THE ball that night was a very brilliant affair, and when I arrived the rooms were already somewhat crowded. I found Spernow waiting for me near the entrance.
“You are a little late, Count; we began to fear that perhaps you were not coming. Mademoiselle Broumoff is anxious for me to present you at once. Will you come with me?”
As we threaded our way through the throng, he told me the names of many of those present, but I was looking everywhere for the Princess, and felt disappointed at not seeing her.
Mademoiselle Broumoff was sitting alone in a corner at the far end, and I saw her eyes light up as she caught sight of us. She was not pretty, but her face was bright and clever, with an ever-changing play of expression that made it very attractive; while a pair of deeply set thoughtful eyes spoke of great intelligence.
As soon as I had been presented, she made a place for me at her side and sent Spernow away with a reminder that he had a number of duty dances with important partners.
“You have kept him from them so long, Count, that he will have a busy time,” she said with a smile.
“I have kept him? I have but this minute arrived.”
“Of course, that is the reason. I had commissioned him to bring you straight to me, and you are late.”
“I did not know that such an honour was depending on my arrival, or I would have been earlier,” I said with a bow.
“I have been most anxious, and half feared you meant to disappoint us;” and in a light strain we chatted pleasantly. I soon perceived that my companion was bent upon creating a favourable impression, while on my side I was not less desirous of making a friend of one who was so close an intimate of the Princess. We danced the next waltz together, and at the close of it she asked me to lead her to one of the conservatories.
I observed that she was careful to select a quiet corner, where we could speak without fear of being overheard, and after a moment’s pause she said earnestly:
“I have been really anxious to know you, Count.”
“I am flattered,” I answered.
“No, not that,” she replied impulsively, with a slight shake of the head. “I mean more than that. Michel has told me all that has passed between you—especially this morning at your new house. Captain Zoiloff is a man to trust implicitly, you know that?”
“I formed that opinion strongly,” I said, beginning to wonder what she was going to say.
“Michel tells me you are half English. Is that a secret?”
“No, certainly not. We English are not afraid to own our nationality, as the actions of many of us show too prominently sometimes, I fear.”
“But Englishmen of wealth do not commonly choose Bulgaria as a place of residence—at least not without some strong motive.” And her eyes searched my face for the truth.
“Eccentricity has never yet been denied to us.”
“Is it in your case eccentricity—only?”
“I am also half a Roumanian,” I said, repeating the answer I had given in the morning to Zoiloff.
“And the Roumanians are all but Russians.”
“Is not the Princess Christina a Roumanian?” I retorted. “And also of the Russian Party here?”
“Do you think that?” she asked quickly, turning the battery of her eyes full on me again.
“What time or means have I had to learn how to distinguish between appearances and facts?”
She laughed—a very silvery, sweet laugh.
“You fence as cleverly with your tongue as with your sword, Count. What do you want to know?”
“Nothing that cannot be told me voluntarily, mademoiselle.”
“Why do we all trust you instinctively?” she asked. A quiet feminine thrust.
“I am happy if you do,” I parried; and at the reply she shrugged her shoulders, and a shadow of impatience crossed her expressive face.
There was a pause, in which she looked down and played with her fan.
“We wish to trust you entirely,” she said next, in a low, earnest voice. “The Princess wishes it.” A swift glance shot up to notice the effect of this.
“I have no more earnest wish in life than to serve the Princess,” I declared, the words coming from my heart.
“To serve her is to serve the cause of freedom and the cause of Bulgaria.”
“Freedom as the Russians interpret it?”
“Freedom as the English love it,” she answered, in a tone that vibrated with enthusiasm, her eyes flashing and her cheeks colouring. “The freedom that we true Bulgarians read and dream of, crave and would die for,” she added, her voice deep and low with feeling.
A long pause followed, in which my thoughts were busy. Had the Princess Christina inspired this feeling, and was this strange girl an agent in pressing me to join such a movement? My heart beat fast at the thought.
“Is that a cause you would serve, Count?” she asked.
“These are strange things to hear from those whom I find all gathered under the wings of the Russian Eagle!” I said cautiously.
“There may be stranger yet to hear,” she returned sharply.
“The Prince who is on your throne is no friend of Russia.”
“The Prince has never gained the confidence of true Bulgarians. The men he keeps about him are patriots in nothing but name; and he has neither the wit to winnow the false from the true, nor the courage to set the false at defiance.”
“You would play for a big stake?”
“And make our lives the counters. Is not that enough?” The retort was given with a show of bitterness. “You English are cold and calculating.”
“We are cautious, certainly.”
“Yet you should hate the Russians.”
“No one has accused us of loving them.”
