Miss Braithwaite was asleep on the couch in her sitting-room, deeply asleep, so that when Prince Ferdinand William Otto changed the cold cloth on her head, she did not even move. The Countess Loschek had brought her some medicine.
“It cured her very quickly,” said the Crown Prince, shuffling the cards with clumsy fingers. He and Nikky were playing a game in which matches represented money. The Crown Prince had won nearly all of them and was quite pink with excitement. “It’s my deal, it? When she goes to sleep like that, she nearly always wakens up much better. She’s very sound asleep.”
Nikky played absently, and lost the game. The Crown Prince triumphantly scooped up the rest of the matches. “We’ve had rather a nice day,” he observed, “even if we didn’t go out. Shall we divide them again, and start all over?”
Nikky, however, proclaimed himself hopelessly beaten and a bad loser. So the Crown Prince put away the cards, which belonged to Miss Braithwaite, and with which she played solitaire in the evenings. Then he lounged to the window, his hands in his pockets. There was something on his mind which the Chancellor’s reference to Hedwig’s picture had recalled. Something he wished to say to Nikky, without looking at him.
So he clearer throat, and looked out the window, and said, very casually:
“Hilda says that Hedwig is going to get married.”
“So I hear, Highness.”
“She doesn’t seem to be very happy about it. She’s crying, most of the time.”
It was Nikky’s turn to clear his throat. “Marriage is a serious matter,” he said. “It is not to be gone into lightly.”
“Once, when I asked you about marriage, you said marriage was when two people loved each other, and wanted to be together the rest of their lives.”
“Well,” hedged Nikky, “that is the idea, rather.”
“I should think,” said Prince Ferdinand William Otto, slightly red, “that you would marry her yourself.”
Nikky, being beyond speech for an instant and looking, had His Royal Highness but seen him, very tragic and somewhat rigid, the Crown Prince went on:
“She’s a very nice girl,” he said; “I think she would make a good wife.”
There was something of reproach in his tone. He had confidently planned that Nikky would marry Hedwig, and that they could all live on forever in the Palace. But, the way things were going, Nikky might marry anybody, and go away to live, and he would lose him.
“Yes,” said Nikky, in a strange voice, “she—I am sure she would make a good wife.”
At which Prince Ferdinand William Otto turned and looked at him. “I wish you would marry her yourself,” he said with his nearest approach to impatience. “I think she’d be willing. I’ll ask her, if you want me to.”
Half-past three, then, and Nikky trying to explain, within the limits of the boy’s understanding of life, his position. Members of royal families, he said, looking far away, over the child’s head, had to do many things for the good of the country. And marrying was one of them. Something of old Mettlich’s creed of prosperity for the land he gave, something of his own hopelessness, too, without knowing it. He sat, bent forward, his hands swung between his knees, and tried to visualize, for Otto’s understanding and his own heartache, the results of such a marriage.
Some of it the boy grasped. A navy, ships, a railroad to the sea—those he could understand. Treaties were beyond his comprehension. And, with a child’s singleness of idea, he returned to the marriage.
“I’m sure she doesn’t care about it,” he said at last. “If I were King I would not let her do it. And”—he sat very erect and swung his short legs—“when I grow up, I shall fight for a navy, if I want one, and I shall marry whoever I like.”
At a quarter to four Olga Loschek was announced. She made the curtsy inside the door that Palace ceremonial demanded and inquired for the governess. Prince Ferdinand William Otto, who had risen at her entrance, offered to see if she still slept.
“I think you are a very good doctor,” he said, smiling, and went out to Miss Braithwaite’s sitting room.
It was then that Olga Loschek played the last card, and won. She moved quickly to Nikky’s side.
“I have a message for you,” she said.
A light leaped into Nikky’s eyes. “For me?”
“Do you know where my boudoir is?”
“I—yes, Countess.”
“If you will go there at once and wait, some one will see you there as soon as possible.” She put her hand on his arm. “Don’t be foolish and proud,” she said. “She is sorry about last night, and she is very unhappy.”
The light faded out of Nikky’s eyes. She was unhappy and he could do nothing. They had a way, in the Palace, of binding one’s hands and leaving one helpless. He could not even go to her.
“I cannot go, Countess,” he said. “She must understand. To-day, of all days—”
“You mean that you cannot leave the Crown Prince?” She shrugged her shoulders. “You, too! Never have I seen so many faint hearts, such rolling eyes, such shaking knees! And for what! Because a few timid souls see a danger that does not exist.”
“I think it does exist,” said Nikky obstinately.
