The Swinging Caravan/The Rest is Silence
THE REST IS SILENCE
THE revolution gave only the coup de grâce. For it was in the years preceding revolution and war that the Russian empire died.
It died as died Rome, cynically, glitteringly, stalking across the boards in crimson heels and grease paint and peruke and false-face like a romantic barnstormer of the old school, half aware of both cause and effect, and not caring a snap of the fingers for either. It died neither from Tsarism nor Nihilism, but from racial anemia; or rather because everybody who claimed to be anybody made a point of being stamped with the mark of civilization to which he did not belong. Thus the focus grew wrong, the viewpoint twisted; and everything sanely national being despised and ridiculed, by the aristocrats through social and by the bourgeois intelligentsia through esthetic snobbishness, the whole became warped and grimaced and unreal.
Here in Samarkand, where Europe and Asia linked rail metal and swapped lies and threats and bluffs, the situation was caricatured to an extraordinary degree. The Russian officers were too Orientalized, affecting enormous Buriat fur caps and hiltless Circassian sabres, belting their waists with embroidered Bokharan silver and spicing their gliding Slav phrases with Tartar gutturals; while the native-born Asiatic princelings, Sarts and Persians and Turkomans, copied Paris-via Moscow with high silk hats that correctly reflected eight lights, sweet champagne, and subscriptions to naughty French weeklies of which they understood nothing except the illustrations.
There were, too, other bizarre and picaresque comedians in that hodge-podge of commercial statistics, cabarets, gray-coated soldiers, bureaucrats, Kirgiz cameleers, and purple-tiled, minareted mosques which straddled the yellow Central Asian steppes and spoke of itself—without the slightest trace of humor—as a model town.
There were Russian government employees, recently promoted, pouchy, sharp-voiced, who hid their baldness and their forensic wisdom under tremendous, dusty wigs reaching back to the days of Peter the Great, and Russian businessmen, consciously cosmopolitan, the sort who—typically—scorned all foreign countries and hated their own; German cocottes who over-emphasized the ultra-chic of Paris in vogue and vice; French soubrettes who topped Castilian shawls with Catalonian combs and moved their hips in a subtle and sensuous Spanish rhythm; Austrian head-waiters who waxed their mustaches, burred their flat, cozy Viennese speech, and otherwise endeavored to pass muster as simon-pure Magyars; American mining engineers who aped the king's English, broadening their a's and dropping their g's; get-rich-quick Rumanian Jews who set their Semitic imagination to inventing a motley and spurious descent from Crimean gipsy chiefs; Poles who claimed to be Lithuanians and Lithuanians who claimed to be Norwegians. Even the English drummers forgot the small beer and the staid, boiled mutton of the Midlands and referred mysteriously to Huguenot great-great-grandmothers and Portuguese second-cousins.
It was all very unlikely. It was all in strident, garish, pinchbeck contrast—with itself, and with facts. It was all stucco and tinsel and spangles.
There was that reception and ball which Hassan Ghinghiz Khan—though he preferred his Muscovite title of Prince Gengizkhanski—gave to usher in the New Year in his grim old palace which he had inherited from his ancestors, the Tartar Khans of the Golden Horde who had once ruled the land from Pekin to Moscow and from the Himalayas to the frozen shore of the Arctic Ocean.
All Samarkand society was there: Russian officers and civil servants, the prominent business and professional people, the church and the bench, the consular corps and other representative foreigners, and a number of native chiefs whose high cheek bones, lemon complexions, and savage, glinting slit-eyes clashed ludicrously with the sober black-and-white of their evening dress. All except the natives who, being Moslims, still adhered to this one religious prejudice, had brought their wives and grown-up daughters. Yet everybody knew—it had been plainly, insolently engraved on the Prince's invitations—that the ball was given in honor of Mademoiselle Liane de la Tour de Crespigny; and everybody was familiar, if not with Liane's racial, then with her moral antecedents.
There was no arguing about the latter. As to the former, opinions differed.
For some people said that she had begun life as wheat-haired Wilhelmine Schultze above a plumber's shop in the Moabit region of Berlin, while others insisted that they remembered her as Sarah Rifkin, a raven-haired Jewish vixen who had served them with Polish prune-stone liquor in her father's village inn not far from Cracow.
But—wheat-haired or raven-haired, Teutonic or Semitic—today her bobbed curls glinted with a warm russet-red, and her French accent held all the metallic, magnetic crackle of the Outer Boulevards; her white face was small and oval and delicious, resembling an eighteenth century miniature with its short, straight nose, the low forehead, the tiny ears, the beautiful mouth, and eyes that cleverly blended arrogance and demure wistfulness; and her dress that night, audaciously low-cut, was like moon beams on rippling, silken water and had been sent from the Rue Royale by special courier. It accentuated her boyish hips and her high, pointed breasts.
