The chronicles of a great prince

Contents

Chapter p AGE

Introduction

I. Mr. Carfax Accepts a Tutorship .... 3

II. Mr. Carfax Makes Discoveries .... 16

III. Prophetic Days.27

IV. Tragedy and Ceremony.36

V. Widening Horizons.53

VI. The Deeds of Youth.65

VII. Raphael.73

VIII. The Adventure of the Brigands .... 82

IX. Maria Lais.92

X. Episodes.96

XI. The Guild of St. Augustine.104

XII. A Perilous Defence.125

XIII. The Duchess of Alquarto.145

XIV. Raphael’s Marriage.159

XV. Fire and Smoke.164

XVI. What Happened on an April Morning . 171

XVII. Disaster and Again Disaster.192

XVIII. The Diary of Queen Tessa.209

XX. 'A Bargain.234

XXI. The Return of Raphael.244

XXII. The Queen’s Diary Ends.253

XXIII. A Woman Acts.264

XIV. A Fatal Marriage.276

XXV. A Crisis.286

XXVI. The Revolution.299

XXVII. Max.322

XXVIII. To Save Her Crown!.334

DEDICATED TO

PEGGY

MICHAEL

JOHN

PATRICK

RACHEL

Dear Children :—

If you are not now,—some of you!—too old to be so addressed—Here at last is the Book promised you so many years ago, when you were all of you really children. That it is, in many respects, a different book to the collection of stories which were your Chronicles and that it stops half way through the history that so enthralled you, is the fault, first, of your grown years, because what was of supreme in¬ terest to you once is of secondary interest to some of you now, and secondly to the fact that the long-suffering public after all have a right to a say in the matter and could not be expected to cope with the mass of material from which these Chronicles have been drawn.

Still we hope you will find enough of what originally pleased you to take fresh pleasure in the printed page. We leave you in that hope. Accept 'The Chronicles’ with our love!

THE CHRONICLES OF A GREAT PRINCE

I

INTRODUCTION

ITOWEVER great a part Prince Paul d’Arenzano may have played in the drama of international politics at the beginning of the nineteenth century, very little effort has ever been made to study him apart from his work, or take into consideration the environment and education which produced so exceptional a man.

These Chronicles are an attempt to remedy that injustice by a judicial opening up of family records, letters and journals written by friends or contemporaries, and recon¬ structing from these as far as lies in our power, a living portrait of the Great Prince.

Since the editors are more concerned with presenting this portrait than with recording historical events, they have not scrupled at times to translate into narrative form the abundant if somewhat unwieldly mass of material they have collected, hoping by this means to humanize otherwise dreary matter and so to bring into sympathetic focus the lives, loves and fates of men, who having played their part well or ill, on the stage of life, have passed into the Unknown and left, it may be lesser men, to tread in their turn the boards they once filled with their presence and dominated with their personality.

INTRODUCTION

The part played by the English tutor, Henry Carfax, who controlled the most impressionable years of Prince d’Arenzano’s life is so important that we may be pardoned if we commence by discovering how he came to fill his post and with what sort of mind he did so. Matters which are easily traceable in letters and notes belonging to the Rushford and Carfax families.

The Chronicles of a Great Prince

Chapter I I

O UR earliest records of the d’Arenzano family, apart from family records themselves, are found in the letters and diaries of Henry Carfax, a young Englishman of ability and enterprise, who in the autumn of 1820 accepted the tutorship of the young counts of Arenzano, only, it appears after close perusal of his diaries, after long consideration and much persuasion.

A cousin of Prince d’Arenzano’s, Count Everard d’Aren¬ zano, then attached to the Romanzian Legation in London, was responsible for the finding of Henry Carfax, and posterity is indebted to him for that find, for there is no doubt that Carfax’s own character, even more than his real scholarship, was largely responsible for the building up of the character of Paul d’Arenzano, our Great Prince.

One gathers that Carfax’s reluctance to undertake the task was, in the first place, due to dislike of filling a subordinate position in the house of a foreign prince of however exalted a lineage. Orense itself, a small independent state with a distinct race, laws, customs of its own, was still linked in the mind of Europe, for all practical purposes, with Romanzia, that once powerful, but now (in 1820) degenerate country.

