The Project Gutenberg eBook, Her Serene Highness, by David Graham Phillips

HER SERENE HIGHNESS

HER
Serene Highness

A Novel
by
DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS

NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
1902

Copyright, 1902, by Harper & Brothers.
All rights reserved.
Published May, 1902.

Contents

Her Serene Highness

Her Serene Highness

I
The Grand Duke’s Spaniard

ON the top floor of Grafton’s house, in Michigan Avenue, there was a room filled with what he called “the sins of the fathers”—the bad pictures and statuary come down from two generations of more or less misdirected enthusiasm for art. In old age his father had begun this collection; forty years of dogged pursuit of good taste taught him much. Grafton completed it as soon as he came into possession.

In him a Grafton at last combined right instinct and right judgment. Although he was not yet thirty, every picture dealer of note in America and Europe knew him, and he knew not only them but also a multitude of small dealers with whom he carefully kept himself unknown. He was no mere picture buyer. The pretentious plutocrats of that class excited in him contempt—and resentment. How often had one of them destroyed, with a coarse fling of a moneybag, his subtle plans to capture a remarkable old picture at a small price. For he was a true collector—he knew pictures, he knew where they were to be found, he knew how to lie in wait patiently, how to search secretly. And no small part of his pride in his acquisitions came from what they represented as exhibits of his skill as a collector.

A few months before his father died they were in New York and went together to see the collection of that famous plutocratic wholesale picture buyer, Henry Acton.

“Do you see the young Spaniard over there?” said the father, pointing to one of the best-placed pictures in the room.

The son looked at it and was at once struck by the boldness, the imagination with which it was painted. “Acton has it credited to Velasquez,” he said. “It does look something like Velasquez, but it isn’t, I’m certain.”

“That picture was one of my costly mistakes,” continued the elder Grafton. “I bought it as a Velasquez. I was completely taken in—paid eleven thousand dollars for it in Paris about twenty-five years ago. But I soon found out what I’d done. How the critics did laugh at me! When the noise quieted down I sold it. It was shipped back to Paris and they palmed it off on Acton.”

Just then Acton joined them. “We were talking of your Velasquez there,” said the elder Grafton.

Acton grew red—the mention of that picture always put him angrily on the defensive. “Yes; it is a Velasquez. These ignorant critics say it isn’t, but I know a Velasquez when I see one. And I know Velasquez painted that face, or it wasn’t painted. It’ll hang there as a Velasquez while I live, and when I die it’ll hang in the Metropolitan Museum as a Velasquez. If they try to catalogue it any other way they lose my whole collection.”

While Acton was talking the younger Grafton was absorbed in the picture. The longer he looked the more he admired. He cared for pictures as well as for names, and he saw that this portrait was from a master-hand—the unknown painter had expressed through the features of that one face the whole of the Spaniard in the Middle Ages. He felt it was a reflection upon the name of Grafton that such a work of genius had been cast out obviously because a Grafton could appreciate only names. He said nothing to his father, but then and there made up his mind that he would have that picture back.

Apparently there was no hope. But he was not discouraged; patience and tenacity were the main factors in his temperament.

While he was sick with typhoid fever at a New York hotel Acton got into financial difficulties and was forced to “realize” on all his personal property. His pictures were hurriedly sent to the auctioneer. Grafton, a few days past the crisis in his illness, heard the news at nine o’clock in the evening of the third and last day of the sale. He leaped from bed and ordered the nurse to help him dress. He brushed aside protests and pleadings and warnings. They went together to Mendelssohn Hall. Grafton made the driver gallop the horses. He rushed in; his Spaniard was on the easel.

“How much is bid?” he called out.

Everybody looked round, and the auctioneer replied, “It’s just been sold.”

There was a laugh, Grafton looked so wild and strange. Leaning on the arm of the nurse he went to the settlement desk. “To whom was that picture sold?” he said to the clerk.

“On a cable from Paris, Mr. Grafton,” interrupted one of the members of the auction firm. “We’ve had a standing order from Candace Brothers for five years to let them know if the picture came or was likely to come into the market. And they’ve cabled every six months to remind us. When Mr. Acton decided to sell, we sent word. They ordered us to buy, with fifteen thousand dollars as the limit.”

Grafton was furious; he would gladly have paid twenty. “And what did it go for?” he asked.

“Seventeen hundred,” replied the dealer. “Everybody was suspicious of it. We would have got it for five hundred, if it hadn’t been for an artist; he bid it up to his limit.”

“I must sit,” said Grafton to his nurse. “This is too much—too much.”

He was little the worse for his imprudence, and was able to sail on the steamer that carried the picture. He beat it to Paris, and went at once to Candace Brothers, strolling in as if he had no purpose beyond killing time by looking about. He slowly led the conversation round to a point where Louis Candace, to whom he was talking, would naturally begin to think of the Acton sale.

“We’re getting in several pictures from New York,” said Candace—“from the Acton sale.”

“I was ill while it was on,” said Grafton, carelessly. “What did you take?”

“A Rousseau, a Corot, a Wyant, and a—Velasquez.” He hesitated before speaking the last name, and looked confused as Grafton slightly elevated his eyebrows. “Of course,” he hurried on, “we strongly suspect the Velasquez; in fact, we know it’s not genuine. But we’re delighted to get it.”

“I don’t understand,” said Grafton. “I know you too well to suspect that it will be sold as a Velasquez.”

“But certainly not. Even if we did that sort of thing, we couldn’t deceive any of your rich countrymen or any of the English with it. The story is too well known. No; we bought it for His Royal Highness the Grand Duke of Zweitenbourg. It is—or he thinks it is—a portrait of one of his Spanish ancestors. His agent tells me that it is the only known work of a remarkable young Spaniard who was soon afterwards killed at the siege of Barcelona, early in the eighteenth century. They are not even sure of his name. The Grand Duke was most anxious to get it. For years we have been sending him semiannual bulletins on Monsieur Acton’s health and financial condition.”

