Expectant, filled with that insatiable hunger which persons
travelling by sea attribute to the tonic action of the salt-laden
air, Scherer, Eduard, and Franklin were standing at the dining-room
door, discussing the weather while awaiting the arrival of the rest
of the company. Meals were served punctually aboard the "Excelsior,"
and Diana, as the only lady present, was especially careful as a rule
to avoid being late. Eduard, who alone knew why she was not ready,
held his tongue, so as not to have to tell the others that he had
discovered her at so late an hour still in conversation with the
Russian. It was difficult to decide what motive was uppermost in the
prince's thoughts as he made up his mind to keep silence in the
matter. He may have merely wished to avoid the risk of making a
mountain out of a molehill by suggesting there was anything as yet
between Kyril and Diana. Such vague surmises were apt, within the
narrow confines of a ship at sea, to assume undue proportions. Or
could it be that he, a prince, was suddenly aware that the
revolutionist might be a rival for the lady's favour?
The conversation had petered out, and Franklin, going over to consult
the chronometer, saw that it was already twenty minutes past the
hour. Scherer pulled his gold watch from his waistcoat pocket,
slowly wound it up, and replaced it without looking to see what time
it was. Eduard, observing the movements of the other two, shook his
shirt cuff free of his left wrist and looked down at the dial. At
that moment, Wilhelm, who had been standing a little apart and
contemplating the sea from the ship's side, suddenly broke in upon
the silence.
"It's all illuminated! The foam is all alight!"
The other three rejoined him, to watch the phosphorescent light on
the water. Each wave as it rose towards the vessel seemed to be lit
from beneath.
"Murmuring pearls," whispered Franklin.
"How wonderfully phosphorescent these tiny creatures are, to be
sure," said Scherer, thoroughly interested.
"Like the Bundesrat during the speech from the throne," came from the
prince.
Wilhelm who had hitherto been absorbed in his contemplation, now
looked up, and asked:
"Oh, do they wear such shining robes on State occasions?"
"Dresses of State," answered the prince, and his tone implied a
strange mixture of respect and mockery. "Furbelows from
Haroun-al-Rashid's epoch, as our Russian comrade would say."
"It reminds me of Phœnician glass," said Diana, who had,
unnoticed, joined the group. Everyone turned as she spoke, and,
since there seemed to her an element of reproof in her friends'
aspect, she added: "Perhaps you'll be sending me back to my cabin in
disgrace, for I see it has gone the half hour and I have no excuse
ready."
"I'm awfully sorry to be so late," said Kyril, dashing up from below.
But his excuses sounded dull and inadequate after Diana's dainty
little thrust.
Franklin thought: "A bassoon after the flute! How lovely her voice
is."
"You've mentioned those glasses before," said Scherer as he made way
to allow Diana to pass. "Did you not tell me your father had
unearthed them somewhere?"
"Yes, and they lighted up the whole of my childhood with their
opalescent spots, covered, as it were, by a film of lava."
By the time she had finished speaking, she had reached her end of the
table, and, making a half turn, she stood poised for a moment with
her bare arms slightly raised.
"She is certainly very beautiful," thought the Russian. "But she
only cares for admiration and adventure; not an idea in her head.
She's a lost soul."
"I'd always have her dress stunningly in the evening," said Scherer
to himself. "And in the daytime she should be dressed as a girl."
"What an intricate gown," said Eduard, aloud. "It must be the
butterfly that's holding it all together."
And Wilhelm exclaimed:
"Oh, what a rare specimen! Where was it caught, and by whom?"
He pushed back his chair, and, with the simplicity of a child, went
over to where Diana sat, in order to get a closer view of the
exquisite thing as it nestled in the soft folds of her low-cut gown.
