The King's Mirror Part 36

But I was not miserable. I was, on the whole, very considerably relieved. It would have been much worse had Elsa really manifested an absolute absorption in the tragic aspect. It was much better that her thoughts should be filled by her great promotion.

I heard suddenly the sound of feet on the terrace. A moment later loud cheers rang out. I looked down from the window. There was a throng of the household, stable, and garden servants gathered in front of the window of my mother's room. On the steps before the window stood Elsa's slim graceful figure. The throng cheered; Elsa bowed, waved, and kissed her hand to them. They cried out good wishes and called blessings on her. Again she kissed her hand to them with pretty dignity. A pace behind her on either side stood Princess Heinrich and Cousin Elizabeth.

Elsa held the central place, and her little head was erect and proud.

Poor dear child! The great promotion had begun.

CHAPTER XX.

AN INTERESTING PARALLEL.

I had a whimsical desire that somebody, no matter who, should speak the truth about the affair. That I myself should was out of the question, nor would candour be admissible from any of my family; even Victoria could do no more than kiss me. Elsa did not know the truth; her realization of it lay in the future--the future to me ever so present.

Varvilliers would not tell it; his sincerity owned always the limit of politeness. I could not look to have my whim indulged; perhaps had there seemed a chance of fulfilment I should have turned coward. Yet I do not know; the love of truth has been a constant and strong pa.s.sion in my mind. Hence come my laborious trackings of it through mazes of moods and feelings; painful trifling, I daresay. But my whim was accomplished; why and under what motive's spur it is hard to guess.

I sent a message to the Chamber announcing my betrothal; a debate on the answer to be returned followed. Here was a proper and solemn formality, rich in coloured phrases and time-honoured pretence. No lie was allowed place that could not prove its pedigree for five hundred years. Then when Bederhof and the rest had prated, there rose (_O si audissem_) a man with a pale-lined face, in which pa.s.sion had almost destroyed mirth, or at least compelled it to put on the servile dress of bitterness, but with eyes bright still and a voice that rang through the Chamber. Wetter was back, back from wounding me, back from his madness of Coralie, back from his obscure wanderings and his reported bank-breakings. Somewhere and somehow he had got money enough to keep him awhile; and with money in his pocket he was again and at once a power in Forstadt. There must have been strange doings in that man's soul, worthy of record; but who would be so bold as to take up the pen?

His reappearance was remarkable enough. I asked whether he did what he did in malice, in a rivalry that our quarrel and our common defeat at the hands of the paunchy impresario could not wipe out, or whether he discerned that I should join in his acid laugh, and, as I read his speech, cry to myself, "Lo, here is truth and a man who tells it!"

For he rose, there in the Chamber, when Bederhof's sticky syrup had ceased to flow. He spoke of my betrothal, sketching in a poet's mood, with the art of an orator, that perfect love whereof men dream; painting with exquisite skill the man's hot exultation and the girl's tremulous triumph, the spontaneous leap of heart to heart, the world without eclipsed and invisible; the brightness, the glory, and the unquestioning confidence in their eternity. His voice rose victorious out of falterings; his eyes gleamed with the vision that he made. Then, while still they wondered as men shown new things in their own hearts, his lips curved in a smile and his tones fell to a moderate volume. "Such,"

said he, "are the joys which our country shares with its King. Because they are his they are ours; because they are his they are hers. Hers and his are they till their lives' end; ours while our hearts are worthy to conceive of them."

They were silent when he sat down. He had outraged etiquette; n.o.body had ever said that sort of thing before on such an occasion. Bederhof searched in vain through an exhaustive memorandum prepared in the Chancellery. He consulted the clerks. n.o.body had ever said anything in the least like it. They were puzzled. It was all most excellent, most loyal, calculated to impress the people in the most favourable way. But, deuce take it, why did the man smile while he talked, and why did his voice change from a ring of a trumpet to the rasp of a file? The Chamber at large was rather upset by Wetter's oration.

Ah, Wetter, but you had an audience fit though small! I read it--I read it all. I, in my study at Artenberg; I, alone. My mind leaped with yours; my lips bent to the curve of yours. Surely you spoke to please me, Wetter? To show that one man knew? To display plainest truth by the medium of a giant's lies? I could interpret. The language was known to me; the irony was after my own heart.

