“i’ll marry you, wuffie,” said mouse, three days later as she walked along a secluded alley of the casino gardens, whilst the sun sparkled on marble balustrades and glossy orange leaves. “no; pray spare me those ecstasies, and for goodness sake don’t use german endearments; it sets my nerves on edge. listen; there is a condition; perhaps you’ll set your back up at it, and if you do i shall marry somebody else. il n’y a que l’embarras du choix.”
she only cared for woffram’s consent because he was the only one amongst her adorers who could be brought with decent reason to accept vanderlin’s money; the only one also who combined the poverty which could be bought with the high rank which would conceal the sale.
besides, he was, as she said, a very pretty boy, with a cupidon’s face and a grenadier’s frame, and she thought that he would make bon ménage, i.e., do exactly as he was told to do.
she knew society too well not to know that an english duchess is a really much greater person than a german serenissime, but she was tired of being duchess of otterbourne on twopence-halfpenny a year, and being under tutelage and coercion; and there were one or two royal princesses whom she especially detested to whom it would be amusing to be cousin by marriage, she could scratch them so deftly with the softest of velvet paws.
on the whole, she thought it was the best thing to do, so she spoke coldly and rudely to the young prince as he walked beside her. it was the way she managed her men, and it had always succeeded—except once.
“every wish of yours is law,” said prince woffram, radiant and submissive, for he was extremely in love and had never seen any way of inducing his syren to accept his sword and his title, which were all he possessed in the world. she had always told him that he was a nice-looking boy and wore a pretty uniform, and might follow her[555] about and carry her wraps, but was good for nothing more serious.
“let us walk a little quicker, and don’t keep kissing my hand. it is ridiculous,” she said, with some acerbity, for when you are going to marry a man it is always best not to be too civil to him. “now listen here. your greatuncle khris is dead. i was with him when he died. i persuaded him to do an act of very tardy justice to his daughter. i knew the whole story long ago, and that was why i went to see him. i wanted to try and persuade him to undo the harm he had done.”
the young man was silent. he was surprised and could not grasp her meaning, for he knew that it must be something other than what her mere words expressed.
“you never knew olga, did you?” he said, rather stupidly.
“no,” said mouse, keeping both hands in her muff. “i never knew her, but i have always pitied her profoundly, and i knew her wicked old father could set things right if he chose, for once he almost confessed as much to me. but all this does not matter to you. it is an old story, and they are now going to live happy ever afterwards like people in a fairy-tale. that is their idea of felicity; it wouldn’t be mine. if you would believe it, that man has never cared about anybody else. it seems impossible, but it is so. i suppose men of business are not like other people.”
“i don’t understand,” said the young prince humbly, and in great perplexity. “who are going to live happily for ever? who are you speaking of? please tell me more.”
“nobody wants you to understand—you are to listen,” said mouse, with her brilliant eyes flashing on him above her sable collar. “i tell you i was with your greatuncle when he died, and he gave me his confession to take to adrian vanderlin, and the proof of the false witness which he had bribed people to bear against his daughter, because he was so angry that she did so little to get her husband’s money for him (when you think of it, that was natural enough, for one don’t give one’s daughter into the bourgeoise without expecting to be paid for it). he played[556] iago’s part, you know, and vanderlin was jealous, and your cousin olga was too proud to clear herself, and so they were made very miserable and separated. well, this is what he did and what he confessed, and if i had not been there he would have had the papers burned, for he was a bad, vindictive old man to the last.”
this she said with great sincerity and emphasis, for she saw in memory the glare of those steel-blue eyes in the yellow, drawn face.
“but why should you have been the intermediary?” asked the young man, bewildered. “why did not poor old khris send to my uncle ernst (his nephew, you know), who has always remained a devoted friend of olga’s?”
“i don’t know why he didn’t. i know he did not,” she replied irritably, for she was not disposed to submit to cross-examination, and she had by this time come to believe in her narrative as actual fact. “i was there; and he was mortally ill. i doubt if anyone else would have had patience to unravel his confused confessions.”
“well?” said the young prince anxiously.
“well, i have done vanderlin an enormous service,” she continued. “that is to say, with his peculiar ideas of fidelity, he thinks it enormous. it is the ‘one man one vote’ theory, don’t you know. ‘one life, one love’—that sort of thing. one has read of it. great bosh, but still—no, pray don’t go on like that or you will bore me to extinction. listen. you and i can’t marry as we are. we are as poor as church mice. my people won’t and your people can’t do anything for us. but vanderlin will.”
“vanderlin!” exclaimed wuffie. he was dismayed and horrified; he was a young man of easy principles, but there are some scruples which women dance over like a stool at a cotillon, and which men jib at violently as their hunters do at brick walls.
“if your pater ordered you to marry a royal schoolgirl, you’d take her dower fast enough,” she continued; “and yet what disgraceful sources it would come from—opium-taxes, and gin-palace-taxes, and dog-taxes, and poor men’s sixpences and shillings, and nailmakers’ and glassworkers’ pennies, and real coinage, as one may say, out of vice and misery and want.”
