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The Prince and Betty

P >> P. G. Wodehouse >> The Prince and Betty



Produced by Suzanne L. Shell, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team










THE PRINCE AND BETTY





by P. G. WODEHOUSE

[American edition]
1912




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I THE CABLE FROM MERVO

II MERVO AND ITS OWNER

III JOHN

IV VIVE LE ROI

V MR. SCOBELL HAS ANOTHER IDEA

VI YOUNG ADAM CUPID

VII MR. SCOBELL IS FRANK

VIII AN ULTIMATUM FROM THE THRONE

IX MERVO CHANGES ITS CONSTITUTION

X MRS. OAKLEY

XI A LETTER OP INTRODUCTION

XII "PEACEFUL MOMENTS"

XIII BETTY MAKES A FRIEND

XIV A CHANGE OF POLICY

XV THE HONEYED WORD

XVI TWO VISITORS TO THE OFFICE

XVII THE MAN AT THE ASTOR

XVIII THE HIGHFIELD

XIX THE FIRST BATTLE

XX BETTY AT LARGE

XXI CHANGES IN THE STAFF

XXII A GATHERING OF CAT SPECIALISTS

XXIII THE RETIREMENT OF SMITH

XXIV THE CAMPAIGN QUICKENS

XXV CORNERED

XXVI JOURNEY'S END

XXVII A LEMON

XXVIII THE FINAL ATTEMPT

XXIX A REPRESENTATIVE GATHERING

XXX CONCLUSION




THE PRINCE AND BETTY




CHAPTER I

THE CABLE PROM MERVO


A pretty girl in a blue dress came out of the house, and began to walk
slowly across the terrace to where Elsa Keith sat with Marvin Rossiter
in the shade of the big sycamore. Elsa and Marvin had become engaged
some few days before, and were generally to be found at this time
sitting together in some shaded spot in the grounds of the Keith's Long
Island home.

"What's troubling Betty, I wonder," said Elsa. "She looks worried."

Marvin turned his head.

"Is that your friend, Miss Silver?"

"That's Betty. We were at college together. I want you to like Betty."

"Then I will. When did she arrive?"

"Last night. She's here for a month. What's the matter, Betty? This is
Marvin. I want you to like Marvin."

Betty Silver smiled. Her face, in repose, was rather wistful, but it
lighted up when she smiled, and an unsuspected dimple came into being
on her chin.

"Of course I shall," she said.

Her big gray eyes seemed to search Marvin's for an instant and Marvin
had, almost subconsciously, a comfortable feeling that he had been
tested and found worthy.

"What were you scowling at so ferociously, Betty?" asked Elsa.

"Was I scowling? I hope you didn't think it was at you. Oh, Elsa, I'm
miserable! I shall have to leave this heavenly place."

"Betty!"

"At once. And I was meaning to have the most lovely time. See what has
come!"

She held out some flimsy sheets of paper.

"A cable!" said Elsa.

"Great Scott! it looks like the scenario of a four-act play," said
Marvin. "That's not all one cable, surely? Whoever sent it must be a
millionaire."

"He is. It's from my stepfather. Read it out, Elsa. I want Mr. Rossiter
to hear it. He may be able to tell me where Mervo is. Did you ever hear
of Mervo, Mr. Rossiter?"

"Never. What is it?"

"It's a place where my stepfather is, and where I've got to go. I do
call it hard. Go on, Elsa."

Elsa, who had been skimming the document with raised eyebrows, now read
it out in its spacious entirety.

_On receipt of this come instantly Mervo without moment
delay vital importance presence urgently required come
wherever you are cancel engagements urgent necessity hustle
have advised bank allow you draw any money you need expenses
have booked stateroom Mauretania sailing Wednesday don't fail
catch arrive Fishguard Monday train London sleep London catch
first train Tuesday Dover now mind first train no taking root
in London and spending a week shopping mid-day boat Dover
Calais arrive Paris Tuesday evening Dine Paris catch train de
luxe nine-fifteen Tuesday night for Marseilles have engaged
sleeping coupe now mind Tuesday night no cutting loose around
Paris stores you can do all that later on just now you want to
get here right quick arrive Marseilles Wednesday morning boat
Mervo Wednesday night will meet you Mervo now do you follow
all that because if not cable at once and say which part of
journey you don't understand now mind special points to be
remembered firstly come instantly secondly no cutting loose
around London Paris stores see._

_SCOBELL._

"_Well!_" said Elsa, breathless.

