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The King's Mirror

by Anthony Hope · English · Gutenberg #24034 · 593,671 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The King's Mirror

Author: Anthony Hope


        
Release date: December 26, 2007 [eBook #24034]
                Most recently updated: January 3, 2021

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE KING'S MIRROR ***




Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net






THE KING'S MIRROR

A NOVEL

BY ANTHONY HOPE

Author of The Chronicles of Count Antonio--The Prisoner of Zenda--The
God in the Car--Phroso--Rupert of Hentzau, etc.

[Illustration: INTER FOLIA FRUCTIS]

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1899

COPYRIGHT, 1898, 1899,
BY ANTHONY HOPE HAWKINS.

_All rights reserved_.




[Illustration: "I'm not a king for my own pleasure." (See page 14.)]




CONTENTS.

CHAPTER                                                   PAGE
I.--A PIOUS HYPERBOLE                                        1
II.--A BIRD WITHOUT WINGS                                   11
III.--SOME SECRET OPINIONS                                  22
IV.--TWO OF MY MAKERS                                       34
V.--SOMETHING ABOUT VICTORIA                                47
VI.--A STUDENT OF LOVE AFFAIRS                              60
VII.--THINGS NOT TO BE NOTICED                              73
VIII.--DESTINY IN A PINAFORE                                84
IX.--JUST WHAT WOULD HAPPEN                                 96
X.--OF A POLITICAL APPOINTMENT                             109
XI.--AN ACT OF ABDICATION                                  122
XII.--KING AT A PRICE                                      136
XIII.--I PROMISE NOT TO LAUGH                              151
XIV.--PLEASURE TAKES LEAVE TO PROTEST                      165
XV.--THE HAIR-DRESSER WAITS                                179
XVI.--A CHASE OF TWO PHANTOMS                              193
XVII.--DECIDEDLY MEDIÆVAL                                  207
XVIII.--WILLIAM ADOLPHUS HITS THE MARK                     219
XIX.--GREAT PROMOTION                                      233
XX.--AN INTERESTING PARALLEL                               248
XXI.--ON THE ART OF FALLING SOFT                           261
XXII.--UT PUTO, VESTIS FIO                                 275
XXIII.--A PARADOX OF SENSIBILITY                           290
XXIV.--WHAT A QUESTION!                                    304
XXV.--A SMACK OF REPETITION                                318
XXVI.--THE SECRET OF THE COUNTESS                          334
XXVII.--OF GRAZES ON THE KNEE                              349
XXVIII.--AS BEDERHOF ARRANGED                              363




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
                                                   FACING PAGE
"I'm not a king for my own pleasure"            _Frontispiece_
Hammerfeldt came to me and kissed my hand                   43
The firelight played on the hand that held the screen      102
"My ransom," said I. "The price of my freedom"             148
"On my honour, a pure accident," said Varvilliers          215
"Why, what brings you here?" I cried                       262
"My dear friend, have you forgotten me?"                   293
"I'll try--I'll try to make you happy"                     342




THE KING'S MIRROR.

CHAPTER I.

A PIOUS HYPERBOLE.


Before my coronation there was no event in childhood that impressed
itself on my memory with marked or singular distinction. My father's
death, the result of a chill contracted during a hunting excursion,
meant no more to me than a week of rooms gloomy and games forbidden; the
decease of King Augustin, my uncle, appeared at the first instant of
even less importance. I recollect the news coming. The King, having been
always in frail health, had never married; seeing clearly but not far,
he was a sad man: the fate that struck down his brother increased his
natural melancholy; he became almost a recluse, withdrew himself from
the capital to a retired residence, and henceforward was little more
than a name in which Prince von Hammerfeldt conducted the business of
the country. Now and then my mother visited him; once she brought back
to me a letter from him, little of which I understood then, although I
have since read often the touching words of his message. When he died,
there was the same gloom as when my father left us; but it seemed to me
that I was treated a little differently; the servants stared at me, my
mother would look long at me with a half-admiring, half-amused
expression, and Victoria let me have all her toys. In Baroness von
Krakenstein (or Krak, as we called her) alone, there was no difference;
yet the explanation came from her, for when that evening I reached out
my little hand and snatched a bit of cake from the dish, Krak caught my
wrist, saying gravely,

"Kings must not snatch, Augustin."

"Victoria, what do you get when you are a king?" I asked my sister that
night. I was hardly eight, she nearing ten, and her worldly wisdom
seemed great.

"Oh, you have just what you want, and do what you like, and kill people
that you don't like," said she. "Don't you remember the Arabian Nights?"

"Could I kill Krak?" I asked, choosing a concrete and tempting
illustration of despotic power.

Victoria was puzzled.

"She'd have to do something first, I suppose," she answered vaguely. "I
should have been queen if you hadn't been born, Augustin." Her tone now
became rather plaintive.

"But nobody has a queen if they can get a king," said I serenely.

It is the coronation day that stands out in memory; the months that
elapsed between my accession and that event are merged in a vague
dimness. I think little difference was made in our household while we
mourned the dead King. Krak was still sharp, imperious, and exacting.
She had been my mother's governess, and came with her from Styria. I
suppose she had learned the necessity of sternness from her previous
experience with Princess Gertrude, for that lady, my mother, a fair,
small, slim woman, who preserved her girlishness of appearance till the
approach of middle age, was of a strong and masterful temper. Only Krak
and Hammerfeldt had any power over her; Krak's seemed the result of
ancient domination, the Prince's was won by a suave and coaxing
deference that changed once a year or thereabouts to stern and
uncompromising opposition. But with my early upbringing, and with
Victoria's, Hammerfeldt had nothing to do; my mother presided, and Krak
executed. The spirit of Styria reigned in the nursery, rather than the
softer code of our more Western country; I doubt whether discipline were
stricter in any house in Forstadt than in the royal palace.

They roused me at eight on my coronation day. My mother herself came to
my bedside, and knelt down for a few minutes by it. Krak stood in the
background, grim and gloomy. I was a little frightened, and asked what
was afoot.

"You're to be crowned to-day, Augustin," said my mother. "You must be a
good boy."

"Am I to be crowned king, mother?"

"Yes, dear, in the cathedral. Will you be a good king?"

"I'll be a great king, mother," said I. The Arabian Nights were still in
my head.

She laughed and rose to her feet.

"Have him ready by ten o'clock, Baroness," she said. "I must go and have
my coffee and then dress. And I must see that Victoria is properly
dressed too."

"Are you going to be crowned, mother?" I asked.

"No," she said. "I shall be only Princess Heinrich still."

I looked at her with curiosity. A king is greater than a princess;
should I be greater than my mother? And my mother was greater than Krak!
Why, then--but Krak ended my musings by whisking me out of bed.

It was fine fun to ride in the carriage by my mother's side, with
Victoria and old Hammerfeldt opposite. Hammerfeldt was President of the
Council of Regency; but I, knowing nothing of that, supposed my mother
had asked him into our carriage because he amused us and gave us
chocolates. My mother was very prettily dressed, and so was Victoria. I
was very glad that Krak was in another vehicle. There were crowds of
people in the street, cheering us more than they ever had before; I was
taking off my hat all the time. Once or twice I held up my sword for
them to see, but everybody laughed, and I would not do it any more. It
was the first time that I had worn a sword, but I did not see why they
should laugh. Victoria laughed most of all; indeed, at last my mother
scolded her, saying that swords were proper for men, and that I should
be a man soon.

We reached the cathedral, and with my hand in my mother's I was led up
the nave, till we came to the front of the High Altar. There was a very
long service; I did not care about or heed much of it, until the
archbishop came down on to the lowest step, and my mother took my hand
again and led me to him, and he put the crown on my head. I liked that,
and turned round to see if the people were looking, and was just going
to laugh at Victoria, when I saw Krak frowning at me; so I turned back
and listened to the archbishop. He was a nice old man, but I did not
understand very much of what he said. He talked about my uncle, my
father, and the country, and what a king ought to do; at last he leaned
down toward me, and told me in a low but very distinct voice that
henceforward God was the only Power above me, and I had no lord except
the King of kings. He was a very old man with white hair, and when he
had said this he seemed not to be able to go on for a minute. Perhaps he
was tired, or did not know what to say next. Then he laid his hand on my
head--they had taken the crown off because it was so heavy for me--and
said in a whisper, "Poor child!" but then he raised his voice, so that
it rang all through the cathedral, and blessed me. Then my mother made
me get up and turn and face the people; she put the crown on my head
again; then she knelt and kissed my hand. I was very much surprised, and
I saw Victoria trying hard not to laugh--because Krak was just by her.
But I didn't want to laugh; I was too much surprised.

So far memory carries me; the rest is blurred, until I found myself back
in our own home divested of my military costume, but allowed, as a
special treat, to have my sword beside me when we sat down to tea. We
had many good things for tea, and even Krak was thawed into amiability;
she told me that I had behaved very well in the cathedral, and that I
should see the fireworks from the window presently. It was winter and
soon dark. The fireworks began at seven; I remember them very well.
Above all, I recollect the fine excitement of seeing my own name in
great long golden letters, with a word after them that Krak told me I
ought to know meant "king," and was of the third declension. "_Rex,
Regis_," said Krak, and told poor Victoria to go on. Victoria was far
too excited, and Krak said we must both learn it to-morrow; but we were
clapping our hands, and didn't pay much heed. Then Hammerfeldt came in
and held me up at the window for a few minutes, telling me to kiss my
hand to the people. I did as he told me; then the crowd began to go
away, and Krak said it was bedtime.

Now here I might conclude the story of my coronation day; but an episode
remains trivial and ludicrous enough, yet most firmly embedded in my
memory. Indeed, it has always for me a significance quite independent of
its obvious import; it seems to symbolize the truth which the experience
of all my life has taught me. Perhaps I throw dignity to the winds in
recording it; I intend to do the like all through what I write; for, to
my thinking, when dignity comes in at the door sincerity flies out of
the window. I was not tired after the day, or I was too excited to feel
tired. My small brain was agog; my little head was turned. Amidst all
that I did not understand I understood enough to conceive that I had
become a great man. I saw Victoria led off to bed, and going meekly. But
I was not as Victoria; she was not a king as I was; mother had not knelt
before her; the archbishop had not told Victoria that she had no lord
except the King of kings. Perhaps I was hardly to blame when I took his
words as excluding the domination of women, of Krak, even of the mother
who had knelt and kissed my hand. At any rate, I was in a wilful mood.
Old Anna, the nurse, had put Victoria to bed, and now came through the
door that divided our rooms and proposed to assist me in my undressing.
I was wilful and defiant; I refused most flatly to go to bed. Anna was
perplexed; unquestionably a new and reverential air was perceptible in
Anna; the detection of it was fuel to my fires of rebellion. Anna sent
for Krak; in the interval before the governess's arrival I grew uneasy.
I half wished I had gone to bed quietly, but now I was in for the
battle. Had there been any meaning in what the archbishop said, or had
there not? Was it true, or had he misled me? I had believed him, and was
minded to try the issue; I sat in my chair attempting to whistle as my
groom had taught me. Krak came; I whistled on; there was a whispered
consultation between Anna and Krak; then Krak told me that I was to go
to bed, and bade me begin the process by taking off my shoes. I looked
her full and fair in the face.

"I won't till I choose," said I. "I'm king now"; and then I quoted to
Krak what the archbishop had said. She lifted her hands in amazement and
wrath.

"I shall have to fetch your mother," she said.

"I'm above my mother; she knelt to me," I retorted triumphantly.

Krak advanced toward me.

"Augustin, take off your shoes," said she.

I had no love for Krak. Dearest of all gifts of sovereignty would be the
power of defying Krak.

"Do you really want me to take them off?" I asked.

"This instant," commanded Krak.

I do not justify my action; yet, perhaps, the archbishop should have
been more careful of what he said. My answer to Krak was, "Take them,
then." And I snatched off one of them and threw it at Krak. It missed
most narrowly the end of her long nose, and lodged, harmlessly enough,
on Anna's broad bosom. I sat there exultant, fearful, and defiant.

Krak spoke to Anna in a low whisper; then they both went out, leaving me
alone in the big room. I grew afraid, partly because I was alone, partly
for what I had done. I could undress myself, although I was not, as a
rule, allowed to. I tumbled quickly out of my clothes, and had just
slipped on my nightshirt, when the door opened, and my mother entered,
followed by Krak. My mother looked very young and pretty, but she also
looked severe.

"Is this true, Augustin?" she asked, sitting down by the fire.

"Yes, mother," said I, arrested in my flight toward bed.

"You refused to obey the Baroness?"

"Yes. I'm king now."

"And threw your shoe at her?"

"The archbishop said----" I began.

"Be quiet," said my mother, and she turned her head and listened to
Krak, who began to whisper in her ear. A moment later she turned to me.

"You must do as you are told," she said; "and you must apologize to the
Baroness."

"I'd have taken them off if she had asked me," I said, "but she ordered
me."

"She has a right to order you."

"Is she God?" I asked, pointing scornfully at Krak. Really the
archbishop must bear some of the responsibility.

Krak whispered again; again my mother turned to me.

"Will you apologize, Augustin?" she said.

"No," said I stubbornly.

Krak whispered again. I heard my mother say, with a little laugh, "But
to-day, Baroness!" Then she sighed and looked round at me.

"Do apologize, Augustin," said she.

"I'll apologize to you, not to her," I said.

She looked at the Baroness, then at me, then back to the Baroness; then
she smiled and sighed.

"I suppose so. He must learn it. But not much to-night, Baroness. Just
enough to--to show him."

Krak came toward me; a moment later I occupied a position which, to my
lively discomfort, I had filled once or twice before in my short life,
but which I had not supposed that I should fill again after what the
archbishop had said. I set my teeth to endure; I was full of
bewilderment, surprise, and anger. The archbishop had played me terribly
false; the Arabian Nights were no less delusive. Krak was as unmoved and
business-like as usual. I was determined not to cry--not to-night. I was
not very hard tried; almost directly my mother said, "That will do."
There was a pause; no doubt Krak's face expressed a surprised protest.
"Yes, that's enough to-day," said my mother, and she added, "Get into
bed, Augustin. You must learn to be an obedient boy before you can be a
good king."

The moment I was released I ran and leaped into bed, hiding my face
under the clothes. I heard my mother come and say, "Won't you kiss me?"
but I was very angry; I did not understand why they made me a king, and
then beat me, because I behaved like all the kings I had been told or
read about. Moreover, I had begun to cry now, and I would have been
killed sooner than let Krak see that. So presently my mother went away,
and Krak too. Then Anna came and tried to turn down the clothes, but I
would not let her. I hung on to them hard, for I was still crying. I
heard Anna sigh, "Poor dearie!" then she went away; but directly after
Victoria's voice came, saying, "Anna says I may come in with you. May I,
please, Augustin?" I let her move the bedclothes and get in with me; and
I put my arms round her neck. Victoria comforted me as best she could.

"You'll be a real king when you grow up," she said.

A thought struck me--a rapturous thought, born of the Arabian Nights.
(In the archbishop lay no comfort at all.)

"Yes," I cried, "and then I'll bastinado Krak!" With this comforting
thought I fell asleep.

A strange day, this of my coronation, odd to pass through, to the
highest degree illuminating in retrospect. I did not live to bastinado
Krak; nor would I now had I the power. What they did was perhaps a
little cruel, a little Styrian, as Victoria and I used covertly to say
of such harsh measures; but how valuable a lesson on the state and
fortune of kings! The King is one, the man another. The King is crowned,
the man is lashed; they give us greatness in words: in fact, we are our
servants' servants. Little as I liked the thing at the time, I can not
now regret that I was chastised on my coronation day. I was thus put
into an attitude eminently conducive to the perception of truth, and to
a realization of the facts of my position. I forgive thee the blows,
Krak--Lo, I forgive thee!




CHAPTER II.

A BIRD WITHOUT WINGS.


A man's _puerilia_ are to himself not altogether puerile; they are
parcel of the complex explanation of his existent self. He starts, I
suppose, as something, a very malleable something, ready to be hammered
into the shape that the socket requires. The two greatest forces at work
on the yielding substance are parents and position, with the gardener's
boy beneath my window crusts and cuffs, with me at the window kingship
and Styrian discipline. In the latter there was to me nothing strange; I
had grown into it from birth. But now it became suddenly noticeable, as
a thing demanding justification, by reason of its patent incongruity
with my kingship. I have shown how swiftly and sharply the contrast was
impressed on me; if I have not made that point, then my story of a
nursery tragedy is unexcused. I was left wondering what manner of king
he was who must obey on pain of blows. I was very young, and the sense
of outrage did not last, but the puzzle persisted, and Victoria's riper
philosophy was taxed to allay it. Waiting seemed the only thing, waiting
till I could fling my shoes at whom I would, and sit on my throne to
behold the bastinadoing of Krak. My mother told me that I must be an
obedient boy first. Well and good; but then why make me a king now? In
truth I was introduced over-early to the fictions of high policy. A king
without power seems to a child like a bird without wings; but a bird
without wings is a favourite device of statesmanship.

The matter did not stand even here. My kingship not only lacked the
positive advantages with which youthful imagination (aided by the
archbishop's pious hyperbole) had endowed it; it became in my eyes the
great and fertile source of all my discomfort, the parent of every
distasteful obligation, the ground on which all chosen pleasures were
refused. It was ever "Kings can not do this," or "Kings must do that,"
and the "this" was always sweet, the "that" repellent; in Krak's hands
monarchy became a cross between a treadmill and a strait-waistcoat.
"What's the use of being a king?" I dared once to cry to her.

"God did not make you a king for your own pleasure," returned Krak
solemnly. I recollect thinking that her remark must certainly be true,
yet wondering whether God quite realized how tiresome the position was.

It may be supposed that I had many advantages to counterbalance these
evils that pressed so hardly on me. I do not recollect being conscious
of them. Even my occasional parades in public, although they tickled my
vanity, were spoiled for me by the feeling that nobody would look at me
with admiration, envy, or even interest, if he knew the real state of
the case. I may observe that this reflection has not vanished with
infancy, but still is apt to assail me. Of course I was well fed, well
housed, and well, though firmly, treated. Alas, what we have not is more
to us than all we possess. I was thankful under protest; prohibitions
outweighed privileges. I have not the experience necessary for any
generalization, but my own childhood was not very happy.

A day comes into my mind almost as clear and distinct in memory as my
coronation day. I was nine years old, and went with my mother to pay a
visit to a nobleman of high rank. He had just married and brought to his
house a young American lady. We were welcomed, of course, with infinite
courtesy and deference. Princess Heinrich received such tributes well,
with a quiet, restrained dignity and a lofty graciousness. I was smart
in my best clothes, a miniature uniform of the Corps of Guards, and my
hand flew up to my little helmet when the Countess curtseyed very low
and looked at me with merry, sparkling blue eyes. Her husband was a
tall, good-looking fellow, stiff in back and manner, as are most of our
folk, but honest and good-hearted, as are most of them also. But I paid
little heed to him; the laughing Countess engrossed me, and I found
myself smiling at her. Her eyes seemed to enter into confidence with me,
and I knew she was rather sorry for me. The day was damp and chill, and,
although my mother would not refuse to go round the Count's gardens, of
which he was proud, she declared that the walk was not safe for me, and
asked the Countess to take care of me. So she and I were left alone. I
stood rather shyly by the table, fingering the helmet that my mother had
told me to take off; presently looking up, I saw her merry eyes on me.

"Sire," said the Countess, "if you sat down I would."

I bowed and sought a chair; there was a high wooden arm-chair, and I
clambered into it; my legs dangled in mid-air. Another little laugh came
from the Countess as she brought me a high footstool. I tried to jump
down in time to stop her, but she would not let me. Then she knelt
herself on the stool, her knees by my feet.

"What beautiful military boots!" she said.

I looked down listlessly at my shining toes. She clasped her hands,
crying:

"You're a beautiful little king! Oh, isn't it lovely to be a king!"

I looked at her doubtfully; her pretty face was quite close to mine.
Somehow I wanted very much to put my arms round her neck, but I felt
sure that kings did not hug countesses. Imagine Krak's verdict on such a
notion!

"I'm not a king for my own pleasure," said I, regarding my hostess
gravely. "I am a king for the good of my people."

She drew a long breath and whispered in English (I did not understand
then, but the sound of the words stayed with me), "Poor little mite!"
Then she said:

"But don't you have a lovely time?"

I felt that I was becoming rather red, and I knew that the tears were
not far from my eyes.

"No," said I, "not very."

"Why not?"

"They--they don't let me do any of the things I want to."

"You shall do anything you want to here," she whispered. I was very much
surprised to see that her bright eyes had grown a little clouded.

"We've no kings in my country," she said, taking my hand in hers.

