Читать книгу The Man from Brodney's - George Barr McCutcheon - Страница 10

Table of Contents

While all this was being threshed out by the persons most vitally interested in the affairs of Taswell Skaggs and John Wyckholme, events of a most unusual character were happening to one who not only had no interest in the aforesaid heritage, but no knowledge whatever of its existence. The excitement attending the Skaggs-Wyckholme revelations had not yet spread to the Grand Duchy of Rapp-Thorberg, apparently lost as it was in the cluster of small units which went to make up a certain empire: one of the world powers. The Grand Duke Michael disdained the world at large; he had but little in common with anything that moved beyond the confines of his narrow domain. His court was sleepy, lackadaisical, unemotional, impregnable to the taunts of progression; his people were thrifty, stolid and absolutely stationary in their loyalty to the ancient traditions of the duchy; his army was a mere matter of taxation and not a thing of pomp or necessity. Four times a year he inspected the troops, and just as many times in the year were the troops obliged to devote themselves to rigorous display. The rest of the time was spent in social intrigue and whistling for the war-clouds that never came.

The precise location of the Grand Duchy in the map of the world has little or nothing to do with this narrative; indeed, were it not for the fact that the Grand Duke possessed a charming and most desirable daughter, the Thorberg dynasty would not be mentioned at all. For that matter, it is brought to light briefly for the sole purpose of identifying the young lady in question, and the still more urgent desire to connect her past with her future—for which we have, perhaps intemperately, an especial consideration. It is only necessary, therefore, for us to step into and out of the Grand Duchy without the procrastination usual in a sojourner, stopping long enough only to see how tiresome it would be to stay, and to wonder why any one remained who could get away. Not that the Grand Duchy was an utterly undesirable place, but that too much time already had been wasted there by the populace itself.

It has been said that events of a most unusual character were happening; any event that roused the people from their daily stolidity was sufficiently unusual to suggest the superlative. The Grand Duke's peace of mind had been severely disturbed—so severely, in fact, that he was transferring his troubles to the Emperor, who, in turn, felt obliged to communicate with the United States Ambassador, and who, in his turn, had no other alternative than to take summary action in respect to the indiscretions of a fellow-countryman.

In the beginning, it was not altogether the fault of the young man who had come from America to serve his country. Whatever may have been the turmoil in the Grand Duke's palace at Thorberg, Chase's conscience was even and serene. He had no excuses to offer—for that matter none would have been entertained—and he was resigning his post with the confidence that he had performed his obligations as an American gentleman should, even though the performance had created an extraordinary commotion. Chase was new to the Old World and its customs, especially those rigorous ones which surrounded royalty and denied it the right to venture into the commonplace. The ambassador at the capital of the Empire at first sought to excuse him on the ground of ignorance; but the Grand Duke insisted that even an American could not be such a fool as Chase had been; so, it must have been a wilful offence that led up to the controversy.

Chase had been the representative of the American Government at Thorberg for six months. He never fully understood why the government should have a representative there; but that was a matter quite entirely for the President to consider. The American flag floated above his doorway in the Friedrich Strasse, but in all his six months of occupation not ten Americans had crossed the threshold. As a matter of fact, he had seen fewer than twenty Americans in all that time. He was a vigorous, healthy young man, and it may well be presumed that the situation bored him. Small wonder, then, that he kept out of mischief for half a year. Diplomatic service is one thing and the lack of opportunity is quite another. Chase did his best to find occupation for his diplomacy, but what chance had he with nothing ahead of him but regular reports to the department in which he could only announce that he was in good health and that no one had "called."

Chase belonged to the diplomatic class which owes its elevation to the influence of Congress—not to Congress as a body but to one of its atoms. He was not a politician; no more was he an office seeker. He was a real soldier of fortune, in search of affairs—in peace or in war, on land or at sea. Possessed of a small income, sufficiently adequate to sustain life if he managed to advance it to the purple age (but wholly incapable of supporting him as a thriftless diplomat), he was compelled to make the best of his talents, no matter to what test they were put. He left college at twenty-two, possessed of the praiseworthy design to earn his own way without recourse to the $4,500 income from a certain trust fund. His plan also incorporated the hope to save every penny of that income for the possible "rainy day." He was now thirty; in each of several New York banks he had something like $4,000 drawing three per cent. interest while he picked his blithe way through the world on $2,500 a year, more or less, as chance ordained.

"When I'm forty," Chase was wont to remark to envious spendthrifts who couldn't understand his philosophy, "I'll have over a hundred thousand there, and if I live to be ninety, just think what I'll have! And it will be like finding the money, don't you see? Of course, I won't live to be ninety. Moreover, I may get married and have to maintain a poor wife with rich relatives, which is a terrible strain, you know. You have to live up to your wife's relatives, if you don't do anything else."

He did not refer to the chance that he was quite sure to come in for a large legacy at the death of his maternal grandfather, a millionaire ranch owner in the Far West. Chase never counted on probabilities; he took what came and was satisfied.

