Max written by Katherine Cecil Thurston

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[Illustration: "I HAVE WAITED ALL MY LIFE FOR THIS"]

MAX

A NOVEL

BY
KATHERINE CECIL THURSTON

AUTHOR OF
"THE MASQUERADER"
"THE GAMBLER" ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY
FRANK CRAIG

HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMX

Published September, 1910.

ILLUSTRATIONS

"I HAVE WAITED ALL MY LIFE FOR THIS"

STANDING AGAIN IN THE OUTER COURT OF A HOUSE IN PETERSBURG

TWO SOULS, DRAWN TOGETHER, TOUCHED IN A FIRST SUBTLE FUSION

"WHY, BOY, THIS IS CLEVER--CLEVER--CLEVER!"

THE IMPRESSION OF A MYSTERY FLOWED BACK UPON HIM

"LOOK! THIS IS WHAT I SHALL DO. THIS!"

THE COMPLETE SEMBLANCE OF THE WOMAN

"_C'EST LA VIE! L'ETERNELLE, LA TOUTE-PUISSANTE VIE!_"

PART I

MAX

CHAPTER I

A night journey is essentially a thing of possibilities. To those who
count it as mere transit, mere linking of experiences, it is, of course,
a commonplace; but to the imaginative, who by gift divine see a picture
in every cloud, a story behind every shadow, it suggests
romance--romance in the very making.

Such a vessel of inspiration was the powerful north express as it
thundered over the sleeping plains of Germany and France on its night
journey from Cologne to Paris. A thing of possibilities indeed, with its
varying human freight--stolid Teutons, hard-headed Scandinavians, Slavs
whom expediency or caprice had forced to descend upon Paris across the
sea of ice. It was the month of January, and an unlikely and unlovely
night for long and arduous travel. There were few pleasure-passengers on
the express, and if one could have looked through the carriage windows,
blurred with damp mist, one would have seen upon almost every face the
look--resigned or resolute--of those who fare forth by necessity rather
than by choice. In the sleeping-cars all the berths were occupied, but
here and them throughout the length of the train an occasional traveller
slept on the seat of his carriage, wrapped in coats and rugs, while in
the dining-saloon a couple of sleepy waiters lurched to and fro in
attendance upon a party of three men whose energy precluded the thought
of wasting even the night hours and who were playing cards at one of the
small tables. Up and down the whole overheated, swaying train there was
the suggestion of mystery, of contrast and effect, and the twinkling
eyes of the electric lamps seemed to wink from behind their drawn hoods
as though they, worldly wise and watchful, saw the individuality--the
inevitable story--behind the drowsy units who sat or lay or lounged
unguarded beneath them.

In one carriage, the fifth or sixth from the thundering engine, these
lights winked and even laughed one to the other each time the train
lurched over the points, and the dark, shrouding hoods quivered,
allowing a glimpse at the occupant of the compartment.

It was the figure of a boy upon which the twinkling lamp-eyes
flickered--a boy who had as yet scarce passed the barrier of manhood,
for the skin of the face was clean and smooth, and the limbs, seen
vaguely under a rough overcoat, had the freedom and supple grace that
belongs to early youth.

He was sleeping, this solitary traveller--one hand under his head, the
other instinctively guarding something that lay deep and snug in the
pocket of his overcoat. His attitude was relaxed, but not entirely
abandoned to the solace of repose; even in his sleep a something of
self-consciousness seemed to cling to him--a need for caution that lay
near to the surface of his drowsing senses--for once or twice he
started, once or twice his straight, dark eyebrows twitched into a
frown, once or twice his fingers tightened nervously upon their
treasure. He was subconsciously aware that, deserted though the
compartment was, it yet exhaled an alien suggestion, embodied in the
rugs, the coats, the hand-baggage of the card-playing travellers, which
was heaped upon the seat opposite.

But, despite this physical uneasiness, he was dreaming as the train tore
along through the damp, peaceful country--dreaming with that odd
confusion of time and scene that follows upon keen excitement, stress of
feeling or stress of circumstance.

As he dreamed, he was standing again in the outer court of a house in
Petersburg--a house to which he was debtor for one night's shelter; it
was early morning and deadly cold. The whole picture was sharp as a cut
crystal--the triple court-yard, the stone pavement, the gray well, and
frozen pile of firewood. He saw, recognized, lost it, and knew himself
to be skimming down the Nevskiy Prospekt and across the Winter Palace
Square, where the great angel towers upon its rose-granite monument.
Forward, forward he was carried, along the bank of the frozen Neva and
over the Troitskiy bridge, the powdered snow stinging his face like
pinpoints as it flew up from the nails in his little horse's shoes. Then
followed a magnifying of the picture--massed buildings rising from the
snow--buildings gold and turquoise-domed, that, even as they
materialized, lost splendor and merged into the unpretentious frontage
of the Finland station.

