Chapter 10
The cause of his uneasiness and depression was revealed only by the manner in which it was removed. He was lying stretched out on the couch, staring from the window, his head aching; his heart full of a longing that knows but one solace. Anguish had gone out in the grounds after assuring himself that his charge was asleep, so there was no one in the room when he awakened from a sickening dream to shudder alone over its memory. A cool breeze from an open window fanned his head kindly; a bright sun gleamed across the trees, turning them into gold and purple and red and green; a quiet repose was in all that touched him outwardly; inwardly there was burning turmoil. He turned on his side and curiously felt the bandages about his head. They were tight and smooth, and he knew they were perfectly white. How lonely those bandages made him feel, away off there in Graustark!
The door to his room opened softly, but he did not turn, thinking it was Anguish--always Anguish--and not the one he most desired to--
“Her Royal Highness,” announced a maid, and then--
“May I come in?” asked a voice that went to his troubled soul like a cooling draught to the fevered throat. He turned toward her instantly, all the irritation, all the uneasiness, all the loneliness vanishing like mist before the sun. Behind her was a lady-in-waiting.
“I cannot deny the request of a princess,” he responded, smiling gaily. He held forth his hand toward her, half fearing she would not take it.
The Princess Yetive came straight to his couch and laid her hand in his. He drew it to his lips and then released it lingeringly. She stood before him, looking down with an anxiety in her eyes that would have repaid him had death been there to claim his next breath.
“Are you better?” she asked, with her pretty accent. “I have been so troubled about you.”
“I thought you had forgotten me,” he said, with childish petulance.
“Forgotten you!” she cried, quick to resent the imputation. “Let me tell you, then, what I have been doing while forgetting. I have sent to the Regengetz for your luggage and your friend's. You will find it much more comfortable here. You are to make this house your home as long as you are in Edelweiss. That is how I have been forgetting.”
“Forgive me!” he cried, his eyes gleaming. “I have been so lonely that I imagined all sorts of things. But, your Highness, you must not expect us to remain here after I am able to leave. That would be imposing--”
“I will not allow you to say it!” she objected, decisively. “You are the guest of honor in Graustark. Have you not preserved its ruler? Was it an imposition to risk your life to save one in whom you had but passing interest, even though she were a poor princess? No, my American, this castle is yours, in all rejoicing, for had you not come within its doors to-day would have found it in mournful terror. Besides, Mr. Anguish has said he will stay a year if we insist.”
“That's like Harry,” laughed Lorry. “But I am afraid you are glorifying two rattlebrained chaps who should be in a home for imbeciles instead of in the castle their audacity might have blighted. Our rashness was only surpassed by our phenomenal good luck. By chance it turned out well; there were ten thousand chances of ignominious failure. Had we failed would we have been guests of honor? No! We would have been stoned from Graustark. You don't know how thin the thread was that held your fate. It makes me shudder to think of the crime our act might have been. Ah, had I but known you were the Princess, no chances should have been taken,” he said, fervently.
“And a romance spoiled,” she laughed.
“So you are a princess,--a real princess,” he went on, as if he had not heard her. “I knew it. Something told me you were not an ordinary woman.”
“Oh, but I am a very ordinary woman,” she remonstrated. “You do not know how easy it is to be a princess and a mere woman at the same time. I have a heart, a head. I breathe and eat and drink and sleep and love. Is it not that way with other women?”
“You breathe and eat and drink and sleep and love in a different world, though, your Highness.”
“Ach! my little maid, Therese, sleeps as soundly, eats as heartily and loves as warmly as I, so a fig for your argument.”
“You may breathe the same air, but would you love the same man that your maid might love?”
“Is a man the only excuse for love?” she asked. “If so, then I must say that I breathe and eat and drink and sleep--and that is all.”
“Pardon me, but some day you will find that love is a man, and”--here he laughed--“you will neither breathe, nor eat, nor sleep except with him in your heart. Even a princess is not proof against a man.”
