With the approach of the anniversary of his son’s death, the King grew increasingly restless. Each year he determined to put away this old grief, and each year, as his bodily weakness increased, he found it harder to do so. In vain he filled his weary days with the routine of his kingdom. In vain he told himself that there were worse things than to be cut off in one’s prime, that the tragedy of old age is a long tragedy, with but one end. To have out-lived all that one loves, he felt, was worse by far. To have driven, in one gloomy procession after another, to the old Capuchin church and there to have left, prayerfully, some dearly beloved body—that had been his life. His son had escaped that. But it was poor comfort to him.
On other years he had had the Crown Prince with him as much as possible on this dreary day of days. But the Crown Prince was exiled, in disgrace. Not even for the comfort of his small presence could stern discipline be relaxed.
Annunciata was not much comfort to him. They had always differed, more or less, the truth being, perhaps, that she was too much like the King ever to sympathize fully with him. Both were arrogant, determined, obstinate. And those qualities, which age was beginning to soften in the King, were now, in Annunciata, in full strength and blooming.
But there was more than fundamental similarity at fault. Against her father the Archduchess held her unhappy marriage.
“You did this,” she had said once, when an unusually flagrant escapade had come to the ears of the Palace. “You did it. I told you I hated him. I told you what he was, too. But you had some plan in mind. The plan never materialized, but the marriage did. And here I am.” She had turned on him then, not angrily, but with cold hostility. “I shall never forgive you for it,” she said.
She never had. She made her daily visit to her father, and, as he grew more feeble, she was moved now and then to pity for him. But it was pity, nothing more. The very hands with which she sometimes changed his pillows were coldly efficient. She had not kissed him in years.
And now, secretly willing that Hedwig should marry Karl, she was ready to annoy him by objecting to it.
On the day after her conversation with General Mettlich, she visited the King. It was afternoon. The King had spent the morning in his study, propped with pillows as was always the case now, working with a secretary. The secretary was gone when she entered, and he sat alone. Over his knees was spread one of the brilliant rugs that the peasants wove in winter evenings, when the snow beat about their small houses and the cattle were snug in barns. Above it his thin old face looked pinched and pale.
He had passed a trying day. Once having broken down the Chancellor’s barrier of silence, the King had insisted on full knowledge; with the result that he had sat, aghast, amid the ruins of his former complacency. The country and the smaller cities were comparatively quiet, so far as demonstrations against the Government were concerned. But unquestionably they plotted. As for the capital, it was a seething riot of sedition, from the reports. A copy of a newspaper, secretly printed and more secretly circulated, had brought fire to the King’s eyes. It lay on his knees as his daughter entered.
Annunciata touched her lips to his hand. Absorbed as he was in other matters, it struck him, as she bent, that Annunciata was no longer young, and that Time w as touching her with an unloving finger. He viewed her graying hair, her ugly clothes, with the detached eye of age. And he sighed.
“Well, father,” she said, looking down at him, “how do you feel?”
“Sit down,” he said. The question as to his health was too perfunctory to require reply. Besides, he anticipated trouble, and it was an age-long habit of his to meet it halfway.
Annunciata sat, with a jingling of chains. She chose a straight chair, and faced him, very erect.
“How old is Hedwig?” demanded the King
“Nineteen.”
“And Hilda?”
“Sixteen.”
He knew their ages quite well. It was merely the bugle before the attack.
“Hedwig is old enough to marry. Her grandmother was not nineteen when I married her.”
“It would be better,” said Annunciata, “to marry her while she is young, before she knows any better.”
“Any better than what?” inquired the King testily.
“Any better than to marry at all.”
The King eyed her. She was not, then, even attempting to hide her claws. But he was an old bird, and not to be caught in an argumentative cage.
“There are several possibilities for Hedwig,” he said. “I have gone into the matter pretty thoroughly. As you know, I have had this on my mind for some time. It is necessary to arrange things before I—go.”
The King, of course, was neither asking nor expecting sympathy from her, but mentally, and somewhat grimly, he compared her unmoved face with that of his old friend and Chancellor, only a few nights before.
“It is a regrettable fact,” he went on, “that I must leave, as I shall, a sadly troubled country. But for that—” he paused. But for that, he meant, he would go gladly. He needed rest. His spirit, still so alive, chafed daily more and more against its worn body. He believed in another life, did the old King. He wanted the hearty handclasp of his boy again. Even the wife who had married him against her will had grown close to him in later years. He needed her too. A little rest, then, and after that a new life, with those who had gone ahead.
“A sadly troubled country,” he repeated.
“All countries are troubled. We are no worse than others.”
