CHAPTER II.
“Pardon me, your majesty,” said Bennett, holding a pack of cards unshuffled in his hand. “I hesitate to cross your will, but if the princess really has important news——?”
The speaker looked up at the Princess Hilda deferentially, but his intercession in her behalf met with no reward. Far from seeming pleased at his support, she turned her back upon him, her face white and set, and gazed reproachfully at her king and uncle.
“Throw out the cards,” commanded King Rudolph sternly. “Am I to be told by a chit of a girl how to rule my kingdom? Remain where you are, Princess Hilda, and see me win a province in the land across the sea.”
The little group at that moment presented a picturesque tableau. In that old castle within which the centuries had seen enacted many tragedies, comedies, farce-comedies, and burlesques, lost to the world forever for lack of imminent playwrights, an episode in a stirring drama was about to take place against an appropriate mise-en-scène.
The king’s face, flushed with the excitement of the crisis, wore an expression of mingled cupidity and impatience. His fat, reddish hand rapped the table nervously. Opposite to him sat Bennett, a prey to conflicting emotions, but outwardly calm. He had hitherto been too much occupied in gaining an influence over King Rudolph to notice the beauty of Princess Hilda, but as she stood there, cold, disdainful, silent, while the breeze gently caressed her golden-brown hair, the American adventurer felt tempted to throw the mischievous cards into the king’s face and beg forgiveness from the princess on his bended knees.
“Count von Hohenlinden,” began the princess stubbornly.
The king put up his hand deprecatingly.
“The Count von——!” Princess Hilda got no further.
“I draw to my pair of knaves,” cried King Rudolph, thrusting three useless cards aside excitedly.
“You do, indeed,” said Hilda, under her breath, and glancing pointedly at Bennett. She had not lowered her voice sufficiently to prevent the American from catching the drift of her remark. He tossed three cards toward the king.
“Four of a kind!” cried the delighted Schwartzburger, pointing at the cards triumphantly. “My jacks will take your farm, Herr Bennett.”
“But I draw to queens,” remarked the American quietly and casting a quick glance at Princess Hilda. “Ha, was I not right? Are not the queens on my side? Look at that, your majesty! Four queens! I win my contract. Das ist wahr!”
King Rudolph gazed blankly at the cards before him. By a marvellous stroke of luck the American had beaten the king’s four jacks. Novice though he was at poker, the Schwartzburger realized that he had lost the stakes at a moment when the chances were a thousand to one in his favor.
“Gott im Himmel!” he cried angrily, hurling the pack of cards through the window, while his greenish-gray eyes glared fiercely at his opponent, “what mad devil is in the cards?”
“I had wonderful luck,” said Bennett gently, rising from his seat and glancing imploringly at the princess.
“The Count von Hohenlinden, Your Majesty,” cried Hilda, paying no attention to Bennett.
King Rudolph arose from his chair. He was a short, thickset man, clumsy in movement, and much too heavy for his height.
“Will you be quiet, niece?” he exclaimed, his breath coming and going with asthmatic friction. “Let me understand this gentleman. Herr Bennett, you have won the cold hand——”
“And the marble heart,” muttered Bennett mournfully.
“As I understand it,” went on the king, “you purpose to put this castle and the roads, parks, bridges, and forests of my kingdom into a condition more worthy of the nineteenth century than is their present status. Am I right?”
“That is the proposition, your majesty.”
“But there are many difficulties in the way, Herr Bennett. I will meet with resistance at every point. I have ministers—a prime minister, heads of departments, red tape, precedent, national prejudice, and a large family of impecunious relatives, already in alliance against you and your projects. Ach Himmel! I thought my four jacks would solve my difficulties—and now I am worse off than ever.”
The Princess Hilda had retired to a window and was gazing pensively out upon hills and valleys over which the Schwartzburgers had lorded it for many generations. Here and there between the hills she could catch a glimpse of the stately Rhine, as it flowed serenely past the castellated summits where Romans, Teutons, and tourists had fussed and fretted through the centuries. Suddenly the king turned toward her.
“Count von Hohenlinden,” he cried. “You spoke of him, my princess. He is my financier. I need his advice. Have you news of him, Hilda?” The princess turned and approached the king.
“The countess came to me this morning in tears,” she said quietly. “Count von Hohenlinden has gone.”
