Visionaries Part 20

"No, I threw off my clothes in such disgust that night that I vowed I would never get into them again. I gave the suit to my valet."

"Your valet," she gravely returned; "he may become _one of us_."

"Fancy, when I reached the house--I went up in a hansom, for I was bareheaded--my mother was giving the biggest kind of a ball. I had no end of trouble trying to sneak in un.o.bserved."

She regarded him steadily. "Isn't it strange," she went on, "how the bull-dog police of this town persecute us--and they _should_ be sympathetic. They had to leave their own island because of tyranny. Yet as soon as they step on this soil they feel themselves self-const.i.tuted tyrants. Something of the sort happened with your own ancestors--" she looked at him archly--"the Pilgrim Fathers were not very tolerant to the Quakers, the Jews, Catholics, or any sect not their own. Now you do not seem to have inherited that ear-slicing temperament--"

"Oh, stop, Yetta! Don't make any more fun of me. I confess I am cowardly--I hate rows and scandals--"

"'What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his liberty?'"

"Yes, I know. But this was such a nasty little affair. The newspapers would have driven me crazy."

"But suppose, for the sake of argument," she said, "that the row would not have appeared in the newspapers--what then?"

"What do you mean? By Jove, there was nothing in the papers, now that I come to think of it. I went the next morning out to Tuxedo and forgot--what do you mean by this mystery, Yetta?"

"I mean this--suppose, for the sake of further argument, I should tell you that there was no row, no police, no arrests!" He gasped.

"O-h, what an a.s.s I made of myself. So that was your trial! And I failed. Oh, Yetta, Yetta--what shall I say?" The girl softened. She took both his hands in her shapely ones and murmured:--

"Dear little boy, I treated you roughly. Forgive me! There was a real descent by the police--it was no deception. That's why I asked you to play the Star-Spangled Banner--"

"Excuse me, Yetta; but why did you do that? Why didn't you meet the police defiantly chanting the Ma.r.s.eillaise? That would have been braver--more like the true anarchist." She held down her head.

"Because--because--those poor folks--I wanted to spare them as much trouble with the police as possible," she said in her lowest tones.

"And why," he pursued triumphantly, "why did you preach bombs after a.s.suring me that reform must come through the spiritual propaganda?" She quickly replied:--

"Because our most dangerous foe was in the audience. You know. The man with the beard who first spoke. He has often denounced me as lukewarm; and then you know words are not as potent as deeds with the proletarians. One a.s.sa.s.sination is of more value than all the philosophy of Tolstoy. And that old wind-bag sat near us and watched us--watched me. That's why I let myself go--" she was blus.h.i.+ng now, and old Koschinsky nearly dropped a bird-cage in his astonishment.

"Yetta, Yetta!" Arthur insisted, "wind-bag, you call your comrade? Were you not, just for a few minutes, in the same category? Again she was silent.

"I feel now," he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, as he came very close to her, "that we must get outside of these verbal entanglements. I want you to become my wife." His heart sank as he thought of his mother's impa.s.sive, high-bred air--with such a figure for a Fifth Avenue bride! The girl looked into his weak blue eyes with their area of saucer-like whiteness. She shook her stubborn head.

"I shall never marry. I do not believe in such an inst.i.tution. It degrades women, makes tyrants of men. No, Arthur--I am fond of you, perhaps--" she paused,--"so fond that I might enter into any relation but marriage,--that never!"

"And I tell you, Yetta, anarchy or no anarchy, I could never respect the woman if she were not mine legally. In America we do these things differently--" he was not allowed to finish.

She glared at him, then she strode to the shop door and opened it.

"Farewell to you, Mr. Arthur Schopenhauer Wyartz, amateur anarchist.

Better go back to your mother and sisters! _Mein Gott_, Schopenhauer, too!" He put his Alpine hat on his bewildered head and without a word went out. She did not look after him, but walked over to the old bird-fancier and sat on his leather-topped stool. Presently she rested her elbows on her knees and propped her chin with her gloveless hands.

Her eyes were red. Koschinsky peeped at her and shook his head.

"Yetta--you know what I think!--Yetta, the boy was right! You shouldn't have asked him for the Star-Spangled Banner! The Ma.r.s.eillaise would have been better."

"I don't care," she viciously retorted.

"I know, I know. But a nice boy--_so_ well fixed."

"I don't care," she insisted. "I'm married to the revolution."

"Yah, yah! the revolution, Yetta--" he pushed his lean, brown forefinger into the cage of an enraged canary--"the revolution! Yes, Yetta Silverman, the revolution!" She sighed.

XIV

HALL OF THE MISSING FOOTSTEPS

So I saw in my dream that the man began to run.

