Kitobni o'qish: «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."