Lady Burlesdon utterly despairs of me; my neighbours think me an indolent, dreamy, unsociable fellow.Yet I am a young man;and sometimes I have a fancy--the superstitious would call it a presentiment--that my part in life is not yet altogether played;that, somehow and some day, I shall mix again in great affairs, I shall again spin policies in a busy brain, match my wits against my enemies', brace my muscles to fight a good fight and strike stout blows.
Such is the tissue of my thoughts as, with gun or rod in hand, I wander through the woods or by the side of the stream.
Whether the fancy will be fulfilled, I cannot tell--still less whether the scene that, led by memory, I lay for my new exploits will be the true one--for I love to see myself once again in the crowded streets of Strelsau, or beneath the frowning keep of the Castle of Zenda.
Thus led, my broodings leave the future, and turn back on the past.Shapes rise before me in long array--the wild first revel with the King, the rush with my brave tea-table, the night in the moat, the pursuit in the forest: my friends and my foes, the people who learnt to love and honour me, the desperate men who tried to kill me.
And, from amidst these last, comes one who alone of all of them yet moves on earth, though where I know not, yet plans (as I do not doubt)wickedness, yet turns women's hearts to softness and men's to fear and hate.
Where is young Rupert of Hentzau--the boy who came so nigh to beating me?
When his name comes into my head, I feel my hand grip and the blood move quicker through my veins: and the hint of Fate--the presentiment--seems to grow stronger and more definite, and to whisper insistently in my ear that I have yet a hand to play with young Rupert;therefore I exercise myself in arms, and seek to put off the day when the vigour of youth must leave me.
One break comes every year in my quiet life.Then I go to Dresden, and there I am met by my dear friend and companion, Fritz von Tarlenheim.
Last time, his pretty wife Helga came, and a lusty crowing baby with her.
And for a week Fritz and I are together, and I hear all of what falls out in Strelsau; and in the evenings, as we walk and smoke together, we talk of Sapt, and of the King, and often of young Rupert;and, as the hours grow small, at last we speak of Flavia.
For every year Fritz carries with him to Dresden a little box;in it lies a red rose, and round the stalk of the rose is a slip of paper with the words written: "Rudolf--Flavia--always." And the like I send back by him.That message, and the wearing of the rings, are all that now bind me and the Queen of Ruritania.Far--nobler, as I hold her, for the act--she has followed where her duty to her country and her House led her, and is the wife of the King, uniting his subjects to him by the love they bear to her, giving peace and quiet days to thousands by her self-sacrifice.There are moments when I dare not think of it, but there are others when I rise in spirit to where she ever dwells; then I can thank God that I love the noblest lady in the world, the most gracious and beautiful, and that there was nothing in my love that made her fall short in her high duty.
Shall I see her face again--the pale face and the glorious hair?
Of that I know nothing; Fate has no hint, my heart no presentiment.
I do not know.In this world, perhaps--nay, it is likely--never.
And can it be that somewhere, in a manner whereof our flesh-bound minds have no apprehension, she and I will be together again, with nothing to come between us, nothing to forbid our love?
That I know not, nor wiser heads than mine.But if it be never--if I can never hold sweet converse again with her, or look upon her face, or know from her her love; why, then, this side the grave, I will live as becomes the man whom she loves; and, for the other side, I must pray a dreamless sleep.
End
