Chapter IV: Part 4

“But being such friends of yours, or at least knowin’ ’em as you do, if you could bring them together, my dear,” went on the simple little woman looking earnestly into the beautiful face, “if you could make that woman see how she’s wastin’ herself on the trapeze business, when she might be walkin’ along safe an’ happy on the ground with him; an’ if you could make him see that--but men’s queer creatures!--if you could make him see that if he’ll only stir his stumps a bit ’n’ make _himself_ more interestin’ for her, she--don’t you see, my dear? Why, if you did that, if you could make ’em see that each is part wrong, why--it’d be the biggest job you ever did in your life!”

“Yes,” Farleigh drew a deep breath, “it would. The biggest job I ever did in my life! And--isn’t it funny, Mrs. Budd? that’s just what Mr. Pix said too: that to make each see that each is part wrong, is the first step toward reconciliation.”

“Ah, but he’s a smart man, Mr. Pix,” said Mrs. Budd ingenuously. “But you’ll try, my dear? You’ll do what you can to bring these two together again?--don’t know why I take s’ much interest in ’em,” she laughed a little abashed, “but readin’ that woman’s story in the paper seemed so kind o’ pitiful--you see, I thought o’ Theophilus always playin’ around with these climbin’ machines--and then I knew, ’s I say, there must be something wrong about the husband.--You’ll try, my dear?”

“Yes,” promised Farleigh simply, “I’ll try. And--I’m glad you happened to read the story in the paper, Mrs. Budd.”

“Funny now, wasn’t it?” The little woman smiled happily. “And that I should just happen to tell it to you, and you knew those people? Well,” she sighed, “even if we ain’t come to no conclusion about Theophilus, maybe we’ve helped somebody. And here’s Mr. Pix”--then, as another man appeared beside Pix on the stairs--“_my dear!_ is that your husband?” she asked wonderingly.

“Yes,” Farleigh rose to meet them, “why?”

“Because he--my dear, I wouldn’t worry one mite,” the little woman with the tan gloves patted the black sleeve cut by Paquin, reassuringly, “don’t you fret, my dear, one minute. That man could be a member of the Sons of Adam an’ the Kindlin’ Wood Knights an’ any other forty-seven ’leven Clubs he was a mind to. He’s a _man_, my dear. And (as she saw him smile at Farleigh, coming toward her) he loves you. You’re a very lucky woman.”

“Mrs. Budd, this is my husband, Mr. Chalmers,” Farleigh made the introduction rather unsteadily. “I want you to know each other.”

“Indeed, and I’m proud to, Mr. Chalmers,” the little woman beamed; while Farleigh turned to Pix, but not exclusively. “Mrs. Chalmers an’ I have just been having the most interestin’ time, talkin’ about the Spanish Cat--oh I--I beg your pardon”--she grew frantically pink--“I forgot again, they was friends of yours, and besides I don’t know her real name. I----”

“Mrs. Budd has been telling me how to manage the Spanish Cat, Kent,” said Farleigh very quietly. Pix stared at the window as though he meant to jump out of it. “She says that to--to manage her would be the biggest job of my life, and----”

“Oh, not exactly to manage her, Mrs. Chalmers,” put in the little woman uneasily, “to bring her ’n’ her husband together’s what I mean. You see,” she turned to Chalmers, “I think her husband must be part wrong, too.”

“I think he must,” said Kent, looking into Farleigh’s eyes; “I’m sure he is.”

“But what about the case of Budd?” broke in Pix, renouncing the window.

“Oh, we didn’t get ’s far ’s him,” said Mrs. Budd resignedly; “we’ll take up Theophilus at the next meetin’, won’t we, Mrs. Chalmers?”

“We will, indeed,” said the very clever lady. And I must tell you that as she said good-bye to her, she kissed Mrs. Budd!

Kent turned to Pix--Farleigh had gone on ahead of them, rather swiftly, down the stairs. “Pix, I--you--it’s all your affair,” he stammered unevenly, “I----”

“Tut, my dear boy!” Pix waved aside the words, though he gripped the proffered hand and wrung it. “I’m twice as pleased as you are. I never do things unselfishly, you know--I’m purely a philanthropist.

“By the way,” added Pix carelessly, watching Chalmers from behind his monocle as they came out into the street, “who’s this man who’s been detaining you all the time at the Club?”

“That,” said Kent, stepping into the car beside Farleigh, “is a gentleman who has been trying to get my opinion on a Secretaryship in London. I just told him, this afternoon: yes.”

VIII

RICHARD--NO MORE THAN A KING

Into the mysterious shadows of the grey-cloistered chapel, the Court in all its ceremony was disappearing--all except the newest Maid of Honor, who, after one glance back at the sunset, shook her curls rebelliously, and deliberately stayed behind in the rose-garden!

“I just _won’t_ go to vespers,” declared the Maid of Honor wilfully; “and what’s more”--darting after two other stragglers in the procession--“you sha’n’t go either.” She laid a compelling hand on a little old person in rose and silver, and a very magnificent person in black velvet and pumps. “It’s a perfect sacrilege to pray any more to-day. Besides, don’t you know we’ve got to _talk_? To talk about _him_?” And she shook her small fist threateningly after the departing monarch.

“It is a fine evening,” conceded the little old person weakly; already she had arranged her brocade and laces against the quaint primness of an ancient stone settle.

“And--er--no sense, really, in making Sunday _too_ shocking a misfortune,” abetted the magnificent person, enjoying the effect of himself under the glowing luxuriance of a canopy of Maréchal Niels. “Fact is, the King----”

“That’s just it!” The Maid of Honor pounced upon the words, as she pounced upon her favorite garden seat. “The King! Oh”--she clicked her fan vehemently--“I am so glad to get you two alone for once, so that we can talk and talk and talk about him!”

