A Prince to Order

by Charles Stokes Wayne

Grey’s awakening was as gradual as a clouded dawn. For a time dreams and realities intermingled. Then slowly a partial consciousness of his physical being obtruded: his fingers were clutching a silken coverlet; he turned on his side and the linen pillow-case was cool to his cheek; through half-open eyelids a sweep of pale blue became visible. Later he realised that he was in a curtained bed and that the blue was the colour of the draperies. He lay still for a long while—drowsy, inert, his sensibilities numb. Presently the ticking of a clock became audible, and then a rumble of street sounds. At the same moment a throbbing pain in his head asserted itself. With an effort he sat up, his hands pressed against his temples, his mind groping. Then in a flash the unfamiliarity of his surroundings aroused him suddenly, sharply, like a cold plunge, and his brain cleared a trifle. His memory went staggering back after the night before; but the mists descended again and the way grew dark, and he could remember no night without its morning.

He put his feet to the floor and stood up, but a dizziness overcame him, and he sank back upon the bed, weak and limp. His heart was beating tumultuously and his breath came in short, quick gasps. After a little these abnormalities passed and he raised himself on one elbow, resting his cheek on his hand. At the contact he started, amazed, bewildered. In some unaccountable manner he had grown a beard. His hand ran from his cheek to his chin. Close-cropped at the sides it was here an inch long and trimmed to a point, and his moustache was one of several months’ culture and training. He fancied he was dreaming and would awaken presently to find himself clean-shaven, as he had been for years.

And now, he remembered; after all, it was quite clear. He had been to the opera last night, had gone from there to the club, had returned home late, and, having a pressing business appointment at ten this morning, had dragged himself out of bed at eight, still fagged and aggravatingly sleepy. Now he had just had his coffee, and while Lutz was shaving him he was dozing and dreaming.

But how wonderfully real the transformation all seemed! He grew curious as to how he looked with beard and moustache, and, crawling out between the pale-blue velvet curtains, he sought a mirror. The revelation was dumfounding. He, Carey Grey, who from infancy had been as dark as a Spaniard, was as blond as a Norseman. He ran his fingers through his hair, tousled it, going closer to the glass to make sure that there was not some optical illusion. He puffed out his lip and pulled at his moustache until his lowered eyes could see it, and he thrust his chin forward and turned up the point of his beard with the back of his hand until it, too, came within the range of his vision. If this were a dream, he told himself, never before had dream been so real. If it were a reality, never before had reality been so mystifying.

His puzzled survey of himself was followed by a minute inspection of the room into which he had been so mysteriously transported. Its general aspect was foreign; its detail distinctly French. The walls were panelled and medallioned. The bed from which he had risen was one of a pair, each with its gilded papier mâché frieze and its looped-back blue velvet curtains. At the head of each bed were six pillows and another of down at the foot. The full-length mirror into which he had gazed was duplicated between two windows. Upon the mantel was a bronze and gilt clock, flanked by partially burned candles in brass sticks. Two tables, a couch, a washstand, a cheffonier, three chairs and a wardrobe completed the furnishing. A couple of companion pictures, unmistakably French both in conception and execution, decorated two of the wall panels. The hands of the clock stood at twenty minutes of four. He crossed to a window with three sets of curtains and three sets of cord loops all of a tangle, and looked out.

For the spectacle that confronted him he was not prepared. The change in his appearance had indeed been incomprehensible; the strangeness of the room in which he awakened was inexplicable; but to discover at a glance that he was no longer on his native soil, that without his knowledge he had been carried across sea and land and dropped into a Paris hotel on the Boulevard des Italiens, was not only inconceivable but terrifying. He was very pale, and his brain was reeling. Twice he drew trembling fingers across his eyes, as if to wipe out the kaleidoscope of the street below; but when he looked again the view was even more convincing. It was a bit of the French Capital with which he was almost as familiar as with that part of Fifth avenue lying within range of his club windows or with that portion of Broad street near Wall into which he had been wont to glance from his office in the Mills Building.

He turned away from it as from a nightmare, and, sitting down, tried to think. The idea that he was dreaming was not tenable. He knew that he was very wide awake and thoroughly possessed of his faculties. His head still ached with a dull, swollen, congested sensation such as follows a too riotous night, but he could recall nothing of the cause. It occurred to him now that he had read in the newspapers of cases where men had lost their memory for months and had wandered into remote states or countries. This must be the explanation. And in his aberration he had given way to some freak of fancy, had grown a beard and then had had it and his hair bleached corn colour. Men under similar mental derangement, he recollected, forgot their names and homes. Perhaps he had been in the same plight. Now, however, his mind was clear on those points, at least, and he thanked God for his restoration.

Then he wondered how long he had been away. That night at the opera and the club; that morning he had risen early to keep an engagement, and had dozed off while his valet was shaving him—why, that was midwinter; and now, if he could judge by the trees on the boulevard, and the tables in front of the Café Riche across the road, and the straw hats, it must be early summer—late May or June; possibly, indeed, July. And all this time his friends at home—his mother, his fiancée, his partner—were probably thinking him dead. What a relief it would be to them to get the cablegrams he would send, telling that he was alive and well and was returning by the first steamer!

He smiled as he got up and went to the cheffonier and the wardrobe in search of clothes. He was thinking of the sensation the papers in New York must have made over his disappearance; the theories they must have advanced and the pictures they must have published. And then the tragic side of the affair took hold of him, and he put himself in his mother’s place, in Hope’s place, and fancied he could appreciate, in a way at least, their anxiety as the days passed without tidings, and their grief and despair as weeks quadrupled into months.

Having discovered an assortment of garments, including a bathrobe of pongee silk, he looked about for a tub. Across the passage he found a bathroom, and a dip into cold water relieved his headache and balanced his nerves. When at length he was in attire which, while quite as unfamiliar as his yellow hair and beard, was nevertheless tasteful and well fitting, he emerged from his room, locked the door and started forth on a tour of investigation. His curiosity had grown with his dressing, enhanced, perhaps, by his failure to find in any drawer, closet, or pocket a scrap of writing or printing from which he could gain a clue concerning his recent past. His sole discovery indeed had been a wallet containing two fifty-franc notes and a trunk key.