Mrs. Fitz Part 47

"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 ident.i.ty 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 embarra.s.sment, 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 Rex Sonia Von Schalk Irene Arbuthnot Nevil Fitzwaren Odo Arbuthnot, M.P._

Upon the completion of this act of vandalism, the Victor of Rodova turned to the steward.

"Haf the goodness to inform his grace," he said, "that the King of Illyria accepts entire responsibility for the writing on the wall. It is the writing on the wall for him and for his country."

As we went towards the motor cars which awaited us at a side entrance, we had to pa.s.s down a flight of stone steps. In the descent the King was seized with a sudden and momentary faintness. He reeled, and had it not been for the prompt.i.tude of the ever-watchful Chancellor he must have fallen.

"Dat is the writing on the wall for the people of Illyria," said the Victor of Rodova with humorous stoicism as he recovered himself.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE CAST OF THE DIE

Upon the return to Dympsfield House, three telegrams in cypher were waiting for the King. Two secretaries, who with divers other unofficial members of his suite were staying at the Coach and Horses, were in possession of the library, which had been placed at the royal disposal. At dinner that evening we were informed that the Teutonic display of red fire had provoked a grave internal crisis in Illyria.

The National Bank was about to suspend payment; Consolidated Stock was at fifty-nine; and his Majesty must leave these sh.o.r.es in the course of Sat.u.r.day.

I could not repress a sigh of relief, although, to be sure, this was no more than the evening of Wednesday.

"Old Vesuvius is beginning to rumble again," said the King, with a laugh that sounded rather sinister, "but he cannot make us believe in him. How say you, my child?"

He looked across the table at the Princess, who was as pale as death.

Here was the indication of the final and supreme crisis for her and for her husband, and the hearts of those to whom she had come to mean much were torn with pity. Elemental, uncontrollable forces had her in their toils.

Fitz, too, had all our pity. The strain of true grandeur at the heart of the man, which all that was superficial could not efface, had a.s.serted itself in this season of anguish. A lesser nature might have taken steps to relieve his wife of the torment of his presence. But in the watches of the night he had referred the question, and now, come what must, he would meet his fate.

There was reason to believe that he had already thrown his weight in the scale on the side of Ferdinand. He had stopped short of self-immolation, it was true; he had placed another interpretation on the Voice; but it seemed to me, his friend, that his whole bearing was a piece of altruistic heroism which could have had few parallels.

"Ferdinand is right," he said as we kept vigil in my quarters. "The interests of a great people are of more account than a chap like me. I know it, and Sonia knows it too."

The words were torn from him. It was curious how this contained and self-reliant spirit yearned for the sanction that it was in the power of a sympathetic understanding to bestow. If he dealt himself a mortal wound he must have a friend at his side. If he had superhuman strength, at least he had human weakness. Men of valour are proud as a rule. Fitz in the hour of his pa.s.sion had a humility, a craving for the countenance of his fellows that I could only do my best to render in a humble way. The walk of mediocrity saves us from many things, but I suppose there are seasons in the lives of some who wear its badge when we would willingly forgo its comfortable consciousness of immunity for some diviner gift.

It was as though my unhappy friend was bleeding, perhaps to death, and I knew not how to stanch his wound.

Neither of us sought our beds that night, but sat and smoked hour after hour, in silence for the most part, beside a dead fire. He wished me to be near him, almost as a dumb animal yearns for those who show a sympathetic understanding of its pain, even if they are powerless to make it less.

As thus we sat together my mind envisaged the chequered career of my companion in all its phases. I recalled him in his first pair of trousers at his private school; I recalled him as my f.a.g in that larger cosmogony in which afterwards we dwelt together. As his senior, in those days I had unconsciously regarded him as less than myself. But this night, as I sat with him, consumed with pity for the tragic wreck of his fortunes, I realised that he was one whose life was pa.s.sed on a higher, more significant plane than mine could ever occupy.

It was good to feel that I had nothing with which to reproach myself in regard to my att.i.tude towards him in those distant days. His fits of depression, his outbursts of devilry, his dislike of games, the streak of fatalism that was in him, his impatience of all authority, had exposed him to many hards.h.i.+ps. But I was glad to think that I need not accuse myself of imperfect sympathy towards this fantastically odd, yet high and enduring spirit.

Thursday came and pa.s.sed in gloom. Even Ferdinand, that heart of steel, was feeling the poignancy of the crisis. Throughout the day Sonia did not appear. But in the evening Irene sat with her in her room.

"If I were she," she declared to me later, with tearful defiance, "I would not go back--that is, unless they accepted my husband as their future king."

"They cannot do that."

"I think the King himself is so wrong. He hates Nevil, and he has not the least affection for poor little Marie, his granddaughter. It is a dreadful state of things."

I concurred dismally. Yet it was a state of things arising so naturally, so inevitably out of the special circ.u.mstances of the case that it seemed almost to forfeit a little of its tragic significance.

"If only she is strong enough to hold out until Sat.u.r.day!" said my feminine counsellor. "But I am rather afraid. She is quite weak in some ways."

"There is a weakness, isn't there, which is a higher form of strength?"

"Can you mean that she will not be weak if she consents to return to Illyria to marry the Archduke Joseph?"

"She owes a duty to her people."

"She owes a duty to her husband and child."

Thursday ended as it began and Friday brought no solace. The Princess reappeared among us in the afternoon. She was pale and composed, and as the twilight of the January afternoon was gathering, she and Fitz rode out together. The King, at the same hour, walked in the muddy lanes with von Schalk.

"They leave us to-morrow morning at eleven," Mrs. Arbuthnot informed me, "and Sonia has not had her things packed. I believe the worst is over. She would have told me had she decided to go."

I was unable to share her optimism. From the first I had felt that the stars in their courses would prove too much for the unhappy lady. And nothing had occurred to remove that fear.