CHAPTER III.
“Bennett ’82 cannot be explained by any known law,” a Yale professor had once remarked. “He may astonish the world by his genius, or end a short career as a tramp. The splendor of his inherent possibilities emphasizes the dangers that surround such a temperament as his.”
Ten years had passed since Bennett had been graduated, not without honors, from Yale, but he had not as yet fulfilled the professor’s prophecy. He had not made the world ring with his name; neither had he sunk to the level of a knight of the road. There still remained a chance, however, that the foresight of the professor would be vindicated. Bennett was now thirty-two years of age. He had assiduously cultivated the gifts that had led the Yale professor to ascribe to him the peculiarities and possibilities that appertain to genius. Bennett had become an accomplished linguist, a poet, a musician, a diplomatist, and a schemer. But he had neglected the means and methods that lead to permanent success, and his love of adventure had served to make him more of a tramp than a celebrity. The returns from his genius must still be marked “scattering.”
The erratic nature of the man was well illustrated by his invasion of the kingdom of Hesse-Heilfels. One evening in Berlin he had listened to a description of King Rudolph’s picturesque domain. The eccentricities of that petty monarch had aroused Bennett’s curiosity, and he had determined to make a study at close quarters of a royal establishment that still retained many of the peculiarities of mediæval monarchies.
Bennett had been fortunate enough to find luck as his ally upon entering the confines of Hesse-Heilfels. At the very first inn in the kingdom in which he had laid aside his knapsack, he had learned that King Rudolph was suffering from a severe indisposition that had baffled the skill of the court physicians. It did not take Bennett long to come to the conclusion that the reigning Schwartzburger was suffering from inflammatory rheumatism, an affection that Bennett numbered among his family heirlooms. “Litchfield County may be short on romance, but it is long on rheumatism,” he said to himself. “I think I can cure King Rudolph.”
There is no necessity for dwelling upon the details of Bennett’s success as a court physician. He had written a carefully worded letter offering his services to the afflicted monarch “free of charge unless a cure is effected.” King Rudolph, weary of suffering and disgusted with the impotence of his own doctors, had sent for the young American and, much to the astonishment and annoyance of the court, had given him full charge of his royal person. The cure effected by the gifted amateur had won him the friendship of the king, and the enmity of the court circle. In spite of his suavity, Bennett had been unable to make himself popular in a household in which the good-will of the king must be purchased at the expense of general detestation. The feeling against Bennett was intensified, of course, because of his foreign birth. Never before, in the long and polychromatic history of the House of Schwartzburg, had a stranger from a land far over sea become at a bound an influential factor in shaping the destinies of the kingdom of Hesse-Heilfels. Upon the door of his bedchamber one morning, Bennett had found inscribed in chalk, the words, “Geben sie acht. Halt!” The warning had opened his eyes to the fact that the enemies he had made were bold and determined. But he had smiled mockingly, rubbed the chalk from the panel, and made his way, humming a merry catch, to the king’s apartments.
Nevertheless Bennett was not in a joyous mood as he gazed at the moon-kissed river and mountains from a balcony adjoining his apartments on the evening of the day upon which our tale opens. Although the king had apologized in the afternoon for his bitter denunciation of the American in the morning, Bennett realized that his hold upon royal favor was insecure, and that as Rudolph’s rheumatism improved, and his fondness for poker decreased, the end of his adventure would impend.
Twenty-four hours before this Bennett would have felt no special annoyance had a decree of perpetual banishment from the kingdom of Hesse-Heilfels been enforced against him. But as he puffed cigar smoke into the balmy air and gazed dreamily at the silver thread that gleamed between the distant hills, the face of the Princess Hilda—proud, cold, and beautiful—seemed to taunt him, defy him, fascinate him. His pulse beat wildly as the temptation to break this haughty woman’s pride, to make her eyes grow gentle at his approach and her lips melt into smiles as he addressed her, swept over him.
The hopelessness of his longing was clear to him. The princess looked upon him as a quack, an adventurer, a man to be shunned and despised. She had never vouchsafed to him a word, a glance, the slightest recognition of his existence. To win her regard seemed to be impossible. The sceptre of Hesse-Heilfels was as much within his reach as the good-will of the Princess Hilda. Nevertheless, Jonathan Bennett, soothed by tobacco, lulled by the glories of a summer night, haunted by the swarming spirits of the storied Rhine, dreamed his dream of love and conquest and allowed his wild fancies to lead him far from the vulgar plane of poker, sanitary plumbing, and “sure cures” for rheumatism.
