"Ah, but the madman is in love," he pleaded. "You should not judge
poor masculinity in such a state by any ordinary standards. Oh really,
you don't know the Princess Sophia. She is, in sober truth, the nicest
person who was ever born a princess. Why, she had actually made a mock
of even that handicap, for ordinarily it is as disastrous to feminine
appearance as writing books. And, oh, Lord! they will be marrying her
to me, if Desmarets and I win out." Thus he forlornly ended.
"The designing minx!" Miss Claridge said, distinctly.
"Now, gracious lady, do be just a cooing pigeon and grant that when men
are in love they are not any more encumbered by abstract notions about
honor than if they had been womanly from birth. Come, let's be lyrical
and open-minded," he urged; and he added, "No, either you are in love
or else you are not in love. And nothing else will matter either way.
You see, if men and women had been primarily designed to be rational
creatures, there would be no explanation for their being permitted to
continue in existence," he lucidly explained. "And to have grasped
this fact is the pith of all wisdom."
"Oh, I am very wise." A glint of laughter shone in her eyes. "I would
claim to be another Pythoness if only it did not sound so snaky and
wriggling. So, from my trident--or was it a Triton they used to stand
on?--I announce that you and your Augustus are worrying yourselves
gray-headed over an idiotically simple problem. Now, I disposed of it
offhand when I said, 'Man proposes.'"
He seemed to be aware of some one who from a considerable distance was
inquiring her reasons for this statement.
"Because in Saxe-Kesselberg, as in all other German states, when a
prince of the reigning house marries outside of the mediatized nobility
he thereby forfeits his right of succession. It has been done any
number of times. Why, don't you see, Mr. Vanderhoffen? Conceding you
ever do such a thing, your cousin Augustus would become at once the
legal heir. So you must marry. It is the only way, I think, to save
you from regal incarceration and at the same time to reassure the
Prince of Lueminster--that creature's father--that you have not, and
never can have, any claim which would hold good in law. Then Duke
Augustus could peaceably espouse his Sophia and go on reigning---- And,
by the way, I have seen her picture often, and if that is what you call
beauty----" Miss Claridge did not speak this last at least with any air
of pointing out the self-evident.
And, "I believe," he replied, "that all this is actually happening. I
might have known fate meant to glut her taste for irony."
"But don't you see? You have only to marry anybody outside of the
higher nobility--and just as a makeshift----" She had drawn closer in
the urgency of her desire to help him. An infinite despair and mirth
as well was kindled by her nearness. And the man was insane and dimly
knew as much.
And so, "I see," he answered. "But, as it happens, I cannot marry any
woman, because I love a particular woman. At least, I suppose she
isn't anything but just a woman. That statement," he announced, "is a
formal tribute paid by what I call my intellect to what the vulgar call
the probabilities. The rest of me has no patience whatever with such
idiotic blasphemy."
She said, "I think I understand." And this surprised him, coming as it
did from her whom he had always supposed to be the fiancee of Lord
Brudenel's title and bank-account.
"And, well!"--he waved his hands--"either as tutor or as grand-duke,
this woman is unattainable, because she has been far too carefully
reared"--and here he frenziedly thought of that terrible matron whom,
as you know, he had irreverently likened to a crocodile--"either to
marry a pauper or to be contented with a left-handed alliance. And I
love her. And so"--he shrugged--"there is positively nothing left to
do save sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of
kings."
She said, "Oh, and you mean it! You are speaking the plain truth!" A
change had come into her lovely face which would have made him think it
even lovelier had not that contingency been beyond conception.
And Mildred Claridge said, "It is not fair for dreamers such as you to
let a woman know just how he loves her. That is not wooing. It is
bullying."
His lips were making a variety of irrational noises. And he was near
to her. Also he realized that he had never known how close akin were
fear and joy, so close the two could mingle thus, and be quite
undistinguishable. And then repentance smote him.
"I am contemptible!" he groaned. "I had no right to trouble you with
my insanities. Indeed I had not ever meant to let you guess how mad I
was. But always I have evaded my responsibilities. So I remain Prince
Fribble to the last."
