Kitabı oku: «The Adventure of Princess Sylvia», sayfa 9
CHAPTER XI
THE LAST OF THE MAGIC CITRONS
BREAKFAST at Schloss Lynarberg was an informal meal. Those who were sociably inclined at that hour appeared; those who loved not their kind until later in the day, broke their fast in the safe seclusion of their own apartments.
Maximilian had shown himself at the breakfast-table every morning since the beginning of his visit, and it had been Sylvia's usual custom also to be present. But Lady de Courcy invariably kept her room till later, and on one occasion the daughter had borne her mother company. On the morning after the misunderstanding in the garden, therefore, the Emperor was only disappointed, not surprised, to find that Sylvia did not come. He had spent another wakeful night, but he could not bring himself to believe that Sylvia would never listen to him, that she would not yet be brought to see the future through his eyes.
It was his last whole day at Lynarberg, but, by his special request, no regular programme of entertainment had been made. As breakfast progressed, Maximilian turned over in his mind plan after plan for another meeting with Sylvia, and hoped that, by this time, she would be as ready to receive his overtures as he to make them. He longed to write her a letter, imploring her to come to him; but feared, unless he could make his first appeal in person, that he might defeat his own object. It would be better, perhaps, to wait until she was actually in his presence, then carry her away from the eyes of others by some bold stroke.
But she did not come, even when for half an hour they had all been strolling in the quaint pleasaunce, where the white peacocks spread their jewelled tails and shrilly disputed for possession of the sundial. The Baroness, who walked by the Emperor's side, and appeared singularly distraite, despite her constant efforts at repartee, at length proposed that they should row out again to Cupid's Isle. The morning was so fine, and the red October lilies which had been in bud there the other day ought to be open by now.
Maximilian approved the idea. "Shall you not send for Miss de Courcy?" he inquired, with a simulated carelessness at which Malvine could have laughed – had she not been more inclined to weep. "I think I remember hearing her say that there are no such lilies in England, and that she would like to see them in fuller bloom."
The Baroness glanced quickly behind her. None of the others were within earshot, if she spoke in a low voice. "Oh, but you have forgotten, have you not, Your Majesty? Miss de Courcy and her mother have already gone."
He turned so white, under the coat of brown the mountains had given, that Malvine was startled. She had believed Sylvia – more or less – supposing until now that the Emperor had actually been made aware of the intended flitting. There had been an affecting parting, perhaps, she had told herself; and for his sake she had refrained from mentioning the De Courcys at breakfast in the presence of other guests. For the last few moments she had been impatiently waiting for Maximilian to introduce the subject, hoping that he might be confidentially inclined; but it was a genuine surprise to discover that he had really been kept in ignorance. Malvine was very angry with Sylvia's deception; for, had she dreamed, in time, that the Emperor did not know the girl was going, she would slyly have given him a chance to follow, if he chose. Now, it was in all probability already too late for this.
"Where have they gone?" he asked the only sign of feeling in the pallor of his face and the fire in his eyes.
"To Salzbrück, Your Majesty."
"Oh, is that all? Then they are coming back; or, at least, they are not leaving Rhaetia?"
"I am afraid they are leaving."
"When?"
"To-day, by the Orient express. I did all I could to keep them. But some bad news reached Lady de Courcy last night, in a telegram from England. They both insisted that they must go home at once, begging as a favour, since they felt unequal to farewells, that no one should know until they were gone – except, of course, Your Majesty. Miss de Courcy said that – you knew; that you would understand."
The Emperor was silent for a moment, and Malvine would have glanced up at him from under her artificially darkened lashes, if she had dared. But she did not dare. Still, she was beginning to hope that the feeling she would fain have seen implanted in his heart had already taken root so deeply that it would not soon perish. In that case, after all, she would have thwarted the Chancellor – for a time at least; since a man, even when he is an emperor, cannot readily be persuaded to marry one woman when his heart is aching with love for another.
When Maximilian did speak, his voice was very quiet – aggravatingly quiet, thought Malvine – but his eyes were even brighter than before. It was a dangerous, rather than a pleasant brightness; and Malvine, who had no cause to fear its menace for herself, wondered what the light betokened.
