15a The Prince and Betty

by Unknown

  “What say?” said the walrus.

  “I said that, while I am on the throne here, people who feel it necessary to chant ‘Come, little seven!’ must do it elsewhere.”

  “I don’t understand you,” said Mr. Pugh. “Your remarks are absolutely unintelligible.”

  “Never mind. My actions speak for themselves. It doesn’t matter how I describe it—what it comes to is that the Casino is closed. You can follow that? Mervo is no longer running wide open. The lid is on.”

  “Then let me tell you, sir—” Mr. Pugh brought a bony fist down with a thump on the table—”that you are playing with fire. Understand me, sir, we are not here to threaten. We are a peaceful deputation of visitors. But I have observed your people, sir. I have watched them narrowly. And let me tell you that you are walking on a volcano. Already there are signs of grave discontent.”

  “Already!” cried John. “Already’s good. I guess they call it going some in this infernal country if they can keep awake long enough to take action within a year after a thing has happened. I don’t know if you have any influence with the populace, Mr. Pugh—you seem a pretty warm and important sort of person—but, if you have, do please ask them as a favor to me to get a move on. It’s no good saying that I’m walking on a volcano. I’m from Missouri. I want to be shown. Let’s see this volcano. Bring it out and make it trot around.”

  “You may jest—”

  “Who’s jesting? I’m not. It’s a mighty serious thing for me. I want to get away. The only thing that’s keeping me in this forsaken place is this delay. These people are obviously going to fire me sooner or later. Why on earth can’t they do it at once?”

  “What say?” said the walrus.

  “You may well ask, Colonel,” said Mr. Pugh, staring amazed at John. “His Highness appears completely to have lost his senses.”

  The walrus looked at John as if expecting some demonstration of practical insanity, but, finding him outwardly calm, closed his eyes and nodded heavily again.

  “I must say, don’t you know,” said Mr. Archer-Cleeve, “it beats me, what?”

  The entire deputation seemed to consider that John’s last speech needed footnotes.

  John was in no mood to supply them. His patience was exhausted.

  “I guess we’ll call this conference finished,” he said. “You’ve been told all you came to find out,—my reason for closing the Casino. If it doesn’t strike you as a satisfactory reason, that’s up to you. Do what you like about it. The one thing you may take as a solid fact—and you can spread it around the town as much as ever you please—is that it is closed, and is not going to be reopened while I’m ruler here.”

  The deputation then withdrew, reluctantly.

  On the following morning there came a note from Mr. Scobell. It was brief. “Come on down before the shooting begins,” it ran. John tore it up.

  It was on the same evening that definite hostilities may be said to have begun.

  Between the Palace and the market-place there was a narrow street of flagged stone, which was busy during the early part of the day but deserted after sundown. Along this street, at about seven o’clock, John was strolling with a cigarette, when he was aware of a man crouching, with his back toward him. So absorbed was the man in something which he was writing on the stones that he did not hear John’s approach, and the latter, coming up from behind was enabled to see over his shoulder. In large letters of chalk he read the words: “Conspuez le Prince.”

  John’s knowledge of French was not profound, but he could understand this, and it annoyed him.

  As he looked, the man, squatting on his heels, bent forward to touch up one of the letters. If he had been deliberately posing, he could not have assumed a more convenient attitude.

  John had been a footballer before he was a prince. The temptation was too much for him. He drew back his foot—

  There was a howl and a thud, and John resumed his stroll. The first gun from Fort Sumter had been fired.

  Early next morning a window at the rear of the palace was broken by a stone, and toward noon one of the soldiers on guard in front of the Casino was narrowly missed by an anonymous orange. For Mervo this was practically equivalent to the attack on the Bastille, and John, when the report of the atrocities was brought to him, became hopeful.

  But the effort seemed temporarily to have exhausted the fury of the mob. The rest of that day and the whole of the next passed without sensation.

