Kitabı oku: «Her Majesty's Minister», sayfa 12
Chapter Twenty Three
Princess Léonie
“Princess,” I said, “permit me to offer my félicitations on your return to Paris. This is indeed an unexpected pleasure.”
“Ah, M’sieur Ingram!” she cried in charming English, holding forth her white-gloved hand, “at last! I have been hunting for you all the evening. All Paris is here, and the crush is terrible. Yes, you see I am back again.”
The Italian Ambassador had risen, bowed, and turned to speak to another acquaintance; therefore, with her sanction, I dropped into his place.
“And are you pleased to return?” I inquired, glancing at her beautiful and refined face, which seemed to me just a trifle more careworn than when I had last met her eighteen months ago.
“Ah!” she answered, “I am always pleased to come back to France. I went to America for a few months, you know; thence to Vienna, and for nearly a year have been living at home.”
“At Rudolstadt?”
She nodded.
“Well,” I said, “it was really too bad of you to hide your existence from your friends in that manner. Everyone has been wondering for months what had become of you. Surely you found Rudolstadt very dull after life here?”
“I did,” she sighed, causing the magnificent diamonds at her throat to sparkle with a thousand fires. “But I have departed from my hermitage again, you see. Now, sit here and tell me all that has happened during my absence. Then if you are good, I will, as a reward, give you just one waltz.”
“Very well,” I laughed. “Remember that I shall hold you to your bargain;” and then I commenced to gossip about the movements of people she had known when, two years before, she had been the most admired woman in Paris.
The Princess Léonie-Rose-Eugénie von Leutenberg was, according to the Almanach de Gotha– that red, squat little volume so dreaded by the ladies – only thirty years of age, and was certainly extremely good-looking. Her pale, half-tragic beauty was sufficient to arrest attention anywhere. Her noble features were well-moulded and regular, her eyes of a clear grey, and her hair of flaxen fairness, while her bearing was ever that of a daughter of the greatest of the Austrian houses. Her goodness of heart, her gracefulness, her conversational esprit, and her genuine Parisian chic had rendered her popular everywhere; while, as with the Duchesse de Berri, one strong point of her beauty was her charming little foot, which two years ago had been declared to be the loveliest foot in France, or, in Paris, simply “Le pied de la Princesse.” Her shoes and hosiery were perfect marvels of fineness and neatness, and when she walked, or rather glided, along the Avenue des Acacias, the other promenaders formed long rows on each side to behold and admire le pied de la Princesse.
I had heard it declared, too, with mysterious smiles, how le pied de la Princesse had been seen more than once at the masked balls at the Opera, and many an amusing little story had gone the round, and many a piquant tale had been told of how the Princess had been recognised here and there by the extreme smallness of her foot. One was that for a wager she had disguised herself as a work-girl with a bandbox on her arm, and, attended by her valet, likewise disguised, appeared before the Hôtel de Ville awaiting an omnibus. The vehicle stopped, and the conductor exclaimed in an indifferent tone, “Entrez, mademoiselle,” without taking any further notice. Then, however, his wandering eye caught sight of a pair of tiny feet, and, looking into her face in surprise, he enthusiastically exclaimed: “Ah! ah! le pied de la Princesse!” and doffed his hat respectfully. The Princess lost her wager, but was in no little measure proud of the conquest which her foot had won over the plain omnibus-conductor.
Her life had been a somewhat tragic one. The only daughter of Prince Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau, the Seigneur of Wchinitz, in Bohemia, Léonie had, when scarcely out of her teens, been forced to marry the old Prince Othon von Leutenberg, a man forty years her senior. The marriage proved an exceedingly unhappy one, for he treated her brutally, and after five years of a wretched existence, during which she bore herself with great patience and forbearance, the Prince died of alcoholism in Berlin, and her release brought her into possession of an enormous fortune, together with the mansion of the Leutenbergs in the Frieung at Vienna, one of the finest in the Austrian capital, the castle and extensive estates in Schwazbourg-Rudolstadt, that had belonged to the family from feudal days, as well as the hôtel in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, and the beautiful Château de Chantoiseau, deep in the forest of Fontainebleau.
