Buch lesen: «The Princess Virginia», Seite 7

“I sent for you,” said the Chancellor, brushing away metaphor with an impatient gesture, “to show me the precise spot on which to lay my finger.”

“I’ll do my best to deserve your confidence,” responded Egon, gracefully. “Let me see, where shall I begin? Well, as you know, it’s simpler for the Emperor to see a good deal of the woman he admires, at a friend’s house than almost anywhere else, in his own country. This particular woman risked her life to save his; and it’s so natural for him to be gracious in return, that people would be surprised if he were not. There’s so much in their favor, at the commencement.

“Miss Mowbray and her mother arrived at Lyndalberg before the Emperor, had made friends there, and were ready for the campaign. The girl is undoubtedly beautiful – the prettiest creature I think I ever saw – and she has a winning way which takes with women as well as men. Not one of her fellow-guests seems to put a wrong construction on her flirtation with the Emperor, or his with her. The other men would think him blind if he didn’t admire her as much as they do; and none of the women there are of the sort to be jealous. So, are you sure, Lorenz, that you’re not taking too serious a view of the affair?”

“It can’t be taken too seriously, considering the circumstances. I’ve told you my plans for the Emperor’s future. Princesses are women, and gossip is hydra-headed. When the lady hears – she who has been allowed to understand that the Emperor of Rhaetia only waits for a suitable opportunity of formally asking for her hand – for she will surely hear, that he has seized this very moment for his first liason, I tell you neither she nor her people are likely to accept the statement meekly. She’s half German; on her father’s side a cousin not too distant of William II. She’s half English; on her mother’s side related to the King through the line of the Stuarts. And in her there’s a dash of American blood which comes from a famous grandmother, who was descended from George Washington, a man as proud, and with the right to be as proud, as any King. All three countries would have reason to resent such an ungallant slight from Rhaetia.”

“The little affair must be hushed up,” said Egon.

“It must be stopped, and at once,” said the Chancellor.

“Ach!” sighed the young man, with as much meaning in the long drawn breath, as the elder might care to read. And if it did not discourage, it at least irritated him. “Go on!” he exclaimed sharply. “Go on with your sorry tale.”

“After all, when one comes to the telling, there isn’t a very great deal one can put into cut-and-dried words,” explained Egon. “At table, the Emperor has his hostess on one side and his fair preserver on the other. The two talk as much together during meals as etiquette allows, and perhaps a little more. Then, as the Emperor has been often at Lyndalberg, he can act as cicerone for a stranger. He has shown Miss Mowbray all the beauties of the place. He gathers her roses in the rose garden; he has guided her through the grottoes. He has piloted her through the labyrinth; he has told her which are the best dogs in the kennels; and has given her the history of all the horses in the Baron’s stables. I know this from the table talk. He has explored the lake with Miss Mowbray and her mother in a motor-boat; perhaps you saw the party? And whether or no he brought his automobile to Lyndalberg on purpose, in any case he’s had the Mowbrays out in it several times already. One would hardly think he could have found a chance to do so much in such a short time; but our Emperor is a man of action. Yesterday we had a picnic at the Seebachfall, to see Thorwaldsen’s Undine. Leopold and Miss Mowbray being splendid climbers, reached the statue on the height over the fall long before the rest of us. At starting, however, I was close behind with the Baroness, and overheard some joke between the two, about a mountain and a cow. The Emperor spoke of milking as a fine art, and said he’d lately been taking lessons. They laughed a great deal at this, and it was plain that they were on terms of comradeship. When a young man and a girl have a secret understanding – even the most innocent one – it puts them apart from others.

“Last night there were fireworks on the lake. The Emperor and Miss Mowbray watched them together, for everything was conducted most informally. Afterwards we had an impromptu cotillion, with three or four pretty new figures invented by the Baroness. The Emperor gave Miss Mowbray several favors, and one was a buckle of enameled forget-me-nots. This morning there was tennis. The Emperor and Miss Mowbray played together. They were both so skilful, it was a pleasure to watch them. At luncheon they each ate a double almond out of one shell, had a game over it, and Leopold caught Miss Mowbray napping. That brings us to the moment of my coming to you. For the afternoon, I fancy the Baroness was getting up a riding party; and this evening unless they’re too tired, she’ll perhaps get up an amateur concert at which Miss Mowbray will sing. The girl has a delicious voice.”