“Perhaps not. But things are changing. The old order is changing. The spirit of unrest—I shall not live to see it. You may, Annunciata. But the day is coming when all thrones will totter. Like this one.”
Now at last he had pierced her armor. “Like this one!”
“That is what I said. Rouse yourself, Annunciata. Leave that little boudoir of yours, with its accursed clocks and its heat and its flub-dubbery, and see what is about you! Discontent! Revolution! We are hardly safe from day to day. Do you think that what happened nine years ago was a flash that died as it came? Nonsense. Read this!”
He held out the paper and she put on her pince-nez and read its headings, a trifle disdainfully. But the next moment she rose, and stood in front of him, almost as pale as he was. “You allow this sort of thing to be published?”
“No. But it is published.”
“And they dare to say things like this? Why, it—it is—”
“Exactly. It is, undoubtedly.” He was very calm. “I would not have troubled you with it. But the situation is bad. We are rather helpless.”
“Not—the army too?”
“What can we tell? These things spread like fires. Nothing may happen for years. On the other hand, tomorrow—!”
The Archduchess was terrified. She had known that there was disaffection about. She knew that in the last few years precautions at the Palace had been increased. Sentries were doubled. Men in the uniforms of lackeys, but doing no labor, were everywhere. But with time and safety she had felt secure.
“Of course,” the King resumed, “things are not as bad as that paper indicates. It is the voice of the few, rather than the many. Still, it is a voice.”
Annunciata looked more than her age now. She glanced around the room as though, already, she heard the mob at the doors.
“It is not safe to stay here, is it?” she asked. “We could go to the summer palace. That, at least, is isolated.”
“Too isolated,” said the King dryly. “And flight! The very spark, perhaps, to start a blaze. Besides,” he remind her, “I could not make the journey. If you would like to go, however, probably it can be arranged.”
But Annunciata was not minded to go without the Court. And she reflected, not unwisely, that if things were really as bad as they appeared, to isolate herself, helpless in the mountains, would be but to play into the enemy’s hand.
“To return to the matter of Hedwig’s marriage,” said the King. “I—”
“Marriage! When our very lives are threatened!”
“I would be greatly honored,” said the King, “if I might be permitted to finish what I was saying.”
She had the grace to flush.
“Under the circumstances,” the King resumed, “Hedwig’s marriage takes on great significance—great political significance.”
For a half-hour then, he talked to her. More than for years, he unbosomed himself. He had tried. His ministers had tried. Taxes had been lightened; the representation of the people increased, until; as he said, he was only nominally a ruler. But discontent remained. Some who had gone to America and returned with savings enough to set themselves up in business, had brought back with them the American idea.
He spoke without bitterness. They refused to allow for the difference between a new country and an old land, tilled for many generations. They forgot their struggles across the sea and brought back only stories of prosperity. Emigration had increased, and those who remained whispered of a new order, where each man was the government, and no man a king.
Annunciata listened to the end. She felt no pity for those who would better themselves by discontent and its product, revolt. She felt only resentment that her peace was being threatened, her position assailed. And in her resentment she included the King himself. He should have done better. These things, taken early enough, could have been arranged.
And something of this she did not hesitate to say. “Karnia is quiet enough,” she finished, a final thrust.
“Karnia is better off. A lowland, most of it, and fertile.” But a spot of color showed in his old cheeks. “I am glad you spoke of Karnia. Whatever plans we make, Karnia must be considered.”
“Why? Karnia does not consider us.”
He raised his hand. “You are wrong. Just now, Karnia is doing us the honor of asking an alliance with us. A matrimonial alliance.”
The Archduchess was hardly surprised, as one may believe. But she was not minded to yield too easily. The old resentment against her father flamed. Indifferent mother though she was, she made capital of a fear for Hedwig’s happiness. In a cold and quiet voice she reminded him of her own wretchedness, and of Karl’s reputation.
At last she succeeded in irritating the King—a more difficult thing now than in earlier times, but not so hard a matter at that. He listened quietly until she had finished, and then sent her away. When she had got part way to the door, however, he called her back. And since a king is a king, even if he is one’s father and very old, she came.
“Just one word more,” he said, in his thin, old, highbred voice. “Much of your unhappiness was of your own making. You, and you only, know how much. But nothing that you have said can change the situation. I am merely compelled to make the decision alone, and soon. I have not much time.”
So, after all, was the matter of the Duchess Hedwig’s marriage arranged, a composite outgrowth of expediency and obstinacy, of defiance and anger. And so was it hastened.
Irritation gave the King strength. That afternoon were summoned in haste the members of his Council: fat old Friese, young Marschall with the rat face, austere Bayerl with the white skin and burning eyes, and others. And to them all the King disclosed his royal will. There was some demur. Friese, who sweated with displeasure, ranted about old enemies and broken pledges. But, after all, the King’s will was dominant. Friese could but voice his protest and relapse into greasy silence.