The second reason for Carfax’s reluctance seems to have been the very doubtful character which Count Everard gave his young relations. They were, by his account, confirmed tutor-breakers, having had five tutors in two years. Carfax evidently pictured them as arrogant young cubs, and probably vicious, though we gather the Count refused to tabulate either their virtues or their vices, only assuring Carfax that they had their share of intellect.

But the salary offered was princely; Carfax spoke Romanzian fairly well, owing to a Romanzian friend at Oxford, and \n the end Count Everard prevailed, and Carfax found himself towards the end of September, 1820, enroute for Orense.

II

Travelling in those days was no luxurious affair of trains de luxe and 'wagon-lits’. Europe was slowly coming to a state of equilibrium after her tempestuous years of war. Still, provided one had money, there was no special danger in travelling, whatever the discomforts might be, judged by modern standards.

Carfax found himself descending from his last stage at a small inn perched on the shoulder of a pine-clad hill.

In the rough paved court before the inn, some saddle horses were waiting, and on the wooden outside staircase, two white-clad figures were lounging. They watched with unmoved faces as the ponderous coach swung into the court¬ yard and the few passengers for Foresti, the little frontier village of Orense, descended.

As Carfax looked round him curiously, the two figures came forward.

“Mr. Carfax?” questioned the elder one.

Carfax bowed.

“We rode over to meet you. I am Paul d’Arenzano, and this is my brother, Raphael.”

Carfax had just sufficient assurance not to betray his amazement, for amazed he was. Nothing had prepared him for either the size or appearance of his pupils.

They stood gravely surveying each other, neither party betraying the least embarrassment at the mutual scrutiny.

On the one hand they saw the well set up figure of a man with a keen, resolute, if rugged face. He was in riding dress, for he knew the last part of his journey would be in the saddle. The younger of his two inspectors ran over the details of his dress with approval in his brown eyes; the elder boy met his glance with a certain calm interest, as one who measures swords with an adversary.

But Carfax saw something very different. The boys— for they were no more in years, being thirteen and fourteen respectively—were remarkably tall. They had the manners and assurance of full age and yet conveyed a sense of breed¬ ing that ill-fitted with Carfax’s mental images of two young barbarians. But it was their surprising good looks that over¬ threw his first judgment of them. Superficially they were alike, but Carfax was not a superficial observer and he discerned the difference almost as soon as he perceived the likeness. Both were tall, but Paul, the elder, was more than tall. He was built on the scale of big men and might easily have passed for seventeen. There was nothing clumsy in his bigness, and it was disguised by his just proportions and easy carriage. His finely cut features were strong and masterful, and his dark eyes curiously compelling.

The boy breathed an air of arrogance and authority that was a danger signal for the future which his slightly formal courtesy did not disguise.

Raphael was perhaps two inches shorter than his brother. His agile form had the grace and easy movement of some wild animal, his eyes were surprisingly alert and Carfax fancied he saw a faint mockery lurking in their depth. His manner was disarming, with none of the arrogance of the elder boy, but displaying an innocent candor which did not altogether set Carfax at his ease, since his knowledge of youth was wide and accurate.

Once free from observing eyes, the boys’ horses showed a restlessness that would have been disconcerting to unac¬ customed riders. Carfax saw, however, that his pupils were quite equal to the occasion, so merely kept a watch on his own steed, without offering any remark on the behavior of the others. By and by they also took to quieter ways and he intercepted a meaning glance between his escort.

On the other side of the ridge behind the frontier village the ground descended again, crossing a fertile plain dotted with small villages, and beyond the plain there rose, ridge upon ridge, the vast forests of Orense; clothing the lower slopes of the mountain range, which shut in the country like a wall on the east; belted with pine and skirted with oak and beech, trailing olives on its lower slopes, while on its highest summits the snow still lingered, though it was late spring.

The boys rode on each side of Carfax, talking volubly and pressing the conversation which way they would. They asked innumerable questions concerning the customs in Eng¬ lish schools, his own tastes and predilections. Carfax’s replies were cautiously worded and now and again he got in a question of his own.

