“I’ll marry you, Wuffie,” said Mouse, three days later as she walked
along a secluded alley of the Casino gardens, whilst the sun sparkled
on marble balustrades and glossy orange leaves. “No; pray spare me
those ecstasies, and for goodness sake don’t use German endearments; it
sets my nerves on edge. Listen; there is a condition; perhaps you’ll
set your back up at it, and if you do I shall marry somebody else. _Il
n’y a que l’embarras du choix._”
She only cared for Woffram’s consent because he was the only one
amongst her adorers who could be brought with decent reason to accept
Vanderlin’s money; the only one also who combined the poverty which
could be bought with the high rank which would conceal the sale.
Besides, he was, as she said, a very pretty boy, with a Cupidon’s
face and a grenadier’s frame, and she thought that he would make _bon
ménage_, _i.e._, do exactly as he was told to do.
She knew society too well not to know that an English duchess is a
really much greater person than a German Serenissime, but she was tired
of being Duchess of Otterbourne on twopence-halfpenny a year, and being
under tutelage and coercion; and there were one or two royal princesses
whom she especially detested to whom it would be amusing to be cousin
by marriage, she could scratch them so deftly with the softest of
velvet paws.
On the whole, she thought it was the best thing to do, so she spoke
coldly and rudely to the young prince as he walked beside her. It was
the way she managed her men, and it had always succeeded--except once.
“Every wish of yours is law,” said Prince Woffram, radiant and
submissive, for he was extremely in love and had never seen any way
of inducing his syren to accept his sword and his title, which were
all he possessed in the world. She had always told him that he was a
nice-looking boy and wore a pretty uniform, and might follow her about
and carry her wraps, but was good for nothing more serious.
“Let us walk a little quicker, and don’t keep kissing my hand. It is
ridiculous,” she said, with some acerbity, for when you are going to
marry a man it is always best not to be too civil to him. “Now listen
here. Your greatuncle Khris is dead. I was with him when he died. I
persuaded him to do an act of very tardy justice to his daughter. I
knew the whole story long ago, and that was why I went to see him. I
wanted to try and persuade him to undo the harm he had done.”
The young man was silent. He was surprised and could not grasp her
meaning, for he knew that it must be something other than what her mere
words expressed.
“You never knew Olga, did you?” he said, rather stupidly.
“No,” said Mouse, keeping both hands in her muff. “I never knew her,
but I have always pitied her profoundly, and I knew her wicked old
father could set things right if he chose, for once he almost confessed
as much to me. But all this does not matter to you. It is an old story,
and they are now going to live happy ever afterwards like people in a
fairy-tale. That is their idea of felicity; it wouldn’t be mine. If you
would believe it, that man has never cared about anybody else. It seems
impossible, but it is so. I suppose men of business are not like other
people.”
“I don’t understand,” said the young prince humbly, and in great
perplexity. “Who are going to live happily for ever? Who are you
speaking of? Please tell me more.”
“Nobody wants you to understand--you are to listen,” said Mouse, with
her brilliant eyes flashing on him above her sable collar. “I tell you
I was with your greatuncle when he died, and he gave me his confession
to take to Adrian Vanderlin, and the proof of the false witness which
he had bribed people to bear against his daughter, because he was so
angry that she did so little to get her husband’s money for him (when
you think of it, that was natural enough, for one don’t give one’s
daughter into the _bourgeoise_ without expecting to be paid for it).
He played Iago’s part, you know, and Vanderlin was jealous, and your
cousin Olga was too proud to clear herself, and so they were made
very miserable and separated. Well, this is what he did and what he
confessed, and if I had not been there he would have had the papers
burned, for he was a bad, vindictive old man to the last.”
This she said with great sincerity and emphasis, for she saw in memory
the glare of those steel-blue eyes in the yellow, drawn face.
“But why should you have been the intermediary?” asked the young man,
bewildered. “Why did not poor old Khris send to my uncle Ernst (his
nephew, you know), who has always remained a devoted friend of Olga’s?”
