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

not keep me away from Bleiberg. Either he is no judge of beauty, or the peasant girls hereabout are something extraordinary. Pshaw! a man always makes an ass of himself on his wedding eve; the crown prince is simply starting in early. I believe I'll hang on here till the wedding day; a royal marriage is one of those things which I have yet to see. I have a fortnight or more to knock around in. I should like to know what the duchess will eventually do."

He sipped the last drop of the cognac and went down the stairs.


CHAPTER V


BEHIND THE PUPPET BOOTH

While the absent-minded hunter strode down toward the lower town, and Maurice sipped his cognac, the king lay in his bed in the palace and aimlessly fingered the counterpane. There was now no beauty in his face. It was furrowed and pale, and an endless fever burned in the sunken eyes-eyes like coals, which suddenly flare before they turn to ash.

The archbishop nor the chancellor could see anything in the dim corners of the royal bed chamber, but he could. It was the mocking finger of death, and it was leveled at him. Spring had come, and summer and autumn and winter, and spring again, but he had not wandered through the green fields, except in dreams, and the byways he loved knew him no more. Ah, to sit still like a spectator and to see the world pass by! To be a part of it, and yet not of it! To see the glory of strength and vigor just beyond one's grasp, the staffs to lean on crumble to the touch, and the stars of hope fade away one by one from the firmament of one's dreams! Here was weariness for which there was no remedy.

Day by day time pressed him on toward the inevitable. No human hand could stay him. He could think, but he could not act. He could move, but he could not stand nor walk. And that philosophy which had in other days sustained him was shattered and threadbare. He was dead, yet he lived. Fate has so many delicate ironies.

He had tried to make his people love him, only to acquire their hate. He had reduced taxation, only to be scorned. He had made the city beautiful, only to be cursed. A paralytic, the theme of ribald verse, the butt of wineroom wits, the object of contumely to his people, his beneficiaries!

The ingratitude of kings bites not half so deep as the ingratitude of the people. Tears filled his eyes, and he fumbled his lips. There were only two bright spots in his futile life. The first was his daughter, who read to him, who was the first in the morning to greet him and last at night to leave him. The second was the evening hour when the archbishop and the chancellor came in to discuss the affairs of state.

"And Prince Frederick has not yet been heard from?" was his first inquiry.

"No, Sire," answered the chancellor. "The matter is altogether mysterious. The police can find no trace of him. He left Carnavia for Bleiberg; he stopped at Ehrenstein, directed his suite to proceed; there, all ends. The ambassador from Carnavia approached me to-day. He scouts the idea of a peasant girl, and hinted at other things."

"Yes," said the king, "there is something behind all this. Frederick is not a youth of peccadilloes. Something has happened to him. But God send him safe and sound to us, so much depends on him. And Alexia?"

"Says nothing," the archbishop answered, "a way with her when troubled."

"And my old friend, Lord Fitzgerald?"

The prelate shook his head sadly. "We have just been made acquainted with his death. God rest his kindly soul."

The king sank deeper into his pillows.

"But we shall hear from his son within a few days," continued the prelate, taking the king's hand in his own. "My son, cease to worry. Alexia's future is in good hands. I have confidence that the public debt will be liquidated on the twentieth."

"Or renewed," said the chancellor. "Your Majesty must not forget that Prince Frederick sacrifices his own private fortune to adjust our indebtedness. That is the wedding gift which he offers to her Highness. One way or the other, we have nothing to fear."


"O!" cried the king, "I had forgotten that magnanimity. His disappearance is no longer a mystery. He is dead."

His auditors could not repress the start which this declaration caused them to make.

"Sire," said the chancellor, quietly, "princes are not assassinated these days. Our worry is perhaps all needless. The prince is young, and sometimes youth flings off the bridle and runs away. But he loves her Highness, and the Carnavians are not fickle."

The prelate and the statesman had different ideas in regard to the peasant girl. To the prelate a woman was an unknown quantity, and he frowned. The statesman, who had once been young, knew a deal about woman, and he smiled.

"Sometimes, my friends," said the king, "I can see beyond the human glance. I hear the crumbling of walls. But for that lonely child I could die in peace. The crown I wear is of lead; God hasten the day that lifts it from my brow." When the king spoke again, he said: "And that insolent Von Rumpf is gone at last? I am easier. He should have been sent about his business ten years ago. What does Madame the duchess say?"

"So little," answered the chancellor, "that I begin to distrust her silence. But she is a wise woman, though her years are but five and twenty, and she will not make any foolish declaration of war which would only redound to her chagrin."