"Oh, I wish I'd been born there," said I; then we looked at one another
for a minute, and I put out my arms and took hold of her, and drew her
face near mine. With a little gulp in her throat she sprang up, caught
me in her arms, kissed me a dozen times, and threw herself into the big
chair with me on her knees. Now I was crying, and yet half laughing; so
I believe was she. We did not say very much more to one another. Soon I
stopped crying; she looked at me, and we both laughed.

"What babies we are, your Majesty!" said she.

"They might let me do a little more, mightn't they? It's all Krak, you
know. Mother wouldn't be half so bad without Krak."

"Oh, my dear, and is Krak so horrid?"

"Horrid," said I, with grave emphasis.

The Countess kissed me again.

"You'll grow up soon," she said. Somehow the assurance comforted me more
from her lips than from Victoria's. "Will you be nice to me when you
grow up?"

"I shall always be very, very fond of you," said I.

She laughed a funny little laugh, and then sighed.

"If God sends me a little son, I hope he'll be like you," she whispered,
with her cheek against mine.

"He won't be a king," said I with a sigh of envy.

"You poor dear!" cooed she.

Then came my mother's clear, high-bred voice, just outside the door,
descanting on the beauty of the Count's parterres and orangery. A swift
warning glance flew from me to my hostess. I scampered off my perch, and
she stood up in respectful readiness for the entrance of Princess
Heinrich.

"Don't tell mother," I whispered urgently.

"Not a word!"

"Whatever they do to you?"

"No, whatever they do to me!"

My mother was in the room, the Count holding the door for her and
closing it as she passed through. I felt her glance rest on me for a
moment; then she turned to the Countess and expressed all proper
admiration of the gardens, the house, and the whole demesne.

"And I hope Augustin has been a good boy?" she ended.

"The King has been very good, madame," returned the Countess. Then she
looked in an inquiring way at her husband, as though she did not quite
know whether she were right or not, and with a bright blush added, "If
you would let him come again some day, madame!"

My mother smiled quite graciously.

"You mustn't leave me out of the invitation," she said. "We will both
come, won't we, Augustin?"

"Yes, please, mother," said I, relapsed into shyness and in great fear
lest our doings should be discovered.

"Say good-bye now," commanded the Princess.

I should have liked to kiss the Countess again, but such an act would
have risked a betrayal. Our adieu was made in proper form, the Countess
accompanying us to the door. There we left her curtseying, while the
Count handed my mother into the carriage. I looked round, and the
Countess blew me a surreptitious kiss.

When we had driven a little way, my mother said:

"Do you like the Countess von Sempach?"

"Yes, very much."

"She was kind to you?"

"Very, mother."

"Then why have you been crying, Augustin?"

"I haven't been crying," said I. The lie was needful to my compact with
the Countess; my honour was rooted in dishonour.

"Yes, you have," said she, but not quite in the accusing tones that
generally marked the detection of falsehood. She seemed to look at me
more in curiosity than in anger. Then she bent down toward me. "What did
you talk about?" she asked.

"Nothing very particular, mother. She asked me if I liked being king."

"And what did you say?"

"I said I liked it pretty well."

My mother made no answer. I stole a look at her handsome clean-cut
features; she was frowning a little.

"I didn't tell her much," said I, aiming at propitiation.

"Much of what?" came sharply, but not unkindly. Yet the question posed
me.

"Oh, I don't know!" I murmured forlornly; and I was surprised when she
turned and kissed me, saying:

"We all love you, Augustin; but you have to be king, and you must learn
how."

"Yes," I assented. The thing was quite inevitable; I knew that.

Silence followed for a little while. Then my mother said:

"When you're ten you shall have a tutor, and your own servants,
Augustin."

Hastily I counted the months. There were nine; but what did the
proposal mean? Was I to be a free man then?

"And we women will leave you alone," my mother went on. She kissed me
again, adding, "You don't like us, do you?"

"I like you, mother," I said gravely, "at least generally--not when you
let Kr--the Baroness----"

"Never mind the Baroness," she interrupted. Then she put her arm round
my neck and asked me in a very low voice, "You didn't like the Countess
better than me, did you, Augustin?"

"N--no, mother," said I, but I was an unaccomplished hypocrite, and my
mother turned away. My thoughts were not on her, but on the prospect her
words had opened to me.

"Do you mean that the Baroness won't be my governess any more?"

"Yes. You'll have a governor, a tutor."

"And shall I----?"

"I'll tell you all about it soon, dear."

The rest of our drive was in silence. My mind was full to overflowing of
impressions, hopes, and wonders; my mother's gaze was fixed on the
windows of the carriage.

We reached home, and together went up to the schoolroom. It was not
tea-time yet, and lesson-books were on the table. Krak sat beside it,
grave, grim, and gray. Victoria was opposite to her. Victoria was
crying. Past experience enlightened me; I knew exactly what had
happened; Victoria had a delightfully unimpressionable soul; no rebuke
from Krak brought her to tears; Krak had been rapping her knuckles, and
her tears were an honest tribute to pain, with no nonsense of merely
wounded sensibility about them. My mother went up and whispered to
Krak. Krak had, of course, risen, and stood now listening with a heavy
frown. My mother drew herself up proudly; she seemed to brace herself
for an effort; I heard nothing except "I think you should consult me,"
but our quick children's eyes apprehended the meaning of the scene. Krak
was being bearded. There was no doubt of it; for presently Krak bowed
her head in a jerky unwilling nod and walked out of the room. My mother
stood still for a moment with a vivid red colour in her cheeks. Then she
walked across to Victoria, lifted one of her hands from the table, and
kissed it.

"You're going to have tea with me to-day, children," said she, "and
we'll play games afterward. Augustin shall play at not being a king."

I remember well the tea we had and the games that followed, wherein we
all played at being what we were not, and for an evening cheated fate of
its dues. My mother was merriest, for over Victoria and myself there
hung a veil of unreality, a consciousness that indeed we played and set
aside for an hour only the obstinate claims of the actual. But we were
all merry; and when we parted--for my mother had a dinner-party--we both
kissed her heartily; me she kissed often. I thought that she wanted to
ask me again whether I liked the Countess better than her, but was
afraid to risk the question. What I wanted to say was that I liked none
better if she would be always what she was this evening; but I found no
skill adequate to a declaration of affection so conditional. It would be
to make a market of my kisses, and I had not yet come to the age for
such bargains.

Then we were left alone, Victoria and I, to sit together for a while in
the dusk; and, sitting there, we totted up that day's gains. They were
uncertain, yet seemed great. All that had passed I told Victoria, save
what in loyalty to my countess I might not; Victoria imparted to me the
story of the knuckle-rapping. For her an added joy lay in the fact that
on this occasion, if ever, she had deserved the affliction; she had been
gloriously naughty, and gloried in it now; did not her sinfulness
enhance the significance of this revolution? So carried away were we by
our triumph that now again, after a long interval, we allowed our
imagination to paint royalty in glowing colours, and our Arabian Nights
and fairy tales seemed at last not altogether cunningly wrought
deceptions. When we had gone to bed, again we met, I creeping into her
room, and rousing her to ask whether in truth a new age had come and the
yoke of Krak been broken from off our backs. Victoria sat up in bed and
discussed the problem gravely. For me she was sanguine, for herself less
so; for, said she, they go on worrying the girls for ever so long. "She
won't rap your knuckles any more," I suggested, fastening on a certain
and tangible advantage. Victoria agreed that in all likelihood her
knuckles would henceforth be inviolate; and she did not deny such gain
as lay there. Thus in the end I won her to cheerfulness, and we parted
merrily, declaring to one another that we were free; and I knew that in
some way the pretty American countess had lent a hand to knocking off
our chains.

Free! A wonderful word that, whether you use it of a child, a man, a
state, a world, an universe! That evening we seemed free. In after-days
I received from old Hammerfeldt (a great statesman, as history will one
day allow) some lectures on the little pregnant, powerful, empty word.
He had some right to speak of freedom; he had seen it fought for by
Napoleon, praised by Talleyrand, bought by Castlereagh, interpreted by
Metternich. Should he not then know what it was, its value, its potency,
and its sweetness, why men died for it, and delicate women who loved
them cheered them on? Once also in later years a beautiful woman cried
to me, with white arms outstretched, that to be free was life, was all
in all, the heart's one satisfaction. Her I pressed, seeking to know
wherein lay the attraction and allurement that fired her to such
extravagance. And I told her what the Prince had said to me half-way
through his pinch of snuff.

"'Sire,' said he, 'to become free--what is it? It is to change your
master.'"

The lady let her arms fall to her side, reflected a moment, smiled, and
said:

"The Prince was no fool, sire."

As the result of this day that I have described, I had become free. I
had changed my master.

We did not, however, pay any more visits to the Countess.




CHAPTER III.

SOME SECRET OPINIONS.


Even such results as might be looked for on Prince von Hammerfeldt's
theory of the meaning of freedom were in my case arrested and postponed
by a very serious illness which attacked me on the threshold of my
eleventh year. We had gone to Schloss Artenberg, according to our custom
in the summer; it was holiday-time; Krak was away, the talked-of tutor
had not arrived. The immediate fruit of this temporary emancipation was
that I got my feet very wet with dabbling about the river, and, being
under no sterner control than Victoria's, lingered long in this
condition. Next day I was kept in bed, and Victoria was in sore
disgrace. To be brief, the mischief attacked my lungs. Soon I was
seriously ill; a number of grave, black-coated gentlemen came and went
about the bed on which I lay for several weeks. Of this time I have many
curious impressions; most of them centre round my mother. She slept in
my room, and I believe hardly ever left me. I used to wake from uneasy
sleep and look across to her bed; always in a few moments she also
awoke, came and gave me what I needed or asked for, and then would throw
a dressing-gown round her and walk softly to and fro on bare feet, with
her long fair hair hanging about her shoulders. Her face looked
different in those days; yet it was not soft as I have seen mothers'
faces when their sons lay sick or dead, but rather excited, urgent,
defiant; the lips were set close, and the eyes gleamed. She did not
supplicate God, she fought fate, or, if God and fate be one, then it was
God whom she fought; and her battle was untiring. I knew from her face
that I might die, but, so far as I can recall my mood, I was more
curious about the effect of such an event on her and on Victoria than
concerning its import to myself. I asked her once what would happen if I
died; would Victoria be queen? She forbade me to ask the question, but I
pressed it, and she answered hastily, "Yes, yes, but you won't die,
Augustin; you shan't die." I was not allowed to see very much of
Victoria, but a day or two afterward she sat with me alone for a little
while, and I told her she would be queen if I died.

"No. Mother would kill me," she said with absolute conviction, in no
resentment or fear, but in a simple certitude.

"Why? Because you didn't bring me in when I got wet?"

"Yes--if you died of it," nodded Victoria.

"I don't believe it," I said boldly. "Why shouldn't she like you to be
queen?"

"She'd hate it," said Victoria.

"She doesn't hate me being king."

"You're a boy."

I wondered dimly then, and I have wondered since (hardly with more
knowledge), what truth or whether any lay behind my sister's words; she
believed that, apart from any unjust blame for my misfortune, her mother
would not willingly see her queen. Yet why not? I have a son, and would
be glad to lay down my burden and kiss his hand as he sat on the
throne. Are all fathers such as I? Nay, and are all mothers such as
mine? I know not; and if there be any position that opens a man's mind
to the Socratic wisdom of knowing his own ignorance it is that in which
my life has been spent. But it can hardly be that the curious veiled
opposition which from about this time began to exist between my mother
and my sister was altogether singular. It was a feeling not inconsistent
with duty, with punctilious observance, not even with love; but there
was in it a sort of jealousy, of assertion and counter-assertion. It
seemed to me, as I became older, to have roots deeper than any
accidental occurrence or environment, and, so far, I came near to the
difficult analysis, to spring from the relation of one woman who was
slowly but surely being forced to lay down what she had prized most in
her womanhood and another who, slowly but surely, also became aware that
hers was the prize in her turn, and thrust forward a tentative hand to
grasp it. If I am at all right in this notion, then it is plain that
feelings slight and faint, although not non-existent in ordinary homes,
might be intensified in such a family as ours, and that a new and great
impulse would have been imparted to them by such an artificial
accentuation of the inevitable as must have resulted had I died, and my
sister been called to the first place. Among men the cause for such an
antagonism is far less powerful; advancing years take less from us and
often bring what, to older eyes, is a good recompense for lost youth,
and seems to youth itself more precious than any of its own possessions.
Our empire, never so brilliant as a woman's in its prime, is of stuff
more durable and less shaken by the wind of Time's fluttering garment
as he passes by.

My confessor came to see me sometimes. He was an eminent divine,
nominated to his post by Hammerfeldt in reward, I believe, for some
political usefulness. I do not think he saw far into a child's heart, or
perhaps I was not like most children. He was always comforting me,
telling me not to be afraid, that God was merciful, Christ full of love,
and the saints praying for me. Now I was not in the least afraid; I was
very curious about death--I had never seen it--but I was, as I have
said, more curious about the world I should leave behind. I wanted to
know what would be done when I was dead, and where I was to be buried.
Would they fire the guns and parade the troops? I did not rise to the
conception of myself, not knowing anything of what they did. I thought I
should be there somehow, looking on from heaven; and I think that I
rather enjoyed the prospect. A child is very self-centred; I had no
doubt that I should be the object of much attention in heaven on that
day at least. I hinted something of what was passing in my mind to the
confessor. He did not appear to follow the drift of my thoughts. He told
me again that I had been a good boy, and that now, if I prayed and was
sorry for my faults, I should be happy and should please God. This did
not touch the point that engaged my attention. I tried whether my mother
could help me, and I was surprised when the tears started into her eyes,
and she bade me, almost roughly, to be quiet. However, when Victoria
came we talked it all over. Victoria cried a little, but she was quite
clear as to her own position in the procession, and we had rather an
animated dispute about it. She said also that some one in heaven would
hold me, and we differed again as to the celestial personage in whose
lap I was to sit. I am afraid that here our imaginations were assisted
by the picture of the Holy Family in the chapel of the Schloss.

Not the least tiresome incident of this time was that Krak felt it her
duty to display affection. I do not mean to assert that Krak was not and
had not been all along fond of me, but in ordinary seasons to feel
affection was with Krak no reason at all for displaying it. I do more
justice to Krak now; then I did not appreciate the change in her
demeanour. On questioning Victoria, I found that Krak's softness did not
extend beyond the limits of my sickroom; she had indeed ceased the
knuckle-rapping, but in its place she curtailed Victoria's liberty and
kept her nose to the grindstone pitilessly. Why should caresses be
confined to the sick, and kindness be bought only at the price of
threatened death? I was inclined to refuse to kiss Krak, but my mother
made such a point of compliance that I yielded reluctantly. In days of
health Krak had exacted, morning and evening, a formal and perfunctory
peck; if I gave her no more now she looked aggrieved, and my mother
distressed. Had Krak been possessed by a real penitence, I would have
opened my arms to her, but I was fully aware that her mood was not this;
she merely wanted to know that I bore no malice for just discipline, and
it went to my heart even apparently to concede this position. There
seemed to me something a little unfair in her proceedings; they were
attempts to obtain from me admissions that I should have repudiated
scornfully in hours of health. I knew that concessions now would
prejudice my future liberty. In days to come (supposing I recovered) my
hostility to Krak would be met by "Remember how kind she was to you when
you were ill," or "Oh, Augustin, you didn't say that of the Baroness
when she brought you grapes in your illness." I had plenty of grapes.
There are few things which human nature resents more than a theft of its
grievances. I was polite to Krak, but I lodged a protest with my mother
and confided a passionate repudiation of any treaty to Victoria's
sympathetic ear. Victoria was all for me; my mother was stern for a
moment, and then, smiling faintly, told me to try to sleep.

After several months I took a decided and rapid turn toward recovery.
This, I think, was the moment in which I realized most keenly the
fictitious importance which my position imparted to me. The fashion of
everybody's face was changed; mother, doctors, nurses, servants, all
wore an air of victory. When I was carried out on to the terrace at
Artenberg, rows of smiling people clapped their hands. I felt that I had
done something very meritorious in getting better, and I hoped secretly
that they would give me just as fine a procession as though I had died.
Victoria got hold of a newspaper and, before she was detected and
silenced, read me a sentence:

"By the favourable news of the King's health a great weight is lifted
from the heart of the country. There is not a house that will not be
glad to-day." I was pleased at this, although rather surprised. Taking
thought with myself, I concluded that, although kingship had hitherto
failed to answer my private expectations and desires, yet it must be a
more important thing even in these days than I had come to suppose. I
put a question to my mother, pointing at one of the gardeners.

"If Josef's son was ill and I was ill," said I, "which would Josef wish
most to get better?"

"The King should be before a thousand sons to him," she answered
quickly, and in a proud, agitated voice. But a moment later she bade me
not ask foolish questions. I remember that I studied her face for some
moments. It was a little difficult to make out how she really felt about
me and my kingship.

Convalescence was a pleasant season. Styrian discipline was relaxed, and
I was allowed to do very nearly all that my strength enabled me.
Victoria shared in the indulgence of this time; I remember we agreed
that there would be something to be said for never getting quite well.
Had getting quite well meant going back to Krak, I should have felt this
point of view most strongly, but I was not to go back to Krak. There was
a talk of a governor, of tutors, and masters. Hammerfeldt came down and
had a long conversation with my mother. She came out from the interview
with flushed cheeks, seeming vexed and perturbed, but she was composed
again when the Prince took his leave, and said to him pleasantly:

"You mustn't take him away from me altogether, Prince."

"We rely on your influence above everything, madame," was Hammerfeldt's
courtly answer, but my mother watched his retreating figure with a
rather bitter smile. Then she turned to me and asked:

"Shall you be glad to have tutors?"

Krak was in the distance with Victoria; my mother perceived my eyes
travelling in that direction.

"Poor old Baroness! You never liked her, did you, Augustin?"

"No," said I, emboldened by this new and confidential tone.

"Try to think more kindly of her," she advised; but I saw that she was
not in the least aggrieved at my want of appreciation. "You don't like
women, do you?"

"Only you, and Victoria, and----" I hesitated.

"And Anna?"

"Oh, of course, old Anna."

"Well, and who else?"

"The Countess von Sempach," said I, a little timidly.

"Haven't you forgotten her?" asked my mother, and her smile became less
bright.

"No, I've--I've not forgotten her," I murmured. "Does she ever come to
see you, mother--here at Artenberg, I mean?"

"No, darling," said my mother.

I did not pursue the subject. I had eyes good enough to see that my
dislike for Krak was pleasanter to my mother than my liking for the
Countess. Women seem to me to have the instinct of monopoly, and not to
care for a share of affection. Such, at least, was my mother's
temperament, intensified no doubt by the circumstance that in future
days my favour and liking might be matters of importance. She feared
from another woman just what she feared from Hammerfeldt, his governor,
and his tutors; probably her knowledge of the world made her dread
another woman more than any number of men. She feared even Victoria, her
own daughter and my sister; but a woman, very pretty and sympathetic,
who would be only twenty-eight when I was eighteen, must have seemed to
her mind the greatest peril of all. It is one of the drawbacks of
conspicuous place that a man's likings and fancies, his merest whims,
are invested by others with an importance that throws its reflection
back on to his own mind; he is able to recollect only with an effort
that even in his case there are a good many things of no importance. I
did not make these observations as a small boy at Artenberg, but even as
a small boy I knew very well that the Countess von Sempach would not be
invited to the Schloss. Nor was she. My mother guarded the gate, a
jealous angel.

Thus a pleasant summer passed at Artenberg, and in the autumn we
returned to Forstadt. Then I had my procession, though it seemed
scarcely as brilliant or interesting as that wherein Victoria had held
first place while I looked down, a highly satisfied spectator, from
heaven. I was eleven years old now, and perhaps just the first bloom was
wearing off the wonder of the world. For recompense, but not in full
requital, I was more awake to the meaning of things around me, and I
fear much more awake to the importance of myself, Augustin. Now I
appropriated the cheers at which before I had marvelled, and approved
the enthusiasm that had before amused me. My mother greeted these signs
in me; since I was to leave the women she would now have me a man as
soon as might be; besides, she had a woman's natural impatience for my
full growth. They love us most as babies, when they are Providence to
us; least as boys, when we make light of them; more again when as men we
return to rule and be ruled, bartering slavery in one matter for
dominion in another, and working out the equilibrium of power.

But after my procession in the cathedral, when I was giving thanks for
rescue from a death that had never been terrible and now seemed remote
and impossible, I saw my countess. She was nearly opposite to me; her
husband was not with her: he was on guard in the nave with his regiment.
I wanted to make some sign to her, but I had been told that everybody
would be looking at me. When I was crowned, "everybody" had meant Krak,
and I had feared no other eye. I was more self-conscious now. I was
particularly alert that my mother should observe nothing. But the
Countess and I exchanged a glance; she nodded cautiously; almost
immediately afterward I saw her wipe her eyes. I should have liked to
talk to her, tell her that I liked being a king rather better, and give
her the glad tidings that the dominion of Krak had ended; but I got no
chance of doing anything of the sort, being carried away without coming
nearer to her.