“I am to take the word to her, then, that you will not come?”
“That I cannot.”
“You are a very foolish boy,” said the Countess, watching him. “And since you are so fearful, I myself will remain here. There are sentries at the doors, and a double guard everywhere. What, in the name of all that is absurd, can possibly happen?”
That was when she won. For Nikky, who has never been, in all this history, anything of a hero, and all of the romantic and loving boy,—Nikky wavered and fell.
When Prince Ferdinand William Otto returned, it was with the word that Miss Braithwaite still slept, and that she looked very comfortable, Nikky was gone, and the Countess stood by a window, holding to the sill to support her shaking body.
It was done. The boy was in her hands. There was left only to deliver him to those who, even now, were on the way. Nikky was safe. He would wait in her boudoir, and Hedwig would not come. She had sent no message. She was, indeed, at that moment a part of one of those melancholy family groups which, the world over, in palace or peasant’s hut, await the coming of death.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto chatted. He got out the picture-frame for Hedwig, which was finished now, with the exception of burning his initials in the lower left-hand corner. After inquiring politely if the smell of burning would annoy her, the Crown Prince drew a rather broken-backed “F,” a weak-kneed “W,” and an irregular “O” in the corner and proceeded to burn them in. He sat bent over the desk, the very tip of his tongue protruding, and worked conscientiously and carefully. Between each letter he burned a dot.
Suddenly, Olga Loschek became panic-stricken. She could not stay, and see this thing out. Let them follow her and punish her. She could not. She had done her part. The governess lay in, a drugged sleep. A turn of the key, and the door to the passage beyond which Oskar waited would be closed off. Let follow what must, she would not see it.
The boy still bent over his work. She wandered about the room, casually, as if examining the pictures on the wall. She stopped, for a bitter moment, before Hedwig’s photograph, and, for a shaken one, before those of Prince Hubert and his wife. Then she turned the key, and shut Oskar safely away.
“Highness,” she said, “Lieutenant Larisch will be here in a moment. Will you permit me to go?”
Otto was off his chair in an instant. “Certainly,” he said, his mind still on the “O” which he was shading.
Old habit was strong in the Countess. Although the boy’s rank was numbered by moments, although his life was possibly to be counted by hours, she turned at the doorway and swept him a curtsy. Then she went out, and closed the door behind her.
The two sentries stood outside. They were of the Terrorists. She knew, and they knew she knew. But neither one made a sign. They stared ahead, and Olga Loschek went out between them.
Now the psychology of the small boy is a curious thing. It is, for one thing, retentive. Ideas become, given time, obsessions. And obsessions are likely to lead to action.
The Crown Prince Ferdinand William Otto was only a small boy, for all his title and dignity. And suddenly he felt lonely. Left alone, he returned to his expectations for the day, and compared them with the facts. He remembered other carnivals, with his carriage moving through the streets, and people showering him with fresh flowers. He rather glowed at the memory. Then he recalled that the Chancellor had said he needed fresh air.
Something occurred to him, something which combined fresh air with action, yet kept to the letter of his promise—or was there a promise?—not to leave the Palace.
The idea pleased him. It set him to smiling, and his bright hair to quivering with excitement. It was nothing less than to go up on the roof and find the ball. Nikky would be surprised, having failed himself. He would have to be very careful, having in mind the fate of that unlucky child at the Crystal Palace. And he would have to hurry. Nikky would be sure to return soon.
He opened the door on to the great corridor, and stepped out, saluting the sentries, as he always did.
“I’ll be back in a moment,” he informed them. He was always on terms of great friendliness with the guard, and he knew these men by sight. “Are you going to be stationed here now?” he inquired pleasantly.
The two guards were at a loss. But one of them, who had a son of his own, and hated the whole business, saluted and replied that he knew not.
“I hope you are,” said Ferdinand William Otto, and went on.
The sentries regarded one another. “Let him go!” said the one who was a father.
The other one moved uneasily. “Our orders cover no such contingency,” he muttered. “And, besides, he will come back.” He bore a strong resemblance to the boy, who, in the riding-school, had dusted the royal hearse. “I hope to God he does not come back,” he said stonily.
Five minutes to four.
The Crown Prince hurried. The corridors were almost empty. Here and there he met servants, who stood stiff against the wall until he had passed. On the marble staircase, leading up, he met no one, nor on the upper floor. He was quite warm with running and he paused in his father’s suite to mop his face. Then he opened a window and went out on the roof. It seemed very large and empty now, and the afternoon sun, sinking low, threw shadows across it.
Also, from the balustrade, it looked extremely far to the ground.
