The Princess Virginia Part 12

The Chancellor's voice was angry at last, as well as stern, for he could not bear persistence--in other people--unless it were to further some cause of his own. To the delight of the woman who had once tried in vain to melt his iron heart, Count von Breitstein began to look somewhat like a baited bull. Really, said the Baroness to herself, there was an actual resemblance in feature; and joyously she searched for a few more little ribbon-tipped banderillos.

What fun it was to ruffle the temper of the surly old brute who had humiliated her woman's vanity in days long past, but not forgotten!

She knew the Chancellor's desire for the Emperor's marriage as soon as a suitable match could be found; and though she was not in the secret of his plans, would have felt little surprise at learning that some eligible Royal girl had already been selected. Now, how amusing it would be actually to make the old man tremble for the success of his hopes, even if it should turn out in the end to be impossible or undesirable to upset them!

"What could there be more--in honor?" she echoed lightly after an instant given to reflection.

"Why, the Emperor and the girl will see a great deal of each other, unless you banish or imprison the Mowbrays. There'll be many dances together, many calls; in fact, a serial romance instead of a short story. Why shouldn't his Majesty know the pleasure of a--platonic friendship with a beautiful and charming young woman?"

"Because Plato's out of fashion, if ever he was in, among human beings with red blood in their veins; and because, as I said, the Emperor is above all else a man of honor. Besides, I doubt that any woman, no matter how pretty or young, could wield a really powerful influence over his life."

"You doubt that? Then you don't know the Emperor; and you've forgotten some of the traditions of his house."

"Are you trying to warn me of disaster, Baroness?"

She laughed. "Oh, dear no. Of nothing disagreeable. But I should be sorry to think, as you seem to do, that our Emperor has no youth in his veins."

"I think nothing of the sort. What I do think is that my teachings have not been in vain, and that he has grown up to put his duty to his country and his own self-respect above everything. He's a strong man--too strong to be trapped in the meshes of any pink and white Vivien. And if he admired a young woman not of Royal blood, he would keep his distance for her sake. You say this English miss is with her mother at the princ.i.p.al hotel of Kronburg. If Leopold constantly visited them there we should have a scandal. On the other hand, to suggest meeting the girl outside, or incognito, would be an insult.

Either way he would be but poorly rewarding a woman who saved his life."

Baroness von Lyndal's color rallied to the support of her rouge, and her smile dwindled to inanity, for she had insisted upon the argument, and it was going against her.

In her haste to vex the Chancellor, she had not stopped to study from every side the question she had raised. So far, she had merely succeeded in irritating him, and she owed him much more than a pin p.r.i.c.k. Such infinitesimal wounds she had contrived to give the man in abundance, during her twenty-two years at the Rhaetian Court; but now, if she hurt him at all, she would like the stab to be deep and memorable.

To be sure, in beginning the conversation, she had thought of nothing more than a momentary gratification, but the very heat of the argument into which she had thrown herself had warmed her malice, and sharpened the weapon of her wit. She could justify her expressed opinion only by events, and it occurred to her that she might be able to shape events in such a way that she could say with eyes, if not in words, "I told you so."

Her fading smile brightened. "Dear Chancellor, you do well to have faith in your Imperial pupil," said she. "You've helped to make him what he is, and you're ready to keep him what he should be. I suppose, even, that if, being but a young man and having the hot blood of his race, he should stray into a primrose path, you would take advantage of old friendship to--er--put up sign-posts and barriers?"

"Were there the slightest chance of such necessity arising," grumbled the Chancellor, shrugging his shoulders.

"It's like your integrity and courage. What a comfort, then, that the necessity is so unlikely to arise."

The old man looked at her with level gaze, the ruthless look that brushes away a woman's paint and powder, and coldly counts the wrinkles underneath. "I must have misunderstood you then, a moment ago," he said. "I thought your argument was all the other way round, madam?"

"I told you I was amusing myself. What can one do at a ball, when one has reached the age when it would be foolish to dance? Why, I believe that Lady Mowbray and her daughter are not remaining long in Kronburg."

At last she was able to judge that she had given the Chancellor a few uneasy moments, for his eyes brightened visibly with relief. "Ah," he returned, "then they are going out of Rhaetia?"

"Not exactly that," said the Baroness, slowly, pleasantly, and distinctly. "I hear that they've been asked to the country to visit one of his Majesty's oldest friends."

Leopold was not supposed to care for dancing, though he danced--as it was his pride to do all things--well. Certainly there was often a perfunctoriness about his manner in a ball-room, a suggestion of the soldier on duty in his unsmiling face, and his readiness to lead a partner to her seat when a dance was over.

