The Lady in the Car. Le Queux William
I might, Charles. One never knows.” And he took a “Petroff” from the big silver box, and lit it with care. “I am very lonely, you know.”
Charles’s lips relaxed into a smile, but he made no remark. He was well aware how confirmed was his master’s bachelordom. He often admired pretty girls, just as much as they adored him – because he was a prince – but his admiration was tinged with the acidity of sarcasm.
When Charles had gone, his Highness flung off his motor-coat and threw himself into a big chair to think. With a smart rat-a-plan, an infantry regiment of les braves Belges was crossing the Place to relieve the guard at the Palace. He rose and gazed across the square:
“Ah!” he laughed to himself, “my dear uncle, the Red Rubber King, is closely guarded, it seems! I suppose I ought to call upon him. He’s at home, judging from the royal standard. Whew! What a bore it is to have been born a prince! If I’d been a policeman or a pork-butcher I daresay I’d have had a much better time. The world never guesses how badly we fellows are handicapped. Men like myself cannot cross the road without some scoundrelly journalist working up a ‘royal scandal’ or a political complication.”
Then his thoughts ran off into another direction – the direction in which they had constantly flowed during the past week – towards a certain very charming, sweet-faced girl, scarcely out of her teens, who was staying with her father and mother at the Grand Hotel, down on the boulevard.
The Northovers were English – decidedly English. They were of that insular type who, in a Continental hotel, demand bacon and eggs for breakfast, denounce every dish as a “foreign mess,” and sigh for the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding of middle-class suburbia. James Northover, Charles had discovered to be a very estimable and trusted person, manager of the Stamford branch of the London and North Western Bank, who was now tasting the delights of Continental travel by three weeks’ vacation in Belgium. His wife was somewhat obese and rather strong-minded, while little Nellie was decidedly pretty, her light brown hair dressed low and secured by a big black velvet bow, a pair of grey, rather mischievous eyes, sweetly dimpled cheeks, and a perfect complexion. Not yet nineteen, she had only left the High School a year before, and was now being afforded an opportunity of inflicting her school-girl French upon all and sundry with whom she came into contact.
And it was French – French with those pronounced “ong” and “onny” endings for which the tourist-agents are so terribly responsible.
But with all her linguistical shortcomings little Nelly Northover, the slim-waisted school-miss with the tiny wisp of unruly hair straying across her brow, and the rather smart and intelligent chatter, had attracted him. Indeed, he could not get the thought of her out of his head.
They had met at a little inn at the village of Anseremme, on the Meuse, close to Dinant – that paradise of the cheap “hotel-included” tourist. Something had gone wrong with the clutch of his car, and he had been held up there for two days while an engineer had come out from Brussels to repair the damage. Being the only other guest in the place beside the eminently respectable bank manager and his wife and daughter, he lost no time in ingratiating himself with them, and more especially with the last-named.
Though he spoke English perfectly and with but the very slightest accent, he had given his name at the inn as Herr Birkenfeld, for was not that one of his names? He was Count of Birkenfeld, and seigneur of a dozen other places, in addition to being Prince of the royal house of Hesse-Holstein. The bank manager and his wife, of course, believed him to be a young German gentleman of means until, on the morning of the day of his departure, Charles, in greatest confidence, revealed to them who his master really was.
The English trio were utterly staggered. To Nellie, there was an element of romance at meeting a real prince in those rural solitudes of river and forest. As she declared to her mother, he was so nice and so unassuming. Just, indeed, like any ordinary man.
And in her young mind she compared Albert Prince of Hesse-Holstein with the provincial young gentlemen whom she had met last season at the popular county function, the Stamford Ball.
As constantly Nellie Northover’s thoughts reverted to the affable prince, so did his Highness, on his part, sit hour upon hour smoking his pet Russian cigarettes in quick succession, pondering and wondering.
His position was one of terrible weariness. Ah! how often he wished that he had not been born a prince. As an ordinary mortal he might have dared to aspire to the hand of the sweet young English miss. But as Prince Albert of Hesse-Holstein, such a marriage would be denounced by press and public as a misalliance.
He liked James Northover. There was something of the John Bull about him which he admired. A keen, hard-headed business man, tall and bald, who spoke with a Nottingham brogue, and who had been over thirty years in the service of the bank, he was a highly trusted servant of his directors. In allowing overdrafts he seldom made mistakes, while his courtesy had brought the bank a considerably increased business.
The Prince knew all that. A couple of days after meeting Nellie in Anseremme he had written to a certain Reverend Thomas Clayton, who lived in Bayswater, and had only that morning received a long letter bearing the Stamford postmark.
It was on account of this letter that he went out after luncheon in the car along the Rue Royale, and down the Boulevard Botanique, to the Grand Hotel on the Boulevard d’Anspach.
He found Nellie alone in the big salon, reading an English paper. On seeing him the girl flushed slightly and jumped to her feet, surprised that he should call unexpectedly.
“Miss Northover!” he exclaimed, raising his motor-cap, “I’ve called to take you all for a little run this afternoon – if you can come. I have the car outside.”
“I’m sure it’s awfully kind of you, Prince,” the girl replied with some confusion. “I – well, I don’t know what to say. Father and mother are out.”
“Ah!” he laughed; “and of course you cannot come with me alone. It is against your English ideas of les convenances– eh?”
She laughed in chorus, afterwards saying:
“I expect them back in half an hour.”
“Oh, then, I’ll wait,” he exclaimed, and taking off his motor-coat, he seated himself in a chair and began to chat with her, asking what sights of Brussels she had seen, at the same time being filled with admiration at her fresh sweetness and chic. They were alone in the room, and he found an indescribable charm in her almost childlike face and girlish chatter. She was so unlike the artificial women of cosmopolitan society who were his friends.
Yes. He was deeply in love with her, and by her manner towards him he could not fail to notice that his affection was reciprocated.
Presently her parents appeared. They had noticed the big cream-coloured car with the chauffeur standing outside, and at once a flutter had run through both their hearts, knowing that the august visitor had arrived to call upon them.
Northover was full of apologies, but the Prince cut them short, and within a quarter of an hour they were all in the car and on the road to that goal of every British tourist, the battlefield of Waterloo. The autumn afternoon was perfect. The leaves had scarcely begun to turn, and the sun so hot that it might still have been August.
Nellie’s father was just as proud of the Prince’s acquaintance as she was herself, while Mrs Northover was filled with pleasurable anticipations of going back to quiet, old-world Stamford – a place where nothing ever happens – and referring, in the hearing of her own tea-drinking circle, to “my friend Prince Albert.”
A week passed. Mr and Mrs Northover could not fail to notice how constantly the Prince was in Nellie’s society.
Only once, however, did her father mention it to his wife, and then in confidence.
“Nellie seems much struck by the Prince, don’t you think? And I’m sure he admires her. He’s such a good fellow. I like him. I suppose it’s a mere harmless flirtation – and it amuses them both.”
“Fancy, if she became Princess of Hesse-Holstein, James!”
But