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

Count, "I shall follow when you have made a beginning. My presence would hamper you now. I am too well known, and secrecy is all-important until you are at the head of the army."

Alec turned on him with an air that would have delighted Joan, could she have been present.

"The army!" he cried. "I know nothing of leading armies. I mean to place myself at the head of the people."

"Nonsense, Alexis! Make for the troops. They alone can make or mar you," said Prince Michael.

"We shall settle those points at Delgratz," declared the brusk Stampoff. "You will bring the money, half in gold, to the station?" he added to Beliani.

"Yes. Gold is best. For the remainder, you will want Russian notes."

Something seemed to be troubling the august mind of Prince Michael. "By the way, my dear Beliani," he began; but the Greek awoke into a very panic of action.

"Pray forgive me, your Highness," he said. "If I have to raise such a large sum before seven o'clock I cannot lose an instant."

"I shall see you off from the Gare de l'Est," cried Marulitch hurriedly, and the two quitted the room in company. Alec went to pay a brief visit to his mother, and Prince Michael was left alone with the rugged old General. Then, for a few seconds, he became a man.

"You must forgive me, Paul," he said huskily. "I am not fitted for the work. I am broken down, a trifler, a worn out old dandy. You have got the right metal in Alexis. See to it that he does not follow my example, but keeps unstained the family name."

"God's bones! he will do that at least," muttered Stampoff. "If you or your father had possessed half his spirit, there would never have been an Obrenovitch on the throne of Kosnovia! Ferdinand VII., Michael V., Alexis III.! By the patriarch! somehow you Delgrados have managed at last to breed a King!"

CHAPTER III IN THE ORIENT EXPRESS

After some haggling, Alec wrung four thousand five hundred francs out of Dumont. Then, at five minutes past six, he jumped into a cab and was driven to the Place de la Sorbonne.

Of course he had ascertained Joan's address easily. He made no secret of the fact that he had seen her on her way to the Louvre nearly every day of the twenty that had elapsed since their first meeting. His knowledge of the route she followed advanced quickly until he found out where she lived. He would not have dared to call on her now, if it had not been for the tremendous thing that had happened in his life; for he was sure he would become King of Kosnovia. The art that conceals art is good; but the art that is unconscious of artifice is better, and never had soothsayer arranged more effective preliminaries for astounding prediction than sibyl Joan herself.

Paris, too, might well witness the rising of his star. What other city stages such memorials to inspire ambition? Behind him, as his cab sped down the Champs Elysées, rose the splendid pile of the Arch of Triumph; in front, beyond the Place de la Concorde, the setting sun gilded a smoke blackened fragment that marked the site of the Tuileries; while near at hand the statue of France, grief stricken yet defiant, gazed ever and longingly in the direction of her lost Provinces. Here, within a short mile, stood the silent records of three Empires, founded, as time counts, within a few years. Two were already crumbled to the dust. The survivor, consolidated on the ruins of France, flourished beyond the Rhine.

Perhaps, if read aright, these portents were not wholly favorable to one about to try his luck in that imperial game. But Alec, though a good deal of a democrat at heart, was cheered by the knowledge that so long as the world recognizes the divine right of Kings, no monarch by descent could lay better claim to a throne than he. And he was young, and in love, and ready to believe that youth and love can level mountains, make firm the morass, bridge the ocean.

He wondered how Joan would take his great news. He thought he could guess her attitude. At first she would urge him to forget that such a person as Joan Vernon existed. Then he would plead that she was asking that which was not only impossible but utterly unheroic. And the minutes were flying. He would remind her that time does not wait even for Kings, nor would the Orient Express delay its departure by a single second to oblige such a fledgling potentate as he.

"We must part now, my sweet," he would say. "I am going to demand my birthright. When I am admittedly a King, I shall send for you. If you do not answer, I shall become my own envoy. You will make a beautiful Queen, Joan. You and I together will raise Kosnovia from the mire of centuries."

Somewhat stilted lovemaking this; but what was a poor fellow to do who had been taken from the Rue Boissière and plunged into empire making, all in the course of a summer's evening?

He crossed the Pont Neuf without ever a look at Henri Quatre. That was a pity. The sarcastic Béarnais grin might have revealed some of the pitfalls that lay ahead. At any rate, the King of Navarre could have given him many instances of a woman's fickleness—and fickleness was the ugly word that leaped into Alec's puzzled brain when an ancient dame at Joan's lodgings told him that Mademoiselle and her maid had gone away that afternoon.

"Gone! Gone where?" he asked blankly.

"It is necessary to write," said Madame, and shut the door in his face, since it is forbidden in the Quartier for good looking and unknown young men to make such urgent inquiries concerning the whereabouts of discreet young women like Mademoiselle Joan.

Léontine, still scrubbing, came to the rescue. Never had she seen any one so distinguished as this Monsieur. Mon Dieu! but it was a pity that the belle Américaine should have packed her boxes that very day! And diminutive Léontine was romantic to the tips of her stubby fingers.

