Leaving his brother to contemplate the beauties of nature under the shade of the pines, Caerleon walked on, finding his progress much more rapid than it had been when Cyril was his companion, and arrived before very long at a point from which he was able to descry the huntsman’s cottage, built under the shelter of a towering crag. Pausing for a moment to determine which of two paths now before him would be more likely to lead him directly towards it, he heard footsteps above him, and presently a lady came in sight round a turning in the right-hand path. Tall and slight, she wore a plain tweed dress and felt hat, and the trim neatness of her appearance struck Caerleon as most refreshing after the alternate dowdiness and magnificence of many of the Austrian belles he had come across. It did not occur to him at first that this stately lady could be the hoydenish little Scythian schoolgirl of whom he was in search, but presently it struck him as unlikely that two young ladies would be wandering alone in the mountains on the same day, and he advanced to meet the girl.
“Excuse me,” he said, taking off his cap, “but have I the honour of speaking to Mdlle. O’Malachy?”
“I am Nadia O’Malachy,” she replied, looking at him with an expression in which he read surprise not wholly unmixed with resentment. He noticed that her eyes were large and grey, and that her wavy dark hair grew low on her brow. She spoke English readily, but with a slight foreign accent.
“I must ask you to forgive me for stopping you in this way,” said Caerleon, wishing to disarm her evident suspicion, “but the fact is that Madame O’Malachy was very anxious about you, and I promised to see you safely back to the hotel.”
“My mother sent you after me?” she said quickly. “It was quite unnecessary. Pray continue your walk.”
“The object of my walk is achieved,” said Caerleon. “I have only to return.”
“I have told you,” said the girl, with angry dignity, “that I do not desire your company.”
Caerleon laughed inwardly. The walk seemed to promise some amusement. “And I regret, mademoiselle,” he said, “that having promised to see you home, I must do it. I will walk behind you, if you prefer it.”
“Oh no,” said Mdlle. O’Malachy, pointing to the path beside her with an imperious gesture, “I do not wish to insult you. You consider yourself a gentleman. I took you for one.”
She walked on by his side, apparently expecting a retort, but he maintained a resolute silence, although secretly convulsed by the contrast between the intention she expressed and the words which followed it. Suddenly, to his surprise, she turned to him.
“I beg your pardon. I ought not to have said that. I was wrong.”
“Pray don’t apologise,” said Caerleon. “I am here only as your mother’s messenger, and I quite understand that you find my presence disagreeable, and that I can’t expect you to consider my feelings.”
“I do not consider them,” she retorted. “I apologised because it was right to do it when I had been rude.”
“As a punishment to yourself?” asked Caerleon, much amused.
“Certainly not,” she answered. “As a means of self-discipline.”
“I see—and a punishment to me?”
“By no means. Why should I punish you? What you do has no interest for me. Oh, I beg your pardon. That was rude again.”
“Not at all. But I am interested in your self-disciplinary system. Do you mind explaining it a little more fully? I think I ought to hear something about it, you know, since I have to suffer from it.”
“Now she’s going to flare up again,” he thought, as his companion turned and glared at him, but the anger faded out of her eyes as he looked at her in calm expectancy.
“It is a just rebuke,” she said, in a low voice. “I will tell you, although I do not care to speak of myself, but it will be a good punishment for me, as you say. My godmother, with whom I have always lived until lately, used to encourage me to self-denial when I was a child, saying that one could never rise to the height of a great renunciation unless one trained oneself for it by means of constant smaller ones. As I grew older, the principle seemed to me so excellent that I have followed it in other things.—When you were little, did you never hold your hand in the flame of the candle to try and find out whether you could be a martyr?”
“No,” said Caerleon; “I have often done it, but I am afraid it was because I was told not to.”
“Well, I have done it—often. And so with other things. I discovered in myself a strong tendency to insincerity, and fearing to yield to it, I made it a duty never to let politeness or the desire to please keep me from saying what I thought. How dreadful it would be to fail in truthfulness at some great crisis on account of a long course of petty hypocrisies! But I found that this made me appear rude, and I am very proud, and did not like to confess myself in the wrong. So here was another opportunity for self-discipline, and I resolved to let nothing prevent me from instantly asking pardon of any one I had offended in this way.”
“I see—without regard to that person’s feelings. And may I ask whether Madame—your godmother—pursues the same system?”
“My godmother is Princess Soudaroff. No; she does not need it, she is too good. Her life is given up to working among the poor. Her house is an asylum for the wretched. She loves every one, is kind to every one.”
“And she has impressed her views upon you, has she? Did I understand you to say that she brought you up?”
“Yes; she pitied the life I led with my parents, and she adopted me as her own. She gave me everything I could need, and provided excellent teachers for me; but, best of all, she allowed me to help her in her work. Sometimes we lived at her country house, and worked among the peasants, and sometimes in Pavelsburg, and then our work lay among the poorest of the poor. Oh, what a life it was! She cares for body and soul alike. The hospitals and prisons are visited, Bible-classes, sewing-classes held; drunkards reached, young girls away from home befriended and taken care of. To be in trouble or in loneliness—that gives you claim enough upon my Princess.”
“I didn’t know that you went in for all this kind of thing in Scythia,” said Caerleon. “It’s not quite one’s idea of the Greek Church, somehow.”
“But we are Evangelicals; we are separated,” said the girl, eagerly. “They say we are heretics,—Non-conformists, I think you call it in England,—and they persecute us. My godmother has often been in danger of exile, but something has always happened to save her. She has no fear at all.”
“Only for you, perhaps. I suppose the reason you are here is that she sent you away when danger threatened. You didn’t leave her, I am sure.”
“Not of my own free will, never! My mother sent for me; but not on account of any danger. She gave me up willingly enough when I was of no use to her, but now she thinks that I am old enough to be of assistance. Assistance to her!”
“I daresay it is better for you, after all, than your life with Princess Soudaroff,” said Caerleon, judicially. “We can’t always have what we like, you know, and it doesn’t look well for a girl to be unable to get on with her mother.”
“How dare you say that?” she cried, turning upon him again. “What do you know of my circumstances? Do you think I have not tried, longed, agonised to honour my father and mother? but I will not help them in their work. Don’t talk to me of the look of things until you know something about them. Oh, I beg——”
“Excuse me,” said Caerleon, quickly, “but if you have to apologise to me again, do you mind turning your head away, and doing it in a whisper? The effect on yourself would be the same, and it would spare my feelings.”
“You are a scoffer!” said Mdlle. O’Malachy, sharply.
“I hope not; but I am afraid that your apologies will get on my nerves.”
“Your nerves?” she looked him up and down, and then laughed. “You don’t suffer from nerves?”
“You don’t know how wearing it is to be always looking out for apologies—and getting them.”
“But why should it affect your nerves? You are English, you do not drink absinthe?” She was still looking him over in the light of a curious medical problem, and her tone was full of interest.
“I hope you don’t intend to catechise me upon my private vices,” said Caerleon, hastily. “What I said was only in joke. I don’t know what nerves are.”
“A joke?” Evidently it had not occurred to her that any one could take such a liberty on such short acquaintance. “But I do not even know your name, sir.”
“And is it necessary to know a man’s name before he may make a joke in conversation with you?” asked Caerleon, laughing, but she did not hear him.