She was very charming, and there was an air of sadness in her beauty that made her the more interesting. We were friends of long standing. Indeed, I had known her in the days when I was junior attaché and fancied myself in love with every woman. I had admired her, and a firm friendship existed between us, although I think I can say honestly that I had never fallen in love with her. More than once, when those false and scandalous tales had been whispered about her – as they are whispered about every pretty woman in Paris – I had constituted myself her champion, and challenged her traducers to prove their words.
As we sat there chatting, watching the gaily uniformed corps diplomatique, and bowing ever and anon as some man or woman came up to congratulate her on her return to Paris, she told me of the dreariness of her life in the gloomy, ancestral Castle of Rudolstadt, and how, finding it unendurable at last, she had suddenly resolved to spend the remainder of the summer at Chantoiseau.
“I have been there already a fortnight, and everything is in order,” she said. “I am inviting quite a number of people. You must come also.”
“But I scarcely think it is possible for me to be absent from Paris just now,” I answered in hesitation.
“I will take no refusal,” she said decisively. “I will talk to Lord Barmouth to-night before I leave. Me never refuses me anything. Besides, in two hours you can always be at the Embassy. You will remember, the last time you were my guest, how easy you found the journey to and from Paris. Why, you often used to leave in the morning and return at night. No, you cannot refuse.”
“I must consult His Excellency before accepting,” I replied. “In the meantime, Princess, I thank you for your kind invitation.”
“Princess?” she exclaimed, raising her eyebrows. “Why not Léonie? I was Léonie to you always in the days gone by. Is there any reason why you should be so distant now? Unless – ” and she paused.
“Unless what?” I inquired, looking at her swiftly.
“Unless you have a really serious affair of the heart,” she said.
“I have none,” I answered promptly, suppressing a sigh with difficulty.
“Then do not use my title. I hate my friends to call me Princess. Recollect that to you I am always Léonie.”
“Very well,” I laughed, for she was full of quaint caprice.
I had pleasant recollections of my last visit to the château, and hoped that if the theft of the instructions contained in the despatch I had brought from London produced no serious international complication, I should obtain leave to join her house-party, which was certain to be a smart and merry one.
She told me the names of some she had invited. Among those known to me were the Baroness de Chalencon, Count de Hindenburg, the German Ambassador, and his wife, and Count de Wolkenstein, Austrian Ambassador, as well as several other men and women of the smartest set in Paris.
“You will be a real benefactress,” I laughed. “Everyone here is stifled; while Dieppe is too crowded; Aix, with its eternal Villa des Fleurs, is insupportable; and both Royat and Vichy are full to overflowing.”
“Ah, mon cher Gerald!” cried the Princess, lifting her small hands, “it is your English tourists who have spoilt all our summer resorts. If one has no place of one’s own in which to spend the summer nowadays, one must herd with the holders of tourist tickets and hotel coupons.”
I admitted that what she said was in a great measure true. Society, as the grande dame knows it, is being expelled by the tourists from the places which until a year or two ago were expensive and exclusive. Even the Riviera is fast becoming a cheap winter resort, for Nice now deserves to be called the Margate of the Continent.
Having arranged that I should do my best to accept her invitation, our conversation drifted to politics, art, and the drama. She seemed in utter ignorance of recent events, except such as she had read about in the newspapers.
“I know nothing,” she laughed. “News reaches Rudolstadt tardily, and then only by the journals; and you know how unreliable they are. How I’ve longed time after time to spend an evening in Paris to hear all the gossip! It is charming, I assure you, to be back here again.”
“But for what reason did you shut yourself up for so long?” I asked. “It surely is not like you!”
She grew grave in an instant, and appeared to hesitate. Her lips closed tightly, and there was a hard expression at the corners of her well-shaped mouth.
“I had my reasons – strong ones.”
“What were they?”
“Well, I was tired of it all.”
