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Read Ebook: The Moonlit Way: A Novel by Chambers Robert W Robert William Keller Arthur Ignatius Illustrator
Font size: Background color: Text color: Add to tbrJar First Page Next PageEbook has 3678 lines and 105548 words, and 74 pages"Then why," demanded d'Eblis, "does she make such a fuss about being grateful? I hate ingratitude, Ferez. And how can she last, anyway? To dance for the German Ambassador in Constantinople is all very well, but unless somebody launches her properly--in Paris--she'll end in a Pera caf?." Ferez held his peace and listened with all his might. "I could do that," added d'Eblis. "Please?" inquired Ferez suavely. "Launch her in Paris." The programme of Excellenz and Ferez Bey was certainly proceeding as planned. But Gerhardt was becoming restless and dully irritated as he began to realise more and more what caste meant to Prussians and how insignificant to these people was a German-American multimillionaire. And Ferez realised that he must do something. There was a Bavarian Baroness there, uglier than the usual run of Bavarian baronesses; and to her Ferez nailed Gerhardt, and wriggled free himself, making his way amid the gorgeous throngs to the Count d'Eblis once more. "I left Gerhardt planted," he remarked with satisfaction; "by God, she is uglee like camels--the Baroness von Schaunitz! Nev' mind. It is nobility; it is the same to Adolf Gerhardt." "A homely woman makes me sick!" remarked d'Eblis. "Eh, mon Dieu!--one has merely to look at these ladies to guess their nationality! Only in Germany can one gather together such a collection of horrors. The only pretty ones are Austrian." Perhaps even the cynicism of Excellenz had not realised the perfection of this setting, but Ferez, the nimble witted, had foreseen it. Already the glittering crowds in the drawing rooms were drawing aside like jewelled curtains; already the stringed orchestra had become mute aloft in its gilded gallery. The gay tumult softened; laughter, voices, the rustle of silks and fans, the metallic murmur of drawing-room equipment died away. Through the increasing stillness, from the gilded gallery a Thessalonian reed began skirling like a thrush in the underbrush. Suddenly a sand-coloured curtain at the end of the east room twitched open, and a great desert ostrich trotted in. And, astride of the big, excited, bridled bird, sat a young girl, controlling her restless mount with disdainful indifference. "Nihla!" whispered Ferez, in the large, fat ear of the Count d'Eblis. The latter's pallid jowl reddened and his pendulous lips tightened to a deep-bitten crease across his face. To the weird skirling of the Thessalonian pipe the girl, Nihla, put her feathered steed through its absurd paces, aping the haute-?cole. There is little humour in your Teuton; they were too amazed to laugh; too fascinated, possibly by the girl herself, to follow the panicky gambols of the reptile-headed bird. The girl wore absolutely nothing except a Yashmak and a zone of blue jewels across her breasts and hips. Her childish throat, her limbs, her slim, snowy body, her little naked feet were lovely beyond words. Her thick dark hair flew loose, now framing, now veiling an oval face from which, above the gauzy Yashmak's edge, two dark eyes coolly swept her breathless audience. But under the frail wisp of cobweb, her cheeks glowed pink, and two full red lips parted deliciously in the half-checked laughter of confident, reckless youth. Over hurdle after hurdle she lifted her powerful, half-terrified mount; she backed it, pirouetted, made it squat, leap, pace, trot, run with wings half spread and neck stretched level. She rode sideways, then kneeling, standing, then poised on one foot; she threw somersaults, faced to the rear, mounted and dismounted at full speed. And through the frail, transparent Yashmak her parted red lips revealed the glimmer of teeth and her childishly engaging laughter rang delightfully. Then, abruptly, she had enough of her bird; she wheeled, sprang to the polished parquet, and sent her feathered steed scampering away through the sand-coloured curtains, which switched into place again immediately. Breathless, laughing that frank, youthful, irresistible laugh which was to become so celebrated in Europe, Nihla Quellen strolled leisurely around the circle of her applauding audience, carelessly