It is questionable if the announcement of the death of their Crown
Prince, Hilary, upon the verge of his accession to the throne, aroused
more than genteel regret among the inhabitants of Saxe-Kesselberg. It
is indisputable that in diplomatic circles news of this horrible
occurrence was indirectly conceded in 1803 to smack of a direct
intervention of Providence. For to consider all the havoc dead Prince
Fribble--such had been his sobriquet--would have created, _Dei gratia_,
through his pilotage of an important grand-duchy (with an area of no
less than eighty-nine square miles) was less discomfortable now
prediction was an academic matter.
And so the editors of divers papers were the victims of a decorous
anguish, court-mourning was decreed, and that wreckage which passed for
the mutilated body of Prince Hilary was buried with every appropriate
honor. Within the week most people had forgotten him, for everybody
was discussing the execution of the Duc d'Enghein. And the aged
unvenerable Grand-Duke of Saxe-Kesselberg died too in the same March;
and afterward his other grandson, Prince Augustus, reigned in the merry
old debauchee's stead.
Prince Hilary was vastly pleased. His scheme for evading the tedious
responsibilities of sovereignty had been executed without a hitch; he
was officially dead; and, on the whole, standing bareheaded between a
miller and laundress, he had found his funeral ceremonies to be
unimpeachably conducted. He assumed the name of Paul Vanderhoffen,
selected at random from the novel he was reading when his postchaise
conveyed him past the frontier of Saxe-Kesselberg. Freed, penniless,
and thoroughly content, he set about amusing himself--having a world to
frisk in--and incidentally about the furnishing of his new friend Paul
Vanderhoffen with life's necessaries.
It was a little more than two years later that the good-natured Earl of
Brudenel suggested to Lady John Claridge that she could nowhere find a
more eligible tutor for her son than young Vanderhoffen.
"Hasn't a shilling, ma'am, but one of the most popular men in London.
His poetry book was subscribed for by the Prince Regent and half the
notables of the kingdom. Capital company at a dinner-table--stutters,
begad, like a What-you-may-call-'em, and keeps everybody in a roar--and
when he's had his whack of claret, he sings his own songs to the piano,
you know, and all that sort of thing, and has quite put Tommy Moore's
nose out of joint. Nobody knows much about him, but that don't matter
with these literary chaps, does it now? Goes everywhere, ma'am--quite
a favorite at Carlton House--a highly agreeable, well-informed man, I
can assure you--and probably hasn't a shilling to pay the cabman.
Deuced odd, ain't it? But Lord Lansdowne is trying to get him a
place--spoke to me about a tutorship, ma'am, in fact, just to keep
Vanderhoffen going, until some registrarship or other falls vacant.
Now, I ain't clever and that sort of thing, but I quite agree with
Lansdowne that we practical men ought to look out for these clever
fellows--see that they don't starve in a garret, like poor
What's-his-name, don't you know?"
Lady Claridge sweetly agreed with her future son-in-law. So it befell
that shortly after this conversation Paul Vanderhoffen came to
Leamington Manor, and through an entire summer goaded young Percival
Claridge, then on the point of entering Cambridge, but pedagogically
branded as "deficient in mathematics," through many elaborate
combinations of x and y and cosines and hyperbolas.
Lady John Claridge, mother to the pupil, approved of the new tutor.
True, he talked much and wildishly; but literary men had a name for
eccentricity, and, besides, Lady Claridge always dealt with the
opinions of other people as matters of illimitable unimportance. This
baronet's lady, in short, was in these days vouchsafing to the universe
at large a fine and new benevolence, now that her daughter was safely
engaged to Lord Brudenel, who, whatever his other virtues, was
certainly a peer of England and very rich. It seems irrelevant, and
yet for the tale's sake is noteworthy, that any room which harbored
Lady John Claridge was through this fact converted into an absolute
monarchy.
And so, by the favor of Lady Claridge and destiny, the tutor stayed at
Leamington Manor all summer.
There was nothing in either the appearance or demeanor of the fiancee
of Lord Brudenel's title and superabundant wealth which any honest
gentleman could, hand upon his heart, describe as blatantly repulsive.
It may not be denied the tutor noted this. In fine, he fell in love
with Mildred Claridge after a thorough-going fashion such as Prince
Fribble would have found amusing. Prince Fribble would have smiled,
shrugged, drawled, "Eh, after all, the girl is handsome and deplorably
cold-blooded!" Paul Vanderhoffen said, "I am not fit to live in the
same world with her," and wrote many verses in the prevailing Oriental
style rich in allusions to roses, and bulbuls, and gazelles, and peris,
and minarets--which he sold rather profitably.
