The Puppet Crown, Harlod MacGrath [best new books to read .TXT] 📗

may be too strong. Poor, dishonest king! When you accepted this throne, which belongs to another, you fell as far as possible from moral ethics. And now you would be honest and be called dull, and dream, while your ministers profit and smile behind your back. I beg your Majesty's pardon, but you have always requested that I should speak plainly."

The king laughed; he enjoyed this frank friend. There was an essence of truth and sincerity in all he said that encouraged confidence.

"Indeed, I shall be sorry to have you go tomorrow," he said, "for I believe if you stayed here long enough you would truly make a king of me. Be frank, my friend, be always frank; for it is only on the base of frankness that true friendship can rear itself."

"You are only forty-eight," said the Englishman; "you are young."

"Ah, my friend," replied the king with a tinge of sadness, "it is not the years that age us; it is how we live them. In the last four years I have lived ten. To-day I feel so very old! I am weary of being a king. I am weary of being weary, and for such there is no remedy. Truly I was not cut from the pattern of kings; no, no. I am handier with a book than with a scepter; I'd liever be a man than a puppet, and a puppet I am-a figurehead on the prow of the ship, but I do not guide it. Who care for me save those who have their ends to gain? None, save the archbishop, who yet dreams of making a king of me. And these are not my people who surround me; when I die, small care. I shall have left in the passing scarce a finger mark in the dust of time."

"Ah, Sire, if only you would be cold, unfriendly, avaricious. Be stone and rule with a rod of iron. Make the people fear you, since they refuse to love you; be stone."

"You can mold lead, but you can not sculpture it; and I am lead."

"Yes; not only the metal, but the verb intransitive. Ah, could the fires of ambition light your soul!"

"My soul is a blackened grate of burnt-out fires, of which only a coal remains."

And the king turned in his seat and looked across the crisp green lawns to the beds of flowers, where, followed by a maid at a respectful distance, a slim young girl in white was cutting the hardy geraniums, dahlias and seed poppies.

"God knows what her legacy will be!"

"It is for you to make it, Sire."

Both men continued to remark the girl. At length she came toward them, her arms laden with flowers. She was at the age of ten, with a beautiful, serious face, which some might have called prophetic. Her hair was dark, shining like coal and purple, and gossamer in its fineness; her skin had the blue-whiteness of milk; while from under long black lashes two luminous brown eyes looked thoughtfully at the world. She smiled at the king, who eyed her fondly, and gave her unengaged hand to the Englishman, who kissed it.

"And how is your Royal Highness this fine day? he asked, patting the hand before letting it go.

"Will you have a dahlia, Monsieur?" With a grave air she selected a flower and slipped it through his button-hole.

"Does your Highness know the language of the flowers?" the Englishman asked.

"Dahlias signify dignity and elegance; you are dignified, Monsieur, and dignity is elegance."

"Well!" cried the Englishman, smiling with pleasure; "that is turned as adroitly as a woman of thirty."

"And am I not to have one?" asked the king, his eyes full of paternal love and pride.

"They are for your Majesty's table," she answered.

"Your Majesty!" cried the king in mimic despair. "Was ever a father treated thus? Your Majesty! Do you not know, my dear, that to me 'father' is the grandest title in the world?"

Suddenly she crossed over and kissed the king on the cheek, and he held her to him for a moment.

The bulldog had risen, and was wagging his tail the best he knew how. If there was any young woman who could claim his unreserved admiration, it was the Princess Alexia. She never talked nonsense to him in their rambles together, but treated him as he should be treated, as an animal of enlightenment.

"And here is Bull," said the princess, tickling the dog's nose with a scarlet geranium.

"Your Highness thinks a deal of Bull?" said the dog's master.

"Yes, Monsieur, he doesn't bark, and he seems to understand all I say to him."

The dog looked up at his master as if to say: "There now, what do you think of that?"

"To-morrow I am going away," said the diplomat, "and as I can not very well take Bull with me, I give him to you."

The girl's eyes sparkled. "Thank you, Monsieur, shall I take him now?"

"No, but when I leave your father. You see, he was sent to me by my son who is in India. I wish to keep him near me as long as possible. My son, your Highness, was a bad fellow. He ran away and joined the army against my wishes, and somehow we have never got together again. Still, I've a sneaking regard for him, and I believe he hasn't lost all his filial devotion. Bull is, in a way, a connecting link."

