Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  Baraka thought that if he was able to dig through the dam the water would run in again, and she watched the sand for hours, but it was drier than ever. The shadow broadened again, and crept up the rock quickly as the afternoon passed.

  It was a long time since she had heard any sound from the cave; she went to the entrance and listened, but all was quite still. Perhaps the traveller had fallen asleep from exhaustion, too tired even to drag himself out into the air when he could work no longer. She sat down in the entrance and waited.

  An hour passed. Perhaps he was dead. At the mere inward suggestion Baraka sprang to her feet, and her heart beat frantically, and stood still an instant, and then beat again as if it would burst, and she could hardly breathe. She steadied herself against the rock, and then went in to know the truth, feeling her way, and instinctively shading her eyes as many people do in the dark.

  A breath of cool air made her open them, and to her amazement there was light before her. She thought she must have turned quite round while she was walking, and that she was going back to the entrance, so she turned again. But in a few seconds there was light before her once more, and soon she saw the dry sand, full of her footprints and the traveller’s, and then the hollow where the mine was came in sight.

  She retraced her steps a second time, saw the light as before, ran forward on the smooth sand and stumbled upon a heap of earth and stones, just as she saw the sky through an irregular opening on the level of her face. Scarcely believing her senses she thrust out her hand towards the hole. It was real, and she was not dreaming; the traveller had got out and was gone, recking little of what might happen to her, since he was free with his treasure.

  Baraka crept up the slope of earth as quickly as she could and got out; if she had hoped to find him waiting for her she was disappointed, for he was nowhere to be seen. He had got clear away, with his camel-bag full of rubies. A moment later she was lying on the ground, with her face in the little stream, drinking her fill, and forgetful even of the man she loved. In order to deprive them of water the men had dug a channel by which it ran down directly from the spring to the ravine on that side; then they had blocked up the entrance with stones and earth, believing that one man’s strength could never suffice to break through, and they had gone away. They had probably buried or burnt Baraka’s clothes, for she did not see them anywhere.

  She ate some of the dates from the dead man’s wallet, and a bit of the dry black bread, and felt revived, since her greatest need had been for water, and that was satisfied. But when she had eaten and drunk, and had washed herself in the stream and twisted up her hair, she sat down upon a rock; and she felt so tired that she would have fallen asleep if the pain in her heart had not kept her awake. She clasped her hands together on her knees and bent over them, rocking herself.

  When nearly an hour had passed she looked up and saw that the sun was sinking, for the shadows were turning purple in the deep gorge, and there was a golden light on the peaks above. She listened then, holding her breath; but there was no sound except the tinkling of the tiny stream as it fell over a ledge at some distance below her, following its new way down into the valley.

  She rose at last, looked upward, and seemed about to go away when a thought occurred to her, which afterwards led to very singular consequences. Instead of going down the valley or climbing up out of it, she went back to the entrance of the cave, taking the wallet with her, dragged herself in once more over the loose stones and earth, reached the secret hollow where the pool had been, and made straight for the little mine of precious stones. The traveller had broken out many more than he had been able to carry, but she did not try to collect them all. She was not altogether ignorant of the trade carried on by the men of her family for generations, and though she had not the least idea of the real value of the finest of the rubies, she knew very well that it would be wise to take many small ones which she could exchange for clothing and necessaries with the first women she met in the hills, while hiding the rest of the supply she would be able to carry in the wallet.

  When she had made her wise selection, she looked once more towards the quicksand, and left the place for ever. Once outside she began to climb the rocks as fast as she could, for very soon it would be night and she would have to lie down and wait many hours for the day, since there was no moon, and the way was very dangerous, even for a Tartar girl who could almost tread on air.

  High up on the mountain, over the dry well where Baraka and the stranger had been imprisoned, the vulture perched alone with empty craw and drooping wings. But it was of no use for him to wait; the living, who might have died of hunger and thirst, were gone, and the body of dead Saäd lay fathoms deep in the quicksand, in the very maw of the mountain.

