"You have taken a grave responsibility," he said sternly.
"And I trust your Majesty will visit on me alone the consequences," I answered earnestly. "This unfortunate girl had scarcely any one round her but those who were plotting to betray her, and it will be a strange irony if I, who at least was loyal to her, have brought her under the heavy lash of your Majesty's displeasure."
I spoke with warm feeling, and went on to put such reasons as my fear and love for Minna prompted why any penalty for what had been done should fall on me.
And as I spoke I watched the Emperor with eager, hungry keenness for some sign that my pleading was likely to prevail. But not a feature was relaxed for an instant, not a sign or token did he give of feeling. The face retained the same set, impassive, inflexible, gloomy sternness which he had maintained throughout. He heard me to the end, but made no response or reply.
There remained then but one thing more for me to say, one more avowal to make, and I thought of it with something like foreboding. He seemed so cold, so unimpressionable, so infinitely removed from me, that I could not bring myself to hope that any good would result from my declaring my identity. There appeared no chords of old friendship, no associations of comradeship to reawaken. But there was at least the chance that it would convince him I had spoken the truth.
He appeared to me as the type and embodiment of cold, rarefied, unemotional intellectuality. Judgment founded on justice, but feelingless; mind, not heart; the very presentment of retributive righteousness without the warmth of charity. A man who had accepted the high mission of his rulership in a spirit of unshakable faith in the heavenly character of the mission, but who in accepting it had bound down with the iron clamps of an implacable will the milder attributes which go to make humanity human.
Who was to say what would be the effect of an avowal like mine which, like a sudden sword-thrust, might pierce for once his armor of inflexibility and set flowing again the blood of his older nature?
It was he who touched the subject first, and in the form which I had anticipated. He broke a long pause to say:
"You have spoken freely enough, but what is the guarantee of your truth?"
I paused an instant, and, looking him straight in the face, I answered, with slow emphasis:
"I have never told your Majesty a lie in my life."
The unexpected character of the reply set him thinking, and he fixed his eyes on mine.
"What do you mean by that? Who are you and what was your real motive in this?"
Von Augener was also staring hard at me, and I could see that both were thinking hard in the effort to solve the puzzle I had evidently set them.
I let a minute pass without a word, and then said in a low voice:
"I am a man who for years has been under a ban, condemned to live an empty, useless, purposeless life. I saw in this affair at once a means of helping a helpless girl who was sorely beset by dangers; I longed for some sphere of activity for myself again; and I hoped that possibly I might even achieve an object that is never out of my thoughts."
I found myself speaking for the first time with nervousness and hesitation; and I faltered, and then stopped.
The Emperor made no reply, but kept his eyes fixed piercingly on my face.
Old von Augener sneered.
"We are getting to the truth now, I suppose."
The sneer was just the tonic I needed. I found my voice again, and went on in the same low tone.
"For years I have been one of the most pitiable and remorseful of your Majesty's subjects, and I was fighting in this thing in the vague hope that it might possibly in some means enable me to regain part of my old character."
I thought I could detect a faint symptom of concern on the tense, set face turned full on me—just a momentary dilation of the nostrils; but it passed before my pause ended, and in quite as brief, stern a tone as he had before used he asked:
"Who are you?"
I took heart, and tried to brace myself for the final effort.
"Your Majesty, one day some years ago in one of the upper reaches of the Elbe where the current was known to be fierce and dangerous two lads, who had stolen away from their companions, were bathing alone. The river was flooded and swollen, and the stream more than commonly perilous to the swimmers. It proved too powerful for one of them, and he gave a cry and sank. His friend—for they were close friends then—himself struggling hard with the stream, was ahead, and had nearly reached the bank, but turned back and dived for his friend, and under the mercy of God was the means of saving his life."
I stopped. The Emperor was staring at me with a look of such intentness as I have never seen on any human face before or since. He had drawn himself to his full height; and every muscle of his sinewy, powerful, tireless frame was at full tension, while his breath was labored, and came and went through his dilated nostrils as though the passing of it were a pain.
But he made no answer.
"One of the lads, sire, the one whose life was in danger, was the future ruler of the mighty German empire; the other"—I paused again, and then suddenly threw myself on one knee before him—"was your Majesty's most miserable subject, the Count Karl von Rudloff, whose shameful, violent deed against you later has now been punished by five years of bitter remorse and hopeless solitude. I am that unhappiest of men."
"Von Rudloff?" cried the Emperor, now in amazement, while the older man sprang to his feet, and both stood looking down at me in unbounded astonishment.
The effect of my announcement was supreme. I myself was deeply affected, and in the moments of critical silence during which the Emperor and his old confidential adviser stood gazing at me I could not raise my head to meet their looks.
The Kaiser was the first to speak.
"You have amazed me. I know you now, but I did not. What was the meaning of your pretended death? Rise, I do not wish you to kneel to me."
There seemed a little hope in the last sentence. I got up slowly.
"It was not premeditated, sire. I gave my word to Count von Augener here—"
"Stay," interposed the Kaiser quickly, turning a frowning face to his adviser. "What is this?"
"I should prefer to discuss these matters in private with your Majesty," was the answer, not without what appeared to me to be some anxiety.
"Would you prefer to retire at once?"
"As your Majesty pleases."
This reply was given with great reluctance.
"Be it so, then," and the old man went away, giving me a glance of hate as he passed.
I did not understand the meaning of this development, and stood waiting in silence for the Imperial command to speak.
The silence lengthened itself into minutes, and, when I ventured to glance at the Kaiser, I was disconcerted to find that he was staring at me fixedly, and, as it seemed, very sternly. But there were certain symptoms of unrest and agitation that made me believe that he was forcing himself rather to repress every trace of the feelings I had roused.
When at length he spoke, his voice had a depth and vibration which told me, who knew him so well, how strongly he was moved.
"Why have you done this? Why deceive me with a gorgeous lie of your death and funeral? Why never declare yourself till now?"
There was much more reproach than anger in the tone, and I began to hope again.
"May I tell your Majesty plainly all that occurred? When that mad thing happened on the yacht—a madness that will be an ever-pressing grief and shame to me to my dying hour—I went out feeling that only death at my own hands could wipe out the disgrace of it. I should have killed myself that night but for the reflection that my death might come to be publicly associated with what had happened. Then, the next day, Count von Augener came and told me that unless I was dead within a week my death would be an infamous one. The threat was unneeded, sire. That day I went to Berlin to Dr. Mein S——."
And I went on to give him a succinct account of all the circumstances by which the old doctor had led me to believe that I was dying, and had played out the drama of my funeral while I lay in his house unconscious.
"I set out from Berlin," I continued, "to make the career which the old man had spoken of, and my first effort was on the stage. There I learnt the secret of disguise, and became what you see me, to all intents and purposes another man in appearance. A little more than a year ago the doctor died and left me his large fortune, and I was once again set roaming, alive, but without a life to live, when I was carried, against my will and in spite of my protests, to Gramberg, and plunged into the seething cauldron of intrigue there. The rest your Majesty knows, and it remains only for me to say that the one wild hope I had in carrying the intrigue forward was that I might perhaps so control the position here in Munich as to prove myself of service to you, sire, and be able to plead it as a ground for your pardon."
His Majesty had made no comment during the whole narrative, and now he stood for some moments without making a reply. He stared steadfastly at me the whole time with an expression of sombre, stern melancholy. When he spoke at length it was in the firm, quick, decisive tone which he used when his mind was made up and his course chosen.
"I accept your story absolutely, for I believe you incapable of intentional deceit toward me. So far as the Countess Minna is concerned, it will be my personal care to see that she is righted, and her enemies thwarted."
He ceased as abruptly as he had spoken.
"May I thank you——" I began.
"You have no right to speak for her," he interrupted shortly.
I took the rebuff in silence, and stood wondering what he would say as to my own affairs. There came another long, trying pause.
"You did wrong, very wrong," he burst out, with sudden vehemence, speaking almost passionately. "I have been badly served in your matters. You were no more to blame than I myself, and you have made me bear for five years the secret fear that I drove you to your death. And I have cares enough without that."
