Upon which the Count withdrew, meditative but not gloomy. If such young fools were to be the King's favourites, there would be ample opportunity for him to continue wielding the supreme power in Alsander. For a moment he forgot his suspicions as he dreamt the dreams of a man whose ambition age has sharpened instead of dulled.

But late that night when guests and populace (as it had been arranged for the sake of the King's supposed weak health) had dispersed, Vorza, as he jogged home in his carriage, and looked back on the events of the day, was again seized with the conviction that both he and Alsander had been the victims of a childish, simple and audacious hoax. He raged inwardly. Suppose it were found out by some outsider, and he--he, the wise Vorza--were shown to have been miserably fooled by an English jester and a Jew doctor? Was young Arnolfo a plotter, too--had he secret instructions from his old scoundrel of a father? Either, Vorza determined, the hoax must remain unexposed or he must expose it. Pacing the quiet flags of his great hall he pa.s.sed the hours till morning.

Meanwhile the King had formally dismissed his guests, none of whom were staying in the Castle, which, despite the efforts of plumbers, scullions, chambermaids and upholsterers, could only just accommodate with decency the King himself. As he entered the great gate the guard fell back, and he suddenly discovered with a queer thrill that the boy-princess had appeared from nowhere in particular and that they were walking together in the palace garden, the little ruined garden of King Basilandron, which at night, now that the little summer-houses and temples had all their graceful lines traced out with rows of Fairy lamps, had an air not of decay but rather of mystery and sweetness, so tangled were its bowers, so heavy hung the scent of roses in the air.

Norman trembled, feeling the enchantment of the moonlight and all the fear that comes with the birth of pa.s.sion; but he listened in silence to the silvery accents of the Princess as she told her tale.

It seems the admirable old Count Arnolfo was, as the Princess had described him to Norman when she pretended to be his son, sent to Alsander on a patriotic mission. The real son existed, but had been in America for many years; the real father was, as the Princess had depicted him, an ardent patriot, a man, however, of liberal views. He let the Princess run fairly wild--shocking a good deal the other little Royal households with whom they came into contact and giving rise thereby to the legends of her wildness that had reached even Alsander.

But, naturally enough, even his liberal and easy mind would not have contemplated the possibility of his charge roaming Alsander in boy's attire. What old Count Arnolfo had done, however, was to sanction the Princess to make a journey incognito (not, indeed, that such a very unimportant and impoverished Princess would have been much disturbed by adventurers) with her trusty governess, Miss Johnson. Old Arnolfo was getting too old to wander far from home, but he felt all the same that the Princess ought to have a course of good, healthy eye-opening travel in the English fashion.

They were to go anywhere they liked except--and the old man warned them like Bluebeard admonishing his wives--_except_ into the kingdom of Alsander. And of course, like Blue-beard's wife, Ianthe was fired with a resolve to go. But she did not know how to carry out the resolve, though she often thought of simply going and leaving Miss Johnson to her fate.

It was the thought of getting poor Miss Johnson into trouble that prevented her from carrying out this plan rather than any fear of the difficulties of the enterprise. So the Princess kept quiet and toured the helpless Miss Johnson round, and wrote at regular intervals letters to her guardian full of admirable descriptions of the places and monuments visited, culled from Baedeker's well-known hand-books. In the monotony of luxurious travel she all but forgot Alsander.

But one night (and as she began to say one night, Norman, who had cared little to hear the long story, was caught to attention by the music of her words)--one night in London she leant out of her window and watched the Thames shining in the light of the moon. All the dark chimneys across the water were dancing in the moonlight like heavenly towers: and she almost loved the city that till then had seemed so hateful and so dark that she could not understand why men suffered to dwell therein.

Then down the embankment came a man singing--but what was he singing?

