Part 3

“She’s a trespasser.’.was you yourself flew in a passion about it yesterday. Yesterday she was plucking the King’s roses; to-day she’s feeding the King’s carp.”

“‘When the King’s away, the palace mice will play.’ I venture to recall your own words to you,” Ferdinand remarked.

“That’s all very well. Besides, I spoke in jest. But there are limits. And it’s I who am responsible. I’m the Constable of Bellefontaine. Her trespassing appears to be habitual, We’ve caught her at it ourselves, two days in succession. I shall give instructions to the keepers to warn her not to touch a flower, nor feed a bird, beast, or fish, in the whole of this demesne. Really, I admire the cool way in which she went on tossing bread-crumbs to the King’s carp under my very beard!” exclaimed Hilary, working himself into a fine state of indignation.

“Very likely she didn’t know who you were,” his friend reasoned. “And anyhow, your zeal is mighty sudden. You appear to have been letting things go at loose ends for I don’t know how long; and all at once you take fire like tinder because a poor woman amuses herself by throwing bread to the carp. It’s simply spite: you’re disappointed in the colour of her hair. I shall esteem it a favour if you’ll leave the keeper’s instructions as they are. She’s a damned good-looking woman; and I’ll beg you not to interfere with her diversions.”

“I can deny you nothing, Uncle,” said Hilary, by this time restored to his accustomed easy temper; “and therefore she may make hay of the whole blessed establishment, if she pleases. But as for her good looks—that, you’ll admit, is entirely a question of taste.”

“Ah, well, then the conclusion is that your taste needs cultivation,” laughed Ferdinand. “By-the-bye, I shall be glad if you will find out who she is.”

“Thank you very much,” cried Hilary. “I have a reputation to safeguard. Do you think I’m going to compromise myself, and set all my underlings a-sniggling, by making inquiries about the identity of a woman?”

“But,” persisted Ferdinand, “if I ask you to do so, as your———-”

“What?” was Hilary’s brusque interruption.

“As your guest,” said Ferdinand.

“Mille regrets, impossible, as the French have it,” Hilary returned. “But as your host, I give you carte-blanche to make your own inquiries for yourself—if you think she’s worth the trouble. Being a stranger here, you have, as it were, no character to lose.”

“After all, it doesn’t matter,” said Ferdinand Augustus, with resignation. III

But the next afternoon, at about the same hour, Ferdinand Augustus found himself alone, strolling in the direction of the little stone bridge over the artificial lakelet; and there again was the woman, leaning upon the parapet, dropping bread-crumbs to the carp. Ferdinand Augustus raised his hat; the woman bowed and smiled.

“It’s a fine day,” said Ferdinand Augustus.

“It’s a fine day—but a weary one,” the woman responded, with an odd little movement of the head.

Ferdinand Augustus was perhaps too shy to pursue the conversation; perhaps he wanted but little here below, nor wanted that little long. At any rate, he passed on. There could be no question about her smile this time, he reflected; it had been bright, spontaneous, friendly. But what did she mean, he wondered, by adding to his general panegyric of the day as fine, that special qualification of it as a weary one? It was astonishing that any man should dispute her claim to beauty. She had really a splendid figure; and her face was more than pretty, it was distinguished. Her eyes and her mouth, her clear-grey sparkling eyes, her softly curved red mouth, suggested many agreeable possibilities—possibilities of wit, and of something else. It was not till four hours later that he noticed the sound of her voice. At dinner, in the midst of a discussion with Hilary about a subject in no obvious way connected with her (about the Orient Express, indeed—its safety, speed, and comfort), it suddenly came back to him, and he checked a remark upon the advantages of the corridor carriage, to exclaim in his soul, “She’s got a delicious voice. If she sang, it would be a mezzo.”

The consequence was that the following day he again bent his footsteps in the direction of the bridge.

“It’s a lovely afternoon,” he said, lifting his hat.

“But a weary one,” said she, smiling, with a little pensive movement of the head.

“Not a weary one for the carp,” he hinted, glancing down at the water, which boiled and bubbled with a greedy multitude.

“Oh, they have no human feelings,” said she.

“Don’t you call hunger a human feeling?” he inquired.