The day was hot and he was not sorry when the road entered the forest and they reached a higher, cooler level. It was unspeakably beautiful and for a time the boys were silent. It was Raphael who spoke first. He had been watching Carfax’s horse anxiously.

“Anything wrong?” asked the rider carelessly.

“Oh no. Senecarib is going splendidly today—only he had just that expression when-” he hesitated.

“Yes?” demanded Carfax politely.

“When he turned and bit Monsieur Mancara right through the boot. I should not like it to happen to you, but perhaps you are not afraid of horses ?”

“Not particularly.”

“Monsieur Mancara was. He was afraid of many things.” A beatific smile crossed his face.

“Was he your last tutor?”

“ Yes.” A pause. “He committed suicide last spring.”

At this startling news Carfax glanced at Paul, who was gazing straight ahead with an unmoved face.

“Indeed? How sad,” remarked the new tutor evenly. “And have you done no work since?”

“Father Clement has given us some instruction,” put in Paul suddenly, “but there is not much time for work here, you know.”

“I can well believe it with such a forest close at hand.”

“Don’t go exploring the forest alone,” said Raphael hastily, “or you’ll get eaten by wolves.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Raphael’s not joking”—this from Paul sharply. “A mile farther is the Great Barrier and beyond that to the top of the mountains it’s all wolf preserves. It’s safe for the keepers or anyone who knows, but not for strangers.”

“What an odd thing to preserve,” murmured Carfax.

Paul shot a haughty glance at the utterer of an implied criticism.

“We have preserved wolves for sport since 1660. The barrier was put up in our gradfather’s time. There was a bad winter and the wolves got a lot of people and lastly a son of the house, so they shut them in. Every year we shoot so many to keep the numbers down. It’s grand sport, but we are not allowed to go till we are seventeen.”

Carfax’s eyes travelled over Paul, whose fourteen years seemed of such extenuated length.

They stopped once to rest their horses by a little rushing stream and then Paul, who had been silent for a long time, remarked, “It’s shorter across the plain but it’s insufferably hot.”

“And we thought you would like to see the forest,” put in Raphael.

“It’s worth seeing,” said Carfax quietly.

The moderation of his remark won their approval. He had not committed the error of rhapsodizing over their be¬ loved country and he appeared to have forgotten the exist¬ ence of wolves, both faults which former gentlemen had committed on like occasions; neither had he betrayed annoy¬ ance over the lengthened route.

Their Cousin Everard’s protege started with marks to the good, though they only qualified him as an enemy not to be despised.

In a few minutes they came out on a green clearing, and there before them lay the Castle of Aranzano.

Ill

It stood on a grassy eminence, round which, on two sides the stream’s noisy waters found placid harborage in a wide moat. On three sides the forest came within a thousand yards of the green space, and there stopped abruptly as if an enchanter’s wand had set a magic barrier to its riotous growth.

The Castle itself was a grim building of tower and turret, curtain wall and bastion, with an immense gateway between two towers. To the left was a bigger solitary tower, reached now from the outside by a separate bridge and a little arched door that looked absurdly inadequate in the vast grey space of wall. From a turret a flag hung motionless about its staff.

There were few windows looking out to the entrance, and these were mostly narrow slits, cutting the greyness like pointed arrows.

The whole place seemed asleep in the warm spring sun¬ light. A grey memorial of immemorial things, of strength, endurance, unchangeableness and remoteness.

The two silent figures on each side of Carfax watched with furtive anxiety. Their very silence was eloquent, seeming to mock him, saying, “Do you think to bring your two-penny ideals to roost here, to turn our ways to suit your ridiculous island prejudices ?”

They had reined up. The action had been involuntary on the part of Carfax and it was he who first moved his horse and looked at the elder boy.

“It looks like a place that has sent men into the world.”

It was his sole remark, and he saw under the tanned skin of the boy a scarlet flush and a gleam of emotion, gone almost as soon as it came, leaving the arrogant, almost insolent pride dominant; but it taught Carfax in what that pride had root. He ceased for the present to resent it.

