ENTER THE CENTIPEDE.
One morning in the July of the next year Sophia and Petros were sitting
at their half-past-twelve breakfast in the broad north veranda of the
palace at Amandos. A big Persian rug was spread under the table, but
otherwise the black-and-white marble floor was uncarpeted for coolness.
To the west the awnings were down, but the whole long of the gallery
towards the north was open to the breeze which pleasantly tempered the
extreme warmth of the day. Over the town hung a blue haze of trembling
heat, but the air was dry and invigorating, and though the thermometer
registered a hundred degrees, not oppressive.
Coffee had just been served, and as the servants withdrew Sophia lit a
cigarette.
‘About August, Petros,’ she said. ‘I want very much to go away the first
week at latest, and I really see no reason why I should not.’
‘The House will not rise till September,’ said he.
‘Oh, the House, the House!’ cried she. ‘What does it matter what the
House does? Let it fall down if it chooses! I have signed my name so
often during the last month that if I go on I shall get writer’s cramp.
What is writer’s cramp, by the way? And what do all my signatures amount
to? Somebody has a concession for vine-growing, somebody is put in
prison for a year, a firm is given leave to supply smokeless powder
instead of Eley’s. I am sick of it all! I should like to turn Rhodopé
into a limited company, and have it run by Durand, or Spiers and Pond,
and pay one of their barmaids so much a year to impersonate me. I want
to go away for a month or two as soon as possible, and what is more,
Petros, I am going.’
‘If you have settled that, why argue about the matter,’ said he, ‘or
trouble to consult me?’
‘Well, I wanted to know your opinion as to whether it is really
advisable for me to stop. At the same time, if I had thought you would
really disagree with me, I should not have asked you. But the thing is
done now. What do you think about it?’
Petros was silent a moment. He had a plan in his head, and he wished to
play his cards to advantage.
‘Well, here is my opinion,’ he said at length, ‘You have asked for it,
and you shall have it, though, as a rule, you don’t like being advised,
and I don’t care about advising. You are reigning Princess of this
country, and that delightful position----’
Sophia laughed.
‘I would sooner be a milkmaid,’ she said, ‘but such a thing is not
possible.’
‘And that delightful position,’ continued Petros, with the irritating
manner of a man unaware of an interruption, ‘has certain
responsibilities attached to it. You cannot get rid of them except by
sheer gross neglect of your duties, but to tell you the truth, they are
not very onerous. One of them is that you should preserve the form, at
any rate, of attending to the business of the House. I do not think you
need really fear writer’s cramp from signing their resolutions, whatever
writer’s cramp may be; I suppose it is the result of writing. But you
must perform your simple duties----’
‘I have seen that in copper-plate hand in the copy-books I used to do
when I was a child,’ remarked Sophia.
‘That is where I got it from. It seems to me very true, though a little
stale. I do not interfere with you, as you very well know, and I am, of
course, powerless to prevent you going away when you wish. But I think
you will make a very great mistake if you go away now.’
‘_Tant pis_,’ said she. ‘Let us start on the last day of this month. And
oh, Petros, there is a little place on the Riviera----’
Petros rose and walked about in seeming agitation for a moment or two.
He was managing his cards beautifully. Then he turned sharply to her.
‘Go, then, Sophia,’ he said; ‘but I shall not come with you.’
Sophia stared.
‘Why not?’ she asked. ‘I promise never to refer to your system. And the
sea is usually calm at this time of year.’
‘That is not the reason.’
‘What is it, then?’ she asked.
‘Because the mischief which your absence during a sitting of the House
will entail will be sensibly lessened--I do not wish to overrate my
position--if I remain here, and have the air of attending very
sedulously to the affairs of the State. There are certain businesses of
the kind which you have allowed me to transact for you before--the less
important Bills, in fact; with your permission, I will attend to them
again. We want a fresh strain of blood in the trooper’s horses, for
instance; at any rate, I can go carefully into the expenses and business
incidental to that. I know a little about horse-breeding; I may even be
useful on that question. The Bill will come before the House in the
second week in August. I can, at least, serve on a committee. Later,
when the House rises, I will join you. How does my plan strike you?’
Sophia was touched.
‘It is good of you to suggest that, Petros,’ she said. ‘It would be
absurd for me to refuse your offer. You will not be very dull here? No?
