American Push

COPYRIGHT. 1891. "Until?" said Kathleen, secretly exited, with a lovely rose at f uil bloom ín either cheek. "Until I have opened the ball with you at the palace next Thursday. It's against precedent. It will shock certain people. It will immensely shock my mother, the princess of Brindisi. But I vow to you that I shall not dance the first quadrille, that all the duchesses and archduchesses and princesses must do without me, provided you refuse this little request of mine. Now, -will you refuse, or will you be kind and consent?" She saw that he was gTeatlr excited. She realized that unwittingly she had captivated him, a young man of about her own age and full as was she herself with the power to love, even to ■worship. She could not, as a woman, fail to understand the tremendous honor that he paid her. For a moment she forgot Alonzo. This man was a king, and womanlike she forgot the man she loved better than throngs of kings. "Will you consent?" he persisted; and she scanned nis face, thinking how manlul, how noble he looked. How every inch royal. "Yes, monsieur," she answered, knowing well the exultant delight of her mother on learning of this brilliant honor, no matter what might be the stern disapprobation of the court. Just then her mother's voice broke npon her ear. She started, half because the sound was not further away and half because it jarred so on her new, pleasured mood. "My dear Kathleen," her mother begun. But it was too late. Erie, slipping away from two or three ladies with whom he had been at odds in some gay argument, darted forward, but he also found that it was too late. "Lonz," he said, catching his friend by the arm. But Alonzo, who had arrived from Munich a day or two earlier than he had himself expected to come, pressed iorward, seing the king and never dreaming of whom else he was destined to see. He had secured two or three really superb pictures in the Ba varían capital, and was anxious to teil Clarimond of this trouvaüles. As he reached the king's presence, however, he abruptly perceived the truth and recoiled, gTowing pale. Clarimond noticed nothing, however. Kathleen thoroughly controlled herself, as did her mother. In a way they were both prepared for the meeting. "My friend!" said the king, extending to Alonzo his hand. "You have returned sooner than I expected." Then there was a pause, after which Clarimond, with all his accustomed graciousness, continued: "Let me present you, Lispenard, to these ladies, who are, I believe, your country women - " And at that point Alonzo quite lost his head. It seemed to himself afterward, that while hurrying away he must have fallen there on the terrace before the palace, if Eric's arm had not strongly thrust itself within his own, and perhaps, too, if Eric's voice had not harshly burst upon his singing bram. "Lonz! Lonz!" this voice called to hún. "You're disgracing yourself before the king." "I can' t help it. Let me get away." "Lonz! - Oh, very well, we're both getting away, it strikes me, as fast as we're able - look here, now, Lonz, if I'd known you were coming - " "Yes, Eric; I understand. Come right on. When we're at home we can talk it over." At home they did talk it over. When Alonzo had heard everything, and when his mood was thoroughly calmer, he íiaid, with a kind of dogged dullness, to Eric: "I suppose it's all up with me. I might as well send in my resignation at once." "Nonsense," replied Eric. "What I did, you know, was a great breach of etiquette." "The king isn't a slave to etiquette." "Still, I rushed off at scandalous haste. What would you do? Write m a letter and confess everything?" "Yes," Eric said, after a reflective pause. "That's precisely what I would do, my dear And if you want him to sympathize with you, be as untrwthf ui as you can manage. " "What do you mean, Eric?" "Don't let the full facts transpire. Don't teil Clarimond how badly you behaved to that poor girl." "Ah, you will have it that I behaved badly!" said Alonzo, as he quitted the room to write his proposed letter. R was now almost dark, and dinner woald be served at eight. Alonzo ligttted the studio and then seated himself at his writing desk. The words were slow in coming; he feit the excessive awkwardness of this placating epistle, and yet did he not owe it to Clarimond, bis master, his benefactor, i his protector? Would not silence in him be ohurlish at such a time as this? Soddenly a certain thought crosscd his mind, and he rose, flinging his pen aside. In one corner of the room stood his easel, draped. He drew back its covering and looked at the canvas thus revealed. It was the picture of Kathleen. JoBt