Taking tiny, tripping steps—for her skirt, tight about the knees and descending in a daring, clinging curve, persistently embraced her high, little, diamond-studded heels—she entered the ball room on Prince Gengizkhanski's left arm.
The latter was tall, lean, not bad-looking, in an exotic way with his gray, hooded eyes, beaked nose, and the pale-yellow, silky sheen of his narrow, clean shaven face. But the perfect cut of his coat could not conceal the fact that his shoulders were bent and stooped as if weary with life; the rococo coquetry of the tall, white-lacquered, beribboned stick in his right hand could not conceal the fact that he used it, needed it, that his feet dragged and his knees trembled. For he was no longer young; and all his tough, barbarous Tartar blood had not been able to overcome the ravages of the many years that he had lived in European capitals, at fever heat, emotionally, physically, financially. His finances had suffered least. For his wealth was fabulous, Asiatic. He owned whole towns, mountains, rivers.
There were bows and curtsies as the couple passed; a buzz of comment in half-a-dozen languages.
"Ah! Principessa!" said a Frenchman in Italian to a Russian princess of Swedish descent. "Ma che bella donna! Che donna simpatica!"
"Isn't she though?" chimed in the third secretary of the British consulate. He was pathetically young. Eton's idealistic milk was not yet dry on his lips. "And she's such a jolly girl—my word!—has really such a splendid character"
The Frenchman winked at the woman who winked back. She tapped the young Englishman's arm with her fan.
"You think so?" she asked, with a gliding smile.
"Yes."
"Splendid character, eh?" mocked the Frenchman.
"Why not?" came the Englishman's sturdy, aggressive counter-query.
"Eh bien, my little Sir Galahad—" the princess pointed at Liane whose gown, of a fragile, shimmering material, seemed to fit her rather more closely than a skin—"it is really so much easier these days to tell a woman's character from the lines of her body than from those of her hand."
"Bravo! Bravo, bravissimo, Principessa mia!" cried the Frenchman, while the Englishman blushed—and hated himself for it.
Others had heard. They crowded in, applauding, laughing, adding tang and zest and sparkle to the conversation. It switched from Italian to English, from English to French and Polish. They were all feverishly anxious to outdo each other in spice and glitter of words, in daring of similes, in subtle, cruel epigrams.
"That charming Liane is like all the women of her class—" suggested a captain of Don Cossacks who had varied the monotony of last year's marriage to, and divorce from, a Petrograd chorus-girl by this year's elopement with his colonel's wife—"she deceives the Prince only with cavalry officers. In fact, she is absolutely orthodox in her infidelities. She adheres to all the proper conventions."
"Conventions ...?" echoed a beautiful, dark woman with heavy-lidded eyes which looked full of sultry and brooding promise. "I do not know the meaning of the word..."
"I class them with the comic virtues, Madame la Comtesse," said a white-bearded, monocled man in the green and silver of the Viborg Grenadiers.
"Comic virtues?"
"Yes—like chastity, you know—but rather more vicarious..."
"Wrong, Your Excellency!"
"Oh?"
"Yes. Conventions are—well—shall I say the suspenders on respectability's hose?"
"I think they are nothing except a pure manifestation of the sex complex."
"Pure—or impure?"
"Is there a difference?"
"Physiologically—not psychologically!"
"I disagree either way."
"So? What then is your idea, Principessa?"
"I consider them vulgar laws—submitted to by the lower middle classes."
"No, no! What about His Imperial Majesty, the Tsar? He obeys all the conventions. But he hardly ranks with the lower middle classes."
"Oh—doesn't he, though?"
"Hush!" came the sibilant warning. "Hush, Maria Ivanovna!"
"What is all the row about?" asked a newcomer.
"Mademoiselle Liane—and conventions! How would you interpret them, Monsieur le Baron?"
"As to Liane, I would interpret her as—oh—the result of a morganatic marriage between a powder puff and a bottle of absinthe..."
"And—conventions?"
"A question of backbone!"
"That is why they are woman's prerogatives."
"I don't know, Princessa mia. Man has as much backbone as woman."
"Oh—has he?"
"Decidedly. But not quite so much of it shows. Look at Mademoiselle Liane's dress! Venus rising from the foam—of Paquin and the Rue Royale!"
More laughter and daring jests, presently interrupted by an obese, good-natured German countess who said that, after all, it concerned nobody except their host.
"He loves her," she added, "and love—" sighing—"is the greatest faith in the world..."
