The Man from Brodneys | Page 8

desire to connect her past with her future--for which we have, perhaps intemperately, an especial consideration. It is only necessary, therefore, for us to step into and out of the Grand Duchy without the procrastination usual in a sojourner, stopping long enough only to see how tiresome it would be to stay, and to wonder why any one remained who could get away. Not that the Grand Duchy was an utterly undesirable place, but that too much time already had been wasted there by the populace itself.
It has been said that events of a most unusual character were happening; any event that roused the people from their daily stolidity was sufficiently unusual to suggest the superlative. The Grand Duke's peace of mind had been severely disturbed--so severely, in fact, that he was transferring his troubles to the Emperor, who, in turn, felt obliged to communicate with the United States Ambassador, and who, in his turn, had no other alternative than to take summary action in respect to the indiscretions of a fellow-countryman.
In the beginning, it was not altogether the fault of the young man who had come from America to serve his country. Whatever may have been the turmoil in the Grand Duke's palace at Thorberg, Chase's conscience was even and serene. He had no excuses to offer--for that matter none would have been entertained--and he was resigning his post with the confidence that he had performed his obligations as an American gentleman should, even though the performance had created an extraordinary commotion. Chase was new to the Old World and its customs, especially those rigorous ones which surrounded royalty and denied it the right to venture into the commonplace. The ambassador at the capital of the Empire at first sought to excuse him on the ground of ignorance; but the Grand Duke insisted that even an American could not be such a fool as Chase had been; so, it must have been a wilful offence that led up to the controversy.
Chase had been the representative of the American Government at Thorberg for six months. He never fully understood why the government should have a representative there; but that was a matter quite entirely for the President to consider. The American flag floated above his doorway in the Friedrich Strasse, but in all his six months of occupation not ten Americans had crossed the threshold. As a matter of fact, he had seen fewer than twenty Americans in all that time. He was a vigorous, healthy young man, and it may well be presumed that the situation bored him. Small wonder, then, that he kept out of mischief for half a year. Diplomatic service is one thing and the lack of opportunity is quite another. Chase did his best to find occupation for his diplomacy, but what chance had he with nothing ahead of him but regular reports to the department in which he could only announce that he was in good health and that no one had "called."
Chase belonged to the diplomatic class which owes its elevation to the influence of Congress--not to Congress as a body but to one of its atoms. He was not a politician; no more was he an office seeker. He was a real soldier of fortune, in search of affairs--in peace or in war, on land or at sea. Possessed of a small income, sufficiently adequate to sustain life if he managed to advance it to the purple age (but wholly incapable of supporting him as a thriftless diplomat), he was compelled to make the best of his talents, no matter to what test they were put. He left college at twenty-two, possessed of the praiseworthy design to earn his own way without recourse to the $4,500 income from a certain trust fund. His plan also incorporated the hope to save every penny of that income for the possible "rainy day." He was now thirty; in each of several New York banks he had something like $4,000 drawing three per cent. interest while he picked his blithe way through the world on $2,500 a year, more or less, as chance ordained.
"When I'm forty," Chase was wont to remark to envious spendthrifts who couldn't understand his philosophy, "I'll have over a hundred thousand there, and if I live to be ninety, just think what I'll have! And it will be like finding the money, don't you see? Of course, I won't live to be ninety. Moreover, I may get married and have to maintain a poor wife with rich relatives, which is a terrible strain, you know. You have to live up to your wife's relatives, if you don't do anything else."
He did not refer to the chance that he was quite sure to come in for a large legacy at the death of