Chapter 17: More Mystery

I discovered Smith sitting on the rim of the fountain all alone in the dusk.

“Good heavens!” I blurted out, “was any man ever so completely entangled in the web of intrigue as I am? Plot, counterplot, camouflage, mystery—I’m in the very middle of the whole mess!

“I don’t know who anybody is or what they’re up to! Who is Thusis? Who is Clelia? Who is Josephine Vannis? Raoul? The Countess Manntrapp? And who are you, for that matter? I don’t know! I don’t pretend to guess.”

“What’s the trouble?” he asked, amused.

“Trouble! I don’t know. There’s all kinds of trouble lying around. I’m in several varieties of it. Where is the traveling circus?”

“In Tsar Ferdie’s apartments.”

“Probably conspiring,” I added.

“Probably.”

“What are you doing out here?”

“Oh, I’m not conspiring,” he said, laughing, “I’m no saint to converse with the fishes in your fountain.”

“Where is Clelia?”

He said he didn’t know but somehow I gathered the impression that she was somewhere behind the lighted kitchen windows and that Smith was hanging around in hopes she might come out to take the air by starlight.

“Have you seen Thusis?” I asked guiltily. And felt my ears burning in the dark.

“Why, yes,” he said. “She walked down the road a few moments ago.”

“Alone?”

“Yes.”

“Probably she went to take a look at the snow blockade,” said I.

He nodded.

“Perhaps,” I added carelessly, “I had better saunter down that way.”

“No,” he said, “you’d better not.”

“Why?” I asked sharply.

“Starlight and Thusis might go to a young man’s head.”

“I’m no longer in love,” said I in the most solemn tones I had ever used. “I am now able to contemplate Thusis without the stormy emotions which once assailed me, Smith. All that is over. To me she is merely an interesting and rather pathetic woman. I feel kindly toward Thusis. I wish her well. I would willingly do anything I could to——”

“Piffle.”

“What the devil do you mean by that?” I demanded.

“What the devil do you mean by kidding yourself?”

“Haven’t I just explained?”

“You’ve given yourself away. A man doesn’t utter pious sentiments about a girl he no longer cares for. He doesn’t bother to explain his regenerated attitude toward her. He doesn’t trouble himself to talk about her at all. Nor does he go roaming after her by starlight. If you really care for her no longer, let her alone. If you do care you’ll get mad at what I say—as you’re doing—and start off to find her in the starlight—as you’re doing——”

But I was too exasperated to listen to such stuff.

I discovered her, finally, in the starlight just ahead of me, —a slim shadow on the high-road, outlined against a stupendous mass of snow which choked the valley like a glacier.

She heard my steps on the hard stone road, looked over her shoulder, then turned sharply, paying me no further attention, even when I came up beside her.

“Gracious!” said I, attempting an easy tone and manner; “what a tremendous fall was here!”

“I have known greater falls,” she said very quietly.

“Really?”

“Yes; I once had a friend whose fall was greater.”

“Poor fellow! He fell off a precipice, I presume.”

“He fell from his high estate, Mr. O’Ryan.”

“Oh. Did he also have an estate in the Alps?”

She said scornfully: “He fell in my esteem—deep, Mr. O’Ryan—into depths so terrible that, even if I leaned over to look, I could never again perceive him.”

“Poor fellow,” I muttered, chilled to the bone again.

“Yes.” she said calmly, “it was tragic.”

“D-did you care for him, Thusis?” I ventured, scared half to death.

“I trusted him.”

“D-don’t you trust him any more?”

“He is dead—to me,” she said coldly.

There ensued a silence which presently I became unable to endure.

“You know, Thusis, that man isn’t dead——”

“He might better be!”

“You don’t understand him!”

“I no longer wish to.”

“He loves you!”

“He does not!” she cried in tones so fierce that I almost jumped.

“Thusis,” said I in a miserable voice, “you hurt and wounded that man until he was almost out of his senses——”

“And he lost no time in consoling himself with another woman!”

“He didn’t know what he was doing——”

“He seemed to! ... So did she!”

“Thusis—”

“Did you kiss her?”

“I——”

“Did you?”

“Yes.”

I was so scared that my teeth chattered when Thusis turned on me in the starlight.

Her gray eyes were aflame; her little hands were tightly clenched. I hoped she would upper-cut me and mercifully put me to sleep, for this scene was like a nightmare to me.

Then, of a sudden, the slender figure seemed to wilt before my eyes, —shrink, bend, stand swaying with desperate hands covering the face.

“Michael,” she whispered. “Michael!”—and her voice ended in a sigh.

Scared as I was I took her in my arms. She rested her face against my shoulder.

“You—you don’t really care,” I stammered, “do you, Thusis? Do you, my darling——”

“Oh, I don’t know—I don’t know. You’ve hurt me, Michael; I’m all hurt and—and quivering with your wound. I don’t know!—I don’t understand myself. My heart is sore—all raw and sore. So is my mind—the blow you dealt hurts me there, too——”

“But, Thusis dear! You wounded me, too——”

“Oh, I know ... I scarcely knew what I said. I don’t know now what I’m saying—what I’m doing—here in your arms——” She tried to release herself, and, failing, buried her face against my shoulder with a convulsive little shudder.

“You must love me,” I whispered unsteadily. “I can’t live without you, Thusis.”

“But I can’t love you, Michael.”

“Can’t you find it in your heart to care for me?”

“In my heart, perhaps ... But not in my mind.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean exactly that ... I can’t consult my—my heart alone ... I must not. I dare not. I am obliged to consult my senses, too. And—dear Michael—my senses tell me that I may not care for you—must not fall in love—with you——”

“Why?”