“Is a man proof against a princess?” she asked, as she leaned against the casement.
“It depends on the”--he paused “the princess, I should say.”
“Alas! There is one more fresh responsibility acquired. It seems to me that everything depends on the princess,” she said, merrily.
“Not entirely,” he said, quickly. “A great deal--a very great deal--depends on circumstances. For instance, when you were Miss Guggenslocker it wouldn't have been necessary for the man to be a prince, you know.”
“But I was Miss Guggenslocker because a man was unnecessary,” she said, so gravely that he smiled. “I was without a title because it was more womanly than to be a 'freak,' as I should have been had every man, woman and child looked upon me as a princess. I did not travel through your land for the purpose of exhibiting myself, but to learn and unlearn.”
“I remember it cost you a certain coin to learn one thing,” he observed.
“It was money well spent, as subsequent events have proved. I shall never regret the spending of that half gavvo. Was it not the means of bringing you to Edelweiss?”
“Well, it was largely responsible, but I am inclined to believe that a certain desire on my part would have found a way without the assistance of the coin. You don't know how persistent an American can be.”
“Would you have persisted had you known I was a princess?” she asked.
“Well, I can hardly tell about that, but you must remember I didn't know who or what you were.”
“Would you have come to Graustark had you known I was its princess?”
“I'll admit I came because you were Miss Guggenslocker.”
“A mere woman.”
“I will not consent to the word 'mere.' What would you think of a man who came half-way across the earth for the sake of a mere woman?”
“I should say he had a great deal of curiosity,” she responded, coolly.
“And not much sense. There is but one woman a man would do so much for, and she could not be a mere woman in his eyes.” Lorry's face was white and his eyes gleamed as he hurled this bold conclusion at her.
“Especially when he learns that she is a princess!” said she, her voice so cold and repellent that his eyes closed, involuntarily, as if an unexpected horror had come before them. “You must not tell me that you came to see me.
“But I did come to see you and not Her Royal Highness the Princess Yetive of Graustark. How was I to know?” he cried impulsively.
“But you are no longer ignorant,” she said, looking from the window.
“I thought you said you were a mere woman!”
“I am--and that is the trouble!” she said, slowly turning her eyes back to him. Then she abruptly sank to the window seat near his head. “That is the trouble, I say. A woman is a woman, although she be a princess. Don't you understand why you must not say such things to me?”
“Because you are a princess,” he said, bitterly.
“No; because I am a woman. As a woman I want to hear them, as, a princess I cannot. Now, have I made you understand? Have I been bold enough?” Her face was burning.
“You--you don't mean that you--” he half whispered, drawing himself toward her, his face glowing.
“Ach! What have I said?”
“You have said enough to drive me mad with desire for more,” he cried, seizing her hand, which she withdrew instantly, rising to her feet.
“I have only said that I wanted to hear you say you had come to see me. Is not that something for a woman's vanity to value? I am sorry you have presumed to misunderstand me.” She was cold again, but he was not to be baffled.
“Then be a woman and forget that you are a princess until I tell you why I came,” he cried.
“I cannot! I mean, I will not listen to you,” she said, glancing about helplessly, yet standing still within the danger circle.
“I came because I have thought of you and dreamed of you since the day you sailed from New York. God, can I ever forget that day!”
“Please do not recall--” she began, blushing and turning to the window.
“The kiss you threw to me? Were you a princess then?” She did not answer, and he paused for a moment, a thought striking him which at first he did not dare to voice. Then he blurted it out. “If you do not want to hear me say these things, why do you stand there?”
“Oh,” she faltered.
“Don't leave me now. I want to say what I came over here to say, and then you can go back to your throne and your royal reserve, and I can go back to the land from which you drew me. I came because I love you. Is not that enough to drag a man to the end of the world? I came to marry you if I could, for you were Miss Guggenslocker to me. Then you were within my reach, but not now! I can only love a princess!” He stopped because she had dropped to the couch beside him, her serious face turned appealingly to his, her fingers clasping his hands fiercely.
