The covenant - James A. Michener [416]
'But if the while I think on thee, dear friend, All losses are restored and sorrows end.'
After a few demonstrations like this, Frank was so deflated that she could speak right past him when she wished to address Mr. Rhodes. But if she humbled the younger man, she exalted the older, praising him extravagantly and placing herself in his way whenever she moved on deck. When he sat down on a deck chair, he found that she had acquired the one next to it, and if he sought to rest because of his increasing heart unease, there she was, prepared to argue politics with him.
'What does that woman want with me?' Rhodes asked Frank in some dismay at the end of the fifth day.
'I think she wants to marry you, sir.'
'She's already married. Said so herself.'
'But she's getting a divorce. Said so herself.' Rhodes caught the mockery in his young friend's voice and burst into laughter. 'You have only one commission, Frank. Protect me from that woman.'
Saltwood's first stratagem backfired: 'We'll take our meals in your cabin. Let her have the table.' But before the first meal ended, the princess burst into the cabin, eyes aflutter, to assure herself that 'dear Mr. Rhodes is not suffering.' Deftly she maneuvered Frank out of the stateroom, fluffed up the pillows, and sat close beside Mr. Rhodes to help him eat his meal.
'Frank!' came the anguished cry. 'You said you'd bring the papers.' Grabbing anything at hand, Saltwood hurried back into the room, where the beleaguered man said, 'Sit here beside me,' and the princess was edged away.
The next afternoon, in their deck chairs, she chided Mr. Rhodes for having been so ungallant, and as she rose to spread a blanket for him she was seized with a mild fainting spell, which threw her gently into his arms.
'Frank!' he bellowed, and when Saltwood hurried up, he found his master embracing the inert body of the Polish princess.
During the entire voyage this charade continued, for no matter what maneuver the two men devised, the princess knew how to outsmart them, and one evening when persons at the bar said in her hearing, 'I do believe Mr. Rhodes, the woman hater, is having an affair with the princess,' she smiled.
It was when the Scot was one day out of Cape Town that Cecil Rhodes made the second great mistake of his life. In the presence of Frank Saltwood and two guests at his table he said casually to these business friends, 'When we reach the Cape you must visit me at Groote Schuur.'
'I shall be delighted!' the princess said.
He had scarcely unpacked his bags when a telegram arrived from the Mount Nelson Hotel announcing that the princess would be coming to dinner that night. At the meal, a party for the colony's political leaders, she assigned herself the seat as mistress of the establishment, and before long, cryptic notices began appearing in the Cape Town newspapers, sent to them anonymously in a woman's handwriting:
The mighty Colossus whose armor has blunted all the arrows of Cupid seems to have been wounded by that sly huntsman, and we understand that wedding bells may soon be sounding, but who the fair partner is to be we cannot at this time divulge except to say that she is a titled dignitary much accustomed to the royal circles of Berlin, Warsaw and St. Petersburg.
Who was this cyclonic woman who had risked everything on a boat trip to South Africa in pursuit of the world's richest bachelor? Princess Radziwill was everything she claimed to be, and one thing more. She was the daughter of one of Poland's noblest families; her aunt had indeed been the salvation of Honore de Balzac; she had written widely popular books; and she was divorcing her husband, a process that would require many years. But the salient fact was that she was almost penniless.
At forty-one, her hectic behavior had caused her expulsion from the courts of Europe, and several nations had denied her reentry. A waspish