High Noon Part 17

"It is pa.s.sing strange--that events should take this turn--that you should have come at this time. There are, I know now, divinities that shape our ends." And then she turned to Paul and said quickly:

"What madness has brought you here? My friend, believe me, you should never have followed me. This one day you may stay--because I'm weak--and then, I beg of you, go while there is yet time."

The strange iteration of his earlier warning made Paul wonder.

"Tell me," he cried, as he looked searchingly into her face, "what hidden meaning lies beneath your words? And those of the red-haired woman at the home of Boris Ivanovitch?" And he repeated to her the other's warning--almost identical with hers.

"Oh!" she gasped, and grew quite white, "you did not stay at that house? And yet you are here? Thank G.o.d for that." Then, though Paul pressed her, she would say no more.

"Come," she said after a brief pause, "my brother is in the library.

You must know him." And she led the way through a short pa.s.sage to a room beyond.

A handsome man of about thirty-five, who resembled Mademoiselle strikingly, rose as they entered.

"Peter," she said, "this gentleman is Sir Paul Verdayne. He is an old friend of the Countess Oreshefski. I met him at her house in Paris.

Sir Paul will be our guest--until to-morrow," she added.

The young man grasped Paul's hand warmly.

"A friend of the good Countess is most welcome," he exclaimed. "I am only sorry that your stay is to be so short."

Clearly, Mademoiselle was determined that Paul should not remain with them long.

"Will you pardon me, Sir Paul," the young man continued, "if I leave you on my sister's hands for the moment? Our overseer wishes to see me on a matter of some importance and I shall not be free until luncheon."

While he was speaking a large man entered--a wonderfully fine specimen of Russian manhood. As he stood there, proud but respectful, his flaming red beard falling over his broad chest, he looked like some Viking who had just stepped out of an old myth.

"Alexander Andrieff, our overseer," Peter explained, and the man bowed low to Paul.

"And now, Natalie, if you will entertain Sir Paul for the next hour he will perhaps overlook my rudeness."

"Not at all, sir," Paul interrupted, "I am the one who should apologize for having so imposed upon your hospitality." And with Mademoiselle Vseslavitch he retired.

So her name was Natalie! Paul liked the name--it seemed to fit her excellently. And he looked lovingly at the charming girl beside him.

"We will take a stroll in the garden, if it pleases you," she suggested.

Paul was delighted. They stepped outside the house into a large enclosure surrounded by a high stone wall. Beyond a small lake which filled the center of the garden, they came to a seat hidden by screening shrubs from the windows that gave upon the spot.

As they sat there under that wonderful Southern sky, with the air laden with the perfume of countless cherry blossoms, Paul felt that he had been translated into fairy-land, and he was almost afraid to speak lest he break the spell and suddenly find himself back in blase Western Europe again.

He took her hand gently in both of his. It was a beautiful hand, so white and tender and aristocratic. On the third finger was a ring with a blue antique; on her forefinger--worn in the Russian fas.h.i.+on--a diamond. It seemed a talisman to Paul, and as he looked at it he was happy. Feeling the touch of these fingers, his reason stopped dead and a sweet dream came over him--the continuation, as it were, of some interrupted fairy-scene.

"Beautiful Princess!" he whispered softly, as he leaned toward her pale, smiling, gentle face.

Her delicately curved red lips played with mingled melancholy and happiness, and almost childish impulse; and when she spoke, the words were deeply toned, sounding almost like sighs, yet with rapid and impetuous utterance, like a warm shower of blossoms from her beauteous mouth.

"My lover," she said, and Paul's heart leaped with wild joy at the words, "my lover for this one day--listen while I tell what I can hide from you no longer."

And then with halting words she told him of her peril.

"That house where you stayed last night," she said, "it is the home of my cousin Boris," and a sudden shudder pa.s.sed over her as she spoke the name. "He has long wished to marry me--and I have steadfastly refused; I cannot tell you how I loathe him. It was to escape his importunities that I went to Switzerland--and alas! now I have come back, at the order of the Tsar, who commands me to yield to him." She paused. Paul drew her close in tender sympathy.

"I thought once," she went on, "when I left Paris a week ago, that I could force myself to do this hateful thing. A faithful subject must obey the Tsar. But now I know not what the outcome will be. I cannot make up my mind to consent--and Boris grows more impatient every day.

