In the last resort the issue lay with Sonia. Her husband had the wisdom to recognise that; although his own happiness was at stake, the matter was beyond the restricted sphere of the personal equation.
In the crisis of his fate it has always seemed to me that Fitz displayed the inherent nobility of his character. Once the King, with immense force and cogency, had revealed the situation in its true aspect, his son-in-law, without abating a single claim to his wife's consideration, yet refrained from unduly exercising the prerogative conferred upon him by their spiritual affinity.
It was wise and right that Fitz should detach himself as far as possible from the conflict that was being waged between father and daughter. But, although he did what lay in his power to simplify the issue, he could not banish the image of himself from his wife's heart. He furnished the motive power of her existence. Emotion held the master-key to her nature. In any conflict between love and duty, love could hardly fail to win.
Fitz suffered intensely as the struggle went on. He even threw out a hint to me that he might be tempted to take a certain step to help his wife to a possible solution of the problem.
"The longer this goes on," he said to me in the small hours of the morning, "the more clearly I realise that Sonia's place is with her own people. I have been blind, and I have been mad, and I owe it to Ferdinand that I have been able to see myself in my true relation to the issue in which fate has involved us. It is six years since I first saw Sonia on the terrace of the Castle at Blaenau. I was travelling about the world trying to find ease for my soul. I knew that she was unhappy, and she knew that I was, but we were young and not afraid. We met continually, for I had theentréeto the Castle as the grandson of the Elector of Gracow, whose daughter married my grandfather, George Fitzwaren of tragic memory.
"We used to sit out on the Castle terrace, Sonia and I, night after night, watching the stars in their courses, while her father dragooned his parliament and hoodwinked his people. She was lonely, outcast and unloved; there was none to whom she could speak her thoughts; she was oppressed with the sense of her destiny.
"She said that when she first met me she wondered where she had seen me before. She said that my presence haunted her like a half-remembered vision, until it began to merge itself into her dreams of a former existence and a happier state. And as she said this, her voice grew strangely familiar. For me it unlocked the doors of memory. It was like the faint, far-off music you can hear sometimes, the music of the wind in winter sweeping across infinite, illimitable space.
"She allowed me to kiss her, and we knew then we held the key to the riddle of existence. We were twin-souls made one again, and together we would go through all time and all eternity.
"But I think we are beginning now to realise that the sense of oneness is alien to the human state, and that the hour is at hand when we must separate and go out again into the night of ages alone."
In a condition of desolation the unhappy man rocked his meagre body to and fro as thus he spoke.
"If it will really help her," he said, "I think I shall put an end to my present life. At least, I shall ask Ferdinand to do it, for I doubt whether any man in the true enjoyment of his reason has really the power to do it for himself. And yet, perhaps one ought not to say that. So much can be done by prayer."
"Surely it is contrary to the will of God?" I said with a kind of horror.
"It is, undoubtedly," said Fitz, "as regards humanity at large. But it sometimes happens, you know, that one among us plays the game up so high that he gets a special decree. I almost think, Arbuthnot, that I have heard the Voice—and if I have, my unhappy Sonia will be able to go back to her people for a term, and I shall ask you, as my oldest friend, a man whom my instincts tell me to trust, to accept the charge of my little daughter."
To one poised delicately upon the plane of reason such a speech could not fail to be shocking. But it was so sincere, so reasoned, the holder of these views was so entirely the captain of his soul, that his words, as he uttered them, seemed to derive a kind of sanction which as I commit them to paper they do not appear to possess.
The counsel of one man to another does not amount to much in those cases where the subject-matter of their discussion has been already referred to the High Court. But I felt that I should be unfaithful to the elements that formed my own nature, acutely conscious as I was of their imperfect development, if I did not seek to give them some sort of an expression at such a moment as this.
"Fitz," I said, "I can claim no right to address you, except as a younger brother. You belong to a higher order of things; your life is more developed than mine, but I ask you in the name of God to refrain from the step you contemplate, unless you are absolutely convinced, beyond any possibility of error, that there is no other way out."
The unhappy man made no reply. His face had begun to seem unrecognisable.
I rose involuntarily from the chair in which I sat.
"Let us walk in the garden," I said.
The suggestion appeared to shape itself on my lips, regardless of the will's volition. It was, perhaps, a recovered fragment of man's heritage floating downwards from the past.
I opened the door and we went downstairs into the garden. It was the middle of the night; what there was of the moon was almost wholly obscured; the air was mild with the purity of recent rain. Up and down the wet lawns we walked, bareheaded and in our slippered feet.
Suddenly lights flashed upon us out of the shrubbery.
