The Service of Mammon

THE Prince lay beneath the great purple beech, without covering of any kind, and still wet from the drenching spring rain of the night before. The maidens who had espied him in this sorry plight stood looking earnestly down into his face.

“What a queer stick,” said Annabelle, who had seen him first.

Irene was older, and a specialist in fairy lore.

“It ’s an enchanted prince,” she declared.

“How do you know? ”

“Oh, I know.”

The tone was convincing. And, besides, Irene understood all about these things. Annabelle’s eyes grew round as she stooped nearer.

“You’re lucky,” said Irene, “to have found him. Some day, when he comes to his own, he ’ll give you everything you want.” Then her tone changed to the dramatic.

“Your feet were guided hither by some mysterious fate, ” she announced.

When Irene’s conversation ran in this vein Annabelle always trembled. It sounded exactly like the fairy books out of which Mercedes read to her.

Mercedes was her grown-up sister. Instead of graduating at school she had spent the winter in traveling with her mother, and she felt herself a woman of experience. But she and Annabelle were still great chums; and they both understood that the most pleasing fate that can befall any maid is to be carried off by a prince.

So now Annabelle looked eagerly at the enchanted stick.

“ Shall I — take him, Irene ? ”

“Yes. And hurry. Here comes Miss Meeks.” Annabelle stooped, slipped the Prince in her pocket, and rose hastily.

“ What have you found, my dear ? ”

Miss Meeks’s subdued, patient voice asked the question mechanically. As a governess she tried to do her duty.

“Oh, just a queer stick,” spoke up Irene boldly. “Show it to her, Annabelle. ”

The Prince was exhibited.

“ Why, what do you want that for ? ” queried Miss Meeks, taking him in her hand.

The children were silent.

“It is certainly an odd formation,” the governess admitted, “and singularly like the human form. You will notice that the bark has been peeled off, and that the stick, discolored by exposure to the weather, looks almost as though covered by a parchment-like skin. ” As she spoke Miss Meeks held the Prince close to her near-sighted eyes, regarding him unblushingly. Therefore Irene giggled and poked Annabelle in the side.

When Miss Meeks had finished her inspection of the Prince’s person she handed him back to Annabelle, and he was consigned again to his cambric prison.

As the girls neared the house a young man whirled past them on a wheel.

“That’s the boy who brings the telegrams,” said Irene.

Miss Meeks’s pale face sharpened with interest, and she began to walk more briskly. When the three entered the house they saw Mrs. Thorndyke and Mercedes standing before the great hall fireplace, evidently re-reading the message just received.

Mercedes started and crushed the paper in her hand. Annabelle thought she looked half frightened and half pleased. Mrs. Thorndyke, however, seemed very happy. She smiled brightly at the two little girls, and held out her hand. They both ran forward.

“Have you a telegram, mamma? ” Irene asked. She seldom betrayed hesitation.

“A cablegram, my dear.” Then turning to Miss Meeks, she said, “Mr. Stainford will be here sooner than we thought. He arrives in a few days.”

“ Who is he ? ” whispered Annabelle, pulling at Mercedes’s hand.

A mischievous expression flickered across the girl’s agitated face.

“He’s my Prince, ” she answered, whispering also, “and maybe he ’ll carry me off some day.”

But Mrs. Thorndyke heard. “Mr. Stainford,” said she, “is a gentleman whom we met last winter while we were away, and he is coming here to visit us. Now run upstairs with Miss Meeks.”

Irene, who had heard before of this Mr. Stainford, danced away like a sprite, divining more than she knew. And Miss Meeks, who was in Mrs. Thorndyke’s confidence, fairly beamed.

But Annabelle walked gravely. She was wondering whether her sister was in earnest If so, she was soon to see what a real prince was like. She would know into what manner of being the enchanted one she had found was to be transformed.

Up in the nursery Miss Meeks gave way to the pride and joy which swelled within her.

“So Mr. Stainford is coming! ” she exclaimed, pronouncing the name reverently, as though it were a charm.

“Is he really a prince? ” asked Annabelle, who had noted her sister’s mischievous look.

“You little goose! ” exclaimed Irene.

