Trusia Part 19

he said half turning away suffused in his own self-pity, "do not trifle with me." He appealed to Josef. "Is this true--what they say, Josef-Petros, or whatever your name is?"

"It is true, Your Majesty."

"A King! A King!" exclaimed the astonished artist. "But still a King without a kingdom--a table without meat. A mockery of greatness after all. Why do you come to tell me this?" he cried turning fiercely on them. "Was I too contented as I was? It is not good to taunt a hungry man. To tell me that I am a crownless King without six feet of land to call my realm, is but to mock me."

"The remedy is at hand, Your Majesty," Sutphen a.s.serted confidently.

"Eighty thousand men await your coming, all trained soldiers. We will raise the battle cry of Krovitch and at Schallberg crown you and your Queen."

"My Queen," almost shouted the astonished Delmotte, "have I a Queen, too? Are you all crazy, or am I? Pray heaven the Queen is none other than Marie, else I'll have no supper to-night. Who is my queen?" He asked as he saw the expression of disapproval which appeared on more than one face present.

"The n.o.blest woman under heaven, sire," said Sutphen reverently. "One who well could have claimed the crown herself. She wished a man to lead her people in the bitter strife and waived her claims for you. It is therefore but meet that she who has wrought all this for you should share your throne."

"Why was I chosen?"

"You are descended from Stovik--she from Augustus, the last King of Krovitch, Stovik's rival." So step by step they disclosed their plans, their hopes and ambitions to the dazzled Parisian. Finally, his mind was surfeited with the tale of this country which was claiming him; he turned and, with sweeping gesture, indicated those present.

"And you?" he asked. "And these? I know your rightful name as little as I am sure of my own."

"Your Majesty's rightful name is Stovik Fourth." Then Sutphen presented each in turn. Carter came last. The eyes of these two, so near an age, instinctively sought out the other and recognized him as a possible rival. Probably the first there to do so, Carter admitted that this so-called heir to a throne was nothing but an ordinary habitue of cafe and boulevard; a jest-loving animal, with possibly talents, but no great genius.

The artist, with an a.s.sertion of his novel dominance, arose. "I am ready, gentlemen," he said. "My baggage is on my back. I understand that the rendezvous is on the Boulevard S. Michel. Proceed."

Without one backward glance or thought he pa.s.sed from the attic home, his foot in fancy already mounting his throne. Marie was forgotten in the dream of a royal crown and visions of a distant kingdom.

XVII

AT THE HOTEL DES S. CROIX

Some distance back from its fellows on the Boulevard S. Michel, not far from its intersection with S. Germain, stands the one-time palace of the Ducs des S. Croix.

Time, the leveler, seemed to have no more effect upon the princely pile than to increase its hauteur with each pa.s.sing year. Its every stone breathed the dominant spirit of its founders, until at last it stood for all that was patrician, exclusive and unapproachable.

Its eight-foot iron fence, wrought in many an intricate design, formed a corroding barrier to the over-curious, while its spiked top challenged the foolish scaler. A clanging gate opened rebelliously to the paved way which led unto the wide bal.u.s.traded steps. The windows, each with its projecting balcony, seemed thrusting back all cordial advances. Along that side toward the Quai D'Orsay, a cloistered porch joined the terrace from the steps to rear its carven roof beneath the windows of the upper floors. Each rigid pillar was lifted like a lance of prohibition. The walls of either neighbor, unbroken, windowless and blank, were flanking ramparts of its secrecy.

The casual pedestrian, after dusk, was tempted to tiptoe lightly across the palace front, so pervasive was its air of mystery. No more fitting place could be found for plots of deposed monarchies and uncrowned kings. The last S. Croix, impoverished in the mutations of generations, reluctantly, half savagely, had swallowed his pride a few years previously and had consented to rent his ancestral halls. The ideal locality and its immunity from the over-curious had appealed to one who, gladly paying the first price asked, had held the place against the day of need. The lease was in the name of Josef Zorsky, none other than the Hereditary Servitor.