  After breakfast on the following morning Mr. Crump paid a visit to the Palace. John was glad to see him. The staff of the Palace were loyal, but considered as cheery companions, they were handicapped by the fact that they spoke no English, while John spoke no French.

  Mr. Crump was the bearer of another note from Mr. Scobell. This time John tore it up unread, and, turning to the secretary, invited him to sit down and make himself at home.

  Sipping a cocktail and smoking one of John’s cigars, Mr. Crump became confidential.

  “This is a queer business,” he said. “Old Ben is chewing pieces out of the furniture up there. He’s mad clean through. He’s losing money all the while the people are making up their minds about this thing, and it beats him why they’re so slow.”

  “It beats me, too. I don’t believe these hook-worm victims ever turned my father out. Or, if they did, somebody must have injected radium into them first. I’ll give them another couple of days, and, if they haven’t fixed it by then, I’ll go, and leave them to do what they like about it.”

  “Go! Do you want to go?”

  “Of course I want to go! Do you think I like stringing along in this musical comedy island? I’m crazy to get back to America. I don’t blame you, Crump, because it was not your fault, but, by George! if I had known what you were letting me in for when you carried me off here, I’d have called up the police reserves. Hello! What’s this?”

  He rose to his feet as the sound of agitated voices came from the other side of the door. The next moment it flew open, revealing General Poineau and an assorted group of footmen and other domestics. Excitement seemed to be in the air.

  General Poineau rushed forward into the room, and flung his arms above his head. Then he dropped them to his side, and shrugged his shoulders, finishing in an attitude reminiscent of Plate 6 (“Despair”) in “The Home Reciter.”

  “Mon Prince!” he moaned.

  A perfect avalanche of French burst from the group outside the door.

  “Crump!” cried John. “Stand by me, Crump! Get busy! This is where you make your big play. Never mind the chorus gentlemen in the passage. Concentrate yourself on Poineau. What’s he talking about? I believe he’s come to tell me the people have wakened up. Offer him a cocktail. What’s the French for corpse-reviver? Get busy, Crump.”

  The general had begun to speak rapidly, with a wealth of gestures. It astonished John that Mr. Crump could follow the harangue as apparently he did.

  “Well?” said John.

  Mr. Crump looked grave.

  “He says there is a large mob in the market-place. They are talking—”

  “They would be!”

  “—of moving in force on the Palace. The Palace Guards have gone over to the people. General Poineau urges you to disguise yourself and escape while there is time. You will be safe at his villa till the excitement subsides, when you can be smuggled over to France during the night—”

  “Not for mine,” said John, shaking his head. “It’s mighty good of you, General, and I appreciate it, but I can’t wait till night. The boat leaves for Marseilles in another hour. I’ll catch that. I can manage it comfortably. I’ll go up and pack my grip. Crump, entertain the General while I’m gone, will you? I won’t be a moment.”

  But as he left the room there came through the open window the mutter of a crowd. He stopped. General Poineau whipped out his sword, and brought it to the salute. John patted him on the shoulder.

  “You’re a sport, General,” he said, “but we sha’n’t want it. Come
along, Crump. Come and help me address the multitude.”

  The window of the room looked out on to a square. There was a small balcony with a stone parapet. As John stepped out, a howl of rage burst from the mob.

  John walked on to the balcony, and stood looking down on them, resting his arms on the parapet. The howl was repeated, and from somewhere at the back of the crowd came the sharp crack of a rifle, and a shot, the first and last of the campaign, clipped a strip of flannel from the collar of his coat and splashed against the wall.

  A broad smile spread over his face.

  If he had studied for a year, he could not have hit on a swifter or more effective method of quieting the mob. There was something so engaging and friendly in his smile that the howling died away and fists that has been shaken unclenched themselves and fell. There was an expectant silence in the square.

  John beckoned to Crump, who came on to the balcony with some reluctance, being mistrustful of the unseen sportsman with the rifle.

