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CHAPTER XXV
THE FATHER OF HIS PEOPLE

It was past two o'clock when the partie was dissolved. No sooner had our guests retired to their repose than Mrs. Arbuthnot turned enthusiastically to her lord.

"What a perfectly lovely old man! Such charm, such distinction; so kind, so unaffected, and oh, so simple! There is something in being a king, after all."

"Things are not always what they seem, mon enfant," I remarked uneasily.

"He is a perfect old darling."

"He is one of the deepest men in Europe, as all the world knows."

"He is a dear."

"Personally, I have no wish to meet him in a lonely lane on a dark night, if I should happen to have anything upon me that I cared to lose."

"Why, goose, you are jealous!"

"Put not your trust in princes, my child." And, reluctantly enough, I confided Fitz's piece of advice.

Howbeit, I was more than half prepared for Mrs. Arbuthnot's queenlike indignation.

"What do you mean, Odo?" said she, majestically. The outraged delicacy of a De Vere Vane-Anstruther is a very majestic thing.

"Either you promise, or I don't sleep over the stables."

"This is all the doing of Fitz! He has an insane prejudice."

"Fitz is a very shrewd fellow, and he knows our guest rather better than either of us. You must not forget that kings are kings in Illyria."

"I don't understand."

"You must promise, even if you don't."

"I shall do nothing of the kind. It is a humiliating suggestion. Besides, it is all so bourgeois."

"I was waiting for that. But, whatever it is, I have quite made up my mind. Either you promise, or I don't sleep over the stables."

"Then I refuse; absolutely and unconditionally I refuse," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, with what can only be described as hauteur.

It was our first impasse in the course of six years of double harness. I have never disguised from myself that I am a weak mortal. Mrs. Arbuthnot has never disguised it from me either. The habit of yielding more or less gracefully to the imperious will of the superior half of my entity had become second nature. But there was a voice within that would not have me give way.

"Absolutely and unconditionally! I consider it odious. And why should you insult me in this manner – "

The star of my destiny was rising to the heights of the tragedy queen.

"If you would only make the effort to understand, my child," I said patiently, "what is implied in your own admission that there is something in being a king, after all!"

"You are insanely jealous. He is a perfect dear, and he is old enough to be one's grandfather."

For once, however, I was adamant. Together we ascended the stairs; together we entered her ladyship's chamber. There was not adequate accommodation for the two of us. The best rooms had been placed at the disposal of Fitz and his wife, and of the King and his Chancellor. Leading out of this apartment, however, was a small dressing-room with a sofa in it. I opened the door and, as I did so, delivered my final ultimatum.

"Irene, you will either do as you are asked, else I spend the rest of the night in there."

"Pray do as, you choose." Mrs. Arbuthnot was pale with indignation. "But I shall not lock the door."

"So be it."

Leaving the door of the dressing-room slightly ajar, I lay down on the sofa just as I was, and composed myself for slumber as well as an entirely ridiculous situation would permit. Precisely how it had come about it was hard to determine, but I was prepared to inflict upon my overwrought self, for the events of that long day had been many and remarkable, a still further amount of bodily discomfort. But Fitz's hint had overthrown a married man, a father of a family, and a county member, whatever the sense of humour had to say about it all.

In the process of time I forgot sufficiently the dull tumult of my brain and the throbbing of my arm for my jaded nerves to be lulled into an uneasy doze. How long I had been oblivious of my surroundings I do not know, but quite suddenly a cry seemed to break in upon my senses. I awoke with a start.

The room was in total darkness save for a thread of light which came through the partially open door of the adjoining chamber. But sounds and a voice proceeded from it.

I rose from my sofa and listened at the threshold.

"Little milady, little Irene."

The pleading accents were familiar, and paternal. I pushed open the door and entered the room. A distracted vision with streaming hair and in a white nightgown was sitting up in bed; while candle in hand a magnificent figure in a blue silk Oriental robe over a brilliant yellow sleeping-suit was confronting her.

"Little milady. Little Irene."

I fumbled for the knob of the electric light, found it and turned it up.

I was face to face with a subtle and smiling visage. There was astonishment in it, it is true, but it was also full of humour and benevolence.

