15a The Prince and Betty

by Unknown

  It was then seen that the young man was Mr. Crump. General Poineau removed his glasses and gave an impatient twirl to his mustache. Mr. Scobell, who for possibly the first time in his career was not smoking (though, as was afterward made manifest, he had the materials on his person), bustled to the front.

  “Where’s his nibs, Crump?” he enquired.

  The secretary’s reply was swept away in a flood of melody. To the band Mr. Crump’s face was strange. They had no reason to suppose that he was not Prince John, and they acted accordingly. With a rattle of drums they burst once more into their spirited rendering of the national anthem.

  Mr. Scobell sawed the air with his arms, but was powerless to dam the flood.

  “His Highness is shaving, sir!” bawled Mr. Crump, depositing his grip on the quay and making a trumpet of his hands.

  “Shaving!”

  “Yes, sir. I told him he ought to come along, but His Highness said he wasn’t going to land looking like a tramp comedian.”

  By this time General Poineau had explained matters to the band and they checked the national anthem abruptly in the middle of a bar, with the exception of the cornet player, who continued gallantly by himself till a feeling of loneliness brought the truth home to him. An awkward stage wait followed, which lasted until John was seen crossing the deck, when there were more cheers, and General Poineau, resuming his pince-nez, brought out the address of welcome again.

  At this point Mr. Scobell made his presence felt.

  “Glad to meet you, Prince,” he said, coming forward. “Scobell’s my name. Shake hands with General Poineau. No, that’s wrong. I guess he kisses your hand, don’t he?”

  “I’ll swing on him if he does,” said John, cheerfully.

  Mr. Scobell eyed him doubtfully. His Highness did not appear to him to be treating the inaugural ceremony with that reserved dignity which we like to see in princes on these occasions. Mr. Scobell was a business man. He wanted his money’s worth. His idea of a Prince of Mervo was something statuesquely aloof, something—he could not express it exactly—on the lines of the illustrations in the Zenda stories in the magazines—about eight feet high and shinily magnificent, something that would give the place a tone. That was what he had had in his mind when he sent for John. He did not want a cheerful young man in a soft hat and a flannel suit who looked as if at any moment he might burst into a college yell.

  General Poineau, meanwhile, had embarked on the address of welcome. John regarded him thoughtfully.

  “I can see,” he said to Mr. Scobell, “that the gentleman is making a good speech, but what is he saying? That is what gets past me.”

  “He is welcoming Your Highness,” said Mr. Crump, the linguist, “in the name of the people of Mervo.”

  “Who, I notice, have had the bully good sense to stay in bed. I guess they knew that the Boy Orator would do all that was necessary. He hasn’t said anything about a bite of breakfast, has he? Has his address happened to work around to the subject of shredded wheat and shirred eggs yet? That’s the part that’s going to make a hit with me.”

  “There’ll be breakfast at my villa, Your Highness,” said Mr. Scobell. “My automobile is waiting along there.”

  The General reached his peroration, worked his way through it, and finished with a military clash of heels and a salute. The band rattled off the national anthem once more.

  “Now, what?” said John, turning to Mr. Scobell. “Breakfast?”

  “I guess you’d better say a few words to them, Your Highness; they’ll expect it.”

  “But I can’t speak the language, and they can’t understand English. The thing’ll be a stand-off.”

  “Crump will hand it to ‘em. Here, Crump.”

  “Sir?”

  “Line up and shoot His Highness’s remarks into ‘em.”

  “Yes, sir.

  “It’s all very well for you, Crump,” said John. “You probably enjoy this sort of thing. I don’t. I haven’t felt such a fool since I sang ‘The Maiden’s Prayer’ on Tremont Street when I was joining the frat. Are you ready? No, it’s no good. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Tell ‘em you’re tickled to death,” advised Mr. Scobell anxiously.

