Part 37 (1/2)
”Always the same Sphinx!” he thought now, with a slight frown shading the bluff good-nature of his usual expression; ”She is a woman who will face Death as she faces Time,--with that cold smile of hers which expresses nothing but scorn of all life's little business!”
He proceeded meditatively on his way to the palace itself, where, on demand, he was at once admitted to the private apartments of the King.
CHAPTER XVIII
ROYAL LOVERS
Silver-white glamour of the moon, and velvet darkness of deep branching foliage held the quiet breadth of The Islands between them. Low on the sh.o.r.e the fantastic shapes of one or two tall cliffs were outlined black on the fine sparkling sand,--tiny waves rose from the bosom of the calm sea, and cuddling together in baby ripples made bubbles of their crests, and broke here and there among the pebbles with low gurgles of laughter, and in the warm silence of the southern night the nightingales began to tune up their delicate fluty voices with delicious tremors and pauses in the trying of their song. The under-scent of hidden violets among moss flowed potently upon the quiet air, mingled with strong pine-odours and the salt breath of the gently heaving sea,--and all the land seemed as lonely and as fair as the fabled Eden might have been, when the first two human mated creatures knew it as their own. To every soul that loves for the first time, the vision of that Lost Paradise is granted; to every man and woman who know and feel the truth of the divine pa.s.sion is vouchsafed a flas.h.i.+ng gleam of glory from that Heaven which gives them to each other. For the voluptuary--for the animal man,--who like his four-footed kindred is only conscious of instinctive desire, this pure expansion of the heart and enn.o.bling of the thought is as a sealed book,--a never-to-be-divulged mystery of joy, which, because he cannot experience it, he is unable to believe in. It is a glory-cloud in which the privileged ones are 'caught up and received out of sight.' It transfuses the roughest elements into immortal influences,--it colours the earth with fairer hues, and fills the days with beauty; every hour is a gem of sweet thought set in the dreaming soul, and the lover, at certain times of rapt ecstasy, would smile incredulously were he told that anyone living could be unhappy. For love goes back to the beginning of things,--to the time when the world was new. It has its birth in that primeval light when 'the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of G.o.d shouted for joy.' If it is real, deep, pa.s.sionate and disinterested love, it sees no difficulties and knows no disillusions.
It is a sufficient a.s.surance of G.o.d to make life beautiful. But in these days of the eld-time of nations, when all things are being mixed and prepared for casting into a new mould of world-formation, where we and our civilizations are not, and shall not be,--any more than the Egyptian Rameses is part of us now,--love in its pristine purity, faith and simplicity, is rare. Very little romance is left to hallow it; and it is doubtful whether the white moon, swinging like a silver lamp in heaven above the peaceful Islands, shed her glory anywhere on any such lovers in the world, as the two who on this fair night of the southern springtime, with arms entwined round each other, moved slowly up and down on the velvet greensward outside Ronsard's cottage,--Gloria and her 'sailor' husband.
