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The Lighted Match, a novel by Charles Neville Buck |
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Chapter 11. The Passing Princess And The Mistaken Countess |
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_ CHAPTER XI. THE PASSING PRINCESS AND THE MISTAKEN COUNTESS With the sapphire bay of Puntal at his back, his knees clasped between interlacing fingers, Benton sat on the stone sea-wall and affected to whistle up a lightness of heart. Near at hand sprawled a picturesque city, its houses tinted in pea-greens, pinks and soft blues, or as white and decorative as though fashioned in icing on a cake. Clinging steeply to higher levels and leaning on buttressing walls, lay outspread vineyards and cane fields and gardens. Splotching the whole with imperial and gorgeous purple, hung masses of bougonvillea between trellis and masonry. At a more lofty line, where the sub-tropical profusion halted in the warning breath of a keener atmosphere, came the scrub growth and beyond that, in succeeding altitudes, the pine belt, the snow line and the film of trailing cloud on the white peaks. Out of the center of the color-splashed town rose the square tower of the ancient cathedral, white in a coat of plaster for two-thirds of its height, but gray at its top in the nakedness of mossy stone. To its dilapidated clock Benton's eyes traveled repeatedly and anxiously while he waited. From the clock they wandered in turn to the road circling the bay, and the cliff at his left, where the jail-like walls of the King's Palace rose sheer from the rock, fifty feet above him. From the direction of the Cathedral drifted fragments of band music, and the bugle calls of marching platoons. Everywhere festivity reigned, working great profits to the keepers of the wine-shops. Manuel Blanco turned the corner and Benton slipped quickly down from his perch on the wall and fell into step as the other passed. "It is difficult to learn anything, _Senor_." The Spaniard spoke low as he led the way outward from the city. "Puntal is usually a quiet place and the festivities have made it like a child at a _fiesta_. One hears only 'Long live the King--the Queen!' There are to be illuminations to-night, and music, and the limit will be taken off the roulette wheels at the Strangers' Club. Bah! One could have read it in the papers without leaving Cadiz." "Then you have learned nothing?" "One thing, yes. An old friend of mine has come for the festivities from the Duke's estate. He says the pass is picketed and a guard is posted at the Look-out Rock." "The Look-out Rock?" Benton repeated the words with an inflection of inquiry. "Yes--look above you at the hill whose summit is less high than the ridge peaks--there below the snow." Blanco suddenly raised his voice from confidential undertone to the sing-song of the professional guide. "Yonder," he said, scarcely changing the direction of his pointed finger, "is the unfinished sanatorium for consumptives which the Germans undertook and left unfinished." Two soldiers were sauntering by, smart in newly issued uniforms of tall red caps, dark tunics, sky-blue breeches, and polished boots. "That point," went on Blanco, dropping his voice again, as they passed out of earshot, "is three thousand, five hundred feet above the sea. From the rock by the pines--if you had a strong glass, you could see the Galavian flag which flies there--the eye sweeps the sea for many empty leagues. One's gaze can also follow the gorge where runs the pass through the mountains. Also, to the other side, one has an eagle's glimpse of the Grand Duke's hunting lodge. There is an observatory just back of the rock and flag. The speck of light which you can see, like a splinter of crystal, is its dome, but only military astronomers now look through its telescope. There one can read the tale of open shutters or barred windows in the house of Louis, the Dreamer. You understand?" "Yes." "Now, do you see the thread of broken masonry zig-zagging upward from the Palace? That is a walled drive which runs part of the way up to the rock. In other days the Kings of Galavia went thus from their castle to the point whence they could see the peninsula spread out below like a map on the page of a school-book." "Yes? What else?" "This. The lodge of the Duke as seen by the telescope sleeps shuttered--an expanse of blank walls. Yet the Duke is there!" "Louis--in Galavia?" "Wait." Blanco laid his hand on the other's arm and smiled. "My friend is superstitious--and ignorant. He tells how the Duke has a ship's mast with wires on a tower fronting the far side. He says Louis talks with the open sea." "A Marconi mast?" Manuel nodded. Benton's eyes narrowed under drawn brows. When he spoke his voice was tense. "In God's name, Manuel," he whispered, "what is the answer?" The Spaniard met the gaze gravely. "I fancy, _Senor_," he said slowly, "the matches will burn." "When? Where?" "_Quien sabe?