“It doesn’t seem to have done the rival claimant much good, so far.”
“Ah, but that’s because they had a violent quarrel just two years ago. Prince Christodoridi swore that the Professor was only working for his own advantage all along, and the Professor declares that the Prince has shown the blackest ingratitude.”
“And the thieves having fallen out, the honest man comes by his own? Or is it a case of everything coming to him who knows how to wait?”
“Both, I think,” said Zoe, laughing. “Eirene would certainly tell you that Maurice knows how to wait only too well. Of course, it was hard on her—the way their marriage fell flat, I mean. The Scythian Court simply ignored the whole thing, and all her other royal acquaintances followed their example. She just dropped out, and it was as if she didn’t exist. Well, you know, she had begun at Stone Acton by being very much on her dignity—expecting royal honours, in fact. The people round were tremendously interested at first, but they very soon began to ask what sort of a Princess this could be, who was never noticed by any of our own royalties. They bored her, too,—I don’t wonder at that; they have often bored me,—and she snubbed them, and gave a great deal of offence. And then there came the Romance of the Long-Lost Uncle.”
“This is thrilling,” said Wylie. “Princess Eirene’s uncle?”
“No, ours—our cousin, at least; a very very distant cousin. His name was Teffany-Wise, and he was descended from the daughter of Prosper Teffany, a younger son who emigrated from Penteffan to the West Indies about the end of the seventeenth century. I met him in Jamaica when I went round the world, and I wrote home that he looked ineffably old, and capable of any wickedness. He had a sort of inscrutable parchment-like face, you know. I always thought he made his money by slave-trading, but Maurice says its palmy days were over long before his time, unless he was as old as the Wandering Jew, and that he was probably only a speculator in Chicago slum tenements. At any rate, there he was, immensely rich, without a relation nearer than ourselves, and frightfully excited over the newspaper accounts of our Emathian adventures. You see, if the royalties ignored Maurice, the journalists didn’t, and he let himself be interviewed pretty often, because he thought it was only due to Eirene to make her position perfectly clear. It seemed that Mr Teffany-Wise had always had an ambition to use his money in restoring the fortunes of the family, but until he heard about us he didn’t know who there was left. So he talked to me, and then suddenly sailed for home, and descended on Stone Acton in a shower of gold, and supplied Eirene with the object in life she wanted.”
“And that was——?”
“To hustle Maurice into putting himself forward publicly as a candidate for the throne of Emathia. He was determined not to move until he received an invitation, and she was determined he should. She has made a sort of religion of the Theophanis claims since the Long-Lost Uncle appeared. Why, she has turned the library at Stone Acton into a regular throne-room, with crimson hangings—imperial purple, you know—and two gilded chairs on a daïs under a canopy. Oh, it mayn’t seem very dreadful to you, but you don’t know Stone Acton. It was always such a sensible house! And she has been having the most extraordinary people there—refugees and conspirators and so on—till the neighbourhood was scandalised. That was Mr Teffany-Wise’s doing. He saw that there was no hope of Professor Panagiotis and the Emathian Greeks for the present, so he turned boldly to the Slav party—the Thracian Committees and their followers—and bid for their support.”
“Backing his offer with hard cash, I presume?” said Wylie. “That explains the increased activity and boldness of the Emathian insurgents this last year or two. But the Roumis mean business now. I suppose your long-lost relative has no objection to being morally guilty of a massacre or two?”
“He thought they were unavoidable but disagreeable incidents—useful, too, since they would stir the indignation of Europe.”