IN THE REGENT'S STUDY
Stanief was writing, writing steadily, placidly, his pen rustling
faintly as it slipped across the paper. The ruddy glow of the open fire
was tangled and reflected among the many-faceted knickknacks that
littered the desk, caught and tossed back from a dozen shining surfaces,
and mockingly echoed by deep-tinted walls and draperies. Most ruddily,
most vividly, the light seemed to gather around the writer, as if its
quivering pink radiance were a warning or a shield.
It was like another presence in the room, that fire, to the man behind
the curtain. He watched it also as he crept stealthily forward,
clutching more tightly the object in his hand. A man of the people,
shabby, gaunt, unkempt, he stole out into the Regent's study, stepping
cautiously on the gleaming floor or on the treacherously soft rugs
which slipped beneath his unaccustomed feet. From the velvet hangings he
gained the shelter of a tall Vernis-Martin cabinet and crouched in the
shadow, shaking from head to foot with nervous tremors.
Stanief worked on undisturbed; once he paused to choose another pen, and
the intruder cowered to the floor in abject fear. But the writing was
resumed without alarm. After a few moments the man again moved forward,
this time on his hands and knees, until he reached the end of a
high-sided leather couch. There he halted again. Coming here with a
purpose so bold, the habit of a lifetime yet prompted him to hold his
soiled garments away from the gilded and perfumed upholstery with a
vague sense of apology.
There never was a clock that ticked so loudly, so insistently as the
timepiece above the hearth, a clock that set its beats so exactly to the
beat of a man's hurrying pulse. Once the man on the floor touched his
chest curiously, as if to be quite certain whether it was his heart, or
indeed the swaying pendulum which sounded through the quiet place.
Reassured, he moved on.
The glowing firelight wavered giddily across Stanief's bent head,
seeking in vain for a hint of brown in the fine black hair, which had a
slight ripple and a tendency to lie in tiny curls where it touched the
neck. The man noted this dully. If one struck there? Or lower, between
the broad shoulders--
Stanief leaned back and selected a cigarette from the tray on the
writing-table. His drowsy lashes fell meditatively as he reached for a
match, a half-smile curved his lips. The man by the chair darted forward
and struck once, from behind.
The knife crashed ringing to the floor as Stanief's quicker movement met
his assailant's. The man cried out sharply as the strong white hands
closed on his wrists and the superior strength forced him to his knees
beside the desk.
"Clumsily attempted," commented the level voice. "Have you any more
weapons, _mon ami_?"
"Excellency, Royal Highness, pardon--I have no French."
Stanief shrugged his shoulders and lapsed into the language of the
country.
"I asked you if you had other weapons, but it does not matter."
He deliberately transferred both captive wrists to the grasp of his
right hand and with his left opened a drawer of the desk. The man made
no effort to free himself. Generations of serfdom had reasserted
themselves; he might have killed from behind, but before the patrician's
glance and voice resistance did not even occur to him. He submitted
passively when Stanief produced a pair of handcuffs and snapped them in
place.
"Stand up, and farther off," came the contemptuous command. "I am not
accustomed to doing my own police work. You need not try to escape; the
guard is within call. I might have had you arrested half an hour ago
when I first saw you."
"Royal Highness, how--why--"
Stanief answered the stupefied gaze, coldly amused.
"Because it interested me to watch your attempt. I keep a mirror on my
desk, not being without experience. Who sent you to kill me?"
"Royal Highness, my brother was hung last week."
"As you this week. Well?"
The man winced.
"Royal Highness, we wanted freedom. They tell us that while your Royal
Highness lives it can not be; the country is too firmly held and too
content. So we strive to act in time."
He spoke as one reciting a lesson, monotonously, with effort. His type
was familiar, lacking even the poor excuse of originality.
"Your brother was executed for an attempt to kill me?"
"Serenity, he worked in the palace kitchen and put poison in a cup of
chocolate."
"I remember. He was tried; I had nothing to do with his case." He
paused, considering; and the other stared at him in mute fascination.
"Before I ring to have you removed, have you anything to say?"
"Gracious Highness, pardon!"
Stanief regarded him with scornful amazement.
"Pardon? You are mad, _mon ami_. Do you fancy me a child or a woman to
set you free after this performance? Why should I pardon you? You do not
interest me in the least. Go face your trial; my share in the incident
is ended," and Stanief turned away.
"Royal Highness, mercy--I am afraid! Not that--I will--"
"What?"