Meanwhile, far oversea, the reigning Duke of Saxe-Kesselberg had been
unwise enough to quarrel with his Chancellor, Georges Desmarets, an
invaluable man whose only faults were dishonesty and a too intimate
acquaintance with the circumstances of Prince Hilary's demise. As
fruit of this indiscretion, an inconsiderable tutor at Leamington
Manor--whom Lady John Claridge regarded as a sort of upper servant was
talking with a visitor.
The tutor, it appeared, preferred to talk with the former Chancellor of
Saxe-Kesselberg in the middle of an open field. The time was
afternoon, the season September, and the west was vaingloriously
justifying the younger man's analogy of a gigantic Spanish omelette.
Meanwhile, the younger man declaimed in a high-pitched pleasant voice,
wherein there was, as always, the elusive suggestion of a stutter.
"I repeat to you," the tutor observed, "that no consideration will ever
make a grand-duke of me excepting over my dead body. Why don't you
recommend some not quite obsolete vocation, such as making papyrus, or
writing an interesting novel, or teaching people how to dance a
saraband? For after all, what is a monarch nowadays--oh, even a
monarch of the first class?" he argued, with what came near being a
squeak of indignation. "The poor man is a rather pitiable and
perfectly useless relic of barbarism, now that 1789 has opened our
eyes; and his main business in life is to ride in open carriages and
bow to an applauding public who are applauding at so much per head. He
must expect to be aspersed with calumny, and once in a while with
bullets. He may at the utmost aspire to introduce an innovation in
evening dress,--the Prince Regent, for instance, has invented a really
very creditable shoe-buckle. Tradition obligates him to devote his
unofficial hours to sheer depravity----"
Paul Vanderhoffen paused to meditate.
"Why, there you are! another obstacle! I have in an inquiring spirit
and without prejudice sampled all the Seven Deadly Sins, and the common
increment was an inability to enjoy my breakfast. A grand-duke I take
it, if he have any sense of the responsibilities of his position, will
piously remember the adage about the voice of the people and hasten to
be steeped in vice--and thus conform to every popular notion concerning
a grand-duke. Why, common intelligence demands that a grand-duke
should brazenly misbehave himself upon the more conspicuous high-places
of Chemosh! and personally, I have no talents such as would qualify me
for a life of cynical and brutal immorality. I lack the necessary
aptitude, I would not ever afford any spicy gossip concerning the Duke
of Saxe-Kesselberg, and the editors of the society papers would
unanimously conspire to dethrone me----"
Thus he argued, with his high-pitched pleasant voice, wherein there
was, as always, the elusive suggestion of a stutter. And here the
other interrupted.
"There is no need of names, your highness." Georges Desmarets was
diminutive, black-haired and corpulent. He was of dapper appearance,
point-device in everything, and he reminded you of a perky robin.
The tutor flung out an "Ouf! I must recall to you that, thank heaven, I
am not anybody's highness any longer. I am Paul Vanderhoffen."
"He says that he is not Prince Fribble!"--the little man addressed the
zenith--"as if any other person ever succeeded in talking a half-hour
without being betrayed into at least one sensible remark. Oh, how do
you manage without fail to be so consistently and stupendously idiotic?"
"It is, like all other desirable traits, either innate or else just
unattainable," the other answered. "I am so hopelessly light-minded
that I cannot refrain from being rational even in matters which concern
me personally--and this, of course, no normal being ever thinks of
doing. I really cannot help it."
The Frenchman groaned whole-heartedly.
"But we were speaking--well, of foreign countries. Now, Paul
Vanderhoffen has read that in one of these countries there was once a
prince who very narrowly escaped figuring as a self-conscious
absurdity, as an anachronism, as a life-long prisoner of etiquette.
However, with the assistance of his cousin--who, incidentally, was also
his heir--the prince most opportunely died. Oh, pedant that you are!
in any event he was interred. And so, the prince was gathered to his
fathers, and his cousin Augustus reigned in his stead. Until a certain
politician who had been privy to this pious fraud----" The tutor
shrugged. "How can I word it without seeming hypercritical?"
Georges Desmarets stretched out appealing hands. "But, I protest, it
was the narrow-mindedness of that pernicious prig, your cousin--who
firmly believes himself to be an improved and augmented edition of the
Four Evangelists----"
"Well, in any event, the proverb was attested that birds of a feather
make strange bedfellows. There was a dispute concerning some petit
larceny--some slight discrepancy, we will imagine, since all this is
pure romance, in the politician's accounts----"
"Now you belie me----" said the black-haired man, and warmly.
