Anguish, with his customary impulsiveness, overruled Lorry’s objections, and they proceeded toward the entrance. The guards of the Princess saluted profoundly, while the minions of Lorenz stared with ill-bred wonder upon these two tall men from another world. It could be seen that the castle was astir with excitement, subdued and pregnant with thriving hopes and fears. The nobility of Graustark was there; the visitors of Axphain were being entertained.
At the castle doors the two met their first obstacle, but they had anticipated its presence Two guards halted them peremptorily.
“We must see Her Royal Highness,” said Anguish, but the men could not understand him. They stoically stood their ground, shaking their heads.
“Let us find some one who can understand us,” advised Lorry, and in a few moments they presented themselves before the guards, accompanied by a young nobleman with whom they had acquaintance. He succeeded in advancing them to the reception hall inside the doors and found for them a servant who would carry a message to the Princess if it were possible to gain her presence. The nobleman doubted very much, however, if the missive hastily written by Lorry could find its way to her, as she had never been so occupied as now.
Lorry, in his brief note, prayed for a short audience for himself and Mr. Anguish, requesting that Count Halfont be present. He informed her that his mission was of the most imperative nature and that it related to a discovery made concerning the Prince who had tried to abduct her. In conclusion, he wrote that Baron Dangloss had required him to lay certain facts before her and that he had come with no intention to annoy her.
While they sat in the waiting room they saw, through the glass doors, dozens of richly attired men and women in the hall beyond. They were conversing animatedly, Graustark men and women with dejected faces, Axphainians with exultation glowing in every glance. Lorry’s heart sank within him. It seemed hours before the servant returned to bid them follow him. Then his blood leaped madly through veins that had been chilled and lifeless. He was to see Her again!
Their guide conducted them to a small anteroom, where he left them. A few moments later the door opened and there swept quickly into the room—the Countess Dagmar, not the Princess. Her face was drawn with the trouble and sorrow she was trying so hard to conceal. Both men were on their feet in an instant, advancing to meet her.
“The Princess? Is she ill?” demanded Lorry.
“Not ill, but mad, I fear,” answered she, giving a hand to each. “Mr. Lorry, she bids me say to you that she cannot see you. She appreciates the importance of your mission and thanks you for the interest you have taken.
“Also, she authorizes me to assure you that nothing can be done at present regarding the business on which you come.”
“She refuses to see us,” said he, slowly, his face whiter than ever.
“Nay; she begs that you will excuses her. Her Highness is sorely worn and distressed today, and I fear cannot endure all that is happening. She is apparently calm and composed, but I, who know her so well, can see the strain beneath.”
“Surely she must see the urgency of quick action in this matter of ours,” cried Anguish half angrily. “We are not dogs to be kicked out of the castle. We have a right to be treated fairly—”
“We cannot censure the Princess, Harry,” said Lorry, calmly. “We have come because we would befriend her, and she sees fit to reject our good offices. There is but one thing left for us to do—depart as we came.”
“But I don’t like it a little bit,” growled the other.
“If you only knew, Mr. Anguish, you would not be so harsh and unjust,” remonstrated the lady, warmly. Turning to Lorry she said: “She asked me to hand you this and to bid you retain it as a token of her undying esteem.”
She handed him a small, exquisite miniature of the Princess, framed in gold inlaid with rubies. He took it dumbly in his fingers, but dared not look at the portrait it contained. With what might have seemed disrespect he dropped the treasure into his coat pocket.
“Tell her I shall always retain it as a token’ of her—esteem,” he said. “And now may I ask whether she handed my note to her uncle, the Count?”
The Countess blushed in a most unaccountable manner.
“Not while I was with her,” she said, recovering the presence of mind she apparently had lost.
“She destroyed it, I presume,” said he, laughing harshly.
“I saw her place it in her bosom, sir, and with the right hand,” cried the Countess, as if betraying a state secret.
“In her—you are telling me the truth?” cried he, his face lighting up.
