TWO COUNTRIES DISCUSS MARRIAGE
Prince Robin of Graustark was as good-looking a chap as one would see
in a week's journey. Little would one suspect him of being the
descendant of a long and distinguished line of princes, save for the
unmistakeable though indefinable something in his eye that exacted
rather than invited the homage of his fellow man. His laugh was a free
and merry one, his spirits as effervescent as wine, his manner blithe
and boyish; yet beneath all this fair and guileless exposition of
carelessness lay the sober integrity of caste. It looked out through
the steady, unswerving eyes, even when they twinkled with mirth; it met
the gaze of the world with a serene imperiousness that gave way before
no mortal influence; it told without boastfulness a story of centuries.
For he was the son of a princess royal, and the blood of ten score
rulers of men had come down to him as a heritage of strength.
His mother, the beautiful, gracious and lamented Yetive, set all royal
circles by the ears when she married the American, Lorry, back in the
nineties. A special act of the ministry had legalised this union and
the son of the American was not deprived of his right to succeed to the
throne which his forebears had occupied for centuries. From his mother
he had inherited the right of kings, from his father the spirit of
freedom; from his mother the power of majesty, from his father the
power to see beyond that majesty. When little more than a babe in arms
he was orphaned and the affairs of state fell upon the shoulders of
three loyal and devoted men who served as regents until he became of
age.
Wisely they served both him and the people through the years that
intervened between the death of the Princess and her consort and the
day when he reached his majority. That day was a glorious one in
Graustark. The people worshipped the little Prince when he was in
knickerbockers and played with toys; they saw him grow to manhood with
hearts that were full of hope and contentment; they made him their real
ruler with the same joyous spirit that had attended him in the days
when he sat in the great throne and "made believe" that he was one of
the mighty, despite the fact that his little legs barely reached to the
edge of the gold and silver seat,--and slept soundly through all the
befuddling sessions of the cabinet. He was seven when the great revolt
headed by Count Marlanx came so near to overthrowing the government,
and he behaved like the Prince that he was. It was during those
perilous times that he came to know the gallant Truxton King in whose
home he was now a happy guest. But before Truxton King he knew the
lovely girl who became the wife of that devoted adventurer, and who, to
him, was always to be "Aunt Loraine."
As a very small boy he had paid two visits to the homeland of his
father, but after the death of his parents his valuable little person
was guarded so jealously by his subjects that not once had he set foot
beyond the borders of Graustark, except on two widely separated
occasions of great pomp and ceremony at the courts of Vienna and St.
Petersburgh, and a secret journey to London when he was seventeen. (It
appears that he was determined to see a great football match.) On each
of these occasions he was attended by watchful members of the cabinet
and certain military units in the now far from insignificant standing
army. As a matter of fact, he witnessed the football match from the
ordinary stands, surrounded by thousands of unsuspecting Britons, but
carefully wedged in between two generals of his own army and flanked by
a minister of police, a minister of the treasury and a minister of war,
all of whom were excessively bored by the contest and more or less
appalled by his unregal enthusiasm. He had insisted on going to the
match incog, to enjoy it for all it was worth to the real
spectators--those who sit or stand where the compression is not unlike
that applied to a box of sardines.
The regency expired when he was twenty years of age, and he became
ruler in fact, of himself as well as of the half-million subjects who
had waited patiently for the great day that was to see him crowned and
glorified. Not one was there in that goodly half million who stood out
against him on that triumphant day; not one who possessed a sullen or
resentful heart. He was their Prince, and they loved him well. After
that wonderful coronation day he would never forget that he was a
Prince or that the hearts of a half million were to throb with love for
him so long as he was man as well as Prince.
Mr. Blithers was very close to the truth when he said (to himself, if
you remember) that the financial situation in the far-off principality
was not all that could be desired. It is true that Graustark was in
Russia's debt to the extent of some twenty million gavvos,--about
thirty millions of dollars, in other words,--and that the day of
reckoning was very near at hand. The loan was for a period of twelve
years, and had been arranged contrary to the advice of John Tullis, an
American financier who long had been interested in the welfare of the
principality through friendship for the lamented Prince Consort, Lorry.
He had been farsighted enough to realise that Russia would prove a hard
creditor, even though she may have been sincere in her protestations of
friendship for the modest borrower.
A stubborn element in the cabinet overcame his opposition, however, and
the debt was contracted, taxation increased by popular vote and a
period of governmental thriftiness inaugurated. Railroads, highways,
bridges and aqueducts were built, owned and controlled by the state,
and the city of Edelweiss rebuilt after the devastation created during
the revolt of Count Marlanx and his minions. There seemed to be some
prospect of vindication for the ministry and Tullis, who lived in
Edelweiss, was fair-minded enough to admit that their action appeared
to have been for the best. The people had prospered and taxes were paid
in full and without complaint. The reserve fund grew steadily and
surely and there was every prospect that when the huge debt came due it
would be paid in cash. But on the very crest of their prosperity came
adversity. For two years the crops failed and a pestilence swept
through the herds. The flood of gavvos that had been pouring into the
treasury dwindled into a pitiful rivulet; the little that came in was
applied, of necessity, to administration purposes and the maintenance
of the army, and there was not so much as a penny left over for the
so-called sinking fund.
