Chapter 15. The Hair-Dresser Waits

________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER XV. THE HAIR-DRESSER WAITS

When my years and my mood are considered, it may appear that I had enough to do in keeping my own life in the channel of wisdom and discretion. So it seemed to myself, and I was rather amused at being called upon to exert a good influence or even a wholesome authority over William Adolphus; it was so short a time since he had been summoned to perform a like office toward me. Yet after breakfast the next day Victoria came to me, dressed in a subdued style and speaking in low tones; she has always possessed a dramatic instinct. She had been, it seemed, unable to remain unconscious of the gossip afoot; of her own feelings she preferred to say nothing (she repeated this observation several times); what she thought about was the credit of the family; and of the family, she took leave to remind me, I was (I think she said, by God's will) the head. I could not resist remarking how times had changed; less than a year ago she had sent William Adolphus, sober, staid, panoplied in the armour of contented marriage, to wrestle with my errant desires. Victoria flushed and became just a little less meek.

"What's the good of going back to that?" she asked.

"None; it is merely amusing," said I.

The flush deepened.

"Will you allow me to be insulted?" she cried.

"Let us be cool. You've yourself to thank for this, Victoria. Why aren't you pleasanter to him?"

"Oh, he's--I'm all I ought to be to him."

"I don't know what you are to him, you're very little with him."

I suppose that these altercations assume much the same character in all families. They are necessarily vulgar, and the details of them need not be recalled. For myself, I must confess that my sister found me in a perverse mood; she, on her side, was in the unreasonable temper of a woman who expects fidelity but does not show appreciation. I suggested this point for her consideration.

"Well, if I don't appreciate him, whose fault was it I married him?" she cried.

"I don't know. Whose fault is it that I'm going to marry Elsa Bartenstein? Whose fault is anything? Whose fault is it that Coralie Mansoni is a pretty woman?"

"I've never seen her."

"Ah, you wouldn't think her pretty if you had."

Victoria looked at me for a few seconds; then she suddenly drew up a low chair and sat down at my feet. She turned her face up toward mine and took my hand. Well, we never really disliked one another, Victoria and I.

"Mother's so horrid about it," she said.

It was an appeal to an old time-honoured alliance, sanctified by common sorrows, endeared by stolen victories shared in fearful secrecy.

"She says it's my fault, just as you do. But you know her way."

I became conscious that what I had said would be, in fact, singularly hard to bear when it fell from Princess Heinrich's judicial lips.

"She told me that I had lost him, and that I had only myself to thank for it; and--she said it was perhaps partly because my complexion had lost its freshness." Victoria paused, and then ended, "That's a lie, you know."

I seemed to be young again; we were again laying our heads together, with intent to struggle against our mother. I cared not a groat for William Adolphus, but it would be pleasant to me to help my sister to bring him back to his bearings; and the more pleasant in view of Princess Heinrich's belief that the things could not be done.

"As far as being pleasant to him goes," Victoria resumed, "I don't believe that the creature's pleasant to him either. At least he came home in a horribly bad temper last night."

"And what did you say to him?"

"Oh, I--I told him what I thought."

"How we all waste opportunities!" I reflected. "You ought to have soothed him down. He was annoyed last night."

Of course she asked how I knew it, and in the fresh-born candour of revived alliance I told her the story of our evening. I have observed before on the curious fact that women who think nothing of their husbands are nevertheless annoyed when other people agree in their estimate. Victoria was very indignant with Coralie for slighting William Adolphus and showing a ready disposition to transfer her attentions to me.

"It's only because you're king," she said. But she did not allow her vexation to obscure her perception. Her frown gave place to a smile as she looked up, saying: "It would be rather fun if you flirted with her."

I raised my eyebrows. Whence came this new complaisance toward my flirtations?

"Just enough, I mean, to disgust William Adolphus," she added. "Then, as soon as he'd given up, you could stop, you know. Everything would be right then."

"Except mother, you mean."

"Why, yes, except mother. And she'd be splendidly wrong," laughed Victoria.

Nobody who studies himself honestly or observes his neighbours with attention will deny value to an excuse because it may be merely plausible. After all, to wear even a transparent garment is not quite the same thing as to go naked. I do not maintain that Victoria's suggestion contributed decisively to the prosecution of my acquaintance with Coralie Mansoni, but it filled a gap in the array of reasons and impulses which were leading me on, and gave to the matter an air of sport and adventure most potent in attraction for such a mood as mine. I was in rebellion against the limits of my position and the repression of my manner of life. To play a prank like this suited my humour exactly. When Victoria left me, I sent word of my intention to be present at Coralie's theatre that evening, and invited William Adolphus to join me in my box. I received the answer that he would come.

