Chapter 8

It was, then, to continue the fortunes and misfortunes of Max Scharfenstein, close to midnight when the cavalcade crossed the old moat-bridge, which hadn't moved on its hinges within a hundred years. They were not entering by the formal way, which was a flower-bedded, terraced road. It was the rear entrance. The iron doors swung outward with a plaintive moaning, like that of a man roused out of his sleep, and Max found himself in an ancient guard-room, now used as a kind of secondary stable. The men dismounted.

"This way, Herr Ellis," said the colonel, with a mocking bow. He pointed toward a broad stone staircase.

"All I ask," said Max, "is a fair chance to explain my presence here."

"All in due time. Forward! The prince is waiting, and his temper may not be as smooth as usual."

With two troopers in front of him and two behind, Max climbed the steps readily enough. They wouldn't dare kill him, whatever they did. He tried to imagine himself the hero of some Scott or Dumas tale, with a grim cardinal somewhere above, and oubliettes and torture chambers besetting his path. But the absurdity of his imagination, so thoroughly Americanized, evoked a ringing laughter. The troopers eyed him curiously. He might laugh later, but it was scarcely probable. A tramp through a dark corridor and they came to the west wing of the castle. It was here that the old prince lived, comfortably and luxuriously enough, you may take my word for it.

A door opened, flooding the corridor with light. Max felt himself gently pushed over the threshold. He stood in the great living-room of the modern Doppelkinns. The first person he saw was the princess. She sat on an oriental divan. Her hands were folded; she sat very erect; her chin was tilted ominously; there was so little expression on her pale face that she might have been an incomplete statue. But Max was almost certain that there was just the faintest flicker of a smile in her eyes as she saw him enter. Glorious eyes! (It is a bad sign when a man begins to use the superlative adjectives!)

The other occupant of the room was an old man, fat and bald, with a nose like a russet pear. He was stalking--if it is possible for a short man to stalk--up and down the length of the room, and, judging from the sonorous, rumbling sound, was communing half-aloud. Betweenwhiles he was rubbing his tender nose, carefully and lovingly. When a man's nose resembles a russet pear it generally is tender. Whoever he was, Max saw that he was vastly agitated about something.

This old gentleman was (or supposed he was) the last of his line, the Prince of Doppelkinn, famous for his wines and his love of them. There was, so his subjects said, but one tender spot in the heart of this old man, and that was the memory of the wife of his youth. (How the years, the good and bad, crowd behind us, pressing us on and on!) However, there was always surcease in the cellars--that is, the Doppelkinn cellars.

"Ha!" he roared as he saw the blinking Max. "So this is the fellow!" He made an eloquent gesture. "Your Highness must be complimented upon your good taste. The fellow isn't bad-looking."

"When you listen to reason, Prince," replied the girl calmly, "you will apologize to the gentleman and give him his liberty."

"Oh, he is a gentleman, is he?"

"You might learn from him many of the common rules of courtesy,"--tranquilly.

"Who the devil are you?" the prince demanded of Max.

"I should be afraid to tell you. I hold that I am Max Scharfenstein, but the colonel here declares that my name is Ellis. Who are you?" Max wasn't the least bit frightened. These were not feudal times.

The prince stared at him. The insolent puppy!

"I am the prince."

"Ah, your serene Highness,"--began Max, bowing.

"I am not called 'serene'"--rudely. "The grand duke is 'serene.'"

"Permit me to doubt that," interposed the girl, smiling.

Max laughed aloud, which didn't improve his difficulties any.

"I have asked you who you are!" bawled the prince, his nose turning purple.

"My name is Max Scharfenstein. I am an American. If you will wire the American consulate at Barscheit, you will learn that I have spoken the truth. All this is a mistake. The princess did not elope with me."

"His papers give the name of Ellis," said the colonel, touching his cap.

"Humph! We'll soon find out who he is and what may be done with him. I'll wait for the duke. Take him into the library and lock the door. It's a hundred feet out of the window, and if he wants to break his neck, he may do so. It will save us so much trouble. Take him away; take him away!" his rage boiling to the surface.

The princess shrugged.

"I can't talk to you either," said the prince, turning his glowering eyes upon the girl. "I can't trust myself."

"Oh, do not mind me. I understand that your command of expletives is rather original. Go on; it will be my only opportunity." The princess rocked backward and forward on the divan. Wasn't it funny!

"Lord help me, and I was perfectly willing to marry this girl!" The prince suddenly calmed down. "What have I ever done to offend you?"

"Nothing," she was forced to admit.

