Chapter Twenty Three.
Princess Léonie.
“Princess,” I said, “permit me to offer my félicitations on your return to Paris. This is indeed an unexpected pleasure.”
“Ah, M’sieur Ingram!” she cried in charming English, holding forth her white-gloved hand, “at last! I have been hunting for you all the evening. All Paris is here, and the crush is terrible. Yes, you see I am back again.”
The Italian Ambassador had risen, bowed, and turned to speak to another acquaintance; therefore, with her sanction, I dropped into his place.
“And are you pleased to return?” I inquired, glancing at her beautiful and refined face, which seemed to me just a trifle more careworn than when I had last met her eighteen months ago.
“Ah!” she answered, “I am always pleased to come back to France. I went to America for a few months, you know; thence to Vienna, and for nearly a year have been living at home.”
“At Rudolstadt?”
She nodded.
“Well,” I said, “it was really too bad of you to hide your existence from your friends in that manner. Everyone has been wondering for months what had become of you. Surely you found Rudolstadt very dull after life here?”
“I did,” she sighed, causing the magnificent diamonds at her throat to sparkle with a thousand fires. “But I have departed from my hermitage again, you see. Now, sit here and tell me all that has happened during my absence. Then if you are good, I will, as a reward, give you just one waltz.”
“Very well,” I laughed. “Remember that I shall hold you to your bargain;” and then I commenced to gossip about the movements of people she had known when, two years before, she had been the most admired woman in Paris.
The Princess Léonie-Rose-Eugénie von Leutenberg was, according to the Almanach de Gotha—that red, squat little volume so dreaded by the ladies—only thirty years of age, and was certainly extremely good-looking. Her pale, half-tragic beauty was sufficient to arrest attention anywhere. Her noble features were well-moulded and regular, her eyes of a clear grey, and her hair of flaxen fairness, while her bearing was ever that of a daughter of the greatest of the Austrian houses. Her goodness of heart, her gracefulness, her conversational esprit, and her genuine Parisian chic had rendered her popular everywhere; while, as with the Duchesse de Berri, one strong point of her beauty was her charming little foot, which two years ago had been declared to be the loveliest foot in France, or, in Paris, simply “Le pied de la Princesse.” Her shoes and hosiery were perfect marvels of fineness and neatness, and when she walked, or rather glided, along the Avenue des Acacias, the other promenaders formed long rows on each side to behold and admire le pied de la Princesse.
I had heard it declared, too, with mysterious smiles, how le pied de la Princesse had been seen more than once at the masked balls at the Opera, and many an amusing little story had gone the round, and many a piquant tale had been told of how the Princess had been recognised here and there by the extreme smallness of her foot. One was that for a wager she had disguised herself as a work-girl with a bandbox on her arm, and, attended by her valet, likewise disguised, appeared before the Hôtel de Ville awaiting an omnibus. The vehicle stopped, and the conductor exclaimed in an indifferent tone, “Entrez, mademoiselle,” without taking any further notice. Then, however, his wandering eye caught sight of a pair of tiny feet, and, looking into her face in surprise, he enthusiastically exclaimed: “Ah! ah! le pied de la Princesse!” and doffed his hat respectfully. The Princess lost her wager, but was in no little measure proud of the conquest which her foot had won over the plain omnibus-conductor.
Her life had been a somewhat tragic one. The only daughter of Prince Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau, the Seigneur of Wchinitz, in Bohemia, Léonie had, when scarcely out of her teens, been forced to marry the old Prince Othon von Leutenberg, a man forty years her senior. The marriage proved an exceedingly unhappy one, for he treated her brutally, and after five years of a wretched existence, during which she bore herself with great patience and forbearance, the Prince died of alcoholism in Berlin, and her release brought her into possession of an enormous fortune, together with the mansion of the Leutenbergs in the Frieung at Vienna, one of the finest in the Austrian capital, the castle and extensive estates in Schwazbourg-Rudolstadt, that had belonged to the family from feudal days, as well as the hôtel in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, and the beautiful Château de Chantoiseau, deep in the forest of Fontainebleau.
She was very charming, and there was an air of sadness in her beauty that made her the more interesting. We were friends of long standing. Indeed, I had known her in the days when I was junior attaché and fancied myself in love with every woman. I had admired her, and a firm friendship existed between us, although I think I can say honestly that I had never fallen in love with her. More than once, when those false and scandalous tales had been whispered about her—as they are whispered about every pretty woman in Paris—I had constituted myself her champion, and challenged her traducers to prove their words.
As we sat there chatting, watching the gaily uniformed corps diplomatique, and bowing ever and anon as some man or woman came up to congratulate her on her return to Paris, she told me of the dreariness of her life in the gloomy, ancestral Castle of Rudolstadt, and how, finding it unendurable at last, she had suddenly resolved to spend the remainder of the summer at Chantoiseau.
“I have been there already a fortnight, and everything is in order,” she said. “I am inviting quite a number of people. You must come also.”
“But I scarcely think it is possible for me to be absent from Paris just now,” I answered in hesitation.
“I will take no refusal,” she said decisively. “I will talk to Lord Barmouth to-night before I leave. Me never refuses me anything. Besides, in two hours you can always be at the Embassy. You will remember, the last time you were my guest, how easy you found the journey to and from Paris. Why, you often used to leave in the morning and return at night. No, you cannot refuse.”
“I must consult His Excellency before accepting,” I replied. “In the meantime, Princess, I thank you for your kind invitation.”
“Princess?” she exclaimed, raising her eyebrows. “Why not Léonie? I was Léonie to you always in the days gone by. Is there any reason why you should be so distant now? Unless—” and she paused.
“Unless what?” I inquired, looking at her swiftly.
“Unless you have a really serious affair of the heart,” she said.
“I have none,” I answered promptly, suppressing a sigh with difficulty.
“Then do not use my title. I hate my friends to call me Princess. Recollect that to you I am always Léonie.”
“Very well,” I laughed, for she was full of quaint caprice.
I had pleasant recollections of my last visit to the château, and hoped that if the theft of the instructions contained in the despatch I had brought from London produced no serious international complication, I should obtain leave to join her house-party, which was certain to be a smart and merry one.
