Kitabı oku: «Mrs. Maxon Protests», sayfa 4
CHAPTER VI
FRUIT OF THE TREE
Hobart Gaynor undertook his embassy with reluctance. He was busily occupied over his own affairs – he was to be married in a fortnight – and he was only unwillingly convinced by Mr. Attlebury's suave demonstration of where his duty lay, and by the fine-sounding promises which that zealous diplomatist made in Cyril Maxon's name. Waiving the question whether things had been all wrong in the past, Attlebury gave a pledge that they should be all right in the future; all that a reasonable woman could ask, with an ample allowance for whims into the bargain. That was the offer, put briefly. Gaynor doubted, and, much as he wished well to Winnie Maxon, he did not desire to become in any sense responsible for her; he did not want to persuade or to dissuade. Indeed, at first, he would undertake no more than a fair presentment of Maxon's invitation. Attlebury persisted; the woman was young, pretty, not of a very stable character; her only safety was to be with her husband. Her old friend could not resist the appeal; he came into line. But when he asked Cicely Marshfield's applause for his action, he could not help feeling that she was, to use his own colloquial expression, rather "sniffy" about it; she did not appear fully to appreciate his obligation to save Winnie Maxon.
He arrived at Shaylor's Patch before lunch. Stephen Aikenhead received him with cordiality, faintly tinged, as it seemed to the visitor, with compassion. Tora's manner enforced the impression; she treated him as a good man foredoomed to failure. "Of course you must have your talk with her," Stephen said. "You shall have it after lunch." He spoke of the talk rather as a ceremony to be performed than as a conference likely to produce practical results.
"I hope you'll back me up – and Mrs. Aikenhead too?" said the ambassador.
The Aikenheads looked at one another. Tora smiled. Stephen rubbed his forehead. At the moment lunch was announced, and, the next, Winnie came into the room, closely followed by Godfrey Ledstone.
When Hobart saw her, a new doubt smote him – a doubt not of the success (he was doubtful enough about that already), but of the merits of his mission. She looked a different woman from the despairing rebel who had come to him in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Her eyes were bright, there was colour in her cheeks; her manner, without losing its attractive quietude and demureness, was gay and joyous. There might be something in what she had said about being "crushed" at her husband's house! It might not be merely a flourish of feminine rhetoric.
"The country has done wonders for you, Winnie," he said, as he shook hands.
"I'm having a lovely rest." To Hobart she seemed to add, "Why need you come and disturb it?"
Another omen unfavourable in the envoy's eyes was the obvious pleasure she took in Ledstone's presence and conversation; and yet another was the young man's unobtrusive but evident certainty that all he said and did would be well received. On Ledstone's fascinating attentions, no less than on the Aikenheads' affectionate and indulgent friendship, he had to ask her to turn her back. For what? A parcel of promises made by Attlebury in Maxon's name! Were they of much more practical value than what godfathers and godmothers promise and vow at a baby's christening? Could they change the natural man in Maxon and avail against his original sin? But, on the other hand, were not indulgent friendships, and, still more, charming attentions, exactly the dangers against which he had come to warn her? She was young, pretty, and not of a very stable character – Attlebury's words came back. The indulgent friendship would mine her defences; then the charming attentions would deliver their assault. No – Attlebury was right, his own mission was right; but it bore hard on poor Winnie Maxon. A reluctant messenger, a prophet too sensible of the other side of the argument (which prophets should never be), he found himself no match for the forces which now moved and dominated Winnie Maxon. She had been resolved when she was only crying for and dreaming of liberty. Would she be less resolved now that she had tasted it? And was now enjoying it, not amid frowns or reproofs, but with the countenance of her friends and the generally, though not universally, implied approval of all the people she met? Attlebury could make the disapproval of the great world outside sound a terrible thing; sheltered at Shaylor's Patch, Winnie did not hear its voice. Attlebury might hint at terrible dangers; such men thought it "dangerous" for a woman to have any pleasure in her life!
She listened to Hobart kindly and patiently enough, but always with reiterated shakes of her pretty head. At some of the promises she fairly laughed – they were so entirely different from the Cyril Maxon she knew.
"It's no use," she declared. "Whatever may be right, whatever may be wrong, I'm not going back. The law ought to set me free (this was an outcome of Shaylor's Patch!). Since it doesn't, I set myself free, that's all."
"But what are you going to do?"