“They have no human feelings; but I never said we hadn’t plenty of carp feelings,” she answered him.

He laughed. “At all events, I’m pleased to find that we’re of the same way of thinking.”

“Are we?” asked she, raising surprised eyebrows.

“You take a healthy pessimistic view of things,” he submitted.

“I? Oh, dear, no. I have never taken a pessimistic view of anything in my life.”

“Except of this poor summer’s afternoon, which has the fatal gift of beauty. You said it was a weary one.”

“People have sympathies,” she explained; “and besides, that is a watchword.” And she scattered a handful of crumbs, thereby exciting a new commotion among the carp.

Her explanation no doubt struck Ferdinand Augustus as obscure; but, perhaps he felt that he scarcely knew her well enough to press for enlightment. “Let us hope that the fine weather will last,” he said, with a polite salutation, and resumed his walk.

But, on the morrow, “You make a daily practice of casting your bread upon the waters,” was his greeting to her. “Do you expect to find it at the season’s end?”

“I find it at once,” was her response, “in entertainment.”

“It entertains you to see those shameless little gluttons making an exhibition of themselves!” he cried out.

“You must not speak disrespectfully of them,” she reproved him. “Some of them are very old. Carp often live to be two hundred, and they grow grey, for all the world like men.”

“They’re like men in twenty particulars,” asserted he, “though you, yesterday, denied it. See how the big ones elbow the little ones aside; see how fierce they all are in the scramble for your bounty. You wake their most evil passions. But the spectacle is instructive. It’s a miniature presentment of civilisation. Oh, carp are simply brimfull of human nature. You mentioned yesterday that they have no human feelings. You put your finger on the chief point of resemblance. It’s the absence of human feeling that makes them so hideously human.”

She looked at him with eyes that were interested, amused, yet not altogether without a shade of raillery in their depths. “That is what you call a healthy pessimistic view of things?” she questioned.

“It is an inevitable view if one honestly uses one’s sight, or reads one’s newspaper.”

“Oh, then I would rather not honestly use my sight,” said she; “and as for the newspaper, I only read the fashions. Your healthy pessimistic view of things can hardly add much to the joy of life.”

“The joy of life!”. he expostulated. “There’s no joy in life. Life is one fabric of hardship, peril, and insipidity.”

“Oh, how can you say that,” cried she, “in the face of such beauty as we have about us here? With the pure sky and the sunshine, and the wonderful peace of the day; and then these lawns and glades and the great green trees; and the sweet air, and the singing birds! No joy in life!”

“This isn’t life,” he answered. “People who shut themselves up in an artificial park are fugitives from life. Life begins at the park gates, with the natural countryside, and the squalid peasantry, and the sordid farmers, and the Jew money-lenders, and the uncertain crops.”

“Oh, it’s all life,” insisted she, “the park and the countryside, and the virgin forest and the deep sea, with all things in them. It’s all life. I’m alive, and I daresay you are. You would exclude from life all that is nice in life, and then say of the remainder, that only is life. You’re not logical.”

“Heaven forbid,” he murmured devoutly. “I’m sure you’re not, either. Only stupid people are logical.” She laughed lightly. “My poor carp little dream to what far paradoxes they have led,” she mused, looking into the water, which was now quite tranquil. “They have sailed away to their mysterious affairs among the lily-roots. I should like to be a carp for a few minutes, to see what it is like in those cool, dark places under the water. I am sure there are all sorts of strange things and treasures. Do you believe there are really water-maidens, like Undine?”

“Not nowadays,” he informed her, with the confident fluency of one who knew. “There used to be; but, like so many other charming things, they disappeared with the invention of printing, the discovery of America, and the rise of the Lutheran heresy. Their prophetic souls——”

“Oh, but they had no souls, you remember,” she corrected him.

“I beg your pardon; that was the belief that prevailed among their mortal contemporaries, but it has since been ascertained that they had souls, and very good ones. Their prophetic souls warned them what a dreary, dried-up planet the earth was destined to become, with the steam-engine, the electric telegraph, compulsory education (falsely so called), constitutional government, and the supremacy of commerce. So the elder ones died, dissolved in tears; and the younger ones migrated by evaporation to Neptune.”