“I forbid you to continue--I forbid you! Do you hear? I, too, have thought and dreamed of you, and I have prayed that you might come. But you must not tell me that you love me-you shall not!”
“I only want to know that you love me,” he whispered.
“Do you think I can tell you the truth?” she cried. “I do not love you!”
Before he had fairly grasped the importance of the contradictory sentences, she left his side and stood in the window, her breast heaving and her face flaming.
“Then I am to believe you do,” he groaned, after a moment. “I find a princes and lose a woman!”
“I did not intend that you should have said what you have, or that I should have told you what I have. I knew you loved me or you would not have come to me,” she said, softly.
“You would have been selfish enough to enjoy that knowledge without giving joy in return. I see. What else could you have done? A princess! Oh, I would to God you were Miss Guggenslocker, the woman I sought!”
“Amen to that!” she said. “Can I trust you never to renew this subject? We have each learned what had better been left unknown. You understand my position. Surely you will be good enough to look upon me ever afterward as a princess and forget that I have been a woman unwittingly. I ask you, for your sake and my own, to refrain from a renewal of this unhappy subject. You can see how hopeless it is for both of us. I have said much to you that I trust you will cherish as coming from a woman who could not have helped herself and who has given to you the power to undo her with a single word. I know you will always be the brave, true man my heart has told me you are. You will let the beginning be the end?”
The appeal was so earnest, so noble that honor swelled in his heart and came from his lips in this promise:
“You may trust me, your Highness. Your secret is worth a thousand-fold more than mine. It is sacred with me. The joy of my life has ended, but the happiness of knowing the truth will never die. I shall remember that you love me--yes, I know you do,--and I shall never forget to love you. I will not promise that I shall never speak of it again to you. As I lie here, there comes to me a courage I did not know I could feel.”
“No, no!” she cried, vehemently.
“Forgive me! You can at least let me say that as long as I live I may cherish and encourage the little hope that all is not dead. Your Highness, let me say that my family never knows when it is defeated, either in love or in war.”
“The walls which surround the heart of a princess are black and grim, impenetrable when she defends it, my boasting American,” she said, smiling sadly.
“Yet some prince of the realm will batter down the wall and win at a single blow that which a mere man could not conquer in ten lifetimes. Such is the world.”
“The prince may batter down and seize, but he can never conquer. But enough of this! I am the Princess of Graustark; you are my friend, Grenfall Lorry, and there is only a dear friendship between us,” she cried, resuming her merry humor so easily that he started with surprise and not a little displeasure.
“And a throne,” he added, smiling, how ever.
“And a promise,” she reminded him.
“From which I trust I may some day be released,” said he, sinking back, afflicted with a discouragement and a determination of equal power. He could see hope and hopelessness ahead.
“By death!”
“No; by life! It may be sooner than you think!”
“You are forgetting your promise already.”
“Your Highness's pardon,” he begged.
They laughed, but their hearts were sad, this luckless American and hapless sovereign who would, if she could, be a woman.
“It is now three o'clock--the hour when you were to have called to see me,” she said, again sitting unconcernedly before him in the window seat. She was not afraid of him. She was a princess.
“I misunderstood you, your highness. I remembered the engagement, but it seems I was mistaken as to the time. I came at three in the morning!”
“And found me at home!”
“In an impregnable castle, with ogres all about.”
XII. A WAR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
Lorry was removed to another room before dinner, as she had promised.
After they had dined the two strangers were left alone for several hours. Anguish regaled his friend with an enthusiastic dissertation on the charms of the Countess Dagmar, lady-in-waiting to the Princess. In conclusion he said glowingly, his cigar having been out for half an hour or more because his energy had been spent in another direction.
“You haven't seen much of her, Lorry, but I tell you she is rare. And she's not betrothed to any of these confounded counts or dukes either. They all adore her but she's not committed.”
“How do you know all this?” demanded Lorry, who but half heard through his dreams.
“Asked her, of course. How in thunder do you suppose?”
