II
He was right We were marched across the town and into the courtyard of the Castle of St Michael. By the time we got there, and the heavy oaken gates were shut behind us, it was nearly dark.
“Here you pass the night,” announced our officer. “In the morning—humph, we will see.”
“Do you mean to say they are going to afford us no better accommodation than this?” I demanded.
“So it seems,” replied the dark young man. “Fortunately, however, the night is warm, the skies are clear, and to commune with the stars is reputed to be elevating for the spirit.”
Our officer had vanished into the castle, leaving us a corporal and three privates as a guard of honour. We, the prisoners, gathered together in the middle of the courtyard, and held a sort of impromptu indignation meeting. The women were especially eloquent in their complaints. Two of these I recognized as having been among my neighbours of the door-step, and we exchanged compassionate glances. The other four were oldish women, who wore caps and aprons, and looked like servants.
“Cooks,” whispered my comrade. “Some good burghers will be kept waiting for their suppers. Oh, what a lark!”
Our convention finally broke up with a resolution to the effect that, though we had been most shabbily treated, there was nothing to be done.
“We must suffer and be still. Let us make ourselves as comfortable as we can, and seek distraction in an interchange of ideas,” proposed my mate. He seated himself upon a barrel that lay lengthwise against the castle wall, and motioned to me to place myself beside him.
“You are English?” he inquired, in an abrupt German way.
“No, I am American.”
“Ah, it is the same thing. A tourist?”
“You think it is the same thing?” I questioned sadly. “You little know. But——yes, I am a tourist.”
“Have you been long in X———?”
“Three days.”
“For heaven’s sake, what have you found to keep you here three days?”
“I am a painter. The town is paintable.”
“Still life! Nature morte!” he cried. “It is the dullest little town in Christendom. But I’m glad you are a painter. I am a musician—a fiddler.”
“I suspected we were of the same ilk,” said I.
“Did you, though? That was shrewd. But I, too, seemed to scent a kindred soul.”
“Here is my card. If we’re not beheaded in the morning, I hope we may see more of each other,” I went on, warming up.
He took my card, and, by the light of a match struck for the occasion, read aloud, “Mr. Arthur Wainwright,” pronouncing the English name without difficulty. “I have no card, but my name is Sebastian Roch.”
“You speak English?” was my inference. “Oh, yes, I speak a kind of English,” he confessed, using the tongue in question. He had scarcely a trace of a foreign accent.
“You speak it uncommonly well.”
“Oh, I learned it as a child, and then I have relatives in England.”
“Do you suppose there would be any objection to our smoking?” I asked.
“Oh, no! let us smoke by all means.”
I offered him my cigarette case. Our cigarettes afire, we resumed our talk.
“Tell me, what in your opinion is the truth about Mathilde?” I began. “Is she in voluntary hiding, or is her uncle at the bottom of it?”
“Ah, that is too hard a riddle,” he protested. “I know nothing about it, and I have scarcely an opinion. But I may say very frankly that I am not of her partisans. She has no worse enemy than I.”
“What! Really? I’m surprised at that. I thought all the youth of X——— were devoted to her.”
“She’s a harmless enough person in her way, perhaps, and I have nothing positive to charge against her; only I don’t think she’s made of the stuff for a reigning monarch. She’s too giddy, too light-headed; she thinks too little of her dignity. Court ceremonial is infinitely tiresome to her; and the slow, dead life of X——— she fairly hates. Harmless, necessary X——— she has been known to call it. She was never meant to be the captain of this tiny ship of State; and with such a crew! You should see the ministers and courtiers! Dry bones and parchment, puffed up with tedious German eddigette! She was born a Bohemian, an artist, like you or me. I pity her, poor thing—I pity everyone whose destiny it is to inhabit this dreary Principality—but I can’t approve of her. She, too, by-the-by, plays the violin. My own thought is, beware of fiddling monarchs!”
“You hint a Nero.”
“Pay a Nero crossed with a Haroun-al-Raschid. I fear her reign would be diversified by many a midnight escapade, like the merry Caliph’s, only without his intermixture of wrong-righting. She’d seek her own amusement solely; though to seek that in X———! you might as well seek for blood in a broomstick. Oh, she’d make no end of mischief. The devil hath no agent like a woman bored.”
“That’s rather true.” I agreed, laughing, “And Conrad? What of him?”
“Oh, Conrad’s a beast; a squint-eyed, calculating beast. But a beast might make a good enough Grand Duke; and anyhow, a beast is all that a beastly little Grand Duchy like this deserves. However, to tell you my secret feeling, I don’t believe he’ll have the chance to prove it. Mathilde, for all her ennui, is described as tenacious of her rights, and as a cleverish little body, too, down at bottom.. That is inconsistent, but there’s the woman of it. I can’t help suspecting, somehow, that unless he has really killed and buried her, she will contrive by hook or crook to come to her throne.”
That night was long, though we accomplished a lot of talking: cold it seemed, too, though we were in midsummer. I dozed a little, with the stone wall of the castle for my pillow, half-conscious all the while that Sebastian Roch was carrying on a bantering flirtation with the two young girls. At daybreak our guard was changed. At six o’clock we were visited by a dapper little lieutenant, who looked us over, asked our names and other personal questions, scratched his chin for a moment reflectively, and finally, with an air of inspiration, bade us begone. The gates were thrown open and we issued from our prison, free.
“It’s been almost a sensation,” said Sebastian Roch. “So one can experience almost a sensation, even in X———! Live and learn.”
“You are not a patriot,” said I.
“My dear sir, I am patriotism incarnate. Only I find my country dull. If that be treason, make the most of it. I could not love thee, dear, so well, loved I not dulness less. It is not every night of my life that I am arrested, and sit on a barrel smoking cigarettes with an enlightened foreigner. The English are not generally accounted a lively race, but by comparison with the inhabitants of X———they shine like diamonds.”
“I dare say,” I acquiesced. “But I’m not English—I’m American.”
“So I perceive from your accent,” answered he impertinently. “But as I told you once before, it amounts to the same thing. You wear your rue with a difference, that is all.”
“Speaking of sensations,” said I, “I would sell my birthright for a cup of coffee.”
“You’ll find no coffee-house awake at this hour,” said Sebastian.
“Then I’ll wake one up.”
“What! and provoke a violation of the law. By law they’re not allowed to open till seven o’clock.”
“Oh, laws be hanged! I must have a cup of coffee.”
“Really, you are delightful,” asserted Sebastian, putting his arm through mine.
Presently we came to a beer hall, at whose door I began to bang. My friend stood by, shaking with laughter, Which seemed to me disproportionate to the humour of the event.
“You are easily amused,” said I.
“Oh, no, far from it. But this is such a lark you know,” said he.
By and by, we were seated opposite each other at a table, sipping hot coffee.
As I looked at Sebastian Roch I observed a startling phenomenon. The apex of his right whisker had become detached from the skin, and was standing out half an inch aloof from his cheek! The sight sent a shiver down my spine. It was certainly most unnatural. His eyes were bright, his voice was soft, he spoke English like a man and a brother, and his character seemed whimsical and open; but his beard, his dashing, black, pointed beard—which I’m not sure I hadn’t been envying him a little—was eerie, and, instinctively I felt for my watch. It was safe in its place and so was my purse. Therefore, at the door of the Bierhaus, in due time, we bade each other a friendly good-bye, he promising to look me up one of these days at my hotel.
“I have enjoyed your society more than you can think,” he said. “Some of these days I will drop in and see you, à limproviste.”