Part 4

“I can tell you at once,” said she, “that our King is the frankest egotist in two hemispheres. You have learned to think of him as original and romantic? No; he is simply intensely selfish and intensely silly. He is a King Do-Nothing, a Roi Fainéant, who shirks and evades all the duties and responsibilities of his position; who builds extravagant chateaux in remote parts of the country, and hides in them, alone with a few obscure companions; who will never visit his capital, never show his face to his subjects; who takes no sort of interest in public business or the welfare of his kingdom, and leaves the entire government to his ministers; who will not even hold a court, or give balls or banquets; who, in short, does nothing that a king ought to do, and might, for all the good we get of him, be a mere stranger in the land, a mere visitor, like yourself. So closely does he seclude himself that I doubt if there be a hundred people in the whole country who have ever seen him, to know him. If he travels from one place to another, it is always in the strictest incognito, and those who then chance to meet him never have any reason to suspect that he is not a private person. His very effigy on the coin of the realm is reputed to be false, resembling him in no wise. But I could go on for ever,” she said, bringing her indictment to a termination.

“Really,” said Ferdinand Augustus, “I cannot see that you have alleged anything very damaging. A Roi Fainéant? But every king of a modern constitutional state is, willy-nilly, that. He can do nothing but sign bills which he generally disapproves of, lay foundation-stones, set the fashion in hats, and bow and look pleasant as he drives through the streets. He has no power for good, and mighty little for evil. He is just a State Prisoner. It seems to me that your particular King has shown some sense in trying to escape so much as he may of the prison’s irksomeness. I should call it rare bad luck to be born a king. Either you’ve got to shirk your kingship, and then fair ladies dub you the scandal of Europe; or else you’ve got to accept it, and then you’re as happy as a man in a strait-waistcoat. And then, and then! Oh, I can think of a thousand unpleasantnesses attendant upon the condition of a king. Your King, as I understand it, has said to himself, ’Hang it all, I didn’t ask to be born a king, but since that is my misfortune, I will seek to mitigate it as much as I am able. I am, on the whole, a human being, with a human life to live, and only, probably, threescore-and-ten years in which to live it. Very good; I will live my life. I will lay no foundation-stones, nor drive about the streets bowing and looking pleasant. I will live my life, alone with the few people I find to my liking. I will take the cash and let the credit go.’ I am bound to say,” concluded Ferdinand Augustus, “that your King has done exactly what I should have done in his place.”

“You will never, at least,” said she, “defend the shameful manner in which he has behaved towards the Queen. It is for that, I hate him. It is for that, that we, the Queen’s gentlewomen, have adopted ’7’ is a weary day as a watchword. It will be a weary day until we see the King on his knees at the Queen’s feet, craving her forgiveness.”

“Oh? What has he done to the Queen?” asked Ferdinand.

“What has he done! Humiliated her as never woman was humiliated before. He married her by proxy at her father’s court; and she was conducted with great pomp and circumstance into his kingdom—to find what? That he had fled to one of his absurd castles in the north, and refused to see her! He has remained there ever since, hiding like—but there is nothing in created space to compare him to. Is it the behaviour of a gentleman, of a gallant man, not to say a king?” she cried warmly, looking up at him with shining eyes, her cheeks faintly flushed.

Ferdinand Augustus bowed. “The Queen is fortunate in her advocate. I have not heard the King’s side of the story. I can, however, imagine excuses for him. Suppose that his ministers, for reasons of policy, importuned and importuned him to marry a certain princess, until he yielded in mere fatigue. In that case, why should he be bothered further? Why should he add one to the tedious complications of existence by meeting the bride he never desired? Is it not sufficient that, by his complaisance, she should have gained the rank and title of a queen? Besides, he may be in love with another woman. Or perhaps—but who can tell? He may have twenty reasons. And anyhow, you cannot deny to the situation the merit of being highly ridiculous. A husband and wife who are not personally acquainted! It is a delicious commentary upon the whole system of marriages by proxy. You confirm my notion that your King is original.”

“He may have twenty reasons,” answered she, “but he had better have twenty terrors. It is perfectly certain that the Queen will be revenged.”

