The Professional Prince/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI.
On the morning after the arrival of the Princess Frieda, the prince sat in his smoking room reading the “Poems and Songs” of Richard Middleton.
He showed no pleasure when Henry Cleveland announced Sir Horace Cheatle. He laid aside the book with a frown, and bade the footman show him in in a tone of some impatience. But when Sir Horace waddled fussily into the room, he greeted him with sufficient amiability.
“I hear that oaf made a bloomer yesterday?” he began gloomily. He still resented John Stuart's close, unintelligent, convenient resemblance to himself.
“I'm afraid he did—in a moment of absent-mindedness,” Sir Horace admitted in a tone of discomfort.
“Now what has that fathead got to be absent-minded about?”
“The political situation. He's very much absorbed in it,” Sir Horace explained almost complacently.
“What on earth has it got to do with him? He's not paid four hundred a year for being a member of Parliament.”
“He is—er—er—so public-spirited.”
The prince appeared to be ruminating gloomily. Presently Sir Horace said:
“I've come for instructions, highness.”
“Oh, let the oaf go ahead,” said the prince carelessly,
“Yes, highness. But the love speeches, highness? You said you'd write some out for him to learn by heart.”
“Oh, you do that.”
“Me?” Sir Horace asked blankly.
“Yes. With your experience of women, it will be much easier for you than for me.”
“My experience of women?” cried Sir Horace.
“Yes. It must be immense. I've noticed that you turn every woman you come near, including my aunt, round your little finger.”
Sir Horace could hardly believe his ears. He blushed deeply.
“B-b-but I haven't Only Lady Cheatle—and—a g-g-girl at B-B-Bexhill-on-Sea—b-b-before I married,” he stammered.
“Then it must be an intuitional genius,” said the prince calmly. “I leave the matter in your hands with perfect confidence.”
Sir Horace's brain whirled; this was, indeed, an extraordinary, choice compliment. The prince's confidence in him was reassuring, stimulating. In seventy-five seconds, he felt that he had it in him to manage an affair of the heart with supreme skill. He protested no more.
The prince gazed gloomily out of the window. Presently he said:
“By the way, that scar on the face of Princess Frieda—I'm told that it's hardly noticeable when she wears a veil.”
“It is hardly noticeable,” said Sir Horace.
The prince rose and rang the bell. When Henry Cleveland came, he bade him bring the photograph of the Princess Frieda. Henry Cleveland was in charge of the prince's photographs. It had for many years been the custom of his stern aunt to give to the prince, on his birthday and on Christmas Day, a photograph of one of his relations, in an ornate silver frame. Whatever he may have thought of the faces, he was quite sure that the frames did not accord with the scheme of decoration of any of his rooms; therefore all the photographs were stored in a red lacquer Chinese wedding chest in the din- ing room. It was the business of Henry Cleveland, whenever the donor of them came to the house, to set the photographs about the dining room as soon as she was safely in the drawing-room. In this way, and thanks to the prince's having once observed to her that he liked to have his relations round him at mealtimes, she had come to believe that they always stood where she saw them on her visits.
Henry Cleveland soon returned with the photograph of the Princess Frieda. The prince took it to the window and studied it carefully.
“It's rather odd,” he observed to Sir Horace. “In this photograph, the scar is very distinct indeed. It seems—it seems to throw a shadow over the face.”
“It must be a mistake of the photographer's, highness,” said Sir Horace firmly.
The prince looked at the photograph yet more earnestly. Then he said thoughtfully:
“A very good forehead, and plenty of character in the face. What color are her eyes?”
“Green and brown, highness. Sometimes they're green, and sometimes they're brown.”
“Good,” approved the prince and paused, reflecting. “Well, provide that oaf with some love speeches, and let him go ahead. He may as well go on working up the proper preliminary aversion.”
“But, highness, suppose her royal highness falls in love with him?” Sir Horace suggested anxiously.
“She won't. I've just looked at her photograph,” said the prince with calm certainty. “And having seen her face, you ought to know it even better than I.”
Sir Horace went. The prince betook himself again to “Poems and Songs.” Presently, at the end of a poem, he sighed, looked out of the window with a melancholy air, and sighed again. Then he rose, took the portrait of the Princess Frieda from the table to the window, and gazed at it earnestly.
“A nice child,” he murmured in melancholy accents.
At noon that day, John Stuart, attended by Sir Horace Cheatle, went to pay his respects to the Princess Frieda. The prince's stern aunt had bidden him go, and she was no less surprised than delighted by the docility with which he obeyed.
John Stuart went with an easy mind, assured of his intellectual superiority to any woman and relying on the tact of Sir Horace to help him deal with the social side of the affair.
They found the princess in her drawing-room, seated at the window, looking out into the gardens with a somewhat disconsolate air. She greeted John Stuart with the royal polite smile, which she had acquired with very little practice, since she was of a smiling spirit; and he replied to it with a corpselike grin that, even on that hot morning, chilled her blood,
John Stuart, as was proper, opened the conversation. He said:
“I believe this is your first visit to England?”
“It is,” said the princess.
