The Puppet Crown - Harlod MacGrath (nice books to read TXT) 📗

I love!"

"You?" Maurice retreated a step. The silver moonshine became tinged with red.

"I am Prince Frederick, and I love her Highness. I would sacrifice a thousand kingdoms to spare her a moment's sorrow. I have always loved her."

"What a woman!" Maurice murmured, as the scheme of Madame's flashed through his mind. "What a woman! And she had the audacity to kidnap you, too!"

"And by the most dishonorable device. I and my suite of gentlemen were coming to Bleiberg to make the final arrangements. At Ehrenstein I received a telegram which requested me to visit till the following train a baron who was formerly a comrade of my father. The telegram advised me of his sudden illness, and that he had something important to disclose to me. I bade my gentlemen, save one, proceed to Bleiberg. My aide and I entered the carriage which was to convey us to the castle. We never reached it. On the road we fell into an ambush, a contrivance of Madame's. I was brought to the chateau. Whatever happened to Hofer, my aide, I do not know. Doubtless he is dead. But Madame shall pay, both in pride and wealth. I will lay waste this duchy of hers, though in the end the emperor crush me. Let us be off."

They stumbled on through the forest. So confused was Maurice that he forgot his usual caution. The supreme confidence of this woman and the flawlessness of her schemes dazed him. So far she had stopped at nothing; where would she end? A Napoleon in petticoats, she was about to appall the confederation. She had suppressed a prince who was heir to a kingdom triple in power and size to the kingdom which she coveted. Madame the duchess was relying on some greater power, else her plans were madness.

As for the prince, he had but one thought: to reach Bleiberg. The confinement, together with mental suffering, anxiety and forced inaction, began to tell on him. Twice he tripped and fell, and Maurice had to return to assist him to his feet. However could they cross the mountains, a feat which needed both courage and extreme physical endurance?

"I am so weak," said the prince, "so pitiably weak! I thought to frighten the woman by starving myself, poor fool that I was!"

And they went on again. Maurice was beginning to feel the effect of his wine-bibbing; he had a splitting headache.

"Silence!" he suddenly whispered, sinking and dragging the prince with him.

A hundred yards in advance of them stood a sentinel, his body bent forward and a hand to his ear. Presently he, too, lay down. Five minutes passed. The sentinel rose, and convinced that his ears had tricked him, resumed his lonely patrol. He disappeared toward the west, while the fugitives made off in an easterly direction. Maurice was a soldier again. Every two or three hundred yards he knelt and pressed his ear to the cold, damp earth and waited for a familiar jar. The prince watched these movements with interest.

"You have been a soldier?" he asked.

"Yes. Perhaps we had better strike out for the mountains. The sentry line can not extend as far as this."

But now they could see the drab peaks of the mountains which loomed between the partly dismantled trees. Beyond lay the kingdom. Would they ever reach it? There was only one pass; this they dared not make. Yet if they attempted to cross the mountains in a deserted place, they might very easily get lost; for in some locations it was fully six miles across the range, and this, with the ups and downs and windings in and out, might lengthen into twenty miles. They struck out toward the mountains, and after half an hour they came upon an unforeseen obstacle. They sat down in despair. This obstacle was the river, not very, wide, but deep, turbulent and impassable.

"We shall have to risk the pass," said Maurice, gloomily; "though heaven knows how we are to get through it. We have ten shots between us."

They followed the river. The roar of it deadened all other sounds. For a mile they plodded on, silent, watchful and meditative. The prince thought of his love; Maurice tried to forget his. For him the romance had come to an end, its logical end; and it was now only a question of getting back to the world to which he belonged and remaining there. He recalled a line he had read somewhere: a deep love, gashes into the soul as a scar is hewn upon the body and remains there during the whole life. . .

"Look!" cried the prince. He pointed toward the west.

Maurice came out of his dream and looked. Some distance west of the pass, perhaps half a mile from where they stood, Maurice saw the twinkle of a hundred campfires. It was Madame's army in bivouac.

"What does this mean?" asked the prince.

"It means that the duchess is on the eve of striking a blow for her crown," answered Maurice. "And how are we to make the pass, which is probably filled with soldiers? If only we could find a boat! Ah! what would your Highness call this?" He pointed to a thread-like line of bare earth which wended riverward.

"A sheep or cattle path," said the prince, after a close inspection.

"Then the river is perhaps fordable here!" exclaimed Maurice jubilantly. "At any rate, we'll try it; if it gets too deep, we'll come back."