“My dear!” The little old person’s hands went up. “I’m sure no one ever found that much to say about a king. There’s really nothing much to say, is there?” She glanced half fearfully toward the beautiful old chapel door.

“Exactly what I mean!” announced the Maid of Honor triumphantly. “Mind you, I don’t agree to it for all kings--perhaps the less important ones aren’t so bad--but this one! Why, he’s a mere bundle of robes, a mannequin to hang things on: satins, epigrams, anything. A sort of peg for the traditions of our ancestors. Oh!” In the small restless face showed the exasperation of all youth. “What difference does it make how many millions of subjects he has? He’s always the same. He always will be the same, I suppose: just a monarch, a handsome effigy, no more than a king!”

“Nor less,” appended his Fool impartially. (Nowadays, they call them the “king’s best friend”: it amounts to the same thing.) “He does the best he can with the predicament, you know. Rather beastly situation to find oneself in, too, now isn’t it? Fancy, just fancy for yourself”--he looked toward the Maid of Honor’s profile propitiatingly--“being suddenly obliged to become king--or, queen, that is, of Dumdedum; Emperor of Ladada, Lord High Protector of Thingumbob, and all the rest of it. You wouldn’t like it, you know. Nobody would.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” For some reason the Maid of Honor was blushing.

“Nobody would, unless it were one’s butler. It’s being such a temptation to anarchists; and no well-brought-up person likes to be a temptation--or admits that he likes it.”

“And you confess he is marvelously handsome,” urged the little old Lady-in-Waiting slyly, “you acknowledge yourself, Ermyntrude, that he fills his position with distinction; never looks scared, I mean, and that’s _so_ hard for a king. You said just now, you know--you called him----”

“I called him a handsome effigy!” The Maid of Honor rose to her feet sharply. “And that’s quite all he is. Oh, I don’t ask that he shall do anything so wonderful,” she defended, catching up his pet spaniel, and pulling its ears with a mixture of affection and intense impatience, “I don’t ask that he shall ride to wars, or build huge palaces, or squander fortunes over pageantry. I ask simply that he show some signs of humanness, that he be a _man_, any sort of a man, anything rather than a dummy! Why, if Ja--if the Prince were to grow like him ...!”

“But”--the Fool began to look worried. He rubbed his pumps together till they creaked.

“Other kings manage it,” went on the Maid of Honor accusingly; “they have their personalities, their special diets, their favorite spa; they invent a cravat or a new kind of soup, and it’s all very well. But he--he doesn’t do one thing that’s _different_. It’s the Queen who reigns, you know. It’s she” (was it a note of bitterness in the little Maid’s voice?) “who has been straining every nerve to promote this marriage of the Crown Prince with that Franconia girl. But he--he’s such a piece of passivity, he won’t even say yes or no to the idea. All he has energy to do, this whole month since I came to court, is to avoid quarrelling. Any lazy person can do that.”

“But, _my dear_----”

“Oh”--the Maid of Honor heeded nothing but her own rising indignation--“if he’d only get some spite in him, and quarrel like the--like everything--why, it would be splendid! He’d be sublime! And if he’d be wicked--you know what I mean, real, antique, Francis the First, Henry the Eighth _wicked_--oh, then he’d immortalize himself. When one’s genuinely wicked, one’s never forgotten, eh?” She turned confidently to the Fool.

“Um-m. Not if one has a clever press-agent: biographer, that is to say. However,” and, for a Fool, his voice grew quite gentle, “I am afraid that Richard will never be so very wicked. You know he--he has loved a woman.”

The Maid of Honor laughed.

“He has _loved_ a woman,” emphasized the Fool, “and for a man, especially for a king, that is a very rare experience.”

“It was before Ermyntrude was born,” reminded the little old Lady-in-Waiting, softly; and her pretty, faded eyes lost themselves in the sunset. “Before even your mother came to be Mistress of the Robes to his mother, my dear,” she drew the girl down beside her on the ancient settle, “when I myself was a slip of a girl in the Palace at Camelot, and the young Prince Richard barely through with his examinations. He used to talk to me--ah, yes” (she sighed a little sadly) “then he was not so quiet; he used to talk. And one day--it was in the summer, and yes, in this very rose-garden--we had come up from Camelot for some tournament--one day he told me he was in love. ‘Her name’s Rosemary, Guarda,’ he said, ‘and her father is just a professor at the University’ (the little Maid winced). ‘Oh, Guarda, I _am_ glad I don’t have to succeed--think, Guarda! I couldn’t marry Rosemary!’ And” (the sun or something had got into the little old lady’s eyes, so that she had to put up her hand to shield them) “just six months after that--one month before he was going to marry Rosemary--the Crown Prince died, and then his father, the old King; and now”--the fragile old hand fell back into the Lady Guarda’s lap, with a limp little gesture of finality--“Richard is married to a Princess. Perhaps that is why he is no more than a King!”

“Yes”--the Maid of Honor’s voice sounded strangely subdued--“perhaps that is why. See, they are coming out from vespers--shall we walk as far as the gates, Lady Guarda?”

And as the two swept their soft trains down the fragrant allée, out of the dim grey cloisters came a monarch and his court--a splendid panoply of vivid color, mellowed by the dying sun, which cast its tenderness over all the vast old garden, but lingered on the handsome impassive features of the Man Who Came First--a handsome effigy.

“A mere bundle of robes----?” wondered his Fool--who knew him best.

* * * * *

“I know all that you say.” The King rose a trifle wearily, regarding his councillors with that mixture of gentleness and pity which seemed to shut him from them, from every one, like a beautiful stiff hedge. “Our relation with Franconia is, truly, very delicate: the two most prominent world powers ... and then the peculiar situation in the Colonies ... yes, for the best interests of the State, I grant you, even, His Royal Highness should make this alliance. But, milords,” his smile upon them was grave though very sweet, “there are things greater than the State.”