  “Tell ‘em it’s all right, Crump, and that there’s no call for any fuss. From their manner I gather that I am no longer needed on this throne. Ask them if that’s right?”

  A small man, who appeared to be in command of the crowd, stepped forward as the secretary finished speaking, and shouted some words which drew a murmur of approval from his followers.

  “He wants to know,” interpreted Mr. Crump, “if you will allow the Casino to open again.”

  “Tell him no, but add that I shall be tickled to death to abdicate, if that’s what they want. Speed them up, old man. Tell them to make up their minds on the jump, because I want to catch that boat. Don’t let them get to discussing it, or they’ll stand there talking till sunset. Yes or no. That’s the idea.”

  There was a moment’s surprised silence when Mr. Crump had spoken. The Mervian mind was unused to being hustled in this way. Then a voice shouted, as it were tentatively, “Vive la Republique!” and at once the cry was taken up on all sides.

  John beamed down on them.

  “That’s right,” he said. “Bully! I knew you could get a move on as quick as anyone else, if you gave your minds to it. This is what I call something like a revolution. It’s a model to every country in the world. But I guess we must close down the entertainment now, or I shall be missing the boat. Will you tell them, Crump, that any citizen who cares for a drink and a cigar will find it in the Palace. Tell the household staff to stand by to pull corks. It’s dry work revolutionizing. And now I really must be going. I’ve run it mighty fine. Slip one of these fellows down there half a dollar and send him to fetch a cab. I must step lively.”

  Five minutes later the revolutionists, obviously embarrassed and ill at ease, were sheepishly gulping down their refreshment beneath the stony eye of the majordomo and his assistants, while upstairs in the state bedroom the deposed Prince was whistling “Dixie” and packing the royal pajamas into a suitcase.

  CHAPTER X

  MRS. OAKLEY

  Betty, when she stepped on board the boat for Marseilles, had had no definite plan of action. She had been caught up and swept away by an over-mastering desire for escape that left no room in her mind for thoughts of the morrow. It was not till the train was roaring its way across southern France that she found herself sufficiently composed to review her position and make plans.

  She would not go back. She could not. The words she had used in her letter to Mr. Scobell were no melodramatic rhetoric. They were a plain and literal statement of the truth. Death would be infinitely preferable to life at Mervo on her stepfather’s conditions.

  But, that settled, what then? What was she to do? The gods are businesslike. They sell; they do not give. And for what they sell they demand a heavy price. We may buy life of them in many ways: with our honor, our health, our independence, our happiness, with our brains or with our hands. But somehow or other, in whatever currency we may choose to pay it, the price must be paid.

  Betty faced the problem. What had she? What could she give? Her independence? That, certainly. She saw now what a mockery that fancied independence had been. She had come and gone as she pleased, her path smoothed by her stepfather’s money, and she had been accustomed to consider herself free. She had learned wisdom now, and could understand that it was only by sacrificing such artificial independence that she could win through to freedom. The world was a market, and the only independent people in it were those who had a market value.

  What was her market value? What could she do? She looked back at her life, and saw that she had dabbled. She had a little of most things—enough of nothing. She could sketch a little, play a little, sing a little, write a little. Also—and, as she remembered it, she felt for the first time a tremor of hope—she could use a typewriter reasonably well. That one accomplishment stood out in the welter of her thoughts, solid and comforting, like a rock in a quicksand. It was something definite, something marketable, something of value for which persons paid.

  The tremor of hope did not comfort her long. Her mood was critical, and she saw that in this, her one accomplishment, she was, as in everything else, an amateur. She could not compete against professionals. She closed her eyes, and had a momentary vision of those professionals, keen of face, leathern of finger, rattling out myriads of words at a dizzy speed. And, at that, all her courage suddenly broke; she drooped forlornly, and, hiding her face on the cushioned arm-rest, she began to cry.

