King John of Jingalo Part 61

"Then it can't be much of a secret."

"Oh! You think?" He opened his big childish eyes at her and nodded his head solemnly. "This secret has been with me thousands and thousands of miles. Every time I shot off my gun, every day I went 'tramp, tramp'

through the forest walking on snakes, every time I fought for my life I had this secret of mine to live with."

"You had better not tell it then; it may lose its interest."

"I want it to interest you."

"It does," said Charlotte, "very much."

"Huh! You do not know what it is."

"That is why; it is much more interesting not to know."

"Ah, you are playing at me! But what I go to tell you is no joke."

"I was not laughing," she said.

"No; only 'chatter, chatter'!"

"You know where I have been?" he continued.

"I know the continent."

"Yes;--you are right; that is all anybody knows about it. Well, inside of it there is a country as big as this Jingalo of yours; and it belongs really to n.o.body. I have been all over it."

"The people are very savage, are they not?"

"Savage?--oh, no. They are very fierce and proud, and strong; they are also the most wonderful artists. You call that to be a savage?"

"Artists?"

"Yes; look at that."

As he spoke he drew up his sleeve almost to the elbow, exposing a sunburnt arm, smooth, fine of texture, and enormously muscular. Over its brawny mold, with scaly convolutions elaborately tattooed, writhed a dragon in bright indigo.

"Oh, how beautiful!" exclaimed the Princess. Marveling at the clear intricacy of its detail, she stooped to examine it more closely.

Prince Fritz turned his arm this way and that, displaying it. He snapped his fingers: flick went each separate muscle, the dragon became alive.

"What do you think?" he inquired, smiling with childish vanity and the delight of feeling upon his skin the warmth of her breath.

"It is very beautiful," she murmured again, her admiration divided between the scaly dragon's wings and the splendidly molded limb.

"I have them far more beautiful upon my legs," said the Prince.

"Dragons?"

"Yes; but oh! quite different; more--how do you say?--'bloodthirsty' you call it? Here and here"--he went on, indicating the locality--"I have two. One of them is climbing up and the other is climbing down; and they are both biting on my knee-cap with their teeth--like mad."

"They must be quite wonderful."

"They are all that! When I look at them I am lost with admiration of myself." Then he gazed speculatively into her eyes and speaking in dull, soft tones of Teutonic sentiment, said confidentially, "If you will marry me, you shall see them some day."

Charlotte's laughter rang loud. "Do you think I should marry you for that?"

A wistful, rather nonplussed expression came into the Prince's face.

"I do not know," said he, "why women marry at all; they are so wonderful, so beautiful, so good all by themselves; we men are not beautiful at all--not our bodies nor our hearts. And I--oh, well!"--he drew down his sleeve as he spoke,--"I have nothing more beautiful to offer you than those--my dragons. If you do not want them, why should you want me?"

"But women don't marry dragons!" objected Charlotte, scarcely less puzzled than amused.

"Oh! Do they not? I think you are wrong. Many of them marry only because the man they marry makes them afraid. I have seen it done in the country where I come from;--Germany I mean--and everywhere here it is the same.

I am not a dragon myself; but if you are that sort of woman, these might help you to pretend. Do you not think you could be afraid of me enough to marry me?"

This was strange wooing.

"I am not afraid of you at all," said Charlotte; "but I like you--very much."

"Ah, then you want me to be quite another person? Very well, that make it so much easier. Then now I will tell you what I am really like; and you will try not to laugh, will you not?"

Charlotte composed her countenance to as near gravity as was possible, and the Prince went on.

"I am just one little child that has lost its way through having grown so big and strong. And I want some nice, kind woman, that is more sensible than I, to be a mother to me--to take me in her arms and let me cry to her when I am afraid. Herr Gott! I am so frightened sometimes--how I have cried! Of the dark night, of loneliness, of the stillness when there is no noise near, but only _that_, something far, far away, that comes! Everything frightens me when I am alone. Fighting?

No, I am not afraid of that; it is this wait, wait, wait--for what? And I want to have one woman just at my heart, and her voice at my ear, and children--yes, plenty of them; and when I have plenty children, then I shall not be afraid of loneliness any more."

"But if you so dislike it, why did you go away into the wilds?"

"Ah! I had to run away from the music. That was awful! And then--have you lived in a German town?--that is awful too. Do not think that I am asking you to live in a German town? No: I could not be so cruel. So now I tell you my secret."

"You mean the dragons?"

"The dragons? No, no! They go with me,--they are part of me, they are 'in the know': but they themselves are not the secret. That is much, much bigger thing still!"

He paused, and she saw his blue eyes looking far away, as though he had forgotten her presence.

"Well?" she said encouragingly, "you are going to tell me, are you not?"

"Oh, yes! That is what I am come for." His tone was quite business-like now.

"That big country I told you of--it belongs to n.o.body. You know that those North Americans say that n.o.body from Europe is to have it, though they do not use it themselves. Well, I am going to have it."

"You?"

"Schnapps-Wa.s.ser,--me, with my water-bottles. I have turned them into a company; and they are going to give for it--well, never mind how much.

But with what my bottles bring me I can make that country so that no power in the world can prevent it from being a great country to itself."

"But you say it has no coast?"