"Like all things, my good Odo," said her Royal Highness, "Schalk is good in his degree. He has his virtue. He is learned in the law, for instance, but there are times when, like poor Jacques Bonhomme, Schalk would aspire to take more on his shoulders than nature intended they should bear. But there, do not let us complain about Schalk. He is the faithful servant of an august master; do not let us blame him if he grows old and difficult. I once had a hound that grew like Schalk. In the end I had to destroy the honest creature, but of course that is not to say my father will destroy Schalk."

"Quite so, ma'am," said I, with a grave appreciation of the fine distinction that it might please his Majesty to draw in the case of Baron von Schalk.

I relapsed into reverie. What kind of a man was this celebrated sovereign? How would he harmonise with the humble middle-class English setting to which he was on the point of confiding himself? At this stage it was vain to repine, but as I reclined on the cushions of our royal saloon, with my arm throbbing intolerably and my temples too, what would I not have given to be through with the onerous duty of entertaining such a guest!

As thus I sat with our train proceeding full steam ahead to Middleham, my nerves began to rise up in mutiny. Why, oh, why! had I not been firmer? What could a comparative child, without the slightest experience of any walk of life save her own extremely circumscribed one, know of the exigencies of such a situation? How could she appreciate all that was involved in it? A kind of mental nausea came upon me when I realised that I had allowed myself to become responsible for the personal safety and the general well-being of the King of Illyria during his sojourn in England.

The anxieties in which his daughter had involved us were severe enough, but in the case of her father they seemed a hundred times more complex. Certainly they were far too much to ask of any private individual in the middle station of life. It was in vain that I invoked an incipient sense of humour. Sitting alone with a Crown Princess in a special train, with a bullet wound in your arm, is not apparently an ideal situation in which to exercise it. I might laugh as much as I liked at poor George Dandin himself. His embarrassments in the pass to which his wife's infatuation for realms beyond their own had brought him might be truly comic, but the married man, the father of the family, and the county member was quite unable, in his present shattered condition, to accept them with the detachment due to the true Olympian laughter.

Not to put too fine a point upon the matter, the married man, the father of the family, and the county member was in an enfeebled mental, physical and moral state when our special made its first stop. With a startled abruptness I emerged from my unpleasant speculations. Could we be at Middleham already? Hardly, for according to my watch it was only ten minutes past seven. I let down the window and found that it was Risborough.

In about a minute the guard of the train, the local station-master, and the two detectives who were accompanying us as far as Middleham, came to the door of the carriage.

"Extremely sorry, sir," said the station-master, "but you won't be able to go beyond Blakiston. There's been a terrible accident to the 5.28."

My heart gave a kind of dull thump at this announcement.

"The driver ran right through Blankhampton with all the signals against him. The train has been smashed up to matchwood."

"My God!"

The station-master dropped his voice.

"The full number of casualties has not yet been ascertained, sir, but at least half the passengers are killed or injured."

"How ghastly!"

"Awful, sir, awful. It is the worst accident we have ever had on the Grand Central system."

"Poor souls, poor souls!" said my companion. "God rest them!"

"We haven't had a really bad accident for twenty-two years. But this breaks our record with a vengeance. I can't think what the poor chap was doing. As good a driver as we've got, to go and do a thing like that – "

The station-master, a venerable and grizzled man with a stern, heavily lined face, suddenly lost his voice.

"Fate," said my companion with a sombre smile. "Who shall explain the workings of destiny?"

Who, indeed! Had it not been for the bullets of the would-be assassin we should, in all probability, at that moment have been both among the dead. What, after all, does our human foresight matter in the sum of things? All the same, I could not help recalling with a sense of wonder my Uncle Theodore's anxiety that we should not travel by the ill-fated 5.28.

"You will be able to go on as far as Blakiston," said the station-master, "and the Company has arranged for motor cars to meet the train to take you on to Middleham."

"What is the distance from Blakiston to Middleham?"

"About eighteen miles."

When the train went forward the current of my thoughts was altered completely. My former speculations seemed mean beyond comparison with such an event as this. Who shall read the ways of providence? A flesh wound in the arm and a late dinner were a small price to pay after all.

