It meant that they would never set eyes upon Rudolph Smolenski again. But they had no time now to dwell upon his disappearance. Hardly had the noise of the retreating carriage died away when the sound of many voices reached them from the end of the corridor, and they felt a mingled sensation of relief and apprehension at the approaching footsteps of a crowd.
CHAPTER XXI.
Prince Carlo was seated at a small, round, mahogany table in the centre of his shadow-haunted room. Before him lay a not uninviting repast. Cold meat, cut-up peaches, bread, butter, iced coffee, and a dish containing a kind of pickle known only to Rexanians strove in vain to tempt his appetite. Rukacs had spread the table silently, but with an air of deference that was grateful to the captive prince. No word had been spoken between them, but in his very silence Rukacs seemed to do homage to the youth’s rank, a rank that the conspirator recognized in practice while in theory he denied its existence.
Evolution has not yet placed man so far above the lower order of animals that he does not in his heart of hearts acknowledge the tendency of nature to ratify the monarchical idea. He finds beneath him in the scale of being the bees setting up a queen and the herds of wild cattle paying homage to a king bull. He discovers that the prevailing conception of a future world, even among democrats, pictures God upon His throne, surrounded by celestial courtiers. Whether he looks up or down, therefore, man’s eye rests upon the concrete manifestations of the abstract idea of royalty, and, sweeping the whole range of existence, he sees a throne beneath his feet and dreams of another somewhere beyond the stars. The old cry, “Le roi est mort, vive le roi,” may have in it the germs of universal truth that a nation of freemen would do well to heed. The substitution of a political “boss” for an hereditary ruler may be a step forward, but there are those to whom it looks like reaction illustrating the very nature of things.
Prince Carlo of Rexania sipped his coffee and pondered certain questions related to the propositions just laid down. Whatever of weakness there had been in the voluptuous dreams that had tempted him from the stern path of duty in the afternoon had disappeared, and his mind now dwelt wholly upon the obligations he owed to his people, his forefathers, and himself. As the thought of his physical helplessness at that moment stung him into a gesture of angry impatience, Rukacs crossed the room and closed the window that looked out upon the balcony, the window that Prince Carlo had vainly attempted to open on the night of his arrival. Rukacs understood the secret of its fastenings, and silently, almost stealthily, took an unnecessary precaution against his captive’s escape. The manner in which the Rexanian performed this task proved that he was, at bottom, ashamed of the rôle he was playing at the moment.
“If you desire anything, your—your royal highness,” he faltered, as he recrossed the room and placed a hand upon the door opening into the hall, “will you kindly rap three times upon the floor?” The conspirator’s flushed face bore outward evidence of his interior agitation. Rukacs loved freedom too well to make a graceful jailer.
Prince Carlo bowed in acknowledgment of his captor’s words, and on the instant found himself alone, the grating sound of a rusty key again serving to emphasize the chilling fact that he, the heir-apparent to the throne of Rexania, was a prisoner in a land whose political stock in trade is liberty.