“And if you have any message of farewell to the Queen I shall be delighted to deliver it,” added the Princess, who was burning to revenge herself on Cyril for his words to her.
“Ottilie!” said her husband warningly, but Cyril smiled.
“You are too good, madame, but I cannot consent to place myself under a further obligation to you. You must remember that there is already a heavy account between us. I will do my best to repay your Royal Highness promptly; rely upon that.”
He bowed and went out, with a shrill laugh from the Princess, perhaps a little forced, ringing in his ears, and returned to his own house as he had come, to find Paschics watching for him, eager to announce, with much mystery, that there was a lady waiting to see him in his study. For a moment Cyril was startled, but only for a moment. The weakness passed, and he entered the room, to find the lady, who was dressed in black and wore a thick veil, standing by the window.
“Have you not done me harm enough yet?” he asked, never doubting who it was; but the lady raised her veil, and displayed, not the features of Ernestine, but the pale plain face of Anna Mirkovics.
“I am the bearer of a message from her Majesty to you, Count,” she said coldly, giving him a note. “You were right in supposing that she would wish to come here in person, but by representing the difficulty she would experience in leaving the Palace unobserved, I induced her to allow me to be her messenger.”
She turned away again to the window, and Cyril tore open the envelope, and drew out the blotted and tear-stained missive which it contained.
“Cyril, my Beloved” (Ernestine had written),—“You cannot intend to leave me like this. They tell me that you are quitting Thracia in disgrace—but I know that is only my cousin’s malevolence—take me with you. Let me share your trouble—I will not say disgrace, for that cannot attach to your name. Send me one word by Anna, and I will come. Do not think that I shall repent taking the step. You know me well enough to be sure that neither poverty nor scorn would trouble me if I was with you. But I know you are saying, as you did the other day, ‘The choice was in your own hands, and you preferred your son to me.’ Dearest, how could I build our happiness on the ruins of my child’s? You would not wish me to do so; you were trying me, were you not? I have never opposed you in anything but this, but how could I deprive Michael of the joy I desired for myself? And if you think I deserve punishment for following my conscience in this respect, I have received it. Three days and nights of misery, Cyril! Even you would pity me if you saw me now—they tell me I am mad, merely because I love you—or will you not forgive me yet? But if I must go on suffering in this way, at least do not leave me without a word. Let me see you once more, just to say good-bye. I will not trouble you with entreaties, I will only look at you for the last time. Let me have a kind look to remember, and not the dreadful cold eyes that met mine the other day. Remember that day in the burning house, that mountain-path in the snow. You loved me then. Have you the heart to forsake me without one kind word? But no, you are welcome to overwhelm me with reproaches, if only you will let me see you. You know how I love you.—Your broken-hearted
Ernestine.”
“I fear, mademoiselle,” said Cyril to the messenger, crumpling the note in his hand, “that her Majesty forgets the circumstances of the case. It would scarcely improve my position in Thracia at the present moment if I invited the Queen to run away with me. Not,” he dropped for a moment the hard tone in which he had spoken, and Anna Mirkovics looked up with sudden hope, “that I do not consider the scandal involved would inflict a very salutary punishment on King Michael and his future relatives, but one really must consider one’s own personal feelings a little in such a matter.”
“Then what answer”—the maid of honour’s voice was almost choked with indignation—“am I to take to her Majesty?”
“I think it would be best to tell her that there is no answer. To say that I decline the honour might sound discourteous.”
“But you will see her to say good-bye? You must.”
“Pardon me; such a step would indicate a willingness to do more, and I have no intention of doing anything.”
“Yes, if you saw her, you must yield. Oh, Count, have pity upon her! We can do nothing to comfort her, although our hearts are broken by the sight of her sufferings. She sits in the same place from morning till night, and neither weeps nor speaks. The Princess and the King have rallied her, upbraided her, threatened to give out that she has become insane, but nothing could rouse her until Baroness von Hilfenstein happened to hear that you had been released and were about to leave Thracia, and then she determined to make a last effort to communicate with you. You cannot refuse this one small favour. I will smuggle you into the Palace as a friend of my own—what does it signify what they say of me, if I can help to comfort her?—and when you see her, you must give way.”