“Dear me, dear me,” she marvelled. “How extraordinary that we should just have happened to light upon a topic about which you appear to have such a quantity of special knowledge! And now,” she added, bending her head by way of valediction, “I must be returning to my duties.”

And she moved off, towards the palace. IV

And then, for three or four days, he did not see her, though he paid frequent enough visits to the feeding-place of the carp.

“I wish it would rain,” he confessed to Hilary. “I hate the derisive cheerfulness of this weather. The birds sing, and the flowers smile, and every prospect breathes sodden satisfaction; and only man is bored.”

“Yes, I own I find you dull company,” Hilary responded, “and if I thought it would brisk you up, I’d pray with all my heart for rain. But what you need, as I’ve told you a thousand times, is a love-affair with a red-haired woman.”

“Love-affairs are tedious repetitions,” said Ferdinand. “You play with your new partner precisely the same game you played with the old: the same preliminary skirmishes, the same assault, the same feints of resistance, the same surrender, the same subsequent disenchantment. They’re all the same, down to the very same scenes, words, gestures, suspicions, vows, exactions, recriminations, and final break-ups. It’s a delusion of inexperience to suppose that in changing your mistress you change the sport. It’s the same trite old book, that you’ve read and read in different editions, until you’re sick of the very mention of it. To the deuce with love-affairs. But there’s such a thing as rational conversation, with no sentimental nonsense. Now, I’ll not deny that I should rather like to have an occasional bit of rational conversation with that red-haired woman we met the other day in the park. Only, the devil of it is, she never appears.”

“And then, besides, her hair isn’t red,” added Hilary.

“I wonder how you can talk such folly,” said Ferdinand.

“C’est mon métier, Uncle. You should answer me! according to it. Her hair’s not red. What little red there’s in it, it requires strong sunlight to bring out. In shadow her hair’s a sort of dull brownish-yellow,” Hilary persisted.

“You’re colour-blind,” retorted Ferdinand. “But I won’t quarrel with you. The point is, she never appears. So how can I have my bits of rational conversation with her?”

“How, indeed?” echoed Hilary, with pathos.

“And therefore you’re invoking storm and whirlwind. But hang a horseshoe over your bed to-night, turn round three times as you extinguish your candle, and let your last thought before you fall asleep be the thought of a newt’s liver and a blind man’s dog; and it’s highly possible she will appear to-morrow.”

I don’t know whether Ferdinand Augustus accomplished the rites that Hilary prescribed, but it is certain that she did appear on the morrow: not by the pool of the carp, but in quite another region of Bellefontaine, where Ferdinand Augustus was wandering at hazard, somewhat disconsolately. There was a wide green meadow, sprinkled with buttercups and daisies; and under a great tree, at this end of it, he suddenly espied her. She was seated on the moss, stroking with one finger-tip a cockchafer that was perched upon another, and regarding the little monster with intent meditative eyes. She wore a frock the bodice part of which was all drooping creamy lace; she had thrown her hat and gloves aside; her hair was in some slight, soft disarray; her loose sleeve had fallen back, disclosing a very perfect wrist and the beginning of a smooth white arm. Altogether she made an extremely pleasing picture, sweetly, warmly feminine. Ferdinand Augustus stood still, and watched her for an instant before he spoke. Then——

“I have come to intercede with you on behalf of your carp,” he announced. “They are rending heaven with complaints of your desertion.”

She looked up, with a whimsical, languid little smile. “Are they?” she asked lightly. “I’m rather tired of carp.”

He shook his head sorrowfully. “You will permit me to admire your fine, frank disregard of their feelings.”

“Oh, they have the past to remember,” she said. “And perhaps some day I shall go back to them. For the moment I amuse myself very well with cockchafers. They’re less tumultuous. And then, carp won’t come and perch on your finger. And then, one likes a change.—Now fly away, fly away, fly away home; your house is on fire, and your children will burn,” she crooned to the cockchafer, giving it never so gentle a push. But instead of flying away, it dropped upon the moss, and thence began to stumble, clumsily, blunderingly, towards the open meadow.

