One Day Part 5

"I don't wonder at the court escapades that occasionally scandalize all Europe," said the Boy. "I don't wonder at all! The real wonder is that more of the poor slaves to royalty do not snap the chains that bind them, and bolt for freedom. It would be like me,--very like me!"

And Verdayne could say nothing. He knew of more reasons than one why it would be very like the Boy to do such a thing, and he sighed as he thought that some time, perhaps, he might do it. And yet he could not blame him!

"Father Paul," went on the Boy, his thoughts taking a new turn, "you are a bachelor--a hopeless old bachelor--and you have never told me why. Of course there's a woman or two in it! We have talked about everything else under the sun, I think--you and I--but, curiously enough, we have never talked of love! Yet I feel sure that you believe in it. Don't you, Father Paul? Come now, confess! I am in a mood for sentiment to-day, and I want to hear what drove you to a life of single blessedness--what made my romantic old pal such a confirmed old celibate! I don't believe that you object to matrimony on general principles. Tell me your love-story, please, Father Paul."

"What makes you so certain that I have had one, Boy?"

"Oh, I don't know just why, but I am certain! It's there in your lips when you smile, in your eyes when you are moved, in your voice when you allow yourself to become reminiscent. You are full of memories that you have never spoken of to me. And now, Father Paul--now is the accepted time!"

For a moment Verdayne was nonplussed. What could he reply? There was only one love-story in his life, and that one would end only with his own existence, but he could not tell that story to the Boy--yet!

Suddenly, however, an old, half-forgotten memory flashed across his mind. Of course he had a love-story. He would tell the Boy the story of Isabella Waring.

So, as they sat together over their coffee and cigarettes, Verdayne told his young guest about the Curate's daughter, who had all unconsciously wielded such an influence over the events of his past life. He told of the girl's kindness to him when he had broken his collarbone; of her a.s.sistance so freely offered to his mother; of her jolly, lively spirits, her amiable disposition and general gay good-fellowship; and then of the unlucky kiss that had aroused the suspicion and august displeasure of Lady Henrietta, and had sent her erring son a wanderer over the face of Europe--to forget!

He painted his sadness at leaving home--and Isabella--in pathetic colors. Indeed, he became quite affecting when he pictured his parting with Isabella, and when in repeating his parting words, he managed to get just the right suspicion of a tremble into his voice, he really felt quite proud of his ability as a story-teller.

The Boy was plainly touched.

"What foolishness to think that such a love as yours could be cured merely by sending you abroad!" he said.

"Just what I thought, Boy--utter folly!"

"Of course it didn't cure you, Father Paul. You didn't learn to forget, did you? Oh, it was cruel to send you away when you loved her like that! I didn't think it of Aunt Henrietta--I didn't indeed!"

"Oh, you mustn't blame mother, Boy. She meant it for the best, just as your Uncle Peter now means it for the best for you and yours. She thought I would forget."

"Was she very, very beautiful, Father Paul? But of course she was, if _you_ loved her!"

"She was pretty, Boy--at least I thought so."

"Big or little?"

"Tall--very tall."

"I like tall, magnificent women. There's something majestic about them.

I hope the Princess Elodie"--and the Boy made a wry face--"will be quite six foot tall. I could never love a woman small either in body or mind. I am sure I should have liked your Isabella, Father Paul. Majestic women of majestic minds for me, for there you have the royal stamp of nature that makes some women born to the purple. Yes, I am sure I should have liked Isabella. Tell me more."

Paul Verdayne smiled. He should hardly have considered Isabella Waring in any degree "majestic"--but he did not say so.

"She was charmingly healthy and robust--athletic, you know, and all that--with light fluffy hair. I believe she used to wear it in a net.

Blue eyes, of course--thoroughly English, you know--and a fine comrade.

Liked everything that I liked, as most girls at that age didn't, naturally. Of course, mother couldn't appreciate her. She wasn't her style at all. And she naturally thought--mother did, I mean--that when she sent me away 'for my health'"--the Boy smiled--"that I'd forget all about her."

Verdayne began to think he wasn't telling it well after all. He looked out of the window. It was getting hard to meet the frank look in the Boy's blue eyes.

"Forget!" and there was a fine scorn in the tones of the young enthusiast. "But you didn't! you didn't! I'm sure you didn't!"

The romantic story appealed strongly to the Boy's mood.

"But why didn't you marry her when you came back, Father Paul? Did she die?"

"No, she didn't die. She is still living, I believe."

"Then why didn't you marry her, Father Paul? Did they still oppose it?

Surely when you came home and they saw you had not forgotten, it was different. Tell me how it was when you came home."

And Paul Verdayne, in a voice he tried his best to make very sad and heart-broken, replied with downcast eyes, "When I came home, Boy, I found Isabella Waring ready to marry a curate, and happy over the prospect of an early wedding. So, you see, my share in her life was over."

