Mrs. Fitz Part 48

The King returned from his walk, and suave and subtle of countenance, it pleased him to toy with a cup of Mrs. Arbuthnot's tea, while he toasted his muddy gaiters at the fire.

"My daughter has not returned from her ride?"

"No, sir," I answered him.

"The last ride together," said the King, gently. "One of your excellent English poets has a poem about it, has he not?"

A thrill pa.s.sed through my nerves at the almost cruel directness of the King's speech. I saw that in the same moment the eyes of Mrs.

Arbuthnot had filled with tears.

"You have great poets in England," said the King, softly. "They are the chief glories of a nation, and your country is rich in them. We have great poets in Illyria also. There is Bolder. We are all proud to be the countrymen of Bolder. When you come to see us at Blaenau I think you will like to meet him."

As the King spoke in his paternal voice, I was conscious of his hand upon the breast of my coat. He had pinned a piece of black ribbon upon it, to which was attached a silver star.

"I am afraid, sir," I said, suffering some embarra.s.sment, "no man ever did less to deserve the Order of the Silver Star of Illyria."

The King took my hand in his with that wonderful cordial simplicity that was so hard to resist.

"A friend in need is a friend indeed, Mr. Arbuthnot, as your English saying has it. And, madame, when together we lead the cotillon at Blaenau, I hope you will honour us by wearing this."

The King laid a jewel of much beauty upon the tea-table.

"Oh, sir," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, smiling faintly through wet eyelashes.

Standing before the fire, teacup in hand, the King talked to us quite simply and pleasantly and sincerely. He was a man of great power of mind and his outlook upon life was large and direct.

"You have many ways in this country that I should like to see in ours,"

he said. "But we in Illyria make haste slowly. The climate is not so bracing. I am afraid we do not think so forcibly. And there is a wider gulf between the rich and the poor."

There was a note of regret in the King's tone. He seemed to be turning his eyes to the future, and in the process his face grew tired and melancholy. It was then that I realised that this man of infinite vigour and power was said to be near the end of his course.

At dinner we were enlivened by his gaiety. His charm was hard to resist, so rich and full it was and so spontaneous. But my thoughts strayed ever away from the King, his wisdom and his persiflage, to those who were one flesh in the sight of G.o.d, who were dining together for the last time.

Their courage was a n.o.ble, even an amazing thing. The stoicism with which they ate and drank and bore a part in the conversation while a chasm had opened beneath their feet was almost incredible. Throughout the perpetual oscillation from comedy to tragedy, from tragedy to comedy, from comedy to tragedy again of their life together, they had borne their parts with a heroic constancy, and even in this dark phase they were equal to their task.

The die was cast. On the morrow the Princess would return to her people, marry the Archduke, and when the time came accept the throne.

It was part of the dreadful covenant the King had exacted that she would never see Fitz and their child again.

I pa.s.sed a night of weary wretchedness. Do what I would, I could not keep Fitz out of my thoughts. About three o'clock I rose and dressed and put on my overcoat and walked out into the garden. Somehow I expected to find him there. But there was not a trace of him, and every window in the house was dark. A spirit of desolation seemed to pervade everything--so dark and chill was the night. There was not a star to be seen.

I went back to my room, coaxed up the fire, seated myself beside it and lit a pipe. Presently I heard a footfall on the stairs. It was Irene, pale and weary with much weeping. Daylight found her asleep in my arms with her head on my shoulder.

The day of the King's departure had come at last. There was a general scurry of preparation, but precisely at eleven o'clock a procession of six motor cars started from our door for Middleham railway station, whence a special train would proceed to Southampton. It was Sonia's wish that Irene and I should accompany her to the train; and poor Fitz, half stunned as he was, determined to play out the game to the end, and with one of his odd outbursts of cynicism affirmed his sportsmanlike intention of "being in at the death."

The King, his daughter, the Chancellor, and Mrs. Arbuthnot were in the second car, preceded by a special escort from Scotland Yard. Fitz and I had the third to ourselves; the Secretaries were in the fourth; the fifth and sixth conveyed the valets, her Royal Highness's maid, and a considerable quant.i.ty of luggage.

As the procession, at the modest rate of twelve miles an hour, came into the pleasant village of Lymeswold, where our revered Vicar has his cure of souls, there was a considerable amount of bunting displayed in the vicinity of the Coach and Horses. And from the windows of the Vicarage itself depended the Union Jack side by side with the silver Star of Illyria on a green ground. Mrs. Vicar waved a white pocket-handkerchief from the gate of the manse, but the Vicar was bearing a chief part in a more dramatic tableau that had been arranged on the village green. Here the village school was drawn up, the girls in nice white pinafores and the boys looking almost painfully well washed. Each had a small flag that was waved frantically, and the Vicar standing at their head led a prodigious quant.i.ty of cheering, while Ferdinand the Twelfth took off his hat and bowed.

