THE PRINCESS’S CLUB.
Princess Sophia, on her return to Amandos, found the affairs of State
more irksome, if possible, than ever. The innumerable petty businesses
to which she had to give her attention seemed more than usually futile
to her, and there was no table handy where, after a day of unutterably
wearisome routine, she could forget the Mayor and the wife of the Mayor,
and the potatoes and tobacco, in the enchanting uncertainties of
roulette. Prince Petros, at her request, relieved her during the day of
a large part of her duties; but in the evening, when she would have been
glad to get a game of bezique even with him--for his card-playing had
strangely gone off of late--there was often some committee at which, so
he assured her, the presence of one of them necessary.
It had more than once seemed to her that this recurrence of committees
waxing more frequent than under her father, and she noted the
circumstance as a curious one. There seemed, now that the House had
risen, an interminable deal of business to be transacted, and it was
more often than not that Malakopf was closeted with the Prince for an
hour or two after dinner. Again and again it happened that she and her
husband would have just sat down to a game, when it was announced that
the Prime Minister was below, and wished to consult the Princess on a
matter of urgent importance. On such occasions she always asked Petros
to represent her, since she really could not face Malakopf, and he
obeyed with cheerful alacrity.
It was during one of these interviews--a tiresome after-dinner
interruption--when the Princess was left yawning to herself in the
drawing-room, that an idea occurred to her, so simple in itself, and so
easy of execution, that she was lost in astonishment at her own
stupidity that she had not thought of it before. What could be more
obvious than that the remedy for these terrible days and interrupted
evenings was in the establishment of a casino at Amandos, where she
could play not this tiresome bezique, but the real unapproachable
roulette? And she rose from her chair, and fairly danced round the room
at the thought. She would send for Pierre--the inimitable Pierre--the
most discreet and attentive of croupiers. He should manage the tables
for her, and receive a magnificent salary. Oh, heavens! what a relief it
would be to slip out of the House for a recuperative hour in the
casino--to forget for a little the unrivalled tedium of State affairs!
The casino should be built on Crown land, close to the Palace garden,
and there should be a quiet entrance through a private gate into the
place, to save going round the garden walls. There should be a little
red room, like that in which she had played so often at Monte Carlo, and
which of late the obsequious manager had reserved for her when there was
a party with her, where Pierre, urbane and infallible, should set the
little ball spinning, with his thrilling plain-song chant, ‘_Faites vos
jeux, messieurs et mesdames--faites vos jeux!_’
The entrance of Petros interrupted her rosy visions, and before he was
well inside the room:
‘Oh, Petros, I have such an idea!’ she cried. ‘I shall start a nice
little casino here at Amandos, and while you, you dear industrious old
thing, are having your endless interviews with centipede Malakopf, I
shall run across and just take ten minutes at roulette--a breath of
fresh air. It shall be built on that piece of land, just outside the
garden, where you wanted to have an asylum for decayed and idiotic old
gentlemen, and Pierre shall be the manager.’
Now, though Malakopf often groaned under the slowness of the Prince,
Petros was not altogether without wits. Perhaps his late interview with
Malakopf had sharpened them--indeed, he seemed to Sophia to have
acquired a certain quickness lately, though not at cards; but, at any
rate, he saw at once that Sophia was coming to meet their schemes
half-way, as Malakopf had wished she should. A reigning Princess,
winning and losing money from her loyal subjects, could not be
construed into an edifying spectacle, and he made no doubt that the
people of Rhodopé would agree with him. She could not, so he thought,
have hit on a more simple and direct method of dividing the folk into
two parties--one for her (a small one, he hoped), and one (consequently
a large one) against her. Truly she was sowing the seed of a revolution
broadcast, and it would grow up armed men against herself. His face was
a miracle of delighted sympathy.
‘Oh, Sophia,’ he cried, ‘how great an idiot you must think me for never
having suggested that! Oh, if I had only had the idea, the casino should
have been ready when you returned! It should have been built in a day,
like a fairy-palace, to pleasure you. And Pierre, Pierre is just the
man--sober and steady, and full of the divine fire. I remember his
laying his hand on his heart one night after one of those evenings,
those dear evenings, we spent together at Monte Carlo, and saying: “I
adore the Princess! None plays so finely as she!”’
