Majesty Part 13

"Forgive me, highness, if I intrude ... if I disturb you...."

He smiled, said no, apologized for his costume, feeling surprised and pleased....

She saw that his eyes were swimming with moisture:

"I am indiscreet," she said, "but I couldn't help it; I felt I must find out how you were, highness.... Perhaps I wished to surprise you as well: I don't quite know. Something impelled me: I could not help coming to you. You are my guest and my crown-prince; I longed to see for myself how you were.... Your highness bore up well at dinner, but I felt...."

Her voice flowed on, soft and monotonous, as though with drops of balsam. He asked her to sit down; she did so; he sat down by her side; the dark cloak slipped off and she was magnificent, with her white neck, siren-like in her opalescent, pale-green watered silk. He noticed that she had laid aside the jewels which she had worn at dinner.

"I wanted to come to you quietly, through that door," she resumed, "in order to tell you once more, to tell you alone, how unspeakably thankful I am that your highness' life has been preserved...."

Her voice trembled; her ebony glances grew moist; the light of the great candles in the silver candelabra shimmered over the silk of her dress, played with soft light and slumbering shadow in the modelling of her face, in the curve of her bosom.

He pressed her hand; she retained his:

"Was your highness crying when I came in?" she asked.

His tears were still flowing, a last sob heaved through his body.

"Why?" she asked again. "Or am I indiscreet?..."

He looked at her; at this moment he could have told her everything. And, though he contained himself, yet he gave her the essence of his grief:

"I was sad," he said, "because they seem to hate me. Nothing makes me so sad as their hatred."

She looked at him long, felt his sorrow, understood him with her feminine tact, with her courtier-like swiftness of comprehension, which had ripened in the immediate contact of her sovereigns. She understood him: he was the crown-prince, he must suffer his special princely suffering; he must drink an imperial cup of bitterness to the dregs. She remembered that she herself had suffered, so often and so violently, for love, pa.s.sionate woman that she was; she understood that his suffering was different from hers, but doubtless more terrible, as it seized him already at so young an age and as it depended not upon his own single soul, but upon the millions of souls of his empire. She too had suffered because she had not been loved; he also suffered like that. And so in one instant she understood him quite entirely, with all her strange woman's heart.

A thrill of compa.s.sion welled up in her breast as a yet unknown delight and, like a fervent, gentle oracle, she uttered the words:

"They do not all hate you...."

He recognized her pa.s.sionate glances of the day before. He remembered her kiss. He looked at her long, still hesitating a little in the presence of the unknown. Then he extended his arms and, with a dull cry of despair, hoa.r.s.e with hunger for consolation, he called to her in his helplessness:

"Oh, Alexa!..."

She first smiled, with radiant eyes, then flung herself bodily into his young arms, crushing him against her bare breast. She felt like a maid and a mother in one. But, when he clung to her in a wild pa.s.sion of despair, she felt herself to be nothing but a lover. She knew that he would be her last love. The knowledge made her proudly sad and diabolically happy. Her kisses clattered upon his eyes like hail....

And in their love, that night, they mingled the wormwood of what they both were suffering, each seeking consolation for life's sorrows in the other....

9

"To HIS IMPERIAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF XARA, "LYCILIA.

"THE IMPERIAL, "LIPARA, "--_April_, 18--.

"MY DEAR BROTHER,

"I want to tell you before you read it in those tedious papers that our respected father and emperor this morning, on my tenth birthday, dubbed me a knight of St. Ladislas in the knights' hall of the palace. You can understand how proud I feel. I shall not tell you about the ceremony, because you will remember that yourself. I was very much impressed as I walked up to our father between all those tall knights in their blue mantles and knelt before his throne. I wore my new uniform of a lieutenant in the guards. The king-at-arms, the Marquis of Ezzera, held up the rule of the order on a cushion, on which I took the oath. I must have looked rather small with my little mantle: the cross of St.

Ladislas was just as big on it, however, as on those of all the others.

I felt that they were all looking over my head; and that is not a pleasant feeling when you are the hero of the day. But of course I am the youngest of the knights, so there is no harm in my being a little shorter. The sword our father gave me is also a little smaller than that of the other knights, but the hilt is rather pretty and blazes with precious stones. Still, I think I prefer the chasing on the scabbard of yours, but when I am eighteen--so in eight years from now!--I am to have another sword and of course another mantle too.

"Mamma was terribly alarmed and nervous when she heard of that man who attacked you and she wanted to have you recalled at once, because it did not seem safe where you are; and she simply could not understand that this could not be done. But safe: who is safe nowadays? One's not safe in war either and not even here in the Imperial. One shouldn't think so much of all that safety, that's what I say; but of course mamma is a woman and therefore she thinks differently from what we do. The riots and the martial law also upset her, but I think it rather jolly: everything's military now, you know. That Von Fest is a fine fellow. I should like to shake hands with him and to thank him myself; but, as I can't, I beg you _particularly_ to do so for me and _on no account_ to forget it. You have heard, no doubt, through General Ducardi, that papa is going to make Von Fest a commander of the Imperial Orb. What a pity that we can't create him a knight of St. Ladislas, but for that of course he would have to be a Liparian and not a Gothlander.

