The Adventure of Princess Sylvia.
by Mrs. C. N. Williamson.
CHAPTER I
THE ADVENTURE BEGINS
"Who is Sylvia? What is she, That all our swains commend her?"
"I"m dashed if I do!" said the Princess.
"My dear--if anyone should hear you!" groaned the Grand d.u.c.h.ess.
"He is a most estimable young man, I am sure, and a very suitable match."
"Call him a match, if you like; he"s certainly a stick. Anyway, he"s not a match for me. There"s only one existing." And the Princess"s eyes were lifted to the heavens, as if the being at whom she hinted were placed high as the sun that shone above her.
The Grand d.u.c.h.ess was not herself "Hereditary." Her dear lord and master had been that, which was perhaps the reason why such stateliness as she had was almost all acquired. She dropped it sometimes, when alone with her unmarried, unmanageable young daughter; and to-day (in the sweet, old-fashioned garden of the house at Richmond, lent by Queen Victoria) was one of these occasions. The Grand d.u.c.h.ess pouted, and looked like a plump, sulky, elderly child, as she inquired what the Princess Sylvia expected in the way of a matrimonial prize.
"What do I expect?" echoed the young lady. "I expect an emperor.
In fact, _the_ Emperor." For a few moments the Grand d.u.c.h.ess of Eltzburg-Neuwald remained dumb. Then she inadequately murmured, "Dear me!" Yet her demeanour did not suggest a stricken mind. She merely looked surprised, with an added expression that might signify a slow mental readjustment.
"It is really not entirely impossible," she commented at last. "But-- the Emperor of Rhaetia is a very great man."
"He is the only man," returned the Princess calmly. "He always has been. He is, and ever will be. He is the Napoleon of his generation, without Napoleon"s meanness or brutality. Although he"s not an Englishman, even you admit his virtues."
"Don"t speak as if I were bristling with English prejudices," scolded the Grand d.u.c.h.ess. "I ceased to be English when I married your father.
But why did you never mention this--er--desire of yours before?"
"I am far too maidenly," responded Sylvia, "to give my feeling any such bold name. _I_ have not ceased to be English, if my mother has.
Indeed, I give my feeling no name at all. I haven"t spoken of it if there be an "it" to speak of--before, simply because really I"m not crying for a particular toy to play with. I"m only saying, if I can"t have _that_, I won"t have another toy a poor, unworthy toy."
"You call Prince Henri d"Ortens a "poor, unworthy toy?""
"Compared with the Emperor of Rhaetia and compared with me. Look at me, mother. Would I not make an empress?"
Sylvia laughed, sprang up from the seat that girdled the great trunk of the Lebanon cedar, and stood with her bright head erect, her lips still smiling.
The August sun streamed down upon the girl and bathed her in its glory. Her hair was a network of spun gold, under its radiance; her dark eyes jewels; her skin roses and snow; her simple white muslin gown a dazzling robe fit for a fairy, rather than an earthly princess.
Yes, she would make an empress, or she would make a G.o.ddess. So a man must have thought, even if he had not dared to love her. And so thought her mother.
"The dear Queen has never really favoured poor Henri," murmured the Grand d.u.c.h.ess, a light of introspection in her eyes. Already the French Prince, with pretensions to the incomparable hand of Sylvia, was "_poor_ Henri." "I mean, she has never favoured him as a match for you, though she intimated to me yesterday that she saw no insurmountable objections--if you cared for each other--"
"But we don"t. At least I don"t. Which is all that signifies."
"Pray do not be so flippant. As for Maximilian of Rhaetia, it is perhaps natural that he has never been thought of in connection with you, my dear. He is, no doubt, the most sought after _parti_ in--well, yes, I may say in the world. Not a girl with Royal blood in her veins but would go on her knees to him--"
"I would not," cried Sylvia. "I might worship him, but he should go on his knees to _me_."