  John smiled in a friendly manner at the populace. Then he coughed. “Gentlemen,” he said—”and more particularly the sport on my left who has just spoken his piece whose name I can’t remember—I thank you for the warm welcome you have given me. If it is any satisfaction to you to know that it has made me feel like thirty cents, you may have that satisfaction. Thirty is a liberal estimate.”

  “‘His Highness is overwhelmed by your loyal welcome. He thanks you warmly,’” translated Mr. Crump, tactfully.

  “I feel that we shall get along nicely together,” continued John. “If you are chumps enough to turn out of your comfortable beds at this time of the morning simply to see me, you can’t be very hard to please. We shall hit it off fine.”

  Mr. Crump: “His Highness hopes and believes that he will always continue to command the affection of his people.”

  “I—” John paused. “That’s the lot,” he said. “The flow of inspiration has ceased. The magic fire has gone out. Break it to ‘em, Crump. For me, breakfast.”

  During the early portion of the ride Mr. Scobell was silent and thoughtful. John’s speech had impressed him neither as oratory nor as an index to his frame of mind. He had not interrupted him, because he knew that none of those present could understand what was being said, and that Mr. Crump was to be relied on as an editor. But he had not enjoyed it. He did not take the people of Mervo seriously himself, but in the Prince such an attitude struck him as unbecoming. Then he cheered up. After all, John had given evidence of having a certain amount of what he would have called “get-up” in him. For the purposes for which he needed him, a tendency to make light of things was not amiss. It was essentially as a performing prince that he had engaged John. He wanted him to do unusual things, which would make people talk—aeroplaning was one that occurred to him. Perhaps a prince who took a serious view of his position would try to raise the people’s minds and start reforms and generally be a nuisance. John could, at any rate, be relied upon not to do that.

  His face cleared.

  “Have a good cigar, Prince?” he said, cordially, inserting two fingers in his vest-pocket.

  “Sure, Mike,” said His Highness affably.

  Breakfast over, Mr. Scobell replaced the remains of his cigar between his lips, and turned to business.

  “Eh, Prince?” he said.

  “Yes!”

  “I want you, Prince,” said Mr. Scobell, “to help boom this place. That’s where you come in.”

  “Sure,” said John.

  “As to ruling and all that,” continued Mr. Scobell, “there isn’t any to do. The place runs itself. Some guy gave it a shove a thousand years ago, and it’s been rolling along ever since. What I want you to do is the picturesque stunts. Get a yacht and catch rare fishes. Whoop it up. Entertain swell guys when they come here. Have a Court—see what I mean?—same as over in England. Go around in aeroplanes and that style of thing. Don’t worry about money. That’ll be all right. You draw your steady hundred thousand a year and a good chunk more besides, when we begin to get a move on, so the dough proposition doesn’t need to scare you any.”

  “Do I, by George!” said John. “It seems to me that I’ve fallen into a pretty soft thing here. There’ll be a joker in the deck somewhere, I guess. There always is in these good things. But I don’t see it yet. You can count me in all right.”

  “Good boy,” said Mr. Scobell. “And now you’ll be wanting to get to the Palace. I’ll have them bring the automobile round.”

  The council of state broke up.

  Having seen John off in the car, the financier proceeded to his sister’s sitting-room. Miss Scobell had breakfasted apart that morning, by request, her brother giving her to understand that matters of state, unsuited to the ear of a third party, must be discu
ssed at the meal. She was reading her New York Herald.

  “Well,” said Mr. Scobell, “he’s come.”

  “Yes, dear?”

  “And just the sort I want. Saw the idea of the thing right away, and is ready to go the limit. No nonsense about him.”

  “Is he nice-looking, Bennie?”

  “Sure. All these Mervo princes have been good-lookers, I hear, and this one must be near the top of the list. You’ll like him, Marion. All the girls will be crazy about him in a week.”

  Miss Scobell turned a page.

  “Is he married?”

  Her brother started.

  “Married? I never thought of that. But no, I guess he’s not. He’d have mentioned it. He’s not the sort to hush up a thing like that. I—”

  He stopped short. His green eyes gleamed excitedly.

