Chapter 3
"Ah! an American," said Captain Grayrigg. "Then I expect this sort of thing strikes you as quite ridiculous."
"Why, no, Colonel. Between ourselves I may as well tell you I'm over here myself on a job not unconnected with royalty."
Monkley indicated Sylvia with a significant look.
"This little French boy who is called Master Sylvestre at present may be heard of later."
Jimmy had accentuated her nationality. Sylvia, quick enough to see what he wanted her to do, replied in French.
A tall young man with an olive complexion and priestly gestures, standing close by, p.r.i.c.ked up his ears at Monkley's remark. When Captain Grayrigg had retired he came forward and introduced himself as the Prince de Conde.
Monkley seemed to be sizing up the prince; then abruptly with an air of great cordiality he took his arm.
"Say, Prince, let's go and find an ice. I guess you're the man I've been looking for ever since I landed in England."
They moved off together to find refreshment. Sylvia was left in the antechamber, which was filled with a most extraordinary crowd of people. There were young men with very pink cheeks who all wore white roses or white carnations in their b.u.t.tonholes; there was a battered-looking woman with a wreath of laurel in her hair who suddenly began to declaim in a wailful voice. Everybody said, "Hush," and tried to avoid catching his neighbor's eye. At first, Sylvia decided that the lady must be a lunatic whom people had to humor, because her remarks had nothing to do with the reception and were not even intelligible; then she decided that she was a ventriloquist who was imitating a cat. An old gentleman in kilts was standing near her, and Sylvia remembered that once in France she had seen somebody dressed like that, who had danced in a tent; this lent color to the theory of their both being entertainers. The old gentleman asked the baron if he had the Gaelic, and the baron said he had not; whereupon the old gentleman sniffed very loudly, which made Sylvia feel rather uncomfortable, because, though she had not eaten garlic, she had eaten onions for lunch. Presently the old gentleman moved away and she asked the baron when he was going to begin his dance; the baron told her that he was the chief of a great Scottish clan and that he always dressed like that. A clergyman with two black-and-white dogs under his arms was walking about and protesting in a high voice that he couldn't shake hands; and a lady in a Grecian tunic, standing near Sylvia, tried to explain to her in French that the dogs were descended from King Charles I. Sylvia wanted to tell her she spoke English, because she was sure something had gone wrong with the explanation, owing to the lady's French; but she did not like to do so after Jimmy's deliberate insistence upon her nationality.
Presently a very fussy woman with a long, stringy neck, bulging eyes, and arched fingers came into the antechamber and wanted to know who had not yet been presented to the Emperor. Sylvia looked round for Jimmy, but he was nowhere to be seen, and, being determined not to go away without entering the throne-room, she said loudly: "Moi, je n'ai pas encore vu l'empereur."
"Oh, the little darling!" trilled the fussy woman. "Venez avec moi, je vous presenterai moi-meme."
"How beautifully Miss Widgett speaks French!" somebody murmured, when Sylvia was being led into the throne-room. "It's such a gift."
Sylvia was very much impressed by a large orange flag nailed to the wall above the Emperor's throne.
"Le drapeau imperiale de Byzance," Miss Widgett said. "Voyez-vous l'aigle avec deux tetes. Il etait fait pour sa majeste imperiale par le Societe du roi Charles I de West London."
"King Charles again," Sylvia thought.
"Il faut baiser la main," Miss Widgett prompted. Sylvia followed out the suggestion; and the Emperor, to whom Miss Widgett had whispered a few words, said: "Ah, vous etes francais," and to Miss Widgett, "Who did you say he was?"
"I really don't know. He came with Baron von Statten. Comment vous appelez-vous?" Miss Widgett asked, turning to Sylvia.
Sylvia answered that she was called Monsieur Sylvestre, and just then a most unusual squealing was heard in the antechamber.
"Mon dieu! qu'est-ce que c'est que ca?" Sylvia cried.
