Majesty Part 26

7

"TO HIS IMPERIAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF XARA, "OSBORNE HOUSE, ISLE OF WIGHT.

"IMPERIAL, "LIPARA, "--_September_, 18--.

"DEAR SON,

"It was a great pleasure to receive your letter, telling us of the cordial welcome which you met with first at Copenhagen and now in England. We must however express our surprise at what Aunt Olga wrote to us and our regret that you did not act according to our wishes; the Emperor of Austria and the Archduke Albrecht express the same regret in their letters to us. We presume that we did not express ourselves definitely enough in our letter to Aunt Olga: otherwise we cannot imagine why she did not urge you more strongly to ask the Archd.u.c.h.ess Valerie for an interview and to speak to her of the important matter which we all at this moment have so much at heart. You would then have been able to announce your engagement _sous cachet_ at the courts which you are now visiting; and the betrothal could have been celebrated, at the conclusion of journey, at Sigismundingen. Whereas now you have probably placed yourself in a false position towards our friends Their Majesties of Denmark and of England, as all the newspapers are speaking of a possible betrothal to the Archd.u.c.h.ess Valerie and the press is already so kind as to discuss the _pros_ and _cons_ of this alliance in a loud voice. Your journey, however, would have had to take place _in any case_, as it had already been so long announced--your illness intervened to postpone it--and as it is therefore nothing more than an act of courtesy towards our friends.

"Once again, your neglect to act in accordance with our wishes causes us great regret. We perceive in you, Othomar, a certain tendency towards _bourgeois_ hypersensitiveness, which we hope you will learn to master with all the strength you possess. Few of us have in this life escaped a sorrow such as Prince von Lohe-Obkowitz has caused your future bride, but it remains an entirely personal and subordinate feeling and should not be allowed to interfere _in the least_ with affairs of such great political importance as the marriage of a future emperor of Liparia. The archd.u.c.h.ess will doubtless, when she is older, learn to look at this in the same light; and we hope that she will very soon realize that her affection for Prince Lohe could never have brought her happiness, as it would have caused a rupture with his imperial majesty her uncle and with all her relations.

"Master yourself, Othomar, we ask and urge. You sometimes have ideas and entertain proposals which are not those of a ruler. We have noticed this more than once or twice: among other occasions, when you visited Zanti at Vaza. We did not like to reproach you with this at the time, as we were otherwise very well pleased with you. Your dearest wish will no doubt be that we shall always remain so.

"We hope therefore to see you three weeks hence at Sigismundingen, where the Archd.u.c.h.ess Valerie will by then have returned from Altseeborgen to meet you and where we shall also meet the Emperor of Austria.

"It is our fervent hope that the long voyage with Herman will have done you much good and that your wedding will take place at Altara _as soon as possible_. This glad prospect affords us a pleasant diversion from our difficulties with the army bill, which is encountering such stubborn opposition in the house of deputies, though we hope for all that to succeed in carrying it, as it is essential that our army should be increased.

"We cordially embrace you.

"OSCAR."

CHAPTER V

1

It was after the state banquet in the castle at Sigismundingen, where the imperial families of Liparia and Austria were a.s.sembled to celebrate the betrothal of the Duke of Xara and the Archd.u.c.h.ess Valerie. It was in September: the day had been sultry and in the evening the oppressive heat still hung brooding in the air.

Dinner was just over and the imperial procession returned through a long corridor to the reception-rooms. All the balcony-windows of the brightly-lighted gallery stood open; beneath, as in an abyss of river landscape, flowed the Danube, rolling against the rocks, while above it towered the castle with its innumerable little pointed turrets. The mountain-tops were defined in a sombre, violet amphitheatre against the paler sky, which was incessantly lit with electric flashes, as of noiseless lightning. The wood stood gloomy and black, shadowy, sloping up with the peaked tops of its fir-trees against the mountains; in the distance lay small houses, huddled in the dusk of the evening, like some straggling hamlet, with here and there a yellow light.

The Emperor of Liparia gave his arm to the mother of the bride, the Archd.u.c.h.ess Eudoxie; then followed the Emperor of Austria with the Empress of Liparia, the Archduke Albrecht with the Empress of Austria, Othomar with Valerie....

Valerie, lightly pressing Othomar's arm, withdrew with him from the procession:

"It was so warm in the dining-room; you will excuse me," she said to Othomar's sister, the Archd.u.c.h.ess of Carinthia, who was following with one of her Austrian cousins.

Valerie's smile requested the archd.u.c.h.ess to go on. The others followed: the august guests, the equerries, the ladies-in-waiting; they smiled to the betrothed imperial couple, who stood in one of the open window-recesses to let them pa.s.s.

They remained alone in the gallery, before the open window:

"I need air," said Valerie, with a sigh.

He made no reply. They stood together in silence, gazing at the evening landscape. He was wearing the uhlan uniform of the Austrian regiment which he commanded; and a new order glittered amongst the others on his breast: the Golden Fleece of Austria. She seemed to have grown older than she was at Altseeborgen, in her pink-silk evening-dress, with wide, puffed sleeves of very pale-green velvet, a tight-curled border of white ostrich-feathers edging the low-cut bodice and the train.

