It befell, during the seventh month of my stay in the Palace, that a certain great royal wedding was appointed to be celebrated at Dresden: a festivity to which were bidden all the crowned heads and most of the royal and semi-royal personages of Christendom, and amongst them the Krol and Kroleva of Monte-rosso.
“It will cost us a pretty sum of money,” Theodore grumbled, when the summons first reached him. “We’ll have to travel in state, with a full suite; and the whole shot must be paid from our private purse. There’s no expecting a penny for such a purpose from the Soviete.”
“I hope,” exclaimed the Queen, looking up from a letter she was writing, “I hope you don’t for a moment intend to go?”
“Wemustgo,” answered the King. “There’s no getting out of it.”
“Nonsense!” said she. “We’ll send a representative.”
“I only wish we could,” sighed the King. “But unfortunately this is an occasion when etiquette requires that we should attend in person.”
“Oh, bother etiquette,” said she. “Etiquette was made for slaves. We’ll send your Cousin Peter. One must find some use for one’s Cousin Peters.”
“Yes; but this is a business, alas, in which one’s Cousin Peter won’t go down. I’m very sorry to say we’ll have to attend in person.”
“Nonsense!” she repeated. “Attend in person! How can you think of such a thing? We’d be bored and fatigued to death. It will be unspeakable. Nothing but dull, stodgy, suffocating German pomposity and bad taste. Oh, je m’y connais! Red cloth, and military bands, and interminable banquets, and noise, and confusion, and speeches (oh, the speeches!), until you’re ready to drop. And besides, we’d be herded with a crowd of ninth-rate princelings and petty dukes, who smell of beer and cabbage and brilliantine. We’d be relegated to the fifth or sixth rank, behind people who are all of them really our inferiors. Do you suppose I mean to let myself be patronised by a lot of stupid Hohenzollerns and Grâtzhoffens? No, indeed! You can send your Cousin Peter.”
“Ah, my dear, if I were the Tsar of Russia!” laughed her husband. “Then I could send a present and a poor relation, and all would be well. But—you speak of ninth-rate princelings. A ninth-rate princeling like the Krol of Tchermnogoria must make act of presence in his proper skin. It’sde rigueur. There’s no getting out of it. We must go.”
“Well,youmay go, if you like,” her Majesty declared. “As for me, Iwon’t. Ifyouchoose to go and be patronised and bored, and half killed by the fatigue, and half ruined by the expense, I suppose I can’t prevent you. But, if you want my opinion, I think it’s utter insane folly.”
And she re-absorbed herself in her letter, with the air of one who had been distracted for a moment by a frivolous and tiresome interruption.
The King did not press the matter that evening, but the next morning he mustered his courage, and returned to it.
“My dear,” he began, “I beg you to listen to me patiently for a moment, and not get angry. What I wish to say is really very important.”
“Well, what is it? What is it?” she enquired, with anticipatory weariness.
“It’s about going to Dresden. I—I want to assure you that I dislike the notion of going quite as much as you can. But it’s no question of choice. There are certain things one has to do, whether one will or not. I’m exceedingly sorry to have to insist, but we positively must reconcile ourselves to the sacrifice, and attend the wedding—both of us. It’s a necessity of our position. If we should stay away, it would be a breach of international good manners that people would never forgive us. We should be the scandal, the by-word, of the Courts of Europe. We’d give the direst offence in twenty different quarters. We really can’t afford to make enemies of half the royal families of the civilised world. You can’t imagine the unpleasantnesses, the complications, our absence would store up for us; the bad blood it would cause. We’d be put in the black list of our order, and snubbed, and embarrassed, and practically ostracised, for years to come. And you know whether we need friends. But the case is so obvious, it seems a waste of breath to argue it. You surely won’t let a mere little matter of temporary personal inconvenience get us into such an ocean of hot water. Come now—be reasonable, and say you will go.”
The Queen’s eyes were burning; her under-lip had swollen portentously; but she did not speak.
The King waited a moment. Then, “Come, Anéli—don’t be angry. Answer me. Say that you will go,” he urged, taking her hand.
She snatched her hand away. I’m afraid she stamped her foot. “No!” she cried. “Let me alone. I tell you Iwon’t.”
“But, my dear....” the King was re-commencing....
“No, no, no! And you needn’t call me your dear. If you had the least love for me, the least common kindness, or consideration for my health or comfort or happiness, you’d never dream of proposing such a thing. To drag me half-way across the Continent of Europe, to be all but killed at the end of the journey by a pack of horrid, coarse, beer-drinking Germans! And tired out, and irritated, and patronised, and humiliated by people like ————— and ————! It’s perfectly heartless of you. And I—when I suggest such a simple natural pleasure as a trip to Paris, or to the Italian lakes in autumn—you tell me we can’t afford it! You’re ready to spend thousands on a stupid, utterly unnecessary and futile absurdity, like this wedding, but you can’t afford to take me to the Italian lakes! And yet you pretend to love me! Oh, its awful, awful, awful!” And her voice failed her in a sob; and she hid her face in her hands, and wept. So the King had to drop the subject again, and to devote his talents to the task of drying her tears.
I don’t know how many times they renewed the discussion, but I do know that the Queen stood firm in her original refusal, and that at last it was decided that the King should go without her, and excuse her absence as best he might on the plea of her precarious state of health. It was only after this resolution was made and registered, and her husband had brought himself to accept it with some degree of resignation—it was only then that her Majesty began to waver and vacillate, and reconsider, and change her mind. As the date approached for his departure, her alternations became an affair of hours. It was, “Oh, after all, I can’t let you go alone, poor Theo. And besides, I should die of heartbreak, here without you. So—there—I’ll make the best of a bad business, and go with you”—it was either that, or else, “No, after all, Ican’t. I really can’t. I’m awfully sorry. I shall miss you horribly. But, when I think of what itmeans, I haven’t the strength or courage. I simply can’t”—it was one thing or the other, on and off, all day.
“When you finally know your own mind, I shall be glad if you’ll send for me,” said Theodore. “Because I’ve got to name a Regent. And if you’re coming with me, I shall name my Uncle Stephen. But if you’re stopping here, of course I shall name you.”