"By George!" said Marvin. "He certainly seems to want you badly enough.
He hasn't spared expense. He has put in about everything you could put
into a cable."

"Except why he wants me," said Betty.

"Yes," said Elsa. "Why does he want you? And in such a desperate hurry,
too!"

Marvin was re-reading the message.

"It isn't a mere invitation," he said. "There's no
come-right-along-you'll-like-this-place-it's-fine about it. He seems to
look on your company more as a necessity than a luxury. It's a sort of
imperious C.Q.D."

"That's what makes it so strange. We have hardly met for years. Why, he
didn't even know where I was. The cable was sent to the bank and
forwarded on. And I don't know where he is!"

"Which brings us back," said Marvin, "to mysterious Mervo. Let us
reason inductively. If you get to the place by taking a boat from
Marseilles, it can't be far from the French coast. I should say at a
venture that Mervo is an island in the Mediterranean. And a small
island for if it had been a big one we should have heard of it."

"Marvin!" cried Elsa, her face beaming with proud affection. "How
clever you are!"

"A mere gift," he said modestly. "I have been like that from a boy." He
got up from his chair. "Isn't there an encyclopaedia in the library,
Elsa?"

"Yes, but it's an old edition."

"It will probably touch on Mervo. I'll go and fetch it."

As he crossed the terrace, Elsa turned quickly to Betty.

"Well?" she said.

Betty smiled at her.

"He's a dear. Are you very happy, Elsa?"

Elsa's eyes danced. She drew in her breath softly. Betty looked at her
in silence for a moment. The wistful expression was back on her face.

"Elsa," she said, suddenly. "What is it like? How does it feel, knowing
that there's someone who is fonder of you than anything--?"

Elsa closed her eyes.

"It's like eating berries and cream in a new dress by moonlight on a
summer night while somebody plays the violin far away in the distance
so that you can just hear it," she said.

Her eyes opened again.

"And it's like coming along on a winter evening and seeing the windows
lit up and knowing you've reached home."

Betty was clenching her hands, and breathing quickly.

"And it's like--"

"Elsa, don't! I can't bear it!"

"Betty! What's the matter?"

Betty smiled again, but painfully.

"It's stupid of me. I'm just jealous, that's all. I haven't got a
Marvin, you see. You have."

"Well, there are plenty who would like to be your Marvin."

Betty's face grew cold.

"There are plenty who would like to be Benjamin Scobell's son-in-law,"
she said.

"Betty!" Elsa's voice was serious. "We've been friends for a good long
time, so you'll let me say something, won't you? I think you're getting
just the least bit hard. Now turn and rend me," she added
good-humoredly.

"I'm not going to rend you," said Betty. "You're perfectly right. I am
getting hard. How can I help it? Do you know how many men have asked me
to marry them since I saw you last? Five."

"Betty!"

"And not one of them cared the slightest bit about me."

"But, Betty, dear, that's just what I mean. Why should you say that?
How can you know?"

"How do I know? Well, I do know. Instinct, I suppose. The instinct of
self-preservation which nature gives hunted animals. I can't think of a
single man in the world--except your Marvin, of course--who wouldn't
do anything for money." She stopped. "Well, yes, one."

Elsa leaned forward eagerly.

"Who, Betty?"

"You don't know him."

"But what's his name?"

Betty hesitated.

"Well, if I am on the witness-stand--Maude."

"Maude? I thought you said a man?"

"It's his name. John Maude."

"But, Betty! Why didn't you tell me before? This is tremendously
interesting."