Sophia was charmed with his readiness to take her idea up.
‘At last, and at last!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Petros, my soul is sick for
roulette!’
‘Poor dear Sophia,’ said he, ‘and I am afraid you find me grown very
dull. But it is true you have every reason to find me dull; I am so
taken up with these public affairs, that the work has become a passion
to me. In my little way, I have tried to fulfil these duties; at first,
I allow, with distaste, but the performance of them has brought its own
reward.’
‘Ah, copy-books--copy-books!’ cried Sophia, laying her hands laughingly
on his shoulder.
‘Copy-books--even so, Sophia,’ he said. ‘The proper study of mankind is
man, and it is better to be useful than to be clever. I am full of such
thoughts. And it is dull for you. Would that I could do more, however.’
‘You are a dear, good man, Petros,’ she said, ‘and I am delighted with
you.’
‘I have done my best,’ he said, with a quiet dignity and an extreme
sincerity of manner.
He glanced for a moment at a bundle of papers he held in his hand.
‘No, no,’ cried Sophia; ‘you shall not attend to any more business
to-night. What are those papers? Throw them into the grate, and talk to
me about the casino.’
The man had his part at the finger-tips.
‘The latter with pleasure, the former I must refuse to do,’ he said.
‘How would you greet me, Sophia, if I came to you next week and said
your Civil List had not been paid, or that a deputation insisted on
waiting on you? What is the time? Just eleven. Well, we will sit and
talk, and soon I must go back to work. No, no,’ he cried, as she would
laughingly have taken the papers from him; ‘it is for dull old people
like me to do this sort of work. You shall not see any of them,
Sophia;’ and with a quick motion he folded them up and put them in his
pocket.
But he had had a rather awkward moment. It was quite true that they were
not for Sophia to see, since among them was a note from Malakopf
containing urgent advice to him not to be in too great a hurry, and
quoting Napoleon to that effect.
So--for there was no law in Rhodopé against gambling, and not likely to
be while Sophia lived--the Princess’s casino rose apace. The marble
quarries belonging to the Crown grew loud with the chisel, and
unceasingly poured forth their translucent treasures to pleasure the
Princess; for the hangings of her rooms the silk-worms toiled and span,
and for their colouring the purple shells of Tyre worked their miracles;
for her the looms of the Orient clashed and wove, and the red roses on
Arab stuffs grew thicker than the stars at night.
By spring the walls had risen to their full stately height, and
Duvelleroys, of Paris, who had contracted for the finishing and
decorations of the establishment, were already sending out their artists
and argosies. A flight of broad marble steps, balustraded in a grotesque
flamboyant style, led up to the great terrace running along the west
front, which overlooked the town of Amandos, and commanded a magnificent
sea-view. In summer this would be an out-of-door dining-room, where the
player would cool his fevered brain by the contemplation of the infinite
sea, and the sight of the sun setting in amber clouds behind the
northern cape of Corfu. Double doors gave entrance to a marble flagged
hall, from which opened the various cardrooms; on the left was the
largest public-room, for roulette only, and a cabinet off this, with
scarlet satin walls, was called the Princess’s room. Straight in front
of the entrance were the rooms for baccarat, and on the right was what
Sophia called the nursery, a room devoted to the innocent, if somewhat
lugubrious, pursuit of ‘little horses’ and the ‘train’; but, as she
said, a finished gambler was made, not born, and the young needed
education. A smoking-room, containing a bar and a white marble statue of
Luck, from the chisel of Augier, blindfold and smiling on one side of
the mouth, completed the square.
On the first floor were the dining-room and the various drawing-rooms,
where the less orthodox games of whist, picquet, and bezique might be
played; while the downstairs rooms of the club--so Sophia named it--were
devoted to the truer forms of play. Thus, as she acutely observed,
extremes could be seen meeting, for in her club, as in all other clubs,
whist was only allowed in certain rooms.
Upstairs, again, over the dining and drawing-rooms, were some twenty
bedrooms, so that the most thorough devotees--those, in fact, who were
purged of all other desires--need not leave the club night or day, and
the goddess of their worship might directly watch, if so she felt
disposed, over their slumbers, and send them dreams full of the true
religion.