Nevertheless, although his heart beat a trifle fast, he was still determined. A climb which Nikky with his long legs had achieved in a leap, took him up to a chimney. Below—it seemed a long way below was the gutter. There was a very considerable slant. If one sat down, like Nikky, and slid, and did not slide over the edge, one should fetch up in the gutter.
He felt a trifle dizzy. But Nikky’s theory was, that if one is afraid to do a thing, better to do it and get over being afraid.
“I was terribly afraid of a bayonet attack,” Nikky had observed, “until I was in one. The next one I rather enjoyed!”
So the Crown Prince sat down on the sloping roof behind the chimney, and gathered his legs under him for a slide.
Then he heard a door open, and footsteps. Very careful footsteps. He was quite certain Nikky had followed him. But there were cautious voices, too, and neither was Nikky’s. It occurred to Prince Ferdinand William Otto that a good many people, certainly including Miss Braithwaite, would not approve of either his situation or his position. Miss Braithwaite was particularly particular about positions.
So he sat still beside the chimney, well shielded by the evergreens in tubs, until the voices and the footsteps were gone. Then he took all his courage in his hands, and slid. Well for him that the ancient builders of the Palace had been reckless with lead, that the gutter was both wide and deep. Well for Nikky, too, waiting in the boudoir below and hard-driven between love and anxiety.
The Crown Prince, unaccustomed to tiles, turned over halfway down, and rolled. He brought up with a jerk in the gutter, quite safe, but extremely frightened. And the horrid memory of the Crystal Palace child filled his mind, to the exclusion of everything else. He sat there for quite a few minutes. There was no ball in sight, and the roof looked even steeper from this point.
Being completely self-engrossed, therefore, he did not see that the roof had another visitor. Had two visitors, as a matter of fact. One of them wore a blanket with a white “O” over a white “X” on it, and the other wore a mask, and considerable kitchen cutlery fastened to his belt. They had come out of a small door in the turret and were very much at ease. They leaned over the parapet and admired the view. They strutted about the flat roof, and sang, at least one of them sang a very strange refrain, which was something about
And then they climbed on one of the garden chairs and looked over the expanse of the roof, which was when they saw Prince Ferdinand William Otto, and gazed at him.
“Gee whiz!” said the larger pirate, through his mask. “What are you doing there?”
The Crown Prince started, and stared. “I am sitting here,” explained the Crown Prince, trying to look as though he usually sat in lead gutters. “I am looking for a ball.”
“You’re looking for a fall, I guess,” observed the pirate. “You don’t remember me, kid, do you?”
“I can’t see your face, but I know your voice.” His voice trembled with excitement.
“Lemme give you a hand,” said the pirate, whipping off his mask. “You make me nervous, sitting there. You’ve got a nerve, you have.”
The Crown Prince looked gratified. “I don’t need any assistance, thank you,” he said. “Perhaps, now I’m here, I’d better look for the ball.”
“I wouldn’t bother about the old ball,” said the pirate, rather nervously for an old sea-dog. “You better get back to a safe place. Say, what made you pretend that our Railway made you nervous?”
Prince Ferdinand William Otto climbed up the tiles, trying to look as though tiles were his native habitat. The pirates both regarded him with admiration, as he dropped beside them.
“How did you happen to come here?” asked the Crown Prince. “Did you lose your aeroplane up here?”
“We came on business,” said the pirate importantly. “Two of the enemy entered our cave. We were guarding it from the underbrush, and saw them go in. We trailed them. They must die!”
“Really—die?”
“Of course. Death to those who defy us.”
“Death to those who defy us!” repeated the Crown Prince, enjoying himself hugely, and quite ready for bloodshed.
“Look here, Dick Deadeye,” said the larger pirate to the smaller, who stood gravely at attention, “I think he belongs to our crew. What say, old pal?”
Dick Deadeye wagged his tail.
Some two minutes later, the Crown Prince of Livonia, having sworn the pirate oath of no quarter, except to women and children, was on his way to the pirate cave.
He was not running away. He was not disobedient. He was breaking no promises. Because, from the moment he saw the two confederates, and particularly from the moment he swore the delightful oath, his past was wiped away. There was, in his consciousness, no Palace, no grandfather, no Miss Braithwaite, even no Nikky. There was only a boy and a dog, and a pirate den awaiting him.
Strange that the old Palace roof should, in close succession; have seen Nikky forgetting his promise to the Chancellor, and Otto forgetting that he was not to run away. Strange places, roofs, abiding places, since long ago, of witches.
