Trannel attached himself as well as he could to Breckon and Ellen,
and Breckon had an opportunity not fully offered him before to note
a likeness between himself and a fellow-man whom he was aware of not
liking, though he tried to love him, as he felt it right to love all
men. He thought he had not been quite sympathetic enough with Mrs.
Kenton in her having to stay behind, and he tried to make it up to Mr.
Trannel in his having to come. He invented civilities to show him, and
ceded his place next Ellen as if Trannel had a right to it. Trannel
ignored him in keeping it, unless it was recognizing Breckon to say,
“Oh, I hope I’m not in your way, old fellow?” and then making jokes to
Ellen. Breckon could not say the jokes were bad, though the taste
of them seemed to him so. The man had a fleeting wit, which scorched
whatever he turned it upon, and yet it was wit. “Why don’t you try him
in American?” he asked at the failure of Breckon and the tram conductor
to understand each other in Dutch. He tried the conductor himself in
American, and he was so deplorably funny that it was hard for Breckon to
help being ‘particeps criminus’, at least in a laugh.
He asked himself if that were really the kind of man he was, and he grew
silent and melancholy in the fear that it was a good deal the sort of
man. To this morbid fancy Trannel seemed himself in a sort of excess, or
what he would be if he were logically ultimated. He remembered all the
triviality of his behavior with Ellen at first, and rather sickened at
the thought of some of his early pleasantries. She was talking gayly
now with Trannel, and Breckon wondered whether she was falling under the
charm that he felt in him, in spite of himself.
If she was, her father was not. The judge sat on the other side of the
car, and unmistakably glowered at the fellow’s attempts to make himself
amusing to Ellen. Trannel himself was not insensible to the judge’s
mood. Now and then he said something to intensify it. He patronized the
judge and he made fun of the tourist character in which Boyne had got
himself up, with a field-glass slung by a strap under one arm and a
red Baedeker in his hand. He sputtered with malign laughter at a rather
gorgeous necktie which Boyne had put on for the day, and said it was not
a very good match for the Baedeker.
Boyne retorted rudely, and that amused Trannel still more. He became
personal to Breckon, and noted the unclerical cut of his clothes. He
said he ought to have put on his uniform for an expedition like that,
in case they got into any sort of trouble. To Ellen alone he was
inoffensive, unless he overdid his polite attentions to her in carrying
her parasol for her, and helping her out of the tram, when they arrived,
shouldering every one else away, and making haste to separate her from
the others and then to walk on with her a little in advance.
Suddenly he dropped her, and fell back to Boyne and his father, while
Breckon hastened forward to her side. Trannel put his arm across Boyne’s
shoulders and asked him if he were mad, and then laughed at him. “You’re
all right, Boyne, but you oughtn’t to be so approachable. You ought to
put on more dignity, and repel familiarity!”
Boyne could only twitch away in silence that he made as haughty as he
could, but not so haughty that Trannel did not find it laughable, and he
laughed in a teasing way that made Breckon more and more serious. He
was aware of becoming even solemn with the question of his likeness to
Trannel. He was of Trannel’s quality, and their difference was a matter
of quantity, and there was not enough difference. In his sense of their
likeness Breckon vowed himself to a gravity of behavior evermore
which he should not probably be able to observe, but the sample he now
displayed did not escape the keen vigilance of Trannel.
“With the exception of Miss Kenton,” he addressed himself to the party,
“you’re all so easy and careless that if you don’t look out you’ll lose
me. Miss Kenton, I wish you would keep an eye on me. I don’t want to get
lost.”
Ellen laughed--she could not help it--and her laughing made it less
possible than before for Breckon to unbend and meet Trannel on his own
ground, to give him joke for joke, to exchange banter with him. He might
never have been willing to do that, but now he shrank from it, in his
realization of their likeness, with an abhorrence that rendered him
rigid.
