"Ha, you don't know him!"
I admitted that I did not and that I looked forward to our better acquaintance.
The hostess and her humble coadjutor in the things of this life felt it to be a supreme moment in the progress of the feast when the royal lips were brought to the brink of the paternal madeira which had reached us so opportunely, if so illicitly, from Doughty Bridge, Yorks. But our suspense was resolved at once. The Victor of Rodova raised his glass to his hostess with the most benignant glance in the world, and for the second time Mrs. Arbuthnot hoisted the ensign of the rose.
Certainly the royal expansion had a charm that was all its own. Being called for the first time to my present exalted plane of social intercourse, I had had no opportunity of observing anything quite like it, other than in the manners of Fitz and his wife which had proved such a scandal to our neighbourhood. But the Victor of Rodova was so spontaneous in his actions and so unstudied in his gestures, and he appeared to wear his heart on his sleeve with such a childlike facility, that to one nurtured in our insular mode of self-repression it was as good as a play to be in his company.
One thing was clear. From the first it was plain that Mrs. Arbuthnot had achieved a great personal triumph. And in the particular circumstances of the case I am constrained to append the courtier-like phrase, "nor was it to be wondered at." Speaking out of a moderately full knowledge of the subject in all its chameleon-like range of vicissitude, from grave to gay, from lively to severe, in gowns by Worth, in frocks by Paquin, in costumes by Redfern, in nondescript creations by "the woman who makes things for Mama," I had never seen the subject in question keyed up to quite this degree of allure. Mrs. Arbuthnot was magnificent.
The King beamed upon her and she beamed upon the King. More than once he pledged her in the paternal madeira; and before the modest feast had run its course Fitz gave me a stealthy kick on the shin.
"Tell her to keep her door locked to-night," he said in one of his sinister asides.
The bluntness of the words was most uncomfortable, but there was no reason to doubt their sincerity. It was a piece of advice at which one so incorrigibly bourgeois as its recipient might have taken offence. That he did not do so should be counted to him, upon due reflection, as the expression of some remote strain of a more azure tint!
"I know the King's majesty only too well," said the son-in-law of Ferdinand the Twelfth.
When the ladies had left us, the King talked in the friendliest manner and always with that engaging simplicity that was so unstudied and so charming. He was curious to know what I had done to my arm, and when I told him he inquired minutely as to the nature of the wound, and gave me advice as to its treatment. This piece of consideration recalled the magazine article I had lately studied. Here seemed a practical illustration of the fact that in a literal sense he was the father of his people.