Victoria was in very low spirits that evening. It had suddenly come upon
her that she was to be left to endure Krak all alone. Victoria and I
were not somehow as closely knit together as we had been; she was now
thirteen, growing a tall girl, and I was but a little boy. Yet our
relations were not, I imagine, quite what they would have been between
brother and sister of such relative ages in an ordinary case. The
authority which elder sisters may be seen so readily to ape and assume
was never claimed by Victoria; my mother would not have endured such
presumption for a moment. I think Victoria regarded me as a singularly
ignorant person, who yet, by fortune's freak, was invested with a
strange importance and the prospect at least of great and indefinite
power. She therefore took a good deal of pains to make me understand her
point of view, and to convert me to her opinions. Her present argument
was that she also ought to be relieved from Krak.

"Krak was mother's governess till mother was eighteen," I reminded her.

"Awful!" groaned poor Victoria.

"In fact, mother's never got rid of Krak at all."

"Oh, that's different. I shouldn't in the least mind keeping Krak as my
daughter's governess," said Victoria. "That would be rather fun."

"It would be very cruel, considering what Krak does," I objected.

Dim hintings of the grown-up state were in Victoria; she looked a little
doubtful.

"It wouldn't matter when she was quite young," she concluded. "But I'm
nearly fourteen. Augustin, will you ask mother to send Krak away when
I'm fifteen?"

"No," said I. I had a wholesome dread of straining the prerogative.

"Then when I'm sixteen?"

"I don't see what I've got to do with it," said I restlessly.

Victoria became huffy.

"You're king, and you could do it if you liked," she said. "If I was
king, I should like to do things for people, for my sister anyhow." She
pouted in much vexation.

"Well, perhaps I'll try some day," said I reluctantly.

"Oh, you dear boy!" cried Victoria, and she immediately gave me three
kisses.

I was certainly on my way to learn the secret of popularity. In my
experience Victoria's conception of the kingly office is a very common
one, and Victoria's conduct in view of a refusal to forward her views,
and of consent, extremely typical. For Victoria took no account of my
labours, or of the probable trouble I should undergo, or of the snub I
should incur. She called me a dear boy, gave me three kisses, and went
off to bed in much better spirits. And all the while my own secret
opinion was that Krak was rather good for Victoria. It has generally
been my secret opinion that people had no business to receive the things
which they have asked me to give to or procure for them. When the merits
are good the King's help is unnecessary.




CHAPTER IV.

TWO OF MY MAKERS.


Physically my parents' child, with my father's tall stature and my
mother's clean-cut features, intellectually I was more son to
Hammerfeldt than to any one else. From the day when my brain began to
develop, his was the preponderating influence. I had a governor, a good
soldier, General von Vohrenlorf; I had masters; I had one tutor, of whom
more presently (he for a time bade fair to dispute the Prince's
supremacy); but above them all, moulding me and controlling them, was
this remarkable old man. At this time he was seventy years old; he had
been a soldier till thirty, since then a diplomatist and politician. I
do not think in all things as Hammerfeldt thought; time moves, and each
man's mind has its own cast; but I will make no claim to originality at
the cost of depreciating what I learned from him. He was a solitary man;
once he had taken a wife; she left him after two years; he used to talk
about her as though she had died at the date when she ran away, without
bitterness, with an indulgent kindness, with a full recognition of her
many merits. Those who did not know the story little supposed that the
lady lived still in Paris. His conduct in this matter was highly
characteristic. He regarded passions and emotions as things altogether
outside and independent of the rational man. Their power could not be
denied in their own sphere and season; he admitted that they must be
felt--raw feeling was their province; he denied that they should affect
thought or dominate action. In others they were his opportunity, in
himself a luxury that had never been dangerous, or an ailment that was
troublesome but never fatal. He was hard on a blunder; as a necessary
presupposition to effective negotiation or business he recognised a
binding code of honour; he has frequently told me he did not understand
the theological conception of sin. He had eaten of our salt and was our
servant; thus he would readily have died for us; but he prayed pardon if
we asked him to believe in us. "Conduct," he said once, "is the outcome
of selfishness limited by self-conceit." It was his way so to put things
as to strip them of friendly, decent covering; had he said self-interest
limited by self-respect, the axiom would have been more accepted and
less quoted. A superficial person used to exclaim to me, "And yet he is
so kind!" A man without ideals finds kindness the easiest thing in the
world. In truth he was kind, and in a confidential sort of way that
seemed to chuckle and wink, saying, "We're rogues together; then I must
lend you a hand." But he could be ruthless also, displaying a curious
aloofness from his fellow-men and an unconsciousness of any suffering he
might inflict that left mere cruelty far behind. If I were making an
automaton king, I would model my machine on the lines of Hammerfeldt. He
had no belief in a future life, but would sometimes trifle whimsically
with the theory of a transmigration of souls; he traced all beliefs in
immortality to the longing of those who were unfortunate here (and who
did not think himself so?) for a recompense (a revenge he called it)
hereafter, and declared transmigration to be at once the most ingenious
and the most picturesque embodiment of this yearning. He played
billiards extremely well, and excused his skill on the ground that he
was compelled to pass the time while foreign diplomatists and his own
colleagues were making up their mind. I do not think that he ever
hesitated as to what he had best do. He was of an extremely placid and
happy temper. As may be anticipated from what I have said, he regarded
no man as utterly lost unless he were completely under the influence of
a woman.

Yet it was by Hammerfeldt's will that Geoffrey Owen became my daily
companion and familiar friend. Vohrenlorf visited me once or twice a
week, and exercised a perfunctory superintendence. I had, of course,
many masters who came and went at appointed hours. Owen lived with me
both at Forstadt and at Artenberg. At this time he was twenty-five; he
excelled my own adult stature, and walked with the free grace of a
well-bred English gentleman. His dark hair grew thick, rising from his
forehead in a wave; his face was long and thin, and a slight mustache
veiled a humorous tender mouth. There was about the man a pervading
sympathy; the desire to be friends was the first characteristic of his
manner; he was talkative, eager, enthusiastic. If a man were good it
seemed to Owen but natural; if he were a rogue my tutor would set it
down to anything in the world save his own fault. Everybody could be
mended if everybody else would try. Thus he brought with him into our
conservative military court and society the latest breath of generous
hope and human aspiration that had blown over Oxford. Surely this was a
strange choice of Hammerfeldt's! Was it made in ignorance of the man, or
with some idea that my mind should be opened to every variety of
thought, or in a careless confidence that his own influence was beyond
shaking, and that Owen's spirit would beat hopelessly against the cage
and never reach mine in its prison of tradition?

A boy that would not have worshipped such a man as Geoffrey Owen must
have wanted heart and fire. I watched him first to see if he could ride;
he rode well. When he came he could not fence; in six months he was a
good hand with the foils; physical fatigue seemed as unknown to him as
mental inertia. There was no strain and no cant about him; he smoked
hard, drank well after exertion, with pleasure always. He delighted to
talk to my mother, chaffing her Styrian ideas with a graceful deference
that made her smile. Victoria adored him openly, and Krak did not
understand why he was not odious. Thus he conquered the Court, and I was
the first of his slaves. It would be tedious to anybody except myself to
trace the gradual progress of our four years' intimacy and friendship,
of my four years' training and enlightenment. Shall I summarize it and
say that Owen taught me that there were folks outside palaces, and that
the greatness of a station, even as of a man, stood not in the multitude
of the things that it possessed? The summary is cold and colourless; it
smacks of duty, of obligations unwillingly remembered, of selfish
pleasures reluctantly foregone. As I became old enough to do more than
listen entranced to his stories, it seemed to me that to be such a man
as he was, and not knowing that he himself was admired, could be no
duty, but only a happy dream. There has been in my family, here and
there, a vein of fancy, or of mysticism turning sometimes to religious
fervour, again sometimes to soldierly enthusiasm and a knight-errantry
in arms, the ruin and despair of cool statesmanship. On this element
Owen's teaching laid hold and bent it to a more modern shape. I would
not be a monk or a Bayard, but would serve humanity, holding my throne a
naked trust, whence all but I might reap benefit, whereon I must sit
burdened with the sorrows of all; and thus to be burdened was my joy.
With some boys no example could have made such ideas acceptable, or won
anything but scornful wonder for them; in me they struck answering
chords, and as I rambled in the woods at Artenberg already in my mind I
was the perfect king.

Where would such a mood have led? Where would it have ended? What at the
last would have been my state and fame?

On my fifteenth birthday Prince von Hammerfeldt, now in his
seventy-fifth year, came from Forstadt to Artenberg to offer me
congratulations. Though a boy may have such thoughts as I have tried to
describe, for the most part he would be flogged to death sooner than
utter them; to the Prince above all men an instinct bade me be silent.
But Owen rose steadily to the old man's skilful fly; he did not lecture
the minister nor preach to him, but answered his questions simply and
from the heart, without show and without disguise. Old Hammerfeldt's
face grew into a network of amused and tolerant wrinkles.

"My dear Mr. Owen," said he, "I heard all this forty--fifty--years ago.
Is it not that Jean Jacques has crossed the Channel, turning more sickly
on the way?"

Owen smiled. Mine was the face that grew red in resentment, mine the
tongue that burned to answer him.

"I know what you mean, sir," laughed Owen. "Still doesn't the world go
forward?"

"I see no signs of it," replied Hammerfeldt with a pinch of snuff,
"unless it be progress to teach rogues who aren't worth a snap to prate
of their worth. Well, it is pretty enough in you to think as you think.
What says the King to it?" He turned to me with a courteous smile, but
with an unceremoniously intent gaze in his eyes.

I had no answer ready; I was still excited.

"I have tried to interest the King in these lines of thought," said
Owen.

"Ah, yes, very proper," assented Hammerfeldt, his eyes still set on my
face. "We must have more talk about the matter. Princess Heinrich awaits
me now."

Owen and I were left together. He was smiling, but rather sadly; yet he
laughed outright when I, carried beyond boyish shame by my indignation,
broke into a tirade and threw back at him something of what he had
taught me. Suddenly he interrupted me.

"Let's go for a row on the river and have one pleasant afternoon," he
said, laying his hand on my shoulder. "The Prince does not want us any
more to-day."

The afternoon dwells in my memory. In my belief Owen's quick mind had
read something of the Prince's purpose; for he was more demonstrative of
affection than was his wont. He seemed to eye me with a pitiful love
that puzzled me; and he began to talk (this also was rare with him) of
my special position, how I must be apart from other men, and to
speculate in seeming idleness on what a place such as mine would be to
him and make of him. All this came between our spurts of rowing or among
our talk of sport or of flowers as we lay at rest under the bank.

"If there were two kings here, as there were in Sparta!" I cried
longingly.

"There were ephors, too," he reminded me, and we laughed. Hammerfeldt
was our ephor.

There was a banquet that night. I sat at the head of the table, with my
mother opposite and Hammerfeldt at her right hand. The Prince gave my
health after dinner, and passed on to a warm and eloquent eulogy on
those who had trained me. In the course of it he dwelt pointedly on the
obligation under which Geoffrey Owen had laid me, and of the debt all
the nation owed to one who had inspired its king with a liberal culture
and a zeal for humanity. I could have clapped my hands in delight. I
looked at Owen, who sat far down the table. His gaze was on Hammerfeldt,
and his lips were parted in a smile. I did not understand his smile, but
it persisted all through the Prince's graceful testimony to his
services. It was not like him to smile with that touch of satire when he
was praised. But I saw him only for an instant before I went to bed, and
others were with us, so that I could ask no explanation.

The next morning I rose early, and in glee, for I was to go hunting.
Owen did not accompany me; he was, I understood, to confer with
Hammerfeldt. My jovial governor Vohrenlorf had charge of me. A merry day
we had, and good sport; it was late when we came home, and my anxious
mother awaited me in the hall with dry slippers. She had a meal spread
for me, and herself came to share it. Never had I seen her so tender or
so gentle. I had a splendid hunger, and fell to, babbling of my skill
with the gun between hearty mouthfuls.

"I wish Owen had been there," I said.

My mother nodded, but made no answer.

"Is the Prince gone?" I asked.

"No, he is here still. He stayed in case you should want to see him,
Augustin."

"I don't want him," said I with a laugh, as I pushed my chair back. "But
I was glad he talked like that about Owen last night. I think I'll go
and see if Owen's in his room." I rose and started toward the door.

"Augustin, Mr. Owen is not in his room," said my mother in a strangely
timid voice.

I turned with a start, for I was sensitive to every change of tone in
her voice.

"Do you know where he is?" I asked.

"He is gone," said she.

I did not ask where, nor whether he would return. I sat down and looked
at her; she came, smoothed my hair back from my forehead, and kissed me.

"I have not sent him away," she said. "I couldn't help it. The Prince
was resolved, and he has power."

"But why?" burst from my lips.

"It is the Prince's doing, not mine," she reminded me. "The Prince is
here, Augustin."

Why, yes, at least old Hammerfeldt would not run away.

My lips were quivering. I was nearer tears than pride had let me be for
three years past, grief and anger uniting to make me sore and desolate.
There seemed a great gap made in my life; my dearest companion was gone,
the source of all that most held my fancy and filled my mind dried up.
But before I could speak again a tall, lean figure stood in the doorway,
helmet in hand. Hammerfeldt was there; he was asking if the King would
receive him. My mother turned an inquiring glance on me. I bowed my head
and choked down a sob that was in my throat. The old man came near to me
and stood before me; there was a little smile on his lips, but his old
eyes were soft.

"Sire," said he, addressing me with ceremonial deference and formality,
"her royal highness has told you what I have done in your Majesty's
service. I should be happy in your Majesty's approval."

I made him no answer.

"A king, sire," he went on, "should sip at all cups and drain none, know
all theories and embrace none, learn from all men and be bound to none.
He may be a pupil, but not a disciple; a hearer, but always a critic; a
friend, never a devotee."

I felt my mother's hand resting on my shoulder; I sat still, looking in
the Prince's eyes.

"Mr. Owen has done his work well," he went on, "but his work is done. Do
you ask, sire, why he is gone? I will give you an answer. I, Prince von
Hammerfeldt, would have Augustin and not Geoffrey for my master and my
country's."

"Enough for to-night, Prince. Leave him now," my mother urged in a
whisper.

The Prince bent his head slightly, but remained where he stood for a
moment longer. Then he bowed very low to me, and drew back a step,
still facing me. My mother prompted me with what I suppose was the
proper formula.

"You are convinced of the Prince's wisdom and devotion in everything,
aren't you, Augustin?" she said.

"Yes," said I. "Will Mr. Owen write to me?"

"When your Majesty is older, your Majesty will, of course, use your own
pleasure as to your correspondence," returned Hammerfeldt.

He waited for a moment longer, and then drew back further to the door.

"Speak to the Prince, Augustin," said my mother.

"I am very grateful to the Prince for his care of me," said I.

Hammerfeldt came quickly up to me and kissed my hand. "I would make you
a true king, sire," said he, and with that he left us.

[Illustration: Hammerfeldt came to me and kissed my hand.]

So they took my friend from me, and not all the kindness with which I
was loaded in the time following his loss lightened the grief of it.
Presently I came to understand better the meaning of these things, and
to see that the King might have no friend; for his friend must be an
enemy to others, perhaps even to the King himself. Shall I now blame
Hammerfeldt? I do not know. I was coming to the age when impressions
sink deep into the mind; and Geoffrey Owen was a man whose mark struck
very deep. Besides, he had those theories! It was not strange in
Hammerfeldt to fear those theories. Perhaps he was right; with his
statecraft it may well be that he could have done no other than what he
did. But to my fifteen-years-old thoughts these reflections were not
present. They had taken my friend from me. In my bed that night I wept
for him, and my days seemed empty for the want of him. It was to me as
though he had died, and worse than that; there are things as final as
death, yet lacking death's gentleness. Such is it to be cut off, living
friend from living friend, and living heart from heart not grown cold in
the grave. I have told this story of my tutor and myself first, for the
influence Owen had on me more than for the effect wrought in me by the
manner in which I lost him. There must be none very near me; it seemed
as though that stern verdict had been passed. There must be a vacant
space about the throne. Such was Hammerfeldt's gospel. He knew that he
himself soon must leave me; he would have no successor in power, and
none to take a place in love that he had neither filled nor suffered to
be filled. As I wandered, alone now, about the woods at Artenberg I
mused on these things, and came to a conclusion rather bitter for one of
my years. I would tie no more bonds, to have them cut with the sword; if
love must be slain, love should be born no more; to begin was but to
prepare a sad ending. I would not be drawn on to confidence or
friendship. I chose not to have rather than to lose, not to taste rather
than leave undrained the cup of sweet intimacy. Thus I armed my boyhood
at once against grief and love. In all that I did in after days this
determination was always with me, often overborne for the time by
emotions and passions, but always ready to reassert itself in the first
calm hour, and relentlessly to fetter me in a prison of my own making.
My God, how I have longed for friends sometimes!

Geoffrey Owen I saw but once again. I had written twice to him, and
received respectful, friendly, brief answers. But the sword had passed
through his heart also; he did not respond to my invitation, nor show a
desire to renew our intimacy. Perhaps he was afraid to run the risk; in
truth, even while I urged him, I was half afraid myself. Had he come
again, it would not have been as it had been between us. Very likely we
both in our hearts preferred to rest in memories, not to spoil our
thoughts by disappointment, to be always to one another just what we had
been as we rowed together that last afternoon at Artenberg, when the dim
shadow of parting did no more than deepen our affection and touch it to
a profounder tenderness.

And that time when I saw him again? I was driving through the gates of
an English palace, encircled by a brilliant troop of soldiers, cheered
by an interested, good-humoured throng. Far back in their ranks, but
standing out above all heads, I saw his face, paler and thinner, more
gentle even and kindly. He wore a soft hat crushed over his forehead; as
I passed he lifted and waved it, smiling his old smile at me. I waved my
hand, leaning forward eagerly; but I could not stop the procession. As
soon as I was within I sent an equerry to seek him, armed with a
description that he could not mistake. But Geoffrey Owen was nowhere to
be found, he had not awaited my messenger. Having signalled a friend's
greeting across the gulf between us, he was gone. I could have found
him, for I knew that he dwelt in London, working, writing, awakening
hope in many, fear in some, thought in all. But I would not seek him
out, nor compel him to come to me, since he would not of his own accord.
So he went his way, I mine, and I have seen him no more. Yet ever on my
birthday I drain a cup to him, and none knows to whom the King drinks a
full glass silently. It is my libation on a friendship's grave. Perhaps
it would support an interpretation more subtle. For when I stood between
Owen and Hammerfeldt, torn this way and that, uncertain whom I should
follow through life, was not I the humble transitory theatre of a great
and secular struggle? It seems to me that then the Ideal and the Actual
joined in battle over me; Hector and Achilles, and I the body of
Patroclus! Alas, poor body! Greatly the combatants desire it, little
they reck of the roughness it suffers in their struggle! The Spirit and
the World--am I over-fanciful if I seem to see them incarnated in
Geoffrey Owen and old Hammerfeldt? And victory was with the world. Yet
the conquered also have before now left their mark on lands which they
could not hold.




CHAPTER V.

SOMETHING ABOUT VICTORIA.


I feel that I give involuntarily a darker colour to my life than the
truth warrants. When we sit down and reflect we are apt to become the
prey of a curious delusion; pain seems to us the only reality, pleasure
a phantasm or a dream. Yet such reality as pain has pleasure shares, and
we are in no closer touch with eternal truth when we have headaches (or
heartaches) than when we are free from these afflictions. I wonder
sometimes whether a false idea of dignity does not mislead us. Would we
all pose as martyrs? It is nonsense; for most of us life is a tolerable
enough business--if we would not think too much about it. We need not
pride ourselves on our griefs; it seems as though joy were the higher
state because it is the less self-conscious and rests in fuller harmony
with the great order that encircles us.

