A PRINCESS OF BOHEMIA.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIII, Issue XXIII, 2 December 1899, Page 1016

A PRINCESS OF BOHEMIA.

(By Annie E. T. Searing.)

Van Rensselaer had sat through many an embassy dinner, eating messy dishes out of riblams ami frilled papers, and offering his polyglot remarks to many a foreign celebrity, but he glanced toward his left-hand neighbour with some apprehension as he finished his soup, making a hasty study of the Princess, wit'll her blueblack hair and her swarthy side face. There was a display of shoulder and blazing green jewels in the corsage, an impression of large outline and a persuasive personality. Clearly she was not attractive, he decided, and then, as she finished what she had been saying to t'lie man who took her out, ami turned toward Van Rensselaer, he instantly reversed his judgment under the compulsion of her dark eyes. Whether or not she was handsome by ordinary standards he could not have told, but attractive, interesting certainly, and inexplicably odd. With her large red-lipped mouth and gleaming white teeth she might have been a quadroon. or she might have posed to good effect as a gypsy queen in private theatricals. She spoke to him in French.

"I suppose you are a senator, or a general, or perhaps a cabinet member? You American men are so ostentatiously plain in dress. You abstain -o carefully from wearing your decorations on your evening coats that a poor foreigner may not know.” He laughed. She was audacious, even for a princess. "I am sorry, your Highness, but I have neither office nor insignia to my name. Indeed, I have been puzzling my inglorious head not a little to know why I am placed so illustriously at your side!” But he knew, and so did she. t'hat it was because he spoke French like a Parisian and was the cleverest, dinerout in Washington. It was not until the first entree that they again took a turn, and she passed with evident relief from the 'heavy German of the Austrian embassador to her more accustomed tongue. They tasted and hazarded suggestions as to the composition of the dish before them. “Permit me, Monsieur,” she broke off suddenly, “allow’ me one more guess, more intimate—personal! I am a clairvoyant, it has been said, and I have taken a great liberty. I have been reading your thoughts—will you allow me to tell you?” Van Rensselaer bowed, smiling his incredulitv.

“You do me much honour, Madame!”

“Very well, you were looking down the table a moment ago when I addressed you. past the green and gold Bohemian glass. J do not know what yon saw. but it was something very far away—over seas, I think.” He flushed slightly and assented. “We spoke of the entree, your mind on other things. I said ‘lt is made of fish. I fancy/ and you replied. ‘Since it is a game of guess. I choose lobster.’ What you were thinking was: ‘lt is the world-old mess of pottage —to be henceforth my daily bread!’ N'est ce pas. Monsieur, un bon hasard?”

Van Rensselaer finished his wine and set down 'his glass. He was not. smiling now. and the flush had died out- of his cheek. He looked at. her with a gravity very like displeasure. “Your Highness is indeed clairvoyant. It was not a guess; it was the truth. Princesses always tell the truth, do t'hev not?”

She made no reply, and the jewels in her piled-up hair burned not half so deeply as her eyes. He wished that people who were clairvoyant would not fall to his lot at dinner. It was distinctly uncomfortable, and not conducive to good digestion. "!-■ it too much." said the Princess softly, “to ask what the birthright It was too much, decidedly, and yet before he knew be answered, “Music." “Ah," murmured his questioner, "and now?” "Now," said Van Rensselaer, smiling once more as he shrugged his shoulders, “now. I am Darby. But perhaps Darby ami Joan are not indigenous to Russian Society.” Through the orchids a face was smiling greetings to him. “How despairingly charming!” sighed the Russian as she laid down her lorgnette, “and that is Joan!" There was an exasperation for Van Rensselaer in the finality of this woman's intuitions. “Princess.” he said when next they turned toward each other. “I am haunted by a resemblance, I think my

sub-conscious mind. if 1 have one. had gone wandering over time and space to verify it when you caught me napping. 1 hnd never seen but miu-jvo-ni.ni who looked like you-—it was s ago in my student days. She also was a princess—of Bohemia!”

’That was once my country.” she replied.

Van Rensselaer laughed. “But not hers—or mine. There is another and greater Bohemia where such a-s you may not dwell. Yours is geographically located. The other is not; it is no man’s land. As it happened that other princess belonged to both Bohemias.” "Who was she--and what?" “Pardon me, she had your eyes, but not your ancestry. She was a gypsy violinist in Prague. I have never since seen eyes like hers until to-night, and 1 shall never again hear a tone like that from her violin.”

If lie thought he had punished her he was mistaken. She drew in her breath with an odd little sigh and looked at him from under her lowered lids.

“I again read your thought. Monsieur. and I honour you for it. You are saying to yourself that her real rank was as far above mine as your Bohemia was a happier land to dwell in than—let us say, Russia!” It was after dinner when the women were grouped in knots in the long drawing room that the Princess managed to learn what she wanted to know of her neighbour at the table. “Van Rensselaer—oh yes!” said the the hostess. “We call him Fortunatos, he's such a lucky dog. He's the last, of an impoverished old American family.—if there is such a thing as an old family in so young a country —and was quite out of suits with fortune when he met his wife. I believe he was knocking about Europe consorting with all sorts of shabby musical people. studying to be a pianist. She fell so desperately in love with him that her father was obliged to allow the marriage. She had always had her whims gratified, and she threatened to kill herself if denied this one. There was some delay about it and then the wedding took place, with the compact—so I have been told—that he was to give up his profession. I fancy that was no great hardship.” she laughed, “as the price was three millions down and the hand of the richest heiress in America. It is not a difficult metier to be rich. Princess!” “I think it is sometimes very difficult,” was the surprising answer.

It was at the bidfling of a scented note with a coronet on it that Valfc Rensselaer found himself a few days later entering the apartments of tiie Russian.

“It's a thundering annoying sort of thing having your mind read, and I hope she won t be up to it again.” he grumbled.

She was clad in flowing red garments, ornamented with gold filagree, and a finely wrought gold girdle hung down from the clasp to the hem. Van Rensselaer felt the costume to be so barbaric as to be out of good form —too theatrical, and yet her manner was simple enough. “We were speaking that night,” she began as if they hail just left off. “of music. Hungarian music, or were we only thinking of it? I was hoping you would play for me to-day.” “I never play, never touch a piano any more.” and he felt a thrill of annoyance as if some one had pushed against him roughly. The Princess arose and crossed the room, taking up a violin that lav on the open piano. “Then you will listen to me?” she said.

It was Schubert, and she played with such mastery of the instrument, such sympathy and love of the work, that Van Rensselaer was moved out of his reserve. He laid aside his hat and gloves, and sat down by the piano. Once more he threaded through exquisite harmonies and filled the scheme with the piano accompaniment he knew so well. For more than an hour they played with no words save “Do you remember this?" or “Another composer has solved that problem thus—you know it.” leading and following by turns through those paths where only musicians may walk in happy knowledge.

“And now." said the Princess, at last, “do you remember?" She stood straight and tall in her barbaric reds, the gold ornaments gleaming in the late slanting light, and Van Rensselaer had no need to wait for the strains that were coming. He was back again in studentdays and through thecigarsmoke of the music hall inPrague, he could see the Gitana more slim and girlish, but. with the same strange eyes and the blue-black hair, while above the clink of the beer glasses and the soft shuffling of the waiters'

feet, he could hear the witchery of her gypsy music—that half-rememl>er-eil strain that had teased him so often through thv intervening years. Back and forth flushed the bow while her figure swayed to the mad notions, and then came the sad cadence with the heartbreak in it that often characterises the Hungarian music. Here she broke off and laid the violin on the piano, then she came and put her hand on Van Rensselaer’s shoulder. “You know me now. I also was a Bohemian and I also sold my birthright for a mess of pottage! Ah, comrade, it is a grand country, that. Bohemia—but we were not worthy of it, and there is no going back!- But it. is still left to us to be true —true to a compact, an i one dishonour is enough!” The Princess held out her hand in farewell and-dismissal, and Van Rensselaer kissed it reverently. -He feltunsteady on his feet as if he had been drinking. "Good-bye." she said, brokenly. “1 shall not see you again, for I am going away to-morrow. —back to my Darby in Russia. I shall think of you, sometimes. when 1 dream of Bohemia, and I shall pray that you be not too unhappy in your exile. Be good to your Joan!”