Malakopf saw the building go up with mixed feelings. At first he had
been quite of the same mind as Prince Petros, agreeing that the Princess
was playing most directly into their hands and forwarding their schemes.
But the reception of the prospectus by the people, and the avidity with
which the shares in the undertaking were snatched up--for the Princess
had floated a company--was somewhat puzzling to him. Hitherto gambling
had been almost unknown in Rhodopé, always excepting in the precincts of
the palace, but the idea of gaining rouleaux of gold by merely sitting
in an admirably comfortable arm-chair in a beautiful room seemed to have
taken strong hold on the public imagination. The shares were divided
into £60,000 of ordinary shares, and £40,000 of debenture stock, which
were to pay 5 per cent. The Princess had herself invested £10,000 in the
ordinary shares, and Prince Petros, with characteristic caution, £5,000
in debenture stock; but within three hours of the subscription being
opened, every share was taken up. The stock was issued at par, but
before the week was out it was already quoted at 115, and before the
building was complete it reached 120, and Prince Petros was strongly
inclined to sell out, though the fear of his wife’s scorn prevented him.
Here, too, Malakopf had acted with Semitic prudence. Supposing by any
chance the Princess should, in some unforeseen way, frustrate the
scheme of himself and Petros, and she and her gambling continue to
throne it over Rhodopé, it would be well to have a foot in her camp, and
while investing only £1,000 under his own name, he telegraphed from
Vienna in the name of a large banking firm there to secure £10,000 of
ordinary shares, or as many as might be allotted.
But these three were the only large investors, and for the most part the
money was made up by small speculators, on the strength, so it seemed,
of the Princess’s name. Ten fishermen from Mavromáti, for instance, who,
so to speak, did not know red from black, clubbed together and purchased
a £100 ordinary share; a wild-eyed shepherd-boy came in from the remote
hills, and asked for twenty francs worth of the new club; and the head
of the Education Department put a question in the Assembly as to whether
it was permissible to invest the surplus of the Government grant in the
Princess’s company.
Now, Malakopf, astute politician as he was, and unrivalled astronomer of
the financial heaven, could not with certainty interpret these signs of
the times. The readiness with which the subscription was taken up seemed
to augur either a greater popularity of the Princess than he had
bargained for, or a love of gambling in her subjects hitherto void of
fruition. If either of these interpretations was correct--and he did not
see a loophole for a third--it argued not well for the success of the
anti-dynastic conspiracy. He had hoped that there would be some
outburst of popular feeling against the scheme, or an unfriendly
reference to it in the Assembly. It is true there had been some great
outburst of popular feeling, but that had been in favour of it; and as
for the unfriendly reference in the Assembly, that was still unspoken.
For himself, he dared not allude to it in a hostile spirit (Prince
Petros’s tongue was also tied), for he had openly invested £1,000 in the
company, and he would without doubt be called ugly names if, after that,
he showed public disapproval of it. More than that, supposing he
organized a successful opposition to it, he stood fair to lose that much
larger sum which he had covertly put into it. Of his two possible
interpretations for the success of the subscription, he much preferred
to attribute it to the popularity of the Princess, for if a latent love
of gambling was innate in the hearts of the Rhodopians, he had to face
the fact that before long she would be doubly endeared to her subjects,
since, considering her merely as a gambler, she was unique and
magnificent--even Petros, with his system, allowed that--and there were
no two words to the question.
Prince Petros meantime watched the rising walls with a daily accession
of disgust and misgiving. He was a skilful card-player, but he was not a
gambler. His daydream of seeing Sophia go evening after evening to empty
and depopulated rooms, to find Pierre mournfully yawning behind his
hand, and regretting the gay stir and bustle of Monte Carlo, was
replaced by a vision which showed him Sophia crowned and honoured queen
of the gamblers. He was both more sanguine and more easily cast down
than his acuter colleague. He had foreseen a complete and immediate
success when the idea of a club was put to him by his wife, where
Malakopf had only seen a possible factor of success; and similarly now,
while Malakopf was dubious, the Prince was frankly despondent.