But Miss Meeks smiled complacently. “In the world of finance he is,” she answered with emphasis.

“Will he give Mercedes a palace? ” insisted Annabelle.

“He will indeed,” said the governess. And the child was satisfied.

When Miss Meeks left the nursery Annabelle drew the Prince carefully out of her pocket and laid him on a chair.

“ Where shall I keep him ? ” she asked Irene.

Irene glanced about quickly.

“In the doll-house,” she said, with decision.

“But Éline and Alphonse ” — began Annabelle.

“You little goose! What difference does that make ? Put them somewhere else. Did n’t I tell you he was a prince ? Did n’t I tell you that when he is released from enchantment he will give you everything you want? Of course you must give him the best you have, and that is n’t nearly good enough.”

She paused. The lore of a dozen books came surging to her assistance. She went close to Annabelle, whose eyes were full of tears.

“Through the devotion of a pure and lovely maiden — that ’s you, Annabelle — he will be changed from this miserable stick into a splendid prince. He will bend the knee before you; he will beg you to share his throne. He will carry you away to his palace on a milkwhite charger.”

Annabelle dried her tears. She dearly loved the good things of this world.

“Oh, will he! ” she cried.

But Irene had whisked suddenly out of the room.

Annabelle smiled dreamily. She was not looking at the Prince, but out of the window. In fancy she could see the milk-white charger galloping away with herself and the Prince (a creature transformed) on his back. At the end of this wild ride was a shining marble palace. The Prince took her hand; he knelt before her; he led her within ; liveried lackeys bowed low, — at this point her happy eyes turned to the Prince on the chair. They changed suddenly, yet she picked him up carefully, and laid him on her own soft pillow.

“ You must be tired, ” she murmured, “but your room will soon be ready.”

Then Annabelle went and knelt before her doll-house. Within were Éline and Alphonse, their baby and their servants. Éline and Alphonse were a very happy couple.

“My poor Alphonse! My poor Éline! ”

There were tears in the big gray eyes; but the happy couple, who were sitting on the parlor sofa, smiled serenely.

“I ’m going to fix a room for you and Alphonse and the baby on one of my shelves, ” she whispered to the lady. “You will have to give up your house and your servants for a time. A prince needs them.”

The tears ran down her cheeks. Poor Éline ! Poor Alphonse!

The Prince was soon laid to rest on eider down, beneath a lace coverlet; and Alphonse’s finest clothes were selected for his use. But still his face wore the sneer, and Annabelle sighed as she turned away. However, that was the end of him, she thought, until morning. And she went to look in upon the happy couple in their new home.

They were still happy. Their faces were smiling above a plain cotton counterpane, and they met Annabelle’s eyes reassuringly.

As she turned away, Irene bounced into the room, a chocolate candy in her hand.

“Hello! Where ’s the Prince ? ”

Annabelle pointed him out.

“Oh, you put him to bed, did you? And he has n’t had any supper! ”

“Is that for me? ” asked Annabelle, eyeing the candy hungrily.

Irene tightened her lips.

“Yes,” she said, “but of course you ’ll have to give it to the Prince. I ’ll put it here on the table by his bed.”

Annabelle’s mouth drooped.

“Must he eat? ” she asked, a dismal foreboding upon her.

“Of course he must, goose! Do you want to starve him? Why, you must save all your sweeties for him. He would n’t care for bread and milk and things like that.”

The ever ready tears trembled on Annabelle’s long lashes.

“All your sweeties! ” The agony of such a tremendous renunciation overwhelmed her, and she wept helplessly.

And at supper that evening, with lips trembling and eyes glued to her pretty little mould of jelly, Annabelle explained to Miss Meeks that she did not want to eat her dessert just then. And Miss Meeks laughed indulgently.

“She thinks it’s too pretty to eat right up, ” she said to Irene. Miss Meeks often wondered at herself for understanding children so well.

After supper Miss Meeks went to her own room — which connected with the nursery — and Irene followed her.

Irene had already explained to Annabelle that the Prince could not eat if any one remained in the room; and as she reached the door, she cast back a significant glance over her shoulder.