"It is all right," I called. "Do not disturb us. Go into another part of the grounds."
The voice seemed unlike my own, but the watchers obeyed it.
Nature exhorted us as we walked in the garden. Her purity, her calm, the incommunicable magic of her spaciousness, the thrall of her splendour entered our veins. We were her children, flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone. The mighty Mother spoke to us.
A little wind moved softly among the gaunt branches of a pine.
"I must make quite sure that the Voice has spoken to me," said Fitz.
The unhappy man walked to the pine-tree, knelt down and seemed involuntarily to shroud his face with his hands.
I shrank back and turned away.
Quite suddenly my heart leapt with surprise and dismay. An unexpected and sinister presence was by my side.
"I pity that poor fellow," said a voice softly. "I pity them both."
It was the voice of the King.
Habited in a voluminous mantle, the Victor of Rodova linked his arm through mine in his paternal manner.
"Come, my friend," he said in a voice of urgent kindliness, "let us walk in the garden."
Together we walked over the lawns, the King and I, with slow and measured steps.
"It is a beautiful night." Ferdinand the Twelfth took off his hat.
"God is in His heaven, sir," I said, softly.
"You are a God-fearing people," said the King; "that is a good thing. What can we do in the world without the fear of God? This night reminds me of the night before Rodova. It was just like this, a calm, soft air, a little moist. You could hear the wind creeping softly among the pine-trees. At the bottom of your garden there was the gentle noise of a little river. All night the little fishes were leaping and playing in its clear waters, and living their lives joyously as it seemed good to them. And beyond the river were the Austrians, sixty thousand men with horses and cannons.
"The God of Armies had given the soul of my country into my care. Was she to remain a free and independent people as she had been since the time of Alvan the First, or was she to be trampled under the heel of the oppressor? All night I walked in the garden, and I remember I knelt down under the pine-tree yonder, as our friend is doing there. It is a wonderful thing how history keeps happening over again."
The King's voice had grown hushed and solemn.
"To-night is another crisis in the history of our country. I am older than I seem; there is a voice within which tells me that my course is almost run. That is why I have come to speak with my daughter. It is the business of us Sveltkes to hold the balance in the scales of destiny. Since the time of Alvan the First there has been an unbroken line of monarchy; perhaps it is decreed that it shall end to-night. But yet I cannot think so. The unseen power which enabled us to withstand the might of Austria will invest my daughter with wisdom and grace."
There was a footfall on the soft turf, and we turned to find that Fitz had joined us.
"Ha! Nevil," said the King in a voice of parental tenderness. "I was explaining to our good friend how this night reminds me of the eve of Rodova. Our lady the moon was in her present quarter; yonder was Mars, blood-red on the eastern horizon. There behind us was Jupiter, exactly as we see him to-night; but on the night of Rodova Uranus was not visible. It was a grave crisis in the history of our country; to-night is a grave crisis also, for I feel that a term has been placed to my days. But I walked all night in the garden, and I knelt down beneath a single pine-tree, and the God of Armies spoke to me. 'Fear nothing,' said the God of Armies. 'At the break of day, cross the river that flows at the bottom of the garden, and all will be well.'"
The light of the moon fell upon the King's face, That smiling and subtle visage looked strangely luminous.
"An hour before daybreak," the King went on, "Parlowitz came to me. 'Weissmann has come up in the night,' he said, 'with twenty thousand men. If we cross the river, all is lost.' 'Fear nothing, Parlowitz,' I said. 'At daybreak we cross the river. The God of Armies would have it so.' 'Then, sire,' said Parlowitz, 'give this to my wife when next you see her'—Parlowitz unfastened the collar of his tunic and took off a locket which he wore round his neck—'and tell her that it is my wish that our second son John should succeed to my estate.' I then bade adieu to Parlowitz, for he would have it so; and as the dawn was breaking he was shot through the breast at the head of his division. But that was a glorious day in the annals of the Illyrian people; and you, my dear Nevil, will have seen the noble statue that has been raised to the memory of Parlowitz on the terrace at Blaenau."
"I have seen the statue," said Fitz, calmly. "A monument of piety, but abominable as a work of art."
"It is the work of the best sculptor in Illyria," said the King.
"There are no sculptors in Illyria," said Fitz, bluntly.
The King fell into a muse. I was sensible of Fitz's grip upon my arm.
"It is wonderful," said the King, softly, "how history continues to happen over again. I seem to hear the voice again in the upper air: 'At daybreak, cross the river at the bottom of the garden, and all will be well.'"
The grip upon my arm grew tighter.
"Do not leave me," said Fitz in a hoarse whisper.
