A WOMAN OF HER WORD.
The ball given by the municipality of Bellaviste at the Hôtel de
Ville in honour of their new King was the grandest entertainment ever
seen in the city. Every one who had the slightest claim to receive an
invitation was present, with the exception of the agents representing
the various Powers, and the staffs of their respective consulates, who
held themselves severely aloof from a festivity of which the _raison
d’être_ was the social inauguration of a sovereignty not recognised
by the arbiters of European opinion. The display of Thracian costumes
and Parisian toilettes was dazzling, but the observed of all observers
were Madame O’Malachy and her daughter, who were by no means among the
smartest people present. Mr Hicks, the American newspaper
correspondent, who had attended so many society functions that he knew
as much about female dress as the cleverest lady paragraphist that
ever reported an aristocratic wedding, was inclined to be dissatisfied
with Nadia’s appearance. There was a kind of affectation of humility,
he thought, a too evident desire to emphasise the distance between
Caerleon and herself, in her severely plain dress of black net, cut
barely low enough to pass muster on such an occasion, and in the
absence of any relief, such as might have been afforded by flowers or
ornaments, that marked it. It was true that her beautiful head and
shoulders appeared to derive additional grace from the simplicity of
their surroundings, but there was something unsuitable about the
general effect. Did the beggar-maid don her oldest rags when Cophetua
came to woo her? Mr Hicks thought not. And again, why did Miss
O’Malachy look so like a victim led to the sacrifice as she followed
her mother into the room, and so anxious and unhappy when her eye
rested on the King? Mere excitement would not account for her troubled
expression, and she was sure enough of her prize not to be fearful as
to the outcome of the ordeal of the evening. Could it be possible that
she did not reciprocate the King’s affection? Was it--could it be--Mr
Hicks ground his teeth as he intercepted a disapproving glance
levelled at Nadia by Cyril, and felt for one agonised moment that he
had missed the most thrilling point of his romance--was there a
rivalry between the brothers?
“I call it real mean of the old lady never to have given me a hint,”
he groaned, thinking of the extra columns of copy such an intimation
would have supplied, but presently he grew calm again. “There’s
nothing of the sort, or those two fellows couldn’t carry on as they
are doing. A woman can be as sweet as possible to another when she
hates her like poison; but two men can’t be easy together when they
have quarrelled over a girl.”
Reassured to find that he had not let slip an opportunity of gaining
information, he set himself once more to watch the glittering scene
and observed that Caerleon invited Nadia to dance with him as soon as
he had done his duty to the wives of the city fathers. He saw Madame
O’Malachy’s thrill of anxious expectation as the King approached her,
and divined instantly that the offer of such an honour was in itself
equivalent to a proposal of marriage. But Nadia declined it, although
her watchful mother softened the refusal by adding that she did not
dance.
“He shouldn’t have come to ask her himself,” soliloquised Mr Hicks,
who knew a good deal more about the etiquette proper for royalty than
did most of the exalted personages at whose Courts he sojourned.
“Ought to have sent his brother, or his equerry--if he has one. And
she had no business to refuse, anyway. A girl that don’t dance ought
not to go to Court balls.”
But although he turned away with a feeling of lordly contempt for
people who could manage their affairs so badly, Mr Hicks took care not
to lose sight of Nadia during the evening. More than half the
programme had been gone through when he saw Cyril sauntering up to
her. He also saw Nadia shiver slightly, then sit very erect, and he
guessed that the fateful moment had come.
“Will you sit out this dance with me?” asked Cyril, adjusting one of
his sleeve-links as he spoke. The American, watching him, thought the
action a piece of aristocratic rudeness, but Cyril was merely doing
his best not to look towards Madame O’Malachy. If she should gain from
his face an inkling of his compact with her daughter, she was quite
capable, he was sure, of making a scene in public, supposing that she
judged it to be to her interest to do so, and he felt much relieved
when he had succeeded in avoiding her eye, and had left her engrossed
in conversation with Mr Hicks. With Nadia on his arm, he led the way
to one of the smaller balconies, which were curtained off from the
corridors, and decorated with plants and palms, and here he found her
a seat.
“Caerleon may not be here just yet,” he said. “I saw him dancing with
Madame Sertchaieff just now. He has to be civil to her, you know, as
she is the War Minister’s wife.” He went on talking lightly in his
ordinary tones, and did not testify any resentment when Nadia
vouchsafed no answer to his cheerful commonplaces, but sat still, her
rigid hands outstretched before her and locked in one another, until
her face changed suddenly at the sound of a footstep without.