  CHAPTER II

  THERE WAS GOOD copy for the newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic in the news that the famous lyric soprano, Margarita da Cordova, whose real name was Miss Margaret Donne, was engaged to Monsieur Konstantin Logotheti, a Greek financier of large fortune established in Paris, and almost as well known to art-collectors as to needy governments, would-be promoters, and mothers of marriageable daughters. The mothers experienced a momentary depression such as Logotheti himself felt when an historical Van Dyck which he wanted was secretly sold out of a palace in Genoa to a rival collector and millionaire for a price which he would willingly have given; the people he knew shrugged their shoulders at the news that he was to marry a singer, or shook their heads wisely, or smiled politely, according to the scale of the manners they had inherited or acquired; the shopkeepers sent him thousands of insinuating invitations to inspect and buy all the things which a rich man is supposed to give to his bride, from diamonds and lace and eighty horse-power motor-cars to dressing-cases, stationery and silver saucepans; and the newspapers were generously jubilant, and rioted for a few days in a perfect carnival of adjectives.

  The people who made the least fuss about the marriage were Cordova and Logotheti themselves. They were both so well used to perpetual publicity that they did not resent being written and talked about for a time as if they were a treaty, a revolution, a divorce, or a fraudulent trust. But they did not encourage the noise, nor go about side by side in an offensively happy way, nor accept all the two hundred and eighty-seven invitations to dine out together which they received from their friends during three weeks. It was as much as their overworked secretaries could do to answer all these within a reasonable and decent time.

  The engagement was made known during the height of the London season, not long after they had both been at a week-end party at Craythew, Lord Creedmore’s place in Derbyshire, where they had apparently come to a final understanding after knowing each other more than two years. Margaret was engaged to sing at Covent Garden that summer, and the first mention of the match was coupled with the information that she intended to cancel all her engagements and never appear in public again. The result was that the next time she came down the stage to sing the Waltz Song in Romeo and Juliet she received a tremendous ovation before she opened her handsome lips, and another when she had finished the air; and she spent one of the happiest evenings she remembered.

  Though she was at heart a nice English girl, not much over twenty-four years of age, the orphan daughter of an Oxford don who had married an American, she had developed, or fallen, to the point at which very popular and successful artists cannot live at all without applause, and are not happy unless they receive a certain amount of adulation. Even the envy they excite in their rivals is delicious, if not almost necessary to them.

  Margaret’s real nature had not been changed by a success that had been altogether phenomenal and had probably not been approached by any soprano since Madame Bonanni; but a second nature had grown upon it and threatened to hide it from all but those who knew her very well indeed. The inward Margaret was honest and brave, rather sensitive, and still generous; the outward woman, the primadonna whom most people saw, was self-possessed to a fault, imperious when contradicted, and coolly rut
hless when her artistic fame was at stake. The two natures did not agree well together, and made her wretched when they quarrelled, but Logotheti, who was going to take her for better, for worse, professed to like them both, and was the only man she had ever known who did. That was one reason why she was going to marry him, after having refused him about a dozen times.

  She had loved another man as much as she was capable of loving, and at one time he had loved her, but a misunderstanding and her devotion to her art had temporarily separated them; and later, when she had almost told him that she would have him if he asked her, he had answered her quite frankly that she was no longer the girl he had cared for, and he had suddenly disappeared from her life altogether. So Logotheti, brilliant, very rich, gifted, gay, and rather exotic in appearance and manner, but tenacious as a bloodhound, had won the prize after a struggle that had lasted two years. She had accepted him without much enthusiasm at the last, and without any great show of feeling.

  ‘Let’s try it,’ she had said, and he had been more than satisfied.

  After a time, therefore, they told their friends that they were going to ‘try it.’

  The only woman with whom the great singer was at all intimate was the Countess Leven, Lord Creedmore’s daughter, generally called ‘Lady Maud,’ whose husband had been in the diplomacy, and, after vainly trying to divorce her, had been killed in St. Petersburg by a bomb meant for a Minister. The explosion had been so terrific that the dead man’s identity had only been established by means of his pocket-book, which somehow escaped destruction. So Lady Maud was a childless widow of eight-and-twenty. Her father, when he had no prospect of ever succeeding to the title, had been a successful barrister, and then a hard-working Member of Parliament, and he had been from boyhood the close friend of Margaret’s father. Hence the intimacy that grew up quickly between the two women when they at last met, though they had not known each other as children, because the lawyer had lived in town and his friend in Oxford.

