The Game and the Candle Part 27

CHAPTER XV

AT THE GATES OF CHANGE

Once more Stanief was alone in his study, on the morning when Allard made his first rebellion. The windows were open and a warm, sweet breeze drifted the curtains into the room like snowy mists from the past winter, rustling on among the papers upon the writing-table, as Stanief laid down his work to listen to the visitor. It was so rare to see Allard excited and he was so vibrant with indignation as he stood before the other.

"Like that," he was declaring hotly, speaking English in his preoccupation, "and Dalmorov sneered, listening. 'My cousin is having his fine old country-place in the mountains renovated, Allard, so I am informed.' 'I know nothing, sire,' I said. 'He is very far-sighted,' he answered coolly. Monseigneur, I will not go back; I came here to tell you that. I am weary of watching it; I will stay with you. I can come here as I always hoped to do, giving to you, not asking. Let me finish, please. The Emperor has been generous to me, however little so to you, and I am modestly rich in my own right. Why, the pension accompanying the star and order he gave me after that attempt to kill him, that alone is more than my solitary life requires. My tastes are simple--that automobile about which you laugh at me is not as you think. It is my pride to have regained my independence, monseigneur; to be able to come to you, free, and offer to do your secretary's work, Vasili's, what you choose, but to do it as a service of love. Long ago, on the _Nadeja_, I lent myself to aid your purpose, to make it mine. And now you have carried it through; next week the Emperor will be crowned. Now I claim the right to return to you; the work is done."

"John--"

"You can not refuse me that," he cried. "You have taken my life and made it center around you, now you can not bid me tear that core out and go on."

As on their first night together, Stanief stretched his hand across the table for his companion's clasp.

"No," he answered lovingly, "we can not go on without each other. If you will stay with a sinking ship, come; I am selfish enough to let you. But the charge I gave you is not finished, nor my purpose yet fulfilled. You must go back until next week is over."

"The Emperor--" Allard began incredulously.

"The Emperor needs you more than ever before. There are too many people who cling to the peace of the last years, who dread change and would force me upon the throne at any cost. The Empire--not Adrian's court--the vast middle cla.s.s, the merchants, the quiet, staid aristocracy, the very peasants, want all to continue as it is. If I were still to govern with the Emperor they would rest content, but they see it will not be so. They fear Adrian, they know and detest Dalmorov and the party he represents. And they are not careful in their methods of obtaining what they want. John, if you knew the veiled insinuations, the bold offers, the tempters who pursue me night and day; if you knew how they watch for the hours when Adrian has been most hard, how they skilfully touch my pride, my patriotism, my resentment and knowledge of injustice, if you lived my life for twenty-four hours, then you might speak of weariness. But the worst--"

Aghast, Allard stared at him, deep after deep of the inner court opening before his dizzy gaze.

"The worst?" he repeated mechanically.

The hand on the table clenched; all the inherited lawlessness and ambition of a royal line blazed up in Stanief's darkly brilliant eyes.

"I want it," he said deliberately. "I want to rule this country, to toss Dalmorov from my path, to stamp out the satisfied triumph from these time-serving faces about me. I want to play this splendid game and remain chief in the battles of diplomacy and statecraft. I want my wife to continue in the life to which she was born. And I know the power to accomplish all this lies ready at my hand; I have only to take. Oh, I am no Galahad or Cincinnatus, no patient despiser of earthly good; no longer even the idealist who spun his dreams on the _Nadeja_. I have tasted of a dangerous fountain, and I shall thirst for its purple-tinted water all the rest of my time. I have no bent, no inclination, for obscure inactivity."

"Yet?" Allard wondered.

Stanief leaned back and idly picked up the pen on his desk.

"Yet Adrian's coronation takes place next week, exactly. Are we sufficiently inconsistent, we others? And I will pa.s.s my life in a castle of the north, or wandering over Europe. I only spoke to show you that my days are not serene either, and why you must go back to keep your guard of honor with Adrian. I believe he is safe; the secret police watch him ceaselessly and report to me. But I want you near him."