“I was very lucky in getting off so soon,” said a voice, and Caerleon
drew back the curtain and stood before them, in all the magnificence
of the full-dress uniform of the Carlino Regiment. “I caught my spur
in Madame Sertchaieff’s dress,” he went on, “and tore it so badly that
she had to go and get it sewn up. Now, Cyril, old man, if you will add
to your kindness by making yourself scarce for a little while, I shall
be much obliged.”
Resisting the temptation to give Nadia a last glance of warning, Cyril
departed obediently, and mounted guard in the corridor outside with an
air of philosophical calmness, which he was very far from feeling. If
she should fail him now! “It would make Thracia too hot to hold me,”
he mused, “for she’s bound to tell Caerleon the whole story at once,”
and he shifted his position impatiently as he pictured the look of
pain and aversion which the revelation would bring into Caerleon’s
honest eyes. He would have been still more anxious as to the results
of his diplomacy if he could have heard the words in which, without
wasting time on preliminaries, his brother went straight to the matter
in hand.
“I am going to ask you to make a great sacrifice for me, Nadia. Those
silly women out there may think that it’s something very grand to be
Queen of Thracia, but you know better, and so do I. It means
isolation, and worry, and being opposed and thwarted in what you have
set your heart on, and it is very likely to mean danger, perhaps
death. There are not many women I could ask to share these things with
me; but I think that you care for me enough to be willing to help me
through it all.”
He had struck the right chord at once, and the eloquence of Nadia’s
eyes encouraged him to go on.
“I know,” he said, taking her hands in his, “that it doesn’t sound the
proper thing for me to throw it all on you, and ask you to take me as
a charity, but it seems to appeal to you more strongly if it is put in
that light. Doesn’t it signify to you at all that I care for you,
Nadia? that I have loved you since the very first day I saw you? I
don’t believe you realise in the least what you are to me. I wish I
could make you understand how I love you. Look at me--look into my
eyes, and perhaps you will see.”
But Nadia shivered, and drew her hands out of his clasp. The vehemence
of his tone frightened her, and she dared not meet his eye. She could
not say a word, for the lump which had suddenly risen in her throat
seemed to choke her. He noticed her agitation, and tried to speak more
calmly.
“I am sure you can’t possibly know,” he said, “what a revelation it is
to a man who has become accustomed to look at things in an ordinary
everyday way, to be brought into close contact with a woman whose sole
idea is to do right. One’s courage fails sometimes, when one is alone
against the world, and I want you to help me to do what ought to be
done for the kingdom.”
“I can’t marry you,” gasped Nadia, looking up at him with anguished
eyes; “it would not be right.”
“Not right! Why not?” he asked in astonishment.
“On account of so many things. My parents--Louis----”
“I am sure you need not trouble yourself about them,” said Caerleon,
with an involuntary smile at the thought of the ease with which the
O’Malachy family would almost certainly be managed. “Louis is provided
for in the army, and your father and mother will give up their
wandering life, and settle down quietly here.”
“But it is myself!” cried Nadia, desperately. “I am not what you want
in a wife, not good enough, not--not important enough. I should do
nothing but bring trouble upon you. I am afraid to marry you. I dare
not do it. I will not.”
“I think you will, when you understand how much I want you,” said
Caerleon, with all the spirit of his fighting forefathers roused by
her opposition. “Why, I am offering you work, and you know you have
often told me that it is wrong to refuse work when it comes in one’s
way. You cannot tell me that you mean to cast me off because you are
afraid of the silly remarks people will make?”
“Oh, why will you make me say it?” she cried, driven to bay by his
tone. “I will not marry you, then, because you ought to marry a
princess--some one who has been brought up to be a queen, and whose
family will be a support to you in Europe. That is what you must do.”
“Nadia!” he said in astonishment, “you tell me to marry a stranger,
when I love you? You can’t think that right?”
“I know,” she said, despairingly. “It all seems to me horribly,
fearfully wrong, but it must be right, because it is so hard to do.”
“You are in love with martyrdom,” he said, with unwonted sternness;
“but you have no right to try to sacrifice me as well as yourself.”
“Very well, say that I am in love with martyrdom, then,” she answered,
drearily. “Persuade yourself that I love it better than I do you.”
“I have no doubt you do,” returned Caerleon; “but I have the
misfortune to love you better than an utterly unnecessary sacrifice.”
“And I,” she said, “love you so much that for your sake I can separate
myself from you for ever.”
“Is that your idea of love?” he asked bitterly, but with something of
dismay in his voice.
“It is,” she answered.
“But, Nadia, this is monstrous!” he cried. “You tell me that you love
me, and yet you order me to marry some one else. You must know that
such a thing can’t be right. Sit down here quietly, and let us talk
the matter out. I think you will see that you are cruelly unfair.”
