WE were half mad that night, Sapt and Bernenstein and I. The thing seemed to have got into our blood and to have become part of ourselves. For us it was inevitable--nay, it was done.
Sapt busied himself in preparing the account of the fire at the hunting-lodge; it was to be communicated to the journals, and it told with much circumstantiality how Rudolf Rassendyll had come to visit the king, with James his servant, and, the king being summoned unexpectedly to the capital, had been awaiting his Majesty's return when he met his fate. There was a short history of Rudolf, a glancing reference to his family, a dignified expression of condolence with his relatives, to whom the king was sending messages of deepest regret by the hands of Mr.
Rassendyll's servant. At another table young Bernenstein was drawing up, under the constable's direction, a narrative of Rupert of Hentzau's attempt on the king's life and the king's courage in defending himself. The count, eager to return (so it ran), had persuaded the king to meet him by declaring that he held a state-document of great importance and of a most secret nature; the king, with his habitual fearlessness, had gone alone, but only to refuse with scorn Count Rupert's terms. Enraged at this unfavorable reception, the audacious criminal had made a sudden attack on the king, with what issue all knew. He had met his own death, while the king, perceiving from a glance at the document that it compromised well-known persons, had, with the nobility which marked him, destroyed it unread before the eyes of those who were rushing in to his rescue. I supplied suggestions and improvements; and, engrossed in contriving how to blind curious eyes, we forgot the real and permanent difficulties of the thing we had resolved upon. For us they did not exist; Sapt met every objection by declaring that the thing had been done once and could be done again. Bernenstein and I were not behind him in confidence.
We would guard the secret with brain and hand and life, even as we had guarded and kept the secret of the queen's letter, which would now go with Rupert of Hentzau to his grave. Bauer we could catch and silence: nay, who would listen to such a tale from such a man? Rischenheim was ours; the old woman would keep her doubts between her teeth for her own sake. To his own land and his own people Rudolf must be dead while the King of Ruritania would stand before all Europe recognized, unquestioned, unassailed.
True, he must marry the queen again; Sapt was ready with the means, and would hear nothing of the difficulty and risk in finding a hand to perform the necessary ceremony. If we quailed in our courage: we had but to look at the alternative, and find recompense the perils of what we meant to undertake by a consideration the desperate risk involved in abandoning it.
Persuaded the substitution of Rudolf for the king was the only thing would serve our turn, we asked no longer whether it possible, but sought only the means to make it safe and safe.
But Rudolf himself had not spoken. Sapt's appeal and the queen's imploring cry had shaken but not overcome him; he had wavered, but he was not won. Yet there was no talk of impossibility or peril in his mouth, any more than in ours: those were not what gave him pause. The score on which he hesitated was whether the thing should be done, not whether it could; our appeals were not to brace a failing courage, but cajole a sturdy sense of honor which found the imposture distasteful so soon as it seemed to serve a personal end. To serve the king he had played the king in old days, but he did not love to play the king when the profit of it was to be his own. Hence he was unmoved till his care for the fair fame of the queen and the love of his friends joined to buffet his resolution.
Then he faltered; but he had not fallen. Yet Colonel Sapt did all as though he had given his assent, and watched the last hours in which his flight from Strelsau was possible go quickly by with more than equanimity. Why hurry Rudolf's resolve? Every moment shut him closer in the trap of an inevitable choice. With every hour that he was called the king, it became more impossible for him to bear any other name all his days. Therefore Sapt let Mr.
Rassendyll doubt and struggle, while he himself wrote his story and laid his long-headed plans. And now and then James, the little servant, came in and went out, sedate and smug, but with a quiet satisfaction gleaming in his eyes. He had made a story for a pastime, and it was being translated into history. He at least would bear his part in it unflinchingly.
Before now the queen had left us, persuaded to lie down and try to rest till the matter should be settled. Stilled by Rudolf's gentle rebuke, she had urged him no more in words, but there was an entreaty in her eyes stronger than any spoken prayer, and a piteousness in the lingering of her hand in his harder to resist than ten thousand sad petitions. At last he had led her from the room and commended her to Helga's care. Then, returning to us, he stood silent a little while. We also were silent, Sapt sitting and looking up at him with his brows knit and his teeth restlessly chewing the moustache on his lip.
"Well, lad?" he said at last, briefly putting the great question.
Rudolf walked to the window and seemed to lose himself for a moment in the contemplation of the quiet night. There were no more than a few stragglers in the street now; the moon shone white and clear on the empty square.
"I should like to walk up and down outside and think it over," he said, turning to us; and, as Bernenstein sprang up to accompany him, he added, "No. Alone."
"Yes, do," said old Sapt, with a glance at the clock, whose hands were now hard on two o'clock. "Take your time, lad, take your time."
Rudolf looked at him and broke into a smile.
"I'm not your dupe, old Sapt," said he, shaking his head. "Trust me, if I decide to get away, I'll get away, be it what o'clock it will."
"Yes, confound you!" grinned Colonel Sapt.