THE PRICE TO BE PAID.
It was late at night, but the windows of the little inn at Drinitza
were still ablaze with lights. In the sitting-room which was held
sacred to Lord and Lady Usk, Cyril was lying upon a sofa, while Mr
Hicks bandaged systematically and scientifically the various injuries
he had received in being thrown out of the buggy. Usk was wandering in
and out of the room, restless and savagely miserable, for Helene had
not recovered consciousness since she was extricated from the wrecked
carriage, and Hannele and the doctor from Novigrad were with her
upstairs, and would not allow him even near her door.
“There, Count!” said Mr Hicks, tying a final knot; “I guess you’re
about fixed up now, and I incline to think a meal of some sort would
be a judicious investment after all this mussing around. Lord Usk, if
we might requisition the services of that excellent William of yours
to forage for us----”
“Oh, tell him to do anything you like,” said Usk wearily, stepping out
on the terrace for the twentieth time. “I don’t want him.”
The others heard him tramping up and down outside while William
removed the traces of Mr Hicks’s surgical labours, and brought in a
hastily prepared meal. Seeing that Cyril was helpless with a sprained
wrist, the servant asked if he should cut up his meat for him, but the
offer was declined. Presently Usk, finding the companionship of his
own thoughts intolerable, came back into the room.
“Now, Lord Usk,” said Mr Hicks cheerfully, “just sit down and eat
something.”
“No, no, I don’t want anything,” was the hasty answer.
“Do you really feel that you can’t break bread with me, Usk?” asked
Cyril, pausing in his efforts to feed himself with his left hand.
“It’s not that, of course. Here, let me cut that up for you, uncle.
It’s simply that I can’t eat.”
“It is that. You feel that if it had not been for me that poor little
girl upstairs would have been sitting here with you as usual. It’s
quite true, but do you need to hear me say that if I had known what
was to happen I would never have stirred a step to escape--that I
would go back and give myself up to Gregorescu this moment if it would
do her any good?”
“It’s not that,” repeated Usk. “I know it wasn’t your fault--or
Hicks’s or mine, except that we ought never to have let her come--but
that we, all of us strong men, should have got through without a
scratch, and a little delicate girl like her--oh, God! when we got her
out from under the buggy----” his voice failed.
“Well, the Count has a good few scratches to show any way,” said Mr
Hicks judicially, “and so has that good fellow William, blubbering out
that he wished he was killed and her ladyship not hurt. But if I were
you, Lord Usk, I guess I’d find something else to do beyond tearing my
hair and scarifying my soul with remorse that way. You’ll be a fine
washed-out article when they want you upstairs to give a hand with the
nursing. Now, for your wife’s sake!” he took Usk by the shoulders, and
pushed him down into a chair, “I’ll have you make some sort of a meal,
or I’ll warn the doctor that it’ll only mean another patient on his
hands if he lets you sit up.”
“I can’t hear what they are doing from here,” objected Usk.
“Nor can any of us. But we can hear if they open the door, or come out
in the upper hall, and that’s just all you want. Now the Count is
going to tell us something of what he’s been through. Yes, sir,” he
added firmly, in response to a look of remonstrance from Cyril, “I
guess I mean just that.”
“You needn’t think you’re going to make any sensational discoveries,
Hicks. We may suspect till all is blue, but the real movers in the
plot have covered up their traces too well to be brought to book.”
“Ah, I sort of suspicioned that they weren’t taking any risks. But I’d
as lief know the way they fixed things up, Count, from that very
evening when you swam out of our ken, like a new kind of planet.”
