The Sisters In Law Part 48

II

The room, whose lofty ceiling was supported along the center by three ma.s.sive pillars, was already crowded, and people entered constantly.

Every emba.s.sy was represented, all the grande n.o.blesse of Paris and even a stray Bourbon and Bonaparte. A few of the guests were the more distinguished American residents of Paris and their gowns were as out of date if as inimitably cut as the Frenchwomen's, for they had worked as hard. But Alexina ceased to notice them. She had become aware that two American officers, standing still closer to the window, were talking. One of them had parted the curtains and was looking out.

"By Jove," he said. "Strikes me this is rather risky. Six long windows opening on the garden, and the King standing directly in front of one of them. Fine chance for some filthy Bolshevik or anarchist."

"Oh, nonsense," said the other absently; his eyes were roving over the room. "Wish I could take to one of these French girls ... feel it a sort of duty to increase the rapport and all that ... but although the married women and the other sort of girls are a long sight more fascinating than ours, the upper--"

"American girls for me. But I'm still jumpy, and this sort of carelessness makes me nervous, particularly as the story is going about that the King came near being a.s.sa.s.sinated in the station of his home town when he was leaving. Man fired point blank at his face, but gun didn't go off or some one knocked up the man's arm. Did you notice that he looked about rather apprehensively when he arrived, at the station yesterday? No wonder, poor devil."

III

Alexina moved off, making her way slowly, but finally was forced to halt near the row of pillars. She was looking through the opposite door at the fantastic illuminations of the hall and reception rooms beyond, when, without a second's warning flicker, every light in the house went out.

Simultaneously the high clatter of voices ceased as if the old familiar cry of "_Alerte_" had sounded in the street. Involuntarily, as people in real life do act, her hands clutched her heart, her mouth opened to relieve her lungs. A Frenchman whispered beside her. "The King! A plot!"

She waited to hear screams from the women, wild e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns from the men. But the years of war and danger had extinguished the weak and exalted the strong. Beyond the almost inaudible gasp of her neighbor Alexina heard nothing. The silence was as profound as the darkness and that was abysmal; she could not see the white of her gown.

All, she knew, were waiting for the sound of a pistol shot, or of a groan as the King fell with a knife in his back.

Then she became aware that men were forcing their way through the crowd; she was almost flung into the arms of a man behind her. Later she knew that a group of officers had surrounded their King and rushed him up the room to place him in front of the central pillar, but at the moment she believed that they were either carrying out his body, or that a group of anarchists was escaping.

IV

Then one man lit a match. She saw a pale strained face, the eyes roving excitedly above the flickering flame. Then another match was struck, then another. Those that had no matches struck their briquets, and these burned with a tiny yellow flame. One or two took down candles and lit them. All over the room, in little groups, or widely separated, Alexina saw face after face, white and anxious, appear. The bodies were invisible. The faces hung, pallid disks, in the dark.

Her attention was suddenly arrested by a face above the small steady flame of a briquet. It was a thin worn face, probably that of an officer recently discharged from hospital. His expression was ironic and unperturbed and his eyes flashed about the room exhibiting a lively curiosity. An Englishman, probably; nothing there of the severity of the American military countenance; although, to be sure, that had relaxed somewhat these last weeks under the blandishments of Paris.

Nevertheless ... quite apart from the military, there was the curious una.n.a.lyzable difference between the extremely well-bred American face and the extremely well-bred English face. It might be that the older civilization did not take itself quite so seriously....

V

Obeying an impulse, which, she a.s.sured herself later, was but the sudden reaction to frivolity from the horror that had possessed her, she took a match unceremoniously from the hand of a neighbor, lit it and held it below her own face. The man's eyes met hers instantly, opened a little wider, then narrowed.

She looked at him steadily ... interested ... something ... somewhere ... stirring. The match burnt her fingers and was hastily extinguished.

At the same time she became aware of a fuller effulgence just beyond the pillars and that people were moving on, some retreating toward the hall. She was carried forward and a little later turned her head, forgetting for a moment the humorous face that still had seemed to beckon above the white disks that inspired her with no interest whatever.

Against the central pillar stood the King, and on either side of him two officers of his suite, as rigid as men in armor, held aloft each a great candelabra taken from the wall. All the candles in the branches had been lit and shone down on the composed and somewhat expressionless face of the King. The strange group looked like a picture in some old cathedral window.

