Читать книгу A Crowned Queen - Sydney C. Grier - Страница 4

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“Why, Cyril, what’s the matter?” cried Caerleon, as he jumped out of the carriage to find his brother standing on the doorstep, equipped for a journey. Cyril answered by another question.

“Can you let me have the dogcart to drive into Aberkerran at once? I must catch the mail to-night for town, and get the Flushing boat in the morning.”

“But are you going back to Thracia so soon?” asked Nadia in astonishment. “Have they sent for you?”

“Yes; I have had a telegram. The King is dangerously ill, and wants me. I have sent Dietrich on with the luggage, Caerleon; but I thought that if I just stayed to say good-bye to you all, the dogcart would take me into Aberkerran in time to save the train.”

“I’ll drive you myself,” said Caerleon. “Send round the dogcart at once, Wright,” he added to the coachman.

“But have you really been able to get everything packed?” asked Nadia. “Can’t we help you at all?”

“Oh, mother, I helped!” cried Philippa. “Uncle Cyril got his things out, and I folded them up, and Dietrich put them in. They’re all done, and Uncle Cyril said I was a great help.”

Clearly there was nothing left to do, and Philippa relieved the tension of the situation by spinning round wildly on one foot, while her father changed his coat, and her uncle, dissembling his impatience admirably, thanked his sister-in-law for her hospitality. There was little time for farewells when the dogcart came round; but the children did their best to make up for this by standing at the door and waving their hands until the traveller was out of sight. When he was at length released from looking back and answering their signals, Cyril turned to his brother.

“We shall do it all right at this pace, old man.”

“Yes; the roads are capital this evening. Have you any idea as to what’s wrong with Otto Georg?”

“I should fear it is an old trouble from which he has suffered more than once. It began with some injury he received in the Franco-Prussian war, and they say that each time it recurs there is less hope of his getting over it.”

“Was the telegram from the Queen?”

“You don’t imagine she would send for me, even though he was dying? No; it is from his valet.”

“How are things settled in case anything happens to him?”

“By the Constitution the Queen is appointed regent, until the Crown Prince is sixteen. She loses the position if she remarries, and her second husband is debarred from holding any public office whatever in the kingdom. Of course the provision was intended to prevent her marrying a foreign prince and investing him with sovereign power.”

“Of course; very good idea. I’m glad the Constitution recognises the Queen’s rights so far as it does. One would have thought Drakovics might kick against taking orders from a woman.”

“Well, naturally he never expected anything of this kind to happen, at any rate so soon. The Constitution had to contain provisions in view of all emergencies, and he borrowed from somewhere or other what seemed the most equitable and prudent course in such a case. But if things go badly with Otto Georg, I am afraid we have hard times before us.”

“In view of the Queen’s youth and inexperience, you mean?”

“Not that merely. The worst thing is that she is so desperately unpopular.”

“Unpopular? A pretty woman, who has given the Thracians an heir to the throne?”

“That is the sole redeeming feature about her, and she has spoiled the effect of it by insisting that the child shall be brought up as a Lutheran. When Drakovics first thought of her as a wife for the King, his hope was that, being partly of Scythian blood, she would be willing to acquiesce in her children’s growing up in the Orthodox Church. But he had to give it up, for she insisted on a special protective clause in the marriage-contract. Otto Georg didn’t care a rap about it either way, and I daresay she wouldn’t have thought of the matter if her mother had not put her up to it.”

“But you don’t blame the unfortunate girl for wishing her children to be of the same faith as herself?” asked Caerleon warmly.

“I don’t blame her, if she feels strongly on the subject; but I do say that it’s a pity, for such a concession would have conciliated the people and attached them to the dynasty more than anything. Then the Queen shares in the unpopularity of her mother, who considered the Thracians a set of savages when she came among them, and let them see it. Together they have done their best to make the Court a third-rate copy of the minor German ones. The national costume, which is distinctly fetching, and very dear to the people, was tabooed altogether, and the use of the Thracian language frowned upon. No one need expect to enjoy the Queen’s favour, or rather the Princess’s, for that was more important, unless they got their clothes from Vienna, and their conversation from Berlin. The mountain chiefs wouldn’t stand it. They didn’t want to learn German, and the new etiquette disgusted them, and they were very angry at the slights cast upon their nationality. The result is that they never come near the Court unless they are absolutely obliged.”

“The Queen must be mad,” said Caerleon. “She is alienating the very men who keep Otto Georg on the throne.”

“Just so; and she has alienated the lower classes long ago by her lack of the bourgeois virtues. They see that she and Otto Georg don’t get on, and they put it all down to her. Then, at the time of the marriage, some wiseacre made researches into the Weldart family history, and put it about that some remote ancestress of Princess Ernestine’s had at one time or another been a Jewess. Our people detest the Jews, as you know, and now that the Queen is unpopular, their favourite nickname for her is ‘the Jewess.’”

“The poor little woman seems to have a fine stock of blunders and other crimes to live down,” said Caerleon meditatively. “Can’t say I think your prospects in Thracia are roseate, Cyril; but I daresay there’s good stuff in her, and trouble may bring it out. After all, you must acknowledge that she has had rather a bad time of it since her marriage.”

“Her own fault altogether. She should have accepted her destiny like a sensible girl, and Otto Georg would have made her an excellent husband. Princesses are born merely to be married to foreign potentates, and feelings don’t come into the matter at all. Hearts are almost as much of a nuisance in politics as consciences are. Both have a detestable habit of upsetting a statesman’s calculations.”

“Stuff!” said Caerleon. “Wait until it’s your turn.”

“I have escaped it a good long time at present. I don’t think, Caerleon, that you ever yet saw me rush into a foolish thing blindfold, and I have no intention whatever of walking into one with my eyes open. If I ever fall in love, it will be in such a quarter as to advance my material interests very largely.”

“All right; we shall see. I shall be satisfied if it only brings you home from Thracia. But in any case you know that there is always a welcome for you at Llandiarmid.”

“Thanks, old man. I’m sorry I can’t say the same to you about Thracia. The farther you keep from Bellaviste for the present the wiser it will be for your own sake, and the better I shall be pleased.”

They were rattling down Aberkerran High Street as Cyril said this, and as the dogcart drew up outside the station the impassive Dietrich advanced to meet his master.

“Excellency,” he said, with a military salute, for he had served in the Hercynian army, and could not succeed in emancipating himself from the methods of address thus learned, “the train is on the point of departure, and although I have warned the officials that it must not start without your lordship, they are swearing that they will not delay it longer for the Queen Victoria herself.”

“Then I haven’t a moment!” cried Cyril, breaking into the valet’s deliberate German phrases. “Good-bye, Caerleon; give my love to Nadia and the children. I’ll come back soon, and finish my visit properly.”

He grasped his brother’s hand, and rushed into the station, followed by Dietrich, who had already secured his ticket, reaching the platform just in time to enter a carriage as the train was moving off. Settling himself comfortably in a corner seat, he tried hard to banish thought and devote himself to his cigar; but even the best-trained mind will sometimes revolt against a policy of abstraction, and Cyril’s was by no means proof against the excitement of the crisis which he foresaw to be imminent. From the evening papers, which he obtained as the train approached London, he learned that King Otto Georg had been thrown from his horse during a review, and that the fall had brought on a return of the old malady. A specialist had been summoned from Vienna, and M. Drakovics was in constant attendance at the Palace, since a change for the worse in the King’s condition might occur at any moment. On reaching London, Cyril received a telegram from M. Drakovics himself, which had been addressed in the first instance to Llandiarmid, and was forwarded thence by Caerleon, mentioning merely the fact of the King’s illness, and entreating him to hasten back to Thracia. Since he was already travelling as fast as express trains could carry him, he was unable to make any further effort in this direction; and although he found a certain amount of satisfaction during the earlier stages of his journey in planning to save time by means of short cuts and curtailed halts, this resource was exhausted before very long. He was conscious of a disinclination, very unusual with him, to distract his thoughts by reading, or by entering into conversation with his fellow-passengers, and he found himself, therefore, reduced to considering in all possible lights a prospect which was far from being a pleasing one. The papers, Belgian, German, and Austrian, which he obtained in the course of his journey, all told the same tale, that the King was still alive, but could not be expected to recover, while his sufferings were so great that he was kept almost continuously under the influence of opiates. The future looked very black, and Cyril could not decide whether it was blacker in his own case or in that of the kingdom. When the Queen found herself in possession of the reins of power, there was little hope that she would accept the assistance either of M. Drakovics or of himself in the duties of government, and he began to wonder whether it would not be the more dignified course to resign office immediately on the King’s death, instead of waiting to be dismissed. But if Thracia were deprived at once of King and Premier, and handed over to the tender mercies of an incapable and unpopular regent, she would scarcely succeed in weathering the political storm which would ensue, and another revolution would mean almost certainly the outbreak of a European war. To forsake his post now was not to be thought of.

