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The Lighted Match, a novel by Charles Neville Buck |
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Chapter 21. Naples Assumes New Beauty |
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_ CHAPTER XXI. NAPLES ASSUMES NEW BEAUTY The following day was Tuesday. It found Benton nearer cheerfulness than he had been since the _Isis_ had in February pointed her bow eastward for the run across the Atlantic, under sealed orders. To Blanco the yachtsman announced that he would lunch at Parker's, and evasively asked the Spaniard if he would mind being left alone for the day. As the coachman, hailed at random from the mob of brigands by the Custom-house entrance, cracked his whip over the bony stallion in the fiacre shafts, Benton began to notice that Naples was altogether charming. He found no refusals for the tatterdemalion vagabonds who pattered alongside to thrust their violets over the carriage door. At last, as he paced one of the main parlors of the hotel, his eyes riveted on the street entrance, he heard a laugh behind him; a laugh tempered with a vibrant mellowness which was of a sort with no other laugh, and which set him vibrating in turn, as promptly as a tuning-fork answers to its note. The sound brought him round in such electric haste as almost resulted in collision with the girl behind him. He was prepared, of course, to find in her incognita no suggestion of Royalty, yet now when he met her standing alone, and could take the hand she held out to him with her heart-breaking, heart-recompensating smile, he felt a distinct sense of astonishment. "I'm having a holiday," she declared. "It's to be the Queen's day off and you are being allowed to play host with the _Isis_. Do you approve?" With abandonment to the delight of mere propinquity, he laid away sorrow against the returning time of her absence, as one lays away an umbrella until the next shower. "Approve?" he mocked. "It's like asking the drowning man if he approves of being picked up." For a moment her eyes clouded and a droop threatened her lips. "But," she said in a softer tone, "what if you've got to be thrown back into the sea again?" Then she added, "And, you see, I have. Probably I'm very foolish to come. The prison will only be blacker, but I couldn't stand it. I wanted--" She looked at him with the frankness which has nothing to conceal--"I wanted to forget it all for a little time." With a frigid salutation, Colonel Von Ritz arrived. As he addressed the American, despite his flawless courtesy, his voice still carried the undercurrent of antagonism which no word of his had ever failed to convey to Benton, since their first meeting in America. "If Miss Carstow"--he uttered the assumed name with distaste--"will excuse you," he suggested, "I should like a word." Von Ritz led the way out of doors and between the tables and trellises of the garden until he came upon a spot which seemed to promise the greatest possible degree of privacy. There he stopped and stood looking straight ahead of him. "All that I now tell you, Mr. Benton"--his voice was even and polite to a nicety, yet distinctly icy--"is of course a message from the King." "Meaning," Benton smiled with polite indifference, "that your personal communications with me would be few?" "Meaning," corrected Von Ritz gravely, "that in His Majesty's affairs, I speak only on His Majesty's authority." "Colonel, I am at your service." "In the first place," began the Galavian at last, "His Majesty wished me to explain why he has presumed on your further assistance. You are the only man outside Galavia who understands--and whom the King may implicitly trust, trust even with the safety of Her Majesty, the Queen." "You will convey to the King my appreciation of his confidence." Somehow, between the American and this emissary of Karyl, there could never be any attitude other than that of the utmost formality. Von Ritz sketched the situation. "It is important that the world should not know of Her Majesty's departure. It would be an admission to the conspirators that the King feels his weakness, and would invite attack. For this reason she could not leave in the ordinary way. Fortunately, it is not difficult for Her Majesty to escape recognition. She is perhaps the one Queen in Europe whose published portraits would not make it impossible for her to go unknown through the cities of the Continent. Her prejudice against photographs has given her that immunity. She might walk through Paris unrecognized." Benton looked narrowly at Von Ritz. "How much does she know of the truth?" "Absolutely nothing. She has been persuaded to regard the truancy as a break in the routine of Court life, which--" Von Ritz hesitated, then went on doggedly--"which she finds distasteful. She does not even know that the Duke is free. That is as closely guarded a secret as the fact that he was being held under duress." The soldier paused, then went on. "The King has told Her Majesty that he hopes to join her on your yacht within a few days. You will please encourage that fiction. In point of fact," with a gesture of despair, "if His Majesty were to leave now he would never return, and if he remains now he may never again leave. I must myself hasten back." The two men went at some length over the details of the situation. It was agreed that the simple name of a town received by wireless should be a signal upon which the _Isis_ would proceed with all possible haste to the place designated. If the necessity should arise for Karyl's leaving Galavia, he might in this way take refuge on the yacht. This, explained Von Ritz, was only the final precaution of preparing for every exigency. His Majesty was determined not to leave his city alive, until he could leave it in the full security of his established government. The King also made another request. If Blanco could be spared and would consent to come to Puntal, his proven ability, together with his understanding of the language and the fact that he was not generally known in Puntal, would give him untold value. All the government's secret agents were either under suspicion of treason or too well known to the conspirators to be of great avail. If Blanco agreed to come, he might return with Von Ritz, or follow him at once and await instructions at his hotel, using care to avoid the semblance of open communication with the Palace. On his return to the parlors, Cara presented Benton to her ladies-in-waiting, the Countess Fernandez and the Countess Jaurez, who were to travel as Miss Carstow's aunts. * * * * * When there is a three-quarter moon and an atmosphere as subtle as perfume; when the walls of the city lose their ragged lines and melt into soft shadow shapes, relieved here and there by lights which the waters mirror, night and the Bay of Naples are not bad. Then the small boats which bob alongside are filled with picturesque beggars raising huge bunches of violets on bamboo poles to the deck rails, and the mingling of singing voices with guitars sets it all to music. On the forward deck Benton stood leaning on the rail and looking toward the city. At his side was Cara Carstow. She was silent, but she shook her head, and the man's solicitous scrutiny caught the deepening thought-furrow between her eyes, and the twitching of her fingers. He bent forward and spoke softly. "Cara, what is it?" She looked up and smiled. "I was remembering that I stood just here, once before," she said. "Do you think," he asked quietly, "that there has been a moment since then that I have not remembered it? That night you belonged to me and I to you." "I guess," she said rather wearily, "we don't any of us belong to ourselves or to those we love most. We just belong to Fate." "Cara!" He gripped the rail tightly and his words fell evenly. "Over there in America, you admitted to me that you loved me. That was when you were not yet Queen of Galavia." He brought himself up with a sudden halt. She looked up as frankly as a child. "I didn't admit it," she said. "We only admit things against our will, don't we? I told you gladly." "And now--!" He held his breath as he looked into her eyes. "Now I am the Queen of a hideous little Kingdom," she shuddered. "It wouldn't do for me to say it now, would it?" "Oh!" The man leaned again heavily on the rail. The monosyllable was eloquent. Impulsively she bent toward him, then caught herself. For a moment she looked out at the water undulating under the moon like mother-of-pearl on a waving fan. "But it was all right to say I loved you then," she went on reflectively, after a pause. "I had a perfect right then to tell you that I loved you better than all the small total of the world beside, and--" her voice faltered for a moment--"and," with a musical laugh, she illogically added, "I have nothing to take back of what I then said, though of course I can't ever say it again." _ |
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