‘I think that is the best thing you could do,’ said the Princess, ‘and I am glad you suggested it. But I shall have to get you a tutor; it will be a great expense. I suppose you will go round the world. We will go to some agent to-morrow—I suppose there are agents for such things—and see how they are done.’
As usual, the Princess put her purpose into effect without loss of time. She advertised for a travelling tutor, and for three days made the life of Thomas Cook and Sons but a parody of existence. She went to the docks, and inspected large numbers of ocean liners, and at length fixed upon a vessel of the Peninsular and Oriental line, which would take him as far as Egypt. There he would spend a few weeks, go on to India, thence to Australia, and back over America. She had a personal interview with the captain of the vessel, and insisted on all the games provided for the use of passengers being turned out, so that she might assure herself that no game of hazard was played on board. But as the entire stock of entertainment consisted of some inglorious little rope-rings, which were to be thrown into buckets, she felt no further anxiety on this score. It puzzled her to understand how people could find amusement in this, but the captain assured her that they did.
She saw Leonard off on a drizzly November morning. He was to be away at the least for two years, and she parted from him with some emotion. But the conviction that she was doing the wisest thing for him was a large consolation. To let him go back to Rhodopé with all his inherited instincts of gambling would be a dangerous experiment, for she was firm in her resolve that he should prove a good and useful man, a ruler who might be able to grapple with the insidious gambling disease which had spread so direfully through the country, for she felt herself unable, morally incapable, of dealing with it. Personally, she could not face the idea of Amandos shorn of its club, and how should she, the priestess of the goddess, recant? She was determined to give Leonard the best chance possible. He should live on vessels where only rings were provided for entertainment, and when he landed he should shoot animals, and see mosques and wigwams, and other tedious and exotic objects.
She had engaged for him a tutor who inspired her with confidence. He had a lofty, commanding forehead, with high, knobby temples and a pedantic and instructive manner. He kept accounts in a book, and money in a purse. She herself had tried to teach him picquet, and was delighted to observe that he seemed almost incapable of understanding the ordinary value of cards, though he was said to be a fine classical scholar. He said he thought games of chance were irrational amusements, and though in sheer loyalty she was bound to attempt to convince him they were not, she was delighted to find that she failed egregiously. And next day Sophia saw the s.s. Valetta start from Tilbury, bearing Prince Leonard, his tutor, and the little rope-rings out into the siren-haunted mists of the mouth of the Thames.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PLAGUE-SPOT SPREADS.
A few days afterwards Princess Sophia herself started on her return to Rhodopé. The Felatrune was to meet her at Monte Carlo, but she crossed France overland. Her original scheme had been to go by sea all the way, but this saving of time caused by crossing the Continent gave her a balance of eight days, which she proposed to spend on the Riviera, where she lost a good deal of money.
Even in the few months of her absence, the change which had come over her mountain kingdom was startling. The crowd of foreign visitors, chiefly English, had never been so great, nor the season so brilliant. November in Rhodopé is the month of months, clear, cool, and bracing, with a sun of heavenly purity, and a wind just frappé with the snows which have fallen on the higher ranges of the Balkan. The air has a sparkle as if of frost in it, a translucent brightness which in the North we associate with the white rime of autumn mornings. To the Princess, fresh from the damp gray of England, and the tawdry theatrical brilliance of the Riviera, her home seemed an enchanted place, and for once she was glad to get back.
The club had pushed the limits of its gardens and kiosques up the slopes of the hills behind Amandos; bandstands and boulevards were loud with the orchestra and gay with colour. Even Monte Carlo seemed to her empty and depopulated in comparison. But the place was changed in other ways. The discipline of the army was relaxed; a Bill had been introduced in the House, and passed without opposition, which abolished conscription, and though the people were as picturesque as ever, they were infinitely more idle. The demands for provisions and wines consequent on the ever-increasing hosts of foreigners who flocked to the town had made living easier than ever. A man could work two days a week where he had worked six a few years ago, and yet find his earnings undiminished. It had been necessary to limit the number of members of the club, and in consequence a hundred other gaming-houses had been started, and deep into the hours of the night shepherds and sailors watched the roulette-marbles, which rolled as unceasingly as the stars of heaven.
Sophia was almost frightened at the success of the era she had inaugurated, and she was truly shocked at the deterioration which counterbalanced the increased prosperity. She had still, even in her forty-first year, a strong love of keen eyes and fit limbs; her admiration for a fine rider still warred with her respect for a bold player, and she saw to her dismay that a nation of gamblers tends to lose its grip of the saddle. The Life Guards were a mockery of horsemen; they were growing pale and fat, and when they received her on the quay of Mavromáti, she was horrified to observe that they were sleepy-eyed and unerect—a regiment of putty soldiers. She herself, who could still, as in the days when Petros came a-courting, watch the tide of gold ebbing and flowing on the green tables for hour after hour when she should have been asleep, without suffering for it next morning, saw that if the common folk sat up at roulette all night, their parade on the following day lost its briskness. But her regret passed; the town was full of amusing people, and she had a series of house-parties with her from November until the New Year fêtes were over. She was well entertained, and as she was one of those to whom boredom is a pain more exquisite than earache, she found that so long as it was entirely absent, her mind was distracted from the consideration of the deteriorated physique of her people.
Leonard’s letters also were full of consolation. They were so crammed with excruciating facts about mosques and minarets that Sophia was wholly incapable of reading them, and put the interminable sheets into her desk, gratefully feeling that her experiment was brimming with success. His tutor, she was informed, had fallen ill of typhoid at Cairo, and Leonard was purposing to spend a month up the Nile while he was recovering, a trip which he told her was well likely to repay a visit. The pyramids of Sakkarah which he had just seen were magnificent beyond description. As she knew, the Great Step Pyramid was there, a magnificent structure of the Sixth Dynasty, while closer at hand were the great pyramids of Gizeh, the tombs of Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus, or Menkau, as he was more properly called. Archæologists were disagreed as to the date of the Sphinx; for himself, he was inclined to side with Mariette ... and Sophia murmured, ‘Dear boy!’ and read no further, merely glancing at the last of the sixteen sides he had written her, which contained an account of a usaptiu figure he had just purchased from a dealer, which he had every reason to believe was genuine, and not imported from Manchester for the ignorant tourist.