before leaving for Munich he had gwen the portrait what he feit were his absolutely finsd touches. He had not known thea how good it was - how definitely and vita'lly the witehiny head bloomed foríh fnom shadow. j Yes, Eric had' been riglit. Ilisjxwers ■vie-v ml the slow :rnnboodinff sort; they wero like those of the poet Who must "beat his music out" in travail of self distrust. But here was prainly a masterpiece, nevertheless. And yet, as he watched this perfect portraiture of a woman whom he still hungrily loved, though she was lost to him forever, a sense of the terrible irony of such a picture pierced him to the souL The very excellence of its art nould be an incessant jeer. Why had he not foreseen this? An abrupt desire to ruin the picture now swept down upon him. oddly blended with the egotism of tho creator, an element always potent in every true artist's mind. He actually seized his palette knife and stood undecided as to whether he should rip the work into tatters or spare it for future hours of mingled happiness and grief. VVhile he thus hesitated, a knock sounded at the studio door. "Come in," he said, startled, casting the palette knife on the floor, and turning to meet, as he supposed, Eric Thaxter. But it was not Eric. To his very great consternation, it was the king. Clarimond seemed repose itself. "You must pardon me," he said, "for intruding upon you like this. No doubt I bore you horribly. I do not? That is pleasant to hear. Pray let me take this chair, and you - will you have the kind nosa to sit near me? That is right. T wanted to stretch out my hand to you and clasp it for a moment - like that. Yon see, I am certain you are very unhappy, and when my friends are unhappy I am always full of sympathy for them." The king's hand was pressing his own while Alonzo, with drooped eyes, miserably murmured: "Oh, monsieur, I have behaved with an immense vulgarityl" "Vulgarity?" said Clarimond, in a musing voice, which had the effect of giving his listener a chance to escape from the toils of embarrassment, just as the young sovereign's marvelous tact had no doubt suggested to him that it would do. "Vulgarity," he went on, "is the intímate ally of passion. And passion is naturalness. We can'talways keep the landscapes of our lives full of dipped shrubs, like an Elizabethan garden. Teil me, now, mon ami, were you not once engaged to marry this Mlle. Kennaird?" "Yes, monsieur." "So I gathered, from the tumultuous things that her mother said after you left. Mademoiselle scarcely spoke at all. Her mother had an extraordinary amount to say." "And against myself, of course, monsieur I" The king stared for a moment down at the carven agate of his cane handle. "Well," he at length said, smiling, "she ■was not merciful to you. But I did not believe her, and it struck me that mademoiselle did not believe her, either. You will think me a Bad busybody - " "You, monsieur?" "- But I should be glad to hear your version of the affair Shall I teil you why?" He spoke with marked eagerness. and yet the instant that his eyes fairly met those of Alonzo he averted his look and went on in a queerlyaJtered voice: "It is because the young lady. Mlle. Kathleen - is not that her name? - has greatly interested me." After a few seconds he repeated the words: "Greatly interested me. Yes," he soon continued, "if you would teil me just what occurred I should feel most gTateful for your confidence." "Permit me, then, to teil you, monsieur," said Alonzo, and he at once bepan a recital, in which he adhered to the 6trictest truth with what might be called a very carnival of conscientiousness. Remembering Eric's harsh judgment of his conduct, he allowed this to cast upon his disclosures a self-accusative gloom. Ending, he said: "I fear that 1 exacted too much. I am conscious of this now, monsieur, though 1 once thought myself sternly wronged." The king rose. "It all seems to ma the fault of that very dominating persou, the young lady's mother," he said. "You are generous to rid Mlle. Kathleen of all biame as you do- but it is likeyou." He stretched out his hand, which Alonzo sprang forward to grasp with both his own. "I have known for ome time that you had a large, humane heart. I did not need Eric to teil me that." "Eric will rarely see my faults, monsieur," faltered Alonzo. The king now turned his eyes toward the picture on the easeL "Ahl you have been paintingsomething," he said. In thovoice of one who speaks from a desire to break an irksoms pause. Then he fjave a preat start and hurried toward the portrait. "It is she!" he exclaimed. Recedinga few sten, he threw botb hands upw.ard wrai a gesture of