“How so?” asked Ferdinand Augustus.

“The Queen is young, high-spirited, moderately good-looking, and unspeakably incensed. Trust a young, high-spirited, and handsome woman, outraged by her husband, to know how to avenge herself. Oh, some day he will see.”

“Ah, well, he must take his chances,” Ferdinand sighed. “Perhaps he is liberal-minded enough not to care.”

“I am far from meaning the vulgar revenge you fancy,” she put in quickly. “The Queen’s revenge will be subtle and unexpected. She is no fool, and she will not rest until she has achieved it. Oh, he will see!”

“I had imagined it was the curse of royalty to be without true friends,” said Ferdinand Augustus. “The Queen has a very ardent one in you.”

“I am afraid I cannot altogether acquit myself of interested motives,” she disclaimed modestly. “I am of her Majesty’s household, and my fortunes must rise and fall with hers. But I am honestly indignant with the King.”

“The poor King! Upon my soul, he has my sympathy,” said Ferdinand.

“You are terribly ironical,” said she.

“Irony was ten thousand leagues from my intention,” he protested. “In all sincerity the object of your indignation has my sympathy. I trust you will not consider it an impertinence if I say that I already count you among the few people I have met whose good opinion is a matter to be coveted.”

She had risen while he was speaking, and now she bobbed him a little curtsey. “I will show my appreciation of yours, by taking flight before anything can happen to alter it,” she laughed, moving away. V

“You are singularly animated to-night,” said Hilary, contemplating him across the dinner-table; “yet, at the same time, singularly abstracted. You have the air of a man who is rolling something pleasant under his tongue, something sweet and secret: it might be a hope, it might be a recollection. Where have you passed the afternoon? You’ve been about some mischief, I’ll warrant. By Jove, you set me thinking. I’ll wager a penny you’ve been having a bit of rational conversation with that brown-haired woman.”

“Her hair is red,” Ferdinand Augustus rejoined, with firmness. “And her conversation,” he added sadly, “is anything you please but rational. She spent her whole time picking flaws in the character of the King. She talked downright treason. She said he was the scandal of Europe and the frankest egotist in two hemispheres.”

“Ah? She appears to have some instinct for the correct use of language,” commented Hilary.

“All the same, I rather like her,” Ferdinand went on, “and I’m half inclined to undertake her conversion. She has a gorgeous figure—there’s something rich and voluptuous about it. And there are depths of promise in her eyes; there are worlds of humour and of passion. And she has a mouth—oh, of a fulness, of a softness, of a warmth! And a chin, and a throat, and hands! And then, her voice. There’s a mellowness yet a crispness, there’s a vibration, there’s a something in her voice that assures you of a golden temperament beneath it. In short, I’m half inclined to follow your advice, and go in for a love-adventure with her.”

“Oh, but love-adventures—I have it on high authority—are damnable iterations,” objected Hilary.

“That is very true; they are,” Ferdinand agreed. “But the life of man is woven of damnable iterations. Tell me of any single thing that isn’t a damnable iteration, and I’ll give you a quarter of my fortune. The day and the night, the seasons and the years, the fair weather and the foul, breakfast and luncheon and dinner—all are damnable iterations. If there’s any reality behind the doctrine of metempsychosis, death, too, is a damnable iteration. There’s no escaping damnable iterations: there’s nothing new under the sun. But as long as one is alive, one must do something. It’s sure to be something in its essence identical with something one has done before; but one must do something. Why not, then, a love-adventure with a woman that attracts you?”

“Women are a pack of samenesses,” said Hilary despondently.

“Quite so,” assented Ferdinand. “Women, and men too, are a pack of samenesses. We’re all struck with the same die, of the same metal, at the same mint. Our resemblance is intrinsic, fundamental; our differences are accidental and skin deep. We have the same features, organs, dimensions, with but a hair’s-breadth variation; the same needs, instincts, propensities; the same hopes, fears, ideas. One man’s meat is another man’s meat; one man’s poison is another man’s poison. We are as like to one another as the leaves on the same tree. Skin us, and (save for your fat) the most skilled anatomist could never distinguish you from me. Women are a pack of samenesses; but, hang it all, one has got to make the best of a monotonous universe. And this particular woman, with her red hair and her eyes, strikes me as attractive. She has some fire in her composition, some fire and flavour. Anyhow, she attracts me; and—I think I shall try my luck.”

