Chapter 4

"From rumors I've heard, this princess is a great one for larks; rides bicycles and automobiles, and generally raises the deuce. What sort is she?"

"If you are going to remain in Barscheit, my boy, take a friendly warning. Do not make any foolish attempt to see her. She is more fascinating than a roulette table."

This was a sly dig. Max smiled. A recent letter from him had told of an encounter with the goddess of Monte Carlo. Fortune had been all things but favorable.

"I'm not afraid of your princess; besides, I came here to study."

"And study hard, my boy, study hard. Her Highness is not the only pretty woman in Barscheit. There's a raft of them."

"I'll paddle close to the shore," with a smile.

"By the way, I'll wake you up Thursday."

"How?"--lazily.

"A bout at Müller's Rathskeller. Half a dozen American lads, one of whom is called home. Just fixed up his passports for him. You'll be as welcome as the flowers in the spring. Some of the lads will be in your classes."

"Put me down. It will be like old times. I went to the reunion last June. Everything was in its place but you. Hang it, why can't time always go on as it did then?"

"Time, unlike our watches, never has to go to the jeweler's for repairs," said I owlishly.

Max leaned over, took my bull-terrier by the neck and deposited him on his lap.

"Good pup, Artie--if he's anything like his master. Three years, my boy, since I saw you. And here you are, doing nothing and lallygagging at court with the nobility. I wish I had had an uncle who was a senator. 'Pull' is everything these days."

"You Dutchman, I won this place on my own merit,"--indignantly.

"Forget it!"--grinning.

"You are impertinent."

"But truthful, always."

And then we smoked a while in silence. The silent friend is the best of the lot. He knows that he hasn't got to talk unless he wants to, and likewise that it is during these lapses of speech that the vine of friendship grows and tightens about the heart. When you sit beside a man and feel that you need not labor to entertain him it's a good sign that you thoroughly understand each other. I was first to speak.

"I don't understand why you should go in for medicine so thoroughly. It can't be money, for heaven knows your father left you a yearly income which alone would be a fortune to me."

"Chivalry shivers these days; the chill of money is on everything. A man must do something--a man who is neither a sloth nor a fool. A man must have something to put his whole heart into; and I despise money as money. I give away the bulk of my income."

"Marry, and then you will not have to," I said flippantly.

"You're a sad dog. Do you know, I've been thinking about epigrams."

"No!"

"Yes. I find that an epigram is produced by the same cause that produces the pearl in the oyster."

"That is to say, a healthy mentality never superinduces an epigram? Fudge!" said I, yanking the pup from his lap on to mine. "According to your diagnosis, your own mind is diseased."

"Have I cracked an epigram?"--with pained surprise.

"Well, you nearly bent one," I compromised. Then we both laughed, and the pup started up and licked my face before I could prevent him.

"Did I ever show you this?"--taking out a locket which was attached to one end of his watch-chain. He passed the trinket to me.

"What is it?" I asked, turning it over and over.

"It's the one slender link that connects me with my babyhood. It wag around my neck when Scharfenstein picked me up. Open it and look at the face inside."

I did so. A woman's face peered up at me. It might have been beautiful but for the troubled eyes and the drooping lips. It was German in type, evidently of high breeding, possessing the subtle lines which distinguish the face of the noble from the peasant's. From the woman's face I glanced at Max's. The eyes were something alike.

"Who do you think it is?" I asked, when I had studied the face sufficiently to satisfy my curiosity.

"I've a sneaking idea that it may be my mother. Scharfenstein found me toddling about in a railroad station, and that locket was the only thing about me that might be used in the matter of identification. You will observe that there is no lettering, not even the jeweler's usual carat-mark to qualify the gold. I recall nothing; life with me dates only from the wide plains and grazing cattle. I was born either in Germany or Austria. That's all I know. And to tell you the honest truth, boy, it's the reason I've placed my woman-ideal so high. So long as I place her over my head I'm not foolish enough to weaken into thinking I can have her. What woman wants a man without a name?"