“The creature must be a fool, or an adventuress,” pronounced the Chancellor. “If she has kept her senses she ought to know that nothing can come of this folly – except sorrow or scandal.”

Egon shrugged his stiffly padded, military shoulders. “I have always found that a woman in love doesn’t stop to count the cost.”

“So! You fancy her ‘in love’ with the Emperor.”

“With the man, rather than the Emperor, if I’m a judge of character.”

“Which you’re not!” Iron Heart brusquely disposed of that suggestion. “The merest school-girl could pull wool over your eyes, if she cared to take the trouble.”

“This one doesn’t care a rap. She hardly knows that I exist.”

“Humph!” The Chancellor’s eyes appraised his young brother’s features. “That’s a pity. You might have tried cutting the Emperor out. Her affair with him can have no happy ending; while you, in spite of all your faults, with your good looks, our position, and my money, wouldn’t be a bad match for an ambitious girl.”

“Your money?”

“I mean, should I choose to make you my heir, and I would choose, if you married to please me. Who are these Mowbrays?”

“I haven’t had the curiosity to inquire into their antecedents,” said Egon. “I only know that they’re ladies, that they must be of some consequence in their own country, or they couldn’t have got the letters of introduction they have; and that the girl is the prettiest on earth.”

“Mechtilde talked to me, I remember, a good deal about those letters of introduction,” the Chancellor reflected aloud. “But Rhaetia is a long cry from England; and letters might be forged. I’ve known such things to be done. Fetch me a big red volume you’ll find on the third shelf from the floor, at the left of the south window. You can’t miss it. It’s ‘Burke’s Peerage.’”

Egon rose with alacrity to obey. He was rather thoughtful, for his brother had put an entirely new and exciting idea into his head.

Presently the red volume was discovered and laid on the desk before the Chancellor, who turned the leaves over until he found the page desired. As his eye fell upon the long line of Mowbrays, his face changed and the bristling brows came together in a grizzled line. Apparently the women were not adventuresses, at least in the ordinary acceptation of the term.

There they were; his square-tipped finger pressed down upon the printed names with a dig that might have signified his disposition toward their representatives.

“The girl’s mother is the widow of Reginald, sixth Baron Mowbray,” the old man muttered half aloud. “Son, Reginald Edward, fifteen years of age. Daughter, Helen Augusta, twenty-eight. Aha! She’s no chicken, this young lady. She ought to be a woman of the world.”

“Twenty-eight!” replied Egon. “I’ll eat my hat if she’s twenty-eight.”

“Doesn’t she look it, by daylight?”

“Not an hour over nineteen. Might be younger. Jove, I was never so surprised to learn a woman’s age! By the by, I heard her telling Baron von Lyndal last night, apropos of our great Rhaetian victory, that she was eleven years old on the day it took place. That would make her about twenty now. When she spoke, I remember she gave a look at her mother, across the room, as though she were frightened. I suppose she was hoping there was no copy of this big red book at Lyndalberg.”

“That thought might have been in her mind,” assented the Chancellor, “or else she – ” He left his sentence unfinished, and sat with unseeing eyes fixed in an owlish stare on the open page of Burke.

“I should like to know if you really meant what you said about my marriage a little while ago.” Egon ventured to attract his brother’s attention. “Because if you did – ”

“If I did – ”

“I might try very hard to please you in my choice of a wife.”

“Be a little more implicit. You mean, you would try to prove to Miss Mowbray that a Captain of Cavalry in the hand is worth an Emperor in the bush – a bramble-brush at that, eh?”

“Yes. I would do my best. And as you say, I’m not without advantages.”

“You are not. I was on the point of suggesting that you made the most of them in Miss Mowbray’s eyes —until you brought me this red book.”

The large forefinger tapped the page of Mowbrays, while two lines which might have meant amusement, or a sneer, scored themselves on either side the Chancellor’s mouth.

“And now – you’ve changed your mind?” There was disappointment in Egon’s voice.

“I don’t say that. I say only, ‘Wait.’ Make yourself as agreeable to the lady as you like. But don’t pledge yourself, and don’t count upon my promise or my money, until you hear again. By that time – well, we shall see what we shall see. Keep your hand in. But wait – wait.”