Upon arriving at Blakiston we found two motor cars awaiting us: one for the Princess, the other for our escort. A consultation with the chauffeurs disclosed the fact that by proceeding direct home via Parlow and Little Basing instead of by way of Middleham, a matter of seven miles would be saved. Therefore, after a wire had been sent to Middleham to inform our people of this change of route, we entered upon the final stage of our adventurous journey.

In spite of the fact that we exposed ourselves to the charge of driving recklessly, even if not to the actual danger of the public, our destination was reached without further mishap. By twenty-five minutes to nine we had turned in at the lodge gates of Dympsfield House. All the windows of that abode were a blaze of light. Doubtless the royal guest had arrived and, let us hope, was enjoying his dinner.

However, no sooner had we entered the house than we were met by Mrs. Arbuthnot. She was dressed for a gala night, very décolletée in her best gown, carrying a great quantity of sail in the way of jewels – jewels were being worn that year – and with a coiffure that absolutely baffles the pen of the conscientious historian. But, alas! Mrs. Arbuthnot was on the verge of tears.

CHAPTER XXIV
HIS ILLYRIAN MAJESTY FERDINAND THE TWELTFH

His Majesty had not arrived, and the dinner was spoiling.

"No news of the King?" I asked, keeping well in the background, for I had no wish for Mrs. Arbuthnot to observe my condition prematurely.

"Nevil said in his telegram that he would be here about a quarter past seven, and it is now five minutes past nine," said Mrs. Arbuthnot tearfully.

"Five-and-twenty minutes to nine, mon enfant, according to Greenwich," said I, as reassuringly as the circumstances permitted. "Your clock is wrong by half an hour. But there has been a bad accident at Blankhampton. Would they come by Blankhampton? If they did, that would be bound to delay them."

"Oh dear!" said Mrs. Arbuthnot. "If anything has happened to the King! And oh, Sonia dear, how late you are!" she added reproachfully. "I was getting so horribly nervous about you. And you not here to present me or anything! But now you've come it is all right. Just be a dear and have a look at the table before you go up to dress."

The Princess, however, had scarcely had time to yield to Mrs. Arbuthnot's suggestion, and I was in the act of walking upstairs in a state of uncomfortable anxiety in regard to the operation of changing my clothes, when from the vicinity of the hall door there came the sounds of fresh arrivals. I hurried to it, to be greeted immediately by the voice of Fitz.

"Rather late," he said with that air of languor which afflicted him on great occasions. "Line blocked at Blankhampton. Devil of a smash. Tiresome cross-country journey, but we've turned up at last."

"Safe and sound, I hope?"

"Right as rain."

As we walked together down the front steps to the open door of the car that stood at the bottom in the darkness, I was conscious that my pulse was a thought too rapid for a tacit subscriber to the theory of democracy. I held the door while an enormous figure of a man disengaged himself slowly, and not without difficulty, from the interior.

I made a somewhat lower bow than the Englishman in general permits himself. A smiling and subtle visage, at once handsome and venerable, was promptly turned upon me, and I found myself exchanging a cordial and powerful grip of the hand.

Ferdinand the Twelfth ascended the front steps in the charge of his son-in-law, while I held the door for the second occupant of the car to alight. I made an obeisance only a shade less in depth than the one I had bestowed upon the Sovereign. Baron von Schalk was small and dapper, with a face full of intelligence and not unlike that of a bird of prey. As we exchanged bows, it seemed that every line of it, and there were many, was eloquent of power.

"I hope the journey has not tired his Majesty?" I ventured to say. "It must have been very tedious."

Baron von Schalk smiled passively, made a deep guttural noise and answered in very tolerable English, "On the contrary, most interesting. The King never tires himself."

At the top of the steps, framed in a glow of soft light from within, were Mrs. Arbuthnot and the Princess. Standing side by side, they appeared to be vying with one another in the depth and grace of their curtseys. No sooner had the King ascended to them than he took a hand of each in his own and led them into the hall, as though they had been a pair of his small grandchildren. There was a spontaneity about the action which was charming.

Half an hour later we were assembled in the drawing-room. The King promptly offered his arm to his hostess, and led the way in the direction of her unfortunate meal. His daughter placed her hand very lightly upon the arm of the Chancellor, directing an arch look over her shoulder at me as she did so, as if she would say, "There is no help for it!"

Fitz and I, walking side by side, brought up the rear of the procession. The Man of Destiny had a very fell visage.

