Part 26 (1/2)
”I should not think of taking such a liberty,” said Giles quickly.
Olga pouted. ”Then, Mademoiselle Olga,” said she, ”my mother you must call the Princess Karacsay. Will you allow me, Mr. Ware, to present you to my mother?”
She led the young man forward, and he found himself bowing to a stout lady, who at one time must have been beautiful, but in whom age had destroyed a great amount of her good looks. She was darker than her daughter, and had a languid, indolent air, which seemed to account for her stoutness. Evidently she never took exercise. Her face was still beautiful, and she had the most glorious pair of dark eyes. Her hair was silvery, and contrasted strangely with her swart face. One would have thought that she had African blood in her. She wore a yellow dress trimmed with black lace, and many jewels twinkled on her neck and arms and in her hair. Her tastes, like her appearance, were evidently barbaric. In this cold, misty island she looked like some gorgeous tropical bird astray.
”I am glad to see you, Mr. Ware,” she said in soft, languid tones, yet with a kind of rough burr; ”my daughter has often talked of you.” Her English was very good, and there was little trace of a foreign accent.
Yet the occasional lisp and the frequent roughness added a piquancy to her tones. Even at her age--and she was considerably over fifty--she was undeniably a fascinating woman: in her youth she must have been a G.o.ddess both for looks and charm. Olga was regal and charming, but her mother excelled her. Giles found himself becoming quite enchanted with this Cleopatra of the West.
”You have been long in England, Princess?” he asked.
”But a week. I came to see Olga. She would have me come, although I dislike travelling. But I am fond of Olga.”
”It is more than my father is,” said Olga, with a shrug; ”he would not come. I suppose he thinks that I have disgraced him.”
”My dear child,” reproved her mother, ”you know what your father's opinion is about this wild life you lead.”
”A very hard-working life,” retorted her daughter; ”singing is not easy. For the rest, I a.s.sure you I am respectable.”
”It is not the life for a Karacsay, my dear. If you would only come back to Vienna and marry the man your father----”
”I choose for myself when I marry,” flashed out Olga, with a glance at the uncomfortable Giles. ”Count Taroc can take another wife.”
The Princess, seeing that Giles found this conversation somewhat trying, refrained from further remark. She shrugged her ample shoulders, and sipped her coffee, which she complained was bad. ”You do not know how to make coffee here,” she said, unfurling a fan, ”and it is cold, this England of yours.”
”Princess, to-night is warm!” expostulated Ware.
”Nevertheless I have had a fire made up,” she answered, pointing with her fan to the end of the room; ”the landlord was so surprised.”
”He no doubt considered it to be an eccentricity of Her Highness,” said Olga, with a laugh; ”a cigarette, mother?”
The Princess took one languidly, and moved her chair closer to the fire.
The night--to Giles--was quite hot, and he could scarcely bear the stifling heat of the room. Windows and doors were closed, and the fire flamed up fiercely. Also some pastiles had been burnt by Olga, and added a heavy, sensuous scent to the atmosphere. Ware could not help comparing the room to the Venusberg, and the women to the sirens of that unholy haunt. Which of the two was Venus he did not take upon himself to decide.
”I am used to the tropics,” explained the Princess, puffing blue clouds of smoke. ”I come from Jamaica; but I have been many years in Vienna, and in that cold Hungary,” she s.h.i.+vered.
”Ah, now I see, Princess, why you speak English so well,” said Giles, and he might also have added that he now guessed why she was so Eastern in appearance and so barbaric in her taste for crude, vivid colors. She had negro blood in her veins he decided, and Olga also. This would account for the fierce temperament of the latter.
”I left Jamaica when I was twenty-two,” explained the Princess, while her daughter frowned. For some reason Olga did not seem to approve of these confidences. ”Prince Karacsay was travelling there. He came to my father's plantation, and there he married me. I am sorry I did not marry someone in Jamaica,” she finished lazily.
”My dear mother,” broke in her daughter petulantly, ”you have always been happy in Vienna and at the Castle.”
”At the castle, yes. It was so quiet there. But Vienna, ach! It is too gay, too troublesome.”
”You don't like noise and excitement, Princess?”
She shook her imperial head with the gesture of an angry queen.
”I like nothing but rest. To be in a hammock with a cigarette and to hear the wind bend the palms, the surf break on the sh.o.r.es. It is my heaven. But in Hungary--no palms, no surf. Ach!” She made a face.