A WALK IN THE GARDEN
In the last resort the issue lay with Sonia. Her husband had the wisdom to recognise that; although his own happiness was at stake, the matter was beyond the restricted sphere of the personal equation.
In the crisis of his fate it has always seemed to me that Fitz displayed the inherent nobility of his character. Once the King, with immense force and cogency, had revealed the situation in its true aspect, his son-in-law, without abating a single claim to his wife's consideration, yet refrained from unduly exercising the prerogative conferred upon him by their spiritual affinity.
It was wise and right that Fitz should detach himself as far as possible from the conflict that was being waged between father and daughter. But, although he did what lay in his power to simplify the issue, he could not banish the image of himself from his wife's heart. He furnished the motive power of her existence. Emotion held the master-key to her nature. In any conflict between love and duty, love could hardly fail to win.
Fitz suffered intensely as the struggle went on. He even threw out a hint to me that he might be tempted to take a certain step to help his wife to a possible solution of the problem.
"The longer this goes on," he said to me in the small hours of the morning, "the more clearly I realise that Sonia's place is with her own people. I have been blind, and I have been mad, and I owe it to Ferdinand that I have been able to see myself in my true relation to the issue in which fate has involved us. It is six years since I first saw Sonia on the terrace of the Castle at Blaenau. I was travelling about the world trying to find ease for my soul. I knew that she was unhappy, and she knew that I was, but we were young and not afraid. We met continually, for I had the entrée to the Castle as the grandson of the Elector of Gracow, whose daughter married my grandfather, George Fitzwaren of tragic memory.
"We used to sit out on the Castle terrace, Sonia and I, night after night, watching the stars in their courses, while her father dragooned his parliament and hoodwinked his people. She was lonely, outcast and unloved; there was none to whom she could speak her thoughts; she was oppressed with the sense of her destiny.
"She said that when she first met me she wondered where she had seen me before. She said that my presence haunted her like a half-remembered vision, until it began to merge itself into her dreams of a former existence and a happier state. And as she said this, her voice grew strangely familiar. For me it unlocked the doors of memory. It was like the faint, far-off music you can hear sometimes, the music of the wind in winter sweeping across infinite, illimitable space.
"She allowed me to kiss her, and we knew then we held the key to the riddle of existence. We were twin-souls made one again, and together we would go through all time and all eternity.
"But I think we are beginning now to realise that the sense of oneness is alien to the human state, and that the hour is at hand when we must separate and go out again into the night of ages alone."
In a condition of desolation the unhappy man rocked his meagre body to and fro as thus he spoke.
"If it will really help her," he said, "I think I shall put an end to my present life. At least, I shall ask Ferdinand to do it, for I doubt whether any man in the true enjoyment of his reason has really the power to do it for himself. And yet, perhaps one ought not to say that. So much can be done by prayer."
"Surely it is contrary to the will of God?" I said with a kind of horror.
"It is, undoubtedly," said Fitz, "as regards humanity at large. But it sometimes happens, you know, that one among us plays the game up so high that he gets a special decree. I almost think, Arbuthnot, that I have heard the Voice—and if I have, my unhappy Sonia will be able to go back to her people for a term, and I shall ask you, as my oldest friend, a man whom my instincts tell me to trust, to accept the charge of my little daughter."
To one poised delicately upon the plane of reason such a speech could not fail to be shocking. But it was so sincere, so reasoned, the holder of these views was so entirely the captain of his soul, that his words, as he uttered them, seemed to derive a kind of sanction which as I commit them to paper they do not appear to possess.
The counsel of one man to another does not amount to much in those cases where the subject-matter of their discussion has been already referred to the High Court. But I felt that I should be unfaithful to the elements that formed my own nature, acutely conscious as I was of their imperfect development, if I did not seek to give them some sort of an expression at such a moment as this.
"Fitz," I said, "I can claim no right to address you, except as a younger brother. You belong to a higher order of things; your life is more developed than mine, but I ask you in the name of God to refrain from the step you contemplate, unless you are absolutely convinced, beyond any possibility of error, that there is no other way out."
