PLOTS AND COUNTER-PLOTS.
Lady Blanche had no desire to make a mountain out of a molehill, but
even when she surveyed her interview with Malakopf with the coolness and
sobriety of 9 a.m., she still thought that it was clearly her business
to make the matter known to her whom it principally concerned.
Accordingly she sent a note to Sophia asking her for an audience on an
affair of some importance, and this being granted, poured into the
Princess’s amused and interested ear all that Malakopf had said. Blanche
was a good narrator, with so admirable a memory that she had no call to
draw on her imagination, and her account was both vivid and accurate,
the rarest of combinations, and one for which we in vain look in the
pages of histories.
Princess Sophia was far too well entertained by the farcical absurdity
of the conspiracy to be really angry at present with her husband.
Malakopf, however, less simple-witted and much older, was not so lightly
dismissed. She knew the man to be cunning, and one whose investments
might be considered safe, and she fumed at the idea of a centipede
conspiring against her.
‘But there is one point which perplexes me,’ she said to Blanche.
‘Petros and that creature are in league together, that is certain, and
Petros, poor dear, I have no doubt whatever, thrones himself
prospectively over Rhodopé. Really, I married a fool after all, and one
of my requirements was that my husband should not be that. I shall get
quite indignant with him if he does not drop this nonsense. But then
where does Malakopf come in? It is quite certain that it is not worth
his while to overturn me in order to set up Petros. Without doubt he
means to step in himself; but where? He has mounted as high in Rhodopé
as a subject can; he would not take so much trouble if he was to be
nothing more.’
‘You must remember you have ever treated him like an insect, Princess,’
said Blanche. ‘Would not it be sufficient reward for him to overturn
you?’
‘No, I think not,’ said Sophia. ‘The man loathes me, of course, and no
doubt revenge would be an incentive. But I doubt revenge being his goal.
Perhaps there are wheels within wheels. Petros is to overturn me, and he
is to overturn Petros. The House of Ægina is to be a set of ninepins for
a centipede!’
‘The worst of it is that it is almost impossible to find out more,’ said
Blanche. ‘It was a lapful of luck that we know at all.’
‘It was clever of you, Blanche,’ said Sophia, ‘and clever people are
always lucky. About Petros--I shall give him one chance. I shall let
fall a word which should be a warning to him, something very plain, yet
meaningless to a good conscience, and then I shall have another talk
with you, Blanche.’
Sophia glanced at the ormolu clock on the mantelpiece, which had just
jarred as a warning of its striking.
‘Good gracious! it is nearly twelve,’ she said. ‘I shall take a stroll
in the direction--in the direction of the club. Thank you again,
Blanche; how earnestly you know. You have been instructive as well as
amusing. Really, Petros is very impertinent, now I think it over. I
shall ask you to come here again in a day or two--or, stay, I am dining
at the Legation on Friday; we will talk then, after dinner.’
The opportunity of giving a word of warning to Petros occurred that very
evening. They had dined alone, which was unusual; and after dinner,
which was still more unusual, the Prince had proposed a game of bezique.
Sophia had intended to go to the club, but she changed her mind, and
counter-ordered her carriage; for during dinner her husband had
interested her, and this proposal of his was now become remarkable.
Never in his life had the Prince been more desirous to please, but never
in his life, had he known all, had his efforts been more wildly
misdirected and futile, for during the day Sophia’s amusement had given
place to anger. In a conversation he had held with Malakopf that
morning, that sagacious Minister, conscious of a slight want of caution
the night before, had laid great stress on two points.
‘I need not tell you, my dear Prince,’ he said, ‘how essential it is
that the Princess should remain entirely unsuspicious. We have seen a
great deal of each other lately, and I reluctantly propose that we do
not meet quite so often for the future. Our intimacy might put someone
on the look-out, and if you throw a bomb where people are looking, they
will run away. That is my first point. The second point contains good
news. Already there is a widely-spread discontent in the State at the
unedifying conduct of your wife, or so it seems to people, and a large
sympathy with your untiring exertion in the Assembly. Also, I know for
certain that at present Princess Sophia reposes entire confidence in
you. Let it be your business to maintain that unabated--more, to
increase it.’
‘Who told you this?’ asked Petros.
‘One who knows her well--Lady Blanche Amesbury.’
‘Lady Blanche said she put entire confidence in me?’
‘I have the honour of telling you so,’ said Malakopf with impatience.