All night long the three of us walked up and down the lawns before the house. In one of the upper windows was a light. It was Sonia's room.
Few words passed between us, and in the main it was the King who spoke. Never once did Fitz relax his grip upon my arm. Indeed, as the hours passed, it seemed to grow more tense. It had the convulsive tenacity of one who in the last extremity fights to keep the body united to the soul.
Even I, who make no claim to be highly sensitised, was susceptible of the ominous challenge of the force that was enfolding us. Silence was even more terrible than speech. The resources of the ages were in the scale against us.
"For God's sake do not leave me!" said my unhappy friend in a whisper of terror.
At last the first faint pencilings of the dawn began to declare themselves in the upper air. My slippered feet were soaked and my teeth were chattering with the chill of the morning. A curious sensation, which I had never felt before, began to steal over me. With a thrill of suffocating, incommunicable horror I began slowly to realise that I was no longer the master of myself.
Fitz's convulsed grip was still upon my arm, but the sense of him had grown remote. He was slipping farther and farther away.
"Hold me!" he whispered; and again, "Hold me!" The stifled voice was like that of one in whose company I was drowning.
The voice of the King sounded quite near, although it was with dull stupefaction that I heard his words.
"The day is breaking. The river flows at the bottom of the garden."
The fingers of my friend no longer clasped my arm. In the half-light I saw the King produce a revolver from the folds of his mantle. He handed it to Fitz with a paternal, almost deprecating gesture, and we were both powerless to deny him. It seemed to me that I was standing outside all that was happening. The sense of distance appeared ever to increase.
I witnessed the King kiss the forehead of his son-in-law, and heard him give him his blessing. Then I seemed to hear the voice of Fitz crying piteously,
"Sonia, Sonia, help me!"
"Look over there," said the King; "the day is breaking. It is another glorious sunrise for the people of Illyria."
"Yes, indeed, sir," said a voice that broke the spell.
The prayer of Fitz had been heard. Sonia had come unperceived into our midst.
"I have come to taste the morning, it is so good," she said. "And you, how early you have risen!"
The King laughed. He seemed to enfold his daughter with that visage of smiling subtlety.
"We have been walking in the garden, my friends and I," he said. "We have had a pleasant talk together. The position of the stars reminded me of the eve of Rodova, except that Uranus was not with us. It is always well to know the position of Uranus."
I felt Fitz slip the revolver into my hand.
"Come," he said in his tone of natural decision, "let us go and have a bath and get ready for breakfast."
While the King continued to discourse amiably with his daughter we made our escape.
In the privacy of my room over the stables we removed the cartridges from the revolver.
Fitz handed the weapon to me. "Keep it," he said, "as a memento of Ferdinand the Twelfth. I should have crossed the river if Sonia had not heard my call."
Fitz shivered; but in his haggard face I thought that reason was still enthroned.
At the breakfast table, Mrs. Arbuthnot was moved to inquire of our distinguished guest whether he would care to meet some of our friends and neighbours at dinner. Hisincognitoshould be preserved rigidly; and perhaps a few fresh faces would serve to lighten the tedium of his stay in our midst. The King assented to the proposal with his usual hearty good-humour.
Personally I was deeply grateful to Mrs. Arbuthnot for having had the inspiration to make it. I was prepared to welcome anything that would withdraw me from the perilous altitudes upon which I had been walking throughout the night. I might be said to yearn for anything that could re-attach me to the humbler plane of men and things, in whose familiarity lay mental security.
After breakfast, however, when I came to discuss this apparently innocent proposal with Mrs. Arbuthnot, it was clear that something lurked behind it.
"I have got a little plan, you know," said she, with a plaintive, childlike air. "They have all been so uppish with me lately that I have thought of a little plan of scoring them off properly."
"By asking them to meet royalty and giving them an excellent dinner?"
"There shall be nothing wrong with the dinner," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, "but it ought to be very amusing. I shall drive round to Mary's at once and ask her to forgive the short notice, but Sonia's father has unexpectedly turned up and, much against our will, we are having to entertain him."
"Where is the jest? The bald and painful truth is seldom amusing."
"Goose! As they are all convinced that Sonia was formerly a circus rider in Vienna, what can be more natural than that her father is the proprietor of the circus?"
"True, madam. But how will you explain away his title?"
"It will be the simplest thing out. You can always buy a title in Illyria, like you can here. The old circus man has made a fortune and purchased a title accordingly."
I confessed that that had a fairly plausible sound.