"What have you done to your arm?" he asked.

"Got smashed up in a taxi this afternoon."

"Where?"

"Oxford Street, I believe."

"What were you doing there?"

"The Princess had important business in town, and I went with her."

"Important business in town! She never said a word to me about it. Was she in the accident too?"

"Yes, but luckily she didn't get a scratch. And of course this is only a slight superficial wound."

The slight superficial wound did its best to contradict me by throbbing vilely.

Ferdinand the Twelfth sat on the right of his hostess, his Chancellor on her left. It is the due, I think, of our recent and temporarily imported culinary artist, lately in the service of a nobleman, to say that he had done extremely well in trying circumstances. There is no sauce like hunger, of course, but it was observed that the King ate heartily, and, although verging upon the statutory term of human life, seemed not one penny the worse for his long and trying journey.

He spoke English with an agreeable fluency. Not only did he know this country very well indeed, but we gathered that he was accustomed to find it pleasant. Seen across a dinner-table it was clear that his portraits had not in the least exaggerated his natural picturesqueness. It was a noble, leonine head, a thing of power and virility, framed with a mane of white hair. His eyes were heavy-lidded, but deep-seeing and almost uncomfortably direct and penetrating in their gaze; yet where one might have expected calculation and cold detachment there was an impenetrable veil of kindliness which served to obscure the elemental forces which must have lurked beneath.

There were tomatoes among the hors-d'oeuvres, and there were tomatoes in the soup. When the Victor of Rodova made a significant departure from the custom of our land by smacking his lips and astonishing the impassive Parkins by saying, "Make my compliments to de chef upon his consommé; I will haf more," his hostess hoisted the ensign of the rose, and her Royal Highness beamed upon her.

"There, Irene! what did I not tell you, my child?" she exclaimed triumphantly.

"Oliver has a devil of a twist upon him, evidently," murmured the son-in-law of Ferdinand the Twelfth, in an aside to his host of such deplorable banality that an apology is offered for its appearance in these pages. "I wish it would choke the old swine."

"On the contrary, he seems a quite kindly and paternal old gentleman."

"Ha, you don't know him!"

I admitted that I did not and that I looked forward to our better acquaintance.

The hostess and her humble coadjutor in the things of this life felt it to be a supreme moment in the progress of the feast when the royal lips were brought to the brink of the paternal madeira which had reached us so opportunely, if so illicitly, from Doughty Bridge, Yorks. But our suspense was resolved at once. The Victor of Rodova raised his glass to his hostess with the most benignant glance in the world, and for the second time Mrs. Arbuthnot hoisted the ensign of the rose.

Certainly the royal expansion had a charm that was all its own. Being called for the first time to my present exalted plane of social intercourse, I had had no opportunity of observing anything quite like it, other than in the manners of Fitz and his wife which had proved such a scandal to our neighbourhood. But the Victor of Rodova was so spontaneous in his actions and so unstudied in his gestures, and he appeared to wear his heart on his sleeve with such a childlike facility, that to one nurtured in our insular mode of self-repression it was as good as a play to be in his company.

One thing was clear. From the first it was plain that Mrs. Arbuthnot had achieved a great personal triumph. And in the particular circumstances of the case I am constrained to append the courtier-like phrase, "nor was it to be wondered at." Speaking out of a moderately full knowledge of the subject in all its chameleon-like range of vicissitude, from grave to gay, from lively to severe, in gowns by Worth, in frocks by Paquin, in costumes by Redfern, in nondescript creations by "the woman who makes things for Mama," I had never seen the subject in question keyed up to quite this degree of allure. Mrs. Arbuthnot was magnificent.

The King beamed upon her and she beamed upon the King. More than once he pledged her in the paternal madeira; and before the modest feast had run its course Fitz gave me a stealthy kick on the shin.

"Tell her to keep her door locked to-night," he said in one of his sinister asides.

The bluntness of the words was most uncomfortable, but there was no reason to doubt their sincerity. It was a piece of advice at which one so incorrigibly bourgeois as its recipient might have taken offence. That he did not do so should be counted to him, upon due reflection, as the expression of some remote strain of a more azure tint!

"I know the King's majesty only too well," said the son-in-law of Ferdinand the Twelfth.