The scroll of the dream unwound; the dreamer moved, easing his position,
shaking back a lock of dark hair that had fallen across his forehead. He
was no longer rocking to the power of the north express; he was standing
on the platform at the end of a little train that puffed out of the
Finland station--a primitive, miniature train, white with frost and
powdered with the ashes of its wood fuel. The vision came and passed a
sketch, not a picture--a suggestion of straight tracks, wide snow
plains, and the blue, misty blur of fir woods. Then a shifting, a
juggling of effects! Abo, the Finnish port, painted itself upon his
imagination, and he was embarked upon the lonely sledge-drive, to the
harbor. He started in his sleep, shivered and sighed at that remembered
drive. The train passed over new points, the hoods of the lamps swayed,
the lights blinked and winked, and his mind swung onward in response to
the physical jar.

Abo was obliterated. He was on board a ship--a ship ploughing her way
through the ice-fields as she neared Stockholm; salt sea air flicked his
nostrils, he heard the broken ice tearing the keel like a million files,
he was sensible of the crucial sensation--the tremendous quiver--as the
vessel slipped from her bondage into the cradle of the sea, a sentient
thing welcoming her own element!

The heart of the dreamer leaped to that strange sensation. He drew a
long, sharp breath, and sat up, suddenly awake. It was over and done
with--the coldness, the rigor, the region of ice bonds! The fingers of
the future beckoned to him; the promises of the future lapped his ears
as the waves had lapped the ship's sides.

He looked about him, at first excitedly, then confusedly, then a little
shamedfacedly, for we are always involuntarily shamed at being tricked
by our emotions into a false conception. Drawing his hand from his
coat-pocket, he stretched himself with an assumption of ease, as though
he saw and recognized the twinkle in the electric lamps and
spontaneously rose to its demands.

The train was flying forward at unabated speed. Outside, the raw January
air was clinging in a film to the carriage window; inside, the dim light
and overheated air made an artificial atmosphere, enervating or
stimulating according to the traveller's gifts. To this solitary voyager
stimulation was obviously the effect produced, for, try as he might
to cheat the inquisitive lamps, interest in every detail of his
surroundings was portrayed in his face, in the poise of his head, the
quickness of his glance as he gazed round the compartment, verifying the
impression that he was alone.

[Illustration: STANDING AGAIN IN THE OUTER COURT OF A HOUSE IN
PETERSBURG]

Yes, he was absolutely alone! Everything was as it had been when he
settled himself to sleep on the departure of the three strangers. There,
on the opposite seat, were their rugs, their fur-lined coats, their
illustrated papers--all the impedimenta of prosperous travellers; and
there, on the rack above them, was his own modest hand-bag without
initials or label--a common little bag that might have belonged to some
poor Russian clerk or held the possessions of some needy Polish student.
The owner's glance scanned and appraised it, then by suggestion fell to
the plain rough overcoat that covered him from his neck to the tops of
his high boots, and whose replica was to be seen any day in the meaner
streets of Petersburg or Moscow. Like the bag, it was a little strange,
a little incongruous in its comfortable surroundings--a little savoring
of mystery.

The traveller's pulses quickened, his being lifted to the moment, for in
his soul was the spark of adventure, in his eyes the adventurous
look--fearless, observant, questioning. In composition, in expression
and essence, this boy was that free and fascinating creature, the born
adventurer--high of courage, prodigal of emotion, capturer of the
world's loot.

The spirit within him shone out in the moment of solitude; he passed his
hands down the front, of his coat, revelling in its coarse texture; he
rose to his feet, turned to the sheet of gray, misted glass, and,
letting down the window, leaned out into the night.

The scene was vague and ghostly, but to eyes accustomed to northern
whiteness it was full of suggestion, full of secrecy; to nostrils
accustomed to keen, rarefied air there was something poignant and
delicious in the scent of turned earth, the savor of vegetation. He
could see little or nothing as the train rocked and the landscape tore
past, but the atmosphere spoke to him as it speaks to blind men,
penetrating his consciousness. Here were open spaces, tracts of country
fructifying for the spring to come. A land of promise--of growth--of
fulfilment!