"I was lonely. I wanted youth about. I wanted to hear laughter that came from the heart and not from the mind. I do not see where I am to be blamed. The duke suggested you to me; I believed you to be willing. Why did you not say to me that I was not agreeable? It would have simplified everything."

"I am sorry," she said contritely. When he spoke like this he wasn't so unlovable.

"People say," he went on, "that I spend most of my time in my wine-cellars. Well,"--defiantly,--"what else is there for me to do? I am alone." Max came within his range of vision. "Take him away, I tell you!"

And the colonel hustled Max into the library.

"Don't try the window," he warned, but with rather a pleasant smile. He was only two or three years older than Max. "If you do, you'll break your neck."

"I promise not to try," replied Max. "My neck will serve me many years yet."

"It will not if you have the habit of running away with persons above you in quality. Actions like that are not permissible in Europe." The colonel spoke rather grimly, for all his smile.

The door slammed, there was a grinding of the key in the lock, and Max was alone.

The library at Doppelkinn was all the name implied. The cases were low and ran around the room, and were filled with romance, history, biography, and even poetry. The great circular reading-table was littered with new books, periodicals and illustrated weeklies. Once Doppelkinn had been threatened with a literary turn of mind, but a bad vintage coming along at the same time had effected a permanent cure.

Max slid into a chair and took up a paper, turning the pages at random.--What was the matter with the room? Certainly it was not close, nor damp, nor chill. What was it? He let the paper fall to the floor, and his eyes roved from one object to another.--Where had he seen that Chinese mask before, and that great silver-faced clock? Somehow, mysterious and strange as it seemed, all this was vaguely familiar to him. Doubtless he had seen a picture of the room somewhere. He rose and wandered about.

In one corner of the bookshelves stood a pile of boy's books and some broken toys with the dust of ages upon them. He picked up a row of painted soldiers, and balanced them thoughtfully on his hand. Then he looked into one of the picture-books. It was a Santa Claus story; some of the pictures were torn and some stuck together, a reminder of sticky, candied hands. He gently replaced the book and the toys, and stared absently into space. How long he stood that way he did not recollect, but he was finally aroused by the sound of slamming doors and new voices. He returned to his chair and waited for the dénouement, which the marrow in his bones told him was about to approach.

It seemed incredible that he, of all persons, should be plucked out of the practical ways of men and thrust into the unreal fantasies of romance. A hubbub in a restaurant, a headlong dash into a carriage compartment, a long ride with a princess, and all within three short hours! It was like some weird dream. And how the deuce would it end?

He gazed at the toys again.

And then the door opened and he was told to come out. The grand duke had arrived.

"This will be the final round-up," he laughed quietly, his thought whimsically traveling back to the great plains and the long rides under the starry night.

XI

The Grand Duke of Barscheit was tall and angular and weather-beaten, and the whites of his eyes bespoke a constitution as sound and hard as his common sense. As Max entered he was standing at the side of Doppelkinn.

"There he is!" shouted the prince. "Do you know who he is?"

The duke took a rapid inventory. "Never set eyes upon him before." The duke then addressed her Highness. "Hildegarde, who is this fellow? No evasions; I want the truth. I have, in the main, found you truthful."

"I know nothing of him at all," said the princess curtly.

Max wondered where the chill in the room came from.

"He says that his name is Scharfenstein," continued the princess, "and he has proved himself to be a courteous gentleman."

Max found that the room wasn't so chill as it might have been.

"Yet you eloped with him, and were on the way to Dresden," suggested the duke pointedly.

The princess faced them all proudly. "I eloped with no man. That was simply a little prevarication to worry you, my uncle, after the manner in which you have worried me. I was on my way to Dresden, it is true, but only to hide with my old governess. This gentleman jumped into my compartment as the train drew out of the station."

"But you _knew_ him!" bawled the prince, waving his arms.

"Do you know him?" asked the duke coldly.

"I met him out riding. He addressed me, and I replied out of common politeness,"--with a sidelong glance at Max, who stood with folded arms, watching her gravely.

The duke threw his hands above his head as if to call Heaven to witness that he was a very much wronged man.

"Arnheim," he said to the young colonel, "go at once for a priest."

"A priest!" echoed the prince.

"Yes; the girl shall marry you to-night," declared his serene Highness.

"Not if I live to be a thousand!" Doppelkinn struck the table with his fist.

The girl smiled at Max.

"What?" cried the duke, all the coldness gone from his tones. "You refuse?" He was thunderstruck.