“How’d you happen to be in that gutter?” Bobby demanded, as they started down the staircase in the wall. “Watch out, son, it’s pretty steep.”
“I was getting a ball.”
“Is this your house?”
“Well, I live here,” temporized Prince Ferdinand William Otto. A terrible thought came to him. Suppose this American boy, who detested kings and princes, should learn who he was!
“It looks like a big place. Is it a barracks?”
“No.” He hesitated. “But there are a good many soldiers here. I—I never saw these steps before.”
“I should think not,” boasted Bobby. “I discovered them. I guess nobody else in the world knows about them. I put up a flag at the bottom and took possession. They’re mine.”
“Really!” said Prince Ferdinand William Otto, quite delighted. He would never have thought of such a thing.
A door of iron bars at the foot of the long flight of steps—there were four of them—stood open. Here daylight, which had been growing fainter, entirely ceased. And here Bobby, having replaced his mask, placed an air-rifle over his shoulder, and lighted a candle and held it out to the Crown Prince.
“You can carry it,” he said. “Only don’t let it drip on you. You’ll spoil your clothes.” There was a faintly scornful note in his voice, and Ferdinand William Otto was quick to hear it.
“I don’t care at all about my clothes,” he protested. And to prove it he deliberately tilted the candle and let a thin stream of paraffin run down his short jacket.
“You’re a pretty good sport,” Bobby observed. And from that time on he addressed His Royal Highness as “old sport.”
“Walk faster, old sport,” he would say. “That candle’s pretty short, and we’ve got a long way to go.” Or—“Say, old sport, I’ll make you a mask like this, if you like. I made this one.”
When they reached the old dungeon the candle was about done. There was only time to fashion another black mask out of a piece of cloth that bore a strange resemblance to a black waistcoat. The Crown Prince donned this with a wildly beating heart. Never in all his life had he been so excited. Even Dick Deadeye was interested, and gave up his scenting of the strange footsteps that he had followed through the passage, to watch the proceedings.
“We can get another candle, and come back and cook something,” said the senior pirate, tying the mask on with Pieces of brown string. “It gets pretty smoky, but I can cook, you’d better believe.”
So this wonderful boy could cook, also! The Crown Prince had never met any one with so many varied attainments. He gazed through the eyeholes, which were rather too far apart, in rapt admiration.
“As you haven’t got a belt,” Bobby said generously, “I’ll give you the rifle. Ever hold a gun?”
“Oh, yes,” said the Crown Prince. He did not explain that he had been taught to shoot on the rifle-range of his own regiment, and had won quite a number of medals. He possessed, indeed, quite a number of small but very perfect guns.
With the last gasp of the candle, the children prepared to depart. The senior pirate had already forgotten the two men he had trailed through the passage, and was eager to get outdoors.
“Ready!” he said. “Now, remember, old sport, we are pirates. No quarter, except to women and children. Shoot every man.”
“Even if he is unarmed?” inquired the Crown Prince, who had also studied strategy and tactics, and felt that an unarmed man should be taken prisoner.
“Sure. We don’t really shoot them, silly. Now. Get in step.
They marched up the steps and out through the opening at the top. If there were any who watched, outside the encircling growth of evergreens, they were not on the lookout for two small boys and a dog. And, as became pirates, the children made a stealthy exit.
Then began, for the Crown Prince, such a day of joy as he had never known before. Even the Land of Delight faded before this new bliss of stalking from tree to tree, of killing unsuspecting citizens who sat on rugs on the ground and ate sausages and little cakes. Here and there, where a party had moved on, they salvaged a bit of food—the heel of a loaf, one of the small country apples. Shades of the Court Physicians, under whose direction the Crown Prince was daily fed a carefully balanced ration!
When they were weary, they stretched out on the ground, and the Crown Prince, whose bed was nightly dried with a warming-pan for fear of dampness, wallowed blissfully on earth still soft with the melting frosts of the winter. He grew muddy and dirty. He had had no hat, of course, and his bright hair hung over his forehead in moist strands. Now and then he drew a long breath of sheer happiness.
Around them circled the gayety of the Carnival, bands of students in white, with the tall peaked caps of Pierrots. Here and there was a scarlet figure, a devil with horns, who watched the crowd warily. A dog, with the tulle petticoats of a dancer tied around it and a great bow on its neck, made friends with Dick Deadeye, alias Tucker, and joined the group.
But, as dusk descended, the crowd gradually dispersed, some to supper, but some to gather in the Place and in the streets around the Palace. For the rumor that the King was dying would not down.
At last the senior pirate consulted a large nickel watch.
