The Game and the Candle Part 11

The ennuied Count Rosal lunched with them,--a sallow, fatigued young patrician who wore a pince-nez. He obviously was much pleased by the American, and inquired anxiously whether he ever motored. Receiving an affirmative reply, he invited him, with an actual approach to enthusiasm, to try a new French car as soon as they landed.

Allard accepted willingly, even gaily; a little of his color had revived with the ocean wind, some fine elixir had mounted through his veins as the yacht drew from the arms of the harbor and danced out over the long Atlantic swell.

After luncheon Stanief dismissed the third member of their party with that nonchalant grace of his.

"Did you write any letters this morning?" he asked, when the salon had settled into its usual repose.

"One; to my brother."

"Good; every one writes letters--an excellent thing to do. I gave your name to an avid-eyed band of reporters, as one of those sailing with me.

You will be a person of some importance in the tangled affairs to which I am taking you; it is just as well to prepare."

"I have no desire to be curious," Allard began tentatively.

"But you naturally would like to know what is happening. Indeed, it is necessary that you know." He paused an instant. "Do you recall what I said to you last night of my country, of its intrigue and wrong and lack of faith?"

"Yes."

The shadows deepened across the fine dark face. Watching Stanief, it seemed to Allard as if the rose-hued salon lost a little of its brightness also, as if both man and room remembered hours not happy.

"All my life I have walked in the shadow of one man's hate," Stanief said quietly. "I have known it watching greedily for my least indiscretion, heard its wild-beast breathing as it crouched beside me in the dark, stepped cautiously to avoid the snares it spread for me.

Unable to touch me openly unless I myself stooped from inherited safety, my enemy has employed every secret artifice to lure me into reach, every petty goad to sting me to a moment's forgetfulness. I never have taken a friend, conscious that one would be forced to betrayal if not already planning it. I learned long ago that the bright-eyed, fragile ladies of the court were not for me to trust. Living in the center of a dazzling pageant, the focus of a dazzling hate, I have had just one hope to carry with me. Not a pleasant hope, but it is about to be fulfilled. My enemy is dying."

"The Emperor--"

"Exactly."

Allard remained silent, understanding Vasili better now. Stanief rose and walked to the window, gazing out over the tumbling field of water.

When he returned it was with a touch of scarlet burning in his clear cheek.

"Before I started on this voyage, taken at his command," he said, "I bade farewell to my imperial uncle. Ill, grimly and helplessly conscious of the ultimate end, he looked up from his pillows at me. 'Your day is coming,' he declared. 'I know how long your regency will last, how completely my son will be left your toy and victim. But I shall wait on the threshold of the next world, Feodor Stanief, until you come and I see your punishment. Now go.' It was the confession of failure, the laying down of the cards, the first frankness between us."

The two men looked at each other.

"I am probably Regent now," Stanief added.

Allard's eyes did not leave the other's; no doubt clouded the unwavering confidence of his regard.

"'A Stanief guards his own'," he quoted. "If I were the little prince, I should have no fear, monseigneur."

Stanief lifted his head, the sunlight flashed back to the room before his expression.

"Thank you," he answered proudly. "And from emperor to peasant I could find no one else to grant me so much."

"But--I do not understand."

"Then you have not read our history."

Allard turned to the gates of memory, and gazing down dim vistas at many a vague crime and ambitious treachery, remained silent.

"My cousin Adrian," Stanief resumed, after a moment in which he also looked across the past, "by this time perhaps my Emperor Adrian is fourteen years old. Not until he is seventeen can he be crowned and take the government in his own grasp; that is, the country is absolutely ruled by me for the next three years. By me; but those years will be a splendid warfare, a struggle m.u.f.fled in cloth-of-gold, a ceaseless vigil beside which my old life was peace. The country is divided into two great parties: those who wish me to take the crown, and from whom I must protect Adrian; those who wish to rid themselves of me and govern as they choose through the child-emperor. Remember that neither faction believes I shall ever permit my cousin to take the Empire from me.

Loyalty, honor, justice,--those are pretty, extinct phrases of chivalry to their minds."

Allard made a movement of protest.

"Surely not so bad, surely not nowadays," he objected incredulously.

"Our country is still medieval," Stanief retorted. "I tell you not one-half the fact. But, I make no pose of virtue and perhaps I am merely obstinately resolved not to do what is expected of me, but I _will_ carry this through and crown my cousin on his seventeenth birthday, if I live."

His voice hardened into steel, his velvet eyes flashed through their curtaining lashes. Allard rose impulsively and held out his hand.

"'_Soit que soit_,' we said last night," he cried. "Let me aid; stand or fall."

"A desperate cause," warned Stanief, keeping the hand in his firm clasp.

"For day and night my enemies will pour their poison into Adrian's ears; Adrian, whose father must already have taught him distrust and dread of me. It may very well be that when I resign the absolute power to the young Emperor, he himself will first use it to crush me."

"Impossible! And if it be so, at least we shall have fought the good fight."

"Then open the lists to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. We will live our own way for these three years, and abide the decision."

There was no question of etiquette between the two who stood together, with laughter glancing across the surface of an earnestness too deep for speech. Allard had no way of divining that the Stanief he knew did not exist for any one else; that the reserve of a lifetime was broken in their friends.h.i.+p.

They sat down again, presently.

"Long ago, when Adrian was very much younger, I used to see him more intimately," Stanief mused rather sadly. "Then I never considered a regency, believing the Emperor would live until his son could take his place. I was weary even then of the constant strife and suspicion; I longed to make a friend of my small cousin and some day find calm under his rule. But the Emperor interfered, and we have seen each other only formally since. Now comes your part, John. I shall place you in Adrian's suite as his personal attendant. I want you to do what I can not; to guard him from hour to hour, as far as possible, from my self-styled friends and his enemies. He will like you,--you have that gift."

"Gift?" Allard puzzled.

"The gift of being liked. And being an American, you will escape much of the jealousy which would attach to one who could demand more. It is absolutely necessary for me to have some one near my cousin whom I can trust implicitly."

"I will do anything you wish," he answered simply. "Your purpose--let me serve it also. Only I will have to ask you to teach me a bit; I am afraid my ideas of the most formal court in Europe--"

"I shall teach you nothing whatever," Stanief declared, with his sudden smile. "Let the imperial Adrian have that amus.e.m.e.nt. Do not forget what I have implied to those you meet here: that you are merely my secretary as a whim, and are in reality my friend. You understand?"

Allard did understand,--the elaborate luxury with which he had been surrounded, the deference of even Count Rosal, the caution of Vasili.

"I would rather stay with you than be a child's plaything," he said wistfully. "But it is all right."

Stanief regarded him for an instant, then reached for a cigarette.

"You will be with me. But if you have any idea that Adrian is like a child, wait," he observed dryly. "And now let us enjoy the voyage, since it is our last quiet period for several years."

Before Allard could reply, an agitated knock fell on the door and Marzio admitted the pale and breathless Rosal.

"Well?" Stanief questioned, instinctively rising.

Allard rose with him, and standing they received the message.

"I regret to report, by wireless from New York, the death of his Imperial Majesty the Emperor, at noon to-day."