Grafton’s heart sank. Here was a true collector—a past-master of the art. “If I hadn’t been a mere novice,” thought Grafton, “I, too, would have had bulletins on Acton, and a standing order. As it is, my trouble has only begun,” for, being himself a true collector, with all the fatalism of the collector’s temperament, he was not despairing, was only the more resolute in face of these new difficulties.

“His Royal Highness,” continued Candace, “wants the picture because it fills one of the gaps in his gallery of ancestral portraits.” Under skilful questioning, Candace yielded the further information that the keeper of the Grand Duke’s privy purse, Baron Zeppstein, would arrive the following Thursday personally to escort the picture to Zweitenbourg.

It reached Paris on Tuesday, and Grafton took Jack Campbell, whom he found at the Ritz, round to Candace’s on Wednesday morning. Campbell, having been thoroughly coached, made offers for several pictures, all too low, then pretended to fall in love with the Spaniard. He insisted that it was a Velasquez—Grafton seemed to be disgusted with him, somewhat ashamed of him. When Candace told him that the picture was sold, he had them send a telegram to the Grand Duke offering eight thousand dollars for it. A curt refusal to sell at any price came a few hours later.

Campbell and Grafton were there the next morning when Baron Zeppstein came. As he was voluble, and appreciative of the rare pleasure of an attentive listener, Grafton rapidly ingratiated himself, and soon had him flowing on the subject of “my royal master.”

“His Royal Highness has two passions,” said the Baron, “Americans and his pictures. You Americans are making astonishing—I may say appalling—inroads in Germany; your ideas are getting even into the heads of our women, our girls. I don’t like it; I don’t like it. It’s breeding a race of thinking women. I can’t endure a thinking woman. You can’t imagine what I’m suffering just now through Her Serene Highness; but no matter. Your terrible democratic ideas of disrespect for tradition, for institutions, for restraints, are slipping about even in the palaces of our kings. His Royal Highness—the story goes that he was in love with one of your beautiful countrywomen and that she refused to marry him; she did marry his brother, Duke Wolfgang—morganatically, of course. It would be impossible for one of the house of Traubenheim to marry a commoner in the regular way. Your American invasion hasn’t extended that far—”

“And the pictures?” interrupted Grafton, impatient of the digression.

“Ah—yes—there His Royal Highness has a high enthusiasm, a noble passion. He is positively mad about Rembrandts. He has a notable collection of them, and is always trying to add to it.”

Grafton’s eyes dropped; he feared that this simple old Zweitenbourgian might read his thoughts. “Rembrandts?” he said. “That interests me. I have the same craze in a small way.” And he drew the Baron on. He learned that a Rembrandt filled the Grand Duke with the same burning longing for possession with which his craze, the spurious Velasquez, was now filling him. He began to see victory. He cabled his Chicago agent to send him forthwith, in care of Candace Brothers, his two examples of Rembrandt’s early work. When he was a boy, travelling about with his father, he had found them in an obscure shop in Leyden. They now interested him little except as reminders of an early triumph. But to a collector of Rembrandts they would be treasures.

A few days after sending the cable he went in the morning with Mrs. Campbell to Paquin’s—Mrs. Campbell was at Paris for her annual shopping. She was to be fitted for six dresses, she explained, and that meant an hour—perhaps two or three hours. But Grafton was so attracted by the scene that he said he would wait, at least until he was tired. He seated himself on the sofa against the wall, near the door. It was in line with the passage-way into which the fitting-salons open.

The general room was crowded with women—women in the fashions of the day preparing for the fashions of the morrow; girls—the pretty, graceful, polite dressmakers’ assistants famed in Parisian song and story—persuading, soothing, cajoling, flattering. There were a few men, all of them fitters except two. The exceptions were Grafton, trying to efface himself, and Paquin, trying to escape. He had come forth at the request of a customer important enough to be worthy of personal attention, but not important enough to be admitted to the honor of his private consultation-room. The women had seized him and, regardless of his bored and absent expression and speech, were swarming about him, impeding his retreat.

Grafton soon forgot himself, so interested was he in his surroundings—the clamor in French, German, English, American, Italian, Spanish; the exhibits of manners grand and manners sordid; the play of feminine emotions—the passion for dress, the thoughtful pauses before plunging into tempting extravagances, the reckless yieldings to temptation, the woe-begone putting aside of temptation; the mingling of women of all degrees, from royalty and American to actress and demi-mondaine. And they so far ignored the male intruder that they were presently tossing aside dresses into his lap or spreading them against his knees for better display. He retreated along the sofa before up-piling silks and satins and laces and linens. At last he had to choose between being submerged and abandoning the sofa. He still lingered, meekly standing, his hat and stick buried. As he was examining an evening dress that pleased him mightily—a new kind of silk in new shades, a cream white over which a haze of the palest blue-green seemed to be drifting—he chanced to glance along the passage-way.

One of the fitting-salons was open, and half in the doorway, half in the hall, stood a young woman. Her waist was off; her handsome shoulders and arms were bare, yet no more than if she had been in evening dress. She had fine brown hair with much red in it. Her features were strong and rather haughty, but delicate and pleasing. Her skin was dead-white, colorless even on her cheeks. She was frowning and biting her lip and tapping her foot on the floor. As he glanced she caught his eye. She beckoned imperiously.

He put down the dress and went slowly towards her.

“Quick,” she said, in French. “My patience is exhausted. I’ve been waiting half an hour and no fitter has come. Are you a fitter?”

“No,” he replied, also in French. “I’m not exactly a fitter; I’m a—an American. But I’ll get you one.”

“Heavens!” exclaimed the young woman, in English, and she darted into her salon and slammed the door.

Two attendants—a man and a woman—came at him from opposite directions. “But, monsieur! But, monsieur! What does monsieur do here? It is forbidden!” Their politeness was thin, indeed, over their alarm and indignation.

“The lady called me,” explained Grafton, calmly. “It was impossible for me to disobey her. She thought I was a fitter.”