"I doubt if those knees will ever bend to man or woman," said the Grand d.u.c.h.ess. "That, however, is a mere matter of speech. I am serious now, and I wish you to be. Though you are a very beautiful girl, my child--there is no disguising that fact from you, as it has been dinned into your ears since you were old enough to understand-- and there is no better blood in Europe than runs in your veins; still, our circ.u.mstances are--er--unfortunately such that--that we are, for the present, slightly handicapped."
"We"re beggars," said Sylvia. "But Cophetua married a beggar maid;"
and she smiled.
"Pray don"t liken yourself to any such persons, my dear," objected the Grand d.u.c.h.ess, who, on principle, had so often objected to Sylvia"s unconventionalities that the att.i.tude of objection had become chronic. "Your father is dead. The Grand Duchy of Eltzburg-Neuwald has been absorbed by Prussia--for a price, it is true; but it is your brother who has had most of the benefit of that price. And though my dear husband was second cousin to the Emperor of Germany, who loved him during his life as an elder brother, and though you are strictly _within_ the pale from which Maximilian is ent.i.tled to select a wife, one must admit that there are other girls who, from a worldly point of view, might be considered more suitable."
"I wasn"t thinking of the worldly point of view," said the incorrigible one, with unusual softness. She could be gentle and tender enough in certain moods; but she was used to taking the lead with her mother.
"People--men or women--with Royal blood in their veins _must_ think of that point of view," returned the Grand d.u.c.h.ess. She was not Royal, save by marriage, though her long since dead father, the English Duke of Northminster, claimed ancestry from kings and had married a near relation of Queen Victoria. But he had been one of the richest men in the world at the time of his daughter"s marriage; and the exchequer of Eltzburg-Neuwald had sadly needed replenishing. It, or rather its representative, had finally swallowed a large part of the Duke of Northminster"s private fortune, the enormous remainder having vanished in a great financial panic; so that just before the Hereditary Grand Duke of Eltzburg-Neuwald had been gathered to his fathers, he had been induced to make terms with his cousin, the then reigning German Emperor, for the Grand Duchy. Thus deprived of his inheritance, the only son, Friedrich, had joyfully accepted an offer of adoption as Crown Prince from the childless old King of Abruzzia.
The widowed Grand d.u.c.h.ess, not loving the thought of a German residence, when bereft of her ancient importance; hating her son"s adopted land of Abruzzia, which she considered "half savage" (yet liking still less the alternative of a wandering life on the Continent, or a home with the uncle who had inherited her father"s t.i.tle and estates), had gratefully caught at Queen Victoria"s kindness. Ever since Sylvia Victoria Alexandra Mary Valerie Hildegarde, her daughter, had been a proud little Princess of ten years old, the two had lived in the ancient, rose-and-ivy-embowered house placed at their disposal by Her Gracious Majesty. Sylvia had been educated in England; all her thoughts and ideas were those of an English girl, and a somewhat "advanced" English girl. Her very beauty was more English than German--the delicately chiselled nose, the short, haughty upper lip, the frank imperiousness of the hazel eyes under the black sweep of lashes, and dark, soft curve of brow. She was twenty-one now, and vastly tired of being Royal, for already her high place in the world had brought her more of inconvenience than privilege.
"I don"t wish the Emperor of Rhaetia to want me because I am suitable, but because I am irresistible," she a.s.severated. "I want love--love-- or I won"t marry at all."
"But that is nonsense," gravely p.r.o.nounced the elder, steeped for long years in all the traditions and conventionalities of Royalty. "Women in our position must be satisfied with the hope that love may come after marriage; or, if not, we must rest content in doing our duty in that state of life to which heaven has been pleased to call us!"
"Bother duty!" remarked Sylvia, with an impatient disregard for those elegancies of speech to which she had been so carefully brought up.
"Thank goodness, nowadays not all the king"s horses and all the king"s men can make even a princess marry any one against her will. I hate the everlasting cant about duty in marriage. When people love each other they are kind and good and sweet and virtuous, because it is a pleasure, not because it"s duty; and that"s the only sort of loyalty worth having between man and woman, according to my ideas. I would not take anything less from a man; and I should despise him if he were ready to accept less from me."