It said, “Now is your chance! ”

So Annabelle rose sadly, put her plate of jelly on the table of the dollhouse dining-room, and went out into the hall to wait.

Presently Irene came out of Miss Meeks’s room and whispered to Annabelle that the Prince must have finished by this time. And Annabelle, who was an unsuspicious little soul, followed her sister meekly into the nursery.

The plate on the table of the dollhouse dining-room was empty; the Prince was leaning back against his chair as though he had never stirred.

It was then that Annabelle began to hate the Prince. Gentle natures have a singular, slow, permanent way of hating. Irene, under like emotions, would have thrown the Prince out of the window and risked the consequences. But Annabelle undressed him carefully, and laid him under the lace coverlet. The happiest hour of Annabelle’s changed day came when she felt herself rid of the Prince until next morning.

But one unforgettable night she awoke with a cry. Some one, something, had touched her! It lay beside her! Cold with terror she put out her hand. It clutched the Prince. Then she shrieked aloud.

Irene, under cover of darkness, quivered a little, but she quickly assumed an innocent expression of countenance, lying with eyes closed, and so was ready for the coming of a light.

Miss Meeks heard Annabelle call, and came quickly to her side; she found the child cold and trembling, decided that she was ill, and straightway carried her off to the next room lest Irene suffer some contagion. Irene perceived that she had gone too far, and she blamed the Prince. She slipped out of bed, and laid hold upon him with no gentle hand.

“I’ve a mind to pitch you out of the window,” she said irritably, as she put him back in his bed. “And I shall some day, too. You are getting to be a perfect nuisance! ”

The Prince was not one to indulge in premonitions of fate. He showed no uneasiness at these words ; and neither did he appear to note, the next morning, the peculiar gleam in Annabelle’s eye when she returned to the nursery and looked in upon him.

She hated him! She hated him! The sweetness in her was all turned to gall; the gentleness to sullen determination. And she would get rid of the Prince whatever happened!

Thus Annabelle, the lovely and gentle, the innocent-eyed, tender-hearted Annabelle, was ready to do murder.

And still the yellow hair parted over her white forehead to fall in fat, smooth curls about the rose-petal face; her mouth still drooped wistfully; her eyes were limpid as of yore.

But in her heart was murder.

That day, however, brought no opportunity for dark deeds. Instead it brought a great joy.

In the afternoon Mercedes appeared in the nursery and told the little girls they were to come down to the diningroom for dessert that evening.

“Not me, Mercedes? ” cried Annabelle.

“Yes, you too. I asked mamma.”

“ Why are we ? ” demanded Irene.

But Mercedes shook her head, and ran out laughing.

Annabelle was almost solemn in her joy. To her thought, any scene of evening festivity was part of a world entirely without her own, — a world of beauty and laughter and unimagined delights, wherein grown-up people disported themselves after little boys and girls were safely tucked away in bed for the night.

Therefore, when Annabelle entered the dining-room that evening, the gleam of candlelight and silver and glass mingled, for her, into a multitude of dancing fairy lights; while the lady at her father’s right hand, radiant in low-cut bodice and pearls, did not for one instant suggest Mrs. Pointer Jones, who was quite plain in her street hat and gown.

But there seemed something strangely familiar about the young man between her mother and Mercedes; and only when her mother said, “Come here, my dear, and speak to Mr. Stainford, ” did she realize that this was Mercedes’s Prince, and that she could not have seen him before.

Nevertheless, as she took the chair that John placed for her, she still felt that sense of mystified recognition, and kept her eyes fixed on Mr. Stainford.

“Don’t stare so,” murmured her mother, and Annabelle dropped her eyes quickly.

Then a strange thing happened. Instead of the face of Mr. Stainford she seemed to see that of her wooden Prince.

“Why, that is who he looks like! ”

She did not really say the words aloud, but they flashed so clearly through her mind that for one dreadful moment she thought she had done so, and turned quite pale.

Yet no one paid the slightest attention. So she recovered from her fright, and the big gray eyes stole up again to rest upon the face opposite.

It drew up just like the face of her wooden Prince, making that twist about the mouth.

The skin had the same look. And so did the eyes.

