THE ADVENTURE OF PRINCESS SYLVIA
BOOKS BY
C. N. AND A. M. WILLIAMSON
THE LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR
THE PRINCESS PASSES
MY FRIEND THE CHAUFFEUR
LADY BETTY ACROSS THE WATER
ROSEMARY IN SEARCH OF A FATHER
THE CAR OF DESTINY
THE CHAPERON
THE PRINCESS VIRGINIA
SET IN SILVER
ETC., ETC.
THE ADVENTURE OF PRINCESS SYLVIA
By
MRS. C. N. WILLIAMSON
New York
Doubleday, Page & Company
1909
AUTHORIZED EDITION
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
TO
MY AMERICAN PRINCESS
MRS. CLARENCE POSTLEY
CONTENTS
I. THE ADVENTURE BEGINS 3
II. THE INADVERTENCE OF FRAU JOHANN 24
III. THE YOUNG MAN WITH THE BARE KNEES 34
IV. MAX VERSUS MAXIMILIAN 66
V. NOT DOWN IN THE PROGRAMME 81
VI. THE HONOURS OF THE DAY 98
VII. TEN MINUTES GRACE 107
VIII. THE BEAR IN His DEN 131
IX. A WHITE NIGHT 152
X. "THE EMPEROR WILL UNDERSTAND" 186
XI. THE LAST OF THE MAGIC CITRONS 202
XII. BETWEEN MAN AND MAN 221
XIII. NEWS BY TELEPHONE 248
XIV. THE CHANCELLOR'S LUCK 256
XV. THE OLDNESS OF THE CHANCELLOR 284
XVI. THE OPENING OF A DOOR 297
XVII. THE THIRD COURSE 302
THE ADVENTURE OF PRINCESS SYLVIA
The Adventure of Princess Sylvia
CHAPTER I
THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
"Who is Sylvia? What is she,
That all our swains commend her?"
"I'm dashed if I do!" said the Princess.
"My dear--if anyone should hear you!" groaned the Grand Duchess.
"He is a most estimable young man, I am sure, and a very suitable
match."
"Call him a match, if you like; he's certainly a stick. Anyway,
he's not a match for me. There's only one existing." And the
Princess's eyes were lifted to the heavens, as if the being at
whom she hinted were placed high as the sun that shone above her.
The Grand Duchess was not herself "Hereditary." Her dear lord and
master had been that, which was perhaps the reason why such
stateliness as she had was almost all acquired. She dropped it
sometimes, when alone with her unmarried, unmanageable young daughter;
and to-day (in the sweet, old-fashioned garden of the house at
Richmond, lent by Queen Victoria) was one of these occasions. The
Grand Duchess pouted, and looked like a plump, sulky, elderly child,
as she inquired what the Princess Sylvia expected in the way of a
matrimonial prize.
"What do I expect?" echoed the young lady. "I expect an emperor.
In fact, _the_ Emperor." For a few moments the Grand Duchess of
Eltzburg-Neuwald remained dumb. Then she inadequately murmured,
"Dear me!" Yet her demeanour did not suggest a stricken mind. She
merely looked surprised, with an added expression that might signify
a slow mental readjustment.
"It is really not entirely impossible," she commented at last. "But--
the Emperor of Rhaetia is a very great man."
"He is the only man," returned the Princess calmly. "He always has
been. He is, and ever will be. He is the Napoleon of his generation,
without Napoleon's meanness or brutality. Although he's not an
Englishman, even you admit his virtues."
"Don't speak as if I were bristling with English prejudices," scolded
the Grand Duchess. "I ceased to be English when I married your father.
But why did you never mention this--er--desire of yours before?"
"I am far too maidenly," responded Sylvia, "to give my feeling any
such bold name. _I_ have not ceased to be English, if my mother has.
Indeed, I give my feeling no name at all. I haven't spoken of it if
there be an 'it' to speak of--before, simply because really I'm not
crying for a particular toy to play with. I'm only saying, if I can't
have _that_, I won't have another toy a poor, unworthy toy."