‘You seem to have had an intimate talk with Lady Blanche. She is a
clever woman.’
‘And I am not without wits,’ said Malakopf, chuckling, ‘and our talk was
more intimate than she knew. Indeed, she gave me all I wanted to know
with the charming naïveté of a child.’
Prince Petros was silent a moment; he did not feel entirely at ease
about this interview, but his habit of obedience to Malakopf’s orders
would not let him speak. At length, dismissing the subject, ‘Tell me how
to maintain my wife’s confidence,’ he said.
‘A little bezique in the evening would do wonders with her,’ said
Malakopf sententiously.
Thus it was that Prince Petros had proposed a game that evening, and
Sophia accepted from curiosity. During dinner he had talked charmingly,
and had related a number of amusing experiences shortly and with point.
At each Sophia’s contempt rose bitter as bile in her throat. Behind her
back he planned a revolution; before her face he paid court to the
amenities of social life, he behaved with a studied naturalness and
kindness. Knowing all she knew, these miserable little attentions seemed
to her the very acme of meanness, and it was the desire of studying him
further which made her counter-order the carriage that should have taken
her to the club. This argued a very strong desire.
They stood by the open window drinking their coffee, while the groom of
the chambers put out the table and packs of cards, and when the man had
left the room, Petros gently thrust his arm through hers.
‘It seems so long since we have spent an evening quietly together,
Sophia,’ he said. ‘To me, at least, it seems long. Sometimes I almost
wish you had been a poor girl, not the Princess of Rhodopé, that we had
been able to live quietly together up in some little mountain home.’
Sophia for the moment was struck dumb. Surely there was never so
immeasurable a hypocrite as this man! She could not answer, but since
she wished him to continue, she gently pressed his arm with hers.
‘You have felt that too, dearest?’ he continued softly. ‘Sometimes,
Sophia, I have thought you were a little weary of me. Now your sweet
silence makes me know I was wrong; so forgive me, darling. Look at that
lovely wash of moonlight over the town. It lies like a benediction over
your land. It was just such a night--was it not?--when I first came
here. I bless that day--I bless it every hour of my life.’
Sophia turned from him; the man produced in her a sense of physical
sickness. She, who with all her faults had never lied--she, to whom
falsehood was a dirty thing, as inconceivable as not washing, felt ill
at his duplicity. She was angry at herself for letting him speak, and
for a moment she was on the point of telling him she knew all. But her
anger surged up again, she could not forgive him; he had chosen to act a
crooked part, he must reap as he had sown. But she had promised herself
to give him a word of warning; that he should have.
‘Come, Petros,’ she said at length, with an assumed lightness of manner,
‘bezique, bezique. Really, I don’t know that a cottage on the mountains
would have suited me well, though it is charming of you to suggest it;
you would not have loved to find me thumbing a dirty pack of cards when
I should have been mending your stockings. There is a great deal to be
said for the position of the Princess of Rhodopé.’
He took her hand with charming courtesy and kissed it.
‘And who can say enough for the position of her husband?’ he asked.
They played a hand or two with the luck fairly divided, and Petros, who
seemed to Sophia to have recaptured his skill, was a considerable winner
at the end of an hour. But shortly after that he held a hand for which,
as Sophia declared, the world was made. He had early in the game
declared sequence six times, and then abandoned it; he had three
beziques on the table and the fourth knave of diamonds. This card he
drew in some eight tricks before the end, and still Sophia had not seen
the corresponding queen. But Petros’s heart failed him; he scored the
three beziques again with his extra knave, and immediately afterwards
drew in the missing queen.
Sophia was aghast.
‘Four thousand five hundred gone to the dogs!’ she exclaimed, with
contempt. ‘Really, Petros, you are beside yourself.’
‘It was a fault of generalship, I admit,’ said he.
Sophia looked at him very steadily. This was a good opening for what she
had to say.
‘Indeed, Petros, you are no Napoleon,’ she said. ‘You could never,
never carve a kingdom for yourself.’
So Petros had his warning, and Sophia hardened her heart against him.
As Malakopf had suggested, the two conspirators saw somewhat less of
each other for the next week or two, and more than once Sophia
thought--and, to do her justice, hoped--that Petros must have taken her
word of warning to heart. But his nauseating little tendernesses and
solicitudes for her were not diminished, and she found him infinitely
disgusting. He was acting a part, of that she was well assured, for he
was not, she knew, a man to whom caresses are habitual, and their day
had long since been over between them. What, then, could this
recrudescence of an exhibition which had never been natural to him mean
but that he wished to keep her ever surrounded with a tinsel counterfeit
of love? And for what reason could he coin its tokens in such profusion,
except that he wished her to rest assured of his unalterable devotion?
