The Golden Bough. Gibbs George

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СКАЧАТЬ the American's ill-fitting clothing from head to foot. Rowland had a sense that it was the garments which Monsieur Khodkine noted, not the man within them, and had a feeling of being still further ignored when the Russian, after the slightest inclination of the head, which indeed had seemed a part of his cursory inspection, turned again quickly to Tanya.

      "Where is Kirylo Ivanitch?" he asked.

      The girl leaned with one hand upon the table, her gaze upon the floor. Her voice trembled a little as she replied.

      "Kirylo Ivanitch is-is dead."

      Khodkine started violently.

      "Dead! Ivanitch-!" He turned a quick look at Stepan and at Rowland. "When did this happen?" he questioned eagerly. "And who-?"

      His look as though impelled returned to Rowland, who had picked up one of the cigarettes of Monsieur Ivanitch from the table and was now lighting it, very much at his ease. Rowland made no reply, and Tanya, with a gesture of her extended fingers:

      "It happened but just now, – this morning, Grisha Khodkine," she said. "For some days Kirylo Ivanitch had been distraught with nerves, in a kind of strange fit of uncertainty. He was frightened… He bade us keep watch upon the Tree and what lies below it day and night. And to humor him we obeyed. We did not know what was to happen-something strange, Grisha Khodkine-"

      As she paused the Russian looked from one to the other in astonishment and mystification.

      "Dead! – but how? What happened?"

      "This morning," the girl went on, choosing her words carefully, "he attacked Monsieur Rowlan', in the garden, as he was leaving Nemi. Monsieur Rowlan' defended himself, and struck-struck-" Tanya hid her face in her hands, trembling.

      "Go on-" said the Russian.

      "There is little else to tell," said the girl, raising her pallid face from her hands, "Kirylo fell-He is-dead!"

      Khodkine's gaze sought the eyes of the other men in confirmation.

      "It is the truth, Monsieur," muttered Picard. "We saw. It was a fair combat. But it was written-what happened!"

      Monsieur Khodkine's look passed slowly from one to the other and at last rested on Rowland, who met his glance calmly, soberly, without deference-but without defiance.

      "He tried to kill me, Monsieur," he said quietly, "he was dangerous, and so-" He shrugged. "What would you? He fell and his head struck a stone-"

      The Russian stared a moment.

      "Then you-" He paused.

      Rowland smiled a little.

      "It seems, Monsieur," he said coolly, "that I am your new Priest of Nemi."

      There was a long silence during which the Russian stared at Rowland more intently as though correcting a former and mistaken impression. At last he took a pace forward and the eyes of the two men met.

      "You-you knew?" he asked.

      "Nothing," said Rowland.

      "And now-?"

      The American shrugged but Picard broke in eagerly: "All the conditions have been fulfilled, Monsieur Khodkine-all from the first to the last-"

      And while Rowland stood silent, in good-humored contempt, the Frenchman told all that had happened, including the American's escape from imprisonment and the breaking of the Bough. Rowland keenly watched all the actors in this drama, the zealous sincerity of the excitable Frenchman, the mystic absorption of Stepan, the fixed burning gaze of Issad, sure that those who played the minor parts were committed beyond question to a strict interpretation of the symbols of the order. Tanya, the color coming slowly into her cheeks, answered briefly and clearly the questions that were put to her. If there had been restraint in her acceptance of this successor to Ivanitch, or wonder at the strange chain of facts which linked this matter-of-fact American with the destinies of Nemi, she spoke now with an air of definite assurance and fatalism which went far to convince Rowland that if she were not sincere in her beliefs she was playing a skillful part which warned him how deeply he too was committed to his strange new office. But it was Monsieur Khodkine that Rowland watched the closest. From an expression of consternation the face of the Russian settled into a frowning inquiry and then as his glance and Rowland's met, into a mask-like immobility which revealed nothing of his own state of mind. As one by one the facts were revealed to him, his voice became more quiet, his manner more suave, while he nodded his head in solemn deliberation. The phrases he used were theirs, the jargon of mysticism, and yet to Rowland, the man of the world, this change of tone and demeanor failed to comport with the very obvious air of modernity and materialism which Monsieur Khodkine had brought in with him from the world outside.

      "The Bough-broken," Khodkine was muttering, "an escaped prisoner of the Germans, – a slave surely! And the combat-either one may challenge… The Visconti… There seems no doubt. Yes-it is strange. You say that Monsieur Rowland did not know the tradition…?"

      "Not until after Kirylo Ivanitch was dead," said Tanya calmly. "I told him."

      "It is most extraordinary," repeated Khodkine, turning to Rowland with level brows. "An act of Destiny, striking as with the hand of God from out of the mists of the Eternal ages. But it is a sign too definite to be ignored-an act of Revelation and a Prophecy."

      The words were spoken soberly, with an air of rapt introspection, but Rowland missed nothing of the alert intelligence of Monsieur Khodkine's pale blue eyes, keen and observing, which unlike Issad, the dreamer's, fairly blazed with objectivity.

      The impression that Monsieur Khodkine was playing a part, became more definite. He acted a little too well. The talk of mysticism and destiny fell a little too glibly from his lips to be quite in keeping with Rowland's reading of his character, which made the Russian out to be a politician of an advanced type, a doctrinaire perhaps, but an intriguer with a definite and perhaps sordid purpose, who had come expecting to find the dreamer Ivanitch, and instead had found a heretic and an unbeliever. But under this skillful camouflage of mere words, which though they may have meant much to Issad, Stepan and Picard, conveyed nothing to Rowland, he hid his disappointment well, and when all questions had been answered, he went and viewed the dead Ivanitch and agreed as the others had done to an immediate interment of the body.

      Through it all Rowland had said little, reading in the quick furtive glances of the girl Tanya a silent petition to accede in these arrangements, and so when the orders had been given Rowland returned with Monsieur Khodkine to the room on the lower floor where Tanya, after a warning glance which Rowland interpreted and answered, left the two men to their own devices. Rowland, now fully aware that he was to deal with a man of no ordinary ability, took a leaf from Monsieur Khodkine's book and fairly met him at his own game.

      "An American, Monsieur!" began the Russian, after they had lighted their cigarettes. "It is indeed a far cry from the 'white lights' of Broadway to the Priesthood of Nemi-"

      "Ah, you know New York?" asked Rowland.

      "I have been there. An extraordinary city-a wonderful people-intensely practical. But you are no nation of dreamers, Monsieur."

      "Upon the contrary," replied Rowland, politely. "Were we not dreamers-we should long since have finished disastrously our experiment in individualism. Like you in Russia we dream, Monsieur, but unlike you, our dreams come true."

      Khodkine gazed at Rowland with a new interest. Was this smiling American less stupid than he looked?

      "Individualism! СКАЧАТЬ