“Gee! it’s almost supper time,” he said.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto consulted his own watch, the one with the inscription: “To Ferdinand William Otto, from his grandfather, on the occasion of his taking his first communion.”
“Why can’t you come home to supper with me?” asked the senior pirate. “Would your folks kick up a row?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Would your family object?”
“There is only one person who would mind,” reflected the Crown Prince, aloud, “and she will be angry anyhow. I—do you think your mother will be willing?”
“Willing? Sure she will! My governess—but I’ll fix her. She’s a German, and they’re always cranky. Anyhow, it’s my birthday. I’m always allowed a guest on birthdays.”
So home together, gayly chatting, went the two children, along the cobble-paved streets of the ancient town, past old churches that had been sacked and pillaged by the very ancestors of one of them, taking short cuts through narrow passages that twisted and wormed their way between, and sometimes beneath, century-old stone houses; across the flower-market, where faint odors of dying violets and crushed lilies-of-the-valley still clung to the bare wooden booths; and so, finally, to the door of a tall building where, from the concierge’s room beside the entrance, came a reek of stewing garlic.
Neither of the children had noticed the unwonted silence of the streets, which had, almost suddenly, succeeded the noise of the Carnival. What few passers-by they had seen had been hurrying in the direction of the Palace. Twice they had passed soldiers, with lanterns, and once one had stopped and flashed a light on them.
“Well, old sport!” said Bobby in English, “anything you can do for me?”
The soldier had passed on, muttering at the insolence of American children. The two youngsters laughed consumedly at the witticism. They were very happy, the lonely little American boy and the lonely little Prince—happy from sheer gregariousness, from the satisfaction of that strongest of human inclinations, next to love—the social instinct.
The concierge was out. His niece admitted them, and went back to her interrupted cooking. The children hurried up the winding stone staircase, with its iron rail and its gas lantern, to the second floor.
In the sitting-room, the sour-faced governess was darning a hole in a small stocking. She was as close as possible to the green-tile stove, and she was looking very unpleasant; for the egg-shaped darner only slipped through the hole, which was a large one. With an irritable gesture she took off her slipper, and, putting one coarse-stockinged foot on the fender, proceeded to darn by putting the slipper into the stocking and working over it.
Things looked unpropitious. The Crown Prince ducked behind Bobby.
The Fraulein looked at the clock.
“You are fifteen minutes late,” she snapped, and bit the darning thread—not with rage, but because she had forgotten her scissors.
“I’m sorry, but you see—”
“Whom have you there?”
The Prince cowered. She looked quite like his grandfather when his tutor’s reports had been unfavorable.
“A friend of mine,” said Bobby, not a whit daunted.
The governess put down the stocking and rose. In so doing, she caught her first real glimpse of Ferdinand William Otto, and she staggered back.
“Holy Saints!” she said, and went white. Then she stared at the boy, and her color came back. “For a moment,” she muttered “—but no. He is not so tall, nor has he the manner. Yes, he is much smaller!”
Which proves that, whether it wears it or not, royalty is always measured to the top of a crown.
In the next room Bobby’s mother was arranging candles on a birthday cake in the center of the table. Pepy had iced the cake herself, and had forgotten one of the “b’s” in “Bobby” so that the cake really read: “Boby—XII.”
However, it looked delicious, and inside had been baked a tiny black china doll and a new American penny, with Abraham Lincoln’s head on it. The penny was for good fortune, but the doll was a joke of Pepy’s, Bobby being aggressively masculine.
Bobby, having passed the outpost, carried the rest of the situation by assault. He rushed into the dining-room and kissed his mother, with one eye on the cake.
“Mother, here’s company to supper! Oh, look at the cake! B-O-B-Y’! Mother! That’s awful!”
Mrs. Thorpe looked at the cake. “Poor Pepy,” she said. “Suppose she had made it ‘Booby’?” Then she saw Ferdinand William Otto, and went over, somewhat puzzled, with her hand out. “I am very glad Bobby brought you,” she said. “He has so few little friends—”
Then she stopped, for the Prince had brought his heels together sharply, and, bending over her hand, had kissed it, exactly as he kissed his Aunt Annunciata’s when he went to have tea with her. Mrs. Thorpe was fairly startled, not at the kiss, but at the grace with which the tribute was rendered.
Then she looked down, and it restored her composure to find that Ferdinand William Otto, too, had turned eyes toward the cake. He was, after all, only a hungry small boy. With quick tenderness she stooped and kissed him gravely on the forehead. Caresses were strange to Ferdinand William Otto. His warm little heart leaped and pounded. At that moment, he would have died for her!