The Chancellor sat silent during the conclave, silent, but intent. On each speaker he turned his eyes, and waited until at last Karl’s proposal, with its promises, was laid before them in full. Then, and only then, the Chancellor rose. His speech was short. He told them of what they all knew, their own insecurity. He spoke but a word of the Crown Prince, but that softly. And he drew for them a pictures of the future that set their hearts to glowing—a throne secure, a greater kingdom, freedom from the cost of war, a harbor by the sea.
And if, as he spoke, he saw not the rat eyes of Marschall, the greedy ones of some of the others, but instead a girl’s wide and pleading ones, he resolutely went on. Life was a sacrifice. Youth would pass, and love with it, but the country must survive.
The battle, which was no battle at all, was won. He had won. The country had won. The Crown Prince had won. Only Hedwig had lost. And only Mettlich knew just how she had lost.
When the Council, bowing deep, had gone away, the Chancellor remained standing by a window. He was feeling old and very tired. All that day, until the Council met with the King, he had sat in the little office on a back street, which was the headquarters of the secret service. All that day men had come and gone, bringing false clues which led nowhere. The earth had swallowed up Nikky Larisch.
“I hope you are satisfied,” said the King grimly, from behind him. “It was your arrangement.”
“It was my hope, sire,” replied the Chancellor dryly.
The necessity for work brought the King the strength to do it. Mettlich remained with him. Boxes were brought from vaults, unlocked and examined. Secretaries came and went. At eight o’clock a frugal dinner was spread in the study, and they ate it almost literally over state documents.
On and on, until midnight or thereabouts. Then they stopped. The thing was arranged. Nothing was left now but to carry the word to Karl.
Two things were necessary: Haste. The King, having determined it, would lose no time. And dignity. The granddaughter of the King must be offered with ceremony. No ordinary King’s messenger, then, but some dignitary of the Court.
To this emergency Mettlich rose like the doughty old warrior and statesman that he was. “If you are willing, sire,” he said, as he rose, “I will go myself.”
“When?”
“Since it must be done, the sooner the better. To-night, sire.”
The King smiled. “You were always impatient!” he commented. But he looked almost wistfully at the sturdy and competent old figure before him. Thus was he, not so long ago. Cold nights and spring storms had had no terrors for him. And something else he felt, although he said nothing—the stress of a situation which would send his Chancellor out at midnight, into a driving storm, to secure Karl’s support. Things must be bad indeed!
“To the capital?” he asked.
“Not so far. Karl is hunting. He is at Wedeling.” He went almost immediately, and the King summoned his valets, and was got to bed. But long after the automobile containing Mettlich and two secret agents was on the road toward the mountains, he tossed on his narrow bed. To what straits had they come indeed! He closed his eyes wearily. Something had gone out of his life. He did not realize at first what it was. When he did, he smiled his old grim smile in the darkness.
He had lost a foe. More than anything perhaps, he had dearly loved a foe.
The low gray car which carried the Chancellor was on its way through the mountains. It moved deliberately, for two reasons. First, the Chancellor was afraid of motors. He had a horseman’s hatred and fear of machines. Second, he was not of a mind to rouse King Karl from a night’s sleep, even to bring the hand of the Princess Hedwig. His intention was to put up at some inn in a village not far from the lodge and to reach Karl by messenger early in the morning, before the hunters left for the day.
Then, all being prepared duly and in order, Mettlich himself would arrive, and things would go forward with dignity and dispatch.
In the mean time he sat back among his furs and thought of many things. He had won a victory which was, after all, but a compromise. He had chosen the safe way, but it led over the body of a young girl, and he loathed it. Also, he thought of Nikky, and what might be. But the car was closed and comfortable. The motion soothed him. After a time he dropped asleep.
The valley of the Ar deepened. The cliff rose above them, a wall broken here and there by the offtake of narrow ravines, filled with forest trees. There was a pause while the chains on the rear wheels were supplemented by others in front, for there must be no danger of a skid. And another pause, where the road slanted perilously toward the brink of the chasm, and caution dictated that the Chancellor alight, and make a hundred feet or so of dangerous curve afoot.
It required diplomacy to get him out. But it was finally done, and his heavy figure, draped in its military cape, went on ahead, outlined by the lamps of the car behind him. The snow was hardly more than a coating, but wet and slippery. Mettlich stalked on, as one who would defy the elements, or anything else, to hinder him that night.
He was well around the curve, and the cliff was broken by a wedge of timber, when a curiously shaped object projected itself over the edge of the bank, and rolling down, lay almost at his feet. The lamps brought it into sharp relief—a man, gagged and tied, and rolled, cigar shaped, in an automobile robe.