The unhappy man made no reply. His face had begun to seem unrecognisable.
I rose involuntarily from the chair in which I sat.
"Let us walk in the garden," I said.
The suggestion appeared to shape itself on my lips, regardless of the will's volition. It was, perhaps, a recovered fragment of man's heritage floating downwards from the past.
I opened the door and we went downstairs into the garden. It was the middle of the night; what there was of the moon was almost wholly obscured; the air was mild with the purity of recent rain. Up and down the wet lawns we walked, bareheaded and in our slippered feet.
Suddenly lights flashed upon us out of the shrubbery.
"It is all right," I called. "Do not disturb us. Go into another part of the grounds."
The voice seemed unlike my own, but the watchers obeyed it.
Nature exhorted us as we walked in the garden. Her purity, her calm, the incommunicable magic of her spaciousness, the thrall of her splendour entered our veins. We were her children, flesh of her flesh, bone of her bone. The mighty Mother spoke to us.
A little wind moved softly among the gaunt branches of a pine.
"I must make quite sure that the Voice has spoken to me," said Fitz.
The unhappy man walked to the pine-tree, knelt down and seemed involuntarily to shroud his face with his hands.
I shrank back and turned away.
Quite suddenly my heart leapt with surprise and dismay. An unexpected and sinister presence was by my side.
"I pity that poor fellow," said a voice softly. "I pity them both."
It was the voice of the King.
Habited in a voluminous mantle, the Victor of Rodova linked his arm through mine in his paternal manner.
"Come, my friend," he said in a voice of urgent kindliness, "let us walk in the garden."
Together we walked over the lawns, the King and I, with slow and measured steps.
"It is a beautiful night." Ferdinand the Twelfth took off his hat.
"God is in His heaven, sir," I said, softly.
"You are a God-fearing people," said the King; "that is a good thing. What can we do in the world without the fear of God? This night reminds me of the night before Rodova. It was just like this, a calm, soft air, a little moist. You could hear the wind creeping softly among the pine-trees. At the bottom of your garden there was the gentle noise of a little river. All night the little fishes were leaping and playing in its clear waters, and living their lives joyously as it seemed good to them. And beyond the river were the Austrians, sixty thousand men with horses and cannons.
"The God of Armies had given the soul of my country into my care. Was she to remain a free and independent people as she had been since the time of Alvan the First, or was she to be trampled under the heel of the oppressor? All night I walked in the garden, and I remember I knelt down under the pine-tree yonder, as our friend is doing there. It is a wonderful thing how history keeps happening over again."
The King's voice had grown hushed and solemn.
"To-night is another crisis in the history of our country. I am older than I seem; there is a voice within which tells me that my course is almost run. That is why I have come to speak with my daughter. It is the business of us Sveltkes to hold the balance in the scales of destiny. Since the time of Alvan the First there has been an unbroken line of monarchy; perhaps it is decreed that it shall end to-night. But yet I cannot think so. The unseen power which enabled us to withstand the might of Austria will invest my daughter with wisdom and grace."
There was a footfall on the soft turf, and we turned to find that Fitz had joined us.
"Ha! Nevil," said the King in a voice of parental tenderness. "I was explaining to our good friend how this night reminds me of the eve of Rodova. Our lady the moon was in her present quarter; yonder was Mars, blood-red on the eastern horizon. There behind us was Jupiter, exactly as we see him to-night; but on the night of Rodova Uranus was not visible. It was a grave crisis in the history of our country; to-night is a grave crisis also, for I feel that a term has been placed to my days. But I walked all night in the garden, and I knelt down beneath a single pine-tree, and the God of Armies spoke to me. 'Fear nothing,' said the God of Armies. 'At the break of day, cross the river that flows at the bottom of the garden, and all will be well.'"
The light of the moon fell upon the King's face, That smiling and subtle visage looked strangely luminous.
