"I must be a queer-looking bird to this Turk and her keeper--probably some Georgian going to a rich Mussulman"s harem in company with his eunuch," Pobloff repeated to himself.
A gong was banged. Before its strident vibrations had ceased troubling the thin morning air, the train began to move slowly out of Kerb.
Pobloff again was glad.
He remained on the rear platform of his car as long as the white station, beginning to blister under a tropical sun, was in sight. Then he sought his compartment. His amazement and rage were great when he found the two window seats occupied by the negro and the mysterious creature. Pobloff"s bag was tumbled in a corner, his overcoat, hat, and umbrella tossed to the other end of the room. The big black man bared his teeth smilingly, the shrouded girl shrank back as if in fear.
"Well, I"ll be--!" began the composer. Then he leaned over and pushed the b.u.t.ton, the veins in his forehead like whipcords, his throat parched with wrath. But to no avail--the bell was broken. Pobloff"s first impulse was to take the smiling Ethiopian by the neck and pitch him out.
There were several reasons why he did not: the giant looked dangerous; he plainly carried a brace of pistols, and at least one dagger, the jewelled handle of which flashed over his glaring sash of many tints.
And then the lady--Pobloff was very gallant, too gallant, his wife said.
The bell would not ring! What was he to do? He soon made up his mind, supple Slav that he was. With a muttered apology he sank back and closed his eyes in polite despair.
His consternation was overwhelming when a voice addressed him in Russian, a contralto voice of some indefinable timbre, the voice of a female, yet not without epicene intonations. His eyes immediately opened. From her gauze veiling the young woman spoke:--
"We are sorry to derange you. The guard made a mistake. Pardon!" The tone was slightly condescending, as if the G.o.ddess behind the cloud had deigned to notice a mere mortal. Her attendant was smiling, and to Pobloff his grin resembled a newly sliced watermelon. But her voice filled him with ecstasy. His ear, as sensitive as the eye of a Claude Monet, noted every infinitesimal variation in tone-colour, and each shade was a symbol for the fantastic imagination of this poetic composer. The girlish voice affected him strangely. It pierced his soul like a poniard. It made his spine chilly. It evoked visions of white women languorously moving in processional att.i.tudes beneath the chaste rays of an implacable moon. The voice modulated into crisp morning inflections:--
"You are going far, Excellency?" She knew him! And the slave who grinned and grinned and never spoke--what was _he_? She seemed to follow Pobloff"s thought.
"Hamet is dumb. His tongue was cut at the same time he lost his nose. It all happened at the siege of Yerkutz."
Pobloff at last found words.
"Poor fellow!" he said sympathetically, and then forgot all about the mutilated one. "You are welcome to this compartment," he a.s.sured her in his oiliest manner. "What surprises me is that I did not see your Serene Highness when we left Balak." She started at the t.i.tle that he bestowed upon her, and he inwardly chuckled. Clever dog, Pobloff, clever dog! Her eyes were brilliant despite obstructing veils.
"I was _en route_ to Balak yesterday, but my servant became ill and I stopped over night at Kerb." Pobloff was entranced. She was undoubtedly a young dame of n.o.ble birth and her freedom, the freedom of a European woman, delighted him. It also puzzled.
"How is it--?" he asked.
But they had begun that fearful descent, at once the despair and delight of engineers. The mountain fell away rapidly as the long, clumsy train raced down its flank at a breakneck pace. Pobloff shivered and clutched the arms of his seat. He saw nothing but deep blue sky and the tall top of an occasional tree. The racket was terrific, the heat depressing. She sat in her corner, apparently sleeping, while the giant smiled, always smiled, never removing his ugly eyes from the perspiring countenance of Pobloff.
As they neared earth"s level, midday was over. Pobloff hungered. Before he could go in search of the ever absent guard, the woman suddenly sat up, clapped her hands, and said something; but whether it was Turkish, Roumanian, or Greek, he couldn"t distinguish. A hamper was hauled from under the seat by the servant, and to his joy Pobloff saw white rolls, grapes, wine, figs, and cheese. He bowed and began eating. The others looked at him and for a moment he could have sworn he heard faint laughter.
"I am so hungry," he said apologetically. "And you, Serenity, won"t you join me?" He offered her fruit. It was declined with a short nod. He was dying to smoke, and, behold! priceless Turkish tobacco was thrust into his willing hand. He rolled a stout cigarette, lighted it. Then a sigh reached his ears. "The lady smokes," he thought, and slyly chuckled.
A sound of something tearing was heard, and a pair of beautiful hands reached for the tobacco. In a few moments the slender fingers were pressing a cigarette; the slave lighted a wax fusee; the lady took it, put the cigarette in a rent of her veil, and a second volume of odorous vapour arose. Pobloff leaned back, stupefied. A Mohammedan woman smoking in a Trans-Caucasian railway carriage before a Frank! Stupendous! He felt unaccountably gay.
