The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars (25 page)

Mr. Maughan threw back his head and smiled.

“I suppose you’re right; you will witness an interesting marriage, something like that of the carp to the rabbit.”

“After all, those are the most stable unions.”

Bursts of laughter cut short our conversation. Griselda and Ruth Maughan had come back from Monte Carlo with innumerable little packages tied up in pink string.

“Old girl,” Maughan said to his wife, “you look as though you’d bought all the perfume in Monte Carlo. They say that all the money we American husbands make slips through our wives’ fingers.”

I told Griselda about the telegram and the wedding. She was delighted with the invitation, particularly as we planned to be in Southampton within a week.

We were just dressing for dinner at Ciro’s when the steward brought a second telegram. I read these words:
Gerard, I entreat you to come to the castle immediately. Varichkine has disappeared. I am in despair. Love. Diana
.

Griselda and my friends commented on this message while the Hispano-Suiza whirled us from the dock to Ciro’s.

“A fiancée who loses her intended a week before the wedding is certainly running in bad luck,” remarked Griselda who, sure of my fidelity, manifested no jealousy where Lady Diana was concerned.

Ruth Maughan joked, “Perhaps the Communist was afraid to tie the knot.”

The husband chimed in, “He has sounded one of the wells and found it dry.”

I protested, “No, the situation must be serious or Lady Diana would never have sent another wire. Because, whatever else you may say about her, she is not a coward.”

Griselda nudged Ruth and said with a laugh, “Listen to him! I never would have thought that he would rally with such ardor to the defense of a widow and an orphan.”

Maughan chortled. “The widow is charming. As for the orphan part of it, wait till Varichkine is dead.”

Exasperated, I exclaimed, “It’s not fair of you to joke about this thing. After all, I am only doing my duty in befriending a woman who has given me her confidence, and who asks for my assistance.”

Griselda patted my cheek with her gloved hand. “Gerard, we love to tease you. You know perfectly well that I always want you to act honorably and loyally. You can take the first train tomorrow morning for Scotland. We will go to England on the yacht. I shall stay at the Ritz in London and you can meet me there before Lady Diana’s wedding—always provided that the lost, strayed, or stolen Varichkine has been found.”

“Griselda,” I answered, stroking her arm, “I am infinitely grateful to you for taking such a generous view of the
situation. But I honestly cannot abandon her if she really needs me.”

We went into Ciro’s. A Russian singer with a sparkling diadem and two sallow-looking exiles in red vests and white boots were rendering the
Doubinouchka
. A tangled mass of memories came to me. I looked curiously at the nondescript diners who were silently consuming roast mutton or munching elaborate
pêches Melba
. Some women, a little further off, were assuming hieratic poses, their cigarette holders pointed toward the light and their chins resting in the forty-five degree angle of their palms. They wanted to sample, to taste like a liqueur, this hallucinating music. I thought of the Red guards at Nikolaïa, of the gorilla-like executioner, of the unfortunate Tchernicheff, pitiful automat who had breathed his last under my very eyes. I felt like cursing those individuals who were making merry with the Song of Death. I would have enjoyed throwing a shovelful of mud in their faces just to remind them that life is not for all of us a day and night dancing establishment where frivolity is the bandmaster.

Griselda must have read my thoughts, for she gently took my hand and whispered, “Gerard, I understand you and I love you.”

I thanked her with the tenderest of looks and calmed myself. I realized the puerility of my brief revolt. These were the happy people of the world. They were amusing themselves. They had done nothing to deserve happiness, but they were happy. Or, what is the same thing, they thought they were. And is not the formula of oriental happiness to do nothing?

I sat down beside Maughan. I was about to ask his opinion on this serious subject when he anticipated my question more cleverly than he knew by slapping me on the knees and saying:

“Well, old man! What about four Martini cocktails?”

We were back on the yacht at midnight. I was already half asleep when Griselda, in a green and geranium kimono, came and sat down on the edge of the bed.

She asked, “After all, perhaps I am wrong in letting you go all alone to the castle of the Beautiful Lady of the Sleeping Forest.”

She feigned gayety, but I could easily perceive her anxiety. She ran her bejeweled fingers through my hair and went on, “You have been her lover? Come, be truthful about it.”

I denied the charge. She renewed the attack.

“Gerard, tell me the honest truth. I shall let you go anyway because I am certain now that I’ve won you back. You have re-conquered me, body and soul … Gerard.… But, in all frankness, did you love her just a little?”

“With a profound affection, but never with love.”

“You know that during the two years of our separation, I have done a great deal of thinking about you, about life, about the sentimental crises which separate people destined for one another. I am no longer as narrow-minded as I was when I discovered that you were at Palm Beach with Evelyn. I have reflected. I have broadened. I have arrived at an understanding of the trivial importance of passing infractions of fidelity. I can comprehend such infractions, and that they have not the slightest effect on true love, on that profound, durable, solid affection which comes from the bottom of the heart. So, Gerard, you can confide in me, for I love you—shall we say, definitively, and I appreciated it only when I saw you threatened by serious danger. You can safely admit that Lady Diana has been one of the bright though drifting clouds in your life.”

“Griselda, darling—strange as it may seem to you, there has never been anything between us. I advised her, I gave her what moral aid I could, but circumstances, if nothing else,
stood in the way of any closer relationship. Our friendship was platonic in the extreme. And there you have the whole truth.”

Griselda was convinced. She put her arms about me. “You are an odd combination of good and bad, Gerard, dear. You are at once an adventurer and a Don Quixote. You mix decency with vice in a most disconcerting fashion. For two years people in New York have talked to me about my exiled husband. Do you know what I have always said to the people who tried to run you down, who wanted me to divorce you, and who were stupid enough to think that I hadn’t still a little love for you way down deep in my heart? I said, ‘The Prince Séliman? He is the Saint Vincent de Paul of Cook’s Tourist Agency. He could take you through hell without as much as singeing your coat!’ Isn’t that so?”

“And you, Griselda, you are the sweetest person in the world in the most charming of Chinese robes.… And, by way of thanking you for having saved my life, I am about to crush you to death in my arms.”

“Oh! Djerrard!”

Whenever Griselda modulated my name with the intonation of an impatient dove, I knew that she was vanquished. Nevertheless, she broke away, and ran to the other end of the cabin.

Disappointed, I cried, “Where are you going, darling?”

She stretched out her velvety arm, very like the scepter of an empress, and answered softly, “Only to close the port-hole, my dear!”

AT DUSK TWO DAYS LATER I ARRIVED ON THE banks of Loch Lomond. Lady Diana’s chauffeur was waiting for me at the Tarbet station. Beneath the fires of the setting sun, the largest of all Scotland’s lakes had taken on the colors of mauve, saffron, and jade green. It promised to be the most serene of June evenings. An almost imperceptible breeze touched the lake in places, ruffling the placid surface.

Facing it, Ben Lomond erected its pyramid of savage rocks, a fusion of purple and gold.

“Is it far to the castle?” I asked the driver.

“No, sir. A mile and a half in the direction of Inversnaid Falls, but on the east bank of the lake.”

With a sort of pride, the chauffeur added, starting the motor, “We live next to the Macfarlanes.”

I recalled the long feud between the Macfarlanes and the Macgregors which takes up so much space in Scotch history, in those days when the chiefs of the clans manipulated the claymore and the dirk rather too frequently.

I asked, “Where are the Macgregors?”

“Opposite, sir—on the west bank of the lake.”

“I suppose, then, that the lake was a sort of no man’s land between the enemy trenches?”

The chauffeur indulged in a well-disciplined smile.

“Yes, sir—the surface of the lake was anybody’s property. Or better say nobody’s. Or, more exactly, Rob Roy’s, whose cavern you will see to the north of Wallace Island. He navigated the lake with method and discretion.”

“I take it that you are Scotch since you know so much about the region.”

The chauffeur smiled even more faintly.

“No, sir. I am Belgian. But my wife is Scotch and was born at the Macfarlanes’.”

The automobile passed under a vault of gray rocks, coated with moss and lichen, and went through two vast meadows festooned with black iris. The castle of Glensloy had just come to view; already it was bluish in the evening shadows. Two square towers with Roman arches and topped in the purest baronial style. Between the towers, lower down, was the main body of the castle pierced with great bay windows of the guillotine type. Here and there a patch of moss or a scraggly growth of ivy. I noticed that the left tower, on the third floor, had two windows of which the lights were shaded by scarlet curtains. It made me think of a rectangular, fantastic visage scrutinizing the blooming fields with its red eyes. That vision, had I been superstitious, might have impressed me as an evil omen. But I never have been afraid of walking under ladders, nor of dinner parties of thirteen people, nor of overturned salt-cellars, nor even of dowagers in dresses cut far too low.

The chauffeur turned into a driveway, passed between two mushrooms cut from rock and came to a stop at the bottom of a wide stairway. I saw Lady Diana above, on the terrace. She wore a tailor-made suit of white flannel, a yellow scarf, and a mannish felt hat. She brandished a heavy stick and hailed me:

“Hello, Gerard! I’ve been waiting for you an entire hour.”

I scrambled up the steps, two at a time, and kissed her outstretched hands.

“I am awfully sorry to have kept you waiting, my dear. But, as a matter of fact, it’s a damned lucky thing you didn’t have to wait forever!”

“You poor, dear old thing. To think that you risked your life for me. I shall never forget it. I am so happy to see you here. In the first place because you got out of that scrape alive and well; and in the second place because your presence here tonight comforts me more than I can tell you. Ah, Gerard!” She sighed.

“But what has happened? Your telegram worried me terribly.”

She led me to the extreme end of the stone balustrade so that we were in no danger of being overheard. The western face of the terrace gave on the lake over which the evening mist was already settling. On the right, the rocky pyramid of Ben Lomond had draped itself in truly episcopal purple. On the left, the conglomeration of trees on Wallace Island, rising out of the water like a bunch of vegetation forgotten between the two banks, evoked the heroic memory of the famous Scot.

Lady Diana first wanted to hear all the details about my trip to the Caucasus. When I had satisfied her curiosity, she spoke:

“Your difficulties, Gerard, help me to understand what has been going on here. But let me outline the events in their chronological order. When we said goodby in Berlin, I left for London where Varichkine joined me a week later. He was more amorous than ever. He treated my carpets like prayer rugs and made my wrist positively black and blue with his kisses. Toward the fifth or sixth of June, astonished to have received no news from you, tired of telegraphing to Nikolaïa, I went to Sir Eric Blushmore, the future vice-president of my
advisory board, and asked him if he had heard anything from his consulting engineer. He replied that Mr. Edwin Blankett’s reports were excellent, that the Telav business had a most promising aspect and that it was only a matter of days before the corporation would be officially formed with a capitalization of ten million dollars. I was to own fifty-one percent of the capital stock. That meant that, at the price of oil, I would be worth, from that source, a matter of one hundred million francs. With that, I could scoff at the winter winds and have bacon for breakfast without feeling extravagant.… Worn out after so much business, but nevertheless confident about the future, I decided to wait here at Glensloy until you returned from the Caucasus and then to pay my debt to Varichkine, which means to say, to marry him. My suitor asked if he could accompany me. It seemed unfair to leave him on the eve of our wedding so I let him have his way.”

Lady Diana had drawn nearer to me. In a lower tone, as though she feared that someone might be eavesdropping, she continued:

“Now listen carefully, Gerard. That was the eighth of June. The following day, Varichkine received his correspondence from Berlin and he asked me before lunch, ‘Diana, have you heard anything at all from Séliman?’ My reply seemed to disconcert him. When I demanded an explanation, he admitted he was afraid your passport might not protect you adequately. An idea immediately obsessed me and I exclaimed, ‘Madam Mouravieff!’

“He made an evasive gesture which was anything but reassuring.… Wait a minute, let me think.… The next day I received your long dispatch from Constantinople which relieved me of all anxiety. I showed it to Varichkine. He read it several times and sighed:

“ ‘Poor devil! But he got away from her, thank God.’

“For three entire days, Varichkine seemed far less interested in courting me than in discussing over and over again each line of your extraordinary message. He pointed out to me that Madam Mouravieff had shown her hand by opening hostilities on you, and that her desire for vengeance would assuredly bring her vindictiveness upon us. His behavior made me do a lot of thinking and I said to him the other evening: