The Princess Elopes, Harlod MacGrath [romantic story to read TXT] 📗

princess, and all within three short hours! It was like some weird dream. And how the deuce would it end?

He gazed at the toys again.

And then the door opened and he was told to come out. The grand duke had arrived.

"This will be the final round-up," he laughed quietly, his thought whimsically traveling back to the great plains and the long rides under the starry night.


XI

The Grand Duke of Barscheit was tall and angular and weather-beaten, and the whites of his eyes bespoke a constitution as sound and hard as his common sense. As Max entered he was standing at the side of Doppelkinn.

"There he is!" shouted the prince. "Do you know who he is?"

The duke took a rapid inventory. "Never set eyes upon him before." The duke then addressed her Highness. "Hildegarde, who is this fellow? No evasions; I want the truth. I have, in the main, found you truthful."

"I know nothing of him at all," said the princess curtly.

Max wondered where the chill in the room came from.

"He says that his name is Scharfenstein," continued the princess, "and he has proved himself to be a courteous gentleman."

Max found that the room wasn't so chill as it might have been.

"Yet you eloped with him, and were on the way to Dresden," suggested the duke pointedly.

The princess faced them all proudly. "I eloped with no man. That was simply a little prevarication to worry you, my uncle, after the manner in which you have worried me. I was on my way to Dresden, it is true, but only to hide with my old governess. This gentleman jumped into my compartment as the train drew out of the station."

"But you knew him!" bawled the prince, waving his arms.

"Do you know him?" asked the duke coldly.

"I met him out riding. He addressed me, and I replied out of common politeness,"-with a sidelong glance at Max, who stood with folded arms, watching her gravely.

The duke threw his hands above his head as if to call Heaven to witness that he was a very much wronged man.

"Arnheim," he said to the young colonel, "go at once for a priest."

"A priest!" echoed the prince.

"Yes; the girl shall marry you to-night," declared his serene Highness.

"Not if I live to be a thousand!" Doppelkinn struck the table with his fist.

The girl smiled at Max.

"What?" cried the duke, all the coldness gone from his tones. "You refuse?" He was thunderstruck.

"Refuse? Of course I refuse!" And the prince thumped the table again. "What do you think I am in my old age,-an ass? If you have any fillies to break, use your own pastures. I'm a vintner." He banged the table yet again. "Why, I wouldn't marry the Princess Hildegarde if she was the last woman on earth!"

"Thank you!" said the princess sweetly.

"You're welcome," said the prince.

"Silence!" bellowed the duke. "Doppelkinn, take care; this is an affront, not one to be lightly ignored. It is international news that you are to wed my niece."

"To-morrow it will be international news that I'm not !" The emphasis this time threatened to crack the table-leaf. "I'm not going to risk my liberty with a girl who has no more sense of dignity than she has."

"It is very kind of you," murmured the princess.

"She'd make a fine wife," went on the prince, ignoring the interruption. "No, a thousand times no! Take her away-life's too short; take her away! Let her marry the fellow; he's young and may get over it."

The duke was furious. He looked around for something to strike, and nothing but the table being convenient, he smashed a leaf and sent a vase clattering to the floor. He was stronger than the prince, otherwise there wouldn't have been a table to thwack.

"That's right; go on! Break all the furniture, if it will do you any good; but mark me, you'll foot the bill." The prince began to dance around. "I will not marry the girl. That's as final as I can make it. The sooner you calm down the better."

How the girl's eyes sparkled! She was free. The odious alliance would not take place.

"Who is that?"

Everybody turned and looked at Max. His arm was leveled in the direction of a fine portrait in oil which hung suspended over the fireplace. Max was very pale.

"What's that to you?" snarled the prince. He was what we Yankees call "hopping mad." The vase was worth a hundred crowns, and he never could find a leaf to replace the one just broken.

"I believe I have a right to know who that woman is up there." Max spoke quietly. As a matter of fact he was too weak to speak otherwise.

"A right to know? What do you mean?" demanded the prince fiercely. "It is my wife."

With trembling fingers Max produced his locket.

"Will you look at this?" he asked in a voice that was a bit shaky.

The prince stepped forward and jerked the locket from Max's hand. But the moment he saw the contents his jaw fell and he rocked on his heels unsteadily and staggered back toward the duke for support.

"What's the matter, Prince?" asked the duke anxiously. After all Doppelkinn was an old crony, and mayhap he had been harsh with him.

"Where did you get that?" asked the prince hoarsely.

"I have always worn it," answered Max. "The chain that went with it originally will no longer fit my neck."

"Arnheim! . . . Duke! . . . Come and look at this!"-feebly.

"Good Heaven!" cried the duke.

"It is the princess!" said Arnheim in awed tones.

"Where did you get it?" demanded the prince again.

"I was found with it around my neck."

"Duke, what do you think?" asked the agitated prince.

"What do I think?"

"Yes. This was around my son's neck the day he was lost. If this should be! . . . If it were possible!"

"What?" The duke looked from the prince to the man who had worn the locket. Certainly there wasn't any sign of likeness. But when he looked at the portrait on the wall and then at Max doubt grew in his eyes. They were somewhat alike. He plucked nervously at his beard.

"Prince," said Max, "before Heaven I believe that I may be . . . your son!

"My son!"

By this time they were all tremendously excited and agitated and white; all save the princess, who was gazing at Max with sudden gladness in her eyes, while over her cheeks there stole the phantom of a rose. If it were true!

"Let me tell you my story," said Max. (It is not necessary for me to repeat it.)

The prince turned helplessly toward the duke, but the duke was equally dazed.

"But we can't accept just a story as proof," the duke said. "It isn't as if he were one of the people. It wouldn't matter then. But it's a future prince. Let us go slow."

"Yes, let us go slow," repeated the prince, brushing his damp forehead.

"Wait a moment!" said Colonel Arnheim, stepping forward. "Only one thing will prove his identity to me; not all the papers in the world can do it."

"What do you know?" cried the prince, bewildered.

"Something I have not dared tell till this moment,"-miserably.

"Curse it, you are keeping us waiting!" The duke kicked about the shattered bits of porcelain.

"I used to play with the-the young prince," began Arnheim. "Your Highness will recollect that I did." Arnheim went over to Max. "Take off your coat." Max did so, wondering. "Roll up your sleeve." Again Max obeyed, and his wonder grew. "See!" cried the colonel in a high, unnatural voice, due to his unusual excitement. "Oh, there can be no doubt! It is your son!"

The duke and the prince bumped against each other in their mad rush to inspect Max's arm. Arnheim's finger rested upon the peculiar scar I have mentioned.

"Lord help us, it's your wine-case brand!" gasped the duke.

"My wine case!" The prince was almost on the verge of tears.

The girl sat perfectly quiet.

"Explain, explain!" said Max.

"Yes, yes! How did this come?-put there?" spluttered the prince.

"Your Highness, we-your son-we were playing in the wine-cellars that day," stammered the unhappy Arnheim. "I saw . . . the hot iron . . . I was a boy of no more than five . . . I branded the prince on the arm. He cried so that I was frightened and ran and hid. When I went to look for him he was gone. Oh, I know; it is your son."

"I'll take your word for it, Colonel!" cried the prince. "I said from the first that he wasn't bad-looking. Didn't I, Princess?" He then turned embarrassedly toward Max and timidly held out his hand. That was as near sentiment as ever the father and the son came, but it was genuine. "Ho, steward! Hans, you rascal, where are you?"

The steward presently entered, shading his eyes.

"Your Highness called?"

"That I did. That's Max come home!"

"Little Max?"

"Little Max. Now, candles, and march yourself to the packing-cellars. Off with you!" The happy old man slapped the duke on the shoulder. "I've an idea, Josef."

"What is it?" asked the duke, also very well pleased with events.

"I'll tell you all about it when we get into the cellar." But the nod toward the girl and the nod toward Max was a liberal education.

"I am pardoned?" said Arnheim.

"Pardoned? My boy, if I had an army I would make you a general!" roared the prince. "Come along, Josef. And you, Arnheim! You troopers, out of here, every one of you, and leave these two young persons alone!"

And out of the various doors the little company departed, leaving the princess and Max alone.

Ah, how everything was changed! thought Max, as he let down his sleeve and buttoned his cuff. A prince! He was a prince; he, Max Scharfenstein, cow-boy, quarter-back, trooper, doctor, was a prince! If it was a dream, he was going to box the ears of the bell-boy who woke him up. But it wasn't a dream; he knew it wasn't. The girl yonder didn't dissolve into mist and disappear; she was living, living. He had now the right to love any one he chose, and he did choose to love this beautiful girl, who, with lowered eyes, was nervously plucking the ends of the pillow tassel. It was all changed for her, too.

"Princess!" he said a bit brokenly.

"I am called Gretchen by my friends,"-with a boldness that only half-disguised her