"They will swallow it, see if they don't," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, giving an ever freer rein to her invention. "And the old circus man is really too funny, and if Mary Catesby and Laura Glendinning and George and the Vicar and Mrs. Vicar, and that pushing little American would like to see for themselves, we shall be very glad for them to dine here to-morrow evening. And," concluded Mrs. Arbuthnot, in a tone in which childlike conviction and a natural love of mischief were excellently blended, "just see if they don't, that's all!"
"But why, my child? I confess that I cannot see any particular charm in such an entertainment."
"They will come, if only to score us off afterwards, you goose. You don't know them as well as I do."
I confessed that I did not.
Mrs. Arbuthnot lost no time in driving round to her friends, and returned in high glee with them all in her net.
"What did I say!" she declaimed triumphantly. "I called first on Mary. I knew, if I persuaded her, the rest would be easy. Well, you know her little way. She read me a terrible lecture about the duties of my position. As the wife of the member, my responsibilities were simply enormous. Not on any account would she sit down at the same table as Mrs. Fitz. But I drew such a fancy portrait of the old circus man and of his friend the ring-master, who was almost as funny as himself, that I got her to consent. So she and George are coming."
"Mischievous monkey!"
"Then I went on to the Vicarage. The Vicar had no engagement, but he hummed and hawed, until I told him Mary was coming, so he is coming too, and he is going to bring Lavinia. Then there will be Laura and the little American and Reggie Brasset, and Jodey, of course. We shall be quite a family party, and it ought to be tremendous fun."
"Won't Brasset and Jodey be rather flies in your ointment? Don't they know your guilty secret?"
"I shall tell them all about it, of course, and they will help us to carry it off. And I mean to ask Colonel Coverdale to come too. He will like to meet the King, and we must persuade him not to give us away."
I was in no mood to give free play to whatever I may have in the way of a sense of humour. But Mrs. Arbuthnot's scheme, doubtful as it was on the score of morality, had at least the merit of diverting the current of my thoughts into another channel. It certainly did something to lessen the tension.
Mrs. Arbuthnot laid her plans with considerable precaution. She had a long and extremely animated conversation over the telephone with the Chief Constable. I could almost hear the great man growl and chuckle as she expounded her wicked design. But in the end he was unable to resist her and he was in her net as well. Jodey and Brasset, of course, were only too eager to lend a hand, and both agreed with her "that they all deserved to be scored off properly." Personally, the workings of the "scoring-off" process were a little too much for my enfeebled mental system, but I was informed peremptorily that I always was a dull dog.
Determined to leave nothing to chance, Mrs. Arbuthnot even went to the length of taking Fitz into her confidence.
"You know, Nevil," she said, engagingly, "how they have behaved to Sonia and what they have said about her behind her back."
"What have they said?" Fitz's indifference bordered upon the sublime.
"Why, don't you know?" Mrs. Arbuthnot transfixed the Man of Destiny with starlike orbs. "Don't you know that when Laura Glendinning found out that Sonia rides just as straight as she does and that she looks much smarter, it made her frightfully jealous?"
"Did it indeed!" grunted the Man of Destiny.
"And can you believe, Nevil,"—the starlike orbs grew ever rounder and more luminous—"she circulated the story that dear Sonia was a circus rider from Vienna!"
"Oh, really!" Fitz concealed a yawn in a rather perfunctory manner.
"And, what is more, she got everybody to believe it."
Fitz's boredom was dissembled with a smile of twelve-horse-power politeness.
"And so, to score them off," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, rising to pleasantly histrionic heights, "I have invited the ringleaders to dinner to-night to meet the circus rider's father, the proprietor of the circus, who has made a fortune out of his show and has bought himself a title, as, of course, you can in Illyria. And Baron von Schalk is the ringmaster of his circus."
The Man of Destiny guffawed with languid inefficiency and declared that the plot was like a comic opera. In my private ear he recorded an opinion subsequently to which it would be hardly kind to give publicity.
"Nobody but a woman would have thought of it," he said. "If it turns out to be funny, so be it, but I must say it looks like spoiling a good meal—you've got a top-hole cook, old son—and making things damned uncomfortable for everybody."
I adjured Fitz, who, like myself, was evidently in no mood to appreciate refined humour, to wait and see.
Lieutenant-Colonel John Chalmers Coverdale, C.M.G., late of His Majesty's Carabineers, was the first to arrive.
"Sailing rather near the wind, aren't you?" was his greeting to his hostess, who in her best gown was a ravishing example of picturesque demureness.
"I think it will go all right," said she. "Mary Catesby and George will be too killing."
Certainly, when that august matron arrived she was verygrande dameand honest George five feet three inches of meticulous good breeding. They greeted Fitz and his wife with a distant reverence. Ferdinand the Twelfth and his famous minister had not yet appeared upon the scene. Most of their day had been spent upon the much-debated Clause Three of the Illyrian Land Bill.