But all this was merely a prelude to the historic spectacle that we came upon presently. At the top of the steep hill leading to the Marl Pits, that favourite haunt of "the stinkin' Middleshire phocks," lo and behold! all the Crackanthorpe horses, all the Crackanthorpe men, not to mention their ladies, their hounds and the entire hunt establishment, even unto Peter the terrier, were a.s.sembled in full array of battle, as became the hour of eleven o'clock in the morning of a rare scenting day in the middle of January. The cavalcade lined each side of the road, and our motor cars pa.s.sed through it on their lowest speed, to a running accompaniment of cheers and hunting noises and a waving of hats and handkerchiefs.

Evidently the scene had been carefully stage-managed and formed a handsome and appropriate _amende_. It did not fail of its appeal to the broken-hearted circus rider from Vienna. She responded by kissing her hand repeatedly, and her father lifted his hat and bowed continually as though it were a state procession.

The heart of Mrs. Arbuthnot was in pieces, but it was a great moment in the history of the clan. The china-blue eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with their tears, but they were still capable of radiating a subtle feminine light of triumph. The n.o.ble Master blew a blast on his horn and his aide-de-camp, Joseph Jocelyn De Vere Vane-Anstruther, marked the royal progress by hoisting his hat on his whip. As we pa.s.sed Mrs. Catesby, who looked very red, the brims of whose hat looked wider and whose whole appearance approximated more nearly than ever to that of Mr.

Weller the Elder, I bestowed a special salutation upon her, of, I fear, somewhat ironical dimensions. The Great Lady responded by shaking her whip at me in a decidedly truculent manner.

Our procession pa.s.sed on to Middleham railway station, which we reached about a quarter to twelve. A considerable crowd had a.s.sembled about its precincts. The roadway and the entrance to the station were guarded by a body of mounted police, and a small detachment of the Middleshire Yeomanry in the charge of no less a person than Major George Catesby, who saluted us with his sword.

On the platform we were received by a number of local dignitaries, and foremost among these, tall and austere, but with the faint light of humour in his countenance, was Lieutenant-Colonel John Chalmers Coverdale, C.M.G., late of his Majesty's Carabineers.

The King and his Chancellor took a brief but cordial leave of us and stepped briskly into the royal saloon; and then I felt the pressure of a woman's hand, and I heard a low, broken whisper, "Be good for my sake to Nevil and little Marie." The Princess then took the hands of Mrs.

Arbuthnot in each of her own, kissed her wet cheeks, and was handed into the train by the husband she had promised never to see in this life again.

CHAPTER x.x.x

REACTION

The week which followed the royal departure was a season of reaction at Dympsfield House. The tension of our recent life had been well-nigh unendurable. But now the die was cast, the problem solved; we could live and move and enjoy our being according to our wont.

To be sure the unhappy Fitz was still our anxiety. He and his small daughter were still under our roof, and would so remain until the house of his fathers had been rebuilt or until such time as he should choose some other asylum for his shattered life.

It is not too much to say that Fitz, with all his quiddity, had become dear to us. The tragic wreck of his life had called forth all that latent n.o.bility which I at any rate, as his oldest friend, had always known to be there. His submission to the fate which he had himself invoked had seemed to soften the grosser elements that were in his clay. He had now only his small elf of four to live for. In that vivid atom of mortality were reproduced many of the characteristics of the ill-starred "circus rider from Vienna."

During the first few days a kind of stupor lay upon Fitz. He hardly seemed able to realise what had happened. He went out hunting and actively superintended the rebuilding of the Grange, almost as if nothing had occurred to him. But, all too soon, this merciful veil was withdrawn from his mind. He became consumed by restlessness. He could not sleep nor eat his food; he could not settle to any sort of occupation; nothing seemed able to engage his interest; his mind lost its stability, and slowly but surely his will began to lose that reawakened power that it had seemed to be the special function of his marriage to sustain and promote.

By the time the first week had pa.s.sed we began to have forebodings.

Already signs were not wanting that the demons of a sinister inheritance were silently marshalling themselves in order that they might swoop down upon him. One afternoon I found him asleep on a sofa drunk.

As Coverdale was well acquainted with his temperament and all the most salient facts in its history, and as, moreover, he was a man for whose natural soundness of judgment I had the greatest respect, I was moved to take him into my confidence.

"He must get away from England," said Coverdale, "for a time at any rate. And he must go soon."

This was an opinion with which I agreed. It happened that Coverdale knew a man who was about to start on a journey across Equatorial Africa and who proposed to form a hunting camp and indulge in some big game shooting by the way. Such a scheme appeared so eminently suited to Fitz's immediate needs that I hailed it gladly.

Alas! when I discussed this project with him he declined wholly to entertain it; moreover he declined with all that odd decision which was one of his chief characteristics.

"No," he said. "I must stay here and see to the building of the house, and I must look after Marie."

It was in vain that I launched my arguments. The scheme did not appeal to him and there, as far as he was concerned, was the end to the matter.

"I must look after Marie," he said. "We are getting her to do sums.

Her mother could never do a sum to save her life."

Argument was vain. Such a nature was incapable of accepting a suggestion from an outside source; the mainspring of all its actions lay within.

The total failure of the attempt to get him to respond to so hopeful an alternative vexed me sorely. At the time it seemed to promise the only means of saving him from the danger which already had him in its toils.

He grew more and more restless; his distaste for food grew more p.r.o.nounced, and in an appallingly short time it became clear to us that whatever there remained to be done for him must be done at once.