But to-night a new Leopold moved to the music. A girl's white arm on his--that slender arm which had been quick and firm as a man's in his defense; the perfume of a girl's hair, and the gold glints upon it; the shadow of a girl's dark lashes, and the light in a pair of gray eyes when they were lifted; the beating of a girl's heart near him; the springtime grace of a girl's sweet youth in its contrast with the voluptuous summer of Rhaetian types of beauty; the warm rose that spread upwards from a girl's childlike dimples to the womanly arch of her brows; all these charms and more which rendered one girl a hundred times adorable, took hold of him, and made him not an Emperor, but a man, unarmored.

When the music ceased, he fancied for an instant that some accident had befallen the musicians. Then, when he realized that the end of the dance had come in its due time, he remembered with pleasure a rule of his court, established in the days of those who had been before him.

After each dance an interval of ten minutes was allowed before the beginning of another. Ten minutes are not much to a man who has things to say which could hardly be said in ten hours; still, they are something; and to waste even one would be like spilling a drop of precious elixir from a tiny bottle containing but nine other drops.

They had scarcely spoken yet, except for commonplaces which any one might have overheard, since the day on the mountain; and in this first moment of the ten, each was wondering whether or no that day should be ignored between them. Leopold did not feel that it should be spoken of, for it was possible that the girl did not recognize the chamois hunter in the Emperor; and Virginia did not feel that she could speak of it. But then, few things turn out as people feel they should.

Next to the throne room was the ball-room; and beyond was another known as the "Waldsaal," which Leopold had fitted up for the gratification of a fancy. It was named the "Waldsaal" because it represented a wood. Walls and ceiling were masked with thick-growing creepers trained over invisible wires, through which peeped stars of electric light, like the chequerings of sunshine between netted branches. Trees grew up, with their roots in boxes hidden beneath the moss-covered floor. There were grottoes of ivy-draped rock in the corners, and here and there out from leafy shadows glittered the gla.s.s eyes of birds and animals--eagles, stags, chamois, wolves and bears--which the Emperor had shot.

This strange room, so vast as to seem empty when dozens of people wandered beneath its trees and among its rock grottoes, was thrown open to guests whenever a ball was given at the palace; but the conservatories and palm houses were more popular; and when Leopold brought Miss Mowbray to the Waldsaal after their dance, it was in the hope that they might not be disturbed.

She was lovelier than ever in her white dress, under the trees, looking up at him with a wonderful look in her eyes, and the young man's calmness was mastered by the beating of his blood.

"This is a kind of madness," he said to himself. "It will pa.s.s. It must pa.s.s." And aloud,--meaning all the while to say something different and commonplace,--the real words in his mind broke through the crust of conventionality. "Why did you do it?"

Virginia's eyes widened. "I don't understand." Then, in an instant, she found that she did understand. She knew, too, that the question had asked itself in spite of him, but that once it had been uttered he would stand to his guns.

"I mean the thing I shall have to thank you for always."

If Virginia had had time to think, she might have prepared some pretty answer; but, there being no time, her response came as his question had, from the heart. "I couldn't help doing it."

"You couldn't help risking your life to--" He dared not finish.

"It was to save--" Nor was there any end for her sentence.

Then perhaps it was not strange that he forgot certain restrictions which a Royal man, in conversing with a commoner, is not supposed to forget. In fact, he forgot that he was Royal, or that she was not, and his voice grew unsteady, his tone eager, as if he had been some poor subaltern with the girl of his first love.

"There's something I must show you," he said. Opening a b.u.t.ton of the military coat blazing with jewels and orders, he drew out a loop of thin gold chain. At the end dangled a small, bright thing that flashed under a star of electric light.

"My ring!" breathed Virginia.

Thus died the Emperor's intention to ignore the day that had been theirs together.

"Your ring! You gave it to Leo. He kept it. He will always keep it.

Have I surprised you?"

Virginia felt it would be best to say "yes," but instead she answered "no"; for pretty, white fibs cannot be told under such a look in a man's eyes, by a girl who loves him.

"I have not? When did you guess the truth? Yesterday, or--"

"At Alleheiligen."

Silence fell for a minute, while Leopold digested the answer, and its full meaning. He remembered the bread and ham; the cow he could not milk; the rucksacks he had carried. He remembered everything--and laughed.

"You knew, at Alleheiligen? Not on the mountain, when--"

"Yes. I guessed even then, I confess. Oh, I don't mean that I went there expecting to find you. I didn't. I think I shouldn't have gone, had I known. Every one believed you were at Melinabad. But when I tumbled down and you saved me, I looked up, and--of course I'd seen your picture, and one reads in the papers that you're fond of chamois hunting. I couldn't help guessing--oh, I'm sorry you asked me this!"

"Why?"

"Because--one might have to be afraid of an Emperor if he were angry."

"Do I look angry?"

Their eyes met again, laughing at first, then each finding unexpected depths in those of the other which drove away laughter. Something in Leopold's breast seemed alive and struggling to be free from restraint, like a fierce, wild bird. He shut his lips tightly, breathing hard. Both forgot that a question had been asked; but it was Virginia who spoke first, since it is easier for a woman than a man to hide feeling.