Sydney Grier
Stories (51/0)
An Uncrowned King Chapter 6 Part 4
On these occasions Cyril generally remained in the background, afraid of being caught laughing, as he told M. Drakovics, to the no small indignation of the Premier. Wright shared his objection to publicity, but for a different reason, feeling very uneasy in his mind as to the whole proceeding, now that he understood its import, and not at all sure that it was consistent with his duty to Queen Victoria to become a subject of Caerleon. There was an unhappy consciousness that something was wrong about his whole aspect, which would have afforded Cyril infinite amusement at any other time; but now, as from his commanding position on horseback he watched his brother’s close-cropped fair head towering above the unkempt locks of his new subjects, he was busy trying to enter into the feelings of the Thracians. Mothers brought their children to look at Caerleon, for good luck, as they said, “that their eyes might see the King’s face”; old men came tottering up to touch his coat or his riding-whip, and to call down blessings on his head. It was all too absurdly medieval, thought Cyril, as the office-bearers of the little towns came hurrying to take the oath of allegiance to their new King, and the peasants crowded round to entreat him to raise an army to conquer Scythia, in which every man of them would enlist. Why should they make all this fuss about an unimaginative Englishman, who merely looked uncomfortable when a more than usually fervent assurance of devotion was translated to him, and who could say nothing in return but that he would try to do his best for the people and the country? There could be no idea of Divine Right in this case, for how could such a sentiment consist with the popular election of the monarch? and as for loyalty, how could they feel loyalty to a man of whom they knew nothing but that he was an English prince, for whom M. Drakovics vouched as a suitable candidate for the throne? Cyril decided at last that they regarded Caerleon as the incarnation of the spirit of the late revolution, and as a bulwark against Scythia and the return of the House of Franza; but the Thracians themselves would probably have explained their delight much more simply by saying that they had a king at last, that he was young, good-looking, and fair-haired, and that he spoke courteously and looked like a soldier.
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 3 Part 1
Leaving his brother to contemplate the beauties of nature under the shade of the pines, Caerleon walked on, finding his progress much more rapid than it had been when Cyril was his companion, and arrived before very long at a point from which he was able to descry the huntsman’s cottage, built under the shelter of a towering crag. Pausing for a moment to determine which of two paths now before him would be more likely to lead him directly towards it, he heard footsteps above him, and presently a lady came in sight round a turning in the right-hand path. Tall and slight, she wore a plain tweed dress and felt hat, and the trim neatness of her appearance struck Caerleon as most refreshing after the alternate dowdiness and magnificence of many of the Austrian belles he had come across. It did not occur to him at first that this stately lady could be the hoydenish little Scythian schoolgirl of whom he was in search, but presently it struck him as unlikely that two young ladies would be wandering alone in the mountains on the same day, and he advanced to meet the girl.
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 6 Part 6
“Call this being king?” said Caerleon, when he and Cyril met at dinner in the comparatively small room which they had chosen out of the wilderness of state apartments as their dining-room when by themselves, for there were few regular court officials at present. The chief functionaries had all gone into exile with the late king, and it had not been possible to appoint their successors as yet, so that matters were in the hands of such of the less important officials as had adopted the cause of the revolution. These had not yet acquired the reverential obtuseness which would have enabled those whose places they had taken to maintain their position about the king as long as etiquette required, in spite of his disinclination for their society. Accordingly they effaced themselves obediently when their sovereign intimated that their attendance was not further desired that night, and it did not strike Caerleon that even the freedom he now enjoyed would have been impossible in a properly constituted court. “I call it being a slave, no less,” he went on. “What a luxurious beast old Franza must have been! I never saw anything like the rooms up-stairs. Well, if luxury could compensate him for all the bother and fuss, he deserved it.”
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 6 Part 5
“That is all our work since the revolution,” said M. Drakovics, pointing to this rampart with pride. “Under the Franzas, the money voted for fortifications was all spent on excavating and arming useless batteries along the river-front, which no foe would think of attacking, while the town was left defenceless.”