  ‘So you’re going to try it, my dear!’ said Lady Maud, when she heard the news.

  She had a sweet low voice, and when she spoke now it was a little sad; for she had ‘tried it,’ and it had failed miserably. But she knew that the trial had not been a fair one; the only man she had ever cared for had been killed in South Africa, and as she had not even the excuse of having been engaged to him, she had married with indifference the first handsome man with a good name and a fair fortune who offered himself. He chanced to be a Russian diplomatist, and he turned out a spendthrift and an unfaithful husband. She was too kind-hearted to be glad that he had been blown to atoms by dynamite, but she was much too natural not to enjoy the liberty restored to her by his destruction; and she had not the least intention of ever ‘trying it’ again.

  ‘You don’t sound very enthusiastic,’ laughed Margaret, who had no misgivings to speak of, and was generally a cheerful person. ‘If you don’t encourage me I may not go on.’

  ‘There are two kinds of ruined gamblers,’ answered Lady Maud; ‘there are those that still like to watch other people play, and those who cannot bear the sight of a roulette table. I’m one of the second kind, but I’ll come to the wedding all the same, and cheer like mad, if you ask me.’

  ‘That’s nice of you. I really think I mean to marry him, and I wish you would help me with my wedding-gown, dear. It would be dreadful if I looked like Juliet, or Elsa, or Lucia! Everybody would laugh, especially as Konstantin is rather of the Romeo type, with his almond-shaped eyes and his little black moustache! I suppose he really is, isn’t he?’

  ‘Perhaps — just a little. But he is a very handsome fellow.’

  Lady Maud’s lips quivered, but Margaret did not see.

  ‘Oh, I know!’ she cried, laughing and shaking her head. ‘You once called him “exotic,” and he is — but I’m awfully fond of him all the same. Isn’t that enough to marry on when there’s everything else? You really will help me with my gown, won’t you? You’re such an angel!’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’ll do anything you like. Are you going to have a regular knock-down-and-drag-out smash at St. George’s? The usual thing?’

  Lady Maud did not despise slang, but she made it sound like music.

  ‘No,’ answered Margaret, rather regretfully. ‘We cannot possibly be married till the season’s quite over, or perhaps in the autumn, and then there will be nobody here. I’m not sure when I shall feel like it! Besides, Konstantin hates that sort of thing.’

  ‘Do you mean to say that you would like a show wedding in Hanover Square?’ inquired Lady Maud.

  ‘I’ve never done anything in a church,’ said the Primadonna, rather enigmatically, but as if she would like to.

  ‘“Anything in a church,”’ repeated her friend, vaguely thoughtful, and with the slightest possible interrogation. ‘That’s a funny way of looking at it!’

  Margaret was a little ashamed of what she had said so naturally.

  ‘I think Konstantin would like to have it in a chapel-of-ease in the Old Kent Road!’ she said, laughing. ‘He sometimes talks of being married in tweeds and driving off in a hansom! Then he suggests going to Constantinople and getting it done by the Patriarch, who is his uncle. Really, that would be rather smart, wouldn’t it?’

  ‘Distinctly,’ assented Lady Maud. ‘But if you do that, I’m afraid I cannot help you with the wedding-gown. I don’t know anything about the dress of a Fanariote bride.’

  ‘Konstantin says they dress very well,’ Margaret said. ‘But of course it is out of the question to do anything so ridiculous. It will end in the chapel-of-ease, I’m sure. He always has his own way. That’s probably why I’m going to marry him, just because he insists on it. I don’t see any other very convincing reason.’

  Lady Maud could not think of anything to say in answer to this; but as she really liked the singer she thought it was a pity.