"Miss de Courcy did speak of leaving earlier than she had expected," he said. "But if she gave me reason to suppose it would be so soon, I certainly did not understand. I am sorry that there was bad news from England."
So also was Malvine; but she began now to ask herself if the news alone had sufficed to snatch her guests so suddenly away.
"Is it long since they left Lynarberg?" the Emperor added.
"They went at about half-past seven this morning, before any one was up, except my husband and myself and the servants. By half-past eight they would have joined their companion, who remained at the Hohenburgerhof. Then there would have been a little packing to oversee, perhaps, and the Orient express is due in Salzbrück, I think, at precisely one o'clock. It is now" – she glanced half-apologetically at the watch in her bracelet – "it is now five minutes past twelve, so that in less than an hour the prettiest woman who ever came to Salzbrück will have vanished again." And, as Malvine von Lynar spoke, she sighed.
The blood rushed to Maximilian's face. He had a choice between two evils. If he pursued and overtook the girl, he might persuade her to hear reason; at least, she would see that he was no laggard in love. But to follow, to cut short the visit at Lynarberg, which should not have ended till next day, would be virtually to take the world into his secret. The Baroness would know; others would suspect. A month ago such a question (when yielding to inclination meant a humbling of his pride as man and Emperor) would have decided itself. But within these last days Maximilian had learned that his valued strength of will in the past had been ruled, more or less, by the limitations of his desire. Now, he wanted to do a certain thing more than he had ever wanted anything in the whole course of his life, and the question was mentally settled as quickly as it would have been a month ago; the only difference being that it was settled in the opposite way.
"Baroness von Lynar, you and I are old friends," he said hastily.
"I value your friendship above all things, Your Majesty, and would keep it at any cost."
"Then keep something else for me as well; a secret – though it may not be a secret long. You have seen me with Miss de Courcy. And you have guessed something, perhaps?"
"Women are ever quick to jump at romantic conclusions. But – "
"I am answered. A moment has come when I must choose between speaking frankly with you or leaving you to suspect what you will. I choose frankness. There's nearly an hour yet before the Orient express leaves Salzbrück, and you say Miss de Courcy is going with it. I can't let her go without seeing her again. I want – but you know what I want."
"You want your horse and your aide-de-camp's horse saddled; you want to ride away now, at once, to catch the train before it leaves the station; and you want me to give some plausible reason which will account to every one for your sudden departure. Anything, so that it is not connected with Miss de Courcy. Am I right?"
"Absolutely. If I get off in a quarter of an hour, I can just do it."
"I will slip into the house, Your Majesty, and send a servant at once to the stables. Captain von Loewenstein shall be summoned, and you can be on the road in ten minutes."
"I'll go with you to the house, my friend."
"Everybody shall be given to understand that you are called away from Lynarberg on pressing business, but that you expect to return in the afternoon. If you find it best not to come, send a wire saying that you are detained. All will be deeply disappointed; but no one will guess the truth, and more than that, no one will talk."
By this time they were at the house steps. Malvine flew in to give orders, while Maximilian waited, his eyes on his watch. Four minutes later Captain von Loewenstein, the Emperor's aide-de-camp (who had been in the act of proposing to pretty Baroness Marie Vedera), stood ready to receive his master's orders. Ten minutes more, and the two soldierly figures rode at a gallop out from the park gates at Lynarberg.
"We're going to the station, to catch the Orient express, Von Loewenstein," said Maximilian. "I have – promised myself to say good- bye to some friends."
"Were you aware, Your Majesty," asked the aide-de-camp, "that the time-table has just been changed for the autumn? The Orient express leaves ten minutes earlier than it has during the summer."
The Emperor used a strong word. "Are you certain, Von Loewenstein?"
"Certain, Your Majesty. I looked out the time for my sister, who goes to Paris next week. The new table only came into use yesterday."
"I'll kill my horse under me rather than lose the train," said the Emperor. And he loved Arabian Selim well, as Von Loewenstein knew.
"We've just a chance of doing it without that, Your Majesty. It's scarcely five miles now."
They rode as if their lives were at stake. And they rode without a word. At last they came to the suburbs, then into the outskirts of the town. In the distance, a church clock chimed the quarter before one. The two looked at each other. Five minutes, and the station was but a mile away. They would do the trick yet!