For a moment Cyril hesitated still. “It’s not the kind of story to
make a man altogether proud,” he said, “for whenever I was outwitting
our friends the enemy most completely, I seem to have been making it
easier for them to keep a tight hold on me. But you shall hear. Of
course our driver must have been drugged when we got to Klotsch that
evening, and it had probably been made worth the landlord’s while not
to be in too great a hurry to supply his place. At any rate, poor
Paschics and I walked on a good way, and at last, thinking that as we
had paid for the carriage, it was not much good doing the journey on
our own feet, sat down by the roadside to wait for it. I think it was
the first time in our joint lives that we were ever caught napping,
and we have paid dearly enough for it, both of us, Heaven knows! but
who would ever have anticipated danger on that straight piece of high
road? There were not even woods on each side--merely rocks, and those
stunted shrubs the goats eat. We were just beyond the turning which
leads to this road below you here, down into Dardania, sitting rather
high up on the bank so as to be out of the dust. Suddenly we were
seized from behind, and blindfolded with something thrown over our
heads. We hadn’t a chance to struggle. How many men there were against
us I don’t know, but they carried us off quite easily, and when they
took the cloak off my head again I was in a carriage, which must have
been waiting just out of sight in the side-road. There was a woman in
it--Tania Garanine, the Scythian actress--and when I saw her I knew
the true inwardness of the plot at once. She is a favourite tool of
Soudaroff’s; and the Princess of Dardania turned her on when she
wanted to keep her son from marrying Princess Emilia of Magnagrecia.
The young fellow was staunch, you know, which didn’t make the fair
Tania any more kindly disposed towards me, who had made up the match.
She looked quite radiant when I found myself opposite her in the
carriage, and made no bones about answering my questions. It was
desirable that I should be out of the way for a time, she told me, but
everything would be done to make the short seclusion as pleasant as
possible, and if I would give my word not to attempt to escape, I
should be allowed a considerable degree of freedom. Since my revolver
was gone, and my feet were fastened together, and my hands tied in
front of me, it seemed rather unnecessary to ask for my parole, and I
refused it promptly. She didn’t seem to mind, but the fellow who sat
beside me immediately poked the muzzle of a revolver into my neck, and
remarked that he would fire if I moved. There was another man
opposite, also with a revolver, and poor Paschics was at the bottom of
the carriage, apparently choking. I pointed out to the lady that if
she didn’t want him to die before her eyes, she had better have the
thing taken off his head, and she gave the order with a sweet smile,
as a personal favour to me, she said. Just at that moment we passed
another carriage--an elaborate old-fashioned affair with Dardanian
outriders--coming in the opposite direction, towards Europe, and the
man in it bowed very impressively to Mlle. Garanine.”
“Prince Valerian Pelenko!” cried Mr Hicks. “Then I guess he told the
exact truth, after all, when he said he had seen you riding with that
lady, and on the best of terms with her.”
“Probably, since he could not see the revolver, and the carriage-rug
was drawn up over my hands. Did--did my wife hear it?”
“We all heard it, Count, but no one believed a word of it. To us it
was only one more attempt to take away your character.”
“But she might have believed it!” cried Usk violently. “It might have
pained her most awfully. Why didn’t you cry out, Uncle Cyril, even if
you were shot the next moment? At least she would have known that
their whole story was a lie.”
“Would she?” asked Cyril. “My dear Usk, do you think my enemies would
not have been able to arrange things so as to give her greater pain
still? As it happened, Prince Pelenko was able to do his part without
departing from the apparent truth, but do you think he would have
objected to go a little beyond it if necessary? Would it have been
much consolation to my wife to learn that I had shot myself, whether
accidentally or otherwise, when in Mlle. Garanine’s company? You may
say that it would have been no worse than to hear that I was in her
company living, but you must remember that I fully expected to be able
to escape with Paschics in two or three days at most. If I had thought
I should be a prisoner for more than three months!--well, I may tell
you that many and many a time I have wished I had called out as you
suggest, and taken the consequences.”
“I think I hear them moving upstairs,” interrupted Usk, and he went to
the door and listened, but came back almost immediately, sitting down
at the table with the same gloomy face.
“Go ahead, Count!” said Mr Hicks. “I want to know right now what
happened.”
“Nothing happened for some time, except that Mlle. Garanine threw out
hints which were evidently intended to make me believe that I was
merely wanted out of the way for a day or two while a revolution was
carried through in Thracia. It was an ingenious idea, for, of course,
with Michael out of the kingdom, and most of the Ministers away at his
wedding, the time would have been well chosen, but I knew I must have
had some inkling of it if things had gone so far, and I was prepared
to believe anything rather than what she told me. I felt pretty
certain that it was the affairs of Palestine, and not of Thracia,
which were concerned, and that I was wanted out of the way for a good
deal longer than a day or two. I saw several ways in which they might
try to manage it, but I reserved my judgment until we stopped at that
accursed house down there----” he waved his hand towards the hill at
the back of the inn. “If you knew what it has been to be certain that
there were friends and safety within a mile of me, and yet to be
unable to take a step towards them----! I should like to tear that
house down stone by stone, and make it a desolation for ever----”
“And bury Dr Gregorescu and his Dardanians under the ruins?” asked Mr
Hicks.
