"There's Hedwig!" said Prince Ferdinand William Otto. "I'm rather glad to see her. Aren't you?"
"Very glad, indeed."
"You don't look glad."
"I'm feeling very glad inside."
They rode together, around and around the long oval, with its whitewashed railing, its attendant grooms, its watchful eyes overhead. Between Nikky and Hedwig Prince Ferdinand William Otto laughed and chattered, and Hedwig talked a great deal about nothing, with bright spots of red burning in her face.
Nikky was very silent. He rode with his eyes set ahead; and had to be spoken to twice before he heard.
"You are not having a very good time, are you?" Prince Ferdinand William Otto inquired anxiously. To tell the truth, he had been worried about Nikky for some days. Nikky had been his one gleam of cheerfulness in a Palace where all was bustle and excitement and every one seemed uneasy. But Nikky's cheerfulness had been forced lately. His smile never reached his eyes. "I haven't done anything, have I?" he persisted.
"Bless you, no!" said Nikky heartily. "I—well, I didn't sleep well last night. That's all."
He met Hedwig's glance squarely over the head of the Crown Prince.
"Nor did I," Hedwig said.
Later, when the boy was jumping, they had a moment together. The Crown Prince was very absorbed. He was just a little nervous about jumping. First he examined his stirrups and thrust his feet well into them. Then he jammed his cap down on his head and settled himself, in the saddle, his small knees gripping hard.
"It's higher than usual, isn't it?" he inquired, squinting at the hurdle.
The riding-master examined it. "It is an inch lower than yesterday, Your Royal Highness."
"Perhaps we'd better have it the same as yesterday," said the boy, who was terribly afraid of being afraid.
Then, all being adjusted, and his mouth set very tight, indeed, Prince Ferdinand William Otto took the first jump, and sailed over it comfortably.
"I don't mind at all, after the first," he confided to the riding-master.
"Are you angry that I came?" asked Hedwig.
"Angry? You know better."
"You don't say anything."
"Hedwig," said Nikky desperately, "do you remember what I said to you the other day? That is in my heart now. I shall never change. That, and much more. But I cannot say it to you. I have given my word."
"Of course they would make you promise. They tried with me, but I refused." She held her chin very high. "Why did you promise? They could not have forced you. They can do many things, but they cannot control what you may say."
"There are reasons. Even those I cannot tell you. It would be easier, Hedwig, for me to die than to live on and see what I must see. But I cannot even die." He smiled faintly. "You see, I am not keeping my promise."
"I think you will not die," said Hedwig cruelly. "You are too cautious."
"Yes, I am too cautious," he agreed heavily.
"You do not know the meaning of love."
"Then God grant I may never know, if it is worse than this:"
"If I were a man, and loved a woman, I would think less of myself and more of her. When I saw her unhappy and being forced to a terrible thing, I would move heaven and earth to save her."
"How would you do it?" said Nikky in a low tone.
Hedwig shrugged her shoulders. "I would find a way. The world is large. Surely, if one really cared, it could be managed. I should consider my first duty to her."
"I am a soldier, Highness. My first duty is to my country."
"You?" said Hedwig, now very white. "I was not speaking of you. I was speaking of a man who truly loved a woman."
She rode away, and left him there. And because she was hurt and reckless, and not quite sane, she gave him a very bad half-hour. She jumped again, higher each time, silencing the protests of the riding-master with an imperious gesture. Her horse tired. His sides heaved, his delicate nostrils dilated. She beat him with her crop, and flung him again at the hurdle.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto was delighted, a trifle envious. "She jumps better than I do," he observed to Nikky, "but she is in a very bad humor."
At last, his patience exhausted and fear in his heart, Nikky went to her. "Hedwig," he said sternly. "I want you to stop this childishness. You will kill yourself."
"I am trying very hard to."
"You will kill your horse. Look at him."
For answer she raised her crop, but Nikky bent forward and caught the reins.
"How dare you!" she said furiously.