He stopped, and I looked up as if to speak, but he silenced me with a gesture; and the grandeur of his dignity awed me. I recognized the supremely unselfish magnanimity of his act, and I longed to put my feelings into words; but I fell back abashed and speechless before the sense of intense power and majesty which surrounded him like a subtle, magnetic force. He stood buried in thought, wholly self-absorbed for some minutes; and then in the same abrupt manner broke the silence to dismiss me.
"Leave me now, and remain in the ante-room. I will see you later or send you my decision as to yourself."
I backed to the door, bowing, and had all but reached it in silence when a hasty movement of his caused me to look up.
"Stay," he cried, and he came toward me with his quick, firm stride. "I cannot let you go like this. I am glad you are living. You come back to me out of the past that is, and must be, dead; and our friendship is one of the dead things in it. An Emperor has no friend but his God. Still we were friends once, and this is our more proper parting."
He held out his hand to me, and took mine and clasped it; and at the clasp of it my blood thrilled in accord with a thousand thoughts and promptings. I carried his hand to my lips.
"If your Majesty will give me a chance of serving you again in any capacity, my life shall be ever at your bidding."
I spoke from my heart, and my voice trembled under the strain of my feelings.
"I believe you. But you yourself have made it difficult. Save for that, what might we not have been!"
There was no sternness or harshness in this. It was not my Emperor who spoke, but for one fleeting instant it was the personal lament of my old true friend whose friendship I had cast away. The words brought the tears to my eyes, and I could not look up at him, though I knew his eyes were bent upon me, and judged that their light was a kindly one. A moment later the mood passed with him, or was crushed back by the relentless power of his stern will. He drew himself up to his customary, rigid, soldier-like attitude, and said in the short, sharp tone of a military command:
"And now leave me."
I backed out, and took my place in the ante-room, a prey to a tumultuous rush of emotions which flooded upon me, preventing for the moment any attempt at consecutive thought. My mind was a maelstrom, in which hopes, regrets, fear, and delight were mingled in an indistinguishable whirlpool.
Presently, out of the roar and rush of inchoate emotions, three thoughts began to dominate me.
Regret—bitter, maddening, and unavailing—for the years I had lost and the career I had thrown away; wrath, wild and vengeful, against the old enemy of my family, von Augener, for the treachery of his action toward me; and delight, infinitely sweet, that Minna's safety was secured, and that, after all, it was I who had secured it.
The last outweighed the others, and I lost myself in the maze of a love reverie as I sat there, picturing the joy that would leap from her eyes and the light that would gladden her beautiful face if only I could be the messenger of the good news. And it was to be so.
After I had waited I know not how long, for time goes unmeasured in love dreams, some one came and addressed me by a name that made me jump to my feet and stare at the messenger like one half beside himself.
"Count von Rudloff!"
It was one of the two members of the suite I had seen with the Emperor before my interview with him.
"You are addressing me, sir?" I asked.
"I am addressing the Count von Rudloff," he answered, with that air of impassive coolness that men of his kind affect.
I made an effort to regain my self-possession, and to answer him with the same measured calmness.
"I am the Count von Rudloff," I said.
"I bring you a letter from the Emperor, count."
He waited while I tore it open with fingers that trembled. It was short and peremptory enough, but what did it not mean to me?
"I have decided to restore to you your title and possessions. The question of your future career remains in abeyance for the present."
That was all; with the signature of the Emperor himself.
"May I be the first to offer a word of congratulation, count?" asked the messenger.
"Thank you, thank you," I murmured. "It is all unexpected."
He still waited, and I thought there might be something more to add.
"Is there anything more to add?" I asked.
"His Majesty suggests that you should travel for a time—a year or so, perhaps—so that the manner of your return to Berlin and your resumption of your position may not seem to come as the result of this business here in Munich."
"I understand," I said, though I still seemed in a dream. "And am I free to go where I please now?"
"Certainly," he returned, smiling. "Can I be of any assistance?"
"No, thank you. No. I have some urgent business that will not wait another second."