Behind the mask of night, the new-found king, with his gentlemen, was driven to the Hotel des S. Croix, where three ordinary Parisian _fiacres_ discharged the royal party who had come directly from the attic studio. His Majesty was the last to alight. Taking Colonel Sutphen's proffered arm, he proceeded toward the entrance, followed by his suite. The place was dark and grim, no light came through the heavily curtained windows and only by a gleam through the transom above the door could the closest observer have discovered that it was inhabited.

A single wayfarer--the neighborhood boasted but few pedestrians after dark--was approaching. As he drew nearer the group about the King he slackened his pace. Probably actuated by some slight natural curiosity aroused by the unaccustomed sight of many men alighting from cabs before a mansion traditionally, and apparently, empty, he could be excused for gazing inquiringly at each of the party in turn. Accident may have made Josef the last to be noticed, but to Carter's watchful eyes it seemed that some lightning recognition pa.s.sed between the two. Certainly he saw Josef extend two fingers and as rapidly withdraw them. The pa.s.ser-by acknowledged the signal, if such it was, by the slightest of smiles and pa.s.sed on toward the Quai D'Orsay. Carter mentally determined to speak to Sobieska at the first opportunity and regretted that his duties to His Majesty for the present prohibited the consultation.

A species of stage-fright, seizing upon the King, sent a quiver through his limbs, causing his knees to quake, his hands to tremble.

"Who will be here?" he asked in a tone he strove desperately to hold natural and easy. He had already received this information, but speech seemed a refuge from his trepidation. If Sutphen had noticed how his king's voice quavered he was too loyal a subject to comment. With the patience of iteration he answered his sovereign.

"The d.u.c.h.ess of Schallberg, the Countess Muhlen-Sarkey, together with the remaining gentlemen of the household, are all anxiously waiting to welcome Your Majesty."

In response to a signal from Sutphen, the doors were flung wide to admit His Majesty, Stovik Fourth, King of Krovitch. An hundred electric lights, doubled and trebled a score of times by pendant crystals and glistening sconces, greeted the eyes of the man who a few short hours before had been a struggling artist.

Half blinded by the brilliance, he hesitated, his foot already upon a way strange to him. He realized numbly how symbolic of his future that present moment might be. New conditions arose suddenly to confront him, only to find him halting, incompetent. He took a step forward. In his embarra.s.sment his foot caught beneath a rug's edge. Calvert Carter's hand, alone, kept the king from sprawling frog-wise on the polished floor. A sudden pallor at the untimely accident came to the face of Sutphen.

"What is it?" Carter whisperingly inquired of the veteran.

"A bad omen, coming as it does as he enters the house," replied the soldier in the same low tone, tinged with the superst.i.tion of his race.

"I pray G.o.d," he continued, "that he turn out no weak-kneed stumbler."

The incident naturally enough had not served to increase the King's self-confidence. After a glance into the impa.s.sive faces of the waiting servants, he gathered sufficient grace to proceed and look about him, with eyes more accustomed to the light. With an a.s.sumption of ease foreign to his turbulent heart, he took his way along the splendid hall.

He was soon lost in a professional appreciation of the evidence of royal circ.u.mstance, the glories the succeeding years had generously spared, and which now were enriched and ripened by Times' deft touch.

From their coigns the priceless portraits of the S. Croix gazed complacently down upon him. Royalty had aforetimes been of daily habit to them. Their scornful brows with sombre eyes, their thin curling lips, appeared to be of some alien race. They seemed to hold themselves aloof as though he was a child of their one-time serfs, having no claim upon their bond of caste. Even to himself he felt an impostor, a peasant in a royal mask. That he was really a king had not yet come home to him. He felt no embryo greatness struggling to possess him. Upon his face abode the look of one who dreams of pleasant, impossible things. Half smiling, he was yet reluctant of the awakening he was sure would come and scatter forever the wondrous glories of his slumbers. Unwilling that these creations of pigment, brush and canvas should, by exposing him, dissipate his fancies, he dropped his gaze to find himself approaching the entrance of a brilliantly lighted salon.

What lay beyond?

A new world, a new life, an existence such as he had never dreamed of might be waiting on the thither side. He paused again involuntarily.

