The Dark Star

Also, I am happy. The greatest happiness in the world is to have the opportunity to learn about that same world.

I am happy because I now have that opportunity. During these many months since I wrote to you I have learned a little French; I read some, write some, understand pretty well, and speak a little. What a pleasure, mon ami!

Piano and vocal music, too, occupy me; I love both, and I am told encouraging things. But best and most delightful of all I am learning to draw and compose and paint from life in the Académie Julian! Think of it! It is difficult, it is absorbing, it requires energy, persistence, self-denial; but it is fascinating, satisfying, glorious.

Also, it is very trying, mon ami; and I descend into depths of despair and I presently soar up out of those depressing depths into intoxicating altitudes of aspiration and self-confidence.

You yourself know how it is, of course. At the criticism today I was lifted to the seventh heaven. “Pas mal,” he said; “continuez, mademoiselle.” Which is wonderful for him. Also my weekly sketch was chosen from among all the others, and I was given number one. That means my choice of tabourets on Monday morning, voyez vous? So do you wonder that I came home with Suzanne, walking on air, and that as soon as déjeuner was finished I flew in here to write to you about it?

Suzanne is our maid – the maid of Princess Naïa, of course – who walks to and from school with me. I didn’t wish her to follow me about at first, but the Princess insisted, and I’m resigned to it now.

The Princess Mistchenka is such a darling! I owe her more than I owe anybody except mother and father. She simply took me as I was, a young, stupid, ignorant, awkward country girl with no experience, no savoir-faire, no clothes, and even no knowledge of how to wear them; and she is trying to make out of me a fairly intelligent and presentable human being who will not offend her by gaucheries when with her, and who will not disgrace her when in the circle of her friends.

Oh, of course I still make a faux pas now and then, mon ami; there are dreadful pitfalls in the French language into which I have fallen more than once. And at times I have almost died of mortification. But everybody is so amiable and patient, so polite, so gay about my mistakes. I am beginning to love the French. And I am learning so much! I had no idea what a capacity I had for learning things. But then, with Princess Naïa, and with my kind and patient teachers and my golden opportunities, even a very stupid girl must learn something. And I am not really very stupid; I’ve discovered that. On the contrary, I really seem to learn quite rapidly; and all that annoys me is that there is so much to learn and the days are not long enough, so anxious am I, so ambitious, so determined to get out of this wonderful opportunity everything I possibly can extract.

I have lived in these few months more years than my own age adds up! I am growing old and wise very fast. Please hasten to write to me before I have grown so old that you would not recognize me if you met me.

    Your friend,
    Ruhannah.

The letter flattered him. He was rather glad he had once kissed the girl who could write such a letter.

He happened to be engaged, at that time, in drawing several illustrations for a paper called the Midweek Magazine. There was a heroine, of course, in the story he was illustrating. And, from memory, and in spite of the model posing for him, he made the face like the face of Ruhannah Carew.

But the days passed, and he did not reply to her letter. Then there came still another letter from her:

Why don’t you write me just one line? Have you really forgotten me? You’d like me if you knew me now, I think. I am really quite grown up. And I am so happy!

The Princess is simply adorable. Always we are busy, Princess Naïa and I; and now, since I have laid aside mourning, we go to concerts; we go to plays; we have been six times to the opera, and as many more to the Théâtre Français; we have been to the Louvre and the Luxembourg many times; to St. Cloud, Versailles, Fontainebleau.

Always, when my studies are over, we do something interesting; and I am beginning to know Paris, and to care for it with real affection; to feel secure and happy and at home in this dear, glittering, silvery-grey city – full of naked trees and bridges and palaces. And, sometimes when I feel homesick, and lonely, and when Brookhollow seems very, very far away, it troubles me a little to find that I am not nearly so homesick as I think I ought to be. But I think it must be like seasickness; it is too frightful to last.

The Princess Mistchenka has nursed me through the worst. All I can say is that she is very wonderful.

On her day, which is Thursday, her pretty salon is thronged. At first I was too shy and embarrassed to be anything but frightened and self-conscious and very miserable when I sat beside her on her Thursdays. Besides, I was in mourning and did not appear on formal occasions.

Now it is different; I take my place beside her; I am not self-conscious; I am interested; I find pleasure in knowing people who are so courteous, so considerate, so gay and entertaining.

Everybody is agreeable and gay, and I am sorry that I miss so much that is witty in what is said; but I am learning French very rapidly.

The men are polite to me! At first I was so gauche, so stupid and provincial, that I could not bear to have anybody kiss my hand and pay me compliments. I’ve made a lot of other mistakes, too, but I never make the same mistake twice.

So many interesting men come to our Thursdays; and some women. I prefer the men, I think. There is one old French General who is a dear; and there are young officers, too; and yesterday two cabinet ministers and several people from the British and Russian embassies. And the Turkish Chargé, whom I dislike.

The women seem to be agreeable, and they all are most beautifully gowned. Some have titles. But all seem to be a little too much made up. I don’t know any of them except formally. But I feel that I know some of the men better – especially the old General and a young military attaché of the Russian Embassy, whom everybody likes and pets, and whom everybody calls Prince Erlik – such a handsome boy! And his real name is Alak, and I think he is very much in love with Princess Naïa.

