The Lighted Match Part 10

THE PRINCESS CONSULTS JONESY

The coldness of the moonlight killed the pallor of Karyl's face, but added a note of stark accentuation to his set chin and labored self-containment. Von Ritz, despite his bedraggled masquerade was as composed and expressionless as though he had seen nothing beyond the expected. With Von Ritz nothing was beyond the expected.

He had to-night counterfeited Benton's disguise; stolen Benton's car; subst.i.tuted himself for the American and made a decisive effort to interrupt the kidnaping of a Queen.

Finding himself checkmated, he had joined forces with the Prince and brought the pursuit to a successful termination. His manner now was precisely what it had been last night, when his only excitement had been a game of billiards. Men who knew him would have told you that his manner had been the same on a certain red and smoky day when the order of Takavo had been pinned on his breast, in the reek and noise of a battlefield.

After a moment of tense silence, Benton took a step forward.

"At any suitable time," he said, in a voice too low for Cara to catch, "I shall, of course, be entirely at your service."

Pagratide drew a labored breath, but when he raised his head it was to lift his brows inquiringly.

"For what?" he asked in an equally low tone. "Have I asked any questions?" In a matter-of-fact voice he added: "It is growing late. If Miss Carstow has finished the inspection of your yacht, I suggest a return."

Benton recognized the other's refusal to read his motive. After all that was the best course; the only course. Pagratide stepped forward.

"Mr. Benton had the pleasure of driving you down--" he suggested, "may I have the same honor, returning?"

The girl met the eyes of the Prince, with defiance in her own.

"I am not a child!" she vehemently declared. "We may as well be honest with each other. If he had chosen to have it so, you could not have come aboard. I must obey the decrees of State!" She paused, then impulsively swept on: "I can force myself to do what I must do, but I cannot compel my heart--that is his, utterly his." She raised both hands. "Now you know," she said. "You may decide."

Karyl inclined his head.

"I have questioned nothing," he repeated. "Will you honor me by returning in my car?"

Cara tilted her chin rebelliously.

"No," she said, "I don't think I shall. My vacation ends to-morrow if you still wish it, but to-night it has not ended. I return with Mr.

Benton."

Pagratide stiffened painfully, but with supreme self-mastery he forced a smile as though he had asked nothing more than a dance--and had found it engaged.

"I must submit," he replied in a steady voice. "I even understand. But you will agree with me that they"--with a gesture toward the direction from which they had come--"had best know nothing."

Benton and Von Ritz went to the gangway, where the yachtsman bent forward to give some direction to the boat crew below.

"Karyl!" The girl moved impulsively toward the man she must marry, and laid a hand on his arm. "Karyl," she said plaintively, "if you only wanted to marry me for State reasons--it would be different. It wouldn't hurt me then to hurt you. You mean so much as a friend, but I can never be in love with you. You are being unfair with yourself--if you go on. I must be honest with you."

Pagratide spoke slowly, and his voice carried the tremor of feeling.

"You have always been honest with me, and I will make you love me. Until you marry me I have no privilege to question you. When you do, I shall not have to question you." He leaned forward and spoke confidently. "I would marry you if you hated me--and then I would win your love!"

An hour later the Spanish gipsy girl, having shown herself in the emptying ball-room with ingenious excuses for her long absence, took refuge in her own apartments.

On sailing day, Benton, at the pier, watched the steamer stand out into the river between the coming and going of ferry-boats and tugs. About him stamped the usual farewell throng with hats raised and handkerchiefs a-flutter. The music of the s.h.i.+p's band grew faint as a wider and wider gap of water opened between the wharf and the liner's gray hull.

Gradually the crowd scattered back through the great barn-like s.p.a.ces of the pier-house to be re-absorbed by cabs, motors and surface-cars into the main arteries of the city's life. It was over. _Bon voyage_ had been said. One more s.h.i.+p had put out to sea.

Benton stood looking after a slim figure in a blue traveling gown and dark furs, pressed against the after-rail, her handkerchief waving in the raw wind. Most of the sea-going ones had retreated into the shelter of the saloon or cabin, but she remained.

Van Bristow, s.h.i.+vering at his friend's elbow, did not suggest turning back.

Cara stood, still looking sh.o.r.eward, a furrow between her brows, her checks pale, her fingers tightly gripping the rail. She was holding with that grip to all her shaken self-command.

She saw the fang-edged skyline of lower Manhattan lifting its gray shafts through wet streamers of fog; she saw flotillas of squat ferry-boats shouldering their ways against the sullen heave of the river's tide-water; she heard the discordant shriek of their steam throats; she saw the tilting swoop of a hundred gulls, buffeting the wind; but she was conscious only of the vista of oily water widening between herself and him.

Von Ritz had long since drifted into the smoking-room where the men were christening the voyage with brandy-and-soda and dropping into tentative groups, regardful of future poker games.

Pagratide, at Cara's elbow, was silent, respecting her silence.

When at last the two had the deck to themselves and Manhattan had become a shadowy and ragged monotone, she turned and smiled. It was a smile of accepting the inevitable. He went with her to the forward deck where her staterooms were situated, and left her there in silence.

Von Ritz, standing apart near the threshold of the smokeroom, heard his name paged almost before the speaker had entered the door, and turned to take from the hand of the bearer a Marconigram just relayed from sh.o.r.e.

He read it and for an instant a look of pain crossed the features that rarely yielded to expression. Then he sought out Karyl's stateroom.

Karyl turned wearily from the wintry picture of a sullenly heaving sea, to answer the rap on the door. His face did not brighten as he recognized Von Ritz.

The Colonel was that type of being upon whom men may depend or whom they must fear. Whenever there was need, Karyl had come to know that there would be Von Ritz, but also there went with him an austerity and an impersonality that robbed him of the grat.i.tude and love he might have claimed.

Now there was a note almost surly in the expression with which the Prince looked up to greet his father's confidential representative.

"Well?" he demanded.

For answer the officer held out the message.

Karyl puckered his brows over the intricacies of the code and handed it back.

"Be good enough to construe it," he commanded.

"The King," said Von Ritz, "is ill. His Majesty wishes to instruct you in certain matters before--" He broke off with something like a catch in his voice, then continued calmly. "Recovery is despaired of, though death may not be immediate."

Karyl turned away, not wis.h.i.+ng the soldier to see the tears he felt in his eyes, and Von Ritz discreetly withdrew as far as the door. There he paused, and after a moment's hesitation inquired:

"Her Highness goes to Maritzburg--to her father's Court--I presume?"

With his back still turned, the Prince nodded. "Why?" he demanded.

"Because--the message holds no hope--" Von Ritz paused, then added quietly "--and if Your Highness is called upon to mount the throne, it is advisable to hasten the marriage."

He backed out, closing the door behind him.

In her own cabin the girl had bolted the door. At the small desk of her _suite-de-luxe_ she sat with her head on her crossed arms. For a half-hour she remained motionless.

Finally she rose and, with uncertain hands, opened a suitcase, drawing from its place among filmy fabrics and feminine essentials a small, squat figure of time-corroded clay. The little Inca _huaca_ had perhaps looked with that same unseeing squint upon Princesses of other dynasties so long dead that their heartbreaks and ecstasies were now the same--nothing.