A Dash for a Throne. Arthur W. Marchmont
"I WAS THINKING—COUSIN."
THE HORSE HAD FALLEN ON HIM AND ROLLED OVER HIM.
CHAPTER I
MY DEATH
"To a man who has been dead nearly five years everything would be forgiven, probably—except his resurrection."
This half-cynical thought was suggested by the extraordinary change which a few hours of one memorable July day had wrought in my circumstances and position.
As the thought occurred to me I was standing in the library of Gramberg Castle, my hands plunged deep in my pockets, deliberately dallying with my fate, as I watched the black dress of the Prince's beautiful daughter moving slowly among the gayly colored flower-beds in the warm sunshine, like a soothing shadow in the brilliant glare.
I was face to face with a temptation which I found infinitely alluring and immeasurably difficult to resist.
For five years I had been enduring an existence of monotonous emptiness, that depressed me till my heart ached and my spirit wearied; and now a chance of change had been thrust upon me, all against my seeking, at which my pulses were beating high with the bound of hope, my blood running once again with the old quick tingling of excitement, and, through the reopened portals of a life akin to that from which I had been thrust, desire, ambition, pleasure, hazard, were all beckoning to me with fascinating invitation.
I turned from the window and threw myself into a deep easy-chair to think.
Five years before I had passed in a moment from a position of Royal favor, with limitless ambition and opportunities, to one where death was avowedly the only alternate.
And no one had recognized this more readily than I myself.
I am half English by birth. My mother was an English woman, and went to the Prussian Court in the small suite of the bride whom "Unser Fritz" carried from England. My father rose very high in Royal favor, and, as a consequence, I was thrown early in life in the company of the young Princes. We grew up close and intimate companions; and when I chose the navy for my profession every facility was employed to insure my advancement. I had been about five years in the navy, and was already a flag-lieutenant, when the smash came. Happily my father and mother were both dead then.
We were not puritans in those days, and there were some wild times. The last of these in which I took a part finished up on the Imperial yacht; and a wild enough time it was.
I had drunk much more freely than the rest—there were only some half-dozen of us altogether—and then, being a quarrelsome, hot-headed fool, I took fire at some words that fell from the Prince, and I gave him the lie direct. Exactly what happened I don't clearly remember; but I know that he flung his wine right at my face, and I, forgetting entirely that he was at once my future Emperor and my commanding officer, clenched my fist and struck him a violent blow in the face which knocked him down. He hit his head in falling, and lay still as death. We thought at first he was dead. What followed can be imagined. I cannot describe it. It sobered the lot of us; and our relief when we found he was not dead, but only stunned, cannot be put in words.
HE FLUNG HIS WINE RIGHT AT MY FACE
He was lifted up and laid on the table, his face all ghastly gray-white, save where the mark of my blow on the cheek stood out red and livid—a sight I shall never forget.
When the doctor came we told him the Prince had had an ugly fall, and, as soon as he showed signs of coming round, I left and went off to my ship, in a condition of pitiable consternation and remorse.
I nearly shot myself that night. I took out my revolver twice and laid it between my teeth, and was only stopped by the consideration that, if I did it, my suicide would be connected with the affair, and some garbled account of the brawl and of what was behind it would leak out.
The next day old Count von Augener, who had been telegraphed for, came to my cabin. He hated me as he had hated my father, and I knew it.
The interview was brief enough, and he sounded the keynote in the sentence with which he opened it.
"You are still alive, lieutenant?" he said, bending on me a piercing look from under his shaggy, beetling brows.
"Say what you have to say, and be good enough to keep from taunts," I answered, and then told him the thought that alone had stopped me from shooting myself.
He listened in silence, and at the close nodded.
"You have enough wit when the wine's out, and you understand what you have done. Were you other than you are, you would be tried by court-martial and shot. But your act is worse than that of a mutineer—you are a coward"—I started to my feet—"because you have struck a man you know cannot demand satisfaction."
I sank again into my chair and covered my face in shame, for the taunt was true. But to have it thus flung at me ruthlessly was worse than a red-hot brand plunged into my flesh.
The old man stopped and looked at me, pleased that he had thus tortured me.
"There is but one course open to you. You know that?"
"I know it," I answered sullenly.
"Only one reparation you can make. Your death can appear to be either accidental or natural—anyhow, provided that it is at once. You can have a week; after that, if you are alive, you will die an infamous death."
"I understand," I replied, rising as he rose. "Will you give my assurance to the Prince and the Emperor that … "
"I am no tale-bearer, sir," he answered sternly. "The one desire now is to forget that you ever lived." And flinging these harsh words at me, he left me humiliated, ashamed, angry, and impotently remorseful.
Not another word should pass my lips. How should I die? It was not so easy as it seemed. A fatal accident to appear genuine called for clever