[557]“you can’t be a republican—a socialist?” cried prince woffram in horror.
“i don’t know whether i am or not. i dare say i may be. anybody would be to see a little german princeling, with twopence-halfpenny a year, and whose granduncle has just died without money to pay his doctor’s bill, giving himself airs as if he were somebody.”
“how dreadfully unkind you are,” murmured the young man.
“if you don’t like home-truths, you can go and amuse yourself anywhere you like,” she replied, in a severe tone, her hands folded inside her muff, and her coldest and most resolute expression on her face.
his heart sank into his boots. he walked on beside her, crestfallen and conquered.
“i was quite frank with cocky beforehand, and i am quite frank with you. it is much the best way. there are no disappointments and no recriminations.”
prince woffram did not reply. he did not care to fill the rôle which had suited cocky so admirably, and he was, moreover, blindly in love with her. men in love do not like to be mere lay-figures. but he was weak by disposition, and both his poverty and passion made him weaker still.
“vanderlin will do whatever we wish,” said mouse sharply, with an accent of inflexible authority. “he is made of millions, as boo says, and he is immensely grateful to me. he wants to give me half his fortune, but of course he can’t give it to me, so i told him that i was going to marry you, and that he might give it you; quite secretly, you understand, and you will always consider that it is mine. that must be very distinctly understood.”
the young man was silent; he was, indeed, overwhelmed with astonishment and confusion. it seemed odd to hear that another man had been told of her intention to marry him before he himself had been informed of his future happiness; moreover, there was something about the projected arrangement which struck jarringly on his not very sensitive conscience and appalled him, and his proposed benefactor had divorced a woman of his race!
he stammered some german phrases, embarrassed and[558] apprehensive of her displeasure, for he was afraid of her, keenly and childishly afraid.
“don’t use that ridiculous language!” said mouse, with a boundless scorn for the mother tongue of goethe and of kant. “have you understood all i have been saying? if you accept what vanderlin will do for us—and he will do a great deal—i will marry you. if you won’t, i shall never see you any more. pray make no mistake about that.”
“but if you love me——”
“i never said i loved you. i don’t love people. i like you in a way, and i will marry you on certain conditions, but i will not marry you, my good wuffie, to live on an empty title and the pay of a german lieutenant of cuirassiers. not if i know it! i won’t even enter germany, except for the month at homburg when everybody’s there. thanks—i have seen your father’s court, once in the duchy of karstein-lowenthal, and very often in the duchy of gerolstein!”
she laughed cruelly, not relaxing her quick elastic step over the smooth gravel between the palms and the orange-trees. she intended to marry him, and she had no doubt whatever about the result of the conversation. men were like horses. ride them with a firm hand and you could put them at any timber you chose.
prince woffram’s face flushed painfully; the jeer at his father’s court hurt him. as far as he could feel offence with her he felt it then, as her clear unkind laughter rippled on the wintry air.
“you are very rough on me,” he said, humbly, in english. “i am poor—we are poor—i know that; but honorable poverty——”
mouse turned her face to him, withering scorn flashing from her sapphire eyes upon him.
“honorable poverty has just died in the person of prince khristof of karstein-lowenthal, and he had not a penny to pay his laundress, and his lodging, and his doctor, and his grave! adrian vanderlin paid for all of them.”
she said it cruelly, triumphantly, with her silvery laugh sounding shriller than usual.
the young man grew redder still with anger and shame[559] commingled. his eyes were downcast. he had no reply ready as he walked beside her down the lonely alley.
she saw that she had wounded and offended him.
“come, wuffie, be reasonable,” she said, in another tone. “you know well enough that i shall no more marry you to remain penniless than i shall marry one of the croupiers in the casino. if you were going to ally yourself with a royal princess, you would see nothing degrading in living on her allowance allotted to her by what is called the state, that is, taken out of the taxes paid by the public on their sugar, and tea, and cheese, and clothing, and yet, when you come to analyze it, that is not very creditable. it is much more creditable to take what an immensely rich financier never will miss, and offers, de bon cœur, to acquit himself of a debt of gratitude; and since you are so fond of your family, he is your cousin by marriage—at least he was and he will be again, for he means to re-marry his lost angel. my dear wuffie, pray don’t mind my saying so, but german princes are living on their wives’ dowers all over the world by the hundred. it is their métier.”
he still did not answer. he looked on the ground as he walked. there was sufficient truth in what she said for his national and family pride to wince under it. he knew that if he looked at her he should consent to this abominable, indefensible, unworthy act to which she tempted him. he kept his eyes on the ground; the color burnt hotly in his cheeks. she was silent too a few moments. then she stopped short in her walk, forcing him to stop also, and faced him, her hands in her muff and her face very resolute and insolent, with a contemptuous smile on her lips.