The Chancellor turned, and called to his men. Then he bent over the bundle. The others ran up, and cut the bonds. What with cold and long inaction, and his recent drop over the bank, the man could not speak. One of the secret-service men had a flask, and held it to his lips. An amazing situation, indeed, increased by the discovery that under the robe he wore only his undergarments, with a soldier’s tunic wrapped around his shoulders. They carried him into the car, where he lay with head lolling back, and his swollen tongue protruding. Half dead he was, with cold and long anxiety. The brandy cleared his mind long before he could speak, and he saw by the uniforms that he was in the hands of the enemy. He turned sulkily silent then, convinced that he had escaped one death but to meet another. Twenty-four hours now he had faced eternity, and he was ready.
He preferred, however, to die fully clothed, and when, in response to his pointing up the bank and to his inarticulate mouthings, one of the secret police examined the bit of woodland with his pocket flash, he found a pair of trousers where Nikky had left them, neatly folded and hung over the branch of a tree. The brandy being supplemented by hot coffee from a patent bottle, the man revived further, made an effort, and sat up. His tongue was still swollen, but they made out what he said. He had been there since the night before. People had passed, a few peasants, a man with a cart, but he could not cry out, and he had hesitated to risk the plunge to the road. But at last he had made it. He was of Karnia, and a King’s messenger.
“I was coming back from the barrier,” he said thickly, “where I had carried dispatches to the officer in charge. On my return a man hailed me from the side of, the road, near where you found me. I thought that he desired to be taken on, and stopped my car. But he attacked me. He was armed and I was not. He knocked me senseless, and when I awakened I was above the road, among trees. I gave myself up when the snow commenced. Few pass this way. But I heard your car coming and made a desperate effort.”
“Then,” asked one of the agents, “these are not your clothes?”
“They are his; sir.”
The agent produced a flash-light and inspected the garments. Before the Chancellor’s eyes, button by button, strap on the sleeve, star on the cuff, came into view the uniform of a captain of his own regiment, the Grenadiers. Then one of his own men had done this infamous thing, one of his own officers, indeed.
“Go through the pockets,” he continued sternly.
Came, into view under the flash a pair of gloves, a box of matches, a silk handkerchief, a card-case. The agent said nothing, but passed a card to the Chancellor, who read it without comment.
There was silence in the car.
At last the Chancellor stirred. “This man—he took your car on?”
“Yes. And he has not returned. No other machine has passed.”
The secret-service men exchanged glances. There was more to this than appeared. Somewhere ahead, then, was Nikky Larisch, with a motor that did got belong to him, and wearing clothing which his victim described as a chauffeur’s coat of leather, breeches and puttees, and a fur greatcoat over all.
“Had the snow commenced when this happened?”
“Not then; sir. Shortly after.”
“Go out with the driver,” the Chancellor ordered one of his men, “and watch the road for the tracks of another car. Go slowly.”
So it was that, after an hour or so, they picked up Nikky’s trail, now twenty-four hours old but still clear, and followed it. The Chancellor was awake enough by this time, and bending forward. The man they had rescued slept heavily. As the road descended into the foothills, there were other tracks in the thin snow, and more than once they roused Nikky’s victim to pick out his own tire marks. He obeyed dully. When at last the trail turned from the highway toward the shooting-box at Wedeling, Mettlich fell back with something between a curse and a groan.
“The fool!” he muttered. “The young fool! It was madness.”
At last they drew up at an inn in the village on the royal preserve, and the Chancellor, looking rather gray, alighted. He directed that the man they had rescued be brought in. The Chancellor was not for losing him just yet. He took a room for him at the inn, and rather cavalierly locked him in it.
The dull-eyed landlord, yawning as he lighted the party upstairs with candles, apparently neither noticed nor cared that the three of them surrounded a fourth, and that the fourth looked both sullen and ill.
The car, with one of the secret-service men, Mettlich sent on to follow Nikky’s trail, and to report it to him. The other man was assigned to custody of the chauffeur. The Chancellor, more relieved than he would have acknowledged, reflected before a fire and over a glass of hot milk that he was rather unpropitiously bringing Karl a bride!
It was almost four in the morning when the police agent returned. The track he had followed apparently led into the grounds of Wedeling, but was there lost in many others. It did not, so far as he could discover, lead beyond the lodge gates.
The Chancellor sipped his hot milk and considered. Nikky Larisch a prisoner in Karl’s hands caused him less anxiety than it would have a month before. But what was behind it all?
The inn, grumbling at its broken rest, settled down to sleep again. The two secret-service agents took turns on chairs outside their prisoner’s door, glancing in occasionally to see that he still slept in his built-in bed.
