The first American King

“Say, Dorothy!” cried Beatrice Cuming, sweeping into Miss Brandon’s apartment with the energy and enthusiasm of a miniature cyclone; “I’m so glad to catch you alone—so glad! I was afraid somebody would be here and I wouldn’t have a chance to talk to you right away.”

Dorothy shifted her fair head from its position on the cushions of her easy-chair and turned her blue eyes upon the speaker.

“Why, what has happened, Trixy?” she asked with languid interest. “It must, of course, be something of much importance, considering it’s almost an hour since you left me.”

“An hour!” exclaimed Beatrice; “let me tell you, a whole catalogue of wonderful things can happen in an hour. And so it is here. I’ve a whole bookful to tell you—a romance—a love affair—a tragedy!”

“Your introduction is certainly promising, Trixy, dear,” remarked Dorothy with the same languid interest, “but it’s rather lengthy. Remember, long introductions to romances have been out of fashion since the days of our great-grandmothers. Wouldn’t it be well to begin your story?”

“I don’t know just how to begin it,” answered Beatrice ingenuously, “it’s so interesting. But,” she added suddenly, “you’re quite sure you meant what you told me the other day?”

“Told you the other day?” inquired Dorothy, puzzled; “told you about what?”

“About your not caring anything for him, of course?”

“And who may ‘him’ be?” asked Dorothy, with an ever so slight change of voice.

“Why, Captain Mortimer, of course!”

“Oh!” exclaimed Dorothy, her face flushing slightly, “of course not. How silly you are, Trixy!”

“Well,” replied Beatrice, “I thought I’d make quite sure, you know. Dear old papa says I’m always blundering into things without first making proper inquiry, so I thought I’d make quite sure in this case. I wonder who it can be, though?”

“Who what can be?”

“Never mind!” retorted Beatrice; “listen to my story first, and we can then put our heads together and try to guess who the she is.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Dorothy, slightly arching her eyebrows, “you have really decided to begin, then?”

“Stop, Dorothy,” protested Beatrice, “don’t tease me! You’ll drive some of it out of my head and I don’t want to forget anything. Let me see; where shall I begin? Oh, yes! Well; after I left you I went for a stroll in the park. It was such a beautiful day; the smell of the flowers and the grasses was so sweet that I kept on and on almost to the end of the Queen’s Walk. Presently I felt tired and looked about me for a place to rest. I saw a seat some little distance away and I kept on until I reached it and there I sat down. Do you follow me, Dorothy?”

“I find no difficulty in doing so thus far, Trixy,” answered Dorothy, with a smile. “Consider that I’ve followed you to the seat at the end of the Queen’s Walk.”

“I hadn’t been there more than a few minutes,” resumed Beatrice, “when I noticed, around a bend in the path, two officers approaching. Who do you think they were?”

“Remember, Trixy,” answered Dorothy, “you are supposed to be telling a story—not propounding riddles!”

“Why, Captain Swords and Captain Mortimer, Dorothy!”

“Indeed!” remarked Dorothy very quietly.

“Yes. They were talking together and they didn’t see me. What do you think I did, Dorothy?”

“Now you are asking a riddle, Trixy,” replied Dorothy. “You waited until they came up, I suppose, and then monopolized their attention during the rest of the promenade!”

“All wrong—all wrong!” cried Beatrice gayly; “nothing of the kind! Right back of my seat was a big tree, or bush—as high as this room and half as big around. Watching them closely and being quite sure they hadn’t seen me, I crept around to the back of that bush and hid.”

“Hid!” exclaimed Dorothy in astonishment; “why, what was your object in doing that?”

“Just this,” said Beatrice, with a merry laugh; “I thought they might take the seat I had left and, if they did, what fun it would be to creep up behind them and drop a few grains of gravel down the collar of Ralph’s uniform.”

“Oh, the idea!” exclaimed Dorothy, with a shocked air. “And, Trixy,” severely, “since when have you taken to calling the officers of the Guard by their first names?”

“Captain Swords, I should say, of course,” replied Beatrice, not in the least abashed; “but he’s so jolly and all his brother officers call him Ralph. It seems so much easier to call him that. What a brave fellow he must be, too! Captain Bingham was telling me how he—Ral—Captain Swords, I mean—rode out to retake the abandoned guns at Vladivik and how he was wounded. Oh, I just thrilled as I listened to that story.”

“Yes,” exclaimed Dorothy, apparently catching Beatrice’s enthusiasm, “but Captain Mortimer was there, too. It was he, after all, who brought in the guns and, though wounded, carried Captain Swords from under the Russian fire.”

“Yes; and Ralph—Captain Swords, I mean—was decorated with the Columbia Cross,” said Beatrice.

“So was Captain Mortimer,” replied Dorothy, “besides receiving mention in General Orders. But,” she added hastily, “are we going to discuss the Russian War, dear, or are you going on with your story?”