“That is a terrible thing for your Majesty to say,” pronounced his minister severely.

“All true things are terrible--especially beautiful true things. Milords, I will announce my decision at the State banquet to-morrow night. It is, as you know, His Royal Highness’ birthday to-morrow--his eighteenth birthday. Yes, yes, you all are right, he is getting to be a man. A man!--or rather a king. Between the two words, milords, a tremendous gulf is fixed. But I will detain you no longer, gentlemen; I desire an hour or two alone before retiring. Sir Estes, pray send my Fool into the garden--er, not now, you understand, but in half an hour. Yes, thank you, that will be quite soon enough.” And the royal mannequin watched his courtiers disappear into the Palace, always with that gentle, commiserating smile upon his lips.

Then, with a brief sigh that might have meant almost anything, or nothing, he sank down on to the old garden seat, and lit his strange long pipe. The garden was very still, in the pale mystery of the moonlight, very still, and very empty. The King from his shadowy corner gazed past its loveliness at the great palace unbelievingly: it was not a real Palace, there was no real Court inside. Only the exquisite soft arches of the cloister were real, and the long sweep of the old steps, down which he had stolen to meet--he drew in his breath sharply. Yes, the steps, and the grand towering oaks, and the beckoning green vistas, luring one into their ever-vanishing embrace, promising one at the end surely some sweet, half-forgotten memory of childhood. Why, one’s first kite had flirted away down that leafy winding lane; and, yes! at the end of this, that wretched pony had tumbled one’s enraged manhood off its seat--at the resentful age of four. Then that other: it was there as far as the bend in the trees that one’s mother had walked with one, that day of departure for the University. A Queen she was, to be sure, but--marvelously!--one’s wonderful mother as well. And “I’m so glad you don’t have to succeed, Dick,” she had whispered against his cheek, starting guiltily at her own words: “I--I want you to be just a man, you know. A man, with all a man’s pleasures, and burdens, and hobbies, and--and loves, dear. You don’t have to be superb, thank God! you can be just a commonplace man. Ah, Dick, that’s the greatest privilege in the world!”

The King flung his pipe away abruptly. She was dead now. And he----“She was right,” he muttered harshly, beginning to stride up and down, “that’s the greatest privilege in the world. But I----”

“You are alone out here, my dear?” The voice that came to him from a balcony above was as coldly sweet as the moon’s own rays.

“I am alone,” he answered mechanically.

A stately figure trailed down the winding stair and joined him, directing his steps to that corner of the garden that was farthest from the Palace. “Some one has told me that our son--that John will soon come to you with a most unreasonable request. I beg of you, Richard, do not grant it. It has to do with the announcement to be made to-morrow night.”

“The announcement? Why I----”

“You understand me, I am sure.” The cold voice lowered cautiously. “It is imperative that nothing shall be done to mar my plan for adjusting our relations with Franconia; I am only more and more regretful that you have kept the matter of John’s alliance with the Princess Royal pending for so long a time.”

“I have not yet consented----”

“You have not consented to discuss the question formally with the Franconian ambassador”--in the smooth voice an element of irritation was rising--“nor to have him present at the banquet to-morrow night; when, very firmly, you will announce your desire, your _earnest_ desire that the alliance should take place. And listen to me, Richard--you remember that this is the last resort: you have admitted everything else has been tried, and to no purpose, in this situation with Franconia. Now it lies with you. Hitherto, you have refused to discuss the subject of John’s betrothal, even with the family, or your ministers. In this I do not say you have been wrong. It has doubtless been as well to keep the matter quiet until we could learn that the suggestion would be welcomed by Franconia. Now that we are assured of that, however--well, you will make the informal announcement to-morrow night. You know, Richard, where John is concerned, you are apt to be over-lenient. And some one told me----”

“I understand you, Alix.” He understood, too, that when she said over-lenient, she meant weak; no one appreciated the fact that the Queen reigned, more intelligently than did the King. “I could wish, however, that ‘some one’ was not always telling you things about John. It looks--you will pardon me--unpleasantly like spying.”

“One cannot sacrifice the State to looks,” returned the Queen coolly. “If you will insist on forgetting your duty to your people, Richard, somebody must remember it for you. You are not just a plain, ordinary person, you know.” And she swept back up the stair again, and into the Palace.

“Oh, God, if I only were!” groaned the King, turning on his heel with a sudden fierceness very foreign to a mere mannequin. Then he saw his Fool standing there.

“A fine night,” observed the King formally.

“It would be if it were raining, your Majesty,” replied the Fool.

“If it were _raining_?”

“Yes, your Majesty. When it rains, so many things can happen. One slips, one slides, one tumbles into a puddle: there are all sorts of possibilities. While a fine night--is just a fine night, that’s all. Most distressingly ordinary. Before I was a fool----”

“What were you?” interrupted the King.

“A very wise man, my liege. You see, I have changed but little; except that when I was a wise man, I did not enjoy knowing myself to be a fool; whereas now it gives me the subtlest sort of pleasure, knowing how very wise I really am. All a matter of placing oneself, Sire; a matter of light and shade; and if one has the true artistic eye----”

“Do you think that one is then competent to place others?” asked the King abruptly.

The Fool stopped twirling his bauble (his boutonnière, I mean, of course). “One is never competent,” he said slowly, “one is only less stupid than before. One’s sense of values is in better equilibrium. With your Majesty, for instance----”

“Yes?” The King bent toward him eagerly.

“The King can do no wrong,” began his Fool pompously. “Which is only another way of saying that the King is left no chance to do anything but right. He is not an ordinary person.”

“He is,” contradicted the King calmly. “At least he is going to be. Your next King, my dear Fool, is to be just an ordinary person!”

Limply the Fool leaned against a balustrade. “Your Majesty is _too_ exotic in his fancies--quite too exotic,” he protested feebly. “I beg your Majesty to allow me to retire: I am so truly a fool that a joke quite unnerves me. Besides, His Royal Highness is coming--see, yonder he is--an idea, smiling at a makeshift! I beg leave to take the makeshift within the Palace, Sire.”

