The Madonna of the Sleeping Cars

by Maurice DeKobra

  “ ‘We must use an old Siberian ruse. We will cut the bills in two. You will give one half to Chapinski, the other half you will keep for yourself. When he has handed over Prince Séliman safe and sound, you will hand him the complement of the bills. Thus, you will have an absolute hold on the Tchekist!’

  “Ivanof’s idea seemed excellent. He brought Chapinski to me and we rapidly reached an agreement. I gave him his share of the mutilated money and I let him go, convinced that he would keep his promise. But toward ten o’clock, when the captain was about to send the launch ashore, the wireless operator told us that Nikolaïa was calling. More dead than alive, I went into his office with the captain. He gave me the message signed Ivanof which instructed us to proceed to Batoum. Such a radical change of program perplexed us completely. Why should we go to Batoum when it was so simple to take you on at Nikolaïa? The captain smelled a rat. Mr. and Mrs. Maughan did not know what to say. I was betwixt and between. We argued for half an hour. Finally, I told the captain to take up the anchor. After all, it would have been too tragic to have missed you at Batoum just because we had misinterpreted the telegram. The yacht was already under way when a second message arrived to this effect: Disregard previous message. Plans changed. Come immediately pick up sick man on dock. Urgent. Ivanof.

  “The captain countermanded his orders and prepared the launch. You know the rest.”

  While I dressed myself in a blue flannel suit which Maughan was kind enough to lend me, I gave Griselda the key to the mystery by telling her about Madam Mouravieff’s unexpected intervention. She shivered at the thought that the little Russian had failed by a hair’s-breadth to turn me over to the executioner. But I appeased this new fit of hysterics by taking Griselda in my arms and kissing her.

  All the yacht’s passengers assembled at a buffet supper served in the dining-saloon. I kept the promise I had made to my comrades and presented them successively to Griselda:

  “Mr. Ivanof—a pianist virtuoso, who has spent much time in Russian jails. Commandant Lobatchof, of the Imperial Navy, degraded by the Soviets to the more modest post of wireless operator. Comrade Chapinski, ex-delegate of the Tcheka at Nikolaïa—Communist yesterday, capitalist today.”

  My friends smiled—Chapinski first of all. Ivanof bowed graciously before the Princess. Lobatchof had already saluted her, his hand to his forehead. Chapinski approached, put his heels together, kissed the Princess’s wrist the way an abbé of the eighteenth century might have done, and said:

  “Comrade Princess, I present to you this evening, for the first and last time, my scarlet, Socialist homage, for tomorrow I shall adore once more what I burned up nearly four years ago!”

  No one could have admitted his conversion more frankly. We were just taking our places at the table when the captain came down from the bridge. He announced gravely:

  “We have passed the limit of the territorial waters.”

  And, turning to the three Russians, he added, “You are now, gentlemen, under the protection of the American flag and no commander of a Soviet vessel has the right to arrest you.”

  Ivanof, Chapinski, and Lobatchof rose and, facing the Princess, emptied their glasses in honor of the Stars and Stripes. We got up from the table at two o’clock in the morning. In the passageway, I stopped in the doorway of Griselda’s suite and asked her:

  “Dear, would you mind showing me my cabin?”

  She naïvely pointed to her own and answered with her ever charming smile, “Darling, can you put up with this little cell after your experience in the prison at Nikolaïa?”

  I enfolded Griselda in my arms and we bolted the door behind us. The turbine engines vibrated fiercely. But the yacht scarcely rocked on the calm sea.

  She asked, “What are you thinking about, Gerard?”

  And I replied, “I am thinking of the very good, the very gentle, and the saintly Madam Mouravieff who made Death an intimate friend of mine and who gave back to me the only woman I have ever loved.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  OH! DJERRARD!

  MONACO. THE NORTHERN STAR LAY AT ANCHOR in the harbor alongside of the Prince’s yacht. We had taken lunch on board beneath the blue and orange awning. On the left, the Casino stood like a great cake, garnished angelically with palm trees, far too green. The mountains rose in grayish splendor beneath the heavy sky, spotted with passing clouds. Below, the pink cubes, which form the houses of Turbie, seemed to melt in the sun, like so many raspberry ices on a radiator.

  Griselda and Ruth Maughan had gone ashore to do some shopping. I knew that they would soon return laden with rouge, powder, lipsticks, hairpins, expensive perfumes and American lotions in hexagonal bottles, adorned with the profiles of Greek goddesses.