"I will go back now," a.s.sented Allard, utterly subdued. "You are right, I knew nothing of this. I owe so much to him, as well as to you. I wish I were a wiser guardian; I--that automobile--"

"Your automobile! My dear John, what has it to do with the matter? Or do you mean that Adrian gave it to you? I never knew that."

"Yes, he gave it to me," Allard smiled and frowned together. "It is nothing, of course. But I will not leave him again unless you wish or he compels."

"Thank you. You are going direct to the palace?"

"Yes; he sent me with a letter to madame."

Stanief winced, sighing. One trial he had not told Allard, yet exile would have been a light thing to bear if the fearless child Iria had still walked with him.

"Wait and I will go with you," he offered. "I must have the Emperor's approval of these plans for next week. Have you delivered madame's letter?"

"Not yet, monseigneur. I am afraid I forgot it."

"Give it to me and I will leave it with her in pa.s.sing. I have not seen her to-day."

It had come to that point; the cold and self-contained Stanief sought a pretext in these days to see the delicate face he loved. The Gentle Princess was hurting him as no one else could.

Up in her cream-and-azure boudoir, Iria was alone when Stanief entered.

She was bending over a table heaped with water-lilies and purple Florentine irises from the conservatory, herself quite radiant with their reflected brightness as she lifted the heavy petals and breathed their fragrance. Her back to the door, she did not turn at once to see who came unannounced.

"Look, Marya," she called gladly and sweetly. "Come here; were ever things so lovely? So the irises grew at home, knee-deep in the clear pools, like enchanted princes. And the lilies,--over them the dragon-flies hovered all day and between their stems the goldfish slept and played."

She moved with the last word and saw Stanief; a tall, soldierly presence in the filagree room.

"Oh," she exclaimed faintly, "pardon, monseigneur!"

"For what?" he demanded. "It is I who should apologize for disturbing you here. I have a letter from the Emperor for you."

"Thank you, monseigneur," she murmured, and accepted the ma.s.sive envelop to lay it listlessly on the table.

Stanief looked at her. Like one of her own slim flowers she stood, her shimmering white morning dress leaving her round throat and arms bare.

The full soft hair was caught in a great coil low on her neck, she wore no jewel except the slender gold chain and cross gleaming through the lace at her bosom.

"Why are you afraid of me?" he asked abruptly. "Why do you shrink from me as if my touch were pain? What has come between us, Iria?"

"Nothing, monseigneur," her fingers inter-laced in feverish nervousness.

"Nothing? Iria, Iria, will you tell me now to take you with me into my exile?"

"Yes, monseigneur," came the low reply, but her head drooped.

"And you think I would accept the sacrifice? You think--" He checked himself with a violent effort.

"I am sorry," she responded confusedly. "I--I have not changed."

"Then it is I?"

"No, no; please let me go, monseigneur."

"It is I who will go," he answered, shaken out of self-mastery for once.

"Iria, I do not know who awakened you, who showed you the truth, perhaps it was my kindly cousin. But it is clear that you have seen. Iria, was your trust also so weak that it went down before a breath? Because I loved you, must you shrink from me? Child, I loved you the first day that you gave me your shy friendship, I loved you all the months afterward, and was my care of you less careful for that? If you could have continued in your ignorance, would I have failed you?"

Before his pa.s.sion and grief she retreated, mute, colorless, her dazed eyes upon him.

"You!" she gasped, "You--" then suddenly turned and hid her face among the heaped flowers.

"I did not hope that you could love me; I knew better than that," he said. "But I did hope that you would trust me. I thought I had earned that much, Iria. Let my fancies go; I will undo this as far as I may.

You shall stay in the capital or go to your own home, whatever you choose. Only this week remains, and I lay down both my charges. Hush, and do not grieve; this is no fault of yours."

She was sobbing helplessly, her golden head among the white and purple blossoms. He drew a quick breath and stood for a moment, struggling to regather around him the poor tattered cloak of reserve. But it was a relief to him that she could not see his expression when he crossed to her side.

"Forgive me," he said sadly. "I am not very wise to-day, or very kind, I am afraid. I have loved you; yes, and I loved Adrian during our quiet years. Some flaw in me there must be, that neither of you could give me the simple gift of trust. We will speak of this no more; somehow I will find a way for you. 'A Stanief guards his own.'"