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 3 Part 2
“And she has impressed her views upon you, has she? Did I understand you to say that she brought you up?” “Yes; she pitied the life I led with my parents, and she adopted me as her own. She gave me everything I could need, and provided excellent teachers for me; but, best of all, she allowed me to help her in her work. Sometimes we lived at her country house, and worked among the peasants, and sometimes in Pavelsburg, and then our work lay among the poorest of the poor. Oh, what a life it was! She cares for body and soul alike. The hospitals and prisons are visited, Bible-classes, sewing-classes held; drunkards reached, young girls away from home befriended and taken care of. To be in trouble or in loneliness—that gives you claim enough upon my Princess.”
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 3 Part 3
“You won’t understand,” cried the girl, passionately; “it is nothing about money. Consider what political disturbances your acceptance of the crown might bring about, and that there are those who will suspect you of desiring to provoke them so long as you remain in this part of Europe, however innocent your motives may be. I remember that when the crown was offered to you last year, the affair was much discussed in our circle. I myself heard Count Wratisloff say in my godmother’s drawing-room, ‘Here is the peace of Europe hanging upon the caprice of a boy!’”
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 3 Part 4
Once more Cyril drew dark inferences from his brother’s words, but he made no remark, and at the appointed time they presented themselves in Madame O’Malachy’s salon, where a most cordial welcome awaited them. They were the only guests, and it fell naturally to Caerleon to escort his hostess to the table and to sit beside her, a privilege for which he was not as grateful as he ought to have been, for he could hear Cyril and Nadia wrangling busily throughout the meal. Guessing that his brother was treating Mdlle. O’Malachy to a little fin de siècle philosophy, he had no difficulty in imagining the light in which it would strike her, and his anxiety to hear what she was saying in reply distracted his attention a little from her mother, who conversed vivaciously in French, addressing him as “mon cher marquis” in a way that reminded him vaguely of the Molière he had read when at school.
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 3 Part 5
“Well, it seems that the O’Malachy was, as he said, one of the Sarmatian leaders, and he gave the Scythians so much trouble that they were ready to go any lengths to get rid of him. They tried fair means and they tried foul—open attacks, and bribes, and attempted assassination, but it was all no good. At last—I don’t know whether it was a lucky guess, or whether something showed them his weak point—they thought of working upon his susceptibilities. They had a decoy handy, Mdlle. Barbara Platovska, a young Sarmatian lady, brought up in Paris and trained in Scythia. She had done a good deal of work for them already, and she was as plucky and as wily as she was beautiful, so that she was a valuable instrument. Well, they sent her off with a free hand, and a pardon for O’Malachy, signed by the Emperor, in her pocket, together with a promise of employment for him in the Scythian army. Mdlle. Barbara lays her plans, and presently, travelling by night through a forest where the rebels had one of their camps, she falls into their hands. There was some talk of shooting her at once, for her face was unmistakable, and they all knew what harm she had done to their cause; but she singled out O’Malachy, and threw herself at his feet and demanded his protection. You wouldn’t find many Irishmen who would refuse to help a pretty woman in such a plight, and O’Malachy pulled her behind him, and told the rest to come on. They nearly got to blows, but at last they agreed to give the girl some form of trial, and they carried her off to their headquarters. Naturally O’Malachy kept close to her on the way, and she used her opportunity so well that before the journey was over he was head and ears in love with her. He soon discovered that the rest were determined to kill her, and the very first night that he had the chance he helped her to escape from the ruined tower in which she was imprisoned, and escorted her back to her friends. Up to that time he fully meant to go back and give himself up to his comrades, but now was Mdlle. Barbara’s chance. She never let him alone on that journey, until she had got him to promise to come in with her and surrender. He must have been pretty sick of the Sarmatians altogether—they were rather a shady lot, always quarrelling and fighting among themselves—and there was nothing to be made out of their job, and he was in love as well, and he thought she loved him, so he consented. He got his pardon and his post in the Scythian army, and he meant to get Mdlle. Barbara. But when he went to claim her she met him as she had done the other men she had betrayed, turned her back on him and told him that no traitor should ever be her husband. But she had tried that trick once too often. He had her against the wall with a revolver to her head in an instant, and then and there he made her promise to marry him. And that wasn’t all, either. He took her to the table, still with the revolver pointed at her, and made her write out and sign an account of the scene. Then he let her go, but she married him the next week. You see he could have ruined her with that paper. If it had once come to her employers’ ears that she had lost her nerve, and yielded to threats, they would never have made use of her again. Perhaps, too, the O’Malachy’s style of wooing pleased her, or she may have had a soft place for him in her heart all along. At any rate, they married, and went into partnership, and you see what a happy couple they are.”