She told me the names of some she had invited. Among those known to me were the Baroness de Chalencon, Count de Hindenburg, the German Ambassador, and his wife, and Count de Wolkenstein, Austrian Ambassador, as well as several other men and women of the smartest set in Paris.
“You will be a real benefactress,” I laughed. “Everyone here is stifled; while Dieppe is too crowded; Aix, with its eternal Villa des Fleurs, is insupportable; and both Royat and Vichy are full to overflowing.”
“Ah, mon cher Gerald!” cried the Princess, lifting her small hands, “it is your English tourists who have spoilt all our summer resorts. If one has no place of one’s own in which to spend the summer nowadays, one must herd with the holders of tourist tickets and hotel coupons.”
I admitted that what she said was in a great measure true. Society, as the grande dame knows it, is being expelled by the tourists from the places which until a year or two ago were expensive and exclusive. Even the Riviera is fast becoming a cheap winter resort, for Nice now deserves to be called the Margate of the Continent.
Having arranged that I should do my best to accept her invitation, our conversation drifted to politics, art, and the drama. She seemed in utter ignorance of recent events, except such as she had read about in the newspapers.
“I know nothing,” she laughed. “News reaches Rudolstadt tardily, and then only by the journals; and you know how unreliable they are. How I’ve longed time after time to spend an evening in Paris to hear all the gossip! It is charming, I assure you, to be back here again.”
“But for what reason did you shut yourself up for so long?” I asked. “It surely is not like you!”
She grew grave in an instant, and appeared to hesitate. Her lips closed tightly, and there was a hard expression at the corners of her well-shaped mouth.
“I had my reasons—strong ones.”
“What were they?”
“Well, I was tired of it all.”
“Léonie,” I said, looking at her seriously, “pray forgive me, but you do not intend to tell me the truth. You were tired of it years ago, when the Prince was alive.”
“That was so,” she answered, with a glance of triumph; “and I went home to my father and shut myself up at Wchinitz.”
“But you must have had some stronger motive in burying yourself again as you have recently done. You did not write to a soul, and no one knew where you were. You simply dropped out; and you had some reason for doing so, otherwise you would have told the truth to your most intimate friends.”
“You are annoyed that I should have left you without a word—eh?” she asked. “Well, I will apologise now.”
“No apology is necessary,” I answered. “It is only because we are such good friends that I venture to speak thus. I feel confident that you have sustained some great sorrow. You are, somehow, not the same as you were in Paris two years ago; now, tell me—”
“Ah! Do not talk of it!” she cried huskily, rising to her feet. “Let us drop the subject. Promise me, Gerald, not to mention it again, for I confess to you that it is too painful—much too painful. I promised you a waltz. Come, let us dance.”
Thus bidden, I rose, and she, twisting her skirts deftly in her hand, leaned lightly upon my arm as I conducted her to the great ballroom. A very few moments later we glided together into the whirling, dazzling crowd.
“You will not speak of that again, Gerald?” she urged in a hoarse whisper, looking earnestly up to my face, as her head came near my shoulder. “Promise me.”
“If it is your wish, Léonie,” I responded, puzzled, “I will ask no further question.”
Chapter Twenty Four.
In the Forest of Fontainebleau.
Sixty kilometres from Paris, just off that straight and noble highway that runs through the heart of the magnificent forest, and passes through the old-world town of Fontainebleau—where Napoleon signed his abdication—through the mediaeval, crumbling gates of Moret, and away far south to Lyons, rises the fine old Château of Chantoiseau. Half-way between the clean little village of By, standing in the midst of its well-kept vineyards, and the river-hamlet of Thomery, it occupies a commanding position on the summit of a cliff, where far below winds the Seine, on past Valvins and Samois, until it becomes lost like a silver thread among the dark woodlands in the direction of Paris.
The position of the splendid old place is superb. From its windows can be obtained a view of the great forest stretching away to the horizon on the left, while to the right is the valley of the Seine, and across the river spread the smiling vineyards with their white walls—the vineyards of Champagne. The house, a long, rambling place with circular towers, has been historical for many centuries. Once the property of Madame La Pompadour, in the days when the splendours of the Palace of Fontainebleau were world-renowned, a latter-day interest also attaches to it, inasmuch as it was the headquarters of the German Crown Prince during the advance of the Prussians upon Paris. Its grounds, sloping down, enclose part of the forest itself; therefore, during the blazing days of August one lives actually in the woods. The forest is an enormous one, and even to-day there still remain many parts unexplored, where the wolf and wild boar retreat in summer, and where even that most ubiquitous forester, the viper-hunter—the man whose profession it is to kill vipers and sell them at the local mairie—has never penetrated. In the whole of the great forest, however, no spot is more charming or more picturesque than that in which the château is situated. It is not a show-place, like Barbison or the Gorges de Franchard, but entirely rural and secluded—on the one side the open valley, on the other the dark forest, where in the tunnel-like alleys the trees meet overhead, and where the shady highroads to the painter colony at Marlotte and to Bois-le-Roi are perfect paradises for the cyclist.
Chantoiseau itself is not a village, not even a hamlet, only a big old-fashioned cottage in which the forest-guards live. Above it, on the high ground beyond, stands the fine old château. Many of those who read my story have driven or cycled in the forest, and many have no doubt given the great old place a passing glance before plunging deep into those leafy glades that lead to Fontainebleau. If when you have driven past you have inquired of your cocher, “Who lives there?” he has probably only shrugged his shoulders and replied: “Servants only. Madame la Princesse, alas! seldom comes,” and you have gone on your way, as many others have done, wondering why such a beautiful old place should be neglected by its owner.
One hot evening at sundown, about three weeks after the President’s ball, I strolled slowly beside the Princess down the hill, entering the forest by that well-kept cross-road which leads by the Carrefour de la Croix de Montmorin straight to the pretty village of Montigny on the Loing.
Contrary to expectation, no immediate result had accrued from the mysterious theft of the secret instructions to Lord Barmouth; hence I had obtained leave and accepted my hostess’s invitation, although I was compelled to spend two days each week at the Embassy, going up to Paris in the morning and returning by the six o’clock express from the Gare de Lyon. That some result of the exposure of our policy must certainly make itself felt we knew quite well, but at present the political atmosphere seemed clearer, and by the fact that several of the ambassadors had left Paris considerable confidence had been established. Yet in those sultry August days the war-cloud still hung over Europe and the representative of Her Majesty was compelled, as he ever is, to exercise the greatest tact and the utmost finesse in order to preserve peace with honour. Truly, the office of British Ambassador in Paris is no sinecure, for upon him rests much of the responsibility of England’s position in Europe and her prestige among nations, while to him is entrusted the difficult duty of negotiating amicably with a nation openly and avowedly hostile to British interests and British prosperity.
Those summer days, so sunny, happy, and pleasant, in the forest depths at Chantoiseau, were, nevertheless, perplexing ones for the rulers of Europe. The stifling air was the oppression before the storm. I had more than once chatted in the billiard-room with my fellow guests, the German and Austrian Ambassadors, and both had agreed that the outlook was serious, and that the storm-cloud was upon the political horizon.
But life at the château was full of enjoyment. The Princess, a born hostess, knew exactly whom to invite, and her house-parties were always congenial gatherings. There was riding, cycling, tennis, boating, billiards; indeed, something to suit all tastes, while she contented herself with looking on and seeing that all her guests enjoyed themselves.
A riding-party had gone over to Montigny, and after tea the Princess had suggested that I should accompany her for a stroll down into the forest to meet them. She was dressed simply in a washing-dress of pale blue linen, and wore a sailor-hat, so that with her fair hair bound tightly she presented quite an English appearance, save perhaps for her figure and gait, both of which were eminently foreign. The feet that all Paris had admired two years ago were encased in stout walking-boots, and she carried a light cane, walking with all the suppleness of youth.
Soon we left the full glory of the mellow sunset flooding the Seine valley, and entered the forest road where the high trees met and interlaced above, and where the golden light, filtering through the screen of foliage, illuminated here and there the deeper shadows, struck straight upon the brilliant green of the bracken, married with the greyness on the lichen-covered trunks, and kissed the leaves with golden lips. Birds were twittering farewells to the day, and here and there a red-brown squirrel, startled by our presence, darted from bough to bough with tail erect, while on each side of the road was a carpet of moss and wild-flowers. The sweet odour of the woods greeted our nostrils, and we inhaled it in a deep draught, for that gloomy shade was delightfully cool and refreshing after the blazing heat of the stifling day. As I had been compelled to attend to some official correspondence, I had not joined the riding-party. The Princess had given some half-dozen of us tea in the hall, and, while the others had gone off to play tennis, she and I had been left alone.
Suddenly, as we walked along in the coolness, she turned to me, saying in a tone of reproach:
“Gerald, you have hidden from me the true seriousness of the situation at your Embassy. Why?”
“Well,” I answered, facing her in surprise, “we do not generally discuss our fears, you know. Others might profit by the knowledge.”
“But surely you might have confided in me?” she said gravely.
“Then de Wolkenstein has told you?”
“He has told me nothing,” she answered. “But I am, nevertheless, aware of all that has come to pass. I know, too, that since my absence at Rudolstadt you have fallen in love.”
“Well?” I inquired.
She shrugged her well-formed shoulders as if to indicate that such a thing was beyond her comprehension.
“Is it a disaster, do you think?” I asked.
“You yourself should know that,” she replied in a strained tone. “It seems, however, that you do not exercise your usual discretion in your love-affairs.”
“What do you mean, Léonie?” I demanded quickly, halting and looking at her. Who, I wondered, had told her the truth? To which of my loves did she refer—the spy or the traitress?
“I mean exactly what I have said,” she answered quite calmly. “If you had confided in me I might perhaps have used my influence in preventing the inevitable.”
“The inevitable!” I echoed. “What is that?”
“A combination of the Powers against England,” she replied quickly. “As you know well enough, Gerald, I have facilities for learning much that is hidden from even your accredited representatives. Therefore, I tell you this, that at this moment there is a plan arranged to upset British diplomacy in all four capitals and to ruin British prestige. It is a bold plan, and I alone outside the conspirators am aware of it. If carried out, England must either declare war or lose her place as the first nation in the world. Recollect these words of mine, for I am not joking at this moment. To-day is the blackest that Europe has ever known.”
She had halted in the path, and spoke with an earnestness that held me bewildered.
“A conspiracy against us!” I gasped. “What is it? Tell me of it?”
“No,” she answered. “At present I cannot. Suffice it for you to know that I alone am aware of the truth, and that I alone, if I so desire, can thwart their plans and turn their own weapons against them.”
“You can?” I cried. “You will do it! Tell me the truth—for my sake. I have been foolish, I know, Léonie; but tell me. If it is really serious, no time must be lost.”
“Serious?” she echoed. “It is so serious that I doubt whether the present month will pass before war is declared.”
“By England?”
“Yes. Your country will be forced into a conflict which must prove disastrous. The plan is the most clever and most dastardly ever conceived by your enemies, and this time no diplomatic efforts will succeed in staving off the tragedy, depend upon it.”
“Are both Wolkenstein and de Hindenburg aware of the plot?”
“I presume so. I have watched carefully, but have, however, discovered nothing to lead me to believe that they understand how near Europe is to an armed conflict.”
“Then your information is not from Wolkenstein?”
“No, from a higher source.”
“From your Emperor?”
She nodded.
“Then this accounts for your sudden reappearance among us?” I said.
“You may put my presence down to that, if you wish,” she replied. “But promise me, on your word of honour, that you will not breathe a single word to a soul—not even to Lord Barmouth.”
“If you impose silence upon me, Léonie, it shall be as you wish. But you have just said that you can assist me. How?”
“I can do so—if I choose,” she responded thoughtfully, drawing the profile of a man’s face in the dust with the ferrule of her walking-stick.
“You speak strangely,” I said—“almost as though you do not intend to do me this service. Surely you will not withhold from me intelligence which might enable me to rescue my country from the machination of its enemies?”
“And why, pray, should I betray my own country in order to save yours?” she asked in a cold tone.