The upright line between Maximilian's black brows relaxed. He threw up his head and smiled like a boy, looking – Loewenstein thought – as he looked when they camped in the Weisshorn and shot chamois.
"You shall have something to make you remember to-day, if all goes well," he said to the aide-de-camp; then drew in his breath sharply, for Selim had stumbled. A dozen yards away, on the dusty white of the road, lay a black crescent – Selim's shoe.
Quick as light, Maximilian sprang off. "Give me your mare, von Loewenstein," he said. "I must go on alone."
So they made the change, and the younger man watched his master disappear in a cloud of dust, as he, on Selim's back, followed slowly after. And he wished that he knew whether the little Baroness Marie would have said yes or no, and whether the Emperor's business with the Orient express were business of state or love.
Kohinoor had not the staying power of Selim; she was good for a spurt of speed; but she knew when she had had enough, and no mortal power could persuade her otherwise, when she thought that such a time had arrived. People stared to see a man urging a smoking thoroughbred through the broad Bahnhofstrasse in Salzbrück, at a speed forbidden within the town limits, and stared still more at beholding a gendarme leap forward with a warning shout, then blunder back again speechless, with a crimson face under his shining helmet. Horse and man dashed by so madly that few could tell whether the rider were a person of importance at the Court, or a stranger. But a soldier of cavalry swaggering away from barracks with a friend, said, "Do you know who that is?"
"By the way he rides I should say it was his Satanic Majesty," declared the other, a country recruit.
"You're not far wrong, maybe; but, all the same, it is His Majesty our Emperor," replied the first.
The hands on the big, white clock-face looking down from the Bahnhof tower pointed at five minutes to one, when Maximilian reined up the mare before the main entrance, and bade a dienstmann hold his horse, as if he had been a common townsman. Something the fellow shouted about being there to carry luggage, not to hold horses (for he did not know the Emperor by sight), but Maximilian waited neither to hear nor argue. He sprang up the broad stone stairway, three steps at a time.
"Has the Orient express gone yet?" he demanded of the man at the door of the departure platform.
"Five minutes ago," returned the official, not troubling to look up.
An unreasoning fury against fate raged in Maximilian's breast. He ruled this country, yet everything in it seemed to combine in a plot to thwart his dearest desire. For a moment he felt as if he had come up against a blank wall and saw no present way of getting round it; but that was only for an instant, since the Emperor was not a man of slow decisions. His first step was to inquire what was the earliest stop made by the Orient express. In three hours, he learned, it would reach Wandeck, the last station on the Rhaetian side of the frontier. What was the next train, then, leaving Salzbrück for Wandeck? In twenty minutes, a personenzug would go out. After that, there would be no other train for two hours. The personenzug would arrive at Wandeck only fifty minutes earlier than the schnellzug following so much later, therefore most people preferred to wait. But Maximilian, having gathered this intelligence, was not of the majority; he chose the fifty minutes in Wandeck, for even if he courted publicity by engaging a special, so long a time must pass before it could be ready that he would gain no advantage.
Before taking his ticket, however, he telephoned the Hohenburgerhof, to satisfy himself beyond doubt that the De Courcys had actually gone. There was a delay of a few minutes before the answer came; but presently he was informed that the ladies had left the hotel. This decided his plan of action once for all, and the short remaining interval before the departure of the slow train he snatched for writing out two telegrams, one to Baroness von Lynar, the other to a person more important.
The first words of the latter ran fluently. "Miss Mary de Courcy, Orient express, care of the stationmaster, Wandeck," he wrote. "I beg that you will leave the train here and wait for me. I am following, and will arrive in Wandeek three hours after you. I will look for you and hope to find you at the Maximilianhof."
So far it was very simple. He had expressed his wish and signified his intention, which would have been enough if Miss de Courcy were a loyal subject of his own. But unfortunately she had exhibited no signs of subjection; and the question arose, would she grant the most ardently expressed request, unless he could offer some new inducement? On reflection, he was ruefully compelled to admit that she probably would not. Yet what had he to urge that he had not urged last night? What could he say, at this eleventh hour, which would keep her from passing forever beyond his dominions and beyond hope of recall?
