Роберт Чамберс - The Dark Star

"I know it. There are dongas every twenty yards; and Turkish gorse that would stop a charging bull! My answer is, mount! trot! gallop! and hurrah for Achi–Baba!"

"Very picturesque, Alak. But wouldn't it be nicer to be able to come back again and tell us all about it?"

"As for that," he said with his full–throated, engaging laugh, "no need to worry, Princess, for the newspapers would tell the story. What is this Gallipoli country, anyway, that makes our Chancellery wag its respected head and frown and whisper in corners and take little notes on its newly laundered cuffs?

"I know the European and Asiatic shores with their forts—Kilid Bahr, Chimilik, Kum Kale, Dardanos. I know what those Germans have been about with their barbed wire and mobile mortar batteries. What do we want of their plans, then―"

"Nothing, Prince Erlik!" said Rue, laughing. "It suffices that you be appointed adviser in general to his majesty the Czar."

Sengoun laughed with all his might.

"And an excellent thing that would be, Miss Carew. What we need in Russia," he added with a bow to the Princess, "are, first of all, more Kazatchkee, then myself to execute any commands with which my incomparable Princess might deign to honour me."

"Then I command you to go and smoke cigarettes in the music–room and play some of your Cossack songs on the piano for Mr. Neeland until Miss Carew and I rejoin you," said the Princess, rising.

At the door there was a moment of ceremony; then Sengoun, passing his arm through Neeland's with boyish confidence that his quickly given friendship was welcome, sauntered off to the music–room where presently he was playing the piano and singing some of the entrancing songs of his own people in a voice that, cultivated, might have made a fortune for him:

Still echoing the wild air, and playing with both hands in spite of the lighted cigarette between his fingers, he glanced over his shoulder at Neeland:

"A very old, old song," he explained, "made in the days of the great invasion when all the world was fighting anybody who would fight back. I made it into English. It's quite nice, I think."

His naïve pleasure in his own translation amused Neeland immensely, and he said that he considered it a fine piece of verse.

"Yes," said Sengoun, "but you ought to hear a love song I made out of odd fragments I picked up here and there. I call it ' Samarcand '; or rather ' Samarcand Mahfouzeh ,' which means, 'Samarcand the Well Guarded':

'Like a bird in the night is my song—a bird on the wing!'

"'Ahmed and Yucouf bled! A dead king blocks my door!' 'If thy halls and walls be red, Shall Samarcand ask more? Or my song shall cleanse thy house or my heart's blood foul thy floor!'

Sengoun, still playing, flung over his shoulder:

"A Tartar song from the Turcoman. I borrowed it and put new clothes on it. Nice, isn't it?"

"Enchanting!" replied Neeland, laughing in spite of himself.

Rue Carew, with her snowy shoulders and red–gold hair, came drifting in, consigning them to their seats with a gesture, and giving them to understand that she had come to hear the singing.

So Sengoun continued his sketchy, haphazard recital, waving his cigarette now and then for emphasis, and conversing frequently over his shoulder while Rue Carew leaned on the piano and gravely watched his nimble fingers alternately punish and caress the keyboard.

After a little while the Princess Mistchenka came in saying that she had letters to write. They conversed, however, for nearly an hour before she rose, and Captain Sengoun gracefully accepted his congé .

"I'll walk with you, if you like," suggested Neeland.

"With pleasure, my dear fellow! The night is beautiful, and I am just beginning to wake up."

"Ask Marotte to give you a key, then," suggested the Princess, going. At the foot of the stairs, however, she paused to exchange a few words with Captain Sengoun in a low voice; and Neeland, returning with his latchkey, went over to where Rue stood by the lamplit table absently looking over an evening paper.

As he came up beside her, the girl lifted her beautiful, golden–grey eyes.

"Are you going out?"

"Yes, I thought I'd walk a bit with Captain Sengoun."

"It's rather a long distance to the Russian Embassy. Besides―" She hesitated, and he waited. She glanced absently over the paper for a moment, then, not raising her eyes: "I'm—I—the theft of that box today—perhaps my nerves have suffered a little—but do you think it quite prudent for you to go out alone at night?"

"Why, I am going out with Captain Sengoun!" he said, surprised at her troubled face.

"But you will have to return alone."

He laughed, but they both had flushed a little.

Had it been any other woman in the world, he had not hesitated gaily to challenge the shy and charming solicitude expressed in his behalf—make of it his capital, his argument to force that pretty duel to which one day, all youth is destined.

He found himself now without a word to say, nor daring to entertain any assumption concerning the words she had uttered.

Dumb, awkward, afraid, he became conscious that something in this young girl had silenced within him any inclination to gay effrontery, any talent for casual gallantry. Her lifted eyes, with their clear, half shy regard, had killed all fluency of tongue in him—slain utterly that light good–humour with which he had encountered women heretofore.

He said:

"I hadn't thought myself in any danger whatever. Is there any reason for me to expect further trouble?"

Rue raised her troubled eyes:

"Has it occurred to you that they might think you capable of redrawing parts of the stolen plans from memory?"

"It had never occurred to me," he admitted, surprised. "But I believe I could remember a little about one or two of the more general maps."

"The Princess means to ask you, tomorrow, to draw for her what you can remember. And that made me think about you now—whether the others might not suspect you capable of remembering enough to do them harm…. And so—do you think it prudent to go out tonight?"

"Yes," he replied, quite sincerely, "it is all right. You see I know Paris very well."

She did not look convinced, but Sengoun came up and she bade them both good night and went away with the Princess Mistchenka.

As, arm in arm, the two young men sauntered around the corner of the rue Soleil d'Or, two men who had been sitting on a marble bench beside the sun–dial fountain rose and strolled after them.

At midnight the two young men had not yet parted. For, as Sengoun explained, the hour for parting was already past, and it was too late to consider it now. And Neeland thought so, too, what with the laughter and the music, and the soft night breezes to counsel folly, and the city's haunting brilliancy stretching away in bewitching perspectives still unexplored.