I was nonplussed. For a moment I could not reply. At last, however, I answered in a low, earnest tone:
“Because we are friends, Léonie.”
“Mere friendship does not warrant one turning traitor,” she replied.
“But Austria is not the prime mover of this conspiracy,” I said. “The rulers of another nation have formed the plot. Tell me which of the Powers is responsible?”
“No,” she answered with a slight hauteur. “As you have thought fit to preserve certain secrets from me, I shall keep this knowledge to myself.”
“What secrets have I withheld from you?” I inquired, dismayed.
“Secrets concerning your private affairs.”
I knew well that she referred to my passion for Yolande. For a moment I hesitated, until words rose to my lips and I answered:
“Surely my private affairs are of little interest to you! Why should I trouble you with them?”
“Because we are friends, are we not?” she said, looking straight into my face with those fine eyes which half Europe had admired when le pied de la Princesse had been the catchword of Paris.
“Most certainly, Léonie,” I agreed. “And I hope that our friendship will last always.”
“It cannot if you refuse to confide in me and sometimes to seek my advice.”
“But you, in your position, going hither and thither, with hosts of friends around you, can feel no real interest in my doings?” I protested.
“Friends!” she echoed in a voice of sarcasm. “Do you call these people friends? My guests at this moment are not friends. Because of my position—because I am popular, and it is considered chic to stay at Chantoiseau—because I have money, and am able to amuse them, they come to me, the men to bow over my hand, and the women to call me their ‘dear Princess.’ Bah! they are not friends. The diplomatic set come because it is a pleasant mode of passing a few weeks of summer, while still within hail of Paris; and the others—well, they are merely the entourage which every fashionable woman unconsciously gathers about her.”
“Then among them all you have no friend?” Again she turned her fine eyes upon me, and in a low but distinct tone declared:
“Only yourself, Gerald.”
“I hope, Léonie, that I shall always prove myself worthy of your friendship,” I answered, impressed by her sudden seriousness.
Her face had grown pale, and she had uttered those words with all possible earnestness.
Then we walked on together in the silence of the darkening gloom of the forest. The ruddy light of the dying day struggled through the foliage, the birds had ceased their song, and the stillness of night had already fallen. We were each full of our own thoughts, and neither uttered a word.
Suddenly she halted again, and, gripping my arm, looked up into my face. I started, for upon her pale countenance I saw a look of desperation such as I had never before seen there.
“Gerald!” she cried hoarsely, “why do you treat me like this? You cannot tell how I suffer, or you would have pity upon me! Surely you cannot disguise from yourself the truth, even though your coldness forces me to tell you with my own lips. You know well my position—that of a woman drifting here and there, open to the calumnies of my enemies and the scandalous tales invented by so-called friends; a woman who has borne great trials and who is still, alas! unhappy! Of my honesty you yourself shall judge. You have heard whispers regarding my doings—escapades they have been called—and possibly you have given them credence. If you have, I cannot help it. There are persons around us always who delight in besmirching a woman’s reputation, especially if she has the misfortune to be born of princely family. But I tell you that all the tales you have heard are false. I—”
Suddenly she covered her face with her hands; the words seemed to choke her, and she burst into tears.
“No, no, Léonie!” I said with deep sympathy, bending down to whisper in her ear and taking her hand in mine. “No one believes in those foul calumnies. Your honour is too well known.”
“You do not believe them—you will never believe them, will you?” she asked quickly through her tears.
“Of course not. I have denied them many times when they have been repeated to me.”
“Ah!” she cried, “I know you are always generous to a woman, Gerald.”
Then again a long silence fell between us. Presently, with a sudden impulse, she raised her tear-stained face to mine, and with a look of fierce desperation in her eyes implored:
“Gerald, will you not give me one single word? Will you still remain cold and indifferent?” As she said this, her breast rose and fell in agitation.
I drew back, wondering at her beseeching attitude.
“No, no!” she cried. “Do not put me from you, Gerald! I cannot bear it—indeed I can’t! You must have recognised the truth long ago—” and she paused. Then, lowering her voice until it was only a hoarse whisper, she added, “The truth that I love you!”
I looked at her in blank amazement, scarce knowing what to reply. I had admired her just as half Paris had admired her, but I certainly had never felt a spark of deep affection for her.
“Ah!” she went on, reading my heart in an instant, “you despise me for this confession. But I cannot help it. I love you, Gerald, as I have never before loved a man. In return for your love I can offer you nothing—nothing save one thing,” she added in a strange, mechanical voice, almost as though speaking to herself. “In return for your love I can save your country from the grievous peril in which it is now placed.”
She offered me her secret in return for my love! The thing was incomprehensible. I stood there dumbfounded.
“This is a moment of foolishness, Léonie. We are both at fault,” I said, as soon as I again found tongue. “Think of the difference in our stations—you a princess, and I a poor diplomatist! I am your friend, and hope to remain so always—but not your lover.”
“But I love you!” she cried fiercely, raising her blanched and pitiful face until her lips met mine. The passion of love was in her heart. “You may despise me, Gerald; you may cast me from you; you may hate me; but in the end you will love me just as intensely as I love you. To endeavour to escape me is useless. Since the die is cast, let us make the compact now, as I have already suggested. I have confessed to you openly. I am yours, and I implore of you to give me your love in return. You are mine, Gerald—mine only!”
Chapter Twenty Five.
England’s Enemies.
Late that night, after the Princess and most of her guests had retired, I entered the billiard-room to get my cigarette-case, which I had left there while playing pool earlier in the evening, and on opening the door found the two Ambassadors Wolkenstein and Hindenburg seated together in the long lounge-chairs in earnest conversation. They were speaking in German, and as I entered I overheard the words “in such a manner as to crush the English power on the sea.” They were uttered by the German representative, and were certainly ominous. It was apparent that both men were aware of the gigantic conspiracy of which the Princess had told me—the plot which aimed at the downfall of our nation. I could see, too, that my sudden entry had disconcerted them, for they both moved uneasily and glanced quickly at each other as though fearing I had overheard some part of what had passed between them. Then Wolkenstein with skilful tact cried in French:
“Ah, my dear Ingram! we thought we alone were the late birds to-night. Come here and chat;” and at the same time he pulled forward one of the long cane chairs, into which, thus bidden, I sank.
