Chapter Eight.
The Great Ghelardi.
While Waldron and his friend were discussing matters, shouts suddenly arose everywhere—the golden pig had entered and was being touched for luck by everyone, and men raised their glasses to each other, to wish one another “A Happy New Year.” The Christian year had opened, but the Egyptians in fezes only smiled and acknowledged the compliment. Their year had not yet commenced.
“Well,” exclaimed Jack Jerningham at last. “You haven’t told me much about Beatriz.”
“Why should I, my dear fellow, when there’s nothing to tell?”
“Ah, I’m glad to hear that,” was his friend’s quick response, apparently much relieved, for the fascination of the handsome ballerina for Hubert Waldron was the gossip of half the Embassies of Europe. Hubert was a rising man, the son of a great diplomat, but that foolish infatuation would, if continued, most certainty stand in the way of his advancement. Many of his friends, even the Ambassador’s wife, had given him broad hints that the friendship was a dangerous one. Yet, unfortunately, he had not heeded them.
Every man who is over head and ears in love thinks that his adored one is the perfect incarnation of all the virtues. Even when Waldron had heard her discussed in the Casino, that smart club in the Calle de Alcata, he refused to credit the stories told of her, of the magnificent presents she received from admirers, and more especially from the favoured one, the septuagenarian Duke of Villaneuva y Geltru.
“Why are you so glad to hear it?” Hubert asked, his brow slightly knit, for after all it was a sore subject.
“Well, to tell you the truth, because there is so much gossip flying about.”
“What gossip?”
“Of course you know quite well. Why ask me to repeat it, old chap?”
“But I don’t,” was the other’s reply.
“Well,” exclaimed Jerningham after a pause, “perhaps you are, after all, like most men—you close your ears to the truth because you love her.”
“Yes, Jack, I admit it. I do love her.”
“Then the sooner you realise the actual truth, the better,” declared the other with almost brutal abruptness.
“What truth?”
“My dear fellow, I know—nay, everybody knows—your foolish, quixotic friendship with the girl. You love her, and naturally you believe her to be all that is your ideal. But I assure you she’s not.”
“How in the name of Fate can you know?” asked the diplomat, starting up angrily.
“Well—I’ve been in Spain a lot, remember. I’ve seen and heard things. Why, only a week ago in this very hotel I met old Zeigler, of the German Embassy at Madrid, and he began to discuss her.”
“And what did he say, pray?”
“What everybody else says, that—well, forgive me for saying so—but that you are a fool to continue this dangerous friendship with a woman whose notoriety has now become European.”
“Why should people interest themselves in my affairs?” he cried in angry protest.
“Who knows? It’s the same the world over. But I suppose you know that Beatriz has gone to London with the old Duke?”
“It does not surprise me. She asked me to accompany her and to introduce her, but I couldn’t get back from here in time.”
“She asked you, well knowing that you were tied by the leg—eh?” laughed Jack. “Well, my dear fellow,” he sighed, “I think you’re terribly foolish to continue the acquaintanceship. It can only bring you grief and sorrow. Think of what she was, and what she is now. Can any girl rise from obscurity in such a short time without the golden ladder? Ask yourself.”
“You need not cast ugly insinuations,” was Hubert’s angry retort, yet truth to tell, that fact had ever been in his mind—a suspicion the first seeds of which had been sown one night in the Casino Club, and which had now grown within his heart.
“Please forgive me if I’ve hurt your feelings, but we’re old friends and you know how very blunt I am. It’s my failing,” he said in a tone of apology. “But the name of the fair Beatriz has of late been coupled with half a dozen admirers. When I was in Madrid four months ago I heard that Enrique de Egas, the director of the opera, was her very intimate friend, and also that young Juan Ordonez had given her a pearl necklace worth eighteen thousand pounds, while there were whispers concerning Pedro de Padras, Conrado Giaquinto, Sanchez Ferrer and several other nuts of the Spanish nobility with whom you are acquainted. They laugh at you behind your back.”
“Yes,” Hubert responded, quite undisturbed. “But surely you know that it gratifies the vanity of those young bloods of Madrid if their names are coupled with that of a pretty woman. It is the same in Vienna, the same in Rome.”
“Ah, my dear fellow, I see you are hopelessly in love,” declared the other. “I was—once. But the scales fell from my eyes just in time, as I sincerely hope they will fall from yours.”
Waldron remained silent. In his pocket lay a letter which he had received only that morning from Beatriz, dated from the Carlton Hotel in London, a letter full of expressions of undying affection, and of longing to be again at his side.
Were those her true sentiments, he wondered? Had Jack Jerningham, on the other hand, told him the bitter truth? He had first met her a couple of months after her arrival in Madrid when she, poor and simply dressed, was dancing at the Trianon, and as yet unknown. Young Regan, one of the attachés, had introduced her, and the trio had had supper together at Lhardy’s, in the Carrera de San Jeronimo, and on the following day he had taken her for a drive in the El Retero, the beautiful park of Madrid, and afterwards to the Plaza de Toros where the famous Sevilian Espada Ricardo Torres, known to all Spain as “Bombita,” dispatched five bulls after some marvellous pases de pecho, redondos and cambiados before giving the estocada, or death-blow.
He remembered the hot afternoon and the breathless tension of the multitude as “Bombita” with his red cloth met the rush of the infuriated bull, stepped nimbly aside and then plunged his sword downwards through the animal’s neck into its heart. Then came the roar of wild applause in which his dark-haired companion joined with such enthusiasm that her cheeks glowed red with excitement.