“my dear wuffie,” she said with sovereign contempt, “you can’t suppose that i was going to marry you for yourself, do you?”
the young man colored, much mortified. he had supposed so.
“you are a very pretty boy, but one doesn’t marry for good looks,” she said in the same tone. “one marries for bread and butter. neither you nor i have got it; but together we can get it.”
[560]“but—but——” stammered prince woffram; he knew that he was being tempted to what was disgraceful; to what, judged by any court of honor, would brand him as unworthy to wear his sword.
“can you really think, my dear boy,” she said with a cruel, slighting little laugh, “that i shall marry you for the mere sake of going, as the wife of the sixth son of a six-hundredth-time-removed cousin of the emperor, in the défiler-cour at berlin? i can assure you that such a prospect would not attract me for a moment. i have no desire to figure in the salle once in ten years, and make jam and knit stockings like a true german fürstin all the rest of my life. ‘kuche, kirche, kinder,’ was not said by your imperial relative of me. if you accept my conditions i will become your wife, but if you do not there are many others who will. i like you very much, wuffie, but i can live extremely well without you, my dear boy.”
he strove to keep his eyes away from her face. he looked at the trees, at the clouds, at the sea, then at the ground again. he knew that he was being led to his own undoing, to his disgrace in his own eyes, to the abandonment of self-respect and independence and manhood; he knew that he would become vanderlin’s pensioner and her slave, that he would fall in his own sight to a lower place than was held by one of the croupiers raking in gold at the tables yonder. he tried to keep his eyes from her face. he had had a pious mother; he prayed for strength.
“look at me, wuffie!” she said imperiously.
the delicate scent of the perfumed muff was wafted to his nostrils like a puff of incense from the altars of the venusberg. he lifted his eyes and saw hers, with their challenge, their mockery, their malice, their command. he was lost.
a few minutes later boo, who had been playing near, ran down the alley at a headlong pace toward them, and lifted her rosebud mouth to be kissed.
“you are going to be my new pappy, wuffie!” she said, in her sweetest and most innocent manner. “i’ve had two; but they’re both dead, and i shall like you the best of the three, because you’re so pretty, wuffie.”
and she sprang up into his arms, and laughed and beat[561] him about the eyes with a bunch of violets, and so dazzled and blinded him that he had no time to ask himself—who had been the two of whom she spoke?
jack had a letter a month later which astonished and annoyed him. he read it sitting in a favorite nook in one of the embrasures of the hall windows at faldon, with dogs between his knees, at his feet, under his arms, and behind his back; young frolicsome foolish dogs, big and little, who were the object of ossian’s deepest scorn.
the letter was from boo, and dated from a fashionable hotel in the rue castiglione.
“mammy says you are to come over,” the note began abruptly. “she’s writing to your gardjens. she is going to marry wuffie. wuffie is nicer than anybody as was before. he has such a beautiful white coat, and is all chaines, and orders, and swords that clatter, that is when he puts ’em on; when they’re off he don’t look more nor any other man; but she means to make him give up soldiering. she says you are to come over. you won’t carry her traine ’cos people as are widders don’t have traines when they marry, and besides you’re too old. but that don’t matter. i shall have a beautiful frock and wuffie has gived me a tuckoiss belt. don’t fret about your dress. they’ll dress you here. it’s on the third. mammy sends you one hundred thousand kisses; me too. au revoir. auf weidersehn.”
for boo, a true daughter of her time, could write correctly all languages except her own.
this letter was painful to its recipient. he sat looking gloomily out at the glades of the park where wild winds from st. george’s channel were swaying the great trees and driving the faldon river into scurrying clouds of brown foam.
“i’ll take it to him,” he thought. he had learned to know that his uncle ronnie was a rock of refuge. he got up as well as he could for being embraced by all his dogs at once, and knocked down by a newfoundland twice in excess of adoration.
he found hurstmanceaux at the other end of the house engaged in reading his own correspondence of the morning.
[562]“if you please is this true?”
“is what true?”
“that my mother is to marry.”
he held out his sister’s letter.
“i don’t know if it means that. if it don’t mean that i can’t tell what it means,” he added despondently.
“your mother marries, yes,” said hurstmanceaux, taking the note, “and this letter says you are to go to paris. do you wish to go?”
jack’s fair face grew almost stern.
“i will never go to her,” he said with more decision than could have been expected from his years.
“make no rash vows, my boy,” said ronald. “but as regards your appearance at this marriage it is not necessary; i think you are right not to go.”
“i would not go if they dragged me with ropes through the sea from dublin bay to calais,” said jack; “and up the seine,” he added with a geographical afterthought.
“she killed him, and she has forgotten him,” thought her son as he went out with his dogs into the bare march avenues of the park. jack did not forget.
so it came to pass that at the brilliant wedding celebrated at the english and german embassies, and attended by many great persons of royal and noble families, there was not present either the eldest brother or the eldest son of the lady who became h.s.h. princess woffram of karstein-lowenthal.