At a little before five the man outside the prisoner’s door heard something inside the room. He glanced in. All was quiet. The prisoner slept heavily, genuine sleep. There was no mistaking it, the sleep of a man warm after long cold and exhaustion, weary after violent effort. The agent went out again, and locked the door behind him.
And as the door closed, a trap-door from the kitchen below opened softly under the sleeping man’s bed. With great caution came the landlord, head first, then shoulders. The space was cramped. He crawled up, like a snake out of a hole, and ducked behind the curtains of the bed. All was still quiet, save that the man outside struck a match and lighted a pipe.
Half an hour later, the Chancellor’s prisoner, still stiff and weak, was making his way toward the hunting-lodge.
Kaiser saw him first, and found the story unenlightening. Nor could Karl, roused by a terrified valet, make much more of it. When the man had gone, Karl lay back among his pillows and eyed his agent.
“So Mettlich is here!” he said. “A hasty journey. They must be eager.”
“They must be in trouble,” Kaiser observed dryly. And on that uncomplimentary comment King Karl slept, his face drawn into a wry smile.
But he received the Chancellor of Livonia cordially the next morning, going himself to the lodge doorstep to meet his visitor, and there shaking hands with him.
“I am greatly honored, Excellency,” he said, with his twisted smile.
“And I, sire.”
But the Chancellor watched him from under his shaggy brows. The messenger had escaped. By now Karl knew the story, knew of his midnight ride over the mountains; and the haste it indicated. He sheathed himself in dignity; did the Chancellor, held his head high and moved ponderously, as became one who came to talk of important matters, but not to ask a boon.
Karl himself led the way to his study, ignoring the chamberlain, and stood aside to let Mettlich enter. Then he followed and closed the door.
“It is a long time since you have honored Karnia with a visit,” Karl observed. “Will you sit down?”
Karl himself did not sit. He stood negligently beside the mantel, an arm stretched along it.
“Not since the battle of the Ar, sire,” replied the Chancellor dryly. He had headed an army of invasion then.
Karl smiled. “I hope that now your errand is more peaceful.”
For answer the Chancellor opened a portfolio he carried, and fumbled among its papers. But, having found the right one, he held it without opening it. “Before we come to that, sire, you have here, I believe, detained for some strange reason, a Captain Larisch, aide-de-camp”—he paused for effect—“to His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince of Livonia.”
Karl glanced up quickly. “Perhaps, if you will describe this—gentleman—”
“Nonsense,” said the Chancellor testily, “you have him. We have traced him here. Although by what authority you hold him I fail to understand. I am here to find out what you have done with him.” The paper trembled in the old man’s hand. He knew very well Karl’s quick anger, and he feared for Nikky feared horribly.
“Done with him?” echoed Karl. “If as Captain Larisch you refer to a madman who the night before last—”
“I do, sire. Madman is the word.”
Of course, it is not etiquette to interrupt a king. But kings were no novelty to the Chancellor. And quite often, for reasons of state, he had found interruptions necessary.
“He is a prisoner,” Karl said, in a new tone, stern enough now. “He assaulted and robbed one of my men. He stole certain documents. That he has not suffered for it already was because—well, because I believed that the unfortunate distrust between your country and mine, Excellency, was about to end.”
A threat that, undoubtedly. Let the arrangement between Karnia and Livonia be made, with Hedwig to seal the bargain, and Nikky was safe enough. But let Livonia demand too much, or not agree at all, and Nikky was lost. Thus did Nikky Larisch play his small part in the game of nations.
“Suppose,” said Karl unctuously, “that we discuss first another more important matter. I confess to a certain impatience.” He bowed slightly.
The Chancellor hesitated. Then he glanced thoughtfully at the paper in his hand.
Through a long luncheon, the two alone and even the servants dismissed, through a longer afternoon, negotiations went on. Mettlich fought hard on some points, only to meet defeat. Karl stood firm. The great fortresses on the border must hereafter contain only nominal garrisons. For the seaport strip he had almost doubled his price. The railroad must be completed within two years.
“Since I made my tentative proposal,” Karl said, “certain things have come to my ears which must be considered. A certain amount of unrest we all have. It is a part of the times we live in. But strange stories have reached us here, that your revolutionary party is again active, and threatening. This proposal was made to avoid wars, not to marry them. And civil war—” He shrugged his shoulders.
“You have said yourself, sire, that we all have a certain discontent.”
“The Princess Hedwig,” Karl said suddenly. “She has been told, of course?”
“Not officially. She knows, however.”
“How does she regard it?”