--_Pilgrim's Progress_.

I

As the first-cla.s.s carriage rolled languidly out of Balak's only railway station on a sultry February evening, Pobloff, the composer, was not sorry.

"I wish it were Persia instead of Ramboul," he reflected. Luga, his wife, he had left weeping at the station; but since the day she disappeared with his orchestra for twenty-four hours, Pobloff's affection had gradually cooled; he was leaving the capital without a pang on a month's leave of absence--a delicate courtesy of the king's extended to a brother ruler, though a semi-barbarous one, the khedive of Ramboul.

Pobloff was not sad nor was he jubilantly glad. The journey was an easy one; a night and day and the next night would see him, G.o.d willing,--he crossed himself,--in the semi-tropical city of Nirgiz. From Balak to Nirgiz, from southeastern Europe to Asia Minor!

The heir-apparent was said to be a music-loving lad, very much under the cunning thumb of his grim old aunt, who, rumour averred, wore a black beard, and was the scourge of her little kingdom. All that might be changed when the prince would reach his majority; his failing health and morbid melancholy had frightened the grand vizier, and the king of Balakia had been pet.i.tioned to send Pobloff, the composer, designer of inimitable musical masques, Pobloff, the irresistible interpreter of Chopin, to the aid of the ailing youth.

So this middle-aged David left his nest to go harp for a Saul yet in his adolescence. What his duties were to be Pobloff had not the slightest idea. He had received no special instructions; a member of the royal household bore him the official mandate and a purse fat enough to soothe his wife's feelings. After appointing his first violin conductor of the Balakian Orchestra during his absence, the fussy, stout, good-natured Russian (he was born at Kiew, 1865, the biographical dictionaries say) secured a sleeping compartment on the Ramboul express, from the windows of which he contemplated with some satisfaction the flat land that gradually faded in the mists of night as the train tore its way noisily over a rude road-bed.

II

Pobloff slept. He usually snored; but this evening he was too fatigued.

He heard not the sudden stoppages at lonely way stations where hoa.r.s.e voices and a lantern represented the life of the place; he did not heed the engine as it thirstily sucked water from a tank in the heart of the Karpakians; and he was surprised, pleased, proud, when a hot February sun, s.h.i.+ning through his window, awoke him.

It was six o'clock of a fine morning, and the train was toiling up a precipitous grade to the spine of the mountain, where the down-slope would begin and air-brakes rule. Pobloff looked about him. He scratched his long nose, a characteristic gesture, and began wondering when coffee would be ready. He pressed the bell. The guard entered, a miserable bandit who bravely wore his peaked hat with green plumes a la Tyrol. He spoke four tongues and many dialects; Pobloff calculated his monthly salary at forty roubles.

"No, Excellency, the coffee will be hot and refres.h.i.+ng at Kerb, where we arrive about seven." He cleared his throat, put out his hand, bowed low, and disappeared. The composer grumbled. Kerb!--not until that wretched eyrie in the clouds! And such coffee! No matter. Pobloff never felt in robuster health; his irritable nerves were calmed by a sound night's sleep. The air was fresher than down in the malarial valley, where stood the s.h.i.+ning towers of Balak; he could see them pinked by the morning sun and low on the horizon. All together he was glad....

h.e.l.lo, this must be Kerb! A moment later Pobloff bellowed for the guard; he had shattered the electric annunciator by his violence. Then, not waiting to be served, he ran into the vestibule, and soon was on the station platform, inhaling huge drafts of air into his big chest. Ah! It was glorious up there. What surprised him was the number of human beings clambering over the steps, running and gabbling like a lot of animals let loose from their cages. The engineer beside his quivering machine enjoyed his morning coffee. And there were many turbaned pagans and some veiled women mixed with the crowd.

The sparkling of bright colours and bizarre costumes did not disturb Pobloff, who had lived too long on anonymous borders, where Jew, Christian, Turk, Slav, African, and outlandish folk generally melted into a civilization which still puzzled ethnologists.

A negro, gorgeously clad, guarding closely a slim female, draped from head to foot in virginal white, attracted the musician. The man's face was monstrous in its suggestion of evil, and furthermore shocking, because his nose was a gaping hole. Evidently a scimiter had performed this surgical operation, Pobloff mused.

The giant's eyes offended him, they so stared, and threateningly.

Pobloff was not a coward. After his adventure in Balak, he feared neither man nor devil, and he insolently returned the black fellow's gaze. They stood about a buffet and drank coffee. The young woman--her outlines were girlish--did not touch anything; she turned her face in Pobloff's direction, so he fancied, and spoke at intervals to her attendant.