The King's Messenger

It was a rather dim daylight dinner. I remember that quite distinctly, for I could see the glow of the sunset over the trees in the park, through the high window at the west end of the dining-room. I had expected to find a larger party, I believe, for I recollect being a little surprised at seeing only a dozen people assembled at table. It seemed to me that in old times, ever so long ago, when I had last stayed in that house, there had been as many as thirty or forty guests. I recognized some of them among a number of beautiful portraits that hung on the walls. There was room for a great many because there was only one huge window, at one end, and one large door at the other. I was very much surprised, too, to see a portrait of myself, evidently painted about twenty years ago by Lenbach. It seemed very strange that I should have so completely forgotten the picture, and that I should not be able to remember having sat for it. We were good friends, it is true, and he might have painted it from memory, without my knowledge, but it was certainly strange that he should never have told me about it. The portraits that hung in the dining-room were all very good indeed and all, I should say, by the best painters of that time.

My left-hand neighbor was a lovely young girl whose name I had forgotten, though I had known her long, and I fancied that she looked a little disappointed when she saw that I was beside her. On my right there was a vacant seat, and beyond it sat an elderly woman with features as hard as the overwhelmingly splendid diamonds she wore. Her eyes made me think of gray glass marbles cemented into a stone mask. It was odd that her name should have escaped me, too, for I had often met her.

The table looked irregular, and I counted the guests mechanically while I ate my soup. We were only twelve, but the empty chair beside me was the thirteenth place.

I suppose it was not very tactful of me to mention this, but I wanted to say something to the beautiful girl on my left, and no other subject for a general remark suggested itself. Just as I was going to speak I remembered who she was.

“Miss Lorna,” I said, to attract her attention, for she was looking away from me toward the door, “I hope you are not superstitious about there being thirteen at table, are you?”

“We are only twelve,” she said, in the sweetest voice in the world.

“Yes; but some one else is coming. There’s an empty chair here beside me.”

“Oh, he doesn’t count,” said Miss Lorna quietly. “At least, not for everybody. When did you get here? Just in time for dinner, I suppose.”

“Yes,” I answered. “I’m in luck to be beside you. It seems an age since we were last here together.”

“It does indeed!” Miss Lorna sighed and looked at the pictures on the opposite wall. “I’ve lived a lifetime since I saw you last.”

I smiled at the exaggeration. “When you are thirty, you won’t talk of having your life behind you,” I said.

“I shall never be thirty,” Miss Lorna answered, with such an odd little air of conviction that I did not think of anything to say. “Besides, life isn’t made up of years or months or hours, or of anything that has to do with time,” she continued. “You ought to know that. Our bodies are something better than mere clocks, wound up to show just how old we are at every moment, by our hair turning gray and our teeth falling out and our faces getting wrinkled and yellow, or puffy and red! Look at your own portrait over there. I don’t mind saying that you must have been twenty years younger when that was painted, but I’m sure you are just the same man to-day--improved by age, perhaps.”