"M'sieu'? wishes to know where he will find the young lady who lives there?" said she archly, jerking her head and a broom handle toward the neighboring house.

"But yes, my pretty one," cried Alec.

"Well, Pauline said—Pauline is her domestic, see you—said they were going to the forest to paint."

"To Fontainebleau?"

"Perhaps, m'sieu'—to the forest, that was it."

"No name? Barbizon?"

"It might be. I have no head for those big words, m'sieu'."

Alec gave her a five-franc piece. It was the first coin he found in his pocket, and the sight of it caused a frown. Confound those Montmartre playwrights! Why was their stupid travesty constantly recurring to his mind? He frowned again, this time at Auguste Comte's smugness, and looked at his watch. Twenty-five minutes to seven! It was too late now to do other than write—if he succeeded. If not—ah, well! "Some of them are slain in the flower of their youth." At least, she would remember, and those glorious eyes of hers would glisten with tears, and the belief helped to console him. Still, he was saddened, disappointed, almost dulled. Doubt came darkly with the dispelling of the dream that he might commence his Odyssey with Joan's first and farewell kiss on his lips. Love and ambition seemed to be at variance; but love had flown, whereas ambition remained.

Back, then, to the Rue Boissière, to an uproar of visitors, sightseers, journalists. Prince Michael had become Monseigneur again. He was holding a reception. Alec, pressing through the throng, was waylaid by a servant.

"This way, monsieur," whispered the man, drawing him into a passage and thence to the room of Princess Delgrado. Alec was soothing his mother's grief when his father entered secretly on tiptoe with the hushed voice and stealthy air of a conspirator. He carried a parcel, long and narrow, wrapped in brown paper.

"I have been consumed with anxiety," said he. "Julius came and warned me that your departure from Paris ought to be incognito. This is wise; so I remain King-elect till you reach Delgratz. The newspapers are pestering me to declare a program. They all expect that I shall leave Paris to-night or early to-morrow. Indeed, an impudent fellow representing 'Le Soir' says that if I don't bestir myself I shall be christened the Sluggard King. But I shall humbug them finely. Leave that to me. Your portmanteaus have been smuggled out by way of the servants' quarters, and you must vanish unseen. Buy a ticket for Vienna, ignore Stampoff during the journey, accept my blessing, and take this." He held out the parcel.

"What is it?" inquired Alec.

"My father's sword, your grandfather's sword. I have kept it bright for you."

Alec squirmed. He knew the weapon, a curved simitar inlaid with gold, and reposing in a scabbard of gilt metal and purple velvet. In its wrapping of brown paper and twine it suspiciously resembled a child's toy, and Prince Michael's grandiloquent manner added a touch of buffoonery to a farewell scene made poignant by a woman's tears.

"I shall use it only on the skulls of eminent personages," said Alec gravely. In truth, this Parisian kingship was rapidly becoming farcical. What a line, what a situation, for that review!

But there was worse to come. Checked in his outburst of family pride, Monseigneur became practical. "What of Dumont?" said he.

"He was touched; but he knocked off five hundred francs."

"Ah, bah! I rather hoped—well, I must return to the salon and play my part. Remember, you will see no one except a servant at the Gare de l'Est. Julius has arranged passports, everything."

"He is taking an extraordinary interest in me. Of course, if I pull through, he becomes heir presumptive."

"Parbleu! That is so. But—you will marry. Bide your time, though. Choose a Queen who—" his shifty eyes fell on the trembling form of his wife, who had remained strangely silent during this somewhat strained interview,—"who will be as good a wife to you as your mother has been to me. Farewell! may God guard you!"

Twice in one day had the pompous little man been betrayed into an avowal of honest sentiment. But he soon recovered. Once reëstablished on the hearthrug, with his eyeglass properly adjusted, his hands tucked under his coattails when they were not emphasizing some well turned phrase, Prince Michael enjoyed himself hugely.

And then Alec clasped his mother in his arms. She was almost incoherent with terror. Bid him remain she dare not; she lacked the force of character that such a step demanded. She had given too many years to this chimera of royalty now suddenly grown into a monster to be sated only by the sacrifice of her son! But she mourned as if he was already dead, and a lump rose in Alec's throat. He had always loved his mother; his father had ever been remote, a dignified trifler, a poser. The three held nothing in common. It could hardly be doubted that every good quality of mind and body the boy possessed was a debt to the brokenhearted woman now clinging to him in a very frenzy of lamentation. Small wonder if his eyes were misty and his voice choked. Ah! if Joan but knew of this sorrowing mother's plight, surely she would come to her!

At last he tore himself away. Grasping that ridiculous parcel, he hurriedly descended a back staircase. Owing to the paternal watchfulness that the French Government exercises over its subjects, he was obliged to pass the concièrge; but none paid heed to him. If it came to that, all Paris would guffaw at the notion of