Gloria was happy,--and her happiness made her doubly beautiful. Clad in her usual attire of white homespun, with her rich hair falling unbound over her shoulders in girl-fas.h.i.+on, and just kept back by a band of white coral, she looked like a young G.o.ddess of the sea; her l.u.s.trous, starlike eyes gazed up into the tender responsive ones of the handsome stripling she had so trustfully wedded, and not a shadow of doubt or fear darkened the heaven of her confidence. She did not know how beautiful she was,--she did not realise that her body was like one of the unfettered, graceful and perfectly-proportioned figures of women left to our wondering reverence by the Greek sculptors,--she had never thought about herself at all, not even to compare her fair brilliancy of skin with the bronzed, weather-beaten faces of the fisher-folk among whom she dwelt. Resting her delicate cla.s.sic head against the encircling arm of her lover and lord, her beauty seemed almost unearthly in its pure transparency of feature, outlined by the silver glimmer of the moonbeams; and the young man by her side, with his handsome dark head, tall figure and distinguished bearing, looked the fitting mate for her fair, blossoming womanhood. No two lovers were ever more ideally matched in physical perfection; and as they moved slowly to and fro on the soft dark gra.s.s, brus.h.i.+ng the dewy scent from hanging rose-boughs that pushed out inviting tufts of white and pink bloom here and there from the surrounding foliage, they would have served many a poet for some sweet idyll, or romance in rhyme, which should hold in its stanzas the magic of immortality. Yet there was a shade of uneasiness in the minds of both,--Prince Humphry was more silent than usual, and seemed absorbed in thought; and Gloria, looking timidly up from time to time at the dark poetic face of her 'sailor' lover, felt with a woman's quick instinct that something was troubling him, and remorsefully concluded that she was to blame,--that he had heard of her having been seen by the King, and that he was evidently vexed by it. He had arrived that evening suddenly and unexpectedly; for she and her 'little father,' as she called Rene Ronsard, had just begun their frugal supper, when the Crown Prince's yacht swept into the bay and dropped anchor. Half an hour later he, the much-beloved 'junior officer' in the Crown Prince's service had appeared at the cottage door, greatly to their delight, for they did not expect to see him so soon. They had supped together, and then Ronsard himself had gone to superintend a meeting at a small social club he had started for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the fisher-folk, wisely leaving the young wedded lovers to themselves. And they had for a long time been very quiet, save for such little words of love as came into tune with the interchange of caresses,--and after a pause of anxious inward thought, Gloria ventured on a timid query.
”Dearest,--are you _very_ angry with me?”
He started,--and stopping in his walk, turned the fair face up between his two hands, as one might lift a rose on its stem, and kissed it tenderly.
”Angry? How can I ever be angry with you, Sweet? Besides what cause have I for anger?”
”I thought, perhaps--” murmured Gloria, ”that if the Professor told you what I did yesterday,--when the King came--”
”He did tell me;” and the Prince still gazed down on that heavenly beauty which was the light of the world to him. ”He told me that you sang;--and that your golden voice was a musical magnet which drew his Majesty to your feet! I am not surprised,--it was only natural! But I could have wished it had not happened just yet; however, it has happened, and we must make the best of it!”
”It was my fault,” said the girl penitently;--”I had the fancy to sing; and I _would_ sing, though the good Professor told me not to do so!”
The Prince was silent. He was bracing his mind to the inevitable. He had determined that on this very night Gloria should know the truth. For he was instinctively certain that if he went abroad, as his father wished him to do, some means would be taken to remove her altogether from the country before his return; and his idea was to tell her all, and make her accompany him on his travels. As his wife, she was bound to obey him, he argued within himself; she should, she must go with him!
Unconsciously Gloria's next words supplied him with an opening to the subject.
”Why did you never tell me that the Professor was in the King's service?” she asked. ”He seemed to know him quite well,--indeed, almost as a friend!”
”He is the King's physician,” answered the Prince abruptly; ”And, therefore, he is very greatly in the King's confidence.”
He walked on, still keeping his arm round her, and seemed not to see the half-frightened glance she gave him.
”The King's physician!” she echoed;--”He does not seem a great person at all,--he is quite a simple old German man!”
Her lover smiled.
”To be physician to the King, my Gloria, is not a very wonderful honour!
It merely implies that the man so chosen is perhaps the ablest fencer with sickness and death; the greatness is in the simple old German himself, not in the King's preference. Von Glauben is a good man.”
”I know it;” said Gloria gently; ”He is good,--and very kind. He said he would always be my friend,--but he was very strange in his manner yesterday, and almost I was vexed with him. Do you know what he said? He asked me what I should do if you--my husband, had deceived me? Can you imagine such a thing?”
Now was the supreme moment. With a violently beating heart the Prince halted, and putting both arms round her waist, drew her up to him in such a way that their eyes looked close into each other's, and their lips were within kissing touch.
”Yes, my sweetest one! I can imagine such a thing! Such a thing is possible! Consider it to be true! Consider that I _have_ deceived you!”
She did not move from his clasp, but into her large, lovely trusting eyes came a look of grief and terror, and her face grew ashy pale.