After a silence she lifted her lovely head and looked up at me out of beautiful, distressed eyes that dumbly asked indulgence.

“Well, then, you need not tell me, Thusis.”

“You’ll know, some day.”

“I’ll know, some day, why I won you in spite of everything.”

She gently shook her head.

“Yes,” said I, “I shall win you, Thusis.”

“My heart—perhaps.”

“Your mind, too.”

We remained so, for a while, not speaking lest the spell be broken. And at last she slowly disengaged herself from my arms, then, confronting me, placed both her hands in mine with a sudden impulse that thrilled me.

“Let it remain this way, then,” she said. “Win my heart, if you care to. I don’t mind going through life with my heart in your kind keeping, Michael. I had rather it were so. I should be less unhappy.”

“Unhappy?”

“Yes—because I am going to be unhappy anyway. And if I knew that you once cared, it would be easier for me—in after years ... Michael——”

“Yes?”

“Would you care for that much of me?”

I drew her nearer.

“You must not kiss me,” she whispered.

“I——”

“Please ... It is a sign of troth plighted ... And is desecration else ... Troth plighted is a holy thing. And that cannot be between us, Michael. That cannot happen ... And so, you must not touch my lips with yours—dear Michael ... Only my hand—if you do care for me——”

I kissed her hand—then, slowly, each finger and the fragrant palm, until it seemed to disconcert her and she withdrew it.

“Now take me back,” she said in an uncertain voice that trembled slightly, “and remain my dear, frank, boyish friend ... And let me plague you a little, Michael. Won’t you? And not be angry?” She asked so sweetly that I began to laugh—covered her hand with kisses—and laughed again.

“You little girl,” I exclaimed—”oddly mature in some ways—a child in others—you may torment me and laugh at me now to your heart’s content. Isn’t laughter, after all, your heaven born privilege?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Oh, Thusis! Thusis! I am more convinced than ever of what I have half believed. Before I ever set eyes on you I had begun to care for you. Before I ever heard your voice I had begun to fall in love with you. Thusis—my Thusis—loveliest—most wonderful of God’s miracles since Eden bloomed—you are The Laughing Girl!”

“Michael——”

“You are!”

Suddenly, as she walked lightly beside me, resting on my arm, she flung up her head with a reckless, delicious little laugh: “I am The Laughing Girl!”

A slight yet exquisite shock went clean through me as I realized that even to the instant of her avowal I had not been absolutely convinced of her identity with the picture.

“And I wish to tell you,” she went on, her smile changing, “that when the photograph—which unhappily has become so notorious—was taken, I never dreamed that it would be stolen, reproduced in thousands, and sold in every city of Europe!”

“Stolen!”

“Certainly! Do you imagine that I would have permitted its publicity and sale? Never has such an exasperating incident occurred in my life! And I am helpless. I can’t prevent it.”

“Who stole it?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea. It was this way, Michael; it happened in my own home on the island of Naxos, and my sister Clelia and I were amusing ourselves with our cameras, dressing each other up and posing each other.

“And she dressed me—or rather almost un-dressed me—that way—isn’t it enough to make a saint swear—for when I had developed the plate and had started to print, somebody stole the plate from the sill of the open window. And the next thing we knew about it was when all Europe was flooded with my picture under which was printed that dubious caption—’The Laughing Girl.’ Can you imagine my astonishment and rage? Could anything more utterly horrid happen to a girl? Had I at least been fully dressed—but no: there I was in every shop window among actresses, queens, demi-mondaines, and dissipated dukes just as Clelia had posed me in the intimacy of our own rooms, all over jewels, some of me mercifully veiled in a silk scarf, audaciously at ease in my apparent effrontery—oh, Michael, it nearly killed me!”

“Didn’t you do anything about it?”

“Indeed I did! But where these photographs were being printed we never could find out. All we were able to do was to forbid their importation into Italy.”

“How did you manage that?” I asked curiously.

She hesitated, then carelessly: “We had some slight influence at court——”

“Influence?“

“Possibly it amounted to that,” she said indifferently.

“You are known at court, Thusis?”

She shrugged: “We are not, I believe, completely unknown.” She walked on beside me in silence for a few moments, then:

“I do not wish to convey to you that I am persona grata in Italian court circles.”

“But if you are known at court, dear Thusis, how can you be otherwise than welcome there?”

“I am not welcome there.”

“That is impossible.”

“You adorable boy,” she laughed, “I must beg of you to occupy yourself with your own affairs and not continue to occupy yourself with mine.”

“That’s a heartless snub, Thusis.”

“I don’t mean it so,” she said, her hand tightening impulsively on my arm. “But, Michael dear, I don’t wish you to speculate about my affairs. It does no good. Besides, the situation in which I find myself is fearfully complex, and you couldn’t help me out of it.”

“Perhaps I can, Thusis.”

She laughed: “You are delightfully romantic. You almost resemble one of the old time cloak-and-sword lovers of that dear Romance which died so long ago on the printed page as well as in human hearts.”

“It is not dead in my breast, Thusis.”

“It is dead in every breast. Only its frail ghost haunts our hearts at moments.”

“When I offered you my heart, Thusis, did you suppose it empty save for a trace of selfish passion?”

“Men are men ... I do not understand their hearts.”

“Take mine; tear it apart, look into it, —even if I die of it. Will you?”

Her laugh became less genuine and there was no gaiety in it.

“Tell me what I should find in your heart if I dissected it?”

“Love—and a sword!”