He closed his eyes, living in the suggestion, and his spirit sped
forward with the onrush of the train. Somewhere beyond the darkness lay
the land of his desires! Somewhere behind the veil shone the lights of
Paris! With a quick, exulting excitement he laughed; but even as the
laugh was caught and scattered to the winds by the thunder of the
engine, his bearing changed, the excitement dropped from him, a mask of
immobility fell upon his face, and he wheeled round from the window. The
card-playing travellers had opened the door of the carriage.

From his shadowy corner the boy eyed them; and they, alert from their
game, slightly dazed by the darkness of the carriage, peered back at
him, frankly curious. When they had left the compartment he had been a
huddled figure demanding no attention; now he was awake and an
individual, and human nature prompted interest.

Each in turn looked at him, and at each new glance his coldness of
demeanor deepened; until, as the eldest of the party came down the
carriage and appropriated the seat beside him, he turned away, pulling
up the window with resentful haste.

"Don't do that!" said the third man, pausing in the doorway and speaking
in French easily and pleasantly. "Don't do that--if you want the air!"

The boy started and looked round.

"I thank you! But I do not need the air!"

The man smiled acquiescence, but as he stepped into the carriage he took
a sharp look at the boy's clothes--the common Russian clothes--and a
slightly questioning, slightly satirical expression crossed his face. He
was a man who knew his world the globe over, and in his bearing lurked
the toleration, the kindly scepticism that such knowledge breeds.

"As you please!" he said, settling himself comfortably in the corner by
the door, while the elder of his companions--a tall, spare
American--crossed his long legs and lighted a thin black cigar, and the
younger--a spruce young Englishman wearing an eye-glass and a small
mustache--wrapped himself in his rugs, took a clean pocket-handkerchief
from his dressing-case, and opened a large bundle of illustrated
papers--French, German, and English.

For a space the train rocked on. No one attempted to speak, and the
Russian boy continued to stand by the window, pretending to look through
the blurred panes, in reality wondering how he could with least
commotion pass down the carriage to his own vacated place.

At last the man with the long cigar broke the silence in a slow, cool
voice that betrayed his nationality.

"We're well on time, Blake," he remarked, drawing out his watch.

The youth by the window shot an involuntary, fleeting glance at the two
younger men, to see which would answer to the name; and the student of
human nature noted the fact that he understood English.

"Oh, it's a good service!" he acquiesced, the tolerant look--half
sceptical, half humorous--- passing again over his face.

"I don't know! I think we could do with another few kilometres to the
hour." The thin man studied his flat gold watch with the loving interest
of one to whom time is a sacred thing.

At this point the youngest of the three raised his head.

"Marvellous sight you have, McCutcheon! Wish I could see by this light!"

McCutcheon leaned forward, replacing his watch. "What! Can't you see
your picture-books? Let's have the blinkers off!" He rose, his long,
spidery figure stretching up like a grotesque shadow, but as his arm
went out to the nearest of the shrouded lamps he was compelled to draw
back against the seat of the carriage, and an exclamation of surprise
escaped him.

Without warning or apology the Russian boy had turned from the window,
and stepping down the carriage, had tumbled into his former seat,
hunching himself up with his face to the cushions and his back to his
fellow-travellers.

It was a sudden and an uncivil proceeding. The man called Blake smiled;
the Englishman shrugged his shoulders; the American, with a movement of
quiet determination, drew back the lamp hoods.

In the flood of light the carriage lost its air of mystery, and Blake,
who had a fancy for the mysterious, dropped back into his corner and
took out his cigar-case with a little feeling of regret. In traversing
the world's pathways, beaten or wild, he always made a point of seeing
the story behind the circumstance; and, had he realized it, a common
instinct bound him in a triangular link to the peering, winking lamps,
and to the Russian boy lying unsociably wrapped in his heavy coat. All
three had an eye for an adventure.

But the lights were up, and the curtain down--it was a theatre between
the acts; and presently the calculating voice of McCutcheon broke forth
again, as he relapsed into his original attitude, coiling up his long
limbs and nursing his cigar to a glow.

"I can't get over that 'four jacks,'" he said. "To think I could have
been funked into seeing Billy at fifty!"

Blake laughed. "'Twas the eye-glass did it, Mac! A man shouldn't be
allowed to play poker with an eye-glass; it's taking an undue
advantage."

McCutcheon smiled his dry smile and shot a quizzical glance at the neat
young Englishman, who had become absorbed in one of his papers.

"Solid face, Blake!" he agreed. "Nothing so fine as an eye-glass for
sheer bluff. What would Billy be without one? Well, perhaps we won't
say. But with it you have no use for doubt--he's a diplomat all the
time."

The young man named Billy showed no irritation. With the composure which
he wore as a garment, he went on with his occupation.

