"You have lost."
"From whom is it then? There is no European mail to-day." He eyed her,
laughing still. "From whom is it?" he repeated. And as he spoke he bent
again and looked down at the letter, which still lay open in her hand.
"Tancred Ennever!" he exclaimed. "Why, what has he to write to you
about?"
"Don't ask me," she answered, airily; and then, presumably, she must
have understood the uselessness of further parry, for she added,
carelessly enough, "It is to Liance, not to me."
From the window Tancred could see the general turn to where his daughter
sat. And as he watched he saw the girl issue from the shadow, take the
letter from Mrs. Lyeth, and escape with it to the house. During the
entire scene she had not uttered a word. She had been a witness, not an
actor, and now as she crossed the lawn, the letter rumpled in her hold,
there was an alertness in her step and such expectance in her face that
you would have thought her hastening to a rendez-vous. It was evident
that she, too, had taken the fib for truth.
Tancred moved back. When he again peered out, the general and his
bride-elect had disappeared.
V.
Over the luncheon to which Tancred was presently summoned a foreboding
hovered, ambient in the air. Mrs. Lyeth was not present, confined by a
headache, Liance explained, to her room. The girl herself preserved her
every-day attitude, and Tancred did his best to engage her in speech;
but she did not second his endeavors. When he addressed her she
answered, if at all, with her eyes, and in them she put something that
resembled a monition. Save for the reference to her future step-mother,
she broke bread in silence. As for the general, Cruikshank would have
taken him to his heart; he was both jocose and irritable; he feigned a
glutton interest in his plate; he loaded the soft Malay tongue with
curious oaths, which he exploded at the servant; he alternately praised
and reviled the food, and from beneath his bushy eyebrows he glanced in
the kindliest fashion now at his daughter and now at his guest. And so
well did he succeed in heightening the enervation of the latter that it
was not until the acrid caramels were passed that Tancred even pretended
to eat. Then, remembering that it was Liance that made them, he ventured
to compliment the girl, and, as she answered nothing, acknowledging the
tribute only by an inclination of the head, he saw in the expression of
her face that she was even more emotionalized than he. Presently a
burning coal and some cigars were brought. Liance rose from the table,
and Tancred, rising too, accompanied her to the door. There, it may be,
she had some message to impart; her lips moved, yet before Tancred could
grasp its import the general called him, and he was obliged to turn. The
girl wandered out on the veranda, and Tancred resumed his seat.
"Will you smoke?" the general asked. His tone was so friendly that
Tancred felt more miserable than before. "Take one," he continued.
"Sumatran tobacco ranks nearly with the Havanese."
For a fraction of time which seemed immeasurable the two men smoked in
silence. But in a moment the general gave a poke at the coal, and looked
up at his guest.
"Mrs. Lyeth tells me that you have done us the honor to ask for my
daughter's hand."
Tancred glanced at the point of his cigar, and discovered that it was
out.
"May I trouble you?" he murmured.
The general shoved the brasier toward him, and watched the relighting
with evident solicitude.
"It's the dampness," he announced. "H'm. Am I correctly informed?"
Tancred gave a puff or two, and then, withdrawing the weed, he held it
contemplatively between forefinger and thumb; but he answered not a
word.
The general knocked the ashes from his own cigar and eyed the burning
coal.
"H'm, let me ask you, did you write to my daughter this morning?"
And Tancred, with that long-drawn breath we take when we prepare for the
worst, answered shortly:
"I did."
To this avowal the general nodded encouragingly. Tancred, however,
seemed averse to further confidences; he kept looking at his cigar as
though it were some strange and uncanny thing.
"H'm, well--er--did you, did you begin the letter with a term of
endearment?"
"Yes, general."
Tancred had tossed his cigar--a cigar that ranked nearly with a
Havanese--into the finger-bowl. He straightened himself and looked his
host in the face.
"Yes, general, and I am sorry for it. I have no excuse, not one. It was
a piece of unpardonable ill-breeding. I had no right to send the note; I
had no encouragement to write it. The only amend in my power is an
apology. I make one now to you; let me beg that you will convey another
to your daughter."
The general half rose from his seat and hit the table with his fist. His
face was convulsed. He was hideous.
"But, bandit that you are," he cried, "she loves you."
"No, general, you are wrong."