A minute after that I had left the palace, and was hurrying as fast as horses could drag me to Minna to tell her the brilliant news.
When I reached Minna's house, I had an experience that at first amused me. I could not, of course, any longer treat the house as my own, nor look on myself as having any right to enter, and I found the servants very reluctant to admit me at all, and it was only after some difficulty that I succeeded in getting shown into a room close to the door, while they said they would carry my message. I waited in some little fever of impatience, and when the delay had grown into minutes I began to wonder that Minna should take so coolly the fact of my return and the news she must know I should carry. I saw the explanation, however, when the door was opened and the Baroness Gratz sailed in, pompous and very angry.
"What can be your business here now?" she asked, staring at me through her eyeglass.
"I have come to see Minna," I replied, with an inclination to smile at her conduct.
"I am astounded that you should have the assurance to come here after your egregious imposture. Of course you do not expect to see her?"
"Indeed I do," said I quickly, "and as soon as possible."
"And pray in what character now?"
This with a contemptuous and insulting curl of the lip. I paused to give my reply the greater emphasis.
"In a double character—a messenger from his Majesty the Emperor, and as her affianced husband."
"You are not her affianced husband, and I will not suffer that tale to be told in my presence. As for the rest, it is more like a play-actor's story. You imposed upon us too long. You will not do it again." She said this very angrily indeed, and added, almost spitefully: "The countess does not wish to see you."
"In this case I am afraid she cannot choose," I answered. "The Emperor's business cannot wait upon any prejudices for or against his messengers." There was a little stretch of authority insinuated in this. "Moreover, I am bound to say that I prefer to have her decision straight from herself."
"You suggest that I lie, I suppose," she cried, her eyes flashing. "You are too brave a man not to seize a chance of insulting a defenceless woman. That is your stage chivalry. But you will find I am not so defenceless as you suppose."
She rang the bell sharply twice, and then, somewhat to my surprise, and a good deal to my pleasure, the Baron Heckscher was shown in.
"I am told you wish to see me, baroness," he said, ignoring my presence.
"I wish you to tell this person what we have decided as to his prosecution."
I swung round on him instantly.
"I am glad there is a man to deal with. How dare you presume to meddle in my affairs, Baron Heckscher?"
"Really—but how shall I call you? Not the Prince any longer, I presume? Then what?" and he regarded me with an insolent smile.
"His Majesty the Emperor, within the last few minutes, has been good enough to call me by my own name—the Count von Rudloff. That may be a precedent good enough for even you to follow."
He stared at me in blank astonishment. The fact that I had been closeted with the Emperor might mean everything to him, and at the thought all other considerations were dwarfed. I enjoyed his discomfiture. All his insolence disappeared.
"You do not believe what he says, surely?" cried the vindictive old lady when he made no immediate answer, for he stood in great perplexity what course to take toward me.
"You will see you cannot remain here in the face of the baroness's attitude," he said to me at length, with an air that was half truculent and half deprecatory.
I laughed.
"I see you are vastly disconcerted to hear that I have had an audience with his Majesty, and have left him under circumstances that augur ill for you; and well you may be," I added meaningly. "You dare to meddle in my matters at a time when you will need all your wits to save your own from shipwreck. But I have had enough of you, and of this folly. I now demand in the name of the Emperor to see the Countess Minna von Gramberg, and if you attempt to stop me," I said sternly to the Baroness Gratz, "the consequences may be far more grave than you think."
Her anger and dislike of me gave her plenty of courage, however, and she still set me at defiance, abusing me for an impostor and a cheat; and when I declared that if they did not take my message to Minna I would myself go straight to her rooms, she planted herself in front of the door and dared me to attempt to leave it for that purpose, and vowed she would call the servants if I would not go away.
The situation began to verge upon the ridiculous, despite the fact that it was in a measure embarrassing. I could not for the moment see what to do, and was debating this in my thoughts when a sudden turn was given to matters by the entrance of Minna herself, the door being opened from without.
"Ah, Minna!" I cried, hastening to her.
