Produced by Duncan Harrod, Juliet Sutherland, Charles
Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
THE PRINCE OF GRAUSTARK
BY
GEORGE BARR McCUTCHEON
Author of "Graustark", "Beverly of Graustark," etc.
With Illustrations by
A.I. KELLER
1914
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I MR. AND MRS. BLITHERS DISCUSS MATRIMONY
II TWO COUNTRIES DISCUSS MARRIAGE
III MR. BLITHERS GOES VISITING
IV PROTECTING THE BLOOD
V PRINCE ROBIN is ASKED TO STAND UP
VI THE PRINCE AND MR. BLITHERS
VII A LETTER FROM MAUD
VIII ON BOARD THE JUPITER
IX THE PRINCE MEETS MISS GUILE
X AN HOUR ON DECK
XI THE LIEUTENANT RECEIVES ORDERS
XII THE LIEUTENANT REPORTS
XIII THE RED LETTER B
XIV THE CAT IS AWAY
XV THE MICE IN A TRAP
XVI THREE MESSAGES
XVII THE PRODIGAL DAUGHTER
XVIII A WORD OF ENCOURAGEMENT
XIX "WHAT WILL MY PEOPLE DO"
XX LOVE IN ABEYANCE
XXI MR. BLITHERS ARRIVES IN GRAUSTARK
XXII A VISIT TO THE CASTLE
XXIII PINGARI'S
XIV JUST WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN EXPECTED
ILLUSTRATIONS
Her eyes were starry bright, her red lips were parted. _Frontispiece_
"You will be her choice," said the other, without the quiver of an
eye-lash.
"I shall pray for continuous rough weather."
The dignified Ministry of Graustark sat agape.
CHAPTER I
MR. AND MRS. BLITHERS DISCUSS MATRIMONY
"My dear," said Mr. Blithers, with decision, "you can't tell me."
"I know I can't," said his wife, quite as positively. She knew when she
could tell him a thing and when she couldn't.
It was quite impossible to impart information to Mr. Blithers when he
had the tips of two resolute fingers embedded in his ears. That
happened to be his customary and rather unfair method of conquering her
when an argument was going against him, not for want of logic on his
part, but because it was easier to express himself with his ears closed
than with them open. By this means he effectually shut out the voice of
opposition and had the discussion all to himself. Of course, it would
have been more convincing if he had been permitted to hear the sound of
his own eloquence; still, it was effective.
She was sure to go on talking for two or three minutes and then subside
in despair. A woman will not talk to a stone wall. Nor will she
wantonly allow an argument to die while there remains the slightest
chance of its survival. Given the same situation, a man would get up
and leave his wife sitting there with her fingers in her ears; and, as
he bolted from the room in high dudgeon, he would be mean enough to
call attention to her pig-headedness. In most cases, a woman is content
to listen to a silly argument rather than to leave the room just
because her husband elects to be childish about a perfectly simple
elucidation of the truth.
Mrs. Blithers had lived with Mr. Blithers, more or less, for
twenty-five years and she knew him like a book. He was a forceful
person who would have his own way, even though he had to put his
fingers in his ears to get it. At one period of their joint connubial
agreement, when he had succeeded in accumulating a pitiful hoard
amounting to but little more than ten millions of dollars, she
concluded to live abroad for the purpose of educating their daughter,
allowing him in the meantime to increase his fortune to something like
fifty millions without having to worry about household affairs. But she
had sojourned with him long enough, at odd times, to realise that, so
long as he lived, he would never run away from an argument--unless, by
some dreadful hook or crook, he should be so unfortunate as to be
deprived of the use of both hands. She found room to gloat, of course,
in the fact that he was obliged to stop up his ears in order to shut
out the incontrovertible.
Moreover, when he called her "my dear" instead of the customary Lou, it
was a sign of supreme obstinacy on his part and could not, by any
stretch of the imagination, be regarded as an indication of placid
affection. He always said "my dear" at the top of his voice and with a
great deal of irascibility.
Mr. William W. Blithers was a self-made man who had begun his career by
shouting lustily at a team of mules in a railway construction camp.