“How long am I to wait? If the thing’s to be done at all, it must be done soon, for meanwhile, the Emperor makes all the running.”

The Chancellor looked up again from the red book, his fist still covering the Mowbrays, as if they were to be extinguished. “You are to wait,” he said, “until I’ve had answers to a couple of telegrams I shall send to-night.”

CHAPTER X
VIRGINIA’S GREAT MOMENT

The first and second dressing gongs had sounded at Schloss Lyndalberg on the evening of the day after Egon von Breitstein’s visit to his brother, and the Grand Duchess was beginning to wonder uneasily what kept her daughter, when ringed fingers tapped on the panel of the door.

“Come in!” she answered, and Virginia appeared, still in the white tennis dress she had worn that afternoon. She stood for an instant without speaking, her face so radiantly beautiful that her mother thought it seemed illumined from a light within.

It had been on the lips of the Grand Duchess to scold the girl for her tardiness, since to be late was an unpardonable offense, with an Imperial Majesty in the house. But in that radiance the words died.

“Virginia, what is it? You look – I scarcely know how you look. But you make me feel that something has happened.”

The Princess came slowly across the room, smiling softly, with an air of one who walks in sleep. Hardly conscious of what she did, she sank down in a big chair, and sat resting her elbows on her knees, her chin nestling between her two palms, like a pink-white rose in its calyx.

“You may go, Ernestine,” said the Grand Duchess to her maid. “I’ll ring when I want you again.”

The elaborate process of waving and dressing her still abundant hair had fortunately come to a successful end, and Ernestine had just caused a diamond star to rise above her forehead. She was in a robe de chambre, and the rest of her toilet could wait till curiosity was satisfied.

But Virginia still sat dreaming, her happy eyes far away. The Grand Duchess had to speak twice before the girl heard, and started a little. “My daughter – have you anything to tell me?”

The Princess roused herself. “Nothing, Mother, really. Except that I’m the happiest girl on earth.”

“Why – what has he said?”

“Not one word that any one mightn’t have listened to. But I know now. He does care. And I think he will say something before we part.”

“There’s only one more day of his visit here, after to-night.”

“One whole long, beautiful day – together.”

“But after all, dearest,” argued her mother, “what do you expect? If in truth you were only Miss Mowbray, marriage between you and the Emperor would be out of the question. You’ve never gone into the subject of your feelings about this, quite thoroughly with me, and I do wish I knew precisely what you hope for from him; what you will consider the – the keystone of the situation?”

“Only for him to say that he loves me,” Virginia confessed. “If I’m right – if I’ve brought something new into his life, something which has shown him that his heart’s as important as his head, then there will come a moment when he can keep silence no longer – when he’ll be forced to say; ‘I love you, dear, and because we can’t belong to each other, day is turned into night for me.’ Then, when that moment comes, the tide of my fortune will be at its flood. I shall tell him that I love him too. And I shall tell him all the truth.”

“You’ll tell him who we really are?”

“Yes. And why I’ve been masquerading. That it was because, ever since I was a little girl, he’d been the one man in the world for me; because, when our marriage was suggested through official channels, I made up my mind that I must win him first through love, or live single all my days.”

“What if he should be vexed at the deception, and refuse to forgive you? You know, darling, we shall be in a rather curious position when everything comes out, as we have made all our friends here under the name of Mowbray. Of course, the excuse for what we did is, that our real position is a hundred times higher than the one we assumed, and all those to whom we’ve been introduced would be delighted to know us in our own characters, at the end. But Leopold is a man, not a romantic girl, as you are. He has always had a reputation for pride and austerity, for being just before he would let himself be generous; and it may be that to one of his nature, a wild whim like yours – ”

“You think of him as he was before we met, not as he is now, if you fancy he could be hard with a woman he really loved,” said Virginia, eagerly. “He’ll forgive me, dear. I’ve no fear of him any more. To-night, I’ve no fear of anything. He loves me – and – I’m Empress of the world.”

“Many women would be satisfied with Rhaetia,” was the practical response which jumped into the mind of the Grand Duchess; but she would throw no more cold water upon the rose-flame of her daughter’s exaltation. She kissed the girl on the forehead, breathing a few words of motherly sympathy; but when the Princess had flown off to her own room to dress, she shook her diamond-starred head doubtfully.

Virginia’s plan sounded poetical, and as easy to carry out as to turn a kaleidoscope and form a charming new combination of color; or so it had seemed while the young voice pleaded. But, when the happy face and radiant eyes no longer illumined the path, the way ahead seemed dark.

To be sure the Princess had so far walked triumphantly along the high-road to success, but it was not always a good beginning which led to a good end; and the Grand Duchess felt, as she rang for Ernestine, that her nerves would be strained to breaking point until matters were definitely settled, for better or for worse.

Virginia had never been lovelier than she was that night at dinner, and Egon von Breitstein’s admiration for her beauty had in it a fascinating new ingredient. Until yesterday, he had said to himself, “If she be not fair to me, what care I how fair she be?” But now, there was a vague idea that she might after all be for him, and he took enormous pleasure in the thought that he was falling in love with a girl who had captured the Emperor’s heart.

Egon glanced very often at Leopold, contrasting his sovereign’s appearance unfavorably with his own. The Emperor was thin and dark, with a grave cast of feature, while Egon’s face kept the color and youthfulness of the early twenties. He was older than Leopold, but he looked a boy. Alma Tadema would have wreathed him with vine leaves, draped him with tiger skins, and set him down on a marble bench against a burning sapphire sky, where he would have appeared more suitably clad than in the stiff blue and silver uniform of a crack Rhaetian regiment.

Leopold, on the contrary, would never be painted except as a soldier; and it seemed to Egon that no normal girl could help thinking him a far handsomer fellow than the Emperor. For the moment, of course, Miss Mowbray did not notice him, because his Imperial Majesty loomed large in the foreground of her imagination; but the Chancellor had evidently a plan in his head for removing that stately obstacle into the dim perspective.

Egon had not heard Miss Mowbray spoken of as an heiress, therefore, even had there been no Emperor in the way, he would not have worshiped at the shrine. But now, behold the shrine, attractive before, newly and alluringly decked! Egon wondered much over his half-brother’s apparently impulsive offer, and the contradictory command, which had, a little later, enjoined waiting.

He was delighted, however, that he had not been forbidden to make himself agreeable; and his idea was, as soon as dinner should be over, to find a place at Miss Mowbray’s side before any other man should have time to take it. But unluckily for this plan, Baron von Lyndal detained him for a few moments with praise of a new remedy which might cure the Chancellor’s gout; and when he escaped from his host to look for Miss Mowbray in the white drawing-room she was not there.

From the music room adjoining, however, came sounds which drew him toward the door. He knew Miss Mowbray’s soft, coaxing touch on the piano: she was there, “playing in a whisper,” as he had heard her call it. Perhaps she was going to sing, as she had once or twice before, and would need some one to turn the pages of her music. Egon thought that he would much like to be the some one, and was in the act of parting the white velvet portières that covered the doorway, when his hostess smilingly beckoned him away.

“The Emperor has just asked Miss Mowbray to teach him some old-fashioned Scotch or English air (I’m afraid I don’t quite know the difference!) called ‘Annie Laurie,’” the Baroness explained. “He was charmed with it when she sang the other evening, and I’ve been assuring him that the song would exactly suit his voice. We mustn’t disturb them while the lesson is going on. Tell me – I’ve hardly had a moment to ask you – how did you find the Chancellor?”

Chained to a forced allegiance, Egon mechanically answered the questions of the Baroness without making absurd mistakes, the while his ears burned to hear what was going on behind the white curtain.

Everybody knew of the music lesson, now, and chatted in tones of tactful monotony, never speaking too loudly to disturb the singers, never too cautiously, lest they should seem to listen. Once, and then again, the creamy mezzo soprano and the rich tenor that was almost a baritone, sang conscientiously through the verses of “Annie Laurie” from beginning to end; then a few desultory chords were struck on the piano; and at last there was silence behind the white curtains, in the music room.

Were the two still there? To interrupt such a tête-a-tête seemed out of the question, but not to know what was happening Egon found too hard to bear, and the arrival of a telegram for Lady Mowbray came as opportunely as if Providence had had his special needs in mind.

Evidently it was not a pleasant telegram, for, as she read it, the Dresden china lady showed plainly that she was disconcerted. Her pretty face lost its color; her eyes dilated as if she had tasted a drop of belladonna on sugar; she patted her lips with her lace handkerchief, and finally rose from her chair, looking dazed and distressed.

