The Adventure of Princess Sylvia Part 18

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 sc.r.a.pe 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 grat.i.tude 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed 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 Salzbruck. 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 a.s.sociated 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 Salzbruck, 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 G.o.d'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 s.p.a.ce, turned a quick look of surprise on his Chancellor. Beginning to speak, he changed his mind, and bit his lip instead.

For a second the Chancellor paused, hoping for the lead which he had expected here; but finding that it did not come, he went on----

"I had seen the ladies at Your Majesty's birthday ball and it seemed to me impossible that the younger could have reached so mature an age.

Besides, she herself confessed to but twenty-one. This, perhaps, was not unusual, yet it set me thinking. The De Courcys, I learned by a little further reading in Burke, were distantly connected with the family of Eltzburg-Neuwald, which struck me, in the circ.u.mstances, as an odd coincidence. A Miss de Courcy became the Duke of Northminster's wife; and to her was born a daughter who eventually married the late Grand Duke of Eltzburg-Neuwald, father of Princess Sylvia and the present Crown Prince of Abruzzia. Acting as I felt my duty to Your Majesty and Rhaetia bade me act, I at once telegraphed to Friedrich, and also to Baron von Mienigen, Your Majesty's Amba.s.sador to England."

"What did you telegraph?" asked the Emperor, with ominous calm.

"Nothing compromising to Your Majesty or to the lady; I trust you feel confident of that. I inquired of Friedrich if he had English relatives named De Courcy--a mother and daughter--travelling in Rhaetia; and begged that, if so, he would describe them, wiring an answer to me at Markstein. To Von Mienigen I said that all possible particulars regarding the widow of Sir Thomas de Courcy and her daughter, with an account of their present movements, would place me under personal obligations, and that I hoped for a speedy reply by telegraph. These messages I sent off late in the afternoon of the day before yesterday.

Last night I received the answers, within two or three hours of one another. They are now here" (he tapped the breast of his coat); "have I Your Majesty's permission to show them?"

"I will read what your friends have to say if you wish," returned Maximilian coldly. His face told nothing; but the Chancellor looked down to hide the flicker of hope under his eyelids. With a slight tremor in the big, blunt fingers, he unb.u.t.toned his coat and drew out a handsome coroneted pocket-book, given him by Maximilian. The gift had been made on the old man's sixty-fourth birthday, almost a year ago; and the sight of it now produced a certain effect, as, perhaps, "Iron Heart" was quietly aware.

From the pocket-book came two folded papers; and, with a bow, the Chancellor placed them in his Imperial master's hands.

The first that Maximilian opened was a telegram in Italian from the Crown Prince of Abruzzia.

"Have not the remotest idea where Lady de Courcy and her daughter are living; may be in Rhaetia or at the South Pole," it was worded with characteristic flippancy. "Have not seen either since a visit paid to England eight years ago, then only once. Lady de Courcy is a tall old party of the dragon order, with a nose like a rocking-horse. My cousin Mary is dark, and takes after her mother. Is Otto to be the happy man?--FRIEDRICH."

With absolutely expressionless features, Maximilian tossed the paper on to the seat by his side and unfolded the other.