Betty laughed shortly.

"Not so very, really. I only met him two or three times, and I haven't
seen him for years, and I don't suppose I shall ever see him again. He
was a friend of Alice Beecher's brother, who was at Harvard. Alice took
me over to meet her brother, and Mr. Maude was there. That's all."

Elsa was plainly disappointed.

"But how do you know, then--? What makes you think that he--?"

"Instinct, again, I suppose. I do know."

"And you've never met him since?"

Betty shook her head. Elsa relapsed into silence. She had a sense of
pathos.

At the further end of the terrace Marvin Rossiter appeared, carrying a
large volume.

"Here we are," he said. "Scared it up at the first attempt. Now then."

He sat down, and opened the book.

"You don't want to hear all about how Jason went there in search of the
Golden Fleece, and how Ulysses is supposed to have taken it in on his
round-trip? You want something more modern. Well, it's an island in the
Mediterranean, as I said, and I'm surprised that you've never heard of
it, Elsa, because it's celebrated in its way. It's the smallest
independent state in the world. Smaller than Monaco, even. Here are
some facts. Its population when this encyclopaedia was printed--there
may be more now--was eleven thousand and sixteen. It was ruled over up
to 1886 by a prince. But in that year the populace appear to have said
to themselves, 'When in the course of human events....' Anyway, they
fired the prince, and the place is now a republic. So that's where
you're going, Miss Silver. I don't know if it's any consolation to you,
but the island, according to this gentleman, is celebrated for the
unspoilt beauty of its scenery. He also gives a list of the fish that
can be caught there. It takes up about three lines."

"But what can my stepfather be doing there? I last heard of him in
London. Well, I suppose I shall have to go."

"I suppose you will," said Elsa mournfully. "But, oh, Betty, what a
shame!"




CHAPTER II

MERVO AND ITS OWNER


"By heck!" cried Mr. Benjamin Scobell.

He wheeled round from the window, and transferred his gaze from the
view to his sister Marion; losing by the action, for the view was a joy
to the eye, which his sister Marion was not.

Mervo was looking its best under the hot morning sun. Mr. Scobell's
villa stood near the summit of the only hill the island possessed, and
from the window of the morning-room, where he had just finished
breakfast, he had an uninterrupted view of valley, town, and harbor--a
two-mile riot of green, gold and white, and beyond the white the blue
satin of the Mediterranean. Mr. Scobell did not read poetry except that
which advertised certain breakfast foods in which he was interested, or
he might have been reminded of the Island of Flowers in Tennyson's
"Voyage of Maeldive." Violets, pinks, crocuses, yellow and purple
mesembryanthemum, lavender, myrtle, and rosemary ... his two-mile view
contained them all. The hillside below him was all aglow with the
yellow fire of the mimosa. But his was not one of those emotional
natures to which the meanest flower that blows can give thoughts that
do often lie too deep for tears. A primrose by the river's brim a
simple primrose was to him--or not so much a simple primrose, perhaps,
as a basis for a possible Primrosina, the Soap that Really Cleans You.

He was a nasty little man to hold despotic sway over such a Paradise: a
goblin in Fairyland. Somewhat below the middle height, he was lean of
body and vulturine of face. He had a greedy mouth, a hooked nose,
liquid green eyes and a sallow complexion. He was rarely seen without a
half-smoked cigar between his lips. This at intervals he would relight,
only to allow it to go out again; and when, after numerous fresh
starts, it had dwindled beyond the limits of convenience, he would
substitute another from the reserve supply that protruded from his
vest-pocket.

* * * * *

How Benjamin Scobell had discovered the existence of Mervo is not
known. It lay well outside the sphere of the ordinary financier. But
Mr. Scobell took a pride in the versatility of his finance. It
distinguished him from the uninspired who were content to concentrate
themselves on steel, wheat and such-like things. It was Mr. Scobell's
way to consider nothing as lying outside his sphere. In a financial
sense he might have taken Terence's _Nihil humanum alienum_ as his
motto. He was interested in innumerable enterprises, great and small.
He was the power behind a company which was endeavoring, without much
success, to extract gold from the mountains of North Wales, and another
which was trying, without any success at all, to do the same by sea
water. He owned a model farm in Indiana, and a weekly paper in New
York. He had financed patent medicines, patent foods, patent corks,
patent corkscrews, patent devices of all kinds, some profitable, some
the reverse.

