A Son of the Immortals Part 15

The two persons who were the unwitting cause of Joan's sudden misgivings rose and quitted the dining car. No one seemed to be aware of their ident.i.ty. Even the brown-liveried attendants did not give them any more attention than was bestowed on the other pa.s.sengers, and the girl realized that the parents of a King, even such a newly fledged King as Alec, did not usually travel with this p.r.o.nounced lack of state.

"Are you quite sure they are the Prince and Princess?" she asked, scanning Poluski's wrinkled face to learn if he had not been playing some sorry jest.

"Quite sure," said he.

"But----"

"You wonder why they condescend to mix with the common horde? Learn then, my Joan, that a French booking clerk is a skeptic who can be convinced only by the sight of money. Consider the number of brokendown royalties in Paris, and picture, if you can, the scowl of disbelief that would cloud the official features of the Gare de l'Est if Prince Michael asked for a special train to Delgratz; booked it on the nod, so to speak. It could not be done, Joan, not if one subst.i.tuted 'Archangel'

for 'Prince.' As it is, the senior Delgrado has probably touched a friend for the money to buy the tickets."

"Yet their names would be recognized."

Felix called an attendant. "The lady and gentleman who sat at the opposite table were the Count and Countess Polina?"

"I cannot say, monsieur. Shall I inquire?"

"No need, thank you. To be precise, since you demand it," went on Poluski when the man had gone, "I asked who they were the moment we left Paris. I saw them on the platform, and the absence of any display showed that they were traveling incognito. I doubt very much if Alec knows of their journey. Can you guess why I think that?"

Joan shook her head wearily. "I am living in a land of dreams," she sighed. "I do not understand the why or wherefore of anything?"

"Listen, then, and you will see that your dreamland is a prosaic place, after all. There is a man in Paris who receives letters daily from Kosnovia, and they tell of events that are not printed for the mult.i.tude. Last night, when I was certain we should go to Delgratz, I sought him and heard the latest news. Your Alec means to economize. He has promulgated the absurd theory that the people's taxes should be spent for the people's benefit, and he says that no King is worth more than five thousand pounds a year, while many of his contemporaries would be dear at the price. He has also set up this ridiculous maximum as a standard, and intends to reduce the official salary list to about half its present dimensions.

"This fantasy has reached his father's ears, and the old gentleman is hurrying to Delgratz to check the madness ere it is too late. It is a simple bit of arithmetic: if a King, who works like a horse, is to receive only five thousand a year, what is the annual value of his father, who does nothing but lounge about the boulevards? No wonder old Michael is off hotfoot to the White City!"

Despite her perplexities, Joan had to laugh, and Felix bent nearer to clinch his argument.

"You and I must stand by Alec, my dear. I too am breathing a new atmosphere. I fought against Kings because they were tyrants; but I am ready to fight for one who is a deliverer. What do you fear, you? The world? Has the world ever done anything for you that its opinion should be considered? It will fawn or snarl as it thinks best fitted to its own ends; but help or pity? Never! Its votaries in Delgratz will strive to rend Alec when they realize that their interests are threatened. We must be there, you and I, you to aid him in winning the fickle mob, and I to watch those secret burrowings more dangerous to thrones than open revolt. It is a sacred mission, my Joan! They who named you were wiser than they knew. You were christened a King's helpmate, while I, Felix Poluski, am fated to be the most amazing product of modern civilization,--an anarchist devoted to a monarchy.

"It came on me yesterday morning in the Louvre. I saw my principles crucified for the good of humanity. Through the eyes of the Virgin I looked into a heaven of achievement, and I care not what the means so long as good results. One honest King is worth a million revolutionaries, and G.o.d, who made Alec a King, also made him honest."

Excited, exuberant, bubbling over with that very emotionalism at which he had scoffed a few minutes earlier, Felix leaned back in his chair and sang a quatrain in his singularly sweet and penetrating tenor.

Instantly every head was turned and necks were craned. A waiter, serving coffee, was so electrified that he poured no small quant.i.ty into the lap of an indignant German. Joan, too wrathful for mere words, dared not rush away instantly to her compartment, though she would have given a good deal at that moment to be safe in its kindly obscurity. And the worst thing was that she saw the coffeepot incident, and was forced to laugh till the tears came.

Cries of "Bravo!" "Again!" mingled with the iron-clamped syllables of Teutonic protest, and she distinctly heard a well bred English voice say:

"Foreign music hall artists! I told you so, though the girl looks an American. But, by gad! can't that humpbacked johnny sing!"

"Felix, how could you?" she managed to gasp at last.

