The Princess Virginia
TextThe Prince listened, and did not smile as he went out.
He had bidden the Chancellor await his return in the salon of the Royal suite, which was always kept at his disposal, when he appeared in the neighborhood, as he often did since purchasing the hunting lodge a few miles out of Kronburg, in the forest.
Other foreign royalties, or lesser princes from the provinces, occasionally occupied the apartments, also; and this handsome Royal Highness of to-day was not the only one whom the Chancellor of Rhaetia had visited there. He knew by heart the rich purple hangings in the salon, with the double wolf-head of Rhaetia stamped in gold at regular intervals on the velvet; and he sickened of their splendor now, as the moments dragged, and he remained alone.
When half an hour had passed, he could no longer sit still on the purple velvet sofa, but began walking up and down, his hands behind him, scowling at the full length, oil-painted portraits of Rhaetia’s dead rulers; glaring a question into his own eyes in the long, gold framed mirrors, – a question he would have given his life to hear answered in the way he wished.
Three quarters of an hour had gone at last, and still the Chancellor paced the purple drawing-room, and still the Prince did not come back to tell the news.
Had the young man failed? Had that Siren up-stairs beguiled him, as she had beguiled one stronger and greater than he? Was it possible that she had lured the whole secret of their scheme from the Prince, and then induced him to leave the hotel while her arch enemy fumed in the salon, awaiting his return?
But no, there were quick footsteps outside the door; the handle was turned. At least, his Royal Highness was not a traitor.
As the Chancellor had confessed, he was growing old. He felt suddenly very weak; his lips fell apart, trembling; yet he would not utter the words that hung upon them.
Fortunately the Prince read the appeal in the glittering eyes, and did not wait to be questioned.
“Well, I’ve seen the lady and had a talk with her,” he said, in a voice which was, the old man felt, somehow different in tone from what it had been an hour ago.
“And is she the person you have known?”
“Yes, she’s a person I have known. It’s – it’s all right about that plan of yours, Chancellor. She’s going with me to the lodge.”
“Heaven be praised! It seems almost too good to be true. When does she go?”
“At once. That is, as soon as she can get ready. She will dine with me, and my equerry will stop behind and eat the dinner I had ordered here.”
“Magnificent. Then she will go with you alone? Nothing could be better. The presence of the alleged mother as chaperon would be a drawback.”
“Oh, no chaperon is needed for us two. The – er – mother remains at the hotel with a la – a companion they have, who is ill. It was – er – somewhat difficult to arrange this matter, but I don’t think the plot I have in mind now will fail, provided you carry through your part as smartly as I have mine.”
“You may depend upon me. Your Royal Highness is marvelous. Am I to understand that the lady goes with you quite of her own free will?”
“Quite. I flatter myself that she’s rather pleased with the invitation. In a few minutes, I and the fair damsel will be spinning away for a drive in my red motor; you know, the one which I always leave at the lodge, to be ready for use whenever I choose to pay a flying visit. I shall keep her out until it’s dark, to give you plenty of time, but before starting I’ll telephone to my chef that, after all, I sha’n’t be away, and he must prepare dinner for two.”
“I also will send a telephone message,” said the Chancellor.
“To Leopold?”
“Yes, your Royal Highness. This time there will be no uncertainty in my words to him. They will strike home, and, even if he should not be intending to come to Kronburg to-night, they will bring him.”
“You are sure you know where to catch the Emperor?”
“He’ll telephone me from Felgarde, when he has found those he sought are not there, as he will; and I must be at my house to receive and answer his message. It will soon be time now.”
“Very well, all that seems to arrange itself satisfactorily,” said the Prince. “Our motor drive can be stretched out for an hour and a half. The lady will then need to dress. Dinner can be kept back till half past eight, if it would suit your book to break in upon us, at the table. My dining-room isn’t very grand, but it has plenty of light and color, and wouldn’t make a bad background for the last act of this little drama. What do you say, Chancellor? I’ve always thought that your success as a stage manager of the Theater of Nations was partially due to your eye for dramatic effects.”
“Such effects are not to be despised, considering the audience we cater for in that theater.”
“Well, I promise you that for our little amateur play to-night, in my private theater, the footlights shall be lit, the stage set, and two of the principal puppets dressed and painted for the show, before nine. I suppose you can introduce the leading man by that time or a little later?”