"Buy," he offered desperately. "Royalty, not to sell my comrades--who
are we in your sight--there is some one else, some one of the court who
wishes your death."
Stanief stopped with his finger on the bell and bent his keen eyes on
the livid face. It was not a pleasant spectacle, this sordid, trembling
figure in the firelight, but an uglier specter loomed behind it.
"Go on, if you choose," he conceded. "You have my permission."
"Royal Highness, not my comrades. But he is not of us; he urges us here
to fail and die. You are the master; Royal Highness, his name for
grace."
"I promise you nothing. Certainly not your liberty."
"No, no, but life!" he made a movement to throw himself at the Regent's
feet, but drew back before the decided negative. "Royal Highness, to
live, only to live. He is a great lord, he goes to court; he hates and
fears you. Royal Highness, he is the Baron Sergius Dalmorov."
"Ah," observed Stanief, and said nothing more for several minutes. His
all given, the man waited feverishly, not daring to speak except by his
imploring gaze. But Stanief finally pushed the button without vouching a
reply.
"Dimitri," he said curtly to the officer who appeared in answer to the
summons, "take this man and have him imprisoned until I send for him
again. Understand me; there is no charge against him at present; simply
he is a prisoner at my pleasure."
The officer saluted in silence, however amazed at the presence in
Stanief's study of one who certainly had not passed the door, and in
silence marshaled his dazed captive backward to the threshold. There he
halted and again saluted.
"Monsieur Allard awaits the honor of being received by your Royal
Highness."
"Very well; admit Monsieur Allard."
"Highness," faltered the prisoner once more.
Dimitri favored him with a scandalized stare, jerked him unceremoniously
out the door, and administered a shake that almost sent him into
Allard's arms.
"More respect, animal," he ordered explosively. "Pig of a peasant! Oh, a
thousand pardons, Monsieur Allard; pray enter."
Allard laughed and passed on, giving the prisoner a compassionate glance
that altered to one of surprise and distrust at sight of his face. But
he asked no questions, having learned many things in the course of his
life in the Empire. Adrian himself had first given his favorite the dry
advice to see nothing that did not concern him.
Stanief had resumed his writing; at Allard's entrance he looked up to
nod pleasantly toward a chair, and continued his work without speaking.
The two were accustomed to each other; smiling, Allard sat down and let
his head sink against the high back of the cushioned seat.
The fire glowed and danced, rose and fell, making an artificial
brightness that mocked the clouded sky without. Gradually, from waiting
Allard drifted into reverie, in whose closing mists his surroundings
were lost from sight.
After a while Stanief laid down the pen, pushed aside the completed
task, and surveyed his companion unobserved. Twice the Regent moved as
if to speak, then changed his intention and remained mute. The
expression that forced its way through his locked composure was not
gentle; it was as if he struggled fiercely with some emotion and felt it
wrench and writhe beneath the surface of self-control. But in spite of
his will, his dark brows tangled, the black eyes glinted hard behind
their deceptive lashes. And when he finally spoke, his voice carried a
tone never before used to Allard.
"John, what is wrong?" he demanded.
The other looked up in surprise.
"Nothing, monseigneur," he answered, rather wearily.
Stanief's fingers closed sharply on one of the ivory toys which strewed
the desk.
"That is not true," he contradicted. "Kindly say so if you do not wish
to explain; I am not a child to be put off with a light word. Something
has been wrong with you ever since your return from Spain."
Too assured of their friendship for resentment or to attribute the
speech to anything except interest in his affairs, Allard smiled even
while changing color with pain.
"I have you always, monseigneur," he said. "If I have lost other loves,
at least I can rest content with you."
The paper-knife snapped in Stanief's grasp.
"Thank you," he responded, with an accent worthy of his cousin. "I
believe I asked you to explain."
The unconscious Allard pushed the bright hair from his forehead, his
eyes on the ruddy unrest of the flames.
"Of course I meant to tell you some time, monseigneur," he mused aloud.
"But it seemed a bit cowardly to burden you with my troubles; you could
not help them, and you have so many of your own. It was no time to speak
of such a thing during your wedding, and as the weeks went by it grew
harder and harder to speak of it at all. I tried not to betray myself,
but I am rather a bad actor. If it were only I who suffered. The journey
to Spain, for madame--"
He paused. Stanief gazed at him with an expression as somberly dangerous
as ever one of his dangerous house wore.
"The journey to Spain, monsieur?" he repeated.
Aroused at last to a strangeness in his manner, Allard turned to him in
wonder.