Now, something very odd has happened which I wish to tell you about. My father, as you know, was missionary in the Vilayet of Trebizond many years ago. While there he came into possession of a curious sea chest belonging to a German named Conrad Wilner, who was killed in a riot near Gallipoli.

In this chest were, and still are, two very interesting things – an old bronze Chinese figure which I used to play with when I was a child. It was called the Yellow Devil; and a native Chinese missionary once read for us the inscription on the figure which identified it as a Mongol demon called Erlik, the Prince of Darkness.

The other object of interest in the box was the manuscript diary kept by this Herr Wilner to within a few moments of his death. This I have often heard read aloud by my father, but I forget much of it now, and I never understood it all, because I was too young. Now, here is the curious thing about it all. The first time you spoke to me of the Princess Naïa Mistchenka, I had a hazy idea that her name seemed familiar to me. And ever since I have known her, now and then I found myself trying to recollect where I had heard that name, even before I heard it from you.

Suddenly, one evening about a week ago, it came to me that I had heard both the names, Naïa and Mistchenka, when I was a child. Also the name Erlik. The two former names occur in Herr Wilner’s diary; the latter I heard from the Chinese missionary years ago; and that is why they seemed so familiar to me.

It is so long since I have read the diary that I can’t remember the story in which the names Naïa and Mistchenka are concerned. As I recollect, it was a tragic story that used to thrill me.

At any rate, I didn’t speak of this to Princess Naïa; but about a week ago there were a few people dining here with us – among others an old Turkish Admiral, Murad Pasha, who took me out. And as soon as I heard his name I thought of that diary; and I am sure it was mentioned in it.

Anyway, he happened to speak of Trebizond; and, naturally, I said that my father had been a missionary there many years ago.

As this seemed to interest him, and because he questioned me, I told him my father’s name and all that I knew in regard to his career as a missionary in the Trebizond district. And, somehow – I don’t exactly recollect how it came about – I spoke of Herr Wilner, and his death at Gallipoli, and how his effects came into my father’s possession.

And because the old, sleepy-eyed Admiral seemed so interested and amused, I told him about Herr Wilner’s box and his diary and the plans and maps and photographs with which I used to play as a little child.

After dinner, Princess Naïa asked me what it was I had been telling Murad Pasha to wake him up so completely and to keep him so amused. So I merely said that I had been telling the Admiral about my childhood in Brookhollow.

Naturally neither she nor I thought about the incident any further. Murad did not come again; but a few days later the Turkish Chargé d’Affaires was present at a very large dinner given by Princess Naïa.

And two curious conversations occurred at that dinner:

The Turkish Chargé suddenly turned to me and asked me in English whether I were not the daughter of the Reverend Wilbour Carew who once was in charge of the American Mission near Trebizond. I was so surprised at the question; but I answered yes, remembering that Murad must have mentioned me to him.

He continued to ask me about my father, and spoke of his efforts to establish a girls’ school, first at Brusa, then at Tchardak, and finally near Gallipoli. I told him I had often heard my father speak of these matters with my mother, but that I was too young to remember anything about my own life in Turkey.

All the while we were conversing, I noticed that the Princess kept looking across the table at us as though some chance word had attracted her attention.

After dinner, when the gentlemen had retired to the smoking room, the Princess took me aside and made me repeat everything that Ahmed Mirka had asked me.

I told her. She said that the Turkish Chargé was an old busybody, always sniffing about for all sorts of information; that it was safer to be reticent and let him do the talking; and that almost every scrap of conversation with him was mentally noted and later transcribed for the edification of the Turkish Secret Service.

I thought this very humorous; but going into the little salon where the piano was and where the music was kept, while I was looking for an old song by Messager, from “La Basoche,” called “Je suis aimé de la plus belle – ” Ahmed Mirka’s handsome attaché, Colonel Izzet Bey, came up to where I was rummaging in the music cabinet.

He talked nonsense in French and in English for a while, but somehow the conversation led again toward my father and the girls’ school at Gallipoli which had been attacked and burned by a mob during the first month after it had been opened, and where the German, Herr Wilner, had been killed.

“Monsieur, your reverend father, must surely have told you stories about the destruction of the Gallipoli school, mademoiselle,” he insisted.

“Yes. It happened a year before the mission at Trebizond was destroyed by the Turks.” I said maliciously.

“So I have heard. What a pity! Our Osmanli – our peasantry are so stupid! And it was such a fine school. A German engineer was killed there, I believe.”

“Yes, my father said so.”

“A certain Herr Conrad Wilner, was it not?”

“Yes. How did you hear of him, Colonel Izzet?”

“It was known in Stamboul. He perished by mistake, I believe – at Gallipoli.”

“Yes; my father said that Herr Wilner was the only man hurt. He went out all alone into the mob and began to cut them with his riding whip. My father tried to save him, but they killed Herr Wilner with stones.”