The Adventure of Princess Sylvia Part 14

"I am coming to that now. It was best that you should hear first what has been in my heart and mind, these last days which have held more joy for me than all the years I have left behind. You know that men who have their place at the head of a great nation cannot think merely of themselves and those they love better than themselves. If they desire to s.n.a.t.c.h at personal happiness, they must take the only way open to them that is all. Don't do me the injustice to believe that I would not be proud to show you to my subjects as their Empress; but, instead, I can only offer you what men of Royal blood have for hundreds of years offered women whom they respected as well as loved.

You have heard of an arrangement which in your country is called a morganatic marriage? That is what I propose."

With a low cry of pain--the bitter pain of disappointed love and wounded pride--Sylvia tore her hand from his.

"Never!" she exclaimed. "It is an insult."

"An insult? Then, even now I have not made you understand."

"I think that I understand very well--far too well," said Sylvia brokenly. The beautiful fairy structure of happiness that she had reared lay shattered--destroyed in the moment which should have seen its completion.

"I tell you that you do not understand, or you would not say--you would not _dare_ to say, my love--that I had insulted you. You would be honourably my wife in the sight of G.o.d and man."

"Your wife!" and Sylvia gave a hard little laugh which hurt more cruelly than tears. "You have a strange idea of that word, which has always been sacred to me. I would be your wife, you say; I would give you all my love, all myself; you--would give me your left hand. And you know well that, at any moment, you would be free to marry another woman--(a woman you could make an Empress!)--as free as if I had no existence."

"Legally I might be free," he answered, "but I swear to you that I would never take advantage of such liberty."

"To know you possessed it would be death to me. Oh, I tell you again, it was an insult to suggest a fate so miserable, so contemptible, for a woman you profess to love. How could you bear to break it to me? If only you had never spoken the hateful words; if you had left me the ideal I had formed of you--n.o.ble, glorious! But you are selfish, cruel--after all. If you had only said, 'I love you, yet we must part, for Fate stands between', then I could--I could: but no, I can never tell you now what I _might_ have answered if you had said that instead."

Under the sharp fire of her reproaches he stood still, his lips tightly closed, his shoulders squared, as if he had bared his breast for the blow of a knife.

"By heaven, it is you who are cruel!" he said at last. "How can I show you your injustice?"

"In no way. There is nothing more to say between us two, except-- farewell."

"It shall not be farewell!"

"It shall--it must. Because--I wish it."

He had caught her dress as she turned to go; but now he released her.

"You wish it? It is not true that you love me, then?"

"It was true. Everything--everything in my whole life--is changed now.

It would be better if I had never seen you. Good-bye."

She ran from him. One step he took as if to pursue and keep her, but checked himself and followed her only with his eyes. In them there was more of anger than yearning; for Maximilian was a proud man, and to have his love, and the sacrifice he would have made for love's sake, flung back in his face, came like an icy douche when the blood is at fever heat.

For love of this girl he had in a few days altered the habits of a lifetime. Pride, reserve, iron self-control, the wish not only to appear, but to be, a man above the frailties of common men; the desire to be admired almost as a G.o.d by his people all, all, he had flung aside for her. He was too just not to realize that if one of his many Royal cousins, of younger branches than his, had contemplated throwing away for love half that he was ready now to cast to the winds, he would have regarded such weakness with contempt. "He jests at scars who never felt a wound"; and until the Emperor had learned by his own most unlooked-for experience what love meant, what men will do for love while its sweet madness is on them, he would have been utterly unable to sympathize with such pa.s.sionate insanity as his own. A cousin inclined to act as he was bent on acting would once have found all the Emperor's influence, even force perhaps, brought forward to constrain him. Maximilian saw this change in himself, was astonished and shamed by it; yet would have persevered, recklessly trampling down every obstacle, if only Sylvia had seen things with his eyes.

