Truxton King | Page 3

not afraid of the hardships that most men abhor.
The dying spirit of Romance flamed up in his heart; his blood grew
quick again and eager. He would not go home until he had sought out
this land of fair women and sweet tradition. And so he traversed the
wild and dangerous Tartar roads for days and days, like the knights of
Scheherazade in the times of old, and came at last to the gates of
Edelweiss.
Not until he sat down to a rare dinner in the historic Hotel Regengetz
was he able to realise that he was truly in that fabled, mythical land of
Graustark, quaint, grim little principality in the most secret pocket of
the earth's great mantle. This was the land of his dreams, the land of his
fancy; he had not even dared to hope that it actually existed.
And now, here he was, pinching himself to prove that he was awake,
stretching his world-worn bones under a dainty table to which real food
was being brought by--well, he was obliged to pinch himself again.
From the broad terrace after dinner he looked out into the streets of the
quaint, picture-book town with its mediæval simplicity and ruggedness
combined; his eyes tried to keep pace with the things that his fertile
brain was seeing beyond the glimmering lights and dancing window
panes--for the whole scene danced before him with a persistent
unreality that made him feel his own pulse in the fear that some sudden,
insidious fever had seized upon him.

If any one had told him, six months before, that there was such a land
as Graustark and that if he could but keep on travelling in a certain
direction he would come to it in time, he would have laughed that
person to scorn, no matter how precise a geographer he might have
been.
Young Mr. King, notwithstanding his naturally reckless devotion to
first impressions, was a much wiser person than when he left his New
York home two years before. Roughing it in the wildest parts of the
world had taught him that eagerness is the enemy of common sense.
Therefore he curbed the thrilling impulse to fare forth in search of
diversion on this first night; he conquered himself and went to bed
early--and to sleep at once, if that may serve to assist you in getting an
idea of what time and circumstances had done for his character.
A certain hard-earned philosophy had convinced him long ago that
adventure is quite content to wait over from day to day, but that when a
man is tired and worn it isn't quite sensible to expect sleep to be put off
regardless. With a fine sense of sacrifice, therefore, he went to bed,
forsaking the desire to tread the dim streets of a city by night in
advance of a more cautious survey by daylight. He had come to know
that it is best to make sure of your ground, in a measure, at least, before
taking too much for granted--to look before you leap, so to speak. And
so, his mind tingling with visions of fair ladies and goodly
opportunities, he went to sleep--and did not get up to breakfast until
noon the next day.
And now it becomes my deplorable duty to divulge the fact that
Truxton King, after two full days and nights in the city of Edelweiss,
was quite ready to pass on to other fields, completely disillusionised in
his own mind, and not a little disgusted with himself for having gone to
the trouble to visit the place. To his intense chagrin, he had found the
quaint old city very tiresome. True, it was a wonderful old town, rich in
tradition, picturesque in character, hoary with age, bulging with the
secrets of an active past; but at present, according to the well travelled
Truxton, it was a poky old place about which historians either had lied
gloriously or had been taken in shamelessly. In either case, Edelweiss

was not what he had come to believe it would be. He had travelled
overland for nearly a month, out of the heart of Asia, to find himself,
after all, in a graveyard of great expectations!
He had explored Edelweiss, the capital. He had ridden about the
ramparts; he had taken snapshots of the fortress down the river and had
not been molested; he had gone mule-back up the mountain to the
snowcapped monastery of St. Valentine, overtopping and overlooking
the green valleys below; he had seen the tower in which illustrious
prisoners were reported to have been held; he had ridden over the
King's Road to Ganlook and had stood on American bridges at
midnight--all the while wondering why he was there. Moreover, he had
traversed the narrow, winding streets of