"Either take a cottage down here or a tiny flat in London."
"I didn't ask where you were going to live, but what you were going to do." Hobart was a patient man, but few people's tempers are quite unaffected by blank failure, by a serene disregard of their arguments.
"Do? Oh, I dare say I shall take up some movement. I hear a lot about that sort of thing down here, and I'm rather interested."
"Oh, you're not the sort of woman who buries herself in a movement, as you call it."
"I can make friends, like other people, I suppose. I needn't bury myself."
"Yes, you can make friends fast enough! Winnie, you're avoiding the crux of the matter."
"Oh, you're back to your dangers! Well, I think I can trust myself to behave properly."
"You ought to be sure of it."
"Are you being polite?"
"Oh, hang politeness! This is a vital question for you."
The colour mounted in her cheeks; for the first time she showed some sign of embarrassment. But the embarrassment and the feelings from which it sprang – those new feelings of the last fortnight – could not make her waver. They reinforced her resolution with all the power of emotion. They made "going back" still more terrible, a renunciation now as well as a slavery. Her eyes, though not her words, had promised Godfrey Ledstone that she would not go back. What then, as Hobart Gaynor asked, was she going to do? The time for putting that question had not come. There was the pleasure now – not yet the perplexity.
She gave a vexed laugh. "Whether it's vital or not, at any rate it's a question for me, as you say yourself, and for me only. And I must risk it, Hobart. After all, there are different – well, ideas – on that sort of subject, aren't there?" Here Shaylor's Patch showed its influence again.
"I rather wish you hadn't come to this house," he said slowly.
"I've been happier here than anywhere in the world. What have you against it?"
"Well, I can't claim to know much about it, but don't some queer people come?"
"Plenty!" she laughed. "It's very amusing."
He smiled, frowned, looked, and indeed felt, a little foolish – as the average man does when he finds himself called upon to take the moral line.
"Rather – er – unsettling?" he hazarded lamely.
"Very stimulating."
"Well, I can say no more. I've done my job. Take care of yourself, Winnie."
"Oh yes, I will; you may be sure of that. Hobart, will you tell Cyril that I'm very, very sorry, and that I hope he'll be happy, and wish him splendid success and prosperity?"
"I'll tell him – if you won't write yourself."
"I couldn't. That would open it all again. I'll write to you, if there's any business to be settled."
Hobart Gaynor, thinking over the conversation on his way back to town, decided that Winnie had got on apace. Well, if she chose to take her life into her own hands, she herself must make the best of it. He did not pretend to feel quite easy – he could not get Godfrey Ledstone out of his head – but he said nothing about such apprehensions when he reported the failure of his mission. He also delivered Winnie's message to her husband. Cyril Maxon's lips set hard, almost savagely, over it. "We shall see," he said. He could not prevent her from doing what she had done, but he would not acknowledge it as setting up a permanent or recognized state of affairs. For the time disobedient, Winnie was still his wife. He would not accept her valediction. His house was still open to her and, after a decent period of penance, his heart.
A plain case of Stephen Aikenhead's "In solution"! What to Cyril was an indissoluble relationship (and more than that), not even temporarily suspended, but rather defied and violated, was to his wife a thing now at last – by her final decision – over and done with so far as it affected her position towards Cyril himself. He was out of her life – at last. She had her life – at last. Not quite entirely free, this life she had won by her bold defiance. She still acknowledged limitations, even while she nibbled at the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge that grew at Shaylor's Patch. Yet how incomparably more free than the old life! She was amazed to find with how little difficulty, with how slight a pang, and with how immense a satisfaction she had broken the bond – or had broken bounds, for she felt remarkably like a school-boy on a forbidden spree. What great things a little courage will effect! How the difficulties vanish when they are faced! Why, for five whole years, had she not seen that the door was open and walked out of it? Here she was – out! And nothing terrible seemed to happen.
"Well, I've done it now for good and all," she said to Stephen Aikenhead.
"Oh yes, you've done it. And what are you going to do next?"
"Just what Hobart asked me! Why should he – or why should you? If a woman doesn't marry, or becomes a widow, you don't ask her what she's going to do next! Consider me unmarried, or, if you like, a widow."
"That's all very well – excellently put. I am rebuked!" Stephen smiled comfortably and broadly. "You women do put things well. But may I observe that, if you were the sort of woman you're asking me to think about, you'd probably be living pretty contentedly with Cyril Maxon?"
