"If I should meet the Prince to-night, wouldn"t there be news for Stenovics?" cried Mist.i.tch, with a roar of laughter.
If he should meet the Prince! The men at the tables could not make up their minds to that. Mist.i.tch they admired and feared, but they feared the proud Prince, too; they had many of them felt the weight of his anger. Those who had stood up sank back in their places. One pot-bellied fellow raised a shout of hysterical laughter round him by rubbing his fat face with a napkin and calling out: "I should like just one minute to think about that meeting, Captain Hercules!"
Markart had shrunk back, but Mist.i.tch hurled a taunt at him and at all the throng.
"You"re curs, one and all! But I"ll put a heart in you yet! And now"--he burst into a new guffaw--"my young friends and I are going for a walk.
What, aren"t the streets of Slavna free to gentlemen? My friends and I are going for a walk. If we meet anybody on the pavement--well, he must take to the road. We"re going for a walk."
Amid a dead silence he went out, his two henchmen after him. He and Sterkoff walked firm and true--Rastatz lurched in his gait. A thousand eyes followed their exit, and from five hundred throats went up a long sigh of relief that they were gone. But what had they gone to do? The company decided that it was just as well for them, whether collectively or as individuals, not to know too much about that. Let it be hoped that the cool air outside would have a sobering effect and send them home to bed! Yet from behind the gla.s.s screen there soon arose again a busy murmur of voices, like the hum of a beehive threatened with danger.
"A diplomatic career is really full of interest, ma chere," observed Baron von Hollbrandt to his fair companion. "It would be difficult to see anything so dramatic in Berlin!"
His friend"s pretty blue eyes lit up with an eager intensity as she took the cigarette from between her lips. Her voice was full of joyful excitement:
"Yes, it"s to death between that big Mist.i.tch and the Prince--the blood of one or both of them, you"ll see!"
"You are too deliciously Kravonian," said Hollbrandt, with a laugh.
Outside, big Mist.i.tch had crossed the ca.n.a.l and come to the corner where the Street of the Fountain opens on to St. Michael"s Square. "What say you to a call at the Hotel de Paris, lads?" he said.
"Hist!" Sterkoff whispered. "Do you hear that step--coming up the street there?"
The illuminations burned still in the Square and sent a path of light down the narrow street. The three stopped and turned their heads.
Sterkoff pointed. Mist.i.tch looked--and smacked his ponderous thigh.
III
THE VIRGIN WITH THE LAMP
Whatever Marie Zerkovitch"s feelings might be, Fate had its hand on her and turned her to its uses. It was she who had directed Sophy"s steps to the old house ten doors down the Street of the Fountain from St.
Michael"s Square. It was no more than half a mile from her own villa on the south boulevard (from which the Street ran to the Square), and she had long known the decent old couple--German Jews--who lived and carried on their trade in the house over whose front hung the sign of the Silver c.o.c.k. The face of the building was covered with carved timbers of great age; the door of the shop stood far back within a black and ancient porch. Behind the shop were a couple of rooms where Meyerstein and his wife lived; above it one large room, with a window which jutted far out over the narrow street. In this room, which was reached by a separate door in the left side of the porch and a crazy flight of a dozen winding stairs, lived Sophy, and thence she sallied out daily to give her lessons to her two pupils.
By the window she sat on the night of the King"s name-day, on a low chair. The heavy figure of a girl carrying a lamp--a specimen of her landlord"s superfluous stock--stood unemployed on the window-sill. The room was dark, for the path of light from the illuminations, which made the roadway below white, threw hardly a gleam on to its sombre walls; but Sophy had no need of a lamp and every need to save her money. She sat in the gloom, busy in thought, the fresh evening air breathing soft and cool on her brow from the open window.