‘There is no hope here,’ he said to the Prime Minister one day, ‘where I
had hoped so much. She is more popular than ever, and the gold burns in
the people’s pockets while they wait for the club to be opened. They are
gamblers--born gamblers--I am sure of it, and she is the finest of them
all. You can take my word for it, there is no one in the world with so
fine a style. They will worship her method of play, they will adopt it
universally, so far as their more timorous natures permit, and she will
pile success on success. Half Rhodopé will think of nothing but doubling
their winnings, the other half of repairing their losses. I almost wish
I had never come to this damnable country. Rhodopé will become a
roulette-board, and I of infinitely less moment than the marble which
the croupier sets spinning.’
Malakopf moved impatiently in his chair. He no longer treated the Prince
in private with the least form of ceremony.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, do not be so fretful and childish!’ he said. ‘If I,
who am as cunning as the devil and as wise as the original serpent,
cannot yet make up my mind how this experiment of your wife’s will turn
out, how is it possible for you to see the issues with such clearness?
You do not grasp the situation. This new club is a new factor in our
scheme; it is quite likely that it is a factor against us. On the other
hand, it may indirectly give us an opportunity. We have to wait, so let
us do so like reasonable men. I have no patience with prophets--there is
no such thing as prophecy; the whole world is one calculation. You have
not calculated; you only prophesy. I never prophesy; but I am not
without a mathematical gift.’
‘You are not tied by the ankle to the steps of a throne,’ retorted
Petros. ‘You do not know Sophia as I know her, and, what is more, you
have only a thousand pounds in this precious club.’
Malakopf had not told, and did not intend to tell, Petros about his
further investment, and he replied:
‘You are wholly wrong, my dear Prince. Because you drink tea with
Princess Sophia, and see her in her stays, you think you know her better
than I. Perhaps you know the people better also. I, at any rate, know
that she is capable of almost anything--certainly of any piece of
extravagant folly, but also, I am afraid, of a consummate stroke of
Statecraft. If I were to take to prophesying in your spirit, an uneasy
man would be standing in your shoes. You don’t see a quarter of the
possible risks we may have to run, but you see no more of our possible
opportunities. But observe, I never prophesy, and I have not yet enough
data to tell how this affair will turn out. Be good enough to wait;
nothing was ever done in a hurry, though things may be done fast.’
Pierre, obedient to the commands of his adored Princess, arrived in the
month of April, and expressed himself charmed with all the arrangements,
and more than gratified with his salary. The Princess gave him audience
at the Palace on the day of his arrival, talked to him for an hour with
great vivacity, and would have liked to ask him to dinner, if it were
only to see Petros’ face when she told him who her guest was. But she
refrained, and Pierre, who would have been greatly embarrassed by the
honour, was allowed to take his departure in peace.
The club was formally opened on the first of May, so breathless had been
the speed with which the Princess’s plans were put into execution, and
she herself performed the ceremony in full state. Levée dress with
orders was worn, and the gardens of the Casino presented the most
brilliant appearance. Only those who had paid their subscriptions and
become members of the club were allowed in the spacious grounds, but it
really seemed as if all Rhodopé were members. The Princess had arranged
quite an imposing little ceremony, resembling the enthronement of a
bishop. Followed by Petros and her ministers, she walked up the steps of
the south veranda, and in breathless silence tapped at the closed doors
leading into the great hall. From inside Pierre’s voice asked, ‘Who is
there?’ The Princess thereupon replied: ‘I, Sophia, hereditary Princess
of Rhodopé,’ on which Pierre threw the doors open, and, bowing low,
preceded her to the big public room, while the Guards’ band in the
gallery trumpeted out the Rhodopé anthem. Arrived at the large roulette
room, she, Prince Petros, Malakopf, the Mayor of Amandos, the
Minister of the Interior, the first Lord of the Admiralty, the
Commander-in-Chief, the Lord Chancellor, the Minister for Foreign
Affairs, and the Chairman of Council, took their places round the table,
and Pierre seated himself in the croupier’s place. Sophia had also asked
the Bishop of Amandos to take his place with them, adding, however, that
as scruples might stand in his lordship’s way, this was to be considered
as an invitation and not a command, and as an invitation he had refused
it. Everyone then staked twenty-seven napoleons (the same number being
the years of the Princess) on a half-dozen of numbers, and Pierre set
the momentous ball spinning. Round and round it went, slowed down,
wavered, and finally lurched into zero, the number backed by the bank.
