THE CAST OF THE DIE
Upon the return to Dympsfield House, three telegrams in cypher were
waiting for the King. Two secretaries, who with divers other
unofficial members of his suite were staying at the Coach and Horses,
were in possession of the library, which had been placed at the royal
disposal. At dinner that evening we were informed that the Teutonic
display of red fire had provoked a grave internal crisis in Illyria.
The National Bank was about to suspend payment; Consolidated Stock was
at fifty-nine; and his Majesty must leave these shores in the course of
Saturday.
I could not repress a sigh of relief, although, to be sure, this was no
more than the evening of Wednesday.
"Old Vesuvius is beginning to rumble again," said the King, with a
laugh that sounded rather sinister, "but he cannot make us believe in
him. How say you, my child?"
He looked across the table at the Princess, who was as pale as death.
Here was the indication of the final and supreme crisis for her and for
her husband, and the hearts of those to whom she had come to mean much
were torn with pity. Elemental, uncontrollable forces had her in their
toils.
Fitz, too, had all our pity. The strain of true grandeur at the heart
of the man, which all that was superficial could not efface, had
asserted itself in this season of anguish. A lesser nature might have
taken steps to relieve his wife of the torment of his presence. But in
the watches of the night he had referred the question, and now, come
what must, he would meet his fate.
There was reason to believe that he had already thrown his weight in
the scale on the side of Ferdinand. He had stopped short of
self-immolation, it was true; he had placed another interpretation on
the Voice; but it seemed to me, his friend, that his whole bearing was
a piece of altruistic heroism which could have had few parallels.
"Ferdinand is right," he said as we kept vigil in my quarters. "The
interests of a great people are of more account than a chap like me. I
know it, and Sonia knows it too."
The words were torn from him. It was curious how this contained and
self-reliant spirit yearned for the sanction that it was in the power
of a sympathetic understanding to bestow. If he dealt himself a mortal
wound he must have a friend at his side. If he had superhuman
strength, at least he had human weakness. Men of valour are proud as a
rule. Fitz in the hour of his passion had a humility, a craving for
the countenance of his fellows that I could only do my best to render
in a humble way. The walk of mediocrity saves us from many things, but
I suppose there are seasons in the lives of some who wear its badge
when we would willingly forgo its comfortable consciousness of immunity
for some diviner gift.
It was as though my unhappy friend was bleeding, perhaps to death, and
I knew not how to stanch his wound.
Neither of us sought our beds that night, but sat and smoked hour after
hour, in silence for the most part, beside a dead fire. He wished me
to be near him, almost as a dumb animal yearns for those who show a
sympathetic understanding of its pain, even if they are powerless to
make it less.
As thus we sat together my mind envisaged the chequered career of my
companion in all its phases. I recalled him in his first pair of
trousers at his private school; I recalled him as my fag in that larger
cosmogony in which afterwards we dwelt together. As his senior, in
those days I had unconsciously regarded him as less than myself. But
this night, as I sat with him, consumed with pity for the tragic wreck
of his fortunes, I realised that he was one whose life was passed on a
higher, more significant plane than mine could ever occupy.
It was good to feel that I had nothing with which to reproach myself in
regard to my attitude towards him in those distant days. His fits of
depression, his outbursts of devilry, his dislike of games, the streak
of fatalism that was in him, his impatience of all authority, had
exposed him to many hardships. But I was glad to think that I need not
accuse myself of imperfect sympathy towards this fantastically odd, yet
high and enduring spirit.
Thursday came and passed in gloom. Even Ferdinand, that heart of
steel, was feeling the poignancy of the crisis. Throughout the day
Sonia did not appear. But in the evening Irene sat with her in her
room.
"If I were she," she declared to me later, with tearful defiance, "I
would not go back--that is, unless they accepted my husband as their
future king."
"They cannot do that."
"I think the King himself is so wrong. He hates Nevil, and he has not
the least affection for poor little Marie, his granddaughter. It is a
dreadful state of things."
I concurred dismally. Yet it was a state of things arising so
naturally, so inevitably out of the special circumstances of the case
that it seemed almost to forfeit a little of its tragic significance.
"If only she is strong enough to hold out until Saturday!" said my
feminine counsellor. "But I am rather afraid. She is quite weak in
some ways."
