The Enemies of Women Part 58

The Prince was going with her as far as the entrance to his gardens.

During the walk he began once more to lament his fate. He needed to relieve by articulation the despair in which he was left by the refusal of the English woman to tell him where Alicia was staying.

"I am very unhappy, Lady Mary."

"I know," she replied. "My misfortunes are greater than yours, but I rise above them better."

For Mary life was a sort of balance. In one pan of the scales suffering had perforce to fall. No one could free himself from that burden. But the spirit must re-establish the equilibrium by placing in the other pan something great, an ideal, a hope. She had found the necessary counterweight: love for everything alive, sacrifice for one's fellow beings, and consequent abnegation.

What did the Prince have to counter-balance the shocks of destiny?...

Nothing. He went on living the same as in peace times, thinking only of himself. He was still just as the great ma.s.s of men had been, before the war drew them from their selfish individualism, making the virtues of solidarity and sacrifice flourish once more in their souls. For that reason all he needed to feel desperate was a mere obstacle to his desires, a disappointment in love, that should really be an affliction only in the life of a mere boy. Oh, if only he could get a high ideal!

If only he could think less about himself and more about mankind!...

They shook hands beside the gate.

"Good-by, Lady Lewis!" said the Prince, bowing.

If Don Marcos had been present the Prince's voice at that moment would have sounded familiar to him. It was the same as on the afternoon of the duel, when he met the English woman with the two blind men; a beautifully solemn voice which wavered close to tears.

Toledo did not appear until a few moments later, coming out of the gardener's pavilion, to meet the Prince, who was returning pensively toward the villa.

Lubimoff spoke and gave an order in stern tones.

"I am leaving for Paris. I want to go to-morrow. Make all the necessary arrangements."

Then, as he gazed into the Colonel's eyes, he continued in a gentler voice:

"I think I shall never return here.... I am going to sell Villa Sirena."

CHAPTER XII

Don Marcos is descending the slopes of the public gardens toward the Casino Square, in conversation with a soldier.

He is no longer the ceremonious Colonel who used to kiss the hands of the elderly and n.o.ble ladies in the gambling rooms, and was present as the inevitable guest at the luncheons of all the t.i.tled families stopping at the Hotel de Paris. There is nothing about his person to recall the long velvet lined frock coats, the high white silk hats, and the other splendors of his eccentric elegance. He is soberly dressed in a dark suit, and there is something rustic about his appearance, which reveals the man who lives in the country, enjoys cultivating the soil, and feels constraint on returning to city life. He is wearing gloves, just as in the good old days; but now it is out of necessity. His hands remind him of a certain narrow garden around his diminutive villa, with five trees, twelve rose bushes, and some forty shrubs all of which he knows individually, by names he has given them. He has been caring for them so fondly, and caressing them so often, that his fingers have become calloused.

The soldier is also walking along like a country man, looking with curiosity in every direction. A stiff mustache covers his upper lip, one of those stiff and aggressive mustaches which come out after long periods of continual shaving. His uniform is old, faded by the sun and rain. The yellowish cloth has the neutral color of the soil. His right arm hangs inert from the shoulder and moves in rhythm with his step, like a dangling inanimate object. His hand is covered with a glove, the rigidity of which reveals the outline of something hard and mechanical.

The other hand leans on a knotty cane, and smoke is curling from a pipe in his lips. On his sleeves, almost mingling with the color of the cloth, is the one narrow officer's stripe.

"It has been ten months and twenty days, since your Highness left here.

How many things have happened!"

The soldier is Prince Lubimoff; but Lubimoff seems stronger, more serene and decided than the preceding year, in spite of his artificial arm.

There are the same gray hairs, scattered here and there, on his head; but his mustache, on being allowed to grow, has come out almost white.

The Colonel's side whiskers are like his mustache. With the disappearance of his elegance, the touches of the toilet table have likewise ceased, and the modest gray, obtained by careful dying, has given place to the white of frank old age.

Don Marcos points to the Square toward which they are both going.

"If your Highness had only seen it the night of the Armistice!"

The news of the triumph made every one come running. They descended from Beausoleil, they came up from La Condamine, and they arrived from the rock of Monaco. For the first time in four years, the facades of the Casino, the hotels and cafes, were illuminated from top to bottom.

The Square was overflowing with people. They all seemed to blink as though dazzled by the light, after the long darkness in which the submarine menace had kept them plunged. Several bra.s.s instruments roared out the Ma.r.s.eillaise, and the crowd following the flags of the Allied countries and, unwilling to leave the Square, kept marching about the "Camembert," like moths about a flame.

Suddenly a long dancing line formed, a _farandole_, and it began to run and leap, growing at each twist and turn. Every one, in the contagion of enthusiasm, joined out; officers grasped hands with privates; solemn ladies kicked up their heels and lost their hats; timid girls shouted, with their hair flying; the faces of the women had the look of enthusiastic madness which is seen only in times of revolution. The lame hopped and skipped, the blind imagined they could see, and those who had lost their hands held on with their stumps to the serpentine line. The Ma.r.s.eillaise seemed like a miraculous hymn, giving every one new strength. Peace!... Peace!

In one of its evolutions, the head of the human snake climbed the steps of the Casino. The _farandole_ was trying to enter the antechamber, and the gambling rooms, to wrap its coils about the crowd, the _croupiers_, and the tables. Every selfish activity should cease in that hour of generous joy.

