Red Axe - Samuel Rutherford Crockett (books to read fiction .TXT) 📗

with a great deal of his society. He was often graciously pleased to talk concerning his early difficulties.
"When I was an understrapper," he was wont to say, "the land was overswarmed and eaten up by officialdom. I could not see the good meat wasted upon crawlers. 'Get to work,' said I, 'or ye shall neither eat nor crawl!'
"'We must eat--to beg we are not ashamed, to steal is the right of our noble Ritterdom,' the crawlers replied.
"'So,' said I, '_bitte_--as to that we shall see!'
"Then I made me a fine gallows, builded like that outside Paris, which I had seen once when on an embassy for Prince Dietrich. It was like a castle, with walls twelve feet thick, and on the beams of it room for a hundred or more to swing, each with his six feet of clearance, all comfortable, and no complaints.
"Then came the crawlers and asked me what this fine thing was for.
"'For the sacred Ritterdom of Plassenburg!' answered I, 'if it will not cease to burn houses and to ravish and carry off honest men's wives and daughters.'
"'But you must catch us!' quoth Crawlerdom. 'Walls fourteen feet thick!' said they.
"'Content,' cried I; 'there is the more fun in catching you. Only the end is the same--that is to say, my new, well-ventilated castle out there on the heath, fine girdles and neck-pieces and anklets of iron, and six feet of clearance for each of you to swing in.'
"So they went back to their castles, and robbed and ravished and rieved, even as did their fathers for a thousand years, thinking no evil. But I took my soldiers, whom in seven years' service I had taught to obey orders-two foot of clearance did well enough for the disobedient among them, not being either ritters or men of mark. And I, Karl the Miller's brat, as at that time they called me in contempt, borrowed cannon-- great lumbering things--from my friend the Margrave George, down there to the south. A great work we had dragging them up to Plassenburg by rope and chain and laboring plough oxen. We shot them off before the fourteen-feet walls. Then arose various clouds of dust, shriekings, surrenderings, crying of 'Forgive us, great Prince, we never meant to do it,' followed, as I had said, by the six-feet clearances. But these in time I had to reduce to four--so great became the competition for places in my new Schloss Muellerssohn.
"But 'Once done, well done--done forever!' is my motto. So since that time the winds have mostly blown through my Schloss untainted, and the sons of Ritterdom, magnanimous captains and honest bailies of quiet bailiwicks, are my very good friends and faithful officers."
Prince Karl the Miller's Son was silent a moment.
"But I am still looking out for another man with a head-piece to come after me. I have no son, and if I had, the chances are ten to one that he would be either a milksop or a flittermouse painted blue. Milksops I hate, and send to the monkeries. I can endure flittermice painted blue, but they must wear petticoats--and pretty petticoats too. Have you observed those of the Princess?" said he, abruptly changing the subject.
"The Princess's flittermice?" I faltered, not well knowing what I said, for he had turned roughly and suddenly upon me.
"Aye, marry, you may say it! But I meant the Princess's wilicoats!"
"No," said I, as curtly as I could, for the subject had its obvious limitations.
"Ah, they are pretty ones," said Karl, "I assure you. She has at least an undeniable taste in lace and cambric. They say in other lands--not in this--though I would not hinder them if they did--that she wears the under-garments of men and rules the state. But I think not so. The Princess is a better Queen than wife, a better woman than either."
On this subject also I had nothing to say which I dared venture to the husband of the Lady Ysolinde.
"She read my horoscope," said I, weakly, searching for something in the corners of my brain to change the subject.
"How so?" said the Prince, quickly.
"First in a crystal and then in a pool of ink," I replied.
"It was a good horoscope and of a fortunate ending?"
"On the whole--yes!" said I; "though there was much in it that I could not understand."
"Like enow!" laughed the Prince; "I warrant she could not understand it herself! It is ever the way of the ink-pool folk."
Then ensued a silence between us.
Prince Karl remained long with his head resting on his hand. He looked critically at the twisted stem of his wineglass, twirling it between his thick fingers.
"The Princess loves you!" he said, at last, looking shrewdly at me from beneath his gray brows.
It was spoken half as a question and half as information.
"Loves me?" stammered I, the blood sucking back to my heart and leaving my head light and tingling.
The Prince nodded calmly.
"So they say!" said he.
"My Lord, it is a thing impossible!" cried I, earnestly. "I am but a poor lad--and she has been kind to me. But of love no word has been spoken. Besides--"
And I stopped.
"Out with it, man!" said the Prince, more like, as it seemed to me, a comrade inviting a confidence than a great Prince speaking to a newly made officer.
"Well, I--I love the Little Playmate."
It came out with a rush at last.
"Oh!" said he; "that is bad. I hope that is not a matter arranged, a thing serious. For if the Princess knows as much, the young woman will not have her troubles to seek in the Palace of Plassenburg."
