The White Wolf and Other Fireside Tales Part 33

"Thank you. Sooner I'll die than slave of thine become!" He laid about him with fresh vigour.

"Put down your swords," commanded Ferdinand.

"And now tell me who you are."

"We are Valentine and Orson," they answered.

"Indeed?" Ferdinand had heard of them, and shook hands affably.

"Then I'm very glad to make your acquaintance."

"And," said they, "we are rehearsing for the performance at the Palace to-night in your Highnesses' honour."

"Oh, so this is in our honour too?"

"To be sure," said the woman; "and I am to dress up as Hymen and speak the Epilogue in a saffron robe. It has some good lines; for instance--"

'Ye Loves and Genial Hours, conspire To gratify this Royal Pair With Sons impetuous as their Sire, And Daughters as their Mother fair!'

"Thank you," said Ferdinand. "But we are very busy to-day and must take one thing at a time. Can you tell us the way to the sea, please?"

The woman pointed along a path which led to a moss-covered gate and an orchard where the apple-blossom piled itself in pink clouds against the blue sky: as they followed the path they heard her laughing, and looked back to see her still staring after them and laughing merrily, while Valentine and Orson leaned on their swords and laughed too.

The orchard was the prettiest in the whole world. Blackbirds played hide-and-seek beneath the boughs, blue and white violets hid in the tall gra.s.s around the boles, and the s.p.a.ces between were carpeted with daisies to the edge of a streamlet. Over the streamlet sang thrushes and goldfinches and bull-finches innumerable, and their voices shook down the blossom like a fall of pink snow, which threatened to cover even the daisies. The Grand Duke and the Princess believed that all this beauty was in their honour, no less than the chorus of the bells floating across the tree-tops from the city.

"This is the best of all," said Ferdinand as they seated themselves by the stream. "I had no idea marriage was such fun. And they haven't even forgotten the trout!" he cried, peering over the brink.

"Can you make daisy-chains?" asked the Princess timidly.

He could not; so she taught him, feeling secretly proud that there was something he could learn of her. When the chain was finished he flung it over his neck and kissed her. "Though I don't like kissing, as a rule," he explained.

"And this shall be my wedding present," said she.

"Why, I brought you six waggon-loads!--beauties--all chosen by my Chancellor."

"But he didn't make or choose this one," said Sophia, "and I like this one best." They sat silent for a moment. "Dear me," she sighed, "what a lot we have to learn of each other's ways!"

"Hullo!" Ferdinand was staring down the glade. "What's that line at the end there, across the sky?"

Sophia turned. "I think that's the sea--yes, there is a ship upon it."

"But why have they hung a blue cloth in front of it?"

"I expect that's in our honour too."

They took hands and trotted to the end of the orchard; and there, beyond the hedge, ran a ca.n.a.l, and beyond the ca.n.a.l a wide flat country stretched away to the sea,--a land dotted with windmills and cattle and red-and-white houses with weatherc.o.c.ks,--a land, too, criss-crossed with ca.n.a.ls, whereon dozens of boats, and even some large ships, threaded their way like dancers in and out of the groups of cattle, or sailed past a house so closely as almost to poke a bowsprit through the front door. The weather-c.o.c.ks spun and glittered, the windmills waved their arms, the boats bowed and curtseyed to the children. Never was such a salutation. Even the blue cloth in the distance twinkled, and Ferdinand saw at a glance that it was embroidered with silver.

But the finest flash of all came from a barge moored in the ca.n.a.l just below them, where a middle-aged woman sat scouring a copper pan.

"Good-day!" cried Ferdinand across the hedge. "Why are you doing that?"

"Why, in honour of the wedding, to be sure. 'Must show one's best at such times, if only for one's own satisfaction." Then, as he climbed into view and helped Sophia over the hedge, she recognised them, and, dropping her pan with a clatter, called on the saints to bless them and keep them always. The bridal pair clambered down to the towpath, and from the towpath to her cabin, where she fed them (for they were hungry by this time) with bread and honey from a marvellous cupboard painted all over with tulips: in short, they enjoyed themselves immensely.

"Only," said Ferdinand, "I wish they hadn't covered up the sea, for I wanted a good look at it."

"The sea?" said the barge-woman, all of a shiver. Then she explained that her two sons had been drowned in it. "Though, to be sure," said she, "they died for your Majesty's honour, and, if G.o.d should give them back to me, would do so again."

"For me?" exclaimed Sophia, opening her eyes very wide.

"Ay, to be sure, my dear. So it's no wonder--eh?--that I should love you."

By the time they said good-bye to her and hurried back through the orchard, a dew was gathering on the gra.s.s and a young moon had poised herself above the apple-boughs. The birds here were silent; but high on the stone terrace, when they reached it, a solitary one began to sing.

From the bright windows facing the terrace came the clatter of plates and gla.s.ses, with loud outbursts of laughter. But this bird had chosen his station beneath a dark window at the corner, and sang there unseen.

It was the nightingale.