“I’m sure it must have been you who interrupted me, dear,” rejoined Beatrice imperturbably. “Let me see, where was I? Oh, yes! I had hidden behind the big bush. Well, on they came and, sure enough, they seated themselves at the very place I had just left. For a while they sat there quite still. Neither of them said anything and from my hiding-place I could smell the smoke of their cigars. I was trying to find some gravel, but I couldn’t discover any behind the bush, so I was stooping down looking for some pebbles of the right size, when suddenly Captain Swords’ voice came to me. ‘Stanley, old fellow,’ he said, ‘there’s been something wrong with you the last few days. Won’t you speak out and tell me what’s the matter? Usually there are no secrets between us.’

“It seemed to me a long time before the other made any reply, but at last his voice came to me.

“‘Ralph,’ he said, ‘I want to get out of this—to get away from here. I’ve made up my mind to leave the Guard and exchange into the Tenth, or some other regiment.’

“‘You astonish me, Stanley,’ replied Captain Swords; ‘for I thought it was rather jolly here and that you found it so, too. But, be that as it may, if you want to exchange, then exchange let it be for both of us. Just say the word—when?’

“‘What! You’ll leave the Imperial Guard, too?’ the other exclaimed.

“‘Yes,’ said Captain Swords, ‘we’ve always been together. Whenever you go, I go with you. Still, I’d like to know just what has put you out of sorts with things here.’

“Again there was a long pause before there came an answer. I was puzzling just what I ought to do—whether to come out and announce myself, or stay quietly where I was. You see, having unintentionally listened so far, I was embarrassed and didn’t know quite what to do. Before I could make up my mind, Captain Mortimer again spoke.

“‘Ralph,’ he said, ‘I’ll be quite frank with you. Before I came to this cursed Court, my experiences with women had been the ordinary ones of a soldier. I hadn’t been here a week, though, before I met one who appealed to me as no other woman ever had. No need for me to name her. You know whom I mean.’

“‘The women here do seem to have a decidedly queer effect upon a man,’ answered Captain Swords. ‘I have noticed that. But I didn’t mean to interrupt. Go on, Stanley.’

“‘Ralph,’ said the other one, and his voice seemed to me to shake as he spoke, ‘I’m an infernal fool. I loved that woman—loved her passionately, reverently, madly. Her presence, her voice, her touch seemed to open the gates of heaven to me—the world was different from what it ever had looked to me before. It was heaven and yet there was a hell in it, too. Ralph, I tell you, man, if you’d be happy, never love a woman like that.’

“‘Poor old fellow!’ said Captain Swords.”

“Excuse me, Trixy, dear,” exclaimed Dorothy, suddenly wheeling her chair, “but the light hurts me. You won’t mind my turning this way, will you? No, dear, don’t move. I like your voice to come to me that way—from behind me. I’m listening. Continue.”

“Very well, let me see where I was,” resumed Beatrice. “Oh, yes; Captain Swords said: ‘Poor old fellow!’ and then the other continued:

“‘I told you, Ralph, that I was an infernal fool and that’s putting it mildly. I loved her and I was fool enough for a brief, mad period to hope—to believe—that she loved me. Lady Brooke happened to speak her name one night and incidentally mentioned a few details concerning her. Lady Brooke said she was a favorite with the Queen and that she was considered to be one of the richest heiresses of the Court. As she said the words, Ralph, I went sick all through me. I felt as when that Russian bullet hit me at Pedershof, for I had known nothing of this and here, it seemed, was an unexpected barrier between us. Lady Brooke, however, went on to say—and she warned me that this was strictly confidential, of course—that this report, like many other reports, had little foundation in fact; that in reality the lady’s money was largely in expectancy as the heiress of her maternal uncle, Sir Ray Murray, the head of the Copper Trust; that Sir Ray was engaged in a war to the death with Sir Brussels Page and that the whole thing might result in Sir Ray’s financial annihilation, in which case the lady’s supposed millions would dwindle to nothing. It seems a strange, I might say almost a mean thing, Ralph, to rejoice at some form of ill-fortune touching the woman you adore, but the truth is the truth—I did rejoice at those words of Lady Brooke. Those millions would have been a barrier between us. Without them, I felt she was nearer to me. Lady Brooke is a handsome woman—although I never particularly took to her—but she never looked so handsome to me as at that moment. I could have laughed out—laughed out loud and long—as she spoke pityingly of the almost certain loss of those confounded millions. Just as if the man who wins her for her own sweet sake alone will not be richer than the royal heir who comes to his throne.’”

“He said that—he said that! You heard him say that?” murmured Dorothy, from her chair, in a strangely muffled voice.

“Yes; of course that’s what he said,” replied Beatrice, engrossed in her story. “Am I not giving you the exact words?”

“Go on—go on.”

“There now! You’ve thrown me all out by interrupting and I’ve lost the thread.”

“Please forgive me. What did they say next?”

“Well,” resumed Beatrice, “Captain Swords asked him why he had given up hope. Why was it that he thought the lady didn’t care for him?”

“Yes; yes!”

