Volume X Part 6 (1/2)
”Ah,” said the mandarin.
”Yes,” she went on. ”The marriage was annulled, and the child declared illegitimate. Ernest Augustus, as the duke was somewhat inconsequently named, married again, and had other children, the eldest of whom is the present bearer of the t.i.tle--the same Duke of Zeln one hears of, quarreling with the croupiers at Monte Carlo. The Princess Anna, with her baby, came to Austria. The Emperor gave her a pension, and lent her one of his country houses to live in--Schloss Sanct--Andreas. Our hostess, by-the-by, the Countess Wohenhoffen, was her intimate friend and her _premiere dame d'honneur_.”
”Ah,” said the mandarin.
”But the poor princess had suffered more than she could bear. She died when her child was four years old. The Countess Wohenhoffen took the infant, by the Emperor's desire, and brought him up with her own son Peter. He was called Prince Louis Leczinski. Of course, in all moral right, he was the Hereditary Prince of Zeln. His legitimacy, for the rest, and his mother's innocence, are perfectly well established, in every sense but a legal sense, by the fact that he has all the physical characteristics of the Zeln stock. He has the Zeln nose and the Zeln chin, which are as distinctive as the Hapsburg lip.”
”I hope, for the poor young man's sake, though, that they're not so unbecoming?” questioned the mandarin.
”They're not exactly pretty,” answered the mask. ”The nose is a thought too long, the chin is a trifle too short. However, I daresay the poor young man is satisfied. As I was about to tell you, the Countess Wohenhoffen brought him up, and the Emperor destined him for the Church.
He even went to Rome and entered the Austrian College. He'd have been on the high road to a cardinalate by this time if he'd stuck to the priesthood, for he had strong interest. But, lo and behold, when he was about twenty, he chucked the whole thing up.”
”Ah? _Histoire de femme?_”
”Very likely,” she a.s.sented, ”though I've never heard any one say so. At all events, he left Rome, and started upon his travels. He had no money of his own, but the Emperor made him an allowance. He started upon his travels, and he went to India, and he went to America, and he went to South Africa, and then, finally, in '87 or '88, he went--no one knows where. He totally disappeared, vanished into s.p.a.ce. He's not been heard of since. Some people think he's dead. But the greater number suppose that he tired of his false position in the world, and one fine day determined to escape from it, by sinking his ident.i.ty, changing his name, and going in for a new life under new conditions. They call him the Invisible Prince. His position _was_ rather an ambiguous one, wasn't it? You see, he was neither one thing nor the other. He has no _etat-civil_. In the eyes of the law he was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, yet he knew himself to be the legitimate son of the Duke of Zeln. He was a citizen of no country, yet he was the rightful heir to a throne. He was the last descendant of Stanislas Leczinski, yet it was without authority that he bore his name. And then, of course, the rights and wrongs of the matter were only known to a few. The majority of people simply remembered that there had been a scandal. And (as a wag once said of him) wherever he went, he left his mother's reputation behind him. No wonder he found the situation irksome. Well, there is the story of the Invisible Prince.”
”And a very exciting, melodramatic little story, too. For my part, I suspect your Prince met a boojum. I love to listen to stories. Won't you tell me another? Do, please,” he pressed her.
”No, he didn't meet a boojum,” she returned. ”He went to England, and set up for an author. The Invisible Prince and Victor Field are one and the same person.”
”Oh, I say! Not really!” he exclaimed.
”Yes, really.”
”What makes you think so?” he wondered.
”I'm sure of it,” said she. ”To begin with, I must confide to you that Victor Field is a man I've never met.”
”Never met--?” he gasped. ”But, by the blithe way in which you were laying his sins at my door, a little while ago, I supposed you were sworn confederates.”
”What's the good of masked b.a.l.l.s, if you can't talk to people you've never met?” she submitted. ”I've never met him, but I'm one of his admirers. I like his little poems. And I'm the happy possessor of a portrait of him. It's a print after a photograph. I cut it from an ill.u.s.trated paper.”
”I really almost wish I _was_ Victor Field,” he sighed. ”I should feel such a glow of gratified vanity.”
”And the Countess Wohenhoffen,” she added, ”has at least twenty portraits of the Invisible Prince--photographs, miniatures, life-size paintings, taken from the time he was born, almost, to the time of his disappearance. Victor Field and Louis Leczinski have countenances as like each other as two halfpence.”
”An accidental resemblance, doubtless.”
”No, it isn't an accidental resemblance,” she affirmed.
”Oh, then you think it's intentional?” he quizzed.
”Don't be absurd. I might have thought it accidental, except for one or two odd little circ.u.mstances. _Primo_, Victor Field is a guest at the Wohenhoffens' ball.”
”Oh, he _is_ a guest here?”
”Yes, he is,” she said. ”You are wondering how I know. Nothing simpler.
The same _costumier_ who made my domino, supplied his Chinese dress. I noticed it at his shop. It struck me as rather nice, and I asked whom it was for. The _costumier_ said, for an Englishman at the Hotel de Bade.
Then he looked in his book, and told me the Englishman's name. It was Victor Field. So, when I saw the same Chinese dress here to-night, I knew it covered the person of one of my favorite authors. But I own, like you, I was a good deal surprised. What on earth should a little London literary man be doing at the Countess Wohenhoffen's? And then I remembered the astonis.h.i.+ng resemblance between Victor Field and Louis Leczinski; and I remembered that to Louis Leczinski the Countess Wohenhoffen had been a second mother; and I reflected that though he chose to be as one dead and buried for the rest of the world, Louis Leczinski might very probably keep up private relations with the Countess. He might very probably come to her ball, incognito, and safely masked. I observed also that the Countess's rooms were decorated throughout with _white lilac_. But the white lilac is the emblematic flower of the Leczinskis; green and white are their family colours.