What, I wondered, had been the exchange of view’s between these two noted diplomatists? The faces of both were sphinx-like. Our talk at first dealt with nothing more important than the journey across the forest to Barbison which our hostess had arranged for the morrow. I knew, however, that the conversation held before my entrance had been about the European situation. Those men were England’s enemies. My impulse was to rise abruptly and leave them; but it is always the diplomatist’s duty to remain cool, and watch, even though he may be compelled to hobnob with the bitterest opponents of his native land. Therefore I remained, and, concealing my antipathy, lit a cigar and lay back in my chair, carelessly gossiping about the usual trivialities which form the subject of house-party chatter.
“The Princess looked rather pale to-night, I thought,” exclaimed Count de Hindenburg suddenly. “She seemed quite worried.”
“With a château full of guests the life of a hostess is not always devoid of care,” I remarked, blowing a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.
I alone knew the reason of her paleness and anxiety, and was eager to ascertain what deductions these two shrewd men had made.
“To me,” observed the representative of the Emperor Francis Joseph, “it seemed as though the Princess had been shedding tears. Didn’t you notice that her eyes were just a trifle swollen?” and, turning to me, he added: “She scarcely spoke to you at dinner. Are you the culprit, Ingram?”
Both men laughed.
“Certainly not,” I denied. “Madame has a touch of nerves, I suppose—that’s all. Such a malady is common among women.”
“She looked quite worn out by fatigue,” declared Wolkenstein.
“Because she is never still a single moment in the day. Her thoughts are always for her guests—how to amuse them and to give them a pleasant time. It was the same two years ago,” I said.
“Remarkable woman—quite remarkable!” exclaimed de Hindenburg. “She had sufficient trouble with the rheumatic old Prince to turn any woman’s hair grey; but, on the contrary, she seems now to become younger every day. She’s still one of the prettiest women in Europe.”
“Everyone admits that, of course,” I said.
They exchanged glances, and I fancied that these looks were unusually significant. A flood of recollections of the sunset hour in the forest surged within my mind—how I had striven with firmness to release myself, and how I had been forced to turn away and leave the Princess. In that deep gloom, when the rosy afterglow was fading and the light within the leafy glade so dim that all objects were indistinct, I had seen her wild passion in all its magnificence. Her eyes had burned with the fierce, all-consuming fire of love, her cheeks were white and cold, and her words as reckless as they were passionate. She had charged me with entertaining affection for some other woman—a woman unworthy of my love, she had said with distinct meaning, as though she knew the duplicity of Yolande; and she had sworn an oath with clenched hands to compel me to reciprocate her passion.
The scene between us was one of unreason and of folly. She had been overwhelmed by the impulse of the moment, and I had bowed and left her, my heart full of conflicting emotions, my head reeling. She had suddenly twisted her soft arms about my neck and clung to me, whispering her love and declaring that I was cruel, cold, with a heart like adamant. But I had flung her off, and we had not met until two hours later, when I sat at her right hand at dinner, during which she had scarcely addressed a single word to me.
My companions had, of course, noticed this, and appeared to have cleverly guessed my refusal to accept the offer of the Princess. They little knew the terms upon which she had attempted to make a compact with me—that she was ready to betray them in return for my love.
I smoked on in silence and in wonder. The situation certainly presented a problem which I was utterly unable to solve. That the affections of such a woman as the Princess von Leutenberg were not to be trifled with I knew well, for women of her temperament are capable of anything when once they love with a fierce, uncontrollable, reckless passion such as she had seen fit to display that evening in the deep silence of the forest. Her proposition had, indeed, been a startling one. She had offered me the secret of the plot in return for my love!
With my two companions I chatted on until nearly two o’clock; then we separated, and I passed through the long oak corridors to my room. Upon the dressing-table I found a note lying. It was sealed with black wax, with the Leutenberg arms. I tore it open. It gave out an odour of fresh violets, and I saw instantly that the handwriting was Léonie’s.
“I have been foolish in my confession to you, Gerald,” she wrote in French. “But my heart was so full that I could conceal the truth no longer. I saw from your manner at dinner to-night that you despise me, and intend to hold me at a distance as an unwelcome woman who has flung herself into your arms. But I cannot help it. The misfortune—nay, the curse upon me—is that I love you. Would to Heaven that I did not! Because of you I have forgotten eatery thing—my duty to myself as a woman, my duty to my family as one of a noble house, my duty to my country, my duty to my Creator. When I left Paris long ago, I crossed the Atlantic, resolved to forget you; but all was in vain. I returned to Rudolstadt and shut myself up in retirement, striving to wean myself from the mad passion which had arisen within me. All, however, was futile, and at last I broke the bonds and returned to Paris. A month has gone by, and now I have told you the truth; I have confessed. To-morrow morning at eleven I shall walk alone through the forest, along the road that leads to By. My offer to you—an offer made, I admit, in desperation—still stands. If you accept it you will be enabled to save your country from her enemies, and we shall both find peace and happiness; if not, then the plot will be carried out, and at least one woman’s life will be wrecked—the solitary and unhappy woman who writes these lines and whose name is Léonie.”
She had written that letter calmly and coolly, for the handwriting showed no haste. Evidently she had penned it in the seclusion of her chamber, and Suzanne, her maid, had placed it upon my dressing-table.
I stood with the letter in my hand. My eyes caught my own reflection in the long silver-framed mirror, and I was struck by the haggard, anxious expression upon my own countenance. My personal appearance startled me.
Well I knew the character of this pale and beautiful woman whom all Paris had admired. The impression she gave everyone was that of perpetual and irreconcilable contrast. I had long ago recognised her high mental accomplishments, her unequalled grace, her woman’s wit and woman’s wiles, her almost irresistible allurements, her moments of classic grandeur, her storms of temper, her vivacity of imagination, her petulant caprice, her tenderness and her truth, her childish susceptibility to flattery, her magnificent spirit, and her princely pride. She had dazzled my faculties, perplexed my judgment, bewildered and bewitched my fancy. I was conscious of a kind of fascination against which my moral sense rebelled.