“So then, Father!”--one felt with a thrill the onslaught of Youth--“you have been railing at the world, with the help of that soberest man at Court. Fie upon you! And you, sir, off with you! I will not have my father’s Fool turn him into an old sobersides!” The young Prince ran lightly down the steps from the terrace and came laughing to the King’s side.

“I suppose I should have said ‘your Majesty’ before him,” he apologized, locking arms with his father, as the Fool vanished within; “Mother told me only this morning that I did not sufficiently realize the respect due you as a monarch. But how can I? Why, we’ve always been such pals, eh, Father? And if ever I’m a king and have children--well, I’ll try to make them forget I’m a king, that’s all.”

“Have I made you forget it?” asked the King wistfully. “Do I seem to you just--just your father, Jack--you know what I mean, just an ordinary man?”

“You seem”--his son regarded him half puzzled--“an ordinary man? Well, no, Father. Of course, you’re keen for sport, as keen as I am; and then in your heart you’ve that passion for the flute--ah, yes, you have! You needn’t shake your head: you know you’d pawn the Palace if only you could play the flute. But something’s always hindering you. I suppose something always hinders a king, Father?” The King’s own wistfulness had crept into the young voice.

The King cleared his throat. “I’m afraid it does,” he acknowledged, looking away from the boy, and up at the balcony--so cold and white in the moon’s radiance. “I--but come, let’s walk. You were saying----”

“There’s something I’ve got to ask you.” The Prince walked a little faster. “You must know what it is, Father--they’ve all talked so much about it. And last night at the Masque Ermyntrude whispered to me that it was no use at all, asking you--that Mother had arranged everything, and you would never go against Mother. But, somehow, because you _aren’t_ just an ordinary man, because you’ve always been different to me from the rest of the world, I made up my mind to ask you. You see, it’s--it’s about this marriage.” For the moment the young Prince looked a good deal more than eighteen. “I haven’t said anything up till now--I’ve always known, of course, that being a king made a difference, that it meant one could never do as one liked, you know; so when Mother and all of them first talked about the Princess--all along, in fact--I didn’t say anything. Oh, I understood”--and for the first time in his life the King saw bitterness in his son’s face--“an alliance with Franconia is essential; my tutor’s told me of it many times: he’s prepared me very cleverly. But, Father, I don’t want to make an alliance. I want to marry a woman.”

The King stopped walking. They were just at the foot of the steps where he had used to meet--“I see,” he said gently.

“I’ve tried to go through with it”--the boy’s voice grew more and more unsteady--“since Mother told me how much it would mean to all the millions of our people I’ve nerved myself up to it; and I told myself again and again that, as Ermyntrude says, a man who’s got to be a king has no right to any feelings. That he must be just a dummy, to support the prestige and ambitions of his subjects. His subjects!” The Prince’s laugh was not a pleasant thing to hear. “Oh, I wonder that you don’t see the screaming satire of it, Father--even though you are a king.”

The King looked at him strangely. “I was not always a king,” he said; and again his glance strayed down the dim green vistas with their whimsical shadows. At the end of each vista it was black now. “When I was your age, Jack, I had no idea that I ever would be King. But--but I want to ask _you_ something: if the country were to go to war, and a good man was needed to lead the troops, would you go? Understand me: even though there was every probability of your being killed, though you had one chance in a thousand, or say no chance at all--and--you were also just about to marry--a woman. Would you go?”

“I”--the boy drew a long breath. “But of course I’d go. You know that, Father.”

“Then--the country _is_ at war; for a great nation, the subtlest, deadliest kind of war, John: with international opinion. It does need a leader. The King, you see”--the even voice never wavered--“is just a dummy--no more than the King. And I’m very much afraid that the leader will have to be killed, at least all but the mere blood and bones and breath of him: and those amount to so little, don’t they? Yes, yes; they amount to so little. Well! so this some one must sacrifice himself. We’ve tried everything, we’ve come dangerously near showing ourselves abject, in this adjustment with Franconia: at least, so the queen tells me. There is left just this way out, the alliance, I mean, and ... some one must sacrifice himself. Who do you think will do it, John?” Under the cold stone balcony, the King stretched his hand toward the Crown Prince. Did he congratulate himself that for once he was not being over-lenient?

“Very well, your Majesty.” There was no doubt as to its being the Crown Prince who spoke. At the same time his hand as it met the King’s was the hand of a subject. “I will do it. You will, I suppose, make the formal announcement to the Court to-morrow night? I will be prepared, sir. Good-night.”

“Good-night.” An infinite sadness was in the King’s eyes as once more he turned about to pace up and down, alone.

The alliance, then, was assured. The Queen and all her ministers--far more than his--would be satisfied. He supposed it was a very satisfactory piece of business. But--he wondered suddenly--would the next King be just an ordinary person?

“Jack.” Some one was calling softly. “Jack, are you there?” The moon had gone down; it was very dark in the vast old garden. But through the blackness one could see a dainty figure, like an adorable phantom image, poised uncertainly, just _at the top of the steps_. “It’s so dark, I can’t see you, Jack”--the little laugh held a note of the piteous. “And I daresay it’s the last time I shall see you, isn’t it? For of course he wouldn’t listen to you. He--he’s such a _real_ king, isn’t he?” For a moment longer she stood there, the beseeching, fairy thing; then with a quick sob of disappointment, she fled.

But the half-concealed impatience of her last speech had told the King that it was the little Maid of Honor, Ermyntrude. Ah--he remembered: she had come to Court not so long ago, just a month--after her father died. Her father was--why should it seem suddenly so significant?--a professor at the University; a very learned man. Her mother, a Princess, had broken rank to marry him. Women did those things.

