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The Lighted Match, a novel by Charles Neville Buck |
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Chapter 18. In Which The Sphinx Breaks Silence |
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_ CHAPTER XVIII. IN WHICH THE SPHINX BREAKS SILENCE Left alone, Benton spent ten minutes in the room, then passed through the window to the balcony and went down into the miniature garden. His face was hot and his pulses heightened. The garden was gratefully cool and quiet. From the window, through which he had come, a broad shaft of tempered luminance fell across the fountain and laid a zone of soft light athwart the low stone benches surrounding it. Then it caught, and faintly edged with its glow, the granite balustrade at the shoulder of the cliff. Elsewhere the little garden was enveloped in the velvet blackness of the night, against which the points of town and harbor lights, far below, were splinters of emerald and ruby. The moon would not rise until late. The American strolled over to the shaded margin which was unspoiled by the light. He brushed back the hair from his forehead and let the sea breeze play on his face. Finally a light sound behind him called his attention inward. The King and Von Ritz stood together in the doorway. Both were in dress uniform. Karyl, even at the side of the soldierly Von Ritz, was striking in the white and silver of Galavia's commanding general. Across his breast glinted the decorations of all the orders to which Royalty entitled him. The King, with a deep breath not unlike a sigh, came forward to the fountain. There he halted with one booted foot on the margin of the basin and his white-gauntleted hands clasped at his back. He had not yet seen Benton, who now stepped out of the shadow to present himself. As he came into view Karyl raised his eyes and nodded with a smile. "Ah, Benton," he said, "so you came! Thank you." The American bowed. He wished to observe every proper amenity of Court etiquette. He was still chagrined by the memory of his rudeness to Von Ritz, yet he was determined that if Karyl had sent for him as the Count Pagratide, he must receive him on equal terms and without ceremony. "Certainly," he replied. Then with a short laugh he added: "I have never before been received by a crowned head. If my etiquette proves faulty, you must score it against my ignorance--not my intention." "I sent for you," said Karyl slowly, as the eyes of the two men met in full directness, "and you were good enough to come. I am a crowned head--yes--that is my damned ill-fortune. Let us, for God's sake, in so far as we may, forget that! Benton, back there--" his voice suddenly rose and took on a passionate tremor as he lifted one gauntleted hand in a sweep toward the west--"back there in your country, where you were a grandee of finance and I an impecunious foreigner, there was no ceremony between us. If we can forget this livery"--Karyl savagely struck his breast--"if you will try to forget that you are looking at a toy King, fancifully trimmed from head to heel in braid and medals--then perhaps we can talk!" "Your Majesty--" demurred Von Ritz in a tone of deep protest. The King swept his arm back as one who brushes an unimportant intruder into the background. "And we must talk," went on Karyl vehemently, "as two men, not as one man and a puppet." The American stood looking on at the violence of the King's outburst with a sense of deep sympathy. Again the Colonel stepped forward with an interposed objection. "If I may suggest--" he began in an emotionless inflection which fell in startling contrast with the surcharged vehemence of the other. Then he halted in the midst of his sentence as Karyl wheeled passionately to face him. "My God, Colonel!" cried the King. "There is not a debt of gratitude in life that I do not owe to you--I and my house! I am crushed under my obligations to you. You have been our strength, our one loyal support, and yet there are times when you madden me!" The officer stood waiting, respectful, impersonal, until the flood of words should subside, but for a while Karyl swept agitatedly on. "You wear a sword, Von Ritz, which any monarch in Europe would hire at your own price. Any government would let you name what titles and honors you wished in payment--" "Your Majesty!" "Forgive me, I know your sword is not for sale. I mean no such intimation. I mean only that it has a value. I mean you are a man, and the game to you is the large one of statecraft. It is really you who rule this Kingdom. Ah, yes, you remonstrate, but I tell you it is true, and the damnable shame is that it is not a Kingdom worthy of your genius! You, Von Ritz, are the engine, the motive force--but I--in God's holy name, what am I?" He raised his hands questioningly, appealingly. "You," replied the older soldier calmly, "are the King." "Yes," Karyl caught up the words almost before they had fallen from the lips of the other. "Yes, I am the King. I am the miserable, gilded figurehead out on the prow, which serves no end and no purpose. I am the ornamental symbol of a system which the world is discarding! I am a medieval lay figure upon which to hang these tinsel decorations, these ribbons!" "Your Majesty is excited." "No, by God, I am only heartbroken--and I am through!" The King's hands dropped at his sides. The passion died out of his voice and eyes, leaving them those of a man who is very tired. For a moment there was silence. It was broken by the American. "Pagratide," he asked, "why did you send for me?" The King stood rigid with the illuminating shaft from the door touching into high-lights the polish of his boots and the burnish of his accouterments. Finally he turned and in a voice now deadly quiet countered with another question. "Benton, why did you save me?" The American answered with quiet candor. "I went into it," he said, "because I feared the danger might threaten Cara. Once in, only a murderer could have turned back." "So I thought." Karyl nodded his head, then he turned and paced restively up and down the path between the fountain and the balcony. At last he halted fronting the American. "I wish to God, Benton, you had let that traitor Lapas and his constituents touch their damned button. I wish to God you had let them lift me, amid the stones of _do Freres_, into eternity! But that wish is uncharitable to Von Ritz and the others who must have gone with me." The King broke off with a short laugh. "After all," he added, "of course, as you say, you couldn't do it." Benton shook his head. "No," he said, "I couldn't do it." Again Karyl paced back and forth, and again he stopped, facing the American. "Benton, it is hard for two men to talk in this fashion. Perhaps no two other men ever did. I find myself a jailer to the woman I love--Oh, yes, I am also imprisoned by Royalty but that does not alter matters." The voice shook. The gauntleted hands were tightly gripped, but the speaker went steadily on. "And you love her!" For an instant Benton looked at the other, hesitant. Then realizing the unquestionable sincerity with which the King spoke, he answered with equal frankness. "Pagratide--over there--I thought I could enter Paradise. I did look into Paradise. Then I had to set my face back again to the desert--and in the desert one has only memory and hunger and thirst." "Yours is hunger and thirst--yes!" exclaimed the King of Galavia. "But mine is the hunger and thirst of Tantalus." There was a low pained exclamation from the balcony and both men wheeled in recognition of the voice and the shadow that divided the band of light in the doorway. The Queen stood on the low sill and though her head and figure were only sketched in shade against the tempered luminance at her back her exclamation told them that she had heard. She stood in the unbroken sweep of her Court gown. Her slim hands gripped the ermine which fell from her shoulders to the floor and slowly crushed it between clenched fingers. About her head the light touched her hair into a soft nimbus. Karyl stepped impetuously forward and held out his hand to lead her into the garden. Benton, who had involuntarily started toward the balcony at the first sight of her, caught his lip in his teeth and halted where he stood. The girl remained for a moment, astonished at the sight of the two men, incredulous of what she had heard. She had slipped away for a moment of respite from the fatiguing requirements of the ball-room. She had come here because she had felt sure that here she could be alone. She had come, driven by the prompting of her heart, to look out to the Mediterranean and wonder where, between its gates at Gibraltar and Suez, Benton might at that moment be. And from the balcony she had seen him in the garden and had heard a part of this talk before the spell of her astounded muteness broke into exclamation. "You heard what we were saying." Karyl spoke gently, deferentially. "And it seemed to you incredible that we should be confidential on such a subject. It would be so, except that we are both seeking the same end--your service--" he paused, then added miserably--"and your happiness." She listened in wonderment as she held out her hand to Benton and watched trance-like his lowered head as he bent his lips to her fingers. "Cara!" Karyl had stepped back and was leaning over, his elbows resting on the stone back of one of the low benches. His fingers tightly grasped the carved ornaments at its top. His words were carefully chosen and measuredly spoken. He knew that if he permitted one expression to escape him unguardedly, with it would slip away the command by which he was curbing mutinous emotions. "Cara, I happened to be born a Prince, who should one day develop into a King. It chanced that Nature had a sense of humor--so Nature paid me a droll compliment. She gave me a futile ambition to be a man--me, whom she had decided was to be only a King!" The group stood silent and attentive in a strained tableau, except for Von Ritz, who paced back and forth just beyond the fountain, as though respectfully repudiating the whole unseemly episode. "Then I fell in love with you," went on the King of Galavia. "You married me--because State reasons demanded it. I could not win your love--he did!" He turned toward Benton, and his voice, though it held its slow control, was bitter. "Benton, do you fancy this puny game amuses me? Do I not know that you could buy a principality like this for a souvenir of Europe if it happened to please you? The one time I have been allowed to feel a man was in your country, where we met as equal rivals.... No, not equal even then, because you were the winner, I the loser." "Karyl," the Queen spoke in a low voice, "I can give you loyalty, admiration, respect and my life to use as you see fit to use it. I give as freely as I can. My love I do not refuse--it