As he spoke she opened her door and showed her head. The attendants, with serious faces, began to pour out apologies. “Pardon, Your Serene Highness! We hope that your—”

“It was my fault,” she interrupted, in French, and he noted that she had a German accent. Her look of condescending good-nature was not flattering to him. It said that in the mind of Her Serene Highness he and the two attendants formed a trio of inferior persons before whom she could conduct herself with almost as much freedom as before so many blocks of wood.

“No apology is necessary,” he said, with abrupt courtesy. “You wish a fitter. I’ll see that you get one at once.”

Her Serene Highness flushed and withdrew her head. “Take him away,” she called through the door, in a haughty tone, “and send a fitter.”

Grafton faced the attendants. He drew from his pocket two ten-franc pieces and gave one to each. “Have the goodness to get mademoiselle her fitter instantly,” he said.

They bowed and thanked him and he slowly returned to his sofa. Half an hour and she issued from her salon in street costume. Close behind her came an old-maidish German woman. As they reached the door, Grafton held it open. Her Serene Highness drew herself up coldly. He bowed with politeness and without impertinence, and closed the door behind them.

“Who was that lady?” he said to her fitter, hurrying past with her dresses on his arm.

“Her Serene Highness the Duchess Erica of Zweitenbourg, monsieur. She is the niece of His Royal Highness the Grand Duke Casimir.”

Grafton met her twice the next day. In the morning he was at the tomb of Napoleon. A woman—one of two walking together a short distance in front of him—dropped her handkerchief. He picked it up and overtook her.

“Pardon, mademoiselle,” he said. “Your handkerchief.” She paused. He saw that it was Her Serene Highness. At the same time she recognized him and the smile she had begun died away. She took the handkerchief with an icy “Thanks.” He dropped back, but their way happened to be his. Her companion glanced round presently; he was near enough to hear her say, “The person is following Your Serene Highness.” He came on, passed them as if unconscious of their existence, and they changed their route.

In the afternoon he was at the Louvre. He saw two women coming towards him—Her Serene Highness and her companion. As they saw him they turned abruptly into a side corridor. He came to where they had turned; there lay a handkerchief. He picked it up and noted that it was a fine one, deeply bordered with real lace. In the corner, under a ducal crown, was the initial “E.” He walked rapidly after the two women and, although they quickened their pace, he was soon beside them.

“Pardon, mademoiselle,” he began.

Her Serene Highness flushed with anger and her gray eyes blazed. “This is insufferable!” she exclaimed. “If you do not leave—”

“Your handkerchief,” he said, extending it, his eyes smiling but his face grave.

She looked at it in horror. “Monsieur is mistaken,” she said, fighting against embarrassment and a feeling that she had made herself ridiculous.

“Mademoiselle is mistaken—doubly mistaken,” he replied, tranquilly. “The handkerchief bears her monogram, and”—here he smiled satirically—“if mademoiselle is vain enough to mistake common courtesy for impudence, I am not vain enough to mistake accident—even twice repeated accident—for design.”

She looked at him with generous, impulsive repentance and took the handkerchief from his outstretched hand. “It is mine,” she said, in English, “and I regret my foolish mistake.” Her tone had no suggestion of condescension. It was the tone of the universal woman in presence of the universal man.

He bowed his appreciation without speaking and went rapidly away.

II
An American Invades

WHEN his Rembrandts came, Grafton took the package to his hotel, opened it, assured himself that they were in good condition, sealed it, and left it with Candace Brothers. “I may telegraph you to forward it,” he said. But he did not tell them what was in it nor where he was going; they might betray him or forestall him, and so deprive him of the pleasure of a successful campaign in person and unaided.

He reached the town of Zweitenbourg at noon on a Monday, five days after his Spaniard. At half-past two he was in a walking suit and on his way to the Grand Ducal Palace, “The Castle,” to reconnoitre. It was July, and the air of that elevated valley was both warm and bracing. From the beautiful road hills and mountains could be seen on every side—the frontiers of the Grand Duchy.

It had once been almost a kingdom. It was now shrunk, through the bad political and matrimonial management of the reigning house, to less than two hundred and fifty square miles. But the Zweitenbourgians were proudly patriotic—they disdained mere size; they were all for quality, not quantity. Besides, they were as vague in general geography as the average human being; they thoroughly knew only the internal geography of Zweitenbourg. In their text-books the Grand Duchy posed as the central state of civilization. In their school histories its grand dukes cut a great figure. For example, it was their Grand Duke Godfrey who, slightly assisted by a Prussian general, Blücher, won the battle of Waterloo. Wellington comes in for a mere mention, as a sort of “among those present”—“a small force of English under a Lord Wellington,” so runs the account, “was defeated in the first day’s engagement and almost caused the rout of the Grand Duke Godfrey and his allies; but on the second day, after the English had been beaten, and when they were about to run, the Grand Duke and Blücher came up with the main army and Napoleon was overthrown.” In the Zweitenbourg atlases the map of each country was printed on a separate plate, and all were apparently of about the same size. And, finally, all Zweitenbourgians knew that their men were the bravest and their women the most beautiful in the world, and that all foreign nations were inhabited by peoples who were ignorant, foolish, and perfidious.

After two miles between garden-like farms, Grafton found himself at the entrance to what seemed a wilderness. There were two huge stone pillars, each capped with a grand-ducal crown. There were two great bronze gates with a large C under a crown in the centre of each. The gates were open, and between the pillars went the military road, clean, smooth, perfect, to plunge into the wilderness. Beside the entrance was an ivy-covered lodge, in front of it a soldier in the blue and white uniform of the Grand Duke’s Household Guards. He was marching up and down, his rifle at shoulder arms. As Grafton advanced he halted and shifted his rifle to a challenge.

“Show your passport,” he commanded, in a queer dialect of German.

“I have no passport,” replied Grafton.

The soldier looked at him stupidly. “But every foreigner has a passport,” he said.

“I have none.”

“Ah; very well.” The soldier shrugged his shoulders and resumed his march.

Grafton stood where he had halted. “May I go on?” he asked.

“Yes; why not?” said the soldier.

“But why did you ask for my passport?”

“It’s in the rules. Pass on or you may get into trouble. You know perfectly well that all are admitted to the park at this season.”