Not the latest infamy of the halls, nor yet a hearty British ballad--but the Song of the Black Swans of the Kradenda which every Alsandrian knows and loves. The singer pa.s.sed beneath her window: she cried out, "Who goes there singing Alsandrian in the City of London?" Miss Johnson was shocked. The singer replied in English, "Who speaks to me in Alsandrian in a voice that is like a song?" Looking more closely, the Princess saw the singer to be a venerable and beautiful old man.

"I am an Alsandrian: speak English no more," she replied to his question.

"Ah! but I must speak English," said the stranger.

"But why?"

"Because I am an Englishman, fair lady of Alsander," replied the poet, for it was he, as Norman had already guessed.

A little disappointed, as she confessed, the Princess told how, nevertheless, she called the poet to come in and see her, and to a scandalized protest from Miss Johnson merely rejoined that if he might not come in through the door he should enter through the window.

It was the poet, then, who arranged the secret visit of Ianthe to Alsander. It was he who suggested her disguise, he who made friends for her in Alsander who could be trusted with the great secret, he who managed Miss Johnson. This latter superhuman task he managed heaven knows how. But I think the little old lady was a romantic and would have come, too, had it not been necessary for her to continue the tour and post from various ill.u.s.trious towns the charming letters which the Princess with the poet's aid (to lighten the touch of Baedeker) composed beforehand ready for the post. "And so ends my tale," concluded the Princess. "Three days ago Sforelli, at my request, informed my guardian of all the amazing truth: and he (stern old man!) without one comment, has ordered me back. I must obey. I leave to-night. Here ends the masquerade!"

"Poor masquerade!" cried Norman. "Is it here the curtain falls? Whatever be the strong and radiant drama of our lives on which it shall rise again, I regret the masquerade!"

Their footsteps ceased upon the garden path. The moonlight flung their stilly shadows to the tattered roses. On the pediment of Love's plaster Temple one fairy light still palely glimmered in the vast white splendour of chaste Artemis. A nightingale trilled once, then fell a-dreaming. And through the boy's learned soul pa.s.sed murmurs of ages far estranged, which yet blended together and took on a nature of their own--a clear dim note of the Athenian lyre, hinting beneath all artificial chords the melody of the earth and of truth, a gavotte by Lully or Rameau, a laugh of Heine, or songs they sang at the Cremorne Gardens, twenty years ago. He felt the moonlit sky, the ruined bowers, the Temple and the roses dwindle and shapen into the scenery of a stage--as though the girl in travesty before him had made a mockery of all the linked worlds. Then suddenly he knew.

"Columbine," he said, "you will not leave me thus?"

She stepped away from him lightly, arms akimbo.

"And what are you to me, Pierrot?" she cried; "or Columbine to you?"

"To me," he answered, "you are the colour of the soul of the marble statues, and the shape of the movement of the gliding moon."

"Like her," she laughed, "I shine falsely and I shine pale. Like her, to you I am only a shape that is no shape and a colour that is no colour."

"I will chase you from shape to shape," replied the young King. "I will pursue you from hue to hue; though you change to a slim gazelle or silver fish or a little seed of corn. And when I have conquered you at last, and held you, and driven you to your true and pristine form, then victorious, as now vanquished, will I swear eternal pa.s.sion at your feet."

And he knelt on one knee before her.

"Why, Pierrot!" she whispered, "you said you would not love me yet!"

"But that," he replied, "was three hours ago."

"Pursue me no more, Pierrot," she warned him. "The moon has tricked your eye: the scents of the garden have deceived your heart. Am I not still Arnolfo? am I not still a boy?"

"Columbine," he replied, "I am pleading for love. Answer me now, tell me my doom, torment me no longer, for I hear approaching the fiery wheels of your departure."

"Oh, what a thirst for words you have," sighed she. "Stay there on your knees in silence, impatient, importunate Pierrot, and wait till I choose to answer."

"They have come to take you away!" he cried. "Your dragon is roaring at the gate. Your answer, Columbine!"