But it could not be her Prince, because they had been expecting this one — still, when they were enchanted, you could not exactly tell about anything.

And even if he was not her Prince, that was the way her Prince would look when he was released from enchantment.

Mrs. Thorndyke did not notice that her little girl was staring again. In her own face a strange expression had come.

How young Mercedes looked tonight, — almost like a little girl playing at being grown up.

Her neck and arms, revealed by this first dinner gown, showed childish lines and hollows. Her eyes were misty with young wonder, — not radiant with love, — and her mouth kept wavering from wistful curves to an eager smile.

Mrs. Thorndyke’s own eyes grew suddenly misty. And then she looked at Murray Stainford.

Would he understand? Surely he would! The appeal of this delicately unfolding womanhood must touch the heart of any man to reverence and tenderest devotion.

But the face of Mercedes’s Prince did not betray exactly these emotions. And suddenly the great primeval instinct of protection surged up within the mother.

Her little girl! Her pretty Mercedes ! Why, she was only a child, and this man —

She grew pale, and reached hastily for her glass of wine.

“How absurd! ” she said to herself. “I shall have one of my attacks if I yield to this foolishness.” And she crowded the feeling down.

Murray Stamford, meantime, had noticed her sudden pallor, and was wondering whether Mercedes inherited her mother’s heart trouble.

“I ’ve got to risk that, —but why does the brat stare so ? ”

The young man said it to himself. But Annabelle spoke aloud. She had not meant to in the least, but when his eyes met hers the words simply popped out.

“Are you going to give Mercedes a palace and everything she wants ? ”

She hoped she had not really spoken. But the sound of her own voice kept rolling around in the dreadful hollow of silence into which she found herself plunged. And through this silence peered the reproachful eyes of her mother, and the cold, dead eyes of Mercedes’s Prince.

The latter presently turned his eyes upon Mrs. Thorndyke and said, with a certain, slow emphasis, —

“ What a very clever child that is ! ”

Annabelle did not see the strange, spirited look Mercedes flashed upon the speaker; nor did she see her mother’s wounded face. She could not see anything for the mist that swam in her eyes. And just as John set before her a beautiful red rose of strawberry cream she burst into tears.

For she had felt the meaning of Murray Stainford’s voice, though she had not understood.

“ Take her up to Miss Meeks, Irene, ” said Mrs. Thorndyke very gently. And Irene, inwardly raging, led her small sister away.

Annabelle was a goose, of course; but it was all the fault of that wretched wooden Prince. He was getting to be a perfect nuisance.

Suddenly Irene dashed ahead of Annabelle, and rushing into the nursery, shut the door with a bang.

When Annabelle stumbled in, still crying, Irene stood with her back to the window. Her eyes were shining triumphantly.

But she only said, “Well, the light’s on, and I guess Miss Meeks will be coming in a minute, so I ’ll go back, now. ”

When she was alone, Annabelle sat down desolately. She felt disgraced, though she scarcely knew why. It is the bitterest feeling of childhood.

It was some time before she remembered the wooden Prince and her suspicions concerning him. Of course it could n’t be, — but her eyes became riveted on the doll-house ; and a queer feeling crept over her.

Suppose Mercedes’s Prince and hers really were the same!

She stole softly up to the doll-house and looked within.

The Prince was gone.

She could scarcely believe it, but there was the empty bed. And then the full measure of the Prince’s iniquity became clear to Annabelle.

She had found him and cared for him, but no sooner was he released from enchantment than he had deserted her for Mercedes. She did not want his palace, nor anything that was his; but the realization of such baseness filled her with horror.

“He is a bad, wicked Prince,” she said aloud, “and I hate him! ”

Just then the door opened.

“ O Mercedes, ” gasped Annabelle, “your Prince is a bad, wicked prince, and I hate him, I do! ”

The young girl paled a little.

“Why do you hate him, darling?” she asked, holding the child in her arms and looking straight into the clear gray eyes.

“ Because he is bad, ” said Annabelle.

Mercedes only kissed her for answer, but the misty look was gone from her eyes and the wavering smile from her lips. It was as though some shimmering veil through which she had looked out upon the world had been torn away.

Virginia Yeaman Remnitz.