“I know you must be one of the English noblemen who are staying in the hotel, and you cannot be the brother—he is small and delicate, my father said so. You are, then, the pretender?”
“The pretender?” asked Caerleon in astonishment.
“I beg your pardon—I should have remembered that the word has a worse meaning in English than in French. The aspirant, I should say—the aspirant to the throne of Thracia?”
“Well, I was, a year ago; or rather the throne of Thracia aspired to me. I refused it, you know.”
“I remember; I was sorry. But you are going to accept it now?”
“Now? I don’t know what you mean. I haven’t a thought of it.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Here? in Hungary? To visit my friend, Count Temeszy.”
“But you are on your way to Thracia?”
“I assure you I am not. What can have put it into your head?”
“Every one thinks so. My parents quite believe it—and so do others.”
“Then they are mistaken, that’s all.”
“But why do you stay here, since Count Temeszy is away? You leave soon?”
“Not that I know of. Why should we?”
“Sir,” her voice was very earnest, “will you be angry if I give you a warning? If there is no special reason to keep you here, do not remain. My father is not—is not a good friend for young men.”
“A card-sharper, of course!” was the thought that darted through Caerleon’s mind. “It’s good of her to tell me, poor girl!” Aloud he added, “Thank you for your warning, mademoiselle. Perhaps you would be so kind as to mention to your father that I don’t carry the revenues of Thracia about with me.”
“You won’t understand,” cried the girl, passionately; “it is nothing about money. Consider what political disturbances your acceptance of the crown might bring about, and that there are those who will suspect you of desiring to provoke them so long as you remain in this part of Europe, however innocent your motives may be. I remember that when the crown was offered to you last year, the affair was much discussed in our circle. I myself heard Count Wratisloff say in my godmother’s drawing-room, ‘Here is the peace of Europe hanging upon the caprice of a boy!’”
“I am much obliged to him,” said Caerleon, grimly.
“Now I have offended you again. I am sorry. Count Wratisloff is a man who speaks a little emphatically sometimes, but he had no intention of being unkind. He prayed for you himself at our prayer-meeting the next day.”
“Very kind of him, I’m sure. I suppose he prayed that I might refuse the crown?”
“Oh no. How could he pretend to regulate the course of public affairs? If the time is come for a great European war, who can prevent it? He prayed that all might happen for the best.”
“Then you and your circle are fatalists, mademoiselle?”
“Surely not. ‘What will be, will be’—that is what the fatalists say, is it not?” she looked at him inquiringly. “But what we say is, ‘What will be, must be for the best.’”
“But why pray about it, then?” asked Caerleon, interested by this frank confession of faith.
“That we may be brought to believe that it is so when we cannot see it,” she answered, in a low voice; and although Caerleon would willingly have pursued the subject, a turn in the path here brought them in sight of Cyril, and there was no further opportunity for private conversation. During the rest of the way home they spoke chiefly of temperance work, Mdlle. O’Malachy recounting incidents from her experience among Princess Soudaroff’s protégés, and Caerleon replying with reminiscences of the various abortive attempts at restrictive legislation which he had supported in his House of Commons days, while Cyril listened and smiled with lofty contempt.
“Here we are,” he said at last, with undisguised relief, “and here is your father coming to meet us, mademoiselle.”
“Naughty girl!” cried the O’Malachy, shaking his fist playfully at his daughter. “I hope you’ve given trouble enough to us and to these gentlemen? There’s your mother waiting for you on the balcony. Go and settle ut with her yourself. Me lord, I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you and to Lord Cyrul for your goodnuss to-day. Me wife is very nervous, but you have been most kind in relieving her anxiety. May I hope that you will give us the pleasure of your company at dinner this evening? Madame O’Malachy will like to thank you herself.”
“You are very kind,” said Caerleon. “We were hoping to call this afternoon——”
“Call!” cried the O’Malachy in high contempt. “Would you talk about calling in this wildernuss? Come to-night, and we’ll be delightud to see you.”
The invitation was accepted with suitable gratitude, and the O’Malachy returned to his wife and daughter, while Caerleon and Cyril sought their own quarters. Lunch was rather a silent ceremony, for Caerleon felt an unaccountable aversion to detailing to his brother his conversation with Nadia O’Malachy.
“Not going out again, surely?” said Cyril, when the meal was over, and Caerleon took up his cap from the window-seat.
“I want a smoke.”
“Well, there are no ladies here, thank goodness! Sit down and smoke like a reasonable human being.”
“No, I want a walk.”
“I should have thought you had had walking enough for one day,” grumbled Cyril, but Caerleon was already outside, and he was obliged to address the remainder of his complaint to his cigar. “He walks with her all morning, does he? and then goes out again to think about her? I ought to have foreseen this. That’s the drawback of the kind of life we’ve been leading for a man of Caerleon’s stamp. He’s scarcely spoken to a lady since the Governor died, and now the first decent-looking girl he meets bowls him over at once. What a blessing it is that I’m not susceptible!”
Caerleon’s walk lasted for over two hours, and Cyril, with a telegram in his hand, was awaiting him impatiently when he returned.
“Back at last!” he said. “Do see what this is. It may be to summon us home about something, or it may be from Temeszy.”
“It is from Temeszy,” said Caerleon, opening it. “The steward must have telegraphed to him yesterday as soon as we were gone. He has business in Paris which will keep him there for more than a month, but he wants us to take up our quarters at the castle, ride his horses, hunt his wolves, or whatever else in the way of game there may be about, and so on—in fact, use the house as if it was our own.”
“Well, what do you think?” asked Cyril.
“If you ask me,” said Caerleon, slowly, “I think that we might as well have stayed at Llandiarmid as bury ourselves out there without Temeszy or any one to speak to.”
“I see,” said Cyril. “You mean to stay on here for the present, then?”
“Yes, I think we might.”
“But you forget that Mr or M. O’Malachy is coming back. What is one to call a fellow who has an Irish father and a Sarmatian mother, and has been brought up abroad? But anyhow, he is coming, and we have got his room.”
“I forgot that,” said Caerleon, rather crestfallen. “We must find out to-night when he is expected. There’s no need to leave until he comes.”
Once more Cyril drew dark inferences from his brother’s words, but he made no remark, and at the appointed time they presented themselves in Madame O’Malachy’s salon, where a most cordial welcome awaited them. They were the only guests, and it fell naturally to Caerleon to escort his hostess to the table and to sit beside her, a privilege for which he was not as grateful as he ought to have been, for he could hear Cyril and Nadia wrangling busily throughout the meal. Guessing that his brother was treating Mdlle. O’Malachy to a little fin de siècle philosophy, he had no difficulty in imagining the light in which it would strike her, and his anxiety to hear what she was saying in reply distracted his attention a little from her mother, who conversed vivaciously in French, addressing him as “mon cher marquis” in a way that reminded him vaguely of the Molière he had read when at school.
“I am longing that you should know my son,” she observed at last. “He is of the same age as your brother, and I have a presentiment that they will be friends. Louis is a true enthusiast, and it is this trait in his character that has caused us no small anxiety. My husband has perhaps told you that until a short time ago the unfortunate boy was an officer in the Scythian army. Would you believe that he has resigned his post in order to join the Thracian revolutionists?”