Princess Sophia sprang up and clapped her hands.
‘An omen!’ she cried--‘a magnificent omen! Success to the club of
Amandos! Pierre, I wish my stake had been a hundredfold what it was!’
Then, recollecting ceremony, she bowed to the crowds which had followed
them into the room, and stood there while the table was opened.
‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ she said, with a wonderful dignity of manner,
‘I declare this room formally opened. There is no need for me to remind
you how ancient and venerable is the practice of gambling. Cultivate,
let me beg you, a calm demeanour at the tables, and bow your heads
cheerfully and obediently to the decision of pure chance. Long may the
club supply to you a little pleasurable excitement, and may Luck ever
favour the deserving!’
Again bowing, amid a tumult of applause, she and the high officials who
had attended her left the room, and no sooner were they out than there
was a positive scramble for the places. Members of the Assembly,
fishermen from the coast, tradesmen of the town, wild shepherdfolk from
the hills, jostled and pushed together to secure a place.
Sophia, in the hall outside, heard the noise with rapture.
‘This will be a success, gentlemen,’ she said; ‘let us congratulate
ourselves.’
The Royal Party took a hasty luncheon, without speeches, on the terrace
outside, and as soon as she had drunk her coffee Sophia visited each of
the rooms in turn, all of which were crowded with eager gamblers. In
each she had seen that there was a chair on the croupier’s right with a
crown, and her initial embroidered on it, and in each room she now took
her seat and played a few stakes. She was watched with eager and
admiring eyes, for, as usual, she played with a splendid recklessness
and the most imperturbable demeanour, doubling and redoubling her stake
after she had lost, and placing it here, there, anywhere that took her
fancy. Her luck was extraordinarily good, and her dash and boldness were
suitably rewarded. The people, in whose nature, as Malakopf had
suspected, there lurked an innate love of gambling, were charmed and
lost in wonder. She had given them a characteristic style, and until
some twenty years ago, when the casino at Amandos was turned into an
asylum for decayed and idiotic old gentlemen, there was nowhere in the
world where you could see such glorious ventures and such desperate
punting as in the building that Princess Sophia opened on this sunny
first of May.
The gambling instinct spread like some medieval plague over the country.
Shepherds coming to Amandos with their sheep for market would rush from
their careful bargainings to the reckless chances of the table. A whole
column of the _Amandos Herald_ was devoted to the record of the same
(just as in the _Times_ we have a column of Money Market), analyzing a
run of luck, or giving the total sum a man would have gained who had
continued to back a certain six numbers from 10.30 to 11.30.
The manufacture of roulette-boards, which Sophia, with a far-reaching
prudence, had made a Government monopoly, bid fair to become a valuable
revenue. They were plain, but very well made, and the enormous
quantities in which they were supplied enabled her to sell them at a
price which put them within everybody’s reach. She also instituted an
Order of the Zero, the first grade of which was to be conferred only on
European princes of blood royal; but the second was the reward of
continuous and orthodox play, and was conferred on the recommendation of
Pierre.
The restaurant accommodation in the casino was soon found to be totally
inadequate, and the plot of ground immediately adjoining the club garden
was bought at a fancy price by a native speculator, and on it was run up
with breathless speed an immense hotel and restaurant. From foreign
countries people flocked in shoals to the new Temple of Chance, at first
from curiosity, but later from delight in its charms, and found that the
fame of its magnificence, the beauty of the scenery, and the
invigorating quality of the mountain air had been done scant justice to.
Eminent physicians, who knew that the body is reached through the subtle
gateways of the mind, no less than the mind through the subtle gateways
of the body, and that for many bad health is the direct result of being
bored, recommended, honestly and wisely, a month at Rhodopé for anæmic
and nerve-ridden people. Success scarcely ever failed to attend on the
cure when the case was properly diagnosed; for the air itself was a
tonic of divine prescription, and the mind was not, as in so many of
those unspeakable mountain resorts, left to rot and breed disease, but
was intelligently entertained at the casino. The English people above
all flocked to Amandos, for, as they said, the folk are not like
foreigners, one would really take them for English; and when they of
Albion take up this attitude, it is pretty certain that the place will
be popular among their compatriots. Their insular aloofness fell from
them like scales in Rhodopé--it was as good as being at home. And with
the English came a Church of England chaplain, hip-baths, one most
hazardous golf-links on the mountain side, and another on the sandy
fore-shore of Mavromáti, and the ties were complete.
