I
THE STRAND OF DREAMS
"I must see him if only for a minute. I can't go back to the city after coming so far. Please—" but the girl's face disappeared and the rickety door, which had been opened on a chain, was slammed after this imperative speech, and Gerald Shannon found himself staring exasperatedly at its rusty exterior. To have travelled on foot such a distance only to be turned away like a beggar enraged him. Nor was the prospect of returning over the path which had brought him to Karospina's house a cheering one. He turned and saw that a low, creeping mist had obliterated every vestige of the trail across the swamp lands. There was no sun, and the twilight of a slow yellow day in late September would soon, in complicity with the fog, leave him totally adrift on this remote strand—he could hear the curving fall and hiss of the breakers, the monotonous rumour of the sea. So he was determined to face Karospina, even if he had to force his way into the house.
Two hours earlier, at the little railway station, they had informed him that the road was easy flatland for the greater part of the way. He had offered money for a horse or even a wheel; but these were luxuries on this bleak, poverty-ridden coast. As there was no alternative, Gerald had walked rapidly since three o'clock. And he had not been told the truth about the road; where the oozing, green, unwholesome waters were not he stepped, sometimes sinking over his ankles in the soft mud. Not a sign of humanity served him for comfort or compass. He had been assured that if he kept his back to the sun he would reach his destination. And he did, but not without many misgivings. It was the vision of a squat tower-like building, almost hemmed in by a monster gas reservoir, fantastic wooden galleries, and the gigantic silhouettes of strange machinery, that relieved his mind. But this house and its surroundings soon repelled him. His reception was the final disenchantment.
He played a lively tattoo with his blackthorn stick on the panels of the door. For five minutes this continued, interspersed with occasional loud calls for Karospina. At last the siege was raised. After preliminary unboltings, unbarrings, and the rattling of the chain, Gerald saw before him a middle-aged man with a smooth face and closely shaven head, who quietly asked his name and business.
"I have a letter for you, Mr. Karospina—if you are that gentleman—and as I have put myself to much trouble in getting to you, I think I deserve a little consideration."
"A letter, my worthy sir! And for me? Who told you to come here? How do you know my name?" This angered the young man.
"It is from Prince K. The Prince. Now are you satisfied?" he added, as his questioner turned red and then paled as if the news were too startling for his nerves.
"Come in, come in!" he cried. "Mila, Mila, here is a guest. Fetch tea to the laboratory." He literally dragged Shannon within doors and led him across a stone corridor to a large room, but not before he had bolted and barred the entrance to his mysterious fortress. Seeing the other's look of quiet amusement, he laughed himself:—
"Wolves, my dear sir, wolves, human wolves, prowl on the beach at night, and while I have no treasures, it is well to be on the safe side. Mila, Mila, the tea, the tea." There was a passionate intensity in his utterance that attracted Gerald from his survey of the chamber. He saw that in the light Karospina was a much older man than he had at first supposed. But the broad shoulders, the thick chest, and short, powerful figure and bullet head belied his years. Incredulously his visitor asked himself if this were the wonderful, the celebrated Karospina, chemist, revolutionary, mystic, nobleman, and millionnaire. A Russian, he knew that—yet he looked more like the monk one sees depicted on the canvases of the early Flemish painters. His high, wide brow and deep-set, dark eyes proclaimed the thinker; and because of his physique, he might have posed as a prize-fighter.
He took the letter and read it as the door opened and the girl came in with the tea. She wore her hair braided in two big plaits which hung between her shoulders, and her bold, careless glance from eyes sea-blue made the Irishman forget his host and the rigours of the afternoon. A Russian beauty, with bare, plump arms, and dressed in peasant costume; but—a patrician! Her fair skin and blond hair filled him with admiration. What the devil!—he thought, and came near saying it aloud.
"My niece, Princess Mila Georgovics, Mr. Shannon." Gerald acknowledged the introduction with his deepest bow. He was dazzled. He had come to this dreary place to talk politics. But now this was out of the question. And he began explaining to the Princess; Mila he had fancied was some slattern waiting on the old fanatic of a prince. He told Mila this in a few words, and soon the pair laughed and chatted. In the meantime Karospina, who had finished the letter, began to pace the apartment. Apparently he had forgotten the others.
"Tea, tea, where's the tea?" he presently shouted. As they drank, he said: "The prince asks an impossibility, Mr. Shannon. Say to him, no, simply no; he will understand, and so will you, I hope. I'm done with all militant movements. I'm converted to the peace party. What's the use of liberty to people who won't know what to do with it when they get it? Tolstoy is right. Let the peasant be shown how to save his soul—that and a little to eat and drink and a roof are all he needs in this life."
