V
That same evening the grand duke's valet knocked on the door leading into the princess' apartments, and when the door opened he gravely announced that his serene Highness desired to speak to the Princess Hildegarde. It was a command. For some reason, known best to herself, the princess chose to obey it.
"Say that I shall be there presently," she said, dismissing the valet.
As she entered her uncle's study—so called because of its dust-laden bookshelves, though the duke sometimes disturbed their contents to steady the leg of an unbalanced chair or table—he laid down his pipe and dismissed his small company of card-players.
"I did not expect to see you so soon," he began. "A woman's curiosity sometimes has its value. It takes little to arouse it, but a great deal to allay it."
"You have not summoned me to make smart speeches, simply because I have been educated up to them?"—truculently.
"No. I have not summoned you to talk smart, a word much in evidence in Barscheit since your return from England. For once I am going to use a woman's prerogative. I have changed my mind."
The Princess Hildegarde trembled with delight. She could put but one meaning to his words.
"The marriage will not take place next month."
"Uncle!"—rapturously.
"Wait a moment,"—grimly. "It shall take place next week."
"I warn you not to force me to the altar," cried the girl, trembling this time with a cold fury.
"My child, you are too young in spirit and too old in mind to be allowed a gateless pasture. In harness you will do very well." He took up his pipe and primed it. It was rather embarrassing to look the girl in the eye. "You shall wed Doppelkinn next week."
"You will find it rather embarrassing to drag me to the altar,"—evenly.
"You will not," he replied, "create a scandal of such magnitude. You are untamable, but you are proud."
The girl remained silent. In her heart she knew that he had spoken truly. She could never make a scene in the cathedral. But she was determined never to enter it. She wondered if she should produce the bogus certificate. She decided to wait and see if there were no other loophole of escape. Old Rotnäsig? Not if she died!
When these two talked without apparent heat it was with unalterable fixedness of purpose. They were of a common race. The duke was determined that she should wed Doppelkinn; she was equally determined that she should not. The gentleman with the algebraic bump may figure this out to suit himself.
"Have you no pity?"
"My reason overshadows it. You do not suppose that I take any especial pleasure in forcing you? But you leave me no other method."
"I am a young girl, and he is an old man."
"That is immaterial. Besides, the fact has gone abroad. It is now irrevocable."
"I promise to go out and ask the first man I see to marry me!" she declared.
"Pray Heaven, it may be Doppelkinn!" said the duke drolly.
"Oh, do not doubt that I have the courage and the recklessness. I would not care if he were young, but the prince is old enough to be my father."
"You are not obliged to call him husband." The duke possessed a sparkle to-night which was unusual in him. Perhaps he had won some of the state moneys which he had paid out to his ministers' that day. "Let us not waste any time," he added.
"I shall not waste any,"—ominously.
"Order your gown from Vienna, or Paris, or from wherever you will. Don't haggle over the price; let it be a good one; I'm willing to go deep for it."
"You loved my aunt once,"—a broken note in her voice.
"I love her still,"—not unkindly; "but I must have peace in the house. Observe what you have so far accomplished in the matter of creating turmoil." The duke took up a paper.
"My sins?"—contemptuously.
"Let us call them your transgressions. Listen. You have ridden a horse as a man rides it; you have ridden bicycles in public streets; you have stolen away to a masked ball; you ran away from school in Paris and visited Heaven knows whom; you have bribed sentries to let you in when you were out late; you have thrust aside the laws as if they meant nothing; you have trifled with the state papers and caused the body politic to break up a meeting as a consequence of the laughter."
The girl, as she recollected this day to which he referred, laughed long and joyously. He waited patiently till she had done, and I am not sure that his mouth did not twist under his beard. "Foreign education is the cause of all this," he said finally. "Those cursed French and English schools have ruined you. And I was fool enough to send you to them. This is the end."
"Or the beginning,"—rebelliously.
"Doppelkinn is mild and kind."
"Mild and kind! One would think that you were marrying me to a horse! Well, I shall not enter the cathedral."
"How will you avoid it?"—calmly.
"I shall find a way; wait and see." She was determined.
"I shall wait." Then, with a sudden softening, for he loved the girl after his fashion: "I am growing old, my child. If I should die, what would become of you? I have no son; your Uncle Franz, who is but a year or two younger than I am, would reign, and he would not tolerate your madcap ways. You must marry at once. I love you in spite of your wilfulness. But you have shown yourself incapable of loving. Doppelkinn is wealthy. You shall marry him."
"I will run away, uncle,"—decidedly.
"I have notified the frontiers,"—tranquilly. "From now on you will be watched. It is the inevitable, my child, and even I have to bow to that."
She touched the paper in her bosom, but paused.
"Moreover, I have decided," went on the duke, "to send the Honorable Betty Moore back to England."
"Betty?"
"Yes. She is a charming young person, but she is altogether too sympathetic. She abets you in all you do. Her English independence does not conform with my ideas. After the wedding I shall notify her father."
"Everything, everything! My friends, my liberty, the right God gives to every woman—to love whom she will! And you, my uncle, rob me of these things! What if I should tell you that marriage with me is now impossible?"—her lips growing thin.
"I should not be very much surprised."
"Please look at this, then, and you will understand why I can not marry Doppelkinn." She thrust the bogus certificate into his hands.
The duke read it carefully, not a muscle in his face disturbed. Finally he looked up with a terrifying smile.
"Poor, foolish child! What a terrible thing this might have turned out to be!"
"What do you mean?"
"Mean? Do you suppose anything like this could take place without my hearing of it? And such a dishonest unscrupulous rascal! Some day I shall thank the American consul personally for his part in the affair. I was waiting to see when you would produce this. You virtually placed your honor and reputation, which I know to be above reproach, into the keeping of a man who would sell his soul for a thousand crowns."
The girl felt her knees give way, and she sat down. Tears slowly welled up in her eyes and overflowed, blurring everything.
The duke got up and went over to his desk, rummaging among the papers. He returned to the girl with a letter.
"Read that, and learn the treachery of the man you trusted."
The letter was written by Steinbock. In it he disclosed all. It was a venomous, inciting letter. The girl crushed it in her hand.
"Is he dead?" she asked, all the bitterness in her heart surging to her lips.
"To Barscheit,"—briefly. "Now, what shall I do with this?"—tapping the bogus certificate.
"Give it to me," said the girl wearily. She ripped it into halves, into quarters, into infinitesimal squares, and tossed them into the waste-basket. "I am the unhappiest girl in the world."
"I am sorry," replied the grand duke. "It isn't as if I had forced Doppelkinn on you without first letting you have your choice. You have rejected the princes of a dozen wealthy countries. We are not as the common people; we can not marry where we will. I shall announce that the marriage will take place next week."
"Do not send my friend away," she pleaded, apparently tamed.
"I will promise to give the matter thought. Good night."
She turned away without a word and left him. When he roared at her she knew by experience that he was harmless; but this quiet determination meant the exclusion of any further argument. There was no escape unless she ran away. She wept on her pillow that night, not so much at the thought of wedding Doppelkinn as at the fact that Prince Charming had evidently missed the last train and was never coming to wake her up, or, if he did come, it would be when it was too late. How many times had she conjured him up, as she rode in the fresh fairness of the mornings! How manly he was and how his voice thrilled her! Her horse was suddenly to run away, he was to rescue her, and then demand her hand in marriage as a fitting reward. Sometimes he had black hair and eyes, but more often he was big and tall, with yellow hair and the bluest eyes in all the world.