  Paul Griggs, the veteran man of letters, smiled rather sadly when she met him shopping in New Bond Street, and told him of Margaret’s engagement. He said that most great singers married because the only way to the divorce court led up the steps of the altar. Though he knew the world he was not a cynic, and Lady Maud herself wondered how long it would be before Logotheti and his wife separated.

  ‘But they are not married yet,’ Griggs added, looking at her with the quietly ready expression of a man who is willing that his indifferent words should be taken to have a special meaning if the person to whom he has spoken chooses, or is able, to understand them as they may be understood, but who is quite safe from being suspected of suggesting anything if there is no answering word or glance.

  Lady Maud returned his look, but her handsome face grew rather cold.

  ‘Do you know of any reason why the marriage should not take place?’ she inquired after a moment.

  ‘If I don’t give any reason, am I ever afterwards to hold my peace?’ asked Griggs, with a faint smile on his weather-beaten face. ‘Are you publishing the bans? or are we thinking of the same thing?’

  ‘I suppose we are. Good-morning.’

  She nodded gravely and passed on, gathering up her black skirt a little, for there had been a shower. He stood still a moment before the shop window and looked after her, gravely admiring her figure and her walk, as he might have admired a very valuable thoroughbred. She was wearing mourning for her husband, not because any one would have blamed her if she had not done so, considering how he had treated her, but out of natural self-respect.

  Griggs also looked after her as she went away because he felt that she was not quite pleased with him for having suggested that he and she had both been thinking of the same thing.

  The thought concerned a third person, and one who rarely allowed himself to be overlooked; no less a man, in fact, than Mr. Rufus Van Torp, the American potentate of the great Nickel Trust, who was Lady Maud’s most intimate friend, and who had long desired to make the Primadonna his wife. He had bought a place adjoining Lord Creedmore’s, and there had lately been a good deal of q
uite groundless gossip about him and Lady Maud, which had very nearly become a scandal. The truth was that they were the best friends in the world, and nothing more; the millionaire had for some time been interested in an unusual sort of charity which almost filled the lonely woman’s life, and he had given considerable sums of money to help it. During the months preceding the beginning of this tale, he had also been the object of one of those dastardly attacks to which very rich and important financiers are more exposed than other men, and he had actually been accused of having done away with his partner’s daughter, who had come to her end mysteriously during a panic in a New York theatre. But, as I have told elsewhere, his innocence had been proved in the clearest possible manner, and he had returned to the United States to look after the interests of the Trust.

  When Griggs heard the news of Margaret’s engagement to Logotheti, he immediately began to wonder how Mr. Van Torp would receive the intelligence; and if it had not already occurred to Lady Maud that the millionaire might make a final effort to rout his rival and marry the Primadonna himself, the old author’s observation suggested such a possibility. Van Torp was a man who had fought up to success and fortune with little regard for the obstacles he found in his way; he had worked as a cowboy in his early youth, and was apt to look on his adversaries and rivals in life either as refractory cattle or as dangerous wild beasts; and though he had some of the old-fashioned ranchero’s sense of fair-play in a fight, he had much of the reckless daring and ruthless savagery that characterise the fast-disappearing Western desperado.

  Logotheti, on the other hand, was in many respects a true Oriental, supremely astute and superlatively calm, but imbued, at heart, with a truly Eastern contempt for any law that chanced to oppose his wish.

  Both men had practically inexhaustible resources at their command, and both were determined to marry the Primadonna. It occurred to Paul Griggs that a real struggle between such a pair of adversaries would be worth watching. There was unlimited money on both sides, and equal courage and determination. The Greek was the more cunning of the two, by great odds, and had now the considerable advantage of having been accepted by the lady; but the American was far more regardless of consequences to himself or to others in the pursuit of what he wanted, and, short of committing a crime, would put at least as broad an interpretation on the law. Logotheti had always lived in a highly civilised society, even in Constantinople, for it is the greatest mistake to imagine that the upper classes of Greeks, in Greece or Turkey, are at all deficient in cultivation. Van Torp, on the contrary, had run away from civilisation when a half-educated boy, he had grown to manhood in a community of men who had little respect for anything and feared nothing at all, and he had won success in a field where those who compete for it buy it at any price, from a lie to a life.