The Dark Star by Robert W. Chambers (ink ebook reader txt) 📕

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.

From every fairy lamp the lustrous capital signalled to youth her invitation, her challenge, and her menace. Like some jewelled sorceress—some dreaming Circe by the river bank, pondering new spells—so Paris lay in all her mystery and beauty under the July stars.

Sengoun, his arm through Neeland’s, had become affectionately confidential. He explained that he really was a nocturnal creature; that now he had completely waked up; that his habits were due to a passion for astronomy, and that the stars he had discovered at odd hours of the early morning were more amazing than any celestial bodies ever before identified.

But Neeland, whose head and heart were already occupied, declined to study any constellations; and they drifted through the bluish lustre of white arc-lights and the clustered yellow glare of incandescent lamps toward a splash of iridescent glory among the chestnut trees, where music sounded and tables stood amid flowers and grass and little slender fountains which balanced silver globes upon their jets. 338

The waiters were in Russian peasant dress; the orchestra was Russian gipsy; the bill of fare was Russian; and there was only champagne to be had.

Balalaika orchestra and spectators were singing some evidently familiar song—one of those rushing, clattering, clashing choruses of the Steppes; and Sengoun sang too, with all his might, when he and Neeland were seated, which was thirsty work.

Two fascinating Russian gipsy girls were dancing—slim, tawny, supple creatures in their scarlet and their jingling bangles. After a deafening storm of applause, their flashing smiles swept the audience, and, linking arms, they sauntered off between the tables under the trees.

“I wish to dance,” remarked Sengoun. “My legs will kick over something if I don’t.”

They were playing an American dance—a sort of skating step; people rose; couple after couple took the floor; and Sengoun looked around for a partner. He discovered no eligible partner likely to favour him without a quarrel with her escort; and he was debating with Neeland whether a row would be worth while, when the gipsy girls sauntered by.

“Oh,” he said gaily, “a pretty Tzigane can save my life if she will!”

And the girls laughed and Sengoun led one of them out at a reckless pace.

The other smiled and looked at Neeland, and, seating herself, leaned on the table watching the whirl on the floor.

“Don’t you dance?” she asked, with a sidelong glance out of her splendid black eyes.

“Yes; but I’m likely to do most of my dancing on your pretty feet.” 339

“Merci! In that case I prefer a cigarette.”

She selected one from his case, lighted it, folded her arms on the table, and continued to gaze at the dancers.

“I’m tired tonight,” she remarked.

“You dance beautifully.”

“Thank you.”

Sengoun, flushed and satisfied, came back with his gipsy partner when the music ceased.

“Now I hope we may have some more singing!” he exclaimed, as they seated themselves and a waiter filled their great, bubble-shaped glasses.

And he did sing at the top of his delightful voice when the balalaikas swept out into a ringing and familiar song, and the two gipsy girls sang, too—laughed and sang, holding the frosty goblets high in the sparkling light.

It was evident to Neeland that the song was a favourite one with Russians. Sengoun was quite overcome; they all touched goblets.

“Brava, my little Tziganes!” he said with happy emotion. “My little compatriots! My little tawny panthers of the Caucasus! What do you call yourselves in this bandbox of a country where two steps backward take you across any frontier?”

His dancing partner laughed till her sequins jingled from throat to ankle:

“They call us Fifi and Nini,” she replied. “Ask yourself why!”

“For example,” added the other girl, “we rise from this table and thank you. There is nothing further. C’est fini—c’est Fifi—Nini—comprenez-vous, Prince Erlik?”

“Hi! What?” exclaimed Sengoun. “I’m known, it appears, even to that devilish name of mine!” 340

Everybody laughed.

“After all,” he said, more soberly, “it’s a gipsy’s trade to know everybody and everything. Tiens!” He slapped a goldpiece on the table. “A kiss apiece against a louis that you don’t know my comrade’s name and nation!”

The girl called Nini laughed:

“We’re quite willing to kiss you, Prince Erlik, but a louis d’or is not a copper penny. And your comrade is American and his name is Tchames.”

“James!” exclaimed Sengoun.

“I said so—Tchames.”

“What else?”

“Nilan.”

“Neeland?”

“I said so.”

Sengoun placed the goldpiece in Nini’s hand and looked at Neeland with an uncomfortable laugh.

“I ought to know a gipsy, but they always astonish me, these Tziganes. Tell us some more, Nini––” He beckoned a waiter and pointed indignantly at the empty goblets.

The girls, resting their elbows on the tables, framed their faces with slim and dusky hands, and gazed at Sengoun out of humorous, half-veiled eyes.