"Which, like all faiths, is sure to wind up in atheism sooner or later," smiled a Russian high-priest, playing with the enormous amethyst cross on his breast.
"Quite wrong, Father Anastase!" came the German countess' blunt rejoinder. "I knew the Prince before you wore a cassock—aye!—before you were put into long trousers. A sensualist? Yes. But also a sentimentalist."
"Is the combination possible?"
"Yes. And delightful—for the woman in the case! And self-hurting—for the man!"
She was right. If all Samarkand knew of Liane's escapades, so did Prince Gengizkhanski. But he did not blame her; hardly even in his own heart. Never for a moment did he think of making a scene with her, of mentioning to her that it was his money which paid for her jewels, her furs, her motorcars, her thoroughbred Orloff horses, her fluffy Persian kittens, and the coquettish little Trianonesque villa that he had built for her close to Shah Zindeh's ancient mosque.
The sounds of revelry from the villa, music, laugh ter, the shuffle and glide of tangoing feet, the clinking of glasses, late at night and early in the morning, clashed often with the pious chant that issued from the mosque, the "hasbi rabi jal Ullah—my defense is the Lord, magnify Allah!" of the green-turbaned muezzin; and Prince Gengizkhanski smiled ironically at the recollection how last year, shortly after he had brought Liane from Paris and installed her in her new home, the muezzin had complained to him, shocked to the core of his narrow Moslim soul. But finally, finding the other polite yet adamant, the man had submitted:
"Very well, Heaven-born! Listen is obey!"
He had salaamed and withdrawn.
For, after all, Prince Gengizkhanski, though westernized and russianized, was still Hassan Gengiz Khan, the direct descendant of the Khans of the Golden Horde.
And yet—he would often think—what good was his blood to him? The world had changed; he differed from those red-faced warriors of olden days. He differed even from his own father.
He remembered how the latter had once bought a tuwaif, a Hindu dancing girl, from a passing Turkoman caravan. The girl had been unfaithful. His father had loved her, had called her "mahi-alum soz-i-mun—O moon of the world and burner of my heart!"
But—"chon waqta moomaut mah roofood—the hour of death is at hand!" had come the command to the crimson-robed Persian executioner. There had been the braying of conches, the dull booming of nagara drums, the beating of tomtoms, the wailing of women; and she had been tied in a sack together with a live, biting, scratching cat, and thrown into the river, well weighted with stones.
Yes—he thought—he was not like his father. Perhaps he was decadent. Perhaps civilized. Perhaps over-civilized. At all events he was frock-coated and top-hatted. He was a member of the Paris Jockey Club and the English Club in Moscow. He had the red ribbon of the Legion of Honor and the green ribbon of the Vladimir. He rode on an English hunting-saddle, and knew all about the latest French novel and Cubist paintings and point-to-point races and British imperial politics and the name of the actress for whose sake Prince von Windischgrätz was divorcing his wife.
All this the West had taught him. It had taught him, furthermore, that death, killing, is no argument in life and in love; the fate is not an open and shut issue; that a man must struggle and compete to conquer what he desires and hold what he loves.
Struggle and compete? And how could he—he who was sixty-five years of age and gouty andad dicted to flannel underwear and, if the truth be told, to an occasional hot-water bottle? Besides, Liane was so young, and he doubted that he had the right to dictate to her youth, to nag it and twist it and spoil it. Had he not promised her on that day in Paris when she had agreed to accompany him to Samarkand, that he would give her anything and everything in the world—whatever her heart desired?
"Everything I shall give to you, mon enfant, except sorrow!"
Those had been his very words.
Only this morning she had broken an engagement to go riding with him, pleading a headache. An hour later he had seen her drive by the side of a dashing young cavalry officer. If he should confront her with the fact, she would shrug her slim shoulders and tell him not to worry.
"It was only Ivan Alexandrovitch—such a nice boy—I met him in Moscow. He dropped in for a cigarette and a glass of chartreuse, and he insisted that I go driving with him—and I thought the fresh air might be good for my headache. You must not be jealous, chéri!"
It was always the same: the broken engagements, the young cavalry officers. Only the names changed: Ivan Alexandrovitch or Pavel Stepanovitch or perhaps some young foreigner, American or French. He could not keep track of them. To him they all looked alike: tall, lean, broad-shouldered, clear-eyed. And always her disarming smile, her ready explanation that she had known them in Paris or Moscow or Vienna:
"Don't worry. Absolutely platonic, I assure you. Why—I love you, mon gros chéri!"