Eight o'clock is the hour at which we dine in the Crackanthorpe country. It is the established custom for regular followers of that distinguished pack to be extremely hungry at that hour. As the presentation timepiece chimed the hour from the drawing-room chimneypiece, there was a full muster of Mrs. Arbuthnot's dinner guests: the Vicar and his wife, looking rather pinched and formal, their invariable attitude towards public life, yet the Vicar wearing a somewhat worldly pair of shoes of patent leather and equally worldly mauve socks and rather short trousers; Miss Laura Glendinning, our local Diana, who looked horse and talked horse and who would doubtless have eaten horse had it been in the menu; my charming little friend, the relict of Josiah P. Perkins of Brownville, Mass.; the noble Master enveloped in a sartorial masterpiece and a frown of perplexity; hisaide-de-camp, Joseph Jocelyn De Vere Vane-Anstruther enveloped ditto, but leaning up not ungracefully against a corner of the chimneypiece with his hands in his pockets, not looking at anybody, not speaking to anybody, but with a covert gaze fixed upon the drawing-room door in quest of early information in regard to Ferdinand the Twelfth.
In the middle of thesalonthe august Mrs. Catesby discussed the Minority Report with the Vicar of the parish and Prison Reform with the Chief Constable, whilst I, sharing the largest and most comfortable sofa with Mrs. Nevil Fitzwaren, had to answer a succession of sympathetic inquiries in regard to my arm.
"A mere scratch," everybody was assured. "Lucky it wasn't worse. Fact is, those taxis are rather dangerous."
The presentation timepiece chimed a quarter past eight. The proprietor of the Viennese circus and his faithful acolyte were yet to seek. Romantic figures as they doubtless were—at least, there was the authority of the hostess that such was their nature—the manner in which they were obstructing the serious business of life was hard to condone.
Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins came up to our sofa. She gave a demure, down-looking glance at the lady seated by my side, who was decidedlypiano, which of course was as it should be, and made the plaintive confession, "I am so hungry. I wouldn't mind the hind leg off that satinwood table."
"You have full permission to have it," said I.
"Oh, no," said Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins, "it would spoil the suite. But hardly any breakfast, a sandwich at the Top Covert, in which there was hardly any hog, one cup of tea at the Vicarage, and you know what that is, and now—oh dear!——"
In these harrowing circumstances I conceived it to be my duty to find out what was toward. I yielded my place to Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins, and as she collapsed into it, I heard her say, "I suppose if you once get a cinch on circuses you make a regular pile right soon?"
But as I made to go forth in search of Ferdinand the Twelfth, lo and behold! that monarch came in with his minister. He was wearing no orders, there was nothing to enhance or to distort his personality, but it struck me that his bearing had a simple majesty beyond that of any person I had ever seen.
"Make our apologies, milady," he said in a low voice, which was yet quite audible to most in the room, since upon his entrance the conversation had been suspended automatically. "That mad Dutchman is waving his torch over the powder keg, and we had forgotten the time."
And then, with the greatest simplicity and good-nature, he started to make a tour of the room, shaking each man by the hand heartily, saying "Very pleased to meet you, sir," and bowing to each lady in turn with smiling gravity. He then gave the hostess his arm.
At the table I had Mrs. Catesby on my right hand, Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins on my left.
"What a lovely man!" said Charybdis on the left.
"I don't believe," said Scylla, "that he has any connection with a circus whatever."
"He is Mrs. Fitz's father, anyhow."
"What is his name?"
"Count Zhygny, but titles are cheap in Illyria."
"It is a noble head," said the Great Lady.
"Objective criticism is proverbially unsafe," I hazarded. "His daughter has a noble face."
"He is just bully." Charybdis was waxing enthusiastic. "Quite Bawston."
The Great Lady addressed herself in grim earnest to the serious business of life, and I am bound to say—although doubtless I am the wrong person to insist on the fact—that it was worthy of all the attention that was paid to it. We were twenty-five minutes late at the post, as Jodey had complained bitterly to his hostess, but the distinguishedcheflately in the service of a nobleman had fairly excelled himself. Good-humour, nay, even cordiality, reigned all along the line.
"Are those pearls real?" said an imperious whisper from the right.
"I am not a judge of precious stones," I admitted, "although in the process of time I think I shall be."
"One can't believe they are real. If they are, they must be priceless. What a wonderful head that man has! And who, pray, is the other?"
"Herr Brouss is his name. The circus-ring is his vocation."
