"We have not received any promise from Humphry himself," she said; "Apparently he is not disposed to take a similar oath of loyalty!"
"Truly, Madam, you judge me rightly for once!" said the Prince, quietly; "I am certainly not disposed to do anything but to be master of my own thoughts and actions."
"Remain so, Humphry, by all means!" said the King indulgently. "The present circ.u.mstances being so far favourable, we exact nothing more from you. Love will be love, and pa.s.sion must have its way with boys of your age. I impose no further restriction upon you. The girl"s own word is to me sufficient bond for the preservation of your high position. All young men have their little secret love-affairs; we shall not blame you for yours now, seeing, as we do, the satisfactory end of it in sight!
But I fear we are detaining you!" This with elaborate politeness. "If you wish to follow your fair _inamorata_, the way is clear! You may retire!"
Without any haste, but with formal military stiffness the Prince saluted,--and turning slowly on his heel, left the presence-chamber.
Alone, the King and his beautiful Queen-Consort looked questioningly at one another.
"What think you, Madam, of the heroine of this strange love-story?" he asked with a touch of bitterness in his voice. "Does it not strike you that even in this arid world of much deception, there may be after all such a thing as innocence?--such a treasure as true and trusting love? Were not the eyes of this girl Gloria, when lifted to your face, something like the eyes of a child who has just said its prayers to G.o.d,--who fears nothing and loves all? Yet I doubt whether you were moved!"
"Were you?" she asked indifferently, yet with a strange fluttering at her heart, which she could not herself comprehend.
"I was!" he answered. "I confess it! I was profoundly touched to see a girl of such beauty and innocence confront us here, with no other shield against our formal and ridiculous conventionalities, save the pure strength of her own love for Humphry, and her complete trust in him. It is easy to see that her life hangs on his will; it is not so much her with whom we have to deal, as with him. What he says, she will evidently obey. If he tells her he has ceased to love her, she will die quite uncomplainingly; but so long as he does love her, she will live, and expand in beauty and intelligence on that love alone; and you may be a.s.sured, Madam, that in that case, he will never wed another woman! Nor could I possibly blame him, for he is bound to find all--or most women inferior to her!"
She regarded him wonderingly.
"Your admiration of her is keen, Sir!" she said, amazed to find herself somewhat irritated. "Perhaps if she were not morganatically your daughter-in-law, you might be your son"s rival?"
He turned upon her indignantly.
"Madam, the days were, when you, as my wife, had it in your power to admit no rivals to the kingdom of your own beauty! Since then, I confess, you have had many! But they have been worthless rivals all,--crazed with their own vanity and greed, and empty of truth and honour. A month or two before I came to the Throne, I was beginning to think that women were viler than vermin,--I had grown utterly weary of their beauty,--weary--ay, sick to death of their alluring eyes, sensual lips, and too freely-offered caresses; the uncomely, hard-worked woman, earning bread for her half-starved children, seemed the only kind of feminine creature for which I could have any respect--but now--I am learning that there _are_ good women who are fair to see,--women who have hearts to love and suffer, and who are true--ay--true as the sun in heaven to the one man they worship!"
"A man who is generally quite unworthy of them!" said the Queen with a chill laugh; "Your eloquence, Sir, is very touching, and no doubt leads further than I care to penetrate! The girl Gloria is certainly beautiful, and no doubt very innocent and true at present,--but when Humphry tires of her, as he surely will, for all men quickly tire of those that love them best,--she will no doubt sink into the ordinary ways of obtaining consolation. I know little concerning these amazingly good women you speak of; and nothing concerning good men! But I quite agree with you that many women are to be admired for their hard work.
You see when once they do begin to work, men generally keep them at it!"
She gathered up her rich train on one arm, and prepared to leave the apartment. "If you think," she continued, "as you now say, that Humphry will never change his present sentiments, and never marry any other woman, the girl"s oath is a mere farce and of no avail!"
"On the contrary, it is of much avail," said the King, "for she has sworn before us both never to claim any right to share in Humphry"s position, till the nation itself asks her to do so. Now as the nation will never know of the marriage at all, the "call" will not be forthcoming."
The Queen paused in the act of turning away.
"If you were to die," she said; "Humphry would be King. And as King, he is quite capable of making Gloria Queen!"
He looked at her very strangely.
"Madam, in the event of my death, all things are possible!" he said; "A dying Sovereignty may give birth to a Republic!"
The Queen smiled.
"Well, it is the most popular form of government nowadays," she responded, carelessly moving slowly towards the door; "And perhaps the most satisfactory. I think if I were not a Queen, I should be a republican!"
"And I, if I were not a King," he responded, "should be a Socialist!
Such are the strange contradictions of human nature! Permit me!" He opened the door of the room for her to pa.s.s out,--and as she did so, she looked up full in his face.
"Are you still interested in your new form of amus.e.m.e.nt?" she said; "And do you still expose yourself to danger and death?"
He bowed a.s.sent.
"Still am I a fool in a new course of folly, Madam!" he answered with a smile, and a half sigh. "So many of my brother monarchs are wadded round like peaches in wool, with precautions for their safety, lest they bruise at a touch, that I a.s.sure you I take the chances of danger and death as exhilarating sport, compared to their guarded condition. But it is very good of you to a.s.sume such a gracious solicitude for my safety!"
"a.s.sume?" she said. Her voice had a slight tremor in it,--her eyes looked soft and suffused with something like tears. Then, with her usual stately grace, she saluted him, and pa.s.sed out.
Struck at the unwonted expression in her face, he stood for a moment amazed. Then he gave vent to a low bitter laugh.