"Refuse? Of course I refuse!" And the prince thumped the table again. "What do you think I am in my old age,--an ass? If you have any fillies to break, use your own pastures. I'm a vintner." He banged the table yet again. "Why, I wouldn't marry the Princess Hildegarde if she was the last woman on earth!"

"Thank you!" said the princess sweetly.

"You're welcome," said the prince.

"Silence!" bellowed the duke. "Doppelkinn, take care; this is an affront, not one to be lightly ignored. It is international news that you are to wed my niece."

"To-morrow it will be international news that I'm _not_!" The emphasis this time threatened to crack the table-leaf. "I'm not going to risk my liberty with a girl who has no more sense of dignity than she has."

"It is very kind of you," murmured the princess.

"She'd make a fine wife," went on the prince, ignoring the interruption. "No, a thousand times no! Take her away--life's too short; take her away! Let her marry the fellow; he's young and may get over it."

The duke was furious. He looked around for something to strike, and nothing but the table being convenient, he smashed a leaf and sent a vase clattering to the floor. He was stronger than the prince, otherwise there wouldn't have been a table to thwack.

"That's right; go on! Break all the furniture, if it will do you any good; but mark me, you'll foot the bill." The prince began to dance around. "I will not marry the girl. That's as final as I can make it. The sooner you calm down the better."

How the girl's eyes sparkled! She was free. The odious alliance would not take place.

"Who is that?"

Everybody turned and looked at Max. His arm was leveled in the direction of a fine portrait in oil which hung suspended over the fireplace. Max was very pale.

"What's that to you?" snarled the prince. He was what we Yankees call "hopping mad." The vase was worth a hundred crowns, and he never could find a leaf to replace the one just broken.

"I believe I have a right to know who that woman is up there." Max spoke quietly. As a matter of fact he was too weak to speak otherwise.

"A right to know? What do you mean?" demanded the prince fiercely. "It is my wife."

With trembling fingers Max produced his locket.

"Will you look at this?" he asked in a voice that was a bit shaky.

The prince stepped forward and jerked the locket from Max's hand. But the moment he saw the contents his jaw fell and he rocked on his heels unsteadily and staggered back toward the duke for support.

"What's the matter, Prince?" asked the duke anxiously. After all Doppelkinn was an old crony, and mayhap he had been harsh with him.

"Where did you get that?" asked the prince hoarsely.

"I have always worn it," answered Max. "The chain that went with it originally will no longer fit my neck."

"Arnheim! . . . Duke! . . . Come and look at this!"--feebly.

"Good Heaven!" cried the duke.

"It is the princess!" said Arnheim in awed tones.

"Where did you get it?" demanded the prince again.

"I was found with it around my neck."

"Duke, what do you think?" asked the agitated prince.

"What do I think?"

"Yes. This was around my son's neck the day he was lost. If this should be! . . . If it were possible!"

"What?" The duke looked from the prince to the man who had worn the locket. Certainly there wasn't any sign of likeness. But when he looked at the portrait on the wall and then at Max doubt grew in his eyes. They were somewhat alike. He plucked nervously at his beard.

"Prince," said Max, "before Heaven I believe that I may be . . . your son!

"My son!"

By this time they were all tremendously excited and agitated and white; all save the princess, who was gazing at Max with sudden gladness in her eyes, while over her cheeks there stole the phantom of a rose. If it were true!

"Let me tell you my story," said Max. (It is not necessary for me to repeat it.)

The prince turned helplessly toward the duke, but the duke was equally dazed.

"But we can't accept just a story as proof," the duke said. "It isn't as if he were one of the people. It wouldn't matter then. But it's a future prince. Let us go slow."

"Yes, let us go slow," repeated the prince, brushing his damp forehead.

"Wait a moment!" said Colonel Arnheim, stepping forward. "Only one thing will prove his identity to me; not all the papers in the world can do it."

"What do you know?" cried the prince, bewildered.

"Something I have not dared tell till this moment,"--miserably.

"Curse it, you are keeping us waiting!" The duke kicked about the shattered bits of porcelain.

"I used to play with the--the young prince," began Arnheim. "Your Highness will recollect that I did." Arnheim went over to Max. "Take off your coat." Max did so, wondering. "Roll up your sleeve." Again Max obeyed, and his wonder grew. "See!" cried the colonel in a high, unnatural voice, due to his unusual excitement. "Oh, there can be no doubt! It is your son!"

The duke and the prince bumped against each other in their mad rush to inspect Max's arm. Arnheim's finger rested upon the peculiar scar I have mentioned.

"Lord help us, it's your wine-case brand!" gasped the duke.

"My wine case!" The prince was almost on the verge of tears.

