“Then for the love of God, bring him here,” he answered, forgetting himself. She started at that.
“No! No!” she cried hastily, as though fearing he might make the attempt to find him; “not to save the kingdom. You should listen to me to-night, General; I am very wise. The reports which have come in are 332 without exception bad. You arrest here, you arrest there, but still the people gather and still they state their wishes. I know how it is; at first they were amused to have their queen,––it was like a holiday. Especially when Dicky talked to them. But freedom is in the blood and it is as foolish to fight against it as against the foreign ships we once tried to keep out of our harbor. Carlina––the old Carlina, your Carlina and mine, is no more.”
She paused at the look of horror which had crept over his withered face. She dropped her hand to his arm.
“Do I sound disloyal? It is only because the kingdom remains as it used to be in your dear heart and yours alone. I am your queen, General, because you are still in the past. But the others are not. They are of the present and to them I am only a tradition. If they were all like you, my heart and soul, my life and love would all be theirs. It is to save what is left of the former things––to save you and the few others of that old kingdom––to have our dear Carlina as we used to have it out there in the sunshine of the garden––that I would leave this turmoil before it is too late.”
The white head drooped as she spoke,––drooped low over the wrinkled hands clasped upon the jeweled sword handle. Dreams––dreams that had seemed about to come true in these his later years now faded before his misty eyes. He had thought to see, before he died, the glory of the former times returned; and now his queen was the first to call them dead. For the moment he felt himself as solitary as one returned from 333 the grave. But, as she had said, if there were more like Otaballo, the kingdom would still be, without all this strife. His stubborn thoughts refused to march into the present. He raised his head again, still a general of Carlina.
“Your Majesty,” he said, “there is but one way in which a servant of the house of Montferaldo may save himself.”
And clicking his heels together, he had turned with military precision and left her. Then she had tossed the night long, dreaming horrible things. Now she sat in her private apartments staring with troubled eyes over the sunlit grounds. So an hour passed, when without warning, the door snapped open, closed, and she looked up, startled, to see Danbury himself.
Her breath was cut off as though her heart had been stopped, as when one thrusts in a finger and halts a clock. There was the same dead silence that closes in upon the cessation of the long-continued ticking––a silence as though the whole world paused a moment to listen. He limped across the room to her side. She saw that his hair was dishevelled, his coat torn, as though he had been in a struggle. Then his arms closed about her and she felt a great sense of safety, of relief, as though everything had suddenly been settled for her. There was no kingdom, no throne, no Otaballo, no cityful of malcontents,––nothing but Dicky. She felt as much at peace as when they used to sit in the garden together. All this other confusion had been only some 334 story which he had told her. But in a minute he drew back from her and thrust the present in again.
“Come,” he whispered, “we must hurry.”
“But Dicky––what is it?”