For answer Nikky turned and, riding beside her, led her weary horse out of the ring. And long training asserted itself. Hedwig dared not make a scene before the waiting grooms. She rode in speechless rage, as white as Nikky, and trembling with fury. She gave him no time to assist her to dismount, but slipped off herself and left him, her slim, black-habited figure held very straight.
"I'm afraid she's very angry with you," said the Crown Prince, as they walked back to the Palace. "She looked more furious than she did about the fruitcake."
That afternoon Nikky went for a walk. He took Toto with him, and they made the circuit of the Park, which formed an irregular circle about the narrow streets of the old citadel where the wall had once stood. He walked, as he had done before, because he was in trouble, but with this difference, that then, he had walked in order to think, and now he walked to forget.
In that remote part where the Gate of the Moon stood, and where, outside, in mediaeval times had been the jousting-ground, the Park widened. Here was now the city playground, the lake where in winter the people held ice carnivals, and where, now that spring was on the way, they rode in the little cars of the Scenic Railway.
An old soldier with a wooden leg, and a child, were walking together by the lake, and conversing seriously. A dog was burying a bone under a near-by tree. Toto, true to his instincts, waited until the bone was covered, and then, with calm proprietorship, dug it up and carried it off. Having learned that Nikky now and then carried bones in his pockets, he sat up and presented it to him. Nikky paying no attention at first, Toto flung it up in the air, caught it on his nose, balanced it a second, and dropped it. Then followed a sudden explosion of dog-rage and a mix-up of two dogs, an old soldier, a young one, a boy, and a wooden leg. In the end the wooden leg emerged triumphant, Toto clinging to it under the impression that he had something quite different. The bone was flung into the lake, and a snarling truce established.
But there had been a casualty. Bobby had suffered a severe nip on the forearm, and was surveying it with rather dazed eyes.
"Gee, it's bleeding!" he said.
Nikky looked worried, but old Adelbert, who had seen many wounds, recommended tying it up with garlic, and then forgetting it. "It is the first quarter of the moon," he said. "No dog's bite is injurious at that time."
Nikky, who had had a sniff of the bone of contention, was not so easy in his mind. First quarter of the moon it might be, but the bone was not in its first quarter. "I could walk home with the boy," he suggested, "and get something at a chemist's on the way."
"Will it hurt?" demanded Bobby.
"We will ask for something that will not hurt."
So it happened that Bobby and Tucker, the two pirates, returned that day to their home under the escort of a tall young man who carried a bottle wrapped in pink paper in his hand, and looked serious. Old Pepy was at home. She ran about getting basins, and because Nikky had had his first-aid training, in a very short time everything was shipshape, and no one the worse.
"Do you suppose it will leave a scar?" Bobby demanded.
"Well, a little one, probably."
"I've got two pretty good ones already," Bobby boasted, "not counting my vaccination. Gee! I bet mother'll be surprised."
"The Americans," said Pepy, with admiring eyes fixed on their visitor, "are very peculiar about injuries. They speak always of small animals that crawl about in wounds and bring poison."
"Germs!" Bobby
explained. "But they know about germs here, too. I, played with a boy one, afternoon at the Scenic Railway—my father is the manager, you know. If you like, I can give you some tickets. And the boy said a fig lady he had was covered with germs. We ate it anyhow."
Nikky looked down smilingly. So this was the American lad! Of course. He could understand Otto's warm feeling now. They were not unlike, the two children. This boy was more sturdy, not so fine, perhaps, but eminently likable. He was courageous, too. The iodine had not been pleasant, but he had only whistled.
"And nothing happened to the other boy, because of the germs?"
"I don't know. He never came back. He was a funny boy. He had a hat like father's. Gee!"
Nikky took his departure, followed by Pepy's eyes. As long as he was in sight she watched him from the window. "He is some great person," she said to Bobby. "Of the aristocracy. I know the manner."
"A prince, maybe?"
"Perhaps. You in America, you have no such men, I think, such fine soldiers, aristocrats, and yet gentle. The uniform is considered the handsomest in Europe."