The judge was walking ahead with Boyne, and his back expressed such
severe disapproval that, between her fear that Trannel would say
something to bring her father’s condemnation on him and her sense of
their inhospitable attitude towards one who was their guest, in a sort,
she said, with her gentle gayety, “Then you must keep near me, Mr.
Trannel. I’ll see that nothing happens.”
“That’s very sweet of you,” said Trannel, soberly. Whether he had now
vented his malicious humor and was ready to make himself agreeable, or
was somewhat quelled by the unfriendly ambient he had created, or was
wrought upon by her friendliness, he became everything that could be
wished in a companion for a day’s pleasure. He took the lead at the
station, and got them a compartment in the car to themselves for the
little run to Leyden, and on the way he talked very well. He politely
borrowed Boyne’s Baedeker, and decided for the party what they had
best see, and showed an acceptable intelligence, as well as a large
experience in the claims of Leyden upon the visitor’s interest. He had
been there often before, it seemed, and in the event it appeared that he
had chosen the days sightseeing wisely.
He no longer addressed himself respectfully to Ellen alone, but he
re-established himself in Boyne’s confidence with especial pains, and he
conciliated Breckon by a recognition of his priority with Ellen with a
delicacy refined enough for even the susceptibility of a lover alarmed
for his rights. If he could not overcome the reluctance of the judge, he
brought him to the civil response which any one who tried for Kenton’s
liking achieved, even if he did not merit it, and there remained no more
reserve in Kenton’s manner than there had been with the young man from
the first. He had never been a persona grata to the judge, and if he did
not become so now, he at least ceased to be actively displeasing.
That was the year before the young Queen came to her own, and in the
last days of her minority she was visiting all the cities of her future
dominion with the queen-mother. When Kenton’s party left the station
they found Leyden as gay for her reception as flags and banners could
make the gray old town, and Trannel relapsed for a moment so far as to
suggest that the decorations were in honor of Boyne’s presence, but he
did not abuse the laugh that this made to Boyne’s further shame.
There was no carriage at the station which would hold the party of five,
and they had to take two vehicles. Trannel said it was lucky they wanted
two, since there were no more, and he put himself in authority to assort
the party. The judge, he decided, must go with Ellen and Breckon, and he
hoped Boyne would let him go in his carriage, if he would sit on the box
with the driver. The judge afterwards owned that he had weakly indulged
his dislike of the fellow, in letting him take Boyne, and not insisting
on going himself with Tramiel, but this was when it was long too
late. Ellen had her misgivings, but, except for that gibe about the
decorations, Trannel had been behaving so well that she hoped she might
trust Boyne with him. She made a kind of appeal for her brother, bidding
him and Trannel take good care of each other, and Trannel promised so
earnestly to look after Boyne that she ought to have been alarmed for
him. He took the lead, rising at times to wave a reassuring hand to her
over the back of his carriage, and, in fact, nothing evil could very
well happen from him, with the others following so close upon him. They
met from time to time in the churches they visited, and when they lost
sight of one another, through a difference of opinion in the drivers as
to the best route, they came together at the place Trannel had appointed
for their next reunion.
He showed himself a guide so admirably qualified that he found a way
for them to objects of interest that had at first denied themselves in
anticipation of the visit from the queens; when they all sat down at
lunch in the restaurant which he found for them, he could justifiably
boast that he would get them into the Town Hall, which they had been
told was barred for the day against anything but sovereign curiosity.
He was now on the best term with Boyne, who seemed to have lost all
diffidence of him, and treated him with an easy familiarity that showed
itself in his slapping him on the shoulder and making dints in his hat.
Trannel seemed to enjoy these caresses, and, when they parted again for
the afternoon’s sight-seeing, Ellen had no longer a qualm in letting
Boyne drive off with him.
He had, in fact, known how to make himself very acceptable to Boyne. He
knew all the originals of his heroical romances, and was able to give
the real names and the geographical position of those princesses who
had been in love with American adventurers. Under promise of secrecy he
disclosed the real names of the adventurers themselves, now obscured in
the titles given them to render them worthy their union with sovereigns.
