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dreadful thing: she might, she almost certainly would believe that he had made love to her
because of the money she was going to inherit!
Stunned, numb with apprehension, he stumbled toward a chair. The thing was simple. He
had been so quick to admire, so ready with a scheme for acquaintance--which would now prove
to be false. On the face of it, she could give no other interpretation to his actions. He would have
to tell her that she was rich. He would have next to tell her that he had deceived her. He would
have to make it clear that he knew all the time she was going to be rich. Then--the love he
offered would seem ignominious, scheming, mean. Only the greatness and integrity of his feeling
for her could have made him blind to so obvious and terrible a fact. But in the staggering
realization of the appearance of his behavior, she would be humanly compelled to overlook the
evidence of anything deeper.
At four in the morning Barney was still walking.
He had walked all night, cursing himself, his stupidity, cursing fate which led him to
meet love by giving him the tidings which would strangle it. He was angry and dramatic in the
dawn. He stalked and muttered. His feelings leaked through his muscles and more acid feelings
rose to take their place. He could see her, proud and aching. He could see himself, proud and
silent. Neither of them could behave in any other manner.
Day came. Pale and hollow-eyed he sat in an early-opened restaurant drinking coffee.
"Another cup," he said. And another. He was unconscious of fatigue. How she would despise
him.
She would go to Philadelphia. They would ride side by side on the train, unspeaking. Or
perhaps she would not even ride with him. "Maybe you did like me a little," she would say. "But
you came to get my money. How can I believe anything else? If you didn't--then why did you
make love to me first and tell me afterward? City men! Even that fool lecturer knew something!"
While he sat in the restaurant, staring wretchedly through the lettered plate-glass window,
he discovered one single idea which gave him relief. Mr. Jamison might understand. Faint hope
rose in him. For Mr. Jamison was a philosopher. He knew people and he understood them. If he
went to Mr. Jamison and told him in detail just what had occurred, perhaps he would win a
helpful ally against the dark hours ahead.
He glanced at his watch. In an hour Janet would go to business. Then he would call at her
house and talk with her foster father. He went to his hotel room and spent the time changing his
clothes and shaving with nervous hands. He smoked parts of eleven cigarettes. Then he started
down the street.
There was a limousine in front of the Jamison house. For a puzzled instant Barney's
weary mind realized only that it was familiar. Someone in it. Motor running--he could hear it
faintly at that distance. The gears meshed and it moved forward toward him. He remembered and
he saw simultaneously. A chauffeur. Inside, Chloe Laforge-Leigh and Janet! Their heads were
bent together in earnest conversation and she did not see him as he stopped, his face frozen. He
half waved. He swung around as if he were going to chase the car.
Then he walked weakly toward the house. Mr. Jamison was leaning on the fence looking
in the direction the limousine had taken.
CHAPTER X
To most American eyes Europe is Paris and London. It is a bright succession of sidewalk
cafés, monocles, mustaches, sidelong glances from mysterious ladies, with a cathedral obtruding
its spires here and there. Berlin, in the American mind, may exist nebulously as a smell of beer
and frankfurters. But Sabria, or any similar principality, has no being. Even the news reels fail to
convey its actuality. Its armies, its fertile fields and lofty mountains, the slightly barbaric
splendor of its pre-war court belong to limbo from which they emerge in newspaper items
skipped for cartoons and occurrences of domestic interest.
A Frenchman would know a good deal about Sabria. An Englishman would know a little-
-although he would not commit himself on his knowledge. But a citizen of the United States
would be blithely ignorant. In 1914 the Balkan barometer meant nothing. In 1930 Prince Rupert,
Valak, Duke of Lower Sabria, and the lesser titles of their retinue appearing frequently in the
newspapers meant very little more. As titles they were accepted calmly and except for a few
persons like Chloe who had devoted years to integrating the variations of European royal blood,
and possibly a dozen diplomats, it occurred to no one that Rupert's progenitors had followed
Attila to the sack of Rome or that the Pope himself had retired to Sabria in the remote eleven
hundreds.
The Sabrians themselves, however, were adequately conscious of their ancient glories.
Valak, who represented the kingdom and who faithfully and perhaps rightly believed that its
future depended on his activities, was unflinchingly motivated by that consciousness. It welled [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]