"I'm sorry. I forgot we were not in Paris. But there are some here who appreciate good music. If you don't mind, I'll give them Beranger's 'Adieu to Mary Stuart.' You remember, it goes this way--"

Joan fled, making play with her handkerchief. The fast speeding train threw her from side to side of the corridor during a hurried transit; but the exquisite lines followed her clearly.

Felix sang like a robin till the mood exhausted itself. Then, deaf to enthusiastic plaudits and cries for "More!" he lit a long thin cigar and smoked furiously. Pa.s.sing Joan's berth later, he knocked.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"I, the Humming Bee."

"Leave me to-night, Felix. I must think."

"Better sleep. Thinking creates wrinkles. Look on me as a horrible example."

He went away, ba.s.sooning some lively melody, but grinning the while, and if his thoughts took shape they would run:

"The struggle has ended ere it began, sweet maid. You are in love; but have not yet waked up to that astonishing fact. Now, why did the good G.o.d give me a big heart and a small head and a twisted spine? Why not have made me either a man or an imp?"

Joan could not face strangers in the dining car after Poluski's strange outburst. She remained in her own cramped quarters all next day, ate some meals there as best she could, and kept Felix at arm's length so far as confidence or counsel was concerned. On the platform at Vienna, where the train was made up afresh, she encountered Princess Delgrado.

To her consternation, the older woman stopped and spoke.

"I am sorry I missed the delightful little concert your friend provided in the dining car last night," she said in French, and her voice had that touch of condescension with which a society leader knows how to dilute her friendliness when addressing a singer or musician. "My husband and I retired early, to our great loss, I hear. Are you traveling beyond Vienna? If so, and you give us another musical this evening----"

"There is some mistake," faltered Joan, unconsciously answering in English. "People who do not know Monsieur Poluski often take him for an operatic artiste. He is a painter. He sings only to amuse himself, and seldom waits to consider whether the time and place are well chosen."

"But, gracious me!" cried the Princess, amazed to find that Joan spoke English as to the manner born. "Some one said you were Polish. I doubted my eyes when I looked at you; but your companion--well, he might be anything."

"Both he and I earn our bread by painting pictures," said Joan. "Indeed, we are now bound for Delgratz to carry out a commission."

"Delgratz! How extraordinary! I too am going there. It is so disturbed at present that it is the last place in the world I should have suspected of artistic longings. May I ask who has sent for you?"

Luckily, in the bustle and semiobscurity of the station, Princess Delgrado did not pay much heed to the furious blushing of the pretty girl who had aroused her interest. It was impossible to regard one whom she now believed to be an American like herself as being in any way concerned with the intrigues that centered in the capital of Kosnovia, and she attributed Joan's confusion to the pardonable error that arose from the talk Prince Michael brought from the smoking car.

But what was Joan to answer? She could not blurt out to Alec's mother the contents of that exceedingly plainspoken epistle now reposing in her pocket. For one mad instant she wondered what would happen if she said:

"I am being sent to Delgratz by people who wish to drive Alec out of the kingdom, and I am really considering whether or not I ought to marry him."

Then she lifted her head valiantly, with just that wood-nymph flinging back of rebellious hair that Alec was thinking of while riding to his Castle of Care after a long day in the saddle.

"There is nothing unusual in my being chosen to copy a picture," she said. "Art connoisseurs care little for politics. To them a new Giotto is vastly more important than a new King, and I am told that both are to be found in Delgratz nowadays."

Prince Michael strolled up. He was pleased that his wife had made the acquaintance of the charming unknown, whom he had looked for in vain during the day.

"Ah," he said, with polite hat flourish, "I feared we had lost the pleasant company of which I heard----"

"You were misinformed," broke in his wife hastily in English. "This young lady is visiting Delgratz for art purposes. The gentleman who sang last night is the celebrated painter, Monsieur--Monsieur----"

"Felix Poluski," said Joan.

Prince Michael started as though a scorpion had found a crack in his patent boots.

"Poluski--Felix Poluski!" he cried. "I know that name; but he was fond of using strange colors on his palette if I remember rightly."

Felix, owing to his small stature, was compelled to dodge among the crowd on the platform like a child. He appeared now unexpectedly, and Michael's exclamation was not lost on him.

"Excellent, Monseigneur!" he said. "You always had a turn for epigram. I am glad to find that you have not forgotten the brave days of old when you and I used to spout treason together, you because you hungered after a dynasty, and I because I preferred dynamite. Odd thing, both words mean power, strength, sovereignty; the difference lies only in the method of application. But that was in our hot youth, Michael----"

"Imbecile!" hissed the Prince, his red face blanching, as once before when a man spoke of the perils that hedge a throne in the Balkans. "This is Vienna. I shall be recognized!"