“No,” said Cyril calmly. “That would be too good for them. That man
has made me twenty years older in these three months. I saw the whole
plot as soon as I was face to face with him and heard his name, and it
was the very worst of the alternatives I had imagined. You will wonder
how I knew. Well, I don’t think I am a coward generally. Hicks, you
and I have been in some tight places together; what do you say?”
“No man less so, Count.”
“Thanks. But there is one thing before which I am an abject coward,
and that is poison. Not ordinary poison--just going to sleep and not
waking up again--nor even the fancy kinds which twist you up into an
arch before they’ve done with you, but one particular kind of poison,
the thought of which used to give me the horrors whenever I let myself
remember it while I was in Thracia. Taken in small quantities, it
doesn’t destroy life, only the mind--takes away a man’s memory, leaves
him a sort of perpetual child, do you see? The knowledge of it is
hereditary in one family, but for generations it has been at the
service of the Scythian Government, and occasionally it has been
used--not too often, so as to awaken suspicion, but just to get rid
effectually of some troublesome person whose death might cause remark.
All those years when I was practically the only barrier between
Ernestine and Michael and a Scythian protectorate, I went in deadly
fear of this devilish stuff. Of course I took precautions. Paschics
and Dietrich were staunch, if all the rest of my household were
traitors, but there was always the danger of the thing’s being
administered in some one else’s house. I inquired secretly into the
subject, and got some interesting information by bribing disappointed
Secret Service agents, so that I had some faint idea of the nature and
properties of the drug. Then I had an exhaustive list made of the
members of the family that prepared it, and their various marriages,
so that if I found myself in the neighbourhood of any of them I might
be on my guard. In the last generation, one of the daughters married a
Dacian named Gregorescu. Now you see why I knew my fate as soon as I
heard the doctor’s name. He was at the house, waiting to receive me,
and Mlle. Garanine delivered me over to him in the most matter-of-fact
way. She herself returned into Dardania at once--on horseback, I
presume, for the carriage could not cross the mountains, and was laid
up in the Pelenko stables--and the two men with revolvers went with
her. But we were no better off for that. The house was guarded by a
small army of Dardanians, who kept watch day and night, though of
course I didn’t find this out at once. My idea was to disarm the
doctor’s suspicions by pretending to swallow whole the notion of the
Thracian plot, and I harped on the subject till late at night. I
pointed out that it could not possibly be successful, but that I would
make it worth his while if he would release me at once. I appealed to
his cupidity, his ambition, everything I could think of, and at last
he thought it advisable to pretend to yield. He would think it over,
and let me know in the morning, he said, and in any case I might be
sure my captivity should be as pleasant as he could make it. I had
refused supper, but would I drink a little glass of benedictine with
him to show there was no ill-feeling? This was what I had been
expecting, and I agreed at once, only thankful he had chosen liqueur
and not coffee, which would have been much more difficult to manage.
The benedictine looked just as usual, except that I could just
distinguish a very slight--almost imperceptible--cloudiness about the
glass at my end of the tray.”
“But why not have taken the other, and so forced on an explanation?”
demanded Usk, who had become interested in the recital in spite of
himself.
“Because that was what I particularly wished not to do. My idea was to
make Gregorescu think I had taken the poison, and so gull him into
keeping a less strict watch on me. He would not venture to repeat the
experiment unless he was quite sure I had tricked him, for a second
dose would kill any man living, and I was pretty certain they did not
want me to die on their hands. For one thing, it would look bad if the
matter came out; for another, it would spoil the full effect of the
Princess of Dardania’s revenge. So I took up the glass and sipped it
quite calmly, to all appearance--only, instead of swallowing any of
the liqueur, I poured it down my sleeve a drop at a time, by a turn of
the wrist, when I raised the glass to my lips. He did not dare to
watch me very closely while I drank, lest I should suspect something,
and I am thankful to say my nerve lasted until the glass was empty. I
thought then it was about the stiffest piece of acting I had ever been
driven to. If I had known that I had to carry it on for three months!