"Why, my friend," said Ferdinand the Twelfth in his most paternal manner, "pray what are you doing here?"

I confess that I could find no answer to the royal inquiry.

In the circumstances it was not easy to know what reply to make. Indeed so completely was I taken aback that I could not find a word to say. Coolly enough the King stood regarding me with that bland and subtle countenance. But as those smiling eyes measured me they gave me "to think." I carried one arm in a sling, I was without a weapon, and the Father of his People was a man of exceptional physical power.

As a measure of precaution, I reached pensively for the poker.

A transitory gleam flitted across the King's face, but the royal countenance was still urbane.

"Madame should have locked her door," he said, with an air of humorous reproach. "Dat is a good custom we haf in Illyria."

"Your Majesty must forgive us," said I, without permitting my glance to stray towards the half-terrified vision that was so near to me, "if we appear bourgeois. The fact is, we are not so familiar as we should like to be with the usages of the great world."

The King laughed heartily.

"There is nothing to forgive, my good friend," he said with an air of splendid magnanimity. "But Madame should certainly have locked her door. However, let us not bear malice."

With a superbly graceful gesture, in which the paternal and the humorous were delightfully mingled, the King withdrew.

Horror and incredulity contended in the eyes of Mrs. Arbuthnot. But I did not think well to spare her the reverberation of my triumph.

"There is something in being a king, after all, mon enfant."

Mrs. Arbuthnot was only able to gasp.

"Do not let us blame him; he is the Father of his People. But apparently it would seem that that which may be bourgeois in the eyes of the matrons of the Crackanthorpe Hunt is really the highest breeding in Illyria."

Thereupon I laid down the poker as pensively as I had taken it up, sought to compose the star of my destiny, who was beginning to weep softly, and bade her good morning.

Outside the door I lingered a moment to hear the key click in the lock in the most unmistakable manner.

With the aid of a candle I made my way to my temporary quarters over the stables. The hour was a quarter to five. Little time was left for further repose, but it was used to such advantage that it was not without difficulty that my servant was able to rouse me at a quarter to eight. By the time I was putting the finishing touches to my toilet I was informed that Count Zhygny was below, inspecting the horses.

Count Zhygny, to give our illustrious guest his nom de guerre, which, like nearly all Illyrian proper names, it is well not to attempt to pronounce as it is spelt, was stroking the fetlocks of Daydream with an air of knowingness when I joined him. Dressed in a suit of tweeds and a green felt hat, he looked the picture of restless energy. Seen in the light of day he was far older than he had appeared the previous night. Hollows were revealed in his cheeks, and there were pouches under his eyes. His hands shook and his brow had many lines, but every one of his many inches was instinct with a natural force.

His greeting was frank and hearty and as cordial as you please. There was not a trace of resentment or embarrassment. But, from the manly ease of his bearing, it was abundantly clear that the king could do no wrong.

He linked his arm through mine, and together we strolled in to breakfast. At the sideboard I helped him to bacon and tomatoes, and Mrs. Arbuthnot gave him coffee.

The manner of "little milady" was perhaps a thought constrained when she received his Majesty's matutinal greeting. To encourage her he pinched her ear playfully.

Mrs. Fitz did not grace this movable feast, and Fitz and the Chancellor were rather late.

"You have taken a long time over your devotions, Schalk," said the King. "I am glad it does not cost me these pains to keep on good terms with heaven."

"I also, sir," said Schalk drily.

"I see you have the English Times there, Schalk. What is the news this morning?"

The Chancellor adjusted a pair of gold pince-nez and began to read aloud from that organ of opinion.

"'Blaenau, Wednesday evening. The Illyrian Land Bill was read a second time in the House of Deputies this afternoon.'"

"Ha, that is important," said the King, laughing. "What a well-informed journal is the English Times! Do you approve of the Illyrian Land Bill, Schalk?"

"Since I had the honour of drafting it, sir, to your dictation, I cannot do less than endorse it."

"And read a second time already, says the English Times, in the House of Deputies. I always say they have some of the best minds of the kingdom in the Lower House."

"Trust them to know what is good for themselves," said Schalk sourly.