A year of grace remained. The minister of finance had long since
recovered from the delusion that it would be easy to borrow from
England or France to pay the Russians, there being small prospect of a
renewal by the Czar even for a short period at a higher rate of
interest. The great nations of Europe made it plain to the little
principality that they would not put a finger in Russia's pie at this
stage of the game. Russia was ready to go to war with her great
neighbour, Austria. Diplomacy--caution, if you will,--made it
imperative that other nations should sit tight and look to their own
knitting, so to say. Not one could afford to be charged with
befriending, even in a round-about way, either of the angry grumblers.
It was only too well known in diplomatic circles that Russia coveted
the railroads of Graustark, as a means of throwing troops into a remote
and almost impregnable portion of Austria. If the debt were paid
promptly, it would be impossible, according to international law, for
the great White Bear to take over these roads and at least a portion of
the western border of the principality. Obviously, Austria would be
benefitted by the prompt lifting of the debt, but her own relations
with Russia were so strained that an offer to come to the rescue of
Graustark would be taken at once as an open affront and vigorously
resented. Her hands were tied.
The northern and western parts of Graustark were rich with productive
mines. The government had built railroads throughout these sections so
that the yield of coal and copper might be given an outlet to the world
at large. In making the loan, Russia had demanded these prosperous
sections as security for the vast sum advanced, and Graustark in an
evil hour had submitted, little suspecting the trick that Dame Nature
was to play in the end.
Private banking institutions in Europe refused to make loans under the
rather exasperating circumstances, preferring to take no chances. Money
was not cheap in these bitter days, neither in Europe nor America.
Caution was the watchword. A vast European war was not improbable,
despite the sincere efforts on the part of the various nations to keep
out of the controversy.
Nor was Mr. Blithers far from right in his shrewd surmise that Prince
Robin and his agents were not without hope in coming to America at this
particular time. Graustark had laid by barely half the amount required
to lift the debt to Russia. It was not beyond the bounds of reason to
expect her Prince to secure the remaining fifteen millions through
private sources in New York City.
Six weeks prior to his arrival in New York, the young Prince landed in
San Francisco. He had come by way of the Orient, accompanied by the
Chief of Staff of the Graustark Army, Count Quinnox,--hereditary
watch-dog to the royal family!--and a young lieutenant of the guard,
Boske Dank. Two men were they who would have given a thousand lives in
the service of their Prince. No less loyal was the body-servant who
looked after the personal wants of the eager young traveller, an
Englishman of the name of Hobbs. A very poor valet was he, but an
exceptionally capable person when it came to the checking of luggage
and the divining of railway time-tables. He had been an agent for
Cook's. It was quite impossible to miss a train that Hobbs suspected of
being the right one.
Prince Robin came unheralded and traversed the breadth of the continent
without attracting more than the attention that is bestowed upon
good-looking young men. Like his mother, nearly a quarter of a century
before, he travelled incognito. But where she had used the somewhat
emphatic name of Guggenslocker, he was known to the hotel registers as
"Mr. R. Schmidt and servant."
There was romance in the eager young soul of Prince Robin. He revelled
in the love story of his parents. The beautiful Princess Yetive first
saw Grenfell Lorry in an express train going eastward from Denver.
Their wonderful romance was born, so to speak, in a Pullman compartment
car, and it thrived so splendidly that it almost upset a dynasty, for
never--in all of nine centuries--had a ruler of Graustark stooped to
marriage with a commoner.
And so when the far-sighted ministry and House of Nobles in Graustark
set about to select a wife for their young ruler, they made overtures
to the Prince of Dawsbergen whose domain adjoined Graustark on the
south. The Crown Princess of Dawsbergen, then but fifteen, was the
unanimous choice of the amiable match-makers in secret conclave. This
was when Robin was seventeen and just over being fatuously in love with
his middle-aged instructress in French.
The Prince of Dawsbergen despatched an embassy of noblemen to assure
his neighbour that the match would be highly acceptable to him and that
in proper season the betrothal might be announced. But alack! both
courts overlooked the fact that there was independent American blood in
the two young people. Neither the Prince of Graustark nor the Crown
Princess of Dawsbergen,--whose mother was a Miss Beverly Calhoun of
Virginia,--was disposed to listen to the voice of expediency; in fact,
at a safe distance of three or four hundred miles, the youngsters
figuratively turned up their noses at each other and frankly confessed
that they hated each other and wouldn't be bullied into getting
married, no matter what _anybody_ said, or something of the sort.
"S'pose I'm going to say I'll marry a girl I've never seen?" demanded
seventeen-year-old Robin, full of wrath. "Not I, my lords. I'm going to
look about a bit, if you don't mind. The world is full of girls. I'll
marry the one I happen to want or I'll not marry at all."