And it won’t look odd, will it, if I go and you stop here? I have a
horror of doing things that look odd.’
‘Not so odd, at any rate, as if we both went away,’ said Petros.
‘And much less odd than if I stopped here all August,’ remarked Sophia
in self-defence. ‘It would be an imbecility.’
Sophia got up from the table, and went indoors to the nursery to see the
adorable Leonard, the four-months-old baby. Petros’s arrangement seemed
to her to be in every way admirable. Apart from the convenience of
getting away when she wanted, it gave her the opportunity of getting
away alone. She was fond of her husband, but constantly irritated by
him. She had no idea of letting herself be schooled by him into
dependence, to be taught the duty of royalty by him, and she never
forgot that she was Princess of Rhodopé, and he her husband. More than
once had he attempted to point out to her his idea of what a wife’s
attitude should be to her husband, and what a monarch’s attitude towards
the people, and her retort had been not far to seek. She was autocrat of
Rhodopé, and she was not going to be taught by anybody.
Petros, she found, was not only master of the subtleties of bezique, he
knew also the most refined secrets of irritating conversation. With all
his varied gifts, he had the misfortune to be a pedant, a schoolmaster
in private life, and, what is worse, to be quite unconscious of his
pedantry. Sophia resented with every fibre in her nature his attempts to
instruct her, to develop her mind, and, indeed, the chief result of his
schooling had been to develop her impatience of him. Living with him was
like living in a stuffy room with only high-backed chairs. He was for
ever wanting her to sit up straight, and listen to improving
conversation, whereas she wanted to lounge imperially by an open window.
Something of the blood of generations of irresponsible rulers ran in her
veins; the unbridled license of Eastern tyrants had mingled with the
refinement of the student line of Florence to compound a subtle
temperament. He had once alluded to some wise act of the Czar, wishing
her to draw a lesson from it, but in a moment her nose was in the air.
‘The Romanoffs were feeding pigs when we were kings,’ she had said.
Her education, so to speak, had been the work of generations of
ancestors, accomplished prenatally, and she owed more to them than to
her tutors. It was Tamburlaine who had smoked a cigarette on the
horse-block, and Lorenzo, more than her masters, who had given her that
quick artistic perception that made the great singers of Europe love to
sing to her accompaniment. The blood of the great Catherine was hers,
too, and hers by inheritance the intolerance of rulers. ‘_C’est mon
plaisir_’ was reason enough with her. Indeed, she needed a clever
husband and a loyal people. The former she had got in a way, but his
cleverness was more akin to cunning than to wisdom or broadness of
vision. To trace the process of thought was to him as valuable as the
conception itself, and it pleased him more to make an infinitesimal
deduction correctly than to blunder splendidly. She was headstrong, and
would never be small; he was a master of finesse, but could never be
big. She was royal to her finger-tips, he was only the cadet of a family
that happened to be reigning. Her second need--a large loyalty from her
people--was more completely hers than he guessed. What she did was
right, and how firmly the people of Rhodopé held that creed he was to
learn. The spirit preached from Potsdam had possession of their hearts.
Petros sat still on the veranda after she had left him, and smoked
contentedly. If Sophia found him irritating, he at any rate bore the
knowledge with equanimity. He had not looked for domestic bliss in his
marriage; for he did not aim at domesticity, and he did not believe in
bliss. But every day found him more thankful that he had married her,
for he believed in ambition, especially when it was his own. Rhodopé
seemed to him more enviable than ever, and he fully intended to make a
bid for it. Rhodopé, he said to himself with sublime self-sufficiency as
he was shaving, wanted a master; and he looked at his image in the
glass. The very fact that Sophia had chosen to marry him amounted to a
guarantee of his excellent qualities in the minds of her subjects; and
he was quick enough to see how popular he was, and complacently shallow
enough not to guess at the grand reason for his popularity. He was
eminently possessed of the power to please, and when he found himself
pleasing he not unnaturally referred it to his own power.
A further cause for gratification this morning lay in the fact that
Sophia had been so willing to leave to deal with the affairs of the
kingdom alone. She had closed with his offer as soon as it had been
made, and, as this was the first real step that he had taken since his
marriage in the prosecution of his aims, he was pleased that it should
have gone forward without a stumble. He intended to use her absence to
take several more steps in the same direction.