"I once met a distinguished foreigner, a Baron Somebody, a great politician who looked exactly like that. It was at Spa or one of those foreign watering-places. By the way, Odo, what did the other man mean by 'the mad Dutchman is waving his torch over the powder keg'? I see in the paper this morning that relations are strained between Germany and Illyria.
"It is one of those cryptic phrases to which we have not the key."
"What a deliciousentrée! This is coals of fire with a vengeance. I hope you are not living beyond your means."
"Try the madeira—I see our excellent Vicar has discovered it. I am wondering, Mary, whether I could win a little support again in high places, as an out-and-out opponent of socialism in any shape or form."
"I will make no rash promises, Odo"—the Great Lady took a wary sip of the paternal vintage—"but I will speak to dear Evelyn if you wish, although you certainly don't deserve to be forgiven."
"I hope you will assure her that no one has a profounder veneration for a poor but deserving class."
In spite of the fact that Fitz and his wife remained silent and preoccupied, the progress of the feast was marked by a temperate gaiety. The hostess was on the crest of the wave. She made no attempt to veil an almost indecent sense of triumph. Precisely why she should have harboured it I cannot say, but she betrayed all the outward and visible signs of that emotion. There was a light in her eye, there was a piquancy about her discourse, there was a deferential archness in her attitude towards the high personages by whom she was surrounded, which communicated themselves to the whole table. In response to her sallies the reverberations of the royal laughter were loud and long.
"Toppin' good sort, ain't he?" said my relation by marriage in a moment of expansion to Miss Laura Glendinning.
"Who is a toppin' good sort?" said that literal Diana.
"Why, the King, of course."
"I have never met him," said Diana.
"Where, pray, did you meet him, Joseph?" was the severe inquiry of the Great Lady over the brim of her madeira.
"In the paddock at Newmarket," said the young fellow, making a brilliant recovery.
"Fathead!" said the noble Master in a whisper of indulgent languor. "You nearly blewed it then."
The royal laughter continued to reverberate.
"I suppose he began life as a clown?" said the Great Lady.
"Nearly all these circus chaps do, don't they?" said Jodey, who nearly suffered misfortune in a too strenuous desire to preserve his gravity.
"Or as a bare-back rider," said I, taking up the parable.
"One would certainly say a clown," said the Great Lady. "Dear me, what manners!"
The port wine had appeared and had been duly dispensed. At this precise moment Ferdinand the Twelfth was giving the table-cloth a peremptory tap. He rose, glass in hand.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my good friends," said he. "I haf one toast to propose. We will drink, if you please, to the health ofle bon roi Edouard. God bless him!"
Upon the Chief Constable's extremely prompt initiative the company did not hesitate to follow the Circus Proprietor's lead.
"The King! God bless him!"
This incident, which the Circus Proprietor had invested with such authority that it seemed perfectly in order, nearly led to the undoing of Jodey and his noble friend. Overborne by the emotion of the moment, they indulged in a little side show of their own. The toast ofle bon roi Edouardhaving been honoured in form the rest of the company sat down at once, but our two sportsmen remained upon their feet. Filling up their glasses, they turned towards the illustrious guest and repeated the solemn formula:
"The King. God bless him!"
"Sit down, you asses," said the Chief Constable in a truculent undertone.
Nevertheless, the proprietor of the circus bowed to them and smiled paternally.
"One shouldn't look for too much," said the Vicar, "but I think the old fellow is a bit of a sportsman."
"Not at all a bad fellow," said honest George, expansively. "Not at all a bad fellow. Not at all a bad fellow."
However, a subtle fear lay within the breast of a married man, a father of a family, and a county member, lest our excellent Vicar had spoken in excess of his knowledge. I foresaw that the ordeal by fire was coming. When the ladies left the room desperation urged me to bestow a pointed hint upon the Church.
"Perhaps, Vicar," I said, plaintively, "if you joined the ladies? Not at all a bad fellow, you know, not at all a bad fellow, but perhaps not—er—altogether—don't you know!"
"None the worse for that," said the hardest riding parson in three counties, filling up his glass with composure and with cordiality. "If you think the old buffer can appreciate a yarn, I will tell that old one of my Uncle Jackson's. It is rather a chestnut these days, but perhaps he mayn't have heard it."
The clerical effort was by no meansvieux jeu. And it is only just to the Church to mention that the style of the raconteur compared very favourably with that he affected in his vocation. Ferdinand the Twelfth guffawed heartily, and replied with a couple of masterpieces that brought the blush of shame to the cheek of modesty. I am afraid there was only one cheek, however, in which the emblem in question was able to find sanctuary, and truth compels me to assert that it was neither that of the Church nor the Police.
