The King's Mirror Part 4

But after my procession in the cathedral, when I was giving thanks for rescue from a death that had never been terrible and now seemed remote and impossible, I saw my countess. She was nearly opposite to me; her husband was not with her: he was on guard in the nave with his regiment.

I wanted to make some sign to her, but I had been told that everybody would be looking at me. When I was crowned, "everybody" had meant Krak, and I had feared no other eye. I was more self-conscious now. I was particularly alert that my mother should observe nothing. But the Countess and I exchanged a glance; she nodded cautiously; almost immediately afterward I saw her wipe her eyes. I should have liked to talk to her, tell her that I liked being a king rather better, and give her the glad tidings that the dominion of Krak had ended; but I got no chance of doing anything of the sort, being carried away without coming nearer to her.

Victoria was in very low spirits that evening. It had suddenly come upon her that she was to be left to endure Krak all alone. Victoria and I were not somehow as closely knit together as we had been; she was now thirteen, growing a tall girl, and I was but a little boy. Yet our relations were not, I imagine, quite what they would have been between brother and sister of such relative ages in an ordinary case. The authority which elder sisters may be seen so readily to ape and a.s.sume was never claimed by Victoria; my mother would not have endured such presumption for a moment. I think Victoria regarded me as a singularly ignorant person, who yet, by fortune's freak, was invested with a strange importance and the prospect at least of great and indefinite power. She therefore took a good deal of pains to make me understand her point of view, and to convert me to her opinions. Her present argument was that she also ought to be relieved from Krak.

"Krak was mother's governess till mother was eighteen," I reminded her.

"Awful!" groaned poor Victoria.

"In fact, mother's never got rid of Krak at all."

"Oh, that's different. I shouldn't in the least mind keeping Krak as my daughter's governess," said Victoria. "That would be rather fun."

"It would be very cruel, considering what Krak does," I objected.

Dim hintings of the grown-up state were in Victoria; she looked a little doubtful.

"It wouldn't matter when she was quite young," she concluded. "But I'm nearly fourteen. Augustin, will you ask mother to send Krak away when I'm fifteen?"

"No," said I. I had a wholesome dread of straining the prerogative.

"Then when I'm sixteen?"

"I don't see what I've got to do with it," said I restlessly.

Victoria became huffy.

"You're king, and you could do it if you liked," she said. "If I was king, I should like to do things for people, for my sister anyhow." She pouted in much vexation.

"Well, perhaps I'll try some day," said I reluctantly.

"Oh, you dear boy!" cried Victoria, and she immediately gave me three kisses.

I was certainly on my way to learn the secret of popularity. In my experience Victoria's conception of the kingly office is a very common one, and Victoria's conduct in view of a refusal to forward her views, and of consent, extremely typical. For Victoria took no account of my labours, or of the probable trouble I should undergo, or of the snub I should incur. She called me a dear boy, gave me three kisses, and went off to bed in much better spirits. And all the while my own secret opinion was that Krak was rather good for Victoria. It has generally been my secret opinion that people had no business to receive the things which they have asked me to give to or procure for them. When the merits are good the King's help is unnecessary.

CHAPTER IV.

TWO OF MY MAKERS.