"An hour before daybreak," the King went on, "Parlowitz came to me. 'Weissmann has come up in the night,' he said, 'with twenty thousand men. If we cross the river, all is lost.' 'Fear nothing, Parlowitz,' I said. 'At daybreak we cross the river. The God of Armies would have it so.' 'Then, sire,' said Parlowitz, 'give this to my wife when next you see her'—Parlowitz unfastened the collar of his tunic and took off a locket which he wore round his neck—'and tell her that it is my wish that our second son John should succeed to my estate.' I then bade adieu to Parlowitz, for he would have it so; and as the dawn was breaking he was shot through the breast at the head of his division. But that was a glorious day in the annals of the Illyrian people; and you, my dear Nevil, will have seen the noble statue that has been raised to the memory of Parlowitz on the terrace at Blaenau."
"I have seen the statue," said Fitz, calmly. "A monument of piety, but abominable as a work of art."
"It is the work of the best sculptor in Illyria," said the King.
"There are no sculptors in Illyria," said Fitz, bluntly.
The King fell into a muse. I was sensible of Fitz's grip upon my arm.
"It is wonderful," said the King, softly, "how history continues to happen over again. I seem to hear the voice again in the upper air: 'At daybreak, cross the river at the bottom of the garden, and all will be well.'"
The grip upon my arm grew tighter.
"Do not leave me," said Fitz in a hoarse whisper.
All night long the three of us walked up and down the lawns before the house. In one of the upper windows was a light. It was Sonia's room.
Few words passed between us, and in the main it was the King who spoke. Never once did Fitz relax his grip upon my arm. Indeed, as the hours passed, it seemed to grow more tense. It had the convulsive tenacity of one who in the last extremity fights to keep the body united to the soul.
Even I, who make no claim to be highly sensitised, was susceptible of the ominous challenge of the force that was enfolding us. Silence was even more terrible than speech. The resources of the ages were in the scale against us.
"For God's sake do not leave me!" said my unhappy friend in a whisper of terror.
At last the first faint pencilings of the dawn began to declare themselves in the upper air. My slippered feet were soaked and my teeth were chattering with the chill of the morning. A curious sensation, which I had never felt before, began to steal over me. With a thrill of suffocating, incommunicable horror I began slowly to realise that I was no longer the master of myself.
Fitz's convulsed grip was still upon my arm, but the sense of him had grown remote. He was slipping farther and farther away.
"Hold me!" he whispered; and again, "Hold me!" The stifled voice was like that of one in whose company I was drowning.
The voice of the King sounded quite near, although it was with dull stupefaction that I heard his words.
"The day is breaking. The river flows at the bottom of the garden."
The fingers of my friend no longer clasped my arm. In the half-light I saw the King produce a revolver from the folds of his mantle. He handed it to Fitz with a paternal, almost deprecating gesture, and we were both powerless to deny him. It seemed to me that I was standing outside all that was happening. The sense of distance appeared ever to increase.
I witnessed the King kiss the forehead of his son-in-law, and heard him give him his blessing. Then I seemed to hear the voice of Fitz crying piteously,
"Sonia, Sonia, help me!"
"Look over there," said the King; "the day is breaking. It is another glorious sunrise for the people of Illyria."
"Yes, indeed, sir," said a voice that broke the spell.
The prayer of Fitz had been heard. Sonia had come unperceived into our midst.
"I have come to taste the morning, it is so good," she said. "And you, how early you have risen!"
The King laughed. He seemed to enfold his daughter with that visage of smiling subtlety.
"We have been walking in the garden, my friends and I," he said. "We have had a pleasant talk together. The position of the stars reminded me of the eve of Rodova, except that Uranus was not with us. It is always well to know the position of Uranus."
I felt Fitz slip the revolver into my hand.
"Come," he said in his tone of natural decision, "let us go and have a bath and get ready for breakfast."
While the King continued to discourse amiably with his daughter we made our escape.
In the privacy of my room over the stables we removed the cartridges from the revolver.
Fitz handed the weapon to me. "Keep it," he said, "as a memento of Ferdinand the Twelfth. I should have crossed the river if Sonia had not heard my call."
Fitz shivered; but in his haggard face I thought that reason was still enthroned.