IV
One night I was awakened from my slumbers by a violent banging at my door.
“Who’s there?” I demanded. “What’s the matter?”
“Open—open in the name of the law!” commanded a deep bass voice.
“Good heavens! what can the row be now?” I wondered.
“Open, or we break in the door,” cried the voice.
“You must really give me time to put something on,” I protested, and hurriedly wrapped myself in some clothes.
Then I opened the door.
A magnificently uniformed young officer stepped into the room, followed by three gendarmes with drawn sabres. The officer inclined his head slightly, and said: “Herr Veinricht, ich glaube?”
His was not the voice that I had heard through the door, gruff and trombone-like, but a much softer voice, and much higher in pitch. Somehow it did not seem altogether the voice of a stranger to me, and yet the face of a stranger his face emphatically was—a very florid face, surmounted by a growth of short red hair, and decorated by a bristling red moustache. His eyes were overhung by bushy red eyebrows, and, in the uncertain candlelight, I could not make out their colour.
“Yes, I am Herr Veinricht,” I admitted, resigning myself to this German version of my name.
“English?” he questioned curtly.
“No, not English—American.”
“Macht nichts! I arrest you in the name of the Grand Duchess.”
“Arrest me! Will you be good enough to inform me upon what charge?”
“Upon the charge of consorting with dangerous characters, and being an enemy to the tranquillity of the State. You will please to dress as quickly as possible. A carriage awaits you below.”
“Good Lord! they have somehow connected me with Sebastian Roch,” I groaned inwardly. And I began to put certain finishing touches to my toilet.
“No, no,” cried the officer. “You must put on your dress-suit. Can you be so ignorant of criminal etiquette as not to know that State prisoners are required to wear their dress-suits?”
“It seems an absurd regulation,” said I, “but I will put on my dress-suit.”
“We will await you outside your door; but let me warn you, should you attempt to escape through your window, you will be shot in a hundred places,” said the officer, and retired with his minions.
The whole population of the hotel were in the corridors through which I had presently to pass with my custodians, and they pressed after us to the street. A closed carriage stood there, with four horses attached, each “near” horse bearing a postilion.
Three other horses, saddled, were tied to posts about the hotel entrance. These the gendarmes mounted.
“Will you enter the carriage?” said the officer.
But my spirit rose in arms. “I insist upon knowing what I’m arrested for. I want to understand the definite nature of the charge against me.”
“I am not a magistrate. Will you kindly enter the carriage?”
“Oh, this is a downright outrage,” I declared, and entered the carriage.
The officer leaped in after me, the door was slammed to, the postilions yelled at their horses, off we drove, followed by the rhythmical clank-clank of the gendarmes.
“I should like to get at the meaning of all this, you know,” I informed my captor.
“My dear sir, you do not begin to appreciate the premises. One less ignorant of military fashions would have perceived from my coat long since that I am a provost-marshal.”
“Well, and what of that? I suppose you are none the less able to explain my position to me.”
“Position, sir! This is trifling. But I must caution you that whatever you say will be remembered, and, if incriminating, used against you.”
“It is a breach of international comity,” said I.
“Oh, we are the best of friends with England,” he said, lightly.
“But I am an American, I would have you to know.”
“Macht nichts!” said he.
“Macht nichts!” I echoed, angrily. “You think so! I shall bring the case to the notice of the United States Legation, and you shall see.”
“How? And precipitate a war between two friendly powers?”
“You laugh! but who laughs last laughs best, and I promise you the Grand Duchy of X———shall be made to pay for this pleasantry with a vengeance.”
“This is not the first time you have been arrested while in these dominions,” he said, sternly, “and I must remind you that lèse-majesté is a hanging matter.”
“Lèse-majesté!” I repeated, half in scorn, half in terror.
“Ya wohl, mein Herr,” he answered. “But, after all, I am simply obeying orders,” he added, with an inflection almost apologetic.
Where had I heard of that curious soft voice before? A voice so soft that his German sounded almost like Italian.
Meanwhile we had driven across the town, past the walls, and into the open country.
“You are perhaps conducting me to the frontier?” I suggested, deriving some relief from the fancy.
“Oh, hardly so far as that, let us hope,” he answered, with what struck me as a suppressed chuckle.
“Far?” I cried. “Can you use the word in speaking of a pocket-handkerchief?”
“It is small, but it is picturesque, it is paintable,” said he. “And, what is more, by every syllable you utter against it you weave a strand into your halter, and drive a nail into your coffin. Suicide is imprudent, not to say immoral.”
“If I could meet you on equal terms,” I cried, “I would pay you for your derision with a good sound Anglo-Saxon thrashing.”
“Oh, tiger’s heart wrapped in a painter’s hide,” he retorted, laughing outright.
We drove on in silence for perhaps a quarter of an hour longer; then at last our horses’ hoofs resounded upon stone, and we drew up. My officer descended from the carriage; I followed him. We were standing under a massive archway lighted by a hanging lantern. Before a small door pierced in the stone wall fronting us a sentinel was posted, with his musket presented in salute.
