Peter the Brazen Part 39

She seemed to be distressed.

"You must be mistaken."

Peter shook his head forcibly. "A choleric gentleman born with the habit of reaching for his hip-pocket," he amplified.

She studied him with wide, speculative eyes. "He must be from the north. Some of them I do not know. But all of them have been informed."

"To permit me to live and love until one to-morrow morning?"

She nodded.

The aspiring and perspiring orchestra and the impa.s.sioned tenor had again reached the chorus of "Un Peu d'Amour."

"I could ge-e-e-eve you al-l-l my life for the-e-e-e-s--"

"Badly sung, but appropriate," commented Romola Borria.

Peter's countenance became a question mark.

"It may mean that I am giving you all my life for--this," she explained.

"For these few minutes, when we were to chatter, and make love, and be happy?" Peter demanded indignantly. "My dear----" He reached out for her hand, and she let him fondle it, not reluctantly. "I'd give all my life, too, for these few minutes with you. Do you know--you're perfectly adorable to-night! There's something--something irresistible about you--to me!"

"To you?"

"Yes," he said in a deep voice, and sincerely. "I'd come all the way 'round the world, and lay my life at your feet--thus." And he placed his knuckles on the white cloth, as if they were knees.

"Ah! But you don't mean that!"

"When I'm in love, I mean everything!"

"I know. You are fickle. Miss Lorimer--Miss--Vost--Romola--they come, they love, they are gone, quite as fatefully and systematically as life follows death, and death follows life."

"I do wish you wouldn't talk about death in that flippant manner," he gibed, wondering how under the sun he might get her out of this gloomy mood.

"But death is in my mind always--Peter. When you have gone through----"

"Romola, I refuse to be lectured."

"Very well; I refuse to talk of anything but love and death."

"Excellent, my own love! Tell me now how it feels when _you_ are in the heavenly condition."

"Most hopeless, Peter; because death, you see, is so close upon the heels of my love."

"Meaning--me?"

"No--my heart. The death of love and the death--of life follow my love. Now I want to pick up the threads of a moment ago. Peter, don't hold my hand. That woman is--staring. You said--you said, you would come away around the world to see me, to help me, possibly, if I were in trouble. You weren't serious."

"Cross my heart!"

"On the _Persian Gulf_ that day--that day I told you something of your recent adventures and your apparently miraculous escapes, I intended to ask you----"

"Seeress, I am all ears----"

"I intended asking you a favor, a most important one, an alternative----"

"The trip to Nara?"

"Yes; an alternative to that. Tell me truly how much at heart you hate the man at Len Yang. Wait. Don't answer me yet. At heart, do you really hate him, as you pretend, or are you simply bowing down to your vanity, to the pride you seem to take in these quixotic deeds? For one thing, there is very little money in what you are doing. If you should approach these adventures a little differently, perhaps, you might put yourself in a position to be rewarded for the troubles you take, the dangers you risk. I mean that."

"I admit I'm not a money hater," frowned Peter, striving without much success to feel her trend.

"It would be so easy for you to make all the money you need in only a few years by--how shall I say it?--by 'being nice.' Wait! I have not finished. You said I was a special emissary from him. You hit the mark more squarely than you thought. Oh, I admit it! I was sent to Batavia to meet you, to intercept you, and, to be quite frank, to ask you your terms."

"From _him_?"

"Yes. He has observed you. He can use you, and oh!--how badly he wants you and your boldness and that unconquerable fire of yours! He needs you! He wants you, more than any man he has known! And he will pay you! Name your price! A half million gold a year? Bah! It is a drop to him!"

"Don't," begged Peter in a whisper. "Please--don't--go on."

His face had become almost as white as the tablecloth, and his lips were trembling, ashen.

"G.o.d! I put my confidence in you, time after time, and each time you show me treachery, deeper, more hideous, than before. Please don't continue. I'm trying, as hard as I know how, to appreciate your position in this wretched mess--and trying to find some excuse for it.

For you! And it's hard. d.a.m.ned, brutally hard. Let's part! Let's forget! Let's be just memories to each other--Romola!"

Her face, too, had lost its color, like life fading from a rose when the stem is snapped. Her hand sought her throat and groped there, as it always did in her moments of nervousness, and she drummed on the cloth with a silver knife. She stared curiously at him, with the other light dying hard.

"Then I can only hope--a slender hope--to bring you back to the favor I asked you originally, and I place that before you now, my request for that favor--my final hope. You cannot refuse that. You cannot! You profess to be chivalrous. Now, let me--test you!"

CHAPTER XIV

"Romola, I said no to Nara long ago."

She threw up her head.

"A woman should need to be informed but once that her love is not wanted. This is not what I meant."

"Ah! Another scheme! Your little brain is nothing short of an idea machine. Remarkable! Go on."

"No," she said, rather sullenly, at this flow of bitterness, "a variation of my plan. If you will not accompany me to Nara, then I must go alone. I must have money. Do you understand? I am penniless.

The _King of Asia_ leaves for j.a.pan to-morrow, at dawn. I will never return to China. Will you--help me?"

"What do you mean by that? Will I break into the house and help you rob?"