“I daresay I should,” said Nadia, refusing to take the seat to which
he tried to draw her. “I have not a doubt that you could convince
me--make me yield, at any rate, since my own heart is on your side.
But you will not. I know that you are stronger than I am, and you will
not take an ignoble advantage of your strength to make me do what I
know is wrong. Think,” as he gazed at her in silence, “how we should
feel, if I married you, and our marriage plunged Thracia into
misfortunes--if you were forced to abdicate.”
“I should do it with a good conscience, and go home happily with you,”
returned Caerleon, with unexpected promptness. “If that’s all, I’ll
abdicate now. What do I care for the kingdom? There has been nothing
but worry and rumours of approaching trouble since I accepted it, and
if it’s to come between you and me, I’ll have nothing more to do with
it.”
“Oh no, no,” entreated Nadia, clinging to his arm as he turned towards
the doorway. “Don’t talk like that! Let me believe in you still. You
accepted the kingdom because it was right, for the sake of the people,
and I know you will govern wisely. Don’t let me be disappointed in
you. If I can give you up because it is right, you can give me up. I
can bear anything if I am sure that I can trust you to go on as you
have begun.”
“What can I do?” broke out Caerleon in his despair. “You do your best
to break my heart, and then you expect me not even to struggle. Nadia,
have you no pity? Give me some hope. Say that after a year--two
years--any length of time--I may speak to you again. What is a man to
do when you bring up his own sense of honour against him?”
“He must submit,” said Nadia. Caerleon stood looking at her in
silence, his heart protesting wildly against the barriers she had
raised between them. It was on his lips to say, “You have told me you
love me, and that’s enough. Nothing shall part us.” He felt sure that
his love must prevail over her scruples; she had said so herself. But
she had appealed to his chivalry; how could he disappoint her? The
struggle was a cruel one, and he turned away from her without a word.
She saw her advantage, and went on--
“I know you will let me be proud of you still. You won’t know where I
am, but I shall always watch what you are doing, and I shall feel glad
to think that perhaps I have helped you--a little. And then some day
you will meet some one whom it is right for you to marry, and you will
remember that I wished it----”
“Are you trying to drive me mad, Nadia?” he cried, turning upon her
fiercely. “If you told me you did not care for me, I could bear it
better. But it makes one feel such a fool, when you have said you love
me, to stand back and let you go. How can you expect it of me?”
“It is right,” she answered, slowly.
“Let me kiss you once, only once,” he entreated.
“Oh no, no, no!” she almost shrieked, feeling that her resolution must
give way at the touch of his lips. “Keep your kisses for your bride!”
“I don’t think I have deserved that,” he said, bitterly. “Understand
once for all, Nadia, that you need not lay the flattering unction to
your soul that I shall comfort myself as you please yourself by
imagining I shall do. I can’t marry you against your will, but I won’t
marry any other woman. Until I met you I thought that I should never
marry, and now that you won’t have me I know it. It is you or no one,
and you will cheerfully sacrifice me to a fancied scruple----”
“You see that you are well rid of me,” said Nadia.
“Nonsense!” cried Caerleon. “I love you more than ever. I can’t do
without you. Just think of the life to which you are condemning me. To
be alone always, never to be able to get away from the glare and rush
of public life, never to have any one to cheer me on, never to have a
home. I thought you would have helped me. I thought you would be there
to advise me when I could not see my way clearly. You always seem to
be sure of the right path at once. Do you really think that marrying
the Emperor of Scythia’s daughter--if I had the faintest intention of
taking the advice you have been giving me to-night--would ever make up
for that? I don’t mean to marry to strengthen my position in Europe. I
want a wife who will look at things without fear or favour, and help
me to do what is right. Isn’t this a mission for you? Tell me, my
dearest, is there no chance for me?”
“None,” she answered, with difficulty, the fervency of his pleading
almost destroying her power of speech. “Please, please, say no more.
You cannot tell how my heart is longing to say Yes; but I dare not
yield. Don’t you see that all the course of our lives has been leading
up to this--to the great choice between right and wrong? It is right
now to think of the kingdom, and not of ourselves, and so I can be
strong to refuse you for your own sake. It is hard for you, I know,
but I think it is harder for me. You can stand alone, but I--oh! I
could not do it if I was not sure it was right. Never, never think
that I did not love you. Please let me go.” He loosed her hands, and
she drew aside the curtain and passed out, looking back at him as he
stood watching her in despairing silence, then tapped Cyril on the
shoulder with her fan. “Will you kindly take me back to my mother,
Lord Cyril? She was intending to leave early.”