With all her perverseness, egotism, and caprice, she, nevertheless, I knew, mingled a capacity for warm affection and kindly feeling, or, rather, what one might call a constitutional good-nature, and was lavishly generous to her favourites and dependants. She was a Princess in every sense of the word, her right royal wilfulness and impatience often fathering the strangest caprice. There were actually moments when she seemed desirous of picking a quarrel with such immensities as time and space, and, with the air of a lioness at bay, regarded those who dared to remember what she chose to forget.
She had given me but little time to decide. To-morrow at eleven she would slip away from her guests and await me in that long, tunnel-like passage leading through the forest to the ancient town of Moret, at the confluence of the willow-lined Loing with the broad Seine. Its walls and gates, dating from the time of Charlemagne, still remain, and right in the heart of the little town stands the square old donjon keep, now ivy-grown and with its moat full of a profusion of sweet-smelling tea-roses.
I could save England if, in return for her secret, I gave her my love. Has any man ever found himself in similar perplexity?
Calmly I reasoned with myself, turning again to her letter, and feeling convinced that this sudden passion of hers was but a momentary caprice. No woman, if she were cool and reasonable, would have acted as she had done, for she must have recognised that the difference in our stations rendered marriage impossible.
My duty to my country was to learn the truth about this gigantic conspiracy; yet, at the same time, my duty towards myself and towards the Princess was to leave Chantoiseau at once and forget all that had occurred. Signs had not been wanting in Paris during the past few days to corroborate what she had told me regarding the conspiracy of certain Powers against the prestige of their hated rival England. There was a lull in diplomatic affairs that was ominous; a distinctly oppressive atmosphere which foreboded a storm.
Far into the night I sat thinking, trying to devise some plan by which I could obtain knowledge of her secret without committing myself. But I could find none—absolutely none.
At early morning, before the others were astir, I took a stroll down the hill to where the clear Seine wound beneath the chalk cliff. The larks were soaring high, filling the air with their song. The boatmen going down-stream shouted wittily to each other between their hands, and the bronzed villagers on their way to work in the vineyards chanted merrily the latest popular airs. Life is easy and prosperous among the peasantry around the Fontainebleau forest. In those clean white villages of the Department of Seine et Marne there is little, if any, poverty. I wandered through the pretty, flower-embowered village of Thomery, and, crossing the river by the long iron bridge, entered the smiling little hamlet of Champagne—a quaint and comely group of small cottages, where lived the vineyard-workers. This hamlet is famous for miles round because of a particularly venomous breed of vipers which infest the sun-kissed lands in its neighbourhood. Although only six o’clock, the prosperous little place was already busy, and as I wandered through the village, past the grey old church, and along the wide, well-kept road beside the river, I smiled to think that the name of that old-world place was known everywhere from Piccadilly to Peru, and was synonymous with wealth, luxury, and riotous living.
Heedless as to where I went, so deeply engaged was I in conflicting feelings and in trying to determine whether I should keep that appointment on the footpath to Moret, at last I found myself in Samoreau, where, crossing by the ferry, I returned to the forest, and at eight o’clock was back again, idling with several of the guests on the lawn in front of the château.
After drinking my coffee, I sat in the window of one of the petit salons that overlooked the valley and took up a pen, meaning to write to my hostess, for I had resolved to send her a note of regret, and return at once to Paris. I could remain there no longer.
Scarcely had I taken the note-paper from the escritoire, when the Baroness de Chalencon entered, fussy as usual and full of the excursion to Barbison.
“Léonie tells me you are not accompanying us,” she cried in French. “I’ve been searching for you everywhere. Why, my dear Gerald, you must come.”
“I regret, Baronne, that I can’t,” I answered. “I have to go to Paris by the midday train.”
“How horribly unsociable you are!” she exclaimed. “Surely you can postpone your journey to Paris! Wolkenstein and the others have declared that we can’t do without you.”
“Express to them my regrets,” I said. “But to-day it is utterly impossible. I must be at the Embassy this afternoon. I have important business there.”
“Well, I suppose if you failed to put in an appearance, a crisis in Europe would not result, would it?” she observed with a touch of grim irony. “At the Rue de Lille or the Rue de Varenne,” she added, meaning the German and Austrian Embassies, “they take things far more easily than you do. That’s the worst of you English—you are always so very enthusiastic and so painfully businesslike.”
“I am compelled to do my duty,” I answered briefly.
“Most certainly,” answered the Baroness. “But you might surely be sociable as well! This is not like you, M’sieur Ingram.”
“I must apologise, Baronne,” I said. “But, believe me, it is impossible for me to go to Barbison to-day. I have urgent correspondence here to attend to, and afterwards I must run up to Paris.”
When she saw that I was firm, she reluctantly left me, saying as she disappeared through the door:
“I really don’t know what is coming to you. You are not at all the light and soul of the summer picnics, as you once used to be.”
“I’m growing old,” I shouted with a laugh.
She halted, turned back, and, putting her head inside the room again, retorted in a low, distinct voice:
“Or have fallen in love—which is it?”
I treated her suggestion with ridicule, and in the end she retired, laughing merrily, for at heart she was a pleasant woman, with whom I was always on excellent terms of friendship.
Then I sat down again to write, hoping to remain undisturbed. But although I held the pen poised in my hand I could think of no excuse. Three carriages drew up before the château, the coachmen wearing those handsome scarlet vests, conical hats, and many gold buttons, which together represent the mode in Fontainebleau and at Monte Carlo; and the guests, a merry, laughing, chattering crowd, mounted into the vehicles. Big picnic baskets, with the gilt tops of champagne bottles peeping out, were placed in a light cart to follow the excursionists, and two of the guests—men from Vienna—mounted the horses held by the grooms. Then, when all was ready, the whips cracked, there was a loud shouting of farewells to the hostess, who stood directing her servants, and the whole party moved off and away to the leafy forest lying below.