Also--outside the ordinary gains of finance--he had expectations. He
was the only male relative of his aunt, the celebrated Mrs. Jane
Oakley, who lived in a cottage on Staten Island, and was reputed to
spend five hundred dollars a year--some said less--out of her snug
income of eighteen million. She was an unusual old lady in many ways,
and, unfortunately, unusually full of deep-rooted prejudices. The fear
lest he might inadvertently fall foul of these rarely ceased to haunt
Mr. Scobell.

This man of many projects had descended upon Mervo like a stone on the
surface of some quiet pool, bubbling over with modern enterprise in
general and, in particular, with a scheme. Before his arrival, Mervo
had been an island of dreams and slow movement and putting things off
till to-morrow. The only really energetic thing it had ever done in its
whole history had been to expel his late highness, Prince Charles, and
change itself into a republic. And even that had been done with the
minimum of fuss. The Prince was away at the time. Indeed, he had been
away for nearly three years, the pleasures of Paris, London and Vienna
appealing to him more keenly than life among his subjects. Mervo,
having thought the matter over during these years, decided that it had
no further use for Prince Charles. Quite quietly, with none of that
vulgar brawling which its neighbor, France, had found necessary in
similar circumstances, it had struck his name off the pay-roll, and
declared itself a republic. The royalist party, headed by General
Poineau, had been distracted but impotent. The army, one hundred and
fifteen strong, had gone solid for the new regime, and that had settled
it. Mervo had then gone to sleep again. It was asleep when Mr. Scobell
found it.

The financier's scheme was first revealed to M. d'Orby, the President
of the Republic, a large, stout statesman with even more than the
average Mervian instinct for slumber. He was asleep in a chair on the
porch of his villa when Mr. Scobell paid his call, and it was not until
the financier's secretary, who attended the seance in the capacity of
interpreter, had rocked him vigorously from side to side for quite a
minute that he displayed any signs of animation beyond a snore like the
growling of distant thunder. When at length he opened his eyes, he
perceived the nightmare-like form of Mr. Scobell standing before him,
talking. The financier, impatient of delay, had begun to talk some
moments before the great awakening.

"Sir," Mr. Scobell was saying, "I gotta proposition to which I'd like
you to give your complete attention. Shake him some more, Crump. Sir,
there's big money in it for all of us, if you and your crowd'll sit in.
Money. _Lar' monnay_. No, that means change. What's money, Crump?
_Arjong_? There's _arjong_ in it, Squire. Get that? Oh, shucks!
Hand it to him in French, Crump."

Mr. Secretary Crump translated. The President blinked, and intimated
that he would hear more. Mr. Scobell relighted his cigar-stump, and
proceeded.

"Say, you've heard of _Moosieer_ Blonk? Ask the old skeesicks if
he's ever heard of _Mersyaw_ Blonk, Crump, the feller who started
the gaming-tables at Monte Carlo."

Filtered through Mr. Crump, the question became intelligible to the
President. He said he had heard of M. Blanc. Mr. Crump caught the reply
and sent it on to Mr. Scobell, as the man on first base catches the
ball and throws it to second.

Mr. Scobell relighted his cigar.

"Well, I'm in that line. I'm going to put this island on the map just
like old Doctor Blonk put Monte Carlo. I've been studying up all about
the old man, and I know just what he did and how he did it. Monte Carlo
was just such another jerkwater little place as this is before he hit
it. The government was down to its last bean and wondering where the
Heck its next meal-ticket was coming from, when in blows Mr. Man, tucks
up his shirt-sleeves, and starts the tables. And after that the place
never looked back. You and your crowd gotta get together and pass a
vote to give me a gambling concession here, same as they did him.
Scobell's my name. Hand him that, Crump."

