A prince of lovers

A MAN of Count Irromar’s abnormal cunning and insight had little difficulty in guessing something very near the truth about his captives. They were ladies of rank, Ludovic had told him, and he could quite believe it. Indeed the information jumped with a shrewd suspicion already in his head, which, however, naturally stopped far short of the real truth. Tracing in his mind the probabilities of the affair, he constructed an elopement, a pursuing party, a sudden uniting of opposite interests, resulting in the parley he had held from the window. It all fitted in with absolute exactness; the circumstantial plausibility was so great that he decided he could accept and act upon supposition as certainty. With this intent he next evening presented himself once more before Ruperta. A certain urgent business which claimed him had prevented an earlier interview.

“It is as well that I have kept you safe under my roof, gracious Fräulein,” he began, with almost apologetic deference. “You have thereby escaped, if not danger, at least a disagreeable encounter.”

Ruperta’s mood had grown, during these long hours, to one of proud resentment. Fear, for herself at least, she did not know. The great effect the situation had upon her was to fill her with an almost maddening, because futile, indignation. In her treatment at the Count’s hands she saw nothing but a shameful outrage; the actual danger in which she stood scarcely occurred to her. Her fearlessness left her self-reliant, and a self-reliant woman is to herself indeed a tower of strength. As for her captor and host, she told herself that she saw through his deceit, and as for his brute strength, why—she was a woman. It was scarcely conceivable, at any rate in her experience, that this man could resort to any brutality in order to coerce her.

She replied to him, with disdainful resentment, “What may that be, Count?”

Her tone suggested that she was prepared to disbelieve whatever he might be going to tell her; but he ignored his unpromising reception.

“Now the strange desertion of Lieutenant von Bertheim and Captain von Ompertz may be accounted for.”

“Yes?” Her eyes were fixed on him as though to detect and shrivel up the coming falsehood. But Karl Irromar was no ordinary man, no ordinary wrong-doer, even, and the effect was otherwise.

“Captain Rollmar—have I the name aright?—Captain Rollmar has been here.”

At the name her face had brightened expectantly for an instant, then clouded again. She would give him no lead; he must tell his story without suggestion from her, and she could judge of its truth or falsehood.

“Indeed?” Only intense repression of her anxiety could have enabled her to pronounce the word so coldly.

“Yes. He came with no friendly intent, that was certain, and I judged it advisable to keep you under my protection and to refuse him entrance to my house.”

“The Lieutenant and Captain Ompertz?” She could not resist the question which forced itself to her lips.

“They had evidently fallen in with Captain Rollmar and his party,” he replied darkly. “The result of their meeting, you, gracious lady, may best imagine.”

In truth she did not know what to imagine, what to believe. A chill of despairing loneliness seemed to sweep over her soul. Only for a moment, and then she called up her courage again.

“I am thankful,” he said, insistently, “that I deemed it wise to keep you here under my protection.”

His assumption of patronage seemed to provoke her. “Indeed, Count,” she returned, “your intention may have been kind, but it is not so certain that I stood in need of protection—from more than that night’s storm.”

“I think,” he replied, insinuatingly, “that you would not have cared to meet this Captain Rollmar.”

“You might,” she rejoined, with spirit, “have given me the chance, instead of keeping me ignorant of his presence.”

The Count laughed. “The captain has not gone far yet. Shall I send for him?”

The steely blue eyes were on her, lighted with masterful amusement. How she loathed the indignity she could not resent.

“If you are serious you may send for him,” she answered quietly.

For a moment he stood looking at her in silence, in a pause of calculation.

“I shall not send for this Captain Rollmar,” he said at length, speaking with marked deliberation, “for two reasons.”

For an instant her eyes were raised to his face; that was all the invitation he received to state them.

“One,” he proceeded, “is that I would not for the world subject you to the chance or shadow of annoyance. And I have every reason to believe that would be the outcome of my delivering you up to this rough fellow who is pursuing you, and who may have already wreaked his vengeance on your—your escort.”

She made a slight movement, perhaps the checking of a shiver: that was the only break in her impassivity.

“The other,” his tone had fallen to an unlooked-for softness now, and his manner was almost a caress: “the other is—forgive me, gracious lady—that I could not bear to give you up to another man’s keeping.” The speech brought no sign of acknowledgment from her. He drew a step closer. “You may understand, Fräulein, and pardon?” he added earnestly.

Now she looked him full in the face and there seemed nothing in her eyes but scorn. “I can at least understand,” she replied.

“And not forgive?”

“Forgive!” she echoed, with imperious yet half-amused disdain, “that is scarcely a word to be used between us, Count. You pay but a bad compliment to your hospitality if, after so short an acquaintance, you find that necessary.”