"There is a weakness, isn't there, which is a higher form of strength?"
"Can you mean that she will not be weak if she consents to return to
Illyria to marry the Archduke Joseph?"
"She owes a duty to her people."
"She owes a duty to her husband and child."
Thursday ended as it began and Friday brought no solace. The Princess
reappeared among us in the afternoon. She was pale and composed, and
as the twilight of the January afternoon was gathering, she and Fitz
rode out together. The King, at the same hour, walked in the muddy
lanes with von Schalk.
"They leave us to-morrow morning at eleven," Mrs. Arbuthnot informed
me, "and Sonia has not had her things packed. I believe the worst is
over. She would have told me had she decided to go."
I was unable to share her optimism. From the first I had felt that the
stars in their courses would prove too much for the unhappy lady. And
nothing had occurred to remove that fear.
The King returned from his walk, and suave and subtle of countenance,
it pleased him to toy with a cup of Mrs. Arbuthnot's tea, while he
toasted his muddy gaiters at the fire.
"My daughter has not returned from her ride?"
"No, sir," I answered him.
"The last ride together," said the King, gently. "One of your
excellent English poets has a poem about it, has he not?"
A thrill passed through my nerves at the almost cruel directness of the
King's speech. I saw that in the same moment the eyes of Mrs.
Arbuthnot had filled with tears.
"You have great poets in England," said the King, softly. "They are
the chief glories of a nation, and your country is rich in them. We
have great poets in Illyria also. There is Bolder. We are all proud
to be the countrymen of Bolder. When you come to see us at Blaenau I
think you will like to meet him."
As the King spoke in his paternal voice, I was conscious of his hand
upon the breast of my coat. He had pinned a piece of black ribbon upon
it, to which was attached a silver star.
"I am afraid, sir," I said, suffering some embarrassment, "no man ever
did less to deserve the Order of the Silver Star of Illyria."
The King took my hand in his with that wonderful cordial simplicity
that was so hard to resist.
"A friend in need is a friend indeed, Mr. Arbuthnot, as your English
saying has it. And, madame, when together we lead the cotillon at
Blaenau, I hope you will honour us by wearing this."
The King laid a jewel of much beauty upon the tea-table.
"Oh, sir," said Mrs. Arbuthnot, smiling faintly through wet eyelashes.
Standing before the fire, teacup in hand, the King talked to us quite
simply and pleasantly and sincerely. He was a man of great power of
mind and his outlook upon life was large and direct.
"You have many ways in this country that I should like to see in ours,"
he said. "But we in Illyria make haste slowly. The climate is not so
bracing. I am afraid we do not think so forcibly. And there is a
wider gulf between the rich and the poor."
There was a note of regret in the King's tone. He seemed to be turning
his eyes to the future, and in the process his face grew tired and
melancholy. It was then that I realised that this man of infinite
vigour and power was said to be near the end of his course.
At dinner we were enlivened by his gaiety. His charm was hard to
resist, so rich and full it was and so spontaneous. But my thoughts
strayed ever away from the King, his wisdom and his persiflage, to
those who were one flesh in the sight of God, who were dining together
for the last time.
Their courage was a noble, even an amazing thing. The stoicism with
which they ate and drank and bore a part in the conversation while a
chasm had opened beneath their feet was almost incredible. Throughout
the perpetual oscillation from comedy to tragedy, from tragedy to
comedy, from comedy to tragedy again of their life together, they had
borne their parts with a heroic constancy, and even in this dark phase
they were equal to their task.
The die was cast. On the morrow the Princess would return to her
people, marry the Archduke, and when the time came accept the throne.
It was part of the dreadful covenant the King had exacted that she
would never see Fitz and their child again.
I passed a night of weary wretchedness. Do what I would, I could not
keep Fitz out of my thoughts. About three o'clock I rose and dressed
and put on my overcoat and walked out into the garden. Somehow I
expected to find him there. But there was not a trace of him, and
every window in the house was dark. A spirit of desolation seemed to
pervade everything--so dark and chill was the night. There was not a
star to be seen.