John Stuart considered for about fifteen seconds; he did not wish to speak idly. Then he continued:
“In many ways you have doubtless lost by not seeing our great country earlier. But, on the other hand, you will gain by bringing a maturer judgment to your first view of it.”
He paused, pleased with these weighty words. During the last three weeks, by frequent practice on the stern aunt of the prince, he had acquired considerable oratorical powers.
“Ah, yes,” the princess agreed vaguely.
“I'm inclined to envy you the great pleasures that lie before you,” he went on, warming to the theme. “To see for the first time our national museums, the scenes of our great historic events, the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul's Cathedral, Charing Cross, the Bank of England! Yes, really I could almost wish that I were seeing them for the first time myself.”
“I wish you were,” said the princess amiably, and again she smiled the royal smile. It seemed appropriate.
John Stuart felt even more pleased with himself, and his manner grew still more oratorical.
“But you must see the North. That is the true heart of England, the great industrial heart of England, that has made her what she is. Thousands on thousands of factories—counties, whole counties full of factories—pouring out cotton goods, iron goods, all kinds of machinery, to the farthest parts of the globe!”
“Ah, yes, I must see the North,” murmured the princess.
John Stuart paused, considering; he wished to be quite fair. Then he added:
“But we must not blind ourselves to the fact that, though the North is the industrial heart of England, and modern English politics come from Manchester, London is its political heart—the Houses of Parliament.”
“Ah, yes,” the princess repeated.
“You must see them at their best. I know of nothing more exhilarating, more thrilling, than a full-dress debate. It is my favorite form of recreation. I could do with one every afternoon—every night!”
“Is it better than a good play?” asked the princess in a somewhat awed tone.
“A play?” cried John Stuart scornfully. “How can the purely fictitious interest of a trivial drama compare with the interest of seeing the destinies of nations tremble in the balance? Why, at the moment, there is the greatest political crisis since James II.!”
He was there. As the constant needle ever turns to the pole, so his constant mind ever turned to the leader of the morning's Daily Wire. He took a fresh breath and began to pour it out.
The Princess Frieda listened with an air of dutiful attention, her eyes fixed patiently on his face. At these great moments, that face was not at its best. As the great thoughts of the leader writer streamed from his lips, John Stuart wore the somewhat pained, strained air of a stupid schoolboy reciting for the first time the first twenty lines of the masterpiece of the poet Gray. Later, when he had come to the end of the wit and wisdom of the leader writer and was pouring forth his own sage reflections on them, he wore an expression of proud self-satisfaction, somewhat repulsive.
The Princess Frieda had full time to absorb both these expressions—since the impressive information he was conveying came ponderously in at her right ear and rushed hurriedly out through her left—and to form from them a distressing impression of her suitor's charm. Before the eloquent hour was up, she was trying her best to persuade herself out of the conviction that he must be the most tedious bore in all the royal circles of Europe and the Near East.
The hour might easily have become two, for John Stuart's memory was an inexhaustible mine of that wit and wisdom, had not Sir Horace intervened. At the end of three-quarters of an hour, he found himself unable any longer to assimilate the mass of solid information that was being poured into him. He was ashamed of himself—he was growing dazed. Ten minutes later, by a violent effort, he roused himself from an apparently trancelike condition, and coughed sharply.
John Stuart finished a weighty, but somewhat involved sentence, and looked at him impatiently.
“Your highness' appointment,” Sir Horace reminded him.
John Stuart rose, frowning, tore himself from his political preoccupation, and took his leave.
When the door closed behind her well-informed suitor, the Princess Frieda sprang to her feet, clasped her hands, and cried:
“Sap-er-li-popette! Does he always talk like that? It was like being in the schoolroom again—with Fräulein Schumacher.”
Her lady in waiting, the Countess Fersen, gazed at her thoughtfully. Then she said:
“But it is incredible.”
“It is,” the princess agreed with conviction.
“I don't understand it at all,” said the countess, frowning. “I was told—we were all told—there's no point in keeping it from you now—that the prince was an incorrigible {{wg:flaneur|flâneur}}.”
“But how absurd!” cried the princess. “He is solid—quite solid—all through.”
“Well, it's much better than being married to an incorrigible flâneur,” protested the countess.
“Much,” the princess assented without enthusiasm.
The Countess Fersen's face of a sudden grew sympathetic.
“I'm afraid you're disappointed, dear.”
“He is not—not exciting,” the princess murmured.
“But you don't want an exciting husband. They are so dangerous.”
The princess looked at her somewhat curiously.
“But he might be a little exciting before we're married,” she said.
“Well, after all, solid affection is the important thing. It lasts,” the countess declared firmly.
“At any rate the solidity should,” said the princess, and she turned to the window with a somewhat disconsolate air.
Her eyes were dull and her lips drooped a little at the corners.
Mindful of the prince's injunction, Sir Horace came to the house in Half Moon Street at half past seven, to make his report on the first interview between John Stuart and the Princess Frieda, and found the prince dressing for dinner. Beaming with satisfaction, he told the prince of the excellent impression John Stuart must have made on the princess by his masterly exposition of the political crisis.
“Poor young thing!” exclaimed the prince in a tone of compassion. Then he added cheerfully: “He's piling up that aversion, all right.”