Swift to build on slenderest foundations, avid to pile imagination on imagination till the unsubstantial structure reached the skies, her mind was at work to-night. The life and stir, the heat and tumult, of the city, were fuel to her dreams. Chances and happenings were all about her; they seemed to lie, like the water for Tantalus, just beyond the reach of her finger-tips; her eyes pierced to the vision of them through the dusky blackness of the ancient room. In response to the confused yet clamorous cry of the life around her, her spirit awoke. Dead were the dear dead; but Sophy was alive. But to be a starving French mistress at Slavna--was that a chance? Yes, a better than being cook-maid at Morpingham; and even in the kitchen at Morpingham Fortune had found her and played with her awhile. For such frolics and such favor, however fickle, however hazardous, Sophy Grouch of Morpingham was ever ready.
Dunstanbury had come to Morpingham--and Lady Meg. Paris had brought the sweet hours and the gracious memory of Casimir de Savres. Should Slavna lag behind? Who would come now? Ever the highest for Sophy Grouch! The vision of the royal escort and its pale young leader flashed in the darkness before her eagerly attendant eyes.
Suddenly she raised her head. There was a wild, quick volley of cheering; it came from the Golden Lion, whose lights across the Square a sideways craning of her neck enabled her to see. Then there was silence for minutes. Again the sound broke forth, and with it confused shoutings of a name she could not make out. Yes--what was it? Mist.i.tch--Mist.i.tch!
That was her first hearing of the name.
Silence fell again, and she sank back into her chair. The lights, the stir, the revelry were not for her, nor the cheers nor the shouts. A moment of reaction and la.s.situde came on her, a moment when the present, the actual, lapped her round with its dim, muddy flood of vulgar necessity and sordid needs. With a sob she bowed her head to meet her hands--a sob that moaned a famine of life, of light, of love. "Go back to your scullery, Sophy Grouch!" What voice had said that? She sprang to her feet with fists clinched, and whispered to the darkness: "No!"
In the street below, Mist.i.tch slapped his thigh.
Sophy pushed her hair back from her heated forehead and looked out of the window. To the right, some twenty yards away and just at the end of the street, she saw the figures of three men. In the middle was one who bulked like a young Falstaff--Falstaff with his paunch not grown; he was flanked by two lean fellows who looked small beside him. She could not see the faces plainly, since the light from the Square was behind them.
They seemed to be standing there and looking past the sign of the Silver c.o.c.k along the street.
A measured, military footfall sounded on her left. Turning her head, she saw a young man walking with head bent down and arms behind him. The line of light struck full on him, he was plain to see as by broadest day. He wore a costume strange to her eyes--a black sheepskin cap, a sheepskin tunic, leather breeches, and high, unpolished boots--a rough, plain dress; yet a broad, red ribbon crossed it, and a star glittered on the breast; the only weapon was a short, curved scimitar. It was the ancient costume of the Bailiff of Volseni, the head of that clan of shepherds who pastured their flocks on the uplands. The Prince of Slavna held the venerable office, and had been to Court in the dress appropriate to it. He had refused to use his carriage, sending his aides-de-camp home in it, and walked now through the streets of the city which he had in charge. It was constantly his habit thus to walk; his friends praised his vigilance; his foes reviled his prowling, spying tricks; of neither blame nor praise did he take heed.
Sophy did not know the dress, but the face she knew; it had been but lately before her dreaming eyes; she had seen it in the flesh that morning from the terrace of the Hotel de Paris.
The three came on from her right, one of the lean men hanging back, lurking a little behind. They were under her window now. The Prince was but a few yards away. Suddenly he looked up with a start--he had become aware of their approach. But before he saw them the three had melted to one. With a shrill cry of consternation--of uneasy courage oozing out--Rastatz turned and fled back to the Square, heading at his top speed for the Golden Lion. In the end he was unequal to the encounter.
Sterkoff, too, disappeared; but Sophy knew the meaning of that; he had slipped into the shelter of the porch. Her faculties were alert now; she would not forget where Sterkoff was! Mist.i.tch stood alone in the centre of the narrow street, his huge frame barely leaving room for a man to pa.s.s on either side.