The Chancellor hesitated. “Like most young women, she would prefer making her own choice. But that,” he added hastily, “is but a whim. She is a lovable and amiable girl. When the time comes she will be willing enough.”
Karl stared out through one of the heavily curtained windows. He was not so sure. And the time had gone by when he would have enjoyed the taming of a girl. Now he wanted peace—was he not paying a price for it?—and children to inherit his well-managed kingdom. And perhaps—who knows?—a little love. His passionate young days were behind him, but he craved something that his unruly life had not brought him. Before him rose a vision of Hedwig her frank eyes, her color that rose and fell, her soft, round body.
“You have no reason to believe that she has looked elsewhere?”
“None, sire,” said the Chancellor stoutly.
By late afternoon all was arranged, papers signed and witnessed, and the two signatures affixed, the one small and cramped—a soldier’s hand; the other bold and flowing—the scrawl of a king. And Hedwig, save for the ceremony, was the bride of Karl of Karnia.
It was then that the Chancellor rose and stretched his legs. “And now, sire,” he said, “since we are friends and no longer enemies, you will, I know, release that mad boy of mine.”
“When do you start back?”
“Within an hour.”
“Before that time,” said Karl, “you shall have him, Chancellor.”
And with that Mettlich was forced to be content. He trusted Karl no more now than he ever had. But he made his adieus with no hint of trouble in his face.
Karl waited until the machine drove away. He had gone to the doorstep with the Chancellor, desiring to do him all possible honor. But Mettlich unaccustomed to democratic ways, disapproved of the proceeding, and was indeed extremely uncomfortable, and drew a sigh of relief when it was all over. He was of the old order which would keep its royalties on gilded thrones and, having isolated there in grandeur, have gone about the business of the kingdom without them.
Karl stood for a moment in the open air. It was done, then, and well done. It was hard to realize. He turned to the west, where for so long behind the mountains had lurked an enemy. A new era was opening; peace, disarmament, a quiet and prosperous land. He had spent his years of war and women. That was over.
From far away in the forest he heard the baying of the hounds. The crisp air filled his lungs. And even as he watched, a young doe, with rolling eyes, leaped across the drive. Karl watched it with coolly speculative eyes.
When he returned to the study the agent Kaiser was already there. In the democracy of the lodge men came and went almost at will. But Karl, big with plans for the future, would have been alone, and eyed the agent with disfavor.
“Well?” he demanded.
“We have been able to search the Chancellor’s rooms, sire,” the agent said, “for the articles mentioned last night—a card-case, gloves, and a silk handkerchief, belonging to the prisoner upstairs. He is Captain Larisch, aide-de-camp to the Crown Prince of Livonia.”
He had, expected Karl to be, impressed. But Karl only looked at him. “I know that,” he said coldly. “You are always just a little late with your information, Kaiser.”
Something like malice showed in the agent’s face. “Then you also know, sire, that it is this Captain Larisch with whom rumor couples the name of the Princess Hedwig.” He stepped back a pace or two at sight of Karl’s face. “You requested such information, sire.”
For answer, Karl pointed to the door.
For some time after he had dismissed the agent, Karl paced his library alone. Kaiser brought no unverified information. Therefore the thing was true. Therefore he had had his enemy in his hand, and now was pledged to let him go. For a time, then, Karl paid the penalty of many misdeeds. His triumph was ashes in his mouth.
What if this boy, infatuated with Hedwig, had hidden somewhere on the road Olga Loschek’s letter? What, then, if he recovered it and took it to Hedwig? What if— But at last he sent for the prisoner upstairs, and waited for him with both jealousy and fear in his eyes.
Five minutes later Nikky Larisch was ushered into the red study, and having bowed, an insolent young bow at that, stood and eyed the King.
“I have sent for you to release you,” said Karl. Nikky drew a long breath. “I am grateful, sire.”
“You have been interceded for by the Chancellor of Livonia, General Mettlich, who has just gone.”
Nikky bowed.
“Naturally, since you said nothing, of your identity, we could not know that you belonged to His Majesty’s household. Under the circumstances, it is a pleasure to give you your freedom.”
Nikky, bowed again.
Karl fixed him with cold eyes. “But before you take leave of us,” he said ironically, “I should like the true story of the night before last. Somehow, somewhere, a letter intended for me was exchanged for a blank paper. I want that letter.”
“I know no more than you, sire. It is not reasonable that I would have taken the risk I took for an envelope containing nothing.”
“For that matter,” said His Majesty, “there was nothing reasonable about anything you did!”
And now Karl played his trump card, played it with watchful eyes on Nikky’s face. He would see if report spoke the truth, if this blue-eyed boy was in love with Hedwig. He was a jealous man, this Karl of the cold eyes, jealous and passionate. Not as a king, then, watching a humble soldier of Livonia, but as man to man, he gazed at Nikky.