Afterwards I spoke a little thickly, and let him help me to my room.
He was watching for the symptoms, and was quite satisfied, but early
in the morning he very nearly had me. Poor Paschics, of course, knew
nothing of the whole affair. He was imprisoned somewhere by himself,
but in the morning they left his door open, and he crept along the
passage to find me. I saw him standing over me with his finger on his
lips when I woke, and I was just going to explain things to him when
it struck me that his being allowed to be there was suspicious, and I
pretended not to know him. It was heartbreaking to see the state he
was in, but I persisted, and it was well I did, for Gregorescu was
spying on us the whole time. I found out his spy-hole afterwards. He
thought it was all right then, and came and had poor Paschics taken
away, apologising to me for his intrusion. I looked as puzzled as I
could, and when I got up did my best to make it clear that my mind was
a blank--that I did not know Gregorescu himself, or where I was, or
who I was, or anything that had happened. For the first day or two he
used to try to catch me out, starting subjects suddenly, or asking
questions, and it’s just a chance that the strain didn’t make me as
mad as he thought I was. But when he felt pretty sure of the vacuum,
he began to fill it after a fashion by suggestion. I was Prince
Shishman Pelenko, and I was gradually fitted with a past to match the
name--all hinted most carefully, and wedged into my mind, so to speak,
by leading questions. It was horribly cleverly done, and when
Gregorescu thought his work was complete, he had it inspected--by
Prince Soudaroff himself. It was a good thing that I had had fair
practice in guile by that time, or I could never have held out, but I
baffled even him. He also went away quite satisfied----”
“And met us on the hill here, and told us a whole lot of lies about
Shishman Pelenko,” said Usk savagely.
“Well,” said Mr Hicks, with some complacency, “I guess the champion
liar of Europe had met his match that time, any way.”
“Thanks for the compliment!” said Cyril. “I believe now that his
perfect satisfaction with what he had seen and heard must have made
him less clear-sighted with regard to what was going on in Neustria.
He thought that with me helpless and in safe custody he had nipped the
Palestine scheme in the bud, but no doubt he intended to make things
safe after a while by opening negotiations with Ernestine and
Goldberg, and handing me over, as a hopeless idiot, in exchange for a
promise that the existing state of affairs at Jerusalem should remain
undisturbed. It has been about the only consolation I have had, to
think that the real scheme would go on all the better because
Soudaroff was congratulating himself on having put a stop to the bogus
one. But I needed the consolation, for it was just about that time
that I lost poor Paschics. We had been kept so strictly apart that I
had never had a chance of conferring with him or explaining matters,
but he seems to have had some idea that I was only shamming madness.
At any rate, one night, when there was a tremendous thunderstorm, I
found him by my bed again. He did not utter a sound, simply took my
hand in the darkness, and talked on it in the deaf-and-dumb alphabet.
He said he believed he could escape under cover of the storm, for the
Dardanians were all in a lively state of funk, taking shelter wherever
they could, and he would bring back help and release me. I asked him
in the same way why I should not come too, but he told me that the
usual man--a rascally French-speaking Greek who posed as my personal
attendant--was on guard at my door, and had only let him pass when he
gave him all the money he had, under the pretext that I was always
afraid of thunder. In fact, I saw the fellow inside the room by the
next flash of lightning, listening jealously, but as he only saw
Paschics holding my hand, he got nothing to tell his master. Well, as
soon as the storm became less severe, Paschics departed, and the next
thing I heard was that he was dead.”
“And was he murdered?” asked Usk quickly.