“You shouldn’t have caused the poor beast such a panic,” he reproached her. “You should have broken the dreadful news gradually. As you see, your sudden blurting of it out has deprived him of the use of his faculties. Don’t believe her,” he called after the cockchafer. “She’s practising upon your credulity. Your house isn’t on fire, and your children are all safe at school.”

“Your consideration is entirely misplaced,” she assured him, with the same slight whimsical smile. “The cockchafer knows perfectly well that his house isn’t on fire, because he hasn’t got any house. Cockchafers never have houses. His apparent concern is sheer affectation. He’s an exceedingly hypocritical little cockchafer.”

“I should call him an exceedingly polite little cockchafer. Hypocrisy is the compliment courtesy owes to falsehood. He pretended to believe you. He would not have the air of doubting a lady’s word.”

“You came as the emissary of the carp,” she said, “and now you stay to defend the character of their rival.”

“To be candid, I don’t care a hang for the carp,” he confessed brazenly. “The unadorned fact is that I’m immensely glad to see you.”

She gave a little laugh, and bowed with exaggerated ceremony. “Grand merci, Monsieur; vous me faites trop d’honneur,” she murmured.

“Oh, no, not more than you deserve. I’m a just man, and I give you your due. I was boring myself into melancholy madness. The afternoon lay before me like a bumper of dust and ashes, that I must somehow empty. And then I saw you, and you dashed the goblet from my lips. Thank goodness (I said to myself), at last there’s a human soul to talk with; the very thing I was pining for, a clever and sympathetic woman.”

“You take a great deal for granted,” laughed she.

“Oh, I know you’re clever, and it pleases me to fancy that you’re sympathetic. If you’re not,” he pleaded, “don’t tell me so. Let me cherish my illusion.”

She shook her head doubtfully. “I’m a poor hand at dissembling.”

“It’s an art you should study,” said he. “If we begin by feigning an emotion, we’re as like as not to end by genuinely feeling it.”

“I’ve observed for myself,” she informed him, “that if we begin by genuinely feeling an emotion, but rigorously conceal it, we’re as like as not to end by feeling it no longer. It dies of suffocation. I’ve had that experience quite lately. There was a certain person whom I heartily despised and hated; and then, as chance would have it, I was thrown two or three times into his company; and for motives of expediency I disguised my antagonism. In the end, do you know, I found myself rather liking him?”

“Oh, women are fearfully and wonderfully made,” he said.

“And so are some men,” said she. “Could you oblige me with the name and address of a competent witch or warlock?” she added irrelevantly.

“What under the sun can you want with such an unholy thing?” he exclaimed.

“I want a hate-charm—something that I can take at night to revive my hatred of the man I was speaking of.”

“Look here,” he warned her, “I’ve not come all this distance, under a scorching sun, to stand here now and talk of another man. Cultivate a contemptuous indifference towards him. Banish him from your mind and conversation.”

“I’ll try,” she consented; “though, if you were familiar with the circumstances, you’d recognise a certain difficulty in doing that.” She reached for her gloves, and began to put one on. “Will you be so good as to tell me the time of day?”

He looked at his watch. “It’s nowhere near time for you to be moving yet.”

“You must not trifle about affairs of state,” she said. “At a definite hour I have business at the palace.”

“Oh, for that matter, so have I. But it’s half-past four. To call half-past four a definite hour would be to do a violence to the language.”

“It is earlier than I thought,” she admitted, discontinuing her operation with the glove.

He smiled approval. “Your heart is in the right place, after all. It would have been inhuman to abandon me. Oh, yes, pleasantry apart, I am in a condition of mind in which solitude spells misery. And yet I am on speaking terms with but three living people whose society I prefer to it.”

“You are indeed in sad case, then,” she compassionated him. “But why should solitude spell misery? A man of wit like you should have plenty of resources within himself.”

“Am I a man of wit?” he asked innocently.

Her eyes gleamed mischievously. “What is your opinion?”

“I don’t know,” he reflected. “Perhaps I might have been, if I had met a woman like you earlier in life.”

“At all events,” she laughed, “if you are not a man of wit, it is not for lack of courage. But why does solitude spell misery? Have you great crimes upon your conscience?”

