At first Paul could hardly believe his senses. He was conscious, as he
gazed into the depths of two marvellous eyes, of a tall supple figure
all in black, a crimson rose in her dark hair lending a touch of
color--that, and her red lips.
This was the face that had burned its lineaments into the tablets of
his memory--the face so sweetly known at Lake Lucerne.
The babble of the arriving guests--the strains of the
orchestra--became as the faint murmurs of a far off sea.
For Paul, one fact, and only one, existed--it was she--his Lady of the
Beauteous Countenance; no vision, but a bewitching creature of flesh
and blood whose gloved hand rested for a moment in his own.
As in a dream Paul heard the lady's name--the same that he had learned
at Lucerne--and he felt himself murmuring something--what the words
were he scarcely knew.
Not by so much as the quiver of an eyelash did Mademoiselle give sign
of recognition, or memory of any previous meeting. She merely smiled
as she told Paul that her old friend the Countess had often spoken of
him.
His heart was athrob with curious emotions, when he heard the
Countess' voice:
"Come! we are going in. You two can become better acquainted at
table." And he felt his partner's arm rest lightly within his; its
merest touch electrified him.
"Damn the dinner!" Paul swore softly to himself, for he had no wish
to share his good fortune with a roomful of people.
To his great disgust, a silly ass of a young German _attaché_, who sat
on the other side of Mademoiselle Vseslavitch, began talking with her
as soon as they had reached their places.
When Paul did have her to himself occasionally, she talked to him of
England, the last subject he was interested in then. Not for a minute
did she allow him an opportunity to lead her in the direction of
Langres or Lucerne.
"I have never been across the Channel," she told him. "But I have long
wished to go. You English are such a remarkable people--you are all so
sane and sensible compared with my own countrymen. What Russian can
talk with a woman for five minutes without making violent love to
her?--but you cold-blooded Anglo-Saxons are so refreshingly
different."
Paul did not see the mischievous merriment in the lady's eyes. And his
gallant answer was interrupted by some inanity from Herr von Mark.
If ever the Anglo-German diplomatic relations were in danger, an
observer would have promptly decided that they were at that instant.
That the conceited young German did not immediately expire was only
due to the fact that dagger glances cannot cause a fatal wound.
Paul tried to learn more about the lady. Was she to be long in Paris?
Really, she could not say. She liked the country so much more than the
town that it was always hard for her to stay many days away from the
open. She never knew when the whim might seize her to go--to get
aboard a train and hurry to some distant spot which she felt impelled
to visit. Who knew? To-morrow, perhaps, might find her on her way to
the château of a friend who lived in the Bukowina, near the foothills
of the Carpathian Mountains.
"Ah!"--and she turned to Paul with a radiant face that made him long
to catch her in his arms--"do you know that wonderful country? Those
fissured peaks, with their precipitous and inaccessible crests--their
rock-cumbered valleys, concealing deep and lovely lakes? And the
beautiful pine-woods creeping down to the foot of the mountains? I
could spend all my life in that wonderful place, living in some
peasant's hut, if need be."
"Tell me more!" Paul leaned toward her, forgetful now of all else but
this divine and fascinating being.
"Ah!" she breathed, "you are a devotee of Nature, too, I know. You are
a great traveller,--the Countess has said it," she continued quaintly.
"You have been around the whole world. While as for me, I know Europe
only, and of course Russia best of all countries. I have seen much of
her--those wonderful rolling _steppes_, and rugged mountains. The
North Sea, too, for I love the sea as my own soul.
"Often do I feel as though the sea were really in my soul itself. And
as in the sea there are hidden water-plants, which only come to the
surface at the moment they bloom, and sink again as soon as they fade,
so at times do wondrous flower-pictures form in the depths of my soul,
and rise up, shed perfume around, and gleam and vanish.... Then the
ships that sail by! As you walk along the shore, is it not a pretty
sight to see them--their great white sails look like stately swans.
And still more beautiful is the sight when the setting sun throws
great rays of glory round a passing bark."
In silence Paul gazed at her. He hardly breathed, lest some banal word
should frighten this wonderful nymph away.
"And then at night,"--she went on dreamily--"what a strange and
mysterious sensation the meeting with strange ships at sea produces.
You fancy that perhaps your best friends, whom you have not seen for
years, are sailing silently by, and that you are losing them
forevermore."
Paul was strangely moved. He loved the sea himself, as well as the
mountains--his Queen had taught him its call years ago--and he often
wandered about the shore, pondering over the strange old legends with
which centuries have wreathed it.
"You are wonderful!" he whispered to the lady. "You're like some
water-maiden--and I believe your eyes are a bit of the sea itself!"
"Ah! Now you are like all the rest--French and Russians and Germans!
Why spoil my rhapsody with personalities?"
"Forgive me!" Paul looked sufficiently penitent, and Mademoiselle with
a playful gesture of absolution spoke again.
"It puts me in a strange and curious mood when I ramble along the
shore in the twilight. Behind me are the flat dunes, before me the
vast, heaving, immeasurable ocean, and above me the sky like an
infinite crystal dome. Then I seem to be a very insect; and yet my
soul expands to the size of the world. The high simplicity of Nature
which surrounds me, elevates and oppresses me at the same time, more
so than any other scene, however sublime. There never was any
cathedral dome vast enough for me."
She stopped short, as if suddenly realizing she had stumbled upon
dangerous ground.
And at that moment the Countess picked up the ladies with her eyes and
they rose, to leave the men over their cigars. So Paul was left, to be
drawn, willy-nilly, into a discussion of an international alliance,
which did not interest him in the least.
Later when the men joined the ladies in the _salon_, Paul sought his
sprite, but she was careful, or so it seemed, not to be left alone
with him. And it was not until he said good-night that he could
express to her the wish to see her again.
"You are such an uncertain lady," he said to her, smiling, "so
restless within the confines of a town-house, that I hope you will let
me call to-morrow--before you suddenly go dashing off to climb some
peak, or to visit some foreign coast."
"Come for tea, to-morrow, if you wish." She looked up at him
quickly--searchingly, Paul thought--and his blood raced madly through
his veins.
Adieus were said, and Paul found himself again in his taximeter cab.
In a state of mind quite different from that which had obsessed him on
his way to the dinner, he arrived once more at the _hôtel_.
"Ah! these mad English!" Paul's chauffeur said to himself as he
pocketed an extravagant _pourboire_. "We see too few of them! Milord
Rosbif must have been having some famous old wine over in the
_Faubourg St. Germain_, is it not so?" he asked himself.
But it was the more exalted intoxication of the soul that sent Paul up
the steps with the elastic stride of youth.
* * * * *
Who was she? Paul did not know, even now. Mademoiselle Vseslavitch had
said nothing of her family or her home. Beyond the fact that she was
Russian, and a friend of the Dalmatian Ambassador's wife--herself a
Slav--Paul was still ignorant. Indeed, for all he knew, she might be
some poor relation--lack of fortune was the only possible reason he
could ascribe for her being unmarried. Beautiful and attractive women,
of good family--if they were rich--did not wander over the Continent
long without husbands. Well--that mattered nothing. Thank heaven, he
was not bound by any necessity of fortune.
Before he switched off his light that night Paul took from one of his
boxes a small flat object of red morocco inlaid with gold. He lifted a
tiny lid and there, through wide-set and strangely fascinating eyes a
lady looked at him. It was the most amazing miniature Paul had ever
seen. And the face depicted there with some unknown master's
consummate skill--how often had it proved for him the only consolation
he could find in the whole world.
His eyes dimmed as they conveyed to him the image of his still beloved
_Imperatorskoye_--he pressed the bauble to his lips. Ah! God! the cold
glass! How different from her melting kiss!
Not easily did he control his emotions. Of late years he seldom opened
the portrait because of the almost overwhelming rush of memories it
always brought to him.
"There is a strange resemblance," he mused, after he had carried the
miniature where the light shone full upon it. Was it the strong
predominance of the Russian type which stamped alike the features of
his dead Queen and the living lady he had seen that evening? Paul
could not tell. He closed the case reluctantly. Never had he expected
to see another comparable to his long lost love. Well, he was
drifting, perhaps. Who knew?
And yet he felt again, as his hand rested upon the precious casket,
that _she_ in her wisdom must be cognizant of it all. Indeed, Paul had
gone through the years of his manhood with a feeling that her presence
was always near to him. The conviction that had come to him as he had
stood in the Cathedral at Langres was too strong to be shaken off.
Whatever happened--and Paul meant to win the woman he had that night
left in the _Faubourg St. Germain_--he felt sure his Queen had willed
it.
Such is the inexplicable influence that the dead sometimes exert. I
will not try to tell you more of that now. It would take too long. And
I should first have to tell you about many sad things that happened a
score of years ago, if you do not know them already. And then I might
become melancholy. It is my pleasure instead to tell another story
altogether, which is joyful and appropriate. And it is this very story
which I mean to tell in this book.