There is a bothersome little provision in the Constitution of Monterosso to the effect that the Sovereign may not cross the frontiers of his dominions, no matter for how brief a sojourn, without leaving a Regent in command. Under the good old régime, before the revolution of 1868, the kings of Tchermnogoria were a good deal inclined to spend the bulk of their time—and money—in foreign parts. They found Paris, Monte Carlo, St. Petersburg, Vienna, and even, if you can believe me, sometimes London, on the whole more agreeable as places of residence than their hereditary capital. (There was the particularly flagrant case of Paul II., our Theodore’s great-grandfather, who lived for twenty years on end in Rome. He fancied himself a statuary, poor gentleman, and produced—oh, such amazing Groups! Tons of them repose in the Royal Museum at Vescova; a few brave the sky here and there in lost corners of the Campagna—he used to present them to the Pope! Perhaps you have seen his Fountain at Acqu’amarra?) It was to discourage this sort of royal absenteeism that the patriotic framers of the Constitution slyly slipped Sub-Clause 18 into Clause ii., of Title 3, of Article XXXVI.:Concerning the Appointment of a Regent.
“So,” said Theodore, “when you have finally made up your mind, I shall be glad if you will let me know; for I’ve got to name a Regent.”
But the Queen continued to hesitate; in the morning it was Yes, in the evening No; and the eleventh hour was drawing near and nearer. The King was to leave on Monday. On the previous Tuesday, in a melting mood, Anéli had declared, “There! Once for all, to make an end of it, I’ll go.” On Wednesday a Commission of Regency, appointing Prince Stephen, was drawn up. On Thursday it was brought to the Palace for the royal signature. The King had actually got so far as thedin his name, when the Queen, faltering at sight of the irrevocable document, laid her hand on his arm. She was very pale, and her voice was weak. “No, Theo, don’t sign it. It’s like my death-warrant. I—I haven’t got the courage. You’ll have to let me stay. You’ll have to go alone.” On Friday a new commission was prepared, in which Anéli’s name had been substituted for Stephen’s. On Saturday morning it was presented to the King. “Shall I sign?” he asked. “Yes, sign,” said she. And he signed.
“Ouf!” she cried. “That’ssettled.”
And she hardly once changed her mind again until Sunday night; and even then she only half changed it.
“If it weren’t too late,” she announced, “do you know, I believe I’d decide to go with you, in spite of everything? But of course I never could get ready to start by to-morrow morning. You couldn’t wait till Tuesday?”
The King said he couldn’t.
“And now, my dears” (as Florimond, who loves to tell the story, is wont to begin it), “no sooner was her poor confiding husband’s back a-turned, than what do you suppose this deep, designing, unprincipled, high-handed young woman up and did?”
Almost the last words Theodore spoke to her were, “Do, for heaven’s sake, try to get on pleasantly with Tsargradev. Don’t treat him too much as if he were the dust under your feet. All you’ll have to do is to sign your name at the end of the papers he’ll bring you. Sign and ask no questions, and all will be well.”
And the very first act of Anéli’s Regency was to degrade M. Tsargardev from office and to place him under arrest.
We bade the King good-bye on the deck of the royal yachtNemisa, which was to bear him to Belgrade, the first stage of his journey. Cannon bellowed from the citadel; the bells of all the churches in the town were clanging in jubilant discord; the river was gay with fluttering bunting, and the King resplendent in a gold-laced uniform, with the stars and crosses of I don’t know how many Orders glittering on his breast. We lingered at the landing-stage, waving our pocket-handkerchiefs, till theNemisaturned a promontory and disappeared; Anéli silent, with a white face, and set, wistful eyes. And then we got into a great gilt-and-scarlet state-coach, she and Madame Donarowska, Florimond and I, and were driven back to the Palace; and during the drive she never once spoke, but leaned her cheek on Madame Donarowska’s shoulder, and cried as if her heart would break.
The Palace reached, however—as who should say, “We’re not here to amuse ourselves”—she promptly dried her tears.
“Do you know what I’m going to do?” she asked. And, on our admitting that we didn’t, she continued, blithely, “It’s an ill wind that blows no good. Theo’s absence will be very hard to bear, but I must turn it to some profitable account. I must improve the occasion to straighten out his affairs; I must put his house in order. I’m going to give Monsieur Tsargradev a taste of retributive justice. I’m going to do what Theo himself ought to have done long ago. It’s intolerable that a miscreant like Tsargradev should remain at large in a civilised country; it’s a disgrace to humanity that such a man should hold honourable office. I’m going to dismiss him and put him in prison. And I shall keep him there till a thorough investigation has been made of his official acts, and the crimes I’m perfectly certain he’s committed have been proved against him. I’m not going to be Regent for nothing. I’m going torule.”
We, her auditors, looked at each other in consternation. It was a good minute before either of us could collect himself sufficiently to speak.
At last, “Oh, lady, lady, august and gracious lady,” groaned Florimond, “please be nice, and relieve our minds by confessing that you’re only saying it to tease us. Tell us you’re only joking.”
“I never was more serious in my life,” she answered.
“I defy you to look me in the eye and say so without laughing,” he persisted. “Whatisthe fun of trying to frighten us?”
“You needn’t be frightened. I know what I’m about,” said she.
“What you’re about!” he echoed. “Oh me, oh my! You’re about to bring your house crashing round your ears. You’re about to precipitate a revolution. You’ll lose your poor unfortunate husband’s kingdom for him. You’ll—goodness only can tell what youwon’tdo. Your own bodily safety—your very life—will be in danger. There’ll be mobs, there’ll be rioting. Oh, lady, sweet lady, gentle lady, you mustn’t, you really mustn’t. You’d much better come and sing a song, along o’ me. Don’t meddle with politics. They’re nothing but sea, sand, and folly. Music’s the only serious thing in the world. Come—let’s too-tootle.”
“It’s all very well to try to turn what I say to jest,” the Queen replied loftily, “but I assure you I mean every word of it. I’ve studied the Constitution. I know my rights. The appointment and revocation of Ministers rest absolutely with the Sovereign. It’s not a matter of law, it’s merely a matter of custom, a matter of convenience, that the Ministers should be chosen from the party that has a majority in the Soviete. Well, when it comes to the case of a ruffian like Tsargradev, custom and convenience must go by the board, in favour of right and justice. I’m going to revoke him.”