blowing a kiss or two from her slim finger-tips, evidently quite unspoiled by her success and equally delighted to please and to be pleased. Then, in the gilded gallery the strings began; and quite naturally, without any trace of preparation or self-consciousness, Nihla began to sing, dancing when the fascinating, irresponsible measure called for it, singing again as the sequence occurred. And the enchantment of it all lay in its accidental and detached allure--as though it all were quite spontaneous--the song a passing whim, the dance a capricious after-thought, and the whole thing done entirely to please herself and give vent to the sheer delight of a young girl, in her own overwhelming energy and youthful spirits. Even the Teuton comprehended that, and the applause grew to a roar with that odd undertone of animal menace always to be detected when the German herd is gratified and expresses pleasure en masse. But she wouldn't stay, wouldn't return. Like one of those beautiful Persian cats, she had lingered long enough to arouse delight. Then she went, deaf to recall, to persuasion, to caress--indifferent to praise, to blandishment, to entreaty. Cat and dancer were similar; Nihla, like the Persian puss, knew when she had had enough. That was sufficient for her: nothing could stop her, nothing lure her to return. Beads of sweat were glistening upon the heavy features of the Count d'Eblis. Von-der-Goltz Pasha, strolling near, did him the honour to remember him, but d'Eblis seemed dazed and unresponsive; and the old Pasha understood, perhaps, when he caught the beady and expressive eyes of Ferez fixed on him in exultation. "Whose is she?" demanded d'Eblis abruptly. His voice was hoarse and evidently out of control, for he spoke too loudly to please Ferez, who took him by the arm and led him out to the moonlit terrace. "What!" Ferez shrugged: "I wish to meet her!" said d'Eblis. "Why?" Ferez laughed: After a silence, Ferez turned in the moonlight and looked at the Count d'Eblis. "Yes.... If you get her for me." "Yes." "An' the two million, eh?" "Ask her to supper aboard the yacht." The Count d'Eblis said through closed teeth: "There is the first woman I ever really wanted in all my life!... I am standing here now waiting for her--waiting to be presented to her now." "I spik to Von-der-Goltz Pasha," said Ferez; and he slipped through the palms and orange trees and vanished. For half an hour the Count d'Eblis stood there, motionless in the moonlight. She came about that time, on the arm of Ferez Bey, her father's friend of many years. And Ferez left her there in the creamy Turkish moonlight on the flowering terrace, alone with the Count d'Eblis. When Ferez came again, long after midnight, with Excellenz on one arm and the proud and happy Adolf Gerhardt on the other, the whole cycle of a little drama had been played to a conclusion between those two shadowy figures under the flowering almonds on the terrace--between this slender, dark-eyed girl and this big, bulky, heavy-visaged man of the world. And the man had been beaten and the girl had laid down every term. And the compact was this: that she was to be launched in Paris; she was merely to borrow any sum needed, with privilege to acquit the debt within the year; that, if she ever came to care for this man sufficiently, she was to become only one species of masculine property--a legal wife. And to every condition--and finally even to the last, the man had bowed his heavy, burning head. D'Eblis stared at him out of unseeing eyes; Nihla laughed outright, alas, too early wise and not even troubling her lovely head to wonder why a decoration had been asked for this burly, bushy-bearded man from nowhere. But within his sinuous, twisted soul Ferez writhed exultingly, and patted Gerhardt on the arm, and patted d'Eblis, too--dared even to squirm visibly closer to Excellenz, like a fawning dog that fears too much to venture contact in his wriggling demonstrations. "You take with you our pretty wonder-child to Paris to be launched, I hear," remarked Excellenz, most affably, to d'Eblis. And to Nihla: "And upon a yacht fit for an emperor, I understand. Ach! Such a going forth is only heard of in the Arabian Nights. Eh bien, ma petite, go West, conquer, and reign! It is a prophecy!" Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page |
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