"What the devil," said I, "has brought these Kings here, Smith? Can you
guess?"
"I don't know. I might," he replied, looking over his book at me.
"Well, what is your guess?"
"Why, I suppose they're worried. Things are going very rottenly for the
hun. British, French and Yank are kicking them about most brutally from
Arras to the Vosges. That pasty-faced pervert, the Crown Prince, has
had the very pants kicked off him. The U-boats are a fizzle. The
Bolsheviki are running into cracks like vermin to escape fumigation.
Austria is sick from Italy's kick delivered into the pit of her stomach.
Enver Pasha, who was promised the Khediviate of Egypt when the boche
started to carve up the world, is turning ugly and demanding why the
banquet isn't ready."
He made a weary gesture toward the ceiling.
"Up there," he said, "sits the most cowardly, murderous, and despicable
ruler in the world--Ferdinand of Bulgaria--scared stiff because he's
beginning to believe he's bet on the wrong horse.
"With him sit a King and Queen recently kicked headlong out of Greece.
They also are becoming intensely nervous about that promise made by the
hun Kaiser--an oath thundered from Berlin that the boche sword should
restore them to their thrones.
"You see, Michael, they're worried. They've sneaked away from Berne
incognito to meet here and lay all their cards on the common table.
They're here to consult, bargain, cheat if they can, but anyway they're
here to come to some understanding and arrive at some agreement as to
the best means to avert utter disaster. That's why they're here.
"They couldn't feel safe in spy-ridden Berne; they evidently dare not
trust their own servants. It is plain to me that Switzerland, which is
mostly pro-boche, engineered the affair, willingly or reluctantly,
because the Kaiser's sister is involved and the Federal Government is
horribly afraid of the boche.
"You see how it came about, don't you? This bunch of royal crooks
desired a safe place for a get-together party. Long ago they had
planned it. Then you appeared to take possession of your inheritance.
"What could be safer for them than this lonely valley and a neutral
gentleman from Chili to make 'em comfortable?"
"And a Norse Viking," said I.
"Be careful," he said gravely.
"Of course. But they believe you are what you pretend to be, don't
they?"
"Absolutely.... And how do you know I am not?" he inquired smilingly.
We exchanged gay but significant glances. He went on speaking:
"That's all there is to it," he said, "a bunch of dips trying it on each
other and still held together by the 'cohesive power of plunder'--the
Prussian hun, the Austrian hun, the unspeakable Turk, the bloody Bulgar,
the besotted Bolshevik!--a fine mess, Michael!--and here, under your
roof, are three who have long ago been mugged, and who are known to the
police of civilization everywhere."
"They've got their nerve," said I angrily, "to come here and discuss
their dirty schemes! I've a damned good mind to ask them for their
rooms. I've got enough of them already, Smith. I'm hanged if I stand
for this another day----"
His hand closed on my arm in a leisurely grip of steel, and I winced and
looked up at him in surprise and protest.
"_Don't--spoil--things_," he said quietly. His level glance met mine
with a metallic glint, and I saw in his features something terrible--a
fleeting gleam like the far reflection of lightning across a thunder
cloud.
"Smith!" I exclaimed.
"Don't raise your voice, old chap."
"N-no. But--can't you tell me just what you really are?"
"I'm really quite all right," he assured me, laughingly.
"I assumed that. But--are you here, also, to keep an eye on these
kings?"
"Well, you know one can't help noticing them----"
"Damn! Answer me."
"I admit," he said, "that they interest me."
So _that_ was what brought Smith here, too! He must have known they
were coming. He must have deliberately scraped acquaintance with me for
this purpose.
"I thought," said I bitterly, "that you really liked me, Smith."
"I do, confound you!" he said. "If I didn't both like and trust you, do
you think I'd have been so careless in concealing my identity?"
Both Thusis and Clelia had said the same thing to me.
"Smith?"
"What?"
"Did you know Thusis and Clelia before you met them here?"
"No."
"Do you know why they're here?"
"I can guess."
"Do you know who they really are?"
"No," he said honestly, "I don't. And I can not seem to find out. All
I know is that their purpose in coming here does conflict with mine----"
The pretty fanfare of a postilion's horn cut him short.
"There," said I, "comes the rest of the precious bunch!"
"'Hail, hail,'" said he gravely, "'the gang's all here!'"
And we got up and went to the window to inspect the arriving diligence.
*XIII*
*IN THE RAIN*
That afternoon I fled the house. This new invasion of my privacy had
quite upset me. Bulgarian and Greek royalty had been difficult enough to
endure, but this new wagon-load of huns and near-huns proved too much
for me.