“Indeed?” said Caerleon, much interested; “and has he joined them yet?”
“No, but he intends to do so as soon as possible. Imagine his throwing away all his prospects like this! It is madness.”
“Come now, Barbara,” put in the O’Malachy from his end of the table. “Louie is a very decent feller, and he may make his way yet. You wouldn’t believe that I meself began life as a leader in the Sarmatian insurrection, would you?” he asked, turning to the young men with an air of extreme innocence.
“No, indeed,” said Caerleon, dimly conscious that Cyril started, and pursed up his lips as though to whistle.
“It’s true, then. When I left Ireland as a young man, after a little difficulty with the Government connectud with the troubles of ’48, I took, though it is not I should say ut, a prominent part in the Sarmatian affair, and yet here I am now, a colonel in the Scythian army. I learned wisdom, you see. The Scythians were not so bad as I had thought them, and the Sarmatians were a good deal worse, and so ut happened that I changed sides, perhaps with a little persuasion of another kind addud on,” and he glanced waggishly at his wife, who laughed rather nervously, and remarked that the candles were burning low.
“But have you never visited England since 1848?” asked Caerleon. “Surely there can be no danger of your being arrested now? I hope I may have the pleasure of welcoming you at Llandiarmid yet.”
“Yes,” said Cyril, “if you began as a Sarmatian revolutionist and end as a Scythian officer, we may hope to see you in a comfortable berth in the Constabulary yet, O’Malachy.”
“Ah, but there’s another businuss since ’48,” said the O’Malachy. “You know Balster, the feller that was made Irush Secretary two or three years ago? When I heard he had got the Irush Offus, I sent um a present of a box of cigars, the brand I always smoke meself—he had admired them greatly when I met um at Ludwigsbad some time before. Well, would you believe ut? Sure ’twas a mighty queer piece of work—the police opened the box when ut got to Doblun, and they found dynamite in ut. So then they accused me of trying to blow the man up, and I daren’t set foot in me native land. I was sorry, of course; but how was ut me fault?”
“Do you mean to imply,” asked Caerleon, “that the police took the cigars out and put dynamite instead of them?”
“All I can say,” replied the O’Malachy, spreading out his hands with a deprecatory gesture, “is that I sent cigars, and that the police fellers found an infernal machine. You must make what you can of ut.”
“Oh, don’t harp on the subject, Caerleon,” put in Cyril, seeing that his brother was not satisfied. “Can’t you see that it’s very naturally disagreeable to the O’Malachy? When do you expect your son, O’Malachy?”
“In two or three days, Lord Cyrul. I am greatly pleased that he will be so fortunate as to meet you here.”
“Oh, but we shan’t be here,” said Caerleon, seizing his opportunity. “We must not forget that we are trespassing on your kindness all the time we occupy these rooms. We will clear out to-morrow, if you like.”
“That you won’t,” returned the O’Malachy. “Why, when I was hearing in the town yesterday that your friend was in Parrus, and knew that you would be wanting to come back here, I went straight to the landlord, and got um to clear out another room for Louie, without any fuss at all. So now the place is plenty big for both of us, and I will think that you are offended with us if you turn out before you have seen all you want of the neighbourhood.”
“Since you are so kind,” said Caerleon, “we will certainly stay on for the present.” Here a frown from Cyril reached him, and an almost imperceptible “Don’t!” and he added rather lamely, “That is, if you are quite sure we are not inconveniencing you—or Miss O’Malachy.”
“My dear marquis,” said Madame O’Malachy, “let me assure you that your society is already doing my husband far more good than the waters here. As for my daughter, how should you inconvenience her?”
“Oh no; why should I need two rooms?” asked Nadia, gloomily, and Caerleon could get nothing but monosyllables from her during the remainder of the evening. When the guests were gone, however, she turned to her parents as she was leaving the room.
“You may be interested to know,” she said in her clear hard voice, “that Lord Caerleon has no intention of going to Thracia, nor of accepting the Thracian crown. I am not in the habit of helping you in your work, but I thought that this piece of news might possibly lead you to alter your plans a little.”
“Many thanks, my daughter,” said Madame O’Malachy, while her husband laughed softly. “In what way are our plans to be changed?”
“Surely you can leave Lord Caerleon and his brother alone, now that you know this, and not seek to involve them in any danger?”
“Mademoiselle,” said the O’Malachy, rising and standing with his back to the stove, “may I remind you of one small fact? We have not, as you remark, the honour of your assistance, and I regret to say that this necessarily deprives you of any pleasure you might derive from sharing our confidence. Whatever plans your mother and I may have in view, we do not feel inclined to risk their reaching Lord Caerleon by communicating them to you.”
Nadia’s face grew crimson, but she threw her head back proudly as she bade her parents good-night and left the room.
“There is a little fool for you!” said Madame O’Malachy with lazy contempt.
“What did you mean by making signs to me at dinner?” asked Caerleon of Cyril, when they were alone together in his room.
“Any one with ordinary common-sense would have seen that I meant you not to accept the O’Malachy’s offer, but to go on at once, away from here.”
“But why in the world? You said nothing of this before.”
“Because I did not know who he was, but at dinner it suddenly flashed upon me that he was the hero of a story which I heard when I was in Pavelsburg. Old Dostelsky, who helped in putting down the Sarmatian rebellion, told it to two or three of us in the smoking-room one night.”
“Something spicy, I suppose? Come, let us hear it.”
“Well, it seems that the O’Malachy was, as he said, one of the Sarmatian leaders, and he gave the Scythians so much trouble that they were ready to go any lengths to get rid of him. They tried fair means and they tried foul—open attacks, and bribes, and attempted assassination, but it was all no good. At last—I don’t know whether it was a lucky guess, or whether something showed them his weak point—they thought of working upon his susceptibilities. They had a decoy handy, Mdlle. Barbara Platovska, a young Sarmatian lady, brought up in Paris and trained in Scythia. She had done a good deal of work for them already, and she was as plucky and as wily as she was beautiful, so that she was a valuable instrument. Well, they sent her off with a free hand, and a pardon for O’Malachy, signed by the Emperor, in her pocket, together with a promise of employment for him in the Scythian army. Mdlle. Barbara lays her plans, and presently, travelling by night through a forest where the rebels had one of their camps, she falls into their hands. There was some talk of shooting her at once, for her face was unmistakable, and they all knew what harm she had done to their cause; but she singled out O’Malachy, and threw herself at his feet and demanded his protection. You wouldn’t find many Irishmen who would refuse to help a pretty woman in such a plight, and O’Malachy pulled her behind him, and told the rest to come on. They nearly got to blows, but at last they agreed to give the girl some form of trial, and they carried her off to their headquarters. Naturally O’Malachy kept close to her on the way, and she used her opportunity so well that before the journey was over he was head and ears in love with her. He soon discovered that the rest were determined to kill her, and the very first night that he had the chance he helped her to escape from the ruined tower in which she was imprisoned, and escorted her back to her friends. Up to that time he fully meant to go back and give himself up to his comrades, but now was Mdlle. Barbara’s chance. She never let him alone on that journey, until she had got him to promise to come in with her and surrender. He must have been pretty sick of the Sarmatians altogether—they were rather a shady lot, always quarrelling and fighting among themselves—and there was nothing to be made out of their job, and he was in love as well, and he thought she loved him, so he consented. He got his pardon and his post in the Scythian army, and he meant to get Mdlle. Barbara. But when he went to claim her she met him as she had done the other men she had betrayed, turned her back on him and told him that no traitor should ever be her husband. But she had tried that trick once too often. He had her against the wall with a revolver to her head in an instant, and then and there he made her promise to marry him. And that wasn’t all, either. He took her to the table, still with the revolver pointed at her, and made her write out and sign an account of the scene. Then he let her go, but she married him the next week. You see he could have ruined her with that paper. If it had once come to her employers’ ears that she had lost her nerve, and yielded to threats, they would never have made use of her again. Perhaps, too, the O’Malachy’s style of wooing pleased her, or she may have had a soft place for him in her heart all along. At any rate, they married, and went into partnership, and you see what a happy couple they are.”
