PRINCE OTTO - A ROMANCE
TO NELLY VAN DE GRIFT
(MRS. ADULFO SANCHEZ, OF MONTEREY)
AT last, after so many years, I have the pleasure of re-introducing
you to 'Prince Otto,' whom you will remember a very little fellow,
no bigger in fact than a few sheets of memoranda written for me by
your kind hand. The sight of his name will carry you back to an old
wooden house embowered in creepers; a house that was far gone in the
respectable stages of antiquity and seemed indissoluble from the
green garden in which it stood, and that yet was a sea-traveller in
its younger days, and had come round the Horn piecemeal in the belly
of a ship, and might have heard the seamen stamping and shouting and
the note of the boatswain's whistle. It will recall to you the
nondescript inhabitants now so widely scattered:- the two horses,
the dog, and the four cats, some of them still looking in your face
as you read these lines; - the poor lady, so unfortunately married
to an author; - the China boy, by this time, perhaps, baiting his
line by the banks of a river in the Flowery Land; - and in
particular the Scot who was then sick apparently unto death, and
whom you did so much to cheer and keep in good behaviour.
You may remember that he was full of ambitions and designs: so soon
as he had his health again completely, you may remember the fortune
he was to earn, the journeys he was to go upon, the delights he was
to enjoy and confer, and (among other matters) the masterpiece he
was to make of 'Prince Otto'!
Well, we will not give in that we are finally beaten. We read
together in those days the story of Braddock, and how, as he was
carried dying from the scene of his defeat, he promised himself to
do better another time: a story that will always touch a brave
heart, and a dying speech worthy of a more fortunate commander. I
try to be of Braddock's mind. I still mean to get my health again;
I still purpose, by hook or crook, this book or the next, to launch
a masterpiece; and I still intend - somehow, some time or other - to
see your face and to hold your hand.
Meanwhile, this little paper traveller goes forth instead, crosses
the great seas and the long plains and the dark mountains, and comes
at last to your door in Monterey, charged with tender greetings.
Pray you, take him in. He comes from a house where (even as in your
own) there are gathered together some of the waifs of our company at
Oakland: a house - for all its outlandish Gaelic name and distant
station - where you are well-beloved.
R. L. S.
Skerryvore,
Bournemouth.
BOOK I - PRINCE ERRANT
CHAPTER I - IN WHICH THE PRINCE DEPARTS ON AN ADVENTURE
You shall seek in vain upon the map of Europe for the bygone state
of Grunewald. An independent principality, an infinitesimal member
of the German Empire, she played, for several centuries, her part in
the discord of Europe; and, at last, in the ripeness of time and at
the spiriting of several bald diplomatists, vanished like a morning
ghost. Less fortunate than Poland, she left not a regret behind
her; and the very memory of her boundaries has faded.
It was a patch of hilly country covered with thick wood. Many
streams took their beginning in the glens of Grunewald, turning
mills for the inhabitants. There was one town, Mittwalden, and many
brown, wooden hamlets, climbing roof above roof, along the steep
bottom of dells, and communicating by covered bridges over the
larger of the torrents. The hum of watermills, the splash of
running water, the clean odour of pine sawdust, the sound and smell
of the pleasant wind among the innumerable army of the mountain
pines, the dropping fire of huntsmen, the dull stroke of the wood-
axe, intolerable roads, fresh trout for supper in the clean bare
chamber of an inn, and the song of birds and the music of the
village-bells - these were the recollections of the Grunewald
tourist.
North and east the foothills of Grunewald sank with varying profile
into a vast plain. On these sides many small states bordered with
the principality, Gerolstein, an extinct grand duchy, among the
number. On the south it marched with the comparatively powerful
kingdom of Seaboard Bohemia, celebrated for its flowers and mountain
bears, and inhabited by a people of singular simplicity and
tenderness of heart. Several intermarriages had, in the course of
centuries, united the crowned families of Grunewald and Maritime
Bohemia; and the last Prince of Grunewald, whose history I purpose
to relate, drew his descent through Perdita, the only daughter of
King Florizel the First of Bohemia. That these intermarriages had
in some degree mitigated the rough, manly stock of the first
Grunewalds, was an opinion widely held within the borders of the
principality. The charcoal burner, the mountain sawyer, the wielder
of the broad axe among the congregated pines of Grunewald, proud of
their hard hands, proud of their shrewd ignorance and almost savage
lore, looked with an unfeigned contempt on the soft character and
manners of the sovereign race.