Physically my parents' child, with my father's tall stature and my mother's clean-cut features, intellectually I was more son to Hammerfeldt than to any one else. From the day when my brain began to develop, his was the preponderating influence. I had a governor, a good soldier, General von Vohrenlorf; I had masters; I had one tutor, of whom more presently (he for a time bade fair to dispute the Prince's supremacy); but above them all, moulding me and controlling them, was this remarkable old man. At this time he was seventy years old; he had been a soldier till thirty, since then a diplomatist and politician. I do not think in all things as Hammerfeldt thought; time moves, and each man's mind has its own cast; but I will make no claim to originality at the cost of depreciating what I learned from him. He was a solitary man; once he had taken a wife; she left him after two years; he used to talk about her as though she had died at the date when she ran away, without bitterness, with an indulgent kindness, with a full recognition of her many merits. Those who did not know the story little supposed that the lady lived still in Paris. His conduct in this matter was highly characteristic. He regarded pa.s.sions and emotions as things altogether outside and independent of the rational man. Their power could not be denied in their own sphere and season; he admitted that they must be felt--raw feeling was their province; he denied that they should affect thought or dominate action. In others they were his opportunity, in himself a luxury that had never been dangerous, or an ailment that was troublesome but never fatal. He was hard on a blunder; as a necessary presupposition to effective negotiation or business he recognised a binding code of honour; he has frequently told me he did not understand the theological conception of sin. He had eaten of our salt and was our servant; thus he would readily have died for us; but he prayed pardon if we asked him to believe in us. "Conduct," he said once, "is the outcome of selfishness limited by self-conceit." It was his way so to put things as to strip them of friendly, decent covering; had he said self-interest limited by self-respect, the axiom would have been more accepted and less quoted. A superficial person used to exclaim to me, "And yet he is so kind!" A man without ideals finds kindness the easiest thing in the world. In truth he was kind, and in a confidential sort of way that seemed to chuckle and wink, saying, "We're rogues together; then I must lend you a hand." But he could be ruthless also, displaying a curious aloofness from his fellow-men and an unconsciousness of any suffering he might inflict that left mere cruelty far behind. If I were making an automaton king, I would model my machine on the lines of Hammerfeldt. He had no belief in a future life, but would sometimes trifle whimsically with the theory of a transmigration of souls; he traced all beliefs in immortality to the longing of those who were unfortunate here (and who did not think himself so?) for a recompense (a revenge he called it) hereafter, and declared transmigration to be at once the most ingenious and the most picturesque embodiment of this yearning. He played billiards extremely well, and excused his skill on the ground that he was compelled to pa.s.s the time while foreign diplomatists and his own colleagues were making up their mind. I do not think that he ever hesitated as to what he had best do. He was of an extremely placid and happy temper. As may be antic.i.p.ated from what I have said, he regarded no man as utterly lost unless he were completely under the influence of a woman.

Yet it was by Hammerfeldt's will that Geoffrey Owen became my daily companion and familiar friend. Vohrenlorf visited me once or twice a week, and exercised a perfunctory superintendence. I had, of course, many masters who came and went at appointed hours. Owen lived with me both at Forstadt and at Artenberg. At this time he was twenty-five; he excelled my own adult stature, and walked with the free grace of a well-bred English gentleman. His dark hair grew thick, rising from his forehead in a wave; his face was long and thin, and a slight mustache veiled a humorous tender mouth. There was about the man a pervading sympathy; the desire to be friends was the first characteristic of his manner; he was talkative, eager, enthusiastic. If a man were good it seemed to Owen but natural; if he were a rogue my tutor would set it down to anything in the world save his own fault. Everybody could be mended if everybody else would try. Thus he brought with him into our conservative military court and society the latest breath of generous hope and human aspiration that had blown over Oxford. Surely this was a strange choice of Hammerfeldt's! Was it made in ignorance of the man, or with some idea that my mind should be opened to every variety of thought, or in a careless confidence that his own influence was beyond shaking, and that Owen's spirit would beat hopelessly against the cage and never reach mine in its prison of tradition?

A boy that would not have wors.h.i.+pped such a man as Geoffrey Owen must have wanted heart and fire. I watched him first to see if he could ride; he rode well. When he came he could not fence; in six months he was a good hand with the foils; physical fatigue seemed as unknown to him as mental inertia. There was no strain and no cant about him; he smoked hard, drank well after exertion, with pleasure always. He delighted to talk to my mother, chaffing her Styrian ideas with a graceful deference that made her smile. Victoria adored him openly, and Krak did not understand why he was not odious. Thus he conquered the Court, and I was the first of his slaves. It would be tedious to anybody except myself to trace the gradual progress of our four years' intimacy and friends.h.i.+p, of my four years' training and enlightenment. Shall I summarize it and say that Owen taught me that there were folks outside palaces, and that the greatness of a station, even as of a man, stood not in the mult.i.tude of the things that it possessed? The summary is cold and colourless; it smacks of duty, of obligations unwillingly remembered, of selfish pleasures reluctantly foregone. As I became old enough to do more than listen entranced to his stories, it seemed to me that to be such a man as he was, and not knowing that he himself was admired, could be no duty, but only a happy dream. There has been in my family, here and there, a vein of fancy, or of mysticism turning sometimes to religious fervour, again sometimes to soldierly enthusiasm and a knight-errantry in arms, the ruin and despair of cool statesmans.h.i.+p. On this element Owen's teaching laid hold and bent it to a more modern shape. I would not be a monk or a Bayard, but would serve humanity, holding my throne a naked trust, whence all but I might reap benefit, whereon I must sit burdened with the sorrows of all; and thus to be burdened was my joy.

