"Aye, and such a woman!" I interrupted. "As G.o.d hears me, I would give ten years of my life to hold her again in my arms, to kiss her lips, to hear her say that she loved me. But, pardon me, what were you going to say?"
"Your dream Princess was but a woman--ah, well; this is Tuesday; Thursday at noon she will wed the Prince. It is written."
"The devil!" I let slip. I was at the start again.
"Sir, you do him injustice."
"Who?--the Prince?" savagely.
"No; the--the devil!" She had fully recovered, and I had no weapon left.
"Gretchen, did you really ever love me?"
There was no answer.
"No; I do not believe you did. If you had loved me, what to you would have been a King, a Prince, a princ.i.p.ality? If you broke that promise who would be wronged? Not the King, not the Prince."
"No, I should not have wronged them, but," said the Princess rising, "I should have wronged my people whom I have sworn to protect; I should have wronged my own sense of honor; I should have broken those ties which I have sworn to hold dear and precious as my life; I should have forsaken a sacred duty for something I was not sure of--a man"s love!"
"Gretchen!"
"Am I cruel? Look!" Phyllis stood at the other end of the conservatory. "Does not there recur to you some other woman you have loved? You start. Come; was not your love for Gretchen pique? Who is she who thus mirrors my own likeness? Whoever she is, she loves you!
Let us return; I shall be missed." It was not the woman but the Princess who spoke.
"You are breaking two hearts!" I cried, my voice full of disappointment, pa.s.sion and anger.
"Two? Perhaps; but yours will not be counted."
"You are--"
"Pray, do not lose your temper," icily; and she swept toward the entrance.
I had lost.
As the Princess drew near to Phyllis the brown eyes of the one met the blue-green eyes of the other. There was almost an exclamation on Phyllis"s lips; there was almost a question on Gretchen"s; both paled.
Phyllis understood, but Gretchen did not, why the impulse to speak came. Then the brown eyes of Phyllis turned their penetrating gaze to my own eyes, which I was compelled to shift. I bowed, and the Princess and I pa.s.sed on.
By the grand staircase we ran into the Prince. His face wore a dissatisfied air.
"I was looking for Your Highness," he said to Gretchen. "Your carriage is at the curb. Permit me to a.s.sist you. Ah, yes," in English, "it is Herr Winthrop. I regret that the interview of to-morrow will have to be postponed till Monday."
"Any time," said I, watching Gretchen whose eyes widened, "will be agreeable to me."
Gretchen made as though to speak, but the Prince antic.i.p.ated her.
"It is merely a little discussion, Your Highness," he said, "which Herr Winthrop and I left unfinished earlier in the evening. Good night."
On the way to the cloak room it kept running through my mind that I had lost. Thursday?--she said Thursday was the day of her wedding? It would be an evil day for me.
Pembroke was in the cloak room.
"Going?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Well, let us go together. Where shall it be--Egypt or the steppes of Siberia?"
"Home first," said I; "then we shall decide."
When we got into the carriage we lit cigars. For some reason Pembroke was less talkative than usual. Suddenly he pulled down the window, and a gust of snow blew in. Then up went the window again, but the cigar was gone.
"Has anything gone wrong?" I asked.
""One more unfortunate. . . . Make no deep scrutiny!"" he quoted.
"Jack, she wouldn"t think of it, not for a moment. Perhaps I was a trifle too soon. Yes, she is a Princess, indeed. As for me, I shall go back to elephants and tigers; it"s safer."
""The Bridge of Sighs,"" said I. "Let us cross it for good and all."
"And let it now read "Sighs Abridged.""
He asked me no questions, and I silently thanked him. Once in our rooms, he drank a little more brandy than I thought good for one "who may or may not live the year out." I told him so. He laughed. And then I laughed. Both of us did it theatrically; it was laughter, but it was not mirth.
"Cousin," said I, "that"s the idea; let us laugh. Love may sit on the windowsill and shiver to death."
"That fellow Anacreon was a fool," said Pembroke. "If the child of Venus had been left then and there, what a lot of trouble might have been averted! What do you say to this proposition; the north, the bears and the wolves? I"ve a friend who owns a shooting box a few miles across the border. There"s bears and gray wolves galore. Eh?"
"I must get back to work," said I, but half-heartedly.
"To the devil with your work! Throw it over. You"ve got money; your book is gaining you fame. What"s a hundred dollars a week to you, and jumping from one end of the continent to the other with only an hour"s notice?"
"I"ll sleep on it."
"Good. I"ll go to bed now, and you can have the hearth and the tobacco to yourself."
"Good night," said I.
Yes, I wanted to be alone. But I did not smoke. I sat and stared into the flickering flames in the grate. I had lost Gretchen. . . . To hold a woman in your arms, the woman you love, to kiss her lips, and then to lose her! Oh, I knew that she loved me, but she was a Princess, and her word was given, and it could not be. The wind sang mournfully over the sills of the window; thick snow whitened the panes; there was a humming in the chimneys. . . . She was jealous of Phyllis; that was why I knew that she loved me. . . . And the subtle change in Phyllis"s demeanor towards me; what did it signify? . . . Gretchen was to be married Thursday because there were no proofs that Phyllis was her sister. . . . What if Gretchen had been Phyllis, and Phyllis had been Gretchen. . . . Heigho! I threw some more coals on the fire.
The candle sank in the socket. There are some things we men cannot understand; the sea, the heavens and woman. . . . Suddenly I brought both hands down on my knees. The innkeeper! The innkeeper! He knew!
In a moment I was rummaging through the stack of time tables. The next south-bound train left at 3:20. I looked at the clock; 2:20. My dress suit began to fly around on various chairs. Yes; how simple it was!
The innkeeper knew; he had known it all these years. I threw my white cravat onto the table and picked up the most convenient tie. In ten minutes from the time the idea came to me I was completely dressed in traveling garments. I had a day and a half. It would take twenty hours to fetch the innkeeper. I refused to entertain the possibility of not finding him at the inn. I swore to heaven that the nuptials of the Princess Hildegarde of Hohenphalia and the Prince Ernst of Wortumborg should not be celebrated at noon, Thursday. I went into the bedroom.
"Pembroke?"
"What is it?" came drowsily.
"I am going on a journey."
"One of those cursed orders you get every other day?" he asked.