“But how did the story get about?” asked Caerleon. “Surely it was to the interest of both of them to keep it quiet.”
“Oh, the O’Malachy let it out one evening when he had been dining—told it as rather a fine thing, I believe.”
“The old beast! to go and give his wife away like that,” remarked Caerleon, with righteous indignation.
“Well, after all, she doesn’t show up so very much worse than he does in the matter,” said Cyril. “They are rather a well-matched pair. You know what their present manner of life is?”
“Oh yes, I know. Card-sharping.”
Cyril stared. “Not unless you are speaking in parables, and alluding to political cards. They are spies of the Scythian Government, agents provocateurs, and so on. The O’Malachy is supposed to be travelling for his health, a pursuit which enables him to be pretty constantly on the move, and turn up just where his presence is required. Oh, he’s a fine old fellow! Wasn’t that rich about Balster and the infernal machine? It was an awful sell for him, though. Sorry! of course he was sorry—that Balster didn’t open it himself, and get blown up. That’s one of his little ways of employing his leisure hours, and the whole family are really otherwise engaged than in health-seeking, very much so.”
“Not all of them. Miss O’Malachy is not.”
“Well, you certainly know more about her than I do, so I can’t say. You have a queer taste in fathers-in-law, though.”
“Don’t talk rot,” said Caerleon, indignantly. “I won’t hear the girl slandered, but I can’t even make out whether I like her or not. She says the most appalling things in the coolest voice, and then apologises.”
“Well,” said Cyril, getting near the door, “when a man goes out to think about a girl, and wastes two hours of his valuable time in trying to decide whether he likes her or not, and then comes back without having found out, it looks as though he was pretty far gone already.” And Cyril quitted the room in a hurry, dexterously avoiding the boot which Caerleon hurled at him.
In the morning no reference was made to the conversation of the evening before on the part either of Caerleon or of Cyril, although the latter found an ominous confirmation of his suspicions in the fact that his brother did not offer to change his plans in any way as a consequence of what had been said.
“He must really be smitten with the girl,” argued Cyril, mentally, “for if he wasn’t, he would take fright at the hints I gave him, and want to part company with these people at once. Well, it’s his own look-out. He ought to marry, and it’s very evident that he’ll marry whom he likes. This girl is not bad-looking, and it’s a strong point in her favour that the O’Malachy daren’t set foot on English ground. A decent veil can be drawn over his existence so long as he keeps out of the way. At any rate, it’s not my business to make a fuss, and if I did, Caerleon would probably go and propose at once. I’m glad I said what I did, for now he knows what he’s about. He can’t say that he’s been let in for anything blindfold, but I mean to be satisfied with that.”
Having decided on adopting the attitude of benevolent neutrality, Cyril accompanied his brother without a murmur to the post-office, and the telegram refusing Count Temeszy’s invitation was duly despatched. Returning towards the inn, they took their way through the Kurgarten, a desolate piece of ground adorned with a few straggling bushes and a good many dilapidated plaster statues, and here they found the O’Malachy family, occupying three of the paintless and rickety chairs arranged in a circle round the kiosk in which the waters of the medicinal spring were dispensed by an unattractive Hebe. The O’Malachy was sipping his morning tumbler of greenish and muddy-looking fluid with the air of a martyr, while his wife, in the most coquettish of Parisian morning costumes and hats, was communicating to her daughter her impressions of the few other health-seekers who patronised the Janoszwar waters, the majority of whom were the Hungarian Jewesses she regarded with such strong aversion. Nadia sat bolt upright beside her, silent and rebellious, her face, with its expression of enforced resignation, protesting, as clearly as her attitude, against her mother’s discourse and the delight she took in it. The contrast between the two figures—the one so markedly rigid and repellent, the other all that was graceful, pliant, and pleasing—was a sharp one, and Caerleon, as he approached, found himself wishing emphatically, although in silence, that Nadia could manage to avoid the contamination of her surroundings without holding herself so aggressively aloof from them. Cyril was less reticent.
“Good gracious! how sulky that girl looks,” he remarked. “Wretchedly bad form to listen to her mother’s talk with that face on. Such talk as it is, too! I wish we had Madame O’Malachy at some of the houses one goes to in London. Her conversational powers are lost out here.”
“Perhaps Miss O’Malachy finds the talk less edifying than it is lively,” said Caerleon, absently, trying to put himself in Nadia’s place, and to realise the disgust which the stream of scandal and innuendo in which her mother delighted must arouse in her.
“Don’t be a prig,” was the sole answer vouchsafed by Cyril; and they went on and greeted the O’Malachys, and annexed two unoccupied chairs near them, Caerleon contriving to place himself beside Nadia, Cyril beside her mother. Presently the O’Malachy finished his penance, and they rose and sauntered together towards the hotel.
“We have heard from my son this morning, my dear marquis,” said Madame O’Malachy to Caerleon. “He hopes to be with us to-morrow.”
“Does he intend to make a long stay here?”
“Alas, no! He is still mad on the subject of Thracia, and insists on going there almost immediately. What can he expect but defeat and ruin? But he shall not go into danger alone. There are mineral springs at Tatarjé, which the O’Malachy has been advised to visit, and we shall all accompany my poor misguided Louis. We may not be able to do much, but at any rate we shall be near him.”
“But if the country is in such a dangerous state, are you not afraid to visit it?” asked Caerleon.
“Afraid!” repeated Madame O’Malachy, high scorn in her tone. “My dear marquis, for what do you take us? We are accustomed to danger.”
“I should rather like to see Thracia,” remarked Caerleon, not very relevantly. “It must be a very interesting country.”
“Then why wouldn’t you and Lord Cyrul come with us?” asked the O’Malachy.
“Oh no, my friend,” cried his wife, “that would never do. Have you forgotten the unsettled state of Thracia? Do you not remember that the people hate travellers, throw all kinds of vexatious restrictions in their way, seize every opportunity of insulting and injuring them? Our dear marquis must not come. The country is positively dangerous.”
“Is that intended as a reason for our not visiting it?” asked Caerleon. “Cyril, I think we’ll make a tour in Thracia.”
“Oh, all right,” said Cyril. “I hope your will is made, though as I am to be with you, it won’t much matter.”