"You are almost impious, Sylvia; you ought to have been born a _bourgeoise_," said her mother. But at this moment, when the clash of tongues, as opinion struck upon opinion, was imminent, there occurred a happy diversion in the arrival of a servant with letters.
Sylvia, who was a neglectful correspondent, had nothing; but two or three bulky envelopes had come for the Grand d.u.c.h.ess, and eagerly she broke the seal of one which bore the hand writing of her son Friedrich, now Crown Prince of Abruzzia.
"Open the others for me, dear, while I see what Fritz has to say," she requested. And Sylvia leisurely obeyed.
There was a note from an old friend of whom she was fond; and she had just begun to be interested in the first paragraph, when an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n from her mother caused a quick lifting of her lashes.
The Grand d.u.c.h.ess was staring at the scrawled pages, held close to her near-sighted eyes, while a bright flush troubled the surface of her usually serene countenance.
"What is the matter?" exclaimed Sylvia. "Anything wrong with Fritz?"
"No--no--nothing in the least wrong," murmured the Grand d.u.c.h.ess absent-mindedly. "Far from it, indeed; but really--this is the most _extraordinary_ coincidence. It seems almost too strange that it should come at such a moment. Yet I suppose I am not dreaming?" She peered questioningly at Sylvia; for it must be confessed that the Grand d.u.c.h.ess did sometimes sleep, perchance even dream, in the warm seclusion of the old riverside garden.
"Life is a dream!" hummed the Princess. "But you _look_ awake, dear; and I"ve never known you to talk whole sentences in your sleep. What has Fritz been doing?"
"It is not Fritz; it"s your emperor," returned her mother.
It was now Sylvia"s turn to flush. This, then, was the "coincidence"!
She wished, yet vaguely dreaded, to ask for the purport of the news.
Of course it was ridiculous to blush, because it was ridiculous to care. But the fact remained that she did blush and that she did care.
Princess Sylvia had never seen Maximilian of Rhaetia; nevertheless, as she had half laughingly, half earnestly declared, he had been for her the one real man in a world of shadow men, since childish days. In the little room grandiloquently called her "study" (a room sacred to herself alone, whose secrets even her mother did not share) were preserved many souvenirs of the Emperor, which had been acc.u.mulating for years. There were paragraphs cut from newspapers, setting forth his great prowess as a soldier, hunter, and mountaineer, with dramatic anecdotes of his haughty courage when in danger. There were portraits of Maximilian, beginning from an early age, up to the present, when he was shown as a tall, stern-eyed, pa.s.sionate-lipped, aggressive-chinned young man of thirty. There were copies of pictures he had painted, plays he had written, music he had composed, fierce and warlike speeches he had delivered; accounts of improvements in guns and gun powder invented by him; with numerous other records of his accomplishments and achievements; for the Emperor of Rhaetia was, in his own mind, and that of his people, the one shining exception to the rule that a "Jack of all trades can be master of none." He was master of all, or at least all he had ever attempted--their name being legion--and Sylvia loved him because it was so. The locked drawers of her desk were hallowed by the records of her hero which they hid.
Now, the thought that flashed into her mind was that Fritz"s letter might perhaps contain a gossiping account of the Emperor"s engagement to one of those other Royal girls, who, as the Grand d.u.c.h.ess had justly observed, were more suitable to match him than poor, pretty little Princess Sylvia of Eltzburg-Neuwald. Maximilian was thirty years old (Sylvia knew his age to the day, almost to the hour); therefore it was remarkable that he had not long ago listened to the advice of his Chancellor and chosen a wife worthy to be Empress of Rhaetia and the mother of an heir.
"Guess what Fritz writes of him," said the Grand d.u.c.h.ess, controlling visible emotion.
Sylvia also controlled hers, crushing it down with a relentless hand, and telling herself that what she felt was at its worst but wounded vanity.