Volume Ii Part 13 (1/2)
The first half of the night was nearly spent when he arose to conduct her across the street to Uel's house. The last words at the head of the steps were these: ”Now, dear, to-morrow I must go a journey on business which will keep me three days and nights--possibly three weeks. Tell father Uel what I say. Tell him also that I have ordered you to stay indoors while I am absent, unless he can accompany you. Do you hear me?”
”Three weeks!” she cried, protestingly. ”Oh, it will be so lonesome! Why may I not go with Syama?”
”Syama would be a wisp of straw in the hands of a ruffian. He could not even call for help.”
”Then why not with Nilo?”
”Nilo is to attend me.”
”Oh, I see,” she said, with a merry laugh. ”It is the Greek, the Greek, my persecutor! Why, he has not recovered from his fright yet; he has deserted me.”
He answered gravely: ”Do you remember a bear tender, one of the amus.e.m.e.nts at the fisherman's fete?”
”Oh, yes.”
”He was the Greek.”
”He!” she cried, astonished.
”Yes. I have it from Sergius the monk; and further, my child, he was there in pursuit of you.”
”Oh, the monster! I threw him my fan!”
The Prince knew by the tremulous voice she was wounded, and hastened to say: ”It was nothing. He deceived everybody but Sergius. I spoke of the pestilent fellow because you wanted a reason for my keeping you close at home. Perhaps I exacted too much of you. If I only knew certainly how long I shall be detained! The three weeks will be hard--and it may be Uel cannot go with you--his business is confining. So if you do venture out, take your sedan--everybody knows to whom it belongs--and the old Bulgarian porters. I have paid them enough to be faithful to us. Are you listening, child?”
”Yes, yes--and I am so glad!”
He walked down the stairs half repenting the withdrawal of his prohibition.
”Be it so,” he said, crossing the street. ”The confinement might be hurtful. Only go seldom as you can; then be sure you return before sunset, and that you take and keep the most public streets. That is all now.”
”You are so good to me!” she said, putting her arm round his neck, and kissing him. ”I will try and stay in the house. Come back early.
Farewell.”
Next day about noon the Prince of India took the galley, and set out for Plati.
The day succeeding his departure was long with Lael. She occupied herself with her governess, however, and did a number of little tasks such as women always have in reserve for a more convenient season.
The second day was much more tedious. The forenoon was her usual time for recitations to the Prince; she also read with him then, and practised talking some of the many languages of which he was master.
That part of the day she accordingly whiled through struggling with her books.
She was earnest in the attempt at study; but naturally, the circ.u.mstances considered, she dropped into thinking of the palace and galley. What a delightful glorious existence they prefigured! And it was not a dream!
Her father, the Prince of India, as she proudly and affectionately called him, did not deal in idle promises, but did what he said. And besides being a master of design in many branches of art, he had an amazing faculty of describing the things he designed. That is saying he had the mind's eye to see his conceptions precisely as they would appear in finished state. So in talking his subjects always seemed before him for portraiture. One can readily perceive the capacity he must have had for making the unreal appear real to a listener, and also how he could lead Lael, her hand in his, through a house more princely than anything of the kind in Constantinople, and on board a s.h.i.+p such as never sailed unless on a painted ocean--a house like the Taj Mahal, a vessel like that which burned on the Cydnus. She decided what notable city by the sea she wanted most to look at next, and in naming them over, smiled at her own indecision.
The giving herself to such fancies was exactly what the Prince intended; only he was to be the central figure throughout. Whether in the palace or on the s.h.i.+p, she was to think of him alone, and always as the author of the splendor and the happiness. Of almost any other person we would speak compa.s.sionately; but he had lived long enough to know better than dream so childishly--long enough at least to know there is a law for everything except the vagaries of a girl scarcely sixteen.
After all, however, if his scheme was purely selfish, perhaps it may be pleasing to the philosophers who insist that relations cannot exist without carrying along with them their own balance of compensations, to hear how Lael filled the regal prospect set before her with visions in which Sergius, young, fair, tall and beautiful, was the hero, and the Prince only a paternal contributor. If the latter led her by the hand here and there, Sergius went with them so close behind she could hear his feet along the marble, and in the voyages she took, he was always a pa.s.senger.
The trial of the third day proved too much for the prisoner. The weather was delightfully clear and warm, and in the afternoon she fell to thinking of the promenade on the wall by the Bucoleon, and of the waftures over the Sea from the Asian Olympus. They were sweet in her remembrance, and the longing for them was stronger of a hope the presence of which she scarcely admitted to herself--a hope of meeting Sergius. She wanted to ask him if the bear-tender at the fete could have been the Greek. Often as she thought of that odious creature with her fan, she blushed, and feared Sergius might seriously misunderstand her.