“But, my dear——”
“Oh”—the Maid of Honor heeded nothing but her own rising indignation—“if he’d only get some spite in him, and quarrel like the—like everything—why, it would be splendid! He’d be sublime! And if he’d be wicked—you know what I mean, real, antique, Francis the First, Henry the Eighth wicked—oh, then he’d immortalize himself. When one’s genuinely wicked, one’s never forgotten, eh?” She turned confidently to the Fool.
“Um-m. Not if one has a clever press-agent: biographer, that is to say. However,” and, for a Fool, his voice grew quite gentle, “I am afraid that Richard will never be so very wicked. You know he—he has loved a woman.”
The Maid of Honor laughed.
“He has loved a woman,” emphasized the Fool, “and for a man, especially for a king, that is a very rare experience.”
“It was before Ermyntrude was born,” reminded the little old Lady-in-Waiting, softly; and her pretty, faded eyes lost themselves in the sunset. “Before even your mother came to be Mistress of the Robes to his mother, my dear,” she drew the girl down beside her on the ancient settle, “when I myself was a slip of a girl in the Palace at Camelot, and the young Prince Richard barely through with his examinations. He used to talk to me—ah, yes” (she sighed a little sadly) “then he was not so quiet; he used to talk. And one day—it was in the summer, and yes, in this very rose-garden—we had come up from Camelot for some tournament—one day he told me he was in love. ‘Her name’s Rosemary, Guarda,’ he said, ‘and her father is just a professor at the University’ (the little Maid winced). ‘Oh, Guarda, I am glad I don’t have to succeed—think, Guarda! I couldn’t marry Rosemary!’ And” (the sun or something had got into the little old lady’s eyes, so that she had to put up her hand to shield them) “just six months after that—one month before he was going to marry Rosemary—the Crown Prince died, and then his father, the old King; and now”—the fragile old hand fell back into the Lady Guarda’s lap, with a limp little gesture of finality—“Richard is married to a Princess. Perhaps that is why he is no more than a King!”
“Yes”—the Maid of Honor’s voice sounded strangely subdued—“perhaps that is why. See, they are coming out from vespers—shall we walk as far as the gates, Lady Guarda?”
And as the two swept their soft trains down the fragrant allée, out of the dim grey cloisters came a monarch and his court—a splendid panoply of vivid color, mellowed by the dying sun, which cast its tenderness over all the vast old garden, but lingered on the handsome impassive features of the Man Who Came First—a handsome effigy.
“A mere bundle of robes——?” wondered his Fool—who knew him best.
“I know all that you say.” The King rose a trifle wearily, regarding his councillors with that mixture of gentleness and pity which seemed to shut him from them, from every one, like a beautiful stiff hedge. “Our relation with Franconia is, truly, very delicate: the two most prominent world powers ... and then the peculiar situation in the Colonies ... yes, for the best interests of the State, I grant you, even, His Royal Highness should make this alliance. But, milords,” his smile upon them was grave though very sweet, “there are things greater than the State.”