He walked to the water's edge, studied the black whirling mass, shrugged and stepped in. The prince came after him, unhesitatingly. Both shivered. The water was intensely cold. But the bed was shallow, and the river never mounted above the waist. However, in midstream it rushed strongly and wildly along, and all but carried them off their feet. They arrived in safety at the opposite shore, weak and cold in body, but warm in spirit. They lay on the grass for several moments, breathing heavily. They might now gain the pass by clambering up the mountain and picking their way down from the other side. It was not possible that Madame's troopers had entered into the kingdom.

"I am giving out," the prince confessed reluctantly. "Let us make as much headway as we can while I last."

They stood up. Now the moon fell upon them both; and they viewed each other with no little curiosity. What the prince saw pleased him, for he possessed a good eye. What Maurice saw was a frank, manly countenance, youthful, almost boyish. The prince did not look to be more than three and twenty, if that; but there was a man's determination in his jaw. This jaw pleased Maurice, for it confided to him that Madame had now something that would cause her worry.

"I put myself in your care," said the prince, offering his hand. "I am not equal to much. A man can not see his wedding day come and go without him, helpless to prevent it, and not have the desire to sit down and weep and curse. You will see nothing but the unfavorable side of me for the next dozen hours."

"I'm not altogether amiable myself," replied Maurice with a short laugh. "Let us get out of the moonlight," he added; "we are somewhat conspicuous, and besides, we should keep moving; this cold is paralyzing. Is your Highness equal to the climbing?"

"Equal or not, lead the way. If I fall I'll call you."

And the weary march began again; over boulders, through tangles of tough shrubbery, up steep inclines, around precipices, sometimes enveloped in mists, yet still they kept on. Often the prince fell over ragged stones, but he picked himself up without assistance; though he swore some, Maurice thought none the less of him for that bit of human weakness. The cold was numbing, and neither felt the cuts and bruises.

After two hours of this fatiguing labor they arrived upon a small plateau, about two thousand feet above the valley. The scene was solemn and imposing. The world seemed lying at their feet. The chateau, half hidden in the mist, sparkled like an opal. Maurice scowled at it. To the prince the vision was as reviving as a glass of wine. He threatened it with his fist, and plunged on with renewed vigor. There are few sensations so stimulating as the thought of a complete revenge. The angle of vision presently changed, and the historic pile vanished. Maurice never saw the Red Chateau again.

Little more in the way of mishap befell them; and when the moon had wheeled half way down from the zenith, the kingdom lay below them. A descent of an hour's duration brought them into the pass. Maurice calculated that nearly five hours had passed since he left the chateau; for the blue was fading in the east. The phantom vitality of the prince now forsook him; his legs refused their offices, and he sank upon a boulder, his head in his hands. Maurice was not much better; but the prince had given him the burden of responsibility, and he was determined to hold up under it.

"If your Highness will remain here," he said, "I will fetch assistance, for the barrack can not be far off."

The prince nodded and Maurice tramped away. But the miniature barrack and the quaint stone customs house both were wrapt in gloom and darkness. Maurice investigated. Both buildings were deserted; there was no sign of life about. He broke a window, and entered the customs office. Remembering that Colonel Mollendorf smoked, he searched the inner pocket of his coat. He drew forth a box of wax matches, struck one and looked about. A struggle had taken place. Evidences were strewn on the floor. The telegraph operator's table had been smashed into bits, the instrument twisted out of shape, the jars broken and the wires cut. Like indications of a disturbance were also found in the barrack.

Maurice began to comprehend. Madame's troopers had crossed the frontier, but they had returned again, taking with them the handful of troopers belonging to the king. It was plain that the object of this skirmish had been to destroy communications between Bleiberg and the frontier. Madame desired to effect a complete surprise, to swoop down on the capital before it could bring a large force into the field.

There is an unwritten law that when one country intends to wage war against its neighbor a formal declaration shall be made. But again Madame had forsaken the beaten paths. More than three weeks had passed since the duchy's representative in Bleiberg had been discredited and given his passports. At once the duchess had retaliated by discrediting the king's representative in Brunnstadt. Ordinarily this would have been understood as a mutual declaration of war. Instead, both governments ignored each other, one suspiciously, the other intentionally. All of which is to say, the gage of war had been flung, but neither had stooped to pick it up.

Perhaps Madame expected by this sudden aggressiveness to win her fight with as little loss of blood as possible, which in justice to her was to her credit. Again, a declaration of war openly made might have moved the confederation to veto it by coercion. To win without loss of life would leave the confederation powerless to act. Therefore it will be seen that Madame was not only a daring woman, but a general of no mean ability.

This post was an isolated one; between it and Bleiberg there was not even a village. The main pass from the kingdom into the duchy was about thirty miles east. Here was