Chapter 23: Thusis

For a while the dancing was lively and good-humored hilarity reigned.

The Tzar of all the Bulgars had imbibed enough wine to dull, if not to obliterate that continual desire of his to slink into corners and peep out at a hostile world bent on his assassination. Only when somebody spoke to him too abruptly behind his back did the customary symptoms blanch his face and set his wild eyes roving and his big nose wrinkling like a boar which winds an enemy.

He was having as good a time as such a person can ever have; and toward supper time his exhilaration incited him to attempt a waddling sort of Bulgarian dance with the Countess Manntrapp—an amazing exhibition of mammoth movements on his part; and a sort of infernal and fascinating grace on the part of the lithe Countess.

Dancing with Thusis, I hastily led her out of their way, and everybody else stood in the circle, the center of which was pervaded by Ferdinand and his lively vis-à-vis.

Which performance presently stirred Admiral Lauterlaus from a somewhat beer-sodden lethargy, and he emitted raucous sounds of protest. But Baron Bummelzug began to snap his fingers and stamp and caper in imitation of the schuplattl of the Bavarian peasantry; and all the boche except the Queen, imitated him and seized partners.

Eddin Bey came to ask Thusis, and he was so faultlessly polite and so gay and graceful that she cast a saucy glance of dismissal at me and accepted him.

It was quite all right, of course, but it depressed me a little, particularly because Clelia had inexorably refused everybody except Smith.

Now there is a very beautiful Grecian dance supposed to be the triumphant dance executed by the Ten Thousand when they caught sight of the sea; and it is called “The Sea-dance.”

Tino, rather drunk, climbed on a chair, shouted for attention, and informed the company that he was about to perform this celebrated dance.

But when we all gave him room he jigged around a while like an intoxicated soldier’s drab, and, remarking jauntily that he had forgotten it, offered ten thousand drachma to anybody present who could dance the Sea-dance of the Ten Thousand.

He was rather vulgar about it, too, digging into his pockets and pulling out fistfuls of hun gold, and loudly demanding that somebody should attempt to win it.

I glanced instinctively toward Thusis who, her dance with Eddin interrupted, stood in the circle opposite me.

Her gray eyes were brilliant, her cheeks delicately flushed, and the shock of thick ruddy hair fairly glittered, every silky thread afire with the gleam of molten gold.

She looked at me with the sweet, reckless audacity of a spoiled child; then she laughed and said something to Clelia. I saw the latter go to the music box, select a record, start it; and the haunting air called The Sea-dance floated out.

Then Thusis seemed suddenly to melt into motion; her slim feet scarcely touched the floor; head, arms, slender body, were all part of a single and exquisite motion flowing from one soft curve to another.

You could have heard a pin drop in the room; and I did hear one—a big jeweled affair, that clattered to my feet.

As I stooped to recover it the queen said hoarsely in my ear:

“Who is that girl?”

I turned; she snatched the jewel and dug it into her hair.

“That girl, madame, is Thusis, my housekeeper.”

“Fiddle,” retorted the queen. “She’s something else, too, —or once was. The first time I noticed her it occurred to me that I’d seen her somewhere. What was she—a celebrated dancer?—before she became your housekeeper?”

The queen’s nasty insolence froze me.

“I am not,” said I, “as familiar with celebrated dancers as your husband is—and the various men of your immediate family.”

That I had penetrated her incognito did not appear to disturb her as much as my inferences concerning Tino and the Kaiser and that degenerate nest of reptiles, her nephews.

A white, pinched expression came into her frosty face and her eyes flamed.

“I thought you were a Yankee,” she said.

“A Yankee from Chile,” said I, bowing.

She looked clean through me at Thusis.

“I’ve seen that woman somewhere,” she said without emotion. “I’ll recollect where, presently.”

But my eyes and attention were now focussed on the lovely Thusis and I paid no further heed to this bad-tempered Hohenzollern.

Never have I seen such an exquisite dance, such grace, such loveliness. As for the boches, when Thusis ended her Dance of the Sea, they were like a herd of cattle galloping around her and bellowing their satisfaction.

Tino, drunk and prodigal, began to throw handfuls of gold at Thusis, and, enraged, I caught him by the collar and jerked him onto a chair.

“Where the devil do you think you are—in the Coulisse of the Opera?” I cried in his partly deafened ear.

But he only grinned and wagged his head and attempted to fish more gold out of his pockets. But now his thrifty wife interfered and she ordered Secretary Gizzler to pick up every coin. Then she hissed something into Tino’s car which seemed to galvanize that partly soused monarch so that he found his feet with alacrity and suffered himself to be led aside by his tight-lipped spouse.

From time to time during the festivities I had heard distant significant noises indicating that upstairs the Bolsheviki were not enduring sheep-dip and imprisonment with resignation.

Once I had slipped away to the corridor outside their quarters, but, when I made my presence known, Raoul from within calmly assured me that the delousing was progressing successfully and that he did not require my assistance.

Russia, forcibly scrubbed, had put forth agonized howls; and now, Russia imprisoned, was battering at its door and yelling murder.

Now and then, a hun noticed the noise and inquired concerning its origin, but I always turned on more music and they soon forgot in the din of the dance.

Thusis had resumed her dance with Eddin Bey; Smith and Clelia were dancing. I said to Raoul, who was starting to crank the music-machine: “I’ll just step up and quiet those Bolsheviki.”

They were raining blows upon their door when I arrived. I rapped sharply.

“What do you want?” said I.

They gibbered at me in Russian.

“Speak English!” I insisted.

Perhaps Puppsky was so excited or so demoralized by his first bath that he forgot he could speak English.

I tried them in Italian: “Whata da mat’?” I inquired pleasantly. They chattered back at me like lunatic squirrels.

“What the devilovitch is the matsky?” I shouted, incensed at their stupidity. “You listen to me! Your clothes are being boiled and you’ve got to stay where you are! Stop your noise, Puppsky!”

And off I went to inspect the big wash boiler in the kitchen where, lifting the lid which had been the queen’s shield, I was gratified to observe the garments of the Bolsheviki simmering nicely.

“It is not the only vermin that Germania’s shield covers,” said I. And much pleased with my jeu d’esprit, I poured in another bottle of sheep-dip and returned to the dance salon where supper was now being served at little tables.

As soon as I entered the room I felt trouble brewing. The inevitable hunnish reaction had set in. A tired boche is an ugly one; an intoxicated hun may become either offensively sentimental or surly and ingeniously bestial. And now they were about to become surfeited huns, heavy with wine, heavier with food. I did not fancy the looks of things very much.

The queen alone appeared to be perfectly sober; the others were engaged in that sort of half insolent raillery always provocative of a row, shouting German pleasantries at one another from table to table, lifting slopping glasses, cheering, singing and leering at the ladies.