And it was only now, at such proximity, that he realized how low
indeed the neck was cut. His young, inexperienced eyes lingered on
Diana's bosom, his senses became confused with the delicate aroma
that rose from her person, he forgot the passage of time. Four pairs
of eyes, glaring their protest and reproof, were fixed questioningly
upon Wilhelm, each man wondering when the indiscreet inspection would
come to an end. Diana, who had turned towards Wilhelm to show him
the ornament, did not see the men's expression, but she sensed
disapproval in the air by the silence that had fallen on the company.
She was rather amused by the little scene, and allowed half a minute
to go by before turning away and saying:
"Your soup will be cold, Wilhelm, and it's turtle soup today, you
know, tortoise, the sort upon which an elephant can stand, a Buddha
sitting on its back."
Wilhelm took a deep breath, and, as he hastened back to his place, he
was heard murmuring: "Marvellous!" but whether he was referring to
the turtle, or to the butterfly, or to Diana's bosom, not one of the
four men could decide.
Conversation now became general. There was talk about sacred rites
among the Hindus; Scherer gave an account of the tortoise-shell
mausoleum in Kandy, and told how he had hurriedly left the place and
gone back to Colombo, because a company of English snobs had taken
possession of the little lake, and how relieved he felt when he got
back to the vision of the infinite sea. Diana had some interesting
things to say concerning the customs in Upper Egypt, and about
camel-riding, and her first experience of sea-sickness as she
crouched between the animal's humps. Franklin spoke of the
serpentine movements of the elephant's trunk, and went on to refer to
the anomalous aspect of this strange creature as seen amid the haunts
of men. Finally he opened a discussion on the price of ivory, which
seemed greatly to interest Scherer. "Yes," he was saying, "I
remember my awe when the first tusk was put in my hand and how I
turned to the skinny little hunter to say that such a beautiful thing
was certainly worth all the perils of the chase. To which he
answered: 'Of course you know that out of one tusk six billiard balls
can be made.''
"All my sympathies go to the elephant," exclaimed Kyril, rousing
himself from his silence. "The futile uses to which such fine things
and so much labour are put..."
"Quite right! Quite right!" exclaimed Eduard. "I'm wholeheartedly a
partisan of the pachyderms. All politicians should belong to that
race, and to that race alone!"
"It's a pity you speak ironically," retorted Kyril, "for what you say
happens to be true."
The prince's lips twitched, then he said:
"By the time the present generation of diplomats, the spiders, have
died out, I fear the elephants will have been exterminated by the
Austrian consular service under the leadership of Dr. Franklin as
head huntsman! Whom shall we then have left to send as ambassador to
St. Petersburg, I should like to know?"
"Reynard the Fox," laughed Scherer.
"On the contrary," said Eduard, "the revolutionists here wish it
might be the lamb!"
"Neither will do," put in Kyril gravely, "but, rather, Herr Scherer
himself--on the understanding of course that he has accepted our
ideas in their entirety."
Although Scherer's acceptance of these ideas was only partial and,
even then, mainly theoretical, he felt more flattered by the
Russian's implied appreciation than he would have been by an official
summons to such a post. Nevertheless, he did not betray his
feelings, merely answering:
"I'm no more than a business man. You'd better try to convince the
prince, so that in the future when he is appointed to some foreign
post, he may work hand in hand with us, democratically. Advanced
ideas coming from abroad have a much better chance of acceptance at
home, you know!"
"Compromise," muttered Kyril disdainfully. "Parson Brand says: 'All
or nothing!'"
Since Scherer had spoken, the prince had kept his eyes on the
Russian, considering him attentively. Again tonight he reacted as he
had always reacted to similar talks during the past weeks, when this
slogan had been voiced, and it seemed to him that the Russian's
fanaticism was a serious obstacle to fulfilment. He intervened by
saying:
"Would you appoint Ibsen's Brand as chargé d'affaires in Christiania?"
"He'd be a trifle old for the job, I fear," answered Kyril.