“Now, see here, Lorry, don’t begin to question the Countess’s word. I won’t stand for that,” interposed Anguish, good-humoredly.
“I should be more than base to say falsely that she had done anything so absurd,” said the Countess, indignantly.
“Where is she now?” asked Lorry.
“In her boudoir. The Prince Lorenz is with her—alone.”
“What!” he cried, jealousy darting into his existence. He had never known jealousy before.
“They are betrothed,” said she, with an effort. There was a dead silence, broken by Lorry’s deep groan as he turned and walked blindly to the opposite side of the room. He stopped in front of a huge painting and stared at it, but did not see a line or a tint.
“You don’t mean to say she has accepted?” half whispered Anguish.
“Nothing less.”
“Thank God, you are only a Countess,” he said, tenderly.
“Why—why—what difference can it make! I mean, why do you say that?” she stammered, crimson to her hair.
“Because you won’t have to sell yourself at a sacrifice,” he said, foolishly. Lorry came back to them at this juncture, outwardly calm and deliberate.
“Tell us about it, pray. We had guessed as much.”
“Out there are his people,—the wretches!” she cried, vindictively, her pretty face in a helpless frown. “Today was the day, you know, on which he was to have his answer. He came and knelt in the audience chamber. All Graustark had implored her to refuse the hated offer, but she bade him rise, and there, before us all; promised to become his bride.
“The greatest sorrow Graustark has ever known grows out of that decision. She is determined to save for us what her father’s folly lost. To do this she becomes the bride of a vile wretch, a man who soils her pure nature when he thinks of her. Oh, we sought to dissuade her,—we begged, we entreated, but without avail. She will not sacrifice one foot of Graustark to save herself. See the triumphant smiles on their faces—the brutes!” She pointed maliciously to the chattering visitors in the hall. “Already they think the castle theirs. The union of Graustark and Axphain! Just what they most desired, but we could not make her see it so.”
“Is the day set?” asked Lorry, bravely, after a moments silent inspection of the dark-browed victors.
“Yes, and there is to be no delay. The marriage contract has already been signed. The date is November 20th, the day on which we are to account to Bolaroz for our war debt.
“The old Prince’s wedding gift to Graustark is to be a document favoring us with a ten years’ extension,” she said, scornfully.
“And where is she to live?”
“Here, of course. She is Graustark’s ruler, and here she insists on abiding. Just contemplate our court! Over-run with those Axphain dogs! Ah, she has wounded Graustark more than she has helped her.”
There was nothing more to be said or done, so, after a few moments, the Americans took their departure. The Countess bade them farewell, saying that she must return to the Princess.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” said Anguish, with rare assurance and the air of an old and indispensable friend.
“And you, Mr. Lorry?” she said, curiously.
“I am very much occupied,” he mumbled.
“You do wrong in seeking to deceive me,” she whispered, as Anguish passed through the door ahead of them. “I know why
you do not come.”
“Has she told you?”
“I have guessed. Would that it could have been you and not the other.”
“One cannot be a man and a prince at the same time, I fancy,” he said, bitterly.
“Nor can one be a princess and a woman.” Lorry recalled the conversation in the sickroom two weeks before and smiled ironically. The friendly girl left them at the door and they passed out of the castle.
“I shall leave Edelweiss tomorrow,” said one, more to himself than to his companion, as they crossed the parade. The other gave a start and did not look pleased. Then he instinctively glanced toward the castle.
“The Princess is at her window,” he cried, clutching Lorry’s arm and pointing back. But the other refused to turn, walking on blindly. “You ought not to have acted like that, Gren,” said Anguish, a few moments later. “She saw me call your attention to her, and she saw you refuse to look back. I don’t think that you should have hurt her.” Lorry did not respond, and there was no word between them until they were outside the castle gates.
“You may leave tomorrow, Lorry, if you like, but I’m going to stay a while,” said Harry, a trifle confusedly.
“Haven’t you had enough of the place?”