“I think not, mademoiselle. I am not a sentimentalist, as you know, and I cannot flatter myself that the meeting would afford any comfort to her Majesty. It is not as though things were as they used to be.”
“You mean that you do not now love her? But if that is the case, you have never loved her. Oh, assure me of that, let me tell her from yourself that you sought her only for the help she could give to your political designs, that you awoke her love for you merely that you might climb to power by its means, and that it was only natural you should throw off the mask when she refused to serve your purpose any longer. It will wound her terribly, but her pride will help her to tear you from her heart. You need not try to keep up the mockery any longer, surely?”
“I should be delighted to meet your wishes, mademoiselle, but unfortunately I am not quite quixotic enough to blacken my own character so gratuitously as you propose. I did love her Majesty at one time—in fact, until three days ago. I will not say that at any time I should have been willing to make a fool of myself to please her, as some men would, but once, at any rate, I was prepared to die for her. Is it beyond your power to imagine an experience by which love should be altogether burnt out and destroyed? That was my case when, thanks to the Queen, I saw my policy overthrown, the labours of twenty years undone, and myself held up to the ridicule of Europe.”
“But if you love her, you can forgive even that. She was wrong, no doubt, but has she not suffered for it? Is she not willing to share with you the consequences of her fault, as the only reparation she can make? You say you loved her——”
“Pardon me; I fear I have not made my meaning clear. I did once love her Majesty, but—I do so no longer.”
“You really loved her? I hope you did; I am glad if you did. You think your love is dead; but it will come to life again to torment you, and then, perhaps—oh, I trust it will be so!—you will know something of the pain you are making her suffer, when you feel that you would give anything to see her and to touch her hand again, and you cannot approach her. If the time ever came for her to treat you as you are treating her now, I could die happy.”
“May I suggest, mademoiselle, that I feel a slight delicacy in listening to these accounts of her Majesty’s feelings—under the circumstances?”
“You are a cruel, heartless man,” said Anna Mirkovics despairingly, “and I hope God will punish you as you deserve!”
“I fear that you must rate my deserts very low, mademoiselle, if you mean to imply that the punishment I merit is even worse than all that has already happened to me.”
He looked round with a faint smile at the dismantled room and the untidy packet of papers, and Anna Mirkovics realised dimly that whatever his punishment was to be in the future, it had begun in the present.
About a week later, the party gathered for afternoon tea in the great hall at Llandiarmid Castle were startled by the entrance of a visitor, who opened the front door and walked in unannounced.
“Uncle Cyril!” cried Usk.
“Cyril, old man!” exclaimed his father. “My dear fellow, why didn’t you telegraph, and let us send the carriage for you?”
“I didn’t care to make a fuss. No, Caerleon, I am not quite a fool. I came here in a fly, not plodding through the mud. Nadia, you look younger than your daughter. Phil, do you still consider it a compliment to be told you are more like your father than ever? Mr Mansfield, how are you? I have seen you and Usk so recently that I really can’t perceive any changes at the moment that ought to be remarked upon. Caerleon, do sit down, old man, and don’t grip my shoulder like that. I assure you that I am flesh and blood, and not my own ghost.”
“You have cut Thracia for good and all?” asked Caerleon, sitting down opposite his brother, but avoiding looking at him.
“I suppose so—or rather, it has cut me. I have refused their pension, at any rate.”
“Right! I’m delighted to hear it.”
“No more questions any one wants to ask, are there? You know that old Drakovics has returned to nominal power, with Vassili as an under-study of all work?”
“Did all your men go over to him?”
“Most did; but Georgeivics and old Mirkovics resigned. I pointed out to them that it was foolish; but they would do it.”
“And they were the only ones that remained faithful?”
“My dear Caerleon, pray don’t be so tragic. A man doesn’t want further depressing when he has come to such glorious smash already as I have. No, Paschics is persistently and stupidly determined to follow my fallen fortunes. I left him in London, to delude the interviewers. And Dietrich is also in my train, more taciturn than ever now that his belief in my star has been so rudely shattered. Oh, and by the bye, there is an old Jew named Goldberg, whom you may remember hearing of. When I was passing through Vienna, he came and played the Good Samaritan. There is a sum of two million florins about which he and I had dealings together once, and he informs me that when it was returned to him he invested it at once in my name, and that it is at my service now. I daresay I shall go and stay with him a little later on. Those are all that I have found faithful among the faithless, I believe.”
