Kitabı oku: «Her Royal Highness: A Romance of the Chancelleries of Europe», sayfa 5
Chapter Nine.
At Downing Street
Hubert Waldron mounted the great staircase of the Foreign Office in Downing Street full of trepidation.
The Earl of Westmere, His Majesty’s principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, desired to see him.
On New Year’s night, an hour after his conversation with Jack Jerningham, he had found in his room at the Savoy an urgent telegram from the Embassy recalling him home at once. He had, therefore, left Port Said by the Indian mail next day, and had travelled post-haste to London.
He had arrived at Charing Cross at four o’clock, driven to the St. James’s Club, and after a wash, had taken a taxi to Downing Street.
The uniformed messenger who conducted him up the great staircase halted before a big mahogany door, tapped upon it, and next second Hubert found himself in that big, old-fashioned, rather severe room wherein, at a great littered writing-table, sat his white-haired Chief.
“Good afternoon, Waldron,” exclaimed the tall, thin-faced statesman rising briskly and putting out his hand affably, an action which at once set the diplomat at his ease. He had feared that gossip regarding the opera-dancer had reached his ears, and that his reception might be a very cool one.
“I didn’t expect you until to-morrow. You’ve come from Cairo, haven’t you?”
“I came straight through by Brindisi,” was the other’s reply, seating himself in the padded chair which his Chief indicated.
“A gay season there, I hear – eh?”
“Quite. But I’ve been on leave in Upper Egypt.”
“And a most excellent spot during this horrible weather we’re having in London. Wish I were there now.”
And the Earl, a rather spare, refined man whose clean-shaven features were strongly marked, and who wore the regulation morning coat and grey striped trousers, crossed to the big fireplace and flung into it a shovelful of coals.
That room in which Hubert had only been once before he well-remembered. Its sombre walls that had listened to so many international secrets were painted dark green; upon one side was an old painting of Palmerston who had once occupied that selfsame room, while over the black marble mantelshelf hung a fine modern portrait of His Majesty, King George V.
The old Turkey carpet was dingy and worn, and about the place where the director of Great Britain’s foreign policy so often interviewed the ambassadors of the Powers, was an air of sombre, yet dignified gloom.
“I’ve called you home, Waldron,” said the Earl deliberately as he re-seated himself at his great table, piled as it was with State papers and dispatches from England’s representatives abroad, “because I want to have a chat with you.”
He was interrupted by a tap upon the door, and a man in uniform announced:
“Captain Rayne, m’lord.”
“Oh, come in, Rayne,” exclaimed the Minister for Foreign Affairs, as a smart, well-dressed, middle-aged man entered, nodding acquaintance with Waldron. “Let’s see! You’re taking the turn to Berlin and Petersburg?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the King’s Foreign Service messenger.
The Earl took from a drawer a letter he had already written and sealed in an official envelope bearing a blue cross, and handed it to him saying:
“This is for Petersburg – most urgent. I have nothing for Berlin, but Sir Charles has, I believe. You will bring me back an answer to this dispatch with all haste, please.”
“To-day is Tuesday, sir; I shall be back next Tuesday if Sir Henry is in Petersburg,” replied the King’s messenger with an air as unconcerned as though he were going to Hampstead.
“Yes, he is.”
“Then nothing else, sir?”
“Nothing, Rayne – except what Sir Charles may have. Good afternoon.”
And the King’s messenger, who spent his days travelling to and fro across the face of Europe, placed the confidential dispatch addressed to the British Ambassador to the Court of the Tzar in his pocket, bowed, and went forth on his weary seven days’ journey to the Russian capital and back.
“As I was saying, Waldron,” the Earl continued when the door had again closed, “I asked you to come home because I consider the time has now come when you should have promotion. As a friend of your late, respected father, I have naturally watched your career in the Service with greatest interest, and have been much gratified at the shrewd qualities you have shown, therefore I am giving you promotion, and have appointed you as second secretary to Rome.”
“To Rome!” echoed Waldron, his eyes opening widely. “I – I’m sure, Lord Westmere, I cannot thank you sufficiently for your appreciation of my services, or for sending me to the one post I wished for most of all.”
“I know, Waldron,” laughed his lordship pleasantly. “You know Rome, for you lived there for some years. You were honorary attaché there under your father, and I think you speak Italian very well indeed, if I remember aright.”
“I have a fair knowledge of the language,” was the diplomat’s modest response.
“Then go to Rome and continue the career you have followed with such success. Your father’s most brilliant work was accomplished in Italy, and I hope his mantle will fall upon you, Waldron.”