And, strangely, there was in that last statement a certain amount of truth. She meant it. For it would be unjust to say that his ancient race and fantastic fortune were the only links which bound her to him. There was also his great soul, his kindly heart, and the fact that his wrinkled old hands were as soft as silk and exhaled a fine, thin perfume which could not be matched in all Paris. Too, he understood her youth—and her youth's motley, lawless desires and imaginings.
He looked at her; smiled.
There was nothing in the world that he would not do for her. This ball, for instance, tonight. She had wished it because the regimental ladies in charge of a recent garrison charity fête had not invited her.
So he had arranged it, although Prince Kutusoff, the Russian governor-general, had told him gently and diplomatically that, given Mademoiselle Liane's "ah—interesting social status," he, for one, doubted the advisability—et cetera, et cetera; and furthermore, given the growing influence of Her Imperial Majesty, the Tsaritsa, the Imperial Court in Moscow was inclined to be rigid and might not like—et cetera, et cetera ... "you see, mon ami?"
"Your Excellency," Prince Gengizkhanski had replied, "this is Samarkand..."
"Yes?"
"And in Samarkand I am as important—pardon—as the Romanoffs are in Moscow."
"You mean—of course—socially, not politically?" had come the other's slow, purring drawl.
"Of course, Your Excellency!"
"Ah!"
"But"
"But?"
"Look, Your Excellency!"
Prince Gengizkhanski had pointed through the win dow at the squat, minareted mosques, the streets and bazaars bearing the life of the Central Asian steppes, stolid, stony, fatalistic, yet still redolent of former savage centuries when the Khans had ruled the land, still throbbing with a tremendous, rebellious under current. Here and there gray-coated Russian soldiers were among the crowd. But they seemed like isolated fragments; driftwood on the grim, sluggish, yellow sea of native life.
The governor-general had understood the unspoken threat; had considered rapidly.
"Mon ami" he had said, "my advice was purely personal—not official."
He had bowed and left; and, outside, to his aide-de-camp:
"After all—why should I steep Asia in blood because of a Parisian cocotte's painted smile?"
"Suppose the Tsaritsa heard of it? You know—Her Imperial Majesty is really tremendously bourgeois in her inhibitions!"
"I shall attend the ball myself—I and my wife—thus surrounding it with an aura of most respectable respectability," Prince Kutusoff had replied.
He was there now, his chest blazing with decorations, the centre of an animated, laughing group of men and women; and Prince Gengizkhanski indicated them, turning to Liane.
"You like it?" he asked.
"Yes."
"You are pleased—satisfied—happy?"
"Yes. So very happy. You know—the wife of the British consul"
"The woman with spats and an abortive mustache?"
"Splendid! The same. She cut me dead the other day in the Bazaar of the Goldsmiths. Well—tonight she was most cordial—begged me to give her my dressmaker's address."
"Triumph!" he laughed.
"Triumph indeed! But it would take a woman to understand what I mean. At all events, I have you to thank for it. You are so good to me."
"Because I love you." He raised her hand and kissed it. "I am a little tired, dear," he went on. "Would you mind going to the conservatory with me and sitting down for a moment?"
"I would like to. But—" she blushed rather guiltily—"oh..."
"Yes, dear?"
"I promised the next tango to Ivan Alexandrovitch"
He sighed; was about to insist.
"But"
Then he saw the petulant look in her eyes; saw her narrow feet tapping the floor; saw her shoulders jerking, instinctively, rhythmically, to the lascivious pizzicato of the violins that brushed out from the palm-screened orchestra. Everywhere couples were swaying, gliding, stepping the intricate Argentine measure.
"Very well," he said, again kissing her hand. "I am too old to dance. I have arrived at the stage of life where I breakfast habitually on a bromo-seltzer, a cigarette, and no food at all." He smiled. "Go and dance and amuse yourself, mon enfant."
"You are awfully, awfully good to me. Far too good. Ivan Alexandrovitch always says so...."
"Does he? And last month it was Pavel Stepanovitch who so charmingly endorsed my character. No, no—" quickly, as he saw her mouth contract into a tiny grimace—"I did not mean to hurt your feelings"
"You didn't. But I don't want you to be jealous."
"I am not, little soul. And now—run along with your Ivan or Pavel or Boris!"
He turned to go, leaning heavily on his stick, just as Ivan Alexandrovitch—an officer in the Don Cossacks whose full name was Prince Youssoupoff—came up, jingling his gold spurs.
"My dance, Liane?"
"I've been waiting...."
They moved, slowly, gracefully, in the first gliding, sideways gesture of the tango. For a moment Prince Gengizkhanski saw the expression on their eager young faces, showing keen mutual liking, concentrated interest in each other, admiration, joy in being together, body to body. He heard the Cossack's rollicking Russian words:
"Golubushka—little dove! Ogurtchik—adored small cucumber!"
And he walked away, smiling a little, regretting the days when he, too, had been able to coin such ridiculous terms of endearment without feeling self-conscious. He sat down in the conservatory. It was empty. The ball seemed far away. There was hardly a memory of sound. Presently he was joined by a distant cousin, Tugluq Yar Khan, an elderly Turkoman who had the face of a weary, dissipated mastiff, with bloodshot, strained eyes, deeply lined cheeks and drooping lips; yet, for all his repulsive appearance, somehow very much the aristocrat. There was in his eyes that sardonic melancholia peculiar to those who are bonded slaves to some terrible, hidden vice, like a sadness of soul studying, rather impersonally, the ravages of mind and body. For Tugluq Yar Khan was a notorious addict to opium.
He greeted the other ironically.
"My pet weakness is always with me," he said, producing a silver box, taking out a small brown opium pellet, and swallowing it. "Yours—" pointing in the direction of the ball room, "seems to be usually with somebody else."
Prince Gengizkhanski was nowise offended. The link between him and the other was strong. It had been tempered by sympathy and tested by the knowledge of their mutual shortcomings.
"Not much to choose between us," he replied. "You can't conquer your weakness—and I can't conquer mine."
"At least mine is worth while—and wholly satisfying."
"Really?"
"Quite. It gives me seconds, hours, eternities of dreams, purple and scarlet and gold. But you, my Hassan? Punah-i-Khoda—God protect us! To break your heart over a brittle, painted doll"
"Whom I love, cousin."
"Oh..." Tugluq Yar Khan was astonished. "Do you, honestly?"
"Indeed!" came the simple reply. "With all my soul."
"Then why do you permit her to flit and flirt about with those men in there? Why don't you hold her?"
"How can I? They are young—and she is young—while I ... oh..." He shrugged his shoulders.
"Youth is not the only thing. Age, too, has its weapons."
"Namely?"
"Sacrifice, Hassan!"
"Sacrifice?"
"Yes.
I sacrificed myself to this—" Tugluq Yar Khan swallowed another opium pill—"to the whirling, winged poppy dreams. I sacrificed my manhood, my ambition, my pride, my all—while you..."
"I give to her everything that her heart desires."
"Yes. Furs, motorcars, jewels! Nothing! Have you given yourself? I knew women before I took to opium—the lesser evil. And once I gained a woman's love by jumping into the Volga—it was early winter, and beginning to freeze—and saving the life of a mangy cur. Did she care for the dog? No. But woman is cruel. Woman likes sacrifice. Why—" he went on, his voice thickening as the opium was taking effect—"if I were you—do you know what I would do?"
"Yes—?" Prince Gengizkhanski leaned forward, intensely interested.
"Remember the emerald Buddha?"
"Emerald Buddha—?" puzzled the other.
"Yes. Don't you remember—how our grandfather"
"Yes, yes!" came Prince Genizkhanski's sudden recollection.
"Grandfather used to tell us about it when we were children, you and I...."
"And ...?"
"If I were you, Hassan! Allah, if I were you...."
And, all at once, as is the way with opium eaters, he fell into heavy, drugged slumber while the other's memory rushed back down the long lane of years to what his grandfather had told him about the emerald idol, in the Buddhist monastery far up in the mountains of Tibet, on the roof of the world. It was the usual tale of a priceless jewel, carved minutely and exquisitely, flawless, and weighing over fifty karat; the sort of tale which is repeated, with innumerable variations and embroideries, from Canton to Kashmere and from Mandalay to Teheran. Only this story had the advantage of being true. The abbot of the monastery had shown it once to Gengizkhanski's grandfather who had been stalking snow-tiger across the Tibetan border.
"It is not for sale, not for any price," the latter had wound up the telling. "Many tried to get it, by theft, ruse, violence. But they failed. They died—all—died the slow death of Tibet. Perhaps—" smiling into his short-cropped beard—"their strength of youth was not great enough. Perhaps their love was not deep enough. For, of course, they one and all tried because of a woman's eyes."
Youth and strength—he thought—and love. His youth was past; and the West had sapped his tough Tartar strength. Love—? Yes. He loved greatly, deeply, tenderly. And what good was it to him?
He sat there, brooding, smoking countless cigarettes. He lost all idea of time. His cousin awakened from his poppy dreams; left without a word. He was now alone. Presently he looked at his watch. It was very late. The party must be drawing to its close.