Mr. Thorpe came home a little late. He kissed Bobby twelve times, and one to grow on. He shook hands absently with the visitor, and gave the Fraulein the evening paper—an extravagance on which he insisted, although one could read the news for nothing by going to the cafe on the corner. Then he drew his wife aside.
“Look here!” he said. “Don’t tell Bobby—no use exciting him, and of course it’s not our funeral anyhow but there’s a report that the Crown Prince has been kidnapped. And that’s not all. The old King is dying!”
“How terrible!”
“Worse than that. The old King gone and no Crown Prince! It may mean almost any sort of trouble! I’ve closed up at the Park for the night.” His arm around his wife, he looked through the doorway to where Bobby and Ferdinand were counting the candles. “It’s made me think pretty hard,” he said. “Bobby mustn’t go around alone the way he’s been doing. All Americans here are considered millionaires. If the Crown Prince could go, think how easy—”
His arm tightened around his wife, and together they went in to the birthday feast. Ferdinand William Otto was hungry. He ate eagerly—chicken, fruit compote, potato salad—again shades of the Court physicians, who fed him at night a balanced ration of milk, egg, and zwieback! Bobby also ate busily, and conversation languished.
Then the moment came when, the first cravings appeased, they sat back in their chairs while Pepy cleared the table and brought in a knife to cut the cake. Mr. Thorpe had excused himself for a moment. Now he came back, with a bottle wrapped in a newspaper, and sat down again.
“I thought,” he said, “as this is a real occasion, not exactly Robert’s coming of age, but marking his arrival at years of discretion, the period when he ceases to be a small boy and becomes a big one, we might drink a toast to it.”
“Robert!” objected the big boy’s mother.
“A teaspoonful each, honey,” he begged. “It changes it from a mere supper to a festivity.”
He poured a few drops of wine into the children’s glasses, and filled them up with water. Then he filled the others, and sat smiling, this big young man, who had brought his loved ones across the sea, and was trying to make them happy up a flight of stone stairs, above a concierge’s bureau that smelled of garlic.
“First,” he said, “I believe it is customary to toast the King. Friends, I give you the good King and brave soldier, Ferdinand of Livonia.”
They stood up to drink it, and even Pepy had a glass.
Ferdinand William Otto was on his feet first. He held his glass up in his right hand, and his eyes shone. He knew what to do. He had seen the King’s health drunk any number of times.
“To His Majesty, Ferdinand of Livonia,” he said solemnly. “God keep the King!”
Over their glasses Mrs. Thorpe’s eyes met her husband’s. How they trained their children here!
But Ferdinand William Otto had not finished. “I give you,” he said, in his clear young treble, holding his glass, “the President of the United States—The President!”
“The President!” said Mr. Thorpe.
They drank again, except the Fraulein, who disapproved of children being made much of, and only pretended to sip her wine.
“Bobby,” said his mother, with a catch in her voice, “haven’t you something to suggest—as a toast?”
Bobby’s eyes were on the cake; he came back with difficulty.
“Well,” he meditated, “I guess—would ‘Home’ be all right?”
“Home!” they all said, a little shakily, and drank to it.
Home! To the Thorpes, a little house on a shady street in America; to the Fraulein, a thatched cottage in the mountains of Germany and an old mother; to Pepy, the room in a tenement where she went at night; to Ferdinand William Otto, a formal suite of apartments in the Palace, surrounded by pomp, ordered by rule and precedent, hardened by military discipline, and unsoftened by family love, save for the grim affection of the old King.
Home!
After all, Pepy’s plan went astray, for the Fraulein got the china baby, and Ferdinand William Otto the Lincoln penny.
“That,” said Bobby’s father, “is a Lincoln penny, young man. It bears the portrait of Abraham Lincoln. Have you ever heard of him?”
The Prince looked up. Did he not know the “Gettysburg Address” by heart?
“Yes, sir,” he said. “The—my grandfather thinks that President Lincoln was a very great man.”
“One of the world’s greatest. I hardly thought, over here—” Mr. Thorpe paused and looked speculatively at the boy. “You’d better keep that penny where you won’t lose it,” he said soberly. “It doesn’t hurt us to try to be good. If you’re in trouble, think of the difficulties Abraham Lincoln surmounted. If you want to be great, think how great he was.” He was a trifle ashamed of his own earnestness. “All that for a penny, young man!”
The festivities were taking a serious turn. There was a little packet at each plate, and now Bobby’s mother reached over and opened hers.