The Assembly of Rhodopé is peculiarly constituted. In all it numbers
sixty members, of whom two-thirds enjoy hereditary seats, and one-third
are elected by vote every three years. But there was in those days no
sharp division into parties; no socialism as yet masqueraded in the
streets under the very penetrable disguise of philanthropy; and those
who had only small estates of their own had not yet begun to initiate
Bills whereby larger holders should be deprived of their lands. On the
other hand, even the hereditary voters were not all of blindly
Conservative disposition, and the general tendency of politics was to be
mildly progressive. The Prime Minister, elected by the House, was the
President, and represented the monarch in his absence; but when the
hereditary Prince or Princess was present, he took his seat in the body
of the House. The Crown, however, possessed the power of deposing the
Prime Minister and appointing a one at discretion. This prerogative had
not since the great political crisis of 1793, and generally considered
obsolete. But it had never been repealed, and nothing stood in the way
of its being exercised should the Sovereign decide to do so.
Princess Sophia left on the first of August in the royal yacht
_Felatrune_. Her departure had been made somewhat hurriedly, and she had
given but scanty attention to the discussion of the management of the
affairs of State in her absence. Prince Petros, however, insisted that
he should be given some clear notion of how far he was to be considered
Regent, and how far he was to telegraph for her instructions. He had
made a copy on a sheet of foolscap of the Bills which would come before
the House before it broke up in September, and she ran her eye quickly
over them.
‘Tobacco, potatoes--potatoes, tobacco,’ she said; ‘there is nothing
there that I cannot leave completely to you. I will write a short
address to the House, if I have time, in which I nominate you as my
Regent, and Malakopf will read it out to them. Here, I will do it now;
give me a bit of paper.’
Sophia scribbled some half-dozen lines, signed them, and addressed the
envelope to the Prime Minister, Malakopf.
‘I understand that I am to take your place in every way,’ said Petros,
to whom she had not shown the note.
‘Yes, I have said that,’ said Sophia. ‘Don’t introduce a Bill for
deposing me, you know; and if there is any unexpected crisis, let me
know by telegraph. Of course there won’t be, for crises never happen in
Rhodopé, and the unexpected never happens anywhere. I have complete
confidence in you, Petros. And don’t be terribly conscientious; if
possible, let me not hear a word of these three-halfpenny concerns till
you join me. I want an entire holiday.’
‘A holiday will do you good, dear Sophia,’ said he; ‘I am afraid the
heat has tired you. In turn, let me ask you not to make the State
bankrupt at Monte Carlo.’
‘It wants a man with a system to do that,’ laughed Sophia.
Petros and Leonard, an amazingly sunny infant, went down to Mavromáti to
see the Princess off, and returned together to Amandos about six
o’clock. Petros did not care for children, and the unconscious Leonard
merely roused in him a sense of futile envy at the thought that the boy
would some day be Prince of Rhodopé, not merely the husband of its
Princess. The Assembly met at three o’clock next day, and he spent a
solitary but arduous evening going over very carefully a scheme he had
in his mind. He was naturally a cautious man--a man with a system, as
Sophia had said, but occasionally he would embark in a risky concern.
His investments of all kinds, whether of money or brains, were either
very safe or paid an enormous percentage.
The Prime Minister at this time was a man named Malakopf, originally no
doubt of Russian birth, whose family had been settled in Rhodopé for
many generations. Russian he might or might not be; Jew he certainly
was, and he had all the financial sagacity of that remarkable race. His
probity, however, stood in great need of demonstration; and he was known
to have been mixed up in a very lucrative but more than questionable
transaction, some ten years before, on the Vienna Bourse. There had been
a most unpleasant scene on this occasion between him and Prince
Demetrius, who spoke his mind with singular frankness, and Malakopf’s
affection for the reigning House of Rhodopé was supposed to be of the
most tepid temperature.
Sophia detested the man; with her habitual force of expression, she had
said that to be in the room with him was like having tea with a
centipede: one never knew where it would be next, and the prevalent
impression was that it was crawling up one’s back. But Petros from the
first had made much of him; he had often told his wife that so acute a
financier was a goose who laid golden eggs for the State. It would be of
the nature of suicide to strangle anything so intimately connected with
the well-being of the principality. He might be like a centipede,
socially speaking, if she would have it so; politically he was
invaluable. Besides, he was a man with power; he could be a dangerous
enemy, and it was always well to make friends with people who might be
dangerous enemies.