After leaving college, he drifted pretty much over the world, taking pot luck with fortune and clasping the hand of circumstance, to be led into the highways and byways, through good times and ill times, in love and out, always coming safely into port with a smiling wind behind. There had been hard roads to travel as well as easy ones, but he never complained; he swung on through life with the heart of a soldier and the confidence of a Pagan. He loathed business and he abhorred trade.

"That little old trust fund is making more money for me by lying idle than I could accumulate in a century by hard work as a grocer or an undertaker," he was prone to philosophise when his uncles, who were merchants, urged him to settle down and "do something." Not that there were grocers or undertakers among them; it was his way of impressing his sense of freedom upon them.

He was an orphan and bounden to no man. No one had the right to question his actions after his twenty-first anniversary. It was fortunate for him that he was a level-headed as well as a wild-hearted chap, else he might have sunk to the perdition his worthy uncles prescribed for him. He went in for law at Yale, and then practised restlessly, vaguely for two years in Baltimore, under the patronage of his father's oldest friend, a lawyer of distinction.

"If I fail at everything else, I'll go back to the practice of law," he said cheerfully. "Uncle Henry is mean enough to say that he has forgotten more law than I ever knew, but he has none the better of me. 'Gad, I am confident that I've forgotten more law, myself, than I ever knew."

Tiring of the law books and reports in the old judge's office, he suddenly abandoned his calling and set forth to see the world. Almost before his friends knew that he had left he was heard of in Turkestan. In course of time he served as a war correspondent for one of the great newspapers, acted as agent for great hemp dealers in the Philippines, carried a rifle with the Boers in South Africa, hunted wild beasts in Asia and in Hottentot land, took snapshots in St. Petersburg, and almost got to the North Pole with one of the expeditions. To do and be all of these he had to be a manly man. Not in a month's journey would you meet a truer thoroughbred, a more agreeable chap, a more polished vagabond, than Hollingsworth Chase, first lieutenant in Dame Fortune's army. Tall, good looking, rawboned, cheerful, gallant, he was the true comrade of those merry, reckless volunteers from all lands who find commissions in Fortune's army and serve her faithfully. He had shared pot luck in odd parts of the world with English lords, German barons and French counts—all serving under the common flag. His heart had withstood the importunate batterings of many a love siege; the wounds had been pleasant ones and the recovery quick. He left no dead behind him.

He was nearly thirty when the diplomatic service began to appeal to him as a pleasing variation from the rigorous occupations he had followed heretofore. A British lordling put it into his head, away out in Delhi. It took root, and he hurried home to attend to its growth. One of his uncles was a congressman and another was in some way connected with railroads. He first sought the influence of the latter and then the recommendation of the former. In less than six weeks after his arrival in Washington he was off for the city of Thorberg in the Grand Duchy of Rapp-Thorberg, carrying with him an appointment as consul and supplied with the proper stamps and seal of office. His uncle compassionately informed him beforehand that his service in Thorberg would be brief and certainly would lead up to something much better.

At the end of five months he was devoutly, even pathetically, hoping that his uncle was no false prophet. He loathed Thorberg; he hated the inhabitants; he smarted under the sting of royal disdain; he had no real friends, no boon companions and he was obliged to be good! What wonder, then, that the bored, suffering, vivacious Mr. Chase seized the first opportunity to leap headforemost into the very thick of a most appalling indiscretion!

When he first arrived in Thorberg to assume his sluggish duties he was not aware of the fact that the Grand Duke had an unmarried daughter, the Princess Genevra. Nor, upon learning that the young lady existed, was he particularly impressed; the royal princesses he had been privileged to look upon were not remarkable for their personal attractiveness: he forthwith established Genevra in what he considered to be her proper sphere.

She was visiting in St. Petersburg or Berlin or some other place—he gave it no thought at the time—when he reached his post of duty, and it was toward the end of his fifth month before she returned to her father's palace in Thorberg. He awoke to the importance of the occasion, and took some slight interest in the return of the royal young lady—even going so far as to follow the crowd to the railway station on the sunny June afternoon. His companions were two young fellows from the English bank and a rather agreeable attaché of the French Government.

He saw the Princess for the first time that afternoon, and he was bowled over, to use the expression of his English friends with whom he dined that night. She was the first woman that he had ever looked upon that he could describe, for she was the only one who had impressed him to that extent. This is how he pictured her at the American legation in Paris a few weeks later:

"Ever see her? Well, you've something to live for, gentlemen. I've seen her but three times and I don't seem able to shake off the spell. Her sisters, you know—the married ones—are nothing to look at, and the Grand Duke isn't a beauty by any means. How the deuce she happens to produce such a contrast I can't, for the life of me, understand. Nature does some marvellous things, by George, and she certainly spread herself on the Princess Genevra. You've never seen such hair. 'Gad, it's as near like the kind that Henner painted as anything human could be, except that it's more like old gold, if you can understand what I mean by that. Not bronze, mind you, nor the raw red, but—oh, well, I'm not a novelist, so I can't half-way describe it. She's rather tall—not too tall, mind you—five feet five, I'd say—whatever that is in the metric system. Slender and well dressed—oh, that's the strangest thing of all! Well dressed! Think of a princess being well dressed! I can see that you don't believe me, but I'll stake my word it's true. Of course, I've seen but three of her gowns and—but that's neither here nor there. I'd say she's twenty-two or twenty-three years of age—not a minute older. I think her eyes are a very dark grey, almost blue. Her skin is like a—a—oh, let me see, what is there that's as pure and soft as her skin? Something warm, and pink, and white, d'ye see? Well, never mind. And her smile! And her frown! You know, I've seen both of 'em, and one's as attractive as the other. She's a real princess, gentlemen, and the prettiest woman I've ever laid my eyes upon. And to think of her as the wife of that blithering little ass—that nincompoop of a Karl Brabetz! She loathes him, I'm sure—I know she does. And she's got to marry him! That's what she gets for being a Grand Duke's daughter. Brabetz is the heir apparent to some duchy or other over there and is supposed to be the catch of the season. You've heard of him. He was in Paris this season and cut quite a figure—a prince with real money in his purse, you know. I wonder why it is that our American girls can't marry the princes who have money instead of those who have none. Not that I wish any of our girls such bad luck as Brabetz! I'll stake my head he'll never forget me!" Chase concluded with a sharp, reflective laugh in which his hearers joined, for the escapade which inspired it was being slyly discussed in every embassy in Europe by this time, but no one seemed especially loth to shake Chase's hand on account of it.

But to return: the advent of the Princess put fresh life into the slowgoing city and court circles. Charming people, whom Chase had never seen before, seemed to spring into existence suddenly; the streets took on a new air; the bands played with a keener zest and the army prinked itself into a most amazingly presentable shape. Officers with noble blood in their veins stepped out of the obscurity of months; swords clanked merrily instead of dragging slovenly at the heels of their owners; uniforms glistened with a new ambition, and the whole atmosphere of Thorberg underwent a change so startling that Chase could hardly believe his senses. He lifted up his chin, threw out his chest, banished the look of discontent from his face and announced to himself that Thorberg was not such a bad place after all.

For days he swung blithely through the streets, the hang-dog look gone from his eyes, always hoping for another glimpse of the fair sorceress who had worked the great transformation. He even went so far as to read the court society news in the local papers, and grew to envy the men whose names were mentioned in the same column with that of the fair Genevra. It was two weeks before he saw her the second time; he was more enchanted by her face than before, especially as he came to realise the astonishing fact that she was kind enough to glance in his direction from time to time.

It was during the weekly concert in the Kursaal, late one night. She came in with a party, among whom he recognised several of the leading personages at court.

Once a week the regular concert gave way to a function in which the royal orchestra was featured. On such occasions the attendance was extremely fashionable, the Duke and his court usually being present. It was not until this time, however, that Chase felt that he could sit through a concert without being bored to extinction. He loved music, but not the kind that the royal orchestra rendered; Wagner, Chopin, Mozart were all the same to him—he hated them fervently and he was not yet given to stratagems and spoils. He sat at a table with the French attaché just below the box occupied by the Princess and her party. In spite of the fact that he was a gentleman, born and bred, he could not conquer countless impulses to look at the flower-face of the royal auditor. They were surreptitious and sidelong peeps, it is true, but they served him well. He caught her gaze bent upon him more than once, and he detected an interest in her look that pleased his vanity exceeding great.

Gradually the programme led up to the feature of the evening—the rendition of a great work under the direction of a famous leader, a special guest of the music-loving Duke.

Chase arose and cheered with the assemblage when the distinguished director made his appearance. Then he proceeded to forget the man and his genius—in fact everything save the rapt listener above him. She was leaning forward on the rail of the box, her chin in her hand, her eyes looking steadily ahead, enthralled by the music. Suddenly she turned and looked squarely into his eyes, as if impelled by the magnetism they unconsciously employed. A little flush mounted to her brow as she quickly resumed her former attitude. Chase cursed himself for a brainless lout.

The number came to an end and the crowd arose to cheer the bowing, smiling director. Chase cheered and shouted "bravo," too, because she was applauding as eagerly as the others. She called the flushed, bowing director to her box, and publicly thanked him for the pleasure he had given. Chase saw him kiss her hand as he murmured his gratitude. For the first time in his life he coveted the occupation of an orchestra leader.

The director was a frail, rather good-looking young man, with piercing black eyes that seemed too bold in their scrutiny of the young lady's face. Chase began to hate him; he was unreasonably thankful when he passed on to the box in which the Duke sat.

The third and last time he saw the Princess Genevra before his sudden, spectacular departure from the Grand Duchy, was at the Duke's reception to the nobility of Rapp-Thorberg and to the representatives of such nations of the world as felt the necessity of having a man there in an official capacity.