"During the journey to Spain, monseigneur, this came for me," he replied
simply, and drew forth a letter which he laid before the other.
Stanief picked it up, himself confronted by the unexpected. Allard
resumed his seat and averted his head as the rustling paper unfolded.
It was a sweetly calm letter, a letter written by one in the evening of
life and itself breathing an evening repose and gray twilight hush.
Across the fevered passion of the man who read, the first words drifted
like the cool, scented air of the Californian garden from which they
came. A letter that neither reproached nor questioned, its message was
given with all tenderness of phrase and household name.
Robert had not been well for a long time, Aunt Rose wrote most
delicately. After John had left for South America so suddenly, his
younger brother had fretted and chafed against his own quiet life. Even
his engagement to Theodora had failed to cheer him, or cure his strange
restlessness and abstraction. About six months after John's departure,
he had been found unconscious on the veranda, lying among the crumpled
newspapers. An illness followed, and after recovering from that he never
seemed to grow quite strong. In the third year of John's absence, when
preparations were being made for the long-delayed wedding, he again fell
ill. The morning they received John's letter from the _Nadeja_, he
rallied wonderfully. Asking to have the letter himself, he read it again
and again, then sent them all away while he rested. An hour later they
had found him, resting indeed, his cheek upon the letter and the old
bright content on his boyish face. Theodora had borne it very well. They
were tranquilly calm in their life together, now, and sent their
earnest love to John in the distant life he had chosen.
Stanief laid down the letter very gently. He never forgot how the light
from this purer and simpler world fell across the labyrinth of dark
thoughts at which he scarcely dared look back.
"Nearly two years," Allard said, his head still turned away. "So long
since Robert died. I did not write at once from here; I thought they
knew of me, and I wanted a little real life to tell. I was sick of
pretense. I suppose the women did not know how to reach me here; Bertie
would have had no difficulty. But it was a grief past remedying, and
there seemed no use troubling you."
Stanief rose and came around the writing-table to lay both hands on the
other's shoulders.
"I beg your pardon, John," he said earnestly and gravely. "I spoke to
you just now as I never will again, come what may. I have my own griefs,
less patiently endured than yours; and I misunderstood."
"I did not notice," Allard answered, with perfect truth. "You are always
like no one else, monseigneur. I am glad that you know, very glad. You
see, it is not only that I myself have lost Robert, but that I have
taken him from Theodora. I wanted so much happiness for her, and now--it
was all wrong. Let us talk of something else, please."
Stanief turned away to the table.
"My last cigarette was never lighted," he remarked, the change of tone
complete. "Did you not see that particularly disagreeable
fellow-countryman of mine who went out in Dimitri's charge? He tried to
kill me just before you arrived."
Effectively distracted, Allard sat up.
"He--"
"Oh, that is nothing novel. In fact, it becomes monotonous. Only this
fellow varied the routine by declaring Dalmorov the instigator of all
this."
"Dalmorov!" Allard echoed incredulously. "To stoop so far! Yet I
remember; I saw him talking with your prisoner the other night. I was
coming from the club with Rosal and Linovitch, when the acetylene
search-lights of the car fell across the two, as they stood in an angle
of the cathedral wall."
"So? He is imprudent. Also he should recollect that while such people
will keep faith with one another, they will cheerfully betray one of the
class they hate."
"You will accuse him, arrest him?"
"My dear John, on the word of a wretched peasant? I shall do nothing so
impulsive. But, I will perfect the chain, and then--" He offered a match
serenely. "Why should he not pay? Moreover, he is dangerous to the
Emperor. When I resign this remodeled empire to my cousin, he shall rule
it, not Dalmorov. Have patience yet a while. Before my power passes from
me, I will remove this gentleman, whether Adrian approves of it or not;
and then contentedly lay down my borrowed scepter."
"The Emperor--"
"The Emperor may do as he will, afterward. He is fond of his Dalmorov."
"I am not so sure of that, monseigneur; he plays with him."
Stanief smiled.
"My young cousin is a kitten for whom we are all toy mice, John. Which
reminds me that the hour for my visit to him approaches."
"And recalls me to my errand. The Emperor requests that her Royal
Highness the Grand Duchess will come to him this morning, if it will not
derange her plans."
"You have told madame?"
"No, monseigneur. I thought perhaps you--" he looked at Stanief
interrogatively.
"Would accompany her?" Stanief completed the question. "Perhaps."
He touched the bell, and the long regard in which he enveloped Allard
held many blended emotions besides its affection.