“Léonie,” I said, looking at her seriously, “pray forgive me, but you do not intend to tell me the truth. You were tired of it years ago, when the Prince was alive.”
“That was so,” she answered, with a glance of triumph; “and I went home to my father and shut myself up at Wchinitz.”
“But you must have had some stronger motive in burying yourself again as you have recently done. You did not write to a soul, and no one knew where you were. You simply dropped out; and you had some reason for doing so, otherwise you would have told the truth to your most intimate friends.”
“You are annoyed that I should have left you without a word – eh?” she asked. “Well, I will apologise now.”
“No apology is necessary,” I answered. “It is only because we are such good friends that I venture to speak thus. I feel confident that you have sustained some great sorrow. You are, somehow, not the same as you were in Paris two years ago; now, tell me – ”
“Ah! Do not talk of it!” she cried huskily, rising to her feet. “Let us drop the subject. Promise me, Gerald, not to mention it again, for I confess to you that it is too painful – much too painful. I promised you a waltz. Come, let us dance.”
Thus bidden, I rose, and she, twisting her skirts deftly in her hand, leaned lightly upon my arm as I conducted her to the great ballroom. A very few moments later we glided together into the whirling, dazzling crowd.
“You will not speak of that again, Gerald?” she urged in a hoarse whisper, looking earnestly up to my face, as her head came near my shoulder. “Promise me.”
“If it is your wish, Léonie,” I responded, puzzled, “I will ask no further question.”
Chapter Twenty Four
In the Forest of Fontainebleau
Sixty kilometres from Paris, just off that straight and noble highway that runs through the heart of the magnificent forest, and passes through the old-world town of Fontainebleau – where Napoleon signed his abdication – through the mediaeval, crumbling gates of Moret, and away far south to Lyons, rises the fine old Château of Chantoiseau. Half-way between the clean little village of By, standing in the midst of its well-kept vineyards, and the river-hamlet of Thomery, it occupies a commanding position on the summit of a cliff, where far below winds the Seine, on past Valvins and Samois, until it becomes lost like a silver thread among the dark woodlands in the direction of Paris.
The position of the splendid old place is superb. From its windows can be obtained a view of the great forest stretching away to the horizon on the left, while to the right is the valley of the Seine, and across the river spread the smiling vineyards with their white walls – the vineyards of Champagne. The house, a long, rambling place with circular towers, has been historical for many centuries. Once the property of Madame La Pompadour, in the days when the splendours of the Palace of Fontainebleau were world-renowned, a latter-day interest also attaches to it, inasmuch as it was the headquarters of the German Crown Prince during the advance of the Prussians upon Paris. Its grounds, sloping down, enclose part of the forest itself; therefore, during the blazing days of August one lives actually in the woods. The forest is an enormous one, and even to-day there still remain many parts unexplored, where the wolf and wild boar retreat in summer, and where even that most ubiquitous forester, the viper-hunter – the man whose profession it is to kill vipers and sell them at the local mairie – has never penetrated. In the whole of the great forest, however, no spot is more charming or more picturesque than that in which the château is situated. It is not a show-place, like Barbison or the Gorges de Franchard, but entirely rural and secluded – on the one side the open valley, on the other the dark forest, where in the tunnel-like alleys the trees meet overhead, and where the shady highroads to the painter colony at Marlotte and to Bois-le-Roi are perfect paradises for the cyclist.
Chantoiseau itself is not a village, not even a hamlet, only a big old-fashioned cottage in which the forest-guards live. Above it, on the high ground beyond, stands the fine old château. Many of those who read my story have driven or cycled in the forest, and many have no doubt given the great old place a passing glance before plunging deep into those leafy glades that lead to Fontainebleau. If when you have driven past you have inquired of your cocher, “Who lives there?” he has probably only shrugged his shoulders and replied: “Servants only. Madame la Princesse, alas! seldom comes,” and you have gone on your way, as many others have done, wondering why such a beautiful old place should be neglected by its owner.