“Your words are most encouraging, Lord Westmere,” declared the younger man who, on entering there, had feared a reprimand for his friendship with the Spanish dancer. “You may rely on me to do my best.”
“Of that I am quite certain. The Waldrons have been diplomats for over a century, and you will never disgrace their reputation,” said the strongest man of the British Cabinet, the man who had learned diplomacy under Salisbury and to whom the nation now entrusted its good relations with the Powers. “But,” his lordship added, “will you, quite unofficially, allow me to give you a word of friendly advice?” And he looked the secretary of the Embassy full in the face.
“Most willingly. Any advice from my Chief I will be most certain to follow,” was the other’s earnest reply.
“Well, perhaps it is a rather delicate matter, and one to which I, in my official position, ought not to refer, but as one who takes a very keen interest in your future, I feel that I must speak.”
Waldron grew paler. He knew what was coming. “It is within my knowledge,” went on his lordship, “that towards a certain lady in Madrid you have been unduly friendly – a lady whose name is not exactly free from scandal.”
“That is so,” he admitted.
“Then, Waldron, why do you not recollect Palmerston’s advice to the young man newly appointed to a post abroad?” he asked gravely. “Palmerston said that the necessary qualifications of a diplomat on being attached to an Embassy was that he should be able to lie artistically, to flirt elegantly, to dress smartly, to be polite to every woman, be she princess or laundress, but never on any account to commit the fatal error of falling in love. Remember that with the diplomat love at once puts an end to all his sphere of usefulness. Do not let this happen in your case, I beg of you.” Hubert did not reply for some seconds. At last he said in a rather a husky, confused voice:
“It is most kind of you to speak to me in such terms, Lord Westmere, and I fully appreciate the great interest which you have always shown me. Will it be sufficient to promise you that I will not repeat the folly of which I fear I have been guilty?”
“Excellent, my dear Waldron, excellent?” cried the white-haired Cabinet Minister, rising and shaking his hand warmly. “I’m glad you’ve seen the folly of it all. That dancing-girl is an unfit associate for you, that’s certain; so forget her. Take up your post at Rome as early as you can, and fulfil your promise to me to do your best.”
The Earl had risen as a sign that the interview was over. He was usually a sharp-speaking, brusque and busy man. To interviewers he was brief, and had earned for himself the reputation of the most hard and unapproachable man in the Service which he controlled. But Hubert Waldron had certainly not found him so, and as he descended the great handsome staircase and went out into the falling fog in Downing Street, he could not help a feeling of joy that he had been promoted over the heads of a dozen others to the second secretaryship of His Majesty’s Embassy to the Quirinale.
Next day the Morning Post told the world that the Honourable Hubert Waldron, M.V.O., was in London, and that same afternoon he received at his club a note from Beatriz, urging him to call at the Carlton.
Throughout the whole evening he debated within himself whether he should see her in order to wish her farewell. If he did not then she would regard him as brutal and impolite. He remembered those letters of hers, so full of passionate outpourings, and while he ate his dinner alone in a corner of the club dining-room they decided him.
He sent her a reply by hand that he would call at the hotel at half-past eleven, after she had finished her performance at the theatre.
Punctually at that hour a page-boy took him up in the lift, and passing along a corridor they halted at a door.
The page rapped, whereupon it opened, and next second the tall, handsome Spanish woman in a wonderful evening gown flew into Hubert’s arms crying in Spanish in wild glee:
“Ah! At last, my own dear Hubert – at last! What pleasure!”
But he only took her hand, and bowing low with grave courtliness, kissed it.
“Come, sit down,” she urged, pulling him towards a soft settee. “Tell me, when did you arrive from Egypt? The Duke saw the arrival in the paper this morning, and told me.”
“Then the Duke is still here,” he asked with affected unconcern.
“Of course. Why? He knows your English quite well, and, alas! I do not. Oh, it is so difficult! What I should do without him, I don’t know,” she went on volubly with much gesticulation. Those great dark eyes of hers and her raven-black hair gave a wonderful vivacity to her handsome Andalusian countenance. Her portraits were in all the illustrated papers, and during the day he had learnt how, by her wonderful dancing, she had taken London by storm.
“And what kind of reception have you had?” he asked gravely in Spanish, as he seated himself upon the settee before her.
“Superb!” she declared, her great eyes brightening. “Your English audiences are so intensely sympathetic. I love London. I think I dance better here in your cold, foggy city than in Madrid. Why, I do not know. Perhaps it is because I feel somehow at home with the English – because you, Hubert, are my dear friend.” And then she chattered on with hands and arms thrown about in quick gesticulation, describing to him her life during the past three weeks, and how full of gaiety and enjoyment had every moment been.
