His face fell.
“I’m sorry,” he said after a moment. “I guess I was an awful fool even to think of it, but a man hates to lose the whole dignity of his life for a girl’s whim. I see it would be impossible. I’m sorry.”
He got up and picked up his cane.
Now he was moving toward the door, and Olive’s heart came into her throat and a great, irresistible wave of self-preservation swept over her—swept over all her scruples and her pride. His steps sounded in the hall.
“Brevoort!” she called. She jumped to her feet and ran to the door. He turned. “Brevoort, what was the name of that paper—the one your uncle went to?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not too late for them to change their story if I telephone now! I’ll say we were married tonight!”
III
There is a society in Paris which is merely a heterogeneous prolongation of American society. People moving in are connected by a hundred threads to the motherland, and their entertainments, eccentricities and ups and downs are an open book to friends and relatives at Southampton, Lake Forest or Back Bay. So during her previous European sojourn Emily’s whereabouts, as she followed the shifting Continental seasons, were publicly advertised; but from the day, one month after the unsolemnized wedding, when she sailed from New York, she dropped completely from sight. There was an occasional letter for her father, an occasional rumor that she was in Cairo, Constantinople or the less frequented Riviera—that was all.
Once, after a year, Mr. Castleton saw her in Paris, but, as he told Olive, the meeting only served to make him uncomfortable.
“There was something about her,” he said vaguely, “as if—well, as if she had a lot of things in the back of her mind I couldn’t reach. She was nice enough, but it was all automatic and formal.—She asked about you.”
Despite her solid background of a three-month-old baby and a beautiful apartment on Park Avenue, Olive felt her heart falter uncertainly.
“What did she say?”
“She was delighted about you and Brevoort.” And he added to himself, with a disappointment he could not conceal: “Even though you picked up the best match in New York when she threw it away.”…
… It was more than a year after this that his secretary’s voice on the telephone asked Olive if Mr. Castleton could see them that night. They found the old man walking his library in a state of agitation.
“Well, it’s come,” he declared—vehemently. “People won’t stand still; nobody stands still. You go up or down in this world. Emily chose to go down. She seems to be somewhere near the bottom. Did you ever hear of a man described to me as a”—he referred to a letter in his hand—“dissipated ne’er-do-well named Petrocobesco? He calls himself Prince Gabriel Petrocobesco, apparently from—from nowhere. This letter is from Hallam, my European man, and it incloses a clipping from the Paris Matin. It seems that this gentleman was invited by the police to leave Paris, and among the small entourage who left with him was an American girl, Miss Castleton, ’rumored to be the daughter of a millionaire. ’ The party was escorted to the station by gendarmes.” He handed clipping and letter to Brevoort Blair with trembling fingers. “What do you make of it? Emily come to that!”
“It’s not so good,” said Brevoort, frowning.
“It’s the end. I thought her drafts were big recently, but I never suspected that she was supporting——”
“It may be a mistake,” Olive suggested. “Perhaps it’s another Miss Castleton.”
“It’s Emily all right. Hallam looked up the matter. It’s Emily, who was afraid ever to dive into the nice clean stream of life and ends up now by swimming around in the sewers.”
Shocked, Olive had a sudden sharp taste of fate in its ultimate diversity. She with a mansion building in Westbury Hills, and Emily was mixed up with a deported adventurer in disgraceful scandal.
“I’ve got no right to ask you this,” continued Mr. Castleton. “Certainly no right to ask Brevoort anything in connection with Emily. But I’m seventy-two and Fraser says if I put off the cure another fortnight he won’t be responsible, and then Emily will be alone for good. I want you to set your trip abroad forward by two months and go over and bring her back.”
“But do you think we’d have the necessary influence?” Brevoort asked. “I’ve no reason for thinking that she’d listen to me.”
“Time’s no one else. If you can’t go I’ll have to.”
“Oh, no,” said Brevoort quickly. “We’ll do what we can, won’t we, Olive?”
“Of course.”
“Bring her back—it doesn’t matter how—but bring her back. Go before a court if necessary and swear she’s crazy.”
“Very well. We’ll do what we can.”
