THE KING AND THE BEGGAR MAID
Drexel slipped down and was standing at the table when the bolt shot
back and she entered. She closed the door, and stood looking a moment
at him, and he gazed back at her. Despite those beauty-murdering
clothes, the spell of her personality was more sovereign even than
yesternight.
She was the first to speak. “I have come,” said she in that low
rich voice that set his every nerve to vibrating, “to thank you and
apologize.”
He could only incline his head.
“To thank you for what you so gallantly did for me last night.”
Drexel found his voice, and he could not keep a little irony out of his
words. “Your thanks seem rather oddly expressed.” He motioned about the
imprisoning room.
“It is for that I would apologize. I am sorry. But it seemed to us
necessary.”
“Necessary! Why?”
She looked him straight in the face. “Because I did not wholly trust
you.”
“Not trust me?”
“You had seen me--you guessed what I had done--you could have
identified me had you seen me again, and could have turned me over to
the police. That would possibly have meant my death; certainly the
destruction of all my plans.”
“Then you really tried to shoot Prince Berloff?”
“I did not. He fired the shots; so that he could say I fired and bring
against me the charge of attempted assassination.”
“But,” said Drexel, reverting to her preceding statement, “you seemed
to trust me at first.”
“Yes.”
“And then you did not?”
“Frankly--no.”
“You feared me as much as you did the police. Why?”
She did not answer.
“I am completely at a loss,” said he. “Come--why did you not trust me?”
“That,” said she steadily, “I cannot tell.”
He rubbed his forehead. “Well, of all situations a sane man ever got
into!” he muttered. When he next spoke there was again a touch of
irony in his voice. “At least,” he drawled, “would it be considered an
intrusion into matters which are none of my concern, if I asked what is
going to happen to me?”
“You will merely be detained till we feel it is safe to release you.
Ivan and Nicolai are treating you all right? We had to act instantly,
and they were the only persons we could upon the instant command.”
“Oh, they’re nice enough boys, I guess,” said Drexel. “But I wish they
lived at a better hotel. The janitor here doesn’t know it is winter
yet, and keeps the steam heat turned off; my bed, that sofa there, is
upholstered with soft coal and soup-bones; and the chef--well, the
chef’s repertoire is limited to tea and bologna. But I guess I can
stand it.”
She smiled slightly, but the smile was instantly gone. “Your
inconvenience is being suffered to render more secure a great cause.”
“And to render more secure your life?”
“And my life,” she added.
She held out her hand. “Again I apologize, and again I thank you.
Good-bye.”
“You are not going!” cried Drexel--but he did not miss the opportunity
of taking her hand. “Not yet--please! There is something I want to ask
you.”
“Yes?”
He looked straight into her eyes. “It is this: Who are you?”
She drew her hand away. “You do not need to know.”
“Perhaps not,” said he. “But I wish to.”
“Well--I am one of a thousand girls”--there came a flush into her
face and a ring into her voice--“ten thousand girls, yes, a hundred
thousand! who are doing the same work.”
“Yes, I know now that you are a revolutionist. But who are you
personally?”
“Any one of the hundred thousand.”
“But you are not just any one,” he persisted. “That’s plain. You are
educated, refined, have had advantages far above the ordinary.”
“Do you not know,”--and her voice swelled with a more vibrant
ring--“that our universities are filled with poor, obscure young
women--poor, yet great souls just the same! who starve themselves,
literally starve themselves, that they may gain an education, that they
may become broad, cultured women? And do this that they may bring light
and help and hope to their down-trodden people?”
But Drexel was seeing her as she appeared upon the train. “That may be
so; but you are not of that kind,” he said confidently. “That kind does
not look as you did last night.”
“But how do you know,” she cried, stretching wide her arms the better
to display her clumsy garments, “that last night’s clothes are any
truer index of my station than to-night’s?”
She saw the question struck home. “We revolutionists work in hourly
danger from the police. Safety compels us to assume disguises, and we
fit our disguises to our missions. My mission of yesterday required
that I should seem what you call a lady.”
“You mean that your yesterday’s clothes were only a disguise?”
“Only a disguise.”
He pondered for a moment. No, a woman of position, which he had half
guessed her to be, would have no reason for discontent; no reason
for risking comfort, wealth, life even, in this struggle for better
conditions. After all, she was probably one of those rarely beautiful,
rare-spirited women who now and again flower among the common people.
“Then this is all I am to know?” he asked slowly.
“That I am just one of the hundred thousand--that is all.”
She started toward the door.
“Wait!” he cried. “Wait! Surely I shall see you again.”