Mr Hicks, when in after days he related his impressions of the
incidents of that evening, whether in conversation or in the columns
of the ‘Empire City Crier,’ was wont to remark, with much originality
and force, that coming events cast their shadows before them, and that
there is no accounting for the sympathetic movements of certain finely
constituted minds. This was his way of leading up to the striking fact
that while he and Madame O’Malachy were in the midst of a pleasant
chat, in which the reputations of various Thracian notabilities
suffered rather severely, the lady broke off suddenly in the course of
a sentence and sighed deeply. In response to his anxious inquiries,
she assured him that she was not ill, but that she felt a presentiment
of coming misfortune,--“and at such a time as this,” she added, “you,
monsieur, as a friend of the family, will be at no loss to understand
the subject of my anxiety. You will pardon a mother’s weakness, but it
is hard to see two young lives wrecked by an obstinate pride. You have
watched with interest the course of the attachment--the royal idyl, as
I might call it--between the King and my daughter, and I know you will
sympathise with me in my fear lest Nadia, in her sensitive delicacy,
should have refused her lover through fear of being supposed to covet
his throne.”
“And you’ll scarcely believe me,” Mr Hicks was accustomed to continue,
ignorant that by means of a mirror behind him Madame O’Malachy had
noticed Nadia approaching her from the other end of the room, and
discerned in an instant that her companion was not Caerleon, “but the
words were not out of her mouth when I saw Lord Cyril in the distance,
with Miss O’Malachy on his arm as white as a sheet, and I knew her
mother was right at once. No girl that had just accepted a king ever
went about with a face like that.”
“Oh, Mr Hicks, do tell!” his enraptured audience would exclaim; and Mr
Hicks would go on to detail how Madame O’Malachy had turned as white
as her daughter on seeing her face, but had said calmly that the heat
of the room was too much for Miss Nadia, and they must go home; and
how she had turned to him with a sorrowful look that went to his
heart, and whispered, “My kind friend, do this for us. If any one
speaks to you of the matter we were discussing, let it be known that
my daughter has refused his Majesty for the reason I feared.”
In fulfilling this parting request Mr Hicks, as a gallant American,
and therefore a sworn servant of the fair sex, had spent the remainder
of the evening, only pausing to glance at the King as he passed
through the hall about half an hour later with set face and firmly
closed lips on his way back to the palace, on the plea of illness. To
the observer who had noted duly at the beginning of the entertainment
that “his Majesty looked extremely well, and conversed affably with
the different persons presented to him,” the change spoke volumes; but
other people were not quite so ready to accept Madame O’Malachy’s
explanation as he was. More than one of the chaperons with whom he
touched on the subject gave it as her opinion that the King had
informed Miss O’Malachy that he could not, consistently with his duty
to the nation, marry her; and that a harrowing scene had ensued. It
was extraordinary how widely it was known in the ballroom that
something of the kind had occurred, and Mr Hicks found his duty of
impressing Madame O’Malachy’s view of the case on his friends to be no
sinecure. But he persevered, for he sympathised deeply with her in her
disappointment, and he was also sorry for Nadia, who, as he rightly
supposed, would have a good deal to endure from her mother on the way
home. “Those outspoken, affectionate women can do an astonishing
amount of reproaching when they are once worked up,” he said to
himself; but he never dreamed of the storm of sarcasm and cruel
invective under which Nadia was writhing at the moment.
The next day found Bellaviste society divided into two parties, one of
which accepted Madame O’Malachy’s account of the events of the evening
before, and believed that an insane pride had driven Nadia to refuse
the King; while the other, led by Madame Sertchaieff, and relying on
the authority of M. Drakovics, held that his Majesty had, more or less
directly, declined to marry her. Madame Sertchaieff was the great lady
of Bellaviste. As the wife of the Minister for War (the brother of the
Ivan Sertchaieff who had been the last Premier of the late king), she
took the lead in the society of the city, and derived no small honour
from the fact that her husband was the only member of the Ministry
whom M. Drakovics treated on anything approaching a footing of
equality. With every desire to make the Thracian army invincible, the
Premier was handicapped by an absolute ignorance of military affairs,
and since General Sertchaieff had turned his back on his brother and
his party to adopt the cause of the revolution, he left all the actual
work of the bureau in his hands, and also consulted him frequently on
the general policy of the Government. Consequently, when Madame
Sertchaieff (it is needless to say that she had not been among the
ladies whose eagerness to see Nadia had so deeply scandalised the
Premier) averred that she had guessed, from the excitement visible in
the King’s manner when he danced with her, that he was screwing up his
courage to the point of formally breaking off his relations with Miss
O’Malachy, and further hinted that the step had been taken on the
advice and with the full approval of M. Drakovics, she carried many of
her hearers with her. Curiosity was rife as to what would be the next
step on either side; but on the evening after the ball the public
excitement was cruelly balked by the news that the O’Malachy family,
with the exception of Louis, had left the city. They were gone because
it could not but be disagreeable to Miss O’Malachy to run the risk of
meeting her rejected lover at every turn, said Mr Hicks and his party;
because they had received a secret mandate from the police advising
them to depart, said Madame Sertchaieff and her friends; because the
O’Malachy and his wife, perceiving that there was no opening in
Thracia for their peculiar talents, had determined to return to the
service of their Scythian employers, thought Cyril.
