The Game and the Candle Part 21

"But it seemed a bit cowardly to burden you with my troubles; you could not help them, and you have so many of your own. It was no time to speak of such a thing during your wedding, and as the weeks went by it grew harder and harder to speak of it at all. I tried not to betray myself, but I am rather a bad actor. If it were only I who suffered. The journey to Spain, for madame--"

He paused. Stanief gazed at him with an expression as somberly dangerous as ever one of his dangerous house wore.

"The journey to Spain, monsieur?" he repeated.

Aroused at last to a strangeness in his manner, Allard turned to him in wonder.

"During the journey to Spain, monseigneur, this came for me," he replied simply, and drew forth a letter which he laid before the other.

Stanief picked it up, himself confronted by the unexpected. Allard resumed his seat and averted his head as the rustling paper unfolded.

It was a sweetly calm letter, a letter written by one in the evening of life and itself breathing an evening repose and gray twilight hush.

Across the fevered pa.s.sion of the man who read, the first words drifted like the cool, scented air of the Californian garden from which they came. A letter that neither reproached nor questioned, its message was given with all tenderness of phrase and household name.

Robert had not been well for a long time, Aunt Rose wrote most delicately. After John had left for South America so suddenly, his younger brother had fretted and chafed against his own quiet life. Even his engagement to Theodora had failed to cheer him, or cure his strange restlessness and abstraction. About six months after John's departure, he had been found unconscious on the veranda, lying among the crumpled newspapers. An illness followed, and after recovering from that he never seemed to grow quite strong. In the third year of John's absence, when preparations were being made for the long-delayed wedding, he again fell ill. The morning they received John's letter from the _Nadeja_, he rallied wonderfully. Asking to have the letter himself, he read it again and again, then sent them all away while he rested. An hour later they had found him, resting indeed, his cheek upon the letter and the old bright content on his boyish face. Theodora had borne it very well. They were tranquilly calm in their life together, now, and sent their earnest love to John in the distant life he had chosen.

Stanief laid down the letter very gently. He never forgot how the light from this purer and simpler world fell across the labyrinth of dark thoughts at which he scarcely dared look back.

"Nearly two years," Allard said, his head still turned away. "So long since Robert died. I did not write at once from here; I thought they knew of me, and I wanted a little real life to tell. I was sick of pretense. I suppose the women did not know how to reach me here; Bertie would have had no difficulty. But it was a grief past remedying, and there seemed no use troubling you."

Stanief rose and came around the writing-table to lay both hands on the other's shoulders.

"I beg your pardon, John," he said earnestly and gravely. "I spoke to you just now as I never will again, come what may. I have my own griefs, less patiently endured than yours; and I misunderstood."

"I did not notice," Allard answered, with perfect truth. "You are always like no one else, monseigneur. I am glad that you know, very glad. You see, it is not only that I myself have lost Robert, but that I have taken him from Theodora. I wanted so much happiness for her, and now--it was all wrong. Let us talk of something else, please."

Stanief turned away to the table.

"My last cigarette was never lighted," he remarked, the change of tone complete. "Did you not see that particularly disagreeable fellow-countryman of mine who went out in Dimitri's charge? He tried to kill me just before you arrived."

Effectively distracted, Allard sat up.

"He--"

"Oh, that is nothing novel. In fact, it becomes monotonous. Only this fellow varied the routine by declaring Dalmorov the instigator of all this."

"Dalmorov!" Allard echoed incredulously. "To stoop so far! Yet I remember; I saw him talking with your prisoner the other night. I was coming from the club with Rosal and Linovitch, when the acetylene search-lights of the car fell across the two, as they stood in an angle of the cathedral wall."

"So? He is imprudent. Also he should recollect that while such people will keep faith with one another, they will cheerfully betray one of the cla.s.s they hate."

"You will accuse him, arrest him?"

"My dear John, on the word of a wretched peasant? I shall do nothing so impulsive. But, I will perfect the chain, and then--" He offered a match serenely. "Why should he not pay? Moreover, he is dangerous to the Emperor. When I resign this remodeled empire to my cousin, he shall rule it, not Dalmorov. Have patience yet a while. Before my power pa.s.ses from me, I will remove this gentleman, whether Adrian approves of it or not; and then contentedly lay down my borrowed scepter."

"The Emperor--"

"The Emperor may do as he will, afterward. He is fond of his Dalmorov."

"I am not so sure of that, monseigneur; he plays with him."

Stanief smiled.

"My young cousin is a kitten for whom we are all toy mice, John. Which reminds me that the hour for my visit to him approaches."

"And recalls me to my errand. The Emperor requests that her Royal Highness the Grand d.u.c.h.ess will come to him this morning, if it will not derange her plans."

"You have told madame?"

"No, monseigneur. I thought perhaps you--" he looked at Stanief interrogatively.

"Would accompany her?" Stanief completed the question. "Perhaps."

He touched the bell, and the long regard in which he enveloped Allard held many blended emotions besides its affection.

"Has madame gone to drive, Dimitri?" he inquired of that attendant.

"Her Royal Highness at this moment descends the stairs, Royal Highness."

"Say to her that I would be glad to see her here, now, if she is at leisure."

Dimitri vanished hastily. An instant later he opened the door, and Iria came noiselessly across the threshold with the exotic, Andalusian grace that made her least movement a delight.

Both gentlemen rose at her entrance. Coloring faintly, she inclined her head to Allard, and crossed to Stanief, lifting her eyes to his with a certain delicate confidence and trust.

"You sent for me, monsiegneur?" she questioned, in her rippling southern voice.

"I asked you to come," he corrected. "Monsieur Allard has a message for you."

She turned docilely to Allard, without leaving Stanief's side.

"For me, monsieur?"

Stanief looked from one to the other. Very lovely was the young girl in her trailing blue velvets and furs; her golden-brown hair cl.u.s.tering in full, soft waves under the large hat, her golden-brown eyes warm with expectation. Iria had acquired a dainty poise, not less gentle but more a.s.sured, during these months of emanc.i.p.ation and freedom under the Regent's protection. Allard gazed at her with frank admiration and friendliness as he explained:

"Madame, the Emperor requests the happiness of your presence this morning, if the visit will cause no disturbance of your plans."

Her dimpling smile responded to a demand sufficiently familiar. Adrian's love for her had long ago outlived surprise and become an accepted fact.

"Thank you, monsieur," she answered, and again looked up at Stanief.

"You are going, monseigneur? We may go together?"

"I intended to ask it of you, if you will wait an instant for me to arrange these papers."

Allard saluted them quietly, and withdrew. Like all the rest of the city, he fancied them most happy in each other. The Regent's aversion to the marriage had been forgotten in his bearing since the first day of his fiancee's arrival.

Iria sank down in an arm-chair and loosened the furs under her round white chin, laying the huge m.u.f.f in her lap. Quite innocently and without shyness she followed Stanief's movements as he tossed into a drawer the writing upon which he had been engaged and dropped on top the thin, keen knife left from the recent conflict.

"Monseigneur," she said at last.