"It's dashed queer stuff," said William Adolphus, scratching his head.

"All right in a story book, you know; but in the Chamber! Do you think he's off his head?"

"I don't think so, William Adolphus," said I.

"Victoria says it's hardly--hardly decent, you know."

"I shouldn't call it exactly indecent."

"No, not exactly indecent," he admitted. "But what the devil did he want to say it there for?"

"Ah, that I can't answer."

My brother-in-law looked discontented. Yet as a rule he resigned himself readily enough to not understanding things.

"Victoria says that Princess Heinrich requested the d.u.c.h.ess to manage that Elsa----"

"My dear William Adolphus, the transaction sounds complicated."

"Complicated? What do you mean? Princess Heinrich requested the d.u.c.h.ess not to let Elsa read it."

"Ah, my mother has always good reasons."

"But Elsa had read it already."

"How unfortunate wisdom always is! Did Elsa like it?"

"She told Victoria that it seemed great nonsense."

"Yes, she would think so."

"Well, it is, you know," said William Adolphus.

"Of course it is, my dear fellow," said I.

Yet I wanted to know more about it, and observing that Varvilliers was stated to have been present in the Diplomatic Gallery, I sent for him to come to Artenberg and describe the speech as it actually pa.s.sed. When I had sent my message I went forth in search of my _fiancee_. She had read the report already; my mother's measures had been taken too late. What did pretty Elsa think? She thought it was all great nonsense. Poor pretty Elsa!

My heart was hungry. Wetter had broken--as surely he had meant to break--the sleep of memory and the sense of contrast. I went to her not with love, but with some vague expectation, a sort of idea that, contrary to all likelihood, I might again have in some measure what had come to me before, springing now indeed not whence I would, but whence it could, yet being still itself though grown in an alien soil. The full richness of native bloom it could not win, yet it might attain some pale grace and a fragrance of its own. For these I would compound and thank the malicious wit that gave them me. But she thought it all great nonsense; nay, that was only what she had told Victoria. My mother was wise, and my mother had requested that she should not read it.

When I came to her she was uncertain and doubtful in mood. She did not refer to the speech, but a consciousness of it showed in her embarra.s.sment and in the distrustful mirth of her eyes. She did not know how I looked upon it, nor how I would have her take it; was she to laugh or to be solemn, to ridicule or to pretend with handsome ampleness?

There were duties attached to her greatness; was it among them to swallow this? But she knew I liked to joke at some things which others found serious; might she laugh with me at this extravagance?

"Well, you've read the debate?" I asked. "They all said exactly the proper things."

"Did they? I didn't know what the proper things were."

"Oh, yes; except that mad fellow Wetter. It's a sad thing, Elsa; if only he weren't a genius he'd have a great career."

She threw a timid questioning glance at me.

"Victoria says that he talked nonsense," she remarked.

"Victoria declares that it was you who said it."

"Well, I don't know which of us said it first," she laughed. "Princess Heinrich said so too; she said he must have been reading romances and gone mad, like Don Quixote."

"You've read some?"

"Oh, yes, some. Of course, it's different in a story."

So had observed William Adolphus. I marked Victoria as the common origin.

"You see," said I tolerantly, "he's a man of very emotional nature. He's carried away by his feelings, and he thinks other people are like himself." And I laughed a little.

Elsa also laughed, but still doubtfully. She seemed ill at ease. I found her venturing a swift stealthy glance at me; there was something like fear in her eyes. I was curiously reminded of Victoria's expression when she came to Krak with only a half of her exercise written, and mistrusted the validity of her excuse. (Indeed it was always a bad one.) What, then, had Wetter done for her? Had he not set up a hopeless standard of grim duty, frowning and severe? My good sister had meant to be consolatory with her "great nonsense," remembering, perhaps, the Baron over there at Waldenweiter. Elsa was looking straight before her now, her brows puckered. I glanced down at the hand in her lap and saw that it trembled a little. Suddenly she turned and found me looking; she blushed vividly and painfully.

"My dearest little cousin," said I, taking her hand, "don't trouble your very pretty head about such matters. Men are not all Wetters; the fellow's a poet if only he knew it. Come, Elsa, you and I understand one another."

"You're very kind to me," she said. "And--and I'm very fond of you, Augustin."

"It's very charming of you, for there's little enough reason."