Louis Tracy

“ Joan, to-day in the cathedral I could have bound you with ropes if that would have served to keep you in Delgratz; but now I kiss the hem of your dress. My poor girl, my own dear Joan, how you must have suffered! Yet I envy you—I do, on my soul! Life becomes ennobled by actions such as yours. And Alec must never know what you have done for him. That is both the grandeur and the pathos of it. Joan, my precious, your namesake was burnt on the pyre for a King's cause, yet her deed would rank no higher [Pg 240] than yours if the world might be allowed to judge between you. ”

“ For some reason the little man was very angry, and he seemed to resent the implied slur on his good taste.
"I am determined to end this farce once and for all," he vowed. "Before you joined us, I told the Princess——"
The door was flung open. The young man who had followed Joan and Alec into the Louvre that morning rushed in. His pink and white face was crimson now, and his manner that of unmeasured, almost uncontrollable excitement. He gazed at them with a wildness that bordered on frenzy, yet it was clear that their own marked agitation was only what he expected to find. ”

“ The gallant old Serb meant well, for he was a patriot to the core; but his impulsive action grated. Perhaps it was better so. Alec, bred in a society that treated such demonstrations with scant respect, was suddenly recalled to earth, and the business that lay before him seemed to be more in keeping with the modern directness of the railway bridge than with daydreams founded on a picturesque vision of Delgratz.
The city, too, lost its glamour when seen from those backdoor suburbs that every railway in every land appears to regard as the only natural avenue of approach to busy communities. ”

“ It will fawn or snarl as it thinks best fitted to its own ends; but help or pity? Never! Its votaries in Delgratz will strive to rend Alec when they realize that their interests are threatened. We must be there, you and I, you to aid him in winning the fickle mob, and I to watch those secret burrowings more dangerous to thrones than open revolt. It is a sacred mission, my Joan! They who named you were wiser than they knew. You were christened a King's helpmate, while I, Felix Poluski, am fated to be the most amazing product of modern civilization,—an anarchist devoted to a monarchy. ”

“ Joan tried to persuade her tortured mind that the conspiracy had failed.
"They will not dare to remain," she whispered. "They know that assistance may arrive at any moment. Listen, they are going now!"
"Are you gentlemen armed?" asked Felix, grimly.
"Yes, with riding whips," said Alec. "For my part, I have refused to carry any more dangerous weapon; though it is true that I entered Delgratz with a sword in my hand," he added, remembering with a twinge his imagining of Joan's ready laugh when she heard of Prince Michael's brown paper parcel. ”

“ And here you are, a grown man, and Theodore and his Queen are lying dead in the Black Palace. It gives one to think. Now, our good Stampoff here would have me rush off and buy a ticket for Delgratz to-night. As if Austria had not closed every frontier station and was not waiting to pounce on any Delgrado who turned up at this awkward moment on the left bank of the Danube! ”

“ If he chooses to vacate the throne, it reverts to me."
"A Republic in Kosnovia!" snarled Stampoff. "That, indeed, will mark the beginning of the end for the Slav race. A single year would wipe us out of existence. What say you, Beliani, and you, Marulitch? Why are you dumb? Was it for this that we have striven through so many years? Shall our country be wrecked now because a hot headed youth puts his vows to a woman before every consideration of national welfare?"
"The notion is preposterous!" growled Julius, gaining courage from Stampoff's bold denunciation; but Beliani tried to temporize. ”

“ She began to mix some pigments on the palette. Delgrado, already regretting an inexplicable outburst, turned from the picture and looked at Murillo's "woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a diadem of twelve stars."
"Now, please help me to appreciate that and you will find me a willing student," he murmured.
But Joan had recovered her self-possession. "Suppose we come off the high art ladder and talk of our uninteresting selves," she said. "What of the mystery you hinted at on the Quai? Why shouldn't I call you Mr. Delgrado? ”

