One Day | Page 5

Is any one ever ready for any dire calamity, however certainly expected? He paced up and down under the tall trees of the park and for a time did not answer. Then he paused and laid his hand upon the shoulder of the Boy with a tenderness of touch that proved better than any words how close was the bond between them.
"Tell you what you are to me! I could never, never do that! You are everything to me, everything!"
The Boy made a motion as if to speak, but the man forestalled him.
"We're jolly good friends, aren't we--the very best of companions? In all the world there is no man, woman or child that is half so near and dear to me as you. Men don't usually talk about these things to one another, you know, Boy; but, though I am a bachelor, you see, I feel toward you as most men feel toward their sons. What does the mere defining of the relationship matter? Could we possibly be any more to each other than we are?"
Paul Verdayne seated himself on a little knoll beneath the shade of a giant oak. The Boy looked at him with the wistfulness of an infinite question in his gaze.
"No, no, Boy! Some time, perhaps--yes, certainly--you shall know all, all! But that time has not yet come, and for the present it is best that things should rest as they are. Trust us, Boy--trust me--and be patient!"
"Patient!" The Boy laughed a full, ringing laugh, as he threw himself on the grass at his companion's feet. "I have never learned the word! Could you be patient, Uncle Paul, when youth was all on fire in your heart, with your own life shrouded in mystery? Could you, I say, be patient then?"
Verdayne laughed indulgently as his strong fingers stroked the Boy's brown curls.
"Perhaps not, Boy, perhaps not! But it is for you," he continued, "for you, Boy, to make the best of that life of yours, which you are pleased to think clouded in such tantalizing mystery. It is for you to develop every God-given faculty of your being that all of us that love you may have the happiness of seeing you perform wisely and well the mission upon which you have been sent to this kingdom of yours to accomplish. Boy! every true man is a king in the might of his manhood, but upon you is bestowed a double portion of that universal royalty. This is a throne-worshipping world we are living in, Paul, and it means even more than you can realize to be a prince of the blood!"
The Boy looked around the park apprehensively. What if someone heard? For this straight young sapling, who was only the "Boy" to Paul Verdayne, was to the world at large an heir to a throne, a king who had been left in infancy the sole ruler of his kingdom.
His visits to Verdayne Place were incognito. He did like to throw aside the purple now and then and be the real live boy he was at heart. He did enjoy to the full his occasional opportunities, unhampered by the trappings and obligations of royalty.
"A prince of the blood!" he echoed scornfully. "Bah!--what is that? Merely an accident of birth!"
"No, not an accident, Paul! Nothing in the world ever is that. Every fragment of life has its completing part somewhere, given its place in the scheme of the universe by intricate design--always by _design!_ As for the duties of your kingdom, my Prince, it is not like you to take them so lightly."
"I know! I know! Yet everybody might have been born a prince. It is far more to be a man!"
"True enough, Boy! yet everybody might not have been born to your position. Only you could have been given the heritage that is yours! My Boy, yours is a mission, a responsibility, from the Creator of Life Himself. Everybody can follow--but only God's chosen few can lead! And you--oh, Boy! yours is a birthright above that of all other princes--if you only knew!"
The young prince looked wistfully upward into the eyes of the elder man.
"Tell me, Uncle Paul! Dmitry always speaks of my birth with a reverence and awe quite out of proportion to its possible consequence--poor old man. And once even the Grand Duke Peter spoke of my 'divine origin' though he could not be coaxed or wheedled into committing his wise self any further. Now you, yourself the most reserved and secretive of individuals when it pleases you to be so, have just been surprised into something of the same expression. Do you wonder that I long to unravel the mystery that you are all so determined to keep from me? I can learn nothing at home--absolutely nothing! They glorify my mother--God bless