is just ... just that it is not mine to give." She spoke with unutterable weariness. "I seem to bring only sorrow to those who love me." "You can give me all but love," Karyl repeated very softly, leaning forward toward her, "and love is all there is! Without it I take all else you give me as a thief takes, without right. If being a King means being your jailer, then I am done with being a King!" "Your Majesty," cut in Von Ritz sharply, "it is time to terminate this talk. It has no end. It is aimless argument which comes only back to the starting point." The King wheeled and met the eyes of his adviser. The studied self-control he had maintained since Cara's arrival slipped from him and his voice broke out explosively. "It has an end!" he cried. "I will show you the end. If I cannot build empire I can do something else, I can throw this damnable little Kingdom down into the chaos it deserves!... I can abdicate to my cousin, Louis Delgado, who wants the throne I don't want!... I can stamp on this tinseled trumpery.... I can break jail!" He turned with an impassioned out-sweeping of his hands. Coming swiftly from behind the bench, he halted tensely before Benton and leaned defiantly forward. "Then I can free her--and by God I shall fight you for her on equal terms, inch by inch, not holding her in duress, but fighting for her free consent. She has been trapped by Fate into marrying me and at heart she rebels. I shall set her free and then by God I will win her back!" Von Ritz had stood by as the King rushed on in climax after climax of heated words. Now he took one swift stride forward. From his quiet face had fallen every trace of impassiveness. When he spoke his voice trembled with the irresistible eloquence of power and fire. "My God, boy!" He seized Karyl by his shoulders and wheeled him so that they stood face to face. There was in his manner nothing of deference, nothing of the subordinate. Now he stood transformed, the man of action; the dominant, compelling force before whom littler men must wither. This was no longer Von Ritz the emotionless. It was Von Ritz the King-maker, burning with vitalizing passion. "My God, boy, are you mad? Do you think other men have never loved and sacrificed themselves for duty--kept unuttered, locked in their hearts, things they were hungry to say?... Do you think that your hard task of Kingship is yours to play with--to desert?... Why, boy, I've taught you your manual of arms, I've drilled you, trained you, watched you grow from childhood. My heart has beaten with joy because you were free of every degenerate trace that has marked and scarred Europe's cancerous Royalty! I've seen you come clean-hearted, straight-minded into man-hood; prepared you to show the world what a Kingdom can be with a clean King--a strong King! I've fitted you to bear a burden which only a man could bear--to remind the world that 'King' means the Man Who Can--and I thought you could do it!" He paused only to draw a long breath, then hastened on again. "Yes, your task is thankless. Your Principality is small, but it is a keystone in Europe's arch. It is such Princelings as you who must send clean blood down to the thrones of to-morrow.... Is that not enough?... Have I built a King, day by day, year by year, idea by idea, only to see him wither and crumple under the first blast? Go on with your task, in God's name! Probably they will murder you ... assassination may at the end be your reward, but only the coward fears the outcome! For God's sake, Karyl, don't desert me under fire!" He paused with a gesture eloquent of appeal. When next he spoke his voice was slow, deliberate. "And the other picture! The cafe tables of Paris are crowded with Royalty that has been; with the miserable children of conquered and abdicated Kings!" The King dropped exhaustedly to the bench, his fore-arms on his knees, his gloved fingers hanging limp. After a moment he rose again and went to Cara. "I want to fight for you," he said simply. "I want to free you first--then fight for you." "Karyl," she answered gently, "if you do _this_, you will enslave my soul, and my imprisonment will be only harder. You will make me a wrecker of governments--a traitor to my duty." The King turned and looked out to sea. "I must think," he said in a tired voice. "Perhaps it is only a matter of time. Delgado is free. Perhaps I shall not have to present him with my throne. Conceivably he may come and take it." Von Ritz approached again and took Karyl's hand. To him a King was, at last analysis, only the best product of the King-maker's craft. He was a King-maker--before him stood a tired boy whom he loved. "You will fight," he said, "and you will fight with hell's fury. The first step will be to recapture this Pretender. With him in hand--" "Which is in itself impossible," retorted Karyl. At the window appeared the young Captain who had been left at the hotel. His hand was at his forehead in salute. Von Ritz went to meet him and in a moment returned for Benton. Together the two men went out. Five minutes later they had come again into the garden. With them came Manuel Blanco. The bull fighter paused to bow low to the Queen, then to the King. At last he spoke with some diffidence. "I have taken the very great liberty," he said, "of making the Duke Louis Delgado an enforced guest on the yacht--where he awaits Your Majesty's pleasure." _ |
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