“No, nothing so amusing. But when one is alone, one thinks; and when one thinks—that way madness lies.”

“Then do you never think when you are engaged in conversation?” She raised her eyebrows questioningly.

“You should be able to judge of that by the quality of my remarks. At any rate, I feel.”

“What do you feel?”

“When I am engaged in conversation with you, I feel a general sense of agreeable stimulation; and, in addition to that, at this particular moment———But are you sure you really wish to know?” he broke off.

“Yes, tell me,” she said, with curiosity.

“Well, then, a furious desire to smoke a cigarette.”

She laughed merrily. “I am so sorry I have no cigarettes to offer you.”

“My pockets happen to be stuffed with them.”

“Then, do, please, light one.”

He produced his cigarette-case, but he seemed to hesitate about lighting a cigarette.

“Have you no matches?” she inquired.

“Yes, thank you, I have matches. I was only thinking.”

“It has become a solitude, then?” she cried.

“It is a case of conscience, it is an ethical dilemma. How do I know—the modern woman is capable of anything—how do I know that you may not yourself be a smoker? But if you are, it will give you pain to see me enjoying my cigarette, while you are without one.”

“It would be civil to begin by offering me one,” she suggested.

“That is exactly the liberty I dared not take—oh, there are limits to my boldness. But you have saved the situation.” And he offered her his cigarette-case.

She shook her head. “Thank you, I don’t smoke.” And her eyes were full of teasing laughter, so that he laughed too, as he finally applied a match-flame to his cigarette. “But you may allow me to examine your cigarette-case,” she went on. “It looks like a pretty bit of silver.” And when he had handed it to her, she exclaimed, “It is engraved with the royal arms.”

“Yes. Why not?” said he.

“Does it belong to the King?”

“It was a present from the King.”

“To you? You are a friend of the King?” she asked, with some eagerness.

“I will not deceive you,” he replied. “No, not to me. The King gave it to Hilary Clairevoix, the Constable of Bellefontaine; and Hilary, who’s a careless fellow, left it lying about in his music-room, and I came along and pocketed it. It is a pretty bit of silver, and I shall never restore it to its rightful owner if I can help it.”

“But you are a friend of the King’s?” she repeated, with insistence.

“I have not that honour. Indeed, I have never seen him. I am a friend of Hilary’s; I am his guest. He has stayed with me in England—I am an Englishman—and now I am returning his visit.”

“That is well,” said she. “If you were a friend of the King, you would be an enemy of mine.”

“Oh?” he wondered. “Why is that?”

“I hate the King,” she answered simply.

“Dear me, what a capacity you have for hating! This is the second hatred you have avowed within the hour. What has the King done to displease you?”

“You are an Englishman. Has the King’s reputation not reached England yet? He is the scandal of Europe. What has he done? But no—do not encourage me to speak of him. I should grow too heated,” she said strenuously.

“On the contrary, I pray of you, go on,” urged Ferdinand Augustus. “Your King is a character that interests me more than you can think. His reputation has indeed reached England, and I have conceived a great curiosity about him. One only hears vague rumours, to be sure, nothing specific; but one has learned to think of him as original and romantic. You know him. Tell me a lot about him.”

“Oh, I do not know him personally. That is an affliction I have as yet been spared.” Then, suddenly, “Mercy upon me, what have I said!” she cried. “I must ’knock wood,’ or the evil spirits will bring me that mischance to-morrow.” And she fervently tapped the bark of the tree beside her with her knuckles.

Ferdinand Augustus laughed. “But if you do not know him personally, why do you hate him?”

“I know him very well by reputation. I know how he lives, I know what he does and leaves undone. If you are curious about him, ask your friend Hilary. He is the King’s foster-brother. He could tell you stories,” she added meaningly.

“I have asked him. But Hilary’s lips are sealed. He depends upon the King’s protection for his fortune, and the palace-walls (I suppose he fears) have ears. But you can speak without danger. He is the scandal of Europe? There’s nothing I love like scandal. Tell me all about him.”

“You have not come all this distance, under a scorching sun, to stand here now and talk of another man,” she reminded him.

“Oh, but kings are different,” he argued. “Tell me about your King.”