"Oh, Desmarets, you are as vain as ever! Let us say, then, of grand
larceny. In any event, the politician was dismissed. And what, my
dears, do you suppose this bold and bad and unprincipled Machiavelli
went and did? Why, he made straight for the father of the princess the
usurping duke was going to marry, and surprised everybody by showing
that, at a pinch, even this Guy Fawkes--who was stuffed with all manner
of guile and wickedness where youthful patriotism would ordinarily
incline to straw--was capable of telling the truth. And so the father
broke off the match. And the enamored, if usurping, duke wept bitterly
and tore his hair to such an extent he totally destroyed his best
toupet. And privily the Guy Fawkes came into the presence of the
exiled duke and prated of a restoration to ancestral dignities. And he
was spurned by a certain highly intelligent person who considered it
both tedious and ridiculous to play at being emperor of a backyard.
And then--I really don't recall what happened. But there was a general
and unqualified deuce to pay with no pitch at a really satisfying
temperature."
The stouter man said quietly: "It is a thrilling tale which you
narrate. Only, I do recall what happened then. The usurping duke was
very much in earnest, desirous of retaining his little kingdom, and
particularly desirous of the woman whom he loved. In consequence, he
had Monsieur the Runaway obliterated while the latter was talking
nonsense----"
The tutor's brows had mounted.
"I scorn to think it even of anybody who is controlled in every action
by a sense of duty," Georges Desmarets explained, "that Duke Augustus
would cause you to be murdered in your sleep."
"A hit!" The younger man unsmilingly gesticulated like one who has
been touched in sword-play. "Behold now, as the populace in their
blunt way would phrase it, I am squelched."
"And so the usurping duke was married and lived happily ever
afterward." Georges Desmarets continued: "I repeat to you there is only
the choice between declaring yourself and being--we will say, removed.
Your cousin is deeply in love with the Princess Sophia, and thanks to
me, has now no chance of marrying her until his title has been secured
by your--removal. Do not deceive yourself. High interests are
involved. You are the grain of sand between big wheels. I iterate
that the footpad who attacked you last night was merely a prologue. I
happen to know your cousin has entrusted the affair to Heinrich
Obendorf, his foster-brother, who, as you will remember, is not
particularly squeamish."
Paul Vanderhoffen thought a while. "Desmarets," he said at last, "it
is no use. I scorn your pribbles and your prabbles. I bargained with
Augustus. I traded a duchy for my personal liberty. Frankly, I would
be sorry to connect a sharer of my blood with the assault of yesterday.
To be unpardonably candid, I have not ever found that your assertion of
an event quite proved it had gone through the formality of occurring.
And so I shall hold to my bargain."
"The night brings counsel," Desmarets returned. "It hardly needs a
night, I think, to demonstrate that all I say is true."
And so they parted.
Having thus dismissed such trifles as statecraft and the well-being of
empires, Paul Vanderhoffen turned toward consideration of the one
really serious subject in the universe, which was of course the bright,
miraculous and incredible perfection of Mildred Claridge.
"I wonder what you think of me? I wonder if you ever think of me?" The
thought careered like a caged squirrel, now that he walked through
autumn woods toward her home.
"I wish that you were not so sensible. I wish your mother were not
even more so. The woman reeks with common-sense, and knows that to be
common is to be unanswerable. I wish that a dispute with her were not
upon a par with remonstrance against an earthquake."
He lighted a fresh cheroot. "And so you are to marry the Brudenel
title and bank account, with this particular Heleigh thrown in as a
dividend. And why not? the estate is considerable; the man who
encumbers it is sincere in his adoration of you; and, chief of all,
Lady John Claridge has decreed it. And your decision in any matter has
always lain between the claws of that steel-armored crocodile who, by
some miracle, is your mother. Oh, what a universe! were I of hasty
temperament I would cry out, TUT AND GO TO!"
This was the moment which the man hid in the thicket selected as most
fit for intervention through the assistance of a dueling pistol. Paul
Vanderhoffen reeled, his face bewilderment. His hands clutched toward
the sky, as if in anguish he grasped at some invisible support, and he
coughed once or twice. It was rather horrible. Then Vanderhoffen
shivered as though he were very cold, and tottered and collapsed in the
parched roadway.
A slinking man whose lips were gray and could not refrain from
twitching came toward the limp heap. "So----!" said the man. One of
his hands went to the tutor's breast, and in his left hand dangled a
second dueling pistol. He had thrown away the other after firing it.
"And so----!" observed Paul Vanderhoffen. Afterward there was a
momentary tussle. Now Paul Vanderhoffen stood erect and flourished the
loaded pistol. "If you go on this way," he said, with some severity,
"you will presently be neither loved nor respected. There was a time,
though, when you were an excellent shot, Herr Heinrich Obendorf."
"I had my orders, highness," said the other stolidly.
"Oh yes, of course," Paul Vanderhoffen answered. "You had your
orders--from Augustus!" He seemed to think of something very far away.