When we arrived at the theatre Coralie was already on the stage. She was singing a song; she had a very fine voice; her delivery and air, empty of real feeling, were full nevertheless of a sensuous attraction. My brother-in-law laid his elbows on the front of the box and stared down at her; I sat a little back, and, after watching the scene for a few moments, began to look at the house. Immediately opposite me I saw Varvilliers with a party of ladies and men; he bowed and smiled as I caught his eye. In another box I saw Wetter, gazing at the singer as intently as William Adolphus himself. There must certainly be something in a girl who exercised power over two men so different. And Wetter was a person of importance and prominence, accepted as a political leader, and consequently a fine target for gossip; his feelings must be strongly engaged before he exposed himself to comment. I fell to studying his face; he was pale; when I took my glass I could see the nervous frown on his brow and the restless gleam of his eyes. By my side William Adolphus was chuckling with bovine satisfaction at an allusion in Coralie's song; his last night's pique seemed forgotten. I leaned forward and looked again at Coralie. She saw me and sang the next verse straight at me. (She did the same thing once more in later days.) I saw people's heads turn toward my box, and drew back behind the shelter of the hangings.

At the end of the act my brother-in-law turned to me, blew his nose, and ejaculated, "Superb!" I nodded my head. "Splendid!" said he. I nodded again. He launched on a catalogue of Coralie's attractions, but seemed to check himself rather suddenly.

"I don't suppose she's your sort, though," he remarked.

"Why not?" I asked with a smile.

"Oh, I don't know. You like clever women who can talk and so on. She'd bore you to death in an hour, Augustin."

"Would she?" said I innocently. I was amused at William Adolphus' simple cunning. "I daresay I should bore her too."

"Perhaps you would," he chuckled. "Only she wouldn't tell you so, of course."

"But Wetter doesn't seem to bore her," I observed.

"Good God, doesn't he?" cried my brother-in-law.

There were limits to the amusement to be got out of him. I yawned and looked across the house again. Wetter's place was empty. I drew William Adolphus' attention to the fact.

"I wonder if the fellow's gone behind?" he said uneasily.

"We'll go after the next act."

"You'll go?"

"Of course I shall send and ask permission."

William Adolphus looked puzzled and gloomy.

"I didn't know you cared for that sort of thing; I mean the theatre and all that."

"We haven't a Coralie Mansoni here every day," I reminded him. "I don't care for the ordinary run, but she's something remarkable, isn't she?"

He muttered a few words and turned away. A moment later Varvilliers knocked at the door of my box and entered. Here was a good messenger for me. I sent him to ask whether Coralie would receive me after the next act. He went off on his errand laughing.

I need not record the various stages and the gradual progress of my acquaintance with Coralie Mansoni. It would be for the most part a narrative of foolish actions and a repetition of trivial conversations. I have shown how I came to enter on it, led by a spirit of rebellion and the love of a joke, weary of the repression that was partly inevitable, partly self-imposed, glad to find an outlet for my youthful impulses in a direction where my action would involve no political danger. On one good result I can pride myself; I was undoubtedly the instrument of sending my brother-in-law back to his wife a humbled and repentant man. Coralie had no scruple about allowing him to perceive that her attentions had been paid to his rank, not to himself; and his rank was now eclipsed. A few days of sulking was followed by a violent outburst; but my position was too strong. He could not quarrel seriously with his wife's brother on such a ground. He returned to Victoria, and, I had no doubt, received the castigation which he certainly deserved. My interest in him vanished as he vanished from the society that centred round Mlle. Mansoni. At the same time my share in his defeat and humiliation left a soreness between us which lasted for a long while.

I myself had by this time fallen into a severe conflict of feeling. My temperament was not like Varvilliers'. For an hour or two, when I was exhilarated with society and cheered by wine, I could seem to myself such as he naturally and permanently was. But I was not a native of the clime. I raised myself to those heights of unmoral serenity by an effort and an artifice. He forgot himself easily. I was always examining myself. That same motive, or instinct, or tradition of feeling (I do not know how best to describe it) on whose altar I had sacrificed my first passion was still strong in me. I did not fear that Coralie would or could exercise a political influence over me, but I was loth that she should possess a control of any sort. I clung obstinately to the conception of myself as standing alone, as being independent and under the power of nobody in any respect. This was to me a stronger check than the restraint of accepted morality. Looking back on the matter, and judging myself as I should judge any young man, I am confident that my passion would easily have swept away the ordinary scruples. It was my other conscience, my King's conscience, that raised the barrier and protracted the resistance. Here is another case of that reaction of my position on myself which has been such a feature of my life. Varvilliers' unreasoned philosophy did not cover this point. Here I had to fight out the question for myself. It was again a struggle between the man and the king, between a natural impulse and the strength of an intellectual conception. I perceived with mingled amusement and bitterness how entirely Varvilliers failed to appreciate the condition of my mind or to conceal his surprise at my alternate hot and cold fits, urgency followed by a drawing-back, eagerness to be moving at moments when nothing could be done, succeeded by refusals to stir when the road was clear. I believe that he came to have a very poor opinion of me as a man of the world; but his kindness toward me never varied.

But there was one to whom my mind was an open book, who read easily and plainly every thought of it, because it was written in the same characters as was his own. The politician who risked his future, the debtor who every day incurred new expenses, the devotee of principles who sacrificed them for his passion, the deviser of schemes who ruined them at the demand of his desires, here was the man who could understand the heart of his King. Wetter was my sympathizer, and Wetter was my rival. The relations between us in those days were strange. We did not quarrel, we felt a friendliness for one another. Each knew the price the other paid or must pay as well as he knew his own price. But we were rivals. Varvilliers was wrong when he said that Coralie cared nothing about Wetter. She cared, although it was in a peculiar fashion that she cared. Truly he could give her little, but he was to her a sign and a testimony of her power, even as I myself in another way. Mine was the high rank, the great position. In conquering me lay the open and notorious triumph, but she was not insensible to the more private joy and secret exultation that came to her from dominating a ruling mind, and filling with her own image a head capacious enough to hold imperial policies and shape the destinies of kingdoms. Wetter and I, each in our way, broke through the crust of seemingly consistent frivolity that was on her, and down to a deep-seated tendency toward romance and the love of power. She could not rule directly, but she could rule rulers. I am certain that some such idea was in her head, alloying, or at least refining, a grosser self-interest. Therefore Wetter, no less than I, was of value to her. She would not willingly have let him go, even although he could give her nothing and she did not care for him in the only sense of which my friend the Vicomte took account. I came to realize how it was between her and him before very long, and to see how the same ultimate instinct of her nature made her long to gather both him and me into her net. Thus she would have bowing before her the highest and the strongest heads in Forstadt. That she so analyzed and reasoned out her wishes it would be absurd to suppose, but we--he and I--performed the task for her. Each knew that the other was at work on it; each chafed that she would consent to be but half his; each desired to rule alone, not to be one of two that were ruled. All this had been dimly foreshadowed to me when I sat in the theatre, looking now at Coralie as she sang her song, now at Wetter's frowning brows and tight-set lips. I must add that my position was rendered peculiarly difficult by the fact that Wetter not only owed me deference, but was still in my debt for the money I had lent him. He had refused to consider it a gift, but was, and became every day more, incapable of repaying it.

We were at luncheon at her villa one day, we three, and with us, of course, Madame Briande, an exceedingly well-informed and tactful little woman. Coralie had been very silent and (as usual) attentive to her meal. The rest had chattered on many subjects. Suddenly she spoke.

"It has been very amusing," she said, with a little yawn that ended in a rather weary smile. "For my part I can conceive only one thing that could increase the entertainment."

"What's that, Coralie?" asked Madame Briande.

Coralie waved her right hand toward me and her left toward Wetter.

"Why, that we should have for audience and as spectators of our little feast your subjects, sire, and, monsieur, your followers."

Clearly Coralie had been maturing this rather startling speech for some time; she launched it with an evident enjoyment of its malice. A moment of astonished silence followed; madame's tact was strained beyond its uttermost resources; she smiled nervously and said nothing; Wetter turned red. I looked full in Coralie's eyes, drained my glass of cognac, and laughed.

"But why should that be amusing?" I asked. "And, at least, shall we not add to our imaginary audience the crowd of your admirers?"

"As you will," said she with a shrug. "Whomever we add they would see nothing but two gentlemen getting under the table, oh, so quickly!"

Madame Briande became visibly distressed.

"Is it not so?" drawled Coralie in lazy enjoyment of her excursion.

"Why," said I, "I should most certainly invoke the shelter of your tablecloth, mademoiselle. A king must avoid being misunderstood."

"I thought so," said she with a long look at me. "And you, monsieur?" she added, turning to Wetter.

"I should not get under the table," said he. He strove to render his tone light, but his voice quivered with suppressed passion.

"You wouldn't?" she asked. "You'd sit here before them all?"

"Yes," said he.

Madame Briande rose. Her evident intention was to break up the party. Coralie took no notice; we men sat on, opposite one another, with her between us on the third side of the small square table.

"Must not a politician avoid--being misunderstood?" she asked Wetter.

"Unless there is something else that he values more," was the reply.

She turned to me, smiling still.

"Would not that be so with a king also?"

"Certainly, if there could be such a thing."

"But you think there could not?"

"I can't call such a thing to mind, mademoiselle."

"Ah, you can't call it to mind! No, you can't call it to mind. It seems to me that there is a difference, then, between politicians and kings."

Madame Briande was moving about the room in evident discomfort. Wetter was sitting with his hand clenched on the table and his eyes downcast.

Coralie looked long and intently at him. Then she turned her eyes on me. I took out a cigarette, lit it, and smiled at her.

"You--you would get under the table?" she asked me.

"You catch my meaning perfectly."

"Then aren't you ashamed to sit at it?"

"Yes," said I, and laughed.

"Ah!" she cried, shaking her fist at me, and herself laughing. Then she leaned over toward me and whispered, "You shall retract that."

Wetter looked up and saw her whispering to me, and laughing as she whispered. He frowned, and I saw his hand tremble on the table. Though I laughed and fenced with her and defied her, I was myself in some excitement. I seemed to be playing a match; and I had confidence in my game.

Wetter spoke abruptly in a harsh but carefully restrained voice.

"It is not for me to question the King's account of himself," he said, "but so far as I am concerned your question did me a wrong. Openly I come here, openly I leave here. All know why I come, and what I desire in coming. I ask nothing better than to declare it before all the city."

She rose and made him a curtsey, then she gave a slight yawn and observed:

"So now we know just where we are."

"The King has defined his position with great accuracy," said Wetter with an open sneer.

"Yes? What is it?" she asked.

"His own words are enough; mine could add no clearness--and--"

"Might give offence?" she asked.

"It is possible," said he.

"Then we come to this: which is better, a king under the table or a politician at it?" She burst out laughing.

Madame Briande had fled to a remote corner. Wetter was in the throes of excitement. A strange coolness and recklessness now possessed me. I was insensible of everything at this moment except the impulse of rivalry and the desire for victory. Nothing in the scene had power to repel me, my eyes were blind to everything of ugly aspect in it.

"To define the question, mademoiselle, should be but a preliminary to answering it," said I, with a bow.

"I would answer it this minute, sire, but----"

"You hesitate, perhaps?"

"Oh, no; but my hair-dresser is waiting for me."

"Let no such trifle detain you then," I cried. "For I, even I the coward, had sooner----"

"Be misunderstood?"

"Why, precisely. I had sooner be misunderstood than that your hair should not be perfectly dressed at the theatre."

Wetter rose to his feet. He said "Good-bye" to Coralie, not a word more. To me he bowed very low and very formally. I returned his salutation with a cool nod. As he turned to the door Coralie cried:

"I shall see you at supper, _mon cher_?"

He turned his head and looked at her.

"I don't know," he said.

"Very well. I like uncertainty. We will hope."

He went out. I stood facing her for a moment.

"Well?" said she, looking in my eyes, and seeming to challenge an expression of opinion.

"You are pleased with yourself?"

"Yes."

"You have done some mischief."

"How much?"

"I don't know. But you love uncertainty."

"True, true. And you seem to think that I love candour."

"Don't you?"

"I think that I love everything and everybody in the world except you."

I laughed again. I knew that I had triumphed.

"Behold your decision," I cried, "and the hair-dresser still waits!"

She did not answer me. She stood there smiling. I took her hand and kissed it with much and even affected gallantry. Then I went and paid a like attention to Madame Briande. As the little woman made her curtsey she turned alarmed and troubled eyes up to me.

"Oh, _mon Dieu_!" she murmured.

"Till to-night," smiled Coralie. _

Read next: Chapter 16. A Chase Of Two Phantoms

Read previous: Chapter 14. Pleasure Takes Leave To Protest

Table of content of King's Mirror


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book