He rose. Upstairs, in his private apartments, he had had a little supper prepared, just for Liane and himself. There was in his inside pocket a necklace which he wanted to give to her, to put a sort of seal on the evening; a string of fifty evenly matched, rose-red pearls with a clasp made of a single rose-red diamond. It had cost him the revenue of seventeen villages. But it would accentuate the whiteness of her neck.
He entered the ball room. It was half empty. There was a stale odor of champagne and perfume and bruised flowers. Only here and there were small groups, talking aimlessly, rather tiredly, the epigrams coming not so quickly and sharply as earlier during the evening.
"Are you looking for Mademoiselle Liane?" asked a woman.
She was very beautiful. But her lips had that slight suggestion of hardness which comes to the lips of those who have a soul on the defensive, a heart that has learned to be wary of ambush. She had often tried to interest the Prince in herself; had always failed. She knew that he knew. So she was bitter.
"Yes, Madame le Baronne," he replied.
She pointed to a small alcove, completely screened by potted palms and ferns.
"You will find her there."
"Thank you."
"With Ivan Alexandrovitch Youssoupoff," she continued.
He did not wince before the mockery in her eyes.
"Thank you again."
He bowed; turned to go.
"Monsieur le Prince!"
"Madame la Baronne?"
"If I were you ..."
"Yes?"
"I would be careful."
"How?"
"About entering the alcove..."
"Indeed?"
"Yes. You know—fools and middle-aged lovers rush where angels—" Quick silence and a tinkly laugh.
"Thank you once more, Madame la Baronne. Your advice is both altruistic and excellent. I shall be careful."
He walked away; stopped near the alcove. He heard Liane's voice brushing through, in a headlong, vehement whisper:
"No, no, Ivan! Not tonight!"
"Why not?" came the Cossack's excited accents.
"I promised Prince Gengizkhanski that I would have supper with him."
"Oh—but—golubushka—little dove! The night is glorious, scented with spring. Let's drive out into the steppes, and..."
"No, no! I don't want to disappoint the Prince. I am very fond of him!"
"But you do not love him. You cannot. Listen, dear, please listen..."
"Some other time ..."
"I love you! I love you with all my heart and soul and body! I would kill for you, steal for you, die for you! There is nothing, nothing, nothing I would not do for you!"
"So the Prince says—nothing, nothing, nothing he would not do for me..."
"Oh, but I am young and strong, while he... What can he do except—oh—give you jewels and..."
Prince Gengizkhanski raised his voice deliberately, addressing an imaginary servant:
"Have you seen Mademoiselle Liane? Oh—in there? Thank you."
He entered the alcove.
"Pardon me, Liane," he said, "but ..."
"I'll be with you immediately." She rose.
"No, no. I am very tired, and so, if you will forgive me, we shall have our little supper party some other time. By the way—" he reached into his pocket and took out the velvet case which contained the pearl necklace—"here is a trifle which might amuse you." He bent over her hand and kissed it. "Good night, dear child!" And, to the Cossack: "Au revoir, mon capitaine! You will, I know, be so good as to drive Mademoiselle home? Ah—thank you!"
He walked upstairs to his library to write some letters; and, two days later, Samarkand gossiped over the news that he had gone on a journey into farther Central Asia, while Mademoiselle Liane de la Tour de Crespigny opened an envelope which contained a generous draft on the Russian-Asiatic Bank in Moscow, a world of tender, old-fashioned messages, and a strange postscript which said that the writer would be gone for an indefinite length of time and that he would bring back his strength of youth and all the love on earth—or die in the attempt.
She smiled.
"What a delightful, romantic, ridiculous old darling!" she said.
Then she sent her maid to deposit the draft and telephoned to Pavel Stepanovitch, Baron de Bardeleben, an officer in the Viborg Grenadiers, asking him to have lunch with her—she had had a quarrel the evening before with Ivan Alexandrovitch Youssoupoff.
For a while the news of Prince Gengizkhanski's sudden journey upset certain political circles in Moscow when the governor-general spoke of it in his monthly report. For, just as south of the Himalayas, in India, there was always fear of Russian intrigues, thus north of the hills was there fear of British intrigues; the threat of rebellion stimulated by foreign gold; and, too, the danger of native chiefs, outwardly russianized, reverting to type. So the Central Asian department of the Russian Secret Service, known euphoniously as the Ethnological Survey, despatched several men into the farther lands, amongst them Gregory Azheff, a Crimean Jew, commonly known as E. S. 227; a fur-capped and wide-shouldered Bokharan ruffian by the name of Hydar Ali Khan—name which he changed at will—who traded with stallions into China, and wretched emeralds, also with striped Bokhariot belts, salt, onyx-eyed Persian kittens, and several unclassified items of Central Asian merchandise; and M. Michail Michailovitch Dorjieff, a Russian-born Mongol from the shores of Lake Baikal, who was reputed to know more about Buddhism, including its modern political ramifications, than all the learned professors of Harvard and Oxford put together. These picturesque, semi-Oriental Russian gentlemen deployed fan-wise over the eastern roads; one toward Urga in Outer Mongolia; the second toward Yarkand in Chinese Turkestan; and the third toward Lhasa in Forbidden Tibet where the Dalai Lama, that viceroy and incarnation of the Lord Gautama Buddha upon earth, was his very good friend with whom, on occasion, he got dismally drunk upon vodka and champagne.