“Oh, Nunky, Nunky,” murmured Hilary, shaking his head, “I am shocked by your lack of principle. Have you forgotten that you are a married man?”

“That will be my safeguard. I can make love to her with a clear conscience. If I were single, she might, justifiably enough, form matrimonial expectations for herself.”

“Not if she knew you,” said Hilary.

“Ah, but she doesn’t know me—and shan’t,” said Ferdinand Augustus. “I will take care of that.” VI

And then, for what seemed to him an eternity, he never once encountered her. Morning and afternoon, day after day, he roamed the park of Bellefontaine from end to end, in all directions, but never once caught sight of so much as the flutter of her garments. And the result was that he began to grow seriously sentimental. “Im wunderschônen Monat Mai!” It was June, to be sure; but the meteorological influences were, for that, only the more potent. He remembered her shining eyes now as not merely whimsical and ardent, but as pensive, appealing, tender; he remembered her face as a face seen in starlight, ethereal and mystic; and her voice as low music far away. He recalled their last meeting as a treasure he had possessed and lost; he blamed himself for the frivolity of his talk and manner, and for the ineffectual impression of him this must have left upon her. Perpetually thinking of her, he was perpetually sighing, perpetually suffering strange, sudden, half painful, half delicious commotions in the tissues of his heart. Every morning he rose with a replenished fund of hope: this day at last would produce her. Every night he went to bed pitying himself as bankrupt of hope. And all the while, though he pined to talk of her, a curious bashfulness withheld him; so that, between him and Hilary, for quite a fortnight she was not mentioned. It was Hilary who broke the silence.

“Why so pale and wan?” Hilary asked him. “Will, when looking well won’t move her, looking ill prevail?”

“Oh, I am seriously love-sick,” cried Ferdinand Augustus, welcoming the subject. “I went in for a sensation, and I’ve got a real emotion.”

“Poor youth! And she won’t look at you, I suppose?” was Hilary’s method of commiseration.

“I have not seen her for a mortal fortnight. She has completely vanished. And for the first time in my life I’m seriously in love.”

“You’re incapable of being seriously in love,” said Hilary.

“I had always thought so myself,” admitted Ferdinand Augustus. “The most I had ever felt for any woman was a sort of mere lukewarm desire, a sort of mere meaningless titillation. But this woman is different. She’s as different to other women as wine is different to toast-and-water. She has the feu-sacré. She’s done something to the very inmost soul of me; she’s laid it bare, and set it quivering and yearning. She’s made herself indispensable to me; I can’t live without her. Ah, you don’t know what she’s like. She’s like some strange, beautiful, burning spirit. Oh, for an hour with her I’d give my kingdom. To touch her hand—to look into those eyes of hers—to hear her speak to me! I tell you squarely, if she’d have me, I’d throw up the whole scheme of my existence, I’d fly with her to the uttermost ends of the earth. But she has totally disappeared, and I can do nothing to recover her without betraying my identity; and that would spoil everything. I want her to love me for myself, believing me to be a plain man, like you or anybody. If she knew who I am, how could I ever be sure?”

“You are in a bad way,” said Hilary, looking at him with amusement. “And yet, I’m gratified to see it. Her hair is not so red as I could wish, but, after all, it’s reddish; and you appear to be genuinely aflame. It will do you no end of good; it will make a man of you—a plain man, like me or anybody. But your impatience is not reasoned. A fortnight? You have not met her for a fortnight? My dear, to a plain man (like me or anybody) a fortnight’s nothing. It’s just an appetiser. Watch and wait, and you’ll meet her before you know it. And now, if you will excuse me, I have business in another quarter of the palace.”