A professor at the University! And “It’s the last time I shall see you, isn’t it?” Who was it standing there at the top of the steps? Standing there for the last time, piteously brave, with that heartbreaking little laugh in her voice. The King dashed his hand across his eyes. “Rosemary!” he called yearningly; and fled after her up the steps.

* * * * *

The great banquet hall was hushed. The minstrels had put away their songs, and the Court sat quiet. Only the Fool played with his gardenia: he whispered to some one that nothing gave him confidence like appearing trivial.

“Milords, Ladies of the Court, and our distinguished guests”--as the King raised his handsome face to the colonial Princes, one saw that it was very pale--as pale as that of the Crown Prince, who sat at his right.

“The King is but just beginning to be alive to the privileges of his position. You know how in olden times, and in these modern reckless days as well, monarchs have sacrificed thousands--lives, ducats, principalities even, for the sake of some passing fancy--some hobby, perhaps, that wanted gratifying. And no one has dared to say them nay. Milords, I have been up to this time a very lenient sovereign” (the Queen was tapping her slipper nervously); “I have been content to be just an ordinary King!” He looked from one to the other of the company whimsically. “Emperors have given away continents; great lords have sold their every slave--all for the sake of a whim. And so now, milords, I intend to gratify a little notion of my own. It has long been the custom to betroth the Crown Prince on His Highness’ birthday. His Highness grows to manhood, he attains his majority, and voila! One picks him a bride! Quite suitable; _quite_ suitable.” (The Queen was breathing more freely. The Crown Prince sat with his young face half shaded. The whole Court held its breath with attention; particularly the Fool, who was watching his master with a new concentration.)

“Very good. The King has taken the fancy--oh, a very flighty fancy no doubt, milords--to present the Crown Prince and his affections to er--some one quite unexpected--some one whom the King shall choose on the ah--spur of the moment, you understand. It lends more excitement to a game, to cast the die quite on the spur of the moment, eh?” (By this time the Queen was beside herself; while the Prince had half risen, in his indignation.)

“So--let me see--I assure you, milords”--and the King’s voice had never been so lightly gay, his face so gravely sweet--“I assure you this moment is worth all the monotony of Kingship, yes, though that monotony had lasted a thousand dreary years!--this moment on which one stakes his all: his destiny, his country, his lands beyond the seas--for the sake of one glorious, mad whim! I bestow the hand of Prince John upon which one? Let us say the littlest--she who sits yonder in the corner--what, not _crying_? There’ll be plenty of time for that when you’re Queen, my dear. Come bring her forward, your Highness, and let all men see whom the King has chosen to carry out his one wild madness. Your name is----? Ermyntrude! Milords, I pledge you Ermyntrude, your future Queen, the daughter of a Princess, and” (for the first time the King’s voice faltered) “of a professor at the University. Ermyntrude!”

“And so he’s no more than a King?” The Fool was asking the Maid of Honor a moment later--and for a Fool, his voice was beautiful.

The Maid of Honor’s lovely, vivid little face was like a drenched spring flower--all the more radiant for its tears. “No--no more than a King? Oh!” she caught the velvet sleeve impetuously. “Oh, Fool, you’re his best friend--you’re his Fool, so you know him best--could any one, I ask you could _any one_ be more than the King!”

* * * * *

But why, asks the Child (the Child we all are, when it comes to a story), why was the King so wonderful? Was it because he was one of our Plain People?

And the story-teller turns back over the pages wistfully--on each of them, for her, is written a little of the great tragedy and great sublimity of Life. “It was because he couldn’t be one” (she says finally), “because he couldn’t be a Plain Person; but had nevertheless the supreme courage to demand for his son what he could never have for himself. And I think, in the power to make this subtlest of sacrifices, every man is King; and every King that divinely privileged creature: a Plain Man.”

IX

LUCIA--A MERE WIFE

“I’ve come,” said Lucia, “for a very long visit.”

Something in the weary little sigh with which she threw herself down on the sofa, made her mother look up, arrested.

“You--you don’t mean that you aren’t happy, my dear?” she asked uncertainly.

Lucia gave a faint smile. “At least I’m not unhappy. I wish” (with sudden vehemence) “I were. I wish----”

Mrs. Loring took an apprehensive step towards her.

“There, mother, it’s all right. I’m a little tired, and--and unstrung with seeing you again, that’s all. It’s all right.”

“But my dear, I’m afraid that is just what it isn’t. I----”

“Yes, really! It’s only that I--I’ve always been a little over-balanced, you know, if such a state were possible. And it is,” tensely, “outside of mathematics.”

Mrs. Loring--whose intimacy with mathematics was fleeting--looked at her daughter anxiously. “Just what do you mean, Lucy? There, my dear--throw your coat off. And your hat--so! Jacqueline will unpack you while we have our tea. Tell me what you mean--over-balanced?” She inclined her well-dressed head vaguely.

“I mean,” said Lucia, pressing back against a nest of cushions, “just that. All my life I’ve seen things evenly, mother: in parallel rows, that always tallied. When you sent me to finishing-school, I hated it; but I put up with the two years’ boredom without complaint, because I realized it was making valuable friends for me. When I took up drawing, later, I did it because I knew that on the other side of the hard work and cruel discouragement in getting started, would lie a hobby--and a profitable one--in which I might bury myself at any time, and with absorbing interest. And when I married----”

“Yes?” Mrs. Loring sat forward a little.

“You thought I never would marry, didn’t you, mother darling?” with a brief laugh. “I was afraid of marriage, rather. But when John came, and I thought I cared enough and--well, it seemed to me that if I went into the thing with no illusions, I couldn’t lose any. That if I got married, just because I wanted to,--if I expected nothing, at least I couldn’t get less.”

“Lucy,” put in her mother uncomfortably, “you think too much. You always did. Cream, my dear?”

“Please. I said, when I came in, I’d come for a very long visit.”