“Otto Georg may have been able to leave some message for me,” said Cyril to himself, as he left the train at Bellaviste, “giving an idea of his views under the circumstances; but if he hasn’t, I’ll stick to office for his sake until I’m turned out, and try to keep baby Michael on the throne. We are bound to fail, I suppose, and I shall risk my reputation as a statesman, but one must be ready to run some risks for a friend.”

Learning from the railway officials, who greeted him respectfully, that the King was still living, he drove straight to the Palace, intending to go to his own rooms and don his Ministerial uniform at once, so as to be ready in case of a summons to the sick-room. Passing along the corridor, however, he found himself suddenly face to face with the little Crown Prince and his English nurse. Mrs Jones was a sister of Wright, the Llandiarmid coachman, although she had enjoyed greater educational advantages, and she owed her position to the recommendation of Lady Caerleon, for which reason she regarded Cyril with marked favour and deference, while waging a chronic warfare with the other officials belonging to the Palace. On this occasion she stopped him to inquire after the health of the family at Llandiarmid, while the little Prince, his face still wet with tears, made unavailing efforts to climb into his arms.

“It is the Herr Graf!” he cried, in his baby German, burying his face in Cyril’s fur cuff. “Come and play wild beasts, Herr Graf. Papa is ill, and can’t walk about, but you can put that fur thing over your head, and roar.”

“Not now, Prinzchen,” said Cyril, dexterously disencumbering himself of the coat, in which Prince Michael proceeded immediately to envelop his own small person. “We might disturb the poor papa.”

“Bless his little heart!” said Mrs Jones, wiping her eyes; “how should he understand that his poor pa is struck for death?”

“The King is dying, then,” asked Cyril anxiously.

“I wouldn’t go for to speak not positively, my lord, which ain’t my place; but if ever I see death written upon a gentleman’s face, I see it upon the King’s just now. And there wasn’t scarcely a dry eye in the room, to see this pore lamb a-strokin’ his father’s forehead, and cryin’ because he wasn’t able to play with him.”

“Has Count Mortimer arrived yet?” asked another voice, and the King’s valet, mounting the stairs, uttered an exclamation of relief as he caught sight of Cyril. “His Majesty begged that your Excellency would come to him as soon as you reached the Palace,” he added.

“I will merely change my clothes, and wait upon his Majesty in a few minutes,” said Cyril, turning into a side-corridor, but the man stopped him.

“His Majesty entreated that you would lose no time, but come to him at once, Excellency. His Excellency the Premier is not in attendance upon his Majesty at this moment.”

“I see,” said Cyril. “I will come.”

Before he could do more than make a hasty attempt to remove from his attire some portion of the dust of his long journey, they were in the King’s anteroom, and pausing before the inner door, he had a momentary glimpse of the doctors gathered round the bed on which his friend lay. The Queen was sitting beside her husband, the stony pallor of her tired young face thrown into relief by the rich brocade of the curtains behind her, and Cyril wondered whether it was merely a sense of duty, or the workings of a late remorse, which kept her at her post.

“Will your Majesty graciously drink this?” one of the doctors was saying, as he held a glass to the King’s lips; “it will ease the pain.”

“Narcotics again!” groaned the dying man wearily, “and I have told you that I wish to keep my brain clear for the present. I think I heard some one come in. Has Count Mortimer arrived yet?”

“His Excellency is here, sir,” said one of the attendants.

“Then tell him to come to me at once. And leave the room, all of you. I will not take the dose at present, doctor.”

“Your Majesty will permit me to remain with you?” asked the Vienna doctor, noticing the sudden strength in the King’s voice, and anticipating a reaction.

“In the anteroom, doctor, if you please. I wish to be alone with Count Mortimer. What! must I command twice?”

“You certainly need not command twice,” said the Queen, rising from her seat with tears of mortification in her eyes, and following the discomfited doctors. “I regret to have trespassed upon the privacy of your Majesty and Count Mortimer.”

