I
While these events of political moment were going on, Prince Hans Fritz Otto of Schnapps-Wasser had been busy planting himself in the good graces of the Princess Charlotte. They rode, they skated, they lunched, they played billiards together; and so easy did their relations to each other become that the Queen ceased to have any anxiety as to the future, and left the entire conduct of the affair to Providence.
Charlotte all her life had been quick and impulsive in her decisions; her hatreds and her affections had always been precipitately bestowed, and while her conduct was seldom reasonable, her instincts were generally right. So now—when a most crucial question was coming to her for decision—for she no longer needed to be informed of the Prince's mind in the matter—she did not allow its serious character to weigh upon her spirits or make her less ready and spontaneous in the bestowal of her liking. On the contrary, if anything, it hastened her verdict of approval. "I do believe that I am going to fall in love with him!" she said to herself after an acquaintance of only twenty-four hours; and having so determined, she set forth with all speed to study "philosophically," as she phrased it, this huge healthy natural specimen which fortune had thrown in her way. "For if I don't take a philosophical view of him now," she said to herself, "I shall never be able to do it afterwards."
The effort to do so rather amused her; she was not in love with him but she liked him more than a little. She had not yet, however, put him to the test by revealing the awful fact that she had been in prison as a common criminal; and before doing so (a little nervous as to the result) she took such opportunity of survey as was left to her, studied him up and down, noticed his ways, demeanor, habits, and wondered to herself whether in three weeks' time she would be so infatuated with this great creature as not to know where divinity ended and mere earthly clay began.
She had plenty of material to go upon: he was as naïve in the revelations of his own character as in his half-bewildered admiration for the swift mercurial motions of her livelier temperament.
For a while, at the beginning of their acquaintance, some question as to the degree of her sincerity seemed to trouble him.
"How much of what you say do you really mean?" he inquired.
"Oh, it varies!" she answered. "I talk so as to find out what I think. Don't you? Some things one can't judge of till one hears them spoken."
"That seems funny to me."
"Why? You are fond of music: don't you find that sound is very important? Can you think music without ever hearing it?"
"Sometimes," he said.
"But only the airs."
"Oh, no; sometimes I can think like an orchestra, when I know all what is in it."
"You must be very musical."
"Yes; that is my misfortune sometimes. The world has so much ugly sound already; and then some people go out of their ways to make more."
"Ah, yes," she smiled, "I remember you were a musical critic once."
He let that go; and turning the conversation abruptly, as was his wont, to more personal ends, said—
"Tell me, do you like my name?"
"Schnapps-Wasser?" Shaping the word elaborately, she made a wry face over it.
"No—not that; my own name."
"But you have three."
"Yes; Hans, Fritz, Otto. Which of them you like best?"
"Fritz suits you best."
"Then will you always call me it?"
"Prince Fritz, Prince Fritz?—sounds like a robin," she said, trying it in musical tones.
"No, just Fritz; no more, only that."
"Wait till I have known you a few more days; then we will see."
"But I shall already be nearly gone by then," he protested. "I am only here such a short time."
"Perhaps some day you will come again."
"Ah! Again!" He sounded unutterable things, as though upon that word hung his whole fate. Anything might happen to him before they met again.
"I have a secret," he said; "I want to tell it you."
"Are you sure you can trust me?"
"When I have told you it, you can tell anybody."
"Then it can't be much of a secret."
"Oh! You think?" He opened his big childish eyes at her and nodded his head solemnly. "This secret has been with me thousands and thousands of miles. Every time I shot off my gun, every day I went 'tramp, tramp' through the forest walking on snakes, every time I fought for my life I had this secret of mine to live with."
"You had better not tell it then; it may lose its interest."
"I want it to interest you."
"It does," said Charlotte, "very much."
"Huh! You do not know what it is."
"That is why; it is much more interesting not to know."
"Ah, you are playing at me! But what I go to tell you is no joke."
"I was not laughing," she said.
"No; only 'chatter, chatter'!"
"You know where I have been?" he continued.
"I know the continent."
"Yes;—you are right; that is all anybody knows about it. Well, inside of it there is a country as big as this Jingalo of yours; and it belongs really to nobody. I have been all over it."
"The people are very savage, are they not?"
"Savage?—oh, no. They are very fierce and proud, and strong; they are also the most wonderful artists. You call that to be a savage?"
"Artists?"
"Yes; look at that."
As he spoke he drew up his sleeve almost to the elbow, exposing a sunburnt arm, smooth, fine of texture, and enormously muscular. Over its brawny mold, with scaly convolutions elaborately tattooed, writhed a dragon in bright indigo.
"Oh, how beautiful!" exclaimed the Princess. Marveling at the clear intricacy of its detail, she stooped to examine it more closely.
Prince Fritz turned his arm this way and that, displaying it. He snapped his fingers: flick went each separate muscle, the dragon became alive.
"What do you think?" he inquired, smiling with childish vanity and the delight of feeling upon his skin the warmth of her breath.
"It is very beautiful," she murmured again, her admiration divided between the scaly dragon's wings and the splendidly molded limb.