As he stood, pen in hand (each moment of hesitation at the risk of missing his chosen train), a curious memory came to him. He recalled a fairy tale which had been a favourite of his childhood, and had helped to form his resolve that, when he grew to manhood, he would never miss an opportunity through vacillation. The story had for its hero a prince who went abroad so seek his fortune, and received from one of the Fates three magic citrons which he was told to cut by the side of a fountain. Obeying, from the first citron sprang a beautiful maiden, who demanded a drink of water; and while the prince gazed in amazement, vanished. With the second citron, it was the same; and the third maiden would have been irrevocably lost also, had not the youth recovered his presence of mind at the last moment.
Now, Maximilian said to himself, his knife was on the rind of the last citron. Let him think well before he cut, that his one remaining chance of happiness might not vanish like the two fairy maidens.
He had believed it impossible for a man to love a woman more than he loved Mary de Courcy; but, knowing that he was on the point of losing her, he found his love a thousand-fold greater than he had known. The sacrifice he had been ready to make had loomed large in his eyes; now, it was nothing, since it had not sufficed to win or keep her. What, then, could he do? What other resource had he left?
Suddenly it seemed that a great light shone before his eyes, like a meteor bursting, and a voice whispered in his ear a thought that ran like fire through his veins.
Why not? he asked of his heart. Who was bold enough to say "no" to the Emperor's "yes"? Had he not proved more than once that his strength, his will, made him a law unto himself?
A dark flush stained his face, and he wrote quickly on and on. When he had finished, and signed his telegram "The Chamois Hunter," he hurried away to buy a ticket, and was only just in time. He sprang into an empty first-class carriage, and threw himself into a seat as the train began to move slowly out of the station.
In his brain rang the intoxicating music of his great resolve. He could see nothing, think of nothing but that. His arms ached to clasp the girl he loved; his lips, cheated last night, already felt her kisses. For she would give them now, and she would give herself. He was treading the past of an Empire under foot to win her, and every throb of the engine brought them nearer together.
But such moments of exaltation come seldom in a lifetime. The heart of man or woman could not go on forever playing the wild refrain of their accompaniment; and so it was that, as the minutes passed, the song of the blood in Maximilian's veins fell to a minor key. He thought still of Sylvia, and thought of her with passion which would be satisfied at any cost; but he thought of lesser things as well. He viewed the course which his meditated action laid out before him, like a man who rides a race for life or death across strange country, where none have passed before.
There was no one on earth whom Maximilian of Rhaetia feared, but there was one to whom he owed much, and whom it would be grievous to offend. In his father's day, one man, old even then, had built upon the foundations of a disastrous past a great and prosperous nation. This man had been to Maximilian what his father could never have been; and, without the magnetic gift of inspiring affection, had instilled respect and gratitude in the breast of an enthusiastic boy.
"Poor old Von Markstein!" the Emperor said to himself. "He will feel this sorely. I would spare him if I could; yet I cannot live my life for him – "
He sighed, and looked up frowning at some sudden sound. Like a spirit called from the vasty deep, there stood the Chancellor at the door between Maximilian's compartment and the next.
CHAPTER XII
BETWEEN MAN AND MAN
OLD "Iron Heart" was dressed in the long, double-breasted gray overcoat, and wore, pulled over his eyes, the gray slouch hat, in which all snapshot photographs (no others had ever been taken) represented him.
At sight of the Emperor, leaning with folded arms against the red plush cushions, he took off his famous hat, to show the bald, shining dome of his great head, fringed with hair of curiously mingled black and white.
"Good day, Your Majesty," he observed, with no sign of surprise in voice or countenance.
The train rocked from side to side, and it was with difficulty that the old man kept his footing; but he stood rigidly erect, supporting himself in the doorway, until the Emperor invited him to enter and be seated.
"I am glad that you are well enough to travel, Chancellor," cried Maximilian. "We had none too encouraging an account of you from Captain Otto the day before yesterday."
"I travel because you travel, Your Majesty," said "Iron Heart."
They now sat facing each other, on opposite seats, and the Emperor, combating a boyish sense of guilt, stared fixedly at the square visage, on which the afternoon light cruelly scored the detail of each wrinkle.
"So?" said Maximilian.