“But the Queen, Uncle Cyril?” asked Usk. “You said that she always supported you. Did she change sides, or has she really gone mad? The papers hint at all kinds of things.”
Cyril looked round upon the group with a rather strained smile. “I don’t want to sound melodramatic,” he said, “but I should feel deeply obliged if you would mention the Queen’s name to me as little as possible. Her Majesty chose suddenly to forsake my advice, and adopt that of my bitterest enemy, and that sort of thing puts a man a little out of conceit with her.”
“I can’t stand this any longer,” said Caerleon hoarsely. “This place is too hot, or draughty, or something. For goodness’ sake, Cyril, come out on the terrace and have a smoke.”
“Anything for a quiet life!” said Cyril, acquiescing readily.
“Oh, mother!” cried Philippa, as the door closed behind her father and uncle, “it was worse than that, I’m sure. He loved her, and she has played him false. Didn’t you see his face?”
“He is awfully changed since we saw him less than a month ago,” said Usk.
“I should scarcely have known him to be the same man,” Mansfield agreed.
“Oh, how could she? how could she?” cried Philippa. “To draw him on, and win his love, and then throw him over—a splendid man like Uncle Cyril! The wicked woman, I hate her! It is not a thing to be cried over”—and she dashed away an indignant tear as she spoke—“I should like to kill her! She has taken all the best years of his life, and left him
‘Exceeding comfortless, and worn, and old,
For a dream’s sake.’”
“Don’t get into the habit of quoting poetry when you are excited, Phil,” said her uncle’s voice at the open window. He had been passing, and had overheard the last words. “It is very hard to break oneself off it, and it has got me into trouble more than once. People think it sounds stagey, you know.”
“I suppose,” pursued Philippa, in a lower tone, but still with boundless indignation, “that she thought he was not grand enough for her to marry! And so she used him as long as she wanted his help, and then cast him aside. As if she ought not to have been glad of the chance of giving up everything for him because she loved him—if she did!”
“There may be excuses for her of which we know nothing,” said Lady Caerleon, observing that Mansfield was hanging on Philippa’s words in rapt admiration, as much for the speaker as for the sentiments she expressed. “She may even think she is acting rightly. It is quite possible,” with a sigh, “to do wrong from the best motives.”
“No, mother, I am sure it was just wicked, horrible pride. She thought only of herself, and not a bit of him, and calmly broke his heart because he did not happen to be born a King.”
And there was no one to tell her that it was Cyril, and not Ernestine, who had found place and power too much to give up for love.
THE END.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES.
Sydney C. Grier was the pseudonym of Hilda Caroline Gregg.
This book is part of the author’s “Balkan Series.” The full series, in order, being:
A Crowned Queen
The Kings of the East
The Prince of the Captivity
Alterations to the text:
[Title Page]
Add brief note indicating this novel’s position in the series. See above.
[Chapter I]
Change “in that georgeous company” to gorgeous.
“With the certainity that neither principal” to certainty.
[Chapter II]
“understand that his pore pa is struck” to poor.
[Chapter IV]
“her unaccustomed graciousnesness was merely” to graciousness.
“representing St Gabriel of Tartarjé” to Tatarjé.
[Chapter V]
“Come, count, I wish to go to the” to Count.
[Chapter IX]
“striking his mother ... with his little first” to fist.
“because she is—well, angry himself” to herself.
[Chapter XVI]
“The loyalty of my familty is not dependent” to family.
[Chapter XX]
“I’m afraid I had forgotton” to forgotten.
[Chapter XXI]
“Ernestine placed himself between them” to herself.
“she owed it to himself that it was” to herself.
[Chapter XXII]
“like his Majesty’s contrairy ways” to contrary.
[Chapter XXV]
“saw a way out of the diffculty” to difficulty.
[End of Text]