It was tolerably clear, from the Chancellor's manner, that his royal master was enjoying a little private baiting.

"Why, Schalk," he said, "I believe you are still harping on Clause Three."

"I have never reverted, sir, from my original view," said the Chancellor, "that under Clause Three the peasantry is getting far more than is good for it. I have always felt, sir, as you are aware, that this is a concession to the pestilential agrarian agitator, and I feel sure the First Chamber will proclaim this opinion also."

"Well, well, Schalk," said the King cheerfully, "is it not the function of the First Chamber to disagree with the Second, and what is the Little Father for except to soothe their quarrels by flattering both and agreeing with neither?"

"Your Majesty is pleased to speak in riddles," said the Chancellor, with gravity.

"What a cardinal you would have made, Schalk!" said his master. "But if you have really made up your mind about Clause Three, we must look at it again. I agree with you that it is not good for growing children to eat all the cake. We must keep a little for their elders, because they like cake too, it appears."

"Everyone is fond of cake," said the Chancellor sententiously, "but there is never quite enough to go round, unfortunately."

"That is a happy phrase of Schalk's," said the King, making the conversation general with his amused air; "'the pestilential agrarian agitator.' Have you that kind of animal in England?"

"We are infested with him, sir," said the member for the Uppingdon Division of Middleshire, the owner of a modest thousand or so of acres. "The people for the land, and the land for the people! The country reeks of it."

"It is the same everywhere," said the King. "A great world movement is upon us. The wise can detect the voice of the future in the cry of the people, but there are some who stuff wool in their ears, eh, Schalk?"

Ferdinand the Twelfth assumed a port of indulgent sagacity. This half-serious, half-bantering fragment of his discourse, and half a dozen in a similar tenor to which it was my privilege to listen, seemed to establish one fact clearly. It was that the King was not the slave of his ministers. He was a man with a keen outlook upon his time, deliberately unprogressive, not in response to the reactionary forces by which he was surrounded, but because he held that it was not good for the world to go too fast.

His article of faith was simple enough, and in his conduct he did not hesitate to embody it. He conceived it to be the highest good for every people to have a king; a wise, patient and beneficent law-giver to correct the excesses of faction; one to stand at the helm to steer the ship of state through troubled waters.

Whether his conception of the monarchical condition was right or wrong, he was able to enforce it with all the weight of his personality. He believed profoundly in the divine right. In the assurance of his own infallibility he seemed to admit no limit to his own freedom of action.

He believed that the future of his country was in his hands. It was in order to conserve it that he had come to England in this singular and unexpected manner. Having chosen a Royal Consort for his only daughter, she whose act of revolt was but a manifestation of sovereignty carried to a higher power, he was prepared come what may to enforce his will.

All through this little history I have tried to show how comedy strove with tragedy as the play was unfolded. The spectators were never quite sure which way the cat would jump. Infinite opportunity for laughter was provided, but underneath this merriment lay that which was too deep for tears. Viewed upon the surface, the precipitation into our midst of such an elemental figure as Ferdinand the Twelfth was food for an inextinguishable jest, but the reverse of the medal must not be overlooked.

Every hour the King spent under our roof was a slow-drawn torture for Fitz and his wife. Holding the romantic belief that they were twin-souls whom destiny had linked irrevocably together, they were everything to one another. But running counter to this faith were those incalculable hereditary forces which the King with incomparable power and address was marshalling against it.

Now was the time for the Princess to yield. In his own person the King had come to demand of her that once and for all she should take up the burden of her heritage. If now she declined to heed, the days of the Monarchy were numbered.

It was only too clear to us onlookers that a terrible contest was being waged. In two or three brief days the Princess seemed worn to a shadow; the look of wildness was again in her eyes: her whole bearing confessed an overwhelming mental stress.

Fitz also suffered greatly. And his travail was not rendered less by the fact that Ferdinand did not scruple to make a personal appeal.

About the third night of his ordeal, Fitz accompanied me to my quarters over the stables.

"Arbuthnot," he said, sinking into a chair, "I have been thinking this thing out as well as I can with the help of Ferdinand, and he has made me see that my rights in the matter are not quite what I thought they were. I do not complain. He has talked to me as a father might to a son, and he has brought me to see that our position in the sight of God may not be quite what we judged it to be."

