The Adventure of Princess Sylvia. Williamson Alice Muriel
lliamson
The Adventure of Princess Sylvia
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 Duchess. "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 Duchess 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 Duchess 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 Duchess 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 Duchess. "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 goddess. 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 Duchess, 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 Duchess. "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 circumstances 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 Duchess, who, on principle, had so often objected to Sylvia's unconventionalities that the attitude 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 entitled 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 Duchess. 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 Duchess, 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 title 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 asseverated. "I want love – love – or I won't marry at all."
"But that is nonsense," gravely pronounced 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.