“Then there is a closed season?”

“I don’t know,” said the soldier, crossly. “I never heard of one. It’s in the rules to admit every one from April until December. No one comes the rest of the year. But I don’t suppose he could be shut out if he did. There’s no rule which says so.”

“Then why these rules?”

The soldier gave the profoundly thoughtful frown of those incapable of thought. “I don’t know,” he said. “Soldiers must have rules. Everything must be done by rules, so that it will be done just as it used to be. We’ve had the same rules—oh, hundreds of years. Nothing must be changed. What’s new is bad, what’s old is good.”

Grafton trudged on into the wilderness. The road gradually swept into another road. He saw that it was a circle, a girdle, about a lake which was perhaps four miles long and two miles wide, blue as the sky and mirroring it to its smallest flake of snowy cloud. Opposite him, across the width of the lake, towered and spread The Castle, with turrets and battlements, a vast, irregular mantle of ivy draping part of its old gray front. He could see terraces and lawns of brilliant green, the gaudiness of flower-beds and flowering bushes, red and blue and purple and yellow. “Where Her Serene Highness lives,” he thought.

He decided to walk as far as The Castle; next day he would drive and perhaps pay his respects to Baron Zeppstein. He was impressed by the loneliness of the park, apparently an untouched wilderness except the road. The birds were singing. Now and then there would be a crash and he would see a deer making off, or a whir and a scurrying flapping, and he would get a glimpse of some wild bird in panic-stricken flight. As he came nearer to The Castle the signs of habitation were numerous, but still not a human being. At last he was close to the walls, looking up at them.

He could see nothing but the perfect order of the shrubbery to indicate that any one had been there recently. The huge gates—solid doors rather than gates—were closed. The sun was shining, the waters of the lake glistened, the foliage was fresh and vivid, the soft, strong air blew in a gentle breeze. But there was a profound hush, as if the grim old fortress-palace, and all within and around it, had long been locked in a magic sleep.

A sense of uncanniness was creeping over him in spite of his incredulous American mind. He was startled by a trumpet blast which seemed to come from the depth of the woods to the left. Standing in the middle of the road, he turned. He had just time to jump aside.

Out of the woods, by a cross-road he had not noted, swept a gorgeous cavalcade. As he looked he felt more strongly than ever like a time-wanderer who had been, in a twinkling, borne backward several centuries. First to pass him at a mad gallop were six soldiers on tall black chargers. They and their horses were trapped in the blue and white of the Household Guards. Corselets and plumed helmets and chains clashed and rattled and flashed as they flew past. A few yards behind them, at the same furious pace, came a graceful, long-bodied carriage of strange coloring and design, drawn by eight black horses with postilions. On a curious foot-board at the back of the carriage stood two footmen in a mediæval livery. They were hanging on by straps. Behind the carriage came six more black-horsed cavalrymen of the Household Guards.

As Grafton gaped through the dust in the wake of this ancient spectacle it halted before The Castle’s gates so abruptly that every horse reared to its haunches. But immediately all was quiet, motionless. One of the cavalrymen put a trumpet to his lips and sent a blast echoing and re-echoing like a peal of fairy laughter to and fro over the lake. As if there were enchantment in that blast, the great weather and battle scarred doors of The Castle swung noiselessly back. Out came eight men in mediæval costumes, each bearing a long, slender, brazen trumpet. Four went to either side of the entrance. They put the trumpets to their lips and sounded a fanfare.

Grafton’s expectation was at excitement pitch. What did this gorgeous revival of mediævalism presage? what dazzling apparition was about to greet his ravished eyes?

Now appeared a man in mediæval court costume, resplendent in velvet and lace and silver braid. He was walking backward, bowing low at each step, his velvet, beplumed hat in his hand. And then the central figure—His Royal Highness Casimir of Traubenheim, Grand Duke of Zweitenbourg, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Margrave of Plaut, Prince of Wiesser, of Dinn, of Feltenheim, Count in Brausch and in Ranau. He was a sallow, cross-looking little man, with thin shoulders, legs, and arms, and a great paunch of a stomach, dilated and sagged from overfeeding. He was dressed in a baggy tweed suit and a straight-brimmed top-hat. He seated himself in the carriage.

“What an anticlimax!” thought Grafton. But there was a second and briefer flourish of the trumpets, and then appeared the Duchess Erica, in a white cloth dress and a big white hat and carrying a white parasol. Grafton felt like applauding. “The spectacle is looking up,” he said. He was near enough to note that her sweet face was discontented, impatient, almost sad. She seated herself beside the Grand Duke. The mounted trumpeter blew, the cavalrymen in front wheeled and struck spurs into their horses, the whole procession was instant whirling away—it was gone. Grafton glanced at The Castle doors; they were closed again and the trumpeters and the courtier had disappeared. The dust settled, the magic sleep descended.

Grafton might have thought himself the victim of an illusion had he not seen, far away across the lake, a cloud of dust, and in front of it the gaudy cavalcade and the grand-ducal carriage, the shine of blue and silver and polished steel rushing along as if fleeing from a fiend. And after a few minutes it came towards The Castle again from the other direction. The horses were dripping, their coats streaked with foam. At the entrance there were the same startling halt, the same mysterious opening of doors, the same stage-like assembling of trumpeters, the same flourishes. The Grand Duke and his niece and the attendants disappeared, the procession fled into the woods; there was silence and ancient repose once more.

Grafton set out on the return walk, trying to force himself to stop thinking of Her Serene Highness and to resume thinking of her uncle and his Spaniard. He had not gone far when a court-officer issued from a by-path. He paused to get a good look at this romantic figure, and presently recognized beneath the enfoldings of finery his commonplace, voluble acquaintance of the Paris picture-shop, Baron Zeppstein.

“Why, how d’ye do, Baron Zeppstein!” he called out.

The Baron looked at him superciliously, then collapsed into cordiality. “Meester Grafton!” he exclaimed. “It is a pleasure—a joyful surprise. I did not know you at first.”

“Nor I you,” said Grafton. “I seem to be the only modern thing here—except the old gentleman who took that quiet jog around the lake a few minutes ago.”