"C'est le--comment dit-on bagpipes en Francais? C'est le 'baagpeep' vous savez," which left Sylvia as wise as she was before. However, as there was no general panic, she ceased to be frightened. Soon she saw Jimmy beckoning to her from the antechamber, and shortly afterward they left the reception, which had interested Sylvia very much, though she regretted that n.o.body had offered her an ice.
Monkley congratulated Sylvia upon her quickness in grasping that he had wanted her to pretend she was French, and by his praise roused in her the sense of ambition, which, though at present it was nothing more than a desire to please him personally, marked, nevertheless, a step forward in the development of her character; certainly from this moment the old fear of having no one to look after her began to diminish, and though she still viewed with pleasure the prospect of being alone, she began to have a faint conception of making herself indispensable, perceiving dimly the independence that would naturally follow. Meanwhile, however gratifying Monkley's compliment, it could not compensate her for the ice she had not been given, and Sylvia made this so plain to him that he invited her into a confectioner's shop on the way home and gave her a larger ice than any she had seen at the Emperor's.
Ever since Sylvia had made friends with Jimmy Monkley, her father had adopted the att.i.tude of being left out in the cold, which made him the worst kind of audience for an enthusiastic account of the reception. Mrs. Meares, though obviously condescending, was a more satisfactory listener, and she was able to explain to Sylvia some of the things that had puzzled her, among others the old gentleman's remark about Gaelic.
"This keeping up of old customs and ceremonies in our degenerate days is most commendable," said Mrs. Meares. "I wish I could be doing more in that line here, but Lillie Road does not lend itself to the antique and picturesque; Mr. Morgan, too, gets so impatient even if Clara only hums at her work that I don't like to ask that Scotchman to come and play his bagpipes here, though I dare say he should be only too glad to do so for a s.h.i.+lling. No, my dear boy, I don't mean the gentleman you met at the Emperor's. There is a poor man who plays in the street round here from time to time and dances a sword dance. But the English have no idea of beauty or freedom. I remember last time I saw him the poor man was being moved on for obstructing the traffic."
Clara put forward a theory that the reception had been a church treat. There had been a similar affair in her own parish once, in which the leading scholars of the Sunday-school cla.s.ses had portrayed the kings and queens of England. She herself had been one of the little princes who were smothered in the Tower, and had worn a pair of her mother's stockings. There had been trouble, she remembered, because the other little prince had been laced up so tightly that he was sick over the pillow that was wanted to stuff out the boy who was representing Henry VIII and could not be used at the last moment.
Sylvia a.s.sured her that nothing like this had taken place at the Emperor's, but Clara remained unconvinced.
A week or two pa.s.sed. The reception was almost forgotten, when one day Sylvia found the dark-complexioned young man with whom Monkley had made friends talking earnestly to him and her father.
"You understand," he was saying. "I wouldn't do this if I didn't require money for my work. You must not look upon me as a pretender. I really am the only surviving descendant in the direct line of the famous Prince de Conde."
"Of course," Monkley answered. "I know you're genuine enough. All you've got to do is to back--Well, here he is," he added, turning round and pointing to Sylvia.
"I don't think Sil looks much like a king," Henry said, pensively. "Though I'm bound to say the only one I ever saw in real life was Leopold of Belgium."
Sylvia began to think that Clara had been right, after all.
"What about the present King of Spain, then?" Monkley asked. "He isn't much more than nine years old, if he's as much. You don't suppose he looks like a king, do you? On the Spanish stamps he looks more like an advertis.e.m.e.nt for Mellin's food than anything else."
"Naturally the de jure King of Spain, who until the present has been considered to be Don Carlos, is also the de jure King of France," said the Prince de Conde.
"Don't you start any of your games with kings of France," Henry advised. "I know the French well and they won't stand it. What does he want to be king of two places for? I should have thought Spain was enough for anybody."
"The divine right of monarchs is something greater than mere geography," the Prince answered, scornfully.
