The King's Mirror Part 10

I opened my lips to speak to her again.

"No, no; go, please go. Good-night, dear." I left her standing in the middle of her room. Outside the door I waited many minutes; I heard her moving about and getting into bed; then all was quiet; I returned to my own room.

I was up early the next morning, for I had been able to sleep but little. I wanted above all things to see Victoria again. But even while I was dressing Baptiste brought me a note. I opened it hurriedly, for it was from her. I read:

"Forget all about last night; I was tired and ill. I rely on your honour to say nothing to anybody. I am all right this morning."

She was ent.i.tled to ask the pledge of my honour, if she chose. I tore the note in fragments and burned them.

It was about eleven o'clock in the morning when I went out into the garden. There was a group on the terrace--my mother, Victoria, and William Adolphus. They were laughing and talking and seemed very merry.

As a rule I should have waved a "good morning" and pa.s.sed on for my solitary walk. To-day I went up to them. My mother appeared to be in an excellent temper, the Prince looked quite easy and happy. Victoria was a little pale but very vivacious. She darted a quick look at me, and cried out the moment I had kissed my mother:

"We're settling the bridesmaids! You're just in time to help, Augustin."

We "settled" the bridesmaids. I hardly knew whether to laugh or to cry during this important operation. Victoria was very kind to her _fiance_, receiving his suggestions with positive graciousness: he became radiant under this treatment. When our task was done, Victoria pa.s.sed her arm through his, declaring that she wanted a stroll in the woods; as they went by me she laid her hand lightly and affectionately on my arm, looking me full in the face the while. I understood; for good or evil my lips were sealed.

My mother looked after the betrothed couple as they walked away; I looked at my mother's fine high-bred resolute face.

"I'm so glad," said she at last, "to see Victoria so happy. I was afraid at one time that she'd never take to it. Of course we had other hopes."

The last words were a hit at me. I ignored them; that battle had been fought, the victory won, and paid for by me in handsome fashion.

"Has she taken to it?" I asked as carelessly as I could. But my mother's eyes turned keenly on me.

"Have you any reason for thinking she hasn't?" came in quick question.

"No," I answered.

The sun was shining and Princess Heinrich opened her parasol very leisurely. She rose to her feet and stood there for a moment. Then in a smooth, even, and what I may call reasonable voice, she remarked:

"My dear Augustin, from time to time all girls have fancies. We mothers know that it doesn't do to pay any attention to them. They soon go if they're let alone. We shall meet at lunch, I hope?"

I bowed respectfully, but perhaps I looked a little doubtful.

"It really doesn't do to take any notice of them," said my mother over her shoulder.

So we took no notice of them; my sister's midnight flight to my room and to my arms was between her and me, and for all the world as though it has never been, save that it left behind it a little legacy of renewed kindliness and trust. For that much I was thankful; but I could not forget the rest.

A month later she was married to William Adolphus at Forstadt.

CHAPTER VIII.

DESTINY IN A PINAFORE.

The foreign tour I undertook in my eighteenth year has been sufficiently, or even more than sufficiently, described by the accomplished and courtly pen of Vohrenlorf's secretary. I travelled as the Count of Artenberg under my Governor's guidance, and saw in some ways more, in some respects less, than most young men on their travels are likely to see. Old Hammerfeldt recommended for my reading the English letters of Lord Chesterfield to his son, and I studied them with some profit, much amus.e.m.e.nt, and an occasional burst of impatience; I believe that in the Prince's opinion I, like Mr. Stanhope, had hitherto attached too little importance to, and not attained enough proficiency in, "the graces"; concealment was the life's breath of his statescraft, and "the graces" help a man to hide everything--ideals, emotions, pa.s.sions, his very soul. It must have been an immense satisfaction to the Prince, on leaving the world at a ripe age, to feel that n.o.body had ever been sure that they understood him; except, of course, the fools who think that they understood everybody.

As far as my private life is concerned, one incident only on this expedition is of moment. We paid a visit to my father's cousins, the Bartensteins, who possessed a singularly charming place in Tirol. The Duke was moderately rich, very able, and very indolent. He was a connoisseur in music and the arts. His wife, my Cousin Elizabeth, was a very good-natured woman of seven or eight and thirty, noted for her dairy and fond of out-of-door pursuits; her devotion to these last had resulted in her complexion being rather reddened and weather-beaten. We were to stay a week, an unusually long halt; and even before we arrived I detected a simple slyness in my good Vohrenlorf's demeanour. When a secret was afoot, Vohrenlorf's first apparent effort was to draw everybody's attention to the fact of its existence. Out of perversity I asked no questions, and left him to seethe in his over-boiling mystery.

I knew that I should be enlightened soon enough. I was quite right; before I had been a day with my relatives it became obvious that Elsa was the mystery. I suppose that it is not altogether a common thing for a youth of eighteen, feeling himself a man, trying to think himself one, just become fully conscious of the power and attraction of the women he meets, to be shown a child of twelve, and given to understand that in six years' time she will be ready to become his wife. The position, even if not as uncommon as I suppose, is curious enough to justify a few words of description.