Tell me," she turned her wonderful eyes up to Paul--"what manner of people had he with him?"

And Paul described to his lady the villainous Michael with the red hands, and Virot, the oily Frenchman. And as he told of Mademoiselle Ivanovitch, the red-haired woman, the lady's lip curled scornfully.

"A tissue of lies!" she cried. "Those men are the sc.u.m of Europe, blackguards of the worst type--the kind Boris has always gathered round him from his boyhood. And the woman--bah!--he has no sister. She is but a mistress he would have long since cast off were it not that she sometimes is of a.s.sistance in his wicked plans."

Then Paul told her of the disturbance of the night before, and of his encounter with the woman that very morning.

Natalie clasped Paul's hand--he thrilled beneath the sudden tightening of her fingers.

"Ah!" she breathed, in sudden agitation, "they must in some way have known your mission all the time. I tremble when I think of the peril you were in. Boris is hot-headed, and it must have angered him almost beyond endurance when he knew that he entertained a rival beneath his own roof. Some men, it is said, have entered that evil house never to be seen more by mortal eyes."

Paul tried to quiet her fears. But, though she soon grew calmer, he saw that a great dread still lay upon her. And even when they returned to the house, she started apprehensively at every sudden sound.

Paul found brother Peter to be indeed a most gracious host. He had been educated in England, it appeared, and like Paul was an Oxford man. Indeed, the two found many things to talk about, for Peter well remembered the stories he had heard of Paul's record as an oarsman on the 'Varsity eight--traditions of the sort that are handed down from year to year unto succeeding cla.s.ses.

But as they talked, Paul noticed that Peter's eyes often rested with a troubled look upon his sister. In fact, it seemed to Paul that a black shadow of direful portent hung over them throughout the meal.

CHAPTER XXII

That afternoon Paul and his love--for a day, as she had told him--walked down the long avenue of pine-trees. And pacing back and forth beneath the shade he told her many things, some of which she knew already.

She could not repress a smile as he recounted to her the manner in which he had walked up and down the terrace at Lucerne, while--though he knew it not--she saw him from her window.

"And now," he said at last, pausing to look down into her dear face, "forsake, I beg of you, this scene of trouble. Leave this strange land, half West, half East, and come away with me to England. There I will try to make you happy, and the day will come, I hope, when you will forget that this threatening evil ever came into your life. I do not know even yet the reasons that seem to demand this marriage with your cousin. Come! it shall not be, even though the Tsar demands it.

By marrying me, you will become a British subject, and we then can laugh at any human will that would take you from me."

And then he saw a tear upon her lovely cheek. Like a pearl upon the snow it was. Paul took her in his arms, and her beautiful weary head sank upon his shoulder.

"You weep, dear heart!" he said to her, for she was sobbing softly.

"Surely this dreadful union must not be. Come--early to-morrow we will start for Kieff, and then--in a few days more--England and freedom!"

She recovered quickly and shook her head.

"No!" she told him. "That can not be. To-morrow morning you must leave this unhappy place. To stay here would be of no avail. It would only make matters worse. Boris is furious now, I know. And it will only make my lot harder if you remain."

Paul could not move her though he pleaded with her for a long time; and his heart was heavy as they at last drew near the house again.

That night, at dinner, Natalie tried bravely to be gay, but even the brilliancy of her conversation and her brother's effort to entertain his guest did not conceal from Paul the strain of the situation. A young relative, Alexis Vseslavitch by name, was present at the board, having ridden in that afternoon from his estate back in the hills. He was a high-spirited youth and loved dearly to tease his cousin Natalie. But even he saw that for once an unusual restraint seemed upon her.

Afterward, they pa.s.sed the long evening in the great hall where Paul had waited in the morning. The room was ablaze with candles--and even then the pale lady rang for a servant to bring in more. It was a wild night. A storm had come with the darkness, and outside the wind howled a savage symphony to accompanying crashes of thunder. Mademoiselle sat by her brother, with her hand on the head of an old wolf-hound which frequently looked up at her in dumb adoration as she chattered with the men upon a hundred topics--chiefly travel--for they all loved it.