She had accused him of insulting her, caring not at all that, even to make her morganatically his wife, he must give great cause of offense to his Ministers and his people. He was expected to marry a woman of Royal rank, suitable to his own, and to give the country an heir. If Sylvia had accepted the position he offered, he could never have thought of another marriage. Not only would it be exceedingly difficult, in modern days, to find a princess willing to tolerate such a rival, but it would be impossible for him so to desecrate the bond between himself and the woman he adored. This being so, there could be no direct heir to the throne. At his death his uncle, the Archduke Egon's son, would succeed; and, during his own reign, the popularity which was dear to him would be hopelessly forfeited. Rhaetians would never forgive him for selfishly preferring his own private happiness to the good of the nation, or what they would consider its good; and they would have a right to their resentment, as they had a right to demand that he should marry. He could fancy how old "Iron Heart" von Markstein would present this view to him, with furious eloquence, temples that throbbed like the ticking of a watch, eyes netted with bloodshot veins. He could fancy, too, how with Sylvia's love and promise to uphold him, he could have stood against the storm, steadfast in his own indomitable will. But now, the will which had carried him through life in a triumphal progress had been powerless against that of a girl. She would have none of him. A woman whose face was her fortune, whose place in life reached hardly so high as the first steps of a throne, had refused--an emperor.

Hardly yet could Maximilian believe the things which had happened. He had spoken of doubting that he had won her love; and so he had doubted. But he had allowed himself very strongly to hope, since in the annals of history it had scarcely been known that an emperor's suit should be despised. Besides, he had loved her so pa.s.sionately, that it seemed she could not be cold. He hoped still that, when she had pa.s.sed the night in reflecting, in thinking over the situation, perhaps taking counsel with that commonplace but sensible lady, her mother, she might be ready, if approached for the second time, to change her mind.

For the first moment or two after the stinging rebuff he had suffered, Maximilian felt that he could not demean himself--having been so misjudged, so accused--to sue again. But, as he looked toward the house, and thought of Sylvia's sweetness, her beauty dimmed by grief-- which he had caused--a great tenderness breathed its calm over the thwarted pa.s.sion in his breast.

He would write a letter and send it to her room; or no, better give her a longer interval for repentance. To-morrow he would see her and show her all the depth of the love she had thrust aside. She could not withstand him forever; and now that he had burned his boats behind him, he would not go back. He could not give her up.

Sylvia had hurried blindly toward the house, and it was instinct rather than intention which led her to the open window of the music-room.

Tears burned her eyelids, but they did not fall until she stood once more where she and Maximilian had so lately been together. There she had sat, at the piano, while he had bent over her, and she had been happy. How little she had guessed the humiliation that was to come! How could she bear it, and how could she live out the years of her life after this?

She paused in the embrasure of the window, her little fingers fiercely clutching the heavy curtain, as she gazed through a mist at the picture called up by the open piano. Then a sob tore its way from her heart to her lips. "Cruel--cruel!" she stammered, half aloud. "What agony--what an insult! Ah, well, the dream's ended now."

Dashing the tears away to clear her vision, with desperation that must vent itself somehow, she flung the curtain aside and would have moved out into the room beyond, had not her gesture revealed the presence of a figure wrapped in the folds of velvet.

Some one else was there in the embrasure of the window--some one was hiding, and had been spying. Dark as it was behind the satin-lined velvet curtain, she must have seen a form pressed back into the shadow, had not her eyes been blinded by her tears.

Now, her first impulse was for flight--anything to escape without recognition; but a second quick thought brought a change of mood.

Whoever it was, had been watching, was already informed that Miss de Courcy had come in weeping, after a _tete-a-tete_ with the Emperor.

She must know who it was with whom she had to deal.

Sylvia had taken a step out into the room, as she flung back the curtain and touched the warm shape behind it. Wheeling suddenly round, she s.n.a.t.c.hed the screen of velvet away and stood face to face with Captain von Markstein.

It was a crucial moment for him. Quailing under the lash of her glance, bereft of his presence of mind, he caught at any chance for self-justification. The girl had come back by a different path from the one he had watched; she had rushed in like a whirlwind, without giving him the opportunity for escape which he had reasonably expected. If he stood waiting her condemnation, he was lost; he must step into the breach at whatever risk. No time to weigh words; the first which sprang to his tongue must be let loose.