“I believe not. As far as I could make out, he was trying to escape
along the roof, intending to climb down one of the trees which grew
near the end of the house, when Gregorescu discovered his absence and
turned out the Dardanians. When he saw they were after him, he turned
off to the edge of the roof, intending to drop from it to the back
verandah, and so to the ground; but the parapet was rotten all along,
and a great piece of it fell with him. He struggled up and threw
himself over the edge of the verandah, and actually ran a few steps;
then they saw him give a convulsive leap and fall to the ground. When
they got to him he was dead. The shock and the fall together were too
much for him, after the excitement and anxiety of the past weeks. That
was Gregorescu’s account, and I have no reason to doubt it.”
“No; it’s in accordance with the medical evidence,” said Mr Hicks.
“Death due to shock, bruises inflicted before death; that was all.”
“But it doesn’t explain our finding the body in the river,” said Usk.
“That was to throw you off the scent,” said Cyril quickly. “Didn’t you
all go off to some place on the Mœsian frontier, miles away, to see
whether I was in that neighbourhood? But you didn’t rise to the
occasion as they hoped. You were quite expected to leave Drinitza, and
take up your quarters at Bagnanera.”
“Then you heard something of our movements?”
“Oh yes; they talked quite openly before me, at first to try and catch
me off my guard, and afterwards, when they were quite sure the drug
had taken effect, because there was no reason why they shouldn’t. They
had one more try to make me betray myself when they found Paschics was
dead, telling me of it suddenly, and I had to affect ignorance and
mystification, and go through the whole sickening show over again. It
was so long before Gregorescu was really convinced of my madness that
I suppose, in spite of all my care, I must have failed in some points,
but he seems to have satisfied himself at last that it was more likely
the drug should produce slightly different effects on different people
than that a man should carry on such a deception for so long. Then
came the news of the Neustrian revolution and Malasorte’s
dictatorship, and Soudaroff must have seen immediately that his plans
for making use of me were foiled. In a sense, all that had been done
was useless, except as a matter of personal revenge, and he could not
hope to do any successful trading with me in the future, since his
Emperor had gone behind him and was in league with Malasorte, and
Malasorte was in league with the Jews. I gathered that the plan now
was to smuggle me into Pannonia and leave me in a lunatic asylum
there, to be discovered or not by my friends, as circumstances might
determine----”
“No, sir,” said Mr Hicks quickly; “you were to be discovered. Mlle.
Garanine took the trouble to come here on purpose to give the plan
away to us.”
“That was to get us out of the way, as I said at the time,” remarked
Usk. “We were keeping too strict a watch on the neighbourhood to
please them.”
“No doubt,” said Cyril; “and we must also remember that nothing would
satisfy the Princess of Dardania but to restore to my wife a husband
who could not even recognise her. The woman’s malice had to be
consulted as well as Soudaroff’s statecraft, you see. Well, you may
imagine my state of feeling, with such a prospect before me--a pauper
lunatic asylum, from which I might or might not be released before I
was driven really mad. Then there came poor Helene’s sudden
incursion.” Usk moved restlessly. “It was almost more than I could do
to keep up my pretence of not recognising her; but if I hadn’t done
it, I don’t believe she would have got away alive. As it was, I saw
her to the gate myself, and watched her out of sight, for those
bloodthirsty Dardanians were capable of anything, but I had disarmed
their suspicions so completely by that time that they all obeyed me in
ordinary matters as if I had really been Shishman Pelenko himself. But
Gregorescu was not going to risk Helene’s bringing back help. The last
thing he wished was to be caught on Pannonian soil, and to be
identified with my disappearance, so we prepared for a flitting at
once. The idea which he had so carefully ‘suggested’ to me, that my
life was in danger from unknown enemies, was worked again, and I was
warned I must escape at once. And I had to fall in with it, for I
couldn’t throw off the mask until help was actually at hand. When I
saw Helene again, alone, hiding in the bushes, just as we were
starting, I almost lost hope, for I couldn’t make her understand what
I wanted, and I could only trust no one else had seen her. If they
hadn’t found out who she was since the morning, by sending a spy to
track her back here, I haven’t a doubt she would have been killed, but
they were afraid of meddling with her further than by sending an old
woman to guide her astray while we got off.”
“But how did you get off, any way, and what happened to the carriage,
Count?” cried Mr Hicks.
“The carriage simply drove out of the gates and into the wood, where
it was left, while we went on with the horses alone,” answered Cyril.