If there were any privacy at all to be had it seemed that I must seek it
in the woods. And thither I fled under an umbrella, a book under one
arm, a fishing rod under the other, and my pockets full of smoking
material.
For I preferred to sit on the wet moss in the rain, and read and smoke
and fish under my ancient green gamp--even if the seat of my trousers
did become soaking wet--rather than listen to the gobbling gabble of
those Teutons and witness their bad manners and their unpleasant
personal habits.
So, as I say, as soon as the new arrivals had registered and had been
assigned to rooms I made up my mind to inhabit the woods during their
occupation of my property, and invited Smith to share my indignant
seclusion.
He declined, probably because, whoever he really was and whatever might
be his job, the one and the other very evidently had to do with this
bunch of assorted boches.
He said very politely that he didn't enjoy privacy when it was sopping
wet. He smiled when he said it. We were standing at the desk in the
big living-room: the huns, both royalty and new arrivals, had gone to
their rooms, and Smith was carelessly examining the register where my
guests' signatures had been inscribed in the pale and watery ink of the
country.
"A pretty kettle of fish," I commented, looking over his shoulder. "But
this new consignment of boches doesn't seem to be camouflaged. These
are their real names, I fancy."
"I happen to know that they are," said Smith.
He began to read the names aloud just as they were written; and I
noticed the lazy amusement in his pleasant, even voice as he commented
upon each signature:
"'_General Count von Dungheim_'! Oh, yes; he belonged to Tino's suite
when he was kicked out of Athens. They call him 'Droly.' He did some
dirty work there--instigated the murder of the allied detachments. He's
a big, thin Prussian with a capacity for gluttony equal only to the
Bulgarian King's. He enjoys only one eye.
"'_Baron von Bummelzug_'! Oh, certainly. He's a Bavarian civilian. He
engineered the treacherous surrender of that Greek army corps. He also
was in Tino's suite, and still is.
"'_Admiral Lauterlaus_'! Tino's ex-naval aide. Tried dirty work on the
Allied fleet off Samos. A Prussian,--mostly belly and head.
"'_Princess Pudelstoff_'! She was that enormously fat woman, Michael,
who kissed King Ferdinand on both cheeks and left two wet spots. She's
one of those German-Russians from Courland attached to the Bulgarian
court, and related to Ferdinand in some degree or other,--irregularly.
"'_Countess Manntrapp_'! The pretty girl. You remember her honeyed,
cooing voice when you were presented to her?--and her ecstatic baby
stare, as though acquaintance with a Chilean gentleman had been the
secret ambition of her life, and the realization overwhelmed her? Well,
old top, there you have Lila Shezawitch, Countess Manntrapp--the widow
of that brainless old reprobate, the cavalryman, who disappeared in some
Russian swamp-hole when Hindenburg made his mark among the lakes.
"'_Adolf Gizzler_'! Look out for that rat, Michael. He's a bum
school-teacher, Bummelzug's secretary.
"'_Leo Puppsky_'! What do you know about that Bolshevik being here in
Switzerland? And
"'_Isidore Wildkatz_,' too! Here they are with the huns, this pair of
Judases! Oh, you're quite right, Michael. It's a pretty kettle of
fish. I don't blame you for taking to the woods, rain or no rain."
"You won't come, too?" I asked. He smiled, and I understood.
He was _such_ a decent sort. I had become very fond of him.
"All right," said I; "don't get yourself into trouble. That's certainly
a sinister bunch of boches as well as an unpleasant one."
"Good old Michael," he said, patting my shoulder.
So I took to the woods with rod and book, and a camp-stool I picked up
on the veranda.
Heavens, how it rained! But I stopped at the barn-yard, found a
manure-fork, and disinterred a tin canful of angle-worms. Then I
marched on in the teeth of the storm, umbrella over my head, and entered
that pretty woodland path which Thusis and I had once trodden together
on our food-conservation quest.
The memory inclined me to sentimental reverie, and, with my dripping
gamp over my head, I slopped along in a sort of trance, my brain a maze
of vague enchantment as images of Thusis or of my photograph of The
Laughing Girl alternately occupied my thoughts.
For, when alone, these two lovely phantoms always became inextricably
mixed. I could not seem to differentiate between them in memory. And
which was the loveliest I could not decide because the resemblance was
too confusing.
And so, in a sort of delicious daze, I arrived at the foot-bridge.