The girl sat perfectly quiet.

"Explain, explain!" said Max.

"Yes, yes! How did this come?--put there?" spluttered the prince.

"Your Highness, we--your son--we were playing in the wine-cellars that day," stammered the unhappy Arnheim. "I saw . . . the hot iron . . . I was a boy of no more than five . . . I branded the prince on the arm. He cried so that I was frightened and ran and hid. When I went to look for him he was gone. Oh, I know; it is your son."

"I'll take your word for it, Colonel!" cried the prince. "I said from the first that he wasn't bad-looking. Didn't I, Princess?" He then turned embarrassedly toward Max and timidly held out his hand. That was as near sentiment as ever the father and the son came, but it was genuine. "Ho, steward! Hans, you rascal, where are you?"

The steward presently entered, shading his eyes.

"Your Highness called?"

"That I did. That's Max come home!"

"Little Max?"

"Little Max. Now, candles, and march yourself to the packing-cellars. Off with you!" The happy old man slapped the duke on the shoulder. "I've an idea, Josef."

"What is it?" asked the duke, also very well pleased with events.

"I'll tell you all about it when we get into the cellar." But the nod toward the girl and the nod toward Max was a liberal education.

"I am pardoned?" said Arnheim.

"Pardoned? My boy, if I had an army I would make you a general!" roared the prince. "Come along, Josef. And you, Arnheim! You troopers, out of here, every one of you, and leave these two young persons alone!"

And out of the various doors the little company departed, leaving the princess and Max alone.

Ah, how everything was changed! thought Max, as he let down his sleeve and buttoned his cuff. A prince! He was a prince; he, Max Scharfenstein, cow-boy, quarter-back, trooper, doctor, was a prince! If it was a dream, he was going to box the ears of the bell-boy who woke him up. But it wasn't a dream; he knew it wasn't. The girl yonder didn't dissolve into mist and disappear; she was living, living. He had now the right to love any one he chose, and he did choose to love this beautiful girl, who, with lowered eyes, was nervously plucking the ends of the pillow tassel. It was all changed for her, too.

"Princess!" he said a bit brokenly.

"I am called Gretchen by my friends,"--with a boldness that only half-disguised her real timidity. What would he do, this big, handsome fellow, who had turned out to be a prince, fairy-tale wise?

"Gretchen? I like that better than Hildegarde; it is less formal. Well, then, Gretchen, I can't explain it, but this new order of things has given me a tremendous backbone." He crossed the room to her side. "You will not wed my--my father?"

"Never in all this world!"--slipping around the table, her eyes dim like the bloom on the grape. She ought not to be afraid of him, but she was.

"But I--"

"You have known me only four days," she whispered faintly. "You can not know your mind."

"Oh, when one is a prince,"--laughing,--"it takes no time at all. I love you. I knew it was going to be when you looked around in old Bauer's smithy."

"Did I look around?"--innocently.

"You certainly did, for I looked around and saw you."

They paused. (There is no pastime quite like it.)

"But they say that I am wild like a young horse." (Love is always finding some argument which he wishes to have knocked under.)

"Not to me,"--ardently. "You may ride a bicycle every day, if you wish."

"I'd rather have an automobile,"--drolly.

"An airship, if money will buy it!"

"They say--my uncle says--that I am not capable of loving anything."

"What do I care what they say? Will you be my wife?"

"Give me a week to think it over."

"No."

(She liked that!)

"A day, then?"

"Not an hour!"

(She liked this still better!)

"Oh!"

"Not half an hour!"

"This is almost as bad as the duke; you are forcing me."

"If you do not answer yes or no at once, I'll go back to Barscheit and trounce that fellow who struck me. I can do it now."

"Well--but only four days--"

"Hours! Think of riding together for ever!"--joyously taking a step nearer.

"I dare not think of it. It is all so like a dream. . . . Oh!" bursting into tears (what unaccountable beings women are!)--"if you do not love me!"

"Don't I, though!"

Then he started around the table in pursuit of her, in all directions, while, after the manner of her kind, she balked him, rosily, star-eyed. They laughed; and when two young people laugh it is a sign that all goes well with the world. He never would tell just how long it took him to catch her, nor would he tell me what he did when he caught her. Neither would I, had I been in his place!

"Here's!" said the prince.

"It's a great world," added the duke.

"For surprises," supplemented the prince. "Ho, Hans! A fresh candle!"

And the story goes that his serene Highness of Barscheit and his Highness of Doppelkinn were found peacefully asleep in the cellars, long after the sun had rolled over the blue Carpathians.