Three Weeks

The two days out at sea were a raging impatience to Paul, in which he learnt to understand all the torments of Tantalus. To know and feel her near, and yet not to be allowed to get to her! It was an impossible cruelty.

The two grey-headed men's hearts ached for him, and Captain Grigsby delivered himself of this aphorism: "Say what you will, Charles, but youth pays the devil of a long price for its pleasures. Here you and I snored like a couple of porpoises all last night, while the boy paced the deck and cursed everything."

And Sir Charles had only grunted, for he was feeling very deeply for his son.

There was a fresh breeze blowing when the time was up and they sighted land again, and long before any possible shore could be examined, Paul stood--his strongest glasses in his hand--on the look-out.

At length they came in full view, and alas! there could be no mistake, the flagstaff upon the villa roof was empty.

To the day of his death Paul will keep a vivid picture of the pure white-columned house. No semi-Oriental architecture met his view, but a beautiful marble structure in the graceful Ionic style, seeming a suitable habitation for his Queen.

It was approached by groves of ilex, from a wall at the edge of the sea. And now Paul could discern the landing-stage, and the great studded door.

A sensation of foreboding--a wild, mad anxiety, filled his being. What had happened? Why might he not land? Then for the first time that fact of Vasili's vanishment came into his mind. Was there something sinister in it? Had he scented any danger to his Queen, and gone to see? A whirlwind of questions and frenzied speculation shook Paul's brain. But there was nothing to be done now but to cram on all steam and make for Constantinople.

He looked again. The green jalousies were lowered over the windows, all seemed peaceful, silent and deserted. No living being wandered in the gardens. It might have been a mausoleum for the dead. And as this thought came to him Paul almost cried aloud.

Then he dominated himself. How weak and intolerably foolish to imagine evil where perhaps none was! Why should his thoughts fly to terrible reasons for the postponement of his joy, when in truth they could as well be of the simplest? A sudden call to the city--a descent of some undesirable spying eye--a hundred and one possible things, all much more likely than any ones of fear.

He would not permit another moment of wonder. He would regain his calm and wait like a man for certainty. Thus his face wore an iron mask and his thoughts an iron band. And presently they came to Constantinople.