Arms and the Woman - Harold MacGrath (polar express read aloud TXT) 📗

a King to a man in love? Presently we two were alone in the garden, the Princess and myself. She was whispering instructions, telling me that I was a man of courage.

"It is not too late to back out," she said.

"I would face a thousand kings rather," I replied.

We could see at the gate the carriage which was to take us to the station. Now came the moment when I was tried by the crucible and found to be dross. I committed the most foolish blunder of my life. My love suddenly overleapt its bounds. In a moment my arms were around her lithe body; my lips met hers squarely. After it was done she stood very still, as if incapable of understanding my offence. But I understood. I was overwhelmed with remorse, love, and regret. I had made impossible what might have been.

"Your Highness," I cried, "I could not help it! Before God I could not! It is because I love you better than anything in the world-you cannot be of it!-and all this is impossible, this going away together."

Her bosom heaved, and her eyes flashed like a heated summer sky.

"I will give you one minute to leave this place," she said, her tones as even and as cold as sudden repression of wrath could make them. "I trusted you, and you have dared to take advantage of what seemed my helplessness. It is well indeed for you that you committed this outrage before it is too late. I should have killed you then. I might have known. Could ever a woman trust a man?" She laughed contemptuously. "You would have made me a thing of scorn; and I trusted you!"

"As God is my judge," I cried, "my respect for you is as high as heaven itself. I love you; is there nothing in that? I am but human. I am not a stone image. And you have tempted me beyond all control. Pardon what I have done; it was not the want of respect-."

"Spare me your protestations. I believe your minute is nearly gone," she interrupted.

And then-there was a crunch on the gravel behind us. The Princess and I turned in dismay. We had forgotten all about the anonymous note. Two officers were approaching us, and rapidly. The elder of the two came straight to me. I knew him to be as inexorable as his former master, the victor of Sedan. The Princess looked on mechanically.

"Come," said the Count, in broken English; "I believe your carriage is at the gate."

I glanced at the Princess. She might have been of stone, for all the life she exhibited.

"Come; the comedy is a poor one," said the Count.

I followed him out of the garden. My indifference to personal safety was due to a numbness which had taken hold of me.

"Get in," he said, when we reached the carriage. I did so, and he got in after me. The driver appeared confused. It was not his fare, according to the agreement. "To the city," he was briefly told. "Your hotel?" turning to me. I named it. "Do you understand German?"

"But indifferently," I answered listlessly.

"It appears that you understand neither the language nor the people. Who are you?"

"That is my concern," I retorted. I was coming about, and not unnaturally became vicious.

"It concerns me also," was the gruff reply.

"Have your own way about it."

"How came you by that medal?" pointing to my breast.

"Honestly," said I.

"Honestly or dishonestly, it is all the same." He made a move to detach it, and I caught his hand.

"Please don't do that. I am extremely irritable; and I might throw you out of the window. I can get back to my hotel without guidance."

"I am going to see you to your lodgings," asserted the Count, rubbing his wrist, for I had put some power into my grasp.

"Still, I might take it into my head to throw you out."

"You'd better not try."

"Are you afraid?"

"Yes. There would be a scandal. Not that I would care about the death of a miserable adventurer, but it might possibly reflect upon the virtue of her Highness the Princess Hildegarde."

"What do you want?" I growled.

"I want to see if your passports are proper so that you will have no difficulty in passing over the frontier."

"Perhaps it would be just as well to wake the American Minister?" I suggested.

"Not at all. If you were found dead there might be a possibility of that. But I should explain to him, and he would understand that it was a case without diplomatic precedent."

"Well?"

"You are to leave this country at once, sir; that is, if you place any value upon your life."

"Oh; then it is really serious?"

"Very. It is a matter of life and death-to you. Moreover, you must never enter this country again. If you do, I will not give a pfennig for your life."

He found my passports in good order. I permitted him to rummage through some of my papers.

"Ach! a damned scribbler, too!" coming across some of my notes.

"Quite right, Herr General," said I. I submitted because I didn't care.