I was hardly prepared for such a speech on the lips of Fitz. That it should fall from them so simply gave me an enlarged idea of the forces that were being brought to bear upon him.

CHAPTER XXVI
A WALK IN THE GARDEN

In the last resort the issue lay with Sonia. Her husband had the wisdom to recognise that; although his own happiness was at stake, the matter was beyond the restricted sphere of the personal equation.

In the crisis of his fate it has always seemed to me that Fitz displayed the inherent nobility of his character. Once the King, with immense force and cogency, had revealed the situation in its true aspect, his son-in-law, without abating a single claim to his wife's consideration, yet refrained from unduly exercising the prerogative conferred upon him by their spiritual affinity.

It was wise and right that Fitz should detach himself as far as possible from the conflict that was being waged between father and daughter. But, although he did what lay in his power to simplify the issue, he could not banish the image of himself from his wife's heart. He furnished the motive power of her existence. Emotion held the master-key to her nature. In any conflict between love and duty, love could hardly fail to win.

Fitz suffered intensely as the struggle went on. He even threw out a hint to me that he might be tempted to take a certain step to help his wife to a possible solution of the problem.

"The longer this goes on," he said to me in the small hours of the morning, "the more clearly I realise that Sonia's place is with her own people. I have been blind, and I have been mad, and I owe it to Ferdinand that I have been able to see myself in my true relation to the issue in which fate has involved us. It is six years since I first saw Sonia on the terrace of the Castle at Blaenau. I was travelling about the world trying to find ease for my soul. I knew that she was unhappy, and she knew that I was, but we were young and not afraid. We met continually, for I had the entrée to the Castle as the grandson of the Elector of Gracow, whose daughter married my grandfather, George Fitzwaren of tragic memory.

"We used to sit out on the Castle terrace, Sonia and I, night after night, watching the stars in their courses, while her father dragooned his parliament and hoodwinked his people. She was lonely, outcast and unloved; there was none to whom she could speak her thoughts; she was oppressed with the sense of her destiny.

"She said that when she first met me she wondered where she had seen me before. She said that my presence haunted her like a half-remembered vision, until it began to merge itself into her dreams of a former existence and a happier state. And as she said this, her voice grew strangely familiar. For me it unlocked the doors of memory. It was like the faint, far-off music you can hear sometimes, the music of the wind in winter sweeping across infinite, illimitable space.

"She allowed me to kiss her, and we knew then we held the key to the riddle of existence. We were twin-souls made one again, and together we would go through all time and all eternity.

"But I think we are beginning now to realise that the sense of oneness is alien to the human state, and that the hour is at hand when we must separate and go out again into the night of ages alone."

In a condition of desolation the unhappy man rocked his meagre body to and fro as thus he spoke.

"If it will really help her," he said, "I think I shall put an end to my present life. At least, I shall ask Ferdinand to do it, for I doubt whether any man in the true enjoyment of his reason has really the power to do it for himself. And yet, perhaps one ought not to say that. So much can be done by prayer."

"Surely it is contrary to the will of God?" I said with a kind of horror.

"It is, undoubtedly," said Fitz, "as regards humanity at large. But it sometimes happens, you know, that one among us plays the game up so high that he gets a special decree. I almost think, Arbuthnot, that I have heard the Voice – and if I have, my unhappy Sonia will be able to go back to her people for a term, and I shall ask you, as my oldest friend, a man whom my instincts tell me to trust, to accept the charge of my little daughter."

To one poised delicately upon the plane of reason such a speech could not fail to be shocking. But it was so sincere, so reasoned, the holder of these views was so entirely the captain of his soul, that his words, as he uttered them, seemed to derive a kind of sanction which as I commit them to paper they do not appear to possess.

The counsel of one man to another does not amount to much in those cases where the subject-matter of their discussion has been already referred to the High Court. But I felt that I should be unfaithful to the elements that formed my own nature, acutely conscious as I was of their imperfect development, if I did not seek to give them some sort of an expression at such a moment as this.

