The Game and the Candle Part 19

"Cousin!"

"This falsehood, sire--since, having met the Princess, it is my earnest desire to have the honor of her hand--this is too much. Baron Dalmorov is your attendant; I request your justice. If it is refused--"

"Well, cousin?" Adrian asked mechanically, rather in stupor than challenge at Stanief's words.

Stanief's usually veiled glance glinted clear and ice-cold.

"Sire, Dalmorov shall account to me now; and I to you later."

Allard, familiar with both, bit his lip in an agony of anxiety. For an instant Adrian wavered, then his eyes fell, beaten down by those of his kinsman.

"Whatever you wish," he conceded, docilely as Iria could have spoken.

"He had no right, no excuse from me. Go bid Dalmorov come here, Allard."

The surrender was complete. Relieved and surprised, Allard obeyed, hazarding a guess that the Emperor's own fondness for Iria had influenced the answer.

But Adrian had not lived ten months with his Regent without learning more than a childish love of command. He looked up again at the stately figure that towered over him, glittering in the semibarbaric magnificence of dress demanded by etiquette.

"Come by me, Feodor," he urged, with a gesture of invitation to the chair at his side.

"Thank you, sire," without moving.

Adrian surveyed him, then stooped to the first apology of his life, however imperiously spoken.

"I never told any one at all of your unwillingness to marry Iria, Feodor. If it is known, it is because you yourself seized every possible delay. Come here; I do not wish Dalmorov to find you standing there."

Stanief complied, and Adrian laid a hand on his sleeve.

"Then you love Iria, after all?" he asked, with hesitating curiosity.

"Love? In twenty-four hours? Hardly, sire; but I guard my own."

The young Emperor lifted his head no less proudly.

"And so do I, cousin. Dalmorov shall satisfy you."

Half an hour after Iria had returned to the suite appointed to her and her mother, she received a visit from Baron Dalmorov--a very different Dalmorov from the malicious, self-confident gentleman of the morning, and who offered her so abject an apology for his mistaken and untrue statement regarding the Grand Duke's att.i.tude, that the Gentle Princess was quite distressed. She sent him away rea.s.sured and apparently grateful, then fell to connecting events. Recollecting Stanief's expression during her nave account and the carriage of his head as he had crossed the reception-hall to Adrian, she had no difficulty in divining the reason for Dalmorov's sudden contrition. But Stanief's strength no longer chilled her with terror; instead she stood with relief behind its shelter.

There was a ball at the palace that night. Stanief never danced, but every one else did, and the Emperor opened the evening with the Princess. It was obvious to all why Stanief had been forced to this marriage, whenever Adrian was seen with Iria; the boy so evidently liked, indeed, loved her. And the fifteen-year-old autocrat was always popularly supposed to be without affection.

Near the end of the evening Stanief came across Allard, who was leaning against a flower-wreathed pillar and watching the dancers with grave, unseeing eyes. The other man studied him for a minute, then laid a hand on his shoulder.

"John, I have scarcely seen you to-night. You look troubled."

Allard started and turned, his face brightening warmly.

"I am not dancing to-night, monseigneur," he explained. "That is all."

"Why not?"

The gray eyes fell.

"I was--a bit out of sorts, perhaps."

Stanief stood silent, his own expression becoming very somber. Allard waited quietly; he indeed bore the stamp of fatigue in his pallor and the dark circles beneath his eyes.

"It is a tangled skein, this life of ours," Stanief said at last, "and not wholly of our spinning. You are with the Emperor to-night?"

"Every night now, monseigneur."

"Then I may not see you until morning. Good night, John."

Allard smiled with the cordial brilliancy that always sprang in response to his name on Stanief's lips.

"Good night, monseigneur," he answered lovingly.

The next morning, with all elaborate ceremony, the marriage took place.

It was remarked that when the Princess stood up, in as much snowy satin, old lace and pearl as could be crowded upon one small feminine figure, opposite Stanief in the vast cathedral, her wide eyes never left his face, and she seemed to find support in his composure. And when they came down the aisle together, her little white-gloved fingers clung to the white sleeve of his uniform as if there alone she touched some reality in the bewildering panorama.

"Did you ever see the frail edelweiss growing on a ledge of some ice-fringed granite cliff?" whispered the volatile Vasili in Allard's ear. "Look, pray, at our Grand d.u.c.h.ess."

"The edelweiss is safe, at least," Allard replied soberly. "Perhaps safer than the cliff."

CHAPTER XI

IN THE REGENT'S STUDY

Stanief was writing, writing steadily, placidly, his pen rustling faintly as it slipped across the paper. The ruddy glow of the open fire was tangled and reflected among the many-faceted knickknacks that littered the desk, caught and tossed back from a dozen shining surfaces, and mockingly echoed by deep-tinted walls and draperies. Most ruddily, most vividly, the light seemed to gather around the writer, as if its quivering pink radiance were a warning or a shield.

It was like another presence in the room, that fire, to the man behind the curtain. He watched it also as he crept stealthily forward, clutching more tightly the object in his hand. A man of the people, shabby, gaunt, unkempt, he stole out into the Regent's study, stepping cautiously on the gleaming floor or on the treacherously soft rugs which slipped beneath his unaccustomed feet. From the velvet hangings he gained the shelter of a tall Vernis-Martin cabinet and crouched in the shadow, shaking from head to foot with nervous tremors.

Stanief worked on undisturbed; once he paused to choose another pen, and the intruder cowered to the floor in abject fear. But the writing was resumed without alarm. After a few moments the man again moved forward, this time on his hands and knees, until he reached the end of a high-sided leather couch. There he halted again. Coming here with a purpose so bold, the habit of a lifetime yet prompted him to hold his soiled garments away from the gilded and perfumed upholstery with a vague sense of apology.

There never was a clock that ticked so loudly, so insistently as the timepiece above the hearth, a clock that set its beats so exactly to the beat of a man's hurrying pulse. Once the man on the floor touched his chest curiously, as if to be quite certain whether it was his heart, or indeed the swaying pendulum which sounded through the quiet place.

Rea.s.sured, he moved on.

The glowing firelight wavered giddily across Stanief's bent head, seeking in vain for a hint of brown in the fine black hair, which had a slight ripple and a tendency to lie in tiny curls where it touched the neck. The man noted this dully. If one struck there? Or lower, between the broad shoulders--

Stanief leaned back and selected a cigarette from the tray on the writing-table. His drowsy lashes fell meditatively as he reached for a match, a half-smile curved his lips. The man by the chair darted forward and struck once, from behind.

The knife crashed ringing to the floor as Stanief's quicker movement met his a.s.sailant's. The man cried out sharply as the strong white hands closed on his wrists and the superior strength forced him to his knees beside the desk.

"Clumsily attempted," commented the level voice. "Have you any more weapons, _mon ami_?"

"Excellency, Royal Highness, pardon--I have no French."