She shook her head. “You are not to be released till after my mission
has been accomplished. By that time I shall have disappeared. This is
the last time we shall meet. Good-bye.”
Her hand was on the knob, when Drexel sprang forward and threw himself
between her and the door.
“No! No! No!” his words burst forth. “I can’t lose you forever like
this! I can’t! I can’t!”
She drew back and gazed at him with a flashing, imperious manner. “What
does this mean?”
“It means I love you!” he cried. “It means I do not care who you
are--what you are. I love you. I love you! With all my heart--with all
my soul!”
At the sight of his big, strong, quivering body, his tense, working
face, the hauteur all slipped out of her bearing.
“You are in earnest?” she asked slowly, in amazement.
“God strike me dead if I am not! And as never before in all my life!”
“I am sorry--sorry,” she said with true sympathy. “Even if I cared--it
could not be. The liberty of my country has first place in my heart.
That is my husband.”
“Then you refuse me?” cried Drexel.
“I must.”
“And this is final?”
“It is.”
“No! No! No!” he cried, inflamed with love and the danger of the loved
one’s eternal loss, and seizing at every argument. “Listen!” He stepped
nearer her. “Listen, before you speak finally. I can take you out of
this poverty, this turmoil, this oppression! I can give you peace, and
comfort, and position!”
“Ah!” she breathed. “Again the king stoops to the beggar maid.”
Swept madly on by his desire to win her, his dreams for a towering
financial future rushed into the form of argument. He stood before her
the impassioned embodiment of the American hero--the strong, masterful
man of affairs, flashing forth an all-conquering confidence.
“Yes!” cried he, and he glowed dominantly down upon her. “You shall
have everything! Everything! You and I, side by side, shall go breast
to breast with the foremost. I tell you, with your beauty, you shall
queen it over every woman in Chicago!”
He had not noted the strange, quiet look that had come into her face.
“In substance, you mean to tell me that you can give me position.”
“I can give you the very highest!”
“You are of an old family, then?”
“None older in Chicago!”
She did not speak.
“Come!” he went on with the mighty rush of his schemes. “Mine is to
be no trifling million-dollar success. I do not mean to boast--but
I feel the power in me! No young man in America has a chance like
mine! I shall become one of the first business men of America! It is
sure--sure as that the years roll round. I shall become the master of
railroads, of mines, of factories. All--all!--are going to yield me
their wealth. And that means power, and more power--and position, and
greater position. And this wealth, this power, this position, shall all
be yours!”
As he spoke she had slowly unwound the shawl that tightly bound her
head; and the beauty of her face, with its crown of rich dark hair, was
before him unobscured, unconfined. She had drawn herself up, her breath
was coming and going with slow tensity, and her eyes--those wonderful
blue eyes--were blazing full upon him. But she did not speak.
“Well,” demanded Drexel, “what do you say?”
“I say,” said she, and her words came with slow, sharp distinctness,
“that you are the most despicable man I ever met!”
“What!” he cried. And he stepped back against the door, as though she
had struck him in the face.
The eyes still blazed with awful contempt into his own, and the slow
words went on:
“You are a man of great gifts. I see that. Genius, maybe--perhaps great
genius. And doubtless you will achieve all you say. But for a man
with divine gifts, to devote those divine gifts to gigantic schemes
for selfish gain, which means to the despoilment, to the misery, to
the crushing down, of his fellows--I repeat, such a man is the most
despicable man I ever met!”
The paleness of Drexel’s face began to redden with anger.
“I see,” said he grimly, “that you are one of these socialists!”
“Perhaps,” said she, steadily.
“Yes”--between his angry, clenched teeth. “There are some of your
kind even in my country. Disappointed, snivelling failures, snarling
at people who have succeeded!” His anger blazed fiercer. “Let me tell
you this, young lady. You would not be so contemptuous of people with
position, if you had a little of position yourself! Nor of wealth, if
you had ever tasted a little of wealth’s comforts!”
But she did not quail before his fire. “Perhaps not,” she returned,
quietly.
There was a moment of silence between the two.
“And now, will you please allow me to pass?” she said.
Her words sent all the anger out of him.
“But,” he besought desperately, “surely sometime I may meet you again?”
“This is the last time,” said she with quiet finality.
“Forever?”
“Forever.”
He leaned against the door and stared at her with dizzy pain; till she
recalled him by repeating,
“Will you please allow me to pass?”
He dumbly stood aside and opened the door. She hesitated, then gave him
her hand.
“Thank you once more. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said he.
She passed out. And the door closed and the bolt clicked into place.