The Prisoner of Zenda Part 36

"I know you have," said I. "Half our amba.s.sadors have led weary lives on my account. George Featherly told me so. But why should you have been anxious? I can take care of myself."

"Oh, it wasn't that," she cried scornfully, "but I wanted to tell you about Sir Jacob Borrodaile. You know, he's got an Emba.s.sy--at least, he will have in a month--and he wrote to say he hoped you would go with him."

"Where's he going to?"

"He's going to succeed Lord Topham at Strelsau," said she. "You couldn't have a nicer place, short of Paris."

"Strelsau! H'm!" said I, glancing at my brother.

"Oh, _that_ doesn't matter!" exclaimed Rose impatiently. "Now, you will go, won't you?"

"I don't know that I care about it!"

"Oh, you're too exasperating!"

"And I don't think I can go to Strelsau. My dear Rose, would it be--suitable?"

"Oh, n.o.body remembers that horrid old story now."

Upon this, I took out of my pocket a portrait of the King of Ruritania.

It had been taken a month or two before he ascended the throne. She could not miss my point when I said, putting it into her hands:

"In case you've not seen, or not noticed, a picture of Rudolf V, there he is. Don't you think they might recall the story, if I appeared at the Court of Ruritania?"

My sister-in-law looked at the portrait, and then at me.

"Good gracious!" she said, and flung the photograph down on the table.

"What do you say, Bob?" I asked.

Burlesdon got up, went to a corner of the room, and searched in a heap of newspapers. Presently he came back with a copy of the Ill.u.s.trated London News. Opening the paper, he displayed a double-page engraving of the Coronation of Rudolf V at Strelsau. The photograph and the picture he laid side by side. I sat at the table fronting them; and, as I looked, I grew absorbed. My eye travelled from my own portrait to Sapt, to Strakencz, to the rich robes of the Cardinal, to Black Michael's face, to the stately figure of the princess by his side. Long I looked and eagerly. I was roused by my brother's hand on my shoulder. He was gazing down at me with a puzzled expression.

"It's a remarkable likeness, you see," said I. "I really think I had better not go to Ruritania."

Rose, though half convinced, would not abandon her position.

"It's just an excuse," she said pettishly. "You don't want to do anything. Why, you might become an amba.s.sador!"

"I don't think I want to be an amba.s.sador," said I.

"It's more than you ever will be," she retorted.

That is very likely true, but it is not more than I have been.

The idea of being an amba.s.sador could scarcely dazzle me. I had been a king!

So pretty Rose left us in dudgeon; and Burlesdon, lighting a cigarette, looked at me still with that curious gaze.

"That picture in the paper--" he said.

"Well, what of it? It shows that the King of Ruritania and your humble servant are as like as two peas."

My brother shook his head.

"I suppose so," he said. "But I should know you from the man in the photograph."

"And not from the picture in the paper?"

"I should know the photograph from the picture: the picture's very like the photograph, but--"

"Well?"

"It's more like you!" said my brother.

My brother is a good man and true--so that, for all that he is a married man and mighty fond of his wife, he should know any secret of mine. But this secret was not mine, and I could not tell it to him.

"I don't think it's so much like me as the photograph," said I boldly.

"But, anyhow, Bob, I won't go to Strelsau."

"No, don't go to Strelsau, Rudolf," said he.

And whether he suspects anything, or has a glimmer of the truth, I do not know. If he has, he keeps it to himself, and he and I never refer to it. And we let Sir Jacob Borrodaile find another attache.

Since all these events whose history I have set down happened I have lived a very quiet life at a small house which I have taken in the country. The ordinary ambitions and aims of men in my position seem to me dull and unattractive. I have little fancy for the whirl of society, and none for the jostle of politics. Lady Burlesdon utterly despairs of me; my neighbours think me an indolent, dreamy, unsociable fellow. Yet I am a young man; and sometimes I have a fancy--the superst.i.tious would call it a presentiment--that my part in life is not yet altogether played; that, somehow and some day, I shall mix again in great affairs, I shall again spin policies in a busy brain, match my wits against my enemies', brace my muscles to fight a good fight and strike stout blows.

Such is the tissue of my thoughts as, with gun or rod in hand, I wander through the woods or by the side of the stream. Whether the fancy will be fulfilled, I cannot tell--still less whether the scene that, led by memory, I lay for my new exploits will be the true one--for I love to see myself once again in the crowded streets of Strelsau, or beneath the frowning keep of the Castle of Zenda.

Thus led, my broodings leave the future, and turn back on the past.

Shapes rise before me in long array--the wild first revel with the King, the rush with my brave tea-table, the night in the moat, the pursuit in the forest: my friends and my foes, the people who learnt to love and honour me, the desperate men who tried to kill me. And, from amidst these last, comes one who alone of all of them yet moves on earth, though where I know not, yet plans (as I do not doubt) wickedness, yet turns women's hearts to softness and men's to fear and hate. Where is young Rupert of Hentzau--the boy who came so nigh to beating me? When his name comes into my head, I feel my hand grip and the blood move quicker through my veins: and the hint of Fate--the presentiment--seems to grow stronger and more definite, and to whisper insistently in my ear that I have yet a hand to play with young Rupert; therefore I exercise myself in arms, and seek to put off the day when the vigour of youth must leave me.

One break comes every year in my quiet life. Then I go to Dresden, and there I am met by my dear friend and companion, Fritz von Tarlenheim.

Last time, his pretty wife Helga came, and a l.u.s.ty crowing baby with her. And for a week Fritz and I are together, and I hear all of what falls out in Strelsau; and in the evenings, as we walk and smoke together, we talk of Sapt, and of the King, and often of young Rupert; and, as the hours grow small, at last we speak of Flavia. For every year Fritz carries with him to Dresden a little box; in it lies a red rose, and round the stalk of the rose is a slip of paper with the words written: "Rudolf--Flavia--always." And the like I send back by him. That message, and the wearing of the rings, are all that now bind me and the Queen of Ruritania. Far--n.o.bler, as I hold her, for the act--she has followed where her duty to her country and her House led her, and is the wife of the King, uniting his subjects to him by the love they bear to her, giving peace and quiet days to thousands by her self-sacrifice.

There are moments when I dare not think of it, but there are others when I rise in spirit to where she ever dwells; then I can thank G.o.d that I love the n.o.blest lady in the world, the most gracious and beautiful, and that there was nothing in my love that made her fall short in her high duty.

Shall I see her face again--the pale face and the glorious hair? Of that I know nothing; Fate has no hint, my heart no presentiment. I do not know. In this world, perhaps--nay, it is likely--never. And can it be that somewhere, in a manner whereof our flesh-bound minds have no apprehension, she and I will be together again, with nothing to come between us, nothing to forbid our love? That I know not, nor wiser heads than mine. But if it be never--if I can never hold sweet converse again with her, or look upon her face, or know from her her love; why, then, this side the grave, I will live as becomes the man whom she loves; and, for the other side, I must pray a dreamless sleep.