“I don’t know _why_ he didn’t. I know he did not,” she replied
irritably, for she was not disposed to submit to cross-examination, and
she had by this time come to believe in her narrative as actual fact.
“I was there; and he was mortally ill. I doubt if anyone else would
have had patience to unravel his confused confessions.”
“Well?” said the young prince anxiously.
“Well, I have done Vanderlin an enormous service,” she continued.
“That is to say, with his peculiar ideas of fidelity, he thinks it
enormous. It is the ‘one man one vote’ theory, don’t you know. ‘One
life, one love’--that sort of thing. One has read of it. Great bosh,
but still--no, pray don’t go on like that or you will bore me to
extinction. Listen. You and I can’t marry as we are. We are as poor as
church mice. My people won’t and your people can’t do anything for us.
But Vanderlin will.”
“Vanderlin!” exclaimed Wuffie. He was dismayed and horrified; he was a
young man of easy principles, but there are some scruples which women
dance over like a stool at a cotillon, and which men jib at violently
as their hunters do at brick walls.
“If your pater ordered you to marry a royal schoolgirl, you’d take her
dower fast enough,” she continued; “and yet what disgraceful sources it
would come from--opium-taxes, and gin-palace-taxes, and dog-taxes, and
poor men’s sixpences and shillings, and nailmakers’ and glassworkers’
pennies, and real coinage, as one may say, out of vice and misery and
want.”
“You can’t be a republican--a socialist?” cried Prince Woffram in
horror.
“I don’t know whether I am or not. I dare say I may be. Anybody would
be to see a little German princeling, with twopence-halfpenny a year,
and whose granduncle has just died without money to pay his doctor’s
bill, giving himself airs as if he were somebody.”
“How dreadfully unkind you are,” murmured the young man.
“If you don’t like home-truths, you can go and amuse yourself anywhere
you like,” she replied, in a severe tone, her hands folded inside her
muff, and her coldest and most resolute expression on her face.
His heart sank into his boots. He walked on beside her, crestfallen and
conquered.
“I was quite frank with Cocky beforehand, and I am quite frank with
you. It is much the best way. There are no disappointments and no
recriminations.”
Prince Woffram did not reply. He did not care to fill the _rôle_ which
had suited Cocky so admirably, and he was, moreover, blindly in love
with her. Men in love do not like to be mere lay-figures. But he was
weak by disposition, and both his poverty and passion made him weaker
still.
“Vanderlin will do whatever we wish,” said Mouse sharply, with an
accent of inflexible authority. “He is made of millions, as Boo says,
and he is immensely grateful to me. He wants to give me half his
fortune, but of course he can’t give it to me, so I told him that I was
going to marry you, and that he might give it you; quite secretly, you
understand, and you will always consider that it is mine. That must be
very distinctly understood.”
The young man was silent; he was, indeed, overwhelmed with astonishment
and confusion. It seemed odd to hear that another man had been told of
her intention to marry him before he himself had been informed of his
future happiness; moreover, there was something about the projected
arrangement which struck jarringly on his not very sensitive conscience
and appalled him, and his proposed benefactor had divorced a woman of
his race!
He stammered some German phrases, embarrassed and apprehensive of her
displeasure, for he was afraid of her, keenly and childishly afraid.
“Don’t use that ridiculous language!” said Mouse, with a boundless
scorn for the mother tongue of Goethe and of Kant. “Have you understood
all I have been saying? If you accept what Vanderlin will do for
us--and he will do a great deal--I will marry you. If you won’t, I
shall never see you any more. Pray make no mistake about that.”
“But if you love me----”
“I never said I loved you. I don’t love people. I like you in a
way, and I will marry you on certain conditions, but I will not
marry you, my good Wuffie, to live on an empty title and the pay of
a German lieutenant of cuirassiers. Not if I know it! I won’t even
enter Germany, except for the month at Homburg when everybody’s
there. Thanks--I have seen your father’s court, once in the duchy of
Karstein-Lowenthal, and very often in the duchy of Gerolstein!”