“I’ve had rather bad news,” she admitted to Baroness von Lyndal, who was all solicitude. “Oh, nothing really serious, I trust, but still, disquieting. It is from a dear friend. I think I had better go to my room, and talk things over with Helen. Would you be kind enough to tell her when she comes in that she’s to follow me there? Don’t send for her till then; it’s not necessary. But I shall want her by and by.”

It was clear that Lady Mowbray did not wish her daughter to be disturbed. Still, Egon von Breitstein thought he might fairly let his anxiety run away with him. As the Baroness accompanied her guest to the door, he took it upon himself to search for Miss Mowbray, for now, if the Emperor should curse him for a spoil-sport, he would have the best of excuses. Lady Mowbray was in need of her daughter.

He lifted the white curtain and peeped through a small ante-chamber into the music room beyond. It was empty; but one of the long windows leading into the rose garden was wide open.

The month of September was dying, and away in the Rhaetian mountains winter had begun; yet in the lap of the low country summer lingered. The air was soft, and sweet with the perfume of roses, roses living, and roses dead in a potpourri of scattered petals on the grass. It was a garden for lovers, and a night for lovers.

Egon went to the open window and looked out, but dared not let his feet take the direction of his eyes, though he was sure that somewhere in the garden Miss Mowbray and the Emperor were to be found.

“They will come in again this way,” he said to himself, “for they will want people to think they have never left the music room; and for that very reason they won’t stop too long. They must have some regard for the conventions. If I wait – ”

He did not finish the sentence in his mind; nevertheless he examined the resources of the window niche with a critical eye.

There was a deep enclosure between the window frame and the long, straight curtains of olive green satin which matched the decoration of the music room. By drawing the curtains a few inches further forward, one could make a screen which would hide one from observation by any person in the room, or outside, in the garden. So Egon did draw the curtain, and framed in his shelter like a saint in a niche, he stood peering into the silver night.

The moon was rising over the lake, and long, pale rays of level light were stealing up the paths, like the fingers of a blind child that caress gropingly the features of a beloved face.

Egon could not see the whole garden, or all the paths among the roses; but if the Emperor and his companion came back by the way they had gone, he would know presently whether they walked in the attitude of friends or lovers. It was so necessary for his plans to know this, that he thought it worth while to exercise a little patience in waiting. Of course, if they were lovers, good-by to his hopes; and he would never have so good a chance as this to make sure.

All things in the garden that were not white were gray as a dove’s wings. Even the shadows were not black. And the sky was gray, with the soft gray of velvet, under a crust of diamonds which flashed as the spangles on a woman’s fan flash, when it trembles in her hand.

White moths, happily ignorant that summer would come no more for them, drifted out from the shadows like rose petals blown by the soft wind. On a trellis, a crowding sisterhood of pale roses drooped their heads downward in memento mori. It was a silver night; a night of enchantment.

Leopold had meant to take Virginia out only to see the moon rise over the water, turning the great smooth sheet of jet into a silver shield; for there had been clouds or spurts of rain on other nights, and he had said to himself that never again, perhaps, would they two stand together under the white spell of the moon. He had meant to keep her for five minutes, or ten at the most, and then to bring her back; but they had walked down to the path which girdled the cliff above the lake. The moon touched her golden hair and her pure face like a benediction. He dared not look at her thus for long, and when there came a sudden quick rustling in the grass at their feet, he bent down, glad of any change in the current of his thoughts.

Some tiny, winged thing of the night sought a lodging in a bell-shaped flower whose blue color the moon had drunk, and as Leopold stooped, the same impulse made Virginia bend.

He stretched out his hand to gather the low-growing branch of blossoms, which he would give the girl as a souvenir of this hour, and their fingers met. Lake and garden swam before the eyes of the Princess as the Emperor’s hand closed over hers.

Her great moment had come; yet now that it was here, womanlike she wished it away – not gone forever, oh no, but waiting just round the corner of the future.

“The flowers are yours – I give them to you,” she laughed, as if she fancied it was in eagerness to grasp the disputed spray that he had pressed her fingers.