During these summer months the Prince and Malakopf met often, but they
found long faces for each other. Their faces would have been longer
still had they known how completely their little plans had miscarried,
and that already the Princess was very tolerably acquainted with what
was going on. The betrayal had happened in this wise.
It was on the occasion of the Queen of England’s birthday, and Malakopf,
with the other Ministers, dined officially at the British Legation. The
dinner was for men only, but after dinner Lord Abbotsworthy gave a
reception. He was a widower, and the duty of receiving his guests fell
on his daughter, Lady Blanche. The spacious marble-flagged terrace in
front of the house was covered in with a Syrian tent, and the guests for
the most part, after shaking hands with Lady Blanche, passed through the
rooms and into the illuminated coolness of the covered terrace.
Now Malakopf, who for several weeks before this festivity had been
somewhat fretted by the harshness and uncertainty of the events which
followed on the opening of the Princess’s club, and by the continued
despondency of his colleague, had promised himself an evening free from
restraint, and in two senses to give his tongue a treat. He
proposed--for he of that odious class of voluptuary which fixes its
debauches beforehand--to dine as his nature, or rather the
unexceptionable chef of the Minister, prompted him, and to drink as
copiously as the excellence of the vintage with which he was served
suggested. Now, Lord Abbotsworthy, who was himself a great judge of
grape-juice, had made out with some care the menu of the wines, and his
choice was masterly. The consequence was that Malakopf, who had passed a
really memorable hour in the dining-room, eating much and drinking the
best and plenty of it, came upstairs in an unusually relaxed frame of
mind. It would be entirely out of the question to have called him drunk,
or anything like it, but the sunshine which lay upon the slopes of the
champagne country in the comet year had stirred his imagination and
unloosed his tongue. Naturally he was a silent man, but to-night he was
prone to be talkative; a woman’s wit did the rest.
Lady Blanche had been much interested in and somewhat distressed at the
opening of the Princess’s club. She was a young lady gifted with a great
deal of intelligent curiosity; that is to say, the things she was
curious about were always worth knowing, and she particularly wished to
know how this extraordinary innovation struck the leading men of the
State. She had heard with a glow of the heart the tremendous reception
accorded to her dear friend Princess Sophia; but she intensely desired
to learn how those in command took this new evidence of the Princess’s
popularity, whether, in fact--the same question had occurred to
Malakopf--the greeting had been merely the tribute of a loyal people to
a popular Princess, or whether it implied an innate predisposition to
the new amusement provided for them.
It was with this in her mind that, when the duty of reception was over,
she walked slowly through the room, with one ear only open to the voice
of her varying interlocutor, the other wide to catch the strident
accents of the Prime Minister. At last she saw him, though only
distantly, wide-mouthed, yellow-toothed, separated from her by a crowd
of tedious folk; but as she looked in his direction, it so happened that
he looked in hers, and their eyes met. Malakopf’s eye was a shifty one
at the best; but to-night’s potations seemed to have given him a greater
directness of gaze, and it was with no surprise that, in answer to her
little smile of greeting, she saw him a moment afterwards move from his
place and make his way through the crush towards her.
‘Ah, Lady Blanche,’ he said, ‘but unless I push and squeeze I shall have
no chance of getting a word with you. How is it that when we go to a
friend’s house we see the whole world, but not our friend?’
‘And I, too, was despairing of getting a word with you,’ replied
Blanche. ‘It is a delicious night: let us go on to the balcony; the
rooms are so hot.’
Malakopf bowed and offered her his arm.
‘You are too kind to an old man like me,’ he said; ‘but I am very
greedy.’
This was quite true; and they sat down in a corner of the balcony, and
Blanche went straight to the point.
‘There are great changes in Rhodopé,’ she said. ‘Tell me how it all
strikes you.’
Malakopf paused a moment; his instinct counselled caution; but his
dinner had unloosened his tongue, and he longed to let himself go and
talk freely to this beautiful and able woman.