"You would, then, introduce an age-limit for diplomats? Treat them
as the Fiji Islanders treat their old folk? At sixty lead them on to
the rostrum whence, if they proved no longer capable of maintaining
their equilibrium, they would fall to the ground!"
"The Russians are right," cried Franklin enthusiastically; "young
people are better for such posts."
"Bravo! I think so too," exclaimed Wilhelm, the youngest of the
party, who, as usual, had been silently and reverently watching the
others while they talked.
For the time being, the problem was settled in a chorus of merry
laughter, which suddenly ceased when Scherer rose as if to deliver a
formal speech.
"Don't be alarmed," he said, smiling round the circle. "I have no
intention of introducing etiquette of any sort on board the
'Excelsior,' but, since we have been talking of diplomats and of
youth, I should like us all to give our good wishes to one among us
who, this day, has added another year to the tale of his young
decades--I drink to the health of our friend and my guest, His
Highness, Prince Eduard!"
The men had risen. Clicking his heels together and bowing
ceremoniously, the prince touched glasses with his host. Then he
turned to Diana and found her gazing up at him, her eyes dimmed with
tears. Memories of another dinner party crowded upon him. It had
been in the Balkans; she had had a lover at the time; he himself had
been filled with envy. Now, as he bent towards her, Eduard became
poignantly aware of the caresses the dead man must have given to the
Diana-like body before him, a body which he had glimpsed for a
fleeting moment from a distant vantage point in a public gathering.
The lure of the woman was strong upon him.
All had by now clinked glasses and had drunk the toast. There
followed an awkward pause, so usual in the train of such ceremonies.
Then Wilhelm's voice broke in on the silence.
"I thought something must be up directly I saw champagne glasses on
the table!"
"So we have an Almanach de Gotha on board the man-of-war," said
Eduard, turning to Scherer.
"You'll have to own up to your age now," cried Kyril with unwonted
eagerness.
Whereat Diana thought: "Does he hope to be the younger of the two?"
And, as if to shield the prince, she said hastily to Kyril: "You,
too, will have to make the same confession."
"After His Highness!"
"Guess," said Eduard turning to Diana.
She hesitated.
"According to the Almanach, Prince Eduard is nine-and-twenty years of
age," said Scherer, meaning to help the prince out of an embarrassing
situation. "Kürschner, in which we'd be bound to find Dr.
Sergievitch's name, is unfortunately not on board, and I'm afraid
we'll have some difficulty in finding a copy among the Ionian
Islands."
"Twenty-nine, likewise," Kyril informed them simply.
Diana, who was always responsive to the mystical in things, and
endowed with a physical love of youth, felt moved and excited as she
asked:
"Which of you is the younger?"
Her eyes travelled from one to the other.
Eduard and Kyril leaned across the table; they gave the impression of
two wrestlers as each gazed in his opponent's eyes. Their companions
were silent witnesses of this soundless duel. Kyril at this moment
appeared to be endowed with superior strength, and seemed to be
hiding something which his vis-à-vis was endeavouring to divine. A
moment or two passed. Then Wilhelm's voice again broke the tension:
"They were born on the same day!" he cried exultantly.
"How do you know that?" retorted Kyril, his face darkening, his
manner rough and imperious.
"I--I guessed it from the way you behaved," stammered Wilhelm,
abashed.
"Is he right?" asked Diana eagerly, leaning forward in her turn.
"Is he right?" chimed in Franklin and Scherer simultaneously.
Kyril sat back in his chair, folded his table napkin, and answered
gruffly:
"Yes, he's right."
Diana and Eduard drew themselves up, completely taken aback.
"Then we can seize the opportunity of wishing you many happy returns,
too," said Scherer jocularly, hoping to relieve the tension.
"Not today," protested Kyril, "our Russian seventeenth of April does
not fall due until your thirtieth."
"Still, you were born under the same star," said Diana.
"Star? A new kind of decoration," mocked Eduard, trying to conceal
his excitement. "Do you know anything about such matters, my
mystical foster-brother?"