The precise year of grace in which this tale begins shall be left to
the conjecture of the reader. But for the season of the year
(which, in such a story, is the more important of the two) it was
already so far forward in the spring, that when mountain people
heard horns echoing all day about the north-west corner of the
principality, they told themselves that Prince Otto and his hunt
were up and out for the last time till the return of autumn.
At this point the borders of Grunewald descend somewhat steeply,
here and there breaking into crags; and this shaggy and trackless
country stands in a bold contrast to the cultivated plain below. It
was traversed at that period by two roads alone; one, the imperial
highway, bound to Brandenau in Gerolstein, descended the slope
obliquely and by the easiest gradients. The other ran like a fillet
across the very forehead of the hills, dipping into savage gorges,
and wetted by the spray of tiny waterfalls. Once it passed beside a
certain tower or castle, built sheer upon the margin of a formidable
cliff, and commanding a vast prospect of the skirts of Grunewald and
the busy plains of Gerolstein. The Felsenburg (so this tower was
called) served now as a prison, now as a hunting-seat; and for all
it stood so lonesome to the naked eye, with the aid of a good glass
the burghers of Brandenau could count its windows from the lime-tree
terrace where they walked at night.
In the wedge of forest hillside enclosed between the roads, the
horns continued all day long to scatter tumult; and at length, as
the sun began to draw near to the horizon of the plain, a rousing
triumph announced the slaughter of the quarry. The first and second
huntsman had drawn somewhat aside, and from the summit of a knoll
gazed down before them on the drooping shoulders of the hill and
across the expanse of plain. They covered their eyes, for the sun
was in their faces. The glory of its going down was somewhat pale.
Through the confused tracery of many thousands of naked poplars, the
smoke of so many houses, and the evening steam ascending from the
fields, the sails of a windmill on a gentle eminence moved very
conspicuously, like a donkey's ears. And hard by, like an open
gash, the imperial high-road ran straight sun-ward, an artery of
travel.
There is one of nature's spiritual ditties, that has not yet been
set to words or human music: 'The Invitation to the Road'; an air
continually sounding in the ears of gipsies, and to whose
inspiration our nomadic fathers journeyed all their days. The hour,
the season, and the scene, all were in delicate accordance. The air
was full of birds of passage, steering westward and northward over
Grunewald, an army of specks to the up-looking eye. And below, the
great practicable road was bound for the same quarter.
But to the two horsemen on the knoll this spiritual ditty was
unheard. They were, indeed, in some concern of mind, scanning every
fold of the subjacent forest, and betraying both anger and dismay in
their impatient gestures.
'I do not see him, Kuno,' said the first huntsman, 'nowhere - not a
trace, not a hair of the mare's tail! No, sir, he's off; broke
cover and got away. Why, for twopence I would hunt him with the
dogs!'
'Mayhap, he's gone home,' said Kuno, but without conviction.
'Home!' sneered the other. 'I give him twelve days to get home.
No, it's begun again; it's as it was three years ago, before he
married; a disgrace! Hereditary prince, hereditary fool! There
goes the government over the borders on a grey mare. What's that?
No, nothing - no, I tell you, on my word, I set more store by a good
gelding or an English dog. That for your Otto!'
'He's not my Otto,' growled Kuno.
'Then I don't know whose he is,' was the retort.
'You would put your hand in the fire for him to-morrow,' said Kuno,
facing round.
'Me!' cried the huntsman. 'I would see him hanged! I'm a Grunewald
patriot - enrolled, and have my medal, too; and I would help a
prince! I'm for liberty and Gondremark.'
'Well, it's all one,' said Kuno. 'If anybody said what you said,
you would have his blood, and you know it.'
'You have him on the brain,' retorted his companion. 'There he
goes!' he cried, the next moment.
And sure enough, about a mile down the mountain, a rider on a white
horse was seen to flit rapidly across a heathy open and vanish among
the trees on the farther side.
'In ten minutes he'll be over the border into Gerolstein,' said
Kuno. 'It's past cure.'
'Well, if he founders that mare, I'll never forgive him,' added the
other, gathering his reins.
And as they turned down from the knoll to rejoin their comrades, the
sun dipped and disappeared, and the woods fell instantly into the
gravity and greyness of the early night.