The man was putrid.
Two days after this the Princess and her husband dined together at the
English Legation. Lord Abbotsworthy, of course, took the Princess in,
and on her other side sat Malakopf. As usual, he, figuratively speaking,
licked the ground she trod on, and, as usual, she walked with her
tip-tilted nose in the air, as if he had been a disagreeable smell. But
during the course of dinner she let fall a few words which interested
him, though she spoke to the Minister, and not to him, but she intended
the words for his ear, and he sucked them greedily in.
‘I shall not leave Rhodopé till October this year,’ so Malakopf heard
her say, ‘but when I do go, I shall be away three months at the least.
Petros is so admirable, he manages affairs much better than I do, and it
really gives him something to do. Moreover, I have the completest
confidence in him, and his speeches, I believe, are considered most
sensible. I shall spend Christmas in England, I think, with my cousin.
England is often delightful at Christmas, and I don’t suppose I shall be
back here till half-way through January. The yacht? Oh yes; I love the
sea, as you know. I shall go in the yacht. Poor Petros is
sea-sick--think how absurd!’
Malakopf found much to interest him in this speech. The Princess’s long
absence was ideal to his wishes; even to the most loyal of her subjects
a three months’ sojourn abroad would appear protracted, a trial to their
belief in her unwavering devotion to their welfare. And never before, in
his recollection, had the monarch been absent on the occasion of the
great royal fête on New Year’s Day, when the Princess always gave an
immense dance to all those who had signed their names in her book, and a
great banquet in the Guildhall to the humbler citizens of Rhodopé.
There, just before midnight, she went with all her guests, and took her
stand in silence under the clock, while the great assemblage waited,
finger on lip and glass in hand, for the New Year to strike. As soon as
the twelve great shocks had proclaimed another year, she drank
prosperity to them all, and broke her glass, so that no one again might
drink from it. She herself then mingled with the crowd, and spoke a few
words to everyone she came across. Her wonderful memory made it easy for
her to recognise hundreds whom she had never consciously seen except on
this night, and a word of inquiry after son or daughter made many hearts
beat proudly.
Likewise, if the Princess was away for December, the duty of proroguing
Parliament would fall on Petros. The Assembly always rose from its
autumn Session the week before Christmas, but it was not formally
prorogued till the afternoon of the last day of December. On that day
all Members attended in Court dress, and from the throne the Princess
made a speech, thanking them for their labours in the past year. As
representative of her, Petros would speak from her seat, and Malakopf
made a mental note that a somewhat telling scene might be planned for
this occasion, and that Petros also would see a great opportunity.
They left the dining-room, foreign fashion, all together, each man
giving his arm to the woman he had taken in, and as the Princess no
longer objected even to the taste of smoke, there was no segregation of
men when they reached the drawing-room. But after a few words with one
and another of the guests, she beckoned to Lady Blanche, and the two sat
down in a corner of the drawing-room somewhat apart from the others.
Malakopf had an uneasy moment when he saw this, but already in his own
mind he had advanced matters so far that it did not matter much what the
Princess did, and running rapidly over his conversation with Lady
Blanche, he found no tangible cause for disquietude.
‘Blanche,’ said Sophia, speaking in English, ‘I have made my plans. You
have to help me, so please be very intelligent.’
‘What has happened?’ asked Blanche.
‘I have given Petros his warning, and that is over. His silence made me
sure that he knew what I meant. I told him he was no Napoleon, to carve
himself a kingdom. But his odious little attentions to me, which I
imagine are performed at Malakopf’s bidding, continue, and I think he
has made up his mind not to take warning. _Tant pis_, for I do not give
him another chance. You will hardly believe it, but the other night,
only, he made crawly little sentimental speeches to me, though we have
done with that sort of thing long ago. He said he wished we had been a
poor couple in a cottage, and he kissed my hand. The flesh of me crept.’
‘That looks like Malakopf,’ said Blanche.
‘Well, enough of Petros,’ went on Sophia. ‘To-night I talked rather loud
to your father, so that Malakopf could hear. I told him I should leave
Rhodopé in October, and not come back till the middle of January.’
‘But the New Year fête?’ asked Blanche.