Mr. Crump obliged once more. A gleam of intelligence came into the
President's dull eye. He nodded once or twice. He talked volubly in
French to Mr. Crump, who responded in the same tongue.

"The idea seems to strike him, sir," said Mr. Crump.

"It ought to, if he isn't a clam," replied Mr. Scobell. He started to
relight his cigar, but after scorching the tip of his nose, bowed to
the inevitable and threw the relic away.

"See here," he said, having bitten the end off the next in order; "I've
thought this thing out from soup to nuts. There's heaps of room for
another Monte Carlo. Monte's a dandy place, but it's not perfect by a
long way. To start with, it's hilly. You have to take the elevator to
get to the Casino, and when you've gotten to the end of your roll and
want to soak your pearl pin, where's the hock-shop? Half a mile away up
the side of a mountain. It ain't right. In my Casino there's going to
be a resident pawnbroker inside the building, just off the main
entrance. That's only one of a heap of improvements. Another is that my
Casino's scheduled to be a home from home, a place you can be real cosy
in. You'll look around you, and the only thing you'll miss will be
mother's face. Yes, sir, there's no need for a gambling Casino to look
and feel and smell like the reading-room at the British Museum.
Comfort, coziness and convenience. That's the ticket I'm running on.
Slip that to the old gink, Crump."

A further outburst of the French language from Mr. Crump, supplemented
on the part of the "old gink" by gesticulations, interrupted the
proceedings.

"What's he saying now?" asked Mr. Scobell.

"He wants to know--"

"Don't tell. Let me guess. He wants to know what sort of a rake-off he
and the other somnambulists will get--the darned old pirate! Is that
it?"

Mr. Crump said that that was just it.

"That'll be all right," said Mr. Scobell. "Old man Blong's offer to the
Prince of Monaco was five hundred thousand francs a year--that's
somewhere around a hundred thousand dollars in real money--and half the
profits made by the Casino. That's my offer, too. See how that hits
him, Crump."

Mr. Crump investigated.

"He says he accepts gladly, on behalf of the Republic, sir," he
announced.

M. d'Orby confirmed the statement by rising, dodging the cigar, and
kissing Mr. Scobell on both cheeks.

"Cut it out," said the financier austerely, breaking out of the clinch.
"We'll take the Apache Dance as read. Good-by, Squire. Glad it's
settled. Now I can get busy."

He did. Workmen poured into Mervo, and in a very short time, dominating
the town and reducing to insignificance the palace of the late Prince,
once a passably imposing mansion, there rose beside the harbor a
mammoth Casino of shining stone.

Imposing as was the exterior, it was on the interior that Mr. Scobell
more particularly prided himself, and not without reason. Certainly, a
man with money to lose could lose it here under the most charming
conditions. It had been Mr. Scobell's object to avoid the cheerless
grandeur of the rival institution down the coast. Instead of one large
hall sprinkled with tables, each table had a room to itself, separated
from its neighbor by sound-proof folding-doors. And as the building
progressed, Mr. Scobell's active mind had soared above the original
idea of domestic coziness to far greater heights of ingenuity. Each of
the rooms was furnished and arranged in a different style. The note of
individuality extended even to the _croupiers_. Thus, a man with
money at his command could wander from the Dutch room, where, in the
picturesque surroundings of a Dutch kitchen, _croupiers_ in the
costume of Holland ministered to his needs, to the Japanese room, where
his coin would be raked in by quite passable imitations of the Samurai.
If he had any left at this point, he was free to dispose of it under
the auspices of near-Hindoos in the Indian room, of merry Swiss
peasants in the Swiss room, or in other appropriately furnished
apartments of red-shirted, Bret Harte miners, fur-clad Esquimaux, or
languorous Spaniards. He could then, if a man of spirit, who did not
know when he was beaten, collect the family jewels, and proceed down
the main hall, accompanied by the strains of an excellent band, to the
office of a gentlemanly pawnbroker, who spoke seven languages like a
native and was prepared to advance money on reasonable security in all
of them.

