The Pirate's Den
Miss Braithwaite was asleep on the couch in her sitting-room, deeply asleep, so that when Prince Ferdinand William Otto changed the cold cloth on her head, she did not even move. The Countess Loschek had brought her some medicine.
"It cured her very quickly," said the Crown Prince, shuffling the cards with clumsy fingers. He and Nikky were playing a game in which matches represented money. The Crown Prince had won nearly all of them and was quite pink with excitement. "It's my deal, it? When she goes to sleep like that, she nearly always wakens up much better. She's very sound asleep."
Nikky played absently, and lost the game. The Crown Prince triumphantly scooped up the rest of the matches. "We've had rather a nice day," he observed, "even if we didn't go out. Shall we divide them again, and start all over?"
Nikky, however, proclaimed himself hopelessly beaten and a bad loser. So the Crown Prince put away the cards, which belonged to Miss Braithwaite, and with which she played solitaire in the evenings. Then he lounged to the window, his hands in his pockets. There was something on his mind which the Chancellor's reference to Hedwig's picture had recalled. Something he wished to say to Nikky, without looking at him.
So he clearer throat, and looked out the window, and said, very casually: "Hilda says that Hedwig is going to get married."
"So I hear, Highness."
"She doesn't seem to be very happy about it. She's crying, most of the time."
It was Nikky's turn to clear his throat. "Marriage is a serious matter," he said. "It is not to be gone into lightly."
"Once, when I asked you about marriage, you said marriage was when two people loved each other, and wanted to be together the rest of their lives."
"Well," hedged Nikky, "that is the idea, rather."
"I should think," said Prince Ferdinand William Otto, slightly red, "that you would marry her yourself."
Nikky, being beyond speech for an instant and looking, had His Royal Highness but seen him, very tragic and somewhat rigid, the Crown Prince went on:
"She's a very nice girl," he said; "I think she would make a good wife."
There was something of reproach in his tone. He had confidently planned that Nikky would marry Hedwig, and that they could all live on forever in the Palace. But, the way things were going, Nikky might marry anybody, and go away to live, and he would lose him.
"Yes," said Nikky, in a strange voice, "she - I am sure she would make a good wife."
At which Prince Ferdinand William Otto turned and looked at him. "I wish you would marry her yourself," he said with his nearest approach to impatience. "I think she'd be willing. I'll ask her, if you want me to."
Half-past three, then, and Nikky trying to explain, within the limits of the boy's understanding of life, his position. Members of royal families, he said, looking far away, over the child's head, had to do many things for the good of the country. And marrying was one of them. Something of old Mettlich's creed of prosperity for the land he gave, something of his own hopelessness, too, without knowing it. He sat, bent forward, his hands swung between his knees, and tried to visualize, for Otto's understanding and his own heartache, the results of such a marriage.
Some of it the boy grasped. A navy, ships, a railroad to the sea - those he could understand. Treaties were beyond his comprehension. And, with a child's singleness of idea, he returned to the marriage.
"I'm sure she doesn't care about it," he said at last. "If I were King I would not let her do it. And" - he sat very erect and swung his short legs - "when I grow up, I shall fight for a navy, if I want one, and I shall marry whoever I like."
At a quarter to four Olga Loschek was announced. She made the curtsy inside the door that Palace ceremonial demanded and inquired for the governess. Prince Ferdinand William Otto, who had risen at her entrance, offered to see if she still slept, "I think you are a very good doctor," he said, smiling, and went out to Miss Braithwaite's sitting room.
It was then that Olga Loschek played the last card, and won. She moved quickly to Nikky's side.
"I have a message for you," she said.
A light leaped into Nikky's eyes. "For me?" "Do you know where my boudoir is?"
"I - yes, Countess."
"If you will go there at once and wait, some one will see you there as soon as possible." She put her hand on his arm. "Don't be foolish and proud," she said. "She is sorry about last night, and she is very unhappy."
The light faded out of Nikky's eyes. She was unhappy and he could do nothing. They had a way, in the Palace, of binding one's hands and leaving one helpless. He could not even go to her.
"I cannot go, Countess," he said. "She must understand. To-day, of all days - "
"You mean that you cannot leave the Crown Prince?" She shrugged her shoulders. "You, too! Never have I seen so many faint hearts, such rolling eyes, such shaking knees! And for what! Because a few timid souls see a danger that does not exist."
"I think it does exist," said Nikky obstinately.
"I am to take the word to her, then, that you will not come?" "That I cannot."
"You are a very foolish boy," said the Countess, watching him. "And since you are so fearful, I myself will remain here. There are sentries at the doors, and a double guard everywhere. What, in the name of all that is absurd, can possibly happen?"
That was when she won. For Nikky, who has never been, in all this history, anything of a hero, and all of the romantic and loving boy, - Nikky wavered and fell.
When Prince Ferdinand William Otto returned, it was with the word that Miss Braithwaite still slept, and that she looked very comfortable, Nikky was gone, and the Countess stood by a window, holding to the sill to support her shaking body.
It was done. The boy was in her hands. There was left only to deliver him to those who, even now, were on the way. Nikky was safe. He would wait in her boudoir, and Hedwig would not come. She had sent no message. She was, indeed, at that moment a part of one of those melancholy family groups