent's tail," and, humming the refrain of "Les Demi-Vièrges," he climbed the small platform he had erected in front of the world famous Murillo.

Back to back, separated by little more than half the width of the gallery, Joan and Poluski worked steadily for twenty minutes. The Pole sang to himself incessantly, now bassooning between his thin lips the motif of some rhapsody of Lizst's, now murmuring the words of some catchy refrain from the latest review. Anybody else who so transgressed the rules would have been summarily turned out by the guards; but the men knew him, and the Grande Galerie, despite its treasures, or perhaps because of them, is the least popular part of the Louvre. Artists haunt it; but the Parisian, the provincial, the globe trotter, gape once in their lives at Andrea del Sarto, Titian, Salvator Rosa, Murillo of course, and the rest of the mighty dead, and then ask with a yawn, "Where are the Crown Jewels?"

So the Humming Bee annoyed none by his humming; but he stopped short in an improvised variation on the theme of Vulcan's song in "Philemon and Baucis" when he heard a subdued but none the less poignant cry of distress from Joan. In order to turn his head he was compelled to twist his ungainly body, and Joan, who was standing well away from her canvas, was aware of the movement. She too turned.

"I am going," she announced. "I cannot do anything right to-day. Just look at that white feather!"

"Where?"

"In the boy's hat, you tease! Where else would you look?"

"In your face, belle mignonne," said the Pole.

It was true. Joan was not ill; but she was undeniably low spirited, and the artist's mood has a way of expressing itself on the palette. She laughed, with a certain sense of effort.

"I like you best when you sing, Felix. Sometimes, when you speak, you are Infelix."

"By all means go home," he grinned. "One cannot both joke and copy a Caravaggio."

He began to paint with feverish industry, did not look at her again, but tossed an adieu over his humped shoulder when she hurried away. Then he gazed reproachfully, almost vindictively, at the uplifted eyes of the transfigured Virgin.

"Now, you!" he growled. "Vous êtes bénie entre toutes les femmes! This affair is in your line. Why don't you help? Saperlotte! The girl is worth it."

The Wanderers beat Chantilly. One minute before the close of the fourth chukkur the score stood at four all. Both teams were playing with desperation to avoid a decider on tired ponies, when the Wanderers' third man extricated the ball from a tangle of prancing hoofs and clattering sticks, and Alec Delgrado got away with it. He thought his pony was good for one last run at top speed, that and no more. Risking it, he sprinted across two hundred yards of green turf with the Chantilly Number One in hot chase. His opponent was a stone lighter and better mounted; so Alec's clear start would not save him from being overhauled and ridden off ere he came within a reasonable striking distance of the opposing goalposts. That was the Chantilly man's supreme occupation,—some experts will have it that the ideal Number One should not carry a polo stick,—and the pursuer knew his work.

A hundred, eighty, sixty, yards in front Alec saw a goal keeping centaur waiting to intercept him. In another couple of strides a lean, eager head would be straining alongside his own pony's girths. So he struck hard and clean and raced on, and the goalkeeper judged the flight of the white wooden ball correctly, and smote it back again fair and straight.

It traveled so truly that it would have passed Alec three feet from the ground to drop almost exactly on the spot whence he had driven it. But there was more in that last gallop along the smooth lawn than might be realized by any one present save Alec himself. It was his farewell to the game. From that day he would cease to be dependent on a begrudged pittance for the upkeep of his stable, and that meant the end of his polo playing. But he was not made of the stuff that yields before the twelfth hour. His mallet whirled in the air, there was a crack like a pistol shot, and the ball flew over the amazed goalkeeper's head and between the posts.

The yelling and handclapping of the few spectators almost drowned the umpire's whistle.

"By gad, that was a corker!" said he of Chantilly, as the ponies' wild gallop eased to a canter.

"I hope that flourish of mine did not come too close, Beaumanoir," said Alec.

"Don't give a tuppenny now," laughed Lord Adalbert Beaumanoir. "The match is over, and you've won it, and if you play till Doomsday you'll never score a better notch."

"It was lucky, a sheer fluke."

"Oh, that be jiggered for a yarn! A fellow flukes with his eyes shut. You meant it!"

"Yes, that is right. So would you, Berty, if it was your last knock."

"Well, time's up, anyhow," said Beaumanoir, not comprehending.

They trotted off to the group of waiting grooms. Delgrado ran the gauntlet of congratulations, for Paris likes to see Chantilly's flag lowered, and escaped to the dressing room. He gave a letter, already written and sealed, to an attendant, and drove away in his dogcart. Bowling quickly along the broad Allée de Longchamps, he turned into the Route de l'Etoile, and so to the fine avenue where all Paris takes the summer air.

He found himself eying the parade of fashion in a curiously detached mood. Yesterday he thought himself part and parcel of that gay throng. To-day he was a different being. All that had gone before was merged in "yesterday's seven thousand years."

His cob's pace did not slacken until he drew rein at the giant doorway of a block of flats in the Rue Boissière. It was then about five o'clock, and he meant to appear at his mother's tea table. He was far from looking the "limp rag" of his phrase to Joan. Indeed, it might have taxed the resources of any crack regiment in Paris that day to produce his equal in condition. Twenty-four years old, nearly six feet in height, lean and wiry, square wristed, broad shouldered, and straight as a spear, he met the physical requirements, at least, of those classic youths beloved of Joan's favorite goddess.

Usually his clean cut face, typically American in its high cheekbones,