"You call Prince Henri d'Ortens a 'poor, unworthy toy?'"
"Compared with the Emperor of Rhaetia and compared with me. Look at
me, mother. Would I not make an empress?"
Sylvia laughed, sprang up from the seat that girdled the great trunk
of the Lebanon cedar, and stood with her bright head erect, her lips
still smiling.
The August sun streamed down upon the girl and bathed her in its
glory. Her hair was a network of spun gold, under its radiance; her
dark eyes jewels; her skin roses and snow; her simple white muslin
gown a dazzling robe fit for a fairy, rather than an earthly princess.
Yes, she would make an empress, or she would make a goddess. So a man
must have thought, even if he had not dared to love her. And so
thought her mother.
"The dear Queen has never really favoured poor Henri," murmured the
Grand Duchess, a light of introspection in her eyes. Already the
French Prince, with pretensions to the incomparable hand of Sylvia,
was "_poor_ Henri." "I mean, she has never favoured him as a match for
you, though she intimated to me yesterday that she saw no
insurmountable objections--if you cared for each other--"
"But we don't. At least I don't. Which is all that signifies."
"Pray do not be so flippant. As for Maximilian of Rhaetia, it is
perhaps natural that he has never been thought of in connection with
you, my dear. He is, no doubt, the most sought after _parti_ in--well,
yes, I may say in the world. Not a girl with Royal blood in her veins
but would go on her knees to him--"
"I would not," cried Sylvia. "I might worship him, but he should go on
his knees to _me_."
"I doubt if those knees will ever bend to man or woman," said the
Grand Duchess. "That, however, is a mere matter of speech. I am
serious now, and I wish you to be. Though you are a very beautiful
girl, my child--there is no disguising that fact from you, as it has
been dinned into your ears since you were old enough to understand--
and there is no better blood in Europe than runs in your veins; still,
our circumstances are--er--unfortunately such that--that we are, for
the present, slightly handicapped."
"We're beggars," said Sylvia. "But Cophetua married a beggar maid;"
and she smiled.
"Pray don't liken yourself to any such persons, my dear," objected
the Grand Duchess, who, on principle, had so often objected to
Sylvia's unconventionalities that the attitude of objection had become
chronic. "Your father is dead. The Grand Duchy of Eltzburg-Neuwald has
been absorbed by Prussia--for a price, it is true; but it is your
brother who has had most of the benefit of that price. And though my
dear husband was second cousin to the Emperor of Germany, who loved
him during his life as an elder brother, and though you are strictly
_within_ the pale from which Maximilian is entitled to select a wife,
one must admit that there are other girls who, from a worldly point of
view, might be considered more suitable."
"I wasn't thinking of the worldly point of view," said the
incorrigible one, with unusual softness. She could be gentle and
tender enough in certain moods; but she was used to taking the lead
with her mother.
"People--men or women--with Royal blood in their veins _must_ think of
that point of view," returned the Grand Duchess. She was not Royal,
save by marriage, though her long since dead father, the English Duke
of Northminster, claimed ancestry from kings and had married a near
relation of Queen Victoria. But he had been one of the richest men in
the world at the time of his daughter's marriage; and the exchequer of
Eltzburg-Neuwald had sadly needed replenishing. It, or rather its
representative, had finally swallowed a large part of the Duke of
Northminster's private fortune, the enormous remainder having vanished
in a great financial panic; so that just before the Hereditary Grand
Duke of Eltzburg-Neuwald had been gathered to his fathers, he had been
induced to make terms with his cousin, the then reigning German
Emperor, for the Grand Duchy. Thus deprived of his inheritance, the
only son, Friedrich, had joyfully accepted an offer of adoption as
Crown Prince from the childless old King of Abruzzia.
