"Plans," remarked Sengoun, "are not worth the _tcherkeske_ of an honest Caucasian! A Khirgize pony knows more than any diplomat; and my _magaika_ is better than both!"
"All the same," said Rue Carew, "with those stolen plans in your Emba.s.sy, Prince Erlik, you might even gallop a _sotnia_ of your Cossacks to the top of Achi-Baba."
"By heaven! I"d like to try!" he exclaimed, his black eyes ablaze.
"There are _dongas_," observed the Princess dryly.
"I know it. There are _dongas_ every twenty yards; and Turkish gorse that would stop a charging bull! My answer is, mount! trot! gallop!
and hurrah for Achi-Baba!"
"Very picturesque, Alak. But wouldn"t it be nicer to be able to come back again and tell us all about it?"
"As for that," he said with his full-throated, engaging laugh, "no need to worry, Princess, for the newspapers would tell the story. What is this Gallipoli country, anyway, that makes our Chancellery wag its respected head and frown and whisper in corners and take little notes on its newly laundered cuffs?
"I know the European and Asiatic sh.o.r.es with their forts--Kilid Bahr, Chimilik, k.u.m Kale, Dardanos. I know what those Germans have been about with their barbed wire and mobile mortar batteries. What do we want of their plans, then----"
"Nothing, Prince Erlik!" said Rue, laughing. "It suffices that you be appointed adviser in general to his majesty the Czar."
Sengoun laughed with all his might.
"And an excellent thing that would be, Miss Carew. What we need in Russia," he added with a bow to the Princess, "are, first of all, more Kazatchkee, then myself to execute any commands with which my incomparable Princess might deign to honour me."
"Then I command you to go and smoke cigarettes in the music-room and play some of your Cossack songs on the piano for Mr. Neeland until Miss Carew and I rejoin you," said the Princess, rising.
At the door there was a moment of ceremony; then Sengoun, pa.s.sing his arm through Neeland"s with boyish confidence that his quickly given friendship was welcome, sauntered off to the music-room where presently he was playing the piano and singing some of the entrancing songs of his own people in a voice that, cultivated, might have made a fortune for him:
"We are but hors.e.m.e.n, And G.o.d is great.
We hunt on hill and fen The fierce Kerait, Naiman and Eighur, Tartar and Khiounnou, Leopard and Tiger Flee at our view-halloo; We are but hors.e.m.e.n Cleansing the hill and fen Where wild men hide-- Wild beasts abide, Mongol and Baaghod, Turkoman, TadjiG.o.d, Each in his den.
The skies are blue, The plains are wide, Over the fens the hors.e.m.e.n ride!"
Still echoing the wild air, and playing with both hands in spite of the lighted cigarette between his fingers, he glanced over his shoulder at Neeland:
"A very old, old song," he explained, "made in the days of the great invasion when all the world was fighting anybody who would fight back.
I made it into English. It"s quite nice, I think."
His nave pleasure in his own translation amused Neeland immensely, and he said that he considered it a fine piece of verse.
"Yes," said Sengoun, "but you ought to hear a love song I made out of odd fragments I picked up here and there. I call it "_Samarcand_"; or rather "_Samarcand Mahfouzeh_," which means, "Samarcand the Well Guarded":
""Outside my guarded door Whose voice repeats my name?"
"The voice thou hast heard before Under the white moon"s flame!
And thy name is my song; and my song is ever the same!"
""How many warriors, dead, Have sung the song you sing?
Some by an arrow were sped; Some by a dagger"s sting."
"Like a bird in the night is my song--a bird on the wing!"
""Ahmed and Yucouf bled!
A dead king blocks my door!"
"If thy halls and walls be red, Shall Samarcand ask more?
Or my song shall cleanse thy house or my heart"s blood foul thy floor!"
""Now hast thou conquered me!
Humbly thy captive, I.
My soul escapes to thee; My body here must lie; Ride!--with thy song, and my soul in thy arms; and let me die.""
Sengoun, still playing, flung over his shoulder:
"A Tartar song from the Turcoman. I borrowed it and put new clothes on it. Nice, isn"t it?"
"Enchanting!" replied Neeland, laughing in spite of himself.
Rue Carew, with her snowy shoulders and red-gold hair, came drifting in, consigning them to their seats with a gesture, and giving them to understand that she had come to hear the singing.
So Sengoun continued his sketchy, haphazard recital, waving his cigarette now and then for emphasis, and conversing frequently over his shoulder while Rue Carew leaned on the piano and gravely watched his nimble fingers alternately punish and caress the keyboard.
After a little while the Princess Mistchenka came in saying that she had letters to write. They conversed, however, for nearly an hour before she rose, and Captain Sengoun gracefully accepted his _conge_.
"I"ll walk with you, if you like," suggested Neeland.
"With pleasure, my dear fellow! The night is beautiful, and I am just beginning to wake up."
"Ask Marotte to give you a key, then," suggested the Princess, going.
At the foot of the stairs, however, she paused to exchange a few words with Captain Sengoun in a low voice; and Neeland, returning with his latchkey, went over to where Rue stood by the lamplit table absently looking over an evening paper.
As he came up beside her, the girl lifted her beautiful, golden-grey eyes.
"Are you going out?"
"Yes, I thought I"d walk a bit with Captain Sengoun."
"It"s rather a long distance to the Russian Emba.s.sy. Besides----" She hesitated, and he waited. She glanced absently over the paper for a moment, then, not raising her eyes: "I"m--I--the theft of that box today--perhaps my nerves have suffered a little--but do you think it quite prudent for you to go out alone at night?"
"Why, I am going out with Captain Sengoun!" he said, surprised at her troubled face.
"But you will have to return alone."
He laughed, but they both had flushed a little.
Had it been any other woman in the world, he had not hesitated gaily to challenge the shy and charming solicitude expressed in his behalf--make of it his capital, his argument to force that pretty duel to which one day, all youth is destined.
He found himself now without a word to say, nor daring to entertain any a.s.sumption concerning the words she had uttered.
Dumb, awkward, afraid, he became conscious that something in this young girl had silenced within him any inclination to gay effrontery, any talent for casual gallantry. Her lifted eyes, with their clear, half shy regard, had killed all fluency of tongue in him--slain utterly that light good-humour with which he had encountered women heretofore.
He said:
"I hadn"t thought myself in any danger whatever. Is there any reason for me to expect further trouble?"