  “Marion!” he cried. “Marion!”

  “Well, dear?”

  “Listen. Gee, this thing is going to be the biggest ever. I gotta new idea. It just came to me. Your saying that put it into my head. Do you know what I’m going to do? I’m going to cable over to Betty to come right along here, and I’m going to have her marry this prince guy. Yes, sir!”

  For once Miss Scobell showed signs that her brother’s conversation really interested her. She laid down her paper, and stared at him.

  “Betty!”

  “Sure, Betty. Why not? She’s a pretty girl. Clever too. The Prince’ll be lucky to get such a wife, for all his darned ancestors away back to the flood.”

  “But suppose Betty does not like him?”

  “Like him? She’s gotta like him. Say, can’t you make your mind soar, or won’t you? Can’t you see that a thing like this has gotta be fixed different from a marriage between—between a ribbon-counter clerk and the girl who takes the money at a twenty-five-cent hash restaurant in Flatbush? This is a royal alliance. Do you suppose that when a European princess is introduced to the prince she’s going to marry, they let her say: ‘Nothing doing. I don’t like the shape of his nose’?”

  He gave a spirited imitation of a European princess objecting to the shape of her selected husband’s nose.

  “It isn’t very romantic, Bennie,” sighed Miss Scobell. She was a confirmed reader of the more sentimental class of fiction, and this businesslike treatment of love’s young dream jarred upon her.

  “It’s founding a dynasty. Isn’t that romantic enough for you? You make me tired, Marion.”

  Miss Scobell sighed again.

  “Very well, dear. I suppose you know best. But perhaps the Prince won’t like Betty.”

  Mr. Scobell gave a snort of disgust.

  “Marion,” he said, “you’ve got a mind like a chunk of wet dough. Can’t you understand that the Prince is just as much in my employment as the man who scrubs the Casino steps? I’m hiring him to be Prince of Mervo, and his first job as Prince of Mervo will be to marry Betty. I’d like to see him kick!” He began to pace the room. “By Heck, it’s going to make this place boom to beat the band. It’ll be the biggest kind of advertisement. Restoration of Royalty at Mervo. That’ll make them take notice by itself. Then, biff! right on top of that, Royal Romance—Prince Weds American Girl—Love at First Sight—Picturesque Wedding! Gee, we’ll wipe Monte Carlo clean off the map. We’ll have ‘em licked to a splinter. We—It’s the greatest scheme on earth.”

  “I have no doubt you are right, Bennie,” said Miss Scobell, “but—” her voice became dreamy again—”it’s not very romantic.”

  “Oh, shucks!” said the schemer impatiently. “Here, where’s a cable form?”

  CHAPTER VI

  YOUNG ADAM CUPID

  On a red sandstone rock at the edge of the water, where the island curved sharply out into the sea, Prince John of Mervo sat and brooded on first causes. For nearly an hour and a half he had been engaged in an earnest attempt to trace to its source the acute fit of depression which had come—apparently from nowhere—to poison his existence that morning.

  It was his seventh day on the island, and he could remember every incident of his brief reign. The only thing that eluded him was the recollection of the exact point when the shadow of discontent had begun to spread itself over his mind. Looking back, it seemed to him that he had done nothing during that week but enjoy each new aspect of his position as it was introduced to his notice. Yet here he was, sitting on a lonely rock, consumed with an unquenchable restlessness, a kind of trapped sensation. Exactly when and exactly how Fate, that king of gold-brick men, had cheated him he could not say; but he knew, with a certainty that defied argument, that there had been sharp practise, and that in an unguarded moment he had been induced to part with something of infinite value in exchange for a gilded fraud.

  The mystery baffled him. He sent his mind back to the first definite entry of Mervo into the foreground of his life. He had come up from his stateroom on to the deck of the little steamer, and there in the pearl-gray of the morning was the island, gradually taking definite shape as the pink mists shredded away before the rays of the rising sun. As the ship rounded the point where the lighthouse still flashed a needless warning from its cluster of jagged rocks, he had had his first view of the town, nestling at the foot of the hill, gleaming white against the green, with the gold-domed Casino towering in its midst. In all Southern Europe there was no view to match it for quiet beauty. For all his thews and sinews there was poetry in John, and the sight had stirred him like wine.