For a moment the Prince stood still, looking at the giant. Incredulity had seemed to show first in his eyes; it changed now to a cold anger as he recognized the Captain. He stepped briskly forward, and Sophy heard his clear, incisive tones cut the air:
"What extraordinary emergency has compelled you to disobey my orders, Captain Mist.i.tch?"
"I wanted a breath of fresh air," Mist.i.tch answered, in an easy, insolent tone.
The Prince looked again; he seemed even more disgusted than angry now.
He thought Mist.i.tch drunk--more drunk than in truth he was.
"Return to barracks at once and report yourself under stringent arrest.
I will deal with you to-morrow."
"And not to-night, Sergius Stefanovitch?" At least he was being as good as his word, he was acting up to the vaunts he had thrown out so boldly in the great hall of the Golden Lion.
"To-morrow we shall both be cooler." He was almost up to Mist.i.tch now.
"Stand out of my way, sir."
Mist.i.tch did not budge. "There"s room for you to pa.s.s by," he said. "I won"t hurt you. But the middle of the road belongs to me to-night."
His voice seemed to grow clearer with every word; the critical encounter was sobering him. Yet with sobriety came no diminution of defiance.
Doubtless he saw that he was in for the worst now, that forward was the word, and retreat impossible. Probably from this moment he did not intend the Prince to pa.s.s alive. Well, what he intended was the wish of many; he would not lack shelter, friends, or partisans if he dared the desperate venture. Be it said for him that there were few things he did not dare. He dared now, growing sober, to stand by what the fumes of wine had fired his tongue to.
For a moment after the big man"s taunt the Prince stood motionless. Then he drew his scimitar. It looked a poor, weak weapon against the sword which sprang in answer from Mist.i.tch"s scabbard.
"A duel between gentlemen!" the Captain cried.
The Prince gave a short laugh. "You shall have no such plea at the court-martial," he said. "Gentlemen don"t waylay one another in the streets. Stand aside!"
Mist.i.tch laughed, and in an instant the Prince sprang at him. Sophy heard the blades meet. Strong as death was the fascination for her eyes--ay, for her ears, too, for she heard the quick-moving feet and the quicker breathing of a mortal combat. But she would not look--she tried not even to listen. Her eyes were for a man she could not see, her ears for a man she could not hear. She remembered the lean fellow hidden in the porch, straight under her window. She dared not call to warn the Prince of him; a turn of the head, a moment of inattention, would cost either combatant his life. She took the man in the porch for her own adversary, his undoing for her share in the fight.
Very cautiously, making no sound, she took the heavy lamp--the ma.s.sive bronze figure of the girl--raised it painfully in both her hands, and poised it half-way over the window-sill. Then she turned her eyes down again to watch the mouth of the porch. Her rat was in that hole! Yet suddenly the Prince came into her view; he circled half-way round Mist.i.tch, then sank on one knee; she heard him guard the Captain"s lunges with lightning-quick movements of his nimble scimitar. He was trying the old trick they had practised for hundreds of years at Volseni--to follow his parry with an upward-ripping stroke under the adversary"s sword, to strike the inner side of his forearm and cut the tendons of the wrist. This trick big Captain Mist.i.tch, a man of the plains, did not know.
A jangle--a slither--a bellow of pain, of rage! The Prince had made his stroke, the hill-men of Volseni were justified of their pupil.
Mist.i.tch"s big sword clattered on the flags. Facing his enemy, with his back to the porch, the Prince crouched motionless on his knee; but it was death to Mist.i.tch to try to reach the sword with his unmaimed hand.
It was Sophy"s minute; the message that it had come ran fierce through all her veins. Straining to the weight, she raised the figure in her hands and leaned out of the window. Yes, a lean hand with a long knife, a narrow head, a spare, long back, crept out of the darkness of the porch--crept silently. The body drew itself together for a fatal spring on the unconscious Prince, for a fatal thrust. It would be death--and to Mist.i.tch salvation torn from the jaws of ruin.
"Surrender yourself, Captain Mist.i.tch," said the Prince.
Mist.i.tch"s eyes went by his conqueror and saw a shadow on the path beside the porch.