"Has madame gone to drive, Dimitri?" he inquired of that attendant.
"Her Royal Highness at this moment descends the stairs, Royal Highness."
"Say to her that I would be glad to see her here, now, if she is at
leisure."
Dimitri vanished hastily. An instant later he opened the door, and Iria
came noiselessly across the threshold with the exotic, Andalusian grace
that made her least movement a delight.
Both gentlemen rose at her entrance. Coloring faintly, she inclined her
head to Allard, and crossed to Stanief, lifting her eyes to his with a
certain delicate confidence and trust.
"You sent for me, monsiegneur?" she questioned, in her rippling southern
voice.
"I asked you to come," he corrected. "Monsieur Allard has a message for
you."
She turned docilely to Allard, without leaving Stanief's side.
"For me, monsieur?"
Stanief looked from one to the other. Very lovely was the young girl in
her trailing blue velvets and furs; her golden-brown hair clustering in
full, soft waves under the large hat, her golden-brown eyes warm with
expectation. Iria had acquired a dainty poise, not less gentle but more
assured, during these months of emancipation and freedom under the
Regent's protection. Allard gazed at her with frank admiration and
friendliness as he explained:
"Madame, the Emperor requests the happiness of your presence this
morning, if the visit will cause no disturbance of your plans."
Her dimpling smile responded to a demand sufficiently familiar. Adrian's
love for her had long ago outlived surprise and become an accepted fact.
"Thank you, monsieur," she answered, and again looked up at Stanief.
"You are going, monseigneur? We may go together?"
"I intended to ask it of you, if you will wait an instant for me to
arrange these papers."
Allard saluted them quietly, and withdrew. Like all the rest of the
city, he fancied them most happy in each other. The Regent's aversion
to the marriage had been forgotten in his bearing since the first day
of his fiancee's arrival.
Iria sank down in an arm-chair and loosened the furs under her round
white chin, laying the huge muff in her lap. Quite innocently and
without shyness she followed Stanief's movements as he tossed into a
drawer the writing upon which he had been engaged and dropped on top the
thin, keen knife left from the recent conflict.
"Monseigneur," she said at last.
Stanief winced ever so slightly; there were times when the formal title
fell like a drop of acid on his nerves.
"Madame la Duchesse?" he retorted.
Iria laughed out in her surprise, all unconscious of his meaning.
"Monseigneur, are you going to send Marya away from me?"
"I! What have I to do with your ladies? Keep or dismiss them as you
choose, Iria."
"Marya cried this morning, telling me that last night the Baron Dalmorov
warned her of your intention. He said that the Emperor would object to
the sister of Count Ormanof remaining at court, so you would dismiss
her. But I told Marya that you knew how much I cared for her, and would
explain that to the Emperor."
"Some day Dalmorov will learn discretion," Stanief commented, almost too
indolently. "It is nearly time. The Emperor did speak to me of the
Countess Marya, and I pointed out to him that her brother's misconduct
did not affect the matter in the least; since we are not living in China
and visiting faults upon entire families. Also I explained that you rule
your own household."
"But you govern us all, monseigneur," said the Gentle Princess, most
naturally. "I was sure it would be right somehow; I told Marya that no
one who belonged to you need be afraid."
He paused abruptly in front of her.
"Then you are not sorry that you trusted me with yourself, Iria? You are
not sorry any longer that chance placed you in my keeping?"
She leaned forward across the muff, her eyes suddenly wet in their
sincerity.
"Oh, no," she denied with energy. "No, monseigneur. Ah, we do not call
such things chance, we women of the South, but a higher name! I have
never been sorry since that first day on the winter balcony when you
spoke to me so wonderfully. You--you are so good, so kind, monseigneur."
Stanief looked into those clear eyes for a long moment, his own glance
veiled. Then he gently took one of the little gloved hands and lifted it
to his lips.
"I seem to have been born just for that," he said, the sadness of his
voice masked by its even control, "to guard what is mine. I am glad if I
do it passably well, Iria. I wish I could hope that my other ward would
tell me as much, some day. Come, let us go to the Emperor."
She rose, softly flushed and smiling, yet vaguely troubled by his
manner.
"The Emperor?" she ventured. "He is a shadow, monseigneur! You are not
satisfied with him?"
"What do you know of shadows, who are all sunshine? If I imagine a cloud
on the imperial horizon, it is still no larger than that bit of lace in
your hand. Also, the question is rather if he is satisfied with me, than
if I am satisfied with him. Adrian is--Adrian."
Together they moved to the door.