In that crowded bar, thick with tobacco smoke and noisy with the laughter of well-dressed men, the beautiful face of the dancer who, since that blazing well-remembered day, had won fame all over Europe, rose before him in the mists. Did he really love her, he asked himself as Jack Jerningham sat at his side, now smoking in silence. Yes he did, alas! he did.
And yet how strange—how very foolish, after all. He, Hubert Waldron, who for years had lived the exotic social life of diplomacy, who, being a smart, handsome man, had received the smiles and languishing glances of a thousand women of all ages, had fallen in love with that girl of the people—the daughter of a drunken dock labourer.
His friend Jerningham watched him covertly and wondered what was passing in his mind.
“I hope I haven’t offended you, Waldron,” he ventured to exclaim at last. “Perhaps I ought not to have spoken so frankly.”
“Oh, you haven’t offended me in the least, my dear old chap,” was the other’s open reply. “I may have been a fool. Probably I am. But tell me frankly are you really certain that all these stories concerning Beatriz have any foundation in fact?”
“Any foundation?” echoed the other, staring at him with his blue eyes. “You have only to go about the capital with your ears open, and you will hear stranger and more scandalous stories than those. There is the husband, you know, the cab-driver, who threatened the Duke with divorce, and has been paid a hundred thousand pesetas as hush-money.”
“Is that a fact?” gasped his friend. “Are you quite certain of it? I can’t really believe it.”
“I’m quite certain of it. Ask Carreno, the advocate in the Calle Mayor. He made the payment, and told me with his own lips. The story is common property all over Madrid.”
Waldron’s countenance changed, but he made no reply.
“The woman and her husband are making a very substantial harvest out of it, depend upon it, Hubert. Therefore I do, as your old pal, beg of you to reconsider the whole situation. Is it really judicious for you to be associated any longer with her? I know I have no right to dictate to you—or even to make the suggestion. But I venture to do so for your own sake.”
“I know! I know!” was his impatient reply. “Yes. I’ve been a fool, no doubt, Jack—a damned idiot.”
“No; don’t condemn yourself until you have made your own inquiries. When you get back to the Embassy look around and learn the truth. Then I hope you will become convinced of the foundation of my allegations. When you are, let me know, old chap, won’t you?”
At that moment a stout, elderly man, accompanied by another a trifle his junior, who wore the button of the Legion d’Honneur in the lapel of his dress-coat, elbowed their way laboriously up to the bar.
Jack Jerningham’s quick eyes discerned them, whereupon in amazement he ejaculated in a low whisper the somewhat vulgar expression:
“Good God!”
Hubert looked up and saw old Jules Gigleux.
“What?” he asked in surprise.
“Why, look at the elder man—that old fellow with the white, close-cropped hair. Don’t you know him?” he asked in a low voice, indicating Lola’s uncle.
“Know him? Yes. He’s been up the Nile with us. He is a Frenchman named Gigleux.”
“Gigleux!” echoed his friend. “By Gad! and a rather good alias. No, my dear fellow. Look at him well. He is the greatest and most cunning secret agent Germany has ever possessed—the arch-enemy of England, the Chief of the German Secret Service—an Italian whose real name is Luigi Ghelardi, though he goes by a dozen aliases. It is he who controls the whole service of German espionage throughout the world, and he is the unscrupulous chief of the horde of spies who are infesting the Eastern counties of England and preparing for ‘the day.’”
At that second the man referred to glanced across and nodded pleasant recognition with Waldron, though he apparently had no knowledge of his companion.
“Is that really true?” gasped Hubert, utterly astounded and aghast, staring open-mouthed at Lola’s uncle.
“Most certainly. I know him by sight, only too well.”
“Then that accounts for the fact that I found him prying into my belongings in my cabin up the Nile!” exclaimed his friend, to whom the truth had come as an astounding and staggering revelation. And so the dainty Lola—the girl of mystery—was niece of the chief spy of England’s enemies.
Chapter Nine.
At Downing Street.
Hubert Waldron mounted the great staircase of the Foreign Office in Downing Street full of trepidation.
The Earl of Westmere, His Majesty’s principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, desired to see him.
On New Year’s night, an hour after his conversation with Jack Jerningham, he had found in his room at the Savoy an urgent telegram from the Embassy recalling him home at once. He had, therefore, left Port Said by the Indian mail next day, and had travelled post-haste to London.
He had arrived at Charing Cross at four o’clock, driven to the St. James’s Club, and after a wash, had taken a taxi to Downing Street.
The uniformed messenger who conducted him up the great staircase halted before a big mahogany door, tapped upon it, and next second Hubert found himself in that big, old-fashioned, rather severe room wherein, at a great littered writing-table, sat his white-haired Chief.
“Good afternoon, Waldron,” exclaimed the tall, thin-faced statesman rising briskly and putting out his hand affably, an action which at once set the diplomat at his ease. He had feared that gossip regarding the opera-dancer had reached his ears, and that his reception might be a very cool one.
“I didn’t expect you until to-morrow. You’ve come from Cairo, haven’t you?”
“I came straight through by Brindisi,” was the other’s reply, seating himself in the padded chair which his Chief indicated.
“A gay season there, I hear—eh?”
“Quite. But I’ve been on leave in Upper Egypt.”
“And a most excellent spot during this horrible weather we’re having in London. Wish I were there now.”
And the Earl, a rather spare, refined man whose clean-shaven features were strongly marked, and who wore the regulation morning coat and grey striped trousers, crossed to the big fireplace and flung into it a shovelful of coals.
