Part 5 (1/2)

”What is it, dear?” she inquired, ”sciatica?”

His answer came from a source she could not fathom.

”No one,” he murmured in a tone of deep discouragement, ”no one will ever call _me_ 'Jack.'”

III

Three hours later, after dinner, the King and his son, Prince Max, were sitting together in the same room. The King, feeling considerably better for a good meal, had given Max one of his best cigars, and having gone so far to establish confidential relations, was now trying to summon up courage to speak to the young man as a father should.

But here, as elsewhere, he was met by the old difficulty--he and his son were not intimates. They had drifted apart, not for any lack of filial or paternal affection, but simply because in the round of their official lives they so seldom met privately; and since the Prince had acquired an establishment of his own the King knew little of what he did with his daily life beyond the records of the Court Circular.

Max was now twenty-five; he was taller and darker than his father, more handsome and more self-possessed. In his appearance he combined the polish of a military training with the quiet air of an amateur scholar; his forehead was prematurely, but quite becomingly, bald, his mustache well groomed, his figure slight but athletic. He had inherited his father's full lips, but the glance of his eye was of a keener and shrewder quality, and it might be suspected that the eye-gla.s.ses which he occasionally put on were a.s.sumed more for effect than for necessity. Above all, he possessed what the King conspicuously lacked--self-a.s.surance, and with it a sort of moral ease as though any error he might fall into would be taken rather as an experience to profit by than as an occasion for self-reproach. His face showed as he talked that quality of humor which enables a man to laugh at his own enthusiasms, and one could not always be sure whether he were serious or merely indulging in dialectics. To any one out of touch with his intellectual origins, he was a man difficult to know; and the King, being in that matter altogether at sea, knew really very little about him, and was in consequence a little afraid of him.

That fact made a frontal attack difficult; nevertheless, having screwed himself up to speak, he began abruptly.

”Max,” said his father, ”have you ever thought about marrying?”

Max smiled a little bitterly. ”I started thinking about it,” he said, ”when I was seventeen; and off and on I have thought about it ever since.” Then he added rather coldly, as though to warn off mere curiosity, ”Why do you ask, sir? Has any proposal been made?”

”Well,” said his father, ”we might certainly arrange something. I feel, indeed, that we ought to--at your age. I only wanted first to know how you felt upon the matter. You see,” he added, hesitating, ”people are beginning to talk; and it won't do.”

This oblique and cautious reference to his son's private life marked a new stage in their relations: it was actually the first occasion, in all their intercourse as father and son, upon which the s.e.x-question had ever been broached between them. It was no wonder, therefore, that so far they had been rather strangers to each other. Now, however, having decided to speak, the King also decided that he must go on and interfere. It required some moral courage; for he had never failed to recognize his son as the stronger character, and, especially in intellectual matters, his superior.

”I have been told that you have been keeping a mistress,” he said, avoiding the young man's eye.

”That,” answered Max, ”would, I suppose, be the generally received phrase for it.”

”Who is she?” queried the King, pus.h.i.+ng hazardously on, now that the danger-point had been reached.

”Do you wish to meet her?”

Parental dignity was offended.

”That is a suggestion you ought not to make.”

”Then, my dear father, why inquire after her? She and I suit each other: to you she is nothing.”

”How long has this been going on?”

”We have lived together for five years.”

The King recalled a phrase that he had recently heard authoritatively spoken--”a relations.h.i.+p of long standing. Morally, of course, that only makes the matter worse.”

”H'm!” he said aloud. ”You started early, I must say!”

”You, sir, at that age were already a father,” said Max correctively.

The King made an interjectory movement, but the Prince went on. ”I was twenty, and I was still virginal. To speak frankly, I was amazed at myself, perhaps even amused. Yes, even now I am inclined to think that, among princes, my record must have been exceptional. This lady, to whom I owe nearly the whole of my domestic experience, saved me from an adventuress----”

The King lifted his eyebrows.