  It was not then that depression had begun, nor was it during the reception at the quay.

  The days that had followed had been peaceful and amusing. He could not detect in any one of them a sign of the approaching shadow. They had been lazy days. His duties had been much more simple than he had anticipated. He had not known, before he tried it, that it was possible to be a prince with so small an expenditure of mental energy. As Mr. Scobell had hinted, to all intents and purposes he was a mere ornament. His work began at eleven in the morning, and finished as a rule at about a quarter after. At the hour named a report of the happenings of the previous day was brought to him. When he had read it the state asked no more of him until the next morning.

  The report was made up of such items as “A fisherman named Lesieur called Carbineer Ferrier a fool in the market-place at eleven minutes after two this afternoon; he has not been arrested, but is being watched,” and generally gave John a few minutes of mild enjoyment. Certainly he could not recollect that it had ever depressed him.

  No, it had been something else that had worked the mischief and in another moment the thing stood revealed, beyond all question of doubt. What had unsettled him was that unexpected meeting with Betty Silver last night at the Casino.

  He had been sitting at the Dutch table. He generally visited the Casino after dinner. The light and movement of the place interested him. As a rule, he merely strolled through the rooms, watching the play; but last night he had slipped into a vacant seat. He had only just settled himself when he was aware of a girl standing beside him. He got up.

  “Would you care—?” he had begun, and then he saw her face.

  It had all happened in an instant. Some chord in him, numbed till then, had begun to throb. It was as if he had awakened from a dream, or returned to consciousness after being stunned. There was something in the sight of her, standing there so cool and neat and composed, so typically American, a sort of goddess of America, in the heat and stir of the Casino, that struck him like a blow.

  How long was it since he had seen her last? Not more than a couple of years. It seemed centuries. It all came back to him. It was during his last winter at Harvard that they had met. A college friend of hers had been the sister of a college friend of his. They had met several times, but he could not recollect having taken any particular notice of her then, beyond recognizing that she was certainly pretty. The world had been full of pretty American girls then. But now—

  He looked at her. And, as he looked, he heard America calling to him. Mervo, by the appeal of it
s novelty, had caused him to forget. But now, quite suddenly, he knew that he was homesick—and it astonished him, the readiness with which he had permitted Mr. Crump to lead him away into bondage. It seemed incredible that he had not foreseen what must happen.

  Love comes to some gently, imperceptibly, creeping in as the tide, through unsuspected creeks and inlets, creeps on a sleeping man, until he wakes to find himself surrounded. But to others it comes as a wave, breaking on them, beating them down, whirling them away.

  It was so with John. In that instant when their eyes met the miracle must have happened. It seemed to him, as he recalled the scene now, that he had loved her before he had had time to frame his first remark. It amazed him that he could ever have been blind to the fact that he loved her, she was so obviously the only girl in the world.

  “You—you don’t remember me,” he stammered.

  She was flushing a little under his stare, but her eyes were shining.

  “I remember you very well, Mr. Maude,” she said with a smile. “I thought I knew your shoulders before you turned round. What are you doing here?”

  “I—”

  There was a hush. The croupier had set the ball rolling. A wizened little man and two ladies of determined aspect were looking up disapprovingly. John realized that he was the only person in the room not silent. It was impossible to tell her the story of the change in his fortunes in the middle of this crowd. He stopped, and the moment passed.

  The ball dropped with a rattle. The tension relaxed.

  “Won’t you take this seat?” said John.

  “No, thank you. I’m not playing. I only just stopped to look on. My aunt is in one of the rooms, and I want to make her come home. I’m tired.”

  “Have you—?”

  He caught the eye of the wizened man, and stopped again.

  “Have you been in Mervo long?” he said, as the ball fell.