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Show King Tommy j By GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM j Coprrteht by Bobbs-Merrill Co. W. N. U. Service I i CHAPTER XX 1 27 , The king and Cas-imlr left us at fcreslau. There was no help for that. Neither one nor other of them would have been allowed to cross t tie frontier. fron-tier. The Megalhin government was determined not to have Wladislaws on the throne of Lystria again. And they knew Caslmlr for a persistent , plotter. They gald good-by to us with regret ! which was quite unfeigned. It must ! have been Intensely annoying to Casi-J Casi-J mlr to miss the last scene of the j drama he had planned. It was not I working out exactly as he planned it, i which made the end all the more ex-I ex-I citing for him. What should we find j at the Schloss Amherg when we got there? What would Casimir have found If he could have been with us? A wedding and a coronation? The public execution of a pretender to the throne? A counter-revolution, with the Megallan troops in possession posses-sion of the schloss? A patriarch prime minister under a new monarchy, mon-archy, or such things have happened In Russia, which is nut very far away -a martyred archbishop? ' For King Wladislaws the turn of events was even more thrilling. He had developed a personal liking for Tommy, and, in his own way, he was really fond of Calypso. For all he knew when he said good-by to us at Rreslau, she might be a queen, a prisoner pris-oner of state, a fugitive among the mountains, a widow, a bride, or an exceedingly Indignant young woman anxious for vengeance on everyone concerned in the trick which had been played on her. I felt very sorry for the king when he had to say good-by to us at Breslau. Bres-lau. He Is the only king I ever met personally and I liked him. I do not wonder that there la a strong monarchical monar-chical reaction In Europe at present. If there are many kings like Wladislaws, Wladis-laws, It Is natural enough that their people should want to have them back. Democratic institutions are all very well in their way, but they Invariably nd in elected presidents. Presidents -I have known three or four in my time are stodgy compared to King Wladislaws, and Europe does nowadays nowa-days want a little brightness. Europe has so long been used to the pomp and pageantry of monarchy that It Is hard for the people to accustom themselves to the simplicity of republics. repub-lics. Of course the socialistic element Is perfectly satisfied, or at least that wing of the socialists that is not looking look-ing fur something more radical than republics and seeking communistic forms of government, but there are but nw of that class In Lystria. The next part of our journey was accomplished In much faster time th:in Tommy and the princess had done It in. We crossed the frontier in a train, for we had no fear of being stopped, and did not feel, as they did, the necessity fur keeping off the main trallic routes. We bad only twenty-live twenty-live miles to go by motor. I fancy that we had the same car and the same driver that Tommy did; though I cannot be sure about this. Men of khe bearded brigand type are common com-mon enough in Lystria and many of them may be chauffeurs. If I kept a car in London a tiling which I cannot alTord to do I should try to persuade the Lystrian chaufTeur to come home witli me. lie would give an air of aristocratic distinction to any car. I!ut I was not so concerned about the air of distinction just at that time. 1 wanted to reacli the frontier, I wanted want-ed to be where I could feel that we were safe, and I was nut feeling that way with that brigand-looking individual indi-vidual at the wheel, lie would he all right In London where there was a bobby on every corner to offer protection pro-tection if It were needed, but it was different on the lonely roads we were traveling. If I had time and aptitude fur the literary guidebook style of writing. I should describe our journey through that beautiful and little-known part of Kin-ope. I am sure that people would like to read about the mountains, torrents, tor-rents, villages, lung-horned oxen, ruined ru-ined fortresses and so forth. However, the thing will be done, far more competently compe-tently than I could hope to do it. Cable has conceived the Idea of developing de-veloping Lystria as a tourist resort us soon as he has the oil Industry in working order. He intends to hire a couple of our best-known literary men lie even mentioned the nam-s of thiwe be had in mind to write the country up. "Lotus Eating in L-tria." L-tria." 1 suppose, "with Six Colored Illustrations"; and perhaps "The Beautiful Bypaths Series. Lystria. ,v With ten photographs of the author." Cable is extraordinarily thorough. He is writing to an Auieri-:.!! Auieri-:.!! literary paper for the name of the best-known poetess "raised on their side." He means to commission ,her to do some Lystrian Lyrics. It is plainly no use my entering into competition com-petition with such x'ople by describ-ni describ-ni ibe scenery, manners, costumes, customs aud morals of the Lystrians. They are a nice people, and they i!.-ie n beautiful country, but my only Inn rest just then was to get through it as fast as possible. I was not specially spe-cially enjoying the scenery, was not noticing the mountains, the torrents, the villages, the pastoral scenes or the ruined fortresses except to note the speed at which we passed them. The quicker we could get by it, all the better pleased I would be. At another an-other time 1 might return to admire the scenery. We caught our first glimpse of the Schloss Aniberg just as Tommy did. from the top of the hill on the other side of the valley. It was decked with flags. They hung out of every window, fluttered from every flagstaff there were a good many flagstaffs and were festooned along the walls. "I wonder what that means," sail Troyte. "Looks like a king's birthday show," said Norheys. "Wladislaws might have told us what to expect." "Much more likely to be the princess' prin-cess' wedding," said Cable. "Perhaps," I said, "it may be a public pub-lic rejoicing at the death of Emily's curate. I shall be sorry if they've executed him." The car slid down toward the vaDey and the stream that ran through U. It was going at a comfortable pace comfortable because it was rapid. The chauffeur was missing the bumps, and the speed at which we were traveling did not seem to be as fast as it actually actual-ly was, because of the quality of his driving. The car crossed the bridge and began be-gan to climb up the twisty road to the gate of the schloss. Suddenly a salute was fired by the guns on the walls. They did not all go off at once, and they were not very big guns, but they made quite an Impressive amount of noise. Every rifle about the place was shot off at or about the same time, adding a clatter to the din. Our bearded chauffeur, who had been getting get-ting more and more excited since we saw the flags, lost control of himself altogether when lie heard the guns. He stood up, wved his arms wildly and shouted. There are nasty steep banks on each side of the road. If Norheys, who was sitting in front of the car, had not grabbed the steering wheel, we should certainly have left the road and gone rolling over and over till we reached the river In the valley. In that case we should none of us have heard what had happened about the princess and Tommy. I should have been sorry, for I was full of curiosity. We left the car at'the gate of the schloss and passed Into the courtyard. It was half full of soldiers. I fancy that the whole Lystrian army was drawn up there in a square. Many of them were still firing off their rifles. The officers were waving their swords. Something unusual was happening, but what? All the excitement portended portend-ed some great event, something ia which the entire populace of Lystria was Intensely interested. In what way did it concern us. if at all? We were just in time. Through the door of the chapel at the opposite side of the courtyurd came the sound of the wedding march, played on the organ. Tommy, with the princess on his arm, walked out amid deafening cheers. Immediately behind them came Janet Church, a solitary and most unattractive-looking bridesmaid. Behind her thronged the Lystrian nobility. no-bility. All the Count Casimirs were there, except Istvan. The half-dozen or so nobles with other names were also there. Janet, in an old gray tweod dress, and our party In our traveling clothes were the only commonplace com-monplace people. The princess was splendid in a dress much finer, also much longer, than the one she h,id worn when she danced at the tias-cotte. tias-cotte. Tommy had been titled out by Count Albert Casimir in a very handsome hand-some crimson silk suit with a jacket laeed. hussar fashion, with gold. I noticed that he wore one of his own clerical collars round his neck. Perhaps Per-haps that was his idea of full dress fur a ceremonial occasion. Perhaps he did it to please the patriarch. The nobles were gorgeous. No one who has not seen the Lystrian nobility in their best clothes has any idea how uiagnilicent clothes can he. People who understand dressing-tip as 1 1 1 e Lystrians do ought to have a king of their own. They would be wasted In the drab monotony of a republic. I think Troyte felt this as lie looked at the uiagnilicent scene before us. Fortunately, For-tunately, the sun shone brightly. Every color had its full value. Everything Every-thing that could glitter glittered brilliantly. bril-liantly. Last of all. attended by an amazing number of clergy, toe patriarch can;e from the chapel choir. He wore but I am not well uti in the language of ecclesiastical millinery. His garments may have been copes, chasubles, dalmatics dal-matics or albs. Whatever they were, they seemed to me to be made of shimmering gold. If they ever disestablish dis-establish and disendow the church In Lystria. the sai of the patriarch's vestments will go a long way toward paying off the national debt. The procession moved slowly across the square until Tommy caught sicht of us. The moment he did he stopped. and of course everyone else stopped I too. He had never seen any of us be fore, and though we knew who he must be, he could only guess who we . were. He turned to Janet. Church for help. Janet knew me and Introduced me. I presented the rest of the party. At least, I began the presentation. I had only got as far as Norheys when the princess Interrupted me. She rushed forward, threw her arms around Viola's Vio-la's neck and kissed her heartily on both cheeks. "I know you're Miss Temple," she said. "Lady Norheys," I corrected. "You may call her Viola Temple If you like," said Norheys. "What I always al-ways say is : When anybody has a name which everybody else knows them by, why not call them It? That's what I said when fellows began to stop calling me Bunny, after 1 became Norheys, don't you know? I dare say now," he said to Tommy, "that you've often heard of me as Bunny Troyte, and scarcely know me as Norheys. Nor-heys. It's just the same with Viola, only, of course, more so, on account of her being much more famous than any of the rest of us." He was undoubtedly right concerning concern-ing the "fame" which Miss Viola Tem pie, as one of the most popular stage dancers of the British metropolis, had enjoyed. That fnct had been at the bottom of Lord Troyte's scheme of the L.ystrlan marriage. With the cool, far seeing wisdom for which he wus noted he had seen in the union a double purpose, the saving of his nephew from an undesirable alliance with a dancer who did not happen to be a princess, and the exploitation of the Lystrian oil fields in the Interests of England. He had once remarked to me, when we both felt that we must "save"' Norheys from Viola Temple: "If England is to hold her place In the van of the world's progress she must control an adequate supply of oil. With an English king on the throne of Lystria and an English company at work in the oil fields " Troyte is a great statesman. Only a great statesman could or would say a thing like that. Only a sincerely patriotic man could have conceived such a scheme. The princess, one arm still around Viola's neck, cooed Into her ear: "I'm so glad you've got him safe. I wouldn't have taken him from you for anything. And now I'm married, too. Isn't it splendid? And only for your beautiful letter perhaps neither ever would have been." "I should like," said Troyte with dignity, dig-nity, "to have some conversation with the patriarch." The patriarch, it seemed, wanted to have some conversation with Troyte. He had been pushing his way through the excited nobles while the princess was kissing Viola. As soon as he had secured a place for himself In the fron ) row, he made a speech. (TO BE CONTINUED.) |