"Humph!" said Bobby aggressively. "You ought to see my uncle dressed for a Knight Templar parade. You'd see something."
Nikky went down the stairs, with Toto at his heels, a valiant and triumphant Toto, as becomes a dog who has recently vanquished a wooden leg.
At the foot of the staircase a man was working replacing a loosened tile in the passage; a huge man, clad in a smock and with a bushy black beard tucked in his neck out of the way. Nikky nodded to him, and went out. Like a cat Black Humbert was on his feet, and peering after him from the street door. It was he, then, the blond devil who, had fallen on them that night, and had fought as one who fights for the love of it! The concierge went back to the door of his room.
Herman Spier sat inside. He had fortified his position by that trip to the mountains, and now spent his days in Black Humbert's dirty kitchen, or in errand-running. He was broiling a sausage on the end of a fork.
"Quick!" cried Black Humbert. "Along the street, with a black dog at his heels, goes one you will recognize. Follow him, and find out what you can."
Herman Spier put the sausage in his pocket—he had paid for it himself, and meant to have it—and started out. It was late when he returned.
He gave Nikky's name and position, where his lodgings were, or had been until now. He was about to remove to the Palace, having been made aide-de-camp to the Crown Prince.
"So!" said Black Humbert.
"It is also," observed Herman Spier, eating his sausage, "this same one who led the police to Niburg's room. I have the word of the woman who keeps the house."
The concierge rose, and struck the table with his fist. "And now he comes here!" he said. "The boy upstairs was a blind. He has followed us." He struck the sausage furiously out of Herman's hand. "Tonight the police will come. And what then?"
"If you had taken my advice," said the clerk, "you would have got rid of that fellow upstairs long ago." He picked up the sausage and dusted it with his hand. "But I do not believe the police will come. The child was bitten. I saw them enter."
Nevertheless, that night, while Herman Spier kept watch at the street door, the concierge labored in the little yard behind the house. He moved a rabbit hutch and, wedging his huge body behind it, loosened a board or two in the high wooden fence.
More than the Palace prepared for flight.
Still later, old Adelbert roused from sleep. There were footsteps in the passage outside, the opening of a door. He reflected that the concierge was an owl and, the sounds persisting, called out an irritable order for quiet.
Then he slept again, and while he slept the sounds recommenced. Had he glanced out into the passage, then, he would have seen two men, half supporting a third, who tottered between them. Thus was the student Haeckel, patriot and Royalist, led forth to die.
And he did not die.
CHAPTER XXVIII. TEE CROWN PRINCE'S PILGRIMAGE
The day when Olga Loschek should have returned to the city found her too ill to travel. No feigned sickness this, but real enough, a matter of fever and burning eyes, and of mutterings in troubled sleep.
Minna was alarmed. She was fond of her mistress, in spite of her occasional cruelties, and lately the Countess had been strangely gentle. She required little attention, wished to be alone, and lay in her great bed, looking out steadily at the bleak mountain-tops, to which spring never climbed.
"She eats nothing," Minna said despairingly to the caretaker. "And her eyes frighten me. They are always open, even in the night, but they seem to see nothing."
On the day when she should have returned, the Countess roused herself enough to send for Black Humbert, fretting in the kitchen below. He had believed that she was malingering until he saw her, but her flushed and hollow cheeks showed her condition.
"You must return and explain," she said. "I shall need more time, after all." When he hesitated, she added: "There are plenty to watch that I do not escape. I could not, if I would. I have not the strength."
"Time is passing," he said gruffly, "and we get nowhere."
"As soon as I can travel, I will come."
"If madame wishes, I can take a letter."
She pondered over that, interlacing her fingers nervously as she reflected.
"I will send no letter," she decided, "but I will give you a message, which you can deliver."
"Yes, madame."