That room in which Hubert had only been once before he well-remembered. Its sombre walls that had listened to so many international secrets were painted dark green; upon one side was an old painting of Palmerston who had once occupied that selfsame room, while over the black marble mantelshelf hung a fine modern portrait of His Majesty, King George V.
The old Turkey carpet was dingy and worn, and about the place where the director of Great Britain’s foreign policy so often interviewed the ambassadors of the Powers, was an air of sombre, yet dignified gloom.
“I’ve called you home, Waldron,” said the Earl deliberately as he re-seated himself at his great table, piled as it was with State papers and dispatches from England’s representatives abroad, “because I want to have a chat with you.”
He was interrupted by a tap upon the door, and a man in uniform announced:
“Captain Rayne, m’lord.”
“Oh, come in, Rayne,” exclaimed the Minister for Foreign Affairs, as a smart, well-dressed, middle-aged man entered, nodding acquaintance with Waldron. “Let’s see! You’re taking the turn to Berlin and Petersburg?”
“Yes, sir,” replied the King’s Foreign Service messenger.
The Earl took from a drawer a letter he had already written and sealed in an official envelope bearing a blue cross, and handed it to him saying:
“This is for Petersburg—most urgent. I have nothing for Berlin, but Sir Charles has, I believe. You will bring me back an answer to this dispatch with all haste, please.”
“To-day is Tuesday, sir; I shall be back next Tuesday if Sir Henry is in Petersburg,” replied the King’s messenger with an air as unconcerned as though he were going to Hampstead.
“Yes, he is.”
“Then nothing else, sir?”
“Nothing, Rayne—except what Sir Charles may have. Good afternoon.”
And the King’s messenger, who spent his days travelling to and fro across the face of Europe, placed the confidential dispatch addressed to the British Ambassador to the Court of the Tzar in his pocket, bowed, and went forth on his weary seven days’ journey to the Russian capital and back.
“As I was saying, Waldron,” the Earl continued when the door had again closed, “I asked you to come home because I consider the time has now come when you should have promotion. As a friend of your late, respected father, I have naturally watched your career in the Service with greatest interest, and have been much gratified at the shrewd qualities you have shown, therefore I am giving you promotion, and have appointed you as second secretary to Rome.”
“To Rome!” echoed Waldron, his eyes opening widely. “I—I’m sure, Lord Westmere, I cannot thank you sufficiently for your appreciation of my services, or for sending me to the one post I wished for most of all.”
“I know, Waldron,” laughed his lordship pleasantly. “You know Rome, for you lived there for some years. You were honorary attaché there under your father, and I think you speak Italian very well indeed, if I remember aright.”
“I have a fair knowledge of the language,” was the diplomat’s modest response.
“Then go to Rome and continue the career you have followed with such success. Your father’s most brilliant work was accomplished in Italy, and I hope his mantle will fall upon you, Waldron.”
“Your words are most encouraging, Lord Westmere,” declared the younger man who, on entering there, had feared a reprimand for his friendship with the Spanish dancer. “You may rely on me to do my best.”
“Of that I am quite certain. The Waldrons have been diplomats for over a century, and you will never disgrace their reputation,” said the strongest man of the British Cabinet, the man who had learned diplomacy under Salisbury and to whom the nation now entrusted its good relations with the Powers. “But,” his lordship added, “will you, quite unofficially, allow me to give you a word of friendly advice?” And he looked the secretary of the Embassy full in the face.
“Most willingly. Any advice from my Chief I will be most certain to follow,” was the other’s earnest reply.
“Well, perhaps it is a rather delicate matter, and one to which I, in my official position, ought not to refer, but as one who takes a very keen interest in your future, I feel that I must speak.”
Waldron grew paler. He knew what was coming. “It is within my knowledge,” went on his lordship, “that towards a certain lady in Madrid you have been unduly friendly—a lady whose name is not exactly free from scandal.”
“That is so,” he admitted.
“Then, Waldron, why do you not recollect Palmerston’s advice to the young man newly appointed to a post abroad?” he asked gravely. “Palmerston said that the necessary qualifications of a diplomat on being attached to an Embassy was that he should be able to lie artistically, to flirt elegantly, to dress smartly, to be polite to every woman, be she princess or laundress, but never on any account to commit the fatal error of falling in love. Remember that with the diplomat love at once puts an end to all his sphere of usefulness. Do not let this happen in your case, I beg of you.” Hubert did not reply for some seconds. At last he said in a rather a husky, confused voice:
“It is most kind of you to speak to me in such terms, Lord Westmere, and I fully appreciate the great interest which you have always shown me. Will it be sufficient to promise you that I will not repeat the folly of which I fear I have been guilty?”
“Excellent, my dear Waldron, excellent?” cried the white-haired Cabinet Minister, rising and shaking his hand warmly. “I’m glad you’ve seen the folly of it all. That dancing-girl is an unfit associate for you, that’s certain; so forget her. Take up your post at Rome as early as you can, and fulfil your promise to me to do your best.”
The Earl had risen as a sign that the interview was over. He was usually a sharp-speaking, brusque and busy man. To interviewers he was brief, and had earned for himself the reputation of the most hard and unapproachable man in the Service which he controlled. But Hubert Waldron had certainly not found him so, and as he descended the great handsome staircase and went out into the falling fog in Downing Street, he could not help a feeling of joy that he had been promoted over the heads of a dozen others to the second secretaryship of His Majesty’s Embassy to the Quirinale.
Next day the Morning Post told the world that the Honourable Hubert Waldron, M.V.O., was in London, and that same afternoon he received at his club a note from Beatriz, urging him to call at the Carlton.