"You poor old Dutchman, you! You can buy a genealogy with your income. And a woman nowadays marries the man, the man. It's only horses, dogs and cattle that we buy for their pedigrees. Come; you ought to have a strawberry mark on your arm," I suggested lightly; for there were times when Max brooded over the mystery which enveloped his birth.

In reply he rolled up his sleeve and bared a mighty arm. Where the vaccination scar usually is I saw a red patch, like a burn. I leaned over and examined it. It was a four-pointed scar, with a perfect circle around it. Somehow, it seemed to me that this was not the first time I had seen this peculiar mark. I did not recollect ever seeing it on Max's arm. Where had I seen it, then?

"It looks like a burn," I ventured to suggest.

"It is. I wish I knew what it signifies. Scharfenstein said that it was positively fresh when he found me. He said I cried a good deal and kept telling him that I was Max. Maybe I'm an anarchist and don't know it,"--with half a smile.

"It's a curious scar. Hang me, but I've seen the device somewhere before!"

"You have?"--eagerly. "Where, where?"

"I don't know; possibly I saw it on your arm in the old days."

He sank back in his chair. Silence, during which the smoke thickened and the pup whined softly in his sleep. Out upon the night the cathedral bell boomed the third hour of morning.

"If you don't mind, Artie," said Max, yawning, "I'll turn in. I've been traveling for the past fortnight."

"Take a ride on Dandy in the morning. He'll hold your weight nicely. I can't go with you, as I've a lame ankle."

"I'll be in the saddle at dawn. All I need is a couple of hours between sheets."

As I prodded my pillow into a comfortable wad under my cheek I wondered where I had seen that particular brand. It was a brand. I knew that I had seen it somewhere, but my memory danced away when I endeavored to halter it. Soon I fell asleep, dreaming of somebody who wasn't Max Scharfenstein, by a long shot.

V

That same evening the grand duke's valet knocked on the door leading into the princess' apartments, and when the door opened he gravely announced that his serene Highness desired to speak to the Princess Hildegarde. It was a command. For some reason, known best to herself, the princess chose to obey it.

"Say that I shall be there presently," she said, dismissing the valet.

As she entered her uncle's study--so called because of its dust-laden bookshelves, though the duke sometimes disturbed their contents to steady the leg of an unbalanced chair or table--he laid down his pipe and dismissed his small company of card-players.

"I did not expect to see you so soon," he began. "A woman's curiosity sometimes has its value. It takes little to arouse it, but a great deal to allay it."

"You have not summoned me to make smart speeches, simply because I have been educated up to them?"--truculently.

"No. I have not summoned you to talk smart, a word much in evidence in Barscheit since your return from England. For once I am going to use a woman's prerogative. I have changed my mind."

The Princess Hildegarde trembled with delight. She could put but one meaning to his words.

"The marriage will not take place next month."

"Uncle!"--rapturously.

"Wait a moment,"--grimly. "It shall take place next week."

"I warn you not to force me to the altar," cried the girl, trembling this time with a cold fury.

"My child, you are too young in spirit and too old in mind to be allowed a gateless pasture. In harness you will do very well." He took up his pipe and primed it. It _was_ rather embarrassing to look the girl in the eye. "You shall wed Doppelkinn next week."

"You will find it rather embarrassing to drag me to the altar,"--evenly.

"You will not," he replied, "create a scandal of such magnitude. You are untamable, but you are proud."

The girl remained silent. In her heart she knew that he had spoken truly. She could never make a scene in the cathedral. But she was determined never to enter it. She wondered if she should produce the bogus certificate. She decided to wait and see if there were no other loophole of escape. Old _Rotnäsig_? Not if she died!

When these two talked without apparent heat it was with unalterable fixedness of purpose. They were of a common race. The duke was determined that she should wed Doppelkinn; she was equally determined that she should not. The gentleman with the algebraic bump may figure this out to suit himself.

"Have you no pity?"

"My reason overshadows it. You do not suppose that I take any especial pleasure in forcing you? But you leave me no other method."

"I am a young girl, and he is an old man."

"That is immaterial. Besides, the fact has gone abroad. It is now irrevocable."

"I promise to go out and ask the first man I see to marry me!" she declared.

"Pray Heaven, it may be Doppelkinn!" said the duke drolly.

"Oh, do not doubt that I have the courage and the recklessness. I would not care if he were young, but the prince is old enough to be my father."

"You are not obliged to call him husband." The duke possessed a sparkle to-night which was unusual in him. Perhaps he had won some of the state moneys which he had paid out to his ministers' that day. "Let us not waste any time," he added.

"I shall not waste any,"--ominously.

"Order your gown from Vienna, or Paris, or from wherever you will. Don't haggle over the price; let it be a good one; I'm willing to go deep for it."

"You loved my aunt once,"--a broken note in her voice.

"I love her still,"--not unkindly; "but I must have peace in the house. Observe what you have so far accomplished in the matter of creating turmoil." The duke took up a paper.

"My sins?"--contemptuously.

"Let us call them your transgressions. Listen. You have ridden a horse as a man rides it; you have ridden bicycles in public streets; you have stolen away to a masked ball; you ran away from school in Paris and visited Heaven knows whom; you have bribed sentries to let you in when you were out late; you have thrust aside the laws as if they meant nothing; you have trifled with the state papers and caused the body politic to break up a meeting as a consequence of the laughter."

The girl, as she recollected this day to which he referred, laughed long and joyously. He waited patiently till she had done, and I am not sure that his mouth did not twist under his beard. "Foreign education is the cause of all this," he said finally. "Those cursed French and English schools have ruined you. And I was fool enough to send you to them. This is the end."

"Or the beginning,"--rebelliously.

"Doppelkinn is mild and kind."

"Mild and kind! One would think that you were marrying me to a horse! Well, I shall not enter the cathedral."

"How will you avoid it?"--calmly.

"I shall find a way; wait and see." She was determined.

"I shall wait." Then, with a sudden softening, for he loved the girl after his fashion: "I am growing old, my child. If I should die, what would become of you? I have no son; your Uncle Franz, who is but a year or two younger than I am, would reign, and he would not tolerate your madcap ways. You must marry at once. I love you in spite of your wilfulness. But you have shown yourself incapable of loving. Doppelkinn is wealthy. You shall marry him."

"I will run away, uncle,"--decidedly.

"I have notified the frontiers,"--tranquilly. "From now on you will be watched. It is the inevitable, my child, and even I have to bow to that."

She touched the paper in her bosom, but paused.

"Moreover, I have decided," went on the duke, "to send the Honorable Betty Moore back to England."

"Betty?"

"Yes. She is a charming young person, but she is altogether too sympathetic. She abets you in all you do. Her English independence does not conform with my ideas. After the wedding I shall notify her father."

"Everything, everything! My friends, my liberty, the right God gives to every woman--to love whom she will! And you, my uncle, rob me of these things! What if I should tell you that marriage with me is now impossible?"--her lips growing thin.

"I should not be very much surprised."

"Please look at this, then, and you will understand why I can not marry Doppelkinn." She thrust the bogus certificate into his hands.

The duke read it carefully, not a muscle in his face disturbed. Finally he looked up with a terrifying smile.

"Poor, foolish child! What a terrible thing this might have turned out to be!"

"What do you mean?"

"Mean? Do you suppose anything like this could take place without my hearing of it? And such a dishonest unscrupulous rascal! Some day I shall thank the American consul personally for his part in the affair. I was waiting to see when you would produce this. You virtually placed your honor and reputation, which I know to be above reproach, into the keeping of a man who would sell his soul for a thousand crowns."

The girl felt her knees give way, and she sat down. Tears slowly welled up in her eyes and overflowed, blurring everything.

The duke got up and went over to his desk, rummaging among the papers. He returned to the girl with a letter.

"Read that, and learn the treachery of the man you trusted."

The letter was written by Steinbock. In it he disclosed all. It was a venomous, inciting letter. The girl crushed it in her hand.

"Is he dead?" she asked, all the bitterness in her heart surging to her lips.

"To Barscheit,"--briefly. "Now, what shall I do with this?"--tapping the bogus certificate.