_" Blanco paused to light a cigarette. Two priests, their black robes relieved by crimson sashes and stockings, approached, and until they were at a safe distance he talked on once more at random with the sing-song patter of the guide. "That dungeon-like building is the old Fortress _do Freres_. It has clung to that gut of rock out there in the bay since the days when the Moors held the Mediterranean. It is said that the new King will convert it from a fortress into a prison. It is now employed as an arsenal." Slowly the two men moved back to the busier part of the city. They walked in silence until they were swallowed in the crowds drifting near the Central Avenue. Finally Blanco leaned forward, moved by the anxious face of his companion. "_Manana, Senor_," he suggested reassuringly. "Perhaps we may learn to-morrow." "And to-morrow may be too late," replied Benton. "Hardly, _Senor_. The marriage and coronation are the day following. It should be one of those occasions." Benton only shuddered. They swung into the _Ruo Centrale_, between lining sycamores, olive trees and acacias, to be engulfed in a jostling press of feast-day humanity. Suddenly Benton felt his coat-sleeve tugged. "Let us stop," Manuel shouted into his ear above the roar of the carnival clamor. "The Royal carriage comes." Between a garden and the pavement ran a stone coping, topped by a tall iron grill, and laden with screening vines. The two men mounted this masonry and clung to the iron bars, as the crowd was driven back from the street by the outriders. Before Benton's eyes the whole mass of humanity swam in a blur of confusion and vertigo. The passing files of blue and red soldiery seemed wavering figures mounted on reeling horses. The King's carriage swung into view and a crescendo of cheering went up from the crowd. Benton saw blurred circles of color whirling dizzily about a steady center, and the center was the slender woman at Karyl's side, who was the day after to-morrow to become his Queen. He saw the fixed smile with which she tried to acknowledge the salutations as the crowd eddied about her carriage. Her wide, stricken eyes were shimmery with imprisoned tears. To drive through the streets of Puntal with that half-stunned misery written clear in lips and eyes, she must, he knew, have reached the outmost border of endurance. Karyl bent solicitously forward and spoke, and she nodded as if answering in a dream, smiling wanly. It was all as some young Queen might have gone to the guillotine rather than to her coronation. As she looked bewilderedly from side to side her glance fell upon the clustering flowers of the vine. Benton gripped the iron bars and groaned, and then her eyes met his. For a moment her pupils dilated and one gloved hand convulsively tightened on the paneling of the carriage door. The man dropped into the crowd and was swallowed up, and he knew by her familiar gesture of brushing something away from her temples, that she believed she had seen an image projected from a troubled brain. "Come," he said brokenly to his companion, "for God's sake get me out of this crowd." * * * * * The Strangers' Club of Puntal sits high on a solid wall of rock and overlooks the sea. Its beauty is too full of wizardry to seem real, and what nature had done in view and sub-tropical luxuriance the syndicate which operates the ball rooms, tea gardens, and roulette wheels has striven to abet. To-night a moon two-thirds full immersed the grounds in a bath of blue and silver, and far off below the cliff wall the Mediterranean was phosphorescent. In the room where the _croupiers_ spun the wheels, the color scheme was profligate. Benton idled at one of the tables, his eyes searching the crowd in the faint hope of discovering some thread which he might follow up to definite conclusion. Beyond the wheel, just at the _croupier's_ elbow, stood a woman, audaciously yet charmingly gowned in red, with a scale-like shimmer of passementerie. A red rose in her black hair threw