“I trust it may not be,” he rejoined. “But, surely, where you are concerned, Fräulein, the matter of mere time can hardly influence the warmth of the feelings, and therefore of the expressions, of those who have the privilege of your society.”

His meaning, though plain enough, was guardedly couched, more so than could manifestly have been usual in one whose manner was wont to be bluff and direct; but, in truth the outward coldness of her personality repulsed him, in spite of the mad desire to break through that icy rampart.

“I am your guest, Count,” she returned, with a quiet, confident dignity. “As such I may claim at least respect from you.”

The impatience of one who had known little thwarting got the better of his tact. “My one desire in the world,” he declared, with a touch of passion, “is that you shall be much more to me than my guest.”

She drew back proudly from his importunity. “And my desire is,” she retorted, “to cease to be the guest of one who abuses the position of a host.”

They were at issue now; the fencing must become a fight in earnest.

“If you were aware of my power,” Irromar said, “you would know that I do not abuse, or even use it, except to lay it at your feet.”

The eyes were fixed on her, holding her there like moral fangs. To her they seemed more fierce, more fearful even than Rollmar’s, not so much in the will they showed, as in the possibilities of evil they suggested. But, strange as this salient malevolence was to her, her innate courage met the crisis, and she told herself her spirit should not be conquered.

“It does not appear so,” she replied. “Your word and actions do not agree. Else why am I kept here a prisoner?”

He made a gesture of protest. “You are mistaken,” he assured her plausibly. “I have but taken upon myself to keep you here out of the way of the danger which I see, though you may not, is threatening you. That this necessity brings a joy to me is a fact which I dare to hope may not be indifferent to you.”

“Under the circumstances,” she replied steadily, “it can scarcely be of great moment to me.”

“It may be,” he flamed out, “it may be—of the greatest moment.”

It was a covert threat, but she ignored it. “May I ask,” she said, with a calmness in contrast to his outburst, “as I appear to be in your power”—the words were hateful to her, but not to be shirked—“what your purpose is with regard to my detention here?”

“I had hoped,” he answered, with a soreness which he could not altogether disguise, “that the question, or at least its tone, might have been unnecessary.” Then his passion began to rise. “Let me tell you, madam, without further cloaked speeches, that you seek to repulse, to defy—for my reception at your hands points to nothing else—a man whose will is law to himself and to those who cross his path. No one yet, from the late King Josef downwards, has ever successfully defied or resisted my will. That its harsh expression is seldom heard, or even felt, arises from the fact that I am a man of good heart and gentle birth. That, though I live a strenuous life, I hate brutality and love refinement. Will you not take the trouble to look beneath the surface and see—chut! I loathe vanity, but you wilfully shut your eyes to every object but an unworthy one, and compel me to show you myself, a man unlike, certainly, any other man you ever met, you ever could know, a man of a power second to no other one man’s in Europe, a man who is noble in deed, he claims, as in name, and, above all a man who asks nothing better, could better be, than to lay his power, his heart, his very life at your feet, asking you to return, even in a small measure, the devoted all-conquering love with which you have inspired him.”

With every phrase the passion of his pleading had risen, till it touched the very height of insistent fervour. As the climax was reached he put out his arms, but she avoided him with a quick, decisive movement. “No, no!” she exclaimed, in mingled dislike and indignation.

“Be sensible,” he entreated. “Why will you not hear me?”

If the brute in his nature was, from an ominous light in his eyes, on the point of asserting itself, the temper in Ruperta’s was now fairly roused.

“Hear you!” she echoed, her indignation flashing out, “I have heard—from you—of your nobility of character, and you now seem bent upon giving me an illustration of it.”

“If you make me beside myself with love and your coldness,” he urged.

“Love?” she repeated scornfully. Then, regarding her persecutor with abhorrent eyes, his power of will and action, his unscrupulousness and cunning of purpose and, consequently, her own helplessness came home to her. But this acute realization of her desperate position brought with it in a flash the idea of an expedient. To oppose her courage to this man’s strength was hopeless, but, in her extremity, she remembered her trick of temporizing with Udo Rollmar. Wit might succeed where mere spirit failed. True, her former experiment had not been altogether successful, it had led to a passage which was unpleasant enough, but it had at least shown her, what she had sometimes heard, that man is most gullible when his heart or his passion is touched. This man’s mind was, as it were, a very citadel of cunning behind the outer fortification of his brute strength; but Udo Rollmar was astute, too, in an objectionable degree, and she had, at any rate for the moment, fooled him. The idea of stooping to duplicity was to a girl of Ruperta’s proud spirit utterly repugnant; but if ever subterfuge was justifiable it was so in her case, in this crisis as she stood there helpless, desperate, at the mercy of a man who clearly knew none where his own selfish will was concerned.