“And you've known her but a day? Well, you are progressive.”
“Oh, perfectly natural conversation, you know,” explained Anguish, composedly. “She began it by asking me if I were married, and I said I wasn't even engaged. Then I asked her if she were married. You see, from the title, you can't tell whether a countess is married or single. She said she wasn't, and I promptly and very properly expressed my amazement. By Jove, she has a will and a mind of her own, that young woman has. She's not going to marry until she finds a man of the right sort--which is refreshing. I like to hear a girl talk like that, especially a pretty girl who can deal in princes, counts and all kinds of nobility when it comes to a matrimonial trade. By Jove, I'm sorry for the Princess, though.”
“Sorry for the Princess? Why?” asked the other, alert at once.
“Oh, just because it's not in her power to be so independent. The Countess says she cries every night when she thinks of what the poor girl has to contend with.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I don't know anything to tell. I'm not interested in the Princess, and I didn't have the nerve to ask many questions. I do know, however, that she is going to have an unpleasant matrimonial alliance forced upon her in some way.” “That is usual.
“That's what I gather from the Countess. Maybe you can pump the Countess and get all you want to know in connection with the matter. It's a pretty serious state of affairs, I should say, or she wouldn't be weeping through sympathy.”
Lorry recalled a part of the afternoon's sweetly dangerous conversation and the perspiration stood cold and damp on his brow.
“Well, old man, you've chased Miss Guggenslocker to earth only to find her an impossibility. Pretty hopeless for you, Lorry, but don't let it break you up completely. We can go back home after a while and you will forget her. A countess, of course, is different.”
“Harry, I know it is downright madness for me to act like this,” said Lorry, his jaws set and his hands clenched as he raised himself to his elbow. “You don't know how much I love her.”
“Your nerve is to be admired, but--well, I'm sorry for you.”
“Thanks for your sympathy. I suppose I'll need it,” and he sank back gloomily. Anguish was right--absurdly right.
There was a rap at the door and Anguish hastened to open it. A servant presented Count Halfort's compliments and begged leave to call.
“Shall we see the old boy?” asked Harry.
“Yes, yes,” responded the other. The servant understood the sign made by Anguish and disappeared. “Diplomatic call, I suspect.”
“He is the prime minister, I understand. Well, we'll diplome with him until bed-time, if he cares to stay. I'm getting rather accustomed to the nobility. They are not so bad, after all. Friendly and all that--Ah, good evening, your excellency! We are honored.”
The Count had entered the room and was advancing toward the couch, tall, easy and the personification of cordiality.
“I could not retire until I had satisfied myself as to Mr. Lorry's condition and his comfort,” said he, in his broken English. He seated himself near the couch and bent sharp, anxious eyes on the recumbent figure.
“Oh, he's all right,” volunteered Anguish, readily. “Be able to go into battle again tomorrow.”
“That is the way with you aggressive Americans. I am told. They never give up until they are dead,” said the Count, courteously. “Your head is better?”
“It does not pain me as it did, and I'm sure I'll be able to get out to-morrow. Thank you very much for your interest,” said Lorry. “May I inquire after the health of the Countess Halfont? The excitement of last night has not had an unpleasant effect, I hope.”
“She is with the Princess, and both are quite well. Since our war, gentlemen, Graustark women have nothing to acquire in the way of courage and endurance. You, of course, know nothing of the horrors of that war.”
“But we would be thankful for the story of it, your excellency. War is a hobby of mine. I read every war scare that gets into print,” said Anguish, eagerly.
“We, of Graustark, at present have every reason to recall the last war and bitterly to lament its ending. The war occurred just fifteen years ago--but will the recital tire you, Mr. Lorry? I came to spend a few moments socially and not to go into history. At any other time I shall be--”
“It will please and not tire me. I am deeply interested. Pray go on,” Lorry hastened to say, for he was interested more than the Count suspected.