For a time McCutcheon bore this aloofness, then he opened a new attack.
"What are you reading, my son? Makes a man sort of want his breakfast to
see that hungry look in your eyes. Share the provender, won't you?"

Billy looked up sedately.

"You fellows think my life's a game," he said. "But I tell you it takes
some doing to keep in touch with things."

Blake laughed chaffingly. "And the illustrated weekly papers are an
excellent substitute for Blue-books?"

Billy remained undisturbed. "It's all very well to scoff, but one may
get a side-light anywhere. In diplomacy nothing's too insignificant to
notice."

Again Blake laughed. "The principle on which it offers you a living?"

"Oh, come," said Billy, "that's rather rough! You know very well what I
mean. 'Tisn't always in the serious reports you get the color of a fact,
just as the gossip of a dinner-table is often more enlightening than a
cabinet council."

"Apropos?"

"I was thinking of this Petersburg affair."

"What? The everlasting Duma business?" McCutcheon drew in a long breath
of smoke.

Billy looked superior, as befitted a man who dealt in subtler matters
than mere politics. "Not at all," he said. "The disappearance of the
Princess Davorska."

Here Blake made a murmur of impatience. "Oh, Billy, don't!" he said.
"It's so frightfully banal."

McCutcheon took his cigar from his mouth. "The woman who disappeared on
the eve of her marriage?"

"Yes," broke in Blake, "disappeared on the eve of her marriage to elope
with some poet or painter, and set society by the ears. Thoroughly
modern and banal!"

The young diplomat glanced up once more.

"I don't think there's any suggestion of a lover."

"Fact is more potent than suggestion, Billy. Of course there is a lover.
Princesses don't disappear alone."

"You're a Socialist, Ned." Billy's eyes returned to his paper. "Like all
good Socialists, crammed to the neck with class bigotry. Nobody is such
an individualist as the man who advocates equality!"

Blake smiled. "That seems to sound all right," he said; "but it doesn't
remove the lover."

The good-humored scepticism at last forced a way to Billy's
susceptibilities.

"Look here," he said, crossly, "if hearing's not believing, perhaps
seeing is! Look at these pictures; they're not particularly modern or
banal."

He held out his paper, but Blake shook his head.

"No! No, Billy, not for me. If it was some little Rumanian gypsy who had
run away from her tribe I'd take her to my heart and welcome. But a
Princess Davorska--no!"

At this point McCutcheon stretched out his long arm and took the paper
from Billy's hand. "Let's have a squint!" he said. "Lover or no lover,
she must be a bit wide awake." And, curling himself up again, he began
to read from the paper, in a monotonous murmuring voice: "'_The
Princess, as well as being a woman of artistic accomplishments, is an
ardent sportswoman, having in her early girlhood hunted and shot with
keen zest on her father's estates. The above picture shows her at the
age of seventeen, carrying a gun_.' By the Lord, she is wide awake!" he
added, by way of comment. "She is wide awake carrying that gun, but I'd
lay my money on the second picture. Say, Billy, she looks a queen in her
court finery!"

But here real disgust crossed Blake's face. "Oh, that'll do, Mac! Give
us peace about the woman. I'm sick to death of all such nonsense. We're
due in a couple of hours. I think I'll try for forty winks." He threw
away his cigar and tucked his rug about him.

McCutcheon glanced at him, and, seeing that he was in earnest, handed
the paper back to Billy.

"Thanks, Mac!" Blake murmured. "Sorry if I was a bear! Don't switch off
the light, it won't bother me." He nodded, smiled, drew his rug closer
about his knees, and settled himself to sleep with the ease of the
accustomed traveller.

For close upon an hour complete silence reigned in the heated carriage.
Blake slept silently and peacefully; Billy went methodically through his
papers, dropping them one by one at his feet as he finished with them;
McCutcheon smoked, gazing into space with the blank expression of the
strenuous man who has learned to utilize his momentary respites; while,
stretched along the cushions of the carriage, his face hidden, his eyes
wide open and attentive, lay the young Russian, his fingers tentatively
caressing the treasure in the pocket of his coat.

But at last the spell was broken. The diplomatic Englishman dropped his
last paper, and McCutcheon stretched himself and looked once more at his
watch.

"Paris in an hour, Billy! Didn't those loafers in the dining-car promise
us coffee somewhat about this time?"

Billy looked up, unruffled of mind and body as in the first moment of
the journey. "I believe they did," he said. "Tell you what! You jog
their memories, while I go and wash. What about calling Ned?"