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 2 Part 4
After this hospitable intimation, the travellers held back no longer, and speedily found themselves established in most comfortable quarters, for the landlord was delighted not to be compelled to turn away such promising guests from his door. Nothing was too good for them, and they went to bed well content, after commissioning the host to procure horses in the morning for their intended ride to Château Temeszy.
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 2 Part 3
Thanks to Caerleon’s foresight in not sending word to his friend of their intended visit to Hungary, the tour was carried on in a very leisurely fashion indeed, and the brothers lounged through Europe, to use Cyril’s phrase, by unfrequented routes, spending now a day and now a week in old half-deserted towns, left high and dry by the stream of modern progress. There was nothing very inspiriting in such travelling to men who were neither antiquarians nor photographic maniacs; but Caerleon had a vague idea that he was improving his mind by visiting the scenes made famous by old German history, while Cyril was as well content to put in his time on the Continent in this way as in another. The person who suffered most was Wright, the groom, who found himself debarred in most places from communion with his kind owing to his ignorance of the language, and he rejoiced unfeignedly when the course of his masters’ wanderings brought them at last to Janoszwar, the town that lay nearest to Count Gyula Temeszy’s castle.
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 2 Part 2
In this way the matter was settled, and a few days later the two brothers left Llandiarmid for London, where Caerleon did his best to make a satisfactory disposition of his rather complicated affairs, and Cyril went round to say good-bye to his lady friends. Cyril was a very popular young man in London society, where he had found a footing as soon as he left Eton. He had slipped out of sight for a short time as unpaid attaché in the British Embassy at Pavelsburg, but the Scythian winter proved too severe for him, and he was invalided home, to take up a pleasant existence about town, while assuring every one that he was only waiting until a suitable post should offer itself for his acceptance in some more genial clime. As a poverty-stricken younger son, he was free from the pursuit of the match-making mothers and daughters who had made Caerleon’s life such a burden to him. No one wanted to marry him, and, fortunately for himself, he felt no particular desire to marry any one. The part he had chosen in the Human Comedy was that of the Laughing Philosopher, and he played it with complete satisfaction to himself and to his world. He was a universal favourite among the ladies, helping the elder ones to arrange their cotillons and organise their charity bazaars, while for the younger he designed costumes for fancy balls, and was always ready to suggest new ideas for any scheme of pleasure. With men he was not quite so popular. Those who did not know him well regarded him as entirely a ladies’ man, while some few who had penetrated more deeply into his character were a little afraid of him, and half suspected him of hiding deep designs under a mask of frivolity. This was not the case, however. Cyril was fully conscious of his own powers of mind, but he had no scruple as to using them to smooth his path in society until some more important object should come in his way.
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction
An Uncrowned King Chapter 2 Part 1
A year had passed, and the situation in Thracia remained unchanged. The search for a king initiated by M. Drakovics had not yet proved successful, but the Provisional Government was still in office, and the Thracians lived and throve under a regimen of what their enemies called autocracy washed down by draughts of rhetoric. M. Drakovics alone, against whose life two further attempts had been made, looked out ahead with troubled eyes, and yearned for the tall Englishman who had seemed likely to prove such an efficient coadjutor in his task of governing.
By Sydney Grier3 years ago in Fiction