One hot evening at sundown, about three weeks after the President’s ball, I strolled slowly beside the Princess down the hill, entering the forest by that well-kept cross-road which leads by the Carrefour de la Croix de Montmorin straight to the pretty village of Montigny on the Loing.
Contrary to expectation, no immediate result had accrued from the mysterious theft of the secret instructions to Lord Barmouth; hence I had obtained leave and accepted my hostess’s invitation, although I was compelled to spend two days each week at the Embassy, going up to Paris in the morning and returning by the six o’clock express from the Gare de Lyon. That some result of the exposure of our policy must certainly make itself felt we knew quite well, but at present the political atmosphere seemed clearer, and by the fact that several of the ambassadors had left Paris considerable confidence had been established. Yet in those sultry August days the war-cloud still hung over Europe and the representative of Her Majesty was compelled, as he ever is, to exercise the greatest tact and the utmost finesse in order to preserve peace with honour. Truly, the office of British Ambassador in Paris is no sinecure, for upon him rests much of the responsibility of England’s position in Europe and her prestige among nations, while to him is entrusted the difficult duty of negotiating amicably with a nation openly and avowedly hostile to British interests and British prosperity.
Those summer days, so sunny, happy, and pleasant, in the forest depths at Chantoiseau, were, nevertheless, perplexing ones for the rulers of Europe. The stifling air was the oppression before the storm. I had more than once chatted in the billiard-room with my fellow guests, the German and Austrian Ambassadors, and both had agreed that the outlook was serious, and that the storm-cloud was upon the political horizon.
But life at the château was full of enjoyment. The Princess, a born hostess, knew exactly whom to invite, and her house-parties were always congenial gatherings. There was riding, cycling, tennis, boating, billiards; indeed, something to suit all tastes, while she contented herself with looking on and seeing that all her guests enjoyed themselves.
A riding-party had gone over to Montigny, and after tea the Princess had suggested that I should accompany her for a stroll down into the forest to meet them. She was dressed simply in a washing-dress of pale blue linen, and wore a sailor-hat, so that with her fair hair bound tightly she presented quite an English appearance, save perhaps for her figure and gait, both of which were eminently foreign. The feet that all Paris had admired two years ago were encased in stout walking-boots, and she carried a light cane, walking with all the suppleness of youth.
Soon we left the full glory of the mellow sunset flooding the Seine valley, and entered the forest road where the high trees met and interlaced above, and where the golden light, filtering through the screen of foliage, illuminated here and there the deeper shadows, struck straight upon the brilliant green of the bracken, married with the greyness on the lichen-covered trunks, and kissed the leaves with golden lips. Birds were twittering farewells to the day, and here and there a red-brown squirrel, startled by our presence, darted from bough to bough with tail erect, while on each side of the road was a carpet of moss and wild-flowers. The sweet odour of the woods greeted our nostrils, and we inhaled it in a deep draught, for that gloomy shade was delightfully cool and refreshing after the blazing heat of the stifling day. As I had been compelled to attend to some official correspondence, I had not joined the riding-party. The Princess had given some half-dozen of us tea in the hall, and, while the others had gone off to play tennis, she and I had been left alone.
Suddenly, as we walked along in the coolness, she turned to me, saying in a tone of reproach:
“Gerald, you have hidden from me the true seriousness of the situation at your Embassy. Why?”
“Well,” I answered, facing her in surprise, “we do not generally discuss our fears, you know. Others might profit by the knowledge.”
“But surely you might have confided in me?” she said gravely.
“Then de Wolkenstein has told you?”
“He has told me nothing,” she answered. “But I am, nevertheless, aware of all that has come to pass. I know, too, that since my absence at Rudolstadt you have fallen in love.”
“Well?” I inquired.
She shrugged her well-formed shoulders as if to indicate that such a thing was beyond her comprehension.
“Is it a disaster, do you think?” I asked.
“You yourself should know that,” she replied in a strained tone. “It seems, however, that you do not exercise your usual discretion in your love-affairs.”
“What do you mean, Léonie?” I demanded quickly, halting and looking at her. Who, I wondered, had told her the truth? To which of my loves did she refer – the spy or the traitress?
“I mean exactly what I have said,” she answered quite calmly. “If you had confided in me I might perhaps have used my influence in preventing the inevitable.”
“The inevitable!” I echoed. “What is that?”
“A combination of the Powers against England,” she replied quickly. “As you know well enough, Gerald, I have facilities for learning much that is hidden from even your accredited representatives. Therefore, I tell you this, that at this moment there is a plan arranged to upset British diplomacy in all four capitals and to ruin British prestige. It is a bold plan, and I alone outside the conspirators am aware of it. If carried out, England must either declare war or lose her place as the first nation in the world. Recollect these words of mine, for I am not joking at this moment. To-day is the blackest that Europe has ever known.”
She had halted in the path, and spoke with an earnestness that held me bewildered.
“A conspiracy against us!” I gasped. “What is it? Tell me of it?”
“No,” she answered. “At present I cannot. Suffice it for you to know that I alone am aware of the truth, and that I alone, if I so desire, can thwart their plans and turn their own weapons against them.”
“You can?” I cried. “You will do it! Tell me the truth – for my sake. I have been foolish, I know, Léonie; but tell me. If it is really serious, no time must be lost.”
“Serious?” she echoed. “It is so serious that I doubt whether the present month will pass before war is declared.”
“By England?”
“Yes. Your country will be forced into a conflict which must prove disastrous. The plan is the most clever and most dastardly ever conceived by your enemies, and this time no diplomatic efforts will succeed in staving off the tragedy, depend upon it.”
“Are both Wolkenstein and de Hindenburg aware of the plot?”
“I presume so. I have watched carefully, but have, however, discovered nothing to lead me to believe that they understand how near Europe is to an armed conflict.”
“Then your information is not from Wolkenstein?”
“No, from a higher source.”
“From your Emperor?”
She nodded.
“Then this accounts for your sudden reappearance among us?” I said.
“You may put my presence down to that, if you wish,” she replied. “But promise me, on your word of honour, that you will not breathe a single word to a soul – not even to Lord Barmouth.”
“If you impose silence upon me, Léonie, it shall be as you wish. But you have just said that you can assist me. How?”
“I can do so – if I choose,” she responded thoughtfully, drawing the profile of a man’s face in the dust with the ferrule of her walking-stick.
“You speak strangely,” I said – “almost as though you do not intend to do me this service. Surely you will not withhold from me intelligence which might enable me to rescue my country from the machination of its enemies?”
“And why, pray, should I betray my own country in order to save yours?” she asked in a cold tone.
I was nonplussed. For a moment I could not reply. At last, however, I answered in a low, earnest tone:
“Because we are friends, Léonie.”
“Mere friendship does not warrant one turning traitor,” she replied.
“But Austria is not the prime mover of this conspiracy,” I said. “The rulers of another nation have formed the plot. Tell me which of the Powers is responsible?”
“No,” she answered with a slight hauteur. “As you have thought fit to preserve certain secrets from me, I shall keep this knowledge to myself.”
“What secrets have I withheld from you?” I inquired, dismayed.
“Secrets concerning your private affairs.”
I knew well that she referred to my passion for Yolande. For a moment I hesitated, until words rose to my lips and I answered:
“Surely my private affairs are of little interest to you! Why should I trouble you with them?”
“Because we are friends, are we not?” she said, looking straight into my face with those fine eyes which half Europe had admired when le pied de la Princesse had been the catchword of Paris.
“Most certainly, Léonie,” I agreed. “And I hope that our friendship will last always.”
“It cannot if you refuse to confide in me and sometimes to seek my advice.”
“But you, in your position, going hither and thither, with hosts of friends around you, can feel no real interest in my doings?” I protested.
