The Red Axe Part 25

I was at the Prince's bridle ere he could dismount.

"You can ride, Captain Hugo Gottfried!" he said. "I think I will make you my orderly officer."

And so he went within, without a word more of praise or welcome.

There came past just at that moment an ancient councillor clad in a long robe of black velvet, with broad facings and rosettes of scarlet. He was carrying a roll of papers in his hand.

"What said the Prince to yon, young sir, if I may ask without offence?"

said he, looking at me with a curiously sly, upward glance out of the corner of his eye, as if he suspected me of a fixed intention to tell him a lie in any case.

"If it be any satisfaction to you to know," answered I, rather piqued at his tone, "the Prince informed me that I could ride, and that he intended to make me his orderly officer. And he called me not 'young sir,' but Captain Hugo Gottfried."

"How long has he known you?" said the Chief Councillor of State. For so by his habit I knew him to be.

"Half an hour, or thereby," answered I.

"G.o.d help this kingdom!" cried the old man, tripping off, flirting his hand hopelessly in the air--"if he had known you only ten minutes you would have been either Prime-Minister or Commander-in-Chief of the army."

It was in this strange fashion that I entered the army of the Prince of Pla.s.senburg, a service which I shall ever look back upon with grat.i.tude, and count as having brought me all the honors and most of the pleasures of my life.

Half an hour or so afterwards the blowing of trumpets and the thunder of the new leathern cannon announced that the Princess and her train were entering the palace. The Prince came down to greet them on the threshold in a new and magnificent dress.

"The Prince's officer-in-waiting to attend upon his Highness!" cried a herald in fine raiment of blue and yellow.

I looked about for the man who was to be my superior in my new office--that is, if Prince Karl should prove to have spoken in earnest.

"The Prince's orderly to attend upon him!" again proclaimed the herald, more impatiently.'

I saw every eye turn upon me, and I began to feel a gentle heat come over me. Presently I was blushing furiously. For I was still in my riding-clothes, and even they had not been changed after the adventure of the Brick-dust Town. So that they were in no wise fitting to attend upon a mighty dignitary.

The Prince of Pla.s.senburg looked round.

"Ha!" he said; "this is not well--I had forgotten. My orderly ought to have been duly arrayed by this time."

"Pardon, my Prince," said I, "but all the apparel I have is upon my sumpter horse, which comes in the train of the Princess."

My master looked right and left in his quickly imperious and yet humorous manner.

"Here, Count von Reuss," he said to a tall, handsome, heavily jowled young man, "I pray you strip off thy fine coat for an hour, and lend it to my new officer-in-waiting. The ladies will admire thee more than ever in thy fine flowered waistcoat, with silk sleeves and frilled purfles of lace!"

The young man, Von Reuss, looked as if he desired much to tell the Prince to go and be hanged. But there was something in the bearing of Karl of Pla.s.senburg, usurper as they called him, the like of which for command I have never seen in the countenance and manner of any lawfully begotten prince in the world.

So, beckoning me into an antechamber, and swearing evilly under his breath all the time, the young man stripped off his fine coat, and offered it to me with one hand, without so much as looking at me. He gave it indeed churlishly, as one might give a dole to a loathsome beggar to be rid of his importunity.

"I thank you, sir," said I, "but more for your obedience to the Prince than for the fashion of your courtesy to me."

Yet for all that he answered me never a syllable, but turned his head and played with his mustache till his man-servant brought him another coat.

CHAPTER XXVII

ANOTHER MAN'S COAT

I followed the Prince without another word, and when he received the Princess I had the happiness of taking the Little Playmate by the hand and conducting her as gallantly as I could into the palace. And I was glad, for it helped to allay a kind of reproachful feeling in my heart, which would keep tugging and gnawing there whenever I was not thinking of anything else. I feared lest, in the throng and press of new experiences, I might a little have neglected or been in danger of forgetting the love of the many years and all the sweetness of our solitary companionship.

Nevertheless, I knew well that I loved those sweetest eyes of hers more than all the words of men and women and priests.

And even as I helped her to dismount, I went over and told her so.

It was just when I held her in my arms for a moment as she dismounted.

She clung to me, and methought I heard a little sob.

"Do not ever be unkind, Hugo," she said. "I am very lonely. I wish, with all my heart, I were back again in the old Red Tower."

"Unkind--never while I live, little one," I whispered in her ear. "Cheer your heart, and to-morrow your sorrows will wear off, and you and I both shall find friendship in the strange land."

"I hate the Princess! And I shall never like her as long as I live!" she said, with that certain concentrated dislike which only good women feel towards those a degree less innocent, specially when the latter are well to look upon.

There was no time to reply immediately as I conducted her up the steps.

For I had to keep my eyes open to observe how the Prince conducted himself, and in the easy ceremonial of Pla.s.senburg it chanced that I happened upon nothing extravagant.

"But, Helene, you said a while ago that you hated _me_!" I said, after a little pause, smiling down at her.

"Did I?" she answered. "Surely nay!"

"Ah, but 'tis true as your eyes," I persisted. "Do you not remember when I had cut the calf's head off with the axe? You did not love the thought of the Red Tower so much then!"

"Oh, _that_!" she said, as if the discrepancy had been fully explained by the inflexion of her voice upon the word.

But she pressed my hand, so I cared not a jot for logic.

"You do not love her, you are sure?" she said, looking up at me when we came to the darker turn of the stairs, for the corkscrews were narrower in the ancient castle than in the new palace below.

"Not a bit!" said I, heartily, without any more pretence that I did not understand what she meant.

She pressed my hand again, momentarily slipping her own down off my arm to do it.

"It is not that I love you, Hugo, or that I want you to love me," she said, like one who explains that which is plain already, "except, of course, as your Little Playmate. But I could not bear that you should care about that--that woman."

It was evident that there were to be stirring times in the Castle of Pla.s.senburg, and that I, Hugo Gottfried, was to have my share of them.

As soon as we had arrived at the banqueting-hall, the Prince beckoned me and presented me formally to the Lady Ysolinde.

"Your Highness, this is Captain Hugo Gottfried, my new officer-in-waiting."