CHAPTER XIX
It was November when Sir Charles died, and Lady Henrietta betook herself to her sister's for consolation, while Sir Paul and the Boy, with a common impulse, departed for India.
They spent Christmas in Egypt, the winter months in the desert, and at last spring came, with its remembrance of duties to be done. And to the elder man England made its insistent call, as it always did in March. For was it not in England, and in March, the tidings reached him that unto him a son was born?
He must go back.
So at last, acting upon a pre-arrangement to which the young Prince had not been a party, they made their way back to their own world of men and women.
"Boy," said Sir Paul, one day, "the time has come when many questions you have asked and wondered about are to be answered, as is your due. It was your mother's wish that you should go, at the beginning of May, alone, to Lucerne. There you will find letters awaiting you—from her—from your Uncle Peter—yes, even from myself—telling you the whole secret of your birth, the story of your inheritance."
"Why Lucerne, Father Paul?"
"It was your mother's wish—and mine!"
Then, with a rush of tenderness, the older man threw his arm around the Boy's shoulders. "Boy," he said, "be charitable and lenient and kind—whatever you read!"
"And what are you going to do, Father Paul? I have not quite two weeks of freedom left, and I begrudge every day I am forced to spend away from you. You will go with me to see me crowned—and married?"
"Certainly, Boy! You are to stay in Lucerne only until you are sure you understand all the revelations of these letters, and their full import. It may be a week—it may be a day—it may be but a few hours, but—I can't go with you, and you must not ask me to! It is an experience you must face alone. I will await you in Venice, Paul, and be sure that when you want me, Boy, I will come!"
The Boy's sensitive nature was stirred to the depths by the emotion in Sir Paul's face—emotion that all his life long he had never seen there before. He grasped his hand—
"Father Paul," he began, but Sir Paul shook his head at the unspoken appeal in his face and bade him be patient just a little longer and await his letters, for he could tell him nothing.
And thus they parted; the Boy to seek in Lucerne the unveiling of his destiny, the man to wait in Venice, a place he had shunned for one-and-twenty years, but which was dearer to him than any other city in the world. It was there that he had lived the climax of his love-life, with its unutterable ecstasy—and unutterable pain.
Vasili had preceded his young master to Lucerne with the letters that had been too precious, and of too secret a nature, to be entrusted to the post. Who can define the sensations of the young prince as he held in his hand the whole solution of the mystery that had haunted all his years? He trembled—paled. What was this secret—perhaps this terrible secret—which was to be a secret no longer?
Alone in his apartment, he opened the little packet and read the note from the Regent, which enclosed the others, and then—he could read no further. The few words of information that there stared him in the face drove every other thought from his mind, every other emotion from his heart. His father! Why hadn't he seen? Why hadn't he known? A thousand significant memories rushed over him in the light of the startling revelation. How blind he had been! And he sat for hours, unheeding the flight of time, thinking only the one thought, saying over and over again the one name, the name of his father, his own father, whom he had loved so deeply all his life—
Paul Verdayne!