She laughed cruelly, not relaxing her quick elastic step over the
smooth gravel between the palms and the orange-trees. She intended
to marry him, and she had no doubt whatever about the result of the
conversation. Men were like horses. Ride them with a firm hand and you
could put them at any timber you chose.
Prince Woffram’s face flushed painfully; the jeer at his father’s court
hurt him. As far as he could feel offence with her he felt it then, as
her clear unkind laughter rippled on the wintry air.
“You are very rough on me,” he said, humbly, in English. “I am poor--we
are poor--I know that; but honorable poverty----”
Mouse turned her face to him, withering scorn flashing from her
sapphire eyes upon him.
“Honorable poverty has just died in the person of Prince Khristof of
Karstein-Lowenthal, and he had not a penny to pay his laundress, and
his lodging, and his doctor, and his grave! Adrian Vanderlin paid for
all of them.”
She said it cruelly, triumphantly, with her silvery laugh sounding
shriller than usual.
The young man grew redder still with anger and shame commingled. His
eyes were downcast. He had no reply ready as he walked beside her down
the lonely alley.
She saw that she had wounded and offended him.
“Come, Wuffie, be reasonable,” she said, in another tone. “You know
well enough that I shall no more marry you to remain penniless than I
shall marry one of the croupiers in the Casino. If you were going to
ally yourself with a royal princess, you would see nothing degrading in
living on her allowance allotted to her by what is called the State,
that is, taken out of the taxes paid by the public on their sugar, and
tea, and cheese, and clothing, and yet, when you come to analyze it,
that is not very creditable. It is much more creditable to take what an
immensely rich financier never will miss, and offers, _de bon cœur_,
to acquit himself of a debt of gratitude; and since you are so fond of
your family, he is your cousin by marriage--at least he was and he will
be again, for he means to re-marry his lost angel. My dear Wuffie, pray
don’t mind my saying so, but German princes are living on their wives’
dowers all over the world by the hundred. It is their _métier_.”
He still did not answer. He looked on the ground as he walked. There
was sufficient truth in what she said for his national and family pride
to wince under it. He knew that if he looked at her he should consent
to this abominable, indefensible, unworthy act to which she tempted
him. He kept his eyes on the ground; the color burnt hotly in his
cheeks. She was silent too a few moments. Then she stopped short in her
walk, forcing him to stop also, and faced him, her hands in her muff
and her face very resolute and insolent, with a contemptuous smile on
her lips.
“My dear Wuffie,” she said with sovereign contempt, “you can’t suppose
that I was going to marry you for yourself, do you?”
The young man colored, much mortified. He had supposed so.
“You are a very pretty boy, but one doesn’t marry for good looks,” she
said in the same tone. “One marries for bread and butter. Neither you
nor I have got it; but together we can get it.”
“But--but----” stammered Prince Woffram; he knew that he was being
tempted to what was disgraceful; to what, judged by any court of honor,
would brand him as unworthy to wear his sword.
“Can you really think, my dear boy,” she said with a cruel, slighting
little laugh, “that I shall marry you for the mere sake of going, as
the wife of the sixth son of a six-hundredth-time-removed cousin of
the emperor, in the _défiler-cour_ at Berlin? I can assure you that
such a prospect would not attract me for a moment. I have no desire to
figure in the Salle once in ten years, and make jam and knit stockings
like a true German fürstin all the rest of my life. ‘_Kuche, kirche,
kinder_,’ was not said by your Imperial relative of me. If you accept
my conditions I will become your wife, but if you do not there are many
others who will. I like you very much, Wuffie, but I can live extremely
well without you, my dear boy.”