I looked down from the window, and saw the Princess standing on the drive—a sweet, girlish figure in her white dress, her slim waist girdled with blue, and her fair hair bound tightly beneath her sailor-hat. She scarcely looked more than nineteen as she stood there in the morning sunlight, smiling and waving her little hand to her departing guests.
She glanced up suddenly, and I drew back from the window to escape observation. So gentle so tender, so fair was she. And yet I feared her—just as I feared myself.
Chapter Twenty Six.
A Woman’s Heart.
Reader, I do not know what influence it was that overcame me in that breathless hour of perplexity and indecision: whether it was the fascination of her beauty; whether it was owing to the fact that I unconsciously entertained some affection for her; or whether it was because my sense of duty to my country urged me to endeavour to learn the secret of the conspiracy formed against her by the Powers of Europe. To-day, as I sit here writing down this strange chapter of secret diplomacy, I cannot decide which of these three influences caused me to throw my instinctive caution to the winds and keep the appointment in the leafy forest glade that led through the beeches to Veneux Nadon and on to quiet old Moret.
Instinctively I felt myself in danger—that if I allowed myself to become fascinated by this capricious, impulsive woman, it would mean ruin to us both. Yet her beauty was renowned through Europe, and the illustrated papers seemed to vie with each other in publishing her new portraits. Her confession to me had been sufficient to turn the head of any man. Nevertheless, with a fixed determination not to allow myself to fall beneath the fascination of those wonderful eyes, I strolled down the forest-path and awaited her coming.
Soon she approached, walking over the mossy ground noiselessly, save for the quick swish of her skirts; and then with a glad cry of welcome, she grasped my hand.
“Ah!” she exclaimed, a slight flush mounting to her delicate, well-moulded cheeks, “you received my note last night, Gerald? Can you forgive me? I am a woman, and should not have written so.”
“Forgive!” I repeated. “Of course I forgive you anything, Léonie.”
“You think none the worse of me for it?” she urged, speaking rapidly in French. “Indeed, I allowed my pen to run away, and now I regret it.”
I breathed more freely. Her attitude was that of a woman who, conscious of error, now wished it to be forgotten.
“To regret is quite unnecessary,” I assured her in a low voice of sympathy. “We are all of us human, and sometimes we err.”
Silence fell between us for a few moments. It struck me that she was striving strenuously to preserve her self-restraint.
“You will destroy that letter, promise me,” she urged, looking piercingly into my face. “It was foolish—very foolish—of me to write it.”
“I have done so,” I answered, although, truth to tell, it still remained in my pocket.
“And you will not despise me because in an hour of foolishness I confessed my love for you?”
“I shall never despise you, Léonie,” I answered. “We have always been good friends, but never lovers. The latter we never shall be.”
She looked at me quickly, with a strange expression.
“Never?” she asked, in a tone so low that I could scarcely catch the word.
“Never,” I responded.
Her laces stirred as her breast rose and fell, and I saw that she herself was endeavouring to evade my query, although at the same time her heart was full of the same impetuous passion which had so much amazed me on the previous night. I had spoken plainly, and my single word, uttered firmly, had crushed her.
It occurred to me that I had made a mistake. I had not acted diplomatically. I knew, alas! that I was, and always had been, a terrible blunderer in regard to women’s affections. Some men are unlucky in their love-affairs. I was one of them.
We walked slowly together side by side for some distance, neither uttering a word. At last I halted again, and, taking her hand, bent earnestly to her, saying:
“Now, Léonie, let us put aside any sentimentality and talk reasonably.”
“Ah!” she said, her eyes flashing quickly, “you do not love me. Put aside sentiment indeed! How can I put it aside?”
“But a moment ago you suggested that we should forget what passed between us yesterday.”
“I did so in order to test you—to see whether you had a spark of affection for me in your heart. But the bare, cold truth is now exposed. You have not!”
Her face was ashen, and her magnificent eyes had a strange look in them.
“Could you respect me and count me your friend, Léonie, if I feigned an affection which did not really exist within me?” I asked. “Reason with yourself for a moment. Had I been unscrupulous towards you I might yesterday have told you that I reciprocated your affection, and—”
“And you do not?” she cried. “Tell me the truth plainly, once and for all.”
“You offered me in exchange for my love a secret which would enable me to defeat the enemies of my country, and probably cause my advancement in the diplomatic service. You offered me the greatest temptation possible.”
“No;” she said, putting up her hand, “do not use the word temptation.”
“I will call it inducement, then. Well, this inducement was strong enough to persuade me to break the bond of friendship between us, and to cause me to occupy a false position. But I have hesitated, because—”
“Because you do not love me,” she said quickly, interrupting me.
“No, Léonie,” I protested. “Between us it is hard to define the exact line where friendship ends and love begins. Our own discretion should be able to define it. Tell me, which do you prefer—a firm friend—or a false lover?”
“You are too coldly philosophical,” she answered. “I only put it to you from a common-sense standpoint.”
“And which position is to be preferred?” she asked. “Your own, as that of a diplomatist with a paltry fifty thousand francs or so a year, and compelled to worry yourself over every trifling action of those who represent the Courts of your enemies; or that of my husband, with an income that would place you far above the necessity of allowing your brain to be worried by everyday trifles?”
She paused, and her lips trembled. Then with a sudden desperate passion she went on:
“People say that I am good-looking, and my mirror tells me so; yet you, the man I love, can see in me no beauty that is attractive. To you I am simply a smart woman who is at the same time a princess—that is all.”
“I am no flatterer, Léonie,” I cried quickly. “But as regards personal beauty you are superb, incomparable. Remember what Vian said when he painted your portrait for the Salon—that you were the only woman he had ever painted whose features together made a perfect type of beauty.”
“Ah! you remember that!” she said, smiling with momentary satisfaction. “I thought you had forgotten it. I fear that my beauty is not what it was five years ago.”
“You are the same to-day as when we first met and were introduced. It was at Longchamps. Do you remember?”
“Remember? I recollect every incident of that day,” she answered. “You have been ever in my mind since.”
“As a friend, I hope.”
“No, as a lover.”
“Impossible,” I declared. “Do reason for an instant, Léonie. At this moment I am proud to count myself among your most intimate personal friends, but love between us would only result in disaster. If we married, the difference in our stations would be as irksome to you as to me; and if I did not love you, the link would only cause us both unhappiness, and, in a year or two, estrangement.”