They rode in at the great gates. Within, was a vast courtyard doubtless once crowded with buildings but now clear and void.

On the western side was the living house, evidently re¬ modelled in the last two hundred years. There were a range of pointed windows, and here and there a stone carved balcony jutted out. The great hall of entrance occupied the center of this house and was approached by a wide flight of steps. Here was the first sign of life.

Two small boys, some servants, and a great variety of dogs awaited them. Two grooms came forward to take the horses. The bigger of the two boys was dancing on the lowest step in enthusiastic excitement.

“What a time you have been, Paul! Is this the English¬ man? How do you do, Mr. Carfax.”

“Be quiet, Baby.” Paul dealt the obstreperous young person a light box on the ears. “Mr. Carfax, these are my younger brothers. This is Sylvestro and that is Damien.”

The youngest boy came down the steps slowly, surveying the new tutor critically as he did so. The two boys were a remarkable contrast. Sylvestro, even at that age, was a clumsy replica of Paul minus his assurance and gravity. He seemed brimming over with vitality, and good-humor smiled from his merry dark eyes. Undaunted by the brotherly rebuke, he hung on Paul’s arm and watched the newcomer with a friendly smile.

Damien held out his hand. His aloofness was as distinct from Sylvestro’s demonstrativeness as was his appearance. Here were the fair hair and dark eyes of Count Everard, but here also were the curiously fine features of the elder boys, emphasized even in the nine-year-old face, as if Nature till then had been merely trying what she could do in the way of fashioning beauty, and had at last brought her ex¬ periments to a satisfactory conclusion.

In manner Damien was just aloof and courteous with a courtesy that matched oddly with his few years.

They went up the steps together, and a servant waiting at the top hurried forward with a silver salver in his hand.

To him—in the patois —Paul called out fiercely and rapidly a command to go and take his silly head with him, and the man vanished with a half hidden smile. Raphael visibly brightened, Damien gazed at Paul with a heightened color and Sylvestro called out:

“But Paul, why—?”

“Silence, little fool!” came in the swift soft patois again, and then to Carfax in his clear Romanzian.

“Will you wish to see my mother at once, or go straight to your room, Mr. Carfax?”

Carfax decidedly preferred to remove the traces of travel before encountering any more of the family; moreover he wanted time to arrange his thoughts.

The four solemnly escorted him across the immense hall, at one end of which a great black staircase of chestnut wood wound up in a double flight to a stone gallery. At the oppo¬ site end of the hall was a fireplace where even on this warm spring day a fire flickered.

The hall was so large that Carfax had quite a shock when they left the wide gallery, that ran over the entrance doors, and plunged into narrow dark passages full of inequalities, and with bare stone walls.

The passages led in the end to his own apartment and the abode of the two elder boys, situated in a tower at the south¬ west angle of the Castle, the three floors of the tower and the connecting wing being entirely given over to him and his charges.

He was ushered into his room, the heavy door closed and he was at last alone to sort out his ideas and prepare for the still more formidable task of meeting Prince and Princess d’Arenzano.

IV

At the foot of the staircase the boys discussed the new arrival with freedom and animation.

“But Paul,” insisted Sylvestro, ready to dodge possible chastisement, “why did you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Not do it, Baby means,” drawled Raphael, “the Service, that is. You had not said it was to be missed.”

“It would have left us no chance,” growled the elder brother, rather sulkily.

“You gave Mancara the Bread and Salt,” remarked Damien.

Paul flashed round on him.

“This Englishman is no Mancara. It will be no job for you babies, this time. Keep out of it. Raphael and I will manage—if he is to go.”

“Oh, do you think he mayn’t?” chimed in Sylvestro, eagerly. “I hope not, he looks so nice.”

Raphael interposed.

“You mind what Paul says and attend to your own busi¬ ness. Be off!”

The two younger boys obediently betook themselves to their own devices and the elder remained talking quietly; they said nothing at first of what was in their minds, till suddenly Raphael remarked:

“He’s worth testing anyhow.”

Paul grinned.