"I have them far more beautiful upon my legs," said the Prince.
"Dragons?"
"Yes; but oh! quite different; more—how do you say?—'bloodthirsty' you call it? Here and here"—he went on, indicating the locality—"I have two. One of them is climbing up and the other is climbing down; and they are both biting on my knee-cap with their teeth—like mad."
"They must be quite wonderful."
"They are all that! When I look at them I am lost with admiration of myself." Then he gazed speculatively into her eyes and speaking in dull, soft tones of Teutonic sentiment, said confidentially, "If you will marry me, you shall see them some day."
Charlotte's laughter rang loud. "Do you think I should marry you for that?"
A wistful, rather nonplussed expression came into the Prince's face.
"I do not know," said he, "why women marry at all; they are so wonderful, so beautiful, so good all by themselves; we men are not beautiful at all—not our bodies nor our hearts. And I—oh, well!"—he drew down his sleeve as he spoke,—"I have nothing more beautiful to offer you than those—my dragons. If you do not want them, why should you want me?"
"But women don't marry dragons!" objected Charlotte, scarcely less puzzled than amused.
"Oh! Do they not? I think you are wrong. Many of them marry only because the man they marry makes them afraid. I have seen it done in the country where I come from;—Germany I mean—and everywhere here it is the same. I am not a dragon myself; but if you are that sort of woman, these might help you to pretend. Do you not think you could be afraid of me enough to marry me?"
This was strange wooing.
"I am not afraid of you at all," said Charlotte; "but I like you—very much."
"Ah, then you want me to be quite another person? Very well, that make it so much easier. Then now I will tell you what I am really like; and you will try not to laugh, will you not?"
Charlotte composed her countenance to as near gravity as was possible, and the Prince went on.
"I am just one little child that has lost its way through having grown so big and strong. And I want some nice, kind woman, that is more sensible than I, to be a mother to me—to take me in her arms and let me cry to her when I am afraid. Herr Gott! I am so frightened sometimes—how I have cried! Of the dark night, of loneliness, of the stillness when there is no noise near, but only that, something far, far away, that comes! Everything frightens me when I am alone. Fighting? No, I am not afraid of that; it is this wait, wait, wait—for what? And I want to have one woman just at my heart, and her voice at my ear, and children—yes, plenty of them; and when I have plenty children, then I shall not be afraid of loneliness any more."
"But if you so dislike it, why did you go away into the wilds?"
"Ah! I had to run away from the music. That was awful! And then—have you lived in a German town?—that is awful too. Do not think that I am asking you to live in a German town? No: I could not be so cruel. So now I tell you my secret."
"You mean the dragons?"
"The dragons? No, no! They go with me,—they are part of me, they are 'in the know': but they themselves are not the secret. That is much, much bigger thing still!"
He paused, and she saw his blue eyes looking far away, as though he had forgotten her presence.
"Well?" she said encouragingly, "you are going to tell me, are you not?"
"Oh, yes! That is what I am come for." His tone was quite business-like now.
"That big country I told you of—it belongs to nobody. You know that those North Americans say that nobody from Europe is to have it, though they do not use it themselves. Well, I am going to have it."
"You?"
"Schnapps-Wasser,—me, with my water-bottles. I have turned them into a company; and they are going to give for it—well, never mind how much. But with what my bottles bring me I can make that country so that no power in the world can prevent it from being a great country to itself."
"But you say it has no coast?"
"No—just like Jingalo; that is what makes it strong. If I were foolish, if I were only going there to make money, I should try to get some treaty, some concession, some sort of trade-monopoly—rubber, or gum, or niggers' blood, it is all the same thing—I should try to get that from the Brazils or the Bolivias or whoever thinks that it is theirs to sell. I am not such a fool: I do not want to trade, if I have got the people. They are strong, they can run, they live clean lives—nobody has spoiled them; they do not want to be rich; they are still a wonderful people; they know a leader when they have found him. And when they gave me these dragons that I have on me, then I became their King. That is my secret. Now!"
"But if I were to tell people that——"
"Pooh! They would not believe you. 'Mad,' that is what they would say. 'Don't marry that man, he is mad!' And besides I am not King as we talk of kings here in Europe; they would not pay taxes to me or anybody, but I can show them what to do. That country on the map may 'belong' to anybody—the United States may write 'Monroe'—one of their big 'bow-wows' that was—they may write 'Monroe' all round the coasts of South America and at every port that they like to stick in their noses; but they cannot get there to say that the people living on that land shall not become great and strong in their own way, without any one else to say about it. To those men outside I shall only look like a trader what is too stupid to trade with them; but all my trade will be among my own people. That country can live on itself; there, that is my secret! It wants nothing, nothing from outside at all; and the people want nothing either. They have great high plateaux where they can live cool; and they have all the brains and the blood that they want to make themselves a great nation. I have drilled them; ah, but not German fashion, no! They are much too splendid for that. Every man is an army to himself. They do not fear, for in their religion it is forbidden them. But if you can think of Bersaglieri—which are the best troops in Europe—able to climb like monkeys, to swim like fish, to go along the ground like snakes, and to get all by different ways to the same place in the dark with their eyes shut, though they have never been there before—for that is how it seems—well, that is what my army is going to be like. I have ten thousand of them drilled already; in a year I shall have them armed; and I tell you that at six hundred miles from the nearest coast nobody will be able to beat them."