“After your visit to the house the next day, it was restored to its
usual place, but when you were wondering which way it could have gone
without being seen, it was hidden in a thicket quite close to you. And
ourselves? Oh, we crossed the road and plunged into the hills on the
opposite side, and so made our way round by mountain-paths to the
house above the village, which Gregorescu had had in his eye for some
time in case he found it necessary to take the bull by the horns and
negotiate for my surrender instead of dumping me down in Pannonia. You
see, it was on Dardanian soil, and he knew you could not touch him
without a long diplomatic difficulty which would involve just what you
didn’t want--waste of time. You know how he worked the thing through
the mate of Queen Félicia’s yacht, and you know, Hicks, how very
close the shave was at last. I don’t know quite how I gave myself away
in that interview this morning--or yesterday morning now--my nerve is
not what it was, and my face may have shown what I was feeling, or
perhaps he merely put two and two together, but I swear I solemnly
believe that if I had been in his power for another day, he would have
forced me to take another dose of his drug, in some way that I could
not evade. Even as it was, I was in terror lest he should do it before
you came back, but he thought he had a week before him, and he didn’t
know I had seen what was in his mind. You were only just in time, Usk,
but I would rather you had been too late than that this should have
happened.”
“It can’t be helped,” groaned Usk. “Oh, what are they doing with her
all this time? Can she be dead, and they haven’t told me?”
“No, no,” said Mr Hicks. “They had a lot to do, and I guess no news is
good news. If you could sleep a little, now----?”
A mute gesture of refusal from Usk answered him, and they waited on,
until at last the door of the room upstairs was heard to open. Usk met
the doctor half-way up the stairs. “Well?” he gasped. “How is she?”
The doctor, who was a German and disapproved of misalliances, looked
him over severely before answering. “There is no sign of
consciousness,” he replied slowly. “It would be as well to summon her
Highness’s august parents as soon as possible, and there is a
specialist at Vindobona I should be glad to have at hand. It is not
likely he could suggest anything, but it is always a comfort to the
patient’s friends to feel that everything possible has been done.”
The Grand-Duke and Duchess came from Molzau, Queen Ernestine from her
sick-bed at Vindobona, Lord and Lady Caerleon from Geneva, where they
had just laid in the grave the exiled Pauline Vassilievna, who had
been more than a mother to Lady Caerleon. Never had the little inn at
Drinitza been so full, or entertained such important guests, but the
old landlord felt no desire to congratulate himself. The “little
Princess” had won every heart during her stay, and now, to all
appearance, she was dying. When her parents first arrived, she seemed
to recognise them--Usk was certain that she did--but she relapsed
immediately into a state in which she appeared to be conscious of
nothing but pain. As if it had not been agony enough to see her
suffer, Usk found very soon that the blame was supposed to be his. The
Grand-Duchess could not forgive either him or Cyril for the accident.
At least, she said resentfully, she thought she was securing a kind
and thoughtful husband for her Lenchen when she gave her to him, but
he had gone and sacrificed her to his uncle before they had been four
months married. She would have kept him out of the sick-room
altogether if she could, and when he insisted on taking part in the
nursing, mounted guard over him the whole time to make sure that he
did not disturb Helene by speaking to her. If Usk’s heart had not been
very sore, and a good deal troubled by remorse, for which no one but
himself and the Grand-Duchess could see any reason, he would have
rebelled; but he could not engage in a squabble over his wife’s
unconscious form, and his imperious mother-in-law rode roughshod over
him. To his astonishment, it was the Grand-Duke who took his part. He
also was banished from the sick-room, and he did not venture to
dispute his wife’s decision, but he made friends with Usk in a rough
kind of way, and they would take long walks together almost in
silence, finding a fellow-feeling in their common grief. The
Grand-Duchess, in a fury of maternal anxiety so vehement as almost to
be ludicrous, made no secret of the fact that she would have preferred
to be left with only Queen Ernestine and Lady Caerleon to share her
labours. True, she bore a grudge against the Queen because she was
Cyril’s wife, but she credited her with a genuine interest in Helene,
which she denied to any of the men. They could talk of politics, she
said with scorn, when Lenchen lay dying. The accusation had some
colour, unreasonable though it sounded. The question of the relations
between Michael and Félicia had reached an acute stage, and must
speedily become common property if no solution could be devised for
it.