“And within an hour of your doing so the whole town of Vescova will be in revolt. We’ll all have to leave the Palace, and fly for our precious skins. We’ll be lucky if we get away with them intact. A pretty piece of business! Tsargradev, from being Grand Vizier, will become Grand Mogul; and farewell to the illustrious dynasty of Pavelovitch! Oh, lady, lady! I call it downright unfriendly, downright inhospitable of you. Where shall my grey hairs find shelter? I’msocomfortable here under your royal rooftree. You wouldn’t deprive the gentlest of God’s creatures of a happy home? Better that a thousand Tsargradevs should flourish like a green bay-tree, than that one upright man should be turned out of comfortable quarters. There, now, be kind. As a personal favour to me, won’t you please just leave things as they are?”
The Queen laughed a little—not very heartily, though, and not at all acquiescently. “Monsieur Tsargradev must go to prison,” was her inexorable word.
We pleaded, we argued, we exhausted ourselves in warnings and protestations, but to no purpose. And in the end she lost her patience, and shut us up categorically.
“No! Laissez moi tranquille!” she cried. “I’ve heard enough. I know my own mind. I won’t be bothered.”
It was with heavy spirits and the dismallest forebodings that we assisted at her subsequent proceedings. We had an anxious time of it for many days; and it has never ceased to be a source of astonishment to me that it all turned out as well as it did. But—ce que femme veult....
She began operations by despatching an aide-decamp to M. Tsargradev’s house, with a note in which she commanded him to wait upon her forthwith at the Palace, and to deliver up his seals of office.
At the same time she summoned to her presence General Michaïlov, the Military Governor of Vescova, and Prince Vasiliev, the leader of the scant Conservative opposition in the Soviete.
She awaited these gentleman in the throne-room, surrounded by the officers of the household in full uniform. Florimond and I hovered uneasily in the background.
“By Jove, she does look her part, doesn’t she?” Florimond whispered to me.
She wore a robe of black silk, with the yellow ribbon of the Lion of Monterosso across her breast, and a tiara of diamonds in her hair. Her eyes glowed with a fire of determination, and her cheeks with a colour that those who knew her recognised for a danger-signal. She stood on the steps of the throne, waiting, and tapping nervously with her foot.
And then the great white-and-gold folding doors were thrown open, and M. Tsargradev entered, followed by the aide-de-camp who had gone to fetch him.
He entered, bowing and smiling, grotesque in his ministerial green and silver; and the top of his bald head shone as if it had been waxed and polished. Bowing and smirking, he advanced to the foot of the throne, where he halted.
“I have sent for you to demand the return of your seals of office,” said the Queen. She held her head high, and spoke slowly, with superb haughtiness.
Tsargradev bowed low, and, always smiling, answered, in a voice of honey, “If it please your Majesty, I don’t think I quite understand.”
“I have sent for you to demand the return of your seals of office,” the Queen repeated, her head higher, her inflection haughtier than ever.
“Does your Majesty mean that I am to consider myself dismissed from her service?” he asked, with undiminished sweetness.
“It is my desire that you should deliver up your seals of office,” said she.
Tsargradev’s lips puckered in an effort to suppress a little good-humoured deprecatory laugh. “But, your Majesty,” he protested, in the tone of one reasoning with a wayward school-girl, “you must surely know that you have no power to dismiss a constitutional Minister.”
“I must decline to hold any discussion with you. I must insist upon the immediate surrender of your seals of office.”
“I must remind your Majesty that I am the representative of the majority of the Soviete.”
“I forbid you to answer me. I forbid you to speak in my presence. You are not here to speak. You are here to restore the seals of your office to your Sovereign.”
“That, your Majesty, I must, with all respect, decline to do.”
“You refuse?” the Queen demanded, with terrific shortness.
“I cannot admit your Majesty’s right to demand such a thing of me. It is unconstitutional.”
“In other words, you refuse to obey my commands? Colonel Karkov!” she called.
Her eyes were burning magnificently now; her hands trembled a little.
Colonel Karkov, the Marshal of the Palace, stepped forward.
“Arrest that man,” said the Queen, pointing to Tsargradev.
Colonel Karkov looked doubtful, hesitant.
“Do you also mean to disobey me?” the Queen cried, with a glance... oh, a glance!
Colonel Karkov turned pale, but he hesitated no longer. He bowed to Tsargradev. “I must ask you to constitute yourself my prisoner,” he said.
Tsargradev made a motion as if to speak; but the Queen raised her hand, and he was silent.
“Take him away at once,” she said. “Lock him up. He is to be absolutely prevented from holding any communication with any one outside the Palace.”
And, somehow, Colonel Karkov managed to lead Tsargradev from the presence-chamber.
And that ended the first act of our comical, precarious little melodrama.
After Tsargradev’s departure there was a sudden buzz of conversation among the courtiers. The Queen sank back, in evident exhaustion, upon the red velvet cushions of the throne. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, holding one of her hands pressed hard against her heart.
By-and-by she looked up. She was very pale.
“Now let General Michaïlov and Prince Vasiliev be introduced,” she said.
And when they stood before her, “General Michaïlov,” she began, “I desire you to place the town of Vescova under martial law. You will station troops about the Palace, about the Chamber of the Soviete, about the Mint and Government offices, and in all open squares and other places where crowds would be likely to collect. I have just dismissed M. Tsargradev from office, and there may be some disturbance. You will rigorously suppress any signs of disorder. I shall hold you responsible for the peace of the town and the protection of my person.”
General Michaïlov, a short, stout, purple-faced old soldier, blinked and coughed, and was presumably on the point of offering something in the nature of an objection.
“You have heard my wishes,” said the Queen. “I shall be glad if you will see to their immediate execution.”
The General still seemed to have something on his mind.
The Queen stamped her foot. “Is everybody in a conspiracy to disobey me?” she demanded. “I am the representative of your King, who is Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Are my orders to be questioned?”
The General bowed, and backed from the room.
“Prince Vasiliev,” the Queen said, “I have sent for you to ask you to replace M. Tsargradev as Secretary of State for the Interior, and President of the Council. You will at once enter into the discharge of your duties, and proceed to the formation of a Ministry.”
