[1]I should perhaps mention that the Consul of Alsander bears not the slightest resemblance to any Consul in the Levant, Alsander being of course a much coveted retiring post in the General Consular Service.
[1]I should perhaps mention that the Consul of Alsander bears not the slightest resemblance to any Consul in the Levant, Alsander being of course a much coveted retiring post in the General Consular Service.
There was a fine contrast between the two boys as they stood confronting each other. They were both young, handsome, beardless. But Norman was square, strong jawed, with a hint of the workman about him; his hair almost silver, his blue eyes and fair complexion as British as could be. There was little to suggest anything more interesting than the handsome athlete about him save a fine, curious expression of the mouth, a bold forehead, and perhaps an exceptional regularity and symmetry of the features.
Arnolfo was in complete contrast: his whole body, though not well set off by the gorgeous but loose costume, seemed curiously slim and supple: his smooth, dark face had the spiritual beauty of the artist. No lack of determination in it, however, but the power was in the eyes rather than the chin, which was as softly rounded as a woman's. Of these eyes we can say but little; they were large dark eyes, but no poet can sing or painters paint the charms of the soul's windows. Even more beautiful was the mouth, on which hovered a smile. But though in the eyes of Arnolfo there shone a humorous sympathy, though his smile faded with obvious disappointment when Norman drew back his hand, Norman in his fury saw nothing but an insolent boy who had outraged him bitterly. Scorning with a flash of chivalry to use his fist on so frail a person, he nevertheless could not help administering to Arnolfo there and then a ringing smack on the cheek.
"How dare you, sir, commit an outrage on one of my friends in my presence?" The Consul's voice rang out severe and incisive.
"One of your friends!" cried Norman, almost hysterical with wrath. "What business has a British Consul with friends who outrage British subjects? I'd give you one, too," he added, savagely, "if it wasn't for your...."
"It is most impolite of you, sir," said the Consul, interrupting him and leaning across his desk, "to make any reference to the unfortunate state of my arm, due as it is, and as I have already hinted, to excessive zeal in the public service. Also, I may inform you, that you are quite welcome to go for me if you like. Your behaviour is uniformly gross. As for my infirmity, take that!"
And he dealt Norman across his desk a blow with the supposed withered arm which sent him reeling against the wall. Norman was about to reply to this onslaught in kind when Arnolfo interposed himself between them, his cheek still red from the blow.
"Remember," he said to the Consul, "he cannot understand and he has had a great deal to endure. I would think less of him if he had not hit me. Sir, I accept your blow. Will you cry quits with me and be friends?"
"You accept my blow indeed, you coward! I have given you a very good clout on the head. Why don't you challenge me to a duel like a man? Surely that is the custom everywhere outside England?"
"I will make you any reparation you like, but I will not fight you. Strange as it may seem, I hope that some day you may become my friend."
"Friend, indeed! You seem to credit me with outrageous generosity. If you are too frightened to fight, you must at least let me in my turn order you a sound thrashing. Then I can meet you on equal terms."
"Believe me, Signor Norman, I would do that for your friendship," said Arnolfo, and, turning to the Consul, he added, "Will you not leave me with this Englishman a minute?"
"I entreat you, Signor Arnolfo, you should not trust yourself to such a man. He is rude, unmannerly, and dangerous, and not at all likely to appreciate the refinement of your sentiments."
"I entreat you, do what I ask," said the young man, and as the Consul still seemed reluctant, he added in a whisper, "I command you." Upon this the Consul, bowing to Arnolfo, left them alone.
"Now, Signor Norman," began Arnolfo, "try and put aside for a moment your righteous and natural indignation. I have come on purpose to see you. I hastened here as soon as I was informed of your arrival. I want you to forgive me. I want you to be my friend. But, most of all, I want you to believe me to be sincere."
"How are you going to prove your sincerity to me this time?" inquired Norman. "By more subtle torture than beating or by downright murder? You and your friends have inflicted on me the most shameful degradation, and now you implore forgiveness and talk of sincerity. Are you, is this city, is the whole world, mad? Why should you want to talk to me about sincerity? Would it not be more to the point to discuss the figure of my damages?"
"Never be ashamed of your vulgarity, Mr Price," said the young man, without a trace of sarcasm in his gentle voice. "It gives you just that vitality which I have not got. It is exactly the absence of vulgarity from my character that makes me unfit to rule this kingdom alone."
"You seem to have no mean opinion of ourself. I know you only as a shopkeeper and as a conspirator. I agree with you that you are unfit to rule even this kingdom. Take at least the trouble to inform me who you are."
"Will you let me tell my story?"
"I have no interest in your story. But on condition that you have no further designs against me, I will listen to your narrative, provided it is short."
"Sir!" exclaimed Arnolfo, with a flash of passionate anger in his beautiful dark eyes, the genuineness of which not even Norman could doubt, but always speaking in the same gentle tone, "I have had enough of your British and barbarous sulkiness. I am the proudest man in Alsander, and I have let you strike me in the face. But I will not let you insult me further. Sit in that chair and listen to what I have to tell you. Remember now as then, here, as in the secret room of the conspirators, you are utterly in my power."
Norman, curiously stilled by these words, sank into the great armchair in silence. The black walls, the tortured pictures, the incense fragrance of the strange room—had the Consul journeyed to China also?—hypnotized his will. He felt tired and careless. He took almost a pleasure in obeying the elegant and frail young man, whose voice was as low as the music of distant waves.
"I," began Arnolfo, "am a nobleman of Alsander, to which I returned about a year ago, after an absence of many years in many civilized lands, especially in Ulmreich. My father is virtual ruler of the Court of the orphan Princess Ianthe, who (presuming that the present occupant of the throne dies incurably insane and childless) should one day be Queen of Alsander. My father, the Duke Arnolfo, as any peasant boy will tell you, is the guardian of the Princess. It was his plan that the Princess should be educated in Ulmreich, among a sober and wise people, where every facility would be obtainable to cultivate her mind and refine her intelligence. I will confess to you that it was his dream to seat a noble and wise woman on the throne of Alsander, even, if necessary, before the death, or at all events before the natural death, of King Andrea. Well he knows the miserable state of this little kingdom under the idle, foolish and cunning rule of old Count Vorza, and many a time he has only been restrained from riding into Alsander at the head of a handful of retainers and wresting the regency from Vorza by the thought of his young charge whose majority he, an unfortunate exile, has devoutly awaited.
"But, alas! nothing is likely to come of all his dreams. You may have heard flimsy rumours here to the effect that Princess Ianthe is as mad as her cousin. It is not quite true that she is mad. She is stubborn and unreasonable, and she is almost stupid. She grasps nothing, despite the most careful education that a woman could possibly receive. She has fits of piety and fits of melancholy. If that were all, married to a good husband, she might do passably well; but she has one supreme defect which makes her impossible as a queen. She is so ugly that it would be hard to find a man who would not be ashamed to be even so much as styled her husband, though the bribe were a crown.