‘Well, I deceived your father. I expect I shall be in Amandos before
then; to speak more exactly, I expect to be back on December the
thirty-first. However, that shall be seen. Now, before I go, I shall
give you the cipher which I use with Petros, and I want to be accurately
informed day by day how things are going. I will tell your father that I
shall be in correspondence with you, and ask him to send off your
telegrams direct from the Legation, for Malakopf is cunning enough to
suspect something if he finds you constantly sending despatches to me.
Indeed, he looked a little suspicious just now, when he saw me sit down
and talk to you.’
‘It is too dangerous,’ said Blanche. ‘Dear Sophia, don’t go away for so
long; anything may happen in so long an absence.’
‘It will be your business to warn me,’ said the Princess. ‘I have laid
my plan carefully. You must learn as much as you can about the Prince’s
and Malakopf’s little schemes, and I will return at a word from you. I
shall not go to England for Christmas, as I told your father, but be
much nearer home. By Christmas, indeed, I think I shall be at Corfu, so
that I can get back here in a few hours. Conveniently enough, the
Empress has asked me to stay with her there, and she will be incognito,
and so, of course, shall I. The sailors of the _Felatrune_ alone will
know I am here, and I can rely on absolute silence. Oh, it will be as
exciting as a run of luck!’ she cried.
‘Ah, I see,’ said Blanche, ‘you mean that you expect Malakopf will make
the scene on the day the Assembly is prorogued?’
‘That seems to me a Heaven-sent opportunity for him,’ remarked Sophia.
‘Yet perhaps Satan were the more appropriate derivative.’
Blanche burst out laughing--every now and then Sophia, in spite of her
great knowledge of English, would use a sentence of a style hopelessly
pompous, thinking to utter a crowning colloquialism--and her laugh
closed the conversation. Sophia rose, and, with mock resentment in her
voice, ‘I had more to say to you,’ she remarked, ‘but I will not be
laughed at. But I have told you all that is really important, and with
you it is not necessary to say things twice. Dear Blanche, is it true
that Lord Abbotsworthy has hired Pierre and a roulette-board for this
evening? How touching an attention! A mark of true hospitality.’
‘Pierre is waiting for your Highness,’ said Blanche, seeing that
Malakopf had drawn near them. ‘Will you go to the card-room?’
Thus it came about that Sophia was not unaware of the conspiracy which
was on foot against her. She had given her husband fair warning, and
since he persisted in his childish policy of surrounding her with a
hundred lover-like attentions, she thought it excusable and wise to have
a policy too. Sometimes she was almost stirred to pity at the futility
of his efforts to blind her, while her own seeming security was so
illegible to him. She accentuated, if possible, her distaste of State
affairs. Half of the twenty-four hours she spent at the tables of club;
she yawned behind her hand at the most important and confidential
communications of her Ministers; she was even less civil than usual (and
her civility to Malakopf was never remarkable) to her Prime Minister. It
is true that she had the easier part to play, for while Petros fished up
little attentions and an affectionate demeanour to her, as a man draws
water from a deep well, with an effort, she had but to let her natural
inclinations, her distaste of Malakopf, her taste for play, her ennui at
infinitesimal State concerns go unreined.
The effect of all this was that the conferences between her husband and
the Prime Minister lapsed into their former frequency, and not a day
passed but they were closeted together. Even the astuter Malakopf,
lulled into security by the Princess’s negligence of State matters, no
longer went through the formality of asking for her when he wished to
confer with the Crown. Yet the situation was more critical than she
knew. Already there was a party in the House almost hostile to her, for
the sedulity with which she kept her seat in the club, when should have
been in the Council Chamber, though successful in its object, namely,
that of giving increased confidence to the two main actors in the
conspiracy, had had a certain effect in alienating from her many of her
more sober-minded deputies. They saw with pain her unreasonable passion
for the cards and her total neglect of the duties of a reigning monarch.
They saw with silent sympathy the heroic efforts of the Prince to cover
the deficiencies of his wife. Himself well equipped as a debater, he was
primed and loaded by Malakopf, and his contributions to the debates were
an edification. Yet the Princess played her part with consummate skill,
and she trusted to the loyalty of the people to back her up when the
great scene came. Her yawns were the picture of realistic art, her
intolerance of Malakopf a triumph of sincerity. Thereby the caution of
the Prime Minister was slowly and insidiously relaxed, and the four
years he had originally given to the dynasty were much abbreviated in
his mind; for in its sinister depths he was revolving a new and
startling idea, suggested to him by the Princess’s absence. In itself it
was so simple that he almost distrusted it; but as the days went on it
grew more and more seductive.