"Give it to me," said the girl wearily. She ripped it into halves, into quarters, into infinitesimal squares, and tossed them into the waste-basket. "I am the unhappiest girl in the world."

"I am sorry," replied the grand duke. "It isn't as if I had forced Doppelkinn on you without first letting you have your choice. You have rejected the princes of a dozen wealthy countries. We are not as the common people; we can not marry where we will. I shall announce that the marriage will take place next week."

"Do not send my friend away," she pleaded, apparently tamed.

"I will promise to give the matter thought. Good night."

She turned away without a word and left him. When he roared at her she knew by experience that he was harmless; but this quiet determination meant the exclusion of any further argument. There was no escape unless she ran away. She wept on her pillow that night, not so much at the thought of wedding Doppelkinn as at the fact that Prince Charming had evidently missed the last train and was never coming to wake her up, or, if he did come, it would be when it was too late. How many times had she conjured him up, as she rode in the fresh fairness of the mornings! How manly he was and how his voice thrilled her! Her horse was suddenly to run away, he was to rescue her, and then demand her hand in marriage as a fitting reward. Sometimes he had black hair and eyes, but more often he was big and tall, with yellow hair and the bluest eyes in all the world.

VI

The princess rose at dawn the following day. She routed out Hans, the head groom, and told him to saddle Artemis, the slim-limbed, seal-brown filly which an English nobleman had given to her. Ten minutes later she was in the saddle, and the heaviness on her heart seemed to rise and vanish like the opal mists on the bosom of the motionless lake. A pale star blinked at her, and the day, flushed like the cheek of a waking infant, began drowsily to creep over the rolling mountains.

How silent all the city was! Only here and there above the chimneys rose a languid film of smoke. The gates of the park shut behind her with a clang, and so for a time she was alone and free. She touched Artemis with a spur, and the filly broke into a canter toward the lake road. The girl's nostrils dilated. Every flower, the thousand resinous saps of the forest, the earth itself, yielded up a cool sweet perfume that was to the mind what a glass of wine is to the blood, exhilaration.

Mottled with pink, and gray, and blue, and gold, the ever-changing hues of the morning, the surface of the lake was as smooth as her mirror and, like it, always reflecting beauty. Fish leaped forth and fell with a sounding splash, and the circles would widen and gradually vanish. A blackbird dipped among the silent rushes; a young fox barked importantly; a hawk flashed by. The mists swam hither and thither mysteriously, growing thinner and fainter as the gold of day grew brighter and clearer. Suddenly--in the words of the old tent-maker--the false morning died, and it was day.

I'm afraid that somewhere among the princess' ancestors there was a troubadour; for she was something of a poet. Indeed, I have already remarked that she wrote verses. The atmospheric change of the morning turned her mind into sentimental channels. How she envied the peasant woman, who might come and go at will, sleep in the open or in the hut, loving or hating with perfect freedom! Ah, Prince Charming, Prince Charming! where were you? Why did you loiter? Perhaps for her there was no Prince Charming. It might be so. She sighed.

She would never marry Doppelkinn--never. That horrible Steinbock! She was glad, glad that she had struck him, again and again, across his lying eyes and evil mouth. She had believed that she knew the world; it was all yet a mystery; the older she grew the less she understood. Wasn't anybody good? Was everybody to be distrusted? Which way should she turn now? The world was beautiful enough; it was the people in it. Poor Betty! She had her troubles, too; but somehow she refused to confide them. She acted very much as if she were in love.

She gazed at the hawk enviously. How proud and free he was, so high up there, circling and circling. Even the fox was freer than she; the forests were his, and he might go whither he listed. And the fish that leaped in frolic from the water, and the blackbird in the rushes! She could not understand.

She would never marry Doppelkinn--never.

But how should she escape--how? On Wednesday night she would be given her quarterly allowance of a thousand crowns, and on Thursday she must act. . . . Yes, yes, that was it! How simple! She would slip over into Doppelkinn, where they never would think to search for her. She knew a place in which to hide. From Doppelkinn she would go straight to Dresden and seek the protection of her old governess, who would hide her till the duke came to his senses. If only she had an independent fortune, how she would snap her fingers at them all!