  Mr. Maughan had gone to his cabin to get some cigars. I was lounging in my deck-chair. The joy of living again. Perfect quietude. Life is beautiful when one has touched Death’s clammy fingers. I was thinking about our flight across the Black Sea; my farewell to Lobatchof and Chapinski in front of the Golden Horn. For, the latter, swathed in banknotes, wanted to begin all over again in Constantinople. Communist by accident, businessman by vocation, he will one day be a banker in Pera, a café proprietor in Berlin or an importer of caviar in London. Lobatchof, a student, had also left us. But, like Candide, he regretted his little signal station, where in the shade of the maritime flag, he had cultivated Pouchkine, Emerson, and Schopenhauer. He was going to retire in a tiny house in Disdarié, covered with red roses and surrounded by stalwart trees. Facing the Bosphorus, which invariably incites meditation, he would dream of the days before the Revolution when no one presumed to spit in the corridors of the Palais d’Hiver, when the dirty hands of Red guards never stained the Gobelins of the beautiful Kchessinkaïa, and when the virginal chambers of the Smolny Institute were not infested by lousy sailors or by dictators with low foreheads.

  My friend Ivanof, my real liberator, had remained on board at Griselda’s insistence. She had promised to finance a concert for him at Carnegie Hall in New York. Seated at the piano, he had charmed away the hours of our crossing and had put my second honeymoon with Griselda to music.

  A steward interrupted the train of my thoughts:

  “A telegram for you, sir—Jenkins has just come from the local office.”

  Doubtless it was from Lady Diana to whom I had cabled from Constantinople. I opened the blue paper:

  Surprised beyond words at your unbelievable adventure. Varichkine also. Both congratulate you on your fortunate escape. Our marriage will take place June 26th unless something unforeseen occurs. Ask the Princess Séliman to do me the honor to attend. But, if possible, on receipt of this telegram, come to my castle at Glensloy, Loch Lomond. Want awfully to see you. Have noticed something which disturbs me. Affectionately. Diana.

  Maughan appeared just as I was folding up the dispatch. He joked, “News from the beautiful Irina?”

  “No, my dear chap. Lady Diana Wynham invites Griselda and me to her marriage to Varichkine on June twenty-sixth, or in ten days to be exact.”

  “She is marrying a Russian? What a singular idea!”

  “Worthy only of the ‘Madonna of the Sleeping Cars.’ And besides, you forget that this Russian proletarian of today is worth more than a Grand Duke of another generation since, thanks to him, the Telav concession is going to fill their wedding cup with oil. It’s another one of those savory bits of irony which Destiny, ever an astute trickster, loves to reserve for us. This Communist, in being unfaithful to the Marxian code and in betraying his comrades for the sake of occidental capitalists, is going, through the medium of his future wife, to gather in a portion of the fortune of nationalized Russia. I call it a nice coup. By effecting the Red, he gets the White, and thereby wins the game.”

  “How can Lady Diana Wynham, who is always upheld as one of the leaders of British Society, how can a woman who is so notoriously beautiful—”

  “But don’t forget that she is almost ruined financially.”

  “Neverth
eless, how can she, who is considered in New York as one of the Three Graces of Hyde Park, consent to marry a supporter of the Soviets?”

  “You don’t understand the situation, my dear friend. It’s a rare thing to find an income of a million dollars in the hands of some old ‘beau.’ The titled heads of the United Kingdom have been hard hit by the war and the consequent taxes. Lady Diana Wynham, who could never be happy without a great deal of money, would have a difficult time choosing a suitable husband among the bachelors, widowers, and divorcés of her own caste. So, she had practically decided to marry, or at least to give her left hand to some nouveau riche or to some bloated manufacturer. Suddenly she discovered a Communist, a sincere destroyer of modern society, a man who tears down with hammer and chisel—granted a fortune, she prefers him. You know Lady Diana’s taste for everything that is strange, new, original, unexpected. A great lady, who having descended from the ancient Scottish kings, marries a Communist to make him the vice-president of an oil company. You can’t beat that! Isn’t that about enough to keep the English newspapermen busy, and to make the transatlantic cables hum? You can imagine what a time your American reporters will have. I can see the headlines now: ‘Sudden conversion of an amorous Communist.’ ‘Lady Diana Wynham marries the Red Hydra!’ ‘From Moscow to Piccadilly!’ ‘Cupid dips his arrows in oil.’ And a hundred more like that!”

  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 yo
u 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!”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  SCOTCH THISTLES SOMETIMES PRICK

  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?”