Condensed Novels: New Burlesques Part 13

III

The Princess was already there, surrounded by a crowd of admirers, equal if not superior to those who were following the superb Chevalier.

Indeed, they met almost as rivals! Their eyes sought each other in splendid compet.i.tion. The Chevalier turned away, dazzled and incoherent. "She is adorable, magnificent!" he gasped to Mcf.e.c.kless.

"I love her on the instant! Behold, I am transported, ravished!

Present me."

Indeed, as she stood there in a strange gauzy garment of exquisite colors, apparently shapeless, yet now and then revealing her perfect figure like a bather seen through undulating billows, she was lovely.

Two wands were held in her taper fingers, whose mystery only added to the general curiosity, but whose weird and cabalistic uses were to be seen later. Her magnificent face--strange in its beauty--was stranger still, since, with perfect archaeological Egyptian correctness, she presented it only in profile, at whatever angle the spectator stood.

But such a profile! The words of the great Poet-King rose to Mcf.e.c.kless's lips: "Her nose is as a tower that looketh toward Damascus."

He hesitated a moment, torn with love and jealousy, and then presented his friend. "You will fall in love with her--and then--you will fall also by my hand," he hissed in his rival's ear, and fled tumultuously.

"Voulez-vous danser, mademoiselle?" whispered the Chevalier in the perfect accent of the boulevardier.

"Merci, beaucoup," she replied in the diplomatic courtesies of the Amba.s.sadeurs.

They danced together, not once, but many times, to the admiration, the wonder and envy of all; to the scandalized reprobation of a proper few.

Who was she? Who was he? It was easy to answer the last question: the world rang with the reputation of "Chevalier the Artist." But she was still a mystery.

Perhaps they were not so to each other! He was gazing deliriously into her eyes. She was looking at him in disdainful curiosity. "I've seen you before somewhere, haven't I?" she said at last, with a crushing significance.

He shuddered, he knew not why, and pa.s.sed his hand over his high forehead. "Yes, I go there very often," he replied vacantly. "But you, mademoiselle--you--I have met before?"

"Oh, ages, ages ago!" There was something weird in her emphasis.

"Ha!" said a voice near them, "I thought so!" It was the doctor, peering at them curiously. "And you both feel rather dazed and creepy?" He suddenly felt their pulses, lingering, however, as the Chevalier fancied, somewhat longer than necessary over the lady's wrist and beautiful arm. He then put a small round box in the Chevalier's hand, saying, "One before each meal," and turning to the lady with caressing professional accents said, "We must wrap ourselves closely and endeavor to induce perspiration," and hurried away, dragging the Chevalier with him. When they reached a secluded corner, he said, "You had just now a kind of feeling, don't you know, as if you'd sort of been there before, didn't you?"

"Yes, what you call a--preexistence," said the Chevalier wonderingly.

"Yes; I have often observed that those who doubt a future state of existence have no hesitation in accepting a previous one," said the doctor dryly. "But come, I see from the way the crowd are hurrying that your divinity's number is up--I mean," he corrected himself hastily, "that she is probably dancing again."

"Aha! with him, the imbecile Mcf.e.c.kless?" gasped the Chevalier.

"No, alone."

She was indeed alone, in the centre of the ballroom--with outstretched arms revolving in an occult, weird, dreamy, mystic, druidical, cabalistic circle. They now for the first time perceived the meaning of those strange wands which appeared to be attached to the many folds of her diaphanous skirts and involved her in a fleecy, whirling cloud.

Yet in the wild convolutions of her garments and the mad gyrations of her figure, her face was upturned with the seraphic intensity of a devotee, and her lips parted as with the impa.s.sioned appeal for "Light!

more light!" And the appeal was answered. A flood of blue, crimson, yellow, and green radiance was alternately poured upon her from the black box of a mysterious Nubian slave in the gallery. The effect was marvelous; at one moment she appeared as a martyr in a sheet of flame, at another as an angel wrapped in white and m.u.f.fled purity, and again as a nymph of the cerulean sea, and then suddenly a cloud of darkness seemed to descend upon her, through which for an instant her figure, as immaculate and perfect as a marble statue, showed distinctly--then the light went out and she vanished!

The whole a.s.sembly burst into a rapturous cry. Even the common Arab attendants who were peeping in at the doors raised their melodious native cry, "Alloe, Fullah! Aloe, Fullah!" again and again.

A shocked silence followed. Then the voice of Sir Midas Pyle was heard addressing Dr. Haustus Pilgrim:

"May we not presume, sir, that what we have just seen is not unlike that remarkable exhibition when I was pained to meet you one evening at the Alhambra?"

The doctor coughed slightly. "The Alhambra--ah, yes!--you--er--refer, I presume, to Granada and the Land of the Moor, where we last met. The music and dance are both distinctly Moorish--which, after all, is akin to the Egyptian. I am gratified indeed that your memory should be so retentive and your archaeological comparison so accurate. But see! the ladies are retiring. Let us follow."