“You talk of love,” she said, with a little softening of the scorn in her eyes. “What can you expect me to understand by that?”

“Nothing,” he answered readily, and perhaps, for the moment, sincerely, “but what is due to your position, to your honour and mine.”

She laughed with a touch of satire that was yet provocatively fascinating. “One might easily doubt your honourable intentions, Count Irromar, from the manner of your wooing.”

Perhaps the success, which was more familiar to him than failure, gave him the cue that he was gaining ground, and shut his eyes to the idea that this royally masterful girl could yoke her pride with deceit.

“I would I might dare hope,” he said, caressingly confident, “that in your eyes impetuosity may be my greatest fault.”

“Impetuosity,” she said, “means lack of consideration, of respect.”

“No, upon my soul,” he protested. “Will you not do me justice and think of my temptation; how short the time given me to speak my heart may be? It is that which has driven me to the impetuosity which has offended you.”

“You bring me,” she rejoined, with what seemed a lingering touch of resentment, “news of my friends’ fate, and, with the same breath, make love to me. Is that delicate consideration, Count? Where is your noble breeding?”

“I have erred,” he replied, with an affectation of humility. “It was my heart that got the better of my head. All I have to pray for now is that you will let me earn your forgiveness.”

She kept her eyes averted and made no reply, and he judged it best to leave the delicate question for the moment where it was.

“Tell me,” he continued, with a change of tone, “if the question be not offensive, this Lieutenant von Bertheim? He was your lover?”

She made a slight inclination of assent.

“Ah! I think I can read the story. Yes; romance is a fine illusion, but power is finer, and it is real. My dearest hope is that you will soon share mine.”

Still she was silent, for silence was safest then. He, inwardly exultant, accepted such favourable sign as that silence gave, and, where importunity was manifestly distasteful, forebore to follow up so quick upon his advantage.

“And this Captain Rollmar?” he asked, with a knowing curiosity, “He was the Lieutenant’s rival, eh?”

“I suppose so.”

“And not a desirable one, that is manifest.”

“Hardly, perhaps.”

“The son of a powerful man.”

“The Chancellor Rollmar; yes.”

“The story is plain. You may correct me if I have it wrongly. The Rollmar needs but to ask and have. To avoid the indignity of such a disposal, to say nothing of a, perhaps natural, preference, you take to flight with a lover of your own choosing. Your friend goes with you, to play propriety, no doubt.”

Ruperta loathed the half-veiled insolence of his examination, but, at least, it was gaining time and keeping him from a more dangerous subject.

“It was only natural,” she said, “that I should have a friend of my own sex with me.”

“Quite natural,” he smiled. “And the big captain? Ah, of course, he played coachman. The Lieutenant might have chosen a lighter Jehu from among his trusty friends. Or perhaps there was a tenderness between him and Fräulein Minna? It is scarcely surprising that your carriage broke down. Still, it is not for me, of all men, to complain of that. Nor shall it be my fault if you regret it long.”

Every moment her hatred of the man and his scoffing manner increased; but, at least so far, it was harmless.

“And your intention,” he went on, “was to go to Beroldstein? And there get married? Out of Rollmar’s jurisdiction? Am I right?”

“If it gives you any satisfaction to know it, you are not far wrong.”

“Ah!” He was pleased at the successful display of his many-sided power. “But there is one thing I do not know, except negatively, and cannot guess.”

“Indeed?” There was perhaps more sarcasm in the word than he liked.

“Your real name and rank. I only know that you are not what you have given yourself out to be.”

“And what is your idea, Count?”

“That your rank is higher than it appears.”

“And to that is to be ascribed the unusual respect with which you have thought proper to treat me?”

His face darkened at the irony of the rebuke which, dangerous as it was, she could not restrain.

“To me,” he returned, as the cloud passed away, “you are only the most beautiful of earthly women. As a man, as your devoted lover, I am content with that; as your host and protector I am entitled to know more.”

Before the embarrassing question could be farther pressed, there came a gentle knock at the door. Probably aware that the interruption would not have been ventured upon without good cause, the Count, with an impatient frown, strode across the room and opened it. Outside stood the old major-domo. “What is it, Gomer?”

“A traveller, an old gentleman, is at the door begging hospitality for the night, my lord. He has lost his way.”

“So!” The Count’s face was full of alert suspicion. “An old man, you say? Is he alone?”

“Quite alone, my lord.”

Irromar thought for a moment, then said, “Let him come in. I will see him before I consent to let him stay. We must be careful, Gomer, just now.”

“True, my lord,” the old man replied. “But there is little to be feared here.”

So, with a word of excuse to the Princess, Irromar went down into the hall.