Prince Vasiliev was a tall, spare, faded old man, with a pointed face ending in a white imperial. He was a great personal favourite of the Queen’s.
“It will be a little difficult, Madame,” said he.
“No doubt,” assented she. “But it must be done.”
“I hardly see, Madame, how I can form a Ministry to any purpose, with an overwhelming majority against me in the Soviete.”
“You are to dissolve the Soviete and order a general election.”
“The general election can scarcely be expected to result in a change of parties, your Majesty.”
“No; but we shall have gained time. When the new deputies are ready to take their seats, M. Tsargradev’s case will have been disposed of. I expect you will find among his papers at the Home Office evidence sufficient to convict him of all sorts of crimes. If I can deliver Monterosso from the Tsargradev superstition, my intention will have been accomplished.”
“Now let’s lunch,” she said to Florimond and me, at the close of this historic session. “I’m ravenously hungry.”
I dare say General Michaïlov did what he could, but his troops weren’t numerous enough to prevent a good deal of disturbance in the town; and I suppose he didn’t want to come to bloodshed. For three days and nights, the streets leading up to the Palace were black with a howling mob, kept from crossing the Palace courtyard by a guard of only about a hundred men. Cries of “Long live Tsargradev!” and “Death to the German woman!” and worse cries still, were constantly audible from the Palace windows.
“Canaille!” exclaimed the Queen. “Let them shout themselves hoarse. Time will show.”
And she would step out upon her balcony, in full sight of the enemy, and look down upon them calmly, contemptuously.
Still, the military did contrive to prevent an actual revolution, and to maintain thestatus quo.
The news reached the King at Vienna. He turned straight round and hurried home.
“Oh, my dear, my dear!” he groaned. “Youhavemade a mess of things.”
“You think so? Read this.”
It was a copy of the morning’s Gazette, containing Prince Vasiliev’s report of the interesting discoveries he had made amongst the papers Tsargradev had left behind him at the Home Office.
There was an immediate revulsion of public feeling. The secret understanding with Berlin was the thing that “did it.” The Monterossans are hereditarily, temperamentally, and from motives of policy, Russophils.
They couldn’t forgive Tsargradev his secret treaty with Berlin; and they promptly proceeded to execrate him as much as they had loved him.
For State reasons, however, it was decided not to prosecute him. On his release from prison, he asked for his passport, that he might go abroad. He has remained an exile ever since, and (according to Florimond, at any rate) “is spending his declining years colouring a meerschaum.”
“People talk of the ingratitude of princes,” said the Queen, last night. “But what of the ingratitude of nations? The Monterossans hated me because I dismissed M. Tsargradev; and then, when they saw him revealed in his true colours, they still hated me, in spite of it. They are quick to resent what they imagine to be an injury; but they never recognise a benefit. Oh, the folly of universal suffrage! The folly of constitutional government! I used to say, ’Surely a good despot is better than a mob.’ But now I’m convinced that abaddespot, even, is better. Come, Florimond, let us sing.... you know.... that song....”
“God save—the best of despots?” suggested Florimond.
Isn’t it a pretty name, Rosalys? But, for me, it is so much more; it is a sort of romantic symbol. I look at it written there on the page, and the sentiment of things changes: it is as if I were listening to distant music; it is as if the white paper turned softly pink, and breathed a perfume—never so faint a perfume of hyacinths. Rosalys, Cousin Rosalys.... London and this sad-coloured February morning become shadowy, remote. I think of another world, another era. Somebody has said that old memories and fond regrets are the day-dreams of the disappointed, the illusions of the age of disillusion. Well, if they are illusions, thank goodness they are where experience can’t touch them—on the safe side of time.
Cousin Rosalys—I call her cousin. But, as we often used to remind ourselves, with a kind of esoteric satisfaction, we were not “real” cousins. She was the niece of my Aunt Elizabeth, and lived with her in Rome; but my Aunt Elizabeth was not my “real” aunt—only my great-aunt by marriage, the widow of my father’s uncle. It was Aunt Elizabeth herself however, who dubbed us cousins, when she introduced us to each other; and at that epoch, for both of us, Aunt Elizabeth’s lightest words were in the nature of decrees, she was such a terrible old lady.
I’m sure I don’t know why she was terrible, I don’t know how she contrived it; she never said anything, never did anything, especially terrifying; she wasn’t especially wise or especially witty—intellectually, indeed, I suspect she might have passed for a paragon of respectable commonplaceness: but I do know that everybody stood in awe of her. I suppose it must simply have been her atmosphere, her odylic force; a sort of metaphysical chill that enveloped her, and was felt by all who approached her—some peoplearelike that. Everybody stood in awe of her, everybody deferred to her: relations, friends, even her Director, and the cloud of priests that pervaded her establishment and gave it its character. For, like so many other old ladies who lived in Rome in those days, my Aunt Elizabeth was nothing if not Catholic, if not Ecclesiastical. You would have guessed as much, I think, from her exterior. ShelookedCatholic, shelookedEcclesiastical. There was something Gothic in her anatomy, in the architecture of her face: in her high-bridged nose, in the pointed arch her hair made as it parted above her forehead, in her prominent cheek-bones, her straight-lipped mouth and long attenuated chin, in the angularities of her figure. No doubt the simile must appear far-sought, but upon my word her face used to remind me of a chapel—a chapel built of marble, fallen somewhat into decay. I’m not sure whether she was a tall woman, or whether she only had a false air of tallness, being excessively thin and holding herself rigidly erect.
She always dressed in black, in hard black silk cut to the severest patterns. Somehow, the very jewels she wore—not merely the cross on her bosom, but the rings on her fingers, the watch-chain round her neck, her watch itself, her old-fashioned, gold-faced watch—seemed of a mode canonical.
She was nothing if not Catholic, if not Ecclesiastical; but I don’t in the least mean that she was particularly devout. She observed all requisite forms, of course: went, as occasion demanded, to mass, to vespers, to confession; but religious fervour was the last thing she suggested, the last thing she affected. I never heard her talk of Faith or Salvation, of Sin or Grace, nor indeed of any matters spiritual. She was quite frankly a woman of the world, and it was the Church as a worldly institution, the Church corporal, the Papacy, Papal politics, that absorbed her interests. The loss of the Temporal Power was the wrong that filled the universe for her, its restoration the cause for which she lived. That it was a forlorn cause she would never for an instant even hypothetically admit. “Remember Avignon, remember the Seventy Years,” she used to say, with a nod that seemed to attribute apodictic value to the injunction.