"All right. Have it your own way. You're the authority here on kings. But don't overdo it. That's all I advise," Henry said, finally. "I know everybody thinks I'm wrong nowadays," he added, with a glance at Monkley and Sylvia. "But what about Condy's Fluid?"
"What about it?" Monkley asked. "What do you want Condy's for?"
"I don't want it," said Henry. "I simply pa.s.sed the remark. Our friend here is the Prince de Conde. Well, I merely remark 'What about Condy's Fluid?' I don't want to start an argument, because, as I said, I'm always wrong nowadays, but I think if he wanted to be a prince he ought to have chosen a more recherche t.i.tle, not gone routing about among patent medicines."
The Prince de Conde looked inquiringly at Monkley.
"Don't you bother about him, old chap. He's gone off at the deep end."
"I knew it," Henry said. "I knew I should be wrong. That's right, laugh away," he added, bitterly, to Sylvia.
There followed a long explanation by the prince of Sylvia's royal descent, which she could not understand at all. Monkley, however, seemed to be understanding it very well, so well that her father gave up being offended and loudly expressed his admiration for Jimmy's grip of the subject.
"Now," said Monkley, "the question is who are we going to touch?"
The prince asked if he had noticed
"At present," the prince proclaimed, becoming more and more sacerdotal as he spoke of his scheme--"at present I am a lay member of the Society of Jesus, which represents the Platonic tendency in modern thought. I am vowed to exterminate republicanism, anarchy, socialism, and to maintain the conservative instincts of humanity against--"
"Well, n.o.body's going to quarrel with you about spending your own money," Monkley interrupted.
"He can give it to the Salvation Army if he likes," Henry agreed.
The discussion of the more practical aspects of the plan went on for several days. Ultimately it was decided to leave Lillie Road as a first step and take a small house in a suburb; to Sylvia's great delight, for she was tired of the mustiness of Lillie Road, they moved to Rosemary Avenue, Streatham. It was a newly built house and it was all their own, with the Common at one end of the road, and, better still, a back garden. Sylvia had never lived where she had been able to walk out of her own door to her own patch of green; moreover she thoroughly enjoyed the game of being an exiled king that might be kidnapped by his foes at any moment. To be sure, there were disadvantages; for instance, she was not allowed to cultivate an acquaintances.h.i.+p with the two freckled girls next door on their right, nor with the boy who had an air-gun on their left; but generally the game was amusing, especially when her father became the faithful old French servant, who had guarded her all these years, until Mr. James Monkley, the enthusiastic American amateur of genealogy, had discovered the little king hidden away in the old servant's cottage. Henry objected to being ordered about by his own daughter, but his objections were overruled by Jimmy, and Sylvia gave him no rest.
"That d.a.m.ned Conde says he's a lay Jesuit," Henry grumbled. "But what am I? A lay figure. I suppose you wouldn't like me to sleep in a kennel in the back yard?" he asked. "Another thing I can't understand is why on earth you had to be an American, Jimmy."
Monkley told Henry of his sudden impulse to be an American at the Emperor's reception.
"Never give way to impulse," Henry said. "You're not a bit like an American. You'll get a nasty growth in your nose or strain it or something. Americans may talk through the nose a bit; but you make a noise like a cat that's had its tail shut in a door. It's like living in a Punch and Judy show. It may not damage your nose, but it's very bad for my ears, old man. It's all very fine for me to be a French servant. I can speak French; though I don't look like the servant part of it. But you can't speak American, and if you go on trying much harder you very soon won't be able to speak any language at all. I noticed to-day, when you started talking to the furniture fellow, he looked very uneasy. I think he thought he was sitting on a concertina."
"Anyway, he cleared off without getting this month's instalment," Monkley said.
"Oh, it's a very good voice to have when there are duns kicking around," Henry said. "Or in a crowded railway carriage. But as a voice to live with, it's rotten. However, don't listen to me. My advice doesn't count nowadays. Only," and Henry paused impressively, "when people advise you to try linseed oil for your boots as soon as you start talking to them, then don't say I didn't warn you."