“His Royal Highness,” corrected the Baron, pompously. “He takes a drive every afternoon.”

“A good show,” said Grafton. “But I think I’d tire of it. I’d rather look at it than be in it. I should say that he earned his salary.”

The Baron laughed vaguely. “You Americans do not understand our ways,” he said. “You are so practical—so busy. You have no time for tradition and beauty and ceremony.”

“No; we’re a common lot,” said Grafton. “We’d think this sort of thing was a joke if it happened outside of a circus. But it’s a very serious business, isn’t it?” His face was grave.

“It is; it is, indeed,” said Zeppstein, his shallow old face taking on a look of melancholy importance. “But we must do our public duty; we must accept the cares of high station. And His Royal Highness—ah, how he suffers! We others have our relaxations—we get away to our families. But His Royal Highness—this is his vacation. And, mein Gott, he yawns and curses all day long. Yes, it is trying to be near the great of earth, but not so trying as to be great.”

“He looks ill-tempered,” said Grafton, sympathetically.

“But think what he suffers. Imagine! Usually he must wear a heavy, tight uniform and a steel helmet; he says it has given him the headache almost every day for twenty-seven years. But the dignity of the nation must be maintained.”

“Yes, indeed,” said Grafton. “And when is the best time to see him? I’m going to call on him.”

Zeppstein looked at the American as if he thought him insane. “But, my dear sir,” he said, deprecatingly, “you don’t understand. You will have to wait until His Royal Highness’s vacation is over. Then you must go to your minister and he will lay your wish before the Grand Chamberlain. And if possible your name will be placed on the list for one of the levees—there are five each winter.”

“Oh, I don’t want to see the Grand Duke in his official capacity; it’s a little private matter—about a picture.”

“But the Grand Duke has no other capacity. He is head of the state; he is the state every hour of every day, except when he’s abroad. Then he often graciously condescends to be a mere gentleman.”

“But I can’t wait. You ought to be able to arrange it. You’ve got influence.”

“Yes.” Baron Zeppstein was flattered. “But, unfortunately, none is permitted to speak to His Royal Highness unless he has commanded it—that is, no one but his son, the Inheriting Grand Duke, and his niece, the Duchess Erica, and the Grand Chamberlain. And—I am, just at present, at outs with them. Her Serene Highness is most intractable—one of the new school of wild young princesses who are cutting loose from everything in these degenerate days.”

“She certainly doesn’t look tame.”

“I had the honor of escorting her to Paris when I went for His Royal Highness’s picture,” Zeppstein continued. “It was a painful experience. And instead of sustaining me, His Royal Highness—but it was most humiliating.”

“Excellent,” said Grafton. “I can be of service to you. I own a Rembrandt which I wish to let the Grand Duke have at a bargain. I’m certain he’ll be most anxious to get it once he hears of it. Now, if you should be of assistance to him in getting it, he would be grateful, wouldn’t he?”

Zeppstein became thoughtful. “Not grateful,” he said. “It isn’t in His Royal Highness to be grateful. But it might make him think me useful. What do you propose?”

“I don’t know; I can’t tell yet. Keep quiet until I’ve looked over the ground and made my plans.”

“I am at your service,” said Zeppstein. “You would weep to hear how the Grand Chamberlain and his faction have humiliated me. They make me the butt of their jokes at dinner to amuse His Royal Highness. They—”

“You shall be revenged,” said Grafton, shaking hands with him and hurrying away.

From the moment he recognized old Zeppstein until he left him he had been fighting to restrain himself from leading the talk to Erica. He now caught himself regretting it. He stopped short. “Ridiculous!” he exclaimed. “What an idiot I am to let such ideas into my head. It must be in the air here. I’m getting as romantic as—as—as she looks.” And he walked on, her face and her voice haunting him.

III
A Skirmish

GRAFTON learned that the next was one of the three weekly public days at the Grand Duke’s galleries. About eleven the next morning he went to look at his Spaniard and develop his plans for its capture. As he neared The Castle he saw a gardener at work upon his knees, trimming a bush of big pink and white flowers.

“Where is the entrance to the galleries?” he asked, when he was within a yard of the gardener.

“Sh!” whispered the gardener, looking nervously up at the windows.

“What is it?” said Grafton, following his glance and seeing nothing.

“His Royal Highness permits no noise,” replied the gardener in an undertone. “He hears every sound—especially every little sound. Only Sunday it was that he sent out to have the noise stopped. And there was no noise that anybody could hear. And when the First Gentleman of the Bedchamber reported it to His Royal Highness, what do you think His Royal Highness said? It was marvellous!”

“And what did he say?” inquired Grafton.

“His Royal Highness said, ‘It is the sound of the grass and bushes growing. Tear them up!’ Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Wonderful!” said Grafton. “Why aren’t they torn up?”

“All the gentlemen of the court entreated and at last dissuaded His Royal Highness. It was a terrible crisis. Some of the gentlemen were weak from agitation and sweating. Yes, His Royal Highness is a true prince. Only a true prince could hear grass and bushes grow.”

“It’s fortunate he’s a prince, isn’t it?” said Grafton. “Now, if he were an ordinary mortal they’d lock him up in a lunatic asylum.”

The gardener gave a frightened look at the windows, then almost whispered: “Yes, that is so. But princes are different from us; they’re so sensitive, so high-bred. I often think of the things they do here, and I say, ‘If I were to do that, they’d think I was light in the head.’ But, of course, princes can’t be judged like ordinary people.”

“No, indeed,” assented Grafton, “that would never do. Where is the entrance to the galleries?”

“Take the path to the left until you come to the modern wing. The entrance is under the balcony; you will see it.”

Grafton followed the gardener’s directions and, climbing the steps, was about to open the door. At each side, in the same frame, were long, narrow glass windows. At one of these peeping-windows he saw the Grand Duke, his mouth distended in a tremendous yawn. Grafton hesitated. The Grand Duke, in an old, black frock-suit, opened the door.

“Good-morning,” said Grafton. “Are you the keeper of the galleries. These are the Grand Duke’s galleries, are they not?”