Throughout the whole evening he debated within himself whether he should see her in order to wish her farewell. If he did not then she would regard him as brutal and impolite. He remembered those letters of hers, so full of passionate outpourings, and while he ate his dinner alone in a corner of the club dining-room they decided him.
He sent her a reply by hand that he would call at the hotel at half-past eleven, after she had finished her performance at the theatre.
Punctually at that hour a page-boy took him up in the lift, and passing along a corridor they halted at a door.
The page rapped, whereupon it opened, and next second the tall, handsome Spanish woman in a wonderful evening gown flew into Hubert’s arms crying in Spanish in wild glee:
“Ah! At last, my own dear Hubert—at last! What pleasure!”
But he only took her hand, and bowing low with grave courtliness, kissed it.
“Come, sit down,” she urged, pulling him towards a soft settee. “Tell me, when did you arrive from Egypt? The Duke saw the arrival in the paper this morning, and told me.”
“Then the Duke is still here,” he asked with affected unconcern.
“Of course. Why? He knows your English quite well, and, alas! I do not. Oh, it is so difficult! What I should do without him, I don’t know,” she went on volubly with much gesticulation. Those great dark eyes of hers and her raven-black hair gave a wonderful vivacity to her handsome Andalusian countenance. Her portraits were in all the illustrated papers, and during the day he had learnt how, by her wonderful dancing, she had taken London by storm.
“And what kind of reception have you had?” he asked gravely in Spanish, as he seated himself upon the settee before her.
“Superb!” she declared, her great eyes brightening. “Your English audiences are so intensely sympathetic. I love London. I think I dance better here in your cold, foggy city than in Madrid. Why, I do not know. Perhaps it is because I feel somehow at home with the English—because you, Hubert, are my dear friend.” And then she chattered on with hands and arms thrown about in quick gesticulation, describing to him her life during the past three weeks, and how full of gaiety and enjoyment had every moment been.
“Photographers and interviewers have pestered me to death. Ah! Your London journalists are so pressing. They are not lazy and open to bribery, as ours in Madrid. Twice I have danced at private parties and received large fees. Yes—you in London pay well—better even than Petersburg. At the Palace they want me to return for a month next September.”
“And you will accept, of course?”
She hesitated. She was standing at the table, her slim white fingers idly toying with a huge bunch of lilies-of-the-valley which had been thrown to her that night by some unknown admirer.
“Perhaps,” she replied. “At present I do not exactly know. I have also danced twice for charity—some hospital, I think. My manager, Cohen, arranged it. He is simply splendid—better even than he was in Russia.”
“I’m so glad you’re enjoying it, Beatriz,” Hubert said. “I was sorry I could not get back from Egypt. But I was nearly a thousand miles from Cairo when I got your telegram.”
“Oh, it really did not matter,” she declared. “The Duke has been most kind to me.”
“Yes—the Duke—always the Duke,” he said in a hard, changed voice.
She turned and looked at him in quick surprise.
“What—then are you jealous, you dear old Hubert?” she asked with a laugh.
“Not in the least,” was his quick reply. “But while you have the Duke you surely do not require my assistance. You have, it seems, got on in London excellently without me.”
“Because you were unable to come. Have I offended you?” she asked. “Come, forgive me if I have,” she urged, crossing to him, placing her hand upon his coat sleeve and looking up into his face. “I return to Madrid next Monday. You shall travel with me—eh?”
“I am not going back to Madrid,” was his slow reply, his eyes fixed upon hers.
“Not going back!” she echoed. “Why not?”
“I have been transferred to the Embassy in Rome. I leave for Italy the day after to-morrow.”
“To Italy,” she whispered blankly. “Then—then you will no longer be in Spain?”
“No. My term in Madrid has ended,” he answered in a hard, strained voice, for even then he found it hard to bid her farewell.
“Ah!” she cried suddenly. “I see—I see it in your manner! You are tired of me—you are displeased with the Duke. You are jealous of him—jealous that men should flatter me. You, my dear friend, in whom I held such high respect, will not desert me.”
“Alas, Beatriz, I am not my own master. If I were, I should not leave Madrid,” he said earnestly, for that was, after all, the truth.
“And yet, knowing how fondly I love you, Hubert, you will really leave me thus!” she cried, suddenly catching his hand and carrying it to her full red lips. “No,” she went on, tears welling in her wonderful eyes, “you cannot do this. You, too, love me—you know well that you do. Come, do not let us part. I—I know I am foolish—I—ah! no! I love you, Hubert—only you!” And full of her hot Spanish passion she threw her arms about him and burst into a flood of hot tears.
Hubert Waldron bit his lip. He recollected at that moment all the stories concerning her—of the blackmail levied, with her connivance, by the drunken cab-driver whom he himself had once seen in the Puerta del Sol. He remembered his promise to his Chief, and the plain, outspoken words of his friend, Jack Jerningham.
They hardened his heart.
He shook his head and slowly but resolutely, disengaged himself from her passionate embrace.
“No, Beatriz,” he said. “Let us end this. It will, surely, be best for both our sakes. True, I have known you for a long time before you became world-famous as a dancer, but your profession and your interests, like mine, now lie apart. Let us say farewell, and in doing so, let us still remain good friends, with tender memories of one another.”
“Memories!” she cried fiercely, looking into his face with flashing eyes. “They can only be bitter ones for me.”
“And perhaps just as bitter for myself,” he added, still holding her by the wrist and looking into those great black eyes of hers.
“You are very cruel, Hubert!” she declared, her chest beneath its chiffon rising and falling in quick emotion. “You are cruel to a woman!” she repeated in reproach.