The point was presented plainly enough for her. She smiled reflectively. "I think I see. Yes!"
"People differ as well as cases."
She sat down by him, much interested. They were, it seemed, to talk about herself.
"Hobart Gaynor's rather uneasy about me, I think."
"And you about yourself?"
"No, I'm just rather excited, Stephen."
"You're a small boat – and it's a big sea."
"That's the excitement of it. I've been – land-locked – for years. Oh, beached – whatever's your best metaphor for somebody wasting all this fine life!"
"Do you suppose you made your husband happy?"
The question was unexpected. But there was no side of a situation too forlorn for Stephen's notice.
"I really don't know," said Winnie. "I always seemed to be rather – well, rather a minor interest."
"I expect not – I really expect not, you know."
"Supposing I was, or supposing I wasn't – what does it amount to?"
"I was only just looking at it from his point of view for a minute."
"Did he make me happy?"
"Oh, certainly the thing wasn't successful all round," Stephen hastily conceded.
"He said marriage wasn't invented solely to make people happy."
"Well, I suppose he's got an argument there. But you probably thought that the institution might chuck in a little more of that ingredient incidentally?"
"Rather my feeling – yes. You put things well too, now and then, Stephen."
"You suffer under the disadvantage of being a very attractive woman."
"We must bear our infirmities with patience, mustn't we?"
She was this evening in a rare vein of excited pleasure, gay, challenging, admirably provoking, exulting in her freedom, dangling before her own dazzled eyes all its possibilities. Stephen gave a deep chuckle.
"I think I'll go in and tell Tora that I'm infernally in love with you," he remarked, rising from his chair.
"It would be awfully amusing to hear what she says. But – are you?"
A rolling laugh, full of applause, not empty of pity, rumbled over the lawn as Stephen walked back to the house.
No, Stephen was not in love with her; that was certain. He admitted every conceivable doubt as to his duty, but harboured none as to his inclination. That trait of his might, to Winnie's present mood, have been vexatious had he chanced to be the only man in the world, or even the only one in or near Shaylor's Patch. Winnie sat in the twilight, smiling roguishly. She had no fears for herself; far less had she formed any designs. She was simply in joyful rebound from long suppression. Her spirit demanded plenty of fun, with perhaps a spice of mischief – mischief really harmless. So much seemed to her a debt long overdue from life and the world. Yet peril was there, unseen by herself. For there is peril when longings for fun and mischief centre persistently round one figure, finding in it, and in it only, their imagined realization.
But was peril the right word – was it the word proper to use at Shaylor's Patch? Being no fool, Stephen Aikenhead saw clearly enough the chance that a certain thing would happen – or was happening. But how should this chance be regarded? The law – formed by this and that influence, historical, social, and religious – had laid upon this young woman a burden heavier than she was able to bear. So Stephen started his consideration of the case. Retort – she ought to have been stronger! It did not seem a very helpful retort; it might be true, but it led nowhere. The law then had failed with the young woman. Now it said, "Well, if you won't do that, at least you shan't do anything else with my sanction – and my sanction is highly necessary to your comfort, certainly here, and, as a great many people believe, hereafter." That might be right, because it was difficult to deny the general proposition that laws ought to be kept, under pain of penalties. Yet in this particular instance there seemed something rather vindictive about it. It was not as if the young woman wanted to rob churches or pick pockets – things obviously offensive and hurtful to her neighbours. All she would want (supposing the thing did happen) would be to behave in a perfectly natural and normal fashion. All she would be objecting to would be a law-enjoined sterilization of a great side of her nature. She would be wronging her husband? If wrong there were, surely the substantial wrong lay in deserting him, not in making the best of her own life afterwards? She might have children – would they suffer? Living in the social world he did, Stephen could not see that they need suffer appreciably; and they were, after all, hypothetical – inserted into the argument for the sake of logical completeness. She would wound other people's convictions and feelings? No doubt, but that argument went too far. Every innovator, every reformer, nay, every fighting politician, does as much. The day for putting ring-fences round opinions, and threatening trespassers with prosecution, was surely over.
