Next morning, when she saw her reflection in the mirror, she sighed
heavily, and hot tears sprang to her eyes.
Her beautiful countenance, bruised and swollen, was an ugly sight; her
mouth was cut, and one of her even, pretty teeth had been broken by the
cowardly blow.
Henriette, the faithful Frenchwoman, had crept back to her mistress's
room an hour after the Crown Prince had gone, in order to see if her
Highness wanted anything, when to her horror she discovered her lying
insensible where she had been struck down.
The woman was discreet. She had often overheard the Prince's torrents
of angry abuse, and in an instant grasped the situation. Instead of
alarming the other servants, she quickly applied restoratives, bathed
her mistress's face tenderly in eau de Cologne, washing away the blood
from the mouth, and after half an hour succeeded in getting her
comfortably to bed.
She said nothing to any one, but locked the door and spent the remainder
of the night upon the sofa near her Princess.
While Claire was seated in her wrap, taking her chocolate at eight
o'clock next morning, the Countess de Trauttenberg, her husband's spy,
who probably knew all that had transpired, entered with the
engagement-book.
She saw what a terrible sight the unhappy woman presented, yet affected
not to notice it.
"Well, Trauttenberg?" asked the Princess in a soft, weary voice, hardly
looking up at her, "what are our engagements to-day?"
The lady-in-waiting consulted the book, which upon its cover bore the
royal crown above the cipher "C," and replied,--
"At eleven, the unveiling of the monument to Schilling the sculptor in
the Albert-Platz; at one, luncheon with the Princess Alexandrine, to
meet the Duchess of Brunswick-Lunebourg; at four, the drive; and
to-night, `Faust,' at the Opera."
Her Highness sighed. The people, the enthusiastic crowd who applauded
her, little knew how wearying was that round of daily duties, how
soul-killing to a woman with a broken heart. She was "their Claire,"
the woman who was to be their Queen, and they believed her to be happy!
"Cancel all my engagements," she said. "I shall not go out to-day.
Tell the Court newsman that I am indisposed--a bad cold--anything."
"As your Imperial Highness commands," responded De Trauttenberg, bowing,
and yet showing no sign that she observed the disfiguration of her poor
face.
The woman's cold formality irritated her.
"You see the reason?" she asked meaningly, looking into her face.
"I note that your Imperial Highness has--has met with a slight
accident," she said. "I trust it is not painful."
That reply aroused the fire of the Hapsbourg blood within her veins.
The woman was her bitter enemy. She had lied about her, and had
poisoned her husband's mind against her. And yet she was helpless. To
dismiss her from her duties would only be a confirmation of what the
woman had, no doubt, alleged.
It was upon the tip of her tongue to charge her openly as an enemy and a
liar. It was that woman, no doubt, who had spied upon her when she had
called upon Count Leitolf, and who on her return to Treysa had gone
straight to the Crown Prince with a story that was full of vile and
scandalous inventions.
"Oh, dear, no," she said, managing to control her anger by dint of great
effort. "It is not at all painful, I assure you. Perhaps,
Trauttenberg, you had better go at once and tell the newsman, so that my
absence at the Schilling unveiling will be accounted for."
Thus dismissed, the woman, with her false smiles and pretended sympathy,
went forth, and the journals through Germany that day reported, with
regret, that the Crown Princess Claire of Marburg was confined to her
room, having caught a severe chill on her journey from Vienna, and that
she would probably remain indisposed for a week.
When her maids had dressed her she passed on into her gorgeous little
blue-and-gold boudoir, her own sanctum, for in it were all the little
nick-nacks, odds and ends which on her marriage she had brought from her
own home at Wartenstein. Every object reminded her of those happy days
of her youth, before she was called upon to assume the shams of royal
place and power; before she entered that palace that was to her but a
gilded prison.
The long windows of the room looked out upon the beautiful gardens and
the great lake, with its playing fountains beyond, while the spring
sunlight streaming in gave it an air of cheerfulness even though she was
so despondent and heavy of heart. The apartment was gorgeously
furnished, as indeed was the whole of the great palace. Upon the backs
of the chairs, embroidered in gold upon the damask, was the royal crown
and cipher, while the rich carpet was of pale pastel blue. For a long
time she stood at the window, looking out across the park.
She saw her husband in his cavalry uniform riding out with an escort
clattering behind him, and watched him sadly until he was out of sight.
