Chapter 6
1001 Words
CHAPTER VI
It is a year or nearly a year since I wrote in my memoirs,
and I only add to them now because things have happened
which mean that I shall never write any more.
Mr. Peters and I were married last autumn. He asked me
if I would marry him the day that he held the arm of my
chair in the boarding house where we used to live. At
first I never thought that Uncle William would permit
it, because of the hopeless difference of birth. But it
turned out that there was no difficulty at all. Uncle's
mind was always so wonderful that he could find a way
out of anything provided that he wanted to. So he conferred
on Mr. Peters an Order that raised him right up in birth
so that he came level with me. Uncle said that he could
have lifted him higher still if need be but that as I
was only, in our old life, of a younger branch of the
family, it was not necessary to lift Mr. Peters to the
very top. He takes precedence, Uncle said, just below
Uncle Henry of Prussia and just above an Archbishop.
It is so pleasant to think--now that poor Uncle William
is gone--that my marriage was with his full consent.
But even after Uncle William had given his formal consent,
I didn't want to get married till I could leave him
safely. Only he got along so well in his "territory" of
the Bowery from the very start that he was soon quite
all right. He used to go out every morning with his
trayful of badges and pencils and shoe-strings and he
was a success at once. All the people got to know him by
sight and they would say when they saw him, "Here comes
the Emperor," or "Here comes Old Dutch," and very often
there would be quite a little crowd round him buying his
things. Uncle regarded himself always as conferring a
great dignity on any one that he sold a badge to, but he
was very capricious and he had certain buttons and badges
that he would only part with as a very special favour
and honour. Uncle got on so fast that presently Cousin
Ferdinand decided that it would be all right to know him
again and so he came over and made a reconciliation and
took away Uncle's money,--it was all in small coins,--in
a bag to invest for him.
So when everything was all right with Uncle William, Mr.
Peters and I were married and it was on our wedding
morning that Uncle conferred the Order on my husband
which made me very proud. That was a year ago, and since
then we have lived in a very fine place of our own with
four rooms, all to ourselves, and a gallery at the back.
I have cooked all the meals and done all the work of our
apartment, except just at the time when our little boy
was born. We both think he is a very wonderful child. At
first I wanted to call him after the Hohenzollerns and
to name him William Frederick Charles Mary Augustus
Francis Felix, but somehow it seemed out of place and so
we have called him simply Joe Peters. I think it sounds
better. Uncle William drew up an act of abnegation of
Joe, whereby he gives up all claim to a reversion of the
throne of Prussia, Brunswick and Waldeck. I was sorry
for this at first but Uncle said that all the Hohenzollerns
had done it and had made just as great a sacrifice as
Joe has in doing it. But my husband says that under the
constitution of the United States, Joe can be President,
which I think I will like better.
It was one day last week that Uncle William met with the
accident that caused his death. He had walked far away
from his "territory" up to where the Great Park is,
because in this lovely spring weather he liked to wander
about. And he came to where there was a great crowd of
people gathered to see the unveiling of a new monument.
It is called the Lusitania Monument and it is put up in
memory of the people that were lost when one of our war
boats fought the English cruiser Lusitania. There were
a lot of soldiers lining the streets and regiments of
cavalry riding between. And it seems that when Uncle
William saw the crowd and the soldiers he was drawn nearer
and nearer by a sort of curiosity, and when he saw the
great white veil drawn away from the monument, and read
the word "Lusitania" that is carved in large letters
across the base, he screamed out in a sudden fear, and
clashed among the horses of the cavalry and was ridden
down.
They carried him to the hospital, but he never spoke
again, and died on the next day but one. My husband would
not let me go to see him, as he was not conscious and it
could do no good, but after Uncle William was dead they
let me see him in his coffin.
Lying there he seemed such a pitiful and ghastly lump of
clay that it seemed strange that he could, in his old
life, have vexed the world as he did.
I had thought that when Uncle William died there would
have been long accounts of him in the papers; at least
I couldn't help thinking so, by a sort of confusion of
mind, as it is hard to get used to things as they are
and to remember that our other life is unknown here and
that we are known only as ourselves.
But though I looked in all the papers I could find nothing
except one little notice, which I cut out of an evening
paper and which I put in here as a conclusion to my
memoirs.
- Writer