  Tears are the Turkish bath of the soul. Nature never intended woman to pass dry-eyed through crises of emotion. A casual stranger, meeting Betty on her way to the boat, might have thought that she looked a little worried,—nothing more. The same stranger, if he had happened to enter the compartment at this juncture, would have set her down at sight as broken-hearted beyond recovery. Yet such is the magic of tears that it was at this very moment that Betty was beginning to be conscious of a distinct change for the better. Her heart still ached, and to think of John even for an instant was to feel the knife turning in the wound, but her brain was clear; the panic fear had gone, and she faced the future resolutely once more. For she had just remembered the existence of Mrs. Oakley.

  Only once in her life had Betty met her stepfather’s celebrated aunt, and the meeting had taken place nearly twelve years ago. The figure that remained in her memory was of a pale-eyed, grenadier-like old lady, almost entirely surrounded by clocks. It was these clocks that had impressed her most. She was too young to be awed by the knowledge that the tall old woman who stared at her just like a sandy cat she had once possessed was one of the three richest women in the whole wide world. She only remembered thinking that the finger which emerged from the plaid shawl and prodded her cheek was unpleasantly bony. But the clocks had absorbed her. It was as if all the clocks in the world had been gathered together into that one room. There had been big clocks, with almost human faces; small, perky clocks; clocks of strange shape; and one dingy, medium-sized clock in particular which had made her cry out with delight. Her visit had chanced to begin shortly before eleven in the morning, and she had not been in the room ten minutes before there was a whirring, and the majority of the clocks began to announce the hour, each after its own fashion—some with a slow bloom, some with a rapid, bell-like sound. But the medium-sized clock, unexpectedly belying its appearance of being nothing of particular importance, had performed its task in a way quite distinct from the others. It had suddenly produced from its interior a shabby little gold man with a trumpet, who had blown eleven little blasts before sliding backward into his house and shutting the door after him. Betty had waited in rapt silence till he finished, and had then shouted eagerly for more.

  Just as the beginner at golf may effect a drive surpassing that of the expert, so may a child unconsciously eclipse the practised courtier. There was no soft side to Mrs. Oakley’s character, as thousands of suave would-be borrowers had discovered in their time, but there was a soft spot. To general praise of her collection of clocks she was impervious; it was unique, and she did not requ
ire you to tell her so, but exhibit admiration for the clock with the little trumpeter, and she melted. It was the one oasis of sentiment in the Sahara of her mental outlook, the grain of radium in the pitchblende. Years ago it had stood in a little New England farmhouse, and a child had clapped her hands and shouted, even as Betty had done, when the golden man slid from his hiding-place. Much water had flowed beneath the bridge since those days. Many things had happened to the child. But she still kept her old love for the trumpeter. The world knew nothing of this. The world, if it had known, would have been delighted to stand before the clock and admire it volubly, by the day. But it had no inkling of the trumpeter’s importance, and, when it came to visit Mrs. Oakley, was apt to waste its time showering compliments on the obvious beauties of the queens of the collection.

  But Betty, ignoring these, jumped up and down before the dingy clock, demanding further trumpetings, and, turning to Mrs. Oakley, as one possessing influence, she was aware of a curious, intent look in the old lady’s eyes.

  “Do you like that clock, my dear?” said Mrs. Oakley.

  “Yes! Oh, yes!”

  “Perhaps you shall have it some day, honey.”

  Betty was probably the only person who had been admitted to that room who would not, on the strength of this remark, have steered the conversation gently to the subject of a small loan. Instead, she ran to the old lady, and kissed her. And, as to what had happened after that, memory was vague. There had been some talk, she remembered, of a dollar to buy candy, but it had come to nothing, and now that she had grown older and had read the frequent paragraphs and anecdotes that appeared in the papers about her stepfather’s aunt, she could understand why. She knew now what everybody knew of Mrs. Oakley—her history, her eccentricities, and the miserliness of which the papers spoke with a satirical lightness that seemed somehow but a thin disguise for what was almost admiration.