The Price of Power Part 24

"You are comparing me with young Drury, I suppose?"

"Oh, d.i.c.k isn't a bit old-fashioned, I a.s.sure you," she declared. "He's been at Oxford. He doesn't dream and let the world go by. But, Uncle Colin," she went on, "I wonder that you, a diplomat, are so stiff and proper. I suppose it's the approved British diplomatic training. I'm only a girl, and therefore am not supposed to know any of the tremendous secrets of diplomacy. But it always strikes me that, for the most part, you diplomats are exceptionally dull folk. In our Court circle we always declare them to be inflated with a sense of their own importance, and fifty years behind the times."

I laughed outright. Her view was certainly a common-sense one. The whole training of British diplomacy is to continue the traditions of Pitt and Beaconsfield. Diplomacy does not, alas! admit a new and modern _regime_ affecting the world; it ignores modern thought, modern conditions and modern methods. "Up-to-date" is an expression unknown in the diplomat's vocabulary. The Foreign Office instil the lazy, do-nothing policy of the past, the traditions of Palmerston, Clarendon and Dudley are still the traditions of to-day in every British Emba.s.sy throughout the world; and, unfortunately for Britain, the lesson has yet to be learned by our diplomacy that to be strong is to be acute and subtle, and to be dictatorial is to be entirely up-to-date. The German diplomacy is that of keen progress and antic.i.p.ation; that of Turkey craft and cunning; of France, tact, with exquisite politeness. But Britain pursues her heavy, blundering "John Bull" programme, which, though effective in the days of Beaconsfield, now only results in the nation's isolation and derision, certain of her amba.s.sadors to the Powers being familiarly known at the Courts to which they are accredited as "The Man with the Gun."

"What you say is, in a sense, quite true," I admitted. "But I'm so sorry if I'm really very dull. I don't mean to be."

"Oh! You'll improve under my tuition--and d.i.c.k's--no doubt," she exclaimed rea.s.suringly.

Her Highness was nothing if not outspoken.

"The fact is, Uncle Colin," she went on seriously, "you're far too old-fashioned for your age. You are not old, but your ideas are so horribly antiquated. Girls of to-day are allowed a freedom which our grandmothers would have held as perfectly sinful. Girls have become independent. A young fellow takes a girl out to dinner and to the theatre, and even to supper nowadays, and n.o.body holds up their hands in pious horror--only you! It isn't fair," she declared.

"Girls of the people are allowed a great deal of lat.i.tude, I admit. And as far as I can see, the world is none the worse for it," I said. "But what other girls may do, you, an Imperial Highness, unfortunately may not."

"That's just where we don't agree," she said in a tone meant to be impertinent, her straight nose slightly raised as she spoke. "I intend to do as other girls do--at least, while I'm plain Miss Gottorp. They call me the `Little Alien'--so Miss West heard me called the other day."

"No," I said very firmly, looking straight at her as she lolled easily in her chair, her chin resting on her white palm as she gazed at me from beneath her long, dark lashes. "You really must respect the _convenances_. If you take a stroll with young Drury, do so at least in the daylight."

"And with Dmitri watching me all the time from across the road. Not quite," she said. "I like the Esplanade when it is quiet and everybody is in bed. It is so pleasant on these warm nights to sit upon a seat and enjoy the moonlight on the sea. Sounds like an extract from a novel, doesn't it?" and she laughed merrily.

"I fear you are becoming romantic," I said. "Every girl becomes so at one period of her life."

"Do you think so?" she asked, smiling. "Myself, I don't fancy I have any romance in me. The Romanoffs are not a romantic lot as a rule.

They are usually too mercenary. I love nice things."

"Because you are cultured and possess good taste. That is exactly what leads to romance."

"I have the good taste to choose d.i.c.k as a friend, I suppose you mean?"

she asked, with an intention to irritate me.

"Ah, I did not exactly say that."

"But you meant it, nevertheless. You know you did, Uncle Colin."

I did not reply for a few moments. I was recalling what Dmitri had told me--that strange allegation of his that this young man, Richard Drury, was an enigma, an adventurer. He had told me that he was no fit companion for her, and yet when pressed he apparently could give no plain reason. He had been unable to discover much concerning the young fellow--probably because of his failure it seemed he had become convinced that the object of his inquiry was an adventurer.