The Baroness Gratz stepped in between us, however, and lifted her hand as if to keep me away.
"The countess is here in my charge," she cried to me; "and while that is so I forbid you to go near her."
But love laughs at prohibitions. A moment later we were hand-locked, and she had read in my glad face that my news was good. Then she turned angrily upon the baroness, her face flushed and her eyes shining:
"You have no right to interfere with me," she said, her words shortly and sharply spoken. "I have just heard, to my intense indignation, that you have even ventured to tell my servants who shall and who shall not enter my house. Is this true?"
"So far as it relates to this person, of course it is true. You are in my charge, and it is my duty——"
"You have mistaken your duty and overstepped your privileges. You have no right to give such orders, and to do it in my name. You must have known as well as I that the last man in the world against whom my door would ever be shut would be—my affianced husband;" and she raised her head, and stood very erect, looking rarely beautiful in her pride and happiness.
"I did it to save you from the wiles of an adventurer who——"
"Silence, aunt Gratz, and shame to you for those words," cried Minna hotly. "It was this 'adventurer,' as you dare to say, who saved me from the hands of the villain whose schemes you helped, and from the cowardly double plot of the Baron Heckscher there. As for you, sir, if you knew the character of your puppet and tool von Nauheim, as I firmly believe you did," she cried to Baron Heckscher, "there are no words bad enough to paint the infamous vileness of your treachery. While pretending to conspire in my interest, and while professing loyalty to me and mine, you plotted to ruin and dishonor me; and when I find you here to-day I can only believe you have some further abominable motive or plot against me, and that you are here to suborn some of those about me for your purposes. Be good enough to leave the house."
"I have come to protest to you——" he began in reply.
"I decline to listen to you, sir," she interrupted, with quiet dignity.
He stood a moment, scowling viciously, and then, with an ugly glance at me, said:
"Your nameless friend there——"
"I have already told you," I broke in angrily, "that I am the Count von Rudloff, and that the Emperor himself has addressed me in my name."
"I have known for some time all the facts as to this," added Minna, a swift flash from her eyes telling me her delight at the news, "and of the load of infinite obligation I owe to the Count von Rudloff; not the least part of it is for the defeat and exposure of your schemes against me. Be good enough to spare me the necessity of bidding my servants expel you from the house."
"You had better go, baron," I put in. "You will probably find at your house by this time a summons to the Emperor's presence, for he has heard from me the whole story of your acts."
This statement completed his disquiet, and without another word he hurried away.
"You will be troubled by him no more, Minna," I said. "I bring you the best of news. The Emperor has given a personal pledge to answer for your safety and to uphold your interests."
"The Emperor!" she cried in a tone of surprise.
"More than that: I have told him all, and he has acknowledged my title," and I showed her the Imperial letter.
Her face shone with pride and delight.
"I can forgive every one now, for it has all ended so splendidly for you," she said.
"For us," I corrected; and she acknowledged the correction with a blush and a smile of love which exasperated the Baroness Gratz, who had been listening to us in indignant silence.
"Then I suppose you have no more use for me?" she declared, with an angry toss of the head, as she turned to leave us.
"I am afraid you yourself have made it difficult for you to share in my happiness—in our happiness, I mean," said Minna gently. "I am so happy that I have no room for any thought on that score but regret that it should be so."
"You were always an ungrateful girl, Minna," replied the old lady very ungraciously, bitter to the end against me. "And I have no wish to share with you, or deprive you of any part of, such happiness as you may expect to find in company with a man who is sometimes play-actor, sometimes Prince, and always an impostor," and with that parting taunt she flung away.
"Poor aunt Gratz!" sighed Minna.
Then she put her hands in mine, and, nestling close to me, asked with a winsome coquettishness:
"Am I ungrateful, Karl?"
My answer may be guessed, and it took long in telling. But we returned after a time to the ways of common sense, and then I told her what had passed during the audience with the Kaiser; that I was to travel for a year, and then return to Berlin to take up formally my old title and position.
At first the news brought a cloud to her happy face.
"A year is a long time, Karl," she murmured. "Shall you never be in either Munich or Gramberg all that time?"