Sophia’s nose had gone in the air at this.
‘My family is not accustomed to make friends with centipedes,’ she had
said. ‘But, of course, you can do as you please, Petros.’
To-day Prince Petros sought him in his private room off one of the
lobbies of the House. He was a bent, withered little man, but nimble in
movement, and there was a shifty brightness in his eye. He got up at the
Prince’s entry, and bowed low to him.
‘An unexpected pleasure, your Highness,’ he said. ‘Indeed, I was told
that Princess Sophia left Mavromáti yesterday, and I had supposed you
had not yet returned. I am shamefully ill-posted in the news of our
Court, but I have some transactions of great moment on hand, which must
be my excuse.’
Now Malakopf knew that Petros had returned to Rhodopé, and Petros knew
that he knew it. Thus comment was needless.
‘My wife left yesterday,’ said he, ‘but, as you see, I am already back
again. The Princess was in need of a holiday. State affairs’--he spoke
with slow emphasis, and looked Malakopf full in the face--‘State affairs
have tired her terribly this summer. She has been head over ears in
work.’
No shadow of a smile came over the Prime Minister’s face.
‘Indeed, it must be so,’ he answered. ‘Never a moment’s relaxation or
amusement! An iron will!’
But Prince Petros was satisfied; he was sure Malakopf had completely
understood him.
‘I came to talk to you on an important matter,’ said the Prince, taking
a seat. ‘Naturally, my wife and I could not both be absent during the
sitting of the House, and she gave me to understand that she was
sending you a document, which she wished to be communicated to the
Assembly, conferring on me--so I took her meaning to be--powers which
amount--which really amount--to a Regency during her absence.’
Malakopf, though he was not naturally slow, appeared to take some
moments before he grasped what the Prince had said. He fixed his eye on
the window so long, without stirring a muscle, that the Prince spoke
again.
‘No doubt you have seen the document,’ he said, with a little
nervousness. ‘From the few words the Princess let fall to me on the
subject, I gathered--wrongly perhaps--that such was the purport of it.’
At last the Prime Minister turned briskly in his chair.
‘That, I think, we may consider to be the purport of it,’ he said. ‘And
I don’t suppose that the Princess Sophia has ever taken a more prudent
and far-sighted determination. Indeed, it might be even more far-sighted
than she supposes.’
The Prince knew that he was, so to speak, skating on ice which might
prove to be thin. Malakopf knew it equally well, and he applauded
inwardly and derisively the other’s caution.
‘You flatter me,’ said the Prince; and Malakopf silently but sincerely
agreed with him. But he let no palpable pause precede his answer.
‘Flattery,’ he said, ‘is the unwilling tribute of a wise man to his
inferior, or a fool to his superior. Dear Prince, how can I flatter you?
For you are our beloved Princess’s husband, and indeed I have
glimmerings of sense. But let us approach the point with more
particularity. We must consider--must we not?--what will be your proper
place in the Assembly. You represent the Princess Sophia, and as her
representative you take the chair whenever you are present. But here the
legal point comes in: you have no seat--an anomaly as I have always
felt--in the Assembly at all. How would it be, then, if you absented
yourself to-day, and that I, after reading the Princess’s message,
proposed a resolution that during her absence you should be, _ex
officio_, a Member of the House? Then you would have a seat there, and
your position after that, as her representative, would make you
President.’ He paused a moment, and with a look amazingly frank, ‘We
understand each other, do we not?’ he almost whispered, and he
approached as near to a chuckle as his prudence allowed.
‘You are admirably lucid,’ said Petros, returning his gaze.
‘And you, too,’ thought Malakopf; but he did not say so, and ceased
chuckling.
‘Let us, then, act thus,’ he continued: ‘this afternoon I will take the
vote of the House on the matter. It is almost unnecessary for me to send
you the report, for there can be only one conclusion. However, by six
o’clock I will let you know what has happened, for the matter of form
merely--an official communication, my dear Prince, an official
communication. Things must be done in order.’
Prince Petros rose.