When the ladies had left us, the King talked in the friendliest manner and always with that engaging simplicity that was so unstudied and so charming. He was curious to know what I had done to my arm, and when I told him he inquired minutely as to the nature of the wound, and gave me advice as to its treatment. This piece of consideration recalled the magazine article I had lately studied. Here seemed a practical illustration of the fact that in a literal sense he was the father of his people.

"You must show it to me to-morrow," he said. "And I will give you some ointment I always carry, made by my own chemist to my own prescription. Schalk laughs at my chemistry, but that's because he's jealous. I will apply it for you, and in three days you will see the difference. What are you laughing at, Schalk?"

"A man may laugh at his thoughts, sir, may he not?" said Schalk, with a dour smile.

"Not in the presence of the little father, Schalk, unless he shares them with the little father. What are you laughing at? But there, since you bungled that treaty with the wily Teuton your thoughts are not of much consequence. You know I don't care a doit for your thoughts, Schalk, since you went to Berlin. The thoughts of Schalk, forsooth! The wine is with you, you rascal. Remember that in England it is not considered to be good breeding to get drunk before your King."

"In Illyria, sir, that is always held to be impossible," said Schalk.

Ferdinand the Twelfth indulged in a guffaw.

"Good for you, impious one! Nay, fill up your glass before you pass it, and keep out your long nose, else our English friends will think we have no manners in Illyria."

When it pleases a monarch to unbend, the laughter his sallies evoke may seem overmuch for his wit. But it is an excellent custom to laugh heartily at the humour of kings. Ferdinand the Twelfth, in spite of his long journey, was in a very gracious mood and indulged us with many sallies at the expense of his Chancellor. Baron von Schalk, however, was well able to defend himself. It must be allowed, I think, that the royal wit was neither very refined nor very courteous. Rough and primitive, it had something of a Gargantuan savour. But his own deep-voiced appreciation of it was a perpetual feast. He also told one or two stories of a true Rabelaisian cast. They were told with an immense gusto, and he led the laughter himself with a whole-heartedness which was quite Homeric. Before the bottle the Victor of Rodova was magnificent company. It was impossible not to respond to his unaffected, if extremely catholic, good-humour.

When we joined the ladies we found them playing a game of patience. The Father of his People immediately carried a chair to the side of Mrs. Arbuthnot, sat beside her and offered pertinent help in the arrangement of her cards. "But this game is only fit for people like Schalk," he declared. "Britch is the game we play in Illyria."

Interpreting such a remark as being in the nature of a command, the hostess swept her cards together, and imperiously ordered her spouse to get the bridge markers.

"How shall we play, sir?" said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

"Togezzer, madame, you and I," said the King, with an air of homage, "if you please. I can see you play well."

"Oh, sir!" said Madame, for the third time hoisting the ensign of the rose. "How can you possibly know that?"

"Infallible signs, milady," said the King, laughing. "Trust an old soldier to read the signs. First, your ears, if I may say so. They have shape and position, just like my own. That means a well-balanced mind. And that dainty head, c'est magnifique! What intellect behind that forehead! Now give me your hand – the left one."

Milady gave the King a much bejewelled paw.

"Ouf!" said he, "what ambition! You will never hesitate to call sans atout. The heart-line is very good, also. There will be no other partner for Ferdinand. Schalk can have whom he pleases."

It pleased Baron von Schalk to choose her Royal Highness, and a very interesting game began.

"We must take care, milady," said Ferdinand the Twelfth, "we simple children of nature. I expect they will cheat us horribly. Schalk has very little in the way of a conscience, and nothing delights Sonia so much as to overreach a confiding parent."

As he spoke it pleased this simple child of nature to revoke in a very flagrant and palpable manner.

"No diamonds, partner?" said Mrs. Arbuthnot.

"None whatever," said the King, blandly. "I think a small deuce will take that trick, eh, Schalk?"

"So it appears, sir," said the long-suffering Chancellor.

I was led aside by the son-in-law of Ferdinand the Twelfth.

"If you watch this game, old son," said he, "you will gain an insight into the monarchical basis of the constitution of Illyria. Let us watch what the plausible old ruffian does with the nine of diamonds."

Happily the game was not being played for money. But it was characteristic of the Illyrian ruler, that in even the simple matter of a game at cards he was incapable of conducting it other than in a manner peculiarly his own.