Majesty Part 25

6

Ducardi, Dutri, Leoni and Thesbia arrived at Altseeborgen; they were to accompany Othomar on his official journey through Europe.

It was one of the last days, in the morning, when Othomar was walking with Herman towards the woods. The sun was shining, the woods were fragrant, the foot slid over the smooth pine-needles. The princes sat down on the ground, near a great pool of water; around them rose the straight pine-trunks, with their knotty peaks of side-branches; the sky faded into the distance with blue c.h.i.n.ks showing between the projecting foliage of needles.

Herman leant against a tree-trunk; Othomar stretched himself flat on his back, with his hands beneath his head:

"It will soon be over now," he said, softly.

Herman made no reply, but mechanically swept the pine-needles together with his hand. Nor did Othomar speak again; he swallowed his last moments of relaxation and repose in careful draughts, each draught a pure joy that would never return. In the woods a stillness reigned as of death, as though the earth were uninhabited; the melancholy of things that are coming to an end hung about the trees.

Suddenly Othomar took Herman's hand and pressed it:

"Thank you," he said.

"What for?" asked Herman.

"For the pleasure we have had together. Mamma was right: I did not know you, Herman...."

"Nor I you, dear fellow."

"It has been a pleasant time. How delightfully we travelled together, like two tourists! How grand and glorious India was, don't you think?

And j.a.pan, how curious! I never cared much for hunting; but, when I was with you, I understood it and felt the excitement of it: I shall never forget our tiger-hunt! The eyes of the brute, the danger facing you: it's invigorating. At a moment like that, you feel yourself becoming primitive, like the first man. The look of one of those tigers drives away a lot of your hesitation. That's another danger, which mamma is always so afraid of: oh, how enervating it is; it eats up all your energy!... And the nights on the Indian Ocean, on board our _Viking_.

That great wide circle around you, all those stars over your head. How often we sat looking at them, with our legs on the bulwarks!... Perhaps it's a mistake to sit dreaming so long, but it rests one so, it rests one so! I shall never forget it, never...."

"Well, old chap, we must do it again."

"No, one never does anything again. What's done is done. Nothing returns, not a single moment of our lives. Later on it is always different...."

He looked round about him, as though some one might be listening; then he whispered:

"Herman, I have something to tell you."

"What is it?"

"Something to confide to you. But first tell me: that time with the tiger, you didn't think me a great coward, did you?"

"No, certainly not!"

"Well, I'm a coward for all that. I'm frightened, always frightened. The doctors don't know it, because I never tell them. But I always am...."

"But of what, my dear chap?"

"Of something inside myself. Look here, Herman, I'm so afraid ... that I shall not be able to stick it out. That at a given moment of my life I shall be too weak. That suddenly I shall not be able to act and then, then ..."

He shuddered; they look at each other.

"It won't do," he continued, mechanically, as though strengthened by Herman's glance. "I shall fight against it, against that dread of mine.... Do you believe in presentiments?"

"Yes, inversely: mine always turn out the opposite!"

"Then I hope that my presentiment won't come true either."

"But what is it?"

"That within the year ... one of us ... at Lipara ... will be dead."

Herman stared at him fixedly. For all his manliness and his muscular strength, there lay deep down within him a certain heritage of the superst.i.tion that comes murmuring from the sea as with voices of distant prophecy, a superst.i.tion lulled by the beautiful legends of their Gothlandic sea, which, syren-like, sings strange, mystic fairy-tales.

Perhaps he had never until this moment felt that some of it flowed in his rich blood; and he tried to shake it off as nonsense:

"But Othomar, do be rational!" he said.

"I can do nothing to prevent it, Herman. I don't think about it, but I feel little sharp stings, like thoughts suddenly springing up. And lately ... oh, lately, it has been worse; it has become a dream, a nightmare! I was walking through the shopping-streets of Lipara and from all the shops came black people and they measured out bales of black c.r.a.pe, with yard-measures, till the streets were filled with it and the c.r.a.pe lay in the town as though in clouds and surged over the town like a ma.s.s of black muslin. It made everything dark: the sun could not shine through it and everything lay in shadow. The people did not seem to recognize me and, when I asked what all that c.r.a.pe was for, they whispered in my ears, 'Hush, hush, it's ... it's for the Imperial!' ...

O Herman, then I woke and I was damp with perspiration and it was as though I still heard it echoing after me: 'For the Imperial, it's for the Imperial!'"

Herman got up; he was a little nervous:

"Come," said he, "shall we go?... Dreams: don't pay any attention to dreams, Othomar!"

Othomar also rose:

"No, I oughtn't to pay attention to them," he repeated, in a strange tone. "I never used to."

"Othomar," Herman began, decidedly, as though he wished to say something.

"Don't talk to me for a minute; let me be for a moment," Othomar interrupted, quickly, anxiously.

They walked through the woods in silence. Othomar looked about him, strangely, looked at the ground. Herman compressed his lips tightly and puckered up his forehead: he was annoyed. But he said nothing. In a few minutes Othomar's strange glances grew calmer and quieted down into their usual gentle melancholy.

Then he gave a little sigh, as if he were catching his breath:

"Don't be angry," he said, putting his arm through Herman's.

His voice had resumed its usual tone.

"Perhaps it's as well that I have told you; now perhaps it will leave me. So don't be angry, Herman.... I promise you I shan't talk like that again and I shall do my best also not to think like that any more. But, when I have anything on my mind, I must tell it to somebody. And surely that's much better than for ever keeping silent about it! And then, you see, soon I shall have no more time to think of such things: to-morrow we shall be at Copenhagen and then life will resume its normal course.

How can I have talked so queerly? How did I take it into my head? Even I can't remember. It seems very silly now, even to myself."

He gave a little laugh and then, earnestly:

"After all, I'm glad that we have had a talk by ourselves, that I have been able to thank you. We're friends now, aren't we?"

"Yes, of course we're friends," replied Herman, laughing in the midst of his annoyance. "But all the same I shall never know you thoroughly!"

"Don't say that just because of a single presentiment, which I think foolish myself. What else is there in me that's puzzling?..."

"No, there's nothing else!" Herman a.s.sented. "You're a good chap. I don't know how it has come about, but I like you very much...."

They left the woods; the sea lay before them. Like life itself, it lay before them, with all the mystery of its depths, wherein a multiple soul seemed to move, rounding wave upon wave. Nameless and innumerable were its changes of colour, its moods of incessant movement; and it spewed a foam of pa.s.sion on its fiercely towering crests. But this pa.s.sion was merely its superficial manifestation, the exuberance of its endless vitality: from its depths there murmured, in the inimitable melodies of its millions of voices, the mystery of its soul, as it were a glory which the sky above alone knew.