“Photographers and interviewers have pestered me to death. Ah! Your London journalists are so pressing. They are not lazy and open to bribery, as ours in Madrid. Twice I have danced at private parties and received large fees. Yes – you in London pay well – better even than Petersburg. At the Palace they want me to return for a month next September.”
“And you will accept, of course?”
She hesitated. She was standing at the table, her slim white fingers idly toying with a huge bunch of lilies-of-the-valley which had been thrown to her that night by some unknown admirer.
“Perhaps,” she replied. “At present I do not exactly know. I have also danced twice for charity – some hospital, I think. My manager, Cohen, arranged it. He is simply splendid – better even than he was in Russia.”
“I’m so glad you’re enjoying it, Beatriz,” Hubert said. “I was sorry I could not get back from Egypt. But I was nearly a thousand miles from Cairo when I got your telegram.”
“Oh, it really did not matter,” she declared. “The Duke has been most kind to me.”
“Yes – the Duke – always the Duke,” he said in a hard, changed voice.
She turned and looked at him in quick surprise.
“What – then are you jealous, you dear old Hubert?” she asked with a laugh.
“Not in the least,” was his quick reply. “But while you have the Duke you surely do not require my assistance. You have, it seems, got on in London excellently without me.”
“Because you were unable to come. Have I offended you?” she asked. “Come, forgive me if I have,” she urged, crossing to him, placing her hand upon his coat sleeve and looking up into his face. “I return to Madrid next Monday. You shall travel with me – eh?”
“I am not going back to Madrid,” was his slow reply, his eyes fixed upon hers.
“Not going back!” she echoed. “Why not?”
“I have been transferred to the Embassy in Rome. I leave for Italy the day after to-morrow.”
“To Italy,” she whispered blankly. “Then – then you will no longer be in Spain?”
“No. My term in Madrid has ended,” he answered in a hard, strained voice, for even then he found it hard to bid her farewell.
“Ah!” she cried suddenly. “I see – I see it in your manner! You are tired of me – you are displeased with the Duke. You are jealous of him – jealous that men should flatter me. You, my dear friend, in whom I held such high respect, will not desert me.”
“Alas, Beatriz, I am not my own master. If I were, I should not leave Madrid,” he said earnestly, for that was, after all, the truth.
“And yet, knowing how fondly I love you, Hubert, you will really leave me thus!” she cried, suddenly catching his hand and carrying it to her full red lips. “No,” she went on, tears welling in her wonderful eyes, “you cannot do this. You, too, love me – you know well that you do. Come, do not let us part. I – I know I am foolish – I – ah! no! I love you, Hubert – only you!” And full of her hot Spanish passion she threw her arms about him and burst into a flood of hot tears.
Hubert Waldron bit his lip. He recollected at that moment all the stories concerning her – of the blackmail levied, with her connivance, by the drunken cab-driver whom he himself had once seen in the Puerta del Sol. He remembered his promise to his Chief, and the plain, outspoken words of his friend, Jack Jerningham.
They hardened his heart.
He shook his head and slowly but resolutely, disengaged himself from her passionate embrace.
“No, Beatriz,” he said. “Let us end this. It will, surely, be best for both our sakes. True, I have known you for a long time before you became world-famous as a dancer, but your profession and your interests, like mine, now lie apart. Let us say farewell, and in doing so, let us still remain good friends, with tender memories of one another.”
“Memories!” she cried fiercely, looking into his face with flashing eyes. “They can only be bitter ones for me.”
“And perhaps just as bitter for myself,” he added, still holding her by the wrist and looking into those great black eyes of hers.
“You are very cruel, Hubert!” she declared, her chest beneath its chiffon rising and falling in quick emotion. “You are cruel to a woman!” she repeated in reproach.
“No. It will be best for us in the end – best for both of us. You have your future before you – so have I. In my profession as diplomat I have to bow to the inevitable whenever I am transferred. You are a great dancer – a dancer who has won the applause of Europe. May I not still remain your humble and devoted friend?”
For answer Beatriz, the idol of London at that moment, fell upon his shoulder and shed tears of poignant, bitter regret, while he, with knit brows, held his breath for a moment, and then tenderly bent and kissed her upon the cheek.
Chapter Ten.
Some Curious Stories
The festa of San Sebastiano fell on a Sunday.
The ancient church a mile and a half outside Rome on the Appian Way – the road constructed three hundred years before the birth of Christ – was thronged by the populace in festa attire, for San Sebastiano, built as it is over the Catacombs where reposed the remains of the Christian martyrs, is one of the seven churches to which pilgrims have flocked from every part of western Christendom, while in its chapel is the marble slab bearing what is held by tradition to be the footprints of Christ, and which, therefore, is held by the Romans in special veneration.