For nearly an hour by the clock the bottle was circulated and we were royally entertained. Ferdinand had had a rich and various experience of life. Much had he seen and done; he had made and unmade history; he was of the world, he loved it and he courted it; no personality had emerged upon the European chequer-board during the past half-century of whom he could not discourse out of a full and intimate knowledge. If it pleased him, he could pull aside the curtain and disclose the showman making the puppets dance in the political theatre.
He spoke with immense gusto; his zest of life was magnificent, and somewhat strangely there was nothing cynical or ignoble about his point of view. For the best part of an hour he held the least wise of us in thrall. He had an abundance, an overplus of nature, and subtle and Jesuitical—for want of a happier word—as he doubtless was, there was something humane and great-hearted about him as a man.
He gave away the great ones of the earth, showing them in their habit as they dwelt. He made them neither less nor more than they were. Naught was set down in malice, but his anecdotes mostly had a Rabelaisian tang which sprang from a prodigality of nature. He was a great and not unbeneficent force who drained the cup of life to the lees, smacked his lips heartily, and demanded more. His philosophy seemed to be to fear God but not to scruple to use to the full all the noble and infinite gifts of your inheritance. His rule of conduct, however, was not, to measure men by their strength but by their weakness. "Every man has his blind spot," he said,aproposof Bismarck. "Find it and he is yours."
Such a crowded hour of wisdom, wit and historic revelation was an experience that even a dullard was not likely to forget. George Catesby and the Vicar alone were unacquainted with the identity of our guest, and as far as they were concerned the cat was more or less out of the bag.
When we joined the ladies we found that card-tables had been set out. Mrs. Arbuthnot and Coverdale engaged Mrs. Catesby and the King. No one watching the play could fail to be amused by the Circus Proprietor's caustic but good-humoured reflections upon the performance of his partner. The Great Lady bore it all, however, with a stoical humility. To my surprise, she cut in for a second rubber, and her demeanour made it clear to Jodey, who disdained games like "britch" and preferred to watch the royalpartie, "that she smelt a rat."
"I expect the show has pretty well given itself away by now," he said in an aside to his host, "but anyhow they have been scored off properly."
The mystery of "scoring off" was still too much for my inadequate mental processes. But I gathered that there was a consensus of opinion among persons of a more vivid intellectual cast that such indeed was the case.
"We sha'n't half pull her leg, I don't think"—in the exuberance of the hour the young fellow relapsed into a semi-lyrical music-hall comedy vein—"about the old circus johnny who drank a health unto his Majesty. I only wish old Alec had been there, that's all."
"A digger, madame, a digger," said the Circus Proprietor in a tone of humorous expostulation, "when you haf not a treek!"
The Great Lady accepted the reproof with Christian meekness.
It was not until hard upon midnight that the departing guest was sped in divers chariots; the Church in the identical "one-hoss shay" of inimitable and pious memory. "So many thanks, Mrs. Arbuthnot, for a reallymemorableevening," said the Church, with a wave of a somewhat unclerical bowler.
Plutocracy in the little person of Mrs. Josiah P. Perkins had a Daimler of sixty horse power. She gave a lift to a less fortunate sister in the person of Miss Laura Glendinning. The Great Lady and the excellent George, "a good vintage sound but dull," as I have heard him described by a friend and neighbour, had recourse to a medium of travel of twelve horse power only, as became the representatives of our sorely impoverished land-owning class.
"Sucha success, my dear!" said the Great Lady, bestowing her parting blessing. "But," in a voice of mystery, "I shallinsistupon the whole thing being cleared up."
The morning which followed these tempered gaieties was cold and bright. The King borrowed my nicest gun and, accompanied by his son-in-law, our retainer Andrew, and an old field spaniel who answered to the name of Gyp, proceeded to put up a hare or two in the stubble. My physical state precluded my raising a gun to my shoulder, but I deemed it wise to be of the party. Accidents have been known to occur, and—but perhaps it is well not to pursue this vein of speculation.
Destiny is a vague term which provides the veil of decency for many secrets, and firearms have often been the chosen instruments of its decrees. Doubtless I was growing too imaginative. Certainly the adventures I had undergone during the past few weeks had left a mark upon my nerves, but when I recalled our vigil, which was still so fresh in my thoughts as to seem strange and terrible, I could not view the prospect of Ferdinand the Twelfth and his dutiful son-in-law sharing the innocent pastime of a little rough shooting without a secret fear.
I am glad to say that the course of the morning's sport lent no colour to this apprehension. The King was an excellent shot, and even a strange gun made little difference to his prowess. He displayed both science and accuracy. But to see him standing cheek by jowl with Fitz, each with a cocked weapon in his hand; to watch them scramble through gaps and over stiles and five-barred gates, for in spite of his years and his physique Ferdinand was a wonderfully active man who took an almost boyish pride in his bodily condition, was to feel that the life of either was hanging by a thread.