Other drivers had tried to improve on his vocabulary but even the mules
were able to appreciate the futility of such an ambition, and later on,
when he came to own two or three railroads, to say nothing of a few
mines and a steam yacht, his ability to drive men was even more
noteworthy than his power over the jackasses had been. But driving
mules and men was one thing, driving a wife another. What incentive has
a man, said he, when after he gets through bullying a creature that
very creature turns in and caresses him? No self-respecting mule ever
did such a thing as that, and no man would think of it except with
horror. There is absolutely no defence against a creature who will rub
your head with loving, gentle fingers after she has worked you up to
the point where you could kill her with pleasure--or at least so said
Mr. Blithers with rueful frequency.
Mr. and Mrs. Blithers had been discussing royalty. Up to the previous
week they had restricted themselves to the nobility, but as an event of
unexampled importance had transpired in the interim, they now felt that
it would be the rankest stupidity to consider any one short of a Prince
Royal in picking out a suitable husband--or, more properly speaking,
consort--for their only daughter, Maud Applegate Blithers, aged twenty.
Mrs. Blithers long ago had convinced her husband that no ordinary human
being of the male persuasion was worthy of their daughter's hand, and
had set her heart on having nothing meaner than a Duke on the family
roll,--(Blithers alluded to it for a while as the pay-roll)--, with the
choice lying between England and Italy. At first, Blithers, being an
honest soul, insisted that a good American gentleman was all that
anybody could ask for in the way of a son-in-law, and that when it came
to a grandchild it would be perfectly proper to christen him Duke--lots
of people did!--and that was about all that a title amounted to anyway.
She met this with the retort that Maud might marry a man named Jones,
and how would Duke Jones sound? He weakly suggested that they could
christen him Marmaduke and--but she reminded him of his oft-repeated
boast that there was nothing in the world too good for Maud and
instituted a pictorial campaign against his prejudices by painting in
the most alluring colours the picture of a ducal palace in which the
name of Jones would never be uttered except when employed in directing
the fifth footman or the third stable-boy--or perhaps a scullery
maid--to do this, that or the other thing at the behest of her Grace,
the daughter of William W. Blithers. This eventually worked on his
imagination to such an extent that he forgot his natural pride and
admitted that perhaps she was right.
But now, just as they were on the point of accepting, in lieu of a
Duke, an exceptionally promising Count, the aforesaid event conspired
to completely upset all of their plans--or notions, so to speak. It was
nothing less than the arrival in America of an eligible Prince of the
royal blood, a ruling Prince at that. As a matter of fact he had not
only arrived in America but upon the vast estate adjoining their own in
the Catskills.
Fortunately nothing definite had been arranged with the Count. Mrs.
Blithers now advised waiting a while before giving a definite answer to
his somewhat eager proposal, especially as he was reputed to have
sufficient means of his own to defend the chateau against any immediate
peril of profligacy. She counselled Mr. Blithers to notify him that he
deemed it wise to take the matter under advisement for a couple of
weeks at least, but not to commit himself to anything positively
negative.
Mr. Blithers said that he had never heard anything so beautifully
adroit as "positively negative," and directed his secretary to submit
to him without delay the draft of a tactful letter to the anxious
nobleman. They were agreed that a Prince was more to be desired than a
Count and, as long as they were actually about it, they might as well
aim high. Somewhat hazily Mr. Blithers had Inquired if it wouldn't be
worth while to consider a King, but his wife set him straight in short
order.
Peculiarly promising their hopes was the indisputable fact that the
Prince's mother had married an American, thereby establishing a
precedent behind which no constitutional obstacle could thrive, and had
lived very happily with the gentleman in spite of the critics.
Moreover, she had met him while sojourning on American soil, and that
was certainly an excellent augury for the success of the present
enterprise. What could be more fitting than that the son should follow
in the footsteps of an illustrious mother? If an American gentleman was
worthy of a princess, why not the other way about? Certainly Maud
Blithers was as full of attributes as any man in America.
It appears that the Prince, after leisurely crossing the continent on
his way around the world, had come to the Truxton Kings for a
long-promised and much-desired visit, the duration of which depended to
some extent on his own inclinations, and not a little on the outcome of
the war-talk that affected two great European nations--Russia and
Austria. Ever since the historic war between the Balkan allies and the
Turks, in 1912 and 1913, there had been mutterings, and now the
situation had come to be admittedly precarious. Mr. Blithers was in a
position to know that the little principality over which the young man
reigned was bound to be drawn into the cataclysm, not as a belligerent
or an ally, but in the matter of a loan that inconveniently expired
within the year and which would hardly be renewed by Russia with the
prospect of vast expenditures of war threatening her treasury. The loan
undoubtedly would be called and Graustark was not in a position to pay
out of her own slender resources, two years of famine having fallen
upon the people at a time when prosperity was most to be desired.