“For fear that loyalty keeps you silent, I may say to you that the old troubles between Karnia and Livonia are over.”
“I do not understand, sire.”
Karl hesitated. Then, with his twisted smile, he cast the rigid etiquette of such matters to the winds. “It is very simple,” he said. “There will be no more trouble between these two neighboring countries, because a marriage has to-day been arranged—a marriage between the Princess Hedwig, His Majesty’s granddaughter, and myself.”
For a moment Nikky Larisch closed his eyes.
The anniversary of the death of Prince Hubert dawned bright and sunny. The Place showed a thin covering of snow, which clung, wet and sticky, to the trees; but by nine o’clock most of it had disappeared, and Prince Ferdinand William Otto was informed that the excursion would take place.
Two motors took the party, by back streets, to the landing-stage. In the first were Annunciata, Hedwig, and the Countess, and at the last moment Otto had salvaged Miss Braithwaite from the second car, and begged a place for her with him. A police agent sat beside the chauffeur. Also another car, just ahead, contained other agents, by Mettlich’s order before his departure—a plain black motor, without the royal arms.
In the second machine followed a part of the suite, Hedwig’s lady in waiting, two gentlemen of the Court, in parade dress, and Father Gregory, come from his monastery at Etzel to visit his old friend, the King.
At the landing-stage a small crowd had gathered on seeing the red carpet laid and the gilt ropes put up, which indicated a royal visit. A small girl, with a hastily secured bouquet in her hot hands, stood nervously waiting. In deference to the anniversary, the flowers were tied with a black ribbon!
Annunciata grumbled when she saw the crowd, and the occupants of the first car looked them over carefully. It remained for Hedwig to spy the black ribbon. In the confusion, she slipped over to the little girl, who went quite white with excitement. “They are lovely,” Hedwig whispered, “but please take off the black ribbon.” The child eyed her anxiously. “It will come to pieces, Highness.”
“Take the ribbon from your hair. It will be beautiful.”
Which was done! But, as was not unnatural, the child forgot her speech, and merely thrust the bouquet, tied with a large pink bow, into the hands of Prince Ferdinand William Otto.
“Here,” she said. It was, perhaps, the briefest, and therefore the most agreeable presentation speech the Crown Prince had ever heard.
Red carpet and gold ropes and white gloves these last on the waiting officers—made the scene rather gay. The spring sun shone on the gleaming river, on the white launch with its red velvet cushions, on the deck chairs, its striped awnings and glittering brass, on the Crown Prince, in uniform, on the bouquet and the ribbon. But somewhere, back of the quay, a band struck up a funeral march, and a beggar, sitting in the sun, put his hand to his ear.
“Of course,” he said, to no one in particular. “It is the day. I had forgotten.”
The quay receded, red carpet and all. Only the blare of the band followed them, and with the persistence of sound over water, followed them for some time. The Crown Prince put down the bouquet, and proceeded to stand near the steersman.
“When I am grown up,” he observed to that embarrassed sailor, “I hope I shall be able to steer a boat.”
The steersman looked about cautiously. The royal guests were settling themselves in chairs; with rugs over their knees. “It is very easy, Your Royal Highness,” he said. “See, a turn like this, and what happens? And the other way the same.”
Followed a five minutes during which the white launch went on a strange and devious course, and the Crown Prince grew quite hot and at least two inches taller. It was, of course, the Archduchess who discovered what was happening. She was very disagreeable about it.
The Archduchess was very disagreeable about everything that day. She was afraid to stay in the Palace, and afraid to leave it. And just when she had begun to feel calm, and the sun and fresh air were getting in their work, that wretched funeral band had brought back everything she was trying to forget.
The Countess was very gay. She said brilliant, rather heartless things that set the group to laughing, and in the intervals she eyed Hedwig with narrowed eyes and hate in her heart. Hedwig herself was very quiet. The bouquet had contained lilies-of-the-valley, for one thing.
Miss Braithwaite knitted, and watched that the Crown Prince kept his white gloves clean.
Just before they left the Palace the Archduchesss had had a moment of weakening, but the Countess had laughed away her fears.
“I really think I shall not go, after all,” Annunciata had said nervously. “There are reasons.”
The Countess had smiled mockingly. “Reasons!” she said. “I know that many things are being said. But I also know that General Mettlich is an alarmist;” purred the Countess. “And that the King is old and ill, and sees through gray glasses.”
So the Archduchess had submitted to having a plumed and inappropriate hat set high on her head, regardless of the fashion, and had pinned on two watches and gone.