"Now, dear brother, I must finish, because Colonel Fasti is expecting me for my fencing-lesson. Give my _very kindest_ regards to Herman and General Ducardi and remember me to the others; and accept for yourself the fond embrace of your affectionate brother,

"BERENGAR, "Marquis of Thracyna "(Knight of St. Ladislas)."

CHAPTER III

1

It was after the opening of the new parliament. The sun streamed as though with square patches of molten gold along the white palaces of the town, touching with blue what was shadow in the corners.

Two regiments of grenadiers, red and blue, stood in two double lines, drawn up along the princ.i.p.al streets which led from the Parliament House to the Imperial. The crowd pressed and tossed and cheered; all the windows, open wide, swarmed with heads; people looked on from every balcony. A shot thundered from Fort Wenceslas on the sea; the emperor returned; the grenadiers presented arms in company after company....

The lancers lead the van, blue and white, with streaming pennants at the points of their lances, six squadrons of them. The whole strength of the throne-guards, white, with breastplates of glittering gold flashing in the sunlight above the black satin skins of the stallions, ride halberd on thigh, surrounding the gently swaying state-carriages, scintillating with rich gilding and bright crystal and two of them crowned with the imperial crown, with teams of six and eight plumed greys. The horses foam over their bits, impatient, nervously pawing the ground, prancing because of the slow, ceremonious pace along the blinding, flagged roadway. In the first coach, the master of ceremonies, the Count of Threma; in the second, with the crown and the team of eight--and the roar of the cheering rises from behind the hedge of soldiers--the emperor, his uniform all gold, his robes of scarlet and ermine, his crown upon his head. It is the only time that the people have seen their emperor wear his crown.

And they cheer. But the emperor makes no acknowledgment: through the gla.s.s of the coach he looks out, to left and right in turns, at the crowd, with a proud smile of self-consciousness and victory; and his face, full of race, full of force, cold with will, proud with authority, is inaccessible in its smile as that of a Roman emperor on his triumphal entry.

It is a triumphal entry, this return from the Parliament House to his Imperial: a triumph over that which they denied him and upon which he has now laid his heavy hand, showing them all that his mere will can bend them to his word and purpose. And the cheers rise louder and louder from that capricious crowd, restrained like a woman by a ruler whom it now adores for his strength and admires for his imperial might, upon which he leans, as he pa.s.ses from the Parliament House to his own palace, as though it were a whole army that lived upon his nod; and louder and louder, louder and louder the cheers ring out that sunny afternoon over the marble houses; and the emperor smiles continually, as though his smile meant:

"Cheer away! What else can you do but cheer?..."

In the next coach rides the Duke of Xara, robed, crowned; he stares rigidly over the vociferating crowd with the same glance that his mother reserves for the populace. In the next to that, the new governor-general of the capital, the head of the emperor's military household, the Duke of Mena-Doni, a rougher soldier than the Marquis of Dazzara and a less practised courtier, under whose military fist the white capital, like a beaten slave, crouched low during the martial law proclaimed after a single hour of disturbance that ventured to follow upon the emperor's decision to dissolve the house of deputies. His coa.r.s.e, sensual mouth smiles with the same smile as that of the emperor, whose rude force he seems to impersonate; and he too seems to say:

"Cheer away, shout hurrah!"

Then the following carriages: the imperial chancellor, Count Myxila; the ministers: seven of them forming part of the twelve who wished to resign, the others chosen from among the most authoritative of the old n.o.bility in the house of peers itself!

Cheer away, shout hurrah!

Behind the coaches of the higher court-officials, the Xara cuira.s.siers, the crown-prince's own regiment; behind them, a regiment of colonials: Africans, black as polished ebony, with eyes like beads, their thick mouths thrust forwards, clad in the muslin-like snow of their burnouses; behind them, two regiments of hussars on heavy horses, in their long, green, gold-frogged coats and their tall busbies.

Was ever parliament opened thus before, with such a display of military force? And outside the town, on the high parade-grounds, do not the people know that there are troops drawn together from every province, camping there for the manoeuvres, the date of which has been accelerated? And the increased garrisons of the forts, the squadron in the harbour? Do the people themselves feel that they can do nothing else than cheer and is that why they are cheering now, happy once more in their cheering, with Roman docility and southern submission, enamoured of the emperor because of the weight of his crushing fist, loving the crown-prince for the attractive charm of his att.i.tude in the north, or perhaps because they think him interesting after an unsuccessful attempt on his life?

And they seem not to feel that, through the grenadiers presenting arms, they see neither the emperor nor the crown-prince saluting; they cheer away, loving them in spite, perhaps because, of their indifference; they cheer away like madmen....

Slowly the procession wends its way along the interminable main streets.

The whole city, despite its marble, trembles with the clatter of the horses' hoofs upon the flagged pavement. Between the front escort and the endless escort in the rear, the state-carriages, with their glittering throne-guards, shimmer like a kind of jewel, small, rare, carefully guarded. The cavalry are at this moment the soul of Lipara, their echoing step its heart-beat; and between the grenadiers and the tall houses the ma.s.sed and cheering populace seems to have hardly room to breathe.