As I grew older I gained a new and abiding source of pleasure in the
contemplation and study of my sister Victoria. I have anticipated
matters a little in telling of my tutor's departure; I must hark back
and pick up the thread of Victoria's history from the time when I was
hard on thirteen and she near fifteen--the time when she had implored me
to rid her of Krak. I had hated Krak with that healthy full-blooded
antipathy whose faculty one seems to lose in later years. It is a
tiresome thing to be driven by experience to the discovery of some good
in everybody; your fine black fades to neutral gray; often I regret the
delightfully partial views of earlier days. And so many people succeed
in preserving them to a green and untutored old age! They are Popes
always to their heretics. Such was and is Victoria; she never changed in
her views of other people. In contrast she was, as regards herself, of a
temperament so elastic that impressions endured hardly a moment beyond
the blow, and pleasures passed without depositing any residuum which
might form a store against evil days. If Krak had cut her arm off, its
perpetual absence might have made Victoria remember the fault which was
paid for by amputation; the moral effect of rapid knuckles disappeared
with the comfort that came from sucking them. Perhaps her disposition
was a happy chance for her; since the Styrian discipline (although not,
of course, in this blankly physical form later on) persisted for her
long after it had been softened for me. I touch again perhaps on a point
which has caught my attention before; undoubtedly my mother kept the
status of childhood imposed on Victoria fully as long as nature
countenanced the measures. Krak did not go; a laugh greeted my hint.
Krak stayed till Victoria was sixteen. For my part, since it was
inevitable that Krak should discipline somebody, I think heaven was mild
in setting her on Victoria. Had I stayed under her sway I should have
run mad. Victoria laughed, cried, joked, dared, submitted, offended,
defied, suffered, wept, and laughed again all in a winter's afternoon.
She was by way of putting on the dignity of an elder with me and
shutting off from my gaze her trials and reverses. But there was no one
else to tell the joke to, and I had it all each night before I slept.

But now Victoria was sixteen; and Krak, elderly, pensioned, but
unbroken, was gone. She went back to Styria to chasten and ultimately to
enrich (I would not for the world have been privy to their prayers) some
nephews and nieces. It seemed strange, but Krak was homesick for Styria.
She went; Victoria gave her the tribute of a tear, surprised out of her
before she remembered her causes for exultation. Then came their memory,
and she was outrageously triumphant. A new era began; the buffer was
gone; my mother and Victoria were face and face. And in a year as
Victoria said, in two or three as my mother allowed, Victoria would be
grown up.

I was myself, most unwillingly, a cause of annoyance to Victoria, and a
pretext for her repression. Importance flowed in on me unasked,
unearned. To speak in homely fashion, she was always "a bad second," and
none save herself attributed to her the normal status of privileges of
an elder sister. Her wrath was not visited on me, but on those who
exalted me so unduly; even while she resented my position she was not,
as I have shown, above using it for her own ends; this adaptability was
not due to guile; she forgot one mood when another came, and compromised
her pretensions in the effort to compass her desires. Princess Heinrich
seized on the inconsistency, and pointed it out to her daughter with an
exasperating lucidity.

"You are ready enough to remember that Augustin is king when you want
anything from him," she would observe. "You forget it only when you are
asked to give way to him."

Victoria would make no reply--the Krak traditions endured to prevent an
answer to rebukes--but when we were alone she used to remark, "I should
think an iceberg's rather like a mother. Only one needn't live with
icebergs."

Quite suddenly, as it seemed, it occurred to Victoria that she was
pretty. She lost no time in advertising the discovery through the medium
of a thousand new tricks and graces; a determined assault on the
affections of all the men about us, from the lords-in-waiting down to
the stablemen--an assault that ignored existing domestic ties or
pre-arranged affections--was the next move in her campaign. When she was
extremely angry with her mother she would say, "How odious it must be
not to be young any more!" I thought that there was sometimes a wistful
look in my mother's eyes; was she thinking of Krak, Krak in far-off
Styria? Perhaps for once, when Victoria was hitting covertly at Krak, my
mother remarked in a very cold voice:

"You remember your punishments, you don't remember your offences,
Victoria."

I could linger long on these small matters, for I find more interest and
incitement to analysis in the attitude of women toward women than in
their more obvious relations with men; but I must pass over a year of
veiled conflict, and come to that incident which is the salient point in
Victoria's girlish history. It coincided almost exactly in time with the
dismissal of Geoffrey Owen, and my pre-occupation with that event
diverted my attention from the earlier stages of Victoria's affair. She
was just seventeen, grown up in her own esteem (and she adduced many
precedents to fortify her contention), but in my mother's eyes still
wanting a year of quiet home life before she should be launched into
society. Victoria acquiesced perforce, but turned the flank of the
decree by ensuring that the home life should be by no means quiet. She
set to work to prepare for us a play; comedy or tragedy I knew not then,
and am not now quite clear. Our nearest neighbour at Artenberg dwelt
across the river in the picturesque old castle of Waldenweiter; he was a
young man of twenty-two at this time, handsome, pleasant, and ready for
amusement. His father being dead, Frederick was his own master--that is
to say, he had no master. Victoria fell in love with him. The Baron, it
seemed, was not disinclined for a romance with a pretty princess;
perhaps he thought that nothing serious would come of it, and that it
was a pleasant way enough of passing a summer; or, perhaps, being but
twenty-two, he did not think at all, unless to muse on the depth of the
blue in Victoria's eyes, and the comely lines of her figure as she rowed
on the river. To say truth, Victoria gave him small time for reflection.

As I am convinced, before he had well considered the situation he had
fallen into the habit of attending a _rendezvous_ in a backwater of the
stream about a mile above Artenberg. Victoria never went out
unaccompanied, and never came back unaccompanied; it was discovered
afterward that the trusted old boatman could be bought off with the
price of beer, and used to disembark and seek an ale house so soon as
the backwater was reached. The meeting over, Victoria would return in
high spirits and displaying an unusual affection toward my mother,
either as a blind, or through remorse, or (as I incline to think)
through an amiability born of triumph; there was at times even a touch
of commiseration in her manner, and more than once she spoke to me, in a
tone of philosophical speculation, on the uselessness of endeavouring
to repress natural feelings and the futility of treating as children
persons who were already grown up. This mood lasted some time, so long,
I suppose, as the stolen delight of doing the thing was more prominent
than the delight in the thing itself. A month passed and brought a
change. Now she was silent, absent, pensive, very kind to me, more
genuinely submissive and dutiful to her mother. The first force of my
blow had left me, for Owen had been gone now some months; I began to
observe my sister carefully. To my amazement she, formerly the most
heedless of creatures, knew in an instant that she was watched. She drew
off from me, setting a distance between us; my answer was to withdraw my
companionship, since only thus could I convince her that I had no desire
to spy. I had not guessed the truth, and my mother had no inkling of it.
Princess Heinrich's ignorance may seem strange, but I have often
observed that persons of a masterful temper are rather easy to delude;
they have such difficulty in conceiving that they can be disobeyed as to
become ready subjects for hoodwinking; I recollect old Hammerfeldt
saying to me, "In public affairs, sire, always expect disobedience, but
be chary of rewarding obedience." My mother adopted the second half of
the maxim but disregarded the first. She always expected obedience;
Victoria knew it and built on her knowledge a confident hope of impunity
in deceit.

Now on what harsh word have I stumbled? For deceit savours of meanness.
Let me amend and seek the charity, the neutral tolerance, of some such
word as concealment. For things good and things bad may be concealed,
things that people should know and things that concern them not, great
secrets of State and the flutterings of hearts. Victoria practised
concealment.

I found her crying once, crying alone in a corner of the terrace under a
ludicrous old statue of Mercury. I was amazed; I had not seen her cry so
heartily since Krak had last ill-treated her. I put it to her that some
such affliction must be responsible for her despair.

"I wish it was only that," she answered. "Do go away, Augustin."

"I don't want to stay," said I. "Only if you want anything----"

"I wonder if you could!" she said with a sudden flush. "No, it's no
use," she went on. "And it's nothing. Augustin, if you tell mother you
found me crying, I'll never----"

"You know quite well that I never tell anybody anything," said I, rather
offended.

"Then go away, dear," urged Victoria.

I went away. I had been feeling very lonely myself, and had sought out
Victoria for company's sake. However, I went and walked alone down to
the edge of the river. It was clear that Victoria did not want me, and
apparently I could do nothing for her. I have never found myself able to
do very much for people, except those who did not deserve to have
anything done for them. Perhaps poor Victoria didn't, but I was not
aware of her demerits then. I repeated to the river my old reflection:
"I don't see that it's much use being king, you know," said I as I flung
a pebble and looked across at the towers of Waldenweiter. "That fellow's
better off than I am," said I; and I wished again that Victoria had not
sent me away. There is a period of life during which one is always
being sent away, and it is not quite over for me yet in spite of my
dignity.

At last came the crash. A little carelessness born of habit and
impunity, the treachery of the old boatman under the temptation of a
gold piece, the girl's lack of _savoir faire_ when charged with the
offence--here was enough, and more than enough. I recollect being
summoned to my mother's room late one evening, just about my bedtime. I
went and found her alone with Victoria. The Princess sat in her great
arm-chair; Victoria was leaning against the wall when I entered; her
handkerchief was crushed in one hand, the other hand clenched by her
side.

"Augustin," said the Princess, "Victoria and I go to Biarritz
to-morrow."

Victoria's quick breathing was her only comment. My mother told me in
brief, curt, offensive phrases that Victoria had been carrying on a
flirtation with our opposite neighbour. I have no doubt that I looked
surprised.

"You may well wonder!" cried my mother. "If she could not remember what
she was herself, she might have remembered that the King was her
brother."

"I've done nothing----" Victoria began.

"Hold your tongue," said my mother. "If you were in Styria, instead of
here, you'd be locked up in your own room for a month on bread and
water; yes, you may think yourself lucky that I only take you to
Biarritz."

"Styria!" said Victoria with a very bitter smile. "If I were in Styria I
should be beheaded, I daresay, or--or knouted, or something. Oh, I know
what Styria means! Krak taught me that."

"I wish the Baroness was here," observed the Princess.

"You'd tell her to beat me, I suppose?" flashed out my sister.

"If you were three years younger----" began my mother with perfect
outward composure. Victoria interrupted her passionately.

"Oh, never mind my age. I'm a child still. Come and beat me!" she cried,
assuming the air of an Iphigenia.

To this day I am of opinion that she ran a risk in giving this
invitation; it was well on the cards that the Princess might have
accepted it. Indeed had it been Styria--but it was not Styria. My mother
turned to me with a cold smile.

"You perceive," said she, "the spirit in which your sister meets me
because I object to her compromising herself with this wretched baron.
She accuses me of persecution, and talks as though I were an
executioner."

I had been looking very curiously at Victoria. She was in a
dressing-gown, having been called, apparently, from her bedroom; her
hair was over her shoulders. She looked most prettily woe-begone--like
Juliet before her angry father, or, as I say, Iphigenia before the
knife. In a moment she broke out again.

"Nobody feels for me," she complained. "What can Augustin know of it?"

"I know," observed my mother. "But although I know----"

"Oh, you've forgotten," cried Victoria scornfully.

For a moment my mother flushed. I was glad on all accounts that Victoria
did not repeat her previous invitation now. On the contrary, when she
had looked at Princess Heinrich, she gave a sudden frightened sob,
rushed across the room, and flung herself on her knees at my feet.

"You're the king!" she cried. "Protect me, protect me!"

Throughout all this very painful interview I seemed to hear as it were
echoes of the romances which I had read on Victoria's recommendation;
the reminiscence was particularly strong in this last exclamation.
However, it is not safe to conclude that feelings are not sincere
because they are expressed in conventional phrases. These formulas are
moulds into which our words run easily; though the moulds be hollow, the
stuff that fills them may be solid enough.

"Why, you don't want to marry him?" I exclaimed, much embarrassed at
being prematurely forced into functions of a _père de famille_.

"I'll never marry anybody else," moaned Victoria. My mother's face was
the picture of disgust and scorn.

"That's another thing," said she. "At least the King would not hear of
such a marriage as this."

"Do you want to marry him?" I asked Victoria, chiefly, I confess, in
curiosity. I had risen--or fallen--in some degree to my position, and it
seemed strange to me that my sister should wish to marry this Baron
Fritz.

"I--I love him, Augustin," groaned Victoria.

"She knows it's impossible, as well as you do," said my mother. "She
doesn't really want to do it."

Victoria cried quietly, but made no reply or protest. I was bewildered;
I did not understand then how we may passionately desire a thing which
we would not do, and may snatch at the opposition of others as an
excuse alike for refusal and for tears. Looking back, I do not think had
we set Victoria free in the boat, and put the sculls in her hands, that
she would have rowed over to Waldenweiter. But did she, then, deserve no
pity? Perhaps she deserved more; for not two weak creatures like the
Princess (I crave her pardon) and myself stood between her and her
wishes, but she herself--the being that she had been fashioned into, her
whole life, her nature, and her heart, as our state had made them. If
our soul be our prison, and ourself the jailer, in vain shall we plan
escape or offer bribes for freedom; wheresoever we go we carry the walls
with us, and if death, then death alone can unlock the gates.

The scene grew quieter. Victoria rose, and threw herself into a chair in
a weary, puzzled desolation; my mother sat quite still, with eyes intent
on the floor, and lips close shut. A sense of awkwardness grew strong on
me; I wanted to get out of the room. They would not fight any more now;
they would be very distant to one another; and, moreover, it seemed
clear that Victoria did not propose to marry Baron Fritz. But what about
poor Baron Fritz? I approached my mother, and whispered a question. She
answered me aloud.

"I have written to Prince von Hammerfeldt. A letter from him will, I
have no doubt, be enough to insure us against further impertinence."

Victoria dabbed her eyes, but no protest came from her.

"We shall start mid-day to-morrow," the Princess pursued, "unless, of
course, Victoria refuses to accompany me." Her voice took a tinge of
irony. "Possibly your wishes may persuade her, Augustin, if mine can
not."

Victoria raised her head suddenly, and said very distinctly:

"I will do what Augustin tells me." The emphatic word in that sentence
was "Augustin."

My mother smiled bitterly; she understood well enough the implicit
declaration of war, the appeal from her to me, the shifting of
allegiance. I daresay that she saw the absurdity of putting a boy not
yet sixteen into such a position; but I know that I felt it much more
strongly.

"Oh, you'd better go, hadn't you?" I asked uncomfortably. "You wouldn't
be very jolly here, you know."

"I'll do as you tell me, Augustin."

"Yes, we are both at your orders," said my mother.

It crossed my mind that their journey would not be a very pleasant one,
but I did not feel able to enter into that side of the question. I
resented this reference to me, and desired to be rid of the affair.

"I should like you to do as mother suggests," said I.

"Very well, Augustin," said Victoria, and she rose to her feet. She was
a tall, graceful girl, and looked very stately as she walked by her
mother. The Princess made no movement or sign; the grim smile persisted
on her lips. After a moment or two of wavering I followed my sister from
the room. She was just ahead of me in the passage, moving toward her
bedroom with a slow, listless tread. An impulse of sympathy came upon
me; I ran after her, caught her by the arm, and kissed her.

"Cheer up," I said.

"Oh, it's all right, Augustin," said she. "I've only been a fool."

There seemed nothing else to do, so I kissed her again.

"Fancy, Biarritz with mother!" she moaned. Then she turned on me
suddenly, almost fiercely. "But what's the good of asking anything of
you? You're afraid of mother still."

I drew back as though she had struck me. A moment later her arms were
round my neck.

"Oh, never mind, my dear," she sobbed. "Don't you see I'm miserable? Of
course, I must go with her."

I had never supposed that any other course was practicable. The
introduction of myself into the business had been but a move in the
game. Nevertheless it marked the beginning of a new position for me, as
rich in discomfort as, according to my experience, are most extensions
of power.




CHAPTER VI.

A STUDENT OF LOVE AFFAIRS.


The departure to Biarritz was carried through without further overt
hostilities. It chanced to be holidays with me, all my tutors were on
their vacation, my governor, Vohrenlorf, on a visit at Berlin. Hearing
of my solitude, he insisted on making arrangements to return speedily;
but for a few days I was left quite alone, saving for the presence of my
French body-servant Baptiste. I liked Baptiste; he was by conviction an
anarchist, by prejudice a freethinker; one shrug of his shoulders
disposed of the institutions of this world, another relegated the next
to the limbo of delusions. He was always respectful, but possessed an
unconquerably intimate manner; he could not forget that man spoke to
man, although one might be putting on the other's boots for him. He
regarded me with mingled affection and pity. I had overheard him
speaking of _le pauvre petit roi_; the point of view was so much my own
that from the instant my heart went out to Baptiste. Since he attributed
to me no sacro-sanctity, he was not officious or persistent in his
attendance while he was on duty; in fact he left me very much to my own
devices. To my mother he was polite but cold; he adored Victoria,
declaring that she was worthy of being French; his great hatred was for
Hammerfeldt, whom he accused of embodying the devil of Teutonism.
Hammerfeldt was aware of his feelings and played with them, while he
trusted Baptiste more than anybody about me. He did not know how
attached I was to the Frenchman, and I did not intend that he should
learn. I had received a sharp lesson with regard to parading my
preferences.

It was through Baptiste that I heard of Baron Fritz's side of the case,
for Baptiste was friendly with Fritz's servants. The Baron, it appeared,
was in despair. "They watch him when he walks by the river," declared
Baptiste with a gesture in which dismay and satisfaction were curiously
blended.

"Poor fellow!" said I, leaning back in the stern of the boat. To be in
such a state on Victoria's account was odd and deplorable.

Baptiste laid down the sculls and leaned forward smiling.

"It is nothing, sire," said he. "It must happen now and again to all of
us. M. le Baron will soon be well. Meanwhile he is--oh, miserable!"

"Is he all alone there?" I asked.

"Absolutely, sire. He will see nobody."

I looked up at Waldenweiter.

"He has not even his mother with him," said Baptiste; the remark, as
Baptiste delivered it, was impertinent, and yet so intangibly
impertinent as to afford no handle for reproof. He meant that the Baron
was free from an aggravation; he said that he lacked a consolation.

"Shall I go and see him?" I asked. In truth I was rather curious about
him; it was a pleasure to me to break out of my own surroundings.

"What would the Prince say?" said Baptiste.

"He need not know. Row ashore there."

"You must not go, sire. It would be known, and they would say----"
Baptiste's shrug was eloquent.

"Do they always talk about everything one does?"

"Certainly, sire, it is your privilege," smiled my servant. "But I think
he might come to you. That could be managed; not in the Schloss, but in
the wood, quite privately. I can contrive it."

Baptiste did contrive it, and Baron Fritz came. I was now just too old
to scorn love, just too young to sympathize fully with it. There is that
age in a boy's life, but since he holds his tongue about it, it is apt
to escape notice, and people jest on the sudden change in his attitude
toward women. Nothing in nature is sudden; no more, then, is this
transition. I looked curiously at Fritz; he was timid with me. I
perceived that he was not an ordinary young nobleman, devoted only to
sport and wine; he had something of Owen's romance, but in him it was
self-centred, not open wide to embrace the universe of things beautiful
and ugly. He thanked me for receiving him in a rather elaborate and
artificial fashion. I wondered at once that he had caught Victoria's
fancy; her temperament seemed too robust for him. He began to speak of
her in some very poetical phrases; he quoted a line of poetry about
Diana and Endymion. I had been made to turn it into Latin verses, and
its sentiment fell cold on my soul. He spoke of his passion with
desperation, and I thought with pride. He said that, happen what might,
his whole life was the Princess's; but he did not mention Victoria's
name, he said "her" with an air of mystery, as though spies lurked in
the woods. There was nobody save Baptiste, standing sentry to guard this
secret meeting. I gave the Baron a cigarette, and lit one myself; I had
begun the habit, though still surreptitiously.

"You must have known there'd be a row?" I suggested.

"Tell me of her!" he cried. "Is she in great grief?"

I did not want to tell him about Victoria; I wanted him to tell me about
himself. As soon as he understood this, I am bound to say that he
gratified me at once. I sat looking at him while he described his
feelings; all at once he turned and discovered my gaze on him.

"Go on," said I.

The Baron appeared uncomfortable. His eyes fell to the ground, and he
tried to puff at his cigarette which he had allowed to go out. I daresay
he thought me a strange boy; but he could not very well say so.

"You don't understand it?" he asked.

"Partly," I answered.

"We never had any hope," said he, almost luxuriously.

"But you enjoyed it very much?" I suggested; I was quite grave about it
in my mind, as well as in my face.

"Ah!" sighed he softly.

"And now it's all over!"

"I see her no more. I think of her. She thinks of me."

"Perhaps," said I meditatively. I was wondering whether they did not
think more about themselves. "Didn't you think you might manage it?"

"Alas, no. Sorrow was always in our joy."

"What are you going to do now?"

"What is there for me to do?" he asked despairingly. "Sometimes I think
that I can not endure to live."

"Baptiste told me that they watched you when you walked by the river."

He turned to me with a very interested expression of face.

"Do they really?" he asked.

"So Baptiste said."

"I promised her that, whatever happened, I would do nothing rash," said
he. "What would her feelings be?"

"We should all be very much distressed," said I, in my best court
manner.

"Ah, the world, the world!" sighed Baron Fritz. Then with an air of
great courage he went on. "Yet, how am I so different from her?"

"I think you are very much alike," said I.

"But she is--a Princess!"

I felt that he was laying a sort of responsibility on me. I could not
help Victoria being a Princess. He laughed bitterly; I seemed to be put
on my defence.