into conspicuous effect its intense luster. She might have been the genius of _Rouge et Noir_. Her litheness had the panther's sinuous strength. The vivid contrast of olive cheeks, carmine lips and dark eyes, gave stress to her slender sensuousness. Hers was the allurement of poppy and passion-flower. In her movements was suggestion of vital feminine force. Perhaps the incurious glance of the American made itself felt, for as she threw down a fresh _louis d'or_, she looked up and their eyes met. For an instant her expression was almost that of one who stifles an impulse to recognize another. Possibly, thought Benton, she had mistaken him for someone else. "_Mon dieu_," whispered a voice in French, "the Comptessa d'Astaride is charming this evening." "Ah, such wit! Such charm!" enthused another voice at Benton's back. "She is most perfect in those gowns of unbroken lines, with a single rose." Evidently the men left the tables at once, for Benton heard no more. He also turned away a moment later to make way for an Italian in whose feverish eyes burned the roulette-lust. He went to the farthest end of the gardens, where there was deep shadow, and a seaward outlook over the cliff wall. There the glare of electric bulbs and blazing doorways was softened, and the orchestra's music was modulated. Presently he was startled by a ripple of laughter at his shoulder, low and rich in musical vibrance. "Ah, it is not like this in your gray, fog-wrapped country." Benton wheeled in astonishment to encounter the dazzling smile of the Countess Astaride. She was standing slender as a young girl, all agleam in the half-light as though she wore an armor of glowing copper and garnets. "I beg your pardon," stammered the American, but she laid a hand lightly on his arm and smilingly shook her head. "I know, Monsieur Martin, we have not met, but you were with the Duke at Cadiz. You have come in his interest. In his cause, I acknowledge no conventions." In her voice was the fusing of condescension and regal graciousness. "It was wise," she thoughtfully added, "to shave your mustache, but even so Von Ritz will know you. You cannot be too guarded." For an instant Benton stood with his hands braced on the coping regarding her curiously. Evidently he stood on the verge of some revelation, but the role in which her palpable mistake cast him was one he must play all in the dark. "You can trust me," she said with an impassioned note but without elevating her voice. "I am the Countess--" "Astaride," finished Benton. Then he cautiously added the inquiry: "Have you heard the plans that were discussed by the Duke, and Jusseret and Borttorff?" "And yourself and Lieutenant Lapas," she augmented. "And Lapas and myself," admitted Benton, lying fluently. "I know only that Louis is to wait at his lodge to hear by wireless whether France and Italy will recognize his government," she hastily recited; "and that on that signal you and Lapas wait to strike the blow." "Do you know when?" inquired the American, fencing warily in the effort to lead her into betrayal of more definite information. "It must be soon--or never! But tell me, has Louis come? Has he reached his hunting lodge? Does he know that guards are at the rock? Do you, or Lapas, wait to flash the signal from the look-out? Ah, how my gaze shall be bent toward the flag-staff." Then, as her eyes wandered out to sea, her voice became soft with dreams. She laughed low and shook her head. "Louis, Louis!" she murmured. "When you are King! But tell me--" again she was anxious, executive, imperious--"tell me everything!" Obviously he was mistaken for the English Jackal! Benton countered anxiously. "Yet, Your Majesty,"--he bent low as he anticipated her ambition in bestowing the title--"Your Majesty asks so many questions all at once, and we may be interrupted." Once more she was in a realm of air castles as she leaned on the stone coping and gazed off into the moonlight. "It is but the touching of a button," she murmured, "and _allons_! In the space of an explosion, dynasties change places." Suddenly she stood up. "You are right. We cannot talk here. I shall be missed. Take this"--she slipped a seal ring from her finger. "Come to me to-morrow morning. I am at the Hotel de France. I shall be ostensibly out, but show the ring and you will be admitted. When I am Queen, you shall not go undecorated." She gave his hand a warm momentary pressure and was gone. _ |
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