"Carefully guarded as our little Court is, some rumours of the truth have come to Alsander, and at present Vorza seems to the popular estimation to be likely to go on ruling for ever. After all, the people are not unhappy: it is so many years since they have enjoyed the advantages of uncorrupt and energetic government they do not know that they are missing anything. But my father and I love Alsander with a burning passion; we dreamt of Florence, of Athens, of Venice, of the great deeds that have been performed by little States; and night after night we used to discuss what could be done with Alsander. We considered a republic, but a republic, even a small one, needs a dictator to tide over its growing pains and also a standard of education, which Alsandrians by no means possess. As for me, I knew myself to be incapable of governing Alsander alone, even had it been possible for me to acquire the supreme power by my father's influence."
(Norman, who had begun to listen with interest to the young man, and who had; thought that he was getting at the truth at last, noted in his mind the weakness of the last remark—coming from so self-confident young man. However, he did not interrupt, and Arnolfo went on.)
"It was decided finally that I should journey alone to Alsander, spy out the land, and attempt to form a conspiracy. It was a projects not without danger for myself. Vorza knows that the Court of Princess Ianthe is against him; my father warned me almost with tears against his treachery, and I could hardly persuade him to let me go. But once arrived in Alsander I put on so brave an outward show, played with such gaiety the part of an elegant young man bent on nothing but pleasure, that the suspicions of that crafty old fox were lulled with comparative ease. Cunning men seldom penetrate the cunning of others, especially the cunning of such others as have naturally no cunning in their nature, but are only playing a cunning part.
"In the meanwhile I made firm and loyal friends of all the really able or notable men in Alsander, to whom I carried letters of recommendation from my father. I found them surprisingly ready and willing to plot with me some change of government—but what change? I had deliberated long and in vain with several excellent people, when one day I was taken aside by Dr Sforelli, the King's physician, the very doctor to whose searching examination you so strongly objected the other day. He told me that there was a plot in the plot which now he would reveal. 'Your father,' he said, 'has partly deceived you. We are not groping in the dark; we have a plan already formed, a plan fantastic and wild, but still a plan; and we have cherished that plan for years. It was necessary that we should be assured of your discretion and ability before inaugurating our conspiracy; yet we postponed our action in order to await your intelligent co-operation, and, above all, in order to fulfil your father's dearest wish, which was that you should in person preside over the work of the regeneration of Alsander. Our plot is based on a very startling and curious fact, which is this—that practically from and including the day of his coronation not a soul in Alsander, not even Vorza, who is afraid of lunatics—has set eyes on King Andrea.'
"I expressed my astonishment.
"'This extraordinary state of affairs, though based originally on pure chance, is by no means accidental,' explained Sforelli, continuing. 'It was all arranged between your father and myself years ago. It had been actually necessary to seclude the King for a time, and your father, seized by a sudden and wonderful inspiration, gave me the word to convert the temporary seclusion into a permanent one.'
"'That is an extraordinary state of affairs,' I remarked, 'but I do not see how it will help in the regeneration of Alsander.'
"'Think!' said the Doctor, with his queer Jewish smile, and then the whole scheme dawned on me."
"Ah," said Norman, who had forgotten all his animosity in his interest in this amazing tale. "That was a superb idea. Of course, if no one has ever seen the King, you can substitute anyone you like and pretend the madness has been cured, without any revolution, bloodshed or fuss."
"Precisely, sir; but not quite anyone we like. Anyone outside Alsander. Anyone the people do not know. Anyone who is worth substituting. We had to find a ruler, and we set seriously about the task of discovering one. The Doctor had sent friends of his as emissaries to every land, like the Oriental Kings who desired husbands for their daughters and heirs for their crowns, to find a man fit to rule the kingdom. But our emissaries had a more difficult task than those of the Oriental potentates. They had first of all to find a man suitable—and though all that is needed, after all, is a certain amount of honesty, energy and intelligence, for it's not so hard to manage a little State like ours, yet we soon discovered that most honest, intelligent and energetic men were, unfortunately for our purpose, already installed in worldly positions so enviable that they were not likely to leave them for a chance of ruling a miserable country and an off-chance of being killed. Besides, the prospective candidates for royalty could not be trusted with the secret. The honest men might come to think it consistent with their honesty to betray the scheme. The proposed Bang would have to be tempted to Alsander, and, once there, most cautiously treated. And the emissaries the Doctor could send were very few, and poor.
"There was only one of them who was sanguine of success. He was an old man, an English poet...."
"Ah!" interjaculated Norman.
"... He had lived for many years, apparently without means of subsistence, in a broken attic, where he said he was composing a great Ode to the Sun. Sforelli, it seems, knew the old man well, and often declared to incredulous company that the supposed old imbecile was the most intelligent man in Alsander and perhaps in England. The Old Poet, as I said, swore he would succeed."
"Ah!" said Norman, "he has failed!"
"He has not failed," said Arnolfo, rising and laying his hands on Norman's shoulder. "He found you selling biscuits in an English village, and he swears that his feet were pulled to the village against his will at least seven miles on a hot summer afternoon, and all by the power of the Jinn! And now, though we feigned to reject you yesterday, you are the man we are going to make King of Alsander. And if we have to torture you into acceptance, King of Alsander you shall be."
Gently pronouncing the strange threat, the boy stood over Norman and looked down into his face and smiled. The world went unreal for Norman at that moment: he wondered if he were alive.
"I cannot believe a word of it," Norman said slowly, after a time. "But, no, I cannot! If you really wanted a man to rule this country—let us not say a King—it sounds too foolish—you would not choose an English grocer, examine his flesh as though he were a prize pig, thrash him before the eyes of his future subjects, and drive him out like a dog?"
"It was really necessary to see the physique of the man who is to found a dynasty. I fear, though, the Doctor took his duties himself too seriously. I fear, too, the whimsicality of the situation got hold of us: we were inclined to make the most of it. It is not every day one examines a man for the post of King. And as for the rest—we had to frighten you—into secrecy, and if possible into a belief if not of our sincerity at least of our power. We had to be able to command your silence, and it was obvious you were not ready to believe our good faith."
"Then show me your good faith!" rejoined Norman. "Surely I have a right to demand that? I only claim the just equivalent—that I should deal with you as you dealt with me."
"Ah, you do not know," said Arnolfo, paling, "what you ask of me. On the day I make you Bang you may do with me what you will—I promise you. You will rule me then; but I could not accept the dishonour from you now. If you think me a coward—I am a coward, but I can overcome my cowardice. That is not my reason," the boy went on, holding out his hands to Norman with a wan smile. "There—take my hands—torment me as you will; but not till the day you are crowned in the Cathedral of Alsander shall you have your full revenge."
Norman rose and took the delicate hand, and shook hands with a smile. "I cannot help it," he said. "I do not care if you want to make me your jest again, or if you want to kill me, but I am yours to command. I can even forgive you. But as for your plan it is plainly impossible."
"I think I do not care if it is, so long as I have your friendship," said Arnolfo, with strange warmth. "However, I admit there are many difficulties and many dangers in our plot, but what are those that strike you specially?"
"Do I look like an Alsandrian, first of all! Or must I be made up to look like one?"
"Heavens, we will not stoop to disguise. Besides, I have a touch of the artist, sir, in my composition, and never would I have your features altered, your colour changed, or a hair of your head displaced. In any case, the Royal Family were always fair. Kradenda was a Viking. Remember, also, you have only to deceive the ignorant mob. All the intelligent men of Alsander are in the plot."