The three gendarmes sprang from their saddles.
“Farewell, Herr Veinricht,” said the provost-marshal. “I have enjoyed our drive together more than I can tell you.” Then turning to his subordinates, “Conduct this gentleman to the Tower chamber,” he commanded.
One of the gendarmes preceding me, the other two coming behind, I was conveyed up a winding stone staircase, into a big octagonal-shaped room.
The room was lighted by innumerable candles set in sconces round the walls. It was comfortably, even richly furnished, and decorated with a considerable degree of taste. A warm-hued Persian carpet covered the stone floor; books, pictures, bibelots, were scattered discriminatingly about; and in one corner there stood a grand piano, open, with a violin and bow lying on it.
My gendarmes bowed themselves out, shutting the door behind them with an ominous clangour.
“If this is my dungeon cell,” I thought, “I shall not be so uncomfortable, after all. But how preposterous of them to force me to wear my dress-suit.”
I threw myself into an easy-chair, buried my face in my hands, and tried to reflect upon my situation.
I can’t tell how much time may have passed in this way; perhaps twenty minutes or half an hour. Then, suddenly, I was disturbed by the sound of a light little cough behind me, a discreet little “ahem.” I looked up quickly. A lady had entered the apartment, and was standing in the middle of it, smiling in contemplation of my desperate attitude.
“Good heavens!” I gasped, but not audibly, as her face grew clear to my startled sight. “The Grand Duchess her self!”
“I am glad to see you, Mr. Wainwright,” her Highness began, in English. “X——— is a dull little place—oh, believe me, the dullest of its size in Christendom—and they tell me you are an amusing man. I trust they tell the truth.”
Of course the reader has foreseen it from the outset; otherwise why should I be detaining him with this anecdote? But upon me it came as a thunderbolt; and in my emotion I forgot myself, and exclaimed aloud, “Sebastian Roch!” The face of the Grand Duchess had haunted me with a sense of familiarity; the voice of my redheaded officer in the carriage had seemed not strange to me; but now that I saw the face, and heard the voice, at one and the same time, all was clear—“Sebastian Roch!”
“You said——?” the gracious lady questioned, arching her eyes.
“Nothing, madame. I was about to thank your Highness for her kindness, but——”
“But your mind wandered, and you made some irrelevant military observation about a bastion rock. It is, perhaps, aphasia.”
“Very probably,” I assented.
“But you are a man of honour, are you not?”
“I hope so.”
“The English generally are. You can keep a State secret, especially when you happen to have learned it by a sort of accident, can you not?”
“I am a tomb for such things, madame.”
“That is well. And besides, you must consider that not all homicide is murder. Sometimes one is driven to kill in self-defence.”
“I have not a doubt of that.”
“I am only sorry it should, all have happened before you saw him. His squint was a rarity; it would have pleased your sense of humour. X———is the dullest little principality,” she went on, “oh, but dull, dull, dull! I am sometimes forced in despair to perpetrate little jokes. Yet you have actually stopped here five weeks. It must be as they say, that the English people take their pleasures sadly. You are a painter, I am told.”
“Yes, your Highness; I make a shift at painting.”
“And I at fiddling. But I lack a discriminating audience. I think you had better paint my portrait. I will play my fiddle to you. Between whiles we will talk. On occasions, I may tell you, I smoke cigarettes; one must have some excitement. We will try to enliven things a little. Do you think we shall succeed?”
“Oh, I should not despair of doing so.”
“That is nice of you. I have a most ridiculous High Chancellor; you might draw caricatures of him. And my First Lady of the Chamber has a preposterous lisp. I do hope I shall be amused.”
As she spoke, she extended her left hand towards me; I took it, and was about to give it a friendly shake.
“No, no, not that,” said she. “Oh, I forgot, you are an American, and the ABC of court etiquette is Sanskrit to you. Must I tell you what to do?”
To cut a long story short, I thought my lines had fallen unto me in extremely pleasant places; and so, indeed, they had—for a while. I passed a merry summer at the Court of X———, alternating between the Residenz in town, and the Schloss beyond the walls. I made a good many preliminary studies for the princess’s portrait, whilst she played her violin; and between times, as she had promised, we talked, practised court etiquette, smoked cigarettes, and laughed at scandal. But when I began upon the final canvas, I at least had to become a little sober. I wanted to make a masterpiece of it. We had two or three sittings, during which I worked away in grim silence, and the Grand Duchess yawned.
Then one night I was again roused from the middle of my slumbers, taken in custody by a colonel of dragoons, conducted to a closed carriage, and driven abroad through the darkness. When our carriage came to a standstill we found ourselves in the Austrian village of Z————, beyond the X——— frontier There Colonel von Schlangewurtzel bade me good-bye. At the same time he handed me a letter. I hastened to tear it open. Upon a sheet of court paper, in a pretty feminine hand, I read these words.
“You promised to amuse me. But it seems you take your droll British art au grand sérieux. We have better portrait-painters among our natives; and you will find models cheap and plentiful at Z————.
“Farewell!”