Had Cyril possessed a conscience in good working order, it might have
given him a certain amount of trouble at this time; but systematic
neglect and snubbing had reduced his to a condition in which, while it
prevented his full enjoyment of his achievements, it never interfered
with him during their performance, nor caused him to wish that they
had not succeeded. Like the British matron in “Locksley Hall,” he had
amassed “a little hoard of maxims,” or perhaps it would be more
correct to say impressions, during his social career, and these he
employed as balm whenever his conscience gave him a feeble prick. On
the subject of love and marriage these impressions were particularly
vivid. Every man, Cyril considered, was bound to fall in love a
greater or less number of times, and the malady was like the measles,
in that some took it slightly and others severely. Marriage was one of
the things which were better managed in France. Even as it was, every
sensible man with a name and a possible career married with a keen eye
to present and future advantage, but the alliance ought to be arranged
for him as soon as he entered public life, in order to avoid wasting
time in the unprofitable experiments mentioned above. Marrying for
love was a folly which only the most foolhardy of men would commit,
for when the love was gone--and in Cyril’s scheme of life it was bound
to go very soon--where were you? Circumstances had forced him hitherto
to acknowledge a possible exception in the case of his brother. It was
eminently desirable that Caerleon should marry; but it was equally
evident that he would not marry any one who did not captivate his
fancy, and when Nadia appeared on the scene Cyril saw no invincible
objection to his pleasing himself. His tastes were simple, and his
income, in ordinary years, quite sufficient for his moderate wants, so
that money was not a necessity; and if Nadia was not likely to achieve
a success in society, Caerleon, on his side, was too much of a faddist
ever to get on in Parliament, and thus it might be the most suitable
thing for them to settle down at Llandiarmid and elevate the peasantry
and lead the county. In this roseate view, as Cyril now ruefully
perceived, his wonted foresight had been badly at fault, for he ought
to have remembered the shadowy crown, the bestowal of which had since
changed everything. Nadia O’Malachy as Queen of Thracia was simply
_impossible_, and Caerleon ought to have seen this for himself.
“Why, if I had been in his place,” thought Cyril, forgetting that
their views upon the subject were diametrically opposed, “I would have
settled the matter off my own bat, and not thrown it all on the girl.”
It was in this view that, after seeing Madame O’Malachy and her
daughter to their carriage on the fateful evening, he had returned to
his brother, and found him still standing as Nadia had left him.
“Anything up, old man?” he inquired, sympathetically.
“She won’t have me,” responded Caerleon with a kind of dull despair.
“I thought so.” Cyril was careful not to assume a tone of superiority,
which his brother might have resented under the circumstances. “Well,
one doesn’t object to a spice of pride in a girl, but this is rather
too much. I’m awfully----”
“It was not what you think,” Caerleon interrupted quickly. “She
refused me because she thought it best--for the kingdom.”
“If only Drakovics knew how completely she agreed with him!” murmured
Cyril. “But really, you know, Caerleon, such virtue is a little too
bright and good for daily life. It’s convenient for the rest of us
that there are people like that, though they might be rather
overpowering to live with, and all we can do is to profit at their
expense.”
“If you came here to rot me about her----” began Caerleon, angrily.
“I came to fetch you back to the ballroom. People are asking what has
become of you.”
“Let them ask. You don’t imagine that I am going to dance again
to-night?”
“I suppose you don’t mean to stay here. You had better get home. You
look seedy enough for anything. I’ll end up the business for you.”
The offer was thankfully accepted, and it was late when Cyril returned
to the palace; but he saw by the lights in Caerleon’s rooms that he
was still awake, although a knock at the door only produced a mandate
from his brother to “go to bed, and let him alone.” But Cyril did not
sleep that night as soundly as a conscienceless man ought to do, and
whenever he awoke he heard Caerleon tramping backwards and forwards
through his series of rooms.