"But I have been here for weeks!" objected Norman. "Every one knows me as the mad Englishman."
"You have been playing Haroun Al Rashid, and spending the first days of your return to Alsander spying out the land. It is a very pretty story, and will greatly enhance your popularity. Besides, the Old Poet instructed you to weave a mystery round your movements, and I learn from a sure source that you obeyed him."
"Then all this they tell me," gasped Norman, "that the King was sent abroad to be cured was got up on purpose for the plot?"
"Of course, and the announcement that his return and his cure are expected. Not a detail has been forgotten by Sforelli. There were guards at the palace, a closed carriage, a special train."
"And the Consul?" gasped Norman.
"The Consul is an agent of the British Government, and the British Government, tired of wanting a strong Turkey, happens at this moment to want a strong Alsander."
"And Vorza?"
"Vorza is a fool," said the young man, but with less conviction than usual.
"And the King himself. What shall we do with him?" pursued Norman.
"What of him? One of the guards knows of a little tap invented by the Japanese, as simple as the Jiu-jitsu trick with which I felled you in the shop the other day. The King really is the last person to be considered."
"But, really, if you want me to have anything to do with it," cried Norman, in horror, "I cannot touch murder."
"Not murder, but removal. What use is the poor devil's life to him or to the world?" So saying, Arnolfo sat down in the armchair facing his interlocutor and eyed him with interest.
"I am not an Alsandrian. In England we view these things differently," said Norman, pompously, shocked that his gentle companion should be capable of designing such an atrocious outrage. But Arnolfo answered unperturbed:
"In England I believe on one occasion you gave a King a mock trial and then beheaded him under circumstances of inconceivable barbarity. Ah! you're an Englishman, and mad like all of them, as mad as Andrea. Come, I love argument; let's have it out. One life, one rotten, miserable life to buy the happiness of a country, and you won't spend it. You call it principle. When you go to war, what do you care for life? You are not religious in the matter. It's just that fetish you call law. I did not ask you to kill the imbecile yourself; it will be done quietly."
"I will have nothing to do with any filthy, cold-blooded murder. It isn't fetish: it's simply because I won't."
"And if we deal with you instead of with him?"
"Try. I do not like your cynicism."
"I am sorry. But it is unreason on your part, or else sheer cowardice. By what code of ethics in the world do you justify yourself? You are just frightened to do something that would make your conscience uncomfortable. On what do you base your morality?"
"On feeling."
"Would your feelings let you kill a man who was just going to kill some one else?"
"Certainly."
"Then why not a man whose existence does harm to others?"
"Others might think my existence did harm to them."
"But a life that is worthless to itself?"
"May not the poor fool's life be happier than yours or mine?" said Norman, who was always fond of abstract argument and apt to grow eloquent in the realm of ideas. "He lives with his ideal. His cobwebbed, cracked-plaster room is for him a most elegant palace; he sees the phantom courtiers all day long; they bring him presents of fruits and flowers and spices and gold. He is for himself the great Emperor of the World, for all we know."
"Then you will not justify a political assassination?"
"No. It's not so easy as you think, nor are my reasons so trumpery, Arnolfo—for you're as shallow as you are clever. Murder cuts at the source of all society—which war, which is organized killing, does not. Unorganized killing means death not to one man here or there but to society. That is why we English, who think society a good thing, hate murder. Let it loose, unpunished, and if but twenty people are killed the law unheeding, it's worse for society than if twenty thousand perish in war or plague. I will not touch it."
"Your reasoning is powerful, Norman, but it's not your reason that influences your action. Your act is, as you said before, in accordance with your feelings. I might combat your reason, but I cannot change your convictions. What can we do?"
"Well, it's not so terribly urgent to get rid of him."
"What can possibly be done with him?"
"Why, send him to a lunatic asylum, of course."
"What a ghastly piece of perverted common sense. O, you Englishmen; you have never realized that the French Revolution has occurred. You are still a hundred years behind the Continent. But I am Alsandrian, my friend, I am Southern; I have all the Southern weakness."
"And some of the Southern charm," added Norman. Though he had recovered under the stress of the ethical argument from the hypnotic fascination to which he had succumbed, he began to be not so sure that he did not like this strange and gracious person.
"But none of the Southern faithlessness," Arnolfo rejoined. "Trust me, Norman. Trust me and I will be faithful to you to death. I—we all of us need you so desperately. This about the murder was only nonsense—to hear what you had to say, though I'm afraid the good Sforelli suggested it in earnest. There is good work, man's work, an Englishman's work to be done here. Once the fantastic stuff—the mummery—is over, you may achieve true greatness."
"I shall become a thief," said Norman. "Do you want to argue that?"
"You are right to remember it. That repugnance you must sacrifice: you are going to seize an all but worthless property and make it fine land for corn and olive."
"Yet what I said of murder applies to theft: I am helping to cut at the basis of society."
"But to found a new one. Come, in this objection you will not persist. You have not the same emotion, you do not really mind."
"Or, rather, you wake in me such emotions—such schoolboy emotions—that I cannot control them. It's a game—but it's worth playing. I don't care what awaits me—discovery-disaster—death! I don't care if you're fooling me. I follow you, Arnolfo. What are your orders?"
"Continue to play the part the Poet assigned to you, that is all. Hint of the mystery. I will prepare the rest as quickly as I can. About the King, I will arrange something to please you. And now, good-bye."
Norman held out his hand, but Arnolfo, under the stress of subdued emotion, laid his hands on Norman's shoulders and kissed him.
"A Southern way," he said, half laughing, half ashamed. "One more thing, remember, I had almost forgotten," he added, as he opened the door for Norman. "That is, beware of women."
"Norman, you must be awfully rich."
So the guileless Peronella to him on his return, breathlessly emerging from the room to greet him.
"Have you only just found that out?" said Norman, assuming the slight modest smile of a man who has been hiding his infinite superiority.
"Yes. Why, of course, the buckle you gave me was very beautiful, but I had no idea.... I put it on this morning and went for a walk in it, and all the jewellers came running out of their shops to praise it and ask about it and offered thousands of francs for it. And, O Norman, I wouldn't sell your buckle for anything, but if you would get me one of those lovely big hats the Frenchwoman sells in the High Street, just to go with it."
"You are much finer as you are, my lass, with a kerchief round your head."
"Oh, but do, Norman, dear! It seems that buckle of yours is worth enough to buy a new hat for every girl in Alsander."
Norman was about to surrender when he suddenly remembered he had rather less than a napoleon left in the world. "Well, I am in a foolish fix," thought he. "If I don't follow up the buckle, I shall be accused of having stolen it." (He surmised correctly; Alsandrian cunning was already suspicious of him.) "And my clothes are dreadful: a millionaire or Prince, even in disguise, would not wear shiny blue trousers: a Prince in rags is all right, but not a Prince in bags. I wish I had given a hint to that marvellous Arnolfo, but somehow I expected him to know everything without being told. And perhaps it was all a dream and he a phantom."