Though January, the morning was sunny and cloudless, and with Lady Cathcart, the Ambassador’s wife, and young Edward Mervyn, the rather foppish honorary attaché, Hubert Waldron had motored out to watch the festival with all its gorgeous procession of priests and acolytes, its swinging censers and musical chants.
As at all the festas in Rome, there was the usual crowd of gaping Cookites and the five-guinea excursionists of other agencies, for is not the Eternal City the city of the tourist par excellence? In it he can live in a cheap pension for four lire a night, or he can spend a hundred lire a night in certain hotels de luxe on his room alone.
The road was dusty and crowded as, the ceremony over, the party sped back, past the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla – paltry indeed after those left by Rameses in Egypt – and the churches of Santi Nereo ed Achilleo and San Cesareo, afterwards re-entering the city and speeding up the broad modern Via Nazionale and into the long, straight Via Venti Settembre, at last pulling up before the great grey façade of the British Embassy.
Hubert Waldron was no stranger to Rome. For five years he had lived at the Embassy when his father was Ambassador, and in those days had been very popular in the very exclusive Society of the Italian capital. Nowadays, however, he did not live at the Embassy, but rented the same cosy flat over a bank in the Via Nazionale which had been occupied by his predecessor – a charming, artistic little place which was the very ideal of a bachelor pied-à-terre.
That day there was a smart luncheon-party at the Embassy; among the guests being the Austrian and Russian Ambassadors with their wives, Prince Ghika, of the Roumanian Legation, the stout and wealthy Duca di Carpenito, the old Marchesa Genazzano, a hideous guy with her protruding yellow teeth, yet one of the leaders of Roman Society, the young Marchese Montalcino, who wore upturned moustachios and yellow boots; the pretty Contessa Stella Pizzoli, one of the Queen’s dames de la Cour, and half a dozen others whose names in the Italian capital were as household words.
Around the luncheon-table, charmingly arranged with delicate floral decorations, the chatter had been universal, Sir Francis Cathcart, K.C.M.G., the British Ambassador, holding a long and animated conversation with Princess Bezanoff, wife of “The Russian” – as the Tzar’s representative was termed in the diplomatic circle – while Lady Cathcart had been gossiping with the Duca di Carpenito, who was perhaps the greatest landowner in all Italy, and whose ancient Palazzo in the Corso is pointed out to the traveller as one of the finest mediaeval residences in the city.
Waldron, who had taken in the Contessa Stella and sat at her side, was listening to her gossip about the Court, of the doings of the Queen, and of their recent stay at Racconigi. Though most of the conversation at table was in French they spoke in Italian, Hubert speaking that language with scarce a trace of foreign accent.
“Curiously enough, Signor Waldron, I first knew of you by hearing His Majesty speak of you,” remarked the pretty young woman. “I heard him telling General Olivieri, the first aide-de-camp, that you had been attached to the Embassy here.”
“It is a great honour that His Majesty should remember me,” replied the secretary. “He knew me, however, years ago, before he succeeded. I was here with my father, who was Ambassador.”
“Yes. The King said so, and he paid your father a very high compliment. He said that he was the only diplomat whom his father, the late King Victor, ever trusted with a secret.”
Waldron smiled. Then he said:
“His Majesty is exceedingly gracious to me. I had not been back here a week before I had a command to private audience, and he was kind enough to say that he was pleased to resume my acquaintance after my years of absence from Rome. Yes, Contessa,” he added, “here I feel that I am at home and among friends, for I love Italy and her people. Your country possesses a grace and charm which one does not find elsewhere in Europe. There is but one Italy as there is but one Rome in all the world.”
“I fear you flatter us rather too much, Signor Waldron,” replied the pretty young woman. “Now that you have come back to us I hope you will honour my husband with a visit. You know the Palazzo Pizzoli, no doubt, and I hope in the autumn you will come out to us in the Romagna. We can give you a little shooting, I believe. You Englishmen always love that, I know,” she laughed.
“I’m sure I shall be very charmed to make the acquaintance of the Count,” he replied. “And if I may be permitted to call upon you I shall esteem it a great honour, Contessa,” and he smiled at the elegant dame de la Cour with his best diplomatic smile.
“So the young Princess Luisa is in disgrace again, I hear,” remarked the old Marchesa Genazzano, who sat on Waldron’s other hand, showing her yellow teeth as she spoke. “She’s always in some scrape or other. Girls in my day were never allowed the liberty she has – and she a Royal Highness, too!”