‘Pray let me ask you,’ he said, ‘to throw over your other engagements
to-night, and dine with me alone. You shall tell me then how the House
received the proposal.’
‘I am infinitely honoured,’ said Malakopf, bowing again; and the Prince
took his departure.
Left alone, Malakopf lit a cigarette, but instead of attending to
business, seemed lost in evil meditation. At length he drew some papers
towards him, and gave one ghost of a laugh.
‘There is a depth of shallowness,’ he said, to himself, ‘about that man,
which to my frail mind is unplumbable.’
Malakopf dined with the Prince that evening, and before they went in to
dinner made the most favourable report on the way that his proposition
had been received in the House.
‘I first read out the Princess Sophia’s communication,’ he said. ‘It was
known that Her Royal Highness had left for Monte----had left for a few
visits to her relations, and the House requested me to record to you
their sympathy with the Princess’s reason for taking a holiday, and
hoped that a few weeks’ relaxation would recuperate her.’
‘I will convey the sympathy of the House to her,’ murmured Prince
Petros.
Malakopf bowed.
‘I next brought forward the proposal that you should be entitled to a
seat in the House in the Princess’s absence. It was carried, of course,
unanimously--I may say with acclamation. Indeed, I have never,’ said
he, drawing his hand over his chin--‘I have never seen so great an
enthusiasm in our House.’
‘I will do my best to merit the honour you have conferred on me,’ said
the Prince, checking his exultation.
The two dined alone, but with great state and magnificence. Both men
wore their orders; on the sideboard was displayed the gold plate
belonging to the Sovereign, and during dinner the royal band played a
selection of ravishing airs from the gallery. The Prime Minister, Petros
knew, liked magnificence, but what he did not know was that on this
occasion he saw through it. Malakopf was something of a _gourmand_ and
much of a _gourmet_. He ate somewhat largely and very intelligently. The
turtle soup was excellent, the _chaudfroid_ of quails a marvel of art
(he would have liked to congratulate the chef), and he nearly wept with
joy over the haunch of roe-deer braised _à la Savarin_. Finally the
bottle of Château Vryssi (1832) which he drank with his dessert was
almost an awe to him. He was near to feeling a sense of unworthiness,
but so far overcame it as to be able to drink a second bottle.
Petros knew well the Prime Minister’s weakness for fine food, and
thought that if a good dinner would not earn the man’s gratitude, and so
indirectly his help, nothing would. In this he was right. Had it been
possible for Malakopf to feel himself under an obligation to anybody, he
would have been disposed to fall in with the wishes of a man who had
fed him well. But the ore of his nature, if milled, would have been
found to contain not the smallest assay of gratitude. Not only had
Nature not compounded him with a grain of it, but in the mixing she had
used a clean spoon, one which had never had gratitude measured in it; he
was wholly incapable of such a feeling. All he knew was that he would
certainly dine with the Prince as often as he was invited--even
indicate, ever so lightly, that he was ready to come again.
Dinner over, the two sat in the south veranda, where they drank coffee
and smoked. Malakopf, habitually cautious, was perhaps moved to an
unwonted boldness by that noble grape of which he had drunk so freely;
but after he had unloosed his tongue to speak the first words on the
subject which was in the minds of both of them, he knew he had done
right, and that the Prince would be a tool in his hands.
‘It is a thousand pities,’ he said, ‘that the Princess is so delicate.
With all my loyalty, all my unwavering devotion to our royal line, of
which I need not remind you, I have sometimes nearly caught myself
wishing that Prince Demetrius had had a son, a man of iron like himself,
who was equal to the strain and stress of State affairs. The
Princess--God bless her!--has often reminded me of that fable of the
sword which was worn out by use--she will not abide in the scabbard.
Indeed, how you persuaded her to take this little holiday, my dear
Prince Petros, I cannot conceive--a miracle of successful diplomacy.’
‘We must encourage her to be put in the scabbard sometimes,’ said the
Prince; ‘and, indeed, she felt herself tired out; it required but little
persuasion on my part to make her go. Her weakness, not my strength, was
the giver of my little victory.’
Malakopf shook his head.