"Fitz," I said, "I can claim no right to address you, except as a younger brother. You belong to a higher order of things; your life is more developed than mine, but I ask you in the name of God to refrain from the step you contemplate, unless you are absolutely convinced, beyond any possibility of error, that there is no other way out."

The unhappy man made no reply. His face had begun to seem unrecognisable.

I rose involuntarily from the chair in which I sat.

"Let us walk in the garden," I said.

The suggestion appeared to shape itself on my lips, regardless of the will's volition. It was, perhaps, a recovered fragment of man's heritage floating downwards from the past.

I opened the door and we went downstairs into the garden. It was the middle of the night; what there was of the moon was almost wholly obscured; the air was mild with the purity of recent rain. Up and down the wet lawns we walked, bareheaded and in our slippered feet.

Suddenly lights flashed upon us out of the shrubbery.

"It is all right," I called. "Do not disturb us. Go into another part of the grounds."

The voice seemed unlike my own, but the watchers obeyed it.

Nature exhorted us as we walked in the garden. Her purity, her calm, the incommunicable magic of her spaciousness, the thrall of her splendour entered our veins. We were her children, flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone. The mighty Mother spoke to us.

A little wind moved softly among the gaunt branches of a pine.

"I must make quite sure that the Voice has spoken to me," said Fitz.

The unhappy man walked to the pine-tree, knelt down and seemed involuntarily to shroud his face with his hands.

I shrank back and turned away.

Quite suddenly my heart leapt with surprise and dismay. An unexpected and sinister presence was by my side.

"I pity that poor fellow," said a voice softly. "I pity them both."

It was the voice of the King.

Habited in a voluminous mantle, the Victor of Rodova linked his arm through mine in his paternal manner.

"Come, my friend," he said in a voice of urgent kindliness, "let us walk in the garden."

Together we walked over the lawns, the King and I, with slow and measured steps.

"It is a beautiful night." Ferdinand the Twelfth took off his hat.

"God is in His heaven, sir," I said, softly.

"You are a God-fearing people," said the King; "that is a good thing. What can we do in the world without the fear of God? This night reminds me of the night before Rodova. It was just like this, a calm, soft air, a little moist. You could hear the wind creeping softly among the pine-trees. At the bottom of your garden there was the gentle noise of a little river. All night the little fishes were leaping and playing in its clear waters, and living their lives joyously as it seemed good to them. And beyond the river were the Austrians, sixty thousand men with horses and cannons.

"The God of Armies had given the soul of my country into my care. Was she to remain a free and independent people as she had been since the time of Alvan the First, or was she to be trampled under the heel of the oppressor? All night I walked in the garden, and I remember I knelt down under the pine-tree yonder, as our friend is doing there. It is a wonderful thing how history keeps happening over again."

The King's voice had grown hushed and solemn.

"To-night is another crisis in the history of our country. I am older than I seem; there is a voice within which tells me that my course is almost run. That is why I have come to speak with my daughter. It is the business of us Sveltkes to hold the balance in the scales of destiny. Since the time of Alvan the First there has been an unbroken line of monarchy; perhaps it is decreed that it shall end to-night. But yet I cannot think so. The unseen power which enabled us to withstand the might of Austria will invest my daughter with wisdom and grace."

There was a footfall on the soft turf, and we turned to find that Fitz had joined us.

"Ha! Nevil," said the King in a voice of parental tenderness. "I was explaining to our good friend how this night reminds me of the eve of Rodova. Our lady the moon was in her present quarter; yonder was Mars, blood-red on the eastern horizon. There behind us was Jupiter, exactly as we see him to-night; but on the night of Rodova Uranus was not visible. It was a grave crisis in the history of our country; to-night is a grave crisis also, for I feel that a term has been placed to my days. But I walked all night in the garden, and I knelt down beneath a single pine-tree, and the God of Armies spoke to me. 'Fear nothing,' said the God of Armies. 'At the break of day, cross the river that flows at the bottom of the garden, and all will be well.'"

The light of the moon fell upon the King's face, That smiling and subtle visage looked strangely luminous.