He smiled, with quizzically narrowed eyes such as you may yet see in
Raeburn's portrait of the man. "I was remembering, oddly enough, that
elm just back of the Canova Pavilion--as it was twenty years ago. I
managed to scramble up it, but Augustus could not follow me because he
had such short fat little legs. He was so proud of what I had done
that he insisted on telling everybody--and afterward we had oranges for
luncheon, I remember, and sucked them through bits of sugar. It is not
fair that you must always remember and always love that boy who played
with you when you were little--after he has grown up to be another
person. Eh no! youth passes, but all its memories of unimportant
things remain with you and are less kind than any self-respecting viper
would be. Decidedly, it is not fair, and some earnest-minded person
ought to write to his morning paper about it. . . . I think that is
the reason I am being a sentimental fool," Paul Vanderhoffen explained.
Then his teeth clicked. "Get on, my man," he said. "Do not remain too
near to me, because there was a time when I loved your employer quite
as much as you do. This fact is urging me to dangerous ends. Yes, it
is prompting me, even while I talk with you, to give you a lesson in
marksmanship, my inconveniently faithful Heinrich."
He shrugged. He lighted a cheroot with hands whose tremblings, he
devoutly hoped, were not apparent, for Prince Fribble had been ashamed
to manifest a sincere emotion of any sort, and Paul Vanderhoffen shared
as yet this foible.
"Oh Brutus! Ravaillac! Damiens!" he drawled. "O general compendium
of misguided aspirations! do be a duck and get along with you. And I
would run as hard as I could, if I were you, for it is war now, and you
and I are not on the same side."
Paul Vanderhoffen paused a hundred yards or so from this to shake his
head. "Come, come! I have lost so much that I cannot afford to throw
my good temper into the bargain. To endure with a grave face this
perfectly unreasonable universe wherein destiny has locked me is
undoubtedly meritorious; but to bustle about it like a caged canary,
and not ever to falter in your hilarity, is heroic. Let us, by all
means, not consider the obdurate if gilded barriers, but rather the
lettuce and the cuttle-bone. I have my choice between becoming a
corpse or a convict--a convict? ah, undoubtedly a convict, sentenced to
serve out a life-term in a cess-pool of castby superstitions."
He smiled now over Paul Vanderhoffen's rage. "Since the situation is
tragic, let us approach it in an appropriate spirit of frivolity. My
circumstances bully me. And I succumb to irrationality, as rational
persons invariably end by doing. But, oh, dear me! oh, Osiris,
Termagaunt, and Zeus! to think there are at least a dozen other
ne'er-do-wells alive who would prefer to make a mess of living as a
grand-duke rather than as a scribbler in Grub Street! Well, well! the
jest is not of my contriving, and the one concession a sane man will
never yield the universe is that of considering it seriously."
And he strode on, resolved to be Prince Fribble to the last.
"Frivolity," he said, "is the smoked glass through which a civilized
person views the only world he has to live in. For, otherwise, he
could not presume to look upon such coruscations of insanity and remain
unblinded."
This heartened him, as a rounded phrase will do the best of us. But
by-and-bye,
"Frivolity," he groaned, "is really the cheap mask incompetence claps
on when haled before a mirror."
And at Leamington Manor he found her strolling upon the lawn. It was
an ordered, lovely scene, steeped now in the tranquillity of evening.
Above, the stars were losing diffidence. Below, and within arms'
reach, Mildred Claridge was treading the same planet on which he
fidgeted and stuttered.
Something in his heart snapped like a fiddle-string, and he was
entirely aware of this circumstance. As to her eyes, teeth, coloring,
complexion, brows, height and hair, it is needless to expatiate. The
most painstaking inventory of these chattels would necessarily be
misleading, because the impression which they conveyed to him was that
of a bewildering, but not distasteful, transfiguration of the universe,
apt as a fanfare at the entrance of a queen.
But he would be Prince Fribble to the last. And so, "Wait just a
moment, please," he said, "I want to harrow up your soul and freeze
your blood."
Wherewith he suavely told her everything about Paul Vanderhoffen's
origin and the alternatives now offered him, and she listened without
comment.
"Ai! ai!" young Vanderhoffen perorated; "the situation is complete. I
have not the least desire to be Grand-Duke of Saxe-Kesselberg. It is
too abominably tedious. But, if I do not join in with Desmarets, who
has the guy-ropes of a restoration well in hand, I must inevitably
be--removed, as the knave phrases it. For as long as I live, I will be
an insuperable barrier between Augustus and his Sophia. Otototoi!" he
wailed, with a fine tone of tragedy, "the one impossible achievement in
my life has always been to convince anybody that it was mine to dispose
of as I elected!"
"Oh, man proposes----" she began, cryptically. Then he deliberated,
and sulkily submitted: "But I may not even propose to abdicate.
Augustus has put himself upon sworn record as an eye-witness of my
hideous death. And in consequence I might keep on abdicating from now
to the crack of doom, and the only course left open to him would be to
treat me as an impostor."