The Professional Prince/Chapter 14
CHAPTER XIV.
Before she and the Princess Frieda had finished breakfast next morning, the Countess Fersen made up her mind for good and all to inform no one whatever of the supposititious prince. She was too grateful to the real prince for the pleasing change that his entrance on the scene had made in her charge. The princess came to breakfast her old light-hearted self. The listlessness with which she had been wont to face the prospect of hours of John Stuart and the greatest crisis in the history of England had wholly vanished.
The prince devoted himself to the business of love with uncommon ardor. He spent all his days and most of his evenings with the Princess Frieda; and he spared no effort to make those evenings delightful. He believed that he could compass that end by spending as many hours as possible alone with her; and she did nothing to hinder him from doing so.
At three o'clock one afternoon, they were to motor together. At a quarter to three, a happy thought came to him, and he came down the steps of the palace to the car wearing an air of uncommon content.
The princess, the prince, the Countess Fersen, and Sir Horace took their seats in the tonneau; and in it they remained till they got out of London on the Birmingham road beyond Kilburn. Then the prince stopped the car.
“I'm going to drive,” he said. “Would you like to sit in the front seat, princess?”
“Oh, yes!” cried the princess eagerly.
He had helped her out of the tonneau and into the front seat before the countess could form a polite protest.
The prince started the car, and said to the princess in a tone of quiet satisfaction:
“I don't think it's worth while being in a car unless you're in the front seat.”
“It isn't,” the princess agreed with conviction.
“We do think alike about things, don't we?” he said, smiling at her.
The prince drove carefully indeed. It had rarely fallen to his lot to drive a car containing so precious a burden. Besides, he could not have talked to the princess so freely had he been driving fifty miles an hour, and he wished to talk to the princess. But as they came out of Watford, he asked her if she would like to go fast; and when she said that she would, he drove the six miles to King's Langley in seven minutes. As he slowed down at the beginning of the High Street, she laughed with a thrilled delight.
“I never went as fast as that before,” she said in a hushed voice. “It's a delightful sensation.”
“You don't find enough straight, clear road as near London as this to get much of it,” he said regretfully.
In the middle of the High Street, he turned off to the left, up the hill, on to the plateau. He drove slowly along the winding lanes, allowing her to enjoy fully the quiet beauty of the meadows and woods. He made a circuit round Chipperfield Common, and then took the road to Boxmoor. Half a mile beyond Flaunden, he stopped the car at the foot of a little hill crowned with a pine wood. As he had observed on an earlier drive, a steep, very rough wooded footpath led up to the top of the hill.
“There must be a beautiful view from the top of that hill,” he said. “What do you say to exploring it?”
“I should like it,” she said eagerly.
He turned and told the countess what they purposed doing. She looked at the eager face of the princess; then, with a rueful sigh, she rose and stepped out of the car, prepared for martyrdom.
She did not realize, as the prince had realized, how quickly he and the princess would be out of sight of her slowly climbing self and Sir Horace. But she perceived at once the futility of trying to overtake them.
They went slowly. Steep as the hill was, the prince went up the greater part of it sideways, giving far more attention to the face of the princess than to the difficulties of the way. The air seemed to quiver with the dull hum of a million insects. Two or three birds were singing. They seemed to be alone, far from the world, for the countess and Sir Horace climbed and perspired in silence.
The last twenty feet of the path were steeper than ever, and set with sharp, jagged flints. The prince and the princess paused before it, surveying it.
He looked down at her little feet, and said in the most matter-of-fact tone:
“These flints will cut your thin shoes to pieces and your feet, too. I'd better carry you.”
Thereupon, he picked her up.
“Oh!” gasped the princess. But she lay quiet in his arms.
He carried her up to the top of the hill slowly, very careful not to slip. When he set her on her feet at the top, she was flushed and breathing quickly.
“But you are strong!” she murmured.
“No. I couldn't have carried any one else up that bit,” he protested. “But you—you diffuse a magnetic inspiration.”
She laughed softly.
“But you are strong—very strong,” she repeated.
He, too, was breathing quickly, and they stood looking at each other. Her eyes fell before his. He made half a step forward and stepped back.
“And now for the view,” he said in a somewhat uncertain voice, and turned to the right.
They moved slowly between the bare trunks of the pines. She saw two squirrels playing in the tops of one of them, and they stopped to watch them. Then they went on, and came to the edge of the wood on the very crest of the hill, and looked over a wide stretch of country set with meadows and cornfields and woods. Away to the left gleamed the silver expanse of a pool, and from it ran a winding stream—a shining silver ribbon among the green.
“Oh, but it is beautiful!” she murmured in a hushed voice, gazing over it with wide eyes and parted lips.
He let her gaze her fill, and then said:
“You had better rest after your climb.”
She sat down, set her elbows on her knees, rested her face on her hands, and let her eyes again wander over the scene. Presently she murmured:
“There is nothing so beautiful in the North. There is more grandeur and—and majesty, but it is not so beautiful. This touches the heart.”
“I know,” said the prince.
She turned and looked at him with grave eyes. Then she said:
“I never dreamed that you could be so sympathetic.”
“But the moment I saw you I knew that you were the most sympathetic creature in the world.”
“But I—I didn't think that you did see me. You looked like—what is it you call it?—a stock.”
“I looked like a stock,” he said slowly. “Well, you've certainly inspired the stock with life.”
“Highness! Highness!” cried the voice of Sir Horace in the wood.
“The world intrudes,” said the prince.
“It always intrudes,” she cried impatiently.
“It won't always. Shall we” He paused.
“Highness! Highness!” cried the voice of Sir Horace, nearer.
“No. It shan't always intrude,” the prince declared with conviction.
He slipped his arm around her and drew her to him. Her heart was beating fast, but not as fast as his own.
“You won't mind marrying me, Frieda darling, will you?” he asked wistfully.
“You know that—that I shall love it,” she whispered.
Their lips met in a long kiss, and he lifted her to his knee, crushing her to him.
“You're the darling of the world! The most beautiful, the most charming, the most delightful creature in it! And I shall never deserve you—never!” he cried, and kissed her again.