Half a year later the chief of the Ethnological Survey forwarded a copy of their reports to the governor-general of Samarkand who read it and turned to his aide-de-camp.
"Do you know where Prince Gengizkhanski is?" he asked.
"No, sir."
"In Tibet. Do you know what he is doing there?"
"No, sir."
"Nor does our pampered and decidedly overpaid Secret Service. They know what he is not doing, though. They know that he is not shooting snow-tiger or big-horn; that he is not trying to further Great Britain's game in our Central Asian sphere of interests; that he is not communicating with the Delai Lama; that he is not appealing to his kinsmen in Outer Mongolia; that he is not endeavoring to bring about an anti-Russian alliance between the Buddhists and Moslims of Central Asia; that he is not doing a dozen other disagreeable things which might cause a head ache to the big-wigs of our ministry of foreign affairs...."
"Then—what is he doing, sir? A man of his age and refinement in Tibet—the coldest, most cruel, most fanatic country on earth!"
"Do you know the difference between a commoner and an aristocrat?"
"I am not sure, sir."
"When a commoner makes a fool of himself, he does so either for congenital or financial reasons," replied Prince Kutusoff, "while when an aristocrat makes a fool of himself, the reasons are either political or..."
"Or?"
"Psychological, mon petit. I wonder if Mademoiselle Liane knows...."
But it seemed that she did not. So, presently, Samarkand and the governor-general forgot Prince Gengizkhanski; and Liane remembered him only when the stubs in her cheque book showed her that her bank balance was steadily decreasing and—this was early the following spring—when she strolled through the gardens in back of Shah Zindeh's mosque and smelled the scent of certain spring flowers. They reminded her of the fine, thin perfume of the Prince's hands. And then she sighed, and she telephoned to the Prince's Persian major-domo who informed her that his master had not been heard from.
Spring passed into summer, summer into autumn, autumn into winter, and again the cycle of the seasons began, ended, re-began. Liane was in her pink-and-silver boudoir, dabbing at her cheeks with a powder puff and thinking, with a melancholic shrug of her shoulders, that she would either have to return to Paris or to accept the attentions, limousine, and bulbous wallet of a bald-headed, blue-eyed man who had recently come to Samarkand and spoke Russian with a faint German accent—explained by his passport which was in perfect order and gave German-speaking Riga as his birthplace. Liane did not like him. She doubted that he would understand and condone her friendship—"absolutely platonic, mon gros chéri!"—with Ivan and Pavel and Boris. And his hands. They were coarse and red—and there was no perfume to them—only a heavy, male odor of tobacco and alcohol.
As it happened she did not have to accept his attentions after all. For overnight war broke out, and shortly afterwards they lined him up against a white wall, and there was a volley of musketry fire.
He died like a gentleman, haughty and fearless, cheering his Emperor with his last words:
"Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!"
And, bunching every ounce of his dying strength into pathetic, heroic conviction:
"Wait—you Russian—you'll see what ..."
The unfinished threat became truth. Years came; gray years. War. Misery. Defeat. Despair. Famine. A shameful peace. Then revolution.
The cry was everywhere:
"Da zdrasivooyet revolutzia—long live the revolution!"
It spread over Russia like powder under spark. It invaded every nook and corner of that gigantic, amorphous empire. It came one night to Samarkand with the dramatic rumble of the guns, with a long, ghostly line of marching men, some in uniforms, some in peasants' sheepskins, some in store-made clothes and bowler hats, all armed.
There was a melancholy wailing of falling shells, an enormous sheet of dazzling, whitish-blue light that jumped up to the zenith, then dropped to the tortured earth with a million yellow, racing flames. From a low, hog-back hill north of Samarkand rose a curled plume of thick, inky smoke, with a heart of sulphurous gold. An artillery salvo belched up, stopped abruptly, was followed by an immense burst of sound waves like a giant beating a huge drum. The western sky swallowed the mist in an intolerable peacock blue, nicked with livid purple.
