第14章

AN ADVENTURE WITH ROYALTY

Maurice Carewe, attached to the American legation in Vienna, leaned against the stone parapet which separated the terraced promenade of the Continental Hotel from the Werter See, and wondered what had induced him to come to Bleiberg.

He had left behind him the glory of September in Vienna, a city second only to Paris in fashion and gaiety; Vienna, with its inimitable bands, its incomparable gardens, its military maneuvers, its salons, its charming women; and all for a fool's errand.His Excellency was to blame.He had casually dropped the remark that the duchy's minister, Baron von Rumpf, had been given his passports as a persona non grata by the chancellor of the kingdom, and that a declaration of war was likely to follow.

Maurice's dormant love of journalistic inquiry had become aroused, and he had asked permission to investigate the affair, a favor readily granted to him.

But here he was, on the scene, and nobody knew anything, and nobody could tell anything.The duchess had remained silent.Not unnaturally he wished himself back in Vienna.There were no court fetes in the city of Bleiberg.The king's condition was too grave to permit them.And, besides, there had been no real court in Bleiberg for the space of ten years, so he was told.

Those solemn affairs of the archbishop's, given once the week for the benefit of the corps diplomatique, were dull and spiritless.Her Royal Highness was seldom seen, save when she drove through the streets.Persons who remembered the reign before told what a mad, gay court it had been.Now it was funereal.The youth and beauty of Bleiberg held a court of its own.Royalty was not included, nor did it ask to be.

A strange capital, indeed, Maurice reflected, as he gazed down into the cool, brown water.He regretted his caprice.There were pretty women in Vienna.Some of them belonged to the American colony.They danced well, they sang and played and rode.He had taught some of them how to fence, and he could not remember the times he had been "buttoned" while paying too much attention to their lips and eyes.For Maurice loved a thing of beauty, were it a woman, a horse or a Mediterranean sunset.What a difference between these two years in Vienna and that year in Calcutta! He never would forget the dingy office, with its tarnished sign, "U.

S.Consul," tacked insecurely on the door, and the utter loneliness.

He cast a pebble into the lake, and watched the ripples roll away and disappear, and ruminated on a life full of color and vicissitude.He remembered the Arizona days, the endless burning sand, the dull routine of a cavalry trooper, the lithe brown bodies of the Apaches, the first skirmish and the last.From a soldier he had turned journalist, tramped the streets of Washington in rain and shine, living as a man lived who must.

One day his star had shot up from the nadir of obscurity, not very far, but enough to bring his versatility under the notice of the discerning Secretary of State, who, having been a friend of the father, offered the son a berth in the diplomatic corps.

A consulate in a South American republic, during a revolutionary crisis, where he had shown consummate skill in avoiding political complications (and where, by a shrewd speculation in gold, he had feathered his nest for his declining years), proved that the continual incertitude of a journalistic career is a fine basis for diplomatic work.From South America he had gone to Calcutta, thence to Austria.

He was only twenty-nine, which age in some is youth.He possessed an old man's wisdom and a boy's exuberance of spirits.

He laughed whenever he could; to him life was a panorama of vivid pictures, the world a vast theater to which somehow he had gained admission.His beardless countenance had deceived more than one finished diplomat, for it was difficult to believe that behind it lay an earnest purpose and a daring courage.If he bragged a little, quizzed graybeards, sought strange places, sported with convention, and eluded women, it was due to his restlessness.Yet, he had the secretiveness of sand; he absorbed, but he revealed nothing.He knew his friends; they thought they knew him.It was his delight to have women think him a butterfly, men write him down a fool; it covered up his real desires and left him free.

What cynicism he had was mellowed by a fanciful humor.Whether with steel or with words, he was a master of fence; and if at times some one got under his guard, that some one knew it not.

To let your enemy see that he has hit you is to give him confidence.He saw humor where no one else saw it, and tragedy where it was not suspected.He was one of those rare individuals who, when the opportunity of chance refuses to come, makes one.

"Germany and Austria are great countries," he mused, lighting a cigar."Every hundredth man is a king, one in fifty is a duke, every tenth man is a prince, and one can not take a corner without bumping into a count or a baron.Even the hotel waiters are disquieting; there is that embarrassing atmosphere about them which suggests nobility in durance vile.As for me, Iprefer Kentucky, where every man is a colonel, and you never make a mistake.And these kingdoms!" He indulged in subdued laughter."They are always like comic operas.I find myself looking around every moment for the merry villagers so happy and so gay (at fifteen dollars the week), the eternal innkeeper and the perennial soubrette his daughter, the low comedian and the self-conscious tenor.Heigho! and not a soul in Bleiberg knows me, nor cares.

"I'd rather talk five minutes to a pretty woman than eat stuffed pheasants the year around, and the stuffed pheasant is about all Bleiberg can boast of.Well, here goes for a voyage of discovery;"and he passed down the stone steps to the pier, quite unconscious of the admiring glances of the women who fluttered back and forth on the wide balconies above.