With some boys no example could have made such ideas acceptable, or won anything but scornful wonder for them; in me they struck answering chords, and as I rambled in the woods at Artenberg already in my mind I was the perfect king.

Where would such a mood have led? Where would it have ended? What at the last would have been my state and fame?

On my fifteenth birthday Prince von Hammerfeldt, now in his seventy-fifth year, came from Forstadt to Artenberg to offer me congratulations. Though a boy may have such thoughts as I have tried to describe, for the most part he would be flogged to death sooner than utter them; to the Prince above all men an instinct bade me be silent.

But Owen rose steadily to the old man's skilful fly; he did not lecture the minister nor preach to him, but answered his questions simply and from the heart, without show and without disguise. Old Hammerfeldt's face grew into a network of amused and tolerant wrinkles.

"My dear Mr. Owen," said he, "I heard all this forty--fifty--years ago.

Is it not that Jean Jacques has crossed the Channel, turning more sickly on the way?"

Owen smiled. Mine was the face that grew red in resentment, mine the tongue that burned to answer him.

"I know what you mean, sir," laughed Owen. "Still doesn't the world go forward?"

"I see no signs of it," replied Hammerfeldt with a pinch of snuff, "unless it be progress to teach rogues who aren't worth a snap to prate of their worth. Well, it is pretty enough in you to think as you think.

What says the King to it?" He turned to me with a courteous smile, but with an unceremoniously intent gaze in his eyes.

I had no answer ready; I was still excited.

"I have tried to interest the King in these lines of thought," said Owen.

"Ah, yes, very proper," a.s.sented Hammerfeldt, his eyes still set on my face. "We must have more talk about the matter. Princess Heinrich awaits me now."

Owen and I were left together. He was smiling, but rather sadly; yet he laughed outright when I, carried beyond boyish shame by my indignation, broke into a tirade and threw back at him something of what he had taught me. Suddenly he interrupted me.

"Let's go for a row on the river and have one pleasant afternoon," he said, laying his hand on my shoulder. "The Prince does not want us any more to-day."

The afternoon dwells in my memory. In my belief Owen's quick mind had read something of the Prince's purpose; for he was more demonstrative of affection than was his wont. He seemed to eye me with a pitiful love that puzzled me; and he began to talk (this also was rare with him) of my special position, how I must be apart from other men, and to speculate in seeming idleness on what a place such as mine would be to him and make of him. All this came between our spurts of rowing or among our talk of sport or of flowers as we lay at rest under the bank.

"If there were two kings here, as there were in Sparta!" I cried longingly.

"There were ephors, too," he reminded me, and we laughed. Hammerfeldt was our ephor.

There was a banquet that night. I sat at the head of the table, with my mother opposite and Hammerfeldt at her right hand. The Prince gave my health after dinner, and pa.s.sed on to a warm and eloquent eulogy on those who had trained me. In the course of it he dwelt pointedly on the obligation under which Geoffrey Owen had laid me, and of the debt all the nation owed to one who had inspired its king with a liberal culture and a zeal for humanity. I could have clapped my hands in delight. I looked at Owen, who sat far down the table. His gaze was on Hammerfeldt, and his lips were parted in a smile. I did not understand his smile, but it persisted all through the Prince's graceful testimony to his services. It was not like him to smile with that touch of satire when he was praised. But I saw him only for an instant before I went to bed, and others were with us, so that I could ask no explanation.

The next morning I rose early, and in glee, for I was to go hunting.

Owen did not accompany me; he was, I understood, to confer with Hammerfeldt. My jovial governor Vohrenlorf had charge of me. A merry day we had, and good sport; it was late when we came home, and my anxious mother awaited me in the hall with dry slippers. She had a meal spread for me, and herself came to share it. Never had I seen her so tender or so gentle. I had a splendid hunger, and fell to, babbling of my skill with the gun between hearty mouthfuls.

"I wish Owen had been there," I said.

My mother nodded, but made no answer.

"Is the Prince gone?" I asked.

"No, he is here still. He stayed in case you should want to see him, Augustin."

"I don't want him," said I with a laugh, as I pushed my chair back. "But I was glad he talked like that about Owen last night. I think I'll go and see if Owen's in his room." I rose and started toward the door.

"Augustin, Mr. Owen is not in his room," said my mother in a strangely timid voice.

I turned with a start, for I was sensitive to every change of tone in her voice.