She made another pause before replying:
“Perhaps I have been too rash and have surprised you; but we thought from what Michel told me of what passed this morning at your house, that—well, that all was as we wished, and that you were already with us.”
“You thought this?” I asked, purposely putting an emphasis on the pronoun. She understood me and smiled.
“The Princess and I both thought it,” and I heard this with delight.
“You did not hear more than the truth, mademoiselle.”
“Then we are to be friends in it all?” she cried; and her face was radiant with pleasure as she turned her eyes once more full upon me.
“Show me how I can serve the Princess, and I will do it with my whole heart, and if need be with my life.”
“She will be here to-night, and you can tell her. The news will have the pleasanter savour coming direct from you.”
She knew how to fire me, and I would have given half my fortune to have known what lay behind the meaning glance of her eyes, which started thoughts I would not silence, and yet dared not indulge.
As I sat there, half bewildered, I saw a tall, fair, truculent-looking man forcing his way arrogantly among the people and coming in our direction, while he looked about him on all sides in search of someone.
“Who is that?” I asked.
“A man to fear, Count—the worst enemy we have, Duke Sergius. A man whose eyes we have always to blind.”
At that moment he caught sight of my companion and he hurried his pace, a heavy frown darkening his sensual, insolent features.
“I have had much trouble in finding you, mademoiselle. I might almost have thought you were trying to avoid me. The waltz we were to dance together has commenced.”
Mademoiselle Broumoff smiled ingenuously at him and said:
“I scarcely thought you were in earnest when you put my name on your programme. You do not generally honour me by remembering it.”
“I have something particular to ask you,” he replied, with such selfish insolence that I could have kicked him. He caught something of this expression in my face as he looked casually at me, and his glance deepened into a steady stare as he tried to frown me down. But I returned his look with one in which I tried to convey some of the dislike and contempt I felt at his attitude, and, perceiving it, mademoiselle rose hastily, put herself between us, and drew his attention by placing her hand on his arm and saying, as she bowed to me:
“I am ready now.”
As they moved off I heard him ask who I was, but could not catch the reply.
I hated the look of the man, and tried to persuade myself that the feeling was not in any way prompted by what I knew about his design upon the Princess Christina. If I had before needed any inducement to drive me into opposition to him, my hasty prejudice would have supplied it; and I sat now absorbed in thought, chewing the cud of all that had passed between the Princess’s staunch little emissary and myself, and wishing for the hour and the means to thwart him. They would come, I felt, and I nursed my anger and fed my animosity as I sat there piecing together the threads of the net that was closing round me, and drawing me forward upon a path that would lead I could not say whither.
Spernow’s voice roused me.
“You are not dancing, Count. Won’t you let me find you some partners? There are plenty here who wish to know you. Well, have you and Nathalie had an interesting conversation?” he asked in a lower voice, dropping into the seat at my side. “I know how anxious she was for it.”
“I hope great things from it,” I answered.
“Are you to be presented to the Princess?”
I looked at him in surprise, not understanding the question.
“Oh, the presentation was to hinge upon the result of your talk with her.”
“Then probably I shall be presented,” I returned, smiling.
“Good, very good; nothing could be better, indeed. Come, then, and let us go in search of partners. But don’t fill up your card, you may need a gap or two in it presently.” I guessed his meaning, but said nothing as I went with him back to the dancing hall, was introduced to several people, and for an hour danced and chatted as though I had no other object in life.
I was not too much engrossed by my partners, however, to miss the entrance of the Princess Christina, and more than once when I passed close to her in the course of a dance I caught her gaze fixed upon me with evident interest. Once especially was I certain of this, when she and Mademoiselle Broumoff were in close and earnest conversation; and it was with a thrill of pleasure that I felt that I was the subject of their talk.
Soon after this Spernow came to me and said that the Princess was anxious that I should be presented to her; and with a fast-quickening pulse I went with him to where she and her companion were sitting.
Almost directly I had made my bow Mademoiselle Broumoff rose and said to Spernow:
“This is our dance, Michel,” and as the pair went away I took her place by the side of the beautiful woman who exercised so overpowering a fascination upon me.
“A more conventional meeting than our first, Count,” she said.
“A very brilliant scene,” I replied naïvely; for now that I was alone with her I felt like a tongue-tied clown. My stupid answer surprised her, as well it might, and I saw a look of perplexity cross her face. After an awkward pause, I added: “Your coming then saved my life.”
“Scarcely that; but I have since heard the particulars of that matter, and I have been ashamed that you should have suffered such treatment in my name. I am glad of an opportunity of assuring you of my regret.”
“I would gladly suffer much worse on your behalf,” I blurted out nervously, and the answer brought another pause, during which I struggled hard to overcome my embarrassment and self-consciousness. I desired above all things in the world to win the favour of my companion, and yet I sat like a fool, at a loss for the mere commonplaces of conversation. She would think me a dolt or an idiot.