"Shall I leave you alone for a little, Valerie?" he asked, gently.

She shook her head, smiling sadly. Her bosom seemed to heave with uncontrollable emotion.

"Why, Othomar?" she asked. "I am lonely enough at nights, with my thoughts. Leave me alone with them as little as you can...."

She suddenly held out her hand to him:

"Will you forgive your future empress her broken heart?" she asked, suddenly, with a great sob.

And her pale, shrunken face turned full towards him, with two eyes like those of a stricken doe. An irrepressible feeling of pity caused something to well up unexpectedly in his soul; he squeezed her hand and turned away, so as not to weep.

He looked out of the window. Some of the pointed towers, visible from here, rose with an air of sombre romance against the sky, which was luminous with electricity. Below them, romantically, murmured the Danube. The mountains were like the landscape in a ballad. But no ballad, no romance echoed between their two hearts. The prose of the inevitable necessity was the only harmony that united them. But this harmony also united them in reality, brought them together, made them understand each other, feel and live at one with each other. They were now for a minute alone and their eyes frankly sought the depths of each other's souls. There was no need for pretence between these two: each saw the other's sorrow lying shivering and naked in the other's heart.

It was not the riotous pa.s.sion of despair that they beheld. They saw a gentle, tremulous sadness; they looked at it with wide, staring eyes of anguish, as children look who think they see a ghost. For them that ghost issued from life itself: life itself became for them a ghostly existence. They themselves were spectres, though they know that they were tangible, with bodies. What were they?

Dream-beings, with crowns; they lived and bowed and acted and smiled as in a dream, because of their crowns. They did not exist: a vagueness did indeed suggest in their dream-brains that something might exist, in other laws of nature than those of their sphere, but in their sphere they did not exist....

His hand was toying mechanically with some papers that lay near him, on the mirror-bracket between two of the window-recesses; they were ill.u.s.trated periodicals, doubtless left there by some chamberlain. He took one up, to while their sad silence, and opened it. The first thing that he saw was their own portraits:

"Look," he said.

He showed them to her. They now turned over the pages together, saw the portraits also of their parents, a drawing of the castle, a corner of Sigismundingen Park. Then together they read the announcement of their engagement. They were first each described separately: he, an accomplished prince, doing a great deal of good, very popular in his own country and cordially loved by the Emperor of Austria; she, every inch a princess, born to be the empress of a great empire, with likewise her special accomplishments. The eyes of all Europe were fixed upon them at the moment. For their marriage would not only be an imperial alliance of great political importance, but would also tie a knot of real harmony: their marriage was a love-match. There had been attempts to make it seem otherwise, but this was not correct. In Gothland, in the home circle at Altseeborgen, the young couple had learnt to know each other well; their love had sprung like an idyll from the sea and the Duke of Xara had once even saved the archd.u.c.h.ess' life, when she had ventured out too far, in stormy weather, in a rowing-boat. Their love was like a novel with a happy ending. The Emperor Oscar would rather have seen the Grand-d.u.c.h.ess Xenia crown-princess of Liparia and attached great value to an alliance with Russia, but he had yielded before his son's love.... And the article ended by saying that the wedding would take place in October in the old palace at Altara.

They read it together, with their mournful faces, their wide, fixed eyes, which still smarted with staring into each other's souls. Not a single remark came from their lips after reading the article; they only just smiled their two heartrending smiles; then they laid the paper down again. And she asked, with that strange calm with which this betrothed pair were trying to get to know each other:

"Othomar ... do you care for n.o.body?"

A flush suffused his cheeks. Did she know of Alexa?

"I did once think that I ... that I was in love," he confessed; "but I do not believe that it was really love. I now believe that I do not possess the capacity to concentrate my whole soul upon a feeling for one other soul alone; I should not know how to find it, that one soul, and I should fear to make a mistake, or to deceive myself.... No, I do not believe that I shall ever know that exclusive feeling. I rather feel within me a great, wide, general love, an immense compa.s.sion, for our people. It is strange of me perhaps...."

He said it almost shyly, as though it were something abnormal, that general love, of which he ought to be ashamed before her.

"A great love," he explained once more, when she continued to look at him in silence; and he made an embracing gesture with his arms, "for our people...."

"Do you really feel that?" she asked, in surprise.

"Yes...."

A sort of vista opened out before her, as though an horizon of light were dawning right at the end of her dark melancholy; but that horizon was so far, so very far away....

"But, Othomar," she said, "that is very good. It is very beautiful to feel like that!"

He shrugged his shoulders:

"Beautiful? How do you mean? I cannot but feel it when I see all the misery that exists ... among our people, the lower orders, the very lowest especially. If they were all happy and enjoying abundance, there would be no need for me to feel it. So what is there beautiful about it?"

She gave a little laugh: