Part 6 (1/2)
”I wish I could!” answered the young man, half inaudibly.
”And can you not?”
”No. You have never loved me!”
The King drew his cigar from his mouth, and flicking off a morsel of ash, looked at its end meditatively.
”Well--no!--I cannot say honestly that I have. Love,--it is a ridiculous word, Humphry, but it has a meaning on certain occasions!--love for the children of your mother is an impossibility!”
”Sir, I am not to blame for my mother's disposition.”
”True--very true. You are not to blame. But you exist. And that you do exist is a fact of national importance. Will you not sit down?”
”At your command, Sir!” and the Prince seated himself opposite his father, who having studied his cigar sufficiently, replaced it between his lips and went on smoking for a few minutes before he spoke again.
Then he resumed:--
”Your existence, I repeat, Humphry, is a fact of national importance.
To you falls the Throne when I have done with it, and life has done with me. Therefore, your conduct,--your mode of life--your example in manners--concern, not me, so much as the nation. You say that you cannot trust me as a friend, because I have never loved you. Is not this a somewhat childish remark on your part? We live in a very practical age--love is not a necessary tie between human beings as things go nowadays;--the closest bond of friends.h.i.+p rests on the basis of cash accounts.”
”I am perfectly aware of that!” said the Prince, fixing his fine dark eyes full on his father's face--”And yet, after all, love is such a vital necessity, that I have only to look at you, in order to realize the failure and mistake of trying to do without it!”
The King gave him a glance of whimsical surprise.
”So!--you have begun to notice what I have known for years!” he said lightly--”Clever young man! What fine fairy finger is pointing out to you my deficiencies, while supplying your own? Do you learn to estimate the priceless value of love while contemplating the romantic groves and woodlands of The Islands? Do you read poetry there?--or write it? Or talk it?”
Prince Humphry coloured,--then grew very pale.
”When I misuse my time, Sir,” he said--”Surely it will then be needful to catechise me on the manner in which I spend it,--but not till then!”
”Fairly put!” answered the King--”But I have an idea--it may be a mistaken idea,--still I have it--that you _are_ misusing your time, Humphry! And this is the cause of our present little discussion. If I knew that you occupied yourself with the pleasures befitting your age and rank, I should be more at ease.”
”What do you consider to be the pleasures befitting my age and rank?”
asked the Prince with a touch of satire; ”Making a fool of myself generally?”
The King smiled.
”Well!--it would be better to make a fool of yourself generally than particularly! Folly is not so harmful when spread like jam over a whole slice of bread,--but it may cause a life-long sickness, if swallowed in one secret gulp of sweetness!”
The Prince moved uneasily.
”You think I am catechising you,--and you resent it--but, my dear boy, let me again remind you that you are in a manner answerable to the nation for your actions; and especially to that particular section of the nation called Society. Society is the least and worst part of the whole community--but it has to be considered by such servants of the public as ourselves. You know what James the First of England wrote concerning the 'domestic regulations' on the conduct of a prince and future king? 'A king is set as one on a stage, whose smallest, actions and gestures all the people gazinglie do behold; and, however just in the discharge of his office, yet if his behaviour be light or dissolute, in indifferent actions, the people, who see but the outward part, conceive preoccupied conceits of the king's inward intention, which although with time, the trier of all truth, will evanish by the evidence of the contrarie effect, yet, _interim pat.i.tur justus_, and prejudged conceits will, in the meantime, breed contempt, the mother of rebellion and disorder.' Poor James of the 'goggle eyes and large hysterical heart' as Carlyle describes him! Do you not agree with his estimate of a royal position?”
”I am not aware, Sir, that my behaviour can as yet be called light or dissolute;” replied the Prince coldly, with a touch of hauteur.
”I do not call it so, Humphry”--said the King--”To the best of my knowledge, your conduct has always been most exemplary. But with all your excessive decorum, you are mysterious. That is bad! Society will not endure being kept in the dark, or outside the door of things, like a bad child! It wants to be in the room, and know everything and everybody. And this reminds me of another point on which the good English James offers sound advice. 'Remember to be plaine and sensible in your language; for besides, it is the tongue's office to be the messenger of the mind, it may be thought a point of imbecilitie of spirit, in a king to speak obscurely, much more untrewly, as if he stood in awe of any in uttering his thoughts.' That is precisely your mood at the present moment, Humphry,--you stand 'in awe'--of me or of someone else,--in 'uttering your thoughts.'”
”Pardon me, Sir,--I do not stand in awe of you or of anyone;” said the Prince composedly--”I simply do not choose to 'utter my thoughts' just now.”
The King looked at him in surprise, and with a touch of admiration. The defiant air he had unconsciously a.s.sumed became him,--his handsome face was pale, and his dark eyes coldly brilliant, like those of his beautiful mother, with the steel light of an inflexible resolve.
”You do not choose?” said the King, after a pause--”You decline to give any explanation of your long hours of absence?--your constant visits to The Islands, and your neglect of those social duties which should keep you at Court?”