It was Hedwig who showed the most depression on the trip, after all. Early that morning she had attended mass in the royal chapel. All the household had been there, and the King had been wheeled in, and had sat in his box, high in the wall, the door of which opened from his private suite.
Looking up, Hedwig had seen his gray old face set and rigid. The Court had worn black, and the chapel was draped in crepe. She had fallen on her knees and had tried dutifully to pray for the dead Hubert. But her whole soul was crying out for help for herself.
So now she sat very quiet, and wondered about things.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto sat by the rail and watched the green banks flying by. In one place a group of children were sailing a tiny boat from the bank. It was only a plank, with a crazy cotton sail. They shoved it off and watched while the current seized it and carried it along. Then they cheered, and called good-bye to it.
The Crown Prince leaned over the rail, and when the current caught it, he cheered too, and waved his cap. He was reproved, of course, and some officious person insisted on tucking the rug around his royal legs. But when no one was looking, he broke a flower from the bouquet and flung it overboard. He pretended that it was a boat, and was going down to Karnia, filled with soldiers ready to fight.
But the thought of soldiers brought Nikky to his mind. His face clouded. “It’s very strange about Nikky,” he said. “He is away somewhere. I wish he had sent word he was going.”
Hedwig looked out over the river.
The Archduchess glanced at Miss Braithwaite. “There is no news?” she asked, in an undertone.
“None,” said Miss Braithwaite.
A sudden suspicion rose in Hedwig’s mind, and made her turn pale. What if they had sent him away? Perhaps they feared him enough for that! If that were true, she would never know. She knew the ways of the Palace well enough for that. In a sort of terror she glanced around the group, so comfortably disposed. Her mother was looking out, with her cool, impassive gaze. Miss Braithwaite knitted. The Countess, however, met her eyes, and there was something strange in them: triumph and a bit of terror, too, had she but read them. For the Countess had put in her plea for a holiday and had been refused.
The launch drew up near the fort, and the Crown Prince’s salute of a certain number of guns was fired. The garrison was drawn up in line, and looked newly shaved and very, very neat. And the officers came out and stood on the usual red carpet, and bowed deeply, after which they saluted the Crown Prince and he saluted them. Then the Colonel in charge shook hands all round, and the band played. It was all very ceremonious and took a lot of tine.
The new fortress faced the highroad some five miles from the Karnian border. It stood on a bluff over the river, and was, as the Crown Prince decided, not so unlike the desk, after all, except that it had a moat around it.
Hedwig and the Countess went with the party around the fortifications. The Archduchess and Miss Braithwaite had sought a fire. Only the Countess, however, seemed really interested. Hedwig seemed more intent on the distant line of the border than on anything else. She stood on a rampart and stared out at it, looking very sad. Even the drill—when at a word all the great guns rose and peeped over the edge at the valley below, and then dropped back again as if they had seen enough—even this failed to rouse her.
“I wish you would listen, Hedwig,” said the Crown Prince, almost fretfully. “It’s so interesting. The enemy’s soldiers would come up the river in boats, and along that road on foot. And then we would raise the guns and shoot at them. And the guns would drop back again, before the enemy had time to aim at them.”
But Hedwig’s interest was so evidently assumed that he turned to the Countess. The Countess professed smiling terror, and stood a little way back from the guns, looking on. But Prince Ferdinand William Otto at last coaxed her to the top of the emplacement.
“There’s a fine view up there,” he urged. “And the guns won’t hurt you. There’s nothing in them.”
To get up it was necessary to climb an iron ladder. Hedwig was already there. About a dozen young officers had helped her up, and ruined as many pairs of white gloves, although Hedwig could climb like a cat, and really needed no help at all.
“You go up,” said the Crown Prince eagerly. “I’ll hold your bag, so you can climb.”
He caught her handbag from her, and instantly something snapped in it. The Countess was climbing up the ladder. Rather dismayed, Prince Ferdinand William Otto surveyed the bag. Something had broken, he feared. And in another moment he saw what it was. The little watch which was set in one side of it had slipped away, leaving a round black hole. His heart beat a trifle faster.
“I’m awfully worried,” he called up to her, as he climbed. “I’m afraid I’ve broken your bag. Something clicked, and the watch is gone. It is not on the ground.”
It was well for the Countess that the Colonel was talking to Hedwig. Well for her, too, that the other officers were standing behind with their eyes worshipfully on the Princess. The Countess turned gray-white.
“Don’t worry, Highness,” she said, with stiff lips, “The watch falls back sometimes. I must have it repaired.”
But long after the tour of the ramparts was over, after ammunition-rooms had been visited, with their long lines of waiting shells, after the switchboard which controlled the river mines had been inspected and explained, she was still trembling.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto, looking at the bag later on, saw the watch in place and drew a long breath of relief.