So he shut himself up in his room for the rest of the day.
"I have important letters to write," he said, impassively. "You must be content with the buckle, Peronella. Wait a little while, and I'll dress you in gold from head to foot."
He retired, not to write, but to think and meditate. He had supper in his room, and for the first time in his life disliked cabbages. Then he went to bed. As he was falling asleep he wondered whether he had not been raving in his mind for the last few days: whether he was not being fooled: whether he would succeed, what he would do when a King. There was plenty to do: the town was very dirty. An ecstatic vision of having all the drains up flitted across his mind. Succeeded a vision of fine mountain roads with cunning wriggles, and the royal motor car sliding up them. Then the vision of a Court ball with more-than-Oriental splendour. Then the perplexing vision of a little fool of a girl, damned pleasant to see and touch, crying her stupid heart out.
However, he slept. He was awakened by a scrubby postman, who handed him a registered letter. Norman opened it hastily, and was delighted to find that it contained English banknotes for a hundred pounds—delighted but not surprised, for Arnolfo had by now deadened his sense of wonder. He gave the postman twopence, and had breakfast in bed on the strength of his opulence. Indeed he rose so late that at the bank to which he directed his footsteps a five-pound note was changed only with the greatest reluctance, five minutes before noon, the Alsandrian closing time. However, after a lot of little sums had been worked out by a lot of little desks and after the five-pound note had been bitten, crackled and held up to the light, and after Norman had executed a lot of complicated moves and marked time strenuously in front of grilled windows and "caisses" (all Continental banks seem to work on the supposition that you have come there to pass a forgery or rob the till), he was released with a large number of silver coins bulging in his trouser pockets.
He stood for a moment on the threshold blinking at the sun, his contentment tempered by annoyance at the reflection that all the shops were closed and would not be opened again for another three hours, so that he could not buy so much as a pocket handkerchief for his personal adornment, when he heard a whirring clangorousness, and there appeared a motor car crawling and puffing along the ruinous cobbles, followed by a little crowd of admirers, for a motor was as strange in Alsander as an aeroplane (shall I add "a year ago"?) above Upper Tooting. Norman would have known that the car was a London taxi had he ever been to London. The driver, smartly uniformed, stopped opposite him, and Arnolfo dressed in his invariable silk and gold stepped out, and bowed to Norman with a very ostensible deference. "I hope, Sir," he said suavely, "you will do me the honour of stepping into my car and coming to lunch with me at a little place I know of?"
"Why, how did you find me here?" cried Norman. "You are as bewildering as the Cheshire cat."
"It's not hard to find a suspicious fellow like you in a gossipy town like Alsander!" laughed Arnolfo. "Some other day, moreover, you shall tell me who the Cheshire cat was; but jump in now; we have no time to lose."
"I ought to hesitate," said Norman, but he stepped in at once.
"We are going to continue playacting on the lines laid down by the Poet," said Arnolfo, as soon as they were ensconced in the car and being jolted softly and slowly over the atrocious roads. "But you must forsake the proletariat for the aristocracy, and therefore I am going to take you round the town after lunch and dress you up like a Jew on a racecourse. For your story is to be that you are a rich English nobleman (any eccentricity will be swallowed in Alsander if you say you are a rich English nobleman), but that you find that you have Alsandrian blood on your mother's side from the fifteenth century. You see, the story you must tell at present should be a suspicious and extraordinary one, as you are soon going to disavow it when you proclaim yourself King: nevertheless it ought not to be so foolish as to be instantly found out."
Arnolfo continued to explain in great detail, as the car bumped gently on, the exact coat of arms, the exact relationship, the name of the Alsandrian family (a cadet of which had actually disappeared in England in the wars) and various other minute details.
When the car stopped they descended, and entered a curious and neat restaurant of which they seemed to be the only habitues, for it had only one table: there they had an excellent meal. Norman would have sworn it was a private house had not Arnolfo paid the bill and tipped the waiter. He would have sworn correctly, for it was. They then drove to a tailor, a haberdasher, a shoemaker, a hatter, at all of which places Arnolfo took the shopman aside and whispered that the order was for a very distinguished English nobleman, and should be executed without delay. Sometimes he would also let drop as a confidential favour that the nobleman "havas sango Alsandra en la venai," or that "Milord had come to dwell in the country of his ancestors." The Grand Tour Englishman of fabulous wealth and high distinction remained traditional in Alsander, since the Polytechnic Englishman, neither wealthy, nor distinguished, nor fabulous, had not yet arrived; and an Englishman with Alsandrian blood was a prize for the avaricious.
Norman was ostentatiously deposited at his garden door by the car, and for the rest of the day refused to answer any questions, and remained suggestive, impressive, mysterious and aloof, to the great discomposure of the Widow Prasko and her daughter. Cesano came in (I think by the widow's invitation, who hoped to inflame the obviously cooling Englishman with jealousy), but Norman offered no remonstrance to his taking Peronella for a walk. (Not that Cesano had much joy of the moonlight: the girl was moody and returned I to cry herself to sleep within the hour.) Our hero then had to fly before the onset of the widow, who told him—so closely does Alsandrian correspond to English idiom—that he owed it to her, positively owed it to her, to reveal his identity and regularize his position.
"Give me a week," said Norman, shuffling away from her and feeling more like a grocer and less like a King every instant.
As he undressed before the tarnished mirror the marks of the whip, which still stood clear across his back, seemed to rebuke his conceit; his dreams, too, were more humble; he dreamt he was married to the Widow Prasko and kept a boarding-house at Margate.
The next morning a messenger, who looked preposterously discreet, brought a letter from Arnolfo, making an appointment at the British Consulate, and certain ready-made clothes which, as a temporary measure, had been skilfully and swiftly adapted to his form.
Norman at the hour of his appointment found himself once more ensconced in the great armchair in the Consul's black-papered study, listening to Arnolfo. The Consul was not present.
"We have a difficult and dreary task on hand to-day," Arnolfo began. "I am going to take you to visit all the important people of Alsander. We will take Sforelli with us in order to make our movements look suspicious on recapitulation. It will be much more natural for you to become King if you have already obviously moved in aristocratic circles. Your few weeks among the people will be readily credited provided that it is known that you came afterwards to visit the upper classes as well. Some of those whom we shall visit are in the secret: but we have not entrusted the secret to their wives. Some of them may be clever enough to guess that you really are the King; indeed, we are going to spread a few hints to that effect: it will pave the way for future demands on the credulity of Alsander. Of course (as I have already hinted) the presence of the Doctor as your companion will be looked upon as remarkable and invite the sort of comment we desire.
"Remember, Norman, to be most distinguished—and at times a little strange. You are, so to speak, paying official visits incognito. And the last visit we shall pay will be to Count Vorza. O beware of that man: he is a fool as I said before—but he is a clever fool. Come, let us be going!"
"But surely," exclaimed Norman with a glance at Arnolfo's magnificent attire, flashing at the side of his dark frockcoat, "you cannot call on the best people in that costume!"
"Can I not!" replied Arnolfo as they descended the interminable stairs. "There is a tradition in Alsander which it is at once unusual, distinguished and meritorious to preserve, that the Alsandrian national costume lis sufficient and full dress for any Alsandrian or any occasion."