"An hour before daybreak," the King went on, "Parlowitz came to me. 'Weissmann has come up in the night,' he said, 'with twenty thousand men. If we cross the river, all is lost.' 'Fear nothing, Parlowitz,' I said. 'At daybreak we cross the river. The God of Armies would have it so.' 'Then, sire,' said Parlowitz, 'give this to my wife when next you see her' – Parlowitz unfastened the collar of his tunic and took off a locket which he wore round his neck – 'and tell her that it is my wish that our second son John should succeed to my estate.' I then bade adieu to Parlowitz, for he would have it so; and as the dawn was breaking he was shot through the breast at the head of his division. But that was a glorious day in the annals of the Illyrian people; and you, my dear Nevil, will have seen the noble statue that has been raised to the memory of Parlowitz on the terrace at Blaenau."

"I have seen the statue," said Fitz, calmly. "A monument of piety, but abominable as a work of art."

"It is the work of the best sculptor in Illyria," said the King.

"There are no sculptors in Illyria," said Fitz, bluntly.

The King fell into a muse. I was sensible of Fitz's grip upon my arm.

"It is wonderful," said the King, softly, "how history continues to happen over again. I seem to hear the voice again in the upper air: 'At daybreak, cross the river at the bottom of the garden, and all will be well.'"

The grip upon my arm grew tighter.

"Do not leave me," said Fitz in a hoarse whisper.

All night long the three of us walked up and down the lawns before the house. In one of the upper windows was a light. It was Sonia's room.

Few words passed between us, and in the main it was the King who spoke. Never once did Fitz relax his grip upon my arm. Indeed, as the hours passed, it seemed to grow more tense. It had the convulsive tenacity of one who in the last extremity fights to keep the body united to the soul.

Even I, who make no claim to be highly sensitised, was susceptible of the ominous challenge of the force that was enfolding us. Silence was even more terrible than speech. The resources of the ages were in the scale against us.

"For God's sake do not leave me!" said my unhappy friend in a whisper of terror.

At last the first faint pencilings of the dawn began to declare themselves in the upper air. My slippered feet were soaked and my teeth were chattering with the chill of the morning. A curious sensation, which I had never felt before, began to steal over me. With a thrill of suffocating, incommunicable horror I began slowly to realise that I was no longer the master of myself.

Fitz's convulsed grip was still upon my arm, but the sense of him had grown remote. He was slipping farther and farther away.

"Hold me!" he whispered; and again, "Hold me!" The stifled voice was like that of one in whose company I was drowning.

The voice of the King sounded quite near, although it was with dull stupefaction that I heard his words.

"The day is breaking. The river flows at the bottom of the garden."

The fingers of my friend no longer clasped my arm. In the half-light I saw the King produce a revolver from the folds of his mantle. He handed it to Fitz with a paternal, almost deprecating gesture, and we were both powerless to deny him. It seemed to me that I was standing outside all that was happening. The sense of distance appeared ever to increase.

I witnessed the King kiss the forehead of his son-in-law, and heard him give him his blessing. Then I seemed to hear the voice of Fitz crying piteously.

"Sonia, Sonia, help me!"

"Look over there," said the King; "the day is breaking. It is another glorious sunrise for the people of Illyria."

"Yes, indeed, sir," said a voice that broke the spell.

The prayer of Fitz had been heard. Sonia had come unperceived into our midst.

"I have come to taste the morning, it is so good," she said. "And you, how early you have risen!"

The King laughed. He seemed to enfold his daughter with that visage of smiling subtlety.

"We have been walking in the garden, my friends and I," he said. "We have had a pleasant talk together. The position of the stars reminded me of the eve of Rodova, except that Uranus was not with us. It is always well to know the position of Uranus."

I felt Fitz slip the revolver into my hand.

"Come," he said in his tone of natural decision, "let us go and have a bath and get ready for breakfast."

While the King continued to discourse amiably with his daughter we made our escape.

In the privacy of my room over the stables we removed the cartridges from the revolver.

Fitz handed the weapon to me. "Keep it," he said, "as a memento of Ferdinand the Twelfth. I should have crossed the river if Sonia had not heard my call."

Fitz shivered; but in his haggard face I thought that reason was still enthroned.