"How strange it would be if she should love me now!" he murmured.
"But--after all these years--too late! Too late!"
That night before the King retired to rest, Professor von Glauben reported himself and his duty to his Majesty in the privacy of his own apartments. He had, he stated, accompanied Gloria back to her home in The Islands; and, he added somewhat hesitatingly, the Crown Prince had returned with her, and had there remained. He, the Professor, had left them together, being commanded by the Prince so to do.
The King received this information with perfect equanimity.
"The boy must have his way for the present," he said. "His pa.s.sion will soon exhaust itself. All pa.s.sion exhausts itself sooner or--later!"
"That depends very much on the depth or shallowness of its source, Sir,"
replied the Professor.
"True! But a boy!--a mere infant in experience! What can he know of the depths in the heart and soul! Now a man of my age----"
He broke off abruptly, seeing Von Glauben"s eyes fixed steadfastly upon him, and the colour deepened in his cheek. Then he gave a slight laugh.
"I tell you, Von Glauben, this little love-affair--this absurd toy-marriage is not worth thinking about. Humphry leaves the country at the end of this month,--he will remain absent a year,--and at the expiration of that time we shall marry him in good earnest to a royally-born bride. Meanwhile, let us not trouble ourselves about this sentimental episode, which is so rapidly drawing to its close."
The Professor bowed respectfully and retired. But not to sleep. He had a glowing picture before his eyes,--a picture he could not forget, of the Crown Prince and Gloria standing with arms entwined about each other under the rose-covered porch of Ronsard"s cottage saying "Good-night"
to him, while Ronsard himself, his tranquillity completely restored, and his former fears at rest, warmly shook his hand, and with a curious mingling of pride and deference thanked him for all his friendship--"all his goodness!"
"And no goodness at all is mine," said the meditative Professor, "save that of being as honest as I can to both sides! But there is some change in the situation which I do not quite understand. There is some new plan on foot I would swear! The Prince was too triumphant--Gloria too happy--Ronsard too satisfied! There is something in the wind!--but I cannot make out what it is!"
He pondered uneasily for a part of the night, reflecting that when he had returned from The Islands in the King"s yacht, he had met the Prince"s own private vessel on her way thither, gliding over the waves, a mere ghostly bunch of white sails in the glimmering moon. He had concluded that it was under orders to embark the Prince for home again in the morning; and yet, though this was a perfectly natural and probable surmise, he had been unable to rid himself altogether of a doubtful presentiment, to which he could give no name. By degrees, he fell into an uneasy slumber, in which he had many incompleted dreams,--one of which was that he found himself all alone on the wide ocean which stretched for thousands of miles beyond The Islands,--alone in a small boat, endeavouring to row it towards the great Southern Continent that lay afar off in the invisible distance,--where few but the most adventurous travellers ever cared to wander. And as he pulled with weak, ineffectual oars against the mighty weight of the rolling billows, he thought he heard the words of an old Irish song which he remembered having listened to, when as quite a young man he had paid his first and last visit to the misty and romantic sh.o.r.es of Britain.
"Come o"er the sea _Cushla ma chree_!-- Mine through sunshine, storm and snows!-- Seasons may roll, But the true soul, Burns the same wherever it goes; Let fate frown on, so we love and part not, "T is life where thou art, "t is death where thou art not!
Then come o"er the sea, _Cushla ma chree_!
Mine wherever the wild wind blows!"
Then waking with a violent start, he wondered what set of brain-cells had been stirred to reproduce rhymes that he had, or so he deemed, long ago forgotten. And still musing, he almost mechanically went on with the wild ditty.
"Was not the sea Made for the free, Land for Courts and chains alone!-- Here we are slaves, But on the waves, Love and liberty are our own!"
"This will never do!" he exclaimed, leaping from his bed; "I am becoming a mere driveller with advancing age!"
He went to the window and looked out. It was about six o"clock in the morning,--the sun was shining brightly into his room. Before him lay the sea, calm as a lake, and clear-sparkling as a diamond;--not a boat was in sight;--not a single white sail on the distant horizon. And in the freshness and stillness of the breaking day, the world looked but just newly created.
"How we fret and fume in our little span of life!" he murmured. "A few years hence, and for us all the troubles which we make for ourselves will be ended! But the sun and the sea will shine on just the same--and Love, the supremest power on earth, will still govern mankind, when thrones and kings and empires are no more!"
His thoughts were destined to bear quick fruition. The morning deepened into noon--and at that hour a sealed dispatch brought by a sailor, who gave no name and who departed as soon as he had delivered his packet, was handed to the King. It was from the Crown Prince, and ran briefly thus:--
"At your command, Sir, and by my own desire, I have left the country over which you hold your sovereign dominion. Whither I travel, and how, is my own affair. I shall return no more _till the Nation demands my service_,--whereof I shall doubtless hear should such a contingency ever arise. I leave you to deal with the situation as seems best to your good pleasure and that of the Government,--but the life G.o.d has given me can only be lived once, and to Him alone am I responsible for it. I am resolved therefore to live it to my own liking,--in honesty, faith and freedom. In accordance with this determination, Gloria, my wife, as in her sworn marriage-duty bound, goes with me."
For one moment the King stood transfixed and astounded; a cloud of anger darkened his brows. Crumpling up the doc.u.ment in his hand, he was about to fling it from him in a fury. What! This mere boy and girl had baffled the authority of a king! Anon, his anger cooled--his countenance cleared. Smoothing the paper out he read its contents again,--then smiled.