“No. It will be best for us in the end—best for both of us. You have your future before you—so have I. In my profession as diplomat I have to bow to the inevitable whenever I am transferred. You are a great dancer—a dancer who has won the applause of Europe. May I not still remain your humble and devoted friend?”
For answer Beatriz, the idol of London at that moment, fell upon his shoulder and shed tears of poignant, bitter regret, while he, with knit brows, held his breath for a moment, and then tenderly bent and kissed her upon the cheek.
Chapter Ten.
Some Curious Stories.
The festa of San Sebastiano fell on a Sunday.
The ancient church a mile and a half outside Rome on the Appian Way—the road constructed three hundred years before the birth of Christ—was thronged by the populace in festa attire, for San Sebastiano, built as it is over the Catacombs where reposed the remains of the Christian martyrs, is one of the seven churches to which pilgrims have flocked from every part of western Christendom, while in its chapel is the marble slab bearing what is held by tradition to be the footprints of Christ, and which, therefore, is held by the Romans in special veneration.
Though January, the morning was sunny and cloudless, and with Lady Cathcart, the Ambassador’s wife, and young Edward Mervyn, the rather foppish honorary attaché, Hubert Waldron had motored out to watch the festival with all its gorgeous procession of priests and acolytes, its swinging censers and musical chants.
As at all the festas in Rome, there was the usual crowd of gaping Cookites and the five-guinea excursionists of other agencies, for is not the Eternal City the city of the tourist par excellence? In it he can live in a cheap pension for four lire a night, or he can spend a hundred lire a night in certain hotels de luxe on his room alone.
The road was dusty and crowded as, the ceremony over, the party sped back, past the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla—paltry indeed after those left by Rameses in Egypt—and the churches of Santi Nereo ed Achilleo and San Cesareo, afterwards re-entering the city and speeding up the broad modern Via Nazionale and into the long, straight Via Venti Settembre, at last pulling up before the great grey façade of the British Embassy.
Hubert Waldron was no stranger to Rome. For five years he had lived at the Embassy when his father was Ambassador, and in those days had been very popular in the very exclusive Society of the Italian capital. Nowadays, however, he did not live at the Embassy, but rented the same cosy flat over a bank in the Via Nazionale which had been occupied by his predecessor—a charming, artistic little place which was the very ideal of a bachelor pied-à-terre.
That day there was a smart luncheon-party at the Embassy; among the guests being the Austrian and Russian Ambassadors with their wives, Prince Ghika, of the Roumanian Legation, the stout and wealthy Duca di Carpenito, the old Marchesa Genazzano, a hideous guy with her protruding yellow teeth, yet one of the leaders of Roman Society, the young Marchese Montalcino, who wore upturned moustachios and yellow boots; the pretty Contessa Stella Pizzoli, one of the Queen’s dames de la Cour, and half a dozen others whose names in the Italian capital were as household words.
Around the luncheon-table, charmingly arranged with delicate floral decorations, the chatter had been universal, Sir Francis Cathcart, K.C.M.G., the British Ambassador, holding a long and animated conversation with Princess Bezanoff, wife of “The Russian”—as the Tzar’s representative was termed in the diplomatic circle—while Lady Cathcart had been gossiping with the Duca di Carpenito, who was perhaps the greatest landowner in all Italy, and whose ancient Palazzo in the Corso is pointed out to the traveller as one of the finest mediaeval residences in the city.
Waldron, who had taken in the Contessa Stella and sat at her side, was listening to her gossip about the Court, of the doings of the Queen, and of their recent stay at Racconigi. Though most of the conversation at table was in French they spoke in Italian, Hubert speaking that language with scarce a trace of foreign accent.
“Curiously enough, Signor Waldron, I first knew of you by hearing His Majesty speak of you,” remarked the pretty young woman. “I heard him telling General Olivieri, the first aide-de-camp, that you had been attached to the Embassy here.”
“It is a great honour that His Majesty should remember me,” replied the secretary. “He knew me, however, years ago, before he succeeded. I was here with my father, who was Ambassador.”
“Yes. The King said so, and he paid your father a very high compliment. He said that he was the only diplomat whom his father, the late King Victor, ever trusted with a secret.”
Waldron smiled. Then he said:
“His Majesty is exceedingly gracious to me. I had not been back here a week before I had a command to private audience, and he was kind enough to say that he was pleased to resume my acquaintance after my years of absence from Rome. Yes, Contessa,” he added, “here I feel that I am at home and among friends, for I love Italy and her people. Your country possesses a grace and charm which one does not find elsewhere in Europe. There is but one Italy as there is but one Rome in all the world.”
“I fear you flatter us rather too much, Signor Waldron,” replied the pretty young woman. “Now that you have come back to us I hope you will honour my husband with a visit. You know the Palazzo Pizzoli, no doubt, and I hope in the autumn you will come out to us in the Romagna. We can give you a little shooting, I believe. You Englishmen always love that, I know,” she laughed.
“I’m sure I shall be very charmed to make the acquaintance of the Count,” he replied. “And if I may be permitted to call upon you I shall esteem it a great honour, Contessa,” and he smiled at the elegant dame de la Cour with his best diplomatic smile.
“So the young Princess Luisa is in disgrace again, I hear,” remarked the old Marchesa Genazzano, who sat on Waldron’s other hand, showing her yellow teeth as she spoke. “She’s always in some scrape or other. Girls in my day were never allowed the liberty she has—and she a Royal Highness, too!”
“We mustn’t tell tales out of school,” remarked the pretty Countess, with a comical grimace. “Her Royal Highness is, I fear, a sad tomboy. She always was—ever since she left the schoolroom.”