“Isn’t John Gwynne a good husband?” demanded Mrs. Loring. “Is there anything----?”

“Oh, nothing--nothing. Our life is as even as the lines in my account-book. That,” said Lucia in a low voice, “is what I simply can’t stand; what I had to get away from.”

“But--but, my dear, it doesn’t sound very serious. Really, you know, it doesn’t!”

“I know it doesn’t--perhaps it isn’t. Only to me”--Lucia’s fingers closed dangerously over the fragile cup-handle--“it was growing unbearable! I had to get away.”

“Yes, yes, dear. And you were right to come to me. I was delighted when your wire arrived--quite delighted,” said Mrs. Loring quickly. “But what about Tommy?”

“Tommy’s away at school,” said his mother, sipping her tea with a pretense of tranquillity. “We decided to send him to military school this year, you know, as he’s nine. He left yesterday. That gave me my opportunity to come to you. Oh, mother, I snatched at it!”

“Yes, dear--yes,” Mrs. Loring leaned over to pat her hand. She had certainly not known Lucy was so nervous! “And I’ll let the Granvilles and Ada Barker and the Temple girls know you’re here, and we’ll have a gay little visit,” she added cheerfully. “The longer the better, Lucy!”

“Dear mother!” murmured Lucia. “Though I would rather not do a lot of social things--I really would, mother. I’m--I believe I’m rather tired. And John said”--she checked herself swiftly.

“Yes? What did John say?”

“A stupid married woman’s habit I’ve fallen into! What he said was ‘do get rested.’ What he should have said----”

“Lucia,” interrupted her mother, “I was married to your father only four years, but ‘what he should have said’ never happened. I wouldn’t let it happen.”

“He should have said ‘I shall miss you,’” murmured Lucia stubbornly. “That’s one of the things, mother: I’m taken--and let go--so for granted!”

Mrs. Loring looked at her judiciously. “You’re a very pretty woman,” said she. “Even excepting your hair, you’d be striking. And” (running her left hand through its ripples) “it seems to me your hair’s blacker than ever. Doesn’t John think so?”

“John--is occupied more with Consolidated Iron than he is with my hair. Nonsense, mother! Why be tragic about it? John is kind, I’m contented. Why” (lightly) “should I go into heroics because our romance is not so gossamer but that I can pull it to pieces and put it together again? I’m thirty-two. Yet”--she added, laying down her cup--“I seem as greedy for romance as a débutante in the first season. I,” reminiscently, “was rather a nice débutante, eh, mummy?”

“You were delicious!” said Mrs. Loring with enthusiasm. “Ambrose Fayerweather was saying only yesterday”----

“Does Mr. Fayerweather still call here?”

Mrs. Loring’s smooth cheeks flushed. “He is a very old friend,” said she, busy with the cream jug. “And he says the girls these last few years can’t”----

“Hold a candle to those a dozen years ago,” finished Lucia.

“Why, yes! How did you know?”

“He’s said it to me--and other old _galants_--every time I’ve seen him in the last decade. Well, mummy! I’m going up to lie down for a little. I hope,” wistfully, “I haven’t blued you up, dear? I’m afraid I’m rather”----

“You’re in need of rest!” replied Mrs. Loring briskly. “Run along and get it, my dear. John said the right thing, after all!”

She smiled brightly at her daughter; but when Lucia had reached the landing, stood gazing after her. “She thinks too much,” said her mother with a sigh; “it’s a bad habit for a woman.”

Lucia, upstairs, on a couch luxurious with pillows, was still thinking; that is, always the same thing. Why would the figures always balance each other, she wondered wearily? Life was one long sum in algebra--or subtraction: the signs changed, the quantities cancelled, and--X was zero. Everything seemed to be _known_; so distinct and matter-of-fact. When she married John Gwynne, she had loved him--passionately; but also reasoningly. She had taken into consideration that the passion would dim, but that a certain comfortable comradeship would take its place. The passion had dimmed; the comradeship had taken its place. And the illusions which Lucia had not possessed had remained unattacked. What was there then to quarrel with? Her house, from which she had anticipated as much satisfaction as care, had given her the two in equal proportion. Her child, who she had known would thrill and agonize her alike, had done both, with impartial intensity. Her art, which she had been willing to abandon in exchange for certain other delights, had been indeed compensated for by those delights; it had been a fair exchange and no more. No more, for that would have been to spoil the law; to dig unevennesses in the groove--which, for Lucia, seemed eternally straight.

“Oh!” She sat up and flung off the soft blanket that covered her. Was there any way, was there any trick or painful art, with which to break the relentlessness of pleasure paid for? Of happiness counter-checked? Perhaps her mother was right--if she didn’t think so much----. But she had to think. It was all the expression she had of a nature that had never been able to escape from itself, for an unconscious minute. Heavens! Lucia beat the pillows and sank down again. “If this keeps on, I’ll go quite mad.” She had the wit to know she was half mad, anyhow--and always had been. It was perhaps the one thing that kept her sane. Analysts are harassed creatures. John Gwynne, who ate meat and potatoes three times a day, and loved a good vaudeville show, did not know of their existence.

John Gwynne was at that moment in a shop, leaving an order for new decorations for Lucia’s rooms.

“You’ll have to push it through in a hurry,” he said anxiously. “Mrs. Gwynne said she didn’t know when she’d be back, and that means any time. I want something in lilac. Lilac’s her color.”

The attentive clerk showed two samples in pale mauve. “We have the chintz to match these, Mr. Gwynne. If I might suggest, I should think the unconventional design----”

“Sure, the unconventional’s the thing for Mrs. Gwynne! You’ve served her for ten years, Eh, Gregg?”

“Yes, sir--” the suave clerk’s face broke into an almost natural smile--“I was here when you brought her in to select her bridal furnishings, ten years ago.”