Sforelli was waiting for them in the car, and they went motoring round together to the Papal Legate, the bank manager, nobles, consuls—there was not even a minister in Alsander—and so forth. Norman, chiefly by preserving as far as possible a discreet silence, did well, and was complimented by Arnolfo.
"The ladies thought you most distinguished, my friend," he said. "But you have now the harder task I told you of. There is the gate of Vorza's city mansion. Once more, beware! What men say of the old man is true. The aged reactionary is as polite as an Italian and as cunning, as treacherous and as wicked as Abdul Hamid the Turk. So be careful."
It was a needful warning. The old man, very picturesque in his velvet skull cap, received them with great cordiality, and having expressed his great friendship for all Englishmen and referred half-a-dozen to a dozen times to the fact that he had been to London for three days in his youth, contrived that his wife, a colourless person, should take away Arnolfo and Sforelli to a recess and show them photographs. He thereby had a chance of seeing Norman alone, and extracting as much information from him as possible without the intervention of his companions.
"I am always so delighted to meet an Englishman," began the old minister, as soon as they were both ensconced in comfortable chairs, "especially as I have been to London myself. It is true I was there only for a short time, and that many years ago—you see I am old—but I have a vivid memory of it all. I remember the policemen—marvellous! But we see very few Englishmen here. May I ask how you came here, or was it just that curiosity of Englishmen that always drives them round the world? But you speak Alsandrian and between us I have even heard that you have a touch of the Alsandrian in you?"
"It is the attraction of my blood that brought me here, undoubtedly. I have a great interest in my ancestry."
"But you are obviously all English. You cannot have much Alsandrian blood. Tell me of what family you are. Between us—I know all the families in Alsander."
Norman endured the most searching scrutiny with regard to his ancestry. He made hardly a mistake. There was little that Vorza did not know about the old families of Alsander.
"Really," he said, genially, "your visit is as interesting as it is delightful. The visit of an English nobleman to Alsander is not an everyday occurrence. Your visit to the common people and interest in their daily life—that was most characteristically English of you. Yes, your visit, sir, is a great surprise and it coincides with another surprise for us Alsandrians. You know events are rare here, but this will be a great one."
"You mean the cure of the King?"
"Yes. I don't believe it. Sforelli, you know one of those Jews, between us—just a little bit too clever! Wonderful how he picked you up: I should drop him if I were you, by the way. And I had always heard that his poor Majesty was quite, quite mad. I never went to see. I dislike madmen as much as Jews. Arnolfo should not have introduced you to Sforelli, but the boy is so kind to every one! And I'm sure the King cannot be quite recovered—there will be something a little wrong. And a relapse—what a tragedy! Of course, I shall be delighted. I am an old man, and (between us) tired of ruling a thankless country. It would have been too long to wait for the Princess to grow up: now she'll be out of it, poor girl!"
"Which Princess?" interjaculated Norman, innocently.
"Don't you know? His Majesty's cousin, the heir to the throne. She lives with her mother's family far away in Ulmreich. They say she is mad also, and there is no holding her. Old blood, old blood! She was to have come here this year to be introduced to Alsander, but the idea fell through till the possibility of the King's cure had been established one way or another. I have not seen her since she was a girl. She is under the guardianship of the father of that charming young man, your friend Arnolfo. I am sorry I shall not be able to see her again."
"Bring her here and marry her to her cousin," said Norman.
He was quite detached at the time from all thought of his plot.
"A very good idea. But I don't know," replied the old man. "Between us, two mad people! Would it be good for the future of Alsander?"
"You are fond of the country?" inquired Norman.
"Passionately. I love its beauty. Between us, I want it just to remain as it is—a lovely and peaceable place, untouched by the world."
"You don't believe in progress?"
"Not for Alsander. They want me to repair the roads. Never, said I. Saving your friend's presence, I hate automobiles. They would soon be roaring all over the country and spoiling it absolutely. Our roads were made for carts and mules: and the people are quite happy with them. Your friend has one: just as a curiosity, it doesn't matter. Your friend," he added in a low voice, "was an infant when I last saw him before his return to Alsander. I knew his father years ago. A delightful man, but of advanced views. Now, Monsieur Arnolfo has no views at all, but almost anything can be forgiven him for keeping up the old traditions of the national costume, and he's a great acquisition to our little society. Between us, have you known him long?"
"I? No. I should very much like to know more of him. I brought a letter of introduction to him from a relative in England, who had met him and his father in Ulmreich. As you said, he is charming: there is no other word."
"Is he not? Charming: of course restless, but not like his father, who couldn't live in Alsander because it was what he called reactionary. Oh, if his father, old Arnolfo, got a chance, he'd run a funicular up the mountains and build a casino on the beach."
"Well, there's something to be said for being awake and something to be said for modernity," observed Norman.
"True, sir, but (between us)," said Vorza, with a more confidential tone than ever, "I have been, I admit, only a very short time in England, three days, in fact; and I am a bit of a judge, perhaps, in matters of taste—and I didn't see anything in London, among your latest buildings, at all events, that quite comes up to our Cathedral or our Castle."
"But your Cathedral and Castle weren't built by a people fast asleep, but by a people who had just awakened. If Kradenda had lived to-day he would have established an aeroplane service across the mountains.
"Well, well, and would we be happier for that? Ah, you're young and you're English, and I wouldn't think much of you if you weren't for all things new. At your age I was the devil! I may be more foolish now, but we old men want to think we have grown wise."
"You want to sift the question, Excellency; but that's a long, long matter. Perhaps happiness is not the best thing in the world. But here is Arnolfo."
And they took their leave.
"Curses!" said Vorza to himself, as he watched their departure from the window. "Ten million curses. Is this a surprise return? Is it the King? It's about the age. But he looks too British, too British altogether. But, then, so did his grandfather. There's not much madness in his eyes or talk. It cannot be. He might be cured, but he could not be intelligent. And that physique—it's impossible. But there's something up. Why did I trust Sforelli? In the old days I would have burnt him, gaberdine and all! Curses on him, at all events, and on me! How am I to know whether he is the King or no? If it's a plot—it may succeed—it is so simple. Perbacco! how simple it is! Well, we shall see!"
But solid beetles crawled aboutThe chilly hearth and naked floor.James Thompson, author of the "City of DreadfulNight," popularly ascribed to Mr Kipling.
All preparations for this most surprising conspiracy were to be ready, so Arnolfo gave Norman to understand, on the following afternoon, and Norman, doubting his senses and still doubting the seriousness of Arnolfo, rose early and came to the appointed place, which was again the British Consulate, before the appointed time. After a few minutes there came to greet him, not Arnolfo, but Sforelli, a gentleman who would have looked heroic in a burnoose beside the ruins of Palmyra, but seemed merely intellectual and rather repulsive in a morning coat. He handed Norman a letter sealed with what Norman knew to be Arnolfo's seal. It ran as follows:
"DEAR NORMAN,—
"Everything is going well. Please put yourself entirely in the hands of Dr Sforelli, the bearer of this, who has full instructions from the Society. I am so busy, I may not see you again till you are crowned.