“Oh!” she said, and exhibited a gaudy tissue paper bonnet. Everybody had one. Mr. Thorpe’s was a dunce’s cap, and Fraulein’s a giddy Pierrette of black and white. Bobby had a military cap. With eager fingers Ferdinand William Otto opened his; he had never tasted this delicious paper-cap joy before.
It was a crown, a sturdy bit of gold paper, cut into points and set with red paste jewels—a gem of a crown. He was charmed. He put it on his head, with the unconsciousness of childhood, and posed delightedly.
The Fraulein looked at Prince Ferdinand William Otto, and slowly the color left her lean face. She stared. It was he, then, and none other. Stupid, not to have known at the beginning! He, the Crown Prince, here in the home of these barbarous Americans, when, by every plan that had been made, he should now be in the hands of those who would dispose of him.
“I give you,” said Mr. Thorpe, raising his glass toward his wife, “the giver of the feast. Boys, up with you!”
It was then that the Fraulein, making an excuse, slipped out of the room.
Now at last the old King’s hour had come. Mostly he slept, as though his body, eager for its long rest, had already given up the struggle. Stimulants, given by his devoted physician, had no effect. Other physicians there were, a group of them, but it was Doctor Wiederman who stood by the bed and waited.
Father Gregory, his friend of many years, had come again from Etzel, and it was he who had administered the sacrament. The King had roused for it, and had smiled at the father.
“So!” he said, almost in a whisper, “you would send me clean! It is hard to scour an old kettle.”
Doctor Wiederman bent over the bed. “Majesty,” he implored, “if there is anything we can do to make you comfortable—”
“Give me Hubert’s picture,” said the King. When his fingers refused to hold it, Annunciata came forward swiftly and held it before him. But his heavy eyes closed. With more intuition than might have been expected of her, the Archduchess laid it on the white coverlet, and placed her father’s hand on it.
The physicians consulted in an alcove. Annunciata went back to her restless, noiseless pacing of the room. Father Gregory went to a window, and stared out. He saw, not the silent crowd in the Place, but many other things; the King, as a boy, chafing under the restraint of Court ceremonial; the King, as a young man, taking a wife who did not love him. He saw the King madly in love with his wife, and turning to excesses to forget her. Then, and for this the old priest thanked the God who was so real to him, he saw the Queen bear children, and turning to her husband because he was their father. They had lived to love deeply and’ truly.
Then had come the inevitable griefs. The Queen had died, and had been saved a tragedy, for Hubert had been violently done to death. And now again a tragedy had come, but one the King would never know.
The two Sisters of Mercy stood beside the bed, and looked down at the quiet figure.
“I should wish to die so,” whispered the elder. “A long life, filled with many deeds, and then to sleep away!”
“A long life, full of many sorrows!” observed the younger one, her eyes full of tears. “He has outlived all that he loved.”
“Except the little Otto.”
Their glances met, for even here there was a question.
As if their thought had penetrated the haze which is, perhaps, the mist that hides from us the gates of heaven, the old King opened his eyes.
“Otto!” he said. “I—wish—”
Annunciata bent over him. “He is coming, father,” she told him, with white lips.
She slipped to her knees beside the bed, and looked up to Doctor Wiederman with appealing eyes.
“I am afraid,” she whispered. “Can you not—?”
He shook his head. She had asked a question in her glance, and he had answered. The Crown Prince was gone. Perhaps the search would be successful. Could he not be held, then, until the boy was found? And Doctor Wiederman had answered “No.”
In the antechamber the Council waited, standing and without speech. But in an armchair beside the door to the King’s room the Chancellor sat, his face buried in his hands. In spite of precautions, in spite of everything, the blow had fallen. The Crown Prince, to him at once son and sovereign, the little Crown Prince, was gone. And his old friend, his comrade of many years, lay at his last hour.
Another regiment left the Palace, to break ranks beyond the crowd, and add to the searchers. They marched to a muffled drum. As the sound reached him, the old warrior stirred. He had come to this, he who had planned, not for himself, but for his country. And because he was thinking clearly, in spite of his grief, he saw that his very ambition for the boy had been his undoing. In the alliance with Karnia he had given the Terrorists a scourge to flay the people to revolt.
Now he waited for the King’s death. Waited numbly. For, with the tolling of St. Stefan’s bell would rise the cry for the new King.
And there was no King.
In the little room where the Sisters kept their medicines, so useless now, Hedwig knelt at the Prie-dieu and prayed.