IV

The intoxication produced by the performance of the Princess naturally had its reaction. The British moral soul, startled out of its hypocrisy the night before, demanded the bitter beer of self-consciousness and remorse the next morning. The ladies were now openly shocked at what they had secretly envied. Lady Pyle was, however, propitiated by the doctor's a.s.surance that the Princess was a friend of Lady Fitz-Fulke, who had promised to lend her youthful age and aristocratic prestige to the return ball which the Princess had determined to give at her own home. "Still, I think the Princess open to criticism," said Sir Midas oracularly.

"d.a.m.n all criticism and critics!" burst out Mcf.e.c.kless, with the n.o.ble frankness of a pa.s.sionate and yet unfettered soul. Sir Midas, who employed critics in his business, as he did other base and ign.o.ble slaves, drew up himself and his paunch and walked away.

The Chevalier cast a superb look at Mcf.e.c.kless. "Voila! Regard me well! I shall seek out this Princess when she is with herself! Alone, comprenez? I shall seek her at her hotel in the Egyptian Hall! Ha!

ha! I shall seek Zut-Ski! Zut!" And he made that rapid yet graceful motion of his palm against his thigh known only to the true Parisian.

"It's a rum hole where she lives, and n.o.body gets a sight of her," said Flossy. "It's like a beastly family vault, don't you know, outside, and there's a kind of n.i.g.g.e.r doorkeeper that vises you and chucks you out if you haven't the straight tip. I'll show you the way, if you like."

"Allons, en avant!" said the Chevalier gayly. "I precipitate myself there on the instant."

"Remember!" hissed Mcf.e.c.kless, grasping his arm, "you shall account to me!"

"Bien!" said the Chevalier, shaking him off lightly. "All a-r-r-right." Then, in that incomparable baritone, which had so often enthralled thousands, he moved away, trolling the first verse of the Princess's own faint, sweet, sad song of the "Lotus Lily," that thrilled Mcf.e.c.kless even through the Chevalier's marked French accent:--

"Oh, a hard zing to get is ze Lotus Lillee!

She lif in ze swamp--in ze watair chillee; She make your foot wet--and you look so sillee, But you buy her for sixpence in Piccadillee!"

In half an hour the two men reached the remote suburb where the Princess lived, a gloomy, windowless building. Pausing under a low archway over which in Egyptian characters appeared the faded legend, "Sta Ged Oor," they found a Nubian slave blocking the dim entrance.

"I leave you here," said Flossy hurriedly, "as even I left once before--only then I was lightly a.s.sisted by his sandaled foot," he added, rubbing himself thoughtfully. "But better luck to you."

As his companion retreated swiftly, the Chevalier turned to the slave and would have pa.s.sed in, but the man stopped him. "Got a pa.s.s, boss?"

"No," said the Chevalier.

The man looked at him keenly. "Oh, I see! one of de profesh."

The Chevalier nodded haughtily. The man preceded him by devious, narrow ways and dark staircases, coming abruptly upon a small apartment where the Princess sat on a low divan. A single lamp inclosed in an ominous wire cage flared above her. Strange things lay about the floor and shelves, and from another door he could see hideous masks, frightful heads, and disproportionate faces. He shuddered slightly, but recovered himself and fell on his knees before her. "I lofe you,"

he said madly. "I have always lofed you!"

"For how long?" she asked, with a strange smile.

He covertly consulted his shirt cuff. "For tree tousand fife hundred and sixty-two years," he said rapidly.

She looked at him disdainfully. "The doctor has been putting you up to that! It won't wash! I don't refer to your shirt cuff," she added with deep satire.

"Adorable one!" he broke out pa.s.sionately, attempting to embrace her, "I have come to take you." Without moving, she touched a k.n.o.b in the wall. A trap-door beyond him sank, and out of the bowels of the earth leaped three indescribable demons. Then, rising, she took a cake of chalk from the table and, drawing a mystic half circle on the floor, returned to the divan, lit a cigarette, and leaning comfortably back, said in a low, monotonous voice, "Advance one foot within that magic line, and on that head, although it wore a crown, I launch the curse of Rome."

"I--only wanted to take you--with a kodak," he said, with a light laugh to conceal his confusion, as he produced the instrument from his coat-tail pocket.

"Not with that cheap box," she said, rising with magnificent disdain.

"Come again with a decent instrument--and perhaps"-- Then, lightly humming in a pure contralto, "I've been photographed like this--I've been photographed like that," she summoned the slave to conduct him back, and vanished through a canvas screen, which nevertheless seemed to the dazed Chevalier to be the stony front of the pyramids.

V

"And you saw her?" said the doctor in French.