Up to this point, chiefly by the assiduous efforts of Baroness
Radnika, the fiction that Félicia was merely taking a short cruise,
and that her husband had not found time to join her, had been kept up.
Even the Pannonian Court had been willing to account for anything that
seemed strange in the arrangement by remembering Félicia’s American
education, but she had no mind to leave things in this state. When the
Grand-Duke and Duchess paid her a hurried visit on board the yacht on
their way to Drinitza, she told them the facts of the case with the
greatest frankness, and refused to hear of a reconciliation. A
separation she wanted, and a separation she would have, and the
Grand-Duke saw no way of avoiding a scandal. He took counsel with
Cyril and Mr Hicks (these conversations it was which aroused the
Grand-Duchess’s ire), and they beat their brains for some means of
bringing Félicia back to Bellaviste. King Michael was far from
implacable. He admired Félicia intensely, and was really as much in
love with her as it was possible to him to be, and he had the grace to
be heartily ashamed of his own part in the dispute. He saw it now
through Félicia’s eyes, and admired her secretly for resenting his
conduct, and he was also painfully alive to the ridicule that would
descend upon him if it came out that he had driven away his three
months’ bride by his groundless jealousy. He was willing to make
promises and concessions for the future, but Félicia opposed a simple
negative to all his proposals. Once more Cyril became the natural
go-between, and travelled first to Bellaviste to interview the King,
and then across the peninsula to Paranati to try to influence
Félicia, but all in vain.
These journeys were not undertaken without strong remonstrance from
Queen Ernestine, who never saw her husband depart without fearing that
his enemies might contrive to get him again into their power. But he
never travelled without either the Grand-Duke, Mr Hicks, or Lord
Caerleon, and two or three armed servants, and with such precautions
it was not likely that he would now incur danger. Dr Gregorescu had
prudently disappeared, and his Dardanians were merged again in the
general mass of their fellow-countrymen. It was in the highest degree
unlikely that either Prince Soudaroff or the Princess of Dardania
would attempt any further hostile move, when the victim was able to
recount the whole history of the one that had just failed, although he
had not at present chosen to make it public. Moreover, the political
reasons which had induced the Scythian Chancellor to join in the plot
existed no longer, and he recognised that he had been cleverly led
aside by a false clue. Before the Emperor Timoleon V. had sat for a
month upon the throne of Neustria, the world was startled by a
rescript issued jointly by himself and his brother monarch of Scythia.
From this document it appeared that the Scythian troops which had for
three years occupied Jerusalem would be withdrawn immediately, and the
city handed over to the representatives of the Jewish provisional
government which had sat during that period at Nablus. Palestine would
be neutralised, and the Jewish State guaranteed in its independence
and privileges (nothing being said of the shadowy suzerainty of Roum)
by Neustria, Scythia, and the United States of America.
There was little real opposition to the measure. The new alliance was
immensely formidable, besides representing roughly the three Christian
creeds which were wont to battle over the sacred soil. England had
lost her opportunity of protesting when she acquiesced in the Scythian
occupation of Jerusalem three years before, and Hercynia was quieted
by receiving compensation elsewhere, as usual at the expense of Roum.
There was a wild outcry from the mass of the poorer Jews that no
provision was made for appointing a Prince of Palestine, but Cyril
made it known that he should refuse to be nominated even if the post
were constituted. As he had said, the agony of his captivity had made
him an old man all at once, and he felt no temptation to mingle any
longer in politics. It was typical of the change wrought in the man by
the disastrous result of his last experience of the political arena,
that he now desired nothing more than to return with his wife to the
oasis in the Syrian desert, within whose narrow limits he had so often
chafed, and there end his days in quietness.
And in the mean time, while the two Emperors were reorganising the map
of the world, and Félicia was reiterating her undying defiance of her
husband, Helene still lay unconscious in the inn at Drinitza. The
agonies of pain had passed, but she did not recover. She had not
sufficient vitality, the doctors said, to rally from the shock and the
long suffering, and it was not unlikely that her life would flicker
out without so much as a return to consciousness.