“Stay, madame!” cried the King. “Ernestine, remain where you are, I entreat you. You must know with what anxiety I have watched for Count Mortimer’s arrival; surely you cannot object to my making known to him in your presence my dying wishes?”

“Forgive me,” said the Queen, returning to her place, her voice softening. “I thought you wished me to leave you. It was a mistake.”

“It has all been a series of mistakes, I fear,” said the King, laying his hand on that of his wife. “I have not made you happy, Nestchen.”

“I wish I had been a better wife to you,” the Queen whispered painfully, and Cyril bent forward to examine with extreme care some minute detail of the painting he had been contemplating since his entrance into the room.

“It was not your fault,” the King went on. “You should be a child still—and now I must leave you to guard our son’s throne for him. You are very young—very inexperienced—to undertake such a heavy charge.”

“Don’t let that trouble you,” she said, trying to comfort him. “Is he not my son? His kingdom must be my constant care.”

“But how will you take care of it, poor child? What do you know of pitting Pannonia against Hercynia, and playing them both off against Scythia and Neustria? Can you hide your personal feelings under a veil of official friendliness? Why, Nestchen, you will be at enmity with half Europe in a week!”

“I will do my best,” she said in a low voice; “and there is M. Drakovics to help——”

“Drakovics lives for Thracia. The country is safe enough under his guardianship; but he would sacrifice Michael and his interests without a moment’s compunction if he thought another form of government would be more for the benefit of the kingdom.”

“But what are we to do, then?” asked the Queen, with keen anxiety in her voice.

“I cannot tell, unless you will accept as an adviser the man who has been a friend and counsellor to me since I first came to Thracia.”

“You mean Count Mortimer?” asked the Queen, with a gasp.

“I mean my friend Mortimer, to whose honour I could leave you and the child without a fear. But if you will not trust him, Ernestine, I cannot ask him to expose himself to insult by remaining here.”

“I—I will listen to his advice,” she said at last.

“But will you take it when it is given? I cannot die happy unless you and Michael are confided to his care. I should know then that you were safe as long as he was—and there is no man in Europe who is more successful in getting out of difficulties,” and the King laughed faintly as he gazed at his wife. She had released herself from his grasp, and her hands were clasped on her breast as though she were forcing down the feelings which rose within her. Cyril could read in her tear-filled eyes the story of her contest with herself. “You have come between my husband and me,” they seemed to say to him; “you have tried to turn his heart against me,—and now he expects me to trust you.” Unjust as the silent accusation was, the Queen’s agony forbade him to defend himself, and he stood mute, while she, with quivering lips and heaving breast, struggled to speak.

“Can I trust you?” burst from her at last, as her glance met his.

“Before God you can,” he answered. “Bad I may be, but I am not the man to deceive a dying friend, or to injure that friend’s wife and child.”

“Otto, I will trust him,” said the Queen hoarsely, laying her hand in her husband’s. He held it out to Cyril, who stooped and kissed it. He felt her draw back suddenly with an involuntary shudder as his fingers touched hers, then her hand lay cold and nerveless in his. She might overlook the past, but she was not likely to forget it.

“You have removed my chief anxiety, Mortimer,” said the dying King, grasping Cyril’s hand feebly. “I know now that you will watch over my boy and advise his mother, and that so far as it is in your power, you will be his friend as you have been mine.”

“I will,” said Cyril.

“I will thank you with my dying breath,” said the King, with fresh vigour. “You have outdone to-day all your previous kindness to me. Faithful friend that you have been, I can never reward you—all that I can do is to load you with fresh burdens. But I am keeping you standing here, although you are overcome with fatigue. We grow inconsiderate when our friends serve us too well. Go and rest, Mortimer. Send those doctors back as you pass through the anteroom, and they shall try whether they can ease this wretched pain a little. I am tired as well as you. We will both rest, and I will send for you when I wake.”

“Auf wiedersehen, sir!” said Cyril, touching the King’s hand with his lips. He bowed to the Queen as he went out, but she took no notice of him. When he entered, he had seen her give a little start of contemptuous disgust at the sight of his tweed suit and travel-stained appearance, but now she was sitting with her dark eyes staring into the distance, and her hands lying loosely clasped on her lap. Her face was that of a proud woman whose pride had been utterly and forcibly broken, and who was wondering dumbly what further blows fate could have in store for her.

