ONE DAY
A SEQUEL TO "THREE WEEKS"
ANONYMOUS
Original Publication Date 1909, by The Macaulay Company
NEW YORK THE MACAULAY COMPANY 1912
THE SCHILLING PRESS NEW YORK
FOREWORD TO MY AMERICAN FRIENDS
Now after spending some very pleasant weeks in your interesting country,
I feel sure that this book will find many sympathetic readers in
America. Quite naturally it will be discussed; some, doubtless, will
censure it--and unjustly; others will believe with me that the tale
teaches a great moral lesson.
Born as the Boy was born, the end which Fate forced upon him, to me, was
inevitable. Each word and act of the three weeks of his parents'
love-idyl must reflect in the character and life of the child. Little by
little the baby King grew before my mental vision until I saw at last
there was no escape from his importunity and I allowed the insistent
Boy--masterful even from his inception--to shape himself at his own
sweet will. Thus he became the hero of my study.
This is not a book for children or fools--but for men and women who can
grasp the underlying principle of morality which has been uppermost in
my mind as I wrote. Those who can see beyond the outburst of
passion--the overmastering belief in the power of love to justify all
things, which the Boy inherited so naturally from his Queen mother--will
understand the forces against which the young Prince must needs fight a
losing battle. The transgression was unavoidable to one whose very
conception was beyond the law--the punishment was equally inevitable.
In fairness to this book of mine--and to me--the great moral lesson I
have endeavored to teach must be considered in its entirety, and no
single episode be construed as the book's sole aim. The verdict on my
two years' work rests with you, dear Reader, but at least you may be
sure that I have only tried to show that those who sow the wind shall
reap the whirlwind.
--THE AUTHOR.
ONE DAY
CHAPTER I
The Prince tore the missive fiercely from its envelope, and scowled at
the mocking glint of the royal crown so heavily embossed at the top of
the paper. What a toy it was, he thought, to cost so much, and
eventually to mean so little! Roughly translated, the letter ran as
follows:
"Your Royal Highness will be gratified to learn that at last a
satisfactory alliance has been arranged between the Princess Elodie of
Austria and your royal self. It is the desire of both courts and
councils that the marriage shall be solemnized on the fifteenth of the
May following your twenty-first birthday, at which time the coronation
ceremony takes place that is to place the crown of the kingdom upon the
head of the son of our beloved and ever-to-be-regretted Imperatorskoye.
The Court and Council extend greetings and congratulations upon the not
far distant approach of both auspicious events to your Royal Highness,
which cannot fail to afford the utmost satisfaction in every detail to
the ever-beautiful-and-never-to-be-sufficiently beloved Prince Paul.
"Imperator-to-be, we salute thee. We kiss thy feet."
The letter was sealed with the royal crest and signed by the Regent--the
Boy's uncle--the Grand Duke Peter, his mother's brother, who had been
his guardian and protector almost from his birth. The young prince knew
that his uncle loved him, knew that the Grand Duke desired nothing on
earth so much as the happiness of his beloved sister's only son--and yet
at this crisis of the Boy's life, even his uncle was as powerless to
help as was Paul Verdayne, the Englishman.
"The Princess Elodie!" he grumbled. "Who the devil is this Princess
Elodie, anyway? Austrian blood has no particular charm for me! They
might at least have told me something a little more definite about the
woman they have picked out to be the mother of my children. A man
usually likes to look an animal over before he purchases!"
Known to London society as Monsieur Zalenska, the Prince had come up to
town with the Verdaynes, and was apparently enjoying to the utmost the
frivolities of London life.
At a fashionable garden party he sat alone, in a seclusion he had long
sought and had finally managed to secure, behind a hedge of hawthorn
where none but lovers, and men and women troubled as he was troubled,
cared to conceal themselves.
The letter, long-expected and dreaded, had finally crossed the continent
to his hand. It was only the written confirmation of the sentence Fate
had pronounced upon him, even as it had pronounced similar sentences
upon princes and potentates since the beginning of thrones and kingdoms.
While the Prince--or Paul Zalenska, as I will now call him--sat in his
brooding brown study, clutching the imperial letter tightly in his young
hand, his attention was arrested by the sound of voices on the other
side of the hawthorn hedge.