My luggage was packed off to the station, where he saw that my ticket was for Paris.

"Good morning," he said, as I entered the carriage compartment. "The devil will soon come to his own; ach!"

"My compliments to him when you see him!" I called back, not to be outdone in the matter of courtesy.


"And that is all, Jack," concluded Hillars. "For all these months not an hour has passed in which I have not cursed the folly of that moment. Instead of healing under the balm of philosophy, the wound grows more painful every day. She did not love me, I know, but she would have been near me. And if the King had taken away her principality, she would have needed me in a thousand ways. And it is not less than possible that in time she might have learned the lesson of love. But now-if she is the woman I believe her to be, she never could love me after what has happened. And knowing this, I can't leave liquor alone, and don't want to. In my cups I do not care."

"I feel sorry for you both," said I. "Has the Prince married her yet?"

"No. It has been postponed. Next Monday I am going back. I am going in hopes of getting into trouble. I may never see her again, perhaps. To-morrow, to-morrow! Who knows? Well, I'm off to bed. Good night."

And I was left alone with my thoughts. They weren't very good company. To-morrow indeed, I thought. I sat and smoked till my tongue smarted. I had troubles of my own, and wondered how they would end. Poor Hillars! As I look back to-day, I marvel that we could not see the end. The mystery of life seems simple to us who have lived most of it, and can look down through the long years.


CHAPTER VI

During the first year of my residence in London there happened few events worth chronicling. Shortly after my arrival Hillars disappeared. His two months' vacation stretched into twelve, and I was directed to remain in London. As I knew that Hillars did not wish to be found I made no inquiries. He was somewhere on the Continent, but where no one knew. At one time a letter dated at St. Petersburg reached me, and at another time I was informed of his presence at Monte Carlo. In neither letter was there any mention of her Serene Highness, the Princess Hildegarde of Hohenphalia. Since the night he recounted the adventure the wayward Princess had never become the topic of conversation. I grew hopeful enough to believe that he had forgotten her. Occasionally I received a long letter from Phyllis. I always promptly answered it. To any one but me her letters would have proved interesting reading. It was not for what she wrote that I cared, it was the mere fact that she wrote. A man cannot find much pleasure in letters which begin with "Dear friend," and end with "Yours sincerely," when they come from the woman he loves.

In the preceding autumn I completed my first novel. I carried it around to publishers till I grew to hate it as one hates a Nemesis, and when finally I did place it, it was with a publisher who had just started in business and was necessarily obscure. I bowed politely to my dreams of literary fame and became wholly absorbed in my journalistic work. When the book came out I could not but admire the excellence of the bookmaking, but as I looked through the reviews and found no mention save in "books received," I threw the book aside and vowed that it should be my last. The publisher wrote me that he was surprised that the book had not caught on, as he considered the story unusually clever. "Merit is one thing," he said, "but luck is another." I have found this to be true, not only in literature, but in all walks of life where fame and money are the goals. Phyllis wrote me that she thought the book "just splendid"; but I took her praise with a grain of salt, it being likely that she was partial to the author, and that the real worth of the book was little in comparison with the fact that it was I who wrote it.

One morning in early June I found three letters on my desk. The first was from Hillars. He was in Vienna.


"MY DEAR SON," it ran, "there is another rumpus. The Princess disappeared on the 20th of last month. They are hunting high and low for her, and incidentally for me. Why me, is more than I can understand. But I received a letter from Rockwell of the American Legation warning me that if I remained in Austria I should be apprehended, put in jail, hanged and quartered for no other reason on earth than that they suspect me having something to do with her disappearance. Due, I suppose, to that other miserable affair. Though I have hunted all over the Continent, I have never seen the Princess Hildegarde since that night at B--. Where shall I find her? I haven't the least idea. But as a last throw, I am going to the principality of Hohenphalia, where she was born and over which she rules with infinite wisdom. The King is determined that she shall wed Prince Ernst. He would take away her principality but for the fact that there would be a wholesale disturbance to follow any such act. If I ever meet that watch dog of hers, the Count von Walden, the duffer who gave me my congé, there will be