Читать книгу The Kings of the East - Sydney C. Grier - Страница 5

“Hercynian opposition suddenly withdrawn, after various attempts to out-manœuvre us in matter of Anatolian concession. Fear secrecy is now at an end, for business has become known to English journalist. Suspect Hercynian Embassy at Czarigrad of communicating news, hoping to rouse Scythia to action.”

“So!” murmured Cyril to himself, in the long-drawn, meditative German fashion, as he translated the cipher. “Then the battle is beginning in earnest. That is a smart dodge of yours, my dear Baron, to set Scythia on our track, knowing that we can’t hope to bring the matter home to you. I suppose the English papers all revelled in a nice little sensation yesterday. Mr Mansfield!”

Cyril was sitting in the balcony belonging to his appartement in the Hôtel Waldthier at Ludwigsbad, and a young man came hurriedly to the window in answer to his summons. There was nothing in any way remarkable about the new secretary’s appearance—at least to an English eye. Brown-haired and hazel-eyed, tall, broad-shouldered, and carelessly dressed, he would have been passed over at home as “a most ordinary-looking man,” but on the Continent it was his fate to attract attention as a typical Englishman wherever he went.

“Have you found anything in the papers about our business?” Cyril asked him.

“I was just going to bring your Excellency this.” Mansfield tendered a Vindobona evening journal to his employer.

“Just read me the paragraph. And by the way, don’t ‘Excellency’ me in private. The King was good enough to continue me in the use of the title when I left Thracia, but it may be kept for state occasions. And don’t call me ‘sir,’ as you have done once or twice, or it will get about that I am arrogating to myself princely honours. I must ask you to address me as ‘Count,’ if your instinctive veneration for me demands the use of some epithet.”

The reproof was given so genially that it was impossible to take offence, and Mansfield, who had grown very red, returned gradually to his normal colour, and translated the paragraph with very fair fluency:—

“The London ‘Fleet Street Gazette’ publishes a telegram from its correspondent in Czarigrad which exposes a deep-laid conspiracy on the part of the Jews to possess themselves of Palestine. A concession is on the point of being obtained from the Grand Seignior which authorises the development of the whole country by a Hebrew syndicate, and its colonisation by Jewish immigrants. The intermediary at Czarigrad is understood to have been the Englishman Mortimer, of Thracian notoriety.”

Mansfield’s voice dropped when he came to the last word, and he glanced fearfully at Cyril, expecting to find him pained, possibly indignant; but seeing that he was smoking placidly, he took heart of grace.

“I expected this. Are you a thin-skinned person, Mansfield?”

“I don’t think so—I really don’t know,” stammered Mansfield.

“I mean, can you stand being generally cold-shouldered, if not actually cut? Do you yearn for constant communion with your kind?”

“I suppose I could stand being sent to Coventry without whining. Is that the sort of thing?”

“Exactly. If I am not mistaken, that is the fate which will be meted out to you and me for the next few days. If your spirits are liable to give way under it, you had better go home at once.”

“Count!” There was no mistaking the chagrin in the young man’s tone, and Cyril laughed encouragingly.

“That’s all right. I only wanted to prepare you for the worst. Well, shall we take a little stroll? If you are anxious to put my powers of prophecy to the proof, we might pay a few visits.”

The prospect of being turned from the doors of the persons visited did not commend itself to Mansfield, however, and Cyril and he strolled across the bridge and into the tree-shaded Neue Wiese or promenade. The stern regulations in vogue at Ludwigsbad permit an afternoon walk, but do not enforce it, and the gardens and the Königspark were not therefore crowded with Kurgäste, as would be the case a little later n the day. Still, there were a fair number of restless sufferers endeavouring to satisfy their consciences by a feverish activity in lounging up and down, or taking duty drives to points of interest, in company with the faithful relations who had attended them into exile, and Mansfield watched with a painful attention their demeanour towards his employer. He himself had arrived only the day before, and Cyril had carried him off almost immediately to an informal dinner-party at an open-air restaurant, where a little knot of men bearing historic names, and of women famous all over Europe for their beauty, had laughed and talked and jested, as they discussed the unappetising fare allowed them, like members of a very happy, simple-hearted, and united family. The novelty of the occasion had a little intoxicated him, and when the party broke up at nine o’clock it had needed a brisk walk along the Charlottenbad road, and an indulgence in thoughts of Philippa, such as he rarely allowed himself, to enable him to sleep at all. The unexpected friendliness of these great people had been astonishing enough, but it would be nothing compared with a sudden change to coolness, such as Cyril seemed to anticipate. Just as Mansfield, in his thoughts, had reached this point, he saw a carriage approaching in which sat the loveliest and friendliest of the ladies of the evening before. The Countess von Hohenthurm was a celebrated Pannonian beauty, and was commonly considered the haughtiest woman in the empire; but she had taken Mansfield under her wing at the dinner-party, explaining the half-veiled personal allusions with which the conversation was largely sprinkled, and confiding to him various indiscreet revelations respecting notable people then staying or expected at the baths. As she came towards him now, Mansfield raised his hand instinctively towards his hat, but Cyril’s voice at his side said, “Wait. It is possible that the lady has not the pleasure of your acquaintance.”