‘You underrate your powers, Prince Petros,’ he said. ‘It was always the
same with the Princess; she is all zeal for whatever she has in hand. I
have even seen her once or twice here in the palace playing some trivial
game at the cards with the ardour--all the ardour, so I thought--with
which she follows our debates. And with what act! You would have thought
she really cared for the romances of the little pasteboard pieces in
which her guests of less sterling fibre found their amusement. She plays
still, I believe?’
Prince Petros had not the patience to continue this elaborate farce.
Malakopf had fully intended that the first step of importance should be
taken by the other, and the wraith of a smile hovered round his mouth as
Petros spoke again.
‘She plays still, as you say,’ he replied; ‘and, as you know, she has
gone to Monte Carlo, and her royal relations are the tables. The affairs
of the State, as you also know, are nothing to her. I fully believe,
though, that if she had stopped here she would have suffered in health
through pure boredom. But that which is so insignificant to her is very
dear to me. I want to see Rhodopé a great power, and no buffer State. I
want----’
He stopped abruptly, got out of his seat, and began walking up and down.
‘Your Highness wants----?’ suggested Malakopf, insinuatingly, and as
softly as a thought.
‘I want Rhodopé to be a nation,’ broke out the Prince. ‘Look at our
material!’ (‘Already he says “our,”’ thought Malakopf.) ‘Did you ever
see finer men than these troops? Look at our coast, and show me the
fleet that could effect a landing. Have you seen Gibraltar? You have
seen Búlteck, and that is two Gibraltars! Look at our boundaries! Whose
is the army that could invade Rhodopé? England herself is not more
definitely marked out by Nature to be a great power than we. We are of
one race with the Albanian, the flower of the Greek as well as the
Turkish troops--completely careless of death, and with no thought but
their country. Once set me in a great position here, and you shall see
what I will make of Rhodopé’. If I were the humblest Member of the
Chamber I could act, but now I am bound with chains of lead. My hands
are tied; I can do nothing; and my wife spends her money and her time
and her thoughts at Monte Carlo. I am no more than the lacquey who
stands in her ante-chamber--less even, for he is useful in his way; I
alone am a cipher. Oh, Malakopf, it is pitiable, man--it is pitiable!’
The Prince stood before him, his hands opened out by his side, his
handsome mobile face suffused with excitement. Malakopf put one leg
over the other, and suppressed a sigh of content. He had not dared to
hope for speaking so plain as this. There was no need for any more
diplomatic dancing.
‘Yet you have obtained one step to-day,’ he said; ‘you have a seat in
the House. That may well be considered--how do you say it?--the thin end
of the wedge.’
‘Yes, and when my wife returns out comes the wedge,’ replied the Prince.
‘And out come I. Oh, Lord!’
‘Not necessarily,’ said the Prime Minister.
The Prince sat down.
‘Explain yourself; I do not understand,’ he said. Malakopf flicked the
ash off his cigar. He was so completely master of the situation, that he
did not intend to be hurried.
‘It is true that your seat is only temporary at present,’ he said; ‘but
one way and another, dear Prince Petros, I have managed to become a
somewhat influential person in the State----’
‘So I always tell my wife,’ said the Prince with extraordinary unwisdom,
thinking to please the centipede.
‘I am infinitely grateful for your good word,’ replied the other. ‘But I
did not mean that I had any influence in the eyes of the Princess--and,
to speak to you with a frankness that will nearly equal your own, I do
not care to have. But with my considerable wealth, and the extent of my
estate, not to mention a certain personal influence I have with a large
party in the Assembly--an influence which it would be false modesty in
me to underrate, I could, I think, manage to secure you a permanent
seat.’
‘Take another cigar,’ said the Prince. ‘Will you do this for me?’
Malakopf smiled. The juxtaposition of the offer of a cigar and this
request suggested, fantastically enough, a bribe.
‘I do not say it would be easy to manage,’ he replied. ‘It might be a
troublesome affair, and, to speak plainly’--here he laid his hand on the
Prince’s knee, and looked him suddenly in the face--‘what am I to get by
it?’
‘Yet you said this afternoon that my not having a seat in the Senate was
an anomaly.’
‘I endorse what I said. But is it expedient for me personally to attempt
to do away with that anomaly?’
‘I will make it worth your while,’ said the Prince in a low voice.
‘That is enough, my dear Prince,’ he said.
‘Here is a light for you,’ said Prince Petros; and his hand shook as he
held the match in the windless air.