"Your Majesty, I have served you, and your father before you. I think you trust me somewhat?"
"No man more. But this sounds a momentous preface. Is it possible you find it necessary to lead up to the subject, if I can have the pleasure of doing you a favour?"
"It is no preface, Your Majesty. I am too blunt a man to begin with prefaces when I serve in the capacity, not of diplomat, but friend. For you have allowed me to call myself your friend."
"I have asked it of you."
"If I seemed to lead up to what I have to say, it is only for the sake of explanation. You are wondering, perhaps, how I knew that you would travel to-day, and why, knowing it, I ventured to follow. I learned your intention by accident" (the Chancellor did not, for all his boasted bluntness, tell what lay behind that accident); "wishing much to talk over with you a pressing matter which brooks no delay, I took this liberty, and seized the opportunity of speaking with you alone. Some men in my situation would think it wiser to pretend that business of their own had brought them on the journey, and that the meeting had come about by chance. But I am not one to work in the dark, and I want Your Majesty to know the truth." Which no doubt he did; but perhaps not quite the whole truth.
"You raise my curiosity," said Maximilian.
"I will not keep it waiting long," said "Iron Heart." "Have I your indulgence to speak frankly, not wholly as a servant of the Emperor to his master, but as man to man – an old man to a young one?"
"I would have you speak in no other way," answered Maximilian; but he uttered the words with a certain constraint, and the softness died out of his eyes.
"I have had a letter from Friedrich, the Crown Prince of Abruzzia. It has come to his ears that there is a reason for your Imperial Majesty's delay in following up the first overtures for an alliance with his family. Gossip has told him that Your Majesty's affections have become otherwise engaged, and he has written to me as a friend, asking me to contradict or confirm the rumour."
"I am not sure that negotiations had progressed far enough in that matter to give him the right of inquiry," said Maximilian, flushing.
The old man spread out his hands – the pathetic hands of age – in a deprecatory gesture. "I fear, in my zeal for Your Majesty's welfare and the welfare of Rhaetia, I somewhat exceeded my instructions," he confessed. "My one excuse is, that I believed your mind to be entirely made up. I still believe so. I would listen to no one who told me otherwise. And I will inform Friedrich that – "
"You must even get yourself and me out of the scrape as gracefully as you can, since you admit you got us into it," broke in the Emperor, sinfully glad of the chance to transfer a fraction of the blame to other shoulders. "If Princess Sylvia of Eltzburg-Neuwald is as charming as she is said to be, her only difficulty will be to choose a husband, not to get one. For once gossip has told the truth, and I would not pay the Princess so poor a compliment as to ask for her hand when my heart is irrevocably given to another woman."
"It is of that other I would speak with you also, Your Majesty. Gossip has named her. May I do the same?"
"I will save you the trouble, Chancellor," retorted Maximilian, "for I am not ashamed that at last the common fate of all has overtaken me – common, because they say every man loves once before he dies; yet uncommon, because no man ever loved such a woman. There is no one in the world like Miss de Courcy – the English lady who saved my life on the eve of my birthday, as you know."
"It is natural that you should feel grateful, Your Majesty."
"It is natural that I should feel love; impossible that I should not feel it."
"Natural that being still young and inexperienced in such matters, Your Majesty should mistake gratitude for love; impossible that you should let the mistake continue."
"If it were a mistake! I am keeping to my bargain, Chancellor, and talking with you man to man, for I know you won't try me too far. In such a connection it would be better not to mention the word 'mistake'. I am glad that you followed me, for I may as well say that I meant you should know my intentions within a few days. You, of course, would have known before any one."
"Intentions, Your Majesty? I fear I grow old and slow of understanding."
"For you to be slow of understanding would be a change indeed. I spoke of my intentions toward Miss de Courcy."
"You would make the lady some handsome present, as an acknowledgment of your indebtedness?"
"Whether handsome or not would be largely a matter of opinion," said the Emperor, smiling for the first time. "I am making her a present of myself."
The old man had sat with his chin sunk into his short neck, peering out from under his brows in a way he had; but he lifted his head suddenly, and there was a look in his eyes like that of an animal who scents danger from an unexpected quarter.