The idea seemed preposterous, for the Countess, in response to some remark made by the elderly lady who was driving with her, had turned her head in the direction of the two Englishmen, but there was no glance of recognition as her eyes met theirs. Without the movement of a muscle or the slightest change of colour, she looked through them both at the trees behind. It was beyond question that in the world of the Countess von Hohenthurm there existed no such persons as Count Mortimer and his secretary.

“Don’t look so utterly crushed,” said Cyril, giving Mansfield’s arm a gentle shake. “Didn’t I tell you how it would be?”

Mansfield walked on in silence, with compressed lips. Presently they met two of the gentlemen with whom they had dined, but these were so deeply engrossed in conversation as to be unable to recognise them. Next they passed a rustic seat, behind which rose a rock bearing an inscription to the effect that the Archduke Ferdinand Joachim desired to testify to the benefit he had derived from a course of the Ludwigsbad waters. Here there sat a hideous elderly man, of generous proportions, who was laying down the laws of fashion to two or three admiring disciples, with all the confidence to be expected in the recognised arbiter of taste at the baths. He also had been one of the guests of the night before, and Mansfield had conceived an instinctive dislike to him—a dislike which was not now lessened by his putting up an eyeglass, and wondering audibly, in terms of unnecessary emphasis, “Who those fellows might be that looked like Englishmen?”

“Well?” said Cyril, as they passed on; “was I a true prophet?”

“Yes; oh yes. But why—what does it all mean?”

“It means that they believe, or pretend to believe, that we are leagued with the Jews against them, and therefore, very naturally, they feel obliged to mark their disapproval of us.”

“But will it go on? How long will they keep it up?”

“Oh yes, it will go on, for exactly three days and a half. Remember that. Until then, I fear that you and I shall be confined to each other’s society. Pray talk as much as you like. I shall be delighted to listen.”

“I should like to say a word or two to that fellow,” muttered Mansfield, indicating by a backward glance the oracle of fashion.

“I earnestly hope you won’t. In the first place, he would not understand your German, and your righteous indignation would therefore be wasted. In the next, I would rather not kill him if I can help it.”

“Kill him? how?”

“With a sword, my dear youth. Excuse me, but you are really so refreshingly young. Is it beyond your powers of imagination to conceive that if you insulted him he would forthwith challenge me?”

“I can look after my own quarrels, Count,” very haughtily.

“In that case I should very soon have a funeral to look after in the British cemetery,” was the calm reply. “The man is a noted duellist, and you would be at his mercy in two minutes. With me as his antagonist, I will be conceited enough to say, things would be reversed. Since you are so kind as to propose to quarrel with him on my account, perhaps I may be allowed to intimate that I prefer a living secretary to a dead one.”

Mansfield, with an embarrassed laugh, yielded the point, although he did not succeed in arriving all at once at his employer’s pitch of philosophy. As they walked on, Cyril amused himself by detecting and commenting upon the shifts to which his acquaintances were reduced in order to escape seeing him. The ostracism was complete, and he pointed out to Mansfield that it must have been decreed only that morning—probably as soon as the Vindobona papers arrived. It so happened that there were no royal personages at the baths at present; but among the sojourners there was a large contingent of the Pannonian nobility, and it was from these, doubtless, that the fiat had gone forth which declared Count Mortimer to be from henceforth beyond the pale of society. A determined enemy, or even a mere busybody, could easily have found means to promulgate the news during those hours of the morning which were supposed to be devoted to rest, when authority had once spoken. It proved that no one was sufficiently courageous to disobey the edict but the officials of the place, who themselves saluted Cyril with an expression which said that this courtesy was not a reflection of their personal feelings, and that their sympathies were with his opponents. Matters were not improved on the arrival of the English papers, for it was discovered that the Vindobona journal which had done all the mischief had omitted one item of special interest in its quotation from the ‘Fleet Street Gazette.’ “The sudden collapse of the Hercynian opposition to Count Mortimer’s scheme,” wrote the correspondent at Czarigrad, “is thought here to be the result of the kind of business arrangement vulgarly known as a ‘deal.’ In other words, the Imperial Government has been bought off.” This was enough. The hatred always smouldering between the two Teutonic empires burst forth once more in the breasts of their representatives at Ludwigsbad, and the few Hercynians at the baths found themselves shunned almost as completely as Cyril, with whom their own convictions effectually forbade them to fraternise.