They could not understand what he sang. "It is my window," whispered Sophia, and began to weep in the darkness, without knowing why; for she was not miserable in the least, but, on the contrary, very, very happy.

They listened, hand in hand, by a fountain on the terrace. Through the windows they could see the Papal legate chatting at table with the King, Sophia's father, and the Chancellor hobn.o.bbing with the Cardinal Archbishop. Only the Queen of Ysselmonde sat at the table with her wrists on the arms of her throne and her eyes looking out into the darkness, as though she caught some whisper of the bird's song. But the children knew that he sang for them, not for her; for he told of all the adventures of the day, and he told not as I am telling them, but so beautifully that the heart ached to hear. Yet his song was of two words only. "Young--young--young! Love love--love!"--the same words over and over.

A courtier came staggering out from the banqueting-hall, and the bird flew away. The children standing by the fountain watched him as he found the water and dipped his face in it, with a groan. He was exceedingly drunk; but as he lifted his head he caught sight of them in the moonlight and excused himself.

"In your Highnesses' honour," he a.s.sured them: "'been doing my best."

"Poor man!" said Sophia. "But how loyal!"

ENGLAND!

At Madeira seven of us were added to the first-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers of the _Cambuscan_, homeward bound from Cape Town; and even so the company made a poor muster in the saloon, which required a hundred and seventy feet of hurricane-deck for covering. Those were days--long before the South African War, before the Jameson Raid even--when every ship carried out a load of miners for the Transvaal, and returned comparatively empty, though as a rule with plenty of obviously rich men and be-diamonded ladies.

But every tide has its backwash; and it so happened that the _Cambuscan_ held as many second and third-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers as she could stow.

They were--their general air proclaimed it--the failures of South African immigration; men and women who had gone out too early and given up the struggle just when the propitious moment arrived. Seediness marked the second-cla.s.s; the third-cla.s.s came from all parts, from the Cape to Pietermaritzburg, but they might have conspired to a.s.semble on the _Cambuscan_ as a protest against high hopes and dreams of a promised land. The protest, let me add, was an entirely pa.s.sive one. They stood aloof, watching the flashy gaieties of the hurricane-deck from their own sad penumbra--a dejected, wistful, whispering throng. "They simply don't occur," one of the be-diamonded ladies remarked to me, and went on to praise the U-- Line for arranging it so. With nightfall--or a trifle later--they vanished; and at most, when the time came for my last pipe before turning in, two or three figures would be left pacing there forward, pacing and turning and pacing again. I wondered who these figures were, and what their thoughts. They and the sleepers hived beneath them belonged to another world--a world driven with ours through wave and darkness, urged by the same propellers, controlled by the same helmsman, separated only by thin part.i.tions which the touch of a rock would tear down like paper; yet, while the part.i.tions stood, separated as no city separates its rich and poor. Only on Sundays did these two worlds consent to meet. They had, it appeared, a common G.o.d, and joined for a few minutes once a week in worshipping Him.

The be-diamonded lady, however, was not quite accurate. Once, and once only--it was the second day out from Madeira--the third-cla.s.s pa.s.sengers did "occur," to the extent of organising athletic sports, and even (with the captain's leave) of levying prize-money from the saloon-deck.

Some four or five of us, when their delegate approached, were lounging beneath the great awning and listening, or pretending to listen, to the discourse of our only millionaire, Mr. Olstein. As usual, he recited his wrongs; and, as usual, the mere recital caused him to perspire.

The hairs on the back of his expostulatory hand bristled with indignation, the diamonds on his fingers flashed with it. We had known him but two days and were pa.s.sing weary of him, but allowed him to talk.

He apostrophised the British Flag--his final Court of Appeal, he termed it--while we stared out over the waters.

"We love it," he insisted. "We never see it without a lump in our throats. But we ask ourselves, How long is this affection to count for nothing? What are we to get in return?"

No one answered, perhaps because no one knew. My thoughts had flown forward to a small riverside church in England, and a memorial window to one whose body had been found after Isandlwhana with the same flag wrapped around it beneath the tunic. This was _his_ reward.

"Hey? What's this?" Mr. Olstein took the subscription list, fitted his gold-rimmed gla.s.ses and eyed the delegate over the paper.

"Athletic sports? Not much in your line, I should say."

"No, sir;" and while the delegate bent his eyes a bright spot showed on either cheek. He was a weedy, hollow-chested man, about six feet in height, with tell-tale pits at the back of the neck, and a ragged beard evidently grown on the voyage. "I'm only a collector, with the captain's permission."

"I see." Mr. Olstein pulled out a sovereign. "I don't put this on _you_, mind; I can tell a consumptive with half an eye. See here"--he appealed to us--"this is just what we suffer from. You fellows with lung trouble flock to a tepid hole like Madeira, while the Cape would cure you in half the time: why, the voyage itself only begins to be decent after you get south! But you won't see it; and the people who _do_ see it are just the sort who don't pay us when they come, and damage us when they go back,--hard cases, sent out to pick up a living as well as their health, who get stranded and hurry home half-cured."