The bristling brows drew together involuntarily. Count von Breitstein was working without scruple against the Emperor, for the Emperor’s good; yet he winced at his accomplice’s light jest, and it was by an effort that he kept a note of disapproval out of his voice.
“Unless I much mistake, his Majesty will order a special train, as soon as he has had my message,” said he. “That and everything else falling as I confidently expect, I shall be able to bring him out to your Royal Highness’s hunting lodge a little after nine.”
“You’ll find us at the third course,” prophesied the Prince.
“Naturally, the Emperor’s appearance will startle your visitor,” went on the Chancellor, keenly watching the young man’s extraordinarily handsome face. “She would not dare take the risk and drive out with you, great as the temptation would no doubt be, did she dream that he would learn of the escapade, and follow. Indeed, your Royal Highness must have found subtile weapons ready to your hand, that you so soon broke through the armor of her prudence. I expected much from your magnetism and resourceful wit, yet I hardly dared hope for such speedy, such unqualified success as this which now seems assured to us.”
“My weapons were sharpened on my past acquaintance with the pretty lady,” explained the Prince. “Otherwise the result might have been postponed for as many days as I have delayed moments, though at last, the end might have been the same.”
“Not for Rhaetia. Every instant counts. Thanks to you, we shall win; for actress as this girl is, she’ll find it a task beyond her powers to justify to a jealous man this evening’s tête-a-tête with you.”
“If she tests those powers in our presence, we can be audience and admire her histrionic talents,” said the Prince, pleasantly, though with some faint, growing sign of constraint or perhaps impatience. “There’s no doubt in my mind, whatever may be the lady’s conception of her part, about the final tableau. And after all, it’s with that alone you concern yourself – eh, Chancellor?”
“It’s that alone,” echoed the old man.
“Then you would like to go and await the message. There’s nothing more for us to arrange. Au revoir, Chancellor, till nine.”
“Till nine.”
“When the curtain for the last act will ring up.”
The Prince held out his hand. Count von Breitstein grasped it, and then hurried to his electric carriage which had been waiting outside the hotel. A few minutes later, he was talking over the wire to the Emperor in the railway station at Felgarde.
CHAPTER XVII
THE OLDNESS OF THE CHANCELLOR
Leopold thought it more than possible that, by the time of his return to Kronburg, the Chancellor would be as anxious to wriggle out of his proposal to visit the Prince’s hunting lodge, as he had been to have it accepted a few hours before.
“He sha’n’t escape his humiliation, though,” the Emperor told himself. “He shall go, and he shall beg forgiveness for his suspicions, in sackcloth and ashes. Nothing else can satisfy me now.”
Thinking thus, Leopold looked sharply from the window as his special slowed into the central station at Kronburg, along the track which had been kept clear for its arrival. No other train was due at the moment, therefore few persons were on the platform, and a figure in a long gray coat, with its face shadowed by a slouch hat, was conspicuous.
The Emperor had expected to see that figure; but vaguely he wished there were not so much briskness and self-confidence in the set of the massive head and shoulders. The young man believed absolutely in his love; but he would have been gratified to detect a something of depression in the enemy’s air, which he might translate as a foreknowledge of failure.
“I hope your Majesty will forgive the liberty I have taken, in coming to the station without a distinct invitation to do so,” were the Chancellor’s first words as he met the Emperor. “Knowing that you would almost certainly arrive by special train, I came down from my house some time ago, that I might be on hand without fail when you arrived, to place my electric carriage at your service. I thought it probable that you would not have sent to the Palace, and therefore it might save you some slight inconvenience if I were on the spot. If you will honor my poor conveyance – ”
“Don’t let us delay our business for explanations or compliments, if you please, Chancellor,” the Emperor cut him short, brusquely. “I counted on your being here, with your carriage. Now for the hunting lodge in the woods!”
As he spoke, his eyes were on the old man’s face, which he hoped to see fall, or change; but there was no visible sign of discomfiture, and von Breitstein made no attempt to excuse himself from making the proposed visit. Evidently nothing had happened during the hours since the message by telephone, to change the Chancellor’s mind.
“Yes, your Majesty,” came the prompt response. “Now for the hunting lodge in the woods. I am ready to go with you there – as I always have been, and always shall be ready to serve you when I am needed.”
