Зображення сторінки
PDF
ePub

pulled it into the middle of the room and began to spin. Erdreich looked at her for, a minute as if she had committed treason. The King of Telluria frowned; he seemed to challenge everybody to tell him why he should have the impression that a peasant woman, almost invisible from her insignificance, should be presuming to go on with sordid occupations under his royal eyes. Only Queen Ismia wasn't upset. She kept on talking to Erdreich and he looked flattered and dazed, and in a minute or two, as if they were going to play stagecoach, everybody sat down in a circle about the grandmother, and I saw Queen Ismia touch the old woman's glittering headdress. It was the ancient headgear of the Arcadian women, handed down from generation to generation, and worn on gala days. I could have sworn she didn't have it on when we came. Now the queen touched it and said in a kind of lulling, soothing cradle tone, 'It's very bright.'

"Well, I saw it was bright. And I grew abnormally conscious of the hum of the wheel, and something inside my ears kept saying, 'It's very bright. It's very bright.' But then something else further inside me said, 'You fool, you're a war correspondent, and you were at the explosion in Spain, and you've been 'most destroyed by a destroyer, and you didn't turn a hair. And you're outside the window, and what has got them hasn't got you. So keep your eye peeled, my boy, and you'll begin to understand something about the ins and outs of sovereignty!'

"For something had got 'em all, all but the two women. I began to think of them as the two queens now: for though Queen Ismia had on the plainest of black habits, she looked most awfully regal. And when I glanced at the old peasant woman and saw how inscrutable she was, as if she'd got some sort of power under her hand and was turning it on, bit by bit, bit by bit, but not too fast for fear the sheathing would split, I could think only of her crown and how she, too, must be a kind of queen." "What were the others doing, the three men?”

"They were asleep, and the old king was making horrible faces. It was the prince I watched most. I had an idea from the way the two queens looked at him that he was the centre of the play. He began to writhe

and then to talk, wonderingly sometimes as if he spelled a lesson from a book too hard for him, and sometimes violently.

"We're not prepared.' That's what he called out first. 'We're not prepared.' Then he stopped a minute, as if he saw things and they told their story. 'But we couldn't be prepared,' said he. 'Nobody could be prepared for that. They're dropping on us from the clouds. They're dropping bombs. My God! my God! there's the theatre gone. There's the silk factory. The girls in there! Why, mother, they were girls, nothing but girls. And that's their blood.' "The poet sat stark on a little stool, staring at the whirring wheel.

"Do you think,' said he-it was the Lady Macbeth tone-'do you think roses would grow out of such blood as that?'

"The old king was seeing things. I've never made up my mind whether they all saw the same things, or different ones adapted to their grade and text-book. The old king gave a groan.

"She need not have died,' said he. 'Eda needn't have died, she and her little son!' "The peasant woman spoke.

"It will happen,' said she, in a kind of monotonous voice, as if she'd set it to the tune of the wheel. 'It will happen if you open the door. Your hand is on the latch. Shall you open the door?'

"And now it was Erdreich talking. He, too, sat under the same paralysis of horror, but his horror was at himself.

"I called it doughty deeds,' said he, 'but it was blood. This war? This is the butcher's trade. Oh, horrible! blood! blood!'

"But after all it was the prince that told us most.

"What do you see, Prince?' said the old peasant woman, in a steady tone, as if she was afraid to speak too loud. He might have been the watcher on the tower and she the soldier down below. The prince was trembling. I got uneasy as I looked at him. He behaved like a horse I'd seen shuddering with sunstroke.

"It's all destroyed,' said he. "The palace is destroyed. That wouldn't matter, though we did like the windows-mother, didn't we like the windows looking toward the west?-But the little houses down by the river, where the workmen went every night and played on their fiddles and dug

[graphic][subsumed][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][graphic][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small]

little, and stood there all afire with devotion and ready to get her the moon and seven stars if she wanted 'em. And the prince, too, opened his eyes, and he cried out in a wild voice:

"Mother, mother! God save Arcady!' And then he looked straight to where Eda stood in the doorway in her borrowed dress. And he got up and made three steps across the room and said her name, ‘Eda! Eda!' twice, with a kind of sob. And she sobbed, too. It was the prettiest sight I ever saw, those two young things all afire with love and youth, holding each other's hands and forgetting they weren't invisible.

"How did you know me?' said Eda. "Of course I knew you, Eda,' said he. 'How did you know me?'

“Oh, I've been peeping through the crack.'

"And they both laughed, and the king came awake, and gave a roaring 'Haw! haw!' Nobody seemed to wonder how any body had got anywhere. They were just there, that's all.

“‘Cousin,' said the old king. He was speaking to Queen Ismia. 'I like your way of doing things. You're a mighty fine housekeeper. You're a mighty fine mother. Why, a kingdom's only a bigger sort of household, after all. I believe if you and Altaria and I agreed on a sort of iron-clad treaty, we could all turn our war tax into something practical, as you've done. Roads we need, roads and schools. What say, cousin?'

"We must consult the prince,' said she, as if statecraft wasn't a stitch she knew. And now shall we ride home again? There's a horse and a habit for Eda. I had them brought along.' And even then, if you'll believe me, nobody thought to say, 'How did Eda come here? And where's Bertelius? And is he going to sit a thousand years, like Merlin in the forest, with horn spectacles and a black book?' You see, when you're happy because you've found

the road to happiness, you're in a dream, and in a dream you don't need to know how anything is. It is, that's all.

"Oh, there's one other thing. I almost forgot it. When we were all on our horses, out between the trees comes the scarecrow man, like a slanting bamboo pole shot from a sling. And he'd something in his hand. It was a little thing: a flower, a blue flower, the Can panula Arcadinensis. Do you know where it grows in Arcady? It's at the feet of inaccessible cliffs in gorges it makes you dizzy to look into. And now it's Arcady's national flower. He pressed himself close to us, and held it up to the queen. She put out her hand to take it. I wish you could have seen her face. That was a queen.

"For you, madam,' said he. His eyes were sad, wild, lonesome eyes-the eyes of a prisoner-but they were full of light. 'All the gems are yours, and all the flowers.'

"And she not only took the flower, that queen, she laid her hand on his ragged shoulder, and her eyes were full of tears." He stopped.

"Well," said I, "what happened?" "That's all."

"Did the prince marry Eda?" "Oh, yes."

"Did the powers go to war?" "Oh, dear me, no! Nobody went to war ever, after what they'd seen."

"Is Arcady in actual existence now?" "Course it is, much as ever it was." "What's the use, Mitchell," said I, "what is the use? You know this whole story is a part of your bluff.”

"No, 'tisn't either. It's a part of my busy past. Didn't I tell you I saw it myself, pars-magna-fuied it? Well, if I didn't somebody told me. Who was it, now? Who was it told me? Come to think of it, was it the German Emperor, that day he said he'd written a comic opera and didn't know how to get his third act? You ask him, some time when it comes in just right."

[graphic][subsumed][merged small][merged small]

LD HUNDRED and I were taking our Saturday afternoon walk in the countrythat is, in such suburbanized country as we could achieve in the neighborhood of New York. We had passed innumerable small boys and not a few small girls, but save for an occasional noisy group on a base-ball diamond none of them seemed to be playing any definite games.

"Did we use to wander aimlessly round that way?" asked Old Hundred.

"We did not," said I. "If it wasn't marbles in spring or tops in autumn it was duck-on-the-rock or stick-knife or

[ocr errors]

"Only we didn't call it stick-knife," said Old Hundred, "we called it mumbletypeg."

"We called it stick-knife," said I.

"Your memory is curiously bad," said Old Hundred. "You are always forgetting about these important matters. It was mumblety-peg."

"My memory bad!" I sniffed. "I suppose you think I've forgotten how I always licked you at stick-knife?"

Old Hundred grinned. Old Hundred's grin, to-day as much as thirty years ago, is a mask for some coming trouble. He always grinned before he sailed into the other fellow, which was an effective way to catch the other fellow off his guard. I presume he grins now before he cross-questions a witness. "I'll play you a game right now," he said softly.

"You're on," said I.

We selected a spot of clean, thin turf behind a roadside fence. It was in reality a part of somebody's yard, but it was the best we could do. I still carry a pocket knife of generous proportions, to whittle with when we go for a walk, and this I produced and opened, handing it to Old Hundred. "Now, begin," said I, as we squatted down.

He held the knife somewhat gingerly, first by the blade, then by the handle. "Whawhat do you do first?" he finally asked.

« НазадПродовжити »