Just ten days after this interview the Brevoort Blairs called on Mr. Castleton’s agent in Paris to glean what details were available. They were plentiful but unsatisfactory. Hallam had seen Petrocobesco in various restaurants—a fat little fellow with an attractive leer and a quenchless thirst. He was of some obscure nationality and had been moved around Europe for several years, living heaven knew how—probably on Americans, though Hallam understood that of late even the most outlying circles of international society were closed to him. About Emily, Hallam knew very little. They had been reported last week in Berlin and yesterday in Budapest. It was probably that such an undesirable as Petrocobesco was required to register with the police everywhere, and this was the line he recommended the Blairs to follow.
Forty-eight hours later, accompanied by the American vice consul, they called upon the prefect of police in Budapest. The officer talked in rapid Hungarian to the vice consul, who presently announced the gist of his remarks—the Blairs were too late.
“Where have they gone?”
“He doesn’t know. He received orders to move them on and they left last night.”
Suddenly the prefect wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it, with a terse remark, to the vice consul.
“He says try there.”
Brevoort looked at the paper.
“’Sturmdorp—where’s that?”
Another rapid conversation in Hungarian.
“Five hours from here on a local train that leaves Tuesdays and Fridays. This is Saturday.”
“We’ll get a car at the hotel,” said Brevoort.
They set out after dinner. It was a rough journey through the night across the still Hungarian plain. Olive awoke once from a worried doze to find Brevoort and the chauffeur changing a tire; then again as they stopped at a muddy little river, beyond which glowed the scattered lights of a town. Two soldiers in an unfamiliar uniform glanced into the car; they crossed a bridge and followed a narrow, warped main street to Sturmdorp’s single inn; the roosters were already crowing as they tumbled down on the mean beds.
Olive awoke with a sudden sure feeling that they had caught up with Emily; and with it came that old sense of helplessness in the face of Emily’s moods; for a moment the long past and Emily dominant in it, swept back over her, and it seemed almost a presumption to be here. But Brevoort’s singleness of purpose reassured her and confidence had returned when they went downstairs, to find a landlord who spoke fluent American, acquired in Chicago before the war.
“You are not in Hungary now,” he explained. “You have crossed the border into Czjeck-Hansa. But it is only a little country with two towns, this one and the capital. We don’t ask the visa from Americans.”
“That’s probably why they came here,” Olive thought.
“Perhaps you could give us some information about strangers?” asked Brevoort. “We’re looking for an American—lady—” He described Emily, without mentioning her probable companion; as he proceeded a curious change came over the innkeeper’s face.
“Let me see your passports,” he said; then: “And why you want to see her?”
“This lady is her cousin.”
The innkeeper hesitated momentarily.
“I think perhaps I be able to find her for you,” he said.
He called the porter; there were rapid instructions in an unintelligible patois. Then:
“Follow this boy—he take you there.”
They were conducted through filthy streets to a tumbledown house on the edge of town. A man with a hunting rifle, lounging outside, straightened up and spoke sharply to the porter, but after an exchange of phrases they passed, mounted the stairs and knocked at a door. When it opened a head peered around the corner; the porter spoke again and they went in.
They were in a large dirty room which might have belonged to a poor boarding house in any quarter of the Western world—faded walls, split upholstery, a shapeless bed and an air, despite its bareness, of being overcrowded by the ghostly furniture, indicated by dust rings and worn spots, of the last decade. In the middle of the room stood a small stout man with hammock eyes and a peering nose over a sweet, spoiled little mouth, who stared intently at them as they opened the door, and then with a single disgusted “Chut!” turned impatiently away. There were several other people in the room, but Brevoort and Olive saw only Emily, who reclined in a chaise longue with half-closed eyes.
At the sight of them the eyes opened in mild astonishment; she made a move as though to jump up, but instead held out her hand, smiled and spoke their names in a clear polite voice, less as a greeting than as a sort of explanation to the others of their presence here. At their names a grudging amenity replaced the sullenness on the little man’s face.
The girls kissed.
“Tutu!” said Emily, as if calling him to attention—“Prince Petrocobesco, let me present my cousin Mrs. Blair, and Mr. Blair.”
“Plaisir,” said Petrocobesco. He and Emily