“But you cannot intend this in earnest?” asked Madame O’Malachy, with a most ingenuous air of simplicity. “I tell you that it is absolutely dangerous to go to Thracia.”
“You are going the wrong way to keep our friends back, Barbara,” said the O’Malachy. “Do you not know that to hear that a place is dangerous makes ut their juty to visut ut?”
“But these English are so strange!” cried his wife, with artless amazement. “They write letters to their ‘Times’ to complain if the slightest inconvenience touches them at a hotel, or if a street-boy calls them a bad name, and yet they go to look for danger when it is unnecessary.”
“One of the contradictions of human nature,” remarked the O’Malachy, grimly, but when he and his wife and daughter had reached their own room, he returned to the subject: “I don’t know what you were driving at just now, Barbara. Were you really trying to turn the young fellers back, or not? Caerleon is a decent boy enough. Was your heart suddenly filled with compassion for um, or were you trying to make terms with your conscience?”
“That is it,” returned Madame O’Malachy, with a side-glance at her daughter. “I do not wish to have it on my conscience that I brought these young men into Thracia. It is not my affair.”
“Then whose is it?” asked Nadia.
“I say,” went on her mother, “that I have done all in my power to turn them back. I have not led them on to their ruin. I have not made myself disagreeable to my own family, and pleasant to them, that I might induce them to attach themselves to my company. When they get into trouble—into danger,” raising her voice as Nadia rose hurriedly and left the room, “their blood will not be on my head.”
“How you women hate one another!” laughed the O’Malachy, softly.
Louis O’Malachy arrived the next day, a dark-browed, taciturn, broad-shouldered young man, about a year older than Nadia, moving with a peculiar stiffness, as though his movements had always been restrained by a tight uniform, or by the orders of a drill-sergeant. He took a great fancy to Cyril,—at least, his mother said that he had done so, and it was quite true that he lost no opportunity of seeking his company. Indeed, the brothers found it almost impossible to escape from him, for whenever they went out, he invariably made his appearance, and offered himself as their companion. This being the case, Madame O’Malachy, out of compassion for Caerleon, who found himself, as she phrased it, the unwelcome third in this devoted comradeship, fell into the habit of ordering Nadia to accompany her brother on all these occasions. To Caerleon himself she observed, with a cold-blooded frankness which reminded him of her daughter’s first interview with him, that to no one but an Englishman would she think of permitting the privilege of escorting Mdlle. O’Malachy in her walks, but she understood that in England it was only when young people were not allowed to meet freely that there was any fear that complications might arise. She made this remark in Nadia’s hearing, and the girl, who had resisted the proposal strenuously in private, yielded in sheer terror as to what her mother might proceed to say to Caerleon if she still hung back. She knew perfectly well that he divined her reason for coming, and pitied her for it, and the realisation plunged her into the depths of confusion and shame, sensations which were quite new to her. That she, who in her Scythian home had looked the whole world in the face, without a particle of fear, should now be trembling lest this Englishman, almost a stranger, should lay his finger on a quivering wound, made her abjectly miserable. It needed all Caerleon’s tact, all his careful insistence on the rôle of friendly critic which he had adopted when they first met, to re-establish matters on a footing of any confidence between them. He succeeded in appearing so unconscious of anything wrong that she persuaded herself at last that he had not perceived the implication conveyed in her mother’s words, and after this she was at ease with him again, and they discussed social and political problems, illustrated from the experience of each, to their hearts’ content, while Cyril and Louis luxuriated in Balkan politics. Cyril was deeply interested in this young enthusiast, and not a little puzzled by him also. Louis was still intending to proceed to Thracia in a few days, in order to offer his services to M. Drakovics, but his utterances on the subject were not marked by the fiery fanaticism which might have been expected from him on the authority of his past record.
“An enthusiast?” said Cyril to himself. “He’s no more an enthusiast than I am, and that’s putting it pretty strong. A plotter he may be. If he’s a patriot, he’s one of his father’s stamp, the dynamite and dagger school. And yet only an enthusiast would have taken such a step as to throw up his commission in the Scythian army for the sake of joining the Thracians. But what is he doing here? If he means to go to Thracia, why not hurry on there at once? It’s not like an enthusiast to stick for days doing nothing at Janoszwar. Perhaps he hopes to enlist Caerleon and me as volunteers. Perhaps he doesn’t like Caerleon’s dangling after his sister. Can that be it?”
He thought of the contemptuous sniff with which Louis had more than once manifested his opinion of the way in which Caerleon gravitated inevitably to Nadia’s side when they took their walks, but otherwise there was nothing to show that he disapproved of the intimacy. He might not welcome it, but he was not actively hostile; by no word nor action would he influence the result in either direction.
“Is he a philosopher or a blackmailer?” soliloquised Cyril. “Or does he only think Caerleon is a fool? I know men often are amused when any one falls in love with their sisters, and I can’t say that I wonder at it myself in this case. What Caerleon can find to like in that sulky girl I can’t imagine, but he really seems to be hooked this time.”
Whatever Caerleon’s inducement might be, he went on his way calmly, heeding neither Cyril’s lack of sympathy nor young O’Malachy’s scoffs, for he had now fully made up his mind about Nadia. At first he had been alternately attracted and repelled by her, but the repulsion had gradually faded before the attraction. The girl was so transparently honest, so sincere in her earnest intolerance, so unconventional in the way in which she persisted in testing everything by the standards of right and wrong, instead of those of custom and fashion, that the man who had turned in disgust from the artificiality of the frivolous or emancipated girls he had met in troops in London could not but hail her as a kindred spirit. It is true that she offended his taste and outraged his views of propriety twenty times a day by her decided utterances, but now that he knew what prompted these remarks he could honour the intention if he could not appreciate the result. And besides, she was softening, he was sure, under the influence of her friendship with him—he could not mistake the change; and it was seldom indeed that she addressed him nowadays with the abruptness which he had mentally stigmatised as farouche on his first meeting with her. In the society of her own family, however, this change was not visible, and she was still rigid, severe, uncompromisingly plain of speech. In his character of candid friend, Caerleon felt it to be his duty to take her to task occasionally on this subject.
“I wish,” he said to her one day with some trepidation, for he had suffered more than once in his self-imposed task of smoothing down the angles of this young lady’s disposition, “that you could think it right to leave off apologising when you have said anything unpleasant. You have quite dropped it with me, you know, but you keep it up with my brother and your own people.”
“But you told me that it was worse to you than the rude things I had said,” objected Nadia, “and it is not so with the rest.”
“No, indeed, they enjoy it,” said Caerleon, “and that is just why I hate it. Can’t you see that your brother and mine think it a good joke to stir you up to say rude things, just for the pleasure of hearing you apologise with a jerk the next minute?”
“Yes, I see it,” she answered; “but that makes it all the better discipline for me.”
“Not for me,” said Caerleon. “I think your system ought to take some account of other people’s feelings.”
“But surely,” she said, “if I give pleasure to my brother and yours by acting in this way, I am considering other people’s feelings in doing it?”
Her voice as she asked the question was not particularly cheerful, but Caerleon treasured up the remark in his memory as the first approach to a joke that he had ever heard Nadia utter.
“Wouldn’t it be equally good discipline,” he said, “to stop before saying the rude things, and try to say something pleasant instead?”