Ferdinand Augustus, left to himself, went down into the garden. It was a wonderful summer’s evening, made indeed (if I may steal a phrase from Hilary) of perfumed velvet. The sun had set an hour since, but the western sky was still splendid, like a dark banner, with sombre reds and purples; and in the east hung the full moon, so brilliant, so apposite, as to seem somehow almost like a piece of premeditated decoration. The waters of the fountains flashed silverly in its light; glossy leaves gave back dim reflections; here and there, embowered among the trees, white statues gleamed ghost-like. Away in the park somewhere, innumerable frogs were croaking, croaking; subdued by distance, the sound gained a quality that was plaintive and unearthly. The long façade of the palace lay obscure in shadow; only at the far end, in the Queen’s apartments, were the windows alight. But, quite close at hand, the moon caught a corner of the terrace; and here, presently, Ferdinand Augustus became aware of a human figure. A woman was standing alone by the balustrade, gazing out into the wondrous night. Ferdinand Augustus’s heart began to pound; and it was a full minute before he could command himself sufficiently to move or speak.

At last, however, he approached her. “Good evening,” he said, looking up from the pathway.

She glanced down at him, leaning upon the balustrade. “Oh, how do you do?” She smiled her surprise. She was in evening dress, a white robe embroidered with pearls, and she wore a tiara of pearls in her hair. She had a light cloak thrown over her shoulders, a little cape trimmed with swan’s-down. “Heavens!” thought Ferdinand Augustus. “How magnificent she is!”

“It’s a hundred years since I have seen you,” he said.

“Oh, is it so long as that? I should have imagined it was something like a fortnight. Time passes quickly.”

“That is a question of psychology. But now at last I find you when I least expect you.”

“I have slipped out for a moment,” she explained, “to enjoy this beautiful prospect. One has no such view from the Queen’s end of the terrace. One cannot see the moon.”

“I cannot see the moon from where I am standing,” said he.

“No, because you have turned your back upon it,” said she.

“I have chosen between two visions. If you were to authorise me to join you, aloft there, I could see both.”

“I have no power to authorise you,” she laughed, “the terrace is not my property. But if you choose to take the risks——”

“Oh,” he cried, “you are good, you are kind.” And in an instant he had joined her on the terrace, and his heart was fluttering wildly with its sense of her nearness to him. He could not speak.

“Well, now you can see the moon. Is it all your fancy painted?” she asked, with her whimsical smile. Her face was exquisitely pale in the moonlight, her eyes glowed. Her voice was very soft.

His heart was fluttering wildly, poignantly. “Oh,” he began, but broke off. His breath trembled. “I cannot speak,” he said.

She arched her eyebrows; “Then we have made some mistake. This will never be you, in that case.”

“Oh, yes, it is I. It is the other fellow, the gabbler, who is not myself,” he contrived to tell her.

“You lead a double life, like the villain in the play?” she suggested.

“You must have your laugh at my expense; have it, and welcome. But I know what I know,” he said.

“What do you know?” she asked quickly.

“I know that I am in love with you,” he answered.

“Oh, only that,” she said, with an air of relief.

“Only that. But that is a great deal. I know that I love you—oh, yes, unutterably. If you could see yourself! You are absolutely unique among women. I would never have believed it possible for any woman to make me feel what you have made me feel. I have never spoken like this to any woman in all my life. Oh, you may laugh. It is the truth, upon my word of honour. If you could look into your eyes—yes, even when you are laughing at me! I can see your wonderful burning spirit shining deep, deep in your eyes. You do not dream how different you are to other women. You are a wonderful burning poem. They are platitudes. Oh, I love you unutterably. There has not been an hour since I last saw you that I have not thought of you, loved you, longed for you. And now here you stand, you yourself, beside me! If you could see into my heart, if you could see what I feel!”

She looked at the moon, with a strange little smile, and was silent.

“Will you not speak to me?” he cried.

“What would you have me say?” she asked, still looking away.

“Oh, you know, you know what I would have you say.”

“I am afraid you will not like the only thing I can say.” She turned, and met his eyes. “I am a married woman, and—I am in love with my husband.”

Ferdinand Augustus stood aghast. “Oh, my God!” he groaned.

“Yes, though he has given me little enough reason to do so, I have fallen in love with him,” she went on pitilessly. “So you must get over your fancy for me. After all, I am a total stranger to you. You do not even know my name.”

“Will you tell me your name?” asked Ferdinand humbly. “It will be something to remember.”