So Samarkand fell. Came the Tartar Republic. It, too, fell; and a Kieff Jew with dirty hands and decayed teeth was sent from Moscow as kommissar to take over the government.
Prince Kutusoff accepted his death in an ironic eighteenth century spirit, remarking that these revolutions were in wretchedly bad taste.
"Why," he said to his aide-de-camp shortly before they were both taken out and shot, "I understand that this Bolshevist kommissar person who has succeeded me is so democratic that he has the habit of shaving himself. That is carrying things too far, don't you think? And there will be nobody in the future to truffle a Bohemian pheasant as it should be truffled; nobody to mix a champagne cocktail with just the correct proportion of angostura bitters; nobody to cut a proper hand at baccarat; nobody to appreciate Mademoiselle Liane's charming, white shoulders. No, no, mon petit! I prefer death. This new freedom is not good for people of quality"
So the year passed. Winter came; came spring. The revolution, hoarse with shouting and gorged with blood, settled down to work. Everybody worked except the speculators and profiteers. Occasionally the latter were arrested, convicted, and executed. But! others arrived. The breed seemed inexhaustible. The crops failed. People tightened their belts and worked harder. Liane worked in the tiny apartment; which the Soviet government had decreed was large enough for her. She worked with needle and thread; fifty roubles an hour; and bread cost a thousand roubles a loaf. Her hair was russet no longer. Dull it was and brittle and streaked, and at the roots it showed gray. She had nearly forgotten the past. She tried not to think of it. Thinking interfered with her work. And a loaf of bread cost a thousand roubles.
Then one day there were two rings at her bell; a short ring, followed by a long one. The fact of the bell ringing at all was singular. She had no visitors these days. And then—two rings, one short, one long! She remembered—like a signal... "in case," Prince Gengizkhanski had told her once, smiling, "Ivan or Pavel or Boris should be there talking to you—ah—about monistic philosophy or the home policy of the ancient Peruvians...."
"Come in!" she called tremulously.
A moment later Prince Gengizkhanski entered, and when she saw him she screamed. He was dressed in outlandish garments of fur and duffel, almost like a Kirgiz shepherd. His body was emaciated; his soft, wrinkled old hands seemed like agonized, yellow claws; he dragged his right foot as if it were a leaden, lifeless weight; straight across his face was a terrible, blood-red scar, the scar of a wound which had blotted out one eye; and he trembled—trembled in every limb and nerve and muscle.
"What—what has happened to you?" stammered Liane. "Oh—who did ... did the revolutionists...?"
"No," he said in a strange, flat voice, "the Tibetans, my little Liane. But—I succeeded..."
"Succeeded—? In what...?"
"I have brought you ... look ..." and he tumbled into a chair, overcome with weakness and emotion, while from his hand a package dropped on the ground.
She picked it up; opened it. She saw a small idol of the Lord Gautama Buddha, exquisitely carved from a single flawless emerald. She held it against her throat.
"You like it?" he asked.
"I—oh ..." And, after a pause, in a drab mutter: "Jewels—I had forgotten their existence ... oh, yes—there are jewels, aren't there? And flowers—and perfume and laughter—and—oh—dear God!—soap—and cleanliness and..."
She was quite silent; then, as from the next room came a faint noise, she suddenly walked up to him and put her hands on his shoulders.
"You—you are very weak—?" she asked.
"Well—tired...."
"You see—I want you to go out. I can't leave the house. Will you go—and do something for me?"
"Anything. Everything. Tell me."
"You remember the little house in back of Shah Zindeh's mosque—the other side of the gardens—the one with the three balconies?"
"Yes"
"Go there. Dalmatoff, the speculator, lives there. Take the emerald. Sell it to him—for a high price—just as much as you can—" she was almost hysterical—"Bargain like a Jew—like an Armenian...."
"But"
"You have no money, have you?" she demanded fiercely.
"No. They tell me I have nothing left."
"Then sell the emerald. And buy meat and wine and white bread and fruit." She pulled him up, pushed him toward the door. "Be careful. It is against the law. There are spies about..."
"Oh—" he turned on the threshold—"pauvre enfant—you are hungry?"
"I? No, no! But—" she lowered her voice, pointed toward the inner room—"Boris Fyodorovitch—young Boris—he is sick—so sick—and he needs meat—good, red meat—and wine—and... hurry—please hurry...."
Prince Gengizkhanski gave a start. Then a queer smile ran over his face, giving to the blood-red scar a fantastic upward twist.
"Boris—" he whispered, with a quaint blending of self-pity and contentment—"Allah, Allah! But I am glad to be home again!"
And he stopped, kissed Liane's hand, then left quickly to sell the emerald Buddha.