Suddenly rising, I stood before her, and placing my hand upon her shoulder, said:

"I came here this morning to speak to you very seriously, Natalia. Can you really be serious for once?"

"I'm always serious," she replied. "Well--another lecture?"

"No, not a lecture, you incorrigible little flirt. I want to ask you a plain question. Please answer me, for a great deal--a very great deal-- depends upon it. Are you aware of what was contained in those letters which Madame de Rosen gave you for safe-keeping?"

"I have long ago a.s.sured you that I am. Why do you ask again?"

"Because there is one point which I wish to clear up," I said. "I thought you told me that they were in a sealed envelope?"

"So they were. But when I heard of Marya's exile, and that Luba had been sent with her, I broke open the seal and investigated the contents."

"And what did you find?"

"Ah! That is my business, Uncle Colin. I have already told you that I absolutely refuse to betray the secrets of my poor dear friend. You surely ought not to ask me. You have no right to press me to commit such a breach of trust."

"I ask you because so much depends upon the extent of your knowledge," I said. "I have already solved the secret of the disappearance of the letters from the place where you hid them in the palace."

"Then you know who stole them!" she gasped, starting to her feet. "Tell me. Who was the thief?"

"A man whom you do not know. He has confessed to me. He was not a willing thief, but a wretched a.s.sa.s.sin, whom General Markoff holds as his catspaw, and compels to perform his dirty work."

"Then the General has secured them! My suspicions are confirmed!" she gasped, all the colour dying from her beautiful face.

"He has. The theft was committed under compulsion, and at imminent risk to the thief, who most certainly would have been shot by the sentries, if discovered. The letters were handed by him back to General Markoff."

My words held her dumbfounded for a few seconds. She did not speak.

Then she said in a hard, changed tone:

"Ah! Markoff has destroyed them! The proof no longer exists, therefore I am powerless! How I wish I were permitted to speak--to reveal the truth!"

Her teeth were set, her face was white and hard, and the fingers of both hands had clenched themselves into the palms.

"But you know the truth!" I cried. "Will you not speak? Will you never reveal it? It is surely your duty to do so," I urged.

But she only shook her head sadly, saying:

"I cannot betray her confidence."

"Remember," I said, "by exposing this secret which Markoff has been at such infinite pains to keep, you can perhaps obtain the release of poor Marya and her daughter! Is it not your plain duty?" I urged in a low, earnest voice.

But she only again shook her head resolutely.

"No, I cannot expose the secrets of my lost friend. It was her secret which I swore to her I would never reveal," she responded in a harsh, strained voice. "Markoff has secured the proofs and destroyed them. I suspected it from the first. That brute is my bitterest enemy, as he is also Marya's. But, alas! he is all-powerful! He has played a clever double game--and he has won--_he has won_!"

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

SHOWS HARTWIG'S ANXIETY.

Her Highness's firm refusal to reveal to me the contents of those letters, the knowledge of which had caused Madame de Rosen and her daughter to be sent to Siberia, while the Grand Duke Nicholas, her father, hid lost his life, disappointed me.

For a full hour I remained there, trying by all means in my power to persuade her to a.s.sist me in the overthrow of the feted Chief of Secret Police.

She would have done so, she declared, were it not for the fact that she had given her solemn word of honour to Marya de Rosen not to divulge anything she knew concerning the contents of those mysterious letters.

That compact she held sacred. She had given her faithful promise to her friend.

I pointed out to her the determination she had expressed to me in Petersburg that she intended to reveal to the Emperor his favourite in his true light, and thus avenge the lives of thousands of innocent persons who had died on their way to exile or in the foetid, overcrowded prisons of Moscow, and Tomsk, and the vermin-infested _etapes_ of the Great Post Road.

But in reply she sighed deeply, and, looking straight before her in desperation, declared that she had now no proof; and even if she had, she had not the permission of Marya de Rosen to make the exposure. "It is her secret--her own personal secret," she said. "I vowed not to reveal it."