The King's Mirror Part 32

WILLIAM ADOLPHUs. .h.i.tS THE MARK.

At Artenberg, whither we went when I was convalescent, the family atmosphere recalled old days. We were all in disgrace--Victoria because she had not managed her husband better, William Adolphus for behaviour confessedly scandalous, I by reason of those rumours at which I have hinted. My sister and brother-in-law were told of their faults and warned, the one against professors, the other against actresses. My delinquencies were treated with absolute silence. Princess Heinrich reminded me how I had degraded my office by a studious, though cold, deference toward it on her own part. The king was the king, be he never so unruly. His mother could only disapprove and grieve in silence. But in the hands of Princess Heinrich silence was a trenchant weapon.

William Adolphus also was very sulky with me. I found some excuse for him. Toward his wife he wore a hang-dog air; from Princess Heinrich he fairly ran away whenever he could. In these relations toward one another we settled down to pa.s.s a couple of summer months at Artenberg. Now was early July. In August would come the visit of the Bartensteins.

Beside this great fact all else troubled me little. I fell victim to an engrossing selfishness. The quarrels and woes of my kindred went unnoticed, except when they served for a moment's amus.e.m.e.nt. To the fortunes of those with whom I had lately been so much concerned, of Wetter and of Coralie, I was almost indifferent. Varvilliers wrote to me, and I answered in friendly fas.h.i.+on, but I did not at that time desire his presence. So far as my thoughts dwelt on the past, they overleaped what was immediately behind, and took me back to my first rebellion, my first struggle against the fate of my life, my first refusal to run into the mould. I remembered my Governor's comforting a.s.surance that I had still six years; I remembered the dedication of my early love to the Countess. Then I had cherished delusions, thinking that the fate might be avoided. Herein lay the sincerity and honesty of that first attachment, and an enduring quality which made good for it its footing in memory. In it I was not pa.s.sing the time or merely yielding to a desire for enjoyment. I was struggling with necessity. The high issue had seemed to lend some dignity even to a boy's raw love-making, a dignity that shone dimly through thick folds of encircling absurdity. I had not been particularly absurd in regard to Coralie Mansoni, but neither had there been in that affair any redeeming worthiness or dignity of conception or of struggle. Now all seemed over, struggle and waywardness, the dignified and undignified, the absurdly pathetic and the recklessly impulsive. The six years were nearly gone.

Princess Heinrich's steady pressure contracted their extent by some months. The coming of the Bartensteins was imminent. The era of Elsa began.

Old Prince Hammerfeldt had left a successor behind him in the person of his nephew, Baron von Bederhof, and this gentleman was now my Chancellor and my chief official adviser. He was a portly man of about fifty, with red cheeks and black hair. He was high in favour with my mother, the husband of a buxom wife, and the father of nine children. As is not unusual in cases of hereditary succession, he was adequate to his office, although he would certainly not have been selected for it unless he had been his uncle's nephew; but, being the depositary of Hammerfeldt's traditions (although not of his brains), he contrived to pa.s.s muster. He came at this time to Artenberg, and urged on me the necessity of a speedy marriage.

"The recent danger, so providentially averted," he said, "is a stronger argument than any I could use."

"It certainly is," said I politely. As a fact, it might be stronger than any he would be likely to use, and yet not be impregnable.

"For the sake of your people, sire, do not delay."

"My dear Baron," said I, "send for the young lady to-morrow. I haven't seen her since she was a child, so let her bring a letter of identification."

"You joke!" said he. "There can be no doubt. Her parents will accompany her."

"True, true!" I exclaimed, in a tone of relief. "There will be really no substantial risk of having an impostor planted on us."

"I am confident," observed Bederhof, "that the marriage will be most happy."

"You are?"

"Undoubtedly, sire."

"Then we won't lose a moment," I cried.

Bederhof looked slightly puzzled, but also rather complimented. He cleared his throat (if only he could have cleared his head as often and as thoroughly as he did his throat!) and asked, "Er--there are no complications?"

"I beg your pardon, Baron."

"I am ashamed to suggest it, but people do talk. I mean--no other attachment?"

"I have yet to learn, Baron," said I with dignity, "that such a thing, even if it existed, would be of any importance compared to the welfare of the kingdom and the dynasty."

"Not of the least!" he cried hastily.

"I never suspected you of such a paradox really," I a.s.sured him with a smile. "And if the lady should harbour such a thing that would be of equal insignificance."

