The King's Mirror Part 12

Besides, you oughtn't to know how to say things like that, ought you, Caesar?"

Caesar was my--shall I say pet-name?--used when we were alone or with Count Max, only in a playful satire.

A silence followed for some time. At last she glanced toward me.

"Not gone yet?" said she, raising her brows. "What will the Princess say?"

"I go when I please," said I, resenting the question as I was meant to resent it.

"Yes. Certainly not when I please."

Our eyes met now; suddenly she blushed, and then interposed the screen between herself and me. A glorious thrill of youthful triumph ran through me; she had paid her first tribute to my manhood in that blush; the offering was small, but, for its significance, frankincense and myrrh to me.

"I thought you came to talk about Wetter's Bill," she suggested presently in a voice lower than her usual tones.

"The deuce take Wetter's Bill," said I.

"I am very interested in it."

"Just now?"

"Even just now, Caesar." I heard a little laugh behind the screen.

"Hammerfeldt hates it," said I.

"Oh, then that settles it. You'll be against us, of course!"

"Why of course?"

"You always do as the Prince tells you, don't you?"

"Unless somebody more powerful forbids me."

"Who is more powerful--except Caesar himself?"

I made no answer, but I rose and, crossing the rug, stood by her. I remember the look and the feel of the room very well; she lay back in a low chair upholstered in blue; the firelight, forbidden her face, played on the hand that held the screen, flushing its white to red. I could see her hair gleaming in the fantastically varying light that the flames gave as they left and fell. I was in a tumult of excitement and timidity.

"More powerful than Caesar?" I asked, and my voice shook.

"Don't call yourself Caesar."

"Why not?"

There was a momentary hesitation before the answer came low:

"Because you mustn't laugh at yourself. I may laugh at you, but you mustn't yourself."

I wondered at the words, the tone, the strange diffidence that infected even a speech so full of her gay bravery. A moment later she added a reason for her command.

"You're so absurd that you mustn't laugh at yourself. And, Caesar, if you stay any longer, or--come again soon--other people will laugh at you."

To this day I do not know whether she meant to give a genuine warning, or to strike a chord that should sound back defiance.

"If ten thousand of them laugh, what is it to me? They dare laugh only behind my back," I said.

She laughed before my face; the screen fell, and she laughed, saying softly, "Caesar, Caesar!"

I was wonderfully happy in my perturbation. The great charm she had for me was to-day alloyed less than ever before by the sense of rawness which she, above all others, could compel me to feel. To-day she herself was not wholly calm, not mistress of herself without a struggle, without her moments of faintness. Yet now she appeared composed again, and there was nothing but merriment in her eyes. She seemed to have forgotten that I was supposed to be gone. I daresay that not to her, any more than to myself, could I seem quite like an ordinary boy; perhaps the more I forgot what was peculiar about me the more she remembered it, my oblivion serving to point her triumph.

"And the Princess?" she asked, laughing still, but now again a little nervously.

My exultation, finding vent in mischief and impelled by curiosity, drove me to a venture.

"I shall tell the Princess that I kissed you," said I.

The Countess suddenly sat upright.

"And that you kissed me--several times," I continued.

"How dare you?" she cried in a whisper; and her cheeks flamed in blushes and in firelight. My little device was a triumph. I began to laugh.

"Oh, of course, if she asks me when," I added, "I shall confess that it was ten years ago."

Many emotions mingled in my companion's glance as she sank back in her chair; she was indignant at the trap, amused at having been caught in it, not fully relieved from embarra.s.sment, not wholly convinced that the explanation of my daring speech covered all the intent with which it had been uttered, perhaps not desirous of being convinced too thoroughly. A long pause followed. Timidity held me back from further advance. For that evening enough seemed to have pa.s.sed; I had made a start--to go further might be to risk all. I was about to take my leave when she looked up again, saying:

"And about Wetter's Bill, Caesar?"

"You know I can do nothing."

"Can Caesar do nothing? If you were known to favour it fifty votes would be changed." Her face was eager and animated. I looked down at her and smiled. She flushed again, and cried hastily:

"No, no, never mind; at least, not to-night."

I suppose that my smile persisted, and was not a mirthful one. It stirred anger and resentment in her.

"I know why you're smiling," she exclaimed. "I suppose that when I was kind to you as a baby, I wanted something from you too, did I?"

She had detected the thought that had come so inevitably into my mind, that she should resent it so pa.s.sionately almost persuaded me of its injustice. I turned from it to the pleasant memory of her earlier impulsive kindness. I put out my hands and grasped hers. She let me hold them for an instant and then drew them away. She gave rather a forced laugh.

"You're too young to be bothered about Bills," she said, "and too young for--for all sorts of other things, too. Run away; never mind me with my Bills and my wrinkles."

"Your wrinkles!"

"Oh, if not now, in a year or two; by the time you're ready to marry Elsa."

As she spoke she rose and stood facing me. A new sense of her beauty came over me; her beauty's tragedy, already before her eyes, was to me remote and impossible. Because it was not yet very near she exaggerated its nearness; because it was inevitable I turned away from it. Indeed, who could remember, seeing her then? Who save herself, as she looked on my youth?

"You'll soon be old and ugly?" I asked, laughing.