The Goose Girl by Harold MacGrath (online e book reading txt) 📕

dozen frontiers, he took out a small bundle. This he opened carefully, his eyes blurring. Mad fool that he had been! How many times had he gazed at these trinkets in these sixteen or more years? How often had he uttered lamentations over them? How many times had the talons of remorse gashed his heart?

Two little yellow shoes, so small that they lay on his palm as lightly as two butterflies; a little cloak trimmed with ermine; a golden locket shaped like a heart!


CHAPTER VII

AN ELDER BROTHER


Grumbach was very fond of music, and in America there were never any bands except at political meetings or at the head of processions; and that wasn't the sort of music he preferred. There was nothing at the Opera, so he decided to spend the earlier part of the evening in the public gardens. He was lonely; he had always been lonely. Men who carry depressing secrets generally are. He searched covertly among the many faces for one that was familiar, but he saw none; and he was at once glad, and sorry. Yes, there was one face; the rubicund countenance of the bandmaster. It was older, more wrinkled, but it was the same. How many years had the old fellow swung the baton? At least thirty years. In his boyhood days Grumbach had put that brilliant uniform side by side with the grand duke's. As it was impossible for him ever to become a duke, his ambition had been to arrive at the next greatest thing-the bandmaster. As he neared the pavilion he laughed silently and grimly. To have grown wealthy as a master plumber instead! So much for ambition!

Subsequently he found himself standing beside a young vintner and his peasant sweetheart. Their hands secretly met and locked behind their backs. Grumbach sighed. Never would he know aught of this double love. This Eden would never have any gate for him to push aside. He would always go his way alone.

The girl turned her head. Seeing Grumbach, she loosened the vintner's hand.

"Do not mind me, girl," said Grumbach, his face broadening.

The girl laughed easily and without confusion. Her companion, however, flushed under his tan, and a scowl ran over his forehead.

The band struck up, and the little comedy was forgotten. But Grumbach could not see anything except the girl's face, the fresh, exquisite turn of her profile. Once his eye wandered rather guiltily. Her figure was in keeping with her face. Then he saw the little wooden shoes. Ah, well, as long as kings surrounded themselves with armies and with pomp, there would always be wooden shoes. The band was playing Les Huguenots, and the girl hummed the air.

"Do not go there to-night, Gretchen," said the vintner.

"It is a crown."

"I will give you two if you will not go," the vintner urged.

"Foolish boy, what good would that do? We need every crown we have or can get, if we are to be married soon. And you have not gone to work yet. And every day costs you a crown to live, and more, for all I know. You spend a crown as carelessly as if all you had to do was to pick them off the vines. Crowns are hard to get."

"When one is happy, one does not stop to bother about crowns," he said impatiently.

"But will such happiness last? Shall we not be happier as our crowns accumulate, to ward off sickness and hunger? Must I teach you economy?"

"I shall apply for work to-morrow and waste no more crowns, my heart." The vintner's hand again sought hers, and he sent Grumbach a look which said: "Smile if you dare!"

But Grumbach did not smile. He was too sad. He fell into a dream, and the music faded in his ear and the lights of the pavilion grew dim. He was a boy again, and he was carrying posies to the pretty little fräulein in the Adlergasse. Dreams never last, and sometimes they are rudely interrupted.

A hand was put upon his shoulder authoritatively. The police officer who had examined his passports that morning stood at Grumbach's elbow.

"Herr Grumbach," he said quietly, "his excellency the chancellor has directed me to bring you at once to the palace."

"To the palace?" Grumbach's face was expressive of great astonishment. The officer saw nothing out of the ordinary in this expression. Any foreigner would have been seized with confusion under like circumstances. "To the palace?" Grumbach repeated. "My passports were wrong in some respect?"

"Oh, no, Herr; they were correct."

Grumbach roused his mind energetically. He forced down the fast beating of his heart, banished the astonishment from his face, and even brought a smile to his lips.

"But whatever can the chancellor want of me?"

"That is not my business. I was simply sent to find you. His excellency is always interested in German-Americans. It may be that he wishes to ask what the future is there in America. We have more in Dreiberg than we can reasonably take care of."

"In the prisons?"

The officer laughed. "There and elsewhere."

"Is that right?" asked Grumbach, now thoroughly on guard.

"It may not be right to ship our criminals over there, but it is considered very good politics."

"Shall we go at once? I never expected to enter the palace of the grand duke of Ehrenstein," Grumbach added. "It will be something to tell of when I go back to America."