“ I shall marry her, gentlemen, even though it costs me my throne; but I would remind you that we in this room are not Kosnovia. Let us keep our heads and guard our tempers. If an appeal is to be made to the nation, let it be by votes rather than by swords. I have never deviated from my fixed principle that I would sooner pass the remainder of my life poor and unknown than obtain an hour's extension of my rule by spilling the blood of an unoffending people. ”

“ While Alec was listening to the plaudits that proclaimed his triumph, Stampoff growled at him from behind the half-closed door:
"Gods! You've done it! And without a blow! Never was Kingdom won so easily. God bless your Majesty! May you live long and reign worthily!"
Good wishes these; but in them was the germ of an abiding canker. What would Joan say? He had taken a sleeping car ticket from Paris and had stepped into his patrimony with as little anxiety or delay as would herald a royal succession in the oldest and most firmly established monarchy in Europe. ”

“ Meanwhile, Joan must be taken to her room. She is going to faint, and the Lord only knows what has become of her maid!"
Alec was at Joan's side before Felix had made an end. "You will not break down now, sweetheart," he cried. "All danger is over, and, with God's help, you will never witness such a scene in Delgratz again!"
"I feel tired," she sighed. "I know quite well I am safe, Alec. Somehow, I hardly thought you and I should die to-day. We have things to do in the world, you and I; but those horrid men frightened me by their shrieks. It must be awful to pass into the unknown—like that!" ”

“ Repressed for the hour, kept in check, perhaps, by the undoubted loyalty of the masses, it is ready to spout devastating fire and ashes at the least provocation, and that will be found in a marriage which seems to shut out all hope of realizing the long looked-for joining of Montenegro and Kosnovia. I have a bitter acquaintance with our history, madame, and am persuaded that if Alec is to remain King he must abandon forever this notion of marrying an alien. The Greek church would oppose it tooth and nail, and the people would soon follow the lead of their Popes. ”

“ Leaving a valet and maid to bring the luggage, which an obsequious customs officer cleared at once, he ushered his wife into a ramshackle victoria and told the man to drive to the Schwarzburg.
Every Serb is a born gossip; but a policeman had whispered the names of the eminent pair, and awe kept the driver's tongue from wagging, else Prince Michael would have received a greater shock than the welcoming bump of a singularly bad pavement. ”

“ The hunchback slid down from the little scaffolding he had constructed to enable him to survey the large area covered by the frescoes. "I suppose I have understood what you said," he cried. "It is impossible to focus one's thoughts properly on the spoken word when a huge dome adds vibrations of its own, and I admit that I am invariably irritated myself when I state a remarkable fact with the utmost plainness and people pretend to be either deaf or dull of comprehension."
That was Poluski's way. He never would take one seriously; but Joan merely sighed and bent her head. ”

“ I come as a candidate, not a claimant. It rests with you whether I shall remain among you as Alexis III., King of Kosnovia, or go back to my father and tell him that our people are anxious to try a new form of Government. Of course," and here Alec beamed on them most affably, "there are other alternatives. You may elect to put me in jail, or throw me into the Danube, or swing me from a gibbet as a warning to all would-be monarchs and other malefactors. But there is one thing you cannot do. You can never persuade me to wade to a throne through the blood of innocent people! ”

“ Back to back, separated by little more than half the width of the gallery, Joan and Poluski worked steadily for twenty minutes. The Pole sang to himself incessantly, now bassooning between his thin lips the motif of some rhapsody of Lizst's, now murmuring the words of some catchy refrain from the latest review. Anybody else who so transgressed the rules would have been summarily turned out by the guards; but the men knew him, and the Grande Galerie, despite its treasures, or perhaps because of them, is the least popular part of the Louvre. Artists haunt it ”

“ Yet her senses were strained to a tension far more exhausting than the display of emotion natural to one plunged without warning into the most horrible of the many horrors of civil war, and she had heard, long before the others, the onrush of cavalry and the stampede of the mob.
So, when her eyes met Alec's, and she saw that questioning look in his face, she smiled at him with a radiant confidence that was astounding at such a moment.
"Heaven has been good to us, dear," she said. "Your soldiers are here. Your enemies are running away. Listen! they are fighting now on the stairs. ”

