An Uncrowned King Chapter 4 Part 3

Whatever Caerleon’s inducement might be, he went on his way calmly, heeding neither Cyril’s lack of sympathy nor young O’Malachy’s scoffs, for he had now fully made up his mind about Nadia. At first he had been alternately attracted and repelled by her, but the repulsion had gradually faded before the attraction. The girl was so transparently honest, so sincere in her earnest intolerance, so unconventional in the way in which she persisted in testing everything by the standards of right and wrong, instead of those of custom and fashion, that the man who had turned in disgust from the artificiality of the frivolous or emancipated girls he had met in troops in London could not but hail her as a kindred spirit. It is true that she offended his taste and outraged his views of propriety twenty times a day by her decided utterances, but now that he knew what prompted these remarks he could honour the intention if he could not appreciate the result. And besides, she was softening, he was sure, under the influence of her friendship with him—he could not mistake the change; and it was seldom indeed that she addressed him nowadays with the abruptness which he had mentally stigmatised as farouche on his first meeting with her. In the society of her own family, however, this change was not visible, and she was still rigid, severe, uncompromisingly plain of speech. In his character of candid friend, Caerleon felt it to be his duty to take her to task occasionally on this subject.

“I wish,” he said to her one day with some trepidation, for he had suffered more than once in his self-imposed task of smoothing down the angles of this young lady’s disposition, “that you could think it right to leave off apologising when you have said anything unpleasant. You have quite dropped it with me, you know, but you keep it up with my brother and your own people.”

“But you told me that it was worse to you than the rude things I had said,” objected Nadia, “and it is not so with the rest.”

“No, indeed, they enjoy it,” said Caerleon, “and that is just why I hate it. Can’t you see that your brother and mine think it a good joke to stir you up to say rude things, just for the pleasure of hearing you apologise with a jerk the next minute?”

“Yes, I see it,” she answered; “but that makes it all the better discipline for me.”

“Not for me,” said Caerleon. “I think your system ought to take some account of other people’s feelings.”

“But surely,” she said, “if I give pleasure to my brother and yours by acting in this way, I am considering other people’s feelings in doing it?”

Her voice as she asked the question was not particularly cheerful, but Caerleon treasured up the remark in his memory as the first approach to a joke that he had ever heard Nadia utter.

“Wouldn’t it be equally good discipline,” he said, “to stop before saying the rude things, and try to say something pleasant instead?”

“But that would not be true.” Nadia regarded him with absolute horror. “Come what may, I must be true.”

“It’s rather presumptuous of me to quote texts to you,” said Caerleon, “but isn’t there something about ‘speaking the truth in love’?”

“Why should it be presumptuous of you to quote texts to me?” she asked, quickly.

“Well, you see,” he answered, with some hesitation, “I don’t live by rule, as you do. I haven’t a system of self-discipline, or anything of that sort.”

“You think I am proud—conceited?” she said. “You think I set myself up upon a pedestal? Ah no, Lord Caerleon, I entreat you, do not think that. God knows how very weak and feeble I am, how continually I discover in myself that horrible temptation to insincerity. Since I have known you, it has beset me even more than before. Because I know that you are listening, I am perpetually tempted to let things pass, to join for politeness’ sake in conversation that I know is wrong. You cannot tell what it costs me to speak out, and you try to make it harder for me.”

“Indeed I don’t wish to do that,” said Caerleon, touched by the illogical reproach of her last sentence. “I only want to ask you whether you couldn’t make your protests mentally, and not aloud. I never like to hear a girl speak to her mother as you do. Can’t you make some allowance for her? She must have had a hard life—and bad training, perhaps. There may be more excuse for her than we think.”

“I wish I knew it, then!” cried Nadia. “You have not seen as much of her as I have; you cannot know her as I do. She delights in intrigue for its own sake. It gives her an artistic pleasure to do a thing in a roundabout way instead of straight. Do you not see that it is far worse for me to realise this than it can be for you? You cannot tell what torture it was for me to find out, when I first came here from home—from my godmother’s—that my mother would never tell the truth if a falsehood were possible. I felt that I must stand against her influence, or I might grow like her.”

“I don’t fancy you would,” said Caerleon; “but of course, as you say, you are a better judge of your own circumstances than I am. I suppose you feel the same with reference to your brother. It seems as though you had scarcely a civil word for him.”

“He has not many for me,” said Nadia, drily. “No, I do not like Louis. He is not good.”

“Not like him!” cried Caerleon. “But he is your brother.”

“I hope I love him,” said Nadia, meditatively. “I should not like anything bad to happen to him. To do him good—to save his soul—I would die, oh, how willingly! But I cannot like him.”

“But wouldn’t you be better able to do him good if you did like him?” asked Caerleon. Nadia considered for a moment.

“I can’t help it. One cannot like a person who one knows is not good. You yourself, if Milord Cyril were to become false, to break his faith, you could not like him any longer.”

“I see what you mean, but I’m afraid I should have a sneaking fondness for the poor old chap still,” said Caerleon. “But has your brother done anything, that you should talk of him in this way?”

“I do not know,” was the reply. “I only guess. They tell me nothing. But I have found out enough to be sure about him.”

“And what is that?” asked Caerleon, incautiously. Nadia drew herself up.

“That I cannot tell you, Lord Caerleon. If you had now any interest in Thracia, or were likely to be at all affected by my brother’s doings, I might tell you what I believe to be the truth, but you cannot expect me to gratify mere curiosity.”

“I beg your pardon, I’m sure,” said Caerleon, taken aback by this outburst. “Pray don’t think that I want to know anything you don’t wish to tell me.”

“Please forgive me,” said Nadia. “I was rude again. Only I am afraid of telling you what I ought not, and I don’t wish to be disloyal, even to my family.”

“I quite understand,” said Caerleon, although at the very moment he was reflecting that the ins and outs of a woman’s mind were beyond the wit of man to penetrate. “But tell me what you mean by saying if I had any interest in Thracia? I remember that on the day I met you first you told me you were sorry when I declined the crown. Why was it?”

“Because I thought you ought to have accepted it,” returned Nadia. Then, fearing that her tone had been slightly dictatorial, she added, hastily, “I mean that if I had been in your place I should have accepted it.”

“But you thought so—you, a Scythian in politics?” asked Caerleon.