The only thing that reassured him was the presence of one officer. When they came for a man on a serious charge, in Ehrenstein, they came in pairs or fours. So then, there could be pending nothing vital to his liberty or his incognito. Besides, his papers were all right, and now there would be Carmichael to fall back on.

"The palace is lighted up," was Grumbach's comment as the two passed the sentry outside the gates.

"The duke gives the dinner to the diplomatic corps to-night."

"A fine thing to be a diplomat."

"I myself prefer fighting in the open. Diplomats? Their very precious hides are never anywhere near the wars they bring about. No, no; this way. We go in at the side."

"You'll have to guide me. Yes, these diplomats. Men like you and me do all the work. I was in the Civil War in America."

"That was a great fight," remarked the officer. "I should like to have been there."

"Four years; pretty long. Do you know Herr Carmichael?"

"The American consul? Oh, yes."

"He and I fought in the same regiment."

"Then you saw some pretty battles."

Grumbach took off his hat. "See that?"

"Gott! That must have been an ugly one."

"Almost crossed over when I got it. Is this the door?"

"Yes. I'll put you in snugly. You will probably have to wait for his excellency. But you'll have me for company till he appears."

Grumbach entered the palace with a brave heart and a steady mind.

* * * * *

The grand duke had a warm place in his heart for the diplomatic corps. He liked to see them gathered round his table, their uniforms glittering with orders and decorations. It was always a night of wits; and he sprang a hundred traps for comedy's sake, but these astonishing linguists seldom if ever blundered into one of them. They were eternally vigilant. It was no trifling matter to swing the thought from German into French or Italian or Hungarian; but they were seasoned veterans in the game, all save Carmichael, who spoke only French and German fluently. The duke, however, never tried needlessly to embarrass him. He admired Carmichael's mental agility. Never he thrust so keenly that the American was found lacking in an effective though simple parry.

"Your highness must recollect that I am not familiar with that tongue."

"Pardon me, Herr Captain!"

But there was always a twinkle in the ducal eye and an answering smile in the consul's.

The somber black of Carmichael's evening dress stood out conspicuously among the blue and green and red uniforms. Etiquette compelled him to wear silk stockings, but that was the single concession on his part. He wore no orders. An order of the third or fourth class held no allurement. Nothing less than the Golden Fleece would have interested him, and the grand duke himself could not boast of this rare and distinguished order. In truth, Carmichael coveted nothing but a medal for valor, and his own country had not yet come to recognize the usefulness of such a distinction.

All round him sat ministers or ambassadors; he alone represented a consulate. So his place at the table was honorary rather than diplomatic. It was his lively humorous personality the grand duke admired, not his representations.

The duke sat at the head of the table and her serene highness at the foot; and it was by the force of his brilliant wit that the princess did not hold in perpetuity the court at her end of the table. For a German princess of that time she was highly accomplished; she was ardent, whimsical, with a flashing mentality which rounded out and perfected her physical loveliness. Above and beyond all this, she had suffered, she had felt the pangs of poverty, the smart of unrecognized merit; she had been one of the people, and her sympathies would always be with them, for she knew what those about her only vaguely knew, the patience, the unmurmuring bravery of the poor. Never would she become sated with power so long as it gave her the right to aid the people. Never a new tax was levied that she did not lighten it in some manner; never an oppressive law was promulgated that she did not soften its severity. And so the populace loved her, for it did not take the people long to find out what she was trying to do for them. And perhaps they loved her because she had lived the greater part of her young life as one of them.

To-night there was love in the duke's eyes as he looked down the table's length; there was love in the old chancellor's eyes, too; and in Carmichael's. And there was love in her eyes as she gazed back at the two old men. But who could read her eyes whenever they roved in Carmichael's direction? Not even Gretchen's grandmother, who lived in the Krumerweg.

"Gentlemen," said the duke, rising and holding up his glass, "this night I give you a toast which I believe will be agreeable to all of you, especially to his excellency, Baron von Steinbock of Jugendheit. What is past is past; a new regime begins this night." He paused. All eyes were focused upon him in wonder. Only Baron von Steinbock displayed no more than ordinary interest. "I give you," resumed the duke, "her serene highness and his majesty, Frederick of Jugendheit!"

The princess grew delicately pale as the men and women sprang to their feet. Every hand swept toward her, holding a glass. She had surrendered that morning. Not because she wished to be a queen, not because she cared to bring about an alliance between the two countries; no, it was because she was afraid and had burned the bridge behind her.

The tan thinned on Carmichael's face, but his hand was