“Friends!” she echoed in a voice of sarcasm. “Do you call these people friends? My guests at this moment are not friends. Because of my position – because I am popular, and it is considered chic to stay at Chantoiseau – because I have money, and am able to amuse them, they come to me, the men to bow over my hand, and the women to call me their ‘dear Princess.’ Bah! they are not friends. The diplomatic set come because it is a pleasant mode of passing a few weeks of summer, while still within hail of Paris; and the others – well, they are merely the entourage which every fashionable woman unconsciously gathers about her.”
“Then among them all you have no friend?” Again she turned her fine eyes upon me, and in a low but distinct tone declared:
“Only yourself, Gerald.”
“I hope, Léonie, that I shall always prove myself worthy of your friendship,” I answered, impressed by her sudden seriousness.
Her face had grown pale, and she had uttered those words with all possible earnestness.
Then we walked on together in the silence of the darkening gloom of the forest. The ruddy light of the dying day struggled through the foliage, the birds had ceased their song, and the stillness of night had already fallen. We were each full of our own thoughts, and neither uttered a word.
Suddenly she halted again, and, gripping my arm, looked up into my face. I started, for upon her pale countenance I saw a look of desperation such as I had never before seen there.
“Gerald!” she cried hoarsely, “why do you treat me like this? You cannot tell how I suffer, or you would have pity upon me! Surely you cannot disguise from yourself the truth, even though your coldness forces me to tell you with my own lips. You know well my position – that of a woman drifting here and there, open to the calumnies of my enemies and the scandalous tales invented by so-called friends; a woman who has borne great trials and who is still, alas! unhappy! Of my honesty you yourself shall judge. You have heard whispers regarding my doings – escapades they have been called – and possibly you have given them credence. If you have, I cannot help it. There are persons around us always who delight in besmirching a woman’s reputation, especially if she has the misfortune to be born of princely family. But I tell you that all the tales you have heard are false. I – ”
Suddenly she covered her face with her hands; the words seemed to choke her, and she burst into tears.
“No, no, Léonie!” I said with deep sympathy, bending down to whisper in her ear and taking her hand in mine. “No one believes in those foul calumnies. Your honour is too well known.”
“You do not believe them – you will never believe them, will you?” she asked quickly through her tears.
“Of course not. I have denied them many times when they have been repeated to me.”
“Ah!” she cried, “I know you are always generous to a woman, Gerald.”
Then again a long silence fell between us. Presently, with a sudden impulse, she raised her tear-stained face to mine, and with a look of fierce desperation in her eyes implored:
“Gerald, will you not give me one single word? Will you still remain cold and indifferent?” As she said this, her breast rose and fell in agitation.
I drew back, wondering at her beseeching attitude.
“No, no!” she cried. “Do not put me from you, Gerald! I cannot bear it – indeed I can’t! You must have recognised the truth long ago – ” and she paused. Then, lowering her voice until it was only a hoarse whisper, she added, “The truth that I love you!”
I looked at her in blank amazement, scarce knowing what to reply. I had admired her just as half Paris had admired her, but I certainly had never felt a spark of deep affection for her.
“Ah!” she went on, reading my heart in an instant, “you despise me for this confession. But I cannot help it. I love you, Gerald, as I have never before loved a man. In return for your love I can offer you nothing – nothing save one thing,” she added in a strange, mechanical voice, almost as though speaking to herself. “In return for your love I can save your country from the grievous peril in which it is now placed.”
She offered me her secret in return for my love! The thing was incomprehensible. I stood there dumbfounded.
“This is a moment of foolishness, Léonie. We are both at fault,” I said, as soon as I again found tongue. “Think of the difference in our stations – you a princess, and I a poor diplomatist! I am your friend, and hope to remain so always – but not your lover.”
“But I love you!” she cried fiercely, raising her blanched and pitiful face until her lips met mine. The passion of love was in her heart. “You may despise me, Gerald; you may cast me from you; you may hate me; but in the end you will love me just as intensely as I love you. To endeavour to escape me is useless. Since the die is cast, let us make the compact now, as I have already suggested. I have confessed to you openly. I am yours, and I implore of you to give me your love in return. You are mine, Gerald – mine only!”