She tried to pray for her grandfather’s soul, but she could not. Her one cry was for Otto, that he be saved and brought back. In the study she had found the burntwood frame, and she held it hugged close to her with its broken-backed “F,” its tottering “W,” and wavering “O”, with its fat Cupids in sashes, and the places where an over-earnest small hand had slipped.
Hilda stood by the stand, and fingered the bottles. Her nose was swollen with crying, but she was stealthily removing corks and sniffing at the contents of the bottles with the automatic curiosity of the young.
The King roused again. “Mettlich?” he asked.
The elder Sister tiptoed to the door and opened it. The Council turned, dread on their faces. She placed a hand on the Chancellor’s shoulder.
“His Majesty has asked for you.”
When he looked up, dazed, she bent down and took his hand.
“Courage!” she said quietly.
The Chancellor stood a second inside the door. Then he went to the side of the bed, and knelt, his lips to the cold, white hand on the counterpane.
“Sire!” he choked. “It is I—Mettlich.”
The King looked at him, and placed his hand on the bowed gray head. Then his eyes turned to Annunciata and rested there. It was as if he saw her, not as the embittered woman of late years, but as the child of the woman he had loved.
“A good friend, and a good daughter,” he said clearly. “Few men die so fortunate, and fewer sovereigns.” His hand moved from Mettlich’s head, and rested on the photograph.
The elder Sister leaned forward and touched his wrist. “Doctor!” she said sharply.
Doctor Wiederman came first, the others following. They grouped around the bed. Then the oldest of them, who had brought Annunciata into the world, touched her on the shoulder.
“Madame!” he said. “Madame, I—His Majesty has passed away.”
Mettlich staggered to his feet, and took a long look at the face of his old sovereign and king.
In the mean time, things had been happening in the room where the Council waited. The Council, free of the restraint of the Chancellor’s presence, had fallen into low-voiced consultation. What was to be done? They knew already the rumors of the streets, and were helpless before them. They had done what they could. But the boy was gone, and the city rising. Already the garrison of the fortress had been ordered to the Palace, but it could not arrive before midnight. Friese had questioned the wisdom of it, at that, and was for flight as soon as the King died. Bayerl, on the other hand, urged a stand, in the hope that the Crown Prince would be found.
Their voices, lowered at first, rose acrimoniously; almost they penetrated to the silent room beyond. On to the discussion came Nikky Larisch, covered with dust and spotted with froth from his horse. He entered without ceremony, his boyish face drawn and white, his cap gone, his eyes staring.
“The Chancellor?” he said.
Some one pointed to the room beyond.
Nikky hesitated. Then, being young and dramatic, even in tragedy, he unbuckled his sword-belt and took it off, placing it on a table.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I have come to surrender myself.”
The Council stared.
“For what reason?” demanded Marschall coldly.
“I believe it is called high treason.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “It is because of my negligence that this thing has happened. He was in my charge, and I left him.”
No one said anything. The Council looked at a loss, rather like a flock of sheep confronting some strange animal.
“I would have shot myself,” said Nikky Larisch, “but it was too easy.”
Then, rather at a loss as to the exact etiquette of arresting one’s self, he bowed slightly and waited.
The door into the King’s bedchamber opened.
The Chancellor came through, his face working. It closed behind him.
“Gentlemen of the Council,” he said. “It is my duty my duty—to announce—” His voice broke; his grizzled chin quivered; tears rolled down his cheeks. “Friends,” he said pitifully, “our good King—my old comrade—is dead!”
The birthday supper was over. It had ended with an American ice-cream, brought in carefully by Pepy, because of its expensiveness. They had cut the cake with Boby on the top, and the Crown Prince had eaten far more than was good for him.
He sat, fingering the Lincoln penny and feeling extremely full and very contented.
Then, suddenly, from a far-off church a deep-toned bell began to toll slowly.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto caught it. St. Stefan’s bell! He sat up and listened. The sound was faint; one felt it rather than heard it, but the slow booming was unmistakable. He got up and pushed his chair back.
Other bells had taken it up, and now the whole city seemed alive with bells—bells that swung sadly from side to side, as if they said over and over: “Alas, alas!”
Something like panic seized Ferdinand William Otto. Some calamity had happened. Some one was perhaps his grandfather.
He turned an appealing face to Mrs. Thorpe. “I must go,” he said: “I do not wish to appear rude, but something is wrong. The bells—”
Pepy had beet listening, too. Her broad face worked. “They mean but one thing,” she said slowly. “I have heard it said many times. When St. Stefan’s tolls life that, the King is dead!”
“No! No!” cried Ferdinand William Otto and ran madly out of the door.