“I don’t care a whoop for the place. You see, it’s this way: I’m just as hard hit as you, and it is not a Princess that I have to contend with.”
“You mean that you are in love with the Countess?”
“Emphatically.”
“I’m sorry for you.”
“Think she’ll turn me down?”
“Unless you buy a title of one of these miserable counts or dukes.”
“Oh, I’m not so sure about that. These counts and dukes come over and marry our American girls. I don’t see why I can’t step in and pick out a nice little Countess if I want to.”
“She is not as avaricious as the counts and dukes, I’ll wager. She cares nothing fer your money.”
“Well, she’s as poor as a church mouse,” said the other, doggedly.
“The Countess poor? How do you know?’
“I asked her one day and she told me all about it,” said Anguish.
CHAPTER VI
A CLASH AND IT’S RESULT
“I feel like spending the rest of my days in that monastery up there,” said Lorry, after dinner that evening. They were strolling about the town. One was determined to leave the city, the other firm in his resolve to stay. The latter won the day when he shrewdly, if explosively, reminded the former that it was their duty as men to stay and protect the Princess from the machinations of Gabriel, that knave of purgatory. Lorry, at last recognizing the hopelessness of his suit, was ready to throw down his arms and abandon the field to superior odds. His presumption in aspiring for the hand of a Princess began to touch his sense of humor, and he laughed, not very merrily, it is true, but long and loudly, at his folly. At first he cursed the world and every one in it, giving up in despair, but later he cursed only himself. Yet, as he despaired and scoffed, he felt within himself an ever-present hope that luck might turn the tide of battle.
This puny ray grew perceptibly when Anguish brought him to feel that she needed his protection from the man who had once sought to despoil and who might reasonably be expected to persevere. He agreed to linger in Edelweiss, knowing that each day would add pain to the torture he was already suffering, his sole object being, he convinced himself, to frustrate Gabriel’s evil plans.
Returning late in the evening from their stroll, they entered a cafe celebrated in Edelweiss. In all his life Lorry had never known the loneliness that makes death welcome. Tonight he felt that he could not live, so maddening was the certainty that he could never regain joy. His heart bled with the longing to be near her who dwelt inside those castle walls. He scoffed and grieved, but grieved the more.
The cafe was crowded with men and women. In a far corner sat a party of Axphain nobles, their Prince, a most democratic fellow, at the head of a long table. There were songs, jests and boisterous laughter. The celebration grew wilder, and Lorry and Anguish crossed the room, and, taking seats at a table, ordered wine and cigars, both eager for a closer view of the Prince. How Lorry loathed him!
Lorenz was a good-looking young fellow, little more than a boy. His smooth face was flushed, and there was about him an air of dissipation that suggested depravity in its advanced stage. The face that might have been handsome was the reflection of a roue, dashing, devilish. He was fair-haired and tall, taller than his companions by half a head. With reckless abandon he drank and sang and jested, arrogant in his flighty merriment. His cohorts were not far behind him in riotous wit.
At length one of the revelers, speaking in German, called on Lorenz for a toast to the Princess Yetive, his promised bride. Without a moment’s hesitation the Prince sprang to his feet, held his glass aloft, and cried:
“Here’s to the fairest of the fair, sweet Yetive, so hard to win, too good to lose. She loves me, God bless her heart! And I love her, God bless my heart, too! For each kiss from her wondrous lips I shall credit myself with one thousand gavvos. That is the price of a kiss.”
“I’ll give two thousand!” roared one of the nobles, and there was a laugh in which the Prince joined.
“Nay! I’ll not sell them now. In after years, when she has grown old and her lips are parched and dry from the sippings I have had, I’ll sell them all at a bargain. Alas, she has not yet kissed me!”
Lorry’s heart bounded with joy, though his hands were clenched in rage.