It was a colossal venture, but it suffered from the defect from which
most big things suffer; it moved slowly. That it also moved steadily
was to some extent a consolation to Mr. Scobell. Undoubtedly it would
progress quicker and quicker, as time went on, until at length the
Casino became a permanent gold mine. But at present it was being
conducted at a loss. It was inevitable, but it irked Mr. Scobell. He
paced the island and brooded. His mind dwelt incessantly on the
problem. Ideas for promoting the prosperity of his nursling came to him
at all hours--at meals, in the night watches, when he was shaving,
walking, washing, reading, brushing his hair.

And now one had come to him as he stood looking at the view from the
window of his morning-room, listening absently to his sister Marion as
she read stray items of interest from the columns of the _New York
Herald_, and had caused him to utter the exclamation recorded at the
beginning of the chapter.

* * * * *

"By Heck!" he said. "Read that again, Marion. I gottan idea."

Miss Scobell, deep in her paper, paid no attention. Few people would
have taken her for the sister of the financier. She was his exact
opposite in almost every way. He was small, jerky and aggressive; she,
tall, deliberate and negative. She was one of those women whom nature
seems to have produced with the object of attaching them to some man in
a peculiar position of independent dependence, and who defy the
imagination to picture them in any other condition whatsoever. One
could not see Miss Scobell doing anything but pour out her brother's
coffee, darn his socks, and sit placidly by while he talked. Yet it
would have been untrue to describe her as dependent upon him. She had a
detached mind. Though her whole life had been devoted to his comfort
and though she admired him intensely, she never appeared to give his
conversation any real attention. She listened to him much as she would
have listened to a barking Pomeranian.

"Marion!" cried Mr. Scobell.

"A five-legged rabbit has been born in Carbondale, Southern Illinois,"
she announced.

Mr. Scobell cursed the five-legged rabbit.

"Never mind about your rabbits. I want to hear that piece you read
before. The one about the Prince of Monaco. Will--you--listen, Marion!"

"The Prince of Monaco, dear? Yes. He has caught another fish or
something of that sort, I think. Yes. A fish with 'telescope eyes,' the
paper says. And very convenient too, I should imagine."

Mr. Scobell thumped the table.

"I've got it. I've found out what's the matter with this darned place.
I see why the Casino hasn't struck its gait."

"_I_ think it must be the _croupiers_, dear. I'm sure I never
heard of _croupiers_ in fancy costume before. It doesn't seem
right. I'm sure people don't like those nasty Hindoos. I am quite
nervous myself when I go into the Indian room. They look at me so
oddly."

"Nonsense! That's the whole idea of the place, that it should be
different. People are sick and tired of having their money gathered in
by seedy-looking Dagoes in second-hand morning coats. We give 'em
variety. It's not the Casino that's wrong: it's the darned island.
What's the use of a republic to a place like this? I'm not saying that
you don't want a republic for a live country that's got its way to make
in the world; but for a little runt of a sawn-off, hobo, one-night
stand like this you gotta have something picturesque, something that'll
advertise the place, something that'll give a jolt to folks' curiosity,
and make 'em talk! There's this Monaco gook. He snoops around in his
yacht, digging up telescope-eyed fish, and people talk about it.
'Another darned fish,' they say. 'That's the 'steenth bite the Prince of
Monaco has had this year.' It's like a soap advertisement. It works by
suggestion. They get to thinking about the Prince and his pop-eyed
fishes, and, first thing they know, they've packed their grips and come
along to Monaco to have a peek at him. And when they're there, it's a
safe bet they aren't going back again without trying to get a mess of
easy money from the Bank. That's what this place wants. Whoever heard
of this blamed Republic doing anything except eat and sleep? They used
to have a prince here 'way back in eighty-something. Well, I'm going to
have him working at the old stand again, right away."

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