Part 9

His mind was tormented with imaginary wrongs, imaginary slights, imaginary failures.

This young man, who could paint pictures, write books, organize colonies oversea, and with a sword pick the buttons from a waistcoat, forgot the twenty good years still before him; forgot that men loved him for the mistakes he had made; that in parts of the great city of Paris his name was still spoken fondly, still was famous and familiar.

In his book on the “Ethics of Suicide,” for certain hard places in life he had laid down an inevitable rule of conduct.

As he saw it he had come to one of those hard places, and he would not ask of others what he himself would not perform.

From Mexico he set out for California, but not to the house his wife had prepared for him.

Instead, on February 9, 1898, at El Paso, he left the train and registered at a hotel.

At 7.30 in the evening he went to his room, and when, on the following morning, they kicked in the door, they found him stretched rigidly upon the bed, like one lying in state, with, near his hand, a half-emptied bottle of poison.

On a chair was pinned this letter to his wife:

“My DEAREST,--No news from you, although you have had plenty of time to write. Harvey has written me that he has no one in view at present to buy my land. Well, I shall have tasted the cup of bitterness to the very dregs, but I do not complain. Good-by. I forgive you your conduct toward me and trust you will be able to forgive yourself. I prefer to be a dead gentleman to a living blackguard like your father.”

And when they searched his open trunk for something that might identify the body on the bed, they found the crown of Trinidad.

You can imagine it: the mean hotel bedroom, the military figure with its white face and mustache, “a la Louis Napoleon,” at rest upon the pillow, the startled drummers and chambermaids peering in from the hall, and the landlord, or coroner, or doctor, with a bewildered countenance, lifting to view the royal crown of gilt and velvet.

The other actors in this, as Harold Frederic called it, “Opera Bouffe Monarchy,” are still living.

The Baroness Harden-Hickey makes her home in this country.

The Count de la Boissiere, ex-Minister of Foreign Affairs, is still a leader of the French colony in New York, and a prosperous commission merchant with a suite of offices on Fifty-fourth Street. By the will of Harden-Hickey he is executor of his estate, guardian of his children, and what, for the purpose of this article, is of more importance, in his hands lies the future of the kingdom of Trinidad. When Harden-Hickey killed himself the title to the island was in dispute. Should young Harden-Hickey wish to claim it, it still would be in dispute. Meanwhile, by the will of the First James, De la Boissiere is appointed perpetual regent, a sort of “receiver,” and executor of the principality.

To him has been left a royal decree signed and sealed, but blank. In the will the power to fill in this blank with a statement showing the final disposition of the island has been bestowed upon De la Boissiere.

So, some day, he may proclaim the accession of a new king, and give a new lease of life to the kingdom of which Harden-Hickey dreamed.

But unless his son, or wife, or daughter should assert his or her rights, which is not likely to happen, so ends the dynasty of James the First of Trinidad, Baron of the Holy Roman Empire.

To the wise ones in America he was a fool, and they laughed at him; to the wiser ones, he was a clever rascal who had evolved a new real-estate scheme and was out to rob the people--and they respected him. To my mind, of them all, Harden-Hickey was the wisest.

Granted one could be serious, what could be more delightful than to be your own king on your own island?

The comic paragraphers, the business men of “hard, common sense,” the captains of industry who laughed at him and his national resources of buried treasure, turtles’ eggs, and guano, with his body-guard of Zouaves and his Grand Cross of Trinidad, certainly possessed many things that Harden-Hickey lacked. But they in turn lacked the things that made him happy; the power to “make believe,” the love of romance, the touch of adventure that plucked him by the sleeve.

When, as boys, we used to say: “Let’s pretend we’re pirates,” as a man, Harden-Hickey begged: “Let’s pretend I’m a king.”

But the trouble was, the other boys had grown up and would not pretend.

For some reason his end always reminds me of the closing line of Pinero’s play, when the adventuress, Mrs. Tanqueray, kills herself, and her virtuous stepchild says: “If we had only been kinder!”

WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL

IN the strict sense of the phrase, a soldier of fortune is a man who for pay, or for the love of adventure, fights under the flag of any country.

In the bigger sense he is the kind of man who in any walk of life makes his own fortune, who, when he sees it coming, leaps to meet it, and turns it to his advantage.

Than Winston Spencer Churchill to-day there are few young men--and he is a very young man--who have met more varying fortunes, and none who has more frequently bent them to his own advancement. To him it has been indifferent whether, at the moment, the fortune seemed good or evil, in the end always it was good.

As a boy officer, when other subalterns were playing polo, and at the Gaiety Theatre attending night school, he ran away to Cuba and fought with the Spaniards. For such a breach of military discipline, any other officer would have been court-martialled. Even his friends feared that by his foolishness his career in the army was at an end. Instead, his escapade was made a question in the House of Commons, and the fact brought him such publicity that the Daily Graphic paid him handsomely to write on the Cuban Revolution, and the Spanish Government rewarded him with the Order of Military Merit.