"My uncle, the Prince----" he began.

"Knew all this just as well as we do, my dear Baron," I interrupted.

"Come, send for Princess Elsa. I am all impatience."

Even the stupidest of men may puzzle a careful observer on one point--as to the extent of his stupidity. I did not always know whether Bederhof was so superlatively dull as to believe a thing, or merely so permissibly dull as to consider that he ought to pretend to believe it.

Perhaps he had come himself not to know the difference between the two att.i.tudes; certain ecclesiastics would furnish an ill.u.s.tration of what I mean. Princess Heinrich's was quite another complexion of mind. She a.s.sumed a belief with as much conscious art as a bonnet or a mantle; just as you knew that the natural woman beneath was different from the garment which covered her, so you were aware that my mother's real opinion was absolutely diverse from the view she professed. In both cases propriety forbade any reference to the natural naked substratum.

The Princess, with an art that scorned concealment, congratulated me upon my approaching happiness, declared that the marriage was one of inclination, and, having paid it this seemly tribute, at once fell to discussing how the public would receive it. I believe, however, that she detected in me a certain depression of spirits, for she rallied me (again with a superb ignoring of what we were both aware of) on being moped at the moment when I should have been exultant.

"I am looking at it from Elsa's point of view," I explained.

"Elsa's? Really I don't see that Elsa has anything to complain of. The position's beyond what she had any right to expect."

All was well with Elsa; that seemed evident enough; it was a better position than Elsa had any right to expect. Poor dear child, I seemed to see her rolling down the bank again, expecting and desiring no other position than to be on her back, with her little legs twinkling about in the air.

"I think," said I meditatively, "that it would be a good thing if, in providing wives, they reverted to the original plan and took out a rib.

One wouldn't feel that one's rib had any particular right to complain at having its fortunes mixed up with one's own."

My mother remained silent. I looked across the terrace and saw Victoria's three-year-old girl playing about.

"The child's so like William Adolphus," said I, sighing.

My mother rose with deliberate carelessness and walked away.

It may be wondered why I did not rebel. I must answer, first, from the binding force of familiarity; I hated the thing, but it had made good its place in the map of my life; secondly, from the impossibility of inflicting a slight; thirdly, because I rather chose to bear the ills I had than fly to others that I knew not of. Who revolts save in the glowing hope of bettering his lot? I must marry; who was there to be preferred before Elsa? It did not occur to me that I might remain single; I should have shared the general opinion that such an act was little removed from treason. It would not only be to end my own line, it would be to install the children of William Adolphus. I did not grant even a moment's hospitality to such an idea. Bederhof was right, the marriage was urgent; I must marry--just as occasionally I was compelled to review the troops. I had as little apt.i.tude for one duty as for the other, but both were among my obligations. I was so rooted in this att.i.tude that I turned to Victoria with a start of surprise when she said to me one day:

"She's very pretty; I daresay you'll fall in love with her."

She was pretty, if her last portrait spoke truth; she was a slim girl, of very graceful figure, with small features and large blue eyes, which were merry in the picture, but looked as if they could be sad also. I had studied this attractive shape attentively; yet Victoria's suggestion seemed preposterous, incongruous--I had nearly said improper. A moment later it set me laughing.

"Perhaps I shall," I said with a chuckle.

"I don't see anything amusing in the idea," observed Victoria. "I think you're being given a much better chance than I ever had."

The old grudge was working in her mind; by covert allusion she was recalling the part I had taken in the arrangement of her future. Yet she had contrived to be jealous of her husband; that old puzzle recurs.

"I suppose," I mused, "that I'm having a very good chance." I looked inquiringly at my sister.

"If you use it properly. You can be very pleasant to women when you like. She's sure to come ready to fall in love with you. She's such a child."

"You mean that she'll have no standard of comparison?"

"She can't have had any experience at all."

"Not even a baron over at Waldenweiter?"

"What a fool I was!" reflected Victoria. "Mother was horrid, though,"

she added a moment later. She never allowed the perception of her own folly to plead on behalf of Princess Heinrich. "I expect you'll go mad about her," she resumed. "You see, any woman can manage you, Augustin.

Think of----"

"Thanks, dear, I remember them all," I interposed.

"The question is, how will mother treat her," p.r.o.nounced Victoria.

It was not the question at all; that Victoria thought it was merely ill.u.s.trated the Princess's persistent dominance over her daughter's imagination. I allow, however, that it was an interesting, although subordinate speculation.