Then she turned and glanced around the cosy room which everywhere bore
traces of her artistic taste and refinement. Upon the side-tables were
many photographs, signed portraits of her friends, reigning sovereigns,
and royal princes; upon the little centre-table a great old porcelain
bowl of fresh tea-roses from the royal hot-houses. Her little buhl
escritoire was littered with her private correspondence--most of it
being in connection with charities in various parts of the kingdom in
which she was interested, or was patroness.
Of money, or of the value of it, she knew scarcely anything. She was
very wealthy, of course, for her family were one of the richest in
Europe, while the royal house of Marburg was noted for its great wealth;
yet she had never in her life held in her possession more than a few
hundred marks at a time. Her bills all went to the official of the
household whose duty it was to examine and pay them, and to charities
she sent drafts through that same gold-spectacled official.
She often wondered what it was like to be poor, to work for a daily wage
like the people she saw in the street and in the theatres. They seemed
bright, contented, happy, and at least they had their freedom, and loved
and married whom they chose.
Only the previous night, when she had entered her carriage at the
station, a working-man had held his little child up to her for her to
pat its head. She had done so, and then sighed to compare the
difference between the royal father and that proud father of the people.
Little Ignatia, sweet and fresh, in her white frock and pale pink sash,
was presently brought in by Allen to salute her mother, and the latter
snatched up the child gladly in her arms and smothered its chubby face
with fond kisses.
But the child noticed the disfigured countenance, and drew herself back
to look at it.
"Mother is hurt," she said in English, in her childish speech. "Poor
mother!"
"Yes, I fell down, darling," she answered. "Wasn't that very
unfortunate? Are you sorry?"
"Very sorry poor mother is hurt," answered the child. "And, why!--one
of poor mother's tooths have gone." The Princess saw that Allen was
looking at her very hard, therefore she turned to her and explained,--
"It is nothing--nothing; a slight accident. I struck myself."
But the child stroked its mother's face tenderly with the soft, chubby
little hand, saying,--
"Poor mother must be more careful another time or I shall scold her.
And Allen will scold her too."
"Mother will promise to be more careful," she assured the little one,
smiling. And then, seating herself, listened for half an hour to the
child's amusing prattle, and her joyous anticipation of the purchase of
a perambulator for her dolly.
With tender hands the Crown Princess retied the broad pink ribbon of the
sash, and presently produced some chocolates from the silver bon-bon box
which she kept there on purpose for her little one.
And Allen, the rather plain-faced Englishwoman, who was the best of
nurses, stood by in silence, wondering how such an accident could have
happened to her Imperial mistress, but, of course, unable to put any
question to her.
"You may take Ignatia to buy the perambulator, Allen," said she at last
in English. "Get a good one; the best you can. And after luncheon let
me see it. I shall not go out to-day, so you can bring the Princess
back to me at two o'clock."
"Very well, your Highness."
And both she and the child withdrew, the latter receiving the maternal
kiss and caramels in each hand.
Again alone, Claire sat for a long time in deep thought. The
recollection of those cruel, bitter accusations which her husband had
uttered was still uppermost in her mind. What her humble friend
Steinbach had told her was, alas! only too true. At Court it was said
that she loved Leitolf, and the Crown Prince believed the scandalous
libel.
"Ah, if Ferdinand only knew!" she murmured to herself. "If he could
only read my heart! Then he would know the truth. Perhaps, instead of
hating me as he does, he would be as forbearing as I try to be. He
might even try to love me. Yet, alas!" she added bitterly, "such a
thing cannot be. The Court of Marburg have decided that, in the
interests of their own future, I must be ruined and disgraced. It is
destiny, I suppose," she sighed; "my destiny!"
Then she was silent, staring straight before her at Bronzino's beautiful
portrait of the Duchess Eleanor on the wall opposite. The sound of a
bugle reached her, followed by the roll of the drums as the palace guard
was changed. The love of truth, the conscientiousness which formed so
distinct a feature in Claire's character, and mingled with its
picturesque delicacy a certain firmness and dignity, she maintained
consistently always.
The Trauttenberg returned, but she dismissed her for the day, and when
she had left the boudoir the solitary woman murmured bitterly aloud,--
"A day's leave will perhaps allow you to plot and conspire further
against the woman to whom you owe everything, and upon whose charity
your family exist. Go and report to my husband my appearance this
morning, and laugh with your friends at my unhappiness!" She rose and
paced the room, her white hands clasped before her in desperation.