Well, then, would she hurt herself? The argument descended abruptly from the general to the particular. It left principle, and came to prudence, asking no longer what she had a right to do, but what she would be wise to do in her own interests. A man may hold a thing not wrong, and yet be a fool if he does it in a place where the neighbours are so sure of its iniquity that they will duck him in the horse-pond. But suppose him to be a mighty man of valour, whom nobody cares to tackle! He can snap his fingers at the neighbours and follow his own conscience or inclination, free from fear and heedless of disapprobation.
"That's as far as I can get," Stephen concluded, rubbing his forehead, as his habit was in moments of meditation. The conclusion did not seem wholly moral, or wholly logical, but it might work out fairly well in practice; government by the law – that is, the opinion of the majority – for the weak (themselves the majority), government by their own consciences and inclinations for the strong. Probably it was a rough statement of what generally happened, if the terms weak and strong might be taken to sum up the complex whole of a man's circumstances and character; both must by all means be considered.
But who are the strong? How can they judge of their prowess until they are in the thick of the fray? If it fails them then, it's too late – and away to the horse-pond! You do poor service to a friend if you flatter him in this matter. When he finds himself in the pond, he will not be so grateful for your good opinion.
Winnie came in, bright-eyed, softly singing, making for upstairs at a hasty pace.
"I shall be late for dinner!" she cried. "I met Mr. Ledstone, and he made me go for a little walk."
"Did you enjoy it?" asked Stephen politely.
"Yes, thank you, Stephen, very much."
She was gone. Stephen sighed. She had only one life – that was the unspoken plea of her youth, her beauty, and her new-born zest in living. Say what you like, the plea was cogent.
CHAPTER VII
A CODE AND A THEORY
To probe Godfrey Ledstone's mind would be to come up against the odd bundle of ideas which constitutes the average young man's workaday morality – the code before mentioned. This congeries of rules, exceptions, compromises, strictnesses, and elasticities may be condemned; it cannot be sneered at or lightly dismissed. It has, on the whole, satisfied centuries; only at rare intervals has it been seriously interfered with by the powers that be, by Church, or State, or Church-ruled State.
To interfere seriously with it is to rouse a hive of questions, large, difficult, so profoundly awkward as to appal statesmen, lay or ecclesiastical – questions not only moral and religious, but social and economic. Formal condemnation and practical tolerance leave these questions sleeping. The code goes on, exercising its semi-secret underground jurisdiction – a law never promulgated, but widely obeyed, a religion with millions of adherents and not a single preacher. Rather a queer way for the world to live? Rather a desperate attempt at striking a balance between nature and civilization? No doubt. But then, of course, it is only temporary. We are all going to be good some day. To make us all good, to make it possible for us all to be good, immediately – well, there is no telling but what that might involve a radical reconstitution of society. And would even that serve the turn?
The code never had a more unquestioning, a more contented adherent than Godfrey. Without theorizing – he disliked theories and had a good-natured distrust of them – he hit just that balance of conduct whereof the code approves; if he had talked about the matter at all (the code does not favour too much talking) he might have said that he was "not a saint" but that he "played the game." His fellow-adherents would understand perfectly what he meant. And the last thing in the world that he contemplated or desired was to attack, or openly to flout, accepted standards. The code never encourages a man to do that. Besides, he had a father, a mother, and a sister, orthodox-thinking people, very fond and proud of him; he would not willingly do or say anything to shock them. Even from a professional point of view – but when the higher motives are sufficient to decide the issue, why need they invoke the somewhat compromising alliance of others purely prudential?
By now he was very much in love with Winnie Maxon, but he was also desperately vexed with her, and with all the amiable theorizers at Shaylor's Patch. The opportunity had seemed perfect for what he wanted, and what he wanted seemed exactly one of the allowed compromises – an ideal elasticity! Whom would it wrong? Not Cyril Maxon, surely? He was out of court. Whom would it offend? There was nobody to offend, if the affair were managed quietly – as it could be here in the country. And she liked him; though he had made no declaration yet, he could not doubt that she liked him very much.
But the theorizers had been at her. When he delicately felt his way, discussing her position, or, professedly, the position of women in general whose marriages had proved a failure, she leant back, looking adorably pretty, and calmly came out with a remark of a profoundly disconcerting nature.
"If I ever decided to – to link my life with a man's again, I should do it quite openly. I should tell my husband and my friends. I should consider myself as doing just the same thing as if I were marrying again. I talked it all over with Tora the other night, and she quite agreed with me."
Agreed with her! Tora had put it into her head, of course, Godfrey thought angrily. The idea had Tora's hall-mark stamped large in its serene straightforward irrationality.