"This is joyful," he said aloud. She smoked fervently. "Western manners are certainly invading the East," he continued, hoping to hear again that voice of marvellous resonance. She smoked. "Why, even Turkish women have been known to study music in Paris."
"I am not a Turk," she said in her deepest chest tones.
"Pardon! A Russian, perhaps? Your accent is perfect. I am a Russian."
She did not reply.
The day declined, and there was no more conversation. As the train devoured leagues of swampy territory, villages were pa.s.sed. The journey"s end was nearing. Soon meadows were seen surrounding magnificent villas. A wide, shallow river was crossed, the Oxal; Pobloff knew by his pocket map that Nirgiz was nigh. And for the first time in twenty-four hours he sorrowed. Despite his broad invitations and unmistakable hints, he could not trap his travelling companion into an avowal of her ident.i.ty, of her destination. Nothing could be coaxed from the giant, and it was with a sinking heart--Pobloff was very sentimental--that he saw the lights of Nirgiz; a few minutes later the train entered the Oriental station. In the heat, the clamour of half a thousand voices, yelling unknown jargons, his resolution to keep his companions in view went for naught. Beset by jabbering porters, he did not have an opportunity to say farewell to the veiled lady; with her escort she had disappeared when the car stopped--and without a word of thanks! Pobloff was wretched.
III
It was past nine o"clock as he roamed the vast garden surrounding the Palace of a Thousand Sounds--thus named because of the tiny bells tinkling about its marble dome. He had eaten an unsatisfying meal in a small antechamber, waited upon by a stupid servant. And worse still, the food was ill cooked. On presenting his credentials, earlier in the evening, the grand vizier, a sneaky-appearing man, had welcomed him coldly, telling him that her Serene Highness was too exhausted to receive so late in the day; she had granted too many audiences that afternoon.
"And the prince?" he queried. The prince was away hunting by moonlight, and could not be seen for at least a day. In the interim, Pobloff was told to make himself at home, as became such a distinguished composer and artistic plenipotentiary of Balakia"s king. Then he was bowed out of the chamber, down the low malachite staircase, into his supper room. It was all very disturbing to a man of Pobloff"s equable disposition.
He thought of Luga, his little wife, his dove; but not long. She did not appeal to his heart of hearts; she was a coquette. Pobloff sighed. He was midway in his mortal life, a dangerous period for susceptible manhood. He lifted moist eyes to the stars; the night was delicious. He rested upon a cushioned couch of stone. About him the moonlight painted the trees, until they seemed like liquefied ermine; the palace arose in pyramidal surges of marble to the sky, meeting the moonbeams as if in friendly defiance, and casting them back to heaven with triumphant reflections. And the stillness, profound as the tomb, was punctuated by glancing fireflies. Pobloff hummed melodiously.
"A night to make music," whispered a deep, sweet voice. Before he could rise, his heart bounding as if stung to its centre, a woman, swathed in white, sat beside him, touched him, put such a pressure upon his shoulder that his blood began to stir. It was she. He stumbled in his speech. She laughed, and he ground his teeth, for this alone saved him from foolishness, from mad behaviour.
"Maestro--you could make music this lovely night?" Pobloff started.
"In G.o.d"s name, who are you, and what are you doing here? Where did you go this evening? I missed you. Ah! unhappy man that I am, you will drive me crazy!"
She did not smile now, but pressed close to him.
"I am a prisoner--like yourself," she replied simply.
"A prisoner! How a prisoner? I am not a prisoner, but an envoy from my king to the sick princeling."
She sighed.
"The poor, mad prince," she said, "he is in need of your medicine, sadly. He sent for me a year ago, and I am now his prisoner for life."
"But I saw you on the train, a day"s journey hence," interrupted the musician.
"Yes, I had escaped, and was being taken back by black Hamet when we met."
Pobloff whistled. So the mystery was disclosed. A little white slave from the seraglio of this embryo tyrant had flown the cage! No wonder she was watched, little surprise that she did not care to eat. He straightened himself, the hair on his round head like porcupine quills.
"My dear young lady," he exclaimed in accents paternal, "leave all to me. If you do not wish to stay in this place, you may rely on me. When I see this same young man,--he must be a nice sprig of royalty!--I propose to tell him what I think of him." Pobloff threw out his chest and snorted with pride. Again he fancied that he heard suppressed laughter.
He darted glances in every direction, but the fall of distant waters smote upon his ears like the crepuscular music of Chopin. His companion shook with ill-suppressed emotion. It was some time before she could speak.