He listened idly, at first, to what seemed to be a one-sided
conversation, in a dull, emotionless feminine voice--a discourse on
fashion, society chit-chat, and hopeless nonentities, interspersed with
bits of gossip. Could women never talk about anything else? he thought
impatiently.
But his displeasure did not seem to affect the course of things at all.
The voice, completely unconscious of the aversion it aroused in the
invisible listener, continued its dreary, expressionless monotone.
"What makes you so silent, Opal? You haven't said a word to-day that you
didn't absolutely have to say. If all American girls are as dreamy as
you, I wonder why our English lords are so irresistibly attracted across
the water when in search of brides!"
And then the Boy on the other side of the hedge felt his sluggish pulse
quicken, and almost started to his feet, impelled by a sudden thrill of
delight; for another voice had spoken--a voice of such infinite charm
and sweetness and vitality, yet with languorous suggestion of emotional
heights and depths, that he felt a vague sense of disappointment when
the magnetic notes finally died away.
"Brides?" the voice echoed, with a lilt of girlish laughter running
through the words. "You mean '_bribes_,' don't you? For I assure you,
dear cousin, it is the metallic clink of American gold, and nothing
else, that lures your great men over the sea. As for my silence, _ma
belle_, I have been uncommunicative because there really seemed nothing
at all worth saying. I can't accustom myself to small-talk--I can't even
listen to it patiently. I always feel a wild impulse to fly far, far
away, where I can close my ears to it all and listen to my own thoughts.
I'm sorry if I disappoint you, Alice--I seem to disappoint everybody
that I would like to please--but I assure you, laugh at my dreams as you
may, to me my dream-life is far more attractive and beautiful than what
you term Life. Forgive me if I hurt you, cousin. I'm peculiarly
constituted, perhaps, but I don't like this twaddle, and I can't help
it! Everything in England is so beautiful, and yet its society seems
so--so hopelessly unsatisfactory to one who longs to _live!_"
"To live, Opal? We are not dead, surely! What do you mean by life?"
And so her name was Opal! How curiously the name suited the voice! The
Boy, as he listened, felt that no other name could possibly have
matched that voice--the opal, that glorious gem in which all the fires
of the sun, the iridescent glories of the rainbow, and the cold
brilliance of ice and frost and snow seemed to blend and crystallize.
All this, and more, was in that mysteriously fascinating voice.
"To live, Alice?" echoed the voice again. "To live? Why, to live is to
_feel!_--to feel every emotion of which the human soul is capable, to
rise to the heights of love, and knowledge, and power; to sink--if need
be--to the deepest depths of despair, but, at all costs, at all hazards,
to _live!_--to experience in one's own nature all the reality and
fullness of the deathless emotions of life!"
The voice sank almost to the softness of a whisper, yet even then was
vibrant, alive, intense.
"Ah, Alice, from my childhood up, I have dreamed of life and longed for
it. What life really is, each must decide for himself, must he not?
Some, they say, sleep their way through a dreamless existence, and
never, never wake to realities. Alice, I have sometimes wondered if that
was to be my fate, have wondered and wondered until I have cried out in
real terror at the hideous prospect! Surely Fate could not be so cruel
as to implant such a desperate desire in a soul that never was to know
its fulfilment. Could it, Alice? Tell me, _could_ it?"
The Boy held his breath now.
Who was this girl, anyhow, who seemed to express his own thoughts as
accurately as he himself could have done? He was bored no longer. He was
roused, stirred, awakened--and intensely interested. It was as though
the voice of his own soul spoke to him in a dream.
The cold, lifeless voice now chimed in again. In his impatience the Boy
clenched his fists and shut his teeth together hard. Why didn't she keep
still? He didn't want to miss a single note he might have caught of the
voice--that other! Why did this nonentity--for one didn't have to see
her to be sure that she was that--have to interrupt and rob him of his
pleasure?
"I don't understand you, Opal," she was saying. (Of course she didn't,
thought the Boy--how could she?) "I am sure that I live. And yet I have
never felt that way--thank goodness! It's vulgar to feel too deeply,
Mamma used to say, and as I have grown older, I can see that she was
right. The best people never show any excess of emotion. That is for
tragedy queens, operatic stars, and--the women we do not talk about!
Ladies cultivate repose!"
("Repose!--_mon Dieu!_" thought Paul, behind the hedge. He wished that
she would!)