"I don't believe in such things," answered Kyril.
Scherer laughed, and Diana, too, could not hide her mirth as she said
merrily:
"You were both born in the constellation of the Ram."
"Hence these horns," commented Eduard.
"Wool," said Kyril.
"Maybe, likewise, the power of growth, a future vita nuova," put in
Diana.
"Both of us--identical," said Kyril sullenly; like someone who
disapproved of such pleasantries and felt drawn into retaliating in
spite of his better judgment. "How will you, then, be able to tell
us apart?"
"Your horoscopes will not be identical because the actual days of
your birth differ. My father could tell you all that with precision.
I don't know much about such things myself, or, at most, if you care
to show me your palms...?"
Both men stretched out their left hands towards Diana who pushed her
dessert plate aside. She drew the hands towards her, placed her
elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, then looked from one
palm to the other while the company sat eagerly waiting for her to
speak.
"How very different they are," she murmured after a while, "so many
lines crossing one another on your palm, Prince. Here, in the long
line of your life, a kink as it were, cutting it short, after which
the line becomes firmer. Head line good, decidedly domineering. The
line of heart seems to peter out here, but it rises in the Jupiter
mound."
"May I ask what course it follows?" queried the prince.
"It gives pride of place to love," answered Diana in a matter-of-fact
voice. "The mound of Venus is, however, not so pronounced. The
fingers are contemplative rather than grasping. But this middle one,
so square when compared with the others, that brings us to the
Scales, equilibrium." She had not touched him while thus telling his
fortune. Now she looked him in the face as she added: "On the whole,
a lucky hand, Prince."
He turned his hand over on the table, took hers in his and kissed it.
Then:
"And now for my rival," he said.
Kyril meanwhile, had been sitting motionless, following every word,
staring enviously at Eduard's long fingers. Before she began to
speak, Diana looked up into the Russian's face and found his eyes
fixed inquiringly on her own.
"This hand," she began even more sententiously than heretofore, "has
fewer lines. A wonderful line of fate. It rises here, below the
line of life, and runs up in two great curves to join the lines of
the head and the heart, straight up into the mound of Jupiter: and
there is a star."
"What does the star signify?" asked Kyril, dully.
"A great career," answered Diana, so frigidly that Eduard felt uneasy
at such a display of hostility. "But the line of life is not good at
this point, it divides in two, very decidedly, and it is not long."
"How can you tell that?" queried Kyril harshly, bending forward so
eagerly that his fair hair caressed her cheek. She did not draw
back, but said calmly, pointing to the spot again:
"By this."
"That's all right. What else do you see?"
"The head line does not join the line of life. That betokens
fanaticism. Mound of Venus, very strongly developed; line of heart,
simple. The fingers are grasping fingers," she concluded, raising
her head. "A square hand: more will than intelligence. Please
forgive me, I'm keeping you all too long at table."
When, later, they sat in the smoking cabin over cigarettes and
coffee, their wicker chairs drawn together in a circle, the
conversation drifted from suggestion to sleep-walking and to
premonitions of death. From time to time Wilhelm had dragged one or
the other of the circle to the railing to look at the phosphorescence
in the water. These ecstatic excursions had been interpolated into
the general talk which see-sawed between acceptance and denial of
extraordinary phenomena. Franklin could contemplate the cosmos only
from the mystical view-point. Scherer, as a man of the world who had
never wholly denied the possibility of abnormal happenings,
endeavoured always to anchor himself on certainties, as the only safe
harbourage. But despite his best endeavours the springs of
conversation gradually dried up.
The prince and the Russian contributed nothing to the entertainment.
The strange coincidence of their birthdates, separated merely by the
vagaries of the calendar, the variations in their fortunes as read in
the lines of their hands, the aura emanating from the clothing and
the personality of the woman in their midst: all this, and more
especially the strangely prophetic confirmation of her own
consciousness, lay heavy upon the spirits of the two men, one of whom
had been dancing attendance upon Diana for many months in spite of
prejudices of race and rank, while the other held aloof from her,
hostile and suspicious, and yet attracted to her in his own despite.