“Only if you did not love me. If you loved me it would be different.”
“You would still be a princess and I a struggling diplomatist.”
“It would make no difference. Our love would be the same,” she answered passionately. “Ah, Gerald, you cannot tell how very lonely my life is without a single person to care for me! I think I am the most melancholy woman in all the world. True, I have wealth, position, and good looks, the three things that the world believes necessary for the well-being of women; but I lack one—the most necessary of them all—the affection of the man I love.”
“I can’t help it, Léonie!” I cried. “Indeed, it is not my fault that my friendship does not overstep the bounds. Some day it may, but I tell you frankly and honestly that at present it does not. I am your friend, earnest and devoted to you—a friend such as few women have, perhaps. Were I not actually your friend I should now, at this moment, become selfish, feign love, and thus become your bitterest enemy.”
“You are cold as ice,” she answered hoarsely, in a low tone of disappointment.
Her countenance fell, as though she were utterly crushed by my straightforward declaration.
“No, you misunderstand,” I replied, taking her hand tenderly in mine, and speaking very earnestly. “To-day the romance that exists within the breast of every woman is stirred within you, and causes you to utter the same words as you did at sixteen, when your first love was, in your eyes, a veritable god. You will recall those days—days when youth was golden, and when the world seemed a world of unceasing sunshine and of roses without thorns. But you, like myself, have obtained knowledge of what life really is, and have become callous to so much that used to impress and influence us in those long-past days. We have surely both of us taught ourselves to pause and to reason.”
She hung her head in silence, as if she w’ere a scolded child, her looks fixed upon the ground.
“My refusal to mislead you into a belief that I love you is as painful to me as it is to you, Léonie,” I went on, still holding her hand in mine. “I would do anything rather than cause you a moment’s trouble and unhappiness, but I am determined that I will not play you false. These are plain, hard words, I know; but some day you will thank me for them—you will thank me for refusing to entice you into a marriage which could only bring unhappiness to both of us.”
“I shall never thank you for breaking my heart,” she said in a sad voice, looking up at me. “You cannot know how I suffer, or you would never treat me thus!”
“The truth is always hardest to speak,” I answered, adding, in an attempt to console her: “Let us end it all, and return to our old style of friendship.”
“I cannot!” she said, shaking her head—“I cannot!” and she burst into tears.
I stood beside her in the forest-path, helpless and perplexed. Was it possible, I wondered, that the plot of the Powers against England existed only in her imagination, and that she had invented it in order to use it as a lever to gain my affections? She was a clever, resourceful woman—that I knew; but never during the course of our friendship had I found her guilty of double-dealing or of attempting to deceive me in any way whatever. More than once, when she reigned in Paris as queen of Society, she had whispered to me secrets that had been of the greatest use to us at the Embassy; and once, owing to her, we had been forearmed against a dastardly attempt on the part of an enemy to assist the Boers to defy us. A niece of the Emperor of Austria, she was received at the various Courts of Europe, and visited several of the reigning sovereigns; therefore, she was always full of such tittle-tattle as is ever busy among those who live beneath the shadow of a throne, and was far better informed as to political affairs than many of the ambassadors; yet withal she was eminently cautious and discreet, and, if she wished, could be as silent as the grave. Nevertheless, although signs were many that the war-cloud had again arisen and was once more hanging heavily over Europe, I could not bring myself to believe that the plot now hatched was quite as serious as she made it out to be. The world of diplomacy in Paris is full of mares’ nests, and alarms are almost of daily occurrence. When events do not conspire to create them, then those ingenious gentlemen, the Paris correspondents of the great journals, sit down and invent them. The centre of diplomatic Europe is Paris, which is also the centre of the canards, those ingeniously concocted stories which so often throw half Europe into alarm, and for which the sensational journalists alone are responsible.
“Come, Léonie,” I said tenderly at last, “this is no time for tears. I regret exceedingly that this interview is so painful, but it is my duty towards you as a man and as your friend to be firm in preventing you from taking a step which after a short time you would bitterly repent.”
“If you become my husband I shall never repent!” she cried. “You are the only man I have ever loved. I did not love the Prince as I love you! I know,” she added, panting—“I know how unseemly it is that I, a woman, should utter these words; but my heart is full, and my pent-up feelings are now revenging themselves for their long imprisonment.”
I felt myself wavering. This woman who had thrown herself into my arms, was wealthy beyond the wildest dreams of avarice, world-renowned for her beauty and high intellect—a woman altogether worthy and noble. Each moment her powers of fascination grew stronger, and I felt that, after all, I was treating her affection with slight regard, for I was now convinced that her love was no mere caprice or sudden passion.
Yet, after all, my belief in woman’s honesty and purity had been shaken by the discovery that Yolande was a spy and that Edith, after all her protestations, had a secret lover. These two facts caused me, I think, to regard the Princess with some suspicion, although at the same time I could not disguise from myself the truth that her emotion was real and her passion genuine.
“Your confession is but the confession of an honest woman, Léonie,” I said with tenderness. “But what has passed between us must be forgotten. You tempt me to assume a position that I could not maintain. Think for a moment. Is it right? Is it just either to yourself or to me?”
“Will you not accept the offer I made you yesterday?” she asked in the tone of one desperate, her eyes fixed upon mine in fierce earnestness.
“Will you not learn the secret and save your country from ignominy?”
I held my breath, and my eyes fixed themselves on hers. Her tear-stained face was blanched to the lips.
“No, Léonie,” I answered. “Anxious as I am to save England from the net which her unscrupulous enemies have spread for her, I refuse to do so at the cost of your happiness.”
“And that decision is irrevocable?” she asked, with a quick look of menace.
“It is irrevocable,” I replied.
“Yes, I know,” she said in a hoarse whisper—“because another woman holds you in her toils! Well, we shall see!” and she laughed bitterly, the swift fire of jealousy flashing for an instant in the brilliant eyes that half Europe had delighted to praise. “I love you,” she continued, “and some day you will love me. Meanwhile, my secret is my own.”