The Princess Virginia Part 16

CHAPTER X

VIRGINIA'S GREAT MOMENT

The first and second dressing gongs had sounded at Schloss Lyndalberg on the evening of the day after Egon von Breitstein's visit to his brother, and the Grand d.u.c.h.ess was beginning to wonder uneasily what kept her daughter, when ringed fingers tapped on the panel of the door.

"Come in!" she answered, and Virginia appeared, still in the white tennis dress she had worn that afternoon. She stood for an instant without speaking, her face so radiantly beautiful that her mother thought it seemed illumined from a light within.

It had been on the lips of the Grand d.u.c.h.ess to scold the girl for her tardiness, since to be late was an unpardonable offense, with an Imperial Majesty in the house. But in that radiance the words died.

"Virginia, what is it? You look--I scarcely know how you look. But you make me feel that something has happened."

The Princess came slowly across the room, smiling softly, with an air of one who walks in sleep. Hardly conscious of what she did, she sank down in a big chair, and sat resting her elbows on her knees, her chin nestling between her two palms, like a pink-white rose in its calyx.

"You may go, Ernestine," said the Grand d.u.c.h.ess to her maid. "I'll ring when I want you again."

The elaborate process of waving and dressing her still abundant hair had fortunately come to a successful end, and Ernestine had just caused a diamond star to rise above her forehead. She was in a robe de chambre, and the rest of her toilet could wait till curiosity was satisfied.

But Virginia still sat dreaming, her happy eyes far away. The Grand d.u.c.h.ess had to speak twice before the girl heard, and started a little. "My daughter--have you anything to tell me?"

The Princess roused herself. "Nothing, Mother, really. Except that I'm the happiest girl on earth."

"Why--what has he said?"

"Not one word that any one mightn't have listened to. But I know now.

He does care. And I think he will say something before we part."

"There's only one more day of his visit here, after to-night."

"One whole long, beautiful day--together."

"But after all, dearest," argued her mother, "what do you expect? If in truth you were only Miss Mowbray, marriage between you and the Emperor would be out of the question. You've never gone into the subject of your feelings about this, quite thoroughly with me, and I do wish I knew precisely what you hope for from him; what you will consider the--the keystone of the situation?"

"Only for him to say that he loves me," Virginia confessed. "If I'm right--if I've brought something new into his life, something which has shown him that his heart's as important as his head, then there will come a moment when he can keep silence no longer--when he'll be forced to say; 'I love you, dear, and because we can't belong to each other, day is turned into night for me.' Then, when that moment comes, the tide of my fortune will be at its flood. I shall tell him that I love him too. And I shall tell him _all the truth_."

"You'll tell him who we really are?"

"Yes. And why I've been masquerading. That it was because, ever since I was a little girl, he'd been the one man in the world for me; because, when our marriage was suggested through official channels, I made up my mind that I must win him first through love, or live single all my days."

"What if he should be vexed at the deception, and refuse to forgive you? You know, darling, we shall be in a rather curious position when everything comes out, as we have made all our friends here under the name of Mowbray. Of course, the excuse for what we did is, that our real position is a hundred times higher than the one we a.s.sumed, and all those to whom we've been introduced would be delighted to know us in our own characters, at the end. But Leopold is a man, not a romantic girl, as you are. He has always had a reputation for pride and austerity, for being just before he would let himself be generous; and it may be that to one of his nature, a wild whim like yours--"

"You think of him as he was before we met, not as he is now, if you fancy he could be hard with a woman he really loved," said Virginia, eagerly. "He'll forgive me, dear. I've no fear of him any more.

To-night, I've no fear of anything. He loves me--and--I'm Empress of the world."

"Many women would be satisfied with Rhaetia," was the practical response which jumped into the mind of the Grand d.u.c.h.ess; but she would throw no more cold water upon the rose-flame of her daughter's exaltation. She kissed the girl on the forehead, breathing a few words of motherly sympathy; but when the Princess had flown off to her own room to dress, she shook her diamond-starred head doubtfully.

Virginia's plan sounded poetical, and as easy to carry out as to turn a kaleidoscope and form a charming new combination of color; or so it had seemed while the young voice pleaded. But, when the happy face and radiant eyes no longer illumined the path, the way ahead seemed dark.

To be sure the Princess had so far walked triumphantly along the high-road to success, but it was not always a good beginning which led to a good end; and the Grand d.u.c.h.ess felt, as she rang for Ernestine, that her nerves would be strained to breaking point until matters were definitely settled, for better or for worse.

Virginia had never been lovelier than she was that night at dinner, and Egon von Breitstein's admiration for her beauty had in it a fascinating new ingredient. Until yesterday, he had said to himself, "If she be not fair to me, what care I how fair she be?" But now, there was a vague idea that she might after all be for him, and he took enormous pleasure in the thought that he was falling in love with a girl who had captured the Emperor's heart.

Egon glanced very often at Leopold, contrasting his sovereign's appearance unfavorably with his own. The Emperor was thin and dark, with a grave cast of feature, while Egon's face kept the color and youthfulness of the early twenties. He was older than Leopold, but he looked a boy. Alma Tadema would have wreathed him with vine leaves, draped him with tiger skins, and set him down on a marble bench against a burning sapphire sky, where he would have appeared more suitably clad than in the stiff blue and silver uniform of a crack Rhaetian regiment.