“You are the one flower I want – flower of all the world,” he answered, in a choked voice, speaking words he had not meant to speak; but the ice barriers that held back the torrent of which he had told her, had melted long ago and now had been swept away. Other barriers which he had built up in their place – his convictions, his duty as a man at the head of a nation – were gone too. “I love you,” he stammered, “I love you far better than my life, which you saved. I’ve loved you ever since our first hour together on the mountain, but every day my love has grown a thousand fold, until now it’s greater and higher than any mountain. I can fight against myself no longer. I thought I was strong, but this love is stronger than I am. Say that you care for me – only say that.”

“I do care,” Virginia whispered. She had prayed for this, lived for this, and she was drowning in happiness. Yet she had pictured a different scene, a scene of storm and stress. She had heard in fancy broken words of sorrow and noble renunciation on his lips, and in anticipating his suffering she had felt the joy her revelation would give. “I care – so much, so much! How hard it will be to part.”

“If you care, then we shall not be parted,” said Leopold.

The Princess looked up at him in wonder, holding back as he would have caught her in his arms. What could he mean? What plan was in his mind that, believing her to be Helen Mowbray, yet made it possible for him to reassure her so?

“I don’t understand,” she faltered. “You are the Emperor, and I am no more than – ”

“You are my wife, if you love me.”

In the shock of her ecstatic surprise she was helpless to resist him longer, and he held her close and passionately, his lips on her hair, her face crushed against his heart. She could hear it beating, feel it throb under her cheek. His wife? Then he loved her enough for that. Yet how was it possible for him to stand ready, for her sake, to override the laws of his own land?

“My darling – my wife!” he said again. “To think that you love me.”

“I have loved you from the first,” the Princess confessed, “but I was afraid you would feel, even if you cared, that we must say good-by. Now – ” And in an instant the whole truth would have been out; but the word “good-by” stabbed him, and he could not let it pass.

“We shall not say good-by, not for an hour,” he cried. “After this I could not lose you. There’s nothing to prevent my being your husband, you my wife. Would to God you were of Royal blood, and you should be my Empress – the fairest Empress that poet or historian ever saw – but we’re prisoners of Fate, you and I. We must take the goods the gods provide. My goddess you will always be, but the Empress of Rhaetia, even my love isn’t powerful enough to make you. If I am to you only half what you are to me, you’ll be satisfied with the empire of my heart.”

Suddenly the warm blood in Virginia’s veins grew chill. It was as if a wind had blown up from the dark depths of the lake, to strike like ice into her soul. An instant more and he would have known that she was a Princess of the Blood, and through his whole life she could have gone on worshiping him because he had been ready to break down all barriers for her love, before he guessed there need be none to break. Now her warm impulse of gratitude was frozen by the biting blast of disillusionment; but still there was hope left. It might be that she misunderstood him. She would not judge him yet.

“The empire of your heart,” she echoed. “If that were mine I should be richer than with all the treasures of the earth. If you were Leo, the chamois hunter, I would love you as I love you now, because in yourself you are the one man for me; and I’d go with you to the end of the world, as your wife. But you’re not the chamois hunter; you are the man I love, yet you are the Emperor. Being the Emperor, had you talked of a hopeless love and a promise not to forget, having nothing else to give me, because of your high destiny and my humbler one, I could still have been happy. Yet you speak of more than that. You speak of something I can’t understand. It seems to me that what a Royal man offers the woman he loves should be all or nothing.”

“I do offer you all,” said Leopold. “All myself, my life, the heart and soul of me – all that’s my own to give. The rest – belongs to Rhaetia.”

“Then what do you mean by – ”

“Don’t you understand, my sweet, that I’ve asked you to be my wife? What can a man ask more of a woman?”

“Your wife – but not the Empress. How can the two be apart?”

He tried to take her once more in his arms, but when he saw that she would not have it so, he held his love in check, and waited. He was sure that he would not need to wait long, for not only had he laid his love at her feet, but had pledged himself to a tremendous sacrifice on love’s altar.

The step which in a moment of passion he had now resolved to take would create dissension among his people, alienate one who had been his second father, rouse England, America and Germany to anger, because of the Princess whose name rumor had already coupled with his, and raise in every direction a storm of disapproval. When this girl whom he loved realized the immensity of the concession he was making because of his reverent love for her, she would give her life to him, now and forever.