extreme enthusiasra. "Wonderful!" lie pursued. "Not merelyas a portrait, I mean, bu t a a work T art. It reminds me of the Mona Liza' in the Lourre. It has tha ame fine security of treatment, the same rieh subtlety of color." "Monsieur is very kind." "Kind? Nol nol" the king replied, almost irritably. He turned toward Alonzo and surveyed him for a moment with an odd, restless, enkindled glance. "Oood God!" ha hurried on, gnawing1 hu lips, "how I envy you for being able to paint like that - to paint her like thatl" There wai now a dead lilence. Alonzo, with wholly new emotions, watehed him while he gara the picture a fresh ímpetu of survey. "You can name your price for this!" he suddenly said, turning and facing hi companion once more. "I want it. I want it very much." "I did not wish to dispose of it, monsieur " "Not wish to dispose of it?" shot the quick and caustic response. "But, man, I will pay you a fortune for itl Come, now Whatever you please to ask ehall te your by to-morrow morning." And then the eyes of these two men very meaningly met Clarimond read in the other s gaze a refusal ccold and obdurate- and perhaps he read there the cause of this refusal as well. However it tnay have been, an abrupt change took place in him. "You spoke of vulgantv not long ago," h said, visibly disarrayed and walking toward the door of th studio "It is I who im vulgar now Pardon me." And at once he hastened from the apartnient. With hig eye fixed on the portrait, Alonzo sank into a chair. "Th king loves herl" left hin lips in a flurried wtiisper. He closed his eyes, clénched his hands and a surge of ungovernably jealous feeling seemed to flood his soul CHAPTEK X. clarimond, with scarcely more than a nod and a handciasp to Eric, who waited below, sprang into the carriag wbicb had brought him from the palace and returned there at once. He chose to diñe alone in his own suite of cham bers, and at dinner drank a little more wine than usuuL Afterward he went into his mother's apartments, whcre 6he was receiving a very select assemblage that chiefly consisted of the highest Saltravian nobility. Having saluted his mother he movcxl about the rooms for some time, and at length paused quite a while before Bianca d'Este, who was looking exceedingly handsome in a gown of blue satin embroidered with silver. "The princess almost gave up expecting you," she said, looking at him very earnestly with her sweet, infantile, china-blue eyes. "Am I so late?" said Clarimond. "Xot that, monsieur; but we feared - or, I should say, her highness feared - lest other attractions would detain you." He saw the sly innuendo, but chose to pretend that it escaped him. "Really, I do not understand," he said. "Other attractions?" Bianca flushed at her own boldness. And yet the courage of desperation possessed her souL That soul was no longer in bondage to the chureh. A new religión had enthralled it. Women have rarely found it difficult to love kings, and Clarimond, if he had no royalty for a background, would have appealed to almost any woman's heart. As it was he fired both the heart and imagination oí Bianca d' Este. In spirit she was at his feet with that sort of genuflection which is tinctured by a of I cated recklessness. And yet her mien (ice over ñame) was calm enough as she now replied: "I mean the handsome young American girl, monsieur, whom you honored 60 greatly this afternoon." "You saw me?" Clarimond rather lightly said. "And you think I honored her? It seemed to me as if honors were easy, as one says in English whist!" "Oh, monsieur!" Bianca cried; and while she looked into his face, which of late had grown to her more than kingly - had grown to her, indeed, almost like the face of a god - she ardently persisted: "For you to speak like that! For you to even hint that a mere nobody should not be honored, and very greatly honored, by the least smile from you!" He watched her for a moment as though she half irritated, half shocked him. "I am a man," he then said, with gTeat simplicity and gentleness. "IIow can I be more, and why should I not di slike hearing it suggested that I am more?" "You are a king," replied Bianca. "You are a king with a long ancestry of kings behind you!" He laughed softly and shrugged his shoulders, glancing about him at the walls of the festal room in which they Btood, with its panelings of white and ■ gold, with its huge clusters of waj ■ lights for side chandeliers beaming ! abore other huge clusters of prisms like stalactites, and with its ceilings where cupids drove in chariots drawn by butterfiies through gorges and over causeways of rosy and azure cloud. "■'. mnans verv little to he a kinf. nowadays,1' he aid. "At least it means very little to me." "I am so sorry," she answered. "I i am so intensely sorry!" "You have been talking with my mother," he replied. "It is easy to see that you are full of her views and prejudices." "No, they are mine," she averred. "Cali them what you please. I- I hate bo to addrcss you as 'monsieur,' but this is your command, and what can one do but obey it? You are royal, and 'majesty' is your rightful form of address. And then the way in which you despiso and flout all ceremoniall Oh, this is harder to bear still! You shoukl have entered here, just as you should walk abroad, with your equerries, your gentlemen in waiting. Ah, it is terrible, terrible! It saddens me, it wouni'.s me, to eee you cast aside the ricfhts and digrnities of your great birth I do not wonder that your mother sorrov.s. It I is not mere pride that makcs her feel as she does. It is a sense - oh, pardon ae, for I speak from the very inra;st depths i of my heart! - a sense of your having I been appointed by Heaven itself to rule over your people, and of your treating this holy mission as though it concerned some slight and paltry office!" As Bianca d' Este ended, the king took her hand in his own for a moment. Il e feit that it was trembling and he saw that there were tears in her bright, wide, childish eyes. "You ar very sincere," he said, with a smile that was not exempt from a certain delicate melancholy. "A great many people, since history began, have been quite wrong and yet excessively sincei-e." He paused, still holding her hand, and it flew about the great room like wildfire that he was paying this public courtesy to the Italian girl whom his mother so avidly desired him to marry. "Perhaps, my dear Bianca d' Este," he presently resumed, with a faint, enigmatic smile loitering at the corners of his Ups, "you are right, practically, after all, and I, praetically, am in error. The whole affair of conservatism against liberalism grows harder to manage, I imagine, every new day of m; reign. Well, I thank you for your lecture, altit sima;" and with his odd smile fading a little, yet not wholly dying, he dropped Bianca's hand and passed from her presence. He had detested the idea of this entertainment to-night. lts limitations in the way of asking only certain guests disgusted him. Lik all the receptions given by his mother since her appearance in his realm, it positively reeked with what he held to be the worst creeds of caste. There were present severa] nobles, on this particular occasion, who had only deigned to come, as Clarimond well knew. at the eager solicitation of the princesa. They were mostij men past middle age, and their young king had hornfied them by hia liberalisms. They neld his person sacred, and were inflexible in their fealty to him. never forgetting that their ancestors, through oenturies back, had foug-ht and died in the service of his. But they abhorred hi modernity of ideas, and had suffered keen pangs at the audacious changes wrought in their land Political no less than social and physical, these changes had affected fhem with mingled melancholy and horror Two or three of them had chosea to hide their chagrín amid the gayeties of Paris, where their great wealth and princely Saltravian birth had secured welcomes for them among the most exclusive sets. One of these latter, a man about forty years old, with black, üashing eyes, olive skin and a little curly beard and moustache, held an exceptional position as cousin twico removed from the king. II is fortune was very large, and he passed most of his year in the French capital, whence he had but lately returnecL He had been for a long time past one of the terest of the malcontenta; he was iras cible, and notoriously haughty to al inferiors. While the king had made hia first tour through the ball-room every eye had sought his own and even hcad had bowed. I5ut it had struck him, however ragnoly, that this particlar nobleman had bowed with a certain distinct Btiffness. As Clarimond now drew near his mother, he fixed his eyes full on the handsome, swarthy face at her side, and said, with an accent of quiet good humor: "Ah, Philibert, so you're back once again?" At the same moment he put forth his hand. Prince Philibert advanced, and taking the king's hand in his own with a reverent droop of the head, firmly, even resonantly, kissed it. A smile of proud pleasure swept over the face of Princess Brindisi. This was the immemorial usage of the Saltravian court - for a peer or peeress, on returning after an absence and being addressed by the king, to give his hand an obeisant kies. [TO BE CONTINUED. ]