"No, perhaps not with armies," said Charlotte; "but what about civilization itself—all the evil part of it, I mean? How are you going to keep that out?"
"Civilization will find us a bad bargain," said the Prince, "we shall not trade: that is to be our law. I have told them how dreadful civilization has become, and they are afraid of it; they will not touch it with a pair of tongs. Traders may come to us; they shall get nothing, and we shall get nothing from them. Only the King, with those that he has for his Council, shall choose what is to bring in from outside; and that will not be for trade at all.
"Well, now you know! And it is to be Queen of that country, but never to wear any crown, that I ask if you are going to marry me?"
"It would be rather a big adventure, would it not?" said Charlotte.
"Of course! I thought that is what you like."
"Yes, so it is. But what about papa? I don't know what he would say if he knew."
"Do you always tell him what you do, beforehand, to see if he shall approve?"
"I've not done lately," said Charlotte. And then she saw that a suitable moment for her own confession had arrived. She had very small hope of shocking him now; but she did her best.
"Do you know that I have been in prison?" she said.
"No. Who was it that put you there—your papa?"
"I put myself."
"Did you get the keys?"
"I made them arrest me."
"How?"
"I took a policeman's helmet from him, and ran away with it. At least that is what he said afterwards: I don't know whether it was true."
"Beautiful!" exclaimed the Prince in ravished tone. He did not turn a hair; it was merely as though he were listening to some fairy tale.
"But very likely it was!" persisted Charlotte, anxious for the worst to be believed; and then she gave him a full account of the whole thing.
"And what for did you do it?" he inquired when she had finished.
"Because they had told me that you were coming, and I had promised not to run away."
"I do not understand?"
"Well, I didn't know what you were like; and I didn't want you to think I was a bit anxious to meet you.—That was all!"
"That was all, was it?" Enlightenment dawned on him; he beamed at her benevolently.
"And I wanted to see," she continued, "whether you would be shocked: at least, I wanted to give you the chance of being."
"Well, you have given it me, and I am not; I am delighted. The more women can do that sort of thing the better—pull men's heads off, I mean."
"Goodness me!" exclaimed Charlotte, "but I'm not going on doing it."
"Why not? A good thing done twice is better."
The simplicity of his approval left her without words.
"In that country where you and I are going to," went on the Prince, imperturbably, "the women can fight just as well as the men. They are trained to wrestle; and before they allow to marry they must have wrestled off on to his back a man as old as themselves."
"But the men?" cried Charlotte, astonished. "How can they stand being beaten by women?"
"Pooh, that is nonsense!" said Fritz; "men do not mind being beaten by women unless it is that they despise them. In that country the woman that has thrown most men is the one that they are most anxious to marry."
"I have never thrown any one yet," said Charlotte reflectively.
"You!" Peaceful of look he eyed her wonderingly. "You have thrown something much stronger than a man," he said—"you, a princess, that has gone to prison!—and for that silly notion of yours that you could shock me. Ha!"
"I did it for other reasons, too."
"Quite like; people may have a lot of reasons they can make up afterwards for doing wise, brave, foolish things like that!"
"But I did think," insisted Charlotte, "that those Women Chartists were right."
"I do not care whether they are right or wrong;—that is not my concern. They may be just as foolish as you, or just as wise—what difference to me? But when I go to think of you sitting there in that common prison all those ten days with everybody looking for you—looking, looking, and not daring to say one word—so afraid at what you had done—oh, that is marvelous! That is to be a King! That is power!"
Charlotte had become very attentive to her lover's praise. "You think they were really afraid, then?" she inquired, "afraid that it should be known."
"You ask them!" replied Fritz, "and see if they do not all cry 'Hush'!"
And then in his usual abrupt way he returned to matters more personal to himself.
"Well, what are you going to say to me? For the last hour I have been asking you to marry me, and you have said nothing; only just 'wriggle, wriggle,' talking off on to something else."
"Wriggling is one way of wrestling," said Charlotte. Her eye played mischief as she spoke.
"Just waggling the tongue!" retorted Fritz with genial scorn. "Throw a man with that?—you cannot throw me!"
"But I must throw somebody, or else I shall not be qualified. The women of that wonderful country of yours would look down on me."
"Throw me!" The Prince opened his arms, smiling. "I will let you!" he said.
"And despise me afterwards! No, Mr. Schnapp-dragon, I shall choose my own man, and throw him in my own way."
"And if you succeed?"
"Then—yes, then I will marry you."
"And if you fail?"
"Then I won't."
"H'm!" observed the Prince in easy-going tones, "you must have been very sure of him before you would say that!"
Charlotte opened her mouth to rebuke that brazen remark; and then shut it again.
"When do you do it?" went on Fritz, equable as ever. "Before I go?"
Charlotte pretended to temporize. "Well, perhaps to-morrow," said she.
And sure enough, to-morrow it was.