"I think it just as absurd as you do," I hastened to say.

"Absurd!" he echoed. "I didn't say that I thought it absurd. Would not
your Majesty rather say tragic? There must be kings, princes,
princesses--our hearts pay the price."

I was growing rather weary of this Baron, and wondering more and more
what Victoria had discovered in him. But my lack of knowledge led me
into an error; I attributed what wearied me in no degree to the Baron
himself, but altogether to his condition. "This, then, is what it is to
be in love," I was saying to myself; I summoned up the relics of my
scorn once so abundant and vigorous. The Baron perhaps detected the
beginnings of _ennui_; he rose to his feet.

"Forgive me, if I say that your Majesty will understand my feelings
better in two or three years," he observed.

"I suppose I shall," I answered, rather uneasily.

"Meanwhile I must live it down; I must master it."

"It's the only thing to do."

"And she----"

"Oh, she'll get over it," I assured him, nodding my head.

I am inclined sometimes to count it among my misfortunes, that the first
love affair with which I was brought into intimate connection and
confronted at an age still so impressionable, should have been of the
shallow and somewhat artificial character betrayed by the romance of my
sister and Baron Fritz. She was a headstrong girl; longing to exercise
power over men, surprised when a temporary gust of feeling carried her
into an emotion unexpectedly strong; he was a self-conscious fellow,
hugging his woes and delighting in the picturesqueness of his
misfortune. The notion left on my mind was that there was a great deal
of nonsense about the matter. Baptiste strengthened my opinion.

"I ask your pardon, sire," he said with a shrug, "but we know the
sentimentality of the Germans. What is it? Sighs and then beer, more
sighs and more beer, a deluge of sighs and a deluge of beer. A Frenchman
is not like that in his little affairs."

"What does a Frenchman do, Baptiste?" I had the curiosity to ask.

"Ah," laughed Baptiste, "if I told your Majesty now, you would not care
to visit Paris; and I long to go to Paris with your Majesty."

I did not pursue the subject. I was conscious of a disenchantment, begun
by Victoria, continued by the Baron. The reaction made in favour of my
mother. I acknowledged the wisdom of her firmness and an excuse for her
anger. I realized her causes for annoyance and shame, and saw the
hollowness of the lovers' pleas. I had thought the Princess very hard; I
was now inclined to think that she had shown as much self-control as
could be expected from her. Rather to my own surprise I found myself
extending this more favourable judgment of her to other matters,
entering with a new sympathy into her disposition, and even forgiving
some harsh thing which I had never pardoned. The idea suggested itself
to my mind, that even the rigours of the Styrian discipline had a
rational relation to the position which the victims of it were destined
to fill. She might be right in supposing that we could not be allowed
the indulgence accorded to the common run of children. We were destined
for a special purpose, and, if we were not made of a special clay, yet
we must be fashioned into a special shape. It is hard to disentangle the
influence of one event from that exerted by another. Perhaps the loss of
Owen, and the consequently increased influence of Hammerfeldt over my
life and thoughts, had as much to do with my new feelings as Victoria's
love affair; but in any case I date from this time a fresh development
of myself. I was growing into my kingship, beginning to realize the
conception of it, and to fill up that conception in my own mind. This
moment was of importance to me; for it marked the beginning of a period
during which this idea of my position was very dominant and coloured
all I did or thought. I did not change my opinion as to the discomfort
of the post; but its importance, its sacredness, and its paramount
claims grew larger and larger in my eyes. It seems curious, but had
Baron Fritz been a different sort of lover, I think that I should have
been in some respects a different sort of a king. It needs a constant
intellectual effort to believe that there is anything except accident in
the course of the world.

Hammerfeldt's persistent pressure drove the love-lorn Baron, still
undrowned (had the watchers been too vigilant?), on a long foreign tour,
and in three months the Princess and Victoria returned. I saw at once
that the new relations were permanently established between them; my
mother displayed an almost ostentatious abdication of authority; her
whole air declared that since Victoria chose to walk alone, alone in
good truth she should walk. It was the attitude of a proud and
domineering nature that answers any objection to its sway by a wholesale
disclaimer at once of power and responsibility. Victoria accepted her
mother's resolution, but rather with resentment than gratitude. They had
managed the affair badly; my mother had lost influence without gaining
affection; my sister had forfeited guidance but not achieved a true
liberty. She was hardly more her own mistress than before; Hammerfeldt,
screened behind me, now trammelled her, and she had a statesman to deal
with instead of a mother. Only once she spoke to me concerning the Baron
and his affair; the three months had wrought some change here also.

"I was very silly," she said impatiently. "I know that well enough."

"Then why don't you make it up with mother?" I ventured to suggest.

"Mother behaved odiously," she declared. "I can never forgive her the
way she treated me."

The grievance then had shifted its ground; not what the Princess had
done, but the manner in which she had done it was now the head and front
of her offence. It needed little acquaintance with the world to
recognise that matters were not improved by this change; one may come to
recognise that common sense was with the enemy; vanity at once takes
refuge in the conviction that his awkwardness, rudeness, or cruelty in
advancing his case was responsible for all the trouble.

"If she had been kind, I should have seen it all directly," said
Victoria. And in this it may very well be that Victoria was not
altogether wrong.

The position was, however, inconsistent with even moderate comfort.
There was a way of ending it, obvious, I suppose, to everybody save
myself, but seeming rather startling to my youthful mind. In six months
now Victoria would be eighteen, and eighteen is a marriageable age.
Victoria must be married; my mother and Hammerfeldt went
husband-hunting. As soon as I heard of the scheme I was ready with
brotherly sympathy, and even cherished the idea of interposing a
hitherto untried royal veto on such premature haste and cruel forcing of
a girl's inclination. Victoria received my advances with visible
surprise. Did I suppose, she asked, that she was so happy at home as to
shrink from marriage? Would not such a step be rather an emancipation
than a banishment? (I paraphrase and condense her observation.) Did I
not perceive that she must hail the prospect with relief? I was to know
that her mother and herself were at one on this matter; she was obliged
for my kindness, but thought that I need not concern myself in the
matter. Considerably relieved, not less puzzled, with a picture of
Victoria sobbing and the Baron walking (well watched) by the river's
brink, I withdrew from my sister's presence. It occurred to me that to
take a husband in order to escape from a mother was a peculiar step; I
have since seen reason to suppose that it is more common than I
imagined.

The history of my private life is (to speak broadly) the record of the
reaction of my public capacity on my personal position; the effect of
this reaction has been almost uniformly unfortunate. The case of
Victoria's marriage affords a good instance. It might have been that
here at least I should be suffered to play a fraternal and grateful
part. My fate and Hammerfeldt ruled otherwise. There were two persons
who suggested themselves as suitable mates for my sister; one was the
reigning king of a country which I need not name, the other was Prince
William Adolphus of Alt-Gronenstahl, a prince of considerable wealth and
unexceptionable descent but not in the direct succession to a throne,
not likely to occupy a prominent position in Europe. Victoria had never
quite forgiven fortune (or perhaps me either) for not making her a queen
in the first instance; she was eager to repair the error. She came to me
and begged me to exert my influence in behalf of the king, who was
understood through his advisers to favour the suggestion. I was most
happy to second her wishes, although entirely sceptical as to the value
of my assistance. I recollect very well the interview that followed
between Hammerfeldt and myself; throughout the Prince treated me _en
roi_, speaking with absolute candour, disclosing to me the whole
question, and assuming in me an elevation of spirit superior to merely
personal feelings.

"After your Majesty," said he, "the Princess is heir to the throne. We
have received representations that the union of the two countries in one
hand could not be contemplated by the Powers. Now you, sire, are young;
you are and must be for some years unmarried; life is uncertain and"
(here he looked at me steadily) "your physicians are of opinion that
certain seeds of weakness, sown by your severe illness, have not yet
been eradicated from your constitution. It is necessary for me to offer
these observations to your Majesty."

The old man's eyes were very kind.

"It's all right, sir," said I. "Go on."

"We all trust that you may live through a long reign, and that your son
may reign after you. It is, indeed, the only strong wish that I have
left in a world which I have well-nigh done with. But the other
possibility has been set before us and we can not ignore it."

From that moment I myself never ignored it.

"It was suggested that Princess Victoria should renounce her rights of
succession. I need not remind your Majesty that the result would be to
make your cousin Prince Ferdinand heir-presumptive. I desire to speak
with all respect of the Prince, but his succession would be an unmixed
calamity." The Prince took a pinch of snuff.

Ferdinand was very liberal in his theories; and equally so, in a rather
different sense, in his mode of life.

I thought for a moment.

"I shouldn't like the succession to go out of our branch," said I.

"I was sure of it, sire," he said, bowing. "It would break your mother's
heart and mine."

I was greatly troubled. What of my ready inconsiderate promise to
Victoria? And apart from the promise I would most eagerly have helped
her to her way. I had felt severely the lack of confidence and affection
that had recently come about between us; I was hungry for her love, and
hoped to buy it of her gratitude. I believe old Hammerfeldt's keen eyes
saw all that passed in my thoughts. The Styrian teaching had left its
mark on my mind, as had the Styrian discipline on my soul. "God did not
make you king for your own pleasure," Krak used to say with that
instinctive knowledge of the Deity which marks those who train the
young. No, nor for my sister's, nor even that I might conciliate my
sister's love. Nay, again, nor even that I might make my sister happy.
For none of these ends did I sit where I sat. But I felt very forlorn
and sad as I looked at the old Prince.

"Victoria will be very angry," said I. "I wanted to please her so much."

"The Princess has her duties, and will recognise yours," he answered.

"Of course, if I die it'll be all right. But if I live she'll say I did
it just out of ill-nature."

The old man rose from his chair, laying his snuffbox on the table by
him. He came up to me and held out both his hands; I put mine into them,
and looked up into his face. It was moved by a most rare emotion. I had
never seen him like this before.

"Sire," said he in a low tone, "do not think that nobody loves you; for
from that mood it may come that a man will love nobody. There is an old
man that loves you, as he loved your father and your grandfather; and
your people shall love you." He bent down and kissed me on either cheek.
Then he released my hands and stood before me. There was a long silence.
Then he said:

"Have I your Majesty's authority and support in acting for the good of
the kingdom?"

"Yes," said I.

But, alas! for Victoria's hopes, ambitions, and vanity for her crown,
and her crowned husband. Alas, poor sister! And, alas, poor brother,
hungry to be friends again!




CHAPTER VII.

THINGS NOT TO BE NOTICED.


I have not the heart to set down what passed between my sister and
myself when I broke to her the news that I must be against her.
Impulsive in all her moods, and ungoverned in her emotions, she
displayed much bitterness and an anger that her disappointment may
excuse. I have little doubt that I, on my part, was formal, priggish,
perhaps absurd; all these faults she charged me with. You can not put
great ideas in a boy's head without puffing him up; I was doing at cost
to myself what I was convinced was my duty; it is only too likely that I
gave myself some airs during the performance. Might I not be pardoned if
I talked a little big about my position? The price I was paying for it
was big enough. It touched me most nearly when she accused me of
jealousy, but I set it down only to her present rage. I was tempted to
soften her by dwelling on my own precarious health, but I am glad that
an instinct for fair play made me leave that weapon unused. She grew
calm at last, and rose to her feet with a pale face.

"I have tried to do right," said I.

"I shall not forget what you have done," she retorted as she walked out
of the room.

I have been much alone in my life--alone in spirit, I mean, for that is
the only loneliness that has power to hurt a man--but never so much as
during the year that elapsed before Victoria's marriage was celebrated.
Save for Hammerfeldt, whose engagements did not allow him to be much in
my company, and to whom it was possible to open one's heart only rarely,
I had nobody with whom I was in sympathy. For my mother, although she
yielded more readily to the inevitable, was yet in secret on Victoria's
side on the matter of marriage. Victoria had been for meeting the
foreign representatives by renouncing her succession; my mother would
not hear of that, but was for defying the protests. Nothing, she had
declared, could really come of them. Hammerfeldt overbore her with his
knowledge and experience, leaving her defeated, but only half convinced,
sullen, and disappointed. She was careful not to take sides against me
overtly, but neither did she seek to comfort or to aid me. She withdrew
into a neutrality that favoured Victoria silently, although it refused
openly to espouse her cause. The two ladies thus came closer together
again, leaving me more to myself. The near prospect of independence
reconciled Victoria to a temporary control; my mother was more gentle
from her share in her daughter's disappointment. For my part I took
refuge more and more in books and my sport.

Amusement is the one great consolation that life offers, and even in
this dreary time it was not lacking. The love-lorn Baron had returned to
Waldenweiter; he wrote to Hammerfeldt for permission; the Prince refused
it; the Baron rejoined that he was about to be married; I can imagine
the grim smile with which the old man withdrew his objection. The Baron
came home with his wife. This event nearly broke the new alliance
between my mother and my sister; it was so very difficult for my mother
not to triumph, and Victoria detected a taunt even in silence. However,
there was no rupture, the Baron was never mentioned; but I, seeking
distraction, made it my business to pursue him as often as he ventured
into his boat. I overtook him once and insisted on going up to
Waldenweiter and being introduced to the pretty young Baroness. She knew
nothing about the affair, and was rather hurt at not being invited to
Artenberg. The Baron was on thorns during the whole interview--but not
so much because he must be looking a fool in my eyes, as because he did
not desire to seem light of love in his wife's. Unhappily, however,
about this time a pamphlet was secretly printed and circulated, giving a
tolerably accurate account of the whole affair. The wrath in "exalted
quarters" may be imagined. I managed to procure (through Baptiste) a
copy of this publication and read it with much entertainment. Victoria,
in spite of her anger, borrowed it from me. It is within my knowledge
that the Baroness received a copy from an unknown friend, and that the
Baron, being thus driven into a corner, admitted that the Princess had
at one time distinguished him by some attentions--and could he be rude?
Now, curiously enough, the report that got about on our bank of the
river was, that there was no foundation at all for the assertions of the
pamphlet, except in a foolish and ill-mannered persecution to which the
Princess had, during a short period, been subjected. After this there
could be no question of any invitation passing from Artenberg to
Waldenweiter. The subject dropped; the printer made some little scandal
and a pocket full of money, and persons who, like myself, knew the facts
and could appreciate the behaviour of the lovers gained considerable
amusement.

My second source of diversion was found in my future brother-in-law,
William Adolphus, of Alt-Gronenstahl. He was, in himself, a thoroughly
heavy fellow, although admirably good-natured and, I believe, a
practical and competent soldier. He was tall, dark, and even at this
time inclining to stoutness; he became afterward exceedingly corpulent.
He did not at first promise amusement, but a rather malicious humour
found much in him, owing to the circumstance that the poor fellow was
acquainted with the negotiations touching the marriage first suggested
for Victoria, and was fully aware that he himself was in his lady's eyes
only a _pis-aller_. His dignity might have refused such a situation; but
in the first instance he had been hardly more of a free agent than
Victoria herself, and later on, as though he were determined to deprive
himself of all defence, he proceeded to fall genuinely in love with my
capricious but very attractive sister. I was sorry for him, but I am not
aware that sympathy with people excludes amusement at them. I hope not,
for wide sympathies are a very desirable thing. William Adolphus,
looking round for a friend, honoured me with his confidence, and during
his visits to Artenberg used to consult me almost daily as to how he
might best propitiate his deity and wean her thoughts from that other
alliance which had so eclipsed his in its prospective brilliance.

"Girls are rather difficult to manage," he used to say to me ruefully.
"You'll know more about them in a few years, Augustin."

I knew much more about them than he did already. I am not boasting; but
people who learn only from experience do not allow for intuition.

"But I think she's beginning to get fonder of me," he would end, with an
uphill cheerfulness.

She was not beginning to get the least fonder of him; she was beginning
to be interested and excited in the stir of the marriage. There were so
many things to do and talk about, and so much desirable prominence and
publicity attaching to the affair, that she had less time for nursing
her dislike. The shock of him was passing over; he was falling into
focus with the rest of it; but she was not becoming in the least fonder
of him. I knew all this without the few words; with them he knew none of
it. It seems to be a mere accident who chances to be previous to truth,
who impervious.

In loneliness for me, in perturbation for poor William Adolphus, in I
know not what for Victoria the time passed on. There is but one incident
that stands out, naming against the gray of that monotony. The full
meaning of it I did not understand then, but now I know it better.

I was sitting alone in my dressing-room. I had sent Baptiste to bed, and
was reading a book with interest. Suddenly the door was opened
violently. Before I could even rise to my feet, Victoria--the door
slammed behind her--had thrown herself on her knees before me. She was
in her nightdress, barefooted, her hair loose and tumbled on her
shoulders; it seemed as though she had sprung up from her bed and run to
me. She caught my arms in her hands, and laid her face on my knees; she
said nothing, but sobbed violently with a terrible gasping rapidity.

"My God, what's the matter?" said I.

For a moment there was no answer; then her voice came, interrupted and
half-choked by constant sobs.

"I can't do it, I can't do it. For God's sake, don't make me do it.

"Do what?" I asked.

Her sobs alone answered me, and their answer was enough. I sat there
helpless and still, the nervous tight clutching of her hands pinning my
arms to my side.

"You're the king, you're the king," she moaned.

Yes, I was the king; even then I smiled.

"You don't know," she went on, and now she raised her face streaming
with tears. "You don't know--how can you know what it is? Help me, help
me, Augustin."

The thing had come on me with utter suddenness, the tranquillity of my
quiet room had been rudely rent by the invasion. I was, in an instant,
face to face with a strange dim tragedy, the like of which I had never
known, the stress of which I could never fully know. But all the
tenderness that I had for her, my love for her beauty, and the yearning
for comradeship that she herself had choked rose in me; I bent my head
till my lips rested on her hair, crying, "Don't, darling, don't."

She sprang up, throwing her arm about my neck, and looking round the
room as though there were something that she feared; then she sat on my
knee and nestled close to me. She had ceased to sob now, but it was
worse to me to see her face strained in silent agony and her eyes wept
dry of tears.

"Let me stay here, do let me stay here a little," she said as I passed
my arm round her and her head fell on my shoulder. "Don't send me away
yet, Augustin," she whispered, "I don't want to be alone."

"Stay here, dearest, nobody shall hurt you," said I, as I kissed her. My
heart broke for her trouble, but it was sweet to me to think that she
had fled from it to my arms. After all, the old bond held between us;
the tug of trouble revealed it. She lay a while quite still with closed
eyes; then she opened her eyes and looked up at me.

"Must I?" she asked.

"No," I answered. "If you will not, you shall not."

Her arm coiled closer round my neck and she closed her eyes again,
sighing and moving restlessly. Presently she lay very quiet, her
exhaustion seeming like sleep. How long had she tormented herself before
she came to me?

My brain was busy, but my heart outran it. Now, now if ever, I would
assert myself, my power, my position. She should not call to me in vain.
What I would do, I did not know; but the thing she dreaded should not
be. But although I was in this fever, I did not stir; she was resting in
peace; let her rest as long as she would. For more than an hour she lay
there in my arms; I grew stiff and very weary, but I did not move. At
last I believe that in very truth she slept.

The clock in the tower struck midnight, and the quarter, and the
half-hour. I had rehearsed what I should say to my mother and what to
Hammerfeldt. I had dreamed how this night should knit her and me so
closely that we could never again drift apart, that now we knew one
another and for each of us what was superficial in the other existed no
more, but was swept away by the flood of full sympathy. She and I
against the world if need be!

A shiver ran through her; she opened her eyes wide and wider, looking
round the room no longer in fear, but in a sort of wonder. Her gaze
rested an instant on my face, she drew her arm from round my neck and
rose to her feet, pushing away my arm. There she stood for a moment with
a strange, fretful, ashamed look on her face. She tossed her head,
flinging her hair back behind her shoulders. I had taken her hand and
still held it; now she drew it also away.

"What must you think of me?" she said. "Good gracious, I'm in my
nightgown."

She walked across to the looking-glass and stood opposite to it.

"What a fright I look!" she said. "How long have I been here?"

"I don't know; more than an hour."

"It was horrid in bed to-night," she said in a half-embarrassed yet
half-absent way. "I got thinking about--about all sorts of things, and I
was frightened."

The change in her mood sealed my lips.

"I hope mother hasn't noticed that my room's empty. No, of course not;
she must be in bed long ago. Will you take me back to my room,
Augustin?"

"Yes," said I.

She came up to me, looked at me for a moment, then bent down to me as I
sat in my chair and kissed my forehead.

"You're a dear boy," she said. "Was I quite mad?"

"I meant what I said," I declared, as I stood up. "I mean it still."

"Ah," said she, flinging her hands out, "poor Augustin, you mean it
still! Take me along the corridor, dear, I'm afraid to go alone."

Sometimes I blame myself that I submitted to the second mood as
completely as I had responded to the first; but I was staggered by the
change, and the old sense of distance scattered for an hour was
enveloping me again.