"ARNOLFO."
Norman, looking at the Palestinian profile before him, felt that the spring had left the year. The gay youth, with his wit and plots and disguises, would make anyone believe or even do anything. While this worthy? The transition from Greece eastwards was overpowering.
Yet one could see this swarthy, powerful person was to be trusted, more to be trusted than Arnolfo. Norman burst into a flood of practical questions.
"We shall just walk there," came the answer to Norman's first batch of inquiries. "I often go to the palace, as I live quite near, in the square: I have a dissecting room there: my wife objects to having corpses in the house."
"Dissecting? In Alsander?"
"Yes," replied the doctor, in hollow tones. "It was expensive getting corpses in pickle from Paris. So I advertised in theCentjaro,the little local paper you may have seen, the one that hints so broadly that the King of Alsander is already in the town incognito."
"But with success? Surely, in such a religious country...."
"There was money offered," continued Sforelli, dryly. "My door was besieged. I am not sure I was not responsible for murder, even for parricide. Some of those whose near relations were rejected went away in tears."
"Well, Doctor Sforelli, to the point. This mad central idea you are sure of—that no one has seen the King; but what about the guards?"
"The guards are with us."
"But why should they be with us?"
"They are sensible men, for one thing. They are very old servants of Arnolfo's, for another."
"Then Vorza?"
"He has never seen the King, you know that already."
"And the other notables?"
"All the members of the Town Council, which is the progressive element in Alsander, are with us. For all that, none of them have seen Andrea."
"But has there been no ceremony? For instance, was Andrea never crowned?"
"Yes, but with little pomp. There was only the Bishop there and myself. He was crowned in the empty room."
"And the Bishop?"
"Is fortunately dead. No one lives but myself who saw that mock coronation and a small acolyte who is now one of the most able young men of our party. The people were kept outside, but I remember they applauded, none the less. But the only person who was really impressed was the King himself. It meant a great deal to him, that shabby ceremonial!"
"What has given the King that antique form of speech?" pursued Norman.
"Before his mind left him, he had as a boy read one book—that of Makso."
"A! a great book!" cried Norman. "There is real fire in his tales of chivalry."
"And poetry, too," added Sforelli, "of no inconsiderable merit. Well, you know how the greatness of Kradenda is ever being sung therein. And ever since the boy, as he has heard but little human speech about him, has had faint echoes of the immortal language of Makso trickling through his brain."
"One hardly realized he was so young," said Norman, with a sudden pity.
"He is your age," replied Sforelli.
"Is there no hope of cure?"
"None," said the doctor, decisively. "None—on my professional honour. His delusions come from mental weakness, not from aberration. I might cure a man who had wandered from the road of reason, but not one who has never taken it."
So saying they started for the palace, on foot as Sforelli advised, to attract less attention.
"You are still determined not to have Andrea killed?" inquired Sforelli.
"That I prohibit absolutely," said Norman, speaking with authority for the first time.
Sforelli bowed with some irony.
"Fortunately," he said, "there is a small asylum outside the town under my supervision."
"How are we to get him there?" pursued Norman.
"I think of drugging him, and then driving him there myself to-night. It will not be difficult."
"I have your word, you intend to do this, and to do no more than drug him?"
"Although I consider that this humanitarian project of yours is fraught with great danger to our plans, you may trust me," said Sforelli, quietly, and Norman believed the man could be trusted for all his antipathetic ugliness. He inquired:
"And what am I to do while you do this?"
"I am afraid the safest plan will be for you to stay alone in the castle overnight pending my return. It may be rather disagreeable and lonely for you, especially as you may naturally feel nervous on the eve of our great coup, but I see nothing else for it. I must take the King to the asylum myself. It is not safe that any of our friends should either take charge of the madman or bear you company in the castle, for obvious reasons. I cannot be back much before dawn. When I return I shall send an official note to Vorza and explain, by your royal request, that the young 'English nobleman' who visited him the other day is none other than the cured Bang of Alsander. I shall add that you have returned to the Palace and desire to have the news kept secret for the present except from him and a few other notables. I shall further explain that you desired to remain a few days incognito in Alsander from a natural desire of seeing things as they are.
"You will send, written in your own hand, at the same time a command to your well beloved and trusted servant Count Vorza to appear at such an hour, and similar intimations (though not in your Royal hand), together with injunctions to secrecy, will be sent to other notables of Alsander. This letter will be sealed by you with the Royal seal of Alsander, which is in my possession.
"When the time comes you will have to play your part with the utmost care and even if you recognize some of the visitors as being members of the society and fellow conspirators, do not cease acting for a moment. I will tell you the story to which you must hold and to which you must, so to speak, mentally refer when in difficulty. I will tell it you to-morrow morning, when I return, in the palace, in great detail, so that your memory will be fresh for the day. But for the present, so as to get your mind accustomed to it, note that its outline is roughly this: You have been cured in England, mind you, and your mind is almost a blank for everything before that, save that you have vague reminiscences of Makso's poems, and a father and a mother. You had an operation—trepanning. And so forth."
"But it's too unconvincing scientifically. Scientists are sure to arrive and ask questions."
"Scientifically it will be as correct as a story by your own Mr Wells, when I have given you all the details. And I will answer the scientists myself. Above all, avoid being too explanatory. Nothing causes suspicion to arise so much as the volunteering of convincing information."
Thus conversing they arrived at the palace gate. It was already dark and not a soul stirred in the palace square. Two guards saluted them at the doorway. Norman recognized one with a shudder and one with surprise. One was the flagellator, the other the overworked clerk from the British Consulate. Two further guards, rising from their seats on the inner side of the gate, followed them in silence across the moonlit garden. The jasmine was fragrant. The doctor opened a little door. Norman passed once again into the curious corridor, and thence into the throne-room. It was lit by many candles, and was very hot. Everything was there as on his last visit—plaster cupids, broken divans, singeries, the old chair of Kradenda, and the madman looking as unreal as his surroundings—a part of the fantastic picture—glimmering in the dim light. The King, however, though still robed in ermine and cloth of gold, was without his crown, and there was one further change. Everything, except the King, had been washed. Even by the faint illumination this was perceptible. The candelabra shone, the fat thighs of the plaster cherubs were as white as life; even the remote and secret windows let through an undimmed sun.
The King startled the silence. "Ho, thou leech," he cried, "where is my crown?"
"It is being repaired," said Sforelli, with a bow. "I have brought you back Sir Norman as I promised."
"You have been long absent, sir, though your King was in need of you. What have you achieved all these long days?"
"Sire," said Norman, "I have slain three dragons, a red, a yellow and a green: and all with horns upon their tails."
"But my dragon," said the King, impressively, "you have not slain. And to-night I must meet my Queen."
"Thy Queen, Sire?" said Sforelli, in evident surprise.
"Even so."
"That will be impossible unless the enchanter is slain."
"Then he must be slain at once," said the King, with resolution.
"Exactly, and that is why I have brought this good Knight. But your Majesty must drink a draught to protect you against enchantment."