"And yet, Alice, you are--married!"
"Married?--of course!--why not?" and the eavesdropper fancied he could
see the wide-open gaze of well-bred English surprise that accompanied
the words. "One has to marry, of course. That is what we are created
for. But one doesn't make a fuss about it. It's only a custom--a
ceremony--and doesn't change existence much for most women, if they
choose sensibly. Of course there is always the chance of a
_mésalliance_! A woman has to risk that."
"And you don't--love?"
The Boy was struck by a note that was almost horror in the opaline voice
so near him.
"Love? Why, Opal, of course we do! It's easy to love, you know, when a
man is decent and half-way good to one. I am sure I think a great deal
of Algernon; but I dare say I should have thought as much of any other
man I had happened to marry. That is a wife's duty!"
"_Duty!_--and you call that love?" The horror in the tones had now
changed to scorn.
"You have strange ideas of life, Opal. I should be afraid to indulge
them if I were you--really I should! You have lived so much in books
that you seem to have a very garbled idea of the world. Fiction is apt
to be much of a fairy tale, a crazy exaggeration of what living really
consists of!"
"_Afraid?_ Why should I be afraid? I am an American girl, remember, and
Americans are afraid of nothing--nothing! Come, cousin, tell to me, if
you can, why I should be afraid."
"Oh, I don't know! really I don't!" There was a troubled, perplexed note
in the English voice now. "Such notions are apt to get girls into
trouble, and lead them to some unhappy fate. Too much 'life'--as you
call it--must mean suffering, and sorrow, and many tears--and maybe,
_sin_!"
There was a shocked note in the voice of the young English matron as
she added the last word, and her voice sank to a whisper. But Paul
Zalenska heard, and smiled.
"Suffering, and sorrow, and many tears," repeated the American girl,
musingly, "and maybe--sin!" Then she went on, firmly, "Very well,
Alice, give me the suffering and sorrow, and many tears--and the sin,
too, if it must be, for we are all sinners of greater or less
degree--but at any rate, give me life! My life may still be far off in
the future, but when the time comes, I shall certainly know, and--I
shall _live_!"
"You are a peculiar girl, Opal, and--we don't say those things in
England."
"No, you don't say those things, you cold English women! You do not even
_feel_ them! As for sin, Alice, to my mind there can be no worse sin
under heaven than you commit when you give yourself to a man whom you do
not love better than you could possibly love any other. Oh, it is a
sin--it _must_ be--to sell yourself like that! It's no wonder, I think,
that your husbands are so often driven to 'the women we do not talk
about' for--consolation!"
"Opal! Opal! hush! What _are_ you saying? You really--but see! isn't
that Algernon crossing the terrace? He is probably looking for us."
"And like a dutiful English wife, you mustn't fail to obey, I suppose!
Lead the way, cousin mine, and I'll promise to follow you with due
dignity and decorum."
And the rustle of silken skirts heralded the departure of the ladies
away from the hedge and beyond Paul's hearing.
Then he too started at an eager, restless pace for the centre of the
crowd. He had quite forgotten the future so carefully arranged for him,
and was off in hot pursuit of--what? He did not know! He only knew that
he had heard a voice, and--he followed!
As he rejoined the guests, he looked with awakened interest into every
face, listened with eager intensity to every voice. But all in vain. It
did not occur to him that he might easily learn from his hostess the
identity of her American guest; and even if the thought had presented
itself to him, he would never have acted upon it. The experience was
his alone, and he would have been unwilling to share it with any one.
He was no longer bored as earlier in the afternoon, and he carried the
assurance of enthusiasm and interest in his every glance and motion.
People smiled at the solitary figure, and whispered that he must have
lost Verdayne. But for once in his life, the Boy was not looking for his
friend.
But neither did he find the voice!
Usually among the first to depart on such occasions as these, this time
he remained until almost all the crowd had made their adieux. And it was
with a keen sense of disappointment that he at last entered his carriage
for the home of the Verdaynes. He was hearing again and again in the
words of the voice, as it echoed through his very soul, "When my time
comes, I shall certainly know, and I shall--_live!_"
The letter in his pocket no longer scorched the flesh beneath. He had
forgotten its very existence, nor did he once think of the Princess
Elodie of Austria. What had happened to him?
Had he fallen in love with a--voice?