The widowed Grand Duchess, not loving the thought of a German
residence, when bereft of her ancient importance; hating her son's
adopted land of Abruzzia, which she considered "half savage" (yet
liking still less the alternative of a wandering life on the
Continent, or a home with the uncle who had inherited her father's
title and estates), had gratefully caught at Queen Victoria's
kindness. Ever since Sylvia Victoria Alexandra Mary Valerie
Hildegarde, her daughter, had been a proud little Princess of ten
years old, the two had lived in the ancient, rose-and-ivy-embowered
house placed at their disposal by Her Gracious Majesty. Sylvia had
been educated in England; all her thoughts and ideas were those of an
English girl, and a somewhat "advanced" English girl. Her very beauty
was more English than German--the delicately chiselled nose, the
short, haughty upper lip, the frank imperiousness of the hazel eyes
under the black sweep of lashes, and dark, soft curve of brow. She was
twenty-one now, and vastly tired of being Royal, for already her high
place in the world had brought her more of inconvenience than
privilege.
"I don't wish the Emperor of Rhaetia to want me because I am suitable,
but because I am irresistible," she asseverated. "I want love--love--
or I won't marry at all."
"But that is nonsense," gravely pronounced the elder, steeped for long
years in all the traditions and conventionalities of Royalty. "Women
in our position must be satisfied with the hope that love may come
after marriage; or, if not, we must rest content in doing our duty in
that state of life to which heaven has been pleased to call us!"
"Bother duty!" remarked Sylvia, with an impatient disregard for those
elegancies of speech to which she had been so carefully brought up.
"Thank goodness, nowadays not all the king's horses and all the king's
men can make even a princess marry any one against her will. I hate
the everlasting cant about duty in marriage. When people love each
other they are kind and good and sweet and virtuous, because it is a
pleasure, not because it's duty; and that's the only sort of loyalty
worth having between man and woman, according to my ideas. I would not
take anything less from a man; and I should despise him if he were
ready to accept less from me."
"You are almost impious, Sylvia; you ought to have been born a
_bourgeoise_," said her mother. But at this moment, when the clash of
tongues, as opinion struck upon opinion, was imminent, there occurred
a happy diversion in the arrival of a servant with letters.
Sylvia, who was a neglectful correspondent, had nothing; but two or
three bulky envelopes had come for the Grand Duchess, and eagerly she
broke the seal of one which bore the hand writing of her son
Friedrich, now Crown Prince of Abruzzia.
"Open the others for me, dear, while I see what Fritz has to say," she
requested. And Sylvia leisurely obeyed.
There was a note from an old friend of whom she was fond; and she had
just begun to be interested in the first paragraph, when an
ejaculation from her mother caused a quick lifting of her lashes.
The Grand Duchess was staring at the scrawled pages, held close to her
near-sighted eyes, while a bright flush troubled the surface of her
usually serene countenance.
"What is the matter?" exclaimed Sylvia. "Anything wrong with Fritz?"
"No--no--nothing in the least wrong," murmured the Grand Duchess
absent-mindedly. "Far from it, indeed; but really--this is the most
_extraordinary_ coincidence. It seems almost too strange that it
should come at such a moment. Yet I suppose I am not dreaming?" She
peered questioningly at Sylvia; for it must be confessed that the
Grand Duchess did sometimes sleep, perchance even dream, in the warm
seclusion of the old riverside garden.
"Life is a dream!" hummed the Princess. "But you _look_ awake, dear;
and I've never known you to talk whole sentences in your sleep. What
has Fritz been doing?"
"It is not Fritz; it's your emperor," returned her mother.
It was now Sylvia's turn to flush. This, then, was the "coincidence"!
She wished, yet vaguely dreaded, to ask for the purport of the news.
Of course it was ridiculous to blush, because it was ridiculous to
care. But the fact remained that she did blush and that she did care.