"This last time I will obey you to obtain deliverance. I am sick of your potions. But beware; if he is not slain in time for the arrival of that paragon of the world, my Queen, I will—I will—" (the King frowned and hesitated to find words terrible enough) "—I will cut off all your toes and thread them in a necklace and hang them round your neck," he said in triumph.
"Bring the cup," said Sforelli to one of the guards, who immediately produced a rose-coloured liquid in a tumbler, which he handed to the King off a salver with some; ceremony. The King immediately drank it: the four men waited in silence as a happy smile began to play over the Royal features and he sank quietly asleep. The two guards then stripped him of his state robes and muffled him up in a great coat, and, followed by the doctor and Norman, took him out to the castle gate, where a closed carriage was waiting, and placed him inside. The doctor turned to Norman.
"I wonder what that was about his Queen? It's quite a new delusion and startled me."
"Some stir of Spring in him, perhaps," said Norman.
"Well, it's of little matter. We'll find out at the asylum. He will be better off there than here in many ways. It's cleaner, and he will have more fresh air. He is an interesting subject. Now, my unfortunate friend, as we arranged, you must wait in this place, I am afraid, till I return, which will not not be till near on dawn, for there is still much to do. As I said, I am afraid you will be lonely. I think you had better not show yourself out of this wing of the castle, and the guards cannot keep you company as they must stay at the gate. However, you will find a library, rather technical, perhaps, in my dissecting room. A couch has been prepared there, too, and I have not forgotten tobacco. No," continued the doctor, in response to a nervous look in Norman's face, "there is nothing there but books and implements," and the doctor with this assurance drove off with his capture.
On the way the lunatic began to recover from the effects of the drug. He sat in the carriage, now opening and now shutting an eye, and once mumbling some words about his Queen. Finally he went to sleep again. The doctor had but little parley at the diminutive asylum, a doll's house of a construction which he had built, and now managed. He ran it, indeed, at considerable profit, for the paying patients, offshoots of the noble families, considerably outnumbered such pauper inmates as he admitted free. He explained to the trusty guardian the deplorable delusions of the patient, and ordered certain comforts to be given him.
"You might also get him shaved," he added.
The guardian, who was a conspirator also, thoroughly understood the whole business. And there we can leave the doctor and return to Norman, who by no means enjoyed the situation. He did not find the books in the dissecting room of much interest. He was wandering in the throne-room, which looked more ghastly than ever, now the guards had extinguished the candles, in the flickering shadow of the lamp he carried, when he found several scraps of paper on the throne itself. They were covered with intricate designs and meaningless arabesques. There was a wing, there a face, there a foot, there an emblem—all incoherent and messed round with wild scratches. The bits of paper had so fearsome a fascination that it was almost a relief to Norman to go back to the dissecting room and sit down and try to read a treatise on skin diseases. But long before he had mastered the difficult subject Norman was on foot again, restless and troubled. The window was barred—Andrea had slept here sometimes. The night was close.
He sighed for the young strong arms that might have been round his neck. The conspiracy seemed already to be enclosing him in an impenetrable net. As immeasurable time wore on the fishy eyes of Andrea haunted him.
He would not sleep inside the bed, a sorry and comfortless pallet which might have been the madman's.
He lay down on it, dressed as he was, flinging off only his collar. Sleep would not come, save for fitful visions. Rising again, he saw his face pallid in the looking-glass by the fight of the dingy candle, which flickered in a gorgeous stand of beaten copper. He blew the candle out hurriedly, then groped for matches, and lit it again, and flung himself once more on to the couch.
A fitful slumber was descending over him, prelude to sweet sleep, when he heard footsteps, with a tapping noise and the sound of voices. One voice was a man's: there were two other voices, of women. Norman leapt from the bed, alert, and listened hard.
"He won't hurt you, Drakina," said one voice. "He's kissed me many a time, and I don't know what he might not have done if Makzelo had not been there."
A confused giggle was all the reply Norman could hear.
"Where is he, Malsprita?" said another girl's voice.
"Hullo," said the voice of the man, apparently called Makzelo. "He seems to have gone away. The room's empty, that's strange."
"Perhaps he's gone to bed," said a girl.
"He can't have; he never goes to bed as early as this. We have played with him night after night. He loves it, doesn't he, Malsprita?"
"When I do it."
More giggles. Then the voice of Drakina was heard, saying she was frightened.
"Andrea!" cried Makzelo.
They all shouted; there was no reply.
"Let's go and look for him in the corridors. How strange! he was dreadfully excited about his Queen. He mustn't be disappointed."
"I'm frightened," said Drakina. "I don't want to be his Queen."
"You who wanted so to be in a real King's arms. What a little coward you are!"
"But the corridors are so dark. Is he very dreadful to look at, Malsprita?"
"He is not so ugly as you, club-foot! Nothing like."
There was a shuffling and tapping into the corridors.
Norman listened with wonder and disgust. Not quite realizing the meaning of the conversation, he had nevertheless understood enough to feel like a prisoner whose cell is full of rats. What nameless revels had these beings held? The nocturnal visits of these creatures were evidently unknown to Dr Sforelli. Here were three people who knew the Bang by sight: if this unexpected difficulty were not disposed of, the whole plot was ruined. At all events time must be gained: they must not be led to imagine the King already gone. What should he do? He had a second to deliberate while they went into the throne-room: but had made no plan when he heard them outside his door.
"Then he must be in his bedroom," said the man, and went over to open the door.
"Why, it's locked."
"Perhaps the doctor did it," said the club-foot girl.
"Let's burst it in!"
"I daren't disobey the doctor," said the man.
"That doctor's a devil. Why must he pretend the King's away?"
"For God's sake don't tell a soul."
"Andrea! Your Queen!"
"He must be sound asleep, or drugged," said a woman.
"Let's go and look in through the window," said the voice which Norman had by now identified as that of Malsprita.
"We might get a look at him, at all events. Always my luck; just the night I came."
"Well, we'll do that for you," said the man, pompously. He led them round outside. The club-foot girl continued moaning, "I was born crooked and ugly and crooked and ugly I shall die, and I might have been happy just once." And still complaining she passed out of earshot with the rest. Norman covered his head with a sheet, and crouched beneath the window, waiting. He heard the shuffle and tap coming along the gravel outside.
"Why, the bar's out," said the club-foot girl, and she poked her hideous head right through the window. It was a face neither of man nor woman, nor yet of utter evil, but rather of incarnate brutishness. It had no features but a mouth; it was a flat and fleshy face. In frenzy, Norman rose, emitting a falsetto shriek extremely piercing and horrible by which he frightened even himself, and dealt a terrific blow at the head with the great candlestick. By a surprisingly swift move the woman, if woman it was, avoided the bar, receiving the blow on her arm: she uttered a piercing shriek more ghastly still, and the three intruders rushed away into darkness. Losing for the first time in his life all his self-control, Norman kept on shouting and at the same time banged the candlestick against a tin basin, producing a desolating boom. Then he became quiet, relit the candle, and with a book in his hand, which he hardly read, now dozing, now awakening with a start if a leaf rustled or a mouse ran over the floor, stayed in his chair till he could endure it no longer and fled out into the open air.