“My name is Marguerite.”

“Marguerite! Marguerite!” He repeated it caressingly. “It is a beautiful name. But it is also the name of the Queen.”

“I am the only person named Marguerite in the Queen’s court,” said she.

“What!” cried Ferdinand Augustus.

“Oh, it is a wise husband who knows his own wife,” laughed she.

And then.... But I think I have told enough.

THE FRIEND OF MAN

The other evening, in the Casino, the satisfaction of losing my money at petits-chevaux having begun to flag a little, I wandered into the Cercle, the reserved apartments in the west wing of the building, where they were playing baccarat.

Thanks to the heat, the windows were open wide; and through them one could see, first, a vivid company of men and women, strolling backwards and forwards, and chattering busily, in the electric glare on the terrace; and then, beyond them, the sea—smooth, motionless, sombre; silent, despite its perpetual whisper; inscrutable, sinister; merging itself with the vast blackness of space. Here and there the black was punctured by a pin-point of fire, a tiny vacillating pin-point of fire; and a landsman’s heart quailed for a moment at the thought of lonely vessels braving the mysteries and terrors and the awful solitudes of the sea at night....

So that the voice of the croupier, perfunctory, machine-like, had almost a human, almost a genial effect, as it rapped out suddenly, calling upon the players to mark their play. “Marquez vos jeux, messieurs. Quarante louis par tableau.” It brought one back to light and warmth and security, to the familiar earth, and the neighbourhood of men.

One’s pleasure was fugitive, however.

The neighbourhood of men, indeed! The neighbourhood of some two score very commonplace, very sordid men, seated or standing about an ugly green table, intent upon a game of baccarat, in a long, rectangular, ugly, gas-lit room. The banker dealt, and the croupier shouted, and the punters punted, and the ivory counters and mother-of-pearl plaques were swept now here, now there; and that was all. Everybody was smoking, of course; but the smell of the live cigarettes couldn’t subdue the odour of dead ones, the stagnant, acrid odour of stale tobacco, with which the walls and hangings of the place were saturated.

The thing and the people were as banale, as unremunerative, as things and people for the most part are; and dispiriting, dispiriting. There was a hardness in the banality, a sort of cold ferocity, ill-repressed. One turned away, bored, revolted. It was better, after all, to look at the sea; to think of the lonely vessel, far out there, where a pin-point of fire still faintly blinked and glimmered in the illimitable darkness....

But the voice of the croupier was insistent.

“Faites vos jeux, messieurs. Cinquante louis par tableau. Vos jeux sont faits? Rien ne va plus.” It was suggestive, persuasive, besides, to one who has a bit of a gambler’s soul. I saw myself playing, I felt the poignant tremor of the instant of suspense, while the result is uncertain, the glow that comes if you have won, the twinge if you have lost. “La banque est aux enchères,” the voice announced presently; and I moved towards the table.

The sums bid were not extravagant. Ten, fifteen, twenty louis; thirty, fifty, eighty, a hundred.

“Cent louis? Cent? Cent?—Cent louis à la banque,” cried the inevitable voice.

I glanced at the man who had taken the bank for a hundred louis. I glanced at him, and, all at once, by no means without emotion, I recognised him.

He was a tall, thin man, and very old. He had the hands of a very old man, dried-up, shrunken hands, with mottled-yellow skin, dark veins that stood out like wires, and parched finger-nails. His face, too, was mottled-yellow, deepening to brown about the eyes, with grey wrinkles, and purplish lips. He was clearly very old; eighty, or more than eighty.

He was dressed entirely in black: a black frock-coat, black trousers, a black waistcoat, cut low, and exposing an unusual quantity of shirt-front, three black studs, and a black tie, a stiff, narrow bow. These latter details, however, save when some chance motion on his part revealed them, were hidden by his beard, a broad, abundant beard, that fell a good ten inches down his breast. His hair, also, was abundant, and he wore it long; trained straight back from his forehead, hanging in a fringe about the collar of his coat. Hair and beard, despite his manifest great age, were without a spear of white. They were of a dry, inanimate brown, a hue to which they had faded (one surmised) from black.