“ In such circumstances, the caliber of a revolver seems to become magnified to absurdly large proportions, and behind the fearsome weapon Bosko's immovable face was that of an automaton.
Beliani's olive complexion assumed a sickly green tint for the second time that evening. "I was right," he muttered; "but you would not listen."
"It is a common delusion of the thief that an honest man has no brains," said Alec coolly. "Now, Beaumanoir, get busy. Time is flying, and we have little more than an hour to spare." ”

“ Prince Michael and Julius, reassured by Alec's manner, and thanking the propitious stars that had rendered unnecessary the dangerous step they were contemplating, entered the room with as businesslike an air as they could assume at a crisis so fraught with import to their own future.
"We ought to be alone," said Beliani in English, with a wary glance at Bosko.
"Oh, for goodness' sake don't disturb my man! I have so little time and so much to do! Tell me exactly what you want me to sign," and he strode to the door and closed it behind Marulitch. ”

“ Neither man had the slightest belief in Alec's innate nobility of character. Beliani likened him to Bayard, it is true, and Marulitch had scoffingly adopted the simile; but that was because each thought Bayard not admirable, but a fool. The somber history of the Kosnovian monarchy, a record of crass stupidity made lurid at times by a lightning gleam of passion, justified the belief that Alexis would follow the path that led Theodore, and Ferdinand, and Ivan, and Milosch to their ruin. ”

“ Let me assure you that if Prince Michael Delgrado had gone to Delgratz he would have died a sudden and violent death. Prince Michael knew it, and declined the distinction. Believe me, too, Alec has the very best of reasons for consulting no one in his choice of a wife. Now, Joan, be brave! When all is said and done, it should be far more pleasant to marry a King than fling a bomb at him, and I have met several young ladies almost as pretty as you who were ready enough to adopt the latter alternative. At any rate you will take no harm by crossing the Danube. ”

“ It is a simple bit of arithmetic: if a King, who works like a horse, is to receive only five thousand a year, what is the annual value of his father, who does nothing but lounge about the boulevards? No wonder old Michael is off hotfoot to the White City!"
Despite her perplexities, Joan had to laugh, and Felix bent nearer to clinch his argument.
"You and I must stand by Alec, my dear. I too am breathing a new atmosphere. I fought against Kings because they were tyrants; but I am ready to fight for one who is a deliverer. What do you fear, you? The world? ”

“ Prince Michael, who was completely eclipsed not only by his son's extraordinary versatility in all public affairs but by lack of that opulent setting for his peculiar qualities which Paris alone could supply, seemed to accept the inevitable. He tolerated Joan, openly praised her beauty, and became resigned in a more or less patronizing way to the minor distractions of local life.
Felix and Joan gave up their mornings to art. The Pole discovered some quaint old frescoes in the cathedral which attracted him by their remarkable freedom of design and simplicity of color. ”

“ It savored of those outlandish incidents recorded in novels of a sensational type, wherein fur coated, sallow faced, cigarette smoking scoundrels plotted the destruction of dynasties, and used fair maidens as decoys for susceptible Kings. Certainly, Felix Poluski, judged by his past, was no bad prototype of a character in that class of fiction; regarded in his present guise, as he sat opposite her in the dining car of the Orient Express, he looked the most harmless desperado that ever preyed on a quivering world. ”

“ He is no longer a King, but a very devoted lover. Come, we can pass the day pleasantly in Budapest. There is nothing else to be done. No sense in running away merely for the fun of the thing. If Alec is not a King, there is no immediate probability of your becoming a Queen. You will be plain Mrs. Somebody or other. Now I wonder what in the world his new name is. The son of an American father would hardly be called Alexis. Horrible thought! You may have to learn to love him all over again as Chauncey, or Hiram, or Phineas. Tell me, mignonne, could you take him back to your heart as Phineas? ”