"Your Majesty!" he exclaimed incredulously. "You are your father's son. You are Rhaetia. Your standard of honour cannot be soiled for a woman's sake."
"You misunderstand me," said Maximilian, in haste. "I speak of marriage."
The Chancellor's jaw dropped, and the warm mahogany hue of his skin paled to a sickly yellow. For a moment his lips quivered in a vain effort to formulate words, but he fought with his weakness and conquered.
"I had dreamed of nothing as bad as this, Your Majesty," he blurted out, with no sugaring of the truth this time. "I had heard the rumour connecting your most august name with that of a stranger from another country. I feared a young man's impulsiveness. I dreaded a scandal. But forgive me, Your Majesty, this thought of yours is no less than madness. For a man in your position, a morganatic marriage would spell ruin – "
"A morganatic marriage was in my mind, I admit," the Emperor cut him short once more. "But I saw the unwisdom, the injustice of that, and decided differently."
"Praise be to heaven!" devoutly ejaculated the Chancellor, who, in calmer moments, believed himself an atheist.
"I decided that, rather than lose something dearer than life, as dear as honour, I would make this lady – this peerless lady – Empress of Rhaetia," Maximilian went on.
With a cry the Chancellor sprang up, the veins in his forehead full to bursting. His eyes glared like those of a bull that receives the death-stroke. His working lips and the hollow sound in his throat alarmed the Emperor, who, for a few grim seconds, feared the worst. But the iron heart of old Eberhard von Markstein was not to be stilled by a single blow.
He muttered a word which the younger man ignored, though it smote his ears sharply. Then, after a silence potent with meaning, and punctuated with a gasp, the Chancellor "found himself" again.
"No, Your Majesty; no, I say!" he panted.
"But I say yes, and no man shall give me nay. I have thought it all out and I see the path before me," insisted Maximilian. "I will make her a countess first; she shall be Countess of Salzbrück. Later, she shall be Empress."
"Your Majesty, it is impossible."
"Who dares say it is impossible? Answer me that, Von Markstein. She is already a lady of unimpeachable breeding, reputation, and birth – "
"Your Majesty's pardon, while I say it is impossible – I, Von Markstein. For I tell you she has neither the position nor the birth that she claims, and I can prove it!"
Maximilian turned on him fiercely; then the old face, so closely associated with every crisis of his life, appealed to his youth and to his manhood. "Take care, Von Markstein," he said, but in a different tone from that which he had meant to use.
The Chancellor – for all his apparent brusquerie, a diplomat before he was a man – was quick to see and understand the change, as quick to take advantage.
"Punish me as you will, Your Majesty," he said, making no further effort to control the shaking of his voice and hands, since age and infirmity were at this moment his best advocates. "I am an old man; my work for you and yours is nearly done. Cheerfully will I bow to dismissal, if my last effort in your service may save the ship of state from wreck. I would not speak what I do not know; and I do know that the two English ladies who have been staying at the Schloss Lynarberg are not the persons they pretend to be."
"Who has been lying to you, Chancellor?" cried Maximilian, who held the temper he vowed not to lose in clenched hands.
"To me, no one. To Your Majesty, to society in Salzbrück, two adventuresses have lied."
The Emperor leapt to his feet. "If you were a young man, I would kill you for that," he said.
"I know you would. Even as it is, my life is yours. But, for God's sake, for your dead father's sake, hear me first."
Maximilian stared out of the window at the vanishing landscape, his lips a tense white line. Presently he sat down.
"Very well, I will hear you," he said. "Because I do not fear to hear anything that you can say."
Already the Chancellor had marshalled his array of facts in their proper order, and now he lost no time in seizing the opening offered, lest – before all he had to say was said – the narrow way should close again.
"When I heard of Your Majesty's growing admiration for the lady who was fortunate enough to save your life," he began, "I looked for her name and her mother's in a book which the English nation values next to the Bible. It is called 'Burke's Peerage'. There I found the name of Lady de Courcy, widow of a certain Sir Thomas, Baron; mother of a son, still a child, and of one living daughter, much older, a young woman with many names and twenty-eight years."
The Emperor, who had been frowning into space, turned a quick look of surprise on his Chancellor. Beginning to speak, he changed his mind, and bit his lip instead.