It was on Leopold’s tongue to say, that it would be well if his Chancellor’s readiness could be confined to those occasions when it was needed; but he shut his lips upon the words, and walked by the old man’s side in frozen silence.
The carriage was waiting just outside the station, and the moment the two men were seated, the chauffeur started, noiselessly and swiftly.
Both windows were closed, to keep out the chill of the night air, but soon Leopold impatiently lowered one, forgetting the Chancellor’s old-fashioned hatred of draughts, and stared into the night. Already they were approaching the outskirts of the great town, and flying past the dark warehouses and factories of the neighborhood, they sped toward the open country.
The weather, still warm the evening before – that evening of moonlight, not to be forgotten – had turned cold with morning; and to-night there was a pungent scent of dying leaves in the air. It smote Leopold in the face, with the wind of motion, and it seemed to him the essential perfume of sadness. Never again would he inhale that fragrance of the falling year without recalling this hour.
He was half mad with impatience to reach the end of the journey, and confound the Chancellor once for all; yet, as the swift electric carriage spun smoothly along the white road, and landmark after landmark vanished behind tree-branches laced with stars, something within him, would at last have stayed the flying moments, had that been possible. He burned to ask questions of von Breitstein, yet would have died rather than utter them.
It was a relief to the Emperor, when, after a long silence, his companion spoke, – though a relief which carried with it a prick of resentment. Even the Chancellor had no right to speak first, without permission from his sovereign.
“Forgive me, your Majesty,” the old man said. “Your anger is hard to bear; yet I bear it uncomplainingly because of my confidence that the reward is not far off. I look for it no further in the future than to-night.”
“I, too, believe that you won’t miss your reward!” returned the Emperor sharply.
“I shall have it, I am sure, not only in your Majesty’s forgiveness, but in your thanks.”
“I’ll forgive you when you’ve asked my pardon for your suspicions, and when you’ve found Miss Mowbray for me.”
“I have already found her, and am taking you to her now.”
“Then, you actually believe in your own story? You believe that this sweet and beautiful young girl is a fast actress, a schemer, a friend of your notoriously gallant friend, and willing to risk her reputation by paying a late visit, unchaperoned, to him at his hunting lodge in the woods! You are after all a very poor judge of character, if you dream that we shall see her there.”
“I shall see her, your Majesty. And you will see her, unless the madness you call love has blinded the eyes of your body as well as the eyes of your mind. That she is now at the lodge I know, for the Prince assured me with his own lips that she had promised to motor out alone with him, and dine.”
“You mean, he told you that his friend the actress had promised. I’ll stake my life, even he didn’t dare to say Miss Mowbray.”
“He said Miss Brett, the actress, it’s true. But when he called upon her at her hotel (where he and I met to discuss a matter which is no secret to your Majesty), he asked for Miss Mowbray. And the message that came down, I heard. It was that Miss Mowbray would be delighted to see his Royal Highness. This left no doubt in my mind that, after giving out that she would leave to-day, the lady had remained in Kronburg for the express purpose of meeting her dear friend the Prince, the handsomest and best dressed young man in Europe – after your Majesty, of course. And it was quite natural for her to hope that, as she was supposed to be gone, and you were following her, this evening’s escapade would never be discovered.”
“Please spare me your deductions, Chancellor,” said the Emperor, curtly, “and pray understand now, if you have not understood before, that I am with you in this expedition not to prove you right, but wrong; and nothing you can say will convince me that the Prince’s actress and Miss Mowbray are one. If we find a woman at the hunting lodge, it will not be the lady we seek – unless she has been kidnapped; and as you will presently be obliged to eat every word you’ve spoken, the fewer such bitter pills you provide for yourself to swallow, the better.”
Thus snubbed by the young man whom he had held in his arms, an imperious as well as an Imperial infant, the old statesman sought sanctuary in silence. But he had said that which had been in his mind to say, and he was satisfied. Meekness was not his métier, yet he could play the part of the faithful servant, humbly loyal through injustice and misunderstanding; and he played it now, because he knew it to be the one effective rôle. He sat beside the Emperor with bowed head, and stooping shoulders which suggested the weakness of old age, his hands clasped before him; and from time to time he sighed patiently.