‘I don’t really know how it strikes me; indeed, I confess myself
puzzled,’ he said. ‘At any rate, I think the Princess is a cleverer
woman than I had supposed. Do you follow that?’
Blanche nodded.
‘You mean, of course, that the success of the club has more than
justified her starting it; that she knew or guessed--which is even
cleverer--that there was a love of gambling in the people?’
Malakopf applauded gently with his finger-tips.
‘My dear lady,’ he said, ‘you have no idea what a joy it is to me to
talk to people who find me intelligible, to whom I have not to
translate. Now, Prince Petros----’ and he paused. ‘I think I shall
advertise for a translator,’ he added, with a sigh.
‘Prince Petros has always seemed to me a man with all the charm of
cleverness and the brains of a fool,’ remarked Blanche.
Malakopf considered.
‘Yes, you have hit him full,’ he said at length. ‘I have always known
what you have just said, though I have never been able to formulate it.
It is the charm of cleverness that makes one continually think one is
dealing with a gifted man, and as continually one is brought up short.
Oh, how many jars I have received!’
‘He works hard in the Assembly, does he not?’ asked Blanche.
‘He works, it has always struck me, like a convict. He removes a pile of
shot from one place to another, and then back again. Thus, at the end of
the day there is not much to show for the hours of toil. I have seen
much of him lately, and he has a great power of amassing detail, which,
when amassed, is useless to him. He collects his data, and draws no
conclusion from them. Perhaps that is just as well; if he did draw
conclusions, they would be certainly wrong ones.’
‘And he is ambitious, I should think,’ said Blanche quietly.
‘Ambitious! He is ambition. He is discontented in his present position,
and, indeed, who would not be? He is a parody of a Prince, so he tells
me. “Fancy being the husband of a reigning Princess!” he says.’
‘It is wise of him, then, to work hard at humbler duties, and get
perhaps a power of another sort in the country.’
‘He has no power,’ snapped Malakopf, ‘and he never will have!’
Now, Lady Blanche had long entertained a vague curiosity about this new
intimacy between Malakopf and the Prince. Sophia, she knew, detested the
man, and that was a reason the more for surprise that Petros should make
him so close a companion. Day after day she had read in the _Rhodopé
Herald_ that Malakopf had a long interview with the Prince, that the
Prince called on the Prime Minister in the morning and remained to
luncheon, or that Malakopf remained at the Palace till midnight. Up to
this point in her present conversation with him the talk been mainly
random on her part, as one throws a fly over places indeed which may
reasonably hold a fish, but in ignorance whether a fish is there. But at
this moment, when he snapped the answer back at her, forgetting his
manners, she recollected her curiosity in the friendship between the
two, and to the point, and not witlessly, so that Malakopf could
scarcely suspect, even if his mood was suspicious, that he was being
plied with pertinent conversation.
‘No, as yet he has no power,’ she said; ‘but are you sure he never will
have? Does not his sedulous attention to questions which in themselves
can but interest him very slightly tend to make one think that he is
determined not to be only a tame cat about the Court? He is wise, I
should say, to wish to take an active part in affairs, and it seems to
me that he is wise in burdening his own shoulders with the tedious and
drearier side of politics. He won, I should say, golden opinions when he
acted as Regent last year. Moreover, which is more important, the
Princess is very grateful to him. She told me so the other day; and
gratitude is better worth collecting than postage-stamps.’
Malakopf was interested, and showed it.
‘Ah, she said that to you, did she?’ he asked, leaning forward in his
chair. ‘She spoke with gratitude, you say, and with confidence perhaps
in the Prince?’
‘Surely. Why should she not?’ asked Blanche, with a disarming frankness.
‘Rumour had reached me,’ said Malakopf, ‘that she was not altogether
pleased that the Prince should do so much, that she felt that she was a
little thrust into the background. I hardly knew whether to credit it or
not, and your information has relieved me indescribably. But if one
looks closely, there was some colour for the idea. Indeed, I had
supposed that some such desire to be as prominent as her husband had
prompted her to take this very new step of making a casino in Amandos.’