She was distracted by the sound of jangling steel. Artemis had cast a shoe. How annoying! It would take ten minutes to reach old Bauer's smithy, and ten minutes more to put on a shoe. She brought the filly down to a walk.

What was the use of being a princess if one was not allowed to act in a royal fashion? It wasn't so terrible to wear men's clothes, and, besides, they were very comfortable for riding a horse; and as for riding a bicycle in the public streets, hadn't that ugly Italian duchess ridden through the streets of Rome, and in knickerbockers, too? Nobody seemed to mind it there. But in Barscheit it had been little short of a crime. She recalled the flaming fagots and the red-hot wire of her unfortunate wheel. A smile rippled over her face, but it passed quickly. There was nothing left to smile over. They were going to force her to marry a tomb, a man in whom love and courage and joy were as dead things. Woe to Doppelkinn, though--woe to him! She would lead him a dance, wild and terrible.

If only she were Betty, free to do what she pleased, to go and come at will! She wasn't born to be a princess; she wasn't commonplace enough; she enjoyed life too well. Ah, if only she might live and act like those English cousins of hers with whom she went to school! _They_ could ride man-fashion, hunt man-fashion, shoot, play cards and bet at the races man-fashion, and nobody threatened them with Doppelkinns. They might dance, too, till the sun came into the windows and the rouge on their faces cracked. But _she_! (I use the italics to illustrate the decided nods of her pretty head.) Why, every sweet had to be stolen!

She would never marry Doppelkinn--never. She would never watch his old nose grow purple at the table. She would run away. And since Prince Charming was nowhere to be seen, it were better to die an old maid.

Presently the smithy came into view, emerging from a cluster of poplars. She rode up to the doors, dismounted and entered. Old Bauer himself was at the bellows, and the weird blue light hissing up from the blown coals discovered another customer. She turned and met his frank glance of admiration. (If she hadn't turned! If his admiration hadn't been entirely frank!) Instantly she sent Bauer a warning glance which that old worthy seemed immediately to understand. The stranger was tall, well-made, handsome, with yellow hair, and eyes as blue as the sky is when the west wind blows.

He raised his cap, and the heart of the girl fluttered. Wherever had this seemly fellow come from?

"Good morning," said the stranger courteously. "I see that you have had the same misfortune as myself."

"You have lost a shoe? Rather annoying, when one doesn't want a single break in the going." She uttered the words carelessly, as if she wasn't at all interested.

The stranger stuffed his cap into a pocket. She was glad that she had chosen the new saddle. The crest and coat of arms had not yet been burned upon the leather nor engraved upon the silver ornaments, and there was no blanket under the English saddle. There might be an adventure; one could not always tell. She must hide her identity. If the stranger knew that she belonged to the House of Barscheit, possibly he would be frightened and take to his heels.

But the Princess Hildegarde did not know that this stranger never took to his heels; he wasn't that kind. Princess or peasant, it would have been all the same to him. Only his tone might have lost half a key.

Bauer called to his assistant, and the girl stepped out into the road. The stranger followed, as she knew he would. It will be seen that she knew something of men, if only that they possess curiosity.

"What a beautiful place this is!" the stranger ventured, waving his hand toward the still lake and the silent, misty mountains.

"There is no place quite like it," she admitted. "You are a stranger in Barscheit?"--politely. He was young and certainly the best-looking man she had seen in a month of moons. If Doppelkinn, now, were only more after this pattern!

"Yes, this is my first trip to Barscheit." He had a very engaging smile.

"You are from Vienna?"

"No."

"Ah, from Berlin. I was not quite sure of the accent."

"I am a German-American,"--frankly. "I have always spoken the language as if it were my own, which doubtless it is."

"America!" she cried, her interest genuinely aroused. "That is the country where every one does just as he pleases."

"Sometimes." (What beautiful teeth she had, white as skimmed milk!)

"They are free?"

"Nearly always."

"They tell me that women there are all queens."