“Mark my words, she’ll live to be Pope yet,” a ribald young man murmured behind her chair. “Oh, you tell me she is a woman. I’ll assume it for the sake of the argument—I’d do anything for the sake of an argument. But remember Joan, remember Pope Joan!” And he mimicked his Aunt Elizabeth’s inflection and her conclusive nod.
I had not been in Rome since that universe-filling wrong was perpetrated—not since I was a child of six or seven—when, a youth approaching twenty, I went there in the autumn of 1879; and I recollected Aunt Elizabeth only vaguely, as a lady with a face like a chapel, in whose presence—I had almost written in whose precincts—it had required some courage to breathe. But my mother’s last words, when I left her in Paris, had been, “Now mind you call on your Aunt Elizabeth at once. You mustn’t let a day pass. I am writing to her to tell her that you are coming. She will expect you to call at once.” So, on the morrow of my arrival, I made an exceedingly careful toilet (I remember to this day the pains I bestowed upon my tie, the revisions to which I submitted it!), and, with an anxious heart, presented myself at the huge brown Roman palace, a portion of which my formidable relative inhabited; a palace with grated windows, and a vaulted, crypt-like porte-cochère, and a tremendous Swiss concierge, in knee-breeches and a cocked hat: the Palazzo Zacchinelli.
The Swiss, flourishing his staff of office, marshalled me (I can’t use a less imposing word for the ceremony) slowly, solemnly, across a courtyard, and up a great stone staircase, at the top of which he handed me on to a functionary in black—a functionary with an ominously austere countenance, like an usher to the Inquisition. Poor old Archimede! Later, when I had come to know him well and tip him, I found he was the mildest creature, the amiablest, the most obliging, and that tenebrious mien of his only a congenital accident, like a lisp or a club-foot. But for the present he dismayed me, and I surrendered myself with humility and meekness to his guardianship. He conducted me through a series of vast chambers—you know those enormous, ungenial Roman rooms, their sombre tapestried walls, their formal furniture, their cheerless, perpetual twilight—and out upon a terrace.
The terrace lay in full sunshine. There was a garden below it, a garden with orange-trees, and rosebushes, and camellias, with stretches of greensward, with shrubberies, with a great fountain plashing in the midst of it, and broken, moss-grown statues: a Roman garden, from which a hundred sweet airs came up, in the gentle Roman weather. The balustrade of the terrace was set at intervals with flowering plants, in big urn-shaped vases; I don’t remember what the flowers were, but they were pink, and many of their petals had fallen, and lay scattered on the grey terrace pavement. At the far end, under an awning brave with red and yellow stripes, two ladies were seated—a lady in black, presumably the object of my pious pilgrimage; and a lady in white, whom, even from a distance, I discovered to be young and pretty. A little round table stood between them, with a carafe of water and some tumblers glistening crisply on it. The lady in black was fanning herself with a black lace fan. The lady in white held a book in her hand, from which I think she had been reading aloud. A tiny imp of a red Pomeranian dog had started forward, and was barking furiously.
This scene must have made a deeper impression upon my perceptions than any that I was conscious of at the moment, because it has always remained as fresh in my memory as you see it now. It has always been a picture that I could turn to when I would, and find unfaded: the garden, the blue sky, the warm September sunshine, the long terrace, and the two ladies seated at the end of it, looking towards me, an elderly lady in black, and a young lady in white, with dark hair.
My aunt quieted Sandro (that was the dog’s name), and giving me her hand, said “How do you do?” rather drily. And then, for what seemed a terribly long time, though no doubt it was only a few seconds, she kept me standing before her, while she scrutinised me through a double eye-glass, which she held by a mother-of-pearl handle; and I was acutely aware of the awkward figure I must be cutting to the vision of that strange young lady.
At last, “I should never have recognised you. As a child you were the image of your father. Now you resemble your mother,” Aunt Elizabeth declared; and lowering her glass, she added, “This is your cousin Rosalys.”
I wondered, as I made my bow, why I had never heard before that I had such a pretty cousin, with such a pretty name. She smiled on me very kindly, and I noticed how bright her eyes were, and how white and delicate her face. The little blue veins showed through the skin, and there was no more than just the palest, palest thought of colour in her cheeks. But her lips—exquisitely curved, sensitive lips—were warm red. She smiled on me very kindly, and I daresay my heart responded with an instant palpitation. She was a girl, and she was pretty; and her name was Rosalys; and we were cousins; and I was eighteen. And above us glowed the blue sky of Italy, and round us the golden sunshine; and there, beside the terrace, lay the beautiful old Roman garden, the fragrant, romantic garden.... If at eighteen one isn’t susceptible and sentimental and impetuous, and prepared to respond with an instant sweet commotion to the smiles of one’s pretty cousins (especially when they’re named Rosalys), I protest one is unworthy of one’s youth. One might as well be thirty-five, and a literary hack in London.
After that introduction, however, my aunt immediately reclaimed my attention. She proceeded to ask me all sorts of questions, about myself, about my people, uninteresting questions, disconcerting questions, which she posed with the air of one who knew the answers beforehand, and was only asking as an examiner asks, to test you. And all the while, the expression of her face, of her deprecating straight-lipped mouth, of her half-closed sceptical old eyes, seemed to imply that she already had her opinion of me, and that it wouldn’t in the least be affected by anything I could say for myself, and that it was distinctly not a flattering opinion.
“Well, and what brings you to Rome?” That was one of her questions. I felt like a suspicious character haled before the local magistrate to give an account of his presence in the parish; putting on the best face I could, I pleaded superior orders. I had taken mybaccalauréatin the summer; and my father desired me to pass some months in Italy, for the purpose of “patching up my Italian, which had suffered from the ravages of time,” before I returned to Paris, and settled down to the study of a profession.
“H’m,” said she, manifesting no emotion at what (in my simplicity) I deemed rather a felicitous metaphor; and then, as it were, she let me off with a warning. “Look out that you don’t fall into bad company. Rome is full of dangerous people—painters, Bohemians, republicans, atheists. You must be careful. I shall keep my eye upon you.”