“Yes.” The Grand Duke beamed. “Won’t you come in?”

“I’m an American,” continued Grafton, “and I’m much interested in pictures. I particularly wished to see the Grand Duke’s Rembrandts.”

“Ah; it will be a pleasure to show you through. We like Americans here.” He spoke in excellent English. “We once had an American at our little court. But when her husband died she fled. It was too dull for her. But we have to stay here.”

“You surprise me,” said Grafton. “I had always heard that the Grand Duke was a most interesting, a most unusual man.”

Casimir shrugged his shoulders. “He is the most bored of all. He does nothing but regret his youth. He is old, worn-out, a poor creature—no strength, no stomach, no nothing but memories, and a bad temper. And he doesn’t get much pleasure out of his temper. Of what use is a temper when no one dares answer back?”

They had come to Grafton’s Spaniard, indifferently hung among the fierce-looking Teutonic war-lords in armor. “Evidently he doesn’t care especially for it,” said Grafton to himself. Aloud he said: “What a collection of fighters!”

“No wonder they fought,” replied the Grand Duke. “They were so bored that they had to fight to save themselves from suicide or lunacy. Any one would make war in their position—if he dared.”

“But it isn’t allowed so much nowadays.”

“No; worse luck,” growled the Grand Duke.

“Why!” exclaimed Grafton. “There’s the spurious Velasquez from Acton’s collection. Surely the Grand Duke wasn’t caught on that.” Grafton went to the proper distance and angle and examined his beloved Spaniard with a tranquil face and a covetous heart. “It seems strange to meet an old acquaintance so far from home. If I hadn’t been ill when Acton sold, I’d have bid on this. It’s pleasing, very pleasing, though clearly not a Velasquez.”

“We got it because it is a portrait of one of our house—the Duke of Hispania Media, who captured Barcelona early in the eighteenth century.”

“Was that before or after the Archduke Charles took it?”

“It was the capture sometimes erroneously credited to the Archduke Charles. He was present, I believe.”

Grafton laughed good-naturedly. “And in England I suppose they’d say Peterborough took it—he was present, I believe.”

“The English are great liars,” said Casimir, sourly.

“That’s what every nation says about every other,” said Grafton.

The Grand Duke chuckled. “And all are right. Now we come to the Rembrandts.”

It was a fine collection, and Grafton and the Grand Duke went slowly from picture to picture, from drawing to drawing, comparing opinions, telling stories of experiences in collecting. When they reached the examples of Rembrandt’s early work, Grafton was enthusiastic. “But,” said he, “it is too small; there should be more examples.”

“True,” Casimir sighed. “It is not so satisfactory as we wish.”

“Possibly I attach more importance to this weak spot,” continued Grafton, “than another would, because I have an example of his early work and so am interested in it.”

“What is your example, may I ask?” Casimir spoke in a too casual tone.

“A peasant woman with an astonishingly handsome-ugly face; it’s usually described as ‘The Woman with the Earrings,’ because they are very queerly shaped.”

As Grafton thus described the smaller and less interesting of his two early Rembrandts, he watched Casimir’s face mirrored in the glass over a picture. He saw a swift glance, so piercing that he would not have believed those burned-out eyes capable of it. But when Casimir spoke it was to say, carelessly, “I think I’ve heard of it—a small affair, isn’t it?”

“I couldn’t get more than fifteen or twenty thousand marks for it, if I were selling it,” said Grafton. If he had not seen the swoop of that covetous collector glance he would have been discouraged and would have begun to talk of his larger Rembrandt. But he decided to wait. Perhaps the smaller Rembrandt would alone get him his Spaniard, and possibly another picture to boot.

They went on with their examination. Apparently the Grafton Rembrandt had passed from the Grand Duke’s mind. After three-quarters of an hour he said: “Now this, I think, antedates your ‘Armorer.’”

The only outward sign of confusion Grafton gave was to pause abruptly in his walk. “Your ‘Armorer’!”—that was his other and finer Rembrandt. How did the Grand Duke know he had it when he had not spoken of it? “Fool that I am!” he said to himself. “The Grand Duke knows his subject, knows where the Rembrandts are. Why, he now knows my name, I’ll wager.” He was much depressed; he felt that he would not get his Spaniard either easily or cheaply. “The only advantage I have left is that he doesn’t know just what I want, though, no doubt, he has made up his mind that I’m not here for mere sight-seeing.”

As he was thinking he was examining the picture to which Casimir had called attention. He now said: “No, I think not; I’m sure my ‘Woman with the Earrings’ antedates it.” Again the glass covering of a picture betrayed Casimir; Grafton saw a look of relief in his face. “He knew he’d made a break,” thought Grafton, “and now he hopes I didn’t notice it.”

After a few minutes Grafton said he must be going. Casimir’s face was as unreadable as his own; no one could have suspected from looking at either that both were determined to meet again. Grafton thanked Casimir heartily and turned away.

“Do you stay long here?” asked Casimir.

“A day or two, perhaps,” replied Grafton. “My plans are unsettled.”

“To-morrow is a closed day. But if you return, I shall be glad to show you the rest of the collection.”

Grafton knew he had scored. “You are very kind,” he said.

“It is possible that I may be able to show you through His Royal Highness’s apartments. There are several remarkable pictures—a Leonardo, a few Van Dycks, and some interesting moderns.”

“That would be delightful.”

“Then it is agreed?”

“If I can arrange it. At what hour?”

“At ten. I shall expect you.”

“I think I can come. You are most courteous.”

“It is a pleasure. Until to-morrow!”

IV
Two in the Trees

CLEAR of The Castle, Grafton looked at his watch; it was half-past three. “That’s why the servant poked his head in at the door so often,” he thought. “We were at it more than three hours.” He strode along in a jubilant frame of mind. He felt that the Spaniard was practically his; it was a question of detail. And Casimir was a worthy antagonist; the struggle would be full of interest for both.