The Boy's face fell. He had not antic.i.p.ated this ending to the romance.

How could any woman ever have proved faithless to his Father Paul! And how could he, poor man, still keep his firm, dauntless belief in the goodness and truth of human nature after so bitter an experience as this! It shocked his sense of right and justice--this story. He wished he had not asked to hear it.

"Thank you for telling me, Father Paul. It was kind of you to open your past life to me like this, and very unkind of me to ask what I should have known would cost you such pain to tell. I am truly sorry for it all, Father Paul. Thank you again--and forgive me!"

"It's a relief to open one's heart, sometimes, to one who can sympathize," replied Verdayne, with a deep sigh. But he felt like a miserable hypocrite.

Poor Isabella Waring! He had hardly given her a pa.s.sing thought in twenty years. And now he had vilified her to help himself out of a tight corner. Well, she was always a good sort. She wouldn't mind being used--or even misused--to help out her "old pal" this way. Still it made him feel mean, and he was glad when the Boy dropped the subject and turned again to his own difficulties.

But the mind of the young prince was restive, that day. Nothing held his attention long. It seemed, like his eye, to be roving hither and thither, seeking something it never could find.

"You have been to America, Father Paul, haven't you?" he asked.

America? Yes, Verdayne had been to America. It was in America that he had pa.s.sed one season of keenest anguish. He had good reason to remember it--such good reason that in all their wanderings about the world he had never seen fit to take the Boy there.

But something had aroused the young fellow's pa.s.sing interest, and now nothing would satisfy him save that he must hear all about America; and so, for a full hour, as best he could, Verdayne described the country of the far West as he remembered it.

"Nothing in America appealed to me so strongly as the gigantic prairies," he said at last. "You were so deeply moved by our trip to Africa, Boy, that you must remember the impression of vastness and infinity the great desert made upon us. Well, in the glorious West of America it is as if the desert had sprung to life, and from every grain of sand had been born a blade of gra.s.s, waving and fluttering with the joy of new birth. Oh, it is truly wonderful, Paul! Once I went there with the soil of my heart scorched as dry and lifeless as the burning sands of Sahara, but in that revelation of a new creation, some pulse within me sprang mysteriously into being again. It could never be the same heart that it once was, but it would now know the semblance of a new existence. And I took up the burden of life again--albeit a strange, new life--and came home to fight it out. The prairies did all that for me, Boy!" He paused for a moment, and then spoke in a sadder tone. "It was soon after that, Paul, that I first found you."

Paul Zalenska thought that he understood. That, of course, was after Isabella Waring had wrecked his life. Cruel, heartless Isabella! He had never even heard her name before to-day, but he hated her, wherever she might be!

"There is a legend they tell out there that is very pretty and appropriate," went on Verdayne, dreamily. "They say that when the Creator made the world, He had indiscriminately strewn continents and valleys, mountains and seas, islands and lakes, until He came to the western part of America, and despite His omnipotence, was puzzled to know what new glories He could possibly contrive for this corner of the earth. Something majestic and mighty it must be, He thought, and yet of an altogether different beauty from that in the rest of the universe--something individual, distinctive. The seas still overflowed the land, as they had through past eternities, awaiting His touch to call into form and being the elements still sleeping beneath the water--the living representation of His thought. Suddenly stretching out His rod, He bade the waters recede--and they did so, leaving a vast extent of gra.s.sy land where the majestic waves had so lately rolled and tossed. And it is said that the land retains to this day the memory of the sea it then was, while the gra.s.ses wave with a subtle suggestion of the ocean's ebb and flow beneath the influence of a wind that is like no other wind in the world so much as an ocean breeze; while the gulls, having so well learned their course, fly back and forth as they did before the mystic change from water into earth. Indeed, the first impression one receives of the prairie is that of a vast sea of growing vegetation!"

The Boy's eyes sparkled. This was the fanciful Father Paul that he loved best of all.

"Some time we must go there, Father Paul. Is it not so?"

"Yes, Boy, some time!"

CHAPTER V

Rebellious thoughts were flitting through the brain of Paul Zalenska as he rode forth the next morning, tender and fanciful ones, too, as he watched the sun's kisses fall on leaf and flower and tree, drying with their soft, insistent warmth the tears left by the dew of night, and wooing all Nature to awake--to look up with glorious smiles, for the world, after all, is beautiful and full of love and laughter.

Why should _not_ Paul be happy? Was he not twenty, and handsome, and rich, and popular, and destined for great things? Was there a want in the world that he could not easily have satisfied, had he so desired?

And was he not officially betrothed to the Princess Elodie of Austria--

"d.a.m.n the Princess Elodie!" he thought, with more emphasis than reverence, and he rode along silently, slowly, a frown clouding his fresh, boyish brow, face to face with the prose of the existence he would fain have had all romance and poetry.