The doctor on his return as he came with one of the guards through the entrance gate discovered Norman in the grey of dawn pacing the ruined garden and shivering with cold. He was much troubled when he heard the story. "I have been vilely negligent, and I ought to be ashamed of myself for forgetting the fellow," he said. "He was a sort of nurse to Andrea. I thought him too stupid and too frightened of me to do harm, and as he is not supposed to come here at night I had postponed dealing with him till to-day." And turning to the guard at his side, he bade him arrest the three persons concerned and keep them in close custody in the old keep. "Forget all that unpleasantness now, Sir," he continued, "and I beg of you to attend to more serious topics. The letters addressing an invitation to the notable people in the town to come and felicitate you on your cure are now ready and waiting for you to sign them. The said notables should be here this afternoon. You will receive them here in military uniform."
"And what shall I say to them? You have only told me the story of myself. How shall I greet them?"
"That, Sir, is for you to decide. We rely on you: you must rely on yourself."
The world was made for Kings:To him who works and working singsCome joy and majesty and powerAnd steadfast love with royal wings!
The preliminary interview with the notables succeeded beyond expectation. No sign of doubt was displayed anywhere, and the happy suggestion was made that a re-coronation should take place a few days later, to coincide with the great Midsummer feast of San Adovani.
Vorza, who had rolled up to the meeting in his superb state coach, was extremely deferential. Norman detained him after for a private interview, ostentatiously dismissing even Sforelli.
"Alas!" said the King to him, "that so many years of helplessness have prevented me from a due appreciation of your untiring energies in the service of this realm. Be not afraid that I shall ever forget the old noble houses of Alsander. In you I know I can put my trust, and I will begin this auspicious day by honouring a tried and faithful servant of my family and the nation."
This said, Norman clapped his hands, and an attendant entered carrying on a cushion a collar set with pearls.
"Here are the insignia of the office of Lord Chamberlain," continued the King, "which I found in an old safe, tarnished with age and disuse. This I put round your neck and make you master of my household. I pray you now to arrange the procession. I have made Doctor Sforelli my secretary: consult with him if you will: he knows all the details. For the present," continued the King, confidentially, "I have need of Sforelli's services. For the present," he added in a low voice, with much insinuation.
Vorza left the presence somewhat mollified but still suspicious.
After this preliminary interview, following Sforelli's advice, Norman did not show himself abroad till the day of his re-coronation: and heard like a man imprisoned vague rumours of the stir outside. On the night of anticipation the young King—for so he shall be styled in future—slept little, and rising in the first grey of dawn he muffled himself in a coat and stepped out unseen upon a lofty balcony to look out upon the waiting crowd. Down there, in the cold misty break of a day that promised a relentless noontide sun, upturned faces were appealing stupidly for information to the granite castle walls. Weary men began to yawn and shuffle, and shifted the drowsy girls that slept upon their knees. Some were dozing on stools; others, seated on parapets, leant back uncomfortably against the rusty lamp-posts; others lay carelessly upon the pavement or on the pedestal of the statue of Kradenda.
"Truly," thought Norman, "they will be stiff men to rule, these people of Alsander: their heads are all the same shape."
The King was to step into his gilded coach in the company of Vorza and Sforelli: the guards had already cleared the road with unprecedented valour, while the amazing coachman perched himself expectantly upon the box as if he had been born for the task—and indeed the doctor had even found the family in which the tradition ran of driving this curious vehicle. Norman, dressed in military uniform, at the appointed hour left the throne-room, and with great solemnity was handed to his seat by the Lord Chamberlain, who then took his place in the Royal coach. They left the castle yard amid a roar of enthusiasm, and moved slowly down the main street of the town towards the Cathedral square. Such had ever been the processional route of the Kings of Alsander.
At last the carriage stopped at the grand porch of the Cathedral. There, after Norman had been robed in those same overpowering and sumptuous cloths of state that had been stripped from the unconscious Andrea, the ceremony of re-coronation took place. It proved to be an elaborate function, invented by an old-time Bishop with a passion for symbolism and an eye for scenic effect. It consisted of appropriate ritual minutiae, as, for instance, the re-anointing and replacing of the crown—which it would be tedious to describe in detail. But the closing scene of the service was superb. Norman raised himself from his knees, and turned towards the people, feeling his young body awkwardly stiff amid the heroic amplours of his purple robes, and in a few sentences promised to increase the glory of Alsander, making no reference to the mad years gone by. Idle to reproduce those simple sentences, without the animate vision of that clear voice, and the humorous, handsome face with its brilliant blue eyes; without knowing that most wonderful of Cathedrals, whose Byzantine mosaics seemed no less barbarous and splendid than the aristocracy, expectant beneath, whose jewels, the hoard of feudal treasure chests, glimmered and swayed dimly in the incense-laden choir.
And strange it was how when he made that speech the words of the boy rang true and sincere. In the glory of the ceremony he forgot the shabby and grotesque conspiracy: he became for the moment the King of Alsander: he meant the words he said.
The afternoon was ushered in by a long procession of girls and youths: the girls carrying little pots wherein grew wheat, cornflowers and poppies. They passed in Indian file before the Cathedral, and each fair girl that passed broke her pot against the door, in front of whose dinted panels soon grew up a little mountain of sherds, and earth, and fading flowers and corn. Then they passed down to the riverside, and the King followed them in state. There they found themselves face to face with the young men of Alsander, many of them in that gorgeous national costume of which Arnolfo was so fond, who had left them at the Cathedral door and had run round the bridge and were already facing them on the opposite bank. The youths threw off boots and socks, if they were wearing them, and coats, if they possessed them: neither did the girls fear to display their shapely feet: men and maidens entered the stream, the men valiantly, the maids demurely, and then, dipping their hands in the water, they began splashing each other vigorously across the river. When all were soaked with water many of the men swam over, seized a girl and ducked her in the stream: this was held to be a most solemn betrothal. For in the meantime the priests and the Cathedral choir had assembled on the bridge and young voices began to raise the old Latin hymn of the Consecration of the Waters, a hymn older than the Cathedral of Alsander itself, one of the oldest hymns in the world. Swiftly the tumult was stilled, and all knelt by the shore.
Raised on a platform behind the priests stood the tall King: he did not seem to share the joy of all the others, and while they knelt he shaded his eyes, but not for prayer, The first excitement of his adventure had passed: seeing now all around him in the clear and truthful sunlight this mock revel given in his honour and in honour of a lie, he felt a thief and a liar. There was no thrill of triumph in his heart for his achievement. His fellow conspirators had taken him into their farce as one might take a spectator from the stalls and dress him up for the role of King. In the farce nothing mattered—honour or right or manhood. Now here was reality to face him: he was a King, and an impostor. The amazing Arnolfo, whose fantasy and youth had given some poetry to the crude conspiracy, had deserted him. Women, and the fair woman he had seen in the light of morning—was it a thousand years ago?—were lost to him for ever. As amid the joyous sunshine of that first morning when he saw Alsander rise up above her meadows, when, afraid of the world's too deadly beauty, he had felt more lonely than ever in his life before, so now when he had achieved this marvellous thing, now that he ruled the ancient, fair and fabled city, he sank into utter desolation of the soul. And this time no golden girl would chase the black phantom of sorrow from his soul.