“Sure!” said John Gwynne again, more slowly. “Ten years ago! George, but time goes by, don’t it, Gregg?” He was staring out the window at the motors tearing up and down outside.

“Well!” with a start, “the unconventional it is,--paper, hangings, and the whole business--and look here, Gregg, rush this for me, will you? Push it right along.”

“We certainly will, Mr. Gwynne,” the clerkly manner was not quite restored again. Heartiness struggled with it; and--“excuse me, sir,” said Gregg hurriedly, “but do you know I think this is the very design Mrs. Gwynne chose when you were married--wistaria, with the pale pink rosebuds in the border--I’m almost positive it is. It’s a piece we didn’t carry for a number of years, and then”----

“Why, sure--sure!” said Gwynne, gazing at it. “The very thing! And then my sister, two years later, went and put on blue--to surprise Mrs. Gwynne--while we were in Europe. And I think it did surprise her some!” he remembered grimly.

The clerk gave a feeble smile. “Yes, sir--blue with a silver stripe--I remember, sir!”

“I should think you would! I told her to come down and have it changed, but Tommy--our little boy--had the measles just then, and afterward I got hurt in that hunting accident, and then we went to the country--and blessed if there’s ever been a time since when she’s had so much as a chance to think about it! That’s why now--well, see you push it through, Gregg.”

“Indeed yes, Mr. Gwynne! Good-day, Mr. Gwynne.”

“Good-day.”

“Beats me,” added Gwynne to himself outside, “why these clerk-fellows can’t say things as they come: ‘indeed yes’--why the Dickens should a thing be turned hind-side to, when you can say it straight out?”

It was a point he and Lucia had not infrequently discussed--in other denominations. Gwynne, going home to an empty house, felt he would willingly have dropped his side, if Lucia had been there to carry hers.

“She looked tired,” he thought, sitting alone by the library fire after dinner. “I hope her mother makes her rest. She looked regularly fagged.”

He spent the rest of the evening writing her a letter; and Tommy. In the morning he sent Mrs. Loring a telegram. “How’s Lucia?” it said. Lucia had been gone twenty-four hours.

“And you say you’re taken for granted!” triumphed her mother. “You think he’s more interested in Consolidated Iron? Stuff, my dear! John Gwynne’s forty. For a man of forty to follow his wife up with telegrams, the very day after----”

“He might have sent it to me,” said Lucia, ungraciously.

“Oh, well!” Mrs. Loring tossed her handsome head. “If you’re determined to be _difficile_----!”

Lucia, who was pretending to eat a strip of bacon, asked, “Did my drawing-ink come? I ordered some sent down from town, before I left--and a lot of Bristol-board.”

“It came,” said Mrs. Loring, looking at her uneasily. “Lucia, whatever are you----”

“I am going to draw,” said Lucia, with a deep breath. “Ever since I was married, I’ve never had time: first there was Tommy, and then the trip abroad, and then Tommy’s measles, and then John’s accident, and then the new house in the country, and--I’m going to draw, mother! For days and days, and blissful weeks--I’m going to draw!”

Her cheeks were vivid, her eyes afire.

“Oh!” gasped Mrs. Loring, looking at her. “You--you’re going to draw. For--weeks!”

“Yes, mother! And you can tell Ada Barker, and the Temple girls, and whoever else comes, that their fascinations are nothing compared with black-and-white. And if John sends telegrams asking ‘How’s Lucia?’ tell him ‘She’s drawing!’ Do you hear? Tell him ‘She’s drawing!’”

And snatching up her precious parcel that a servant had brought, with an excited little laugh, Lucia fairly flew upstairs. Her mother, left with John Gwynne’s telegram, shook her head, perplexedly.

At luncheon, Lucia appeared, less gay, though still flushed and ardent with intention. “It’s wonderful,” she said, “to have one uninterrupted morning--to know there’s no ordering to be done, and that John won’t come tearing home for early lunch. I really believe I shall accomplish something--if I work,” she added, a little pucker coming between her eyes.

After lunch, she went back to it. Mrs. Loring wished she would lie down and rest her eyes; but she knew Lucia fairly well: she did not suggest it. That night when Ambrose Fayerweather came to dinner, he said warmly, “Well, well! And so the mother tells me you’re at work again, drawing! What energy you youngsters have, to be sure!”

Lucia, who was genuinely fond of him, did not answer that she was as old as her own grandmother, but said with a kind of enthusiasm, “Yes, isn’t it nice! I feel as though I should really get something done. Though--it’s rather hard, of course, starting in again, after so many years.”

“Of mere wife-hood, eh?” Mr. Fayerweather looked at her a bit wistfully from under his iron-grey brows. “By the way, I saw that husband of yours the other day. They tell me he’s a man to reckon with, now. I tell them--but you always get cross with me when I tell the truth about yourself.”

Lucia smiled at him. And he remembered she had always been a confoundedly pretty girl. “Dear Mr. Fayerweather, I’m never cross with you. I’m only unconvinced.”

“Oh! very well then” (they were waiting for her mother and dinner), “I’ll tell you: when people say to me what a splendid fellow Gwynne is, and how successful, I say yes, but who’s backing him? _Mrs. Gwynne!_”

“Backing him?” repeated Lucia slowly.

“Why, yes. Haven’t you always furnished the brains of the combination--the spark? My dear Lucia, we all know that delightful head of yours works in twenty directions a minute!”

Lucia looked at him curiously. “No. It works in only two.” And they kill each other, she started to add; but changed it to “I’m afraid neither has ever helped John.”

“Nonsense--non--sense! Why, Gwynne was nowhere until he got married; and since then--he’s simply soared! There’s no holding him down. Believe me, Lucia, I hear it from men who----”

“Oh, of course he’s done well. I--I’m tremendously proud of John’s success. But it’s his own success, Mr. Fayerweather,” Lucia said passionately. “I haven’t contributed to the length of an idea!” The suddenness with which it struck her, almost overwhelmed Lucia Gwynne.