I saw Elsa first as she was rolling down a hill, with a scandalized governess in full chase. Elsa rolled quickly, marking her progress by triumphant cries. She "brought up" at the foot of the slope in an excessively crumpled state; her short skirts were being smoothed down when her mother and I arrived. She was a pretty, fair, blue-eyed child, with a natural merriment about her attractive enough. She was well made, having escaped the square solidity of figure that characterized Cousin Elizabeth. Her features were still in an undeveloped condition, and her hair, brushed smooth and plastered down on her forehead, was tormented into ringlets behind. She looked at my lanky form with some apprehension.

"Was it a good roll, Elsa?" I asked.

"Splendid!" she answered.

"You didn't know Cousin Augustin was looking on, did you?" asked her mother.

"No, I didn't." But it was plain that she did not care either.

I felt that Cousin Elizabeth's honest eyes were searching my face.

"Give me a kiss, won't you, Elsa?" I asked.

Elsa turned her chubby cheek up to me in a perfection of indifference.

In fact, both Elsa and I were performing family duties. Thus we kissed for the first time.

"Now go and let nurse put on a clean frock for you," said Cousin Elizabeth. "You're to come downstairs to-day, and you're not fit to be seen. Don't roll any more when you've changed your frock."

Elsa smiled, shook her head, and ran off. I gathered the impression that even in the clean frock she would roll again if she chanced to be disposed to that exercise. The air of Bartenstein was not the air of Artenberg. A milder climate reigned. There was no Styrian discipline for Elsa. I believe that in all her life she did at her parents' instance only one thing that she seriously disliked. Cousin Elizabeth and I walked on.

"She's a baby still," said Cousin Elizabeth presently, "but I a.s.sure you that she has begun to develop."

"There's no hurry, is there?"

"No. You know, I think you're too old for your age, Augustin. I suppose it was inevitable."

I felt much younger in many ways than I had at fifteen; the gates of the world were opening, and showing me prospects unknown to the lonely boy at Artenberg.

"And she has the sweetest disposition. So loving!" said Cousin Elizabeth.

I did not find anything appropriate to answer. The next day found me fully, although delicately, apprised of the situation. It seemed to me a strange one. The Duke was guarded in his hints, and profuse of declarations that it was too soon to think of anything. Good Cousin Elizabeth strove to conceal her eagerness and repress the haste born of it by similar but more clumsy speeches. I spoke openly on the subject to Vohrenlorf.

"Ah, well, even if it should be so, you have six years," he reminded me in good-natured consolation. "And she will grow up."

"She won't roll down hills always, of course," I answered rather peevishly.

In truth the thing would not a.s.sume an appearance of reality for me; it was too utterly opposed to the current of my thoughts and dreams. A boy of my age will readily contemplate marriage with a woman ten years his senior; in regard to a child six years younger than himself the idea seems absurd. Yet I did not put it from me; I had been well tutored in the strength of family arrangements, and the force of destiny had been brought home to me on several occasions. I had no doubt at all that my visit to Bartenstein was part of a deliberate plan. The person who contrived my meeting with Elsa had a shrewd knowledge of my character; he knew that ideas long present in my mind became as it were domiciled there, and were hard to expel. I discovered afterward without surprise that the stay with my relatives was added to my tour at Prince von Hammerfeldt's suggestion.

Many men, or youths bordering on manhood, have seen their future brides in short frocks and unmitigated childhood, but they have not been aware of what was before them. I was at once amused and distressed; my humour was touched, but life's avenue seemed shortened. Even if it were not Elsa it would be some other little girl, now playing with her toys and rolling down banks. Imagination was not elastic enough to leap over the years and behold the child transformed. I stuck in the present, and was whimsically apprehensive of a child seen through a magnifying gla.s.s, larger, but unchanged in form, air, and raiment. Was this my fate? And for it I must wait till the perfected beauties who had smiled on me pa.s.sed on to other men, and with them grew old--aye, as it seemed, quite old. I felt myself ludicrously reduced to Elsa's status; a long boy, who had outgrown his clothes, and yet was no nearer to a man.

My trouble was, perhaps unreasonably, aggravated by the fact that Elsa did not take to me. I did my best to be pleasant; I made her several gifts. She accepted my offerings, but was not bought by them; myself she considered dull. I had not the flow of animal spirits that appeals so strongly to children. I played with her, but her young keenness detected the cloven hoof of duty. She told me I need not play unless I liked.

Cousin Elizabeth apologized for me; Elsa was gentle, but did not change her opinion. The pa.s.sage of years, I reflected, would increase in me all that the child found least to her taste. I was, as I have said, unable to picture her with tastes changed. But a failure of imagination may occasionally issue in paradoxical rightness, for the imagination relies on the common run of events which the peculiar case may chance to contradict. As a fact, I do not think that Elsa ever did change greatly.

I began to be sorry for her as well as for myself. Considered as an outlook in life, as the governing factor in a human being's existence, I did not seem to myself brilliant or even satisfactory. I had at this time remarkable forecasts of feelings that were in later years to be my almost daily companions.

"And what shall your husband be like, Elsa?" asked the Duke, as his little daughter sat on his knee and he played with her ringlets.