He resumed his fascinating confidences when they drove off after
luncheon, and he resumed them after each separation from the rest of the
party. Boyne listened with a flushed face and starting eyes, and when at
last Trannel offered, upon a pledge of the most sacred nature from him
never to reveal a word of what he said, he began to relate an adventure
of which he was himself the hero. It was a bold travesty of one of the
latest romances that Boyne had read, involving the experience of an
American very little older than Boyne himself, to whom a wilful young
crown-princess, in a little state which Trannel would not name even to
Boyne, had made advances such as he could not refuse to meet without
cruelty. He was himself deeply in love with her, but he felt bound in
honor not to encourage her infatuation as long as he could help, for he
had been received by her whole family with such kindness and confidence
that he had to consider them.
“Oh, pshaw!” Boyne broke in upon him, doubting, and yet wishing not to
doubt, “that’s the same as the story of ‘Hector Folleyne’.”
“Yes,” said Trannel, quietly. “I thought you would recognize it.”
“Well, but,” Boyne went on, “Hector married the princess!”
“In the book, yes. The fellow I gave the story to said it would never
do not to have him marry her, and it would help to disguise the fact.
That’s what he said, after he had given the whole thing away.”
“And do you mean to say it was you? Oh, you can’t stuff me! How did you
get out of marrying her, I should like to know, when the chancellor came
to you and said that the whole family wanted you to, for fear it would
kill her if--”
“Well, there was a scene, I can’t deny that. We had a regular family
conclave--father, mother, Aunt Hitty, and all the folks--and we kept it
up pretty much all night. The princess wasn’t there, of course, and I
could convince them that I was right. If she had been, I don’t believe
I could have held out. But they had to listen to reason, and I got away
between two days.”
“But why didn’t you marry her?”
“Well, for one thing, as I told you, I thought I ought to consider
her family. Then there was a good fellow, the crown-prince of
Saxe-Wolfenhutten, who was dead in love with her, and was engaged to her
before I turned up. I had been at school with him, and I felt awfully
sorry for him; and I thought I ought to sacrifice myself a little to
him. But I suppose the thing that influenced me most was finding out
that if I married the princess I should have to give up my American
citizenship and become her subject.”
“Well?” Boyne panted.
“Well, would you have done it?”
“Couldn’t you have got along without doing that?”
“That was the only thing I couldn’t get around, somehow. So I left.”
“And the princess, did she--die?”
“It takes a good deal more than that to kill a fifteen-year-old
princess,” said Trannel, and he gave a harsh laugh. “She married
Saxe-Wolfenhutten.” Boyne was silent. “Now, I don’t want you to speak
of this till after I leave Scheveningen--especially to Miss Lottie. You
know how girls are, and I think Miss Lottie is waiting to get a bind
on me, anyway. If she heard how I was cut out of my chance with that
princess she’d never let me believe I gave her up of my own free will?”
“NO, no; I won’t tell her.”
Boyne remained in a silent rapture, and he did not notice they were no
longer following the rest of their party in the other carriage. This had
turned down a corner, at which Mr. Breckon, sitting on the front seat,
had risen and beckoned their driver to follow, but their driver, who
appeared afterwards to have not too much a head of his own, or no head
at all, had continued straight on, in the rear of a tram-car, which was
slowly finding its way through the momently thickening crowd. Boyne was
first aware that it was a humorous crowd when, at a turn of the street,
their equipage was greeted with ironical cheers by a group of gay young
Dutchmen on the sidewalk. Then he saw that the sidewalks were packed
with people, who spread into the street almost to the tram, and that the
house fronts were dotted with smiling Dutch faces, the faces of pretty
Dutch girls, who seemed to share the amusement of the young fellows
below.
Trannel lay back in the carriage. “This is something like,” he said.
“Boyne, they’re on to the distinguished young Ohioan--the only Ohioan
out of office in Europe.”