“We mustn’t tell tales out of school,” remarked the pretty Countess, with a comical grimace. “Her Royal Highness is, I fear, a sad tomboy. She always was – ever since she left the schoolroom.”
The old Marchesa, a woman of the bluest blood of Italy, and bosom friend of Her Majesty the Queen, grunted.
“Like her mother – like the whole House of Savoy. Always venturesome,” she said.
“But the Princess is charming. Surely you will agree, Marchesa?” protested the dame de la Cour.
“A very delightful girl. But she’s been spoilt. Her mother was too lenient with her, and her goings-on are becoming a public scandal.”
“Hardly that, I think,” remarked the Countess. “I know the King is pretty annoyed very often, yet he hasn’t the heart to put his foot down firmly. Even though she is of royal blood she’s very human, after all.”
“Her flirtations are positively disgraceful,” declared the old Marchesa, a woman of the ancient regime of exclusiveness.
Hubert laughed and said:
“I have not the pleasure of knowing Her Royal Highness – perhaps Her Royal Naughtiness might describe her – but as one who has no knowledge of the circumstances, I might be permitted to remark that the love that beats in the heart of a princess is the same love as that beneath the cotton corsets of the femme de chambre.”
“Ah, you diplomats are incorrigible,” cried the old woman with the yellow teeth. “But the Princess Luisa is becoming a scandal. The Queen declared to me only yesterday that she was intensely annoyed at her niece’s behaviour. Her latest escapade, it seems, has been to go to Bologna and take part in some motor-cycle races, riding astride like a man, and calling herself Signorina Merli. And she actually won one of the races. She carried a passenger in a side-car, a young clerk in a bank there, who, of course, was quite unaware of her real identity.”
“Quite sporting,” declared Waldron. “She evidently does not believe much in the royal exclusiveness.”
“Well, she cannot pretend that life at the Quirinale is at all dull. Since the death of her charming mother, the Princess of Milan, she has lived at the Palace, and must have had a very pleasant time.”
“Is she pretty?” asked Waldron, interested.
“Very – and most accomplished,” replied the old stiff-backed Marchesa whose word was law in social Rome. “The House of Savoy is not distinguished by its good looks on the female side, but the Princess Luisa is an exception. Personally, I consider her the best-looking among the marriageable royalties in Europe at the present moment.”
“But are her indiscretions really so very dreadful?” asked the diplomat, “or are they exaggerated?”
“Dreadful!” echoed the noble Montalcino, whose elegant attire and carefully trained moustache were so well-known during the hour of the passeggiate in the Corso. He had been listening to the conversation. “Why, cara mio,” he drawled, “only the other night I saw her with her maid sitting in the stalls at the Salone Margherita, which is, as you know, hardly the place to which a Royal Highness should go. Madonna mia! There are lots of stories about Rome of her escapades,” declared the young sprig of the nobility. “It is said she often escapes from the Palace at night and goes long runs in her car, driving it herself. Bindo Peruzzi found her early one morning broken down away out at Castelnuovo, and gave her a lift back in his car. She got out at the Porta Pia and Bindo pretended not to know who she was. I suppose she sent her chauffeur back for the car later on.”
“Rather a daring escapade for a Royal Highness,” Waldron said. “But, after all, Court life, Court etiquette, and Court exclusiveness must bore a girl to death, if in her youth she has been used to Society, as I suppose she had been during her mother’s lifetime.”
“Oh, of course one may easily make lots of excuses,” shuffled the old Marchesa. “But I feel sure the girl must be a source of great anxiety to both Their Majesties. It would be a great relief to them if she were to marry.”
“They say she is a favourite with the King, and that he never reproves her,” exclaimed the young fellow across the table.
“Well,” declared Hubert, “in any case she must be a merry, go-ahead little person. I shall look forward to meeting her.”
“Oh, no doubt you will, signore, very soon,” laughed the old leader of Society, when just at that moment the Ambassador’s wife gave the signal to rise, and the ladies passed out, the men bowing as they filed from the room.
A quarter of an hour later when the male guests joined the ladies in the big, handsome drawing-room overlooking the garden of the Embassy, the Marchesa beckoned Hubert over to where she was ensconced in a corner.
“Signor Waldron,” she said, “I find that Lady Cathcart has a portrait of Princess Luisa, the young lady whom we have been discussing. Look! It is yonder, on the table in the corner. The one in the oval silver frame.”
Hubert crossed to where she directed and there saw a large oval photograph which he had not before noticed, for he had never particularly examined the portraits in the room. Beneath was scrawled in a bold Italian hand the autograph – “Luisa di Savoia.”
He gazed upon the pictured, smiling face, utterly staggered.
The portrait was that of Lola!