As they glided under the dark arch of the Buchenwald, Leopold spoke again.
“You have led me to suppose that our call at the hunting lodge will be a surprise visit to the Prince. That is the case, isn’t it?”
Count von Breitstein would have preferred that the question had not been asked. He had intended to convey the impression which the Emperor had received, but he had not clothed it in actual statement. Luckily the Prince was as clever as he was good looking, and he could be trusted as an actor, otherwise the old man would have been still more reluctant to commit himself.
“Were our visit expected, we should not be likely to find the lady,” said he. “The Prince and I are on such friendly terms, your Majesty, that he didn’t mind confessing he was to have a pretty actress as his guest. He also answered a few questions I asked concerning her, freely and frankly, for to do so he had to tell me only what the world knows. How could he dream that the flirtations or the visits of a Miss Jenny Brett could be of the slightest importance to the Emperor of Rhaetia? Had he guessed, however, that the entertainment he meant to offer her might be interrupted, naturally he would have taken some means to protect her from annoyance.”
“This night’s work will give him cause to pick a private quarrel with me, if he likes,” said the Emperor, convinced of the Chancellor’s good faith.
“I don’t think he will choose, your Majesty. You are in a mood to be glad if he did, I fear. But no; I need not fear. You will always remember Rhaetia, and put her interests before your own wishes.”
“You weren’t as confident of that a few hours ago.”
“Even then I knew that, when the real test should be applied, your Majesty’s cool head would triumph over the hot impulse of youth. But see, we’re passing through the village of Inseleden, fast asleep already; every window dark. In six or seven minutes at this speed, we shall be at the lodge.”
The Emperor laughed shortly. “Add another seven minutes to your first seven, and we shall be out of the lodge again, with Chancellor von Breitstein a sadder and a wiser man than he went in.”
Meekness was once more the part for the old man to play, and raising his hands, palm upwards, in a gesture of generous indulgence for his young sovereign, he denied himself the pleasure of retort.
The hunting lodge in the wood, now the property of the Chancellor’s accommodating young friend, had until recently belonged to a Rhaetian semi-Royal Prince, who had been compelled by lack of sympathy among his creditors to sell something, and had promptly sold the thing he cared for least. The present owner was a keen sportsman, and though he came seldom to the place, had spent a good deal of money in repairing the quaint, rustic house.
Years had passed since the Emperor had done more than pass the lodge gates; and now the outlines of the low rambling structure looked strange to him, silhouetted against a spangled sky. He was glad of this, for he had spent some joyous days here as a boy, and he wished to separate the old impressions and the new.
Two tall chimneys stood up like the pricked ears of some alert, crouching animal. The path to the lodge gleamed white and straight in the darkness as a parting in the rough black hair of a giant. The trees whispered gossip to each other in the wind, and it seemed to Leopold that they were evil things telling lies and slandering his love. He hated them, and their rustling, which once he had loved. He hated the yellow eyes of the animal with the pricked ears, glittering eyes which were lighted windows; he hated the young Prince who owned the place; and he would have hated the Chancellor more than all, had not the old man limped as he walked up the path, showing how heavy was the burden of his years, as he had never shown it to his Emperor before.
The path led to a hooded entrance, and ascending the two stone steps, the Chancellor lifted the mailed glove which did duty as a knocker. Twice he brought it down on the oak panel underneath, and the sound of metal smiting against wood went echoing through the house, with an effect of emptiness and desolation.
Nobody came to answer the summons, and Leopold smiled in the darkness. He thought it likely that even the Prince was not at home. A practical joke had been played on the Chancellor!
Again the mailed fist struck the panel; an echo alone replied. Count von Breitstein began to be alarmed for the success of his plan. He thanked the night which hid from the keen eyes of the Emperor – cynical now, no doubt – the telltale vein beating hard in his forehead.
“Don’t you think, Chancellor, that after all, you’d better try and take me to some more probable, as well as more suitable, place to look for Miss Mowbray?” he suggested, with a drawl intended to be as aggravating as it actually was. “There doesn’t appear to be any one about. Even the care-takers are out courting, perhaps.”
“But listen, your Majesty,” said von Breitstein, when he knocked again.
Leopold did listen, and heard the ring of a heel on a floor of stone or marble.