Alice Williamson - The Princess Virginia

“No,” said the Princess. “No. I’m — dashed if I do.”

“My darling child!” exclaimed the Grand Duchess. “You’re impossible. If any one should hear you!”

“It’s he who’s impossible,” the Princess amended. “I’m just trying to show you – ”

“Or to shock me. You are so like your grandmother.”

“That’s the best compliment any one can give me, which is lucky, as it’s given so often,” laughed the Princess. “Dear, adorable Virginia!” She cuddled into the pink hollow of her hand the pearl-framed ivory miniature of a beautiful, smiling girl, which always hung from a thin gold chain around her neck. “They shouldn’t have named me after you, should they, if they hadn’t wanted me to be like you?”

“It was partly a question of money, dear,” sighed the Grand Duchess. “If my mother hadn’t left a legacy to my first daughter only on consideration that her own extremely American name of Virginia should be perpetuated – ”

“It was a delicious way of being patriotic. I’m glad she did it. I love being the only Royal Princess with American blood in my veins and an American name on my handkerchiefs. Do you believe for an instant that if Grandmother Virginia were alive, she would let Granddaughter Virginia marry Prince Henri de Touraine?”

“I don’t see why not,” said the Grand Duchess. “She wasn’t too patriotic to marry an English Duke, and startle London as the first American Duchess. Heavens, the things she used to do, if one could believe half the wild stories my father’s sister told me in warning! And as for my father, though a most charming man, of course, he could not – er – have been called precisely estimable , while Prince Henri certainly is, and an exceedingly good match even for you – in present circumstances.”

“Call him a match, if you like, Mother. He’s undoubtedly a stick. But no, he’s not a match for me. There’s only one on earth.” And Virginia’s eyes were lifted to the sky as if, instead of existing on earth, the person in her thoughts were placed as high as the sun that shone above her.

“I should have preferred an Englishman – for you,” said the Grand Duchess, “if only there were one of suitable rank, free to – ”

“I’m not thinking of an Englishman,” murmured her daughter.

“If only you would think of poor Henri!”

“Never of him. You know I said I would be d – ”

“Don’t repeat it! Oh, when you look at me in that way, how like you are to your grandmother’s portrait at home – the one in white, painted just before her marriage. One might have known you would be extraordinary. That sort of thing invariably skips over a generation.”

The Grand Duchess laid down the theory as a law; and whether or no she were right, it was at least sure that she had inherited nothing of the first Virginia’s daring originality. Some of her radiant mother’s beauty, perhaps, watered down to gentle prettiness, for the Hereditary Grand Duchess of Baumenburg-Drippe at fifty-one was still a daintily-attractive woman, a middle-aged Dresden china lady, with a perfect complexion, preserved by an almost perfect temper; surprised eyebrows, kindly dimples, and a conventional upper lip.

She was not by birth “Hereditary.” Her lord and (very much) her master had been that, and had selected her to help him reign over the Hereditary Grand Duchy of Baumenburg-Drippe, not only because her father was an English Duke with Royal Stuart blood in his veins, but because her Virginian mother had brought much gold to the Northmoreland exchequer. Afterwards, he had freely spent such portion of that gold as had come to his coffers, in trying to keep his little estates intact; but now it was all gone, and long ago he had died of grief and bitter disappointment; the Hereditary Grand Duchy of Baumenburg-Drippe was ruled by a cousinly understudy of the German Emperor William the Second; the one son of the marriage had been adopted, as heir to his crown, by the childless King of Hungaria; the handsome and lamentably extravagant old Duke of Northmoreland was dead; his title and vast estates had passed to a distant and disagreeable relative; and the widowed Grand Duchess, with her one fair daughter, had lived for years in a pretty old house with a high-walled garden, at Hampton Court, lent by the generosity of the King and Queen of England.

For a long moment the Dresden china lady thought in silence and something of sadness. Then she roused herself again and asked the one and only Royal Princess with an American name what, in the way of a match, she really expected.

“What do I expect?” echoed Virginia. “Why, I wish for the Moon – no, I mean the Sun. But I don’t expect to get it.”

“Is that a way of saying you never intend to marry?”

“I’m afraid it amounts to that,” admitted Virginia, “since there is only one man in the world I would have for my husband.”

“My dearest! A man you have let yourself learn to care for? A man beneath you? How terrible! But you see no one. I – ”

“I’ve never seen this man. And – I’m not ‘in love’ with him; that would be too foolish. Because, instead of being beneath, he’s far, far above me.”

“Virginia! Of whom can you be talking? Or is this another joke?”

Virginia blushed a little, and instead of answering her mother’s look of helpless appeal, stared at the row of tall hollyhocks that blazed along the ivy-hidden garden wall. She did not speak for an instant, and then she said with the dainty shyness of a child pinned to a statement by uncomprehending elders, “It isn’t a joke. Nonsense, maybe – yet not a joke. I’ve always thought of him – for so many years I’ve forgotten when it first began. He’s so great, so – everything that appeals to me; how could I help thinking about him, and putting him on a pedestal? I – there’s no idea of marriage in my mind, of course. Only – there’s no other man possible, after all the thoughts I’ve given him. No other man in the world.”

“My dear, you must tell me his name.”

“What, when I’ve described him – almost – do you still need to hear his name? Well then, I – I’m not ashamed to tell. It’s ‘Leopold.’”

“Leopold! You’re talking of the Emperor of Rhaetia.”

“As if it could have been any one else.”

“And you have thought of him – you’ve cherished him – for years – as an ideal! Why, you never spoke of him particularly before.”

“That’s because you never seriously wanted me to take a husband until this prim, dull French Henri proposed himself. My thoughts were my own. I wouldn’t have told, only – you see why.”

“Of course. My precious child, how extremely interesting, and – and romantic.” Again the Grand Duchess lapsed into silence. Yet her expression did not suggest a stricken mind. She merely appeared astonished, with an astonishment that might turn into an emotion more agreeable.

Meanwhile it was left for Virginia to look vexed, vexed with herself. She wished that she had not betrayed her poor little foolish secret – so shadowy a secret that it was hardly worthy of the name. Yet it had been precious – precious since childhood, precious as the immediate jewel of her soul, because it had been the jewel of her soul, and no one else had dreamed of its existence. Now she had shown it to other eyes – almost flaunted it. Never again could it be a joy to her.

In the little room, half study, half boudoir, which was her own, there was a desk, locked in her absence, where souvenirs of the young Emperor of Rhaetia had been accumulating for years. There were photographs which Virginia had contrived to buy secretly; portraits of Leopold from an early age, up to the present, when he was shown as a tall, dark, cold-eyed, warm-lipped, firm-chinned young man of thirty. There were paragraphs cut from newspapers, telling of his genius as a soldier, his prowess as a mountaineer and hunter of big game, with dramatic anecdotes of his haughty courage in time of danger, his impulsive charities, his well thought out schemes for the welfare of his subjects in every walk of life.