The king turned again to the gravel pictures. These Englishmen were beyond him in the matter of analysis. Her Royal Highness smiled vaguely, and wondered what this son was like. Once more she smiled, then moved away toward the palace. The dog, seeing that she did not beckon, lay down again. An interval of silence followed her departure. The thought of the Englishman had traveled to India, the thought of the king to Osia, where the girl's mother slept. The former was first to rouse.

"Well, Sire, let us come to the business at hand, the subject of my last informal audience. It is true, then, that the consols for the loan of five millions of crowns are issued to-day, or have been, since the morning is passed?"

"Yes, it is true. I am well pleased. Jacobi and Brother have agreed to place them at face value. I intend to lay out a park for the public at the foot of the lake. That will demolish two millions and a half. The remainder is to be used in city improvements and the reconstruction of the apartments in the palace, which are too small. If only you knew what a pleasure this affords me! I wish to make my good city of Bleiberg a thing of beauty -parks, fountains, broad and well paved streets."

"The Diet was unanimous in regard to this loan?"

"In fact they suggested it, and I was much in favor."

"You have many friends there, then?"

"Friends?" The king's face grew puzzled, and its animation faded away. "None that I know. This is positively the first time we ever agreed about anything."

"And did not that strike you as rather singular?"

"Why, no."

"Of course, the people are enthusiastic, considering the old rate of taxation will be renewed?" The diplomat reached over and pulled the dog's ears.

"So far as I can see," answered the king, who could make nothing of this interrogatory.

"Which, if your Majesty will pardon me, is not very far beyond your books."

"I have ministers."

"Who can see farther than your Majesty has any idea."

"Come, come, my friend," cried the king good-naturedly; "but a moment gone you were chiding me because I did nothing. I may not fill my coffers as you suggested, but I shall please my eye, which is something. Come; you have something to tell me."

"Will your Majesty listen?"

"I promise."

"And to hear?"

"I promise not only to listen, but to hear," laughing; "not only to hear, but to think. Is that sufficient?"

"For three years," began the Englishman, "I have been England's representative here. As a representative I could not meddle with your affairs, though it was possible to observe them. To-day I am an unfettered agent of self, and with your permission I shall talk to you as I have never talked before and never shall again."

The diplomat rose from his seat and walked up and down the path, his hands clasped behind his back, his chin in his collar. The bulldog yawned, stretched himself, and followed his master, soberly and thoughtfully. After a while the Englishman returned to his chair and sat down. The dog gravely imitated him. He understood, perhaps better than the king, his master's mood. This pacing backward and forward was always the forerunner of something of great importance.

During the past year he had been the repository of many a secret. Well, he knew how to keep one. Did not he carry a secret which his master would have given much to know? Some one in far away India, after putting him into the ship steward's care, had whispered: "You tell the governor that I think just as much of him as ever." He had made a desperate effort to tell it the moment he was liberated from the box, but he had not yet mastered that particular language which characterized his master's race.

"To begin with," said the diplomat, "what would your Majesty say if I should ask permission to purchase the entire loan?"


CHAPTER II


THE COUP D'ETAT OF COUSIN JOSEF

The king, who had been leaning forward, fell back heavily in his seat, his eyes full wide and his mouth agape. Then, to express his utter bewilderment, he raised his hands above his head and limply dropped them.

"Five millions of crowns?" he gasped.

"Yes; what would your Majesty say to such a proposition?" complacently.

"I should say," answered the king, with a nervous laugh, "that my friend had lost his senses, completely and totally."

"The fact is," the Englishman declared, "they were never keener nor more lucid than at this present moment."

"But five millions!"

"Five millions; a bagatelle," smiling.

"Certainly you can not be serious, and if you were, it is out of the question. Death of my life! The kingdom would be at my ears. The people would shout that I was selling out to the English, that I was putting them into the mill to grind for English sacks."

"Your Majesty will recollect that the measure authorizing this loan was rather a peculiar one. Five millions were to be borrowed indiscriminately, of any man or body of men willing to advance the money on the securities offered. First come, first served, was not written, but it was implied. It was this which roused my curiosity, or cupidity, if you will."

"I can not recollect that the bill was as you say," said the king, frowning.

"I believe you. When the bill came to you, you were not expected to recollect anything but the royal signature. Have you read half of what you have signed and made law? No. I am serious. What is it to you or to the people, who secures this public mortgage, so long as the money is forthcoming? I desire to purchase at face value the twenty certificates."

"As a representative of England?"

The diplomat smiled. The king's political ignorance was well known. "As a representative of England, Sire,