CHAPTER 22
Present, Past--and Future?
straight to the Tyrol and spent a quiet fortnight--mostly on my back,
for a severe chill developed itself; and I was also the victim of a
nervous reaction, which made me weak as a baby. As soon as I had reached
my quarters, I sent an apparently careless postcard to my brother,
announcing my good health and prospective return. That would serve to
satisfy the inquiries as to my whereabouts, which were probably still
vexing the Prefect of the Police of Strelsau. I let my moustache and
imperial grow again; and as hair comes quickly on my face, they were
respectable, though not luxuriant, by the time that I landed myself in
Paris and called on my friend George Featherly. My interview with
him was chiefly remarkable for the number of unwilling but necessary
falsehoods that I told; and I rallied him unmercifully when he told me
that he had made up his mind that I had gone in the track of Madame de
Mauban to Strelsau. The lady, it appeared, was back in Paris, but was
living in great seclusion--a fact for which gossip found no difficulty
in accounting. Did not all the world know of the treachery and death
of Duke Michael? Nevertheless, George bade Bertram Bertrand be of good
cheer, "for," said he flippantly, "a live poet is better than a dead
duke." Then he turned on me and asked:
"What have you been doing to your moustache?"
"To tell the truth," I answered, assuming a sly air, "a man now and then
has reasons for wishing to alter his appearance. But it's coming on very
well again."
"What? Then I wasn't so far out! If not the fair Antoinette, there was a
charmer?"
"There is always a charmer," said I, sententiously.
But George would not be satisfied till he had wormed out of me (he
took much pride in his ingenuity) an absolutely imaginary love-affair,
attended with the proper soupcon of scandal, which had kept me all this
time in the peaceful regions of the Tyrol. In return for this
narrative, George regaled me with a great deal of what he called "inside
information" (known only to diplomatists), as to the true course of
events in Ruritania, the plots and counterplots. In his opinion, he told
me, with a significant nod, there was more to be said for Black Michael
than the public supposed; and he hinted at a well-founded suspicion that
the mysterious prisoner of Zenda, concerning whom a good many paragraphs
had appeared, was not a man at all, but (here I had much ado not to
smile) a woman disguised as a man; and that strife between the King and
his brother for this imaginary lady's favour was at the bottom of their
quarrel.
"Perhaps it was Madame de Mauban herself," I suggested.
"No!" said George decisively, "Antoinette de Mauban was jealous of her,
and betrayed the duke to the King for that reason. And, to confirm what
I say, it's well known that the Princess Flavia is now extremely cold to
the King, after having been most affectionate."
At this point I changed the subject, and escaped from George's
"inspired" delusions. But if diplomatists never know anything more than
they had succeeded in finding out in this instance, they appear to me to
be somewhat expensive luxuries.
While in Paris I wrote to Antoinette, though I did not venture to call
upon her. I received in return a very affecting letter, in which she
assured me that the King's generosity and kindness, no less than her
regard for me, bound her conscience to absolute secrecy. She expressed
the intention of settling in the country, and withdrawing herself
entirely from society. Whether she carried out her designs, I have never
heard; but as I have not met her, or heard news of her up to this time,
it is probable that she did. There is no doubt that she was deeply
attached to the Duke of Strelsau; and her conduct at the time of his
death proved that no knowledge of the man's real character was enough to
root her regard for him out of her heart.
I had one more battle left to fight--a battle that would, I knew, be
severe, and was bound to end in my complete defeat. Was I not back
from the Tyrol, without having made any study of its inhabitants,
institutions, scenery, fauna, flora, or other features? Had I not simply
wasted my time in my usual frivolous, good-for-nothing way? That was the
aspect of the matter which, I was obliged to admit, would present itself
to my sister-in-law; and against a verdict based on such evidence, I had
really no defence to offer. It may be supposed, then, that I presented
myself in Park Lane in a shamefaced, sheepish fashion. On the whole, my
reception was not so alarming as I had feared. It turned out that I
had done, not what Rose wished, but--the next best thing--what she
prophesied. She had declared that I should make no notes, record no
observations, gather no materials. My brother, on the other hand,
had been weak enough to maintain that a serious resolve had at length
animated me.
When I returned empty-handed, Rose was so occupied in triumphing over
Burlesdon that she let me down quite easily, devoting the greater
part of her reproaches to my failure to advertise my friends of my
whereabouts.
"We've wasted a lot of time trying to find you," she said.
"I know you have," said I. "Half our ambassadors have led weary lives
on my account. George Featherly told me so. But why should you have been
anxious? I can take care of myself."
"Oh, it wasn't that," she cried scornfully, "but I wanted to tell you
about Sir Jacob Borrodaile. You know, he's got an Embassy--at least,
he will have in a month--and he wrote to say he hoped you would go with
him."
"Where's he going to?"
"He's going to succeed Lord Topham at Strelsau," said she. "You couldn't
have a nicer place, short of Paris."
"Strelsau! H'm!" said I, glancing at my brother.
"Oh, _that_ doesn't matter!" exclaimed Rose impatiently. "Now, you will
go, won't you?"
"I don't know that I care about it!"
"Oh, you're too exasperating!"
"And I don't think I can go to Strelsau. My dear Rose, would it
be--suitable?"
"Oh, nobody remembers that horrid old story now."
Upon this, I took out of my pocket a portrait of the King of Ruritania.
It had been taken a month or two before he ascended the throne. She
could not miss my point when I said, putting it into her hands:
"In case you've not seen, or not noticed, a picture of Rudolf V, there
he is. Don't you think they might recall the story, if I appeared at the
Court of Ruritania?"
My sister-in-law looked at the portrait, and then at me.
"Good gracious!" she said, and flung the photograph down on the table.
"What do you say, Bob?" I asked.