I hung my head and said naught, save that Helene declared she loved me not, but that I thought she was mistaken.
"Ah, then," cried the Prince, like one exceedingly relieved, "it is but some boy and girl affair. That is better. She may change her mind, as you will certainly change yours--and that several times--among the ladies of the court. I was in hopes--"
And the Prince stopped in his turn, not from bashfulness, but rather like a man who desires more carefully to choose his words.
"I was in hopes," he went on, speaking slowly, "that if the Princess loved your boy's face and liked my conversation (which I may say without pride that I think she does) you and I together might have kept her at home. So over-much wandering is not good for the state. Also it gets her a name beyond all manner of ill-doing within-doors."
Once more I knew not well what to answer to this speech of the Prince's, so I remained discreetly silent.
"I have seen the Princess's flittermice about her before, often enough (I thank thee for the word, Sir Captain.), but this is the first time she has performed the ink-pool and crystal foolery with any man. There is no great harm in the Princess. In the things of love she is as inflammable as the ink, and as soft as the crystal. Fear not, Joseph, Potiphera may be depended upon not to proceed to extremities. But I was in some hopes that you and I could have arranged matters between us, being both men--aye, and honorable men."
I saw that Karl Miller's Son looked sad and troubled.
"Prince, you love the Princess!" said I, thrusting out my hand to him before I thought. He did not take it, but instead he thrust a flagon of wine into it, as if I had asked for that--yet the thing was not done by way of a rebuff. I saw that plainly.
"Pshaw! What does a grizzle-pate with love?" said he, gruffly. "Nevertheless, I was in hopes."
"Prince Karl," said I, "I give you word of honor, 'tis not as you say or they say. The Princess has indeed done me the honor to be friendly--"
"To hold your hand!" he murmured, softly, like a chorus.
"Well, to be friendly, and--"
"To caress your cheek?" put in the Prince, gently as before.
"Done me the honor to be friendly--"
"To play with your curls, lad?"
"The Princess--" I began, all in a tremor. For anything more awkward than this conversation I had never experienced. It bathed me in a drip of cold sweat.
"To kiss you, perhaps, at the waygoing?" he insinuated.
"No!" thundered I, at last. "Prince, you do your Princess great wrong."
He lifted his hand in a gentle, deprecating way, most unlike the rider who had ridden so fast and so hotly that night of our coming.
"You mistake me, sir," he said. "On the contrary, I have the greatest respect for the Princess Ysolinde. I would not wrong her for the world. But I know her track of old. You are a brave lad, and, after all, I fear there is something in that calf-love of yours--devil take it!"
I thought I could now dimly discern whither the Prince's plans were tending.
"Your Highness," said I, "I am a young man and of little experience. I cannot tell why you have chosen to speak so freely to me. But I am your servant, and, in all that hurts not the essence and matter of my love for the Little Playmate, I will do even as you say."
Prince Karl grasped my hand.
"Ah, well said!" he cried. "You are running your head into a peck of troubles, though. And you are likely to have some experience of womenkind shortly--a thing which does no brisk young fellow any harm, unless he lets them come between him and his career. Women are harmless enough, so that you keep them well down to leeward. I am Baltic-bred, and have ever held to this--that you may sail unscathed through fleets of farthingales, so being that you keep the wind well on your quarter, and see the fair-way clear before you."
I did not at the time understand half he said, but I knew we had made some sort of a bargain. And I thought, with an aching, unsatisfied heart, that though it might be well enough for an iron-gray and cynical old Prince, the thing would hardly commend itself to Helene, my Little Playmate, to whom I had so recently spoken loving words, sweeter than ever before.
"Devil take all Princes and Princesses!" I said, as I thought, to myself. But I must have spoken aloud, for the Prince laughed.
"Do not waste good prayers needlessly," he said; "he will!"
And so, with a careless and humorsome wave of his hand to one side, he went down the staircase, and so out into the quadrangle of the Palace.


CHAPTER XXIX
LOVES ME--LOVES ME NOT
Now how this plan of my Lord Prince's worked in the Palace of Plassenburg I find it difficult to tell without writing myself down a "painted flittermouse," as the Prince expressed it. I was in high favor with my master; well liked also by most of the hard-driving, rough-riding young soldiers whom the miller's son had made out of the sons of dead and damned Ritterdom. I got my share of honor and good service, too, in going to different courts and bringing back all that Prince Karl needed. To exercise myself in the art of war, I hunted the border thieves and gave them short enough shrift. In a year I had made such an assault as that of the inn at Erdberg an impossibility all along the marches of our provinces.
The crusty old councillor, Leopold Dessauer, who had held office under the last Prince of the legitimate line, was ever ready to assist me with the kindest of deeds and the bitterest and saltest of words.
"What did I tell you about being Field-Marshal?" said he one day--"in Karl's kingdom the shorter the service, the higher