“But that would not be true.” Nadia regarded him with absolute horror. “Come what may, I must be true.”
“It’s rather presumptuous of me to quote texts to you,” said Caerleon, “but isn’t there something about ‘speaking the truth in love’?”
“Why should it be presumptuous of you to quote texts to me?” she asked, quickly.
“Well, you see,” he answered, with some hesitation, “I don’t live by rule, as you do. I haven’t a system of self-discipline, or anything of that sort.”
“You think I am proud—conceited?” she said. “You think I set myself up upon a pedestal? Ah no, Lord Caerleon, I entreat you, do not think that. God knows how very weak and feeble I am, how continually I discover in myself that horrible temptation to insincerity. Since I have known you, it has beset me even more than before. Because I know that you are listening, I am perpetually tempted to let things pass, to join for politeness’ sake in conversation that I know is wrong. You cannot tell what it costs me to speak out, and you try to make it harder for me.”
“Indeed I don’t wish to do that,” said Caerleon, touched by the illogical reproach of her last sentence. “I only want to ask you whether you couldn’t make your protests mentally, and not aloud. I never like to hear a girl speak to her mother as you do. Can’t you make some allowance for her? She must have had a hard life—and bad training, perhaps. There may be more excuse for her than we think.”
“I wish I knew it, then!” cried Nadia. “You have not seen as much of her as I have; you cannot know her as I do. She delights in intrigue for its own sake. It gives her an artistic pleasure to do a thing in a roundabout way instead of straight. Do you not see that it is far worse for me to realise this than it can be for you? You cannot tell what torture it was for me to find out, when I first came here from home—from my godmother’s—that my mother would never tell the truth if a falsehood were possible. I felt that I must stand against her influence, or I might grow like her.”
“I don’t fancy you would,” said Caerleon; “but of course, as you say, you are a better judge of your own circumstances than I am. I suppose you feel the same with reference to your brother. It seems as though you had scarcely a civil word for him.”
“He has not many for me,” said Nadia, drily. “No, I do not like Louis. He is not good.”
“Not like him!” cried Caerleon. “But he is your brother.”
“I hope I love him,” said Nadia, meditatively. “I should not like anything bad to happen to him. To do him good—to save his soul—I would die, oh, how willingly! But I cannot like him.”
“But wouldn’t you be better able to do him good if you did like him?” asked Caerleon. Nadia considered for a moment.
“I can’t help it. One cannot like a person who one knows is not good. You yourself, if Milord Cyril were to become false, to break his faith, you could not like him any longer.”
“I see what you mean, but I’m afraid I should have a sneaking fondness for the poor old chap still,” said Caerleon. “But has your brother done anything, that you should talk of him in this way?”
“I do not know,” was the reply. “I only guess. They tell me nothing. But I have found out enough to be sure about him.”
“And what is that?” asked Caerleon, incautiously. Nadia drew herself up.
“That I cannot tell you, Lord Caerleon. If you had now any interest in Thracia, or were likely to be at all affected by my brother’s doings, I might tell you what I believe to be the truth, but you cannot expect me to gratify mere curiosity.”
“I beg your pardon, I’m sure,” said Caerleon, taken aback by this outburst. “Pray don’t think that I want to know anything you don’t wish to tell me.”
“Please forgive me,” said Nadia. “I was rude again. Only I am afraid of telling you what I ought not, and I don’t wish to be disloyal, even to my family.”
“I quite understand,” said Caerleon, although at the very moment he was reflecting that the ins and outs of a woman’s mind were beyond the wit of man to penetrate. “But tell me what you mean by saying if I had any interest in Thracia? I remember that on the day I met you first you told me you were sorry when I declined the crown. Why was it?”
“Because I thought you ought to have accepted it,” returned Nadia. Then, fearing that her tone had been slightly dictatorial, she added, hastily, “I mean that if I had been in your place I should have accepted it.”
“But you thought so—you, a Scythian in politics?” asked Caerleon.
“I thought I had told you that our circle—my godmother’s—are not necessarily Scythian in politics,” said Nadia. “We desire to take the side of justice, of right. I am certain that if Scythia were to enter on an unrighteous war, Count Wratisloff would lift up his voice against it at once. And so we desired for Thracia only the man who would be most likely to rule it well.”
“Then you think I ought to have accepted the crown?” said Caerleon again. She caught him up quickly.
“I cannot judge for you. Only your own conscience can do that. But I have always been taught never to refuse work that offered itself unsought, unless it would interfere with other work on which one was already engaged, and even then one should consider carefully which was the more important of the two. You know best where your responsibilities would have been greatest—in Thracia, or at home in England. Wherever there was most to do, there your work lay, I think. And you might have done so much for Thracia!”
“But would you have had me go there against my father’s express wish?” asked Caerleon, indignantly. “If you will allow me to have had a conscience at all in the matter, I believe it pointed distinctly to staying at home as the right thing for me to do.”
“That made a difference,” assented Nadia. “I cannot judge of your circumstances for you, as I have said, but I was sorry at the time that you refused the crown, and I am sorry still that you are not King of Thracia now. You might do so much good there.”
A little annoyed by her persistence, Caerleon walked on beside her in silence for a while. They had left Cyril and Louis far behind, and were following a path which presently crossed the main road cut through the mountains. At ordinary times the road was almost as lonely as the rocky paths, but on this occasion a band of men were visible in the distance, coming from the direction of the plain.
“It must be some of the Thracian harvesters,” said Nadia. “When their own harvest is ended, numbers of them cross into Hungary and hire themselves out to help the farmers, for the corn ripens later here. I suppose they are returning home with their wages, now that the harvest is over.”
As they walked on, they gained a closer view of the Thracians, a body of tall, lithe, dark-skinned men, tired and footsore, wearing ragged clothes that had once been gaily coloured, shirts that had once been white, and great leather boots. They slackened their pace as they approached the strangers, and one man, who seemed to be the leader of the party, addressed Nadia in broken German.
“Oh, the poor things!” she said, turning to Caerleon. “This has been a terribly bad year for them. The rain and the floods have injured the corn so much that there was scarcely any harvest. They have only earned enough to keep them while at work, and they have nothing to buy food with on their journey home. I wish I could give them something, but I have no money,” and she exhibited an empty purse as she spoke.
“Poor beggars!” said Caerleon. “Give them this, Miss O’Malachy,” and he turned a handful of loose coin out of his pocket and poured it into Nadia’s hand. She gave it to the man, who was profuse in his gratitude, and rapidly reckoning up the value of the money, said that it would be enough to feed himself and his companions until they reached their homes. Turning over the coins in his hand as if to assure himself of their reality, he came upon an English shilling, and looked at it in a puzzled way.
“Tell him that it’s all right, and that he can get it changed in the first big town he comes to,” said Caerleon to Nadia; but when she interpreted the words to the man, he scouted the idea that there was anything wrong about the coin. They liked English things, he said, and he would make a hole in the shilling and wear it in memory of the gracious lady who had given it to him.
“Oh, but it was not mine,” said Nadia, hastily. “You must thank Lord Caerleon.”
“Lor’ Carlin’?” repeated the man, puzzled. Then, as Nadia pointed to Caerleon, his faced beamed with delight. “Not Carlino? the English Prince Carlino?”
