An Uncrowned King Chapter 4 Part 4

“I thought I had told you that our circle—my godmother’s—are not necessarily Scythian in politics,” said Nadia. “We desire to take the side of justice, of right. I am certain that if Scythia were to enter on an unrighteous war, Count Wratisloff would lift up his voice against it at once. And so we desired for Thracia only the man who would be most likely to rule it well.”

“Then you think I ought to have accepted the crown?” said Caerleon again. She caught him up quickly.

“I cannot judge for you. Only your own conscience can do that. But I have always been taught never to refuse work that offered itself unsought, unless it would interfere with other work on which one was already engaged, and even then one should consider carefully which was the more important of the two. You know best where your responsibilities would have been greatest—in Thracia, or at home in England. Wherever there was most to do, there your work lay, I think. And you might have done so much for Thracia!”

“But would you have had me go there against my father’s express wish?” asked Caerleon, indignantly. “If you will allow me to have had a conscience at all in the matter, I believe it pointed distinctly to staying at home as the right thing for me to do.”

“That made a difference,” assented Nadia. “I cannot judge of your circumstances for you, as I have said, but I was sorry at the time that you refused the crown, and I am sorry still that you are not King of Thracia now. You might do so much good there.”

A little annoyed by her persistence, Caerleon walked on beside her in silence for a while. They had left Cyril and Louis far behind, and were following a path which presently crossed the main road cut through the mountains. At ordinary times the road was almost as lonely as the rocky paths, but on this occasion a band of men were visible in the distance, coming from the direction of the plain.

“It must be some of the Thracian harvesters,” said Nadia. “When their own harvest is ended, numbers of them cross into Hungary and hire themselves out to help the farmers, for the corn ripens later here. I suppose they are returning home with their wages, now that the harvest is over.”

As they walked on, they gained a closer view of the Thracians, a body of tall, lithe, dark-skinned men, tired and footsore, wearing ragged clothes that had once been gaily coloured, shirts that had once been white, and great leather boots. They slackened their pace as they approached the strangers, and one man, who seemed to be the leader of the party, addressed Nadia in broken German.

“Oh, the poor things!” she said, turning to Caerleon. “This has been a terribly bad year for them. The rain and the floods have injured the corn so much that there was scarcely any harvest. They have only earned enough to keep them while at work, and they have nothing to buy food with on their journey home. I wish I could give them something, but I have no money,” and she exhibited an empty purse as she spoke.

“Poor beggars!” said Caerleon. “Give them this, Miss O’Malachy,” and he turned a handful of loose coin out of his pocket and poured it into Nadia’s hand. She gave it to the man, who was profuse in his gratitude, and rapidly reckoning up the value of the money, said that it would be enough to feed himself and his companions until they reached their homes. Turning over the coins in his hand as if to assure himself of their reality, he came upon an English shilling, and looked at it in a puzzled way.

“Tell him that it’s all right, and that he can get it changed in the first big town he comes to,” said Caerleon to Nadia; but when she interpreted the words to the man, he scouted the idea that there was anything wrong about the coin. They liked English things, he said, and he would make a hole in the shilling and wear it in memory of the gracious lady who had given it to him.

“Oh, but it was not mine,” said Nadia, hastily. “You must thank Lord Caerleon.”

“Lor’ Carlin’?” repeated the man, puzzled. Then, as Nadia pointed to Caerleon, his faced beamed with delight. “Not Carlino? the English Prince Carlino?”

“Yes,” said Nadia. “Prince and king are the only titles they understand,” she added, to Caerleon, who was suffering agonies of embarrassment at the moment, for the man went down on his knees before him, and kissed his hand and laid it on his head. Then, before Caerleon could protest, he had risen, and was beckoning frantically to his companions, calling out to them in an unknown tongue.

“This is too much,” said Caerleon to Nadia. “I shall tell them that you gave them the money after all.”

“But that would not be true,” responded Nadia, in her matter-of-fact way; and Caerleon was forced to allow his hand to be kissed by each of the men in turn, the leader closing the ceremony by going through it himself a second time, saying earnestly in his barbarous German—

“Ah, why did not your Highness come to Thracia?”

“There!” said Nadia, when they had gone on their way, followed by the blessings of the Thracians, “think how much you might have done for these poor men if you had been king. The whole country is desolate, or only half cultivated. It needs draining, improving, farming on proper methods. You Englishmen all understand farming, don’t you? You could teach them just the things they ought to learn, and introduce English implements. And then, you could also enforce temperance legislation. The people drink dreadfully, rich and poor alike, and there is no Government control of the liquor traffic. It would be virgin soil, the ideal spot for testing all the schemes. You could try as many experiments as you liked, even if you did not insist on total prohibition at once.”

“I’m afraid I should experiment myself off the throne in no time,” said Caerleon, laughing, but Nadia glanced at him without a smile.

“Better to fall through doing right than to succeed through doing wrong,” she said.

“You are oracular to-day,” said Caerleon, but this made her angry, and she told him that as he did not like the way she talked, she would not talk at all,—a decision to which she adhered persistently, so that they returned to the hotel in silence. Her petulance was the more provoking in that this was their last day at Janoszwar, and that on the morrow the O’Malachy family would start on their journey to Thracia, while Cyril and Caerleon continued their walking-tour. It was their intention first to visit a number of ruined castles and other objects of interest out of the beaten track, and then to rejoin their friends at Witska, a mountain village celebrated for a medicinal spring, and situated exactly on the Thracian frontier. Just at the last moment Louis O’Malachy volunteered to accompany them on their tramp, and as they could not very well refuse his offer they accepted it, although neither of them anticipated much pleasure from his society.

“He must be up to something,” soliloquised Cyril; “but what can it be? I suppose we have merely to await developments; but meanwhile, to avoid any risk of accident, I will get Miss O’Malachy to do a little piece of business for me.”

This piece of business was merely the posting of the letter of introduction to M. Drakovics which Mrs Sadleir had intrusted to Cyril; but he had an idea that Louis might wish, for some reason of his own, to intercept the missive if he knew of its existence, or even saw it posted, for he could not rid himself of the notion that the taciturn young patriot had other ends in view than that of furthering the independence of Thracia. Acting on this resolution, he succeeded in finding Nadia alone, and gave the letter into her charge, to be posted as soon as possible after her arrival on Thracian soil, adding at a venture that it might prove to have an important effect on the after-history of Europe. He saw at once that she understood what he meant, and that she sympathised with his object, for her face lighted up.

“I see. I will be most careful. I thank you for trusting me—for letting me help, Lord Cyril.”

“What a fanatic the girl is!” said Cyril to himself, as he went his way; but he entertained a comfortable conviction that it was rather safer to trust a fanatic than a cynic, and he felt secure as to the fate of Mrs Sadleir’s letter, and the note he had written to accompany it. An hour later he left Janoszwar with Caerleon and Louis, and they began a tour for which none of them cared much, except to count the days until it should come to an end. Caerleon missed his talks with Nadia, Cyril was anxious to get to Witska and see whether the letter had produced any effect on M. Drakovics, and Louis displayed an eagerness to reach Thracia, and enlist in the patriot army, which was rather inconsistent with his having come on the tour at all. In consequence, they clung most carefully to the route they had laid down previously, and no one suggested digressions even when the most famous ruins or inviting landscapes were found to lie just a few hours’ march off the road. On the very day they had fixed they reached Witska, a picturesque little town with rocky streets, and whitewashed houses clinging to the steep hillside, and found it filled with numbers of men from the plains in their holiday attire.