"But that'd mean an awful row, and the – a case, and all that!"
"I hope it would. But Cyril doesn't approve of divorce."
"Then you'd never be able to – to get regular, as long as he lived."
"I think I should be regular, without getting regular," she answered, smiling.
"What's the good of defying the world?"
"Isn't that the only way bad things get altered?"
"It needs a good deal of courage to do things like that – right or wrong."
"I should rely on the man I loved to give me the courage."
Godfrey did not wish to admit that the man whom (as he hoped) she loved lacked courage. The answer irritated him; he sat frowning sulkily, his usual gaiety sadly overcast. Winnie's eyes scanned his face for a moment; then, with a sigh, she looked over the lawn to the valley below. She was disappointed with the reception of her great idea. "Of course the two people would have to be very much in love with one another," she added, with a little falter in her voice.
He found a way out of his difficulty. "The more a man loved a woman, the less likely he'd be to consent to put her in such a position," he argued. His face cleared; he was pleased with his point; it was good, according to the code.
"It would be the only honourable position for her," Winnie retorted.
He rose to his feet in a temper; it was all so unreasonable. "I must go."
"Are you coming to anything to-morrow?"
"No, I shall be in town to-morrow. I dare say I shall stay a night or two." This was by way of revenge – or punishment. Let her see how she liked Shaylor's Patch without him!
She turned to him, holding out her hand; in her eyes was raillery, half-reproachful, half-merry. "Come back in a better temper!" she said.
"I'm a fool to come back at all." He kissed her hand and looked steadily into her eyes before he went away.
Himself at once a poor and a pleasure-loving man, Godfrey had the good luck to own a well-to-do and devoted friend, always delighted to "put him up" and to give him the best of hospitality. Bob Purnett and he were old schoolfellows and had never lost sight of one another. Bob had four thousand a year of his own (though not of his own making), and in the summer he had no work to do; in the winter he hunted. He was a jovial being and very popular, except with the House Committee and the cook of his club; to these unfortunate officials he was in the nature of a perpetual Assize Court presided over by a "Hanging Judge."
He gave Godfrey a beautiful dinner and a magnum of fine claret; let it be set down to his credit that he drank – and gave – fine claret at small dinners. He knew better than to be intemperate. Did he not want to go on hunting as long as possible? Nor was Godfrey given to excess in wine-drinking. Still the dinner, the claret, the old friendship, the liqueur, the good cigar, did their work. Godfrey found himself putting the case. It appeared to Bob Purnett a curious one.
"But it's rot," he observed. "You're married or you're not – eh?" He himself was not – quite distinctly. "Must be very pretty, or she wouldn't expect you to stand it?"
Godfrey laughed. There was a primitive truthfulness about Purnett's conversation. He was not sophisticated by thought or entangled in theory – quite different from the people at Shaylor's Patch.
"She is very pretty; and absolutely a lady – and straight, and all that."
"Then let it alone," counselled Bob Purnett.
"I can't help it, old chap." Again the primitive note – the cry that there are limits to human endurance! Godfrey had not meant to utter it. The saying of it was an illumination to himself. Up to now he had thought that he could help it – and would, if he were faced with theories and irrationality.
"Let's go to a Hall?" Bob suggested.
"I'd like a quiet evening and just a jaw."
Bob looked gravely sympathetic. "Oh, you've got it in the neck!" he said, with a touch of reverent wonder in his voice – something like the awe that madmen inspired in our forbears. Godfrey was possessed!
"Yes, I have – and I don't know what the deuce to do."
"Well, what the deuce are you to do?" asked Purnett. His healthy, ruddy, unwrinkled face expressed an honest perplexity. "Must be a rum little card – isn't she?"
"I can't help it, Bob."
"Dashed awkward!"
In fact these two adherents of the code – may it be written honest adherents, for they neither invented nor defended, but merely inherited it? – were frankly puzzled. There is a term in logic – dichotomy – a sharp division, a cutting in two, an opposing of contradictories. You are honest or not honest, sober or not sober. Rough reasoning, but the police courts have to work on it. So you are regular or irregular. But people who want to make the irregular regular – that is as great a shock to the adherents of the code as their tenets are to the upholders of a different law. The denial of one's presuppositions is always a shock – because one must start from somewhere. It is a "shock to credit" – credit of some kind – and how are any of us to get on without credit?