At sound of his own name, Blake's eyes opened. His waking was
characteristic of him. It was no slow recovery of the senses; he was
asleep and then awake--fully, easily awake, with a complete
consciousness of his position--a complete, assured grasp of time and
place.

"We're getting on, eh?" he said. "I suppose you're going to tub before
those fat Belgians in the sleeping-car, Billy? If you are, keep a second
place for me, like a good boy. There's nothing more fiendishly
triumphant than taking a bath in the basin while the rest of the train
is rattling the door-handle. Don't forget! Second place!" Then he turned
to the American. "What about the coffee, Mac? I expect those poor devils
of waiters have slept your order off."

"I was just about to negotiate that coffee transaction." McCutcheon
stood up. "You come too, my son! A little exercise will give you an
appetite." He paused to stretch his long, lean body, and incidentally
his glance fell upon their travelling companion, and he indicated the
recumbent figure with a jerk of the head.

"Say, Ned, ought we to wake our unsociable friend?" Blake cast one quick
glance at the huddled form, then he answered, tersely: "Let him alone!
He's not asleep--and, anyway, he understands English."

At which McCutcheon made a comprehending grimace, and the two left the
carriage.

* * * * *

For many minutes the young Russian did not move; then, when positive
certainty of his solitude had grown into his mind, he lifted himself on
one elbow and looked cautiously about him.

A change had passed over his face in the last hour--an interesting
change. The smooth cheek that the night air had cooled to paleness was
now flushed, and there was a spark of anger in the bright eyes.
Unquestionably this boy had a temper and a spirit of his own, and both
had been aroused. There was a certain arrogance, a certain contempt in
his glance now as it swept the inoffensive coats and rugs of the
departed travellers, a certain antagonism as he sat up, tossed back the
lock of hair that had again fallen across his forehead, and turned his
eyes to the heap of papers lying upon the carriage floor.

For long he gazed upon these papers, as though they exercised a magnetic
influence, and at last, with a swift impulse, extremely characteristic,
he stretched out his arm and drew forth the lowest of the heap.

He regained his former position with a quick, lithe movement of the
body, and in an instant he was poring over the paper, the pages turning
with incredible speed under the eagerness of his touch. At last he
reached the page he sought, the page that had offered ground for
discussion to the three voyagers an hour earlier.

His eyes flashed, his fingers tightened, his dark head was bent lower
over the paper. Two pictures confronted him. The first was of a woman in
Russian court dress, who wore her jewels and her splendor of apparel
with an air of pride and careless supremacy that had in it something
magnificent, something semi-barbaric. The boy looked at this curious and
arresting picture, but only for a moment; by some affinity, some subtle
attraction, his eyes turned instantly to the second portrait--the girl
carrying the gun--and as if in answer to some secret sympathy, some
silent comprehension, the frown upon his brows relaxed and his lips
parted.

It was still the woman of the jewels and the splendid apparel, but it
was a woman infinitely free, infinitely unhampered. The plain,
serviceable clothes fitted the slight figure as though they had been
long worn and loved; the hair was closely coiled, so that the young face
looked out upon the world frank and unadorned as a boy's. Here, as in
the first picture, the eyes looked forth with a curious, proud
directness; but beneath the directness was a glint of humor, a flash of
daring absent in the other face; the mouth smiled, seeming to anticipate
life's secrets, the ungloved hand held the gun with a touch peculiarly
caressing, peculiarly firm.

The traveller looked, looked again, and then, with a deliberation odd in
so slight a circumstance, folded the paper, rose, and stepped to the
window of the carriage.

The night mist beat in, still raw and cold, but somewhere behind the
darkness was the stirring, the vague presage of the day to come. He
leaned out, fingers close about the paper, lips and nostrils breathing
in the suggestive, vaporous air. For a moment he stood, steadying
himself to the motion of the train, palpitating to his secret thoughts;
then, with a little theatricality all for his own edification, he opened
his fingers and, freeing the paper, watched it swirl away, hang for a
second like a moth against the lighted window, and vanish into the
night.

CHAPTER II

'Journeys end in lovers' meeting.' The phrase conjures a picture. The
court-yard of some inn, glowing ripe in the tints of the setting
sun--open doors--an ancient coach disgorging its passengers! This--or,
perhaps, some quay alive with sound and movement--cries of command in
varying tongues--crowded gangways--rigging massed against the sky--all
the paraphernalia of romance and travel. But the real journey--the
journey of adventure itself--is frequently another matter: often gray,
often loverless, often demanding from the secret soul of the adventurer
spirit and inspiration, lest the blood turn cold in sick dismay, and the
brain cloud under its weight of nostalgia.

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