The Puppet Crown Part 6

"The duke?"

"Yes."

"His Highness has been dead these four years."

"Dead four years? So much for man and his futile dreams. Dead four years," absently.

"What did you say, Herr?"

"I? Nothing. How did he die?"

"He was thrown from his horse and killed. But the d.u.c.h.ess lives, and she is worthy of her sire. Eh, Herr, there is a woman for you! She should sit on this throne; it is hers by right. These Osians are aliens and were forced on us."

"It seems to me, young man, that you are talking treason."

"That is my business, Herr." Johann laughed. "I am a socialist, and occasionally harangue for the reds. And sometimes, when I am in need of money, I find myself in the employ of the police."

The muscles of the Englishman's jaws hardened, then they relaxed. The expression on the face of his guide was free from anything but bonhomie.

"One must live," Johann added deprecatingly.

"Yes, one must live," replied the Englishman.

"O! but I could sell some fine secrets to the Osians had they money to pay. Ach! but what is the use? The king has no money; he is on the verge of bankruptcy, and this pretty bit of scenery is the cause of it."

"So you are a socialist?" said the Englishman, pa.s.sing over Johann's declamatory confidences.

"Yes, Herr. All men are brothers."

"Go to!" laughed the Englishman, "you aren't even a second cousin to me.

But stay, what place is this we are pa.s.sing?" indicating with his cane a red-brick mansion which was fronted by broad English lawns and protected from intrusion by a high iron fence.

"That is the British legation, Herr."

The Englishman stopped and stared, unconscious of the close scrutiny of the guide. His eyes traveled up the wide flags leading to the veranda, and he drew a picture of a square-shouldered old man tramping backward and forward, the wind tangling his thin white hair, his hands behind his back, his chin in his collar and at his heels a white bulldog. Rapidly another picture came. It was an English scene. And the echo of a voice fell on his ears. "My way and the freedom of the house and the key to the purse; your way and a closed door while I live. You can go, but you can not come back. You have decided? Yes? Then good morning." Thirteen years, thirteen years! He had sacrificed the freedom of the house and the key to the purse, the kind eyes and the warm pressure of that old hand. And for what? Starvation in the deserts, plenty of scars and little of thanks, ingrat.i.tude and forgetfulness.

And now the kind eyes were closed and the warm hand cold. O, to recall the vanished face, the silent voice, the misspent years, the April days and their illusions! The Englishman took the monocle from his eye and looked at it, wondering what had caused the sudden blur.

"There was a fine old man there in the bygone days," said Johann.

"And who was he?"

"Lord Fitzgerald, the British minister. He and Leopold were close friends." Johann's investigating gaze went unrewarded. The Englishman's face had resumed its expression of mild curiosity.

"Ah; a compatriot of mine," he said. Inwardly he mused: "This guide is watching me; let him catch me if he can. His d.u.c.h.ess? I know far too much of her!"

"He was a millionaire, too," went on Johann.

"Well, we can't all be rich. Come."

They crossed the Stra.s.se and traversed the walk at the side of the palace enclosures. The Englishman aimlessly trailed his cane along the green pickets of the fence till they ended in a stone arch which rose high over the driveway. The gates were open, and coming toward the two wanderers as they stood at the curb rolled the royal barouche, on each side of which rode a mounted cuira.s.sier, sashed and helmeted. The Englishman, however, had observed nothing; he was lost in some dream.

"Look, Herr!" cried Johann, rousing the other by a pull at the sleeve.

"Look!" Socialist though he claimed to be, Johann touched his cap.

In the barouche, leaning back among the black velvet cus.h.i.+ons, her face mellowed by the shade of a small parasol, was a young woman of nineteen or twenty, as beautiful as a da Vinci freshly conceived. The Englishman saw a pair of grave dark eyes which, in the pa.s.sing, met his and held them. He caught his breath.

"Who is that?" he asked.

"That is her Royal Highness the Crown Princess Alexia."

Afterward the Englishman remembered seeing a white dog lying on the opposite seat.

CHAPTER IV. AN ADVENTURE WITH ROYALTY

Maurice Carewe, attached to the American legation in Vienna, leaned against the stone parapet which separated the terraced promenade of the Continental Hotel from the Werter See, and wondered what had induced him to come to Bleiberg.

He had left behind him the glory of September in Vienna, a city second only to Paris in fas.h.i.+on and gaiety; Vienna, with its inimitable bands, its incomparable gardens, its military maneuvers, its salons, its charming women; and all for a fool's errand. His Excellency was to blame. He had casually dropped the remark that the duchy's minister, Baron von Rumpf, had been given his pa.s.sports as a persona non grata by the chancellor of the kingdom, and that a declaration of war was likely to follow. Maurice's dormant love of journalistic inquiry had become aroused, and he had asked permission to investigate the affair, a favor readily granted to him.

But here he was, on the scene, and n.o.body knew anything, and n.o.body could tell anything. The d.u.c.h.ess had remained silent. Not unnaturally he wished himself back in Vienna. There were no court fetes in the city of Bleiberg. The king's condition was too grave to permit them. And, besides, there had been no real court in Bleiberg for the s.p.a.ce of ten years, so he was told. Those solemn affairs of the archbishop's, given once the week for the benefit of the corps diplomatique, were dull and spiritless. Her Royal Highness was seldom seen, save when she drove through the streets. Persons who remembered the reign before told what a mad, gay court it had been. Now it was funereal. The youth and beauty of Bleiberg held a court of its own. Royalty was not included, nor did it ask to be.

A strange capital, indeed, Maurice reflected, as he gazed down into the cool, brown water. He regretted his caprice. There were pretty women in Vienna. Some of them belonged to the American colony. They danced well, they sang and played and rode. He had taught some of them how to fence, and he could not remember the times he had been "b.u.t.toned" while paying too much attention to their lips and eyes. For Maurice loved a thing of beauty, were it a woman, a horse or a Mediterranean sunset. What a difference between these two years in Vienna and that year in Calcutta!

He never would forget the dingy office, with its tarnished sign, "U. S.

Consul," tacked insecurely on the door, and the utter loneliness.

He cast a pebble into the lake, and watched the ripples roll away and disappear, and ruminated on a life full of color and vicissitude. He remembered the Arizona days, the endless burning sand, the dull routine of a cavalry trooper, the lithe brown bodies of the Apaches, the first skirmish and the last. From a soldier he had turned journalist, tramped the streets of Was.h.i.+ngton in rain and s.h.i.+ne, living as a man lived who must.

One day his star had shot up from the nadir of obscurity, not very far, but enough to bring his versatility under the notice of the discerning Secretary of State, who, having been a friend of the father, offered the son a berth in the diplomatic corps. A consulate in a South American republic, during a revolutionary crisis, where he had shown consummate skill in avoiding political complications (and where, by a shrewd speculation in gold, he had feathered his nest for his declining years), proved that the continual incert.i.tude of a journalistic career is a fine basis for diplomatic work. From South America he had gone to Calcutta, thence to Austria.

He was only twenty-nine, which age in some is youth. He possessed an old man's wisdom and a boy's exuberance of spirits. He laughed whenever he could; to him life was a panorama of vivid pictures, the world a vast theater to which somehow he had gained admission. His beardless countenance had deceived more than one finished diplomat, for it was difficult to believe that behind it lay an earnest purpose and a daring courage. If he bragged a little, quizzed graybeards, sought strange places, sported with convention, and eluded women, it was due to his restlessness. Yet, he had the secretiveness of sand; he absorbed, but he revealed nothing. He knew his friends; they thought they knew him. It was his delight to have women think him a b.u.t.terfly, men write him down a fool; it covered up his real desires and left him free.

What cynicism he had was mellowed by a fanciful humor. Whether with steel or with words, he was a master of fence; and if at times some one got under his guard, that some one knew it not. To let your enemy see that he has. .h.i.t you is to give him confidence. He saw humor where no one else saw it, and tragedy where it was not suspected. He was one of those rare individuals who, when the opportunity of chance refuses to come, makes one.

"Germany and Austria are great countries," he mused, lighting a cigar.

"Every hundredth man is a king, one in fifty is a duke, every tenth man is a prince, and one can not take a corner without b.u.mping into a count or a baron. Even the hotel waiters are disquieting; there is that embarra.s.sing atmosphere about them which suggests n.o.bility in durance vile. As for me, I prefer Kentucky, where every man is a colonel, and you never make a mistake. And these kingdoms!" He indulged in subdued laughter. "They are always like comic operas. I find myself looking around every moment for the merry villagers so happy and so gay (at fifteen dollars the week), the eternal innkeeper and the perennial soubrette his daughter, the low comedian and the self-conscious tenor.

Heigho! and not a soul in Bleiberg knows me, nor cares.

"I'd rather talk five minutes to a pretty woman than eat stuffed pheasants the year around, and the stuffed pheasant is about all Bleiberg can boast of. Well, here goes for a voyage of discovery;" and he pa.s.sed down the stone steps to the pier, quite unconscious of the admiring glances of the women who fluttered back and forth on the wide balconies above.

It was four o'clock in the afternoon; a fresh wind redolent of pine and resin blew across the lake. Maurice climbed into a boat and pulled away with a strong, swift stroke, enjoying the liberation of his muscles. A quarter of a mile out he let the oars drift and took his bearings. He saw the private gardens of the king and the archbishop, and, convinced that a closer view would afford him entertainment, he caught up the oars again and moved inland.

The royal gardens ran directly into the water, while those of the archbishop were protected by a wall of brick five or six feet in height, in the center of which was a gate opening on the water. Behind the gate was a small boat dock. Maurice plied the oars vigorously. He skirted the royal gardens, and the smell of newly mown lawns filled the air. Soon he was gliding along the sides of the moss-grown walls. A bird chirped in the overhanging boughs. He was about to cast loose the oars again, when the boat was brought to a violent stop. A few yards waterward from the gate there lay, hidden in the shadowed water, a sunken pier. On one of the iron piles the boat had become impaled.

Maurice was tumbled into the bow of the boat, which began rapidly to fill. First he swore, then he laughed, for he was possessed of infinite good humor. The only thing left for him to do was to swim for the gate.