By-and-by, to my relief, my aunt’s director arrived, Monsignor Parlaghi, a tall, fat, cheerful, bustling man, who wore a silk cassock edged with purple, and a purple netted sash. When he sat down and crossed his legs, one saw a square-toed shoe with a silver buckle, and an inch or two of purple silk stocking. He began at once to talk with his penitent, about some matter to which I (happily) was a stranger; and that gave me my chance to break the ice with Rosalys.
She had risen to greet the Monsignore, and now stood by the balustrade of the terrace, half turned towards the garden, a slender, fragile figure, all in white. Her dark hair swept away from her forehead in lovely, long undulations, and her white face, beneath it, seemed almost spirit-like in its delicacy, almost immaterial.
“I am richer than I thought. I did not know I had a Cousin Rosalys,” said I.
It looks like a sufficiently easy thing to say, doesn’t it? And besides, hadn’t I carefully composed and corrected and conned it beforehand in the silence of my mind? But I remember the mighty effort of will it cost me to get it said. I suppose it is in the design of nature that Eighteen should find it nervous work to break the ice with pretty girls. At any rate, I remember how my heart fluttered, and what a hollow, unfamiliar sound my voice had; I remember that in the very middle of the enterprise my pluck and my presence of mind suddenly deserted me, and everything became a blank, and for one horrible moment I thought I was going to break down utterly, and stand there staring, blushing, speechless. But then I made a further mighty effort of will, a desperate effort, and somehow, though they nearly choked me, the premeditated words came out.
“Oh, we’re notrealcousins,” said she, letting her eyes shine for a second on my face. And she explained to me just what the connection between us was. “But we will call ourselves cousins,” she concluded.
The worst was over; the worst, though Eighteen was still, no doubt, conscious of perturbations. I don’t know how long we stood chatting together there by the balustrade, but presently I said something about the garden, and she proposed that we should go down into it. So she led me to the other end of the terrace, where there was a flight of steps, and we went down into the garden.
The merest trifles, in such weather, with a pretty new-found Cousin Rosalys for a comrade, are delightful, when one is eighteen, aren’t they? It was delightful to feel the yielding turf under our feet, the cool grass curling round our ankles—for in Roman gardens, in those old days, it wasn’t the fashion to clip the grass close, as on an English lawn. It was delightful to walk in the shade of the orange-trees, and breathe the air sweetened by them. The stillness the dreamy stillness of the soft, sunny afternoon was delightful; the crumbling old statues were delightful, statues of fauns and dryads, of Pagan gods and goddesses, Pan and Bacchus and Diana, their noses broken for the most part, their bodies clothed in mosses and leafy vines. And the flowers were delightful; the cyclamens, with which—so abundant were they—the walls of the garden fairly dripped, as with a kind of pink foam; and the roses, and the waxen red and white camellias. It was delightful to stop before the great brown old fountain, and listen to its tinkle-tinkle of cold water, and peer into its basin, all green with weeds, and watch the antics of the goldfishes, and the little rainbows the sun struck from the spray. And my Cousin Rosalys’s white frock was delightful, and her voice was delightful; and that perturbation in my heart was exquisitely delightful—something between a thrill and a tremor—a delicious mixture of fear and wonderment and beatitude. I had dragged myself hither to pay a duty-call upon my grim old dragon of a great-aunt Elizabeth; and here I was wandering amid the hundred delights of a romantic Italian garden, with a lovely, white-robed, bright-eyed sylph of a Cousin Rosalys.
Don’t ask me what we talked about. I have only the most fragmentary recollection. I remember she told me that her father and mother had died in India, when she was a child, and that her father (Aunt Elizabeth’s “ever so much younger brother“) had been in the army, and that she had lived with Aunt Elizabeth since she was twelve. And I remember she asked me to speak French with her, because in Rome she almost always spoke Italian or English, and she didn’t want to forget her French; and “You’re, of course, almost a Frenchman, living in Paris.” So we spoke French together, sayingma cousineandmon cousin, which was very intimate and pleasant; and she spoke it so well that I expressed some surprise. “If you don’t put on at least aslightaccent, I shall tell you you’re almost a Frenchman too,” I threatened. “Oh, I had French nurses when I was little,” she said, “and afterwards a French governess, till I was sixteen. I’m eighteen now. How old are you?” I had heard that girls always liked a man to be older than themselves, and I answered that I was nearly twenty. Well, and isn’t eighteen nearly twenty?.... Anyhow, as I walked back to my lodgings that afternoon, through the busy, twisted, sunlit Roman streets, Cousin Rosalys filled all my heart and all my thoughts with a white radiance.
You will conceive whether or not, during the months that followed, I was an assiduous visitor at the Palazzo Zacchinelli. But I couldn’t spendallmy time there, and in my enforced absences I needed consolation. I imagine I treated Aunt Elizabeth’s advice about avoiding bad company as youth is wont to treat the counsels of crabbed age. Doubtless my most frequent associates were those very painters and Bohemians against whom she had particularly cautioned me—whether they were also republicans and atheists, I don’t think I ever knew; I can’t remember that I inquired, and religion and politics were subjects they seldom touched upon spontaneously. I dare say I joined the artists’ club, in the Via Margutta, the Circolo Internazionale degli Artisti; I am afraid the Caffe Greco was my favourite café; I am afraid I even bought a wide-awake hat, and wore it on the back of my head, and tried to look as much like a painter and Bohemian myself as nature would permit.
