drinking capacity seemed to be infinity, and so he leaned back and coldly scrutinized the musician’s shabby exterior. “I think that I can risk it now,” he mused, and then, in a crisp, hard voice, he suddenly said: “I don’t mind parting with a twenty-pound note, Casimir, if you will tell me all you know about that beauty. You need it now—more than I. I am to be the judge of the value of your story, however. Mark me, I know the main features, but I also know that you have met her in the old days.” The broken-down artist flushed under the changed relation of guest and paid tool.
He uneasily stammered, as he filled a brandy glass, “As a loan—as a loan!” But Hawke was sternly business-like in his reply.
“Don’t make any pretenses with me. You are hard down on your luck, and you know it. This is a mere matter of business.” He unfolded a bundle of notes and carelessly tossed two ten-pound notes over to Casimir, who seized them with trembling fingers. The pitiful sum represented to the artist two months of his meager salary. Here was absinthe unlimited, a little roulette, a new frock for Madame Frangipanni, perhaps even a dress coat for himself.
“How old do you think Alixe is?” unsteadily began the artist.
“I should say about twenty-five,” gallantly replied the Major.
“We will premise that she is thirty-three,” confidently began the musician, “or even thirty-five. When I was a young fool at Warsaw, eighteen years old,” he babbled. “I was the local prodigy. My first essays in public were, of course, concerts, and I was soon the vogue. And, later, asked as an artistic guest to the chateaux of the nobility in Poland, Kowno, Vitebsk, Wilna, Minsk, Grodno and Volhynia. I was a poet in thought, a lover of all womankind in my dreams, and a conspirator in the inmost chambers of my defiant Polish nature.”
“They made me the cat’s-paw of adroit adventurers who were filling their pockets from wealthy Polish sympathizers in France and America, and some of them were Russian paid spies. I braved all the risks. I was the secret means of communication of the highest circles of our cult of Rebellion. Fool that I was, wandering from province to province, I lived the life of a mad enthusiast. The proud memories of Poland were mine, the spirit of her music, arts, and poetry had cast its witchery over me. Her history, the tragedy of a crownless queen of sorrows, had transported me into a dreamy idealism. I was soon the confidant of our seductive mobile Polish beauties. Sinuous, insincere, changeful, passionate, and burning with the flames of Love and Life, I was, at once, their idol and their plaything, their hero, and their willing slave.
“For then, the spirit of old Poland rang out in my numbers, and I waked the quivering echoes of woman’s heart at will. It was in seventy-three that I was sent on a special mission to Prince Pierre Troubetskoi’s splendid chateau at Jitomir in Volhynia. The crafty Russians were watching us even there, and were busied in assembling troops secretly, at Kiev and Wilna. To another was given the proud place of secret spy over the higher circles of Wilna, while my duty was to watch Jitomir and Kiev. Troubetskoi was a bold gallant fellow, an ardent Muscovite, and had secretly returned from a long sojourn in Paris. He was in close touch with the Governors of Volhynia, Kiev, and Podolia, and we feared his sword within, his Parisian connections without. An evil star brought me into his household as his guest. For nearly a year I was kept vibrating between the points of danger to us, my personal headquarters being at the Chateau of Jitomir. And there I lived out my brief heart-life, for there I met Valerie Troubetskoi. No one seemed to know where Pierre had found her, but later I learned her story from her own lips.
“That is, all of the story of a woman’s heart-life which is ever unveiled to any man! She was beautiful beyond—compare, her wistful tenderness shining out as the moon, softer than the fierce noonday glare of the passion-transfigured faces of our Polish beauties. For they loved, for Love’s own sake, and Valerie Troubetskoi offered up the chalice of her own heart in silent sadness. I never saw so lovely a being.”
“Did she look like that?” suddenly demanded Hawke, thrusting a photograph before the haggard eyes of the broken artist. He gasped, and tears gathered in his lashes. “Valerie, herself, and, as I knew her only before her fatal illness had marked her down. Did Alixe give you this?” He clutched at it with his trembling hands.
“Go on,” harshly said Alan Hawke, “the hour is late!”
The Pole buried his face in his thinned hands, and then brokenly resumed: “The old story—the only one you know. She was about my own age; Troubetskoi was nearly always away; perhaps he thought to trap all my traitorous circle through me, or else he was in the secret service of the hungry Russian eagle. Valerie roamed silently through the great halls of Jitomir, saddened and lonely, for their union was childless. My heart spoke to her own in my music; she knew the prayer of my soul, though my lips were silent. For I madly adored her. Then, then, I was a man! My life belonged to Poland, my soul to art, but my heart was a sealed temple of love, a temple where Valerie, the beloved, the secretly worshiped, sat alone on her throne.
“One day a woman, radiant in youth, and reflecting Valerie’s own beauty, was brought to the chateau by Troubetskoi, who had journeyed on to Vienna. It was Alixe Delavigne, the woman whom I saw last with you. A month later Valerie called me to her side: ‘My poor Casimir,’ she said, as I knelt at her feet, ‘I am dying! The struggle will not be a long one. I know the secret of your boyish heart. Your eyes have spoken and your music has reached my heart. Your love is written in your songs without words. When you have forgotten me, there is Alixe; she is alone upon earth. Let me seal your heart to hers, and even in death I shall feel that I love you both.’ Then,” the artist sobbed, “I lost my head. I told her all in mad, burning words. She raised her eyes to mine, and softly said: ‘I shall see you no more unless Alixe is with us, for I love Pierre and he loves me. When I am gone, Alixe will be the only one who knows the secret of my life.’
“It was two months later—for I would not leave her side, even Pierre Troubetskoi could not see her passing away, for it was a mysterious malady—when a sudden alarm brought me to my senses. My secret society work was done, and yet I lingered there, at the very steps of the scaffold. Alixe Delavigne burst into my room at midnight.
“ ‘Hasten!’ she cried. ‘Even now the Cossacks are surrounding the house!’ She let me out through the secret passage of the old Chateau. A cloak was thrown over me by the Intendant. He was a Pole—and one true to the old blood. Alixe pressed a purse upon me. An address in Paris was whispered. ‘I will write! Go! For Valerie’s sake, go!’
“Forty-eight hours later I crossed the Galician frontier at Lemberg disguised as a Polish peasant. My guardian, the Intendant, turned me over to our friends in the valley of the Styr. After six months of wandering, I finally reached Paris in safety. There were sorrowful letters awaiting me. Valerie was hidden forever in the yawning tombs of the gloomy old chapel of Jitomir, and Alixe herself wrote of Pierre Troubetlskoi’s generous blinding of the pursuit. I was, however, prosecuted and hunted. I fled to America, for all our plans of revolt were miserably wrecked—and by Polish traitors!
“Two years later, I learned from a fellow refugee that Pierre Troubetskoi had been killed by accident in a great forest battle. And to Alixe Delavigne, all the wealth which would have been Valerie’s was left by the lion-hearted man who awoke too late to the early doom of his beloved.
“I knew naught of the family history save that the sisters were the daughters of Colonel Delavigne, a gallant French officer, who was murdered by the Communists in seventy-one.” Alan Hawke was now sternly eyeing the musician, who abruptly concluded: “I have never met Alixe Delavigne since. I dare not return to Poland. My own course has been steadily downward, and, beyond knowing that she still possesses the splendid domains of Jitomir, we are strangers to each other. Polish refugees have told me that she has always administered the vast estate with liberal kindness to all. And now you will tell me of her?” The tremulous hand of Wieniawski raised