“Gone?” cried King Rudolph in amazement. “Gone where?”
“No one knows. I fear, your majesty—I fear from what the countess said—that—that—he is a defaulter.”
“Mein Gott! Mein Gott!” exclaimed the king, sinking into a chair. “It cannot be! And yet—and yet—he had full control of my treasury. He told me yesterday—but what matters it what he said then? Call von Schwalbach to me. I tell you, Herr Bennett, if my prime minister has allowed the count to loot my treasury I will have his life. Quick! call a page and send him for von Schwalbach.”
“Alas, your majesty,” said the princess soothingly, “von Schwalbach has also disappeared. It is said that he and the count left the kingdom last night, riding their wheels through a secret pass in the hills.”
The countenance of royalty had turned white with dismay. The king seemed to be stricken helpless at one blow.
“My best friends gone,” he muttered. “Gone—thieves that run off in the night! And I—I have trusted them with my purse, my honor, my very life. Tell me, Hilda,” he went on, almost hysterically, “what caused this downfall of men whose word was always as good as gold, men who have been found faithful to their trust for years?”
The broken king looked up pathetically at his golden-haired niece. She smiled sadly down at him, and then turned frowningly toward Bennett, who stood, with one hand resting upon the card-table, watching the melancholy scene before him.
“One thing alone caused the ruin of the men you trusted,” she said, and paused.
“And that was?” cried the king eagerly.
“Poker!” answered the princess simply.
Bennett stepped back as though struck by a blow in the face, while the king sprang to his feet and puffed helplessly for a moment.
“Donner und Blitzen!” blurted King Rudolph, shaking his fist at the American, whose white lips and flushed cheeks gave evidence of his inward agitation. “You are responsible for this, Herr Bennett! You sneak into my kingdom and tell me you have news from a better world than mine. You tell me that I and my people are ‘behind the times.’ I give you room in my palace and you complain that we have no gas, no electricity, no telephones, no cable cars to climb the hills, no new castles. All is old, you whisper, time-worn, covered with lichen, useless, dead. And I, the only fool of all the Schwartzburgers, listen to you and grow cold to my old counsellors. You talk of progress—and give me poker. You speak of grandeur—and make me a gambler. You point to a rainbow—and pick my pockets. It is enough. I have learned my lesson. Go, Herr Bennett—and may the curse of the King of Hesse-Heilfels be with you to the end.”
King Rudolph sank back into his chair, panting for breath.
At this instant a man burst into the room unannounced, dragging with him a page who had sought to check his impetuosity.
The intruder was a comical figure at his most dignified moments, but at this instant he looked as if he had escaped from a light opera company, just when the audience was roaring at his best joke. He was not over four feet three in height. His hair was tousled and of a light yellow hue. His features were large, especially his nose. Under the influence of great excitement his eyes bulged from his head as if in search of mislaid spectacles. He was attired in a green velvet jacket and small clothes, with a frilled shirt and a small sword at his side. In his hand he carried a green cap, from which a long black feather trailed along the floor.
“Your majesty, pardon me,” he cried, falling upon one knee before the king. “I protest to the throne. I know that I am right! Nicht wahr?”
In spite of the solemnity of the crisis, King Rudolph laughed aloud, the Princess Hilda smiled, and an expression of hope rested upon Jonathan Bennett’s disturbed countenance. The sudden change in the king’s mood was encouraging.
“Rise, Cousin Fritz,” said the king jocosely. “You never appeal to the king in vain. What is your grievance. Perhaps your troubles may prove for the moment a counter-irritant to mine.”
“Because I’m called the king’s jester, Your Majesty, they think I’m a fool,” said the little man, readjusting the feather in his cap. “But I’m not the fool that I look, am I, Schwartzburg?” Here the dwarf winked gayly at the king. Then his anger seemed to return. “Gott im Himmel!” he cried, “they gave me the lie, me, Cousin Fritz, who could tell the truth in Latin and Greek at the age of six. It’s an outrage, your majesty.”
“But what was the cause of all this?” asked the king, beginning to look bored and casting uneasy glances at Bennett, upon whom the royal curse had not had the intended effect.
“The cause, your majesty?” repeated the dwarf. “Cause enough. They said I lied when I told them that four of a kind beat a full house. Think of that, Herr Bennett. They took my money—and I held four aces.”