“We’ll do that. We can now, that’s why I didn’t give him the Service. I wanted to feel free.”

V

On the west and inhabited side of the Castle were two terraces, and below them a drop of thirty feet to the wide meadow land which stretched away to the silver placid waters of a distant lake. Beyond that were lower slopes of forest and then the sunset!

Here on the terrace, Princess d’Arenzano walked with Henry Carfax.

If Carfax’s first recorded impressions of that remarkable woman are as trustworthy as the rest of his careful records, they are perhaps worth giving. The implied doubt reflects no discredit on Carfax, but though nothing in his life be¬ trays it, there remains an impression that the cool-headed young man of twenty-five never quite regarded Princess d’Arenzano with that spirit of detached criticism which he accorded to other women. The only evidence, however, in his writing lies in the complete lack of such criticism and a very careful record of all her speech with him.

Here on the terrace they walked on the evening of June 4th, 1817, Carfax secretly wondering that so young and beautiful a woman should be the mother of those four great boys.

“She took me out on the terrace,” he writes, “and in the open air I thought her even more beautiful than indoors. From her Raphael gets his vivid coloring and sparkling eyes. There is a subtle graciousness about her that balances her quick gestures, and above all I judge her to be a woman of intellect, clever, far-sighted and capable of a wide point of view. She is a Romanzian. One feels she has only absorbed just so much of this atmosphere as was necessary for her happiness, and in return has distilled into the grim ghosts of tradition something of her own living personality. I judge her, too, to be a happy woman; she spoke much of her sons, and her desire that they should be well-educated men. ‘We are so remote from the world here,’ she remarked, ‘that it is doubly needful to train their intellects. The d’Arenzanos at least have never been mere stupid brigands, but my boys must be able to see beyond their own mountains and forests!

“ ‘You will find them worth your time, Mr. Carfax. Paul is difficult, I admit it. He has great strength of mind beyond his years. Raphael, I believe to be brilliant if he can get steady tuition. He follows Paul’s lead in everything, I fear, and Paul, dear fellow, is a little head-strong!’

“She apologized for the absence of her husband, saying that he was at Melino, which is their capital and the only town of any size in the province, with the exception of Courno.

“Also she told me that they very seldom went to Cardozza.

“ ‘Orense is generally sufficient for us and though I am a Romanzian, I have my reasons for disliking Cardozza these days/

“She sighed.”

Carfax must have known enough of Romanzian politics to understand what was implied, and how the mean ingrati¬ tude of King Ferdinand II. towards those who had saved his throne when Europe was rocking to dissolution had estranged from him all the oldest Romanzian families, so that they avoided both the Government and the social life of the capital.

It was night before Prince d’Arenzano appeared and Carfax records the final impression of his disconcerting day with his usual clarity.

“I suppose I cannot honestly say,” he writes, “that Count Everard described his brother to me in misleading terms, yet I had got in my mind a picture of an elderly corpulent gentleman too lazy to rule his own household. But Prince Victor is six feet two, and carries his height with such ease that it is unobtrusive. He has the same vivacious and rest¬ less energy as Sylvestro. He appears indeed a kindly simple soul, very desirous of doing all that is expected of him by his gracious lady, and the obligations of his name. He is clearly adored by his family, who mingle their respectful bearing towards him with a quaint pride, which induces them to show him off much as if he were a clever child.

“We supped together in a big plainly furnished room, the two elder boys with us, and afterwards the Prince took me into the hall and we sat in one of the windows and discussed my pupils.

“ ‘They are good boys,’ he told me, ‘though I can’t manage them, or so my brother says. He advises me to give you a free hand. Do what you like with them so long as you make them honest men. As to brains,—we have never been accounted fools—except myself!’ he added with a deprecating air which was disarming, ‘but then I was never born to be the reigning prince. That was all through politics and the French!’

“I remembered that both his father and his brother had been shot for trying to stem the tide of Bonaparte’s march against the Allies.

“He looked out of the window into the gathering dark and presently went on.

“ ‘I daresay you in England think of us as half barbarians, but we are not that. We have our own customs and laws, and as a race we have a fair record and I want my boys to sustain it. Times are changing and what did for the rest of us, won’t do for the future.’