Here I spread my camp-stool by the green pool's edge. It was a torrent,
now, but still as brilliant and clear as a beryl, and that it lacked its
natural and emerald clarity did not deter me from baiting my hook with
several expostulating worms, and hurling it forth into the foaming
basin.
To hold a fishing rod in one fixed position bores me, and always did.
So I laid the rod on the bank, placed a flat stone on the butt, and,
sheltered under my umbrella, lighted a pipe and opened my book.
But the book soon bored me, too. It was a novel by one of the myriads
of half-educated American "authors" who resemble a countryman I once
knew who called himself a "natural bone-setter" and enjoyed a large and
furtive practice among neighboring clodhoppers to the indignation of all
the local physicians.
There are thousands of "authors" in the United States. But there are
very few writers.
And this novel was by an author, and my attention wandered.
Through an opening in the forest on a clear day one might look out upon
a world of mountains eastward. I realized there could be no view
through the thickly falling rain, but I turned around. And, to my
surprise, I beheld a cloaked figure poised upon the chasm's distant
edge, peering out into the storm through a pair of field-glasses.
I knew that figure in spite of the cloak. Nor could the thickly
slanting rain quench the glorious color of that burnished hair.
"Thusis!" I shouted.
Slowly the figure turned, glasses still poised; and I saw her looking in
my direction.
"I'm fishing!" I called out joyously. "Come under my umbrella!"
She cast a glance behind her toward the blank void where, on clear days,
the bulk of the Bec de l'Empereur towered aloft in its mantle of
dazzling snow. Then she slowly walked toward me through the rain.
When she came near to where I sat, she began to laugh; and I never saw
such an exquisite sight as Thusis, bare-headed in the rain, laughing.
"What on earth are you up to, Michael?" she said.
"Fishing. That herd of huns will eat us out of house and garden if we
don't catch something. Sit beside me under the umbrella, Thusis.
There's room if we're careful and don't let the camp-stool collapse."
She gave me an inscrutable glance, stood motionless for a few moments,
then slowly came over.
"Careful now," I cautioned her, rising. "We must both seat ourselves at
the same instant or this camp-stool will close up like a jack-knife.
Are you ready?"
She laughed and inclined her pretty head.
"Then--one! two! three! Sit!"
We managed to accomplish it without an accident.
"We're too close together," she protested.
"Don't stir," said I. "Do you feel how it wabbles?"
She tested the camp-stool cautiously, and nodded.
"What an absurd situation," she remarked, glancing up at the gamp which
I held over us.
"I think it's very jolly." She didn't look at me; we were too close--so
close that we might possibly have rubbed noses if either turned. But in
her side-long glance I noted both amusement and irony.
"Have you caught anything, Don Michael?"
"Not a bally thing."
"What are you reading?"
"A book of sorts--a novel by an 'author' who lacks education,
cultivation, experience, vocabulary, and a working knowledge of English
grammar. In other words, Thusis, a typical American 'author,'--one of
the Bolsheviki of literature whose unlettered Bolshevik readers are
recruited from the same audience that understands and roars with
laughter at the German and Jewish jokes which compose the librettos of
our New York musical comedies."
Thusis turned up her pretty nose and shrugged--or tried to,--but nearly
upset me, and desisted.
"It's silly to sit here like two hens on a roost," she said.
"It's cozy," said I with a blissful smile that perhaps approached the
idiotic.
"Cozy or not," she insisted, "we resemble a pair of absurd birds."
"Then," said I, "one of us ought to twitter and begin to sing."
We both laughed. "The last time we were here together," I reminded her,
"you were singing all the while."
"Was I?"
"Yes, and I liked it--although your detachment was not flattering to
me."
"Poor Michael. Did you feel abused?"
"It's no novel feeling," said I.
"You ungrateful young man! Do you mean to insinuate that _I_ abuse you?
I--who go fishing with you, stop my house-work to gossip with you, sit
on the stairs with you at three in the morning--and in my nightie,
too----"
"What an incident for a best-seller!" said I. "Fancy the fury of the
female critic! Imagine the rage of the 'good woman'!"
"You are satirical, Don Michael."
"Doesn't satire amuse you?"
"I adore it."
"Nothing," said I, "so angers ignorance as satire, because it is not
understood, and ignorance becomes suspicious when it does not understand
anything. Ignorance mistakes dullness for depth. That is why dull books
are so widely read.
"There is, in America, Thusis, a vast desert inhabited by 'authors' who
produce illiterature.
"Similar deserts, though less in area, exist in other sections of
America. By its ear-marks, however, I guess that this book was
'authorized' somewhere west of Chicago. Don't read it. Only 'a good
woman' could enjoy it."