"But, highness," they protested, "you must listen to reason. There must
be a successor to the throne of Graustark. You would not have the name
die with you. The young Princess is--"
"Is fifteen you say," he interrupted loftily. "Come around in ten years
and we'll talk it over again. But I'm not going to pledge myself to
marry a child in short frocks, name or no name. Is she pretty?"
The lords did not know. They had not seen the young lady.
"If she is pretty you'd be sure to know it, my lords, so we'll assume
she isn't. I saw her when she was three years old, and she certainly
was a fright when she cried, and, my lords, she cried all the time. No,
I'll not marry her. Be good enough to say to the Prince of Dawsbergen
that I'm very much obliged to him, but it's quite out of the question."
And the fifteen-year-old Crown Princess, four hundred miles away,
coolly informed her doting parents that she was tired of being a
Princess anyway and very much preferred marrying some one who lived in
a cottage. In fine, she stamped her little foot and said she'd jump
into the river before she'd marry the Prince of Graustark.
"But he's a very handsome, adorable boy," began her mother.
"And half-American just as you are, my child," put in her father
encouragingly. "Nothing could be more suitable than--"
"I don't intend to marry anybody until I'm thirty at least, so that
ends it, daddy,--I mean, your poor old highness."
"Naturally we do not expect you to be married before you are out of
short frocks, my dear," said Prince Dantan stiffly. "But a betrothal is
quite another thing. It is customary to arrange these marriages years
before--"
"Is Prince Robin in love with me?"
"I--ahem!--that's a very silly question. He hasn't seen you since you
were a baby. But he _will_ be in love with you, never fear."
"He may be in love with some one else, for all we know, so where do I
come in?"
"Come in?" gasped her father.
"She's part American, dear," explained the mother, with her prettiest
smile.
"Besides," said the Crown Princess, with finality, "I'm not even going
to be engaged to a man I've never seen. And if you insist, I'll run
away as sure as anything."
And so the matter rested. Five years have passed since the initial
overtures were made by the two courts, and although several sly
attempts were made to bring the young people to a proper understanding
of their case, they aroused nothing more than scornful laughter on the
part of the belligerents, as the venerable Baron Dangloss was wont to
call them, not without pride in his sharp old voice.
"It all comes from mixing the blood," said the Prime Minister gloomily.
"Or improving it," said the Baron, and was frowned upon.
And no one saw the portentous shadow cast by the slim daughter of
William W. Blithers, for the simple reason that neither Graustark nor
Dawsbergen knew that it existed. They lived in serene ignorance of the
fact that God, while he was about it, put Maud Applegate Blithers into
the world on precisely the same day that the Crown Princess of
Dawsbergen first saw the light of day.
On the twenty-second anniversary of his birth, Prince Robin fared forth
in quest of love and romance, not without hope of adventure, for he was
a valorous chap with the heritage of warriors in his veins. Said he to
himself in dreamy contemplation of the long journey ahead of him: "I
will traverse the great highways that my mother trod and I will look
for the Golden Girl sitting by the wayside. She must be there, and
though it is a wide world, I am young and my eyes are sharp. I will
find her sitting at the roadside eager for me to come, not housed in a
gloomy; castle surrounded by the spooks of a hundred ancestors. They
who live in castles wed to hate and they who wed at the roadside live
to love. Fortune attend me! If love lies at the roadside waiting, do
not let me pass it by. All the princesses are not inside the castles.
Some sit outside the gates and laugh with glee, for love is their
companion. So away I go, la, la! looking for the princess with the
happy heart and the smiling lips! It is a wide world but my eyes are
sharp. I shall find my princess."
But, alas, for his fine young dream, he found no Golden Girl at the
roadside nor anything that suggested romance. There were happy hearts
and smiling lips--and all for him, it would appear--but he passed them
by, for his eyes were _sharp_ and his wits awake. And so, at last, he
came to Gotham, his heart as free as the air he breathed, confessing
that his quest had been in vain. History failed to repeat itself. His
mother's romance would stand alone and shine without a flicker to the
end of time. There could be no counterpart.
"Well, I had the fun of looking," he philosophised (to himself, for no
man knew of his secret project) and grinned with a sort of amused
tolerance for the sentimental side of his nature. "I'm a silly ass to
have even dreamed of finding her as I passed along, and if I had found
her what the deuce could I have done about it anyway? This isn't the
day for mediaeval lady-snatching. I dare say I'm just as well off for
not having found her. I still have the zest for hunting farther, and
there's a lot in that." Then aloud: "Hobbs, are we on time?"
"We are, sir," said Hobbs, without even glancing at his watch. The
train was passing 125th Street. "To the minute, sir. We will be in in
ten minutes, if nothing happens. Mr. King will be at the station to
meet you, sir. Any orders, sir?"
"Yes, pinch me, Hobbs."
"Pinch your Highness?" in amazement. "My word, sir, wot--"
"I just want to be sure that the dream is over, Hobbs. Never mind. You
needn't pinch me. I'm awake," and to prove it he stretched his fine
young body in the ecstasy of realisation.
That night he slept soundly in the Catskills.