“Fifteen years ago Prince Ganlook, of this principality,--the father of our princess,--became incensed over the depredations of the Axphain soldiers who patrolled our border on the north. He demanded restitution for the devastation they had created, but was refused. Graustark is a province comprising some eight hundred square miles of the best land in this part of the world. Our neighbor is smaller in area and population. Our army was better equipped but not so hardy. For several months the fighting in the north was in our favor, but the result was that our forces were finally driven back to Edelweiss, hacked and battered by the fierce thousands that came over the border. The nation was staggered by the shock, for such an outcome had not been considered possible. We had been too confident. Our soldiers were sick and worn by six months of hard fighting, and the men of Edelweiss--the merchants, the laborers and the nobility itself--flew to arms in defense of the city. For over a month we fought, hundreds of our best and bravest citizens going down to death. They at last began a bombardment of the city. To-day you can see they marks on nearly every house in Edelweiss. Hundreds of graves in the valley to the south attest the terrors of that siege. The castle was stormed, and Prince Ganlook, with many of the chief men of the land, met death. The prince was killed in front of the castle gates, from which he had sallied in a last, brave attempt to beat off the conquerors. A bronze statue now marks the spot on which he fell. The Princess, his wife, was my sister, and as I held the portfolio of finance, it was through me that the city surrendered, bringing the siege to an end. Fifteen years ago this autumn--the twentieth of November, to be explicit--the treaty of peace was signed in Sofia. We were compelled to cede a portion of territory in the far northeast, valuable for its mines. Indemnity was agreed upon by the peace commissioners, amounting to 20,000,000 gavvos, or nearly $30,000,000 in your money. In fifteen years this money was to be paid, with interest. On the twentieth of November, this year, the people of Graustark must pay 25,000,000 gavvos. The time is at hand, and that is why we recall the war so vividly. It means the bankruptcy of the nation, gentlemen.”
Neither of his listeners spoke for some moments. Then Lorry broke the silence.
“You mean that the money cannot be raised?” he asked.
“It is not in our treasury. Our people have been taxed so sorely in rebuilding their homes and in recuperating from the effect of that dreadful invasion that they have been unable to pay the levies. You must remember that we are a small nation and of limited resources. Your nation could secure $30,000,000 in one hour for the mere asking. To us it is like a death blow. I am not betraying a state secret in telling you of the sore straits in which we are placed, for every man in the nation has been made cognizant of the true conditions. We are all facing it together.” There was something so quietly heroic in his manner that both men felt pity. Anguish, looking at the military figure, asked: “You fought through the war, your excellency?”
“I resigned as minister, sir, to go to the front. I was in the first battle and I was in the last,” he said, simply.
“And the Princess,--the present ruler, I mean,--was a mere child at that time. When did she succeed to the throne?” asked Lorry.
“Oh, the great world does not remember our little history! Within a year after the death of Prince Ganlook, his wife, my sister, passed away, dying of a broken heart. Her daughter, their only child, was, according to our custom, crowned at once. She has reigned for fourteen years, and wisely since assuming full power. For three years she has been ruler de facto. She has been frugal, and has done all in her power to meet the shadow that is descending.”
“And what is the alternative in case the indemnity is not paid?” asked Lorry, breathlessly, for he saw something bright in the approaching calamity.
“The cession of all that part of Graustark lying north of Edelweiss, including fourteen towns, all of our mines and our most productive farming and grazing lands. In that event Graustark will be no larger than one of the good-sized farms in your western country. There will be nothing left for Her Royal Highness to rule save a tract so small that the word principality will be a travesty and a jest. This city and twenty-five miles to the south, a strip about one hundred fifty miles long. Think of it! Twenty-five by one hundred fifty miles, and yet called a principality! Once the proudest and most prosperous state in the east, considering its size, reduced to that! Ach, gentlemen--gentlemen! I cannot think of it without tearing out a heart-string and suffering such pains as mortal man has never endured. I lived in Graustark's days of wealth, power and supremacy; God has condemned me to live in the days of her dependency, weakness and poverty. Let us talk no more of this unpleasant subject.”