“My dear,” said Ambrose, looking at her, “you--none of you--can tell what you contribute. You’re women, aren’t you?” He glanced through the door, at the stairs where her mother was coming down. “That’s one thing you can’t help or evade. And--you don’t know what you contribute.”

Lucia, during dinner, thought about it. It was a new kind of thinking for her: what she didn’t know; what she could not possibly determine; what didn’t balance with anything else. In it, she forgot the somewhat disheartening disclosures of the day’s work--that her technique was laborious rather than a joy--that it was hard, impossible almost, to get back at the end of the years; and remembered to write to Tommy. She wondered if he had put his boots away, and if he was homesick. Funny little freckle-faced Tommy! Two stubborn tears, like those that had worked their way out of his brave brown eyes when he parted from her, rose suddenly to Lucia’s. How weak she was! she told herself, the next minute, impatiently.

But she wrote to Tommy that night, before she went to bed. And at the end she said--instead of the caution about colds he hated so--“Mother wishes she could kiss you good-night--really, truly good-night, little son!” When she had sent the letter, she was inclined to be scornful of that last bit. The foolish third person--it was only an advanced baby-talk, that in her training of Tommy she had rigorously excluded.

Next day she worked harder than ever, and when John’s telegram came, she did not even know it. She was upstairs, putting her eyes out drawing a bit of lace on the gown of a gorgeous Wenzell lady. Come right, it would not. All afternoon she toiled; got a smudge on her nose that stayed there when Ada Barker came to tea, and a general irritability that caused that young woman to say later, “Well, I didn’t know Lucia Gwynne had gone off so! She’s positively untidy, and so sharp!”

That, Lucia’s mother had reason to echo during those twenty-four hours. But mothers don’t echo, somehow. They exonerate. Mrs. Loring was kept busy exonerating, while that bit of lace tied itself up in knots, and haughtily refused unravelling. When in the evening John Gwynne wired “why doesn’t Lucia write to me?” Lucia’s mother replied, “She’s drawing a piece of lace.” When, an hour later, he demanded, “What in thunder ails her?” Mrs. Loring wired back, “Why don’t you come and see for yourself?”

He came.

Three days after Lucia had arrived, throwing herself down on the little sofa, her husband followed suit. He looked extraordinarily big there.

“Where’s Lucia?” he asked instantly.

“Drawing lace,” said Mrs. Loring--about whose pretty mouth were little lines.

“Is she mad?” demanded her husband.

“She has been--very near it.” Mrs. Loring looked intently into Gwynne’s face. “Lucia thinks too much. You don’t give her enough to do.”

“Thinks too much--not enough to do? Why, isn’t she my wife? What should she do, except give orders to the servants and enjoy herself? I don’t want her to do anything!”

“Then you mustn’t be surprised,” said her mother, “if she comes off to me and draws lace.”

“What? If she--what?”

“If she finds something to do for herself.”

“But she’s always busy--rushing about, with a thousand things to--! That’s one reason why I was glad to have her get away: the only reason. She looked fagged to death. And you say she hasn’t anything to do!”

“Nothing with her head. Only her arms and legs--and nerves. For Lucia that’s not enough. If her head isn’t busied, it gets away from her, and----”

“You tell her to come down here,” broke in John Gwynne suddenly. “_Please!_ Tell her to come down here, and----”

Lucia appeared in the door. There were two smudges on her nose. “I simply can’t get that wretched”--she began: then, with a gasp, “Oh! _John!_ Why--why----”

“Hello, little girl!” John caught her, smudges and all, half way across the room. Mrs. Loring vanished. “Are you--glad to see me?”

Lucia’s lips were buried somewhere about his ear. “But--I--I--yes,” she murmured with difficulty. “I--was trying to draw lace.”

“Well,” said John Gwynne, “you’re going to draw a good deal bigger things than that.” John Gwynne could act quickly in matters of importance. “I’ve a million-dollar combine up for dicker this week--Fayerweather and Lodge and some of the fellows are in it with me--and it’s to do with an art collection of a regent prince who’s gone bankrupt and who’s got to sell to pay his debts. We’re thinking of buying; and I want your--why, Lucia, honey, what’s the matter? Sit down. Why----”

For Lucia was crying. First, softly, then tempestuously; as though her heart would break. John drew her down by him on the sofa, and patted her hand. “It’s all right, honey,” he said steadily, “it’s all right. I know--I took you by surprise, and you were tired to death, and--well, maybe you’d better come home, Lucy.”

“Oh, John--John,” she tried to control herself, “you don’t understand. It’s not that--it’s--John, don’t you see, I’ve tried all along to _keep tab_ on things! I’ve put down so much on your side, and so much on mine; and then added them up. What you gave out I gave--and they always tallied. And at last--oh, don’t you see how dreary it got? How worthless? But _I couldn’t stop doing it_. I was like a wound-up clock. And so----”

“And so now you are going to begin a new column called _our_ side,” put in John Gwynne, covering her hands. “And, Lucia! It’ll be so mixed up, and in such big figures, you can never count ’em--my dear! And, anyhow, we’ll be too busy. I’m going to send for Tommy--after you and I----” with swift tenderness, he kissed her.

While Gwynne, next day, was standing with Lucia in the room hung with the wistaria and pale rosebuds of ten years ago, Ambrose Fayerweather was saying to Mrs. Loring, “but I thought she came to make a _long_ visit?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Loring defensively, “she stayed three days!”

X

ROGER--PLAINLY AN IDLER

“Eh bien, Marcel! and how does it go?” I asked.

“Oh, it goes, m’sieu--it goes, always. But----”

“Yes? ‘But’----?”

“Well, m’sieu” (pulling my chair out, uneasily), “it is the season of the Americans, and--but pardon, m’sieu!”