One protest I made.

"Are we to do nothing, then?" I asked in a low whisper.

"We're to go to our beds like good children," said she with a mournful
little smile. "Come, take me to mine."

"I must see you in the morning."

"In the morning? Well, we'll see. Come, come."

Now she was urgent, and I did as she bade me. But first she made me
bring her a pair of my slippers; her feet were very cold, she said, and
they felt like ice against my hand as I touched them in putting on the
slippers for her. She passed her hand through my arm and we went
together. The door of her room stood wide open; we went in; I saw the
bed in confusion.

"Fancy if any one had come by and seen!" she whispered. "Now,
good-night, dear."

I opened my lips to speak to her again.

"No, no; go, please go. Good-night, dear." I left her standing in the
middle of her room. Outside the door I waited many minutes; I heard her
moving about and getting into bed; then all was quiet; I returned to my
own room.

I was up early the next morning, for I had been able to sleep but
little. I wanted above all things to see Victoria again. But even while
I was dressing Baptiste brought me a note. I opened it hurriedly, for it
was from her. I read:

"Forget all about last night; I was tired and ill. I rely on your honour
to say nothing to anybody. I am all right this morning."

She was entitled to ask the pledge of my honour, if she chose. I tore
the note in fragments and burned them.

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning when I went out into the
garden. There was a group on the terrace--my mother, Victoria, and
William Adolphus. They were laughing and talking and seemed very merry.
As a rule I should have waved a "good morning" and passed on for my
solitary walk. To-day I went up to them. My mother appeared to be in an
excellent temper, the Prince looked quite easy and happy. Victoria was a
little pale but very vivacious. She darted a quick look at me, and cried
out the moment I had kissed my mother:

"We're settling the bridesmaids! You're just in time to help, Augustin."

We "settled" the bridesmaids. I hardly knew whether to laugh or to cry
during this important operation. Victoria was very kind to her _fiancé_,
receiving his suggestions with positive graciousness: he became radiant
under this treatment. When our task was done, Victoria passed her arm
through his, declaring that she wanted a stroll in the woods; as they
went by me she laid her hand lightly and affectionately on my arm,
looking me full in the face the while. I understood; for good or evil my
lips were sealed.

My mother looked after the betrothed couple as they walked away; I
looked at my mother's fine high-bred resolute face.

"I'm so glad," said she at last, "to see Victoria so happy. I was afraid
at one time that she'd never take to it. Of course we had other hopes."

The last words were a hit at me. I ignored them; that battle had been
fought, the victory won, and paid for by me in handsome fashion.

"Has she taken to it?" I asked as carelessly as I could. But my mother's
eyes turned keenly on me.

"Have you any reason for thinking she hasn't?" came in quick question.

"No," I answered.

The sun was shining and Princess Heinrich opened her parasol very
leisurely. She rose to her feet and stood there for a moment. Then in a
smooth, even, and what I may call reasonable voice, she remarked:

"My dear Augustin, from time to time all girls have fancies. We mothers
know that it doesn't do to pay any attention to them. They soon go if
they're let alone. We shall meet at lunch, I hope?"

I bowed respectfully, but perhaps I looked a little doubtful.

"It really doesn't do to take any notice of them," said my mother over
her shoulder.

So we took no notice of them; my sister's midnight flight to my room and
to my arms was between her and me, and for all the world as though it
has never been, save that it left behind it a little legacy of renewed
kindliness and trust. For that much I was thankful; but I could not
forget the rest.

A month later she was married to William Adolphus at Forstadt.




CHAPTER VIII.

DESTINY IN A PINAFORE.


The foreign tour I undertook in my eighteenth year has been
sufficiently, or even more than sufficiently, described by the
accomplished and courtly pen of Vohrenlorf's secretary. I travelled as
the Count of Artenberg under my Governor's guidance, and saw in some
ways more, in some respects less, than most young men on their travels
are likely to see. Old Hammerfeldt recommended for my reading the
English letters of Lord Chesterfield to his son, and I studied them with
some profit, much amusement, and an occasional burst of impatience; I
believe that in the Prince's opinion I, like Mr. Stanhope, had hitherto
attached too little importance to, and not attained enough proficiency
in, "the graces"; concealment was the life's breath of his statescraft,
and "the graces" help a man to hide everything--ideals, emotions,
passions, his very soul. It must have been an immense satisfaction to
the Prince, on leaving the world at a ripe age, to feel that nobody had
ever been sure that they understood him; except, of course, the fools
who think that they understood everybody.

As far as my private life is concerned, one incident only on this
expedition is of moment. We paid a visit to my father's cousins, the
Bartensteins, who possessed a singularly charming place in Tirol. The
Duke was moderately rich, very able, and very indolent. He was a
connoisseur in music and the arts. His wife, my Cousin Elizabeth, was a
very good-natured woman of seven or eight and thirty, noted for her
dairy and fond of out-of-door pursuits; her devotion to these last had
resulted in her complexion being rather reddened and weather-beaten. We
were to stay a week, an unusually long halt; and even before we arrived
I detected a simple slyness in my good Vohrenlorf's demeanour. When a
secret was afoot, Vohrenlorf's first apparent effort was to draw
everybody's attention to the fact of its existence. Out of perversity I
asked no questions, and left him to seethe in his over-boiling mystery.
I knew that I should be enlightened soon enough. I was quite right;
before I had been a day with my relatives it became obvious that Elsa
was the mystery. I suppose that it is not altogether a common thing for
a youth of eighteen, feeling himself a man, trying to think himself one,
just become fully conscious of the power and attraction of the women he
meets, to be shown a child of twelve, and given to understand that in
six years' time she will be ready to become his wife. The position, even
if not as uncommon as I suppose, is curious enough to justify a few
words of description.

I saw Elsa first as she was rolling down a hill, with a scandalized
governess in full chase. Elsa rolled quickly, marking her progress by
triumphant cries. She "brought up" at the foot of the slope in an
excessively crumpled state; her short skirts were being smoothed down
when her mother and I arrived. She was a pretty, fair, blue-eyed child,
with a natural merriment about her attractive enough. She was well
made, having escaped the square solidity of figure that characterized
Cousin Elizabeth. Her features were still in an undeveloped condition,
and her hair, brushed smooth and plastered down on her forehead, was
tormented into ringlets behind. She looked at my lanky form with some
apprehension.

"Was it a good roll, Elsa?" I asked.

"Splendid!" she answered.

"You didn't know Cousin Augustin was looking on, did you?" asked her
mother.

"No, I didn't." But it was plain that she did not care either.

I felt that Cousin Elizabeth's honest eyes were searching my face.

"Give me a kiss, won't you, Elsa?" I asked.

Elsa turned her chubby cheek up to me in a perfection of indifference.
In fact, both Elsa and I were performing family duties. Thus we kissed
for the first time.

"Now go and let nurse put on a clean frock for you," said Cousin
Elizabeth. "You're to come downstairs to-day, and you're not fit to be
seen. Don't roll any more when you've changed your frock."

Elsa smiled, shook her head, and ran off. I gathered the impression that
even in the clean frock she would roll again if she chanced to be
disposed to that exercise. The air of Bartenstein was not the air of
Artenberg. A milder climate reigned. There was no Styrian discipline for
Elsa. I believe that in all her life she did at her parents' instance
only one thing that she seriously disliked. Cousin Elizabeth and I
walked on.

"She's a baby still," said Cousin Elizabeth presently, "but I assure
you that she has begun to develop."

"There's no hurry, is there?"

"No. You know, I think you're too old for your age, Augustin. I suppose
it was inevitable."

I felt much younger in many ways than I had at fifteen; the gates of the
world were opening, and showing me prospects unknown to the lonely boy
at Artenberg.

"And she has the sweetest disposition. So loving!" said Cousin
Elizabeth.

I did not find anything appropriate to answer. The next day found me
fully, although delicately, apprised of the situation. It seemed to me a
strange one. The Duke was guarded in his hints, and profuse of
declarations that it was too soon to think of anything. Good Cousin
Elizabeth strove to conceal her eagerness and repress the haste born of
it by similar but more clumsy speeches. I spoke openly on the subject to
Vohrenlorf.

"Ah, well, even if it should be so, you have six years," he reminded me
in good-natured consolation. "And she will grow up."

"She won't roll down hills always, of course," I answered rather
peevishly.

In truth the thing would not assume an appearance of reality for me; it
was too utterly opposed to the current of my thoughts and dreams. A boy
of my age will readily contemplate marriage with a woman ten years his
senior; in regard to a child six years younger than himself the idea
seems absurd. Yet I did not put it from me; I had been well tutored in
the strength of family arrangements, and the force of destiny had been
brought home to me on several occasions. I had no doubt at all that my
visit to Bartenstein was part of a deliberate plan. The person who
contrived my meeting with Elsa had a shrewd knowledge of my character;
he knew that ideas long present in my mind became as it were domiciled
there, and were hard to expel. I discovered afterward without surprise
that the stay with my relatives was added to my tour at Prince von
Hammerfeldt's suggestion.

Many men, or youths bordering on manhood, have seen their future brides
in short frocks and unmitigated childhood, but they have not been aware
of what was before them. I was at once amused and distressed; my humour
was touched, but life's avenue seemed shortened. Even if it were not
Elsa it would be some other little girl, now playing with her toys and
rolling down banks. Imagination was not elastic enough to leap over the
years and behold the child transformed. I stuck in the present, and was
whimsically apprehensive of a child seen through a magnifying glass,
larger, but unchanged in form, air, and raiment. Was this my fate? And
for it I must wait till the perfected beauties who had smiled on me
passed on to other men, and with them grew old--aye, as it seemed, quite
old. I felt myself ludicrously reduced to Elsa's status; a long boy, who
had outgrown his clothes, and yet was no nearer to a man.

My trouble was, perhaps unreasonably, aggravated by the fact that Elsa
did not take to me. I did my best to be pleasant; I made her several
gifts. She accepted my offerings, but was not bought by them; myself she
considered dull. I had not the flow of animal spirits that appeals so
strongly to children. I played with her, but her young keenness detected
the cloven hoof of duty. She told me I need not play unless I liked.
Cousin Elizabeth apologized for me; Elsa was gentle, but did not change
her opinion. The passage of years, I reflected, would increase in me all
that the child found least to her taste. I was, as I have said, unable
to picture her with tastes changed. But a failure of imagination may
occasionally issue in paradoxical rightness, for the imagination relies
on the common run of events which the peculiar case may chance to
contradict. As a fact, I do not think that Elsa ever did change greatly.
I began to be sorry for her as well as for myself. Considered as an
outlook in life, as the governing factor in a human being's existence, I
did not seem to myself brilliant or even satisfactory. I had at this
time remarkable forecasts of feelings that were in later years to be my
almost daily companions.

"And what shall your husband be like, Elsa?" asked the Duke, as his
little daughter sat on his knee and he played with her ringlets.

I was sitting by, and the Duke's eyes twinkled discreetly. The child
looked across to me and studied my appearance for some few moments. Then
she gave us a simple but completely lucid description of a gentleman
differing from myself in all outward characteristics, and in all such
inward traits as Elsa's experience and vocabulary enabled her to touch
upon. I learned later that she took hints from a tall grenadier who
sometimes stood sentry at the castle. At the moment it seemed as though
her ideal were well enough delineated by the picture of my opposite. The
Duke laughed, and I laughed also; Elsa was very grave and business-like
in defining her requirements. Her inclinations have never been obscure
to her. Even then she knew perfectly well what she wanted, and I was not
that.

By the indiscretion of somebody (the Duke said his wife, his wife said
the governess, the governess said the nurse) on the day before I went,
Elsa got a hint of her suggested future. Indeed it was more than a hint;
it was enough to entangle her in excitement, interest, and, I must add,
dismay. Children play with the words "wife" and "husband" in a happy
ignorance; their fairy tales give and restrict their knowledge. Cousin
Elizabeth came to me in something of a stir; she was afraid that I
should be annoyed, should suspect, perhaps, a forcing of my hand, or
some such manoeuvre. But I was not annoyed; I was interested to learn
what effect the prospect had upon my little cousin. I was so different
from the Grenadier, so irreconcilable with Elsa's fancy portrait.

"I'm very terribly vexed!" cried Cousin Elizabeth. "When it's all
so--all no more than an idea!"

"She's so young she'll forget all about it," said I soothingly.

"You're not angry?"

"Oh, no. I was only afflicted with a sense of absurdity."

Chance threw me in Elsa's way that afternoon. She was with her nurse in
the gardens. She ran up to me at once, but stopped about a yard from the
seat on which I was sitting. I became the victim of a grave, searching,
and long inspection. There was a roundness of surprise in her baby blue
eyes. Embarrassed and amused (I am inclined sometimes to think that more
than half my life has been a mixture of these not implacable enemies), I
took the bull by the horns.

"I'm thin, and sallow, and hook-nosed, and I can't sing, and I don't
laugh in a jolly way, and I can't fly kites," said I, having the
description of her ideal in my mind. "You wouldn't like me to be your
husband, would you?"

Elsa, unlike myself, was neither embarrassed nor amused. The mild and
interested gravity of her face persisted unchanged.

"I don't know," she said meditatively.

With most of the faults that can beset one of my station, I do not plead
guilty to any excessive degree of vainglory. I was flattered that the
child hesitated.

"Then you like me rather?" I asked.

"Yes--rather." She paused, and then added: "If I married you I should be
queen, shouldn't I, Cousin Augustin?"

"Yes," I assured her.

"I should think that's rather nice, isn't it?"

"It isn't any particular fun being king," said I in a burst of
confidence.

"Isn't it?" she asked, her eyes growing rounder. "Still, I think I
should like it." Her tone was quite confident; even at that age, as I
have observed, she knew very well what she liked. For my part I
remembered so vividly my own early dreams and later awakenings that I
would not cut short her guileless visions; moreover, to generalize from
one's self is the most fatal foolishness, even while it is the most
inevitable.

During the remaining hours of my visit Elsa treated me, I must not say
with more affection, but certainly with more attention. She was
interested in me; I had become to her a source of possibilities, dim to
vision but gorgeous to imagination. I knew so well the images that
floated before a childish mind, able to gape at them, only half able to
grasp them. I had been through this stage. It is odd to reflect that I
was in an unlike but almost equally great delusion myself. I had ceased
to expect immoderate enjoyment from my position, but I had conceived an
exaggerated idea of its power and influence on the world and mankind. Of
this mistake I was then unconscious; I smiled to think that Elsa could
play at being a queen, the doll, the bolster, the dog, or whatever else
might chance to come handy acting the regal _rôle_ in my place. I do not
now altogether quarrel with my substitutes.

The hour of departure came. I have a vivid recollection of Cousin
Elizabeth's overwhelming tact; she was so anxious that I should not
exaggerate the meaning or importance of the suggestion which had been
made, that she succeeded in filling my mind with it, to the exclusion of
everything else. The Duke, having tried in vain to stop her, fell into
silence, cigarettes, and drolly resigned glances. But he caught me alone
for a few moments, and gave me his word of advice.

"Think no more about this nonsense for six years," said he. "The women
will match-make, you know."

I promised, with a laugh, not to anticipate troubles. He smiled at my
phrase, but did not dispute its justice. I think he shared the sort of
regret which I felt, that such things should be so much as talked about
in connection with Elsa. A man keeps that feeling about his daughter
long after her mother has marked a husband and chosen a priest.

My visit to my cousins was the last stage of my journey. From their
house Vohrenlorf and I travelled through to Forstadt. I was received at
the railway station by a large and distinguished company. My mother was
at Artenberg, where I was to join her that evening, but Hammerfeldt
awaited me, and some of the gentlemen attached to the Court. I was too
much given to introspection and self-appraisement not to be aware that
my experiences had given me a lift toward manhood; my shyness was
smothered, though not killed, by a kind of mechanical ease born of
practice. After greeting Hammerfeldt I received the welcome of the
company with a composed courtesy of which the Prince's approval was very
manifest. Ceremonial occasions such as these are worthy of record and
meditation only when they surround, and, as it were, frame some incident
really material. Such an incident occurred now. My inner mind was still
full of my sojourn with the Bartensteins, of the pathetic, whimsical,
hypothetical connection between little Elsa and myself, and of the
chains that seemed to bind my life in bonds not of my making. These
reflections went on in an undercurrent while I was bowing, saluting,
grasping hands, listening and responding to appropriate observations.
Suddenly I found the Count von Sempach before me. His name brought back
my mind in an instant from its wanderings. The Countess was recalled
very vividly to my recollection; I asked after her; Sempach, much
gratified, pointed to a row of ladies who (the occasion being official)
stood somewhat in the background. There she was, now in the maturity of
her remarkable beauty, seeming to me the embodiment of perfect
accomplishment. I saluted her with marked graciousness; fifty heads
turned instantly from me toward her. She blushed very slightly and
curtseyed very low. Sempach murmured gratification; Hammerfeldt smiled.
I was vaguely conscious of a subdued sensation running all through the
company, but my mind was occupied with the contrast between this
finished woman and the little girl I had left behind. From feeling old,
too old, sad, and knowing for poor little Elsa, I was suddenly
transported into an oppressive consciousness of youth and rawness.
Involuntarily I drew myself up to my full height and assumed the best
air of dignity that was at my command. So posed, I crossed the station
to my carriage between Hammerfeldt and Vohrenlorf.

"Your time has not been wasted," old Hammerfeldt whispered to me. "You
are ready now to take up what I am more than ready to lay down."

I started slightly; I had for the moment forgotten that the Council of
Regency was now discharged of its office, and that I was to assume the
full burden of my responsibilities. I had looked forward to this time
with eagerness and ambition. But a man's emotions at a given moment are
very seldom what he has expected them to be. Some foreign thought
intrudes and predominates; something accidental supplants what has
seemed so appropriate and certain. While I travelled down to Artenberg
that evening, with Vohrenlorf opposite to me (Vohrenlorf who himself was
about to lay down his functions), the assumption of full power was not
what occupied my mind. I was engrossed with thoughts of Elsa, with
fancies about my Countess, with strange dim speculations that touched
me--the young man, not the king about whom all the coil was. Had I been
called upon to condense those vague meditations and emotions into a
sentence, I would have borrowed what Vohrenlorf had said to me when we
were with the Bartensteins. He did not often hit the nail exactly on
the head, but just now I could give no better summary of all I felt than
his soberly optimistic reminder: "Ah, well, even if it should be so, you
have six years!"

The thought that I treasured on the way to Artenberg that evening was
the thought of my six years.




CHAPTER IX.

JUST WHAT WOULD HAPPEN.


Soon after my return my mother and I went into residence at Forstadt. My
time was divided between mastering my public duties under Hammerfeldt's
tuition, and playing a prominent part in the gaieties of the capital.
Just now I was on cordial, if not exactly intimate, terms with the
Princess. She appeared to have resigned herself to Hammerfeldt's
preponderating influence in political affairs, and to accept in
compensation the office of mentor and guide in all social matters. I was
happy in the establishment of a _modus vivendi_ which left me tolerably
free from the harassing trifles of ceremonial and etiquette. To
Hammerfeldt's instructions I listened with avidity and showed a
deference which did not forbid secret criticism. He worked me hard; the
truth is (and it was not then hidden either from him or from me) that
his strength was failing; age had not bent, but it threatened to break
him; the time was short in which he could hope to be by my side, binding
his principles and rivetting his methods on me. He was too shrewd not to
detect in me a curiosity of intellect that only the strongest and
deepest prepossessions could restrain; these it was his untiring effort
to create in my mind and to buttress till they were impregnable. To some
extent he attained his object, but his success was limited; and his
teaching affected by what I can only call a modernness of temperament in
me, which no force of tradition wholly destroyed or stifled. That many
things must be treated as beyond question was the fruit of his maxims;
it is a position which I have never been able to adopt; with me the acid
of doubt bit into every axiom. I took pleasure in the society and
arguments of the liberal politicians and journalists who began to
frequent the court as soon as a rumour of my inclinations spread. I
became the centre and object of a contention between the Right and the
Left, between Conservative and Liberal forces--or, if I apply to each
party the nickname accorded to it by the enemy, between the Reaction and
the Revolution.

Doubtless all this will find an accomplished, and possibly an impartial,
historian. Its significance for these personal memoirs is due chiefly to
the accidental fact that, whereas my mother was the social centre of the
orthodox party and in that capacity gave solid aid to Hammerfeldt, the
unorthodox gathered round the Countess von Sempach. Her husband was
considered no more than a good soldier, a man of high rank, and a
devoted husband; by her own talents and charm this remarkable woman,
although a foreigner, had achieved for herself a position of great
influence. She renewed the glories of the political _salon_ in Forstadt;
but she never talked politics. Eminent men discussed deep secrets with
one another in her rooms. She was content to please their taste without
straining their intellects or seeking to rival them in argument. By the
abdication of a doubtful claim she reigned absolute in her own dominion.
It was from studying her that I first learned both how far-reaching is
the inspiration of a woman's personality, and how it gathers and
conserves strength by remaining within its own boundaries and refusing
alien conquests. The men of the Princess's party, from Hammerfeldt
downward, were sometimes impatient of her suggestions and attempted
control; the Countess's friends were never aware that they received
suggestions, and imagined themselves to exercise control. I think that
the old Prince was almost alone in penetrating the secret of the real
power his charming enemy exercised and the extent of it. They were very
cordial to one another.

"Madame," he said to her once, "you might convince me of anything if I
were not too old."

"Why, Prince," she cried, "you are not going to pretend that your mind
has grown old?"

"No, Countess, my feelings," he replied with a smile. Her answer was a
blush.

This was told to me by Wetter, a young and very brilliant journalist who
had once given me lessons in philosophy, and with whom I maintained a
friendship in spite of his ultra-radical politics. He reminded me now
and then of Geoffrey Owen, but his enthusiasm was of a dryer sort; not
humanity, but the abstract idea of progress inspired him; not the
abolition of individual suffering, but the perfecting of his logical
conceptions in the sphere of politics was his stimulating hope. And
there was in him a strong alloy of personal ambition and a stronger of
personal passion. Rather to my surprise Hammerfeldt showed no uneasiness
at my friendship with him; I joked once on the subject and he answered:

"Wetter only appeals to your intellect, sire. There I am not afraid
now."

His answer, denying one apprehension, hinted another. It will cause no
surprise that I had renewed an old acquaintance with the Countess, and
had been present at a dinner in her house. More than this, I fell into
the habit of attending her receptions on Wednesdays; on this night all
parties were welcome, and the gathering was by way of being strictly
non-political. Strictly non-political also were the calls that I made in
the dusk of the evening, when she would recall our earlier meetings, our
glances exchanged, our thoughts of one another, and lead me to talk of
my boyhood. These things did not appeal only to the intellect of a youth
of eighteen or nineteen when they proceeded from the lips of a beautiful
and brilliant woman of twenty-eight.

I approach a very common occurrence; but in my case its progress and
result were specially modified and conditioned. There was the political
aspect, looming large to the alarmed Right; there was the struggle for
more intimate influence over me, in which my mother fought with a grim
intensity; in my own mind there was always the curious dim presence of
an inexorable fate that wore the incongruous mask of Elsa's baby face.
All these were present to me in their full force during the earlier
period of my friendship with the Countess, when I was still concealing
from myself as well as from her and all the world that I could ever
desire to have more than friendship. The first stages past, there came a
time when the secret was still kept from all save myself, but when I
knew it with an exultation not to be conquered, with a dread and a shame
that tormented while they could not prevail. But I went more and more to
her house. I had no evil intent; nay, I had no intent at all in my
going; I could not keep away. She alone had come to satisfy me; with her
alone, all of me--thoughts, feelings, eyes, and ears--seemed to find
some cause for exercise and a worthy employment of their life. The other
presences in my mind grew fainter and intermittent in their visits; I
gave myself up to the stream and floated down the current. Yet I was
never altogether forgetful nor blind to what I did; I knew the
transformation that had come over my friendship; to myself now I could
not but call it love; I knew that others in the palace, in the
chancellery, in drawing-rooms, in newspaper offices, ay, perhaps even in
the very street, called it now, not the king's friendship nor the king's
love, but the king's infatuation. Not even then could I lose altogether
the external view of myself.

We were sitting by the fire one evening in the twilight; she was playing
with a hand-screen, but suffering the flames to paint her face and throw
into relief the sensitive merry lips and the eyes so full of varied
meanings. She had told me to go, and I had not gone; she leaned back
and, after one glance of reproof, fixed her regard on the polished tip
of her shoe that rested on the fender. She meant that she would talk no
more to me; that in her estimation, since I had no business to stay, I
was already gone. An impulse seized me. I do not know what I hoped nor
why that moment broke the silence which I had imposed on myself. But I
told her about the little, fair, chubby child at the Castle of
Bartenstein. I watched her closely, but her eyes never strayed from her
shoe-tip. Well, she had never said a word that showed any concern in
such a matter; even I had done little more than look and hint and come.

[Illustration: The firelight played on the hand that held the screen.]

"It's as if they meant me to marry Toté," I ended. Toté was the pet name
by which we called her own eight-year-old daughter.

The Countess broke her wilful silence, but did not change the direction
of her eyes.

"If Toté were of the proper station," she said ironically, "she'd be
just right for you by the time you're both grown up."

"And you'd be mother-in-law?"

"I should be too old to plague you. I should just sit in my corner in
the sun."

"The sun is always in your corner."

"Don't be so complimentary," she said with a sudden twitching of her
lips. "I shall have to stand up and curtsey, and I don't want to.
Besides, you oughtn't to know how to say things like that, ought you,
Cæsar?"

Cæsar was my--shall I say pet-name?--used when we were alone or with
Count Max, only in a playful satire.

A silence followed for some time. At last she glanced toward me.

"Not gone yet?" said she, raising her brows. "What will the Princess
say?"

"I go when I please," said I, resenting the question as I was meant to
resent it.

"Yes. Certainly not when I please."

Our eyes met now; suddenly she blushed, and then interposed the screen
between herself and me. A glorious thrill of youthful triumph ran
through me; she had paid her first tribute to my manhood in that blush;
the offering was small, but, for its significance, frankincense and
myrrh to me.

"I thought you came to talk about Wetter's Bill," she suggested
presently in a voice lower than her usual tones.

"The deuce take Wetter's Bill," said I.

"I am very interested in it."

"Just now?"

"Even just now, Cæsar." I heard a little laugh behind the screen.

"Hammerfeldt hates it," said I.

"Oh, then that settles it. You'll be against us, of course!"

"Why of course?"

"You always do as the Prince tells you, don't you?"

"Unless somebody more powerful forbids me."

"Who is more powerful--except Cæsar himself?"

I made no answer, but I rose and, crossing the rug, stood by her. I
remember the look and the feel of the room very well; she lay back in a
low chair upholstered in blue; the firelight, forbidden her face, played
on the hand that held the screen, flushing its white to red. I could see
her hair gleaming in the fantastically varying light that the flames
gave as they left and fell. I was in a tumult of excitement and
timidity.

"More powerful than Cæsar?" I asked, and my voice shook.

"Don't call yourself Cæsar."

"Why not?"

There was a momentary hesitation before the answer came low:

"Because you mustn't laugh at yourself. I may laugh at you, but you
mustn't yourself."

I wondered at the words, the tone, the strange diffidence that infected
even a speech so full of her gay bravery. A moment later she added a
reason for her command.

"You're so absurd that you mustn't laugh at yourself. And, Cæsar, if
you stay any longer, or--come again soon--other people will laugh at
you."

To this day I do not know whether she meant to give a genuine warning,
or to strike a chord that should sound back defiance.

"If ten thousand of them laugh, what is it to me? They dare laugh only
behind my back," I said.

She laughed before my face; the screen fell, and she laughed, saying
softly, "Cæsar, Cæsar!"

I was wonderfully happy in my perturbation. The great charm she had for
me was to-day alloyed less than ever before by the sense of rawness
which she, above all others, could compel me to feel. To-day she herself
was not wholly calm, not mistress of herself without a struggle, without
her moments of faintness. Yet now she appeared composed again, and there
was nothing but merriment in her eyes. She seemed to have forgotten that
I was supposed to be gone. I daresay that not to her, any more than to
myself, could I seem quite like an ordinary boy; perhaps the more I
forgot what was peculiar about me the more she remembered it, my
oblivion serving to point her triumph.

"And the Princess?" she asked, laughing still, but now again a little
nervously.

My exultation, finding vent in mischief and impelled by curiosity, drove
me to a venture.

"I shall tell the Princess that I kissed you," said I.

The Countess suddenly sat upright.

"And that you kissed me--several times," I continued.

"How dare you?" she cried in a whisper; and her cheeks flamed in
blushes and in firelight. My little device was a triumph. I began to
laugh.

"Oh, of course, if she asks me when," I added, "I shall confess that it
was ten years ago."

Many emotions mingled in my companion's glance as she sank back in her
chair; she was indignant at the trap, amused at having been caught in
it, not fully relieved from embarrassment, not wholly convinced that the
explanation of my daring speech covered all the intent with which it had
been uttered, perhaps not desirous of being convinced too thoroughly. A
long pause followed. Timidity held me back from further advance. For
that evening enough seemed to have passed; I had made a start--to go
further might be to risk all. I was about to take my leave when she
looked up again, saying:

"And about Wetter's Bill, Cæsar?"

"You know I can do nothing."

"Can Cæsar do nothing? If you were known to favour it fifty votes would
be changed." Her face was eager and animated. I looked down at her and
smiled. She flushed again, and cried hastily:

"No, no, never mind; at least, not to-night."

I suppose that my smile persisted, and was not a mirthful one. It
stirred anger and resentment in her.

"I know why you're smiling," she exclaimed. "I suppose that when I was
kind to you as a baby, I wanted something from you too, did I?"

She had detected the thought that had come so inevitably into my mind,
that she should resent it so passionately almost persuaded me of its
injustice. I turned from it to the pleasant memory of her earlier
impulsive kindness. I put out my hands and grasped hers. She let me hold
them for an instant and then drew them away. She gave rather a forced
laugh.

"You're too young to be bothered about Bills," she said, "and too young
for--for all sorts of other things, too. Run away; never mind me with my
Bills and my wrinkles."

"Your wrinkles!"

"Oh, if not now, in a year or two; by the time you're ready to marry
Elsa."

As she spoke she rose and stood facing me. A new sense of her beauty
came over me; her beauty's tragedy, already before her eyes, was to me
remote and impossible. Because it was not yet very near she exaggerated
its nearness; because it was inevitable I turned away from it. Indeed,
who could remember, seeing her then? Who save herself, as she looked on
my youth?

"You'll soon be old and ugly?" I asked, laughing.

"Yes, soon; it will seem very soon to you."

"What's the moral?" said I.

She laughed uneasily, twisting the screen in her hands. For an instant
she raised her eyes to mine, and as they dropped again she whispered:

"A short life and a merry one?"

My hand flew out to her again; she took it, and, after a laughing
glance, curtseyed low over it, as though in formal farewell. I had not
meant that, and laughed in my turn.

"I shan't be old--well, by to-morrow," she murmured, and glanced
ostentatiously at the clock.

"May I come to-morrow?"

"I never invite you."

"Shall you be here?"

"It's not one of my receiving days."

"I like a good chance better than a poor certainty. At least there will
be nobody else here."

"Max, perhaps."

"I don't think so."

"You don't think so? What do you mean by that, Cæsar? No, I don't want
to know. I believe it was impertinent. Are you going?"

"Yes," said I, "when I have kissed your hand."

She said nothing, but held it out to me. She smiled, but there seemed to
me to be pain in her eyes. I pressed her hand to my lips and went out
without speaking again. As I closed the door I heard her fling herself
back into her chair with a curious little sound, half-cry, half-sigh.

I left the house quickly and silently; no servant was summoned to escort
me. I walked a few yards along the street to where Wetter lived. My
carriage was ordered to come for me at Wetter's; it had not yet arrived.
To be known to visit Wetter was to accept the blame of a smaller
indiscretion as the price of hiding a greater. The deputy was at home,
writing in his study; he received me with an admirable unconsciousness
of where I had come from. I was still in a state of excitement, and was
glad to sit smoking quietly while his animated, fluent talk ran on. He
was full of this Bill of his, and explained its provisions to me with
the air of desiring that I should understand its spirit and aim, and of
being willing then to leave it to my candid consideration. He did not
attempt to blink the difficulties.

"Of course we have the Prince and all the party of Reaction against us,"
he said. "But your Majesty is not a member of any party."

"Not even of yours yet," said I with a laugh.

He laughed in his turn, openly and merrily.

"I'm a poor schemer," he said. "But I don't know why it should be wrong
for you to hear my views any more than Hammerfeldt's."

The servant entered and announced the arrival of my carriage. Wetter
escorted me to it.

"I'll promise not to mention the Bill, if you'll honour me by coming
again, sire," he said as he held the brougham door.

"I shall be delighted to come again; I like to hear about it," I
answered. His bow and smile conveyed absolutely nothing but a respectful
gratification and a friendly pleasure. Yet he knew that the situation of
his house was more responsible for my visit than the interest of his
projects.

In part I saw clear enough even at this time. It was the design and hope
of Wetter and his friends to break down Hammerfeldt's power and obtain a
political influence over me. Hammerfeldt's political dominance seemed to
them to be based on a personal ascendency; this they must contrive to
match. Their instrument was not far to seek. The Countess was ready to
their hand, a beautiful woman, sharpest weapon of all in such a strife.
They put her forward against the Prince in the fight whereof I was the
prize. All this I saw, against it all I was forewarned, and forearmed.
Knowledge gave security. But there was more, and here with the failure
of insight safety was compromised. What was her mind? What was her part,
not as it seemed to these busy politicians, but as her own heart taught
it her? Here came to me the excitement of uncertainty, the impulse of
youth, the prick of vanity, the longing for that intimate love of which
my life had given me so little. Was I to her also only something to be
used in the game of politics, a tool that she, a defter tool, must
shape and point before it could be of use? I tried to say this to
myself and to make a barrier of the knowledge. But was it all the truth?
Remembering her eyes and tones, her words and hesitations, I could not
accept it for the whole truth. There was more, what more I knew not.
Even if there had been no more I was falling so deep into the gulf of
passion that it crossed my mind to take while I gave; and, if I were to
be used, to exact my hire. In a tumult of these thoughts, embracing now
what in the next moment I rejected, revolting in a sudden fear from the
plan which just before seemed so attractive, I passed the evening and
the night. For I had taken up that mixed heritage of good and evil, of
pain and power, that goes by the name of manhood; and when a new heir
enters on his inheritance there is a time before he can order it.




CHAPTER X.

OF A POLITICAL APPOINTMENT.


A few days later my mother informed me that Victoria and her husband had
proposed to pay us a long visit. I could make no objection. Princess
Heinrich observed that I should be glad to see Victoria again, and
should enjoy the companionship of William Adolphus. In my mind I
translated her speech into a declaration that Victoria might have some
influence over me although my mother had none, and that William Adolphus
would be more wholesome company than my countesses and Wetters and such
riff-raff. I was unable to regard William Adolphus as an intellectual
resource, and did not associate Victoria with the exercise of influence.
The weakness of the Princess's new move revealed the straits to which
she felt herself reduced. The result of the position which I have
described was almost open strife between her and me; Hammerfeldt's
powerful bridle alone held her back from declared rupture. His method of
facing the danger was very different. He sought to exercise no veto, but
he kept watch; he knew where I went, but made no objection to my going;
any liberal notions which I betrayed in conversation with him he
received with courteous attention, and affected to consider the result
of my own meditations. Had my feelings been less deeply involved I
think his method would have succeeded; even as it was he checked and
retarded what he could not stop. The cordiality of our personal
relations remained unbroken and so warm that he felt himself able to
speak to me in a half-serious, half-jesting way about the Countess von
Sempach.

"A most charming woman indeed," said he. "In fact, too charming a
woman."

I understood him, and began to defend myself.

"I'm not in love with the Countess," I said; "but I give her my
confidence, Prince."

He shook his head, smiled, and took a pinch of snuff, glancing at me
humorously.

"Reverse it," he suggested. "Be in love with her, but don't give her
your confidence. You'll find it safer and also more pleasant that way."

My confidence might affect high matters, my love he regarded as a
passing fever. He did not belong to an age of strict morality in private
life, and his bent of mind was utterly opposed to considering an
intrigue with a woman of the Countess's attractions as a serious crime
in a young man of my position. "Hate her," was my mother's impossible
exhortation. "Love her, but don't trust her," was the Prince's subtle
counsel. He passed at once from the subject, content with the seed that
he had sown. There was much in him and in his teaching which one would
defend to-day at some cost of reputation; but I never left him without a
heightened and enhanced sense of my position and my obligations. If you
will, he lowered the man to exalt the king; this was of a piece with all
his wily compromises.

Victoria arrived, and her husband. William Adolphus's attitude was less
apologetic than it had been before marriage; he had made Victoria
mother to a fine baby, and claimed the just credit. He was jovial,
familiar, and, if I may so express myself, brotherly to the last degree.
Happily, however, he interpreted his more assured position as enabling
him to choose his own friends and his own pursuits; these were not mine,
and in consequence I was little troubled with his company. As an ally to
my mother he was a passive failure; his wife was worse than inactive.
Victoria's conduct displayed the height of unwisdom. She denounced the
Countess to my face, and besought my mother to omit the Sempachs from
her list of acquaintances. Fortunately the Princess had been dissuaded
from forcing on an open scandal; my sister had to be content with
matching her mother's coldness by her rudeness when the Countess came to
Court. Need I say that my attentions grew the more marked, and gossip
even more rife?

Wetter's Bill came up for discussion, and was hurled in vain against
Hammerfeldt's solid phalanx of country gentlemen and wealthy
_bourgeoisie_. I had kept a seal on my lips, and in common opinion was
still the Prince's docile disciple. Wetter accepted my attitude with
easy friendliness, but he ventured to observe that if any case arose
which enabled me to show that my hostility to his party was not
inveterate, the proof would be a pleasure to him and his friends, and
possibly of no disadvantage to me. Not the barest reference to the
Countess pointed his remark. I had not seen her or heard from her for
nearly a week; on the afternoon of the day after the Bill was thrown out
I decided to pay her a visit. Wetter was to take luncheon at her house,
and I allowed him to drop a hint of my coming. I felt that I had done my
duty as regards the Bill; I was very apprehensive of my reception by the
Countess. The opposition that encircled me inflamed my passion for her;
the few days' separation had served to convince me that I could not live
without her.

I found her alone; her face was a little flushed and her eyes bright.
The moment the door was shut she turned on me almost fiercely.

"Why did you send to say you were coming?"

"I didn't send; I told Wetter. Besides, I always send before I go
anywhere."

"Not always before you come to me," she retorted. "You're not to hide
behind your throne, Cæsar. I was going out if you hadn't prevented me."

"The hindrance need not last a moment," said I, bowing.

She looked at me for an instant, then broke into a reluctant smile.

"You haven't sent to say you were coming for a week," she said.

"No; nor come either."

"Yes, of course, that's it. Sit down; so will I. No, in your old place,
over there. Max has been giving me a beautiful bracelet."

"That's very kind of Max."

She glanced at me with challenging witchery.

"And I've promised to wear it every day--never to be without it. Doesn't
it look well?" She held up her arm where the gold and jewels sparkled on
the white skin as the sleeve of her gown fell back.

I paid to Max's bracelet and the arm which wore it the meed of looks,
not of words.

"I've been afraid to come," I said.

"Is there anything to be afraid of here?" she asked with a smile and a
wave of her hands.

"Because of Wetter's Bill."

"Oh, the Bill! You were very cowardly, Cæsar."

"I could do nothing."

"You never can, it seems to me." She fixed on me eyes that she had made
quite grave and invested with a critically discriminating regard. "But
I'm very pleased to see you. Oh, and I forgot--of course I'm very much
honoured too. I'm always forgetting what you are."

On an impulse of chagrin at the style of her reception, or of curiosity,
or of bitterness, I spoke the thought of my mind.

"You never forget it for a moment," I said. "I forget it, not you."

She covered a start of surprise by a hasty and pretty little yawn, but
her eyes were inquisitive, almost apprehensive. After a moment she
picked up her old weapon, the firescreen, and hid her face from the eyes
downward. But the eyes were set on me, and now, it seemed, in reproach.

"If you think that, I wonder you come at all," she murmured.

"I don't want you to forget it. But I'm something besides."

"Yes, a poor boy with a cruel mother--and a rude sister--and----" She
sprang suddenly to her feet. "And," she went on, "a charming old
adviser. Cæsar, I met Prince von Hammerfeldt. Shall I tell you what he
said to me?"

"Yes."

"He bowed over my hand and kissed it and smiled, and twinkled with his
old eyes, and then he said, 'Madame, I am growing vain of my influence
over his Majesty.'"

"The Prince was complimenting you," I remarked, although I was not so
dull as to miss either Hammerfeldt's mockery or her understanding of
it.

"Complimenting me? Yes, I suppose he was--on not having done you any
harm. Why? Because I couldn't!"

"You wouldn't wish to, Countess?"

"No; but I might wish to be able to, Cæsar."

She stood there the embodiment of a power the greater because it feigned
distrust of its own might.

"No, I don't mean that," she continued a moment later. "But I
should----" She drew near to me and, catching up a little chair, sat
down on it, close to my elbow. "Ah, how I should like the Prince to
think I had a little power!" Then in a low coaxing whisper she added,
"You need only to pretend--pretend a little just to please me, Cæsar."

"And what will you do just to please me, Countess?" My whisper was low
also, but full where hers had been delicate; rough, not gentle, urging
rather than imploring. I was no match for her in the science of which
she was mistress, but I did not despair. She seemed nervous, as though
she distrusted even her keen thrusts and ready parries. I was but a boy
still, but sometimes nature betrays the secrets of experience. Suddenly
she broke out in a new attack, or a new line of the general attack.

"Wouldn't you like to show a little independence?" she asked. "The
Prince would like you all the better for it." She looked in my face.
"And people would think more of you. They say that Hammerfeldt is the
real king now--or he and Princess Heinrich between them."

"I thought they said that you----"

"I! Do they? Perhaps! They know so little. If they knew anything they
couldn't say that."

To be told they gossiped of her influence seemed to have no terror for
her; her regret was that the talk should be all untrue and she in fact
impotent. She stirred me to declare that power was hers and I her
servant. It seemed to me that to accept her leading was to secure
perennial inspiration and a boundless reward. Was Hammerfeldt my
schoolmaster? I was not blind to the share that vanity had in her mood
nor to ambition's part in it, but I saw also and exulted in her
tenderness. All these impulses in her I was now ready to use, for I also
had my vanity--a boy's vanity in a tribute wrung from a woman. And,
beyond this, passion was strong in me.

She went on in real or affected petulance:

"Can they point to anything I have done? Are any appointments made to
please me? Are my friends ever favoured? They are all out in the cold,
and likely to stay there, aren't they, Cæsar? Oh, you're very wise. You
take what I give you; nobody need know of that. But you give nothing,
because that would make talk and gossip. The Prince has taught you well.
Yes, you're very prudent." She paused, and stood looking at me with a
contemptuous smile on her lips; then she broke into a pitying little
laugh. "Poor boy!" said she. "It's a shame to scold you. You can't help
it."

It is easy enough now to say that all this was cunningly thought of and
cunningly phrased. Yet it was not all cunning; or rather it was the
primitive, unmeditated cunning that nature gives to us, the instinctive
weapon to which the woman flew in her need, a cunning of heart, not of
brain. However inspired, however shaped, it did its work.

"What do you ask?" said I. In my agitation I was brief and blunt.

"Ask? Must I ask? Well, I ask that you should show somehow, how you
will, that you trust us, that we are not outcasts, riff-raff, as
Princess Heinrich calls us, lepers. Do it how you like, choose anybody
you like from among us--I don't ask for any special person. Show that
some one of us has your confidence. Why shouldn't you? The King should
be above prejudice, and we're honest, some of us."

I tried to speak lightly, and smiled at her.

"You are all I love in the world, some of you," I said.

She sat down again in the little chair, and turned her face upward
toward me.

"Then do it, Cæsar," she said very softly.

It had been announced a few days before that our ambassador at Paris had
asked to be relieved of his post; there was already talk about his
successor. Remembering this, I said, more in jest than seriousness:

"The Paris Embassy? Would that satisfy you?"

Her face became suddenly radiant, merry, and triumphant; she clapped her
hands, and then held them clasped toward me.

"You suggested it yourself!" she cried.

"In joke!"

"Joke? I won't be joked with. I choose that you should be serious. You
said the Paris Embassy! Are you afraid it'll make Hammerfeldt too angry?
Fancy the Princess and your sister! How I shall love to see them!" She
dropped her voice as she added, "Do it for me, Cæsar."

"Who should have it?"

"I don't care. Anybody, so long as he's one of us. Choose somebody
good, and then you can defy them all."

She saw the seriousness that had now fallen on me; what I had idly
suggested, and she caught up with so fervent a welcome, was no small
thing. If I did it, it would be at the cost of Hammerfeldt's confidence,
perhaps of his services; he might refuse to endure such an open rebuff.
And I knew in my heart that the specious justifications were unsound; I
should not act because of them, they were the merest pretext. I should
give what she asked to her. Should I not be giving her my honour also,
that public honour which I had learned to hold so high?

"I can't promise to-day; you must let me think," I pleaded.

I was prepared for another outburst of petulance, for accusations of
timidity, of indifference, again of willingness to take and
unwillingness to give. But she sat still, looking at me intently, and
presently laid her hand in mine.

"Yes, think," she said with a sigh.

I bent down and kissed the hand that lay in mine. Then she raised it,
and held her arm up before him.

"Max's bracelet!" she said, sighing again and smiling. Then she rose to
her feet, and walking to the hearth, stood looking down into the fire. I
did not join her, but sat in my chair. For a long while neither of us
spoke. At last I rose slowly. She heard the movement and turned her
head.

"I will come again to-morrow," I said.

She stood still for a moment, regarding me intently. Then she walked
quickly across to me, holding out her hands. As I took them she laughed
nervously. I did not speak, but I looked into her eyes, and then, as I
pressed her hands, I kissed her cheek. The nervous laugh came again, but
she said nothing. I left her standing there and went out.

I walked home alone through the lighted streets. It has always been, and
is still, my custom to walk about freely and unattended. This evening
the friendly greetings of those who chanced to recognise me in the glare
of the lamps were pleasant to me. I remember thinking that all these
good folk would be grieved if they knew what was going on in the young
King's mind, how he was torn hither and thither, his only joy a crime,
and the guarding of his honour become a sacrifice that seemed too great
for his strength. There was one kind-faced fellow in particular, whom I
noticed drinking a glass at a _café_. He took off his hat to me with a
cheery "God bless your Majesty!" I should have liked to sit down by him
and tell him all about it. He had been young, and he looked shrewd and
friendly. I had nobody whom I could tell about it. I don't remember ever
seeing this man again, but I think of him still as one who might have
been a friend. By his dress he appeared to be a clerk or shopkeeper.

I had an appointment for that evening with Hammerfeldt, but found a note
in which he excused himself from coming. He had taken a chill, and was
confined to his bed. The business could wait, he said, but went on to
remark that no time should be lost in considering the question of the
Paris Embassy. He added three or four names as possible selections; all
those mentioned were well-known and decided adherents of his own. I was
reading his letter when my mother and Victoria came in. They had heard
of the Prince's indisposition, but on making inquiries were informed
that it was not serious. I sent at once to inquire after him, and handed
his note to the Princess.

"Any of those would do very well," she said when she finished it. "They
have all been trained under the Prince and are thoroughly acquainted
with his views."

"And with mine?" I asked, smiling.

A look of surprise appeared on my mother's face; she looked at me
doubtfully.

"The Prince's views are yours, I suppose?" she said.

"I'm not sure I like any of his selections," I observed.

I do not think that my mother would have said anything more at the time;
her judgment having been convinced, she would not allow temper to lead
her into hostilities. Here, as so often, the unwise course was left to
my dear Victoria, who embraced it with her usual readiness.

"Doesn't Wetter like any of them?" she asked ironically.

I remained silent. She came nearer and looked into my face, laughing
maliciously.

"Or is it the Countess? Haven't they made enough love to the Countess,
or too much, or what?"

"My dear Victoria," I said, "you must make allowances. The Countess is
the prettiest woman in Forstadt."

My sister curtseyed with an ironical smile.

"I mean, of course," I added, "since William Adolphus carried you off to
Gronenstahl."

My mother interrupted this little quarrel.

"I'm sure you'll be guided by the Prince's judgment," she observed.

Victoria was not to be quenched.

"And not by the beauty of the prettiest woman in Forstadt." And she
added, "The creature's as plebeian as she can be."

As a rule I was ready enough to spar with my sister; to-night I had not
the spirit. To-night, moreover, she, whom as a rule I could treat with
good-humoured indifference, had power to wound. The least weighty of
people speaking the truth can not be wholly disregarded. I prepared to
go to my room, remarking:

"Of course, I shall discuss the matter with the Prince."

Again Victoria rushed to the fray.

"You mean that it's not our business?" she asked with a toss of her
head.

I was goaded beyond endurance, and it was not their business. Princess
Heinrich might find some excuse in her familiarity with public affairs,
Victoria at least could urge no such plea.

"I am always glad of my mother's advice, Victoria," said I, and with a
bow I left them. As I went out I heard Victoria cry, "It's all that
hateful woman!"

Naturally the thing appeared to me then in a different light from that
in which I can see it now. I can not now think that my mother and sister
were wrong to be anxious, disturbed, alarmed, even angry with the lady
who occasioned them such discomfort. A young man under the influence of
an older woman is no doubt a legitimate occasion for the fears and
efforts of his female relatives. I have recorded what they said not in
protest against their feelings, but to show the singularly unfortunate
manner in which they made what they felt manifest; my object is not to
blame what was probably inevitable in them, but to show how they
overreached themselves and became not a drag on my infatuation, as they
hoped, but rather a spur that incited my passion to a quicker course.

That spur I did not need. She seemed to stand before me still as I had
left her, with my kiss fresh on her cheeks, and on her lips that
strange, nervous, helpless laugh, the laugh that admitted a folly she
could not conquer, expressed a shame that burned her even while she
braved it, and owned a love so compact of this folly and this shame that
its joy seemed all one with their bitterness. But to my younger heart
and hotter man's blood the folly and shame were now beaten down by the
joy; it freed itself from them and soared up into my heart on a
liberated and triumphant wing. I had achieved this thing--I, the boy
they laughed at and tried to rule. She herself had laughed at me. She
laughed thus no more. When I kissed her she had not called me Cæsar; she
had found no utterance save in that laugh, and the message of that laugh
was surrender.




CHAPTER XI.

AN ACT OF ABDICATION.


The night brought me little rest and no wisdom. As though its own
strength were not enough, my passion sought and found an ally in a
defiant obstinacy, which now made me desirous of doing what the Countess
asked for its own sake as well as for hers. Being diffident, I sought a
mask in violence. I wanted to assert myself, to show the women that I
was not to be driven, and Hammerfeldt that I was not to be led. Neither
their brusque insistence nor his suave and dexterous suggestions should
control me or prevent me from exercising my own will. A distorted view
of my position caused me to find its essence in the power of doing as I
liked, and its dignity in disregarding wholesome advice because I
objected to the manner in which it was tendered. This mood, ready and
natural enough in youth, was an instrument of which my passion made
effective use; I pictured the consternation of my advisers with hardly
less pleasure than the delight of her whom I sought to serve. My sense
of responsibility was dulled and deadened; I had rather do wrong than do
nothing, cause harm than be the cause of nothing, that men should blame
me rather than not canvass my actions or fail to attribute to me any
initiative. I felt somehow that the blame would lie with my
counsellors; they had undertaken to guide and control me. If they failed
they, more than I, must answer for the failure. Sophistry of this kind
passes well enough with one who wants excuses, and may even array itself
in a cloak of plausibility; it was strong in my mind by virtue of the
strong resentment from which it sprang, and the strong ally to which its
forces were joined. Passion and self-assertion were at one; my conquest
would be two-fold. While the Countess was brought to acknowledge my
sway, those who had hitherto ruled my life would be reduced to a
renunciation of their authority. The day seemed to me to promise at once
emancipation and conquest; to mark the point at which I was to gain both
liberty and empire, when I should become indeed a king, both in my own
palace and in her heart a king.

In the morning I was occupied in routine business with one of the
Ministers. This gentleman gave me a tolerably good account of
Hammerfeldt, although it appeared that the Prince was suffering from a
difficulty in breathing. There seemed, however, no cause for alarm, and
when I had sent to make inquiries I did not deem it necessary to remain
at home and await the return of my messenger. I paid my usual formal
visit to my mother's apartments. The Princess did not refer to our
previous conversation, but her manner toward me was even unusually stiff
and distant. I think that she had expected repentance. When I in my turn
ignored the matter she became curt and disagreeable. I left her, more
than ever determined on my course. I was glad to escape an interview
with Victoria, and was now free to keep my appointment with Wetter. I
had proposed to lunch with him, saying that I had one or two matters to
discuss. Even in my obstinacy and excitement I remained shrewd enough to
see the advantage of being furnished with well-sounding reasons for the
step that I was about to take. Wetter's forensic sharpness, ready wit,
and persuasive eloquence would dress my case in better colours than I
could contrive for myself. It mattered little to me how well he knew
that arguments were needed, not to convince myself, but to flourish in
the faces of those who opposed and criticised me. It was also my
intention to obtain from him the name of two or three of his friends
who, apart from their views, were decently qualified to fulfil the
duties of the post in the event of their nomination.

It was no shock, but rather a piquant titillation of my bitter humour,
when I disentangled from Wetter's confident and eloquent description of
the Ideal Ambassador a tolerably accurate, if somewhat partial, portrait
of himself. I was rather surprised at his desire for the position.
Subsequently I learned that pecuniary embarrassments made him willing to
abandon, for a time at least, the greater but more uncertain chances of
active political warfare. However, given that he desired the Embassy, it
caused me no surprise that he should ask for it. To appoint him would be
open war indeed; he was the Prince's _bête noire_, my mother's pet
aversion; that he was totally untrained in diplomacy was a minor, but
possibly serious, objection; that he was extreme in his views seemed to
me then no disqualification. I allowed him to perceive that I read his
parable, but, remembering the case of the Greek generals and
Themistocles, ventured to ask him to give me another name.

"The only name that I could give your Majesty with perfect confidence
would be that of my good friend Max von Sempach," said he, with an
admirable air of honesty, but, as I thought, a covert gleam of amusement
in his deep-set eyes. I very nearly laughed. The only man fit for the
Embassy, except himself, was Count Max! And if Count Max went, of course
the Countess would go with him; equally of course the King must stay in
Forstadt. I saw Wetter looking at me keenly out of the corner of his
eye; it did not suit me that he should read my thoughts this time. I
appeared to have no suspicion of the good faith of his suggestion, and
said, with an air of surprise:

"Max von Sempach! Why, how is he suitable?"

With great gravity he gave me many reasons, proving not that Max was
very suitable, but that everybody else was profoundly unsuitable, except
the unmentioned candidate whose name was so well understood between us.

"These," I observed, "would seem to be reasons for looking elsewhere--I
mean to the other side--for a suitable man."

He did not trouble to argue that with me. He knew that his was not the
voice to which I should listen.

"If your Majesty comes to that conclusion, my friends and I will be
disappointed," he said, "but we must accept your decision."

There was much to like in Wetter. Men are not insincere merely because
they are ambitious, dishonest merely because they are given to intrigue,
selfish merely because they ask places for themselves. There is a
grossness of moral fibre not in itself a good thing, but very different
from rottenness. Wetter was a keen and convinced partisan, and an ardent
believer in himself. His cause ought to win, and, if his hand could take
the helm, would win; this was his attitude, and it excused some want of
scruple both in promoting the cause and in insuring to it his own
effective support. But he was a big man, of a well-developed nature,
hearty, sympathetic, and free from cant, full of force, of wit, of
unblunted emotion. He would not, however, have made at all a good
ambassador; and he would not have wanted to be one had he not run into
debt.

Max von Sempach, on the other hand, would fill the place respectably,
although not brilliantly. Wetter knew this, and the fact gave to the
mention of the Count's name a decent appearance without depriving it of
its harmlessness. He named a suitable but an impossible person--a person
to me impossible.

Soon after the meal I left him, telling him that I should come in again
later, and had ordered my carriage to call for me at his house at five
o'clock. Turning down the quiet lane that led to the Countess's, I soon
reached my destination. I was now in less agitation than on the day
before. My mind was made up; I came to give what she asked. Wetter
should have his Embassy. More than this, I came no longer in
trepidation, no longer fearing her ridicule even while I sought her
love, no more oppressed with the sense that in truth she might be
laughing while she seemed to encourage. There was the dawning of triumph
in my heart, an assurance of victory, and the fierce delight in a
determination come to at great cost and to be held, it may be, at
greater still. In all these feelings, mighty always, there were for me
the freshness, the rush of youth, and the venturous joy of new
experience.

On her also a crisis of feeling had come; she was not her old self, nor
I to her what I had been. There was a strained, almost frightened look
in her eyes; a low-voiced "Augustin" replacing her bantering "Cæsar."
Save for my name she did not speak as I led her to a couch and sat down
by her side. She looked slight, girlish, and pathetic in a simple gown
of black; timidity renewed her youth. Well might I forget that she was
not a maiden of meet age for me, and she herself for an instant cheat
time's reckoning. She made of me a man, of herself a girl, and prayed
love's advocacy to prove the delusion true.

"I have been with Wetter," said I. "He wants the Embassy."

I fancy that she knew his desire; her hand pressed mine, but she did not
speak.

"But he recommended Max," I went on.

"Max!" For a moment her face was full of terror as she turned to me;
then she broke into a smile. Wetter's advice was plain to her also.

"You see how much he wants it for himself," said I. "He knows I would
sooner send a gutter-boy than Max. And you know it?"

"Do I?" she murmured.

I rose and stood before her.

"It is yours to give, not mine," said I. "Do you give it to Wetter?"

As she looked up at me her eyes filled with tears, while her lips curved
in a timid smile.

"What--what trouble you'll get into!" she said.

"It's not a thousandth part of what I would do for you. Wetter shall
have it then--or Max?"

"Not Max," she said; her eyes told me why it should not be Max.

"Then Wetter," and I fell on one knee by her, whispering, "The King
gives it to his Queen."

"They'll blame you so; they'll say all sorts of things."

"I shan't hear them; I hear only you."

"They'll be unkind to you."

"They can't hurt me if you're kind to me."

"Perhaps they'll say I--I got it from you."

"I am not ashamed. What is it to me what they say?"

"You don't care?"

"For nothing in the world but you and to be with you."

She sat looking up at me for an instant; then she threw her arm over the
end of the sofa and laid her face on the cushion; I heard her sob
softly. Her other hand lay in her lap; I took it and raised it to my
lips. I did not know the meaning of her tears. I was triumphant. She
sobbed, not loudly or violently, but with a pitiful gentleness.

"Why do you cry so, darling?" I whispered.

She turned her face to me; the tears were running down her cheeks. "Why
do I cry?" she moaned softly. "Because I'm wicked--I suppose I'm
wicked--and so foolish. And--and you are good, and noble, and--and
you'll be great. And"--the sobs choked her voice, and she turned her
face half away--"and I'm old, Augustin."

I could not enter into her mood; joy pervaded me; but neither did I
scorn her nor grow impatient. I perceived dimly that she struggled with
a conflict of emotions beyond my understanding. Words were unsafe,
likely to be wrong, to make worse what they sought to cure. I caressed
her, but trusted my tongue no further than to murmur endearments. She
grew calmer, sat up, and dried her eyes.

"But it's so absurd," she protested. "Augustin, lots of boys are just as
absurd as you; but was any woman ever as absurd as I am?"

"Why do you call it absurd?"

"Oh, because, because"--she moved near me suddenly--"because, although
I've tried so hard, I can't feel it the least absurd. I do love you."

Here was her prepossession all the while--that the thing would seem
absurd, not that there was sin in it. I can see now why her mind fixed
on this point; she was, in truth, speaking not to me who was there by
her, me as I was, but to the man who should be; she pleaded not only
with herself, but with my future self, praying the mature man to think
of her with tenderness and not with a laugh, interceding with what
should one day be my memory of her. Ah, my dear, that prayer of yours is
answered! I do not laugh as I write. At you I could never have laughed;
and if I set out to force a laugh even at myself I fall to thinking of
what you were, and again I do not laugh. Then what is it that the world
outside must have laughed with a very self-conscious wisdom? Its
laughter was nothing to us then, and to-day is to me as nothing. Is it
not always ready to weep at a farce and laugh at a tragedy?

"But you've nobody else," she went on softly. "I shouldn't have dared if
you'd had anybody else. Long ago--do you remember?--you had nobody, and
you liked me to kiss you. I believe I began to love you then; I mean I
began to think how much some woman would love you some day. But I
didn't think I should be the woman. Oh, don't look at me so hard, or--or
you'll see----"

"How much you love me?"

"No, no. You'll see my wrinkles. See, if I do this you can't look at my
face." And putting her arms round my neck she hid her face.

I was strangely tongue-tied, or, perhaps, not strangely; for there comes
a time when the eyes say all that there is desire or need to say. Her
pleadings were in answer to my eyes.

"Oh, I know you think so now!" she murmured. "But you won't go on
thinking so--and I shall." She raised her head and looked at me; now a
smile of triumph came on her face. "Oh, but you do think so now!" she
whispered in a voice still lower, but full of delight. "You do think so
now," and again she hid her face from me. But I knew that the triumph
had entered into her soul also, and that the shadows could no longer
altogether dim its sunshine for her.

The afternoon became full, and waned to dusk as we sat together. We said
little; there were no arrangements made; we seemed in a way cut off from
the world outside, and from the consideration of it. The life which we
must each lead, lives in the main apart from one another, had receded
into distance, and went unnoticed; we had nothing to do save to be
together; 

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