Princess Sylvia had never seen Maximilian of Rhaetia; nevertheless, as
she had half laughingly, half earnestly declared, he had been for her
the one real man in a world of shadow men, since childish days. In the
little room grandiloquently called her "study" (a room sacred to
herself alone, whose secrets even her mother did not share) were
preserved many souvenirs of the Emperor, which had been accumulating
for years. There were paragraphs cut from newspapers, setting forth
his great prowess as a soldier, hunter, and mountaineer, with dramatic
anecdotes of his haughty courage when in danger. There were portraits
of Maximilian, beginning from an early age, up to the present, when he
was shown as a tall, stern-eyed, passionate-lipped, aggressive-chinned
young man of thirty. There were copies of pictures he had painted,
plays he had written, music he had composed, fierce and warlike
speeches he had delivered; accounts of improvements in guns and gun
powder invented by him; with numerous other records of his
accomplishments and achievements; for the Emperor of Rhaetia was, in
his own mind, and that of his people, the one shining exception to the
rule that a "Jack of all trades can be master of none." He was master
of all, or at least all he had ever attempted--their name being
legion--and Sylvia loved him because it was so. The locked drawers of
her desk were hallowed by the records of her hero which they hid.
Now, the thought that flashed into her mind was that Fritz's letter
might perhaps contain a gossiping account of the Emperor's engagement
to one of those other Royal girls, who, as the Grand Duchess had
justly observed, were more suitable to match him than poor, pretty
little Princess Sylvia of Eltzburg-Neuwald. Maximilian was thirty
years old (Sylvia knew his age to the day, almost to the hour);
therefore it was remarkable that he had not long ago listened to the
advice of his Chancellor and chosen a wife worthy to be Empress of
Rhaetia and the mother of an heir.
"Guess what Fritz writes of him," said the Grand Duchess, controlling
visible emotion.
Sylvia also controlled hers, crushing it down with a relentless hand,
and telling herself that what she felt was at its worst but wounded
vanity.
"He's going to be married?" she quietly suggested.
"That depends." Her mother laughed nervously, with a stifled and
mysterious delight. "Guess again--but no, I won't tease you. After
this letter, coming as it has in the midst of our conversation, I
shall be a firm believer in _telepathy_. It is too wonderful. He may
be going to be married; he may not. For, my dear, _dear_ child, he
wants--to marry _you_."
Sylvia sprang to her feet. Perhaps such exhibition of feeling on the
part of a Royal maiden decorously sued (by proxy) for her hand, was
hardly correct. But Sylvia thought of no such considerations. She did
not even know that she had left her chair. For a moment a delicate
blue haze floated between her eyes and the Grand Duchess's pleased,
plump face.
"He--wants--to--marry--me?" she echoed dazedly.
"Yes, you, my darling. Providence must have drawn your inclination
toward him. It is really a romance. Some day, no doubt, it will be
told to the world in history."
Sylvia did not hear. She stood quite still, her hands clasped before
her, the letter she had been reading on the grass at her feet.
"Did he--the Emperor--tell this to Fritz and ask him to write to you?"
she questioned.
"Not--not exactly that, dear," admitted the Grand Duchess, her face
changing; for Sylvia was so exacting and held such peculiar ideas,
that it was sometimes rather difficult to know how she would receive
the most ordinary announcements.
The rapt expression faded from Sylvia's features, like the passing of
dawn.
"Not--exactly that?" she repeated. "Then what--how?"
"Perhaps--though it is not strictly the correct thing--you had better
read Fritz's letter?"
Sylvia put her hands behind her back with a childlike gesture. "I--
somehow I don't want to. Please tell me," she said simply.
"Well, then, you know what an admiration Fritz has felt for Count von
Markstein, the Rhaetian Chancellor, ever since the visit the
Chancellor paid to Abruzzia? They have kept up a correspondence from
time to time, and the sort of friendship which often exists between an
old man with a great career behind him and a young man with his still
to come. Now it seems (in the _quite_ informal manner by which such
affairs are generally begun) that Count von Markstein has written
confidentially to Fritz, as our only near male relative, to ask how we
would regard an alliance between you and Maximilian, or if we have
already disposed of your hand. The Emperor is inclined to listen to
advice at last; and you, as a Protestant Princess--"
"Yes, a Protestant Princess more than ever, for I protest against
being approached upon such terms!" Sylvia exclaimed.