“Yes,” said Nadia. “Prince and king are the only titles they understand,” she added, to Caerleon, who was suffering agonies of embarrassment at the moment, for the man went down on his knees before him, and kissed his hand and laid it on his head. Then, before Caerleon could protest, he had risen, and was beckoning frantically to his companions, calling out to them in an unknown tongue.
“This is too much,” said Caerleon to Nadia. “I shall tell them that you gave them the money after all.”
“But that would not be true,” responded Nadia, in her matter-of-fact way; and Caerleon was forced to allow his hand to be kissed by each of the men in turn, the leader closing the ceremony by going through it himself a second time, saying earnestly in his barbarous German—
“Ah, why did not your Highness come to Thracia?”
“There!” said Nadia, when they had gone on their way, followed by the blessings of the Thracians, “think how much you might have done for these poor men if you had been king. The whole country is desolate, or only half cultivated. It needs draining, improving, farming on proper methods. You Englishmen all understand farming, don’t you? You could teach them just the things they ought to learn, and introduce English implements. And then, you could also enforce temperance legislation. The people drink dreadfully, rich and poor alike, and there is no Government control of the liquor traffic. It would be virgin soil, the ideal spot for testing all the schemes. You could try as many experiments as you liked, even if you did not insist on total prohibition at once.”
“I’m afraid I should experiment myself off the throne in no time,” said Caerleon, laughing, but Nadia glanced at him without a smile.
“Better to fall through doing right than to succeed through doing wrong,” she said.
“You are oracular to-day,” said Caerleon, but this made her angry, and she told him that as he did not like the way she talked, she would not talk at all,—a decision to which she adhered persistently, so that they returned to the hotel in silence. Her petulance was the more provoking in that this was their last day at Janoszwar, and that on the morrow the O’Malachy family would start on their journey to Thracia, while Cyril and Caerleon continued their walking-tour. It was their intention first to visit a number of ruined castles and other objects of interest out of the beaten track, and then to rejoin their friends at Witska, a mountain village celebrated for a medicinal spring, and situated exactly on the Thracian frontier. Just at the last moment Louis O’Malachy volunteered to accompany them on their tramp, and as they could not very well refuse his offer they accepted it, although neither of them anticipated much pleasure from his society.
“He must be up to something,” soliloquised Cyril; “but what can it be? I suppose we have merely to await developments; but meanwhile, to avoid any risk of accident, I will get Miss O’Malachy to do a little piece of business for me.”
This piece of business was merely the posting of the letter of introduction to M. Drakovics which Mrs Sadleir had intrusted to Cyril; but he had an idea that Louis might wish, for some reason of his own, to intercept the missive if he knew of its existence, or even saw it posted, for he could not rid himself of the notion that the taciturn young patriot had other ends in view than that of furthering the independence of Thracia. Acting on this resolution, he succeeded in finding Nadia alone, and gave the letter into her charge, to be posted as soon as possible after her arrival on Thracian soil, adding at a venture that it might prove to have an important effect on the after-history of Europe. He saw at once that she understood what he meant, and that she sympathised with his object, for her face lighted up.
“I see. I will be most careful. I thank you for trusting me—for letting me help, Lord Cyril.”
“What a fanatic the girl is!” said Cyril to himself, as he went his way; but he entertained a comfortable conviction that it was rather safer to trust a fanatic than a cynic, and he felt secure as to the fate of Mrs Sadleir’s letter, and the note he had written to accompany it. An hour later he left Janoszwar with Caerleon and Louis, and they began a tour for which none of them cared much, except to count the days until it should come to an end. Caerleon missed his talks with Nadia, Cyril was anxious to get to Witska and see whether the letter had produced any effect on M. Drakovics, and Louis displayed an eagerness to reach Thracia, and enlist in the patriot army, which was rather inconsistent with his having come on the tour at all. In consequence, they clung most carefully to the route they had laid down previously, and no one suggested digressions even when the most famous ruins or inviting landscapes were found to lie just a few hours’ march off the road. On the very day they had fixed they reached Witska, a picturesque little town with rocky streets, and whitewashed houses clinging to the steep hillside, and found it filled with numbers of men from the plains in their holiday attire.
“There must be a fair or festival of some sort going on,” said Caerleon, as they made their way to the inn, where it had been arranged that the O’Malachy was to secure rooms for them.
“Perhaps the people have come together to do you honour,” suggested Louis, lightly enough, but it struck Cyril that there was a shade of anxiety in his tone.
The inn was an oriental-looking house built round a courtyard, but conforming to the customs of the West so far as to possess a coffee-room—a fact which was proudly announced in German and Thracian in very large letters. There were no windows on the exterior of the house to the ground-floor rooms, a testimony to the frequent occurrence of border raids and attacks from brigands in the days when the inn was built, but balconies ran round each of the two upper storeys, both inside and outside, giving the only means of access to the rooms which opened upon them. The courtyard was thronged with people, among whom Caerleon fancied he recognised some of the harvesters that Nadia and he had met a fortnight before, and they watched with breathless curiosity the three dusty figures in tourist suits and hobnailed boots, and commented upon their appearance audibly but unintelligibly. The landlord, who met them at the door, bowed almost to the ground before them, but as he could speak no tongue of Western Europe, they were unable to question him as to the nature of the attraction which had brought the crowd together. Behind him, however, stood Wright the groom, doing his best to compose his face, which had wreathed itself into an irrepressible grin of delight at welcoming his master, into the blank immobility which he considered becoming and suitable. In his hand was a visiting-card, which he presented to Caerleon.
“The gentleman up-stairs give it me for you, my lord, and ’e’s waitin’ for you in the coffee-room, and I do ’ope, my lord, if I may make so bold, as your lordship don’t think of stayin’ long in this ’ere country, where there ain’t a creetur can speak a word of a Crishtan tongue.”
“That remains to be seen,” said Cyril, looking round Caerleon’s shoulder at the card, and seeing, as he expected, the name of M. Drakovics.
“Has the old brute come to plague me again about his precious kingdom?” said Caerleon, impatiently. “He might have waited until I had made myself respectable, at any rate. Well, I suppose I must see him, but I’ll wash off a little of the dust of travel first”—“and just ask Nadia what she really thinks about the business,” he added to himself, as Wright led the way up-stairs, and along the gallery which crossed the front of the house.
“Which are the O’Malachy’s rooms, Wright?” he asked aloud, but as he spoke, Madame O’Malachy glided out of a doorway near him with her finger on her lip.
“Ah, my dear marquis, I am enchanted to see you!” she said, brightly. “But I will not detain you; you are summoned to more important business than talking with a chattering old woman—is it not so? Only I would ask you to have the great kindness to step softly and not to speak loud, for my daughter is a little indisposed.”
“Miss O’Malachy ill? I hope it is not serious?” cried Caerleon.
“Nothing serious, I assure you. Merely a slight headache and lassitude, which will pass off to-morrow. Rest and quiet are her best medicines. She is too energetic, too eager for work, my dear marquis, but I know that I may count on your consideration.”
She went back into her room, and Caerleon pursued his way disappointed.
“I shan’t be able to ask her about this wretched kingdom, then,” he grumbled to himself. “But, after all, I know what she thinks, for she gave me her views pretty plainly the last time I talked to her.”
“The old gentleman seemed to be in a orful ’urry, my lord,” put in Wright, and Caerleon made a hasty toilet, and entered the coffee-room, where M. Drakovics was marching impatiently from the door to the window and back again. Caerleon would have shaken hands with him, but he drew back with a low bow.
“Your Majesty,” he said, “I am here to announce to you that by a plébiscite of the whole nation you are a second time invited to occupy the throne of Thracia. I have with me a petition signed by every member of the Legislative Assembly, and by the mayor of every township and the head of every village community in the country, entreating you to lay aside your scruples, and come to our help. The people will accept any conditions you may choose to make, as to advisers, Civil List, or anything of the kind;—I know that this will not affect your decision,” as Caerleon turned away with an impatient gesture, “but I mention it to show you that the Thracians wish to deal generously with the man who will honour them by taking up their cause against the world.”
“I must have the night to think it over,” said Caerleon, after some moments of futile consideration. “You will remain here as my guest, I hope? By the bye, who are all the people outside?”
“They are your Majesty’s loyal subjects,” returned M. Drakovics, “who have come here to conduct you, as they hope, in triumph to Bellaviste.”
“Very kind of them,” said Caerleon, “but I am not their king yet. This proceeding looks unpleasantly like compulsion, M. Drakovics. I have no idea of being made king by force.”
“Your Majesty is entirely mistaken,” returned M. Drakovics in alarm. “These men are here with the sole intention of doing you honour, and of adding their entreaties to mine if you should prove to be still obdurate. They are all patriots, almost in despair for their country, for we are convinced that Scythia is meditating some great blow against us.”
“Well, I will think about it,” said Caerleon, and no further allusion was made to the subject during the evening.
On the plea of extreme fatigue, Caerleon and Cyril excused themselves to their guest as early as was possible with due regard for politeness, and prepared to consider the situation in concert. Leaning out of the window of Caerleon’s room, with the watch-fires of the expectant Thracians starring the mountain-slopes on every hand, they discussed the subject in all its bearings. As was generally the case on such occasions, Cyril did most of the talking, and he summed up his arguments very concisely before they separated for the night.
“The question is just this, Caerleon: have you backbone enough to be a Thracian for the future, instead of an Englishman? That’s what it will come to, you know. There will be the most awful row at home, and we may find ourselves outlawed, or declared guilty of high treason, or I don’t know what. So long as we keep to Thracian soil, we shall be all right, if we can only manage to stay there; but I suppose if we ventured into any British possession they might put us in prison and keep us there out of harm’s way. Scythia is bound to make a fuss, and to send the strongest possible diplomatic representations to St James’s about us even if she doesn’t go to war, and you must make up your mind to disregard appeals and commands, from whomsoever they may come, and public opinion too. You won’t any longer be a British peer, poor, perhaps, but universally looked up to—but an adventurer,—a filibuster, in fact. That’s the bad side of it. On the other hand, you consider that your country has treated you pretty shabbily, and holds out no particular prospects to you in your present circumstances. Forfar and the Duke never did much for you either, and I don’t see that you need refuse such an offer as this just to save them from diplomatic complications. Of course, if the worst came to the worst, you might sacrifice yourself, and abdicate magnanimously in order to prevent a European war, but I don’t think it will get as far as that. Scythia will brag and bluster—perhaps try to put you out of the way, but that is our private affair. And in Thracia you have just the field you have always wanted for your administrative and philanthropic talents. From what Drakovics says, they seem to have a fairly good army, but very little else. You will have to make the nation. Oh, there’s no question as to which is the biggest thing to do. As King of Thracia, in the people’s present state of mind, your opportunities would be limitless.”
“And that is what one ought to think of,” said Caerleon, recalling Nadia’s words. “Cyril, old man, I’ll take it.”
“Good for you, old chap,” returned Cyril. “I say, I suppose I shall have to call you ‘your Majesty’ now—in public, that is. Behind the scenes, the augurs may wink as they please. Well, I bag the post of your private secretary, at any rate. That will enable me to give your Majesty a good wigging when I think it called for, and to keep you from getting into trouble. Well, now that your royal mind is made up, I’m off. Ta, ta.”
When the two young men entered the coffee-room in the morning, M. Drakovics advanced to meet them, far too anxious as to the result of their conference to let the matter rest until after breakfast, as Caerleon had intended. The Premier’s face was worn and haggard with anxiety, and his voice shook as he asked—
“May I inquire whether your Majesty has decided what course you will take?”
“Yes,” said Caerleon. “I have made up my mind to accept the crown.”
He had no time to say more, for, to his horror and Cyril’s delight, M. Drakovics fell at his feet and covered his hands with kisses, while he tried in vain to induce him to rise. Cyril recovered himself first.
“Perhaps we might postpone any further raptures until after breakfast,” he suggested, mildly. “Even kings have appetites,—their brothers certainly have.”
“One moment!” cried M. Drakovics, rising and going towards the window. “Your majesty cannot tell what a load you have taken from my heart,” he added, huskily, turning again to Caerleon. “I am satisfied now as to the future of my country. But I must tell the people. They have been as anxious as myself, and they will rejoice as I do.”
He stepped out on the balcony, and addressed the crowd of Thracians, who had again gathered in front of the house. A tremendous shout burst from them when he had finished speaking. Turning round with blazing eyes he beckoned to Caerleon.
“Show yourself to your people, your Majesty. Speak a few words to them—I will interpret—and they will love you for ever.”
Caerleon followed him out, intending to comply with the request, but speech was impossible in presence of the cry of welcome that went up as soon as he became visible. For some minutes he was perforce silent, while the people shouted themselves hoarse, flung their caps into the air, leaped for joy, embraced one another, and wept copiously. He felt oddly reminded of his coming of age, and how he had risen to make his speech at the great dinner his father had given to the Llandiarmid tenants amid a scene of excitement such as this, when the sturdy farmers had sprung up like one man, and drunk his health with acclamations. They had presented him with an old silver punch-bowl—rather an incongruous gift for an uncompromising temperance man—and it had put him into an awkward predicament. A happy thought had struck him, he remembered, and he had told them that he would use the bowl for salad—a statement which was regarded as an exquisite joke, and received with shouts of approving laughter. It was queer that this should all pass through his mind now, as he stood waiting until the rejoicing calmed down a little, and he was able to obtain a moment’s silence. He found himself almost as much at a loss for words as on that earlier occasion, but at last he managed to say—
“Gentlemen” (he felt strongly that this form of address sounded as though he were speaking to his former constituents rather than to his subjects, but it was difficult to know what other to use. “My people” would be a ridiculous affectation as yet, and “Men of Thracia” sounded theatrical). “Gentlemen, your trusted leader, M. Drakovics, has done me the honour of inviting me in your name to accept the crown of Thracia. It is only fair for me to tell you that I don’t feel at all equal to the task of governing; but I have thought over the matter, and I hope that I am doing the right thing in undertaking it. God helping me, my sole aim will be to do what I can for the good of Thracia and the peace of Europe. I feel sure that I may count upon the help and advice of M. Drakovics in the difficulties which are sure to meet us, and I can promise to stick to you if you will stick to me.”