He strove to keep his eyes away from her face. He looked at the trees,
at the clouds, at the sea, then at the ground again. He knew that he
was being led to his own undoing, to his disgrace in his own eyes, to
the abandonment of self-respect and independence and manhood; he knew
that he would become Vanderlin’s pensioner and her slave, that he would
fall in his own sight to a lower place than was held by one of the
croupiers raking in gold at the tables yonder. He tried to keep his
eyes from her face. He had had a pious mother; he prayed for strength.
“Look at me, Wuffie!” she said imperiously.
The delicate scent of the perfumed muff was wafted to his nostrils like
a puff of incense from the altars of the Venusberg. He lifted his eyes
and saw hers, with their challenge, their mockery, their malice, their
command. He was lost.
A few minutes later Boo, who had been playing near, ran down the alley
at a headlong pace toward them, and lifted her rosebud mouth to be
kissed.
“You are going to be my new pappy, Wuffie!” she said, in her sweetest
and most innocent manner. “I’ve had two; but they’re both dead, and I
shall like you the best of the three, because you’re so pretty, Wuffie.”
And she sprang up into his arms, and laughed and beat him about the
eyes with a bunch of violets, and so dazzled and blinded him that he
had no time to ask himself--who had been the _two_ of whom she spoke?
Jack had a letter a month later which astonished and annoyed him. He
read it sitting in a favorite nook in one of the embrasures of the hall
windows at Faldon, with dogs between his knees, at his feet, under
his arms, and behind his back; young frolicsome foolish dogs, big and
little, who were the object of Ossian’s deepest scorn.
The letter was from Boo, and dated from a fashionable hotel in the Rue
Castiglione.
“_Mammy says you are to come over_,” the note began abruptly. “_She’s
writing to your gardjens. She is going to marry Wuffie. Wuffie is
nicer than anybody as was before. He has such a beautiful white coat,
and is all chaines, and orders, and swords that clatter, that is when
he puts ’em on; when they’re off he don’t look more nor any other
man; but she means to make him give up soldiering. She says you are
to come over. You won’t carry her traine ’cos people as are widders
don’t have traines when they marry, and besides you’re too old. But
that don’t matter. I shall have a beautiful frock and Wuffie has
gived me a tuckoiss belt. Don’t fret about your dress. They’ll dress
you here. It’s on the third. Mammy sends you one hundred thousand
kisses; me too. Au revoir. Auf weidersehn._”
For Boo, a true daughter of her time, could write correctly all
languages except her own.
This letter was painful to its recipient. He sat looking gloomily
out at the glades of the park where wild winds from St. George’s
Channel were swaying the great trees and driving the Faldon river into
scurrying clouds of brown foam.
“I’ll take it to him,” he thought. He had learned to know that his
uncle Ronnie was a rock of refuge. He got up as well as he could
for being embraced by all his dogs at once, and knocked down by a
Newfoundland twice in excess of adoration.
He found Hurstmanceaux at the other end of the house engaged in reading
his own correspondence of the morning.
“If you please is this true?”
“Is what true?”
“That my mother is to marry.”
He held out his sister’s letter.
“I don’t know if it means that. If it don’t mean that I can’t tell what
it means,” he added despondently.
“Your mother marries, yes,” said Hurstmanceaux, taking the note, “and
this letter says you are to go to Paris. Do you wish to go?”
Jack’s fair face grew almost stern.
“I will never go to her,” he said with more decision than could have
been expected from his years.
“Make no rash vows, my boy,” said Ronald. “But as regards your
appearance at this marriage it is not necessary; I think you are right
not to go.”
“I would not go if they dragged me with ropes through the sea from
Dublin Bay to Calais,” said Jack; “and up the Seine,” he added with a
geographical afterthought.
“She killed him, and she has forgotten him,” thought her son as he went
out with his dogs into the bare March avenues of the park. Jack did not
forget.
So it came to pass that at the brilliant wedding celebrated at the
English and German embassies, and attended by many great persons of
royal and noble families, there was not present either the eldest
brother or the eldest son of the lady who became H.S.H. Princess
Woffram of Karstein-Lowenthal.