Her Serene Highness: A Novel

by David Graham Phillips

He decided to walk as far as The Castle; next day he would drive and perhaps pay his respects to Baron Zeppstein. He was impressed by the loneliness of the park, apparently an untouched wilderness except the road. The birds were singing. Now and then there would be a crash and he would see a deer making off, or a whir and a scurrying flapping, and he would get a glimpse of some wild bird in panic-stricken flight. As he came nearer to The Castle the signs of habitation were numerous, but still not a human being. At last he was close to the walls, looking up at them.

He could see nothing but the perfect order of the shrubbery to indicate that any one had been there recently. The huge gates—solid doors rather than gates—were closed. The sun was shining, the waters of the lake glistened, the foliage was fresh and vivid, the soft, strong air blew in a gentle breeze. But there was a profound hush, as if the grim old fortress-palace, and all within and around it, had long been locked in a magic sleep.

A sense of uncanniness was creeping over him in spite of his incredulous American mind. He was startled by a trumpet blast which seemed to come from the depth of the woods to the left. Standing in the middle of the road, he turned. He had just time to jump aside.

Out of the woods, by a cross-road he had not noted, swept a gorgeous cavalcade. As he looked he felt more strongly than ever like a time-wanderer who had been, in a twinkling, borne backward several centuries. First to pass him at a mad gallop were six soldiers on tall black chargers. They and their horses were trapped in the blue and white of the Household Guards. Corselets and plumed helmets and chains clashed and rattled and flashed as they flew past. A few yards behind them, at the same furious pace, came a graceful, long-bodied carriage of strange coloring and design, drawn by eight black horses with postilions. On a curious foot-board at the back of the carriage stood two footmen in a mediæval livery. They were hanging on by straps. Behind the carriage came six more black-horsed cavalrymen of the Household Guards.

As Grafton gaped through the dust in the wake of this ancient spectacle it halted before The Castle’s gates so abruptly that every horse reared to its haunches. But immediately all was quiet, motionless. One of the cavalrymen put a trumpet to his lips and sent a blast echoing and re-echoing like a peal of fairy laughter to and fro over the lake. As if there were enchantment in that blast, the great weather and battle scarred doors of The Castle swung noiselessly back. Out came eight men in mediæval costumes, each bearing a long, slender, brazen trumpet. Four went to either side of the entrance. They put the trumpets to their lips and sounded a fanfare.

Grafton’s expectation was at excitement pitch. What did this gorgeous revival of mediævalism presage? what dazzling apparition was about to greet his ravished eyes?

Now appeared a man in mediæval court costume, resplendent in velvet and lace and silver braid. He was walking backward, bowing low at each step, his velvet, beplumed hat in his hand. And then the central figure—His Royal Highness Casimir of Traubenheim, Grand Duke of Zweitenbourg, Prince of the Holy Roman Empire, Margrave of Plaut, Prince of Wiesser, of Dinn, of Feltenheim, Count in Brausch and in Ranau. He was a sallow, cross-looking little man, with thin shoulders, legs, and arms, and a great paunch of a stomach, dilated and sagged from overfeeding. He was dressed in a baggy tweed suit and a straight-brimmed top-hat. He seated himself in the carriage.

“What an anticlimax!” thought Grafton. But there was a second and briefer flourish of the trumpets, and then appeared the Duchess Erica, in a white cloth dress and a big white hat and carrying a white parasol. Grafton felt like applauding. “The spectacle is looking up,” he said. He was near enough to note that her sweet face was discontented, impatient, almost sad. She seated herself beside the Grand Duke. The mounted trumpeter blew, the cavalrymen in front wheeled and struck spurs into their horses, the whole procession was instant whirling away—it was gone. Grafton glanced at The Castle doors; they were closed again and the trumpeters and the courtier had disappeared. The dust settled, the magic sleep descended.

Grafton might have thought himself the victim of an illusion had he not seen, far away across the lake, a cloud of dust, and in front of it the gaudy cavalcade and the grand-ducal carriage, the shine of blue and silver and polished steel rushing along as if fleeing from a fiend. And after a few minutes it came towards The Castle again from the other direction. The horses were dripping, their coats streaked with foam. At the entrance there were the same startling halt, the same mysterious opening of doors, the same stage-like assembling of trumpeters, the same flourishes. The Grand Duke and his niece and the attendants disappeared, the procession fled into the woods; there was silence and ancient repose once more.

Grafton set out on the return walk, trying to force himself to stop thinking of Her Serene Highness and to resume thinking of her uncle and his Spaniard. He had not gone far when a court-officer issued from a by-path. He paused to get a good look at this romantic figure, and presently recognized beneath the enfoldings of finery his commonplace, voluble acquaintance of the Paris picture-shop, Baron Zeppstein.