"What is the fascination in these crowns of straw?" said the king to the prelate. "Ah, my father, you strive for the crown to come; and yet your earnest but misguided efforts placed this earthly one on my head. You were ambitious for me."

"Nay," and the prelate bent his head. "It was self that spoke, worldly aggrandizement. I wished -God forgive me!-to administer not to the prince but to the king. I am punished. The crown has broken your life. It was the passing glory of the world; and I fell."

"And were not my eyes as dazzled by the crown as yours were by the robes? Why did we leave the green hills of Osia? What destiny writes, fate must unfold. And oh, the dreams I had of being great! I am fifty-eight and you are seventy. And look; I am a broken twig, and you tower above me like an ancient oak, and as strong." To the chancellor he said: "And what is the budget?"

"Sire, it is fairly quiet in the lower town. The native troops have been paid, and all signs of discontent abated. The duchess can do nothing but replace von Rumpf. The Marshal is a straw in the wind; von Wallenstein and Mollendorf, I hold a sword above their necks. Nearly half the Diet is with us. There has been some strange meddling in the customs. Englishmen have brought me complaints, through the British legation, regarding such inspections as were never before heard of in a country at peace. I consulted the chief inspector and he affirmed the matter. He was under orders of the minister of police. It appears to me that a certain Englishman is to be kept out of the country for reasons well known to us. I have suspended police power over the customs. Ah, Sire, if you would but agree with Monseigneur to dismiss the cabinet."

"It is too late," said the king.

"There is only one flaw," continued the chancellor. "This flaw is Colonel Beauvais, chief in command of the cuirassiers, who in authority stands between the Marshal and General Kronau. I fear him. Why? Instinct. He is too well informed of my projects for one thing; he laughs when I suggest in military affairs. Who is he? A Frenchman, if one may trust to a name; an Austrian, if one may trust from whence he came, recommended by the premier himself. He entered the cuirassiers as a Captain. You yourself, Sire, made him what he is-the real military adviser of the kingdom. But what of his past? No one knows, unless it be von Wallenstein, his intimate. I, for one, while I may be wrong, trust only those whose past I know, and even then only at intervals."

"Colonel Beauvais?" murmured the king. "I am sure that you are unjustly suspicious. How many times have I leaned on his stout arm! He taught Alexia a thousand tricks of horse, so that to-day she rides as no other woman in the kingdom rides. Would that I stood half so straight and looked at the world half so fearlessly. He is the first soldier in the kingdom."

"All men are honest in your Majesty's eyes," said the archbishop.

"All save the man within me," replied the king.

At this juncture the king's old valet came in with the evening meal; and soon after the prelate and the chancellor withdrew from the chamber.

"How long will he live?" asked the latter.

"A year; perhaps only till to-morrow. Ah, had he but listened to me several years ago, all this would not have come to pass. He would see nothing; he persisted in dreams. With the death of Josef he was convinced that his enemies had ceased to be. Had he listened, I should have dismissed the cabinet, and found enough young blood to answer my purposes; I should have surrounded him with a mercenary army two thousand strong; by now he should have stood strongly entrenched.

"They have robbed him, but you and I were permitted to do nothing. Where is the prosperity of which we formerly boasted? I, too, hear crumbling walls. Yet, the son of this Englishman, whose strange freak is still unaccountable, will come at the appointed time; I know the race. He will renew the loan for another ten years. What a fancy! Lord Fitzgerald was an eccentric man. Given a purpose, he pursued it to the end, neither love nor friendship, nor fear swerved him. Do you know that he made a vow that Duke Josef should never sit on this throne, nor his descendants? What were five millions to him, if in giving them he realized the end? The king would never explain the true cause of this Englishman's folly, but I know that it was based on revenge, the cause of which also is a mystery. If only the prince were here!"

"He will come; youth will be youth."

"Perhaps."

"You have never been young."

"Not in that particular sense to which you refer," dryly.

* * * * * *

In the chamber of finance Colonel Beauvais leaned over the desk and perused the writing on a slip of paper which the minister had given him. Enough daylight remained to permit the letters to stand out legibly. When he had done the Colonel tossed back the missive, and the minister tore it into shreds and dropped them into the waste basket.

"So much for your pains," said Beauvais. "The spy, who has eaten up ten thousand crowns, is not worth his salt. He has watched this man Hamilton for two days, been his guide in the hills, and yet learns nothing. And the rigor of the customs is a farce."

"This day," replied the minister, "the police lost