A Prince to Order

by Charles Stokes Wayne

As the train drew slowly into the railway station Grey leaned over and took Hope’s hand.

“I’ll probably have to leave you for a little,” he said, regretfully, “but O’Hara will see that you get to the hotel, and I’ll try to look in this evening.”

Outside the station a landau, its panels decorated with the royal arms and drawn by six cream-white Arabian horses in glittering, gold-mounted harness, stood in waiting, with coachman, footman and postillions in the purple and scarlet livery of the Court; while thirty yards away, in line along the opposite side of the Bahnhof Platz, was a troop of the King’s Cuirassiers, their breastplates and helmets of silver and gold glinting fiery red in the glow of the sunset.

Cheer after cheer rang out as Grey, with the Prince on his right and the General on his left, passed through the station, followed by the welcoming company that had escorted him from Anslingen, and took his place in the waiting carriage. And, as the little procession of which he was the dominating feature wound through the boulevards and streets of the new town and across the beautiful Charlemagne bridge over the turbulent Weisswasser into the more ancient and picturesque quarter of the city, the cheering, it seemed to him, grew louder and more continuous. At one point a group of young girls in white frocks and red ribbons ran out into the roadway to spread flowers in the path of his equipage, and at another a chorus of a hundred students, crowded on the balconies of a Brauerei, greeted his coming with a patriotic glee, sung as only male voices of Teutonic breeding and training can sing choruses.

Grey’s emotions during this drive were novel and complex. There were moments when he almost felt that he was indeed the Prince—not that any marvellous transubstantiation had taken place, but that he had always been so—and that all this homage, this enthusiastic applause and adulation were his by right; and there were moments when his heart grew sick at the fraud, the imposition, the error, and he knit his brows and reproached himself for letting the deception go so far.

The magnitude the affair had suddenly assumed appalled him. Heretofore he had regarded it as a mere personal matter. He had been outraged, his honour sullied, his life threatened, and he was justified, he had told himself, in using every means within his power to bring his enemies to book. But he had not perceived the possibilities of permitting this line of investigation to run on unchecked. In a single moment the adventure had become a matter of national import. He was guilty now of masquerading as heir to the throne of a European monarchy. Hitherto the crime lay at the doors of a few conspirators, who, to serve certain nefarious ends of which he knew nothing, had striven to secure for him the crown. In that plot he had personally had no part. Everything had been done without his cognisance or consent; but now it was not they alone who were forcing the scheme to a consummation. He had, practically, for the time being at least, joined hands with them and was passively allowing their plans to be carried out, though fully aware of the impious character of the whole proceeding.

And the enormity of his thoughtless offence was at each foot of the way made more and more apparent by these cheering masses of people. When they should learn that they had been tricked, what explanation would serve to assuage their resentment? Love and homage would be turned to hatred and vengeance, and no excuse that he could offer would have any weight against their sense of outraged loyalty.

Then his thoughts took a new trend, and he asked himself how it was possible that old Schlippenbach and his fellow-plotters had been able thus to fool the conservative leaders of a great nation regarding a matter so vital to the very existence of their most cherished institutions as the legitimate succession to the regal sceptre. What incontrovertible proofs had it been possible to offer in order to bring about this ready acceptance of a man whom the Budavian people had never seen to rule over their nation’s destinies? After all, there was where the blame must lie. The preposterousness of the proposition, it seemed to him, should have been apparent to the most simple-minded.

And, as he thought, the landau, with the flashing cuirassiers galloping ahead and behind and on either side, began the tortuous ascent of the Wartburg by the wide, wooded avenues that wind from the palace gates through the sumptuous royal gardens up to the imposing Residenz Schloss on the mountain’s apex. Now and then, through rifts in the foliage, Grey got glimpses of the vast, formidable, castle-like pile of sombre stone perched far above him, the outline of its battlemented towers showing sharp and clear against the pink of the sunset-tinted sky; and it seemed to frown forbiddingly, resembling more a great fortress at this distance than the magnificent palace it is.

Twenty minutes later, to a musical fanfare of bugles, a clinking of bit chains and a rattle of steel-shod hoofs on stone paving, the carriage swept in under the great grey porte-cochère; the massive oaken doors of the Schloss swung impressively inward, and Chancellor von Ritter, in his robes of office, with a dozen attendants at his back, stood in token of formal welcome on the threshold.