“Yes,” said Boyne, trying to enjoy it. “I wonder what they are holloing
at.”
Trannel laughed. “They’re holloing at your Baedeker, my dear boy. They
never saw one before,” and Boyne was aware that he was holding his
red-backed guide conspicuously in view on his lap. “They know you’re a
foreigner by it.”
“Don’t you think we ought to turn down somewhere? I don’t see poppa
anywhere.” He rose and looked anxiously back over the top of their
carriage. The crowd, closing in behind it, hailed his troubled face with
cries that were taken up by the throng on the sidewalks. Boyne turned
about to find that the tram-car which they had been following had
disappeared round a corner, but their driver was still keeping on. At
a wilder burst of applause Trannel took off his hat and bowed to the
crowd, right and left.
“Bow, bow!” he said to Boyne. “They’ll be calling for a speech the next
thing. Bow, I tell you!”
“Tell him to turn round!” cried the boy.
“I can’t speak Dutch,” said Trannel, and Boyne leaned forward and poked
the driver in the back.
“Go back!” he commanded.
The driver shook his head and pointed forward with his whip. “He’s all
right,” said Trannel. “He can’t turn now. We’ve got to take the next
corner.” The street in front was empty, and the people were crowding
back on the sidewalks. Loud, vague noises made themselves heard round
the corner to which the driver had pointed. “By Jove!” Trannel said, “I
believe they’re coming round that way.”
“Who are coming?” Boyne palpitated.
“The queens.”
“The queens?” Boyne gasped; it seemed to him that he shrieked the words.
“Yes. And there’s a tobacconist’s now,” said Trannel, as if that were
what he had been looking for all along. “I want some cigarettes.”
He leaped lightly from the carriage, and pushed his way out of sight on
the sidewalk. Boyne remained alone in the vehicle, staring wildly round;
the driver kept slowly and stupidly on, Boyne did not know how much
farther. He could not speak; he felt as if he could not stir. But the
moment came when he could not be still. He gave a galvanic jump to the
ground, and the friendly crowd on the sidewalk welcomed him to its ranks
and closed about him. The driver had taken the lefthand corner, just
before a plain carriage with the Queen and the queen-mother came in
sight round the right. The young Queen was bowing to the people, gently,
and with a sort of mechanical regularity. Now and then a brighter
smile than that she conventionally wore lighted up her face. The simple
progress was absolutely without state, except for the aide-de-camp on
horseback who rode beside the carriage, a little to the front.
Boyne stood motionless on the curb, where a friendly tall Dutchman had
placed him in front that he might see the Queen.
“Hello!” said the voice of Trannel, and elbowing his way to Boyne’s
side, he laughed and coughed through the smoke of his cigarette. “I was
afraid you had lost me. Where’s your carriage?”
Boyne did not notice his mockeries. He was entranced in that beatific
vision; his boy-heart went out in worship to the pretty young creature
with a reverence that could not be uttered. The tears came into his
eyes.
“There, there! She’s bowing to you, Boyne, she’s smiling right at you.
By Jove! She’s beckoning to you!”
“You be still!” Boyne retorted, finding his tongue. “She isn’t doing any
such a thing.”
“She is, I swear she is! She’s doing it again! She’s stopping the
carriage. Oh, go out and see what she wants! Don’t you know that a
queen’s wish is a command? You’ve got to go!”
Boyne never could tell just how it happened. The carriage did seem to be
stopping, and the Queen seemed to be looking at him. He thought he
must, and he started into the street towards her, and the carriage came
abreast of him. He had almost reached the carriage when the aide turned
and spurred his horse before him. Four strong hands that were like iron
clamps were laid one on each of Boyne’s elbows and shoulders, and he was
haled away, as if by superhuman force. “Mr. Trannel!” he called out in
his agony, but the wretch had disappeared, and Boyne was left with his
captors, to whom he could have said nothing if he could have thought of
anything to say.