The old Marchesa, a woman of the bluest blood of Italy, and bosom friend of Her Majesty the Queen, grunted.
“Like her mother—like the whole House of Savoy. Always venturesome,” she said.
“But the Princess is charming. Surely you will agree, Marchesa?” protested the dame de la Cour.
“A very delightful girl. But she’s been spoilt. Her mother was too lenient with her, and her goings-on are becoming a public scandal.”
“Hardly that, I think,” remarked the Countess. “I know the King is pretty annoyed very often, yet he hasn’t the heart to put his foot down firmly. Even though she is of royal blood she’s very human, after all.”
“Her flirtations are positively disgraceful,” declared the old Marchesa, a woman of the ancient regime of exclusiveness.
Hubert laughed and said:
“I have not the pleasure of knowing Her Royal Highness—perhaps Her Royal Naughtiness might describe her—but as one who has no knowledge of the circumstances, I might be permitted to remark that the love that beats in the heart of a princess is the same love as that beneath the cotton corsets of the femme de chambre.”
“Ah, you diplomats are incorrigible,” cried the old woman with the yellow teeth. “But the Princess Luisa is becoming a scandal. The Queen declared to me only yesterday that she was intensely annoyed at her niece’s behaviour. Her latest escapade, it seems, has been to go to Bologna and take part in some motor-cycle races, riding astride like a man, and calling herself Signorina Merli. And she actually won one of the races. She carried a passenger in a side-car, a young clerk in a bank there, who, of course, was quite unaware of her real identity.”
“Quite sporting,” declared Waldron. “She evidently does not believe much in the royal exclusiveness.”
“Well, she cannot pretend that life at the Quirinale is at all dull. Since the death of her charming mother, the Princess of Milan, she has lived at the Palace, and must have had a very pleasant time.”
“Is she pretty?” asked Waldron, interested.
“Very—and most accomplished,” replied the old stiff-backed Marchesa whose word was law in social Rome. “The House of Savoy is not distinguished by its good looks on the female side, but the Princess Luisa is an exception. Personally, I consider her the best-looking among the marriageable royalties in Europe at the present moment.”
“But are her indiscretions really so very dreadful?” asked the diplomat, “or are they exaggerated?”
“Dreadful!” echoed the noble Montalcino, whose elegant attire and carefully trained moustache were so well-known during the hour of the passeggiate in the Corso. He had been listening to the conversation. “Why, cara mio,” he drawled, “only the other night I saw her with her maid sitting in the stalls at the Salone Margherita, which is, as you know, hardly the place to which a Royal Highness should go. Madonna mia! There are lots of stories about Rome of her escapades,” declared the young sprig of the nobility. “It is said she often escapes from the Palace at night and goes long runs in her car, driving it herself. Bindo Peruzzi found her early one morning broken down away out at Castelnuovo, and gave her a lift back in his car. She got out at the Porta Pia and Bindo pretended not to know who she was. I suppose she sent her chauffeur back for the car later on.”
“Rather a daring escapade for a Royal Highness,” Waldron said. “But, after all, Court life, Court etiquette, and Court exclusiveness must bore a girl to death, if in her youth she has been used to Society, as I suppose she had been during her mother’s lifetime.”
“Oh, of course one may easily make lots of excuses,” shuffled the old Marchesa. “But I feel sure the girl must be a source of great anxiety to both Their Majesties. It would be a great relief to them if she were to marry.”
“They say she is a favourite with the King, and that he never reproves her,” exclaimed the young fellow across the table.
“Well,” declared Hubert, “in any case she must be a merry, go-ahead little person. I shall look forward to meeting her.”
“Oh, no doubt you will, signore, very soon,” laughed the old leader of Society, when just at that moment the Ambassador’s wife gave the signal to rise, and the ladies passed out, the men bowing as they filed from the room.
A quarter of an hour later when the male guests joined the ladies in the big, handsome drawing-room overlooking the garden of the Embassy, the Marchesa beckoned Hubert over to where she was ensconced in a corner.
“Signor Waldron,” she said, “I find that Lady Cathcart has a portrait of Princess Luisa, the young lady whom we have been discussing. Look! It is yonder, on the table in the corner. The one in the oval silver frame.”
Hubert crossed to where she directed and there saw a large oval photograph which he had not before noticed, for he had never particularly examined the portraits in the room. Beneath was scrawled in a bold Italian hand the autograph—“Luisa di Savoia.”
He gazed upon the pictured, smiling face, utterly staggered.
The portrait was that of Lola!
Chapter Eleven.
Strictly Incognita.
That afternoon at half-past three o’clock, the hour when in winter all Rome goes out for its airing on the Pincio, Hubert Waldron was idling along the terrace, gazing at the wonderful panorama of the Eternal City stretched away before him in the yellow sundown.
In Rome it is the correct thing to go to the Pincio, and there pay visits to the Roman ladies who sit in their smart carriages or automobiles as they slowly file up the historic hill and down on the other side. There, in those famous gardens of Lucullus, in which in ancient days Messalina, the wife of Claudius, celebrated her orgies, modern Rome daily holds its daily alfresco reception, for everybody who is anybody in the capital goes there to see and to be seen.
Hubert had been chatting with the Baroness Lanzenhofen, an Austrian hostess very popular in Rome, but her carriage had moved on, and now he stood alone near the kerb looking out upon the wonderful view, and about to descend to the city and drive back in a taxi to his rooms in the Via Nazionale.
