An Uncrowned King Chapter 4 Part 2

Louis O’Malachy arrived the next day, a dark-browed, taciturn, broad-shouldered young man, about a year older than Nadia, moving with a peculiar stiffness, as though his movements had always been restrained by a tight uniform, or by the orders of a drill-sergeant. He took a great fancy to Cyril,—at least, his mother said that he had done so, and it was quite true that he lost no opportunity of seeking his company. Indeed, the brothers found it almost impossible to escape from him, for whenever they went out, he invariably made his appearance, and offered himself as their companion. This being the case, Madame O’Malachy, out of compassion for Caerleon, who found himself, as she phrased it, the unwelcome third in this devoted comradeship, fell into the habit of ordering Nadia to accompany her brother on all these occasions. To Caerleon himself she observed, with a cold-blooded frankness which reminded him of her daughter’s first interview with him, that to no one but an Englishman would she think of permitting the privilege of escorting Mdlle. O’Malachy in her walks, but she understood that in England it was only when young people were not allowed to meet freely that there was any fear that complications might arise. She made this remark in Nadia’s hearing, and the girl, who had resisted the proposal strenuously in private, yielded in sheer terror as to what her mother might proceed to say to Caerleon if she still hung back. She knew perfectly well that he divined her reason for coming, and pitied her for it, and the realisation plunged her into the depths of confusion and shame, sensations which were quite new to her. That she, who in her Scythian home had looked the whole world in the face, without a particle of fear, should now be trembling lest this Englishman, almost a stranger, should lay his finger on a quivering wound, made her abjectly miserable. It needed all Caerleon’s tact, all his careful insistence on the rôle of friendly critic which he had adopted when they first met, to re-establish matters on a footing of any confidence between them. He succeeded in appearing so unconscious of anything wrong that she persuaded herself at last that he had not perceived the implication conveyed in her mother’s words, and after this she was at ease with him again, and they discussed social and political problems, illustrated from the experience of each, to their hearts’ content, while Cyril and Louis luxuriated in Balkan politics. Cyril was deeply interested in this young enthusiast, and not a little puzzled by him also. Louis was still intending to proceed to Thracia in a few days, in order to offer his services to M. Drakovics, but his utterances on the subject were not marked by the fiery fanaticism which might have been expected from him on the authority of his past record.

“An enthusiast?” said Cyril to himself. “He’s no more an enthusiast than I am, and that’s putting it pretty strong. A plotter he may be. If he’s a patriot, he’s one of his father’s stamp, the dynamite and dagger school. And yet only an enthusiast would have taken such a step as to throw up his commission in the Scythian army for the sake of joining the Thracians. But what is he doing here? If he means to go to Thracia, why not hurry on there at once? It’s not like an enthusiast to stick for days doing nothing at Janoszwar. Perhaps he hopes to enlist Caerleon and me as volunteers. Perhaps he doesn’t like Caerleon’s dangling after his sister. Can that be it?”

He thought of the contemptuous sniff with which Louis had more than once manifested his opinion of the way in which Caerleon gravitated inevitably to Nadia’s side when they took their walks, but otherwise there was nothing to show that he disapproved of the intimacy. He might not welcome it, but he was not actively hostile; by no word nor action would he influence the result in either direction.

“Is he a philosopher or a blackmailer?” soliloquised Cyril. “Or does he only think Caerleon is a fool? I know men often are amused when any one falls in love with their sisters, and I can’t say that I wonder at it myself in this case. What Caerleon can find to like in that sulky girl I can’t imagine, but he really seems to be hooked this time.”