Leopold, on the contrary, would never be painted except as a soldier; and it seemed to Egon that no normal girl could help thinking him a far handsomer fellow than the Emperor. For the moment, of course, Miss Mowbray did not notice him, because his Imperial Majesty loomed large in the foreground of her imagination; but the Chancellor had evidently a plan in his head for removing that stately obstacle into the dim perspective.

Egon had not heard Miss Mowbray spoken of as an heiress, therefore, even had there been no Emperor in the way, he would not have worshiped at the shrine. But now, behold the shrine, attractive before, newly and alluringly decked! Egon wondered much over his half-brother's apparently impulsive offer, and the contradictory command, which had, a little later, enjoined waiting.

He was delighted, however, that he had not been forbidden to make himself agreeable; and his idea was, as soon as dinner should be over, to find a place at Miss Mowbray's side before any other man should have time to take it. But unluckily for this plan, Baron von Lyndal detained him for a few moments with praise of a new remedy which might cure the Chancellor's gout; and when he escaped from his host to look for Miss Mowbray in the white drawing-room she was not there.

From the music room adjoining, however, came sounds which drew him toward the door. He knew Miss Mowbray's soft, coaxing touch on the piano: she was there, "playing in a whisper," as he had heard her call it. Perhaps she was going to sing, as she had once or twice before, and would need some one to turn the pages of her music. Egon thought that he would much like to be the some one, and was in the act of parting the white velvet portieres that covered the doorway, when his hostess smilingly beckoned him away.

"The Emperor has just asked Miss Mowbray to teach him some old-fashioned Scotch or English air (I'm afraid I don't quite know the difference!) called 'Annie Laurie,'" the Baroness explained. "He was charmed with it when she sang the other evening, and I've been a.s.suring him that the song would exactly suit his voice. We mustn't disturb them while the lesson is going on. Tell me--I've hardly had a moment to ask you--how did you find the Chancellor?"

Chained to a forced allegiance, Egon mechanically answered the questions of the Baroness without making absurd mistakes, the while his ears burned to hear what was going on behind the white curtain.

Everybody knew of the music lesson, now, and chatted in tones of tactful monotony, never speaking too loudly to disturb the singers, never too cautiously, lest they should seem to listen. Once, and then again, the creamy _mezzo soprano_ and the rich tenor that was almost a baritone, sang conscientiously through the verses of "Annie Laurie"

from beginning to end; then a few desultory chords were struck on the piano; and at last there was silence behind the white curtains, in the music room.

Were the two still there? To interrupt such a tete-a-tete seemed out of the question, but not to know what was happening Egon found too hard to bear, and the arrival of a telegram for Lady Mowbray came as opportunely as if Providence had had his special needs in mind.

Evidently it was not a pleasant telegram, for, as she read it, the Dresden china lady showed plainly that she was disconcerted. Her pretty face lost its color; her eyes dilated as if she had tasted a drop of belladonna on sugar; she patted her lips with her lace handkerchief, and finally rose from her chair, looking dazed and distressed.

"I've had rather bad news," she admitted to Baroness von Lyndal, who was all solicitude. "Oh, nothing really serious, I trust, but still, disquieting. It is from a dear friend. I think I had better go to my room, and talk things over with Helen. Would you be kind enough to tell her when she comes in that she's to follow me there? Don't send for her till then; it's not necessary. But I shall want her by and by."

It was clear that Lady Mowbray did not wish her daughter to be disturbed. Still, Egon von Breitstein thought he might fairly let his anxiety run away with him. As the Baroness accompanied her guest to the door, he took it upon himself to search for Miss Mowbray, for now, if the Emperor should curse him for a spoil-sport, he would have the best of excuses. Lady Mowbray was in need of her daughter.

He lifted the white curtain and peeped through a small ante-chamber into the music room beyond. It was empty; but one of the long windows leading into the rose garden was wide open.

The month of September was dying, and away in the Rhaetian mountains winter had begun; yet in the lap of the low country summer lingered.

The air was soft, and sweet with the perfume of roses, roses living, and roses dead in a potpourri of scattered petals on the gra.s.s. It was a garden for lovers, and a night for lovers.

Egon went to the open window and looked out, but dared not let his feet take the direction of his eyes, though he was sure that somewhere in the garden Miss Mowbray and the Emperor were to be found.

"They will come in again this way," he said to himself, "for they will want people to think they have never left the music room; and for that very reason they won't stop too long. They must have some regard for the conventions. If I wait--"

He did not finish the sentence in his mind; nevertheless he examined the resources of the window niche with a critical eye.

There was a deep enclosure between the window frame and the long, straight curtains of olive green satin which matched the decoration of the music room. By drawing the curtains a few inches further forward, one could make a screen which would hide one from observation by any person in the room, or outside, in the garden. So Egon did draw the curtain, and framed in his shelter like a saint in a niche, he stood peering into the silver night.

The moon was rising over the lake, and long, pale rays of level light were stealing up the paths, like the fingers of a blind child that caress gropingly the features of a beloved face.

Egon could not see the whole garden, or all the paths among the roses; but if the Emperor and his companion came back by the way they had gone, he would know presently whether they walked in the att.i.tude of friends or lovers. It was so necessary for his plans to know this, that he thought it worth while to exercise a little patience in waiting. Of course, if they were lovers, good-by to his hopes; and he would never have so good a chance as this to make sure.

All things in the garden that were not white were gray as a dove's wings. Even the shadows were not black. And the sky was gray, with the soft gray of velvet, under a crust of diamonds which flashed as the spangles on a woman's fan flash, when it trembles in her hand.