"Ah, I am wrong, am I? Not an hour ago she told me so of her own
accord."
"General, it was a jest."
"A jest! You call it a jest to surprise a girl in the dark"--
"To what?" gasped Tancred. "To what?"
"There, you know well enough what I mean. I refer to the other evening."
"Merciful heaven!" groaned Tancred, "it was she then that I kissed."
"It is a jest to do a thing like that, to write impassioned letters, and
to win a heart. Is it a jest you call it, sir, or did I misunderstand
your words?"
"No general, not that. What I meant was that it was impossible for Miss
Van Lier to have confessed to any love for me--"
The lattice at the window was thrust aside. For a second the girl's
sidereal eyes blazed into the room.
"He is right, father: I do not love; I hate."
The lattice fell again. She had gone.
During the moment that followed you could have heard a lizard move.
Tancred fumbled at his collar, and General Van Lier sank bank in his
chair.
"Mr. Ennever," he said, at last, "you are my guest."
The tone in which he spoke was low and self-restrained, but in it there
was an accent that was tantamount to a slap in the face.
Tancred was on his feet at once.
"If you permit me, I will leave to-day."
General Van Lier moved to the door.
"There is a boat from Siak at five," he answered.
"General," Tancred hesitated; he was humiliated as he had never been,
and rightly humiliated, he knew. He was trying to say something that
would express his sense of abasement, and a fitting speech was on the
end of his tongue.
"General--"
"After you, sir." The general was pointing to the door.
"General--"
"Nay, sir, after you. I insist."
Tancred bowed and passed out. A moment later he was in his room.
In a corner was a trunk. In another a shirt-box. Tancred gathered his
traps together, and tossed some into the one, some into the other, a
proceeding at which Zut yelped and fawned with delight. Evidently on him
at least the attractions of the bungalow had begun to pall.
"Yes, Zut, we are going."
And at this the dog yelped again and curveted sheer across the room.
"But you must be quiet," Tancred added. "There, be still."
He was thinking of Mrs. Lyeth, and wondering whether he should see her
before he went. If he could exchange but one word with her, surely, he
told himself, she would understand. He lounged to the window and leaned
on the sill.
It was one of those afternoons, brutal and terrible in beauty, which
only the equator provides. The sky was like the curtain of an alcove,
the sun a vomiter of living glare. Beyond was a riot of color such as
Delacroix never dreamed, a combination more insolent than the Quetzal
possesses, all the primaries interstriated, a rainbow of insolent hues.
And there, in white, a parasol over her head, a basket dangling from her
wrist, Liance appeared, emerging, as her father had, from the coppice
beyond.
Instinctively he drew back: he had no wish to see her eyes charged with
hate again. She was not one to forgive, he knew; the beauty of the
equator was in her, and its pitilessness as well. And yet, he reflected,
if I could but tell her not alone how she and I have erred, but how
sorry I am for it all. But no; manifestly an explanation was impossible.
Did he attempt one it might inculpate another. He was not alone solely
to blame, he was blockaded in his own disgrace. He told himself this; he
repeated it even in varying keys; but beneath it all he felt that some
redress should be. The idea that the house he had entered as an honored
guest would see him depart in shame had already brought the blood to his
cheeks. And that blood now was leaving a stain that years would not
efface. "I must write," he decided; "I must write some word." And he was
about to seat himself at the table, when Atcheh appeared.
"Tuan," he murmured, in the soft vocables of his tongue. "The gharry
waits your lordship."
At this Zut, who was surprisingly polyglot of ear, yelped with renewed
delight. Tancred pointed to his effects, and waited until they had been
removed. It was possible, he reflected, that he might meet Liance or
Mrs. Lyeth in the hall. Yet should he not do so, then, he told himself,
he would write from Singapore.
But when he reached the veranda, only the general was there. Beyond, the
gharry stood in readiness, and by it was Atcheh, the trunk and shirt-box
already strapped in place. Tancred stretched his hand.
"General--"
"I wish you a pleasant journey, sir," that gentleman answered, and
lifted his hat.
Mechanically Tancred raised his own.
"I thank you," he said. And with a backward glance he called to Zut and
entered the conveyance.
A whip cracked, the gharry started; in a moment it was on the road.
Tancred turned to take another and a parting look. Already the general
had disappeared, but from a window he caught a glimpse of some one robed
in white. A curve was rounded and the bungalow disappeared.
