"That girl, madame, is Thusis, my housekeeper."
"Fiddle," retorted the queen. "She's something else, too,--or once was.
The first time I noticed her it occurred to me that I'd seen her
somewhere. What was she--a celebrated dancer?--before she became your
_housekeeper_?"
The queen's nasty insolence froze me.
"I am not," said I, "as familiar with celebrated dancers as your husband
is--and the various men of your immediate family."
That I had penetrated her incognito did not appear to disturb her as
much as my inferences concerning Tino and the Kaiser and that degenerate
nest of reptiles, her nephews.
A white, pinched expression came into her frosty face and her eyes
flamed.
"I thought you were a Yankee," she said.
"A Yankee from Chile," said I, bowing.
She looked clean through me at Thusis.
"I've seen that woman somewhere," she said without emotion. "I'll
recollect where, presently."
But my eyes and attention were now focussed on the lovely Thusis and I
paid no further heed to this bad-tempered Hohenzollern.
Never have I seen such an exquisite dance, such grace, such loveliness.
As for the boches, when Thusis ended her _Dance of the Sea_, they were
like a herd of cattle galloping around her and bellowing their
satisfaction.
Tino, drunk and prodigal, began to throw handfuls of gold at Thusis,
and, enraged, I caught him by the collar and jerked him onto a chair.
"Where the devil do you think you are--in the Coulisse of the Opera?" I
cried in his partly deafened ear.
But he only grinned and wagged his head and attempted to fish more gold
out of his pockets. But now his thrifty wife interfered and she ordered
Secretary Gizzler to pick up every coin. Then she hissed something into
Tino's car which seemed to galvanize that partly soused monarch so that
he found his feet with alacrity and suffered himself to be led aside by
his tight-lipped spouse.
From time to time during the festivities I had heard distant significant
noises indicating that upstairs the Bolsheviki were not enduring
sheep-dip and imprisonment with resignation.
Once I had slipped away to the corridor outside their quarters, but,
when I made my presence known, Raoul from within calmly assured me that
the delousing was progressing successfully and that he did not require
my assistance.
Russia, forcibly scrubbed, had put forth agonized howls; and now, Russia
imprisoned, was battering at its door and yelling murder.
Now and then, a hun noticed the noise and inquired concerning its
origin, but I always turned on more music and they soon forgot in the
din of the dance.
Thusis had resumed her dance with Eddin Bey; Smith and Clelia were
dancing. I said to Raoul, who was starting to crank the music-machine:
"I'll just step up and quiet those Bolsheviki."
They were raining blows upon their door when I arrived. I rapped
sharply.
"What do you want?" said I.
They gibbered at me in Russian.
"Speak English!" I insisted.
Perhaps Puppsky was so excited or so demoralized by his first bath that
he forgot he could speak English.
I tried them in Italian: "Whata da mat'?" I inquired pleasantly. They
chattered back at me like lunatic squirrels.
"What the devilovitch is the matsky?" I shouted, incensed at their
stupidity. "You listen to me! Your clothes are being boiled and you've
got to stay where you are! Stop your noise, Puppsky!"
And off I went to inspect the big wash boiler in the kitchen where,
lifting the lid which had been the queen's shield, I was gratified to
observe the garments of the Bolsheviki simmering nicely.
"It is not the only vermin that Germania's shield covers," said I. And
much pleased with my _jeu d'esprit_, I poured in another bottle of
sheep-dip and returned to the dance salon where supper was now being
served at little tables.
As soon as I entered the room I felt trouble brewing. The inevitable
hunnish reaction had set in. A tired boche is an ugly one; an
intoxicated hun may become either offensively sentimental or surly and
ingeniously bestial. And now they were about to become surfeited huns,
heavy with wine, heavier with food. I did not fancy the looks of things
very much.
The queen alone appeared to be perfectly sober; the others were engaged
in that sort of half insolent raillery always provocative of a row,
shouting German pleasantries at one another from table to table, lifting
slopping glasses, cheering, singing and leering at the ladies.
Bummelzug demanded that the music-box play "Deutschland ueber Alles,"
but the disk was non-existent.
Von Dungheim, who exhibited an inclination to weep at any mention of
Germany, asked in a hoarsely saturated voice for a folk-song. And Raoul
turned on two; and the huns sang first "_Du bist wie eine Blume_," which
shattered them sentimentally so that loud sobs punctuated the
"_Lorelei_" which, of course, followed.
Then Ferdinand, one arm around the Princess Pudelstoff, and a chicken
wing in the other hand, lifted a voice choked with food and attempted a
Bulgarian folk-song--something about the "Kara Dagh" and
"Slivnitza"--but presently lost all recollection of what he was doing
and challenged everybody to extemporaneous rhymes in praise of his
native land.
Nobody obliged.
"Too stupid!" he remarked thickly. "Nobody clever enough to rhyme
'_Bulgarian_'--eh, mine host?" looking around at me where I sat
shielding Thusis from the playful attentions of King Constantine who was
attempting to pinch her.
"Of course," said I, "'_Bulgarian_' rhymes with 'vulgarian'; but that's
obvious." And I smiled at the Tzar of all the Bulgars and offered
Thusis a bon-bon.
She looked at Ferdinand, at Tino, at the queen: suddenly she threw back
her head, and that lovely, childlike, silvery laughter rippled through
the Teutonic din.
There was no scorn in her laughter, only the delicious, irresistible
gaiety of a young girl face to face with the excruciating. And there is
nothing on earth more innocently insolent.
Every Teuton head was turned toward her in stupefied displeasure; fishy,
fixed, pig-like eyes stared at this young girl who dared condone an
insult to Bulgaria with her fresh, impulsive laughter.
Suddenly behind me there was a brusque movement; I heard Tino protest
that his foot had been trodden on; and, turning, I saw the queen
excitedly rising from her place.
"I know who that woman is now!" she said in a voice as sharp as a blade.
She pointed at Thusis like a vixen from the markets:
"That's The Laughing Girl!" she cried. "Look at her! Anybody can
recognize her now from her photographs!"
Thusis colored crimson and shrank from the brutal publicity against my
shoulder, staring wide-eyed at the hatefully sneering visage of the
queen.
"The celebrated Laughing Girl!" repeated the queen mockingly; "Mr.
O'Ryan's _housekeeper_, gentlemen--and our guest at dinner! And what
does our German chivalry and nobility think of that insult launched at
us by a Yankee inn-keeper?"
"Be silent, madame!" I said sharply. "If you don't know how to conduct
yourself I shall request your husband to remove you!"
Then it came, the boche deluge!--a herd of huddling swine on their feet,
all grunting at me, enraged, clamoring, waving their arms. And in the
midst of the guttural uproar a thin, high voice pierced all sound and
dominated it--the sniffling whine of Secretary Gizzler.
Possessed by a sort of cringing exaltation, he rose to his thin, splay
feet, and pointed a meager finger almost in the shocked face of Thusis.
"That is the Duchess of Naxos!" he squealed.
At that Thusis was on her feet, white as a slim sword-blade, and her
gray eye charged with lightning.