Behind him a procession of smart equipages of all kinds filed slowly around the terrace, when of a sudden he heard an excited cry—his name:
“Signor Waldron! Signor Waldron!”
Turning in sudden surprise, he found himself face to face with Lola who, seated alone in one of the royal carriages—a splendid landau bearing the arms of Savoy upon its panels, a footman and coachman in the royal livery and powdered hair—was smiling at him mischievously.
He raised his hat and advancing eagerly took the little white-gloved hand outstretched to him, for the carriage had already pulled up, the fine pair of bays champing impatiently at their bits.
“Well!” he cried. “This is really a great surprise!”
“Yes. I heard that you had been transferred here from Madrid,” she laughed, speaking in English. “But oh! I’ve got lots to explain. I want to see you, Mr Waldron—to see you very particularly. I came here this afternoon to find out if you were here. May I call on you this evening? I know where you live, in the Via Nazionale. When will you be at home?”
He was rather taken aback. Ever since his discovery of her portrait in the Embassy a couple of hours ago he had been plunged in thought, for did he not know her secret—the secret of this madcap Princess who had scandalised the Royal House of Savoy?
“This is really a great surprise to me, Mademoiselle Lola,” he answered, scarce knowing what he said. “I, too, would like to have a chat with you. But is it really wise for you to come to my rooms?” he asked in English, glancing at the two royal servants sitting statuesque upon the box.
“Nobody will know. These men do not know English. Shall we say at ten o’clock to-night? I can get away then—not before, I fear. We have a Court dinner.”
“Very well,” he said, looking into her splendid dark eyes. “At ten o’clock then.”
“Addio—eh! Till ten o’clock?” she laughed.
“But are you sure it would not be an injudicious step—to visit a bachelor in his rooms?” he queried gravely.
“I don’t care, Signor Waldron—if you don’t. I always take every precaution. My maid, Renata, is as silent as the Sphinx we saw in Egypt. Do you remember? And how I fell off my camel?”
“Shall I ever forget those days?” he remarked as he took the outstretched hand and bowed over it. “Very well, mademoiselle—at ten o’clock.”
“Bene. Then I will explain matters. You must be terribly puzzled. I see it in your face,” she laughed.
He smiled and as he stood hat in hand the royal carriage moved off, the onlookers staring to note that the popular young Princess should have stopped and have spoken to a man, an ordinary foot-passenger on the Pincio.
For a second the diplomat glanced after her, then he turned upon his heel and began to descend the winding roadway, past those busts of all the distinguished Italians from Julius Caesar to Marin.
Before him lay that wonderful view of Rome, where beyond the Porta del Popolo and the new quarter with the Palazzo di Giustizia, on the opposite bank of the Tiber, rose the great dome of St. Peter’s from the grey mists of the sunset, while on the right stood the spire of the Church of Lourdes, the Vatican, and a portion of the Leontine wall. Away on the right rose Monte Mario with its dark funereal cypresses, while to the left of St. Peter’s could be seen the round castle of Sant Angelo with the bronze angel that crowned it. The pines on the height of the castle were familiar to him, being those of the Villa Lante on the Janiculum with the Passeggiata Margherita on which the great statue of Garibaldi was the most conspicuous object.
And as he went along his mind was filled with thoughts of the strange situation, and of the amazing discovery he had that day made.
Lola, his charming little friend of the Nile, at whose side he had so often ridden over the desert, was actually a Princess of the blood-royal—the madcap Princess of the House of Savoy! And ere he had descended the hill her splendid carriage with its jingling harness flashed by him and she nodded merrily as he raised his hat, while two cavalry officers, recognising her, raised their hands in ceremonious salute.
He was reflecting upon those idle sunny days in the far-off Nile-land, those evenings when the western sky was diffused and glorified with gold and saffron, and the shades of night crept up from the silent bosom of the desert where the Bedouins and Bishareen halted their caravans to camp.
In that sunset hour he knew that the faces of the devout were now turned towards Mecca—away from that golden mystery and beauty that the sun had placed in the west—to recite their evening prayers. And up from the mists, as he gazed away across to the low purple hills of the Campagna rose that sweet, smiling, beautiful face—the face which he had once again gazed upon, though he had believed it had passed out of his ken for ever.
Punctually at ten o’clock that evening Waldron’s English valet, Peters—the faithful, clean-shaven, but hunch-backed old Peters who had been with him over ten years—ushered Lola, a sweet-faced, girlish figure into his sitting-room where he stood ready to receive her.
“Really, Mr Waldron, what awfully jolly quarters you have here!” she exclaimed, glancing quickly around the well-furnished bachelor room. The man he had succeeded at the Embassy believed in personal comfort, and had furnished his flat in English style. Therefore he had been fortunate in being able to purchase it cheaply, for its owner had been transferred to Tokio.
“Yes,” her host agreed: “they’re not half bad. But,” he added, “do you really think it prudent to come and visit me at this hour?”
“Why not? I couldn’t very well come in the daytime. Somebody might recognise me.”
“But is not ten o’clock at night a rather unusual time for a young lady to visit a bachelor?” he queried.
“Well, I don’t mind,” she laughed gaily. “But there, you’re such a dear, conventional old thing!”
He noted that, contrary to her appearance in the afternoon, when she had worn a smart costume and hat which was evidently the latest creation of the Rue de la Paix, she was now very neatly, almost shabbily dressed in a plain blue serge coat and skirt which had seen its best days, a small, close-fitting little hat which showed evident signs of wear, and sadly worn furs.
She noticed that he surveyed her as she took the armchair he offered her.
