The Moon Endureth | Page 9

I had gone to bed with my
mind full of sad stories of the deaths of kings. Magnificence in tatters
has always affected my pity more deeply than tatters with no such
antecedent, and a monarch out at elbows stood for me as the last irony
of our mortal life. Here was a king whose misfortunes could find no
parallel. He had been in his youth the hero of a high adventure, and his
middle age had been spent in fleeting among the courts of Europe, and
waiting as pensioner on the whims of his foolish but regnant brethren. I
had heard tales of a growing sottishness, a decline in spirit, a squalid
taste in pleasures. Small blame, I had always thought, to so ill-fated a
princeling. And now I had chanced upon the gentleman in his dotage,
travelling with a barren effort at mystery, attended by a sad-faced
daughter and two ancient domestics. It was a lesson in the vanity of
human wishes which the shallowest moralist would have noted. Nay, I
felt more than the moral. Something human and kindly in the old
fellow had caught my fancy. The decadence was too tragic to prose
about, the decadent too human to moralise on. I had left the chamber of
the--shall I say de jure King of England?--a sentimental adherent of the
cause. But this business of the bagpipes touched the comic. To harry an
old valet out of bed and set him droning on pipes in the small hours
smacked of a theatrical taste, or at least of an undignified fancy. Kings
in exile, if they wish to keep the tragic air, should not indulge in such
fantastic serenades.
My mind changed again when after breakfast I fell in with Madame on

the stair. She drew aside to let me pass, and then made as if she would
speak to me. I gave her good-morning, and, my mind being full of her
story, addressed her as "Excellency."
"I see, sir," she said, " hat you know the truth. I have to ask your
forbearance for the concealment I practised yesterday. It was a poor
requital for your generosity, but is it one of the shifts of our sad fortune.
An uncrowned king must go in disguise or risk the laughter of every
stable-boy. Besides, we are too poor to travel in state, even if we
desired it."
Honestly, I knew not what to say. I was not asked to sympathise,
having already revealed my politics, and yet the case cried out for
sympathy. You remember, my dear aunt, the good Lady Culham, who
was our Dorsetshire neighbour, and tried hard to mend my ways at
Carteron? This poor Duchess--for so she called herself--was just such
another. A woman made for comfort, housewifery, and motherhood,
and by no means for racing about Europe in charge of a disreputable
parent. I could picture her settled equably on a garden seat with a
lapdog and needlework, blinking happily over green lawns and mildly
rating an errant gardener. I could fancy her sitting in a summer parlour,
very orderly and dainty, writing lengthy epistles to a tribe of nieces. I
could see her marshalling a household in the family pew, or riding
serenely in the family coach behind fat bay horses. But here, on an inn
staircase, with a false name and a sad air of mystery, she was woefully
out of place. I noted little wrinkles forming in the corners of her eyes,
and the ravages of care beginning in the plump rosiness of her face. Be
sure there was nothing appealing in her mien. She spoke with the air of
a great lady, to whom the world is matter only for an afterthought. It
was the facts that appealed and grew poignant from her courage.
"There is another claim upon your good nature," she said. "Doubtless
you were awoke last night by Oliphant's playing upon the pipes. I
rebuked the landlord for his insolence in protesting, but to you, a
gentleman and a friend, an explanation is due. My father sleeps ill, and
your conversation seems to have cast him into a train of sad memories.
It has been his habit on such occasions to have the pipes played to him,
since they remind him of friends and happier days. It is a small
privilege for an old man, and he does not claim it often."
I declared that the music had only pleased, and that I would welcome

its repetition. Where upon she left me with a little bow and an
invitation to join them that day at dinner, while I departed into the town
on my own errands. I returned before midday, and was seated at an
arbour in the garden, busy with letters, when there hove in sight the