Ragna Part 5

"I shall carry something of you with me when our ways part," he said.

Ragna felt much flattered and regretted that her list of accomplishments did not include drawing.

"But," she said, turning to Angelescu, who had sat a silent spectator, "you can draw, I am sure, will you not make me a little sketch?"

Angelescu would be delighted; he went to his cabin and returned with sketch book and pencil, and without more ado began work. Ragna wished to look over his shoulder, but he would not hear of it.

"You must be patient till I have finished, Mademoiselle, I am not as accomplished a draughtsman as the Prince, and I could not do anything if you watched me."

Finally he produced a very pretty little sketch, representing the rail at the stern, with the slender figure of a girl silhouetted against it, one arm flung out in the act of scattering crumbs. The action was spirited, the whole thing suggested by a few clear decisive strokes of the pencil. Ragna was delighted with it and begged leave to inspect the Count's sketch book; he refused in an embarra.s.sed way, and the Prince, seeing an occasion to tease his friend, made as if to s.n.a.t.c.h at the book crying--

"Fie, how can you refuse a lady. What have you drawn that is so very, very naughty that it can't be seen? Out with it!"

As he spoke, his hand touched the book, and in his haste to withdraw it, Angelescu seized the upper cover. The book opened and two loose leaves fluttered out and fell at Ragna's feet. She picked them up to return to him, glancing at them involuntarily as she did so, and her attention was arrested. The first sketch was a portrait of herself, idealized, but an excellent likeness; the other was the Prince, also an admirable likeness, but conveying an impression of evil--not conscious evil, however, rather the face of a faun through whose eyes looked out a laughing fiend. Ragna s.h.i.+vered unconsciously and turned to the Prince, in whose good humoured countenance she failed to detect the slightest expression similar to that in the drawing.

"So," said Mirko, "our dear Otto has been exercising his talents at our expense! very clever indeed. The sketch of Mademoiselle is charming, but, my dear fellow, what has induced you to lend my humble features to your conception of the Devil? You flatter me, you do indeed!"

Angelescu visibly annoyed, made answer,

"I am sorry, I did not wish Mademoiselle to see that I had taken the liberty of attempting her likeness without her permission, and I can only beg that she will accept the little sketch as a token that she bears me no ill will. As for the other, Your Highness, it was only an idle fancy of mine, and it is only by accident that it may seem to resemble you."

Ragna looked at the little sketches thoughtfully and said, "Count Angelescu, you were wrong in sketching me without my permission, but I will forgive that--especially as you have made me so pretty. As the Prince has some sketches of me, I will let you keep this, if you wish it, and I will keep the other."

But the Prince would have none of that.

"What, Mademoiselle, you wish to keep me before your eyes as a devil?

Never in the world; I won't have it!"

In the end, Angelescu was persuaded to draw another portrait of the Prince with which to redeem the "Devil Sketch" which Ragna insisted on holding as hostage until it should be replaced by a better.

More than once, in the course of the afternoon, Angelescu pleaded that he had writing that must be attended to, official papers and reports that must be prepared, but Mirko refused to let him go.

"You can do all that later," he would say.

Ragna caught Angelescu glancing anxiously at him from time to time, as though suspecting him of some ulterior motive. The aide could hardly insist, however, especially after the episode of the sketches--indeed he had an uneasy feeling that the last word had not been said with regard to them, and that the Prince meant to turn the situation thus created to his own personal advantage. So the afternoon wore on, the Prince keeping the ball of conversation gaily rolling, nothing in his appearance giving the slightest hint that he thought of anything beyond the careless enjoyment of the pa.s.sing hour.

The sun was nearing the horizon as they went below to prepare for dinner. A few light clouds flecked the sky, looking like the fleeces of wandering lambs.

"It will be a perfect evening," said Mirko, "and we shall have a full moon."

Ragna put on the same frock she had worn the evening before--it was her best--but to-night she turned it in a little more at the neck and bosom, and pinned on a piece of lace given her by her mother when she left home. Her skin showed white in the opening and her delicate throat rose from its frame like the stalk of a flower.

The Captain came to the saloon for dinner and sat at the head of the table, having Prince Mirko on his right and Angelescu on his left; Ragna sat by the Prince. All had good appet.i.tes and did full justice to the excellent fare provided.