"Don't think evil of me, Miss de Courcy!" he stammered, still groping for some excuse, in the cotton-wool which seemed to stuff his brains.

"I do not think at all." She held her head proudly; her eyes accused him and belied her words. With a swift step, she would have pa.s.sed him, and he would have done well to let her go; but he had caught a whisper of inspiration from his evil genius. To turn the shame of this defeat to victory, to pose as hero instead of spy this was an ending to the game worth the throw of all his dice. So seemed to say something in his ear, and drunk with vanity he flung himself before her.

"I _beg_ of you to think," he cried. "I will not be misjudged. No man could stand still under the look in your eyes and not defend himself, if he were innocent. Your face says 'spy'."

"You have read your own meaning there! Pray let me go."

"One moment first. You shall listen. I confess I knew you were in the garden with one whom we need not name To break in upon such a _tete-a-tete_, for a man of my inferior rank, would be almost a crime, yet I would have committed that crime to save you. You are so innocent, so beautiful--I feared for you; I suspected--what I know now from your words has happened. I would have saved you this pain, if I could--but I was too late, only in time to see you coming in, to hear against my will--your exclamation. I waited to say that I can at least avenge you. I am at your service--your knight as in days of old. Tell me what you would have me do, and I will do it."

If Sylvia's eyes had been daggers, he would have fallen dead at her feet. For an instant she looked at him in silence. Then: "I would have you leave me, never to dare come into my presence again," she said.

"And now I choose to pa.s.s."

Mechanically he gave way, and she swept by, with lifted head and the proud bearing of an offended queen.

Otto was stricken dumb. Dully he watched her move across the long room to the door which led out into a corridor, not through the drawing-room. He saw the changing lights and shadows on her satin dress, as she pa.s.sed under the chandelier; he saw the reflection of its whiteness mirrored on the polished floor. She was beautiful to him no longer, for he hated her because of his mistake, and because she had read his mind. She had seen the truth there, under his falsehoods, as he saw the reflection on the surface of shining oak. She knew that he was a moral coward, and that, had she accepted his fantastic offer, he would never have ventured to enter the lists as her knight against the Emperor. Fortunately, she had undoubtedly quarrelled with Maximilian, and would not carry tales. It would indeed be a sorry day for Otto if reconciliation ever came; and if by some strange chance of the future it seemed imminent, he must not let it come.

"Heavens! Does she fancy herself an Empress?" he sneered beneath his breath. "Before Eberhard has finished with her, she may not even be what she is now!"

His ears still burned as if she had struck them. He could not return to the drawing-room until they had cooled. There was no hope for him now with Mary de Courcy, whatever the Chancellor's mysterious telegrams might contain, but he was too furious to mourn over lost hopes, lost opportunities. Eberhard was evidently trying to learn something to the girl's disadvantage and Otto's aid was only to have been bought in case of failure. Now, he was in a mood to offer it for nothing, and it occurred to him that he would ride over to Schloss Markstein early in the morning.

CHAPTER X

"THE EMPEROR WILL UNDERSTAND"

IT was for the refuge of isolation that Sylvia fled to her own room.

Between her bedchamber and the Grand d.u.c.h.ess's was a boudoir, which they shared; and it was the door of this intermediate room that gave admittance, from the corridor outside, to both. To the girl's surprise, as she entered--her one comfort the a.s.surance of being undisturbed--her mother looked reproachfully up from a pile of silken cushions on the sofa. Josephine was rubbing her hands, and the air was pervaded with the pungent fragrance of sal volatile.

"I thought you were _never_ coming!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the Grand d.u.c.h.ess. If she noticed her daughter's pallor, she believed it due to anxiety about herself.

Sylvia stared, half dazed, unable yet to separate her mind from her own private misfortunes.

"Never coming!" she echoed mechanically. "Why--are you ill--did you expect me?"

"I nearly fainted downstairs," returned the Grand d.u.c.h.ess, "and it is entirely your fault. You ought not to have exposed me, at my age, to such terrible shocks. Josephine, you can go."