Notwithstanding Henry's pessimism, Monkley continued to practise his American; day by day the task of imposing Sylvia on the world as the King of Spain and France was being carefully prepared, too carefully, it seemed to Sylvia, for so much talk beforehand was becoming tiresome. The long delay was chiefly due to Henry's inability to keep in his head the numerous genealogical facts that were crammed down his throat by the Prince de Conde.
"I never was any good at history even when I was a boy," Henry protested. "Never. And I was never good at working out cousins and aunts. I know I had two aunts, and hated them both."
At last Henry's facts were considered firmly enough implanted to justify a move; and in September the prince and Monkley sat down to compose their preliminary letter to Sir Francis Hurndale. Sylvia by now was so much accustomed to the behavior of her companions that she never thought seriously about the fantastic side of the affair. Her own masquerade as a boy had been pa.s.sed off so successfully even upon such an acute observer as Jimmy, until her father had let out the secret by a slip of the tongue, that she had no qualms about being accepted as a king. She realized that money was to be made out of it; but the absence of money had already come to seem a temporary discomfort, to relieve which people in a position like her own and her father's had no reason to be scrupulous. Not that she really ever bothered her head with the morality of financial ways and means. When she spent the ten-franc piece that she thought she had found, the wrong had lain in unwittingly depriving her mother whom she loved; if she had not loved her mother she might have still had scruples about stealing from her; but stealing from people who had plenty of money and with whom there was no binding link of affection would have been quite incomprehensible to her. Therefore the sight of Jimmy Monkley and her father and the Prince de Conde sitting round a spindle-legged tea-table in this new house that smelled pleasantly of varnish was merely something in a day's work of the life they were leading, like a game of cards. It was a much jollier life than any she had yet known; her alliance with Jimmy had been a very good move; her father was treated as he ought to be treated by being kept under; she was shortly going to have some more clothes.
Sylvia sat watching the trio, thinking how much more vividly present Jimmy seemed to be than either of the other two--the prince with his greenish complexion never really well shaved, and his turn-down collars that made his black suit more melancholy, or her father with his light, plaintive eyes and big ears. She was glad that she was not going to resemble her father except perhaps in being short and in the shape of her wide nose; yet she was not really very short; it was only that her mother had been so tall; perhaps, too, when her hair grew long again her nose would not seem so wide.
The letter was finished and Jimmy was reading it aloud: SIR,--I have the honor to ask if, in the probable event of a great dynastic change taking place in one of the chief countries of Europe, you would welcome the post of court painter, naturally at a suitable remuneration. If you read the daily papers, as no doubt you do, you will certainly have come to the conclusion that neither the present ruling house nor what is known as the Carlist party had any real hold upon the affections of the Spanish people. Verb. sap. Interesting changes may be foreshadowed, of which I am not yet at liberty to write more fully. Should you entertain the proposal I shall be happy to wait upon you with further particulars.
I have the honor to be, sir, Your obedient servant, JOSEPHE-ERNESTE, PRINCE DE CONDe.
"Do you know what it sounds like?" said Henry. "Mind I'm not saying this because I didn't write the letter myself. It sounds to me like a cross between a prophecy in Old Moore's Almanack and somebody trying to sell a patent knife-cleaner."
"There's a good deal in what you say," Monkley agreed, in rather a dissatisfied tone.
Henry was so much flattered by the reception of his criticism that he became compa.s.sionate to the faults of the letter and tried hard to point out some of its merits.
"After all," said Jimmy, "the great thing is that the prince has signed it. If his name doesn't draw Master G.o.dfrey, no letters are going to. We'll send it off as it is."
So the letter was sent. Two days afterward the prince arrived with the news that G.o.dfrey Hurndale had called upon him and that he had been inexpressibly happy at the prospect of meeting the de jure King of France and Spain.
"Bring him round to-morrow afternoon about tea-time," said Monkley. "You haven't forgotten the family history, Henry?"
Henry said that he had not forgotten a single relation, and that he d.a.m.ned them severally each morning in all their t.i.tles while he was dressing.
The next afternoon Sylvia sat in an arm-chair in the presence-room, which Henry supposed was so called because none of the furniture had been paid for, and waited for G.o.dfrey Hurndale's coming. Her father put on the rusty black evening-dress of the family retainer, and Jimmy wore a most conspicuous check suit and talked so loudly and nasally that Henry was driven to a final protest: "Look here, Jimmy, I've dressed up to help this show in a suit that's as old as one of those infernal ancestors of Sil's, but if you don't get less American it'll fall to pieces. Every time you guess I can hear a seam give."
"Remember to talk nothing but French," Monkley warned Sylvia, when the bell rang. "Go on, Harry. You've got to open the door. And don't forget that you can only speak French."
Monkley followed him out of the room, and his voice could be heard clanking about the hall as he invited young Hurndale into the dining-room first. Henry came back and took up his position behind Sylvia's chair; she felt very solemn and excited, and asked her father rather irritably why he was muttering. The reason, however, remained a mystery, for the dining-room door opened again and, heralded by Monkley's tw.a.n.ging invitation, Mr. Hurndale stood shyly in the entrance to the presence-room.
"Go right in, Mr. Hurndale," Monkley said. "I guess his Majesty's just about ready to meet you."
Sylvia, when she saw the young man bowing before her, really felt a kind of royal exaltation and held out her hand to be kissed.
Hurndale reverently bent over it and touched it with his lips; so did the prince, an action for which Sylvia was unprepared and which she rather resented, thinking to herself that he really did not shave and that it had not only been his grubby appearance. Then Hurndale offered her a large bunch of white carnations and she became kingly again.
"Francois," she commanded her father, "mets ces oeillets dans ma chambre."
And when her father pa.s.sed out with a bow Sylvia was indeed a king. The audience did not last long. There were practical matters to discuss, for which his Majesty was begged to excuse their withdrawal. Sylvia would have liked a longer ceremony. When the visitor had gone they all sat down to a big tea in the presence-room, and she was told that the young man had been so completely conquered by her gracious reception of him that he had promised to raise five hundred pounds for her cause. His reward in addition to royal favors was to be a high cla.s.s of the Order of Isabella the Catholic. Everybody, even Henry, was in high good humor. The prince did not come to Streatham again; but a week later Monkley got a letter from him with the Paris postmark.
DEAR MR. MONKLEY,--Our young friend handed me a check for 200 the day before yesterday. As he seemed uncertain about the remainder of the sum promised, I took the liberty of drawing my share at once. My great work requires immediate a.s.sistance, and I am now busily occupied in Paris. My next address will be a castle in Spain, where perhaps we shall meet when you are looking for your next site.
Most truly yours, JOSEPHE-ERNESTE, PRINCE DE CONDe.
Jimmy and Henry stared at each other.
"I knew it," said Henry. "I'm always wrong; but I knew it. Still, if I could catch him, it would take more than Condy's Fluid to disinfect that pea-green welsher after I'd done with him."
Monkley sat biting his lips in silence; and Sylvia, recognizing the expression in his eyes that she dreaded formerly, notwithstanding that he was now her best friend, felt sharply her old repugnance for him. Henry was still abusing the defaulter when Monkley cut him short.
"Shut up. I rather admire him."
"Admire him?" Henry gasped. "I suppose you'd admire the hangman and shake hands with him on the scaffold. It's all very fine for you. You didn't have to learn how Ferdinand the Fifty-eighth married Isabella the Innocent, daughter of Alphonso the Eighth, commonly called Alphonso the Anxious. Condy's Fluid! I swallowed enough of it, I can tell you."
Monkley told him gruffly to keep quiet; then he sat down and began to write, still with that expression in his eyes. Presently he tore up the letter and paced the room.