The countenance of the Grand Duchess became overcast. There were
certain drawbacks in having a spoiled beauty for a daughter. "Sylvia,"
she ejaculated, "surely you don't mean--surely you are not going to
throw over such a marvellous chance as this--a chance that a queen's
daughter might gladly accept--because of a sentimental schoolgirl
scruple?"
"Why do you suppose the Emperor--or his Chancellor--thinks of any one
so insignificant for such a high place, when there are others far more
eligible?" asked Sylvia, with reflective dryness, answering one
question by another.
"Fritz goes on to mention various good reasons in his letter, if you
would only let me tell you, and would take them sensibly," said the
much-enduring elder woman.
"I should like to hear them, at all events," Sylvia judicially
replied.
"Well, as I was beginning to explain, the Empress of Rhaetia must be a
Protestant. At present, as Fritz says, there are not many eligible
young Protestant Princesses who would be acceptable to the Rhaetian
people and add to the Emperor's popularity. Then, as you know,
Maximilian is a man who dominates those around him; he wishes to marry
a young girl who, though of Royal birth, could not by any possibility
have been heiress to a throne of her own. I fancy he would choose to
mould his wife and to take a girl without too many important or
importunate relatives; for he is not one who would dream of adding to
his own greatness by that of a wife. Besides, Maximilian is partial
to England, and the fact that you have had an English education would
be favourably rather than unfavourably regarded both by him and Count
von Markstein--at least, so Fritz believes. And though I have never
allowed you, since you were a child, to have your photograph taken,
and you have lived in such seclusion that you have been little seen,
still the rumour has somehow reached Maximilian's ears that you
are--not ugly. He has been heard more than once to remark that
whatever the future Empress of Rhaetia might be, she would not be
a plain woman; therefore, altogether--"
"Therefore, altogether, my references appear to be satisfactory, and
at a pinch I might do for the place," broke in Sylvia, with hot
impatience. "Oh, mother, I will marry Maximilian, or I will marry no
man; but I won't be married to him in Count von Markstein's hateful
cut-and-dried way."
"It's the Emperor's way, as well as Markstein's."
"Then for once in his big, grand, obstinate life, he shall learn that
there are other wills than his in the world; and that there is one
woman who won't play Griselda even for the sake of being his Empress."
The Grand Duchess looked worried (as well she might, had she been
blessed or banned with a prophetic soul to whisper of the future).
"You look so odd when you say that," she observed; "as if you had--
some kind of plan."
"And so I have," confessed Sylvia. "It came to me suddenly--as all
inspirations come. It's in embryo yet; but I shall fill in the
details." She came close to her mother, and knelt down on the grass at
her feet, looking up with a light in her eyes that no man, and few
women, could have resisted.
There was nobody save the Grand Duchess and the late roses to see how
a young princess threw her mantle of dignity to the winds; for the two
ladies did not keep Royal state and a Royal retinue in the quaint old
house at Richmond; and the arbour hid their confidence from intrusive
eyes or ears.
"You do love me, don't you, dear?" cooed Sylvia, softly as a dove.
"You know I do, my daughter, though I don't pretend to understand
you."
"People grow dull when we understand them too well. It's like solving
a puzzle; there's no more fun in it when it's finished. But you _do_
wish me to be happy?"
"More than anything else--except, of course, Fritz--"
"Fritz is a man and can take care of himself. _I_ must only do the
best I can. And there's something I want _so_ much, and it would give
me a heaven on earth, all my own, if I could win it. Maximilian's
love, quite for myself, as a _girl_, not a proper, 'Protestant
Princess'. I think I see how I _can_ win it, too, if you will only
help me."
"I'll do my best," cried the Grand Duchess, carried out of herself
into unwonted impulsiveness by kisses soft and sweet as falling
rose-leaves. "Only I don't see what I _can_ do."
"But _I_ see; and you must promise to see with my eyes."
"They are very bright ones!" laughed her mother.
Princess Sylvia put both arms round the plump waist, and gave
the Grand Duchess a hug. Then she laughed--an odd, musical,
half-frightened laugh. "Mother, something wonderful is going to
happen to you and me," she exclaimed. "We're going to have an
adventure."