Blanche detected a slight change of tone in his voice, and would have
laid odds at that moment that he had just invented these rumours
himself. But she answered without a pause:
‘It is very ingenious to connect the building of the casino with that,
so ingenious that it certainly ought to be true. I cannot say; it never
occurred to me before. About those rumours--surely more than that has
reached you----’
Malakopf glanced round to see that no one was within hearing. He thought
that he was getting valuable information out of Lady Blanche; she, on
the other hand, was sure that she was getting it out of him.
‘Yes; I have heard more than that,’ he said, drawing his chair closer to
hers.
Blanche nodded. She felt no touch of shame for what she was doing, for
she was loyalty incarnate to Sophia and ruthless to any who were not.
‘You, too, have heard perhaps that in certain quarters it is thought
that Prince Petros is standing on tiptoe to reach the throne?’ she
asked. ‘You have heard that in certain quarters such an attempt is
likely to be widely supported? What are we to make of such things? There
cannot be any truth in them.’
‘You speak frankly,’ said Malakopf, ‘and I will follow your example. I
have heard, it is true, bitter complaints against the Princess Sophia,
and my loyalty has compelled me to listen to them, so as--so as to be on
my guard; but it has often been hard work to control my indignation when
I listened. I have heard her Civil List, and the way she spends it,
bitterly contrasted with the money spent on education and on the poor.
What is one to say to such things? I am all loyalty to our beloved
Princess, yet put yourself in the place of those who say these things
and be candid. Is there not a grain of truth in the accusation?’
Malakopf spoke eagerly, for he wanted to get out of Blanche what she
had heard, and, forgetting his manners again, leaned forward and lit a
cigarette at a candle standing close to her, enveloping her face in a
cloud of smoke. Blanche observed this. The man was certainly in earnest
about something.
‘You will have a whisky-and-soda, will you not?’ she said. ‘Touch that
bell behind you.’
Malakopf resumed his seat, and the two talked of indifferent subjects
till the footman had brought the Prime Minister his whisky; then she
spoke again.
‘Who set these things in currency?’ she asked abruptly. ‘Do you--do you
really suspect Prince Petros of disloyalty to the Princess, and, what is
worse even, of disloyalty to his wife?’
‘No, I do not,’ said Malakopf; ‘but from what you tell me, from what I
have myself heard, I gather there is much feeling against the Princess,
and much sympathy with her husband. Petros--Prince Petros--I know feels
his position acutely; more than that I could not say. But disloyalty----
Why, the man is as true as steel!’ and his voice rang as false as a
cracked crockery plate.
The conversation was bearing much fruit, so thought Lady Blanche, and so
also thought Malakopf. Lady Blanche felt convinced in her own mind that
no rumours had reached Malakopf about the Princess’s growing
unpopularity, but she had with some ingenuity led the other on to expand
embellish his invention of them as he would have them be, and with
complete success. The distrust she had ever felt of this cunning old
man, the growing distrust with which she had seen his ripening intimacy
with Petros, was suddenly struck with colour. She felt sure he was
talking out of his own mouth. Malakopf, on the other hand, was entranced
to find his airy inventions solidified and his own intuitions so
flatteringly supported; it appeared that after all there did exist in
the minds of the people that dissatisfaction with Sophia which it should
be his work and Petros’ to foment. The seeds of revolution, it seemed,
were already sown, and, to judge by the way in which Lady Blanche
endorsed his tentative words, bid fair to flourish.
‘I am glad to hear you say he is so true,’ she said. ‘Personally I know
little of him, but I have seen with so much interest the growing
intimacy between you. Who should know him, if you do not?’
Malakopf’s exultation broke the bonds of his caution.
‘Know him!’ he cried. ‘I know him as I know the shape of the glove that
covers my hand; indeed, he is very like the glove that covers my hand.’
Next moment it was as if another had spoken and the Prime Minister had
heard. He got up abruptly as these imprudent words were conveyed to him,
turned to Lady Blanche, whom for that one minute he had forgotten.
‘I will wish you good-night,’ he said; ‘I have a great quantity of work
to get through before I go to bed.’
‘You go so early?’ asked Blanche. ‘Good-night, monsieur; I have so
enjoyed our talk.’
When the other guests had gone she danced a _pas seul_ all round the
balcony.