Beside the richer scene, with all its priceless relics of another age, its warmth, its lights, its rows of bowing flunkeys and his new-found friends, its dream of a crown and distant throne, arose a pa.s.sing vision of a life he had laid aside. There the plenty of yesterday melted in the paucity of to-day. There cringing cold had crept forlornly in and hunger had been no unexpected guest. There hope and ambition on their brows had ever borne the bruising thorns of defeat and failure. There wealth was a surprising stranger and poverty a daily friend. Friends! Friends! Yes, friends leal and true, a crust for one had meant a meal for all. Such had been real friends. Their jests had banished every aching care and solaced each careless curse of fate. Would this new life give as much?

Could the new life give him more? Would even the "glory that was Greece and the splendor that was Rome" repay him for the sleepless nights, the watchful anxious days of him who fought, who ruled, who trembled upon an uncertain throne?

Having chosen he feared to turn back, lest men should call him a craven and coward. Sensual visions of a greater luxury than this around him came to console him as the picture of the attic life slipped from him.

He stepped beyond the boundaries of regret into the radiant portals of the salon.

A woman stood before him.

Unconsciously his fingers itched for the abandoned brush while his thumb crooked longingly for the discarded palette. Here was a subject fit for his Muse, a Jeanne d'Arc whose soul was beaming from her luminous eyes.

Not that maid of visions and fought fields, but as she hung flame-tortured in the open square of Rouen. No peasant soul this, rather a royal maiden burning on the altars of her country. Awkward and speechless he stood before her. Instinct apprised him that this was no other than Trusia, waiting to receive her King.

Her head was held high in regal pride, but her eyes were the wide dark eyes of a fawn, fear-haunted, at the gaze. Her throat and shoulders gleamed white as starlight while her tapering arms would have urged an envious sigh from a Phidias or a David. Her gown of silk was snow white; the light clung to its watered woof waving and trembling in its folds as though upon a frosted gla.s.s. Diagonally from right to left across her breast descended a great red ribbon upon whose way the jeweled Lion of Krovitch rose and fell above her throbbing heart. This with her diamond coronet were her only jewels. The high spirited, whole-souled girl was face to face at last with the man she had vowed to marry to give her land a king.

Unswervingly her fearless eyes probed to the soul of Stovik and dragged it forth to weigh it in the balance with her own. Fate had denied her heart the right of choosing, so she had prayed that at least her King should be great and strong of soul. Fate in mockery had placed before her an ordinary man to rule her people and her future life.

As though to gain courage from the contact, her hand sought and rested upon the jeweled Lion of her race. Slowly she forced her lips into a little smile, which one observer knew was sadder than tears.

Carter, standing behind the King, was madly tempted to dash aside the royal lout to take her in his arms where she might find the longed-for solace of her pent-up tears.

Colonel Sutphen with a courtly bow took her hand and turned to the monarch.

"Your Majesty," he said gravely, "this is Trusia, d.u.c.h.ess of Schallberg, than whom the earth holds no sweeter, n.o.bler woman. To G.o.d and Trusia you will owe your throne. She has urged us, cheered us, led us, till this day has grown out of our wordy plans. See that she has her full measure of reward from you. Though our swords be for your service, our hearts we hold for her in any hour of her need."

Sutphen's keen eyes had never left the sovereign's face while speaking.

If the words were blunt his manner had been courtly and deferential.

With a courtesy which was superbly free from her inmost trepidation, Trusia swept up the King's reluctant hand, pressing it to lips as chill as winter's bane.

"Sire," she said in a voice scarcely audible, "sire, I did no more than many a loyal son of Krovitch. I--we all--will give our lives for our country and her rightful king."

"d.u.c.h.ess! Lady Trusia," stammered the flushing, self-conscious king embarra.s.sed by the kiss upon his hand, "I fear I am unworthy of such devotion. Unused to courtly custom I feel that I should rather render homage unto you. They tell me, these friends who say that they are my subjects, that I am your debtor. My obligations may already be beyond discharge. Add no more by obeisance." The poorly turned speech awoke a slight defiance in Trusia's heart. It was oversoon, she thought, for her King to patronize her.