“Again he broke off abruptly.

“ ‘Don’t let them gamble. It’s in the blood and it’s bad for us. You’ll manage them I can see—besides Everard says so. The English have a way with the young! Paul’s all right, but Raphael is the very devil!’ ”

Carfax left no notes as to whether his first impressions coincided with the mother or the father’s estimate of their sons. It would, however, be like Carfax to preserve an open mind on the matter.

Chapter II I

T HE first days were spent in exploring the place and getting accustomed to the life there. Of all this Carfax has left such abundant records that the difficulty of selection is considerable.

There was the Castle itself, with its great Armory and Muniment Rooms, its vast stables, the foresters’ court, where lived the dogs and hounds, falcons, guns, and all the paraphernalia of abundant sport, and where a retinue of keepers came and went.

There was the Hall of Justice in the old Keep itself, with the little yard behind, where punishments were meted out in carefully measured gradation. Cells, pillory and whip¬ ping post, all still in use, and part of the old inviolate Law!

“We have no executions here now,” Paul explained: “that only happens at Melino.”

“Father made that change,” commented Raphael, with a regretful sigh. “That’s the Ring,” he went on, pointing out two iron rings in a wall about the height of a man’s shoulder from the ground. “That’s the penalty for breaking any forest law: so many hours with one’s arm fastened up like that.” He thrust his arm through the larger ring. Both rings were secured by a bolt and would hold a man’s arm extended in such a way that he was a complete prisoner.

Carfax examined it carefully. He thought it a cruel idea, but was at pains not to say so. Adverse criticism of their manners or customs was badly received.

He soon ceased to wonder at Paul’s arrogance. The young Prince of Melino (his correct title) was treated with a deference and respect that might have turned the head of the humblest boy. There was only one command and one word superior to his own and that was his father’s.

The forest Carfax got to know bit by bit. It was to the whole of Orense what the sea is to a maritime country. It called to its children with mysterious voices, it soothed their sorrows, sympathized with revolt, and added to joy. In its higher regions it gave out the very spirit of healing and no d’Arenzano could imagine recovery away from its em¬ brace. They seldom talked of it, but its spell lay over their lives from the hour of birth to the hour of death. This applied not only to the reigning family but to all the hardy independent race of foresters who lived in and round its vast depths, who could find their way across it by instinctive touch and who drew from it their substance and made it the field of their labors.

The wolf-barrier Carfax found to be a real thing. The law forbade a married man to live there and Carfax’s young charges were never allowed to go singly into its depths. Yet on mountain expeditions, they would plunge gaily through the most wolf-ridden regions and Carfax went for several such excursions before he saw a wolf.

In the late autumn and winter, there were the famous wolf drives, besides which the glory of all other sport paled. On these occasions, with certain formalities and much excitement, the Prince and his friends destroyed a sufficient num¬ ber of wolves to keep the packs within manageable limits during the cold and hungry months.

Those first days must have been as full of interest as minutes. Carfax allowed himself to be shown all and told all—and more than all he often suspected—by the boys. They seem to have had wit enough to discern beneath his calm acceptance of their wonders, his very real interest.

It remained to be proved whether he were also a man to be obeyed and respected, or their dupe who would leave them to order their lives as they would, so long as they performed just so much or so little work as their active young brains chose to assimilate and as he in his capacity as paid tutor could with decency accept.

II

Carfax quickly found that their intellectual ability was of no mean order and he determined to exploit it to the full as soon as he could gain their confidence, but that was a slow and tedious business.

There followed days and weeks of tortuous discoveries, silent struggles of will, and perilous moments when swift judgment and decision were all that stood between him and defeat.

Outwardly the boys were polite and courteous, but under their youthful suavity, Carfax felt them watching him, ready to seize on the least mistake and ever setting pitfalls in his way. He understood well enough that they regarded him as on probation and he meant to win.

Those were days when the 'young’ of most countries re¬ ceived scant consideration at the hands of their elders. Prompt obedience was the one cardinal virtue by which youthful reputations rose or fell. In such manner had