For an hour over a road beside which the Corniche is commonplace indeed,
the gharry rolled on. To Tancred, however, its beauties were remote and
undiscerned. If he noticed them at all it was only as accessories. He
was wholly absorbed in his own discomfiture, and the gharry drew up and
halted at the wharf before he was aware that Siak had been reached and
the journey was done.
About him was the same assortment of fat-faced Celestials and gaunt
Malays that he had noticed before. Apparently nothing had happened to
them; they had contented themselves with continuing to be. Before him
was a glistening sea, a limitless horizon. To the left the shore
extended, fairer and more brilliant than the courtyard of a royal
domain. Just beyond, one of the ships of the Dutch East India service
was moored, her funnels lengthening and fading in spirals of smoke. And
when Tancred had attended to the transfer of his luggage, and was about
to step into the sampan that was to convey him to the steamer, there
came a clatter of horse's hoofs, and on a black and panting pony Atcheh
suddenly appeared.
"Tuan," he cried, and waved something in the air. "Tuan, a moment more."
In that moment he had sprung from the pony and run to where Tancred
stood.
"From the little lady, Lord," he said, and, handing a basket to his
master's guest, bowed to the ground.
Tancred found a bit of gold.
"For you," he said, and the Malay bowed again. "To the lady, give my
thanks."
And at once his heart gave an exultant throb; his departure was
regretted. As he lowered himself into the boat his excess of joy was so
acute he nearly fell. Truly, if it be pleasant to appreciate, it is also
pleasant to be appreciated. He still clutched at the basket, his hands
moist with excitement, his face aglow, and it was not until the ship was
reached that he noticed that Zut was sniffing at it.
"Behave," he ordered. But his voice was so kindly that the little fellow
only sniffed the more. It was easy to see that he was jubilating too.
On deck Tancred experienced some difficulty in securing a cabin. But for
what were rupees coined and tips invented? The steward consulted the
purser, the purser consulted the first officer, and in five minutes the
cabin of the latter functionary was at Tancred's disposal. It was roomy
and cool; or perhaps it would be more exact to say that it was fully as
large as a closet and that the thermometer did not mark one degree above
ninety. In short, Tancred had every reason to consider himself in luck.
He shut the door and throwing himself on a wicker settee he opened the
basket, which until now he had kept tight clasped in his hand.
It was, he saw, filled with sweetmeats such as he had eaten at the
bungalow. On top, pinned to the interior of the basket, was a slip of
paper that contained a single line--_Souvenir et bon voyage_--and for
signature, _Liance_. He read the message twice, and, it may be, he would
have repeated the message aloud, but Zut kept bothering him with little
hungry yelps. To quiet the dog be tossed him a sweet and put the basket
down.
In some mysterious manner his joy had taken itself away. It was not from
Liance he had expected a remembrance. When Atcheh placed the basket in
his hand, he had told himself that, whatever it might contain, it was at
least a gift from Mrs. Lyeth, a token expressive of her regret at his
departure. And instead of that there was a handful of bonbons that might
have been sent to a child, and a meaningless message from one to whose
solicitude he was indifferent. The disappointment, indeed, was great.
For a while he let it intensify within him. But presently he stood up:
it was getting dark; long since the sob of water displaced had told him
that the ship had started; a turn on deck might do him good, he thought;
and as he moved to the door he called to his dog.
"Zut!"
And as the dog did not immediately appear, Tancred wondered could he
have got out. But no, the door was closed.
"What the dickens can have become of him?" he muttered, and turning
again he caught sight of Zut stretched on the floor. "Hello!" he
exclaimed, "there you are. Why don't you come when you're called?"
Even at this, however, the dog did not move. Tancred bent over and
touched him, and then suddenly kneeled down. "Why, what is the matter
with him? A moment ago he was right enough; it is impossible that--Zut!
Zut Alors!"
And raising the dog's head up he stared at it. The eyes were convulsed,
the tongue was swollen and distorted. "He is dead," he murmured. "He is
dead. But how?"
To this question no answer was vouchsafed. In his bewilderment he stood
up again and leaned at the port-hole. Already Siak had faded. Above was
a splatter of callous stars, beneath was the sea, black now and almost
chill.
