The King's Mirror Part 52

"It is impossible, is it?" I asked, and I looked into her eyes as though I desired her love. Well, I did, that she might have peace.

She blushed, and suddenly, as it were by an uncontrollable immediate impulse, glanced round. Whose face did she seek? Was it not his who last had looked at her in that fas.h.i.+on? He was not in sight. Her gaze fell downward. Ah, that you had been a better diplomatist, Elsa. For though a man may know the truth, he loves sometimes one who will deny it to him pleasantly. He gains thereby a respite and an intermission, the convict's repose between his turns on the treadmill or the hour's flouting of hard life that good wine brings. But it was impossible to rear on stable foundations a Pleasure House of Pretence. With every honest revelation of her heart Elsa shattered it. I can not blame her. I myself was at my a.n.a.lytic undermining.

"You'll go on then?" I asked, with a laugh.

She laughed for answer. The question seemed to her to need no answer.

What, would she go back to Bartenstein--to insignificance, to dulness, and to tutelage? Surely not!

"But I'm not very like the grenadier," I said.

She understood me and flushed, relapsing into uneasiness. I saw that I had touched some chord in her, and I would willingly have had my words unsaid. Presently she turned to me, and forgetting the gazers round held out her hands to mine. Her eyes seemed dim.

"I'll try--I'll try to make you happy," she said.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I'll try--I'll try to make you happy."]

And she said well. Letting all think what they would, I rose to my feet and bowed low over the hand that I kissed. Then I gave her my arm, and walked with her through the lane that they made for us. Surely we pretended well, for somehow, from somewhere, a cheer arose, and they cheered us as we walked through. Elsa's face was in an instant bright again. She pressed my arm in a spasm of pleasure. We proceeded in triumph to where Princess Heinrich sat; away behind her in the foremost row of a group of men stood Wetter--Wetter leading the cheers, waving his handkerchief, grinning in charmingly diabolical fas.h.i.+on. The suitability of Princess Heinrich's reception of us I must leave to be imagined; it was among her triumphs.

I fell at once into the clutches of Cousin Elizabeth, my regard for whom was tempered by a preference for more restraint in the display of emotion.

"My dearest boy," she said, pulling me into a seat by her, "I saw you.

It makes me so happy."

A thing, without being exactly good in itself, may of course have incidental advantages.

"It was sure to happen. You were made for one another. Dear Elsa is young and shy, and--and she didn't quite understand." Cousin Elizabeth looked almost sly. "But now the weight is quite off my mind. Because Elsa doesn't change."

"Doesn't she?" I asked.

"No, she's constancy itself. Once she takes up a point of view, you know, or an impression of a person, nothing alters it. Dear me, we used to think her obstinate. Only everybody gave way to her. That was her father's fault. He never would have her thwarted. But she's turned out very well, hasn't she? So I can't blame him. I know your mother thought us rather lax."

"Ah, my mother was not lax."

"It only shows there's room for both ways, doesn't it? What was I saying?"

I knew what she had been saying, but not which part of it she desired to repeat. However she found it for herself in a moment.

"Oh, yes! No, she never changes. Just what she is to you now she'll be all her life. I never knew her to change. She just loves you or she doesn't, and there it rests. You may feel quite safe."

"How very satisfactory all this is, Cousin Elizabeth!"

"Satisfactory?" she exclaimed, with a momentary surprise at my epithet.

But her theory came to the rescue. "Oh, I know you always talk like that. Well, I don't expect you to talk like a lover to me. It's quite enough if you do it to Elsa. Yes, it is--satisfactory, isn't it?" The good creature laughed heartily and squeezed my hand. "She'll never change," she repeated once again in an ample, comfortable contentment.

"And you don't mind showing what you feel, do you?"

Cousin Elizabeth was chaffing me.

"On my word, I forgot how public we were," said I. "My feelings ran away with me."

"Oh, why should you be ashamed? They might laugh, but I'm sure they envied you."

It was strange enough, but it is very likely that they did. For my own part, I have learned not to envy people without knowing a good deal about them and their affairs.

"Because," pursued Cousin Elizabeth, "I have always in my heart hated merely arranged marriages. They're not right, you know, Augustin. They may be necessary, but they're not right."

"Very necessary, but quite wrong," I agreed.

"And at one time I was the least bit afraid--However I was a silly old woman. Do look at her talking to your mother. Oh, of course, you were looking at her already. You weren't listening to my chatter."

But I had listened to Cousin Elizabeth's chatter. She had told me something of interest. Elsa would never change; she took a view and a relation toward a person and maintained them. What she was to me now she would be always.

"My dear cousin, I have listened with keen interest to every word that you've said," I protested truthfully.

"That's your politeness. I know what lovers are," said Cousin Elizabeth.

I looked across to the Duke's pa.s.sive tired face. The thought crossed my mind that Cousin Elizabeth must have depended on observation rather than on experience for the impressions to which she referred. However she afforded me an opportunity for escape, which I embraced with alacrity.

As I pa.s.sed my mother, she beckoned to me. Elsa had left her, and she was alone for the moment. It seemed that she had a word to say to me, and on the subject concerning which I thought it likely enough that she would have something to say--the engagement of Coralie to sing at the gala performance.

"Was there not some unpleasant talk about this Madame Mansoni?" she asked.

"Well, there was talk," said I, smiling and allowing my eyes to rest on the figure of William Adolphus, visible in the distance. "It would have been better not to have her, perhaps. It can be altered, I suppose."

"Bederhof sanctioned it without referring to you or to me. It has become public now."

"Oh, I didn't know that."

"Yes; it's in the evening papers."

"Any--any remarks?"

"No, except that the Vorwarts calls it an extraordinarily suitable selection."

"The Vorwarts? Yes," said I thoughtfully. Wetter wrote for the Vorwarts.

"Perhaps then to cancel it would make more talk than to let it stand.

The whole story is very old."

Princess Heinrich permitted a smile to appear on her face as with a wave of her fan she relegated Coralie to a proper insignificance. She was smiling still as she added:

"There's another old acquaintance coming to a.s.sist at the wedding, Augustin. I telegraphed to ask her, and she has answered accepting the invitation in the warmest terms."

"Indeed! Who is that, pray?"

"The Baroness," said my mother.

I stared at her; then I cried with a laugh, "Krak? Not Krak?"

"Yes, Krak, as you naughty children used to call her."