“Ach, mein Herr, but you look like an archangel planning a crime.”
Bennett sprang up from his seat in dismay. He had carefully locked the doors of his apartments, and this sudden invasion of his privacy smacked of the supernatural. Cousin Fritz, with a mocking smile playing across his gnarled face, displayed a mischievous joy in the American’s consternation.
“Be seated, Herr Bennett,” cried the dwarf, bowing with exaggerated politeness. “I owe you an apology—but this is one of my jokes. Is it not a good one? Ha—ha!” He danced up and down the balcony with weird agility for a moment. Then he seated himself upon the stone coping and tilted his feathered cap sideways upon his overgrown head.
“You will forgive me,” said Bennett gently, offering the jester a cigar, which the latter accepted with much ceremony, “if I ask you how you managed to surprise me so successfully?”
Cousin Fritz winked knowingly and blew a cloud of smoke into the air.
“I’ve lived in this castle a thousand years,” he answered solemnly. “It has taken me all that time to learn its secrets. Hist, Herr Bennett, they think it’s my business to amuse the king. Nonsense. That’s my pleasure. My work for a thousand years has been to discover all the mysteries of this old castle. I know them all now. What is the result? I’ll tell you, Herr Bennett, and I’ll tell you why I tell you. You made those scoundrels return my money this afternoon. Four aces! The robbers! But they took your word on poker, Herr Bennett—although they hate you. Do you hear me? They hate you.”
The dwarf chuckled with inward glee. He seemed to rejoice in Bennett’s unpopularity.
“And what,” asked Bennett, not wholly pleased with the jester’s untimely jocularity, “what has been the result of your thousand years of discovery in this ancient pile? You started out to tell me.”
“It has been,” answered the dwarf, seeming to weigh his words carefully, “it has been to make me king. These puppets come and go and wear the crown and hold the sceptre, but through the centuries I am monarch of Hesse-Heilfels. I could tell you tales that would make your black hair turn white, tales of my power—of my power, the jester, Cousin Fritz, a buffoon for a thousand years!”
There was something so uncanny in the little wizard’s words and manner that Bennett could hardly repress a gesture of abhorrence. A madman smoking a cigar in the moonlight on a balcony overlooking the Rhine was a creature so out of touch with nineteenth-century ideas that Bennett was tempted to believe that he had fallen asleep and had been attacked by a nightmare.
Suddenly Cousin Fritz hopped down from his perch and sprang toward Bennett. The movement was so sudden that the American had no time to rise.
“Look there,” whispered the dwarf, pointing with trembling hand toward a group of trees at the edge of the park, several hundred feet in front of them. “Do you see those shadows among the trees?”
Bennett’s eyes followed the little man’s gesture. He could make out the figures of several men who had gathered in a group beneath the trees. The moon painted their shadows black against the greensward.
“Do you know what they seek?” asked the dwarf, shaking with inward laughter. “They seek your life, Herr Bennett! Isn’t that a joke? I couldn’t make a better one, could I?”
The American felt an almost irresistible impulse to hurl the uncanny creature into the abyss beneath them. The dwarf’s idea of humor did not appeal to Bennett. As a Yankee he possessed a keen appreciation of the ludicrous, but the prospect of assassination did not strike him as laughable. Cousin Fritz—abnormally sympathetic as he was—realized that his companion was not in a joyous mood.
“Don’t be alarmed, Herr Bennett,” he said, “what I tell you is true. I heard those men planning your death. They hate you because my cousin Rudolph has grown fond of you. But, never fear, I will save you from their machinations. Did I not tell you that I had been King of Hesse-Heilfels for a thousand years? Well, the king is on your side. I decree that you shall not die. Do you doubt my power to save you? Look here!”
The dwarf sprang with wonderful agility upon the coping and stood upright, his crooked figure standing out against the sky like a silhouette to the eyes of the astonished American. Seizing his cap the king’s jester waved it frantically to and fro, as if making a signal to the men at the edge of the park.
“Come here, Herr Bennett,” he cried. “See? Am I not king? Have they not obeyed my command? See? They are gone?”
Bennett gazed searchingly at the trees beneath which the group had stood but a moment before. There was nothing there but the moonlit glory of the forest.