"I think not. I expect it means at least a year away from the Fatherland."
She was silent and looked almost sad.
"But a year will soon pass," I whispered.
A gesture of pretty reproach answered me.
"If you would make a little sacrifice, it would help, I think."
"Sacrifice!" she echoed, not catching my meaning. And when I did not reply she lifted her head from my shoulder and peered into my eyes, her own full of curiosity.
"You used to pride yourself on reading my secrets," said I.
She thought a minute; then a look of wonderment shone in her eyes, followed almost directly by a great, glad blush that spread all over her face, dyeing her cheeks with crimson and driving her to hide them against my shoulder.
"I don't guess this one," she said.
But I was sure she had.
"Don't?"
"Won't, then," she murmured into my coat lapel.
"It could not be yet, of course," said I. "But in three months——"
"You said sacrifice," she interrupted, and glanced up with a quick darting of the eyes.
"It would have to be very quiet—very, very quiet."
"It is no sacrifice to travel—in company."
And there we left it; but we knew well enough each other's hopes and desires.
To accomplish our purpose called for some little tact and effort, because the Emperor was for having Minna taken to Berlin when the Munich troubles had been arranged.
His prompt and drastic measures soon settled these, indeed.
An official announcement was made that the King had been suffering from an indisposition, but had happily recovered completely; and a couple of days later saw him back at the palace—but with a change in the executive which was calculated to work vastly beneficial results for the country. The Heckscher party was broken up, their influence destroyed, and their leaders dealt with secretly, but in some cases none the less severely. The question of the succession to the throne was settled upon a sound basis—one of the points being the renunciation by Minna of all the Gramberg claims.
And it was in settling this that the matter of her marriage was mooted and the Imperial consent gained to her becoming my wife. We succeeded, too, in getting the necessary interval fixed at three months.
The time passed very pleasantly. It was the sweet preface to a life-long romance.
As the outcome of the dash we had made for the throne I had one or two arrangements to complete, and in some respects the most difficult of these was in regard to the Corsican Praga. I could not retain him in my service, because of his association with the death of Minna's brother; while I hoped, too, that the time would never recur when I might have need of his clever, sharp, ready sword. I told him the case plainly, and he was too careless to make demur. He was going to marry and settle in Berlin, he assured me—his bride was to be the actress, Clara Weylin, who had made her peace with him in the score of her act of treachery—and he meant to be the greatest fencing master in Berlin, he declared. I gave him as a wedding present a considerable sum of money, and we parted with many assurances, characteristic and voluble, on his part that he would ever be devoted to me and my interests.
Steinitz I kept with me as secretary, and von Krugen was to remain as guardian of our interests at Gramberg. There was one commission we gave to the two just before our marriage—to go to Charmes and endeavor to bring the real von Fromberg to Munich to be present at the marriage.
Minna and I were together when they started, and she was looking more radiant and beautiful than ever in the anticipative joy of the marriage.
I gave them full instructions, and then, with a smile, I turned to von Krugen.
"Be more careful this time," I said, "and be sure you bring the right man."
"I could not have brought a better man last time, count," he replied.
And in the tone and earnestness spoke all the regard and esteem of a stanch and sincere friend.
"What do you say to that, Minna?" I asked as they drove off.
"A happier mistake was never made, but I don't want him to do it again. The only throne I care for is won now," and, reaching up on tiptoe, she put up her face to mine for a tribute of my loyalty, and I paid it willingly.
During the Spring and Summer of 1899 the New Amsterdam Book Company will publish a New Edition of Clark Russell's greatest story, "The Copsford Mystery," Grant Allan's "Under Sealed Orders," and some other popular novels by well known authors, which have heretofore been obtainable only in an expensive cloth binding. The titles of these will be announced later.
The paper and presswork will be up to the high standard maintained by the New Amsterdam Book Company, the covers attractive and unique, the price reasonable, and the selling qualities of the titles unquestioned.
They will start the series with
By Right of Sword
BY ARTHUR W. MARCHMONT
Fully Illustrated
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Ready early in February.