He was still a quarter of a mile from the park gates when he heard a scream. He listened; nearly half a minute of silence, and then a lusty-lunged feminine call for help. He dashed into the wilderness, breaking a path with difficulty through the heavy undergrowth. He had gone three or four hundred yards, guided by the repeated calls, when he heard in the same voice, in German: “Come no nearer until I explain.” He pressed on; there was a ferocious, growling grunt and a big wild boar, with open jaws and long yellow tusks, came at him. He made for a tree and scrambled up into its branches. He heard a suppressed laugh; his panic-stricken climb could not have been other than ludicrous to an on-looker; he glanced all round but could see no one through the curtain of leaves.

“Where the devil is she?” he said, in English, his voice louder than he thought.

“Here,” came the reply, also in English; “the third tree to your right—the lowest limb.”

He now saw a pair of laced boots with high tops and the edge of a brown cloth walking-skirt. “Those feet look promising,” he thought, as he watched them swinging cheerfully. He crawled farther out on the big limb. When he paused again he could see her waist; a brown silk sash with tasselled ends was wrapped several times round it. He could also see one of her hands; she had her glove off and the hand was as promising as the feet. He crawled a little farther. Pausing again, he peered out; he was looking into the charming, amused face of Her Serene Highness! She recognized him instantly. She tried to sober her features, but the spectacle of this dignified young man on all fours craning his neck at her through the leaves was too much for her gravity. She began to laugh, and, as he instinctively released one hand, took off his hat and bowed, she became almost hysterical.

He swung himself round and found a secure sitting from which he could view her. She said: “I beg your pardon; I’m so—”

“Don’t mind me,” he said, good-humoredly. “It’s most becoming to you to laugh.”

She straightened her face and elaborately brought forward a look designed to “put him in his place.”

“I prefer the laughter,” he said. “Posing isn’t a bit becoming to you—not a bit. You seem to have the habit of drawing me into disagreeable situations and then putting on airs. Who invited me down that passage-way at Paquin’s? Who dropped her handkerchief twice in my path and suspected me of flirtation? Who summoned me to come and amuse her by being chased by a wild boar?”

“But I told you to stop,” she protested, feebly.

“Rather late, wasn’t it? I’m not complaining. It’s delightful to have the chances fate has given me. But I strongly object to your blaming me for fate’s fault.”

“You are rude,” she said, hotly. “You are taking an unfair advantage of my helpless position.”

“Pray calm yourself,” he answered. “All I ask of you is ordinary civility or silence. I certainly have no desire to thrust myself upon you.”

Both were silent and sat watching the boar as it ranged frantically from one tree to the other, pausing at each to look up with an insane gleam in its wicked, little, blood-shot eyes. After fifteen minutes Grafton moved slowly back towards the fork of the tree. As he reached it and seemed about to descend, she said, in a humble tone that made him smile inwardly, “Where are you going, please?”

“I’m going to make a dash for a rifle I see on the ground,” he answered.

“You mustn’t—you mustn’t. I forbid it!” she exclaimed.

“Have you any suggestion to offer as to how we are to escape?”

“No,” she replied, reluctantly, “except to call out.”

“And bring somebody else to make an amusing spectacle of himself—if he doesn’t happen to get killed. I can’t congratulate you on your scheme.” And he continued his descent.

“Stop; for God’s sake, stop!” she called out. “I am ashamed of myself. I am sufficiently punished.”

“My dear young lady, I’m not punishing you; I’m trying to get myself, and incidentally you, out of this mess.”

“Please—please—come back where I can see you; I wish to say something to you.” It was certainly Erica and not Her Serene Highness who was speaking now.

He obeyed her. When he could see her again he said, “Well?”

“I—I want you to say that you forgive me,” she said, earnestly. “I want to see that you forgive me.”

He looked at her in a friendly way. “I understand how it is with you. I don’t in the least blame you. Only, in my country, we never permit any one to take that tone towards us. And now, please, Your Majesty of the Oak Tree, may I go for the rifle?”

“May I say that you mustn’t?” she asked, a smile in her eyes.

“I’d like to have a reason.”

“Well, in the first place”—she hesitated—“it isn’t loaded.”

He looked at her searchingly. She blushed.

“Is it your rifle?” he asked.

“Yes; I always carry it when I walk in the woods; there’s a chance that something disagreeable might escape from the forest into the park, though the fences are strong and high. And to-day when the boar came at me”—she looked as though she felt very foolish—“my foot caught and—I dropped the rifle.”

“And you don’t load it?”

She looked still more confused. “No, I’m not so silly as that. It is loaded,” she said. “You’re always making me apologize to you.”

“Or is it that I make you feel like apologizing to yourself?”

“Perhaps that is it,” she admitted. “But—please don’t go down for the rifle.” She looked at the boar—its thin, powerful body, its vicious green eyes, its greedy, raw mouth—how those tusks and those pointed hoofs could tear and rip and mangle! Then she looked at the handsome, calmly courageous young American. “Please,” she begged. “If anything should go wrong with you, think how it would make me suffer, for I got you into this danger.”

“I’ve a better plan,” he said. “I might climb through on the branches until I was directly over the gun. Then you could distract the brute’s attention by swinging your sash just over his nose. I could jump and grab the gun; I’d have plenty of time to aim and kill him.”

“That sounds very—unsafe,” she objected.

“At any rate, it will do no harm for me to get as near the gun as possible,” he said. And he began to crawl along a branch in the general direction of the rifle. The boar noted the movement and followed him underneath, snapping its fangs at him, the froth flowing from its ragged lips. Erica watched, her eyes wide, her face gray with dread. Crash! a branch gave way under him. He fell, and so low was he before he could stop himself that one of his feet, clad in a heavy shoe, kicked the boar in the nose. She, seeing him begin to fall, screamed and turned about to descend.

“Stop! Stop!” he exclaimed, as he drew himself up into the tree. “I’m all right!”

She clambered back just as the boar, dashing for her, flung itself high up the trunk. He looked at her, saw that her eyes were closed and that she was trembling. “Are you going to faint?” he exclaimed. “Quick, unwind your sash and fasten yourself in the tree with it.”