"Alas, the gamblers! What a malady gambling is, Your Highness! On reaching the Square they took off their hats to the flags, and almost wept, as they sang a verse of the Ma.r.s.eillaise. 'Long live France! Long live the Allies!' And immediately they entered the Casino to bet their money on the same number as the celebrated date, or on other combinations suggested by peace."

The gate-keepers, with the air of old gendarmes, concentrated in a heroic body to keep off with their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, their bellies and their fists the turbulent snake dance which was trying to enter the sacred edifice. They seemed indignant. When had such extraordinary insolence ever been seen? Peace was a good thing, and people might well rejoice; but to come into the Casino like a dancing riot, to interrupt the functioning of an honorable industry!... And they had finally shoved the line of disheveled women down the steps, and the decorated soldiers who were suddenly forgetting their infirmities and their wounds were driven after it.

The Prince and Toledo arrive at the Square and turn to the left of the Casino, toward the Cafe de Paris.

Lubimoff sits down at a table, at a protruding angle of the sidewalk cafe which people nickname "The Promontory." The Colonel remains on his right. He has spent the afternoon with the Prince, and must return home.

He is no longer so free as before; some one is living with him, and his new situation imposes unavoidable obligations.

In his mind's eye he can see, on the heights of Beausoleil, the little house he lives in, surrounded by its little garden. It is all his by registered public deed. But the fate of his property does not worry the Colonel; no one will carry off his walls and trees. What makes him nervous is a certain non-commissioned American officer, young and well built, who has a mania for walking about the dwelling; and certain bright eyes which from a window follow the soldier with a hungry look; and certain lips red as cherries, that smile at that American; and certain hands which Don Marcos thinks he has surprised from a distance throwing down a flower, though their owner shrieks at him in fury every day to convince him that he has been imagining things.

Don Marcos is married. A few weeks after the departure of the Prince, a great change came into his life. Villa Sirena already belonged to the nouveau-riche who was a maker of auto trucks and aeroplanes, and who had also bought the Paris residence. The Colonel on giving him possession, remembered only to praise the merits of the gardener and his family.

Lubimoff, before leaving for the front, had arranged for his "chamberlain's" future, a.s.suring him a pension of ten thousand francs a year, and also sending him a certain sum with which to buy a house.

Since the Colonel had set his mind on dying in Monte Carlo, he ought to have a little Villa Sirena of his own.

After digging in the garden on his property for a short time, with an occasional glance down on the Casino Square, Toledo went in search of Novoa. The Professor was his best friend; besides, he was a Spaniard, and it was the latter's duty to be of service to him, in the most important event in his life. He needed a best man for his wedding. The Professor was dumbfounded on being informed that the Colonel was going to marry the gardener's daughter. She was young enough to be his grandchild! It was tempting fate for a man of his years to expose himself deliberately to such dangers.

"You, Don Marcos, as a Spaniard, must remember," said Novoa, "that the Saint whose name you bear has a bull with long horns for his emblem!

Besides, youth has its rights."

"And old age its duties," replied the Colonel, with a kindly air, resigning himself to his future.

At present, standing beside the Prince, he stammers with timidity and embarra.s.sment. He hates to confess that he must desert him.

"Mado is waiting for me: you see, the poor girl doesn't go out very much. She likes to have me take her to the afternoon concerts on the terraces. It is five o'clock."

And when the Prince a.s.sents, with a slight nod, Toledo rushes off precipitously. Then, farther on, he begins almost to run up the slope, panting, but without feeling his weariness. He wants to reach home as soon as possible, and yet is afraid of doing so. He is sure of Mado only when he is within range of her shrieks. He shudders when he thinks that he may be "imagining things" again.

As the Prince remains alone, the gla.s.s that is before his eyes gradually fades away and with it the adjoining tables, and the people seated around the "Camembert." His vision contracts, and buries itself deep within his mind to contemplate other images of memory.

He arrived in Monte Carlo that morning. Only a few hours have pa.s.sed, and he has seen so much already!

He recalls certain remarks of his friend Lewis; and remarks, made during one of the luncheons at Villa Sirena: "Life is strange and uneven as it flows along. Time goes by without anything extraordinary arising, and then, all of a sudden, hours do the work of months, days are as eventful as years, and things happen in a few moments which, at other times, would take centuries." How many people have died in the relatively short s.p.a.ce of time that has elapsed since he last left Monte Carlo!

Lubimoff recalls the brief and exciting period after his arrival in Paris: his enlistment in the Foreign Legion; the Commission of Second Lieutenant granted him in recognition of his former service as Captain in the Imperial Guards; his departure for the front, after distributing or investing the million and a half derived from the sale of Villa Sirena, his hard life in action, the battles and slaughter accompanying, with gruesome prodigality, the advances of the triumphant offensive. He recalls his meeting with a member of the Legion who suddenly called to him and whom he had some difficulty in recognizing: Atilio Castro!

Castro had changed. His ironical smile had vanished. He looked on life with greater seriousness, and now seemed convinced of the worth of his actions. They belonged to different battalions, and they did not see each other again, till late one afternoon, after a fight, he came across him. The poor boy was lying stretched out on the ground, among other corpses. His forehead had been crushed in and his brain was showing under the wound! On that face the death grin was a smile of serenity.

Poor Castro! What could have become of Dona Clorinda?