"Oh, but I knew, I have always known." She held her eyes away from
him. "And I wrote to Lord Brudenel only yesterday releasing him from
his engagement."
And now without uncertainty or haste Paul Vanderhoffen touched her
cheek and raised her face, so that he saw it plainly in the rising
twilight, and all its wealth of tenderness newborn. And what he saw
there frightened him.
For the girl loved him! He felt himself to be, as most men do, a
swindler when he comprehended this preposterous fact; and, in addition,
he thought of divers happenings, such as shipwrecks, holocausts and
earthquakes, which might conceivably have appalled him, and understood
that he would never in his life face any sense of terror as huge as was
this present sweet and illimitable awe.
And then he said, "You know that what I hunger for is impossible.
There are so many little things, like common-sense, to be considered.
For this is just a matter which concerns you and Paul Vanderhoffen--a
literary hack, a stuttering squeak-voiced ne'er-do-well, with an
acquired knack for scribbling verses that are feeble-minded enough for
Annuals and Keepsake Books, and so fetch him an occasional guinea.
For, my dear, the verses I write of my own accord are not sufficiently
genteel to be vended in Paternoster Row; they smack too dangerously of
human intelligence. So I am compelled, perforce, to scribble such
jingles as I am ashamed to read, because I must write
_something_. . . ." Paul Vanderhoffen shrugged, and continued, in tones
more animated: "There will be no talk of any grand-duke. Instead,
there will be columns of denunciation and tittle-tattle in every
newspaper--quite as if you, a baronet's daughter, had run away with a
footman. And you will very often think wistfully of Lord Brudenel's
fine house when your only title is--well, Princess of Grub Street, and
your realm is a garret. And for a while even to-morrow's breakfast
will be a problematical affair. It is true Lord Lansdowne has promised
me a registrarship in the Admiralty Court, and I do not think he will
fail me. But that will give us barely enough to live on--with strict
economy, which is a virtue that neither of us knows anything about. I
beg you to remember that--you who have been used to every luxury! you
who really were devised that you might stand beside an emperor and set
tasks for him. In fine, you know----"
And Mildred Claridge said, "I know that, quite as I observed, man
proposes--when he has been sufficiently prodded by some one who,
because she is an idiot--And that is why I am not blushing--very
much----"
"Your coloring is not--repellent." His high-pitched pleasant voice, in
spite of him, shook now with more than its habitual suggestion of a
stutter. "What have you done to me, my dear?" he said. "Why can't I
jest at this . . . as I have always done at everything----?"
"Boy, boy!" she said; "laughter is excellent. And wisdom too is
excellent. Only I think that you have laughed too much, and I have
been too shrewd--But now I know that it is better to be a princess in
Grub Street than to figure at Ranelagh as a good-hearted fool's latest
purchase. For Lord Brudenel is really very good-natured," she argued,
"and I did like him, and mother was so set upon it--and he was
rich--and I honestly thought----"
"And now?" he said.
"And now I know," she answered happily.
They looked at each other for a little while. Then he took her hand,
prepared in turn for self-denial.
"The _Household Review_ wants me to 'do' a series on famous English
bishops," he reported, humbly. "I had meant to refuse, because it
would all have to be dull High-Church twaddle. And the _English
Gentleman_ wants some rather outrageous lying done in defense of the
Corn Laws. You would not despise me too much--would you, Mildred?--if
I undertook it now. I really have no choice. And there is plenty of
hackwork of that sort available to keep us going until more solvent
days, when I shall have opportunity to write something quite worthy of
you."
"For the present, dear, it would be much more sensible, I think, to
'do' the bishops and the Corn Laws. You see, that kind of thing pays
very well, and is read by the best people; whereas poetry, of course--
But you can always come back to the verse-making, you know----"
"If you ever let me," he said, with a flash of prescience. "And I
don't believe you mean to let me. You are your mother's daughter,
after all! Nefarious woman, you are planning, already, to make a
responsible member of society out of me! and you will do it,
ruthlessly! Such is to be Prince Fribble's actual burial--in his own
private carriage, with a receipted tax-bill in his pocket!"
"What nonsense you poets talk!" the girl observed. But to him,
forebodingly, that familiar statement seemed to lack present
application.