“Yes,” she said, “it is very fortunate that my maid, Renata, is about the same figure as myself, and that her clothes fit me. I usually pass as her when I go out at night. The sentries change every week, so as long as I am dressed as a maid I have no difficulty—though I sometimes have trouble to avoid the other servants.”
“I should think you run very great risks of recognition,” he remarked. “And if the truth leaked out would there not be some serious trouble?”
“Trouble! Oh, I dread to think of it!” she declared with a shrug of the shoulders. “I receive daily lectures about my non-observance of the social amenities, my lack of personal pride, and all that. But there—Mr Waldron, you must, I know, have been greatly surprised at meeting me to-day. I know I deceived you. But it was imperative, as I was then travelling incognita. So I hope you will forgive me.”
“You practised a very cruel deception upon me,” he said with mock severity. “And I don’t know if I really ought to forgive you.”
“Oh yes, you will—you dear old thing,” she cried persuasively, laughing in his face. He was double her age, therefore the endearing terms in which she addressed him were not exactly out of place. Yet, remembering the secret lover, he wondered what had become of him.
“Then old Gigleux was not your uncle, after all?” remarked Waldron, for he remembered how Jack Jerningham had recognised him on that New Year’s night at Shepheard’s.
“No. Listen and I’ll tell you the truth,” the Princess said in very good English. She was delightfully unconventional. “You see my aunt, the Queen, was very much annoyed because I motored to Florence alone, and some gossip got about regarding me—because I went to a fancy-dress ball with a gentleman I know. Well, I fear I was a little hot-tempered, with the result that I was unceremoniously packed off on a long tour to Egypt and given into the charge of Miss Lambert and old Ghelardi, who had been in the German Service, but who had just returned to Italy and was appointed by the King as Chief of our Secret Police. I was ordered by the King to assume the name of Duprez, while Ghelardi was to be known as Jules Gigleux. And I think we kept up the farce fairly well—didn’t we?”
“Most excellently. Nobody had the slightest suspicion of the truth, I feel sure.”
“I know I told you some awful stories—about my poverty, and all that. But you will forgive me—won’t you?” she implored.
“Of course,” replied the diplomat, charmed by her sweetness and frankness of manner. “It was necessary in order to preserve your incognita. I realise now the reason why your pseudo-uncle regarded me with such a decided antipathy. First he feared lest we might fall in love with each other—”
“And there was no fear of that, was there?” she laughed, interrupting.
“I don’t know exactly,” he answered half-dubiously. “You flirted with me outrageously sometimes.”
“Ah, I know I did! It was, I admit, too bad of me, Mr Waldron. But I do hope even now you’ve found me out in all those white lies that it will make no difference to our friendship.”
“Why, not in the least,” he declared. “I am greatly honoured by Your Royal Highness’s friendship.”
“No, no,” she cried impatiently, “not Highness to you, Mr Waldron. Lola—still Lola, please.”
“Very well,” laughed the man. “But surely that will sound too familiar from one in my station?”
“When we are alone, I mean. Of course in Society, or at Court I may be Her Royal Highness the Principessa Luisa Anna Romana Elisabetta Marie Giovanna di Savoia—and half a dozen other names and titles if you like. They really don’t trouble me,” and she carelessly cast her well-worn sealskin muff upon the couch near her.
“Ah,” he sighed, “I fear you are a sad breaker of the conventionalities. Before I knew that you were my little friend of the Nile I had heard several stories of your various little escapades.”
“Oh yes,” she cried quickly. “No doubt you’ve been told some awful tales about my doings—stories which get about Rome, and everyone exaggerates them as they pass from mouth to mouth. My worst offence, I believe, is because I entered for a motor-cycle race and won it. Well, haven’t your girls in England won similar races?”
“True, but what a shop-assistant may do is forbidden to a princess,” was his reproof.
“Ah, that’s just it?” she exclaimed in protest. “Merely because I happen to be born a princess I’m supposed to put on a veneer of Court manners, and observe Court etiquette day in and day out, until it all bores me stiff—as you say in English. Just because I try and behave like other girls, obtain my freedom when I can, and enjoy myself with open-air pursuits, I am held in horror by Their Majesties, and the people declare that I am a disgrace to our Royal House.”
“No—not a disgrace, Princess.”
“Lola, please,” she said, correcting him.
“Lola then—if you will have it so,” he said. “The people secretly admire you for your courage in breaking the steel bonds of Court etiquette; nevertheless remember that such escapades as yours must lead you into danger—grave personal danger. You are a girl, and remember also that there are some blackguards about who, knowing your active and daring temperament, may entrap you and then levy blackmail upon you.”
Her beautiful face instantly fell. He saw that she grew paler and more thoughtful. Her lips twitched slightly.
“You think so,” she said slowly, her voice so changed that he wondered. “You think that someone might really attempt to levy blackmail upon me—eh?”
“Certainly. And in that lies the very serious peril to which you must be exposed, if you continue to disregard the conventionalities which surround you as a daughter of a Royal House.”
“You are rather hard upon me, Mr Waldron,” she said in a low voice, quite unusual to her.
“Not in the least. Remember I am your friend. If at any time I can serve you in any way you have only to come to me, and I will exert every effort on your behalf,” he said, speaking very earnestly. “But I would beg of you to exercise the greatest discretion. Why continue to annoy Their Majesties by this conduct which must sooner or later bring unpleasantness, and perhaps trouble, upon you?”
“Trouble!” she echoed, her great dark eyes fixed upon him. “Trouble! It has already brought trouble upon me. That is why I came here to-night to see you—to tell you—to confess—and to ask your help as my good, kind friend?”