I went back to my room, coaxed up the fire, seated myself beside it and
lit a pipe. Presently I heard a footfall on the stairs. It was Irene,
pale and weary with much weeping. Daylight found her asleep in my arms
with her head on my shoulder.
The day of the King's departure had come at last. There was a general
scurry of preparation, but precisely at eleven o'clock a procession of
six motor cars started from our door for Middleham railway station,
whence a special train would proceed to Southampton. It was Sonia's
wish that Irene and I should accompany her to the train; and poor Fitz,
half stunned as he was, determined to play out the game to the end, and
with one of his odd outbursts of cynicism affirmed his sportsmanlike
intention of "being in at the death."
The King, his daughter, the Chancellor, and Mrs. Arbuthnot were in the
second car, preceded by a special escort from Scotland Yard. Fitz and
I had the third to ourselves; the Secretaries were in the fourth; the
fifth and sixth conveyed the valets, her Royal Highness's maid, and a
considerable quantity of luggage.
As the procession, at the modest rate of twelve miles an hour, came
into the pleasant village of Lymeswold, where our revered Vicar has his
cure of souls, there was a considerable amount of bunting displayed in
the vicinity of the Coach and Horses. And from the windows of the
Vicarage itself depended the Union Jack side by side with the silver
Star of Illyria on a green ground. Mrs. Vicar waved a white
pocket-handkerchief from the gate of the manse, but the Vicar was
bearing a chief part in a more dramatic tableau that had been arranged
on the village green. Here the village school was drawn up, the girls
in nice white pinafores and the boys looking almost painfully well
washed. Each had a small flag that was waved frantically, and the
Vicar standing at their head led a prodigious quantity of cheering,
while Ferdinand the Twelfth took off his hat and bowed.
But all this was merely a prelude to the historic spectacle that we
came upon presently. At the top of the steep hill leading to the Marl
Pits, that favourite haunt of "the stinkin' Middleshire phocks," lo and
behold! all the Crackanthorpe horses, all the Crackanthorpe men, not to
mention their ladies, their hounds and the entire hunt establishment,
even unto Peter the terrier, were assembled in full array of battle, as
became the hour of eleven o'clock in the morning of a rare scenting day
in the middle of January. The cavalcade lined each side of the road,
and our motor cars passed through it on their lowest speed, to a
running accompaniment of cheers and hunting noises and a waving of hats
and handkerchiefs.
Evidently the scene had been carefully stage-managed and formed a
handsome and appropriate _amende_. It did not fail of its appeal to
the broken-hearted circus rider from Vienna. She responded by kissing
her hand repeatedly, and her father lifted his hat and bowed
continually as though it were a state procession.
The heart of Mrs. Arbuthnot was in pieces, but it was a great moment in
the history of the clan. The china-blue eyes were brimming over with
their tears, but they were still capable of radiating a subtle feminine
light of triumph. The noble Master blew a blast on his horn and his
aide-de-camp, Joseph Jocelyn De Vere Vane-Anstruther, marked the royal
progress by hoisting his hat on his whip. As we passed Mrs. Catesby,
who looked very red, the brims of whose hat looked wider and whose
whole appearance approximated more nearly than ever to that of Mr.
Weller the Elder, I bestowed a special salutation upon her, of, I fear,
somewhat ironical dimensions. The Great Lady responded by shaking her
whip at me in a decidedly truculent manner.
Our procession passed on to Middleham railway station, which we reached
about a quarter to twelve. A considerable crowd had assembled about
its precincts. The roadway and the entrance to the station were
guarded by a body of mounted police, and a small detachment of the
Middleshire Yeomanry in the charge of no less a person than Major
George Catesby, who saluted us with his sword.
On the platform we were received by a number of local dignitaries, and
foremost among these, tall and austere, but with the faint light of
humour in his countenance, was Lieutenant-Colonel John Chalmers
Coverdale, C.M.G., late of his Majesty's Carabineers.
The King and his Chancellor took a brief but cordial leave of us and
stepped briskly into the royal saloon; and then I felt the pressure of
a woman's hand, and I heard a low, broken whisper, "Be good for my sake
to Nevil and little Marie." The Princess then took the hands of Mrs.
Arbuthnot in each of her own, kissed her wet cheeks, and was handed
into the train by the husband she had promised never to see in this
life again.