“No,” she said. “I sha’n’t faint. Oh, what a weak, cowardly creature I am!”

“You?” His look and his tone brought the color to her cheeks and a pleased look to her eyes. “You, who were coming down when you thought the boar had me? You are the bravest girl I ever saw. You can be counted on.”

He remembered the boar and again set out along the branches. “I’ll be more careful,” he called, over his shoulder. Soon he was within six feet of the rifle and directly above it.

“Now what will you do?” she said. “I don’t see that we’re any better off.”

“Patience,” he replied. He broke off a branch and lowered it towards the ground; it reached. He slowly pushed the rifle towards the base of the tree. The boar backed away and eyed the moving branch suspiciously. Grafton had got the rifle against the trunk before the boar rushed. He flung the branch far out from the tree, and the boar leaped into it and trampled and tore it, paying no attention to the rifle.

“Will you please unwind your sash,” said Grafton, “and tease him with it?—keep the end just out of reach of his nose. While you do that I’ll jump down the other side of the tree and shoot him.”

She unwound the long brown sash and let down one of its tasselled ends. The boar rushed it several times, then came to a halt under it, prancing round and round, jumping into the air, frothing and snapping its tusks. Grafton watched until he could see that it was dizzy from rage and rapid whirling.

“Shout!” he called to her. “Shout at him and shake the scarf.”

She obeyed. He dropped to the ground, snatched the rifle, took quick aim, and fired. The boar was leaping into the air. When it fell, it fell to its side, dead—there was not even a quiver.

“Don’t come till I make sure,” he called, running towards the carcass. Down upon it fluttered the brown sash, and then came a heavier body—Erica herself.

Grafton put his arms about her and stood up, holding her as if she were a child. Her long lashes lifted and she looked into his eyes with a faint, apologetic smile. “Put me down, please,” she murmured.

“Not just yet,” he said. “Don’t make an effort, and you’ll come round more quickly.”

She closed her eyes and relaxed into his arms. “How strong he is!” she thought. “And how brave! How glad I am to see him again, to find that he’s just as I’ve been suspecting he’d be!” At this a little color came into her cheeks.

He, not dreaming what was going on in her romantic young mind, was looking down at her, trying to keep a very tender smile out of his face—she looked so like a sleeping, spoiled child, with her child’s complexion, her short upper lip, her round, aggressive little chin. Her skin was so fine that he could see the blood pulsing through the delicate tracery of the veins in her cheek.

“Now I’ll try,” she said, after a few seconds. He let her feet down, but still held her about the shoulders. He led her to a fallen tree, and they sat, she leaning against him, he holding her firmly in his arm. Soon she could sit alone, her elbows on her knees, her chin between her hands.

“You are an American; so you said at—at Paquin’s?”

“Yes; and so are you—almost. You look and speak and act like an American woman.”

“I had an American governess. And my father’s—second wife was an American.”

“But,” he went on, “I don’t feel like an American just now. I feel as if we both belonged here—in this wilderness—as if I had known you all the always I could remember.”

She sat up and smiled, dreamily, sympathetically, without looking at him. “I was just thinking,” she said, “I don’t even know your name, yet I feel as if I knew you as well as I have ever known any one.” She sighed. “I must go.”

She caught him looking longingly at her, and they both blushed and were embarrassed. “My name is Grafton—Frederick Grafton,” he said.

“And mine is Erica.”

“Yes, I know that much—Erica what?”

“That’s all, except several other Christian names.”

“But how are you distinguished from other Ericas?”

“Well, they might call me Erica of Zweitenbourg.”

“Then your name is the same as your uncle’s?”

“But that isn’t his name, nor mine. He’s Grand Duke of Zweitenbourg, and we’re of the younger line—the ducal branch. Our family is Traubenheim. We came here about four hundred years ago.”

“Then your name is Erica Traubenheim.”

“No; Erica of Traubenheim.”

“Erica Traubenheimer?”

“Dear me, no! That’s a dreadful name.”

“I don’t understand,” said Grafton. “It’s as though I should call myself Frederick of Grafton.”

“That is it; only in your country you write your names differently. I was talking to the American minister about it; he explained that you have your noble families as we do, only they don’t reign, but hold aloof from politics, except to accept the high appointments of state.”

Grafton laughed. “Did he tell you that?”

“Oh! I knew at once that you were of a noble family.”

“A noble family of—dress-fitters?”

Erica blushed.

“My father was a pork-packer,” continued Grafton. “And his father was a pork-packer, and before that a farmer, and—I had an aunt who was crazy on genealogy; she found out that we were descended from a blacksmith. And my mother’s grandfather was a carpenter—when he could get carpentering to do. We’re all like that in America.”

“It must be very—very queer.” She seemed disappointed, depressed.

“Every country seems queer to every other. This country seems queer to me. Do you really like it—that life at The Castle?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Well, it seemed to me that if I were caught in such a routine—having to live my life on a plan fixed hundreds of years ago—never allowed to be my natural human self—it seems to me I’d die of weariness, unless I were imbecile or became so.”

“You wouldn’t mind it if you’d been educated for it.” She thought for a few minutes, then said: “Unfortunately, I wasn’t. My father’s—second wife persuaded him to educate me in the modern way. That makes this life almost impossible for me; it seems narrow and unreal, and useless. And it’s so dull, so deadly dull!”

“Why don’t you get out of it—break away?”

“A woman is helpless. Besides, I’m not sure—”

She rose and put on her Tyrol hat and wrapped her brown sash about her waist.

“I’ll walk with you as far as the road,” he said. “I don’t think I could find it alone.”

As they went, both silent and she constrained, he noted that she watched him curiously, as it seemed to him, critically, whenever she thought he was not seeing. They came to the cross-road and he asked, “When am I to see you again?”

She flushed painfully. “I—I’m afraid it’s impossible.”

He put out his hand. She hesitated, then gave him hers. “Good-bye,” she said.

“No; that wasn’t what I meant,” he explained, clasping her hand. She made a faint effort to draw it away, then let it lie in his. “Impossible, you say? Then you don’t wish to let me see you again?”