He was in touch with the great financial movements in all the world's
capitals, and he knew that retrenchment was the watchword. It would be
no easy matter for the little principality to negotiate a loan at this
particular time, nor was there even a slender chance that Russia would
be benevolently disposed toward her debtors, no matter how small their
obligations. They who owed would be called upon to pay, they who
petitioned would be turned away with scant courtesy. It was the private
opinion of Mr. Blithers that the young Prince and the trusted agents
who accompanied him on his journey, were in the United States solely
for the purpose of arranging a loan through sources that could only be
reached by personal appeal. But, naturally, Mr. Blithers couldn't
breathe this to a soul. Under the circumstances he couldn't even
breathe it to his wife who, he firmly believed, was soulless.
But all this is beside the question. The young Prince of Graustark was
enjoying American hospitality, and no matter what he owed to Russia,
America owed to him its most punctillious consideration. If Mr.
Blithers was to have anything to say about the matter, it would be for
the ear of the Prince alone and not for the busybodies.
The main point is that the Prince was now rusticating within what you
might call a stone's throw of the capacious and lordly country
residence of Mr. Blithers; moreover, he was an uncommonly attractive
chap, with a laugh that was so charged with heartiness that it didn't
seem possible that he could have a drop of royal blood in his vigorous
young body. And the perfectly ridiculous part of the whole situation
was that Mr. and Mrs. King lived in a modest, vine-covered little house
that could have been lost in the servants' quarters at Blitherwood.
Especially aggravating, too, was the attitude of the Kings. They were
really nobodies, so to speak, and yet they blithely called their royal
guest "Bobby" and allowed him to fetch and carry for their women-folk
quite as if he were an ordinary whipper-snapper up from the city to
spend the week-end.
The remark with which Mr. Blithers introduces this chapter was in
response to an oft-repeated declaration made by his wife in the shade
of the red, white and blue awning of the terrace overlooking, from its
despotic heights, the modest red roof of the King villa in the valley
below. Mrs. Blithers merely had stated--but over and over again--that
money couldn't buy everything in the world, referring directly to
social eminence and indirectly to their secret ambition to capture a
Prince of the royal blood for their daughter Maud. She had prefaced
this opinion, however, with the exceedingly irritating insinuation that
Mr. Blithers was not in his right mind when he proposed inviting the
Prince to spend a few weeks at Blitherwood, provided the young man
could cut short his visit in the home of Mr. and Mrs. King, who, he had
asseverated, were not in a position to entertain royalty as royalty was
in the habit of being entertained.
Long experience had taught Mr. Blithers to read the lip and eye
language with some degree of certainty, so by watching his wife's
indignant face closely he was able to tell when she was succumbing to
reason. He was a burly, domineering person who reasoned for every one
within range of his voice, and it was only when his wife became coldly
sarcastic that he closed his ears and boomed his opinions into her very
teeth, so to say, joyfully overwhelming her with facts which it were
futile for her to attempt to deny. He was aware, quite as much so as if
he had heard the words, that she was now saying:
"Well, there is absolutely no use arguing with you, Will. Have it your
way if it pleases you."
Eying her with some uneasiness, he cautiously inserted his thumbs in
the armholes of his brocaded waistcoat, and proclaimed:
"As I said before, Lou, there isn't a foreign nobleman, from the
Emperor down, who is above grabbing a few million dollars. They're all
hard up, and what do they gain by marrying ladies of noble birth if
said ladies are the daughters of noblemen who are as hard up as all the
rest of 'em? Besides, hasn't Maud been presented at Court? Didn't you
see to that? How about that pearl necklace I gave her when she was
presented? Wasn't it the talk of the season? There wasn't a Duke in
England who didn't figure the cost of that necklace to within a guinea
or two. No girl ever had better advertising than--"
"We were speaking of Prince Robin," remarked his wife, with a slight
shudder. Mrs. Blithers came of better stock than her husband. His
gaucheries frequently set her teeth on edge. She was born in Providence
and sometimes mentioned the occurrence when particularly desirous of
squelching him, not unkindly perhaps but by way of making him realise
that their daughter had good blood in her veins. Mr. Blithers had
heard, in a round-about way, that he first saw the light of day in
Jersey City, although after he became famous Newark claimed him. He did
not bother about the matter.