Gerald was startled. He had expected to find an "advanced" leader of the Bakounine type. Instead, a man of the "vegetarian" order,—as he had heard them called,—who talked religion instead of dynamite;—and after all the bother of bringing the letter down to this remote country! Decidedly the princess was more enjoyable than a reformed anarchist. She was gazing at him seriously now, her society manner gone. Her nose, rather large for the harmony of her face, palpitated with eagerness. Evidently, thought Gerald, the young lady is the real revolutionist in this curious household. He also ventured to say so to her, but she did not meet his smiling declaration. Her uncle, irritated by his interrupted discourse, exclaimed:—
"Never mind what the Princess Mila thinks, Mr. Shannon. Women change their minds. The chief matter just now is that you cannot go away to-night. You would lose your way, perhaps be drowned. Can you sleep on a hard bed?" He was assured by Gerald that, if he had been turned away, he would have slept in an outhouse, even under one of those windmills he saw in such number on the strand. Karospina smiled.
"Hardly there—that is, if you expected to awaken." Then he left the room, saying that some one must see to the supper. His niece burst into laughter. Gerald joined in.
"He's always like that, fussy, nervous, but with a heart of gold, Mr.—Mr. Shannon. Thank you. It's an Irish name, is it not? And you look like an Irishman; a soldier, too, I fancy!"
Gerald blushed. "A soldier in the cause of humanity," he answered, "but no longer a hireling in the uniform of kings." He felt so foolish after this brave bit of rhetoric that he kept his eyes on the floor. In an instant she was at his side.
"Give me your hand—comrade!" she said, with a peculiar intonation. "Oh! if you only knew how I longed to meet the right men. Uncle is a convert—no, hardly a backslider; but he swears by the regenerating process instead of violence. Formerly the cleverest living chemist, he now—oh! I shame to say it—he now indulges in firework displays instead of manufacturing bombs with which to execute tyrants." She slowly dropped his hand and her eyes wore a clairvoyant expression. He was astounded.
"Fireworks! Doesn't the prince hold by his old faith—he, a pupil of Bakounine, Netschajew, and Kropotkin?" Just then the prince came in, bearing a tray. He seemed happy.
"Here, sit down, dear sir, and partake of a few things. We live so far from civilization that we seldom get a good chicken. But eggs I can offer you, eggs and ham, cooked by me on an electric machine."
"You have no servants?" Gerald ventured.
"Not one. I can't trust them near my—toys. The princess plays Chopin mazourkas after she makes the beds in the morning, and in the afternoon she is my assistant in the laboratory." Again the young man looked about him. If the room was a laboratory, where were the retorts, the oven, the phials, the jars, the usual apparatus of a modern chemist? He saw nothing, except an old-fashioned electric fan and a few dusty books. The fireworks—were those overgrown wheels and gaunt windmills and gas-house the secret of the prince's self-banishment to this dreary coast? What dreams did he seek to incarnate on this strand, in this queer tower, locked away from the world with a charming princess—a fairy princess whose heart beat with love for the oppressed, in whose hand he might some time see the blazing torch of freedom? He, himself, was enveloped by the hypnotism of the place. Mila spoke:—
"I fear I must leave you. I am studying to-night and—I go early to rest. Pray dine as well as you can, with such a chef." She smiled mischievously at her uncle, courtesied in peasant fashion to the bewildered Gerald, who put out his hand, fain to touch hers, and disappeared. The prince gazed inquiringly at the young man.
"Revolutionists soon become friends, do they not? The Princess Mila is part Russian, part Roumanian,—my sister married a Roumanian,—hence her implacable political attitude. I can't lead her back to civilized thinking. She sees war in the moon, sun, and stars. And I—I have forsworn violence. Ah! if I could only make the prince change. Bakounine's death had no effect; Netschajew's fate did not move him; nor was Illowski's mad attempt to burn down Paris with his incendiary symphony an example to our prince that those who take up the sword perish by the sword. Ah, Tolstoy, dear Leon Nikolaievitch, you showed me the true way to master the world by love and not by hate! Until I read—but there, it's late. Come with me to your room. You may smoke and sleep when you will. In the morning I will show you my—toys." They shook hands formally and parted.
His bed was hard, and his room cheerless, but anything, even a haymow, rather than walking back to the station. After he went to his bed, he rehearsed the day's doings from the three hours' ride in the train to the tower. How weary he was! Hark—some one played the piano! A Chopin mazourka! It was the princess. Mila! How lovely her touch!... Mila! What a lovely name! A sleeping princess. A prince with such a sleepy head. How the girl could play ... along the spiral road he saw the music glow in enigmatic figures of fire....