The detectives pulled him through the crowd and hurried him swiftly down
the side street. A little curiosity straggled after him in the shape
of small Dutch boys, too short to look over the shoulders of men at the
queens, and too weak to make their way through them to the front; but
for them, Boyne seemed alone in the world with the relentless officers,
who were dragging him forward and hurting him so with the grip of their
iron hands. He lifted up his face to entreat them not to hold him so
tight, and suddenly it was as if he beheld an angel standing in his
path. It was Breckon who was there, staring at him aghast.
“Why, Boyne!” he cried.
“Oh, Mr. Breckon!” Boyne wailed back. “Is it you? Oh, do tell them I
didn’t mean to do anything! I thought she beckoned to me.”
“Who? Who beckoned to you?”
“The Queen!” Boyne sobbed, while the detectives pulled him relentlessly
on.
Breckon addressed them suavely in their owe tongue which had never come
in more deferential politeness from human lips. He ventured the belief
that there was a mistake; he assured them that he knew their prisoner,
and that he was the son of a most respectable American family, whom they
could find at the Kurhaus in Scheveningen. He added some irrelevancies,
and got for all answer that they had made Boyne’s arrest for sufficient
reasons, and were taking him to prison. If his friends wished to
intervene in his behalf they could do so before the magistrate, but for
the present they must admonish Mr. Breckon not to put himself in the way
of the law.
“Don’t go, Mr. Breckon!” Boyne implored him, as his captors made him
quicken his pace after slowing a little for their colloquy with Breckon.
“Oh, where is poppa? He could get me away. Oh, where is poppa?”
“Don’t! Don’t call out, Boyne,” Breckon entreated. “Your father is right
here at the end of the street. He’s in the carriage there with Miss
Kenton. I was coming to look for you. Don’t cry out so!”
“No, no, I won’t, Mr. Breckon. I’ll be perfectly quiet now. Only do get
poppa quick! He can tell them in a minute that it’s all right!”
He made a prodigious effort to control himself, while Breckon ran
a little ahead, with some wild notion of preparing Ellen. As he
disappeared at the corner, Boyne choked a sob into a muffed bellow, and
was able to meet the astonished eyes of his father and sister in this
degree of triumph.
They had not in the least understood Breckon’s explanation, and, in
fact, it had not been very lucid. At sight of her brother strenuously
upheld between the detectives, and dragged along the sidewalk, Ellen
sprang from the carriage and ran towards him. “Why, what’s the matter
with Boyne?” she demanded. “Are you hurt, Boyne, dear? Are they taking
him to the hospital?”
Before he could answer, and quite before the judge could reach the
tragical group, she had flung her arms round Boyne’s neck, and was
kissing his tear-drabbled face, while he lamented back, “They’re taking
me to prison.”
“Taking you to prison? I should like to know what for! What are you
taking my brother to prison for?” she challenged the detectives, who
paused, bewildered, while all the little Dutch boys round admired this
obstruction of the law, and several Dutch housewives, too old to go
out to see the queens, looked down from their windows. It was wholly
illegal, but the detectives were human. They could snub such a friend of
their prisoner as Breckon, but they could not meet the dovelike ferocity
of Ellen with unkindness. They explained as well as they might, and at a
suggestion which Kenton made through Breckon, they admitted that it was
not beside their duty to take Boyne directly to a magistrate, who could
pass upon his case, and even release him upon proper evidence of his
harmlessness, and sufficient security for any demand that justice might
make for his future appearance.
“Then,” said the judge, quietly, “tell them that we will go with them.
It will be all right, Boyne. Ellen, you and I will get back into the
carriage, and--”
“No!” Boyne roared. “Don’t leave me, Nelly!”
“Indeed, I won’t leave you, Boyne! Mr. Breckon, you get into the
carriage with poppa, and I--”
“I think I had better go with you, Miss Kenton,” said Breckon, and in a
tender superfluity they both accompanied Boyne on foot, while the judge
remounted to his place in the carriage and kept abreast of them on their
way to the magistrate’s.