Burlesdon got up, went to a corner of the room, and searched in a heap
of newspapers. Presently he came back with a copy of the Illustrated
London News. Opening the paper, he displayed a double-page engraving of
the Coronation of Rudolf V at Strelsau. The photograph and the picture
he laid side by side. I sat at the table fronting them; and, as I
looked, I grew absorbed. My eye travelled from my own portrait to Sapt,
to Strakencz, to the rich robes of the Cardinal, to Black Michael's
face, to the stately figure of the princess by his side. Long I looked
and eagerly. I was roused by my brother's hand on my shoulder. He was
gazing down at me with a puzzled expression.
"It's a remarkable likeness, you see," said I. "I really think I had
better not go to Ruritania."
Rose, though half convinced, would not abandon her position.
"It's just an excuse," she said pettishly. "You don't want to do
anything. Why, you might become an ambassador!"
"I don't think I want to be an ambassador," said I.
"It's more than you ever will be," she retorted.
That is very likely true, but it is not more than I have been.
The idea of being an ambassador could scarcely dazzle me. I had been a
king!
So pretty Rose left us in dudgeon; and Burlesdon, lighting a cigarette,
looked at me still with that curious gaze.
"That picture in the paper--" he said.
"Well, what of it? It shows that the King of Ruritania and your humble
servant are as like as two peas."
My brother shook his head.
"I suppose so," he said. "But I should know you from the man in the
photograph."
"And not from the picture in the paper?"
"I should know the photograph from the picture: the picture's very like
the photograph, but--"
"Well?"
"It's more like you!" said my brother.
My brother is a good man and true--so that, for all that he is a married
man and mighty fond of his wife, he should know any secret of mine. But
this secret was not mine, and I could not tell it to him.
"I don't think it's so much like me as the photograph," said I boldly.
"But, anyhow, Bob, I won't go to Strelsau."
"No, don't go to Strelsau, Rudolf," said he.
And whether he suspects anything, or has a glimmer of the truth, I do
not know. If he has, he keeps it to himself, and he and I never refer to
it. And we let Sir Jacob Borrodaile find another attache.
Since all these events whose history I have set down happened I have
lived a very quiet life at a small house which I have taken in the
country. The ordinary ambitions and aims of men in my position seem to
me dull and unattractive. I have little fancy for the whirl of society,
and none for the jostle of politics. Lady Burlesdon utterly despairs of
me; my neighbours think me an indolent, dreamy, unsociable fellow. Yet
I am a young man; and sometimes I have a fancy--the superstitious would
call it a presentiment--that my part in life is not yet altogether
played; that, somehow and some day, I shall mix again in great affairs,
I shall again spin policies in a busy brain, match my wits against my
enemies', brace my muscles to fight a good fight and strike stout blows.
Such is the tissue of my thoughts as, with gun or rod in hand, I wander
through the woods or by the side of the stream. Whether the fancy will
be fulfilled, I cannot tell--still less whether the scene that, led by
memory, I lay for my new exploits will be the true one--for I love to
see myself once again in the crowded streets of Strelsau, or beneath the
frowning keep of the Castle of Zenda.
Thus led, my broodings leave the future, and turn back on the past.
Shapes rise before me in long array--the wild first revel with the King,
the rush with my brave tea-table, the night in the moat, the pursuit in
the forest: my friends and my foes, the people who learnt to love and
honour me, the desperate men who tried to kill me. And, from amidst
these last, comes one who alone of all of them yet moves on earth,
though where I know not, yet plans (as I do not doubt) wickedness, yet
turns women's hearts to softness and men's to fear and hate. Where is
young Rupert of Hentzau--the boy who came so nigh to beating me? When
his name comes into my head, I feel my hand grip and the blood move
quicker through my veins: and the hint of Fate--the presentiment--seems
to grow stronger and more definite, and to whisper insistently in my ear
that I have yet a hand to play with young Rupert; therefore I exercise
myself in arms, and seek to put off the day when the vigour of youth
must leave me.
One break comes every year in my quiet life. Then I go to Dresden, and
there I am met by my dear friend and companion, Fritz von Tarlenheim.
Last time, his pretty wife Helga came, and a lusty crowing baby with
her. And for a week Fritz and I are together, and I hear all of what
falls out in Strelsau; and in the evenings, as we walk and smoke
together, we talk of Sapt, and of the King, and often of young Rupert;
and, as the hours grow small, at last we speak of Flavia. For every year
Fritz carries with him to Dresden a little box; in it lies a red rose,
and round the stalk of the rose is a slip of paper with the words
written: "Rudolf--Flavia--always." And the like I send back by him. That
message, and the wearing of the rings, are all that now bind me and the
Queen of Ruritania. Far--nobler, as I hold her, for the act--she has
followed where her duty to her country and her House led her, and is the
wife of the King, uniting his subjects to him by the love they bear to
her, giving peace and quiet days to thousands by her self-sacrifice.
There are moments when I dare not think of it, but there are others when
I rise in spirit to where she ever dwells; then I can thank God that I
love the noblest lady in the world, the most gracious and beautiful, and
that there was nothing in my love that made her fall short in her high
duty.
Shall I see her face again--the pale face and the glorious hair? Of that
I know nothing; Fate has no hint, my heart no presentiment. I do not
know. In this world, perhaps--nay, it is likely--never. And can it
be that somewhere, in a manner whereof our flesh-bound minds have no
apprehension, she and I will be together again, with nothing to come
between us, nothing to forbid our love? That I know not, nor wiser heads
than mine. But if it be never--if I can never hold sweet converse again
with her, or look upon her face, or know from her her love; why, then,
this side the grave, I will live as becomes the man whom she loves; and,
for the other side, I must pray a dreamless sleep.
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