The scene lasted only a moment. Then the King, bowing courteously, left the room, still between the candelabra; and, followed by his amba.s.sador, whose face was far paler than his, ascended the staircase.

VI

A Frenchman beside Alexina cursed softly and she learned the meaning of the dramatic finale to a superb but rather dull function. There had been no attempt at a.s.sa.s.sination. A lead fuse had melted; the amba.s.sador, who had taxed his imagination to honor his King, had forgotten to give the order that electricians remain on guard to avert just such a calamity as this.

As the explanation ran round the room people began to laugh and chatter rapidly as if they feared the sudden reaction might end in hysteria.

But although all the candles had now been lit, the effort to revive the mild exhilaration of the evening was fruitless. They wanted to get away. Many still believed that a plot had been balked, and that the a.s.sa.s.sins were lurking in one of the many rooms of the hotel.

Alexina met Olive de Morsigny in the dressing-room, and found her white and shaking, although for four years she had proved herself a woman of strong nerves as well as of untiring effort.

"Great heaven!" she whispered, as she helped Alexina on with her wrap.

"If he had been a.s.sa.s.sinated! In Paris! I thought Andre would faint.

His last wound is barely healed. Come, let us get out of this. Who knows? ... In Paris!..."

Their car had to wait its turn. As Alexina stood with her silent friends in the porte cochere the certainty grew that some one was watching her. That officer! Who else? She flashed her eyes over the crowd about her, then into the densely packed hall behind. But she encountered no pair of eyes even remotely humorous, no face in any degree familiar.... Later she whirled about again.... There was a pillar ... easy to dodge behind it.... At this moment Andre took her elbow and gently piloted her into the car.

CHAPTER II

I

Alexina in the weariness of reaction climbed the long stairs of her pension in Pa.s.sy.

Sibyl Bascom, whose husband being on government duty in Washington left her free to go to France, and who rolled bandages all day long in the great hospital in Neuilly; Janet Maynard and Alice Thornd.y.k.e, who ran a canteen in the environs of Paris, and herself, had lived until the Armistice in a comfortable hotel not far from the house of Olive de Morsigny, and found much solace together. But their hotel had been commandeered for one of the Commissions; Sibyl had taken refuge with her sister-in-law, and Alexina, Janet, and Alice had found with no little difficulty vacant rooms in a second-rate pension in Pa.s.sy. The food was even worse than at the hotel, the rooms were barely heated, and as trams at Alexina's hours were airless and jammed, and taxicabs in swarming Paris as scarce as tiaras, with drivers of an unsurpa.s.sable effrontery, she was forced to walk three miles a day in all weathers.

It is true that she could have rented a limousine for a thousand francs a month, but it was almost a religion with workers of her cla.s.s to economize rigorously and give all their surplus to the oeuvre of their devotion. Janet and Alice went back and forth in one of the supply camions of the Y.M.C.A.

II

Alexina pa.s.sed Janet's room softly. She saw a light under the door and inferred that she and Alice were playing poker and consuming many cigarettes, that being their idea of recuperation between one hard day's work and the next. She was in no mood for talking.

Her room was stuffy as well as cold; the furniture and curtains had probably not been changed since the second empire. She opened one of the long windows and stepped out on the balcony. The Seine was nearly in flood after the heavy rains, but it reflected the stars to-night and many long banners of light from the almost festive banks.

It was bitterly cold and she closed her window in a moment and moved about her room. It was too cold to undress. She was inured to discomforts and thankful that she had been brought up in San Francisco, which is seldom warm; but she longed for a few creature comforts nevertheless. During the war she had sustained herself with the thought of the men in the trenches, but now that their lot was ameliorated she felt that she had a right to what comforts she could find. The difficulty was to find them. With Paris overflowing. Generals sleeping in servants' rooms under the roof, soldiers, even officers, picking up women on the streets if only to have a bed for the night, and hotel after hotel being requisitioned for the various Peace Commissions and their illimitable suites, conditions were likely to grow worse. Olive de Morsigny had repeatedly offered hospitality, but she preferred her independence.

To leave was impossible. Her oeuvre must continue for several months.

Sick and wounded men do not recover miraculously with the cessation of hostilities. No doubt she should be grateful for this refuge, and now that the war was over it might be possible to buy petrol for an oil stove.

Then she became aware that it was not only the cold that made her restless. The rigidly enforced calm of her inner life had received a shock to-night and not from the imagined a.s.sa.s.sination of a king.