"Bring two more old brandies, Walter," Mr. Purnett commanded. It was the only immediate and practical step.
"Not for me, old chap."
Bob nodded accordingly to Walter. His face was inconceivably solemn.
"I sometimes feel like cutting the whole thing," said Godfrey fretfully.
"Well, there are other women in the world, aren't there?"
"No, no. I mean the whole thing. What's the good of it?" The young man's fresh face looked for the moment weary and old; he flung his good cigar, scarcely half-smoked, into the fireplace.
Bob Purnett knew better than to argue against a mood like that; one might just as well argue against a toothache.
"Let's go home and have an early bed," he suggested. He yawned, and tried to hide the action. He was devoted to his friend, but his friend had raised a puzzle, and puzzles soon fatigued him – except little ones made of wood, for which he had a partiality.
For three whole days Godfrey Ledstone fought; really trying to "cut the whole thing," to master again the feelings which had mastered him, not to go back to Shaylor's Patch. On one day he went to see his people, the father, mother, and sister, who were orthodox-thinking, and so fond and proud of him. They lived in Woburn Square. The old gentleman had been an accountant in a moderately good way of business, and had retired on a moderately good competence; at least, he was not old really, but, like some men, he took readily, even prematurely, to old age. Everything in the house seemed to Godfrey preternaturally settled; it even seemed settled somehow that Amy would not marry. And it was odd to think that Mr. and Mrs. Ledstone had once married, had (as it must be presumed) suffered from these terrible feelings, had perhaps doubted, feared, struggled, enjoyed. To-day all was so placid in Woburn Square; the only really acute question was the Income Tax – that certainly was a grievance to Mr. Ledstone. Godfrey appreciated the few hours of repose, the fondness, and the pride. It seemed then quite possible to "cut the whole thing" – yes, the whole of it.
Bob Purnett went off on a short visit, leaving his comfortable flat at his friend's disposal. Why not stay in London, do a good turn at work, and see some more of his people in Woburn Square? A good and wise programme. But on the fourth day came a gust that blew the good and wise programme clean out of the window – a gust of feeling like a draught of strong wine, heady and overpowering. He flung down his pencil, crying aloud, "It's no use!"
He was tried beyond that he was able. He laid an indictment, vague and formless, yet charged with poignant indignation, against the general order of things, against what forced a man into folly, and then branded him "Fool" with irons hissing-hot. The old protest, the creature's cry against the injustice of creation! An hour later he was on his way to the country – back to Shaylor's Patch. So far as he was concerned, the thing was settled. He might not realize it; he went, not led by purpose, but driven by craving. But "On my terms if I can, on hers if I must," interprets the confused and restless humming of his brain.
To a man in such case the people he meets as he fares along seem strangely restful, impossibly at peace. The old man with his pipe, the young clerk with his sporting paper, the labourer in the field, the toddler with its toy, all present an illusion of untroubled existence, at which the man with the gadfly looks in envy and in scorn. They possess their souls – he is possessed. Well might Bob Purnett wear that expression of awe! For some day the normal man must resume possession, and he may find that the strangest pranks have been played by the temporary tenant – furniture smashed, debts incurred, and what not, for all of which dilapidations and liabilities he, unfortunate soul, is held responsible! Happily it chances, after all not so seldom, that the temporary tenant has made beauty, not havoc, and left behind him generous gifts, to the enrichment of life till life itself shall pass away.
Stephen Aikenhead sat on the lawn with his little girl Alice, newly come home for the holidays. She was reading aloud to him; he smoked his pipe, and now and again his big hand would pass caressingly over the little bowed head with its soft brown hair. The story was about a certain Princess, to whom a Fairy had given the Gift of Eternal Youth on the condition that she never fainted either from fear or from joy. All went well for a very great many years. Generations were born and died, and the Princess was still sweet seventeen. She outlived seventy-seven Prime Ministers. But at last a very handsome groom, who had appeared at the Castle gates rather mysteriously and been taken into the Princess' service without (as it seemed) any "character," was thrown from his horse while he was in attendance on his Royal Mistress, and, lo and behold, the Princess fainted for fear that he might be dead, and fainted again for joy when she found he wasn't! So he revealed himself as the King of the neighbouring kingdom, and they married one another, and lived happily ever afterwards. Only, of course, the Princess lost the Gift of Eternal Youth.