Bad company? I don’t know. It seemed to me very good company indeed. There was Jack Everett, tall and slim and athletic, with his eager aquiline face, his dark curling hair, the most poetic-looking creature, humorous, whimsical, melancholy, imaginative, who used to quote Byron, and plan our best practical jokes, and do the loveliest little cupids and roses in water-colours. He has since married the girl he was even then in love with, and is still living in Rome, and painting cupids and roses. And there was d’.vignac,le vicomte, a young Frenchman, who had been in the Diplomatic Service, and—superlative distinction!—“ruined himself for a woman,” and now was striving to keep body and soul together by giving fencing lessons; witty, kindly, pathetic d’.vignac—we have vanished altogether from each other’s ken. There was Ulysse Tavoni, the musician, who, when somebody asked him what instrument he played, answered cheerily, “All instruments.” I can testify from personal observation that he played the piano and the flute, the guitar, mandoline, fiddle, and French horn, the ’cello and the zither. And there was Kônig, the Austrian sculptor, a tiny man with a ferocious black moustache, whom my landlady (he having called upon me one day when I was out), unable to remember his transalpine name, described to perfection as “un Orlando Furioso—ma molto piccolo.” There was a dear, dreamy, languid, sentimental Pole, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, also a sculptor, whose name I have totally forgotten, though we were sworn to “hearts’ brotherhood,” He had the most astonishing talent for imitating the sounds of animals, the neighing of a horse, the crowing of a cock; and when he brayed like a donkey, all the donkeys within earshot were deceived, and answered him. And then there was Father Flynn, a jolly old bibulous priest from Cork. An uncle of his had fought at Waterloo; it was great to hear him tell of his uncle’s part in the fortunes of the day. It was great, too (for Father Flynn was a fervid Irish patriot), to hear him roar out the “Wearing of the Green.” Between the stanzas he would brandish his blackthorn, stick at Everett, and call him a “murthering English tyrant,” to our huge delectation.
There were others and others and others; but these six are those who come back first to my memory. They seemed to me very good company indeed; very merry, and genial, and amusing; and the life we led together seemed a very pleasant life. Oh, our pleasures were of the simplest nature, the traditional pleasures of Bohemia; smoking and drinking and talking, rambling arm-in-arm through the streets, lounging in studios, going to the play or perhaps the circus, or making excursions into the country. Only, the capital of our Bohemia was Rome. The streets through which we rambled were Roman streets, with their inexhaustible picturesqueness, their unending vicissitudes: with their pink and yellow houses, their shrines, their fountains, their gardens, their motley wayfarers—monks and soldiers; shaggy pifferari, and contadine in their gaudy costumes, and models masquerading as contadine; penitents, beggars, water-carriers, hawkers; priests in their vestments, bearing the Host, attended by acolytes, with burning tapers, who rang little bells, whilst men uncovered and women crossed themselves; and everywhere, everywhere, English tourists, with their noses in Baedeker. It was Rome with its bright sun, and its deep shadows; with its Ghetto, its Tiber, its Castel Sant’ Angelo; with its churches, and palaces, and ruins; with its Villa Borghese and its Pincian Hill; with its waving green Campagna at its gates. We smoked and talked and drank—Chianti, of course, and sunny Orvieto, and fabled Est-Est-Est, all in those delightful pear-shaped, wicker-covered flasks, which of themselves, I fancy, would confer a flavour upon indifferent wine. We made excursions to Tivoli and Frascati, to Monte Cavo and Nemi, to Acqua Acetosa. We patronised Pulcinella, and the marionettes, and (better still) theimitationmarionettes. We blew horns on the night of Epiphany, we danced at masked balls, we put on dominoes and romped in the Corso during carnival, throwing flowers and confetti, and struggling to extinguish other people’smoccoli. And on rainy days (with an effort I can remember that there weresomerainy days) Everett and I would sit with d’.vignac in his fencing gallery, and talk and smoke, and smoke and talk and talk. D’.vignac was six-and-twenty, Everett was twenty-two, and I was “nearly twenty.” D’.vignac would tell us of his past, of his adventures in Spain and Japan and South America, and of the lady for the love of whom he had come to grief. Everett and I would sigh profoundly, and shake our heads, and exchange sympathetic glances, and assure him that we knew what love was—we were victims of unfortunate attachments ourselves. To each other we had confided everything, Everett and I. He had told me all about his unrequited passion for Maud Eaton, and I had rhapsodised to him by the hour about Cousin Rosalys. “But you, old chap, you’re to be envied,” he would cry. “Here you are in the same town with her, by Jove! You canseeher, you can plead your cause. Think of that. I wish I had half your luck. Maud is far away in England, buried in a country-house down in Lancashire. She might as well be on another planet, for all the good I get of her. But you—why, you can see your Cousin Rosalys this very hour if you like! Oh, heavens, what wouldn’t I give for half your luck!” The wheel of Time, the wheel of Time! Everett and Maud are married, but Cousin Rosalys and I.... Heigh-ho! I wonder whether, in our thoughts of ancient days, it is more what we remember or what we forget that makes them sweet? Anyhow, for the moment, we forget the dismal things that have happened since.
Yes, I was in the same town with her, by Jove; I couldseeher. And indeed I did see her many times every week. Like the villain in a melodrama, I led a double life. When I was not disguised as a Bohemian, in a velvet jacket and a wide-awake, smoking and talking and holding wassail with my boon companions, you might have observed a young man attired in the height of the prevailing fashion (his top-hat and varnished boots flashing fire in the eyes of the Roman populace), going to call on his Aunt Elizabeth. And his Aunt Elizabeth, pleased by such dutiful attentions, rewarded him with frequent invitations to dinner. Her other guests would be old ladies like herself, and old gentlemen, and priests, priests, priests. So that Rosalys and I, the only young ones present, were naturally paired together. After dinner Rosalys would play and sing, while I hung over her piano. Oh, how beautifully she played Chopin! How ravishingly she sang! Schubert’sWohin, and Rôslein, Rôslein, Rôslein roth;and Gounod’sSérénadeand hisBarcarolle:
“Dites la jeune belle,
Où voulez-vous aller?”
And how angelically beautiful she looked! Her delicate, pale face, and her dark, undulating hair, and her soft red lips; and then her eyes—her luminous, mysterious dark eyes, in whose depths, far, far within, you could discern her spirit shining starlike. And her hands, white and slender and graceful, images in miniature of herself; with what incommunicable wonder and admiration I used to watch them as they moved above the keys. “A woman who plays Chopin ought to have three hands—two to play with, and one for the man who’s listening to hold.” That was a pleasantry which I meditated much in secret, and a thousand times aspired to murmur in the player’s ear, but invariably, when it came to the point of doing so, my courage failed me. “You can see her, you can plead your cause.” Bless me, I never dared even vaguely to hint that I had any cause to plead. I imagine young love is always terribly afraid of revealing itself to its object, terribly afraid and terribly desirous. Whenever I was not in Cousin Rosalys’s presence, my heart was consumed with longing to tell her that I loved her, to ask her whether perhaps she might be not wholly indifferent to me; I made the boldest resolutions, committed to memory the most persuasive declarations. But from the instant Iwasin her presence again—mercy, what panic seized me!