“Then the other answered him this way: ‘Ralph, it’s all over. I’m just as much a “goner” as a solitary picket cut off and surrounded by a sotnia of Cossacks. You remember, Ralph, the night of the ball—the last one. I danced twice with her that night and twice, as we danced, she looked into my eyes and I could have sworn I saw the love-light there. I was encouraged, Ralph—buoyed up by my fool hopes and went blindly on to the awful ambuscade that lay for me at the end of this lover’s lane I was treading. After the second dance, I walked with her in the great conservatory and there, my brain whirling, I told her—I don’t know what!’”

“‘And she refused you?’ Captain Swords asked.

“‘Refused me!’ the other answered, oh! so sadly; ‘well, she listened to the end and then gave a little laugh, treated it all as a mere jest—a nothing—murmured some words which I was too dazed even to understand—and left me hastily to join her partner for the next dance.’

“‘The cursed coquette!’ I heard Captain Swords say savagely.

“Then the other turned upon Captain Swords fiercely and declared that he wouldn’t hear one word of reproach spoken of her in his presence; that whatever she had done was, beyond question, right; no doubt that was the way of the ladies of the Court, and if rough soldiers, who had spent their lives in camp and field, didn’t properly understand those ways, it was their fault and they ought not to complain.”

“How noble—how generous!” came from the figure in the chair.

“Wasn’t it, Dorothy!” continued Beatrice; “but that’s not all. He said that after the lady had refused him, he remained in the conservatory for some time and then, not very well knowing what he was doing, he wandered back to the ball-room to catch another glimpse of her as she danced with that black-looking devil, Lord Ashley, as he called him. Then he went on to say that as he stood there, Lady Brooke came up and began to talk to him. She drew his attention to the lady and asked him if she and Lord Ashley didn’t make a handsome couple—she so light and he so dark. Lady Brooke said that she thought there would surely be a match, as she had been playing her cards to win Lord Ashley because of his title, and a titled husband was the one thing above everything that the lady had set her heart on.”

“She said that—she said that to him!” cried Dorothy, suddenly sitting upright in her chair.

“Yes, yes; that’s what she said and more too. She went on to tell him that she thought the lady would very likely succeed and would become Lady Ashley, as she was a clever and skilful angler, but did he not think that she angled for him a little too openly and too boldly?”

“Oh—oh! What——”

“Now don’t interrupt me, Dorothy,” exclaimed Beatrice, completely engrossed in her story, “or I’ll lose it all again. Well, when Lady Brooke said that to him the one wish in his mind, he said, was that she were a man and he would have strangled her where she stood for those words she had spoken.”

“Ah!”

“Yes, and then he went on to say that whomever she chose—whether lord or commoner—would be fortunate, indeed, and that he hoped she would be as happy as he knew she was good and beautiful. Then he told Captain Swords that he should always love her, with the loyalty a soldier has for his flag; worship her with the blind idolatry of a fanatic for his God. He said that if war should again break out, it would find him at the front and that when he fell his one hope was that her face might be the last vision to pass before his eyes; her name the last word upon his lips. Oh, Dorothy, I tell you he spoke so beautifully and so sadly of her that I just sniveled behind the bush and the sob I gave nearly betrayed me. As for Captain Swords, I could hear him pacing up and down the path and he flung his cigar away with such violence that it flew clear over the big bush and almost fell on my head. I wish I had someone to care for me like that. As for Lady Brooke——”

At the mention of that name, Dorothy suddenly sprang from her chair and confronted Beatrice with pale face and strained, wide-staring eyes.

“The wretch—oh, the wretch!” she murmured fiercely. “Such base falsehood!”

“Why, Dorothy,” exclaimed Beatrice, startled, “why are you so excited?”

“Excited! Who wouldn’t be in the face of such horrible untruths—such a dreadful mistake!”

“Why, why, Dorothy!” cried Beatrice quickly. “Do you know anything of this? Who the lady is? Is she some friend of yours? Have I made you unhappy?”

Dorothy took a step forward and put her arms around Beatrice.

“Unhappy!” she stammered; “oh, I’m wretched—so wretched. No, no; I mean I’m happy—so very happy. You don’t understand.”

But Beatrice released herself and looked anxiously into her friend’s face.

“What has happened, Dorothy?” she inquired with concern. “You are ill! You are all white and red by turns.”

“No, no; you don’t understand!”

“Understand, eh!” quoth Beatrice, the light of a sudden intelligence coming into her eyes. “Oh! I see—I see. There now! Just to think of it! As papa would say, I’ve been blundering again.”

“See! You see what?”

“But you distinctly told me,” came the somewhat irrelevant answer, “that you didn’t care for him!”

“Why, of course—of course not; you silly, silly goose! You don’t understand—you don’t understand——”

And by way of adding to Beatrice’s comprehension of the situation, Dorothy suddenly drew her to her heart, sank her head upon her shoulder, and, with great broken sobs following fast upon one another, wept as if her heart would break.