“What can one do with her?” he asked himself in despair. “She will never forgive the humiliation of to-day.”

He passed out, giving the King’s message to the doctors as he went, and they returned into the sick-room, much incensed by their long exclusion. Cyril went on to his own rooms, where Dietrich had prepared a meal for him, and where he took a bath and donned his uniform, so as to be ready in case of a sudden summons from the King. He had intended to sit up and read; but he was worn out by the hurry and anxiety of his long journey, and lay down on a couch for a few minutes’ sleep. The sleep lasted for some hours instead of a few minutes, and Cyril only woke to find M. Drakovics standing beside him with a lugubrious face.

“How is the King?” he asked, starting up.

“The King is well,” was the answer; “but his name is Michael.”

“Otto Georg dead!—and I was never summoned?”

“He was not conscious at the end. When he passed away he was still under the influence of the opiate. I hear you saw him?”

“Yes; he had several charges to give me. I am glad I arrived in time. But here is the beginning of our troubles, Drakovics, since little Michael is King and the Queen is regent.”

“And not only that. See here. This is from our agent in the duchy of Lucernebourg.” He handed Cyril a telegram, partly written in cipher, but easily read by any one who knew the secret.

“‘The Princess of Weldart was ordered last week by her physicians to spend the winter in the South of France. She bade farewell two days ago to the Hercynian Imperial family, and arrived here yesterday en route for the Riviera; but instead of continuing her journey thither, left almost immediately for Switzerland. I discovered through one of her attendants that she is travelling incognito to Thracia by way of Switzerland and Vienna.’”

“Then we shall have her here—how soon?” asked Cyril.

“The telegram was despatched yesterday, but for some reason or other only reached Bellaviste this morning. I was here, and it was not delivered to me until I returned to my office. I should say that she would arrive on the frontier early to-morrow morning.”

“She must be met,” said Cyril, standing up. “I had better go, I suppose. There is a fearful amount to arrange, of course; but I can put things in train before I start, and anything is better than allowing her to begin with a moral victory.”

“You think that she will gain a further grievance if she is permitted to reach the capital unescorted?”

“I don’t care about that, but I can see that she thinks she will catch us napping. A little object-lesson at once will make our task easier in future.”

“Good,” said M. Drakovics; “but you cannot go alone. A military escort would be out of the question under the mournful circumstances, and also in view of the fact that the Princess is travelling incognito. One of the ladies must go, of course, but we cannot trouble the Queen to choose her. You had better apply to Baroness von Hilfenstein.”

“I shall take Stefanovics, and the Baroness had better send Madame Stefanovics as the lady-in-waiting. Then she can watch for a good opportunity for telling the Queen of the arrangements.”

Baroness von Hilfenstein, the Queen’s mistress of the robes, was a lady of vast experience and great resolution, but the news which Cyril had to communicate struck her as little less than appalling. She knew something already of the difficulties by which the Ministers would find themselves confronted under the new régime, and she foresaw that these would be intensified tenfold by the arrival of the Queen’s mother. The Baroness was herself a native of Weldart, and felt towards the Princess not merely the dislike entertained by the subjects of the smaller German States towards the Hercynian Imperial house, but also a lively disgust and contempt of a more personal nature, as for a woman who had taken all Europe into her confidence in her domestic squabbles, thus causing a fierce light, which it could ill bear, to beat upon the throne of Weldart. In spite of her dislike, however, she acquiesced heartily in Cyril’s proposal as to the expediency of greeting the Princess with such ceremonial observances as would be best calculated to disarm her hostility, and requested Madame Stefanovics, the wife of the Grand Chamberlain, to hold herself in readiness to proceed to the frontier that evening in company with her husband and Count Mortimer. In the meantime, she obtained the Queen’s assent to the arrangements, together with a letter to her mother, of which Cyril was to be the bearer, and armed with which he joined his travelling companions when the hour came for their departure. Their special train accomplished the journey to the frontier station of Witska in good time, and they reached their destination some two hours before the Princess’s train was due. Madame Stefanovics was made comfortable in the waiting-room for a short rest, with all the rugs belonging to the party, while her husband and Cyril walked up and down the platform in the twilight, keeping a bright look-out for the train and smoking busily to keep themselves warm.