He waited for a moment longer, and then drew back further to the door.
"Speak to the Prince, Augustin," said my mother.
"I am very grateful to the Prince for his care of me," said I.
Hammerfeldt came quickly up to me and kissed my hand. "I would make you a true king, sire," said he, and with that he left us.
Hammerfeldt came to me and kissed my hand.
So they took my friend from me, and not all the kindness with which I was loaded in the time following his loss lightened the grief of it. Presently I came to understand better the meaning of these things, and to see that the King might have no friend; for his friend must be an enemy to others, perhaps even to the King himself. Shall I now blame Hammerfeldt? I do not know. I was coming to the age when impressions sink deep into the mind; and Geoffrey Owen was a man whose mark struck very deep. Besides, he had those theories! It was not strange in Hammerfeldt to fear those theories. Perhaps he was right; with his statecraft it may well be that he could have done no other than what he did. But to my fifteen-years-old thoughts these reflections were not present. They had taken my friend from me. In my bed that night I wept for him, and my days seemed empty for the want of him. It was to me as though he had died, and worse than that; there are things as final as death, yet lacking death's gentleness. Such is it to be cut off, living friend from living friend, and living heart from heart not grown cold in the grave. I have told this story of my tutor and myself first, for the influence Owen had on me more than for the effect wrought in me by the manner in which I lost him. There must be none very near me; it seemed as though that stern verdict had been passed. There must be a vacant space about the throne. Such was Hammerfeldt's gospel. He knew that he himself soon must leave me; he would have no successor in power, and none to take a place in love that he had neither filled nor suffered to be filled. As I wandered, alone now, about the woods at Artenberg I mused on these things, and came to a conclusion rather bitter for one of my years. I would tie no more bonds, to have them cut with the sword; if love must be slain, love should be born no more; to begin was but to prepare a sad ending. I would not be drawn on to confidence or friendship. I chose not to have rather than to lose, not to taste rather than leave undrained the cup of sweet intimacy. Thus I armed my boyhood at once against grief and love. In all that I did in after days this determination was always with me, often overborne for the time by emotions and passions, but always ready to reassert itself in the first calm hour, and relentlessly to fetter me in a prison of my own making. My God, how I have longed for friends sometimes!
Geoffrey Owen I saw but once again. I had written twice to him, and received respectful, friendly, brief answers. But the sword had passed through his heart also; he did not respond to my invitation, nor show a desire to renew our intimacy. Perhaps he was afraid to run the risk; in truth, even while I urged him, I was half afraid myself. Had he come again, it would not have been as it had been between us. Very likely we both in our hearts preferred to rest in memories, not to spoil our thoughts by disappointment, to be always to one another just what we had been as we rowed together that last afternoon at Artenberg, when the dim shadow of parting did no more than deepen our affection and touch it to a profounder tenderness.
And that time when I saw him again? I was driving through the gates of an English palace, encircled by a brilliant troop of soldiers, cheered by an interested, good-humoured throng. Far back in their ranks, but standing out above all heads, I saw his face, paler and thinner, more gentle even and kindly. He wore a soft hat crushed over his forehead; as I passed he lifted and waved it, smiling his old smile at me. I waved my hand, leaning forward eagerly; but I could not stop the procession. As soon as I was within I sent an equerry to seek him, armed with a description that he could not mistake. But Geoffrey Owen was nowhere to be found, he had not awaited my messenger. Having signalled a friend's greeting across the gulf between us, he was gone. I could have found him, for I knew that he dwelt in London, working, writing, awakening hope in many, fear in some, thought in all. But I would not seek him out, nor compel him to come to me, since he would not of his own accord. So he went his way, I mine, and I have seen him no more. Yet ever on my birthday I drain a cup to him, and none knows to whom the King drinks a full glass silently. It is my libation on a friendship's grave. Perhaps it would support an interpretation more subtle. For when I stood between Owen and Hammerfeldt, torn this way and that, uncertain whom I should follow through life, was not I the humble transitory theatre of a great and secular struggle? It seems to me that then the Ideal and the Actual joined in battle over me; Hector and Achilles, and I the body of Patroclus! Alas, poor body! Greatly the combatants desire it, little they reck of the roughness it suffers in their struggle! The Spirit and the World—am I over-fanciful if I seem to see them incarnated in Geoffrey Owen and old Hammerfeldt? And victory was with the world. Yet the conquered also have before now left their mark on lands which they could not hold.