"Oh, stay there kneeling as I bid you," she cried, "and forget your thirst for words. Was it your mother, boy, who gave you eyes that colour in the night? Stay there and do not speak or raise your glance till you hear my dragon rolling me away--and let me give you, in my own fashion, the silent answer of my farewell."

She spake, and the very dragon ceased to roar, as though even his steely heart recognized the bell-like voice of his mistress, commanding silence throughout the world. Haunted with expectation Norman bowed his eyes: soon he felt her presence bending over him its wings. Softly her arm stole across his shoulder, and suddenly, to his great wonder, fell over his cheek a wave of the soft and fragrant hair he had never seen; and on his lips she answered him.

Too soon she was gone: but he obeyed her to the end; ecstasy which had s.n.a.t.c.hed his spirit out into the realms of fire, had left his body frozen like ice and statues and the moon. He listened immobile to her step fading down the garden: he heard the rumour of her departure. Then he rose and like a man whom life has forgotten, he walked slowly back to his royal home.

But as for Peronella, she, poor girl, had made her way home early enough, clinging to her mother, not heeding the pity, envy, laughter or ridicule of the revellers, dozens of whom pointed to her to make their comment--so famous was she now. On her arrival she paid no attention to her mother's attempts to rea.s.sure her (which consisted in the reflection that no harm had been done, and the a.s.sertion that the King would provide her with a magnificent dowry), but rushing to her room, as ten thousand million disappointed maids have done before, she flung herself on the bed and burst into tears. Then she opened her box and took out a letter. A little slip may ruin a great cause, and the conspirators, who had thought to make all their plans so neatly and completely, had forgotten about letters. And this was a letter, with a British postmark and addressed to Norman Price.

"All Alsander may be deceived," cried Peronella to herself. "But I'll be even with the liar." Peronella, after a moment's hesitation, opened the letter with a little knife, cunningly, so that it could be sealed again.

It was, of course, in English, so she could not understand it. She put it under her pillow with a peasant's caution, and cried herself to sleep.

The next morning she found Father Algio--whom she sought--at the confessional.

"You do well to come to me," said the priest, kindly. "You have been away too long."

"Ah! father," said Peronella, with a not quite honest sigh.

"The ways of Princes are not our ways, Peronella, and hard is the lot of the women whose path they cross."

"Princes?" said Peronella. "Do you believe that tale? A Prince--that Englishman who said he loved me?"

"What do you mean, my daughter? Which tale?"

"Do you believe that that Englishman who came to stay with us was our King Andrea?"

"But who ever doubted it, girl?" rejoined the old priest, pretending greater astonishment than he felt, for, after all, similar questions had been in the hearts of many. "In that he came to Alsander in secret for a few days before his accession we all count it for great wisdom on his part. You must be mad, girl, to talk such treason. Could all our rulers be lying to us?"

"Well, read this letter," said Peronella. "I cannot, for it is in English. It is addressed to him under the name he had when he was with me. It arrived after he left."

The worthy priest, who had been expecting a sad confession of deviation from the straight path of virtue, was more shocked than he would have been at any weakness of the flesh, at this manifestation of coldness, pettiness and deceit. (He need not be therefore accused of having hoped for a romantic tale. His long experience told him that small sins were sometimes worse than great ones.)

"Give me the letter," he said. Taking it, he addressed the girl severely. "You have committed many sins," he said. "You have sinned in stupidly doubting your lawful King; in thinking yourself cleverer than all the rest of Alsander; in taking a letter, which was not yours; in opening that letter and in attempting to disclose its contents to another. I shall reseal the letter and send it instantly to the palace: nor will I betray my King by giving a single glance at the contents. I am most displeased with you, my daughter."

"You will think differently of me when you have read the letter,"

sneered Peronella, rising and departing abruptly down the aisle with a confident and cynical laugh--a laugh sad years older than her laughter of a week ago.

The old priest looked after her with melancholy eyes, then let his glance fall on the letter. He then read it.