How long my stupid silence would have lasted I cannot tell; but the Princess in a movement of her fan dropped her dance card, and, in returning it to her I looked up, and caught her eyes upon me lighted with a rare smile.
“Do you return it to me without your name upon it?” she asked.
“May I have the honour?” I murmured.
“What is a ball for, but dancing?” she smiled. “But if you write your name there it will be a sign and token.”
“Of what?” I asked stupidly.
“Of much that my dear little friend Mademoiselle Broumoff tells me she has said to you to-night.”
“What is a ball for, but dancing?” I repeated her words as I took the card and wrote my initials against a waltz. “It will make the dance memorable to me,” I added, under my breath.
“I shall read it for one thing as a token that you have acquitted me of all responsibility for the scene at General Kolfort’s house.”
“There was no need for any token of that, Princess,” I replied, beginning to shake off my paralysing nervousness.
“And of the rest?”
“That I desire nothing better than to be enrolled among your friends.” I spoke from my heart then, and the words pleased her.
“There may be many dangers, and more difficulties.”
“I am prepared for both—if I can serve you.” I looked straight at her for the first time, and her eyes fell.
“I could have no more welcome friend,” she said softly.
This time the pause that followed was due as much to her embarrassment as to mine, and I noted this with a touch of delight.
“You had a long conference with General Kolfort?” she asked, a minute later.
“Yes; he threatened me with all the power of his enmity if I did not decide to ally myself on his side, and gave me a week in which to do so or leave the country.”
“And your decision?” she asked quickly.
“Has been made to-night.”
“To do what?”
“To devote myself without reserve to your interests.”
“I am glad—and proud.”
No answer that she could have made could have filled me with more supreme pleasure.
“I had feared a quite different result from news which reached me to-day. You know your affairs are pretty freely discussed just now.”
“What news was that?”
“I heard that you had received a captain’s commission in the Prince’s own household regiment. Is that so?”
“It was unsolicited by me; and I learnt it only to-day. I have not yet accepted it. I am to see His Highness to-morrow.”
“You will find him a good man, but sorely distracted by doubts and fears. All willing to serve Bulgaria; but afraid of Russian influence, and unable to choose good advisers here. His nerves have been shaken by the plots against his life, and his judgment shattered till he cannot appraise the men about him. Were matters different he would be an ideal ruler for us.”
“And what of the other influences round him?” I asked guardedly; but she understood me and replied openly:
“You mean the woman whose life you saved. I cannot understand her. Her ruling passion seems to be her hate of me. And a woman with a passion, be it jealousy, hate, or love, is no safe guide.” I detected a note of sadness in her tone. “You ran a great risk that night, Count, a fearful risk.”
“There was little danger that I saw.”
“I do not mean the seen danger; that may have been small for a man whose bravery and skill with weapons are such as yours. But the unseen dangers—the consequences that may always pursue and overtake you when you least think of them. It is such terrible deeds as that which fill me with dismay and dread of the future. How can a cause hope to prosper, the foundations of which are secret murder, implacable violence, and such desperate bloodshed? And these things are done in my name, and apparently with my sanction. Did not General Kolfort threaten you with the consequences of your act?”
“Yes, but I do not take his threats too seriously. It is one thing to assassinate a Bulgarian woman, another to murder a British subject.”
“When you have been longer in this distracted country you will see the distinction differently. But we must talk no longer in this strain here. Too many eyes are upon us and too many ears open. Balls are for dancing, Count,” she added in a light tone and with a smile.
I understood that I was dismissed, and rose and walked away. I was in no mood for dancing, and I went into one of the conservatories to think over what had passed between us, and remained there until it was time to claim her for the waltz she had promised me.
We danced it almost in silence, save for a commonplace or two about the ball and the people present; but at the close she said earnestly:
“I am leaving almost directly. I shall be at home to-morrow afternoon, and shall be interested to know your impressions of the Prince.” Then in a lower voice: “You must be careful, Count. Accept the commission in the regiment; but do not pledge yourself to His Highness’s service. You will not find it necessary. Maintain as strict a neutrality as possible; and then see General Kolfort and tell him what you are doing. It might be well to see him before you go to the Palace. Emphasise the fact of your British nationality. You have a difficult part to play; how difficult you do not yet see, perhaps. But your success and your safety will always be of the deepest concern to me. Remember that, always.”
She spoke earnestly, and in her eyes, as I glanced into them, I saw again that look of solicitude which at our previous meeting had moved me so strangely.
And the sweetness of her voice, the touch of her hand, and the tender softness of her glance, were haunting me all through the night, and urging me to I know not what strenuous efforts in her behalf.