"But how?" he repeated. Then at once he clutched at the woodwork; his
eyes had fallen on the basket; he remembered the sweet he had tossed to
the dog. The cabin seemed to be turning round.
At his side the door opened, and the steward looked in. "Supper is
ready, sir; will you come?"
"The rafflesia!" Tancred gasped at him. But what he meant by that absurd
reply the steward did not think it necessary to ask.
"Very good, sir," he answered, and shut the door.
THE GRAND DUKE'S RUBIES.
There is in New York a club called the Balmoral, which has two
peculiarities--no one ever goes there much before midnight, and it is
the only place in town where you can get anything fit to eat at four
o'clock in the morning. The members are politicians of the higher grade,
men about town, and a sprinkle of nondescripts. In the unhallowed
inspiration of a moment, Alphabet Jones, the novelist,--in polite
society Mr. A. B. Fenwick Chisholm-Jones,--baptized it the Smallpox, a
name which has stuck tenaciously, the before-mentioned members being
usually pitted--against each other. Of the many rooms of the club, one,
it should be explained, is the most enticing. It is situated on an upper
floor, and the siren that presides therein is a long table dressed in
green. Her name is Baccarat.
One night last February, Alphabet Jones rattled up to the door in a
vagabond hansom. He was thirsty, impecunious, and a trifle tired. He had
been to a cotillon, where he had partaken of champagne, and he wanted to
get the taste of it out of his throat. He needed five hundred dollars,
and in his card-case there were only two hundred and fifty. The bar of
the Athenaeum Club he knew at that hour was closed, possible
money-lenders were in bed, and it was with the idea of killing the two
birds of the legend that he sought the Balmoral.
He encountered there no difficulty in slaking his thirst; and when, in
one draught, which brought to his tonsils a suggestion of art, science,
and Wagner combined, he swallowed a brandy-and-soda, he felt better, and
looked about to see who might be present. The room which he had entered
was on what is called the parlor floor. It was long, high-ceiled,
comfortably furnished, and somewhat dim. At the furthermost end three
men were seated, two of whom he recognized, the one as Sumpter Leigh,
the other as Colonel Barker; but the third he did not remember to have
seen before. Some Westerner, he thought; for Jones prided himself on
knowing every one worth knowing in New York, and, it may be added, in
several other cities as well.
He took out his card-case and thumbed the roll of bills reflectively.
If he went upstairs, he told himself, he might double the amount in two
minutes. But then, again, he might lose it. Yet, if he did, might not
five hundred be as easily borrowed as two hundred and fifty?
"It's brutal to be so hard up," he mused. "Literature doesn't pay. I
might better set up as publisher, open a drug-shop, turn grocer, do
anything, in fact, which is brainless and remunerative, than attempt to
earn a living by the sweat of my pen. There's that _Interstate
Magazine_: the editor sent me a note by a messenger this morning, asking
for a story, adding that the messenger would wait _while I wrote it_.
Evidently he thinks me three parts stenographer and the rest
kaleidoscope. What is a good synonym for an editor, anyway?"
And as Jones asked himself this question he glared fiercely in a mirror
that extended from cornice to floor. Then, mollified, possibly, by his
own appearance, for he was a handsome man, tall, fair, and clear of
skin, he threw himself on a sofa, and fell to thinking about the
incidents of the ball.
For some time past he had been as discreetly attentive as circumstances
permitted to a young girl, the only child of a potent financier, and on
that particular evening he had sat out the cotillon with her at an
assembly. She was very pretty and, unusual as it may seem in a
_debutante_, rather coy. But when, a half-hour before, he had wished her
sweet dreams in that seductive manner for which he was famous, she had
allowed the tips of her fingers to rest in his own just one fleeting
second longer than was necessary, and, what is more to the point, had
looked into his eyes something which now, under the influence of the
brandy-and-soda, seemed almost a promise. "Dear little soul!" he
muttered; "if she marries me I will refuse her nothing. It will be the
devil's own job, though, to get her any sort of an engagement ring.
Tiffany, perhaps, might give me one on credit, but it will have to be
something very handsome, something new; not that tiresome solitaire.
Those stones I saw the other day--H'm! I wonder what that fellow is
staring at me for?"
He lounged forward to where the men were seated, and, being asked to
draw a chair, graciously accepted the invitation and another
brandy-and-soda as well.
"It was this way," the stranger exclaimed, excitedly, when he and Jones
had been introduced. "I was telling these gentlemen when you came in
that you looked like the Grand Duke Sergius--"
"Thank you," the novelist answered, affably. "The same to you."
"I never saw him though," the stranger continued.
"No more have I."
"Only his picture."
"Your remark, then, was doubly flattering."
"But the picture to which I allude was that of a chimerical grand duke."
"Really, sir, really you are overwhelming."
"But wait a minute, do wait a minute. Mr. Jones, I don't know whether
you caught my name: it is Fairbanks--David Fairbanks."
"Delighted! I remember it perfectly. My old friend, Nicholas Manhattan,
bought a ruby of you once, and a beauty it was. I heard at the time that
you made a specialty of them."
"So did the grand duke. He came here, you know, on that man-of-war."
"Yes, I know. Mrs. Wainwaring gave him a reception. It was just my luck:
I was down with the measles at the time."
"Oh, you were, were you? You were down with the measles, eh? Well, I
wish I had been. Gentlemen, listen to this; you must listen. I was in my
office in Maiden Lane one day, when a young man came in. He wore the
most magnificent fur coat I have ever seen in my life. No, that coat was
something that only Russia could have produced. He handed me a card on
which was engraved
P^{CE} MICHEL ZAROGUINE,
_Aide-de-camp de S. A. I. le grand-duc Serge de Russie._
"And then, of all things in the world, he offered me a pinch of snuff,
and when I refused he helped himself out of a beautiful box and flicked
the grains which had fallen on his lapel with a nimbleness of finger
such as it was a pleasure to behold. I ought to tell you that he spoke
English with great precision, though his accent was not pleasant--sort
of grizzled, as it were. Well, gentlemen, he said that _his_ prince, as
he called him, the grand duke, wanted some rubies; they were intended
for a present; and, though my visitor did not imply anything either by
word or gesture, I suspected at once that they were for a lady. The
grand duke at that time had been here a fortnight, and it was
said--However, there is no use in going into that. So I showed him a
few; but, if you will believe me, he wanted enough to make a tiara. I
told him that a tiara of stones of that quality would come anywhere from
sixty to eighty thousand dollars. If I had said a peck of groats he
could not have appeared more indifferent. 'It is a great deal of money,'
I said. He smiled a little at that, as though he were thinking, 'Poor
devil of an American, it may seem a great deal of money to you, but to a
grand duke--!' Then I brought out all I had. He looked them over with
the pincers very carefully, and asked how much I valued them at. I told
him a hundred and ten thousand dollars. He didn't turn a hair."
"Was he bald?" Jones asked.
"No, sir, he was not; and your jest is ill-timed. Gentlemen, I appeal to
you. I insist on Mr. Jones's attention--"
"Why, the man is crazy," Jones mused. "What does he mean by saying that
my jest is ill-timed? But why does he insist on my attention? He's
drunk--that's what he is; he's drunk and quarrelsome. Well, let him be.
What do I care?" And Alphabet Jones looked complacently at his white
waistcoat and then over at his excitable _vis-a-vis_. Mr. Fairbanks was
a little man of the Cruikshank pattern, very red and rotund, and as he
talked he gesticulated.
"So I said to him, 'There's been a corner in rubies, but it broke, and
that is the reason why I can give them at that price.' He didn't know
what a corner was, and when I explained he took a note-book out of his
pocket and wrote something in it. 'I am making a collection of
Americanisms for the Czarina,' he said. 'By the way,' he added, 'what is
a Sam Ward!' I told him. He laughed, and put it down--"
"His throat?"
Mr. Fairbanks glanced at Jones with unconcealed irritation: "Dr.
Hammond, sir, says that punning is a form of paresis."
"Be careful about that epsilon; it's short."
"Well, Mr. Jones, you ought to know how to pronounce the word better
than I, for you have the disease and I haven't. Gentlemen, I insist--"
But Jones had begun to muse again. "That fat little brute is a type," he
told himself. "I must work him in somewhere. I wonder, though, if I had
not better leave him and go up to the baccarat. It might be more
remunerative. It would be amusing," and Alphabet smiled at the fantasy
of his own thought, "it would be amusing indeed if he tried to prevent
me." He put his hand over his eyes and let Mr. Fairbanks ramble on.