The young woman herself was under the spell of her own perceptions.
She felt bemused. As always when things lying without the circle of
the tangible sent a ray of light towards her like a beacon from a
distant port, she seemed to be gathered up into the mysterious in a
way that appeared to her almost offensive, so greatly did she revere
her own aptitudes and so much did she hate to tamper with these
secret forces of her being. In such moods the incentive which her
essentially productive nature was in the habit of giving to those who
came in contact with her, was stilled; it was as if she were tossed
amid dark and gloomy waters, and thoughts knocked at her heart,
thoughts which at other times she sought to handle collectedly.
She felt the warm night wind on her throat and arms; her hand moved
slowly, as if half asleep, towards the butterfly on her bosom which,
in rhythm with the rock crystal pendant, rose and fell with her
breathing; her imagination, more alert now than her eyes which lay
deep in the shadows, drank in the luminous movement of the waves,
sensing their luminosity rather than perceiving it. And as she lay
thus pensive and dreamy she felt acutely how alone she was, and how
impossible it was for these friends and lovers around her to put an
end to such solitude as hers.
Was such a thing desirable she asked herself. Could passion, once
more aroused, be lovelier than the mute sympathy of air and sea and
death and night and stars? She looked up, searching for the Scales,
and became uneasy when she could not make out the constellation amid
the clouds which delicately veiled the firmament.
Abruptly she got up, swept by the astonished Wilhelm whose eyes
followed her movements inquisitively, and made for the bows. The
waters were no longer aglow; the sky was partially overcast. She
became conscious of her youth as the wind played around her
shoulders, she saw the rise and fall of her breast beneath the
diaphanous folds of her gown, she felt the sensual delight of the
soft wrap covering her bare arms, and the dead butterfly adorning the
low-cut neck of her dress seemed more brilliant and more alluring
than the waves.
She threw back her shawl so that she might fully enjoy the warm
caress of the wind. Was not all this the prelude to an embrace? Was
she, a young, beautiful, and independent woman, to continue living,
as she had lived for a year and more, like a cloistered nun?---- Why
does he hesitate? Why does he not come, unannounced, tonight, appear
suddenly in my cabin, this respectable, ardent cynic, and forget his
habitual irony and decorum in the ecstasy of an endless night? Do I
frighten the men who refrain from seizing me in the first hour of our
acquaintance?
She returned to the circle of her friends, excused herself as she
lightly shook each by the hand, and withdrew to her cabin. Hastily
dismissing Mary, she took a seat in front of her threefold mirror and
hearkened to the murmur of the waters beneath the port-hole. She
pushed back the wrap from her shoulders, and, as if her own fingers
were those of a lover beginning to unclothe his sweetheart, she
started to unhook her gown. With a slow and voluptuous movement, she
raised her arms above her head, so that the frail bodice slipped down
to the broad waistband which she had loosened likewise. She pressed
the hard crystal between her breasts and held the dead butterfly
against her bosom. Her other arm was still upraised to frame her
curly head. For a long time she sat there, gazing at herself in the
mirror. Then she rose. With a single motion the dress and her
underwear slid to her feet; then stepping free, as from a pupa-case,
she again contemplated herself in the glass.
She found herself beautiful, and yet as she stretched out her arms in
longing, she had no desire for the man who had been in her thoughts.
What she desired now was love. The tones of Wilhelm's lute floated
down to her, yearning and soft.
She clasped her strong hands together, and then pressed their palms
against her body. Aghast, she let them fall to her side, her eyes
darkened, for as she had watched the movements of her own hands her
thoughts had flown to the huge fists of the Russian. She pulled on a
nightgown, and slipped into her bunk. Soon she was wrapped in a
dreamless sleep.