However, as I have said, all this was the unworthy fruit of an overwrought imagination. The sportsmen returned to luncheon safe and sound, with a modest bag of the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field.
In the afternoon, at the instance of Mrs. Arbuthnot, whose happy thought it was, we all motored over to inspect the Castle. The Family was understood to be in Egypt, and the ducal stronghold is the show place of the district.
The rumour as to the Family's whereabouts proved to be correct, and a profitable hour was spent in the casual study of magnificence. The King took a genuine interest in all that he saw. In particular he was charmed with the view from the terrace, which is modelled upon Versailles, with a long and far-spreading vista of oaks and beeches and a herd of deer in the foreground.
He expressed a keen appreciation of the Duke's collection of works of art; yet he permitted himself to wonder that a private individual should have such pictures, such tapestries, such furniture, such porcelain, such armour, such metal work, such carpets, such painted ceilings and heaven knows what besides.
"It is pretty well for a subject," said Ferdinand the Twelfth.
"His Grace of Dumbarton, sir," said I, "owns four other places in these islands on a similar scale of magnificence; he owns a million and a quarter acres, of which a portion is in great centres of industry, his income is rather more than £500,000 a year, and he is accustomed in his public utterances to describe himself as a member of a poor but deserving class."
Ferdinand the Twelfth pondered a moment with an amused yet wary smile.
"If he lived in Illyria," he said, "I think his grace would have to be content with less, eh, Schalk?"
"It would not surprise me, sir," said the Chancellor, with an expressive shrug. "I confess it does not appear economically sound for a State to allow its private citizens to accumulate such quantities of treasure. Whatever the measure of their public capacity I fail to see how they can rise to their responsibilities."
"But if," said I, "the State mulcts his grace of a farthing's-worth, it is immediately denounced as a robber. Property is the most sacred thing we know in this country."
"His grace came by all this honestly, I hope?" said the King, with an amused air.
"He came by it under forms of law, certainly."
"Which he himself did not make, I hope!" said the King, laughing.
"No, sir; his grandfather and the nominees of his grandfather and so on managed that little business. Quite a constitutional proceeding, of course."
"I appreciate that," said Ferdinand the Twelfth, with his subtle smile. "The British Constitution has long been the envy of nations. I suppose our friend the Duke is a man of great public spirit who has rendered signal service to the British Empire."
"On the contrary, he prefers the pleasant obscurity of the English gentleman."
"His forbears, then?"
"The late Duke was an imbecile; and I am afraid if anyone took the trouble to search the records of the family since it came to this country from Germany about the year 1700, there is only one episode involving signal public spirit recorded in its archives."
"A glorious victory, a Blenheim, a Waterloo, I presume?" said Ferdinand the Twelfth.
"No, sir; peace has her victories also. This distinguished family has won the Derby Horse Race on two occasions."
"A wonderful people, Schalk!" said the King, laughing.
Her Royal Highness clapped her hands impulsively in the face of Mrs. Arbuthnot.
"There, Irene, what did I say!" she exclaimed. "Perrault!—wherever you go in this little island you find Perrault. My father has now found Perrault. Even Schalk has found him."
"Sonia dear, you are too funny!" said Mrs. Arbuthnot, 'with a plaintively childlike air of tacit condescension.
The King informed his grace's steward, a gentleman with a bald head and a very conventional aspect, who awaited us in the entrance hall to see us safely off the premises, that he would like to write his name in the visitors' book. Unaware of the identity of Ferdinand the Twelfth and by no means approving of the general trend of our conversation, the steward said with cold politeness that he feared the visitors' book was only used by his grace's guests.
The King took up a piece of red pencil that lay on a writing-table.
"We will write on the wall," he said, blandly.
The steward was shocked and scandalised, but no heed was paid to his protests. The King wrote his name on the wall in bold and firm English characters, immediately beneath Lely's portrait of the founder of the family.
This accomplished, the King gave the pencil to his daughter, who inscribed her name also. She in turn gave it to the Chancellor, who followed her example. He then gave the pencil to Mrs. Arbuthnot.
That lady coloured with embarrassment, but at the King's express desire she wrote her name too; and when it came to the turn of the Conservative member for that part of the county he had no alternative but to obey the royal command.
Our names duly appeared on the wall in the following order:
Ferdinand RexSoniaVon SchalkIrene ArbuthnotNevil FitzwarenOdo Arbuthnot, M.P.