“She will kiss me tomorrow. Tomorrow I shall taste what no other man has touched, what all men have coveted. And I’ll be generous, gentlemen. She is so fair that your foul mouths would blight with but one caress upon her tender lips, and yet you shall not, be deprived of bliss. I shall kiss her thrice for each of you. Let me count: thrice eleven is thirty-three. Aye, thirty-three of my kisses shall be wasted for the sake of my friends, lucky dogs! Drink to my Princess!”
“Bravo!” cried the others, and the glasses were raised to lip.
A chair was overturned. The form of a man landed suddenly at the side of the Prince and a rough hand dashed the glass from his fingers, the contents flying over his immaculate English evening dress.
“Don’t you dare to drink that toast!” cried a voice in his astonished ear, a voice speaking in excited German. He whirled and saw a scowling face beside his own, a pair of gray eyes that flashed fire.
“What do you mean?” he demanded, anger replacing amazement. The other members of his party stood as if spell-bound.
“I mean that you speak of the Princess of Graustark. Do you understand that, you miserable cur?”
“Oh!” screamed, the Prince, convulsed with rage, starting back and instinctively reaching for the sword he did not carry. “You shall pay for this! I will teach you to interfere—”
“I’ll insult you more decidedly just to avoid misapprehension,” snarled Lorry, swinging his big fist squarely upon the mouth of the Prince. His Royal Highness landed under a table ten feet away.
Instantly the cafe was in an uproar. The stupefied Axphainians regained their senses and a general assault was made upon the hotheaded American. He knocked another down, Harry Anguish coming to his assistance with several savage blows, after which the Graustark spectators and the waiters interfered. It was all over in an instant, yet a sensation that would live in the gossip of generations had been created. A Prince of the realm had been brutally assaulted! Holding his jaw, Lorenz picked himself from the floor, several of his friends running to his aid. There was blood on his lips and chin; it trickled to his shirt front. For some moments he stood panting, glaring at Lorry’s mocking face.
“I am Lorenz of Axphain, sir,” he said at last, his voice quivering with suppressed anger.
“It shall be a pleasure to kill you, Lorenz,” observed his adversary, displaying his ignorance of lese-majeste.
Anguish, pale and very much concerned, dragged him away, the Prince l
eaving the cafe ahead of them, followed by his chattering, cursing companions. Prince Gabriel was standing near the door as they passed out. He looked at the Americans sharply, and Anguish detected something like triumphant joy in his eyes.
“Good Lord, Lorry; this means a duel! Don’t you know that?” cried he, as they started upstairs.
“Of course, I do. And I’m going to kill that villain, too,” exclaimed Lorry, loud enough to be heard from one end of the room to the other.
“This is horrible, horrible! Let me square it up some way if—” began the alarmed Anguish.
“Square it up! Look here, Harry Anguish, I am the one who will do the squaring. If he wants a duel he can have it at any old time and in any style he desires.”
“He may kill you!”
“Not while a just God rules over our destinies. I’ll take my chances with pistols, and now let me tell you one thing, my boy: he’ll never live to touch his lips to hers, nor will there be a royal wedding. She cannot marry a dead man.” He was beside himself with excitement and it was fully half an hour before Anguish could bring him to a sensible discussion of the affair. Gradually he became cool, and, the fever once gone, he did not lose his head again.
“Choose pistols at ten paces and at eight tomorrow,” he said, nonchalantly, as a rap at the door of their apartment announced the arrival of the Prince’s friend.
Anguish admitted two well-dressed, black-bearded men, both of whom had sat at the Prince’s table in the cafe. They introduced themselves as the Duke of Mizrox and Colonel Attobawn. Their visit was brief, formal and conclusive.
“We understand that you are persons of rank in your own America?” said the Duke of Mizrox, after a few moments.
“We are sons of business men,” responded Mr. Anguish.
“Oh, well, I hardly know. But his Highness is very willing to waive his rank, and to grant you a meeting.”
“I’m delighted by his Highness’ condescension, which I perfectly understand,” observed Mr. Anguish. “Now, what have we to settle, gentlemen?”
The George Barr McCutcheon Megapack: 25 Classic Novels and Stories Page 36