"d.a.m.n that swine," he suddenly shouted, kicking the spindle-legged table into the fireplace. "We wanted the money, you know. We wanted the money badly."
Shortly before dawn the three of them abandoned the new house in Streatham and occupied rooms in the Kennington Park Road. Monkley and Sylvia's father resumed the racing that had temporarily been interrupted by ambition. Sylvia wandered about the streets in a suit of Etons that was rapidly showing signs of wear.
One day early in the new year Sylvia was leaning over the parapet of Waterloo Bridge and munching hot chestnuts. The warmth of them in her pockets was grateful. Her pastime of dropping the sh.e.l.ls into the river did not lack interest; she was vaguely conscious in the frosty suns.h.i.+ne of life's bounty, and she offered to the future a welcome from the depths of her being; meanwhile there still remained forty chestnuts to be eaten.
Her meditation was interrupted by a voice from a pa.s.serby who had detached himself from the stream of traffic that she had been disregarding in her pensive greed; she looked up and met the glance of a pleasant middle-aged gentleman in a dark-gray coat with collar and cuffs of chinchilla, who was evidently anxious to begin a conversation.
"You're out of school early," he observed.
Sylvia replied that she did not go to school.
"Private tutor?" he asked; and, partly to save further questions about her education, partly because she was not quite sure what a private tutor was, she answered in the affirmative.
The stranger looked along the parapet inquisitively.
"I'm out alone this afternoon," Sylvia said, quickly.
The stranger asked her what amused her most, museums or theaters or listening to bands, and whether she preferred games or country walks. Sylvia would have liked to tell him that she preferred eating chestnuts to anything else on earth at that moment; but, being unwilling to create an impression of trying to snub such a benevolent person, she replied vaguely that she did not know what she liked best. Then because such an answer seemed to imply a lack of intelligence that she did not wish to impute to herself, she informed him that she liked looking at people, which was strictly true, for if she had not been eating chestnuts she would certainly have still been contemplating the traffic across the bridge.
"I'll show you some interesting people, if you care to come with me," the stranger proposed. "Have you anything to do this afternoon?"
Sylvia admitted that her time was unoccupied.
"Come along, then," said the middle-aged gentleman, a little fussily, she thought, and forthwith he hailed a pa.s.sing hansom. Sylvia had for a long time been ambitious to travel in a hansom. She had already eaten thirty-five chestnuts, only seven of which had been bad; she decided to accept the stranger's invitation. He asked her where she lived and promised to send her home by cab when the entertainment was over.
Sylvia asked if it was a reception to which he was taking her. The middle-aged gentleman laughed, squeezed her hand, and said that it might be called a reception, adding, with a chuckle, "a very warm reception, in fact." Sylvia did not understand the joke, but laughed out of politeness.
There followed an exchange of names, and Sylvia learnt that her new acquaintance was called Corydon.
"You'll excuse me from offering you one of my cards," he said. "I haven't one with me this afternoon."
They drove along for some time, during which the conversation of Mr. Corydon always pursued the subject of her likes and dislikes. They drew clear of the press of traffic and bowled westward toward Sloane Street; Sylvia, recognizing one of the blue West Kensington omnibuses, began to wonder if the cab would take her past Lillie Road where Jimmy had specially forbidden her to go, because both he and her father owed several weeks' rent to Mrs. Meares and he did not want to remind her of their existence. When they drew nearer and nearer to Sylvia's former lodging she began to feel rather uneasy and wish that the cab would turn down a side-street. The landmarks were becoming more and more familiar, and Sylvia was asking herself if Mrs. Meares had employed the stranger to kidnap her as a hostage for the unpaid rent, when the cab turned off into Redcliffe Gardens and soon afterward pulled up at a house.
"Here we are," said Mr. Corydon. "You'll enjoy yourself most tremendously, Sylvester."
The door was opened by a servant, who was apparently dressed as a brigand, which puzzled Sylvia so much that she asked the reason in a whisper. Mr. Corydon laughed.