"Well, he's like all the rest of them," said he, after a moment of
indecision. Something told him that he really ought to refrain from
talking about the cost of things, even in the bosom of his family. He
had heard that only vulgarians speak of their possessions. "Now,
there's no reason in the world why we shouldn't consider his offer.
He--"
"Offer?" she cried, aghast. "He has made no offer, Will. He doesn't
even know that Maud is in existence. How can you say such a thing?"
"I was merely looking ahead, that's all. My motto is 'Look Ahead.' You
know it as well as I do. Where would I be to-day if I hadn't looked
ahead and seen what was going to happen before the other fellow had his
eyes open? Will you tell me that? Where, I say? What's more, where
would I be now if I hadn't looked ahead and seen what a marriage with
the daughter of Judge Morton would mean to me in the long run?" He felt
that he had uttered a very pretty and convincing compliment. "I never
made a bad bargain in my life, Lou, and it wasn't guess-work when I
married you. You, my dear old girl, you were the solid foundation on
which I--"
"I know," she said wearily; "you've said it a thousand times: 'The
foundation on which I built my temple of posterity'--yes, I know, Will.
But I am still unalterably opposed to making ourselves ridiculous in
the eyes of Mr. and Mrs. King."
"Ridiculous? I don't understand you."
"Well, you will after you think it over," she said quietly, and he
scowled in positive perplexity.
"Don't you think he'd be a good match for Maud?" he asked, after many
minutes. He felt that he had thought it over.
"Are you thinking of kidnapping him, Will?" she demanded.
"Certainly not! But all you've got to do is to say that he's the man
for Maud and I'll--I'll do the rest. That's the kind of a man I am,
Lou. You say you don't want Count What's-His-Name,--that is, you don't
want him as much as you did,--and you do say that it would be the
grandest thing in the world if Maud could be the Princess of
Grosstick--"
"Graustark, Will."
"That's what I said. Well, if you want her to be the Princess of
_THAT_, I'll see that she is, providing this fellow is a gentleman and
worthy of _her_. The only Prince I ever knew was a damned rascal, and
I'm going to be careful about this one. You remember that measly--"
"There is no question about Prince Robin," said she sharply.
"I suppose the only question is, how much will he want?"
"You mean--settlement?"
"Sure."
"Have you no romance in your soul, William Blithers?"
"I never believed in fairy stories," said he grimly. "And what's more,
I don't take any stock in cheap novels in which American heroes go
about marrying into royal families and all that sort of rot. It isn't
done, Lou. If you want to marry into a royal family you've got to put
up the coin."
"Prince Robin's mother, the poor Princess Yetive, married an American
for love, let me remind you."
"Umph! Where is this Groostock anyway?"
"'Somewhere east of the setting sun,'" she quoted. "You _must_ learn
how to pronounce it."
"I never was good at foreign languages. By the way, where is Maud this
afternoon?"
"Motoring."
He waited for additional information. It was not vouchsafed, so he
demanded somewhat fearfully:
"Who with?"
"Young Scoville."
He scowled. "He's a loafer, Lou. No good in the world. I don't like the
way you let--"
"He is of a very good family, my dear. I--"
"Is he--er--in love with her?"
"Certainly."
"Good Lord!"
"And why not? Isn't every one she meets in love with her?"
"I--I suppose so," he admitted sheepishly. His face brightened. "And
there's no reason why this Prince shouldn't fall heels over head, is
there? Well, there you are! That will make a difference in the
settlement, believe me--a difference of a couple of millions at least,
if--"
She arose abruptly. "You are positively disgusting, Will. Can't you
think of anything but--"
"Say, ain't that Maudie coming up the drive now? Sure it is! By
gracious, did you ever see anything to beat her? She's got 'em all beat
a mile when it comes to looks and style and--Oh, by the way," lowering
his voice to a hoarse, confidential whisper, "--I wouldn't say anything
to her about the marriage just yet if I were you. I want to look him
over first."