"Carl! Carl!" she cried in a hoarse, low voice. "I have only your
indiscretion to thank for all this! And yet have I not been quite as
indiscreet? Why, therefore, should I blame you? No," she said in a
whisper, after a pause, "it is more my own fault than yours. I was
blind, and you loved me. I foolishly permitted you to come here,
because your presence recalled all the happiness of the past--of those
sweet, idyllic days at Wartenstein, when we--when we loved each other,
and our love was but a day-dream never to be realised. I wonder whether
you still recollect those days, as I remember them--those long rambles
over the mountains alone by the by-paths that I knew from my childhood
days, and how we used to stand together hand in hand and watch the
sinking sun flashing upon the windows of the castle far away. Nine
years have gone since those days of our boy-and-girl love--nine long,
dark years that have, I verily believe, transformed my very soul. One
by one have all my ideals been broken and swept away, and now I can only
sit and weep over the dead ashes of the past. The past--ah! what that
means to me--life and love and freedom. And the future?" she sighed.
"Alas! only black despair, ignominy, and shame." Again she halted at
the window, and hot tears coursed down her pale cheeks. Those words,
uttered almost without consciousness on her own part, contained the
revelation of a life of love, and disclosed the secret burden of a heart
bursting with its own unuttered grief. She was repulsed, she was
forsaken, she was outraged where she had bestowed her young heart with
all its hopes and wishes. She was entangled inextricably in a web of
horrors which she could not even comprehend, yet the result seemed
inevitable.
"These people condemn me! They utter their foul calumnies, and cast me
from them unjustly," she cried, pushing her wealth of fair hair from her
brow in her desperation. "Is there no justice for me? Can a woman not
retain within her heart the fond remembrance of the holy passion of her
youth--the only time she has loved--without it being condemned as a sin?
without--"
The words died on her dry lips, for at that moment there was a tap at
the door, and she gave permission to enter.
One of the royal servants in gorgeous livery bowed and advanced,
presenting to her a small packet upon a silver salver, saying,--
"The person who brought this desired that it should be given into your
Imperial Highness's hands at once."
She took the packet, and the man withdrew.
A single glance was sufficient to show her that the gummed address label
had been penned by Count Carl Leitolf's own hand. Her heart beat
quickly as she cut the string and opened the packet, to find within a
book--a dull, uninteresting, philosophical treatise in German. There
was no note or writing of any kind.
She ran through the leaves quickly, and then stood wondering. Why had
he sent her that? The book was one that she certainly could never read
to understand. Published some fifteen years before, it bore signs of
not being new. She was much puzzled.
That Leitolf had a motive in sending it to her she had no doubt. But
what could it denote? Again and again she searched in it to find some
words or letters underlined--some communication meant for her eye alone.
Presently, utterly at a loss to understand, she took up the brown-paper
wrapping, and looked again at the address. Yes, she was not mistaken.
It was from Carl.
For a few moments she held the paper in her hand, when suddenly she
detected that the gummed address label had only been stuck on lightly by
being wetted around the edge, and a thought occurred to her to take it
off and keep it, together with the book.
Taking up the large ivory paper-knife, she quickly slipped it beneath
the label and removed it, when to her astonished eyes there were
presented some written words penned across the centre, where the gum had
apparently been previously removed.
The words, for her eye alone, were in Carl's handwriting, lightly
written, so that they should not show through the label.
The message--the last message from the man who loved her so fondly, and
whose heart bled for her in her gilded unhappiness--read:--
"Adieu, my Princess. I leave at noon to-day, because you have willed it
so. I have heard of what occurred last night. It is common knowledge
in the palace. Be brave, dear heart. May God now be your comforter.
Recollect, though we shall never again meet, that I shall think ever and
eternally of you, my Princess, the sweet-faced woman who was once my
own, but who is now, alas! lost to me for ever. Adieu, adieu. I kiss
your hand, dear heart, adieu!"
It was his last message. His gentle yet manly resignation, the deep
pathos of his farewell, told her how full of agony was his own heart.
How bitter for her, too, that parting, for now she would stand alone and
unprotected, without a soul in whom to confide, or of whom to seek
advice.
As she reread those faintly-traced words slowly and aloud the light died
from her face.
"I kiss your hand, dear heart, adieu!" she murmured, and then, her heart
overburdened by grief, she burst into a flood of emotion.