"Say to the Committee," she began, and paused. She had thought and thought until her brain burned with thinking, but she had found no way out. And yet she could not at once bring herself to speech. But at last she said it: "Say to the Committee that I have reflected and that I will do what they ask. As far," she added, "as lies in my power. I can only—"
"That is all the Committee expects," he said civilly, and with a relief that was not lost on her. "With madame's intelligence, to try is to succeed."
Nevertheless, he left her well guarded. Even Minna, slipping off for an evening hour with a village sweetheart, was stealthily shadowed. Before this, fine ladies had changed garments with their maids and escaped from divers unpleasantnesses.
Olga Loschek lay in her bed, and always there were bells. The cattle were being driven up into the mountains for the summer grazing, great, soft-eyed herds, their bells tinkling slowly as they made their deliberate, soft-footed progress along the valley; the silvery bells for mass; the clock striking the hour with its heavy, vibrating clamor of bronze.
When she sank into the light sleep of fever, they roused her, or she slept on; hearing in their tones the great bell of St. Stefan's announcing the King's death. Bells, always bells.
At the end of two days she was able to be up again. She moved languidly about her room, still too weak to plan. There were times when she contemplated suicide, but she knew herself to be too cowardly to do more than dream of it.
And on the fourth day came the Crown Prince of Livonia on a pilgrimage.
The manner of his coming was this:
There are more ways than one of reaching the hearts of an uneasy people. Remission of taxes is a bad one. It argues a mistake in the past, in exacting such tithes. Governments may make errors, but must not acknowledge them. There is the freeing of political prisoners, but that, too, is dangerous, when such prisoners breathe sedition to the very prison walls.
And there is the appeal to sentiment. The Government, pinning all its hopes to one small boy, would further endear him to the people. Wily statesman that he was, the Chancellor had hit on this to offset the rumors of Hedwig's marriage.
But the idea was not his, although he adopted it. It had had its birth in the little room with the Prie-dieu and the stand covered with bottles, had been born of the Sister's belief in the miracles of Etzel.
However, he appropriated it, and took it to the King.
"A pilgrimage!" said the King, when the mater was broached to him. "For what? My recovery? Cannot you let your servant depart in peace?"
"
Pilgrimages," observed the Chancellor, "have had marvelous results, sire. I do not insist that they perform miracles, as some believe,"—he smiled faintly,—"but as a matter of public feeling and a remedy for discord, they are sometimes efficacious."
"I see," said the King. And lay still, looking at the ceiling.
"Can it be done safely?" he asked at last.
"The maddest traitor would not threaten the Crown Prince on a pilgrimage. The people would tear him limb from limb."
"Nevertheless, I should take all precautions," he said dryly. "A madman might not recognize the—er—religious nature of the affair."
The same day the Chancellor visited Prince Ferdinand William Otto, and found him returned from his drive and busy over Hedwig's photograph frame.
"It is almost done," he said. "I slipped over in one or two places, but it is not very noticeable, is it?"
The Chancellor observed it judicially, and decided that the slipping over was not noticeable at all. Except during school hours Miss Braithwaite always retired during the Chancellor's visits, and so now the two were alone.
"Otto," said the Chancellor gravely, "I want to talk to you very seriously."
"Have I done anything?"
"No." He smiled. "It is about something I would like you to do. For your grandfather."
"I'll do anything for him, sir."
"We know that. This is the point. He has been ill for along time. Very ill."
The boy watched him with a troubled face. "He looks very thin," he said. "I get quite worried when I see him."
"Exactly. You have heard of Etzel?"
Prince Ferdinand William Otto's religious instruction was of the best. He had, indeed, heard of Etzel. He knew the famous pilgrimages in order, and could say them rapidly, beginning, the year of Our Lord 915—the Emperor Otto and Adelheid, his spouse; the year of Our Lord 1100, Ulrich, Count of Ruburg; and so on.
"When people are ill," he said sagely, "they go to Etzel to be cured."
"Precisely. But when they cannot go, they send some one else, to pray for them. And sometimes, if they have faith enough, the holy miracle happens, and they are cured."
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