Prince or Chauffeur? Part 33

"Miss Wellington, I could say a great deal so far--so far as I am concerned, that I have no right to say, now. . . . But--are you going to marry Prince Koltsoff?"

She started forward and then sank back.

"You must not ask that," she said.

"I know--I understand," he said rapidly, "but--but--you mustn't marry him, you know."

"_Must n't!_"

"Miss Wellington, I know, it is none of my business. And yet--Don't you know," he added fiercely, "what a girl you are? I know. I have seen! You are radiant, Miss Wellington, in spirit as in face. Any man knowing what Koltsoff is, who could sit back and let you waste yourself on him would be a pup. Thornton, of the _Jefferson_, has his record.

Write to Walker, _attache_ at St. Petersburg, or Cook at Paris, or Miller at London--they will tell you. Why, even in Newport--"

Jack paused in his headlong outburst and then continued more deliberately.

"It is not for me to indict the man. I could not help speaking because you are you. I cannot do any more than warn you. If I transgress, if I am merely a blundering fool--if you are not what I take you for--forget what I have said. Send me away when we return."

She had been listening to him, as in a daze. Now she shook her head.

"I shall not do that," she said. "Did you take employment with us to say what you have said to me?"

"No."

She hesitated a moment.

"I suppose all men of Koltsoff's sort are the same," she said musingly.

"I am not quite so innocent as that. We are wont to accept our European n.o.blemen as husbands with no question as to the wild oats, immediately behind them--or without considering too closely the wild oats that are to be strewn--afterwards. Ah, don't start; that is the way we expatriates are educated--no, not that; but these are the lessons we absorb. And so--" she was looking at Armitage with a hard face, "so the things that impressed you so terribly--I appreciate and thank you for your motives in speaking of them--do not appear so awful to me."

Jack, his clean mind in a whirl, was looking at her aghast.

"You--you--Anne Wellington! You don't mean that!"

She flung her hands from her.

"Thank you," she said. "Don't I? Oh, I hate it all!" she cried wildly, "the cross purposings of life; the constant groping--being unable to see clearly--the triumph of lower over higher things--I hate them all. Ah," she turned to Jack pitifully, "promise me for life, in this place of peace, the rest and purity and beauty and love of all this--promise, and I shall stay here now with you, from this minute and never leave it, though Pyramus or King Midas, as you please, beckon from beyond this mossy wall."

"Are you speaking metaphorically?" Jack's voice quivered. "For if you are, I--"

She interrupted, laughing mirthlessly.

"I do not know how I was speaking. Don't bother. I am not worth it.

I might have been had I met you sooner--Jack Armitage. For I have learned of you--some things. Don't," she raised her hand as Jack bent forward to speak. "You must n't bother, really. Last night I lived with you a big, clean, thrilling experience and saw strong men doing men's work in the raw, cold, salt air--and I saw a new life. And then--" she was looking straight ahead--"then I was led into a mora.s.s where the air was heavy like the tropics, and things all strange, unreal. And why--why now the doubt which of the two I had rather believe to-night. You were too late. I bade you come to us. I am glad, I am proud that I did--for now I know the reason. But--" she smiled wanly at him, "it should have been sooner."

"Is--it--too late?" Jack's mouth was shut tight, the muscles bulging on either side of his jaw.

"Is it? You--I must wait and see. I--I dreamed last night and it was of the sea, men rus.h.i.+ng aboard a black battles.h.i.+p, rising and falling on great inky waves. It was good--so good--to dream that; not the other. Wait. . . . It is to be lived out. I am weak. . . . But there is a tide in the affairs of men--and women. Perhaps you--"

She stopped abruptly.

"Let us drive out of here, Mr. Armitage. Here, in this pure, wonderful place I feel almost like Sheynstone's Jessie."

"What do you mean?" he asked sharply.

She smiled.

"Not what you thought I meant," she said gently. "Now, drive away, please."

As they returned to the house, Mr. Wellington and his friend were alighting from the touring car; Koltsoff was not with them. As soon as he saw his daughter, Mr. Wellington, whose face was flushed, called Anne to him.

"Say, Anne," he said, "is that Prince of yours a lunatic? Or what is he?

"Why, no, father. Of course not. Why do you ask?"

"Well, then, if he is n't crazy he is a plain, ordinary, d.a.m.ned fool.

He was like a chicken with his head off all the afternoon, calling up on the telephone, sending telegrams, and then, between pauses, telling me he would have to leave right after the ball for Europe and wanting us all to sail with him. Then, at the last minute, some whiskered tramp came to the porch where we were sitting and the first thing I knew he had excused himself for the evening and was going off up the street with that hobo, both of them flapping their arms and exclaiming in each other's faces like a couple of candidates for a padded cell.

Duke Ivan was a pill beside this man. And that is saying a whole lot, let me tell you."

"Why, father!" exclaimed the girl. "I could cry! We are having that dinner for him to-night, and--and oh--"

She rushed into the house and found her mother in her room.

"Mother," she said, "Prince Koltsoff has gone off again! He was with father at the Reading Room and hurried away with a man, whom father describes as a tramp, saying he must be excused for the evening."

"Very well," said Mrs. Wellington placidly; "we will have to have the play--without Hamlet, nevertheless."

"But what shall I do?"

"You might ask McCall."

"Mother! Please! What can we do?"

"Frankly, I don't know, Anne," said Mrs. Wellington. "I confess that this situation in all its ramifications has gone quite beyond me. It is altogether annoying. But let me prophesy: Koltsoff will not miss your dinner. He impresses me as a young man not altogether without brains--although they are of a sort."

Mrs. Wellington was right. Koltsoff put in an appearance in time to meet Anne's guests, but the Russian bear at the height of his moulting season--or whatever disagreeable period he undergoes--is not more impossible than was Prince Koltsoff that night.

CHAPTER XXII

THE BALL BEGINS

Mrs. Wellington's genius for organization was never better exemplified than next day, when preparations for the ball set for the night, began.

At the outset it was perfectly apparent that she was not bent on breaking records--which feat, as a matter of fact, would merely have been overshadowing her best previous demonstrations of supremacy in things of this sort. There was to be no splurge. With a high European n.o.bleman to introduce, she had no intention of having the protagonist in the evening's function overshadowed by his background. She was a student of social nuances--say rather, a master in this subtle art, and she proceeded with her plans with all the calm a.s.surance of a field marshal with a dozen successful campaigns behind him.

Early in the day, Dawson and Buchan and Mrs. Stetson were in conference with her in her office and a bit later the servants, some thirty or forty of them, were a.s.sembled in their dining-room and a.s.signed various duties, all of which were performed under the supervising eye of Mrs.

Wellington, her daughter, or Sara Van Valkenberg. No decorative specialist, or other alien appendage to social functions on a large scale, was in attendance, and, save for the caterer's men, who arranged a hundred odd small tables on the verandas, and the electricians, who hung chandeliers at intervals above them, the arrangements were carried out by the household force.

Under the direction of Anne Wellington--whose mind seemed fully occupied with the manifold details of the duties which her mother had a.s.signed to her--Armitage and a small group hung tapestries against the side of the house where the tables were, and then a.s.sisted the gardener and his staff in placing gladiolas about the globes of the chandeliers.

Small incandescent globes of divers colors were hidden among the flowers in the gardens and an elaborate scheme of interior floral decoration was carried out. Before the afternoon was well along, all preparations had been completed and the women had gone to their rooms, where later they were served by their maids with light suppers.