I could have died sooner than speak the words that I was dying to speak, ask the question I was dying to ask.
I called assiduously at the Palazzo Zacchinelli, and my aunt bade me to dinner a good deal, and then one afternoon every week she used to drive with Rosalys on the Pincian. There was one afternoon every week when all Rome drove on the Pincian; was it Saturday? At any rate, you may be very sure I did not let such opportunities escape me for getting a bow and a smile from my cousin. Sometimes she would leave the carriage and join me, while Aunt Elizabeth, with Sandro in her lap, drove on, round and round the consecrated circle; and we would stroll together in the winding alleys, or stand by the terrace and look off over the roofs of the city, and watch the sunset blaze and fade behind St. Peter’s. You know that unexampled view—the roofs of Rome spread out beneath you like the surface of a troubled sea, and the dome of St. Peter’s, an island rising in the distance, and the sunset sky behind it. We would stand there in silence perhaps, at most saying very little, while the sunset burned itself out; and for one of us, at least, it was a moment of ineffable, impossible enchantment. She was so near to me—so near, the slender figure in the pretty frock, with the dark hair, and the captivating hat, and the furs; with her soft glowing eyes, with her exquisite fragrance of girlhood; she was so near to me, so alone with me, despite the crowd about us, and I loved her so! Oh, why couldn’t I tell her? Why couldn’t she divine it? People said that women always knew by intuition when men were in love with them. Why couldn’t Rosalys divine that I loved her,howI loved her, and make me a sign, and so enable me to speak?
Presently—and all too soon—she would return to the carriage, and drive away with Aunt Elizabeth; and I, in the lugubrious twilight, would descend the great marble Spanish staircase (a perilous path, amongst models and beggars and other things) to the Piazza, and seek out Jack Everett at the Caffé Greco. Thence he and I would go off to dine together somewhere, condoling with each other upon our ill-starred passions. After dinner, pulling our hats over our eyes, two desperately tragic forms, we would set ourselves upon the traces of d’.vignac and Kônig and Father Flynn, determined to forget our sorrows in an evening of dissipation, saying regretfully, “These are the evil courses to which the love of woman has reduced us—a couple of the best-meaning fellows in Christendom, and surely born for better ends.” When we were children (hasn’t Kenneth Grahame written it for us in a golden book?) we played at conspirators and pirates. When we were a little older, and Byron or Musset had superseded Fenimore Cooper, some of us found there was an unique excitement to be got from the game of Blighted Beings.
Oh, why couldn’t I tell her? Why couldn’t she divine it, and make me an encouraging sign?
But, of course, in the end I did tell her. It was on the night of my birthday. I had dined at the Palazzo Zacchinelli, and with the dessert a great cake was brought in and set before me. A number of little red candles were burning round it, and embossed upon it in frosting was this device:
A birthday-piece
From Rosalys,
Wishing birthdays more in plenty
To her cousin “nearly twenty.”
And counting the candles, I perceived they werenineteen.
Probably my joy was somewhat tempered by confusion, to think that my little equivocation on the subject of my age had been discovered. As I looked up from the cake to its giver, I met a pair of eyes that were gleaming with mischievous raillery; and she shook her head at me, and murmured, “Oh, you fibber!”
“How on earth did you find out?” I wondered.
“Oh—a little bird,” laughed she.
“I don’t think it’s at all respectful of you to call Aunt Elizabeth a little bird,” said I.
After dinner we went out upon the terrace. It was a warm night, and there was a moon. A moonlit night in Italy—dark velvet shot with silver. And the air was intoxicant with the scent of hyacinths. We were in March; the garden had become a wilderness of spring flowers, narcissuses and jonquils, crocuses, anemones, tulips, and hyacinths; hyacinths, everywhere hyacinths. Rosalys had thrown a bit of white lace over her hair. Oh, I assure you, in the moonlight, with the white lace over her hair, with her pale face, and her eyes, her shining, mysterious eyes—oh, I promise you, she was lovely.
“How beautiful the garden is, in the moonlight, isn’t it?” she said. “The shadows, and the statues, and the fountains. And how sweet the air is. They’re the hyacinths that smell so sweet. The hyacinth is your birthday flower, you know. Hyacinths bring happiness to people born in March.”
I looked into her eyes, and my heart thrilled and thrilled. And then, somehow, somehow... Oh, I don’t remember what I said; only somehow, somehow... Ah, but I do remember very clearly what she answered—so softly, so softly, while her hand lay in mine. I remember it very clearly, and at the memory, even now, years afterwards, I confess my heart thrills again.
We were joined, in a minute or two, by Monsignor Parlaghi, and we tried to behave as if he were not unwelcome.
Adam and Eve were driven from Eden for their guilt; but it was Innocence that lost our Eden for Rosalys and me. In our egregious innocence, we had determined that I should call upon Aunt Elizabeth in the morning, and formally demand her sanction to our engagement! Do I need to recount the history of that interview? Of my aunt’s incredulity, that gradually changed to scorn and anger? Of how I was fleered at and flouted, and taunted with my youth, and called a fool and a coxcomb, and sent about my business with the information that the portals of the Palazzo Zacchinelli would remain eternally closed against me for the future, and that my people “would be written to"? I was not even allowed to see my cousin to say good-bye. “And mind you, we’ll have no letter writing,” cried Aunt Elizabeth. “I shall forbid Rosalys to receive any letters from you.”
Guilt (we are taught) can be annulled, and its punishment remitted, if we do heartily repent. But innocence? Goodness knows how heartily I repented; yet I never found that a pennyweight of the punishment was remitted. At the week’s end I got a letter from my people recalling me to Paris. And I never saw Rosalys again. And some years afterwards she married an Italian, a nephew of Cardinal Badascalchi. And in 1887, at Viareggio, she died....
Eh bien, voilà!There is the little inachieved, the little unfulfilled romance, written for me in her name, Cousin Rosalys. What of it? Oh, nothing—except—except... Oh, nothing.”All good things come to him who waits.” Perhaps. But we know how apt they are to come too late; and—sometimes they come too early.