“What do you wish to know, Prince Erlik?” they asked mockingly.

“Well, for example, is my country really mobilising?”

“Since the twenty-fifth.”

“Tiens! And old Papa Kaiser and the Clown Prince Footit—what do they say to that?”

“It must be stopped.”

“What! Sang dieu! We must stop mobilising 341 against the Austrians? But we are not going to stop, you know, while Francis Joseph continues to pull faces at poor old Servian Peter!”

Neeland said:

“The evening paper has it that Austria is more reasonable and that the Servian affair can be arranged. There will be no war,” he added confidently.

“There will be war,” remarked Nini with a shrug of her bare, brown shoulders over which her hair and her gilded sequins fell in a bright mass.

“Why?” asked Neeland, smiling.

“Why? Because, for one thing, you have brought war into Europe!”

“Come, now! No mystery!” said Sengoun gaily. “Explain how my comrade has brought war into Europe, you little fraud!”

Nini looked at Neeland:

“What else except papers was in the box you lost?” she asked coolly.

Neeland, very red and uncomfortable, gazed back at the girl without replying; and she laughed at him, showing her white teeth.

“You brought the Yellow Devil into Europe, M’sieu Nilan! Erlik, the Yellow Demon. When he travels there is unrest. Where he rests there is war!”

“You’re very clever,” retorted Neeland, quite out of countenance.

“Yes, we are,” said Fifi, with her quick smile. “And who but M’sieu Nilan should admit it?”

“Very clever,” repeated Neeland, still amazed and profoundly uneasy. “But this Yellow Devil you say I brought into Europe must have been resting in America, then. And, if so, why is there no war there?” 342

“There would have been—with Mexico. You brought the Yellow Demon here, but just in time!”

“All right. Grant that, then. But—perhaps he was a long time resting in America. What about that, pretty gipsy?”

The girl shrugged again:

“Is your memory so poor, M’sieu Nilan? What has your country done but fight since Erlik rested among your people? You fought in Samoa; in Hawaii; your warships went to Chile, to Brazil, to San Domingo; the blood of your soldiers and sailors was shed in Hayti, in Cuba, in the Philippines, in China––”

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Neeland. “That girl is dead right!”

Sengoun threw back his handsome head and laughed without restraint; and the gipsies laughed, too, their beautiful eyes and teeth flashing under their black cascades of unbound hair.

“Show me your palms,” said Nini, and drew Sengoun’s and Neeland’s hands across the table, holding them in both of hers.

“See,” she added, nudging Fifi with her shoulder, “both of them born under the Dark Star! It is war they shall live to see—war!”

“Under the Dark Star, Erlik,” repeated the other girl, looking closely into the two palms, “and there is war there!”

“And death?” inquired Sengoun gaily. “I don’t care, if I can lead a sotnia up Achi-Baba and twist the gullet of the Padisha before I say Fifi—Nini!”

The gipsies searched his palm with intent and brilliant gaze.

“Zut!” said Fifi. “Je ne vois rien que d’l’amour et la guerre aux dames!” 343

“T’en fais pas!” laughed Sengoun. “I ask no further favour of Fortune; I’ll manage my regiment myself. And, listen to me, Fifi,” he added with a frightful frown, “if the war you predict doesn’t arrive, I’ll come back and beat you as though you were married to a Turk!”

While they still explored his palm, whispering together at intervals, Sengoun caught the chorus of the air which the orchestra was playing, and sang it lustily and with intense pleasure to himself.

Neeland, unquiet to discover how much these casual strangers knew about his own and intimate affairs, had become silent and almost glum.

But the slight gloom which invaded him came from resentment toward those people who had followed him from Brookhollow to Paris, and who, in the very moment of victory, had snatched that satisfaction from him.

He thought of Kestner and of Breslau—of Scheherazade, and the terrible episode in her stateroom.

Except that he had seized the box in the Brookhollow house, there was nothing in his subsequent conduct on which he could plume himself. He could not congratulate himself on his wisdom; sheer luck had carried him through as far as the rue Soleil d’Or—mere chance, and that capricious fortune which sometimes convoys the stupid, fatuous, and astigmatic.

Then he thought of Rue Carew. And, in his bosom, an intense desire to distinguish himself began to burn.

If there were any way on earth to trace that accursed box––

He turned abruptly and looked at the two gipsies, who had relinquished Sangoun’s hand and who were still conversing together in low tones while Sangoun 344 beat time on the jingling table top and sang joyously at the top of his baritone voice:

“Eh, zoum—zoum—zoum!
Boum—boum—boum!
Here’s to