"Pobloff," she begged, in her dangerous contralto, a contralto like the medium register of a clarinet, "Pobloff, let me adjure you to be careful. Your coming here has caused political disturbances. The aunt of the prince hates music as much as he adores it. She is no party to your invitation. So be on your guard. Even now there may be spies in the shrubbery." She put her hand on his arm. It was too much. In an instant, despite her feeble struggle, the ardent musician grasped the creature that had tantalized him since morning, and kissed her a dozen times. His head whirled. Pobloff! Pobloff! a voice cried in his brain--and only yesterday you left your Luga, your pretty pigeon, your wife!
The girl was dragged away from him. In the moonshine he saw the grinning Hamet, suspiciously observing him. The runaway stood up and pressed Pobloff"s hand desperately, uttering the cry of her forlorn heart:--
"Don"t play in the great hall; don"t play in that accursed place. You will be asked, but refuse. Make any excuse, but do not set foot on its ebon floors."
He was so confused by the strangeness of this adventure, so confused by the admonition of the unknown when he saw her white draperies disappear, that his jaw fell and his courage wavered. A moment later two oddly caparisoned soldiers, bearing lights, approached, and in the name of her Highness invited him make midnight music in the Palace of a Thousand Sounds.
IV
Seated before a Steinway grand pianoforte, an instrument that found its way to this far-away province through the caprice of some artistic potentate, Pobloff nervously preluded. Notwithstanding the warning of the girl, he had allowed himself to be convoyed to the great Hall of Ebony, and there, quite alone, he sat waiting for some cue to begin.
None came. He glanced curiously about him. For all the signs of humanity he might as well have been on the heights of Kerb, out among its th.o.r.n.y groves, or in its immemorial forests. He preluded as he gazed around. He could see, by the dim light of two flambeaux set in gold sconces, column after column of blackness receding into inky depths of darkness. A fringe of light encircled his instrument, and beside him was a gallery, so vast that it became a gulf of the infinite at a hundred paces. Now, Pobloff was a brave man. He believed that once upon a time he had peered into strange crevices of s.p.a.ce; what novelty could existence hold for him after that shuddering experience? Again he looked into the tenebrous recesses of the hall. He saw nothing, heard nothing.
His fingers went their own way over the keyboard. Finally, following some latent impulse, they began to shape the opening measures of Chopin"s Second Ballade, the one of the enigmatic tonalities, sometimes called _The Lake of the Mermaids_. It began with the chanting, childish refrain, a Lithuanian fairy-tale of old, and as its nave, drowsy, lulling measures--the voices of wicked, wooing sirens--sang and sank in recurrent rhythms, Pobloff heard--this time he was sure--the regular reverberation of distant footsteps. It was as if the monotonous beat of the music were duplicated in some sounding mirror, some mirror that magnified hideously, hideously mimicked the melody. Yet these footfalls murmured as a sea-sh.e.l.l. Every phrase stood out before the pianist, exquisitely clear; his brain had only once before harboured such an exalted mood. There was the expectation of great things coming to pa.s.s; dim rumours of an apocalyptic future, when the glory that never was on sea or land should rend the veil of the visible and make clear all that obscures and darkens. The transfiguration which informs the soul of one taken down in epileptic seizure possessed him. Every cranny of his being was flooded with overmastering light--and the faint sound of footsteps marking sinister time to his music, drew closer, closer.
Shaking off an insane desire to join his voice in the immortal choiring of the Cherubim, Pobloff dashed into the pa.s.sionate storm-scream of the music, and like a pack of phantom bloodhounds the footsteps pressed him in the race. He played as run men from starving wolves in Siberian wastes. To stop would mean--G.o.d! what would it mean? These were no mortal steps that crowded upon his sonorous trail. His fingers flew over the keys as he finished the scurrying tempests of tone. Again the first swaying refrain, and Pobloff heard the invisible mult.i.tude of feet pause in the night, as if waiting the moment when the Ballade would cease. He quivered; the surprises and terrors were telling upon his well-seasoned nerves.
Still he sped on, fearing the tremendous outburst at the close, where Chopin throws overboard his soul, and with blood-red sails signals the h.e.l.lish _Willis_, the Lamias of the lake, to his side. Ah, if Pobloff could but thus portion his soul as hostage to the infernal host that now hemmed him in on all sides! Riding over the black and white rocks of his keyboard, he felt as if in the clutches of an unknown force. He discerned death in the distance--death and the unknown horror--and was powerless to resist. Still the galloping of unseen feet, horrible, naked flesh, that clattered and sc.r.a.ped the earth; the panting, hoa.r.s.e and subdued, of a mighty pack, whose thirst for destruction, for revenge, was unslaked. And always the same trampling of human feet! Were they human? Did not resilient bones tell the tale of brutes viler than men?
The glimmering lights seemed cowed, as they sobbed in vacuity and slowly expired.