The Prince had given orders that champagne be served from the very beginning and he made it his care to replenish Ragna's gla.s.s as often as she emptied it.

Captain Petersen, busy with his dinner and in entertaining his distinguished pa.s.sengers to the best of his ability, noticed nothing, but Angelescu's eyes were grave as he observed the girl's flushed cheeks, and unnaturally bright eyes. He even ventured so far as to ask her whether she were fond of champagne, to which she answered innocently that she liked it very much but had never drunk much wine of any kind whatever.

Captain Petersen broke in with his genial roar. "So you like the champagne, Froken Ragna? So do I! So do I! Not but what a little 'schnapps' in season, has its merits--still I suppose champagne is better for a young lady than 'schnapps'!"

Angelescu relapsed into silence; if the captain, who was, in a way the girl's guardian, saw nothing amiss, he himself would do no more. To do the Prince justice, he had no thought of making his neighbour take more than was good for her; he had no intention of doing her the slightest harm; he wished to give her pleasure and at the same time to enjoy himself. If in filling her gla.s.s he wore a slight air of bravado it was that Angelescu's evident distrust of him and his intentions had stirred up a certain obstinacy within him, and he was possessed by the desire to outrage the would be protector's feelings. Mirko had shrewdly guessed that Angelescu entertained a warmer regard for Ragna than he was willing to admit of to himself; that the a.s.sumption of the protector's role might not be wholly the disinterested or rather uninterested att.i.tude that the Count wished it to appear, as that, when at the close of dinner Ragna went to her cabin for a wrap, he drew Angelescu aside and said to him:

"I wish you to understand once and for all, Otto, that I will not tolerate your interference and your silent criticism. It is all very well for you to think that because you are older than I, and because we have always been comrades you have the right to control me. I am your Prince, and you will do well to remember the fact."

Angelescu, his face burning, cut to the quick, saluted and answered stiffly.

"Your Highness shall be obeyed," then turned on his heel; but Mirko called him back, already regretting the sharpness of his tone and language towards his old playmate and faithful friend.

"Hold on, old man, don't take it like that! I didn't mean what I said, at least not all. You seem to think me a sort of villain in disguise, and you arrogate to yourself the responsibility for my conduct in every direction. You sat at table glaring at me as if I were trying to poison Mademoiselle. Now what is the matter with you?"

"I thought that Your Highness did not realize the fact that she is only a child and quite unused to champagne--"

"Did you not hear the Captain?"

"The Captain is a rough old sailor, unused to young girls; I thought--"

"You think too much, Otto. Besides, it's rather new for you to play the part of 'Squire of Dames' to wandering damsels--I believe the root of the matter is that you are in love with the girl, yourself. Why don't you marry her? You could, you know."

"Your Highness knows very well that I am not free to marry," said Angelescu in a low voice, a dark flush spreading over his face. The Prince knew well, as did everyone else, that his aide was bound, and had been for years, to a married woman of high rank, whose unhappy married life had been responsible for the forming of the liaison, and that now time and custom and a quixotic sense of moral obligation continued to bind the unfortunate Angelescu to the lady's chariot wheels, though any feeling he had had for her was long since dead.

Ragna's entrance put a stop to further explanations, and Angelescu excused himself, saying that he must attend to the neglected writing of the afternoon. So the other two were left with the deck to themselves.

It was a perfect evening, the full moon hung low in an almost cloudless sky and the broad silver pathway over the water looked like a carpet laid for a procession of fairies. Ragna hung over the rail in an ecstasy of appreciative joy.

"Oh, isn't it just like Heaven!" she murmured.

"I can't say," answered Mirko, "never having been there, but it would make a good setting for a love scene. Imagine it for a honeymoon!"

"I must answer like Your Highness," laughed Ragna, "never having had a honeymoon I can't very well imagine one."

"Then look at the lovers in the moon."

"Lovers in the moon!"

"What! have you never seen them?"

"I see only the hare, with his two long ears."

"Look again, the lady is on the right, and you see her head in profile, her lover has a beard--there, do you see?"

"No," said Ragna, "I still do not see."

"That is because your eyes have not been opened; when you have had a lover, you will see the Lovers in the moon."

Ragna laughed at the idea.

"Why should having a lover improve one's eyesight?" she asked.