August cooled into September, and the day of the Princess’s departure
for her necessary holiday was fixed for October 7. It was tacitly
understood between her and Petros that the Prince would not accompany
her, and such had been the success of his Regency the year before that
now Sophia begged him never to send her anything referring, however
remotely, to State matters.
‘I am sick of the sceptre!’ she said to him the day before she left; ‘and
you, Petros, are still rather fond of it. Oh, you remind me so much of a
child dressing up in Court finery; when it comes to put the finery on in
earnest, how bored it is! And you, Petros, if ever you held the sceptre
in your own name, you would find it a bad companion of your days and
nights. Sometimes I am almost tempted to abdicate this throne of
Rhodopé, yet what sort of private person should I make? I am a Princess
of royal blood; I cannot help it; and the burden will be with me
always.’
‘How can you say such things, dearest!’ said Petros, with well-simulated
warmth. ‘It is an idle modesty that makes you seem to be ignorant of the
adoration with which your subjects--I the humblest--regard you. Which of
them, think you, would not willingly die for you? True, you could never
be a private person, any more than a farmer’s wife could be a queen,
though she thinks she could.’
‘Well, therein I am better than the farmer’s wife,’ sighed Sophia. ‘She
thinks she could be me; I know I could not be her. But let me have a
good holiday, Petros; don’t send me anything to sign or to consider.
Consider everything yourself, and sign what you please; and get through
all the business you possibly can, so that there will not be so much
next Session.’
‘You must give me more explicit instructions, dear,’ said the Prince.
‘It is not likely that any measure of great importance will come before
the House, but what am I to do about proroguing it? You will hardly wish
me to deliver the Speech from the Throne?’
‘And why not, dear Petros?’ said she.
She was sitting in a deep armchair in shadow, fanning herself slowly, he
under the full light of a lamp, and as she spoke she leaned back and
watched his face intently. She saw his eye brighten, a flush steal over
his face, and his right hand clenched, as if it already held the
sceptre.
‘Why not, Petros?’ she repeated.
‘Because that is so essentially the prerogative of the Crown,’ he said.
‘How am I to thank your Ministers for their labours? In whose name?’
‘In your own name,’ she said; ‘for, indeed’--and she laughed quietly to
herself--‘you have had far more to thank them for, or curse them for,
this last year than I. It is far more suitable that you should do it. I
am sure you will do it admirably.’
Again his hand clenched, and again Sophia observed his face light up.
She rose with bitter aversion in her heart.
‘Thus no long explanations are necessary,’ she said. ‘Act as if you were
me. I shall be back before the end of January. And now, Petros, you must
leave me; I have some little affairs to settle before I dress for
dinner. Kindly ring the bell for me.’
He rang, and, advancing to her, bowed and kissed her hand.
‘My Queen,’ he murmured.
Sophia stood silent, and watched his graceful exit; then she took her
handkerchief, and rubbed the place where his lips had touched. Next
moment the groom of the chamber entered.
‘Go to the English Legation,’ she said, ‘and tell Lady Blanche that I
shall come to see her to-night after dinner. Leave the message with
her; see her yourself.’
The Princess left Mavromáti next day on the _Felatrune_. With her went
the little Prince Leonard, and Petros saw them off. He went on board
with his wife, but parted from her as soon as they gained the ship, for
she was to start at once. Once more pity for this treacherous man, for
so she certainly regarded him, touched her.
‘I leave you with the fullest confidence,’ she said. ‘I feel sure you
will be a faithful steward for me and my child.’
But Petros’s hypocrisy was not finished enough to suggest a reply, and
he left her in silence.
That night, while the _Felatrune_ ploughed her moonlit way southwards
over the dim waters of the sleeping Adriatic, Malakopf dined at the
Palace. Indeed, the two conspirators, to the best of their knowledge,
had solid ground for self-congratulation. From their point of view, the
Princess’s conduct had been impeccable, and the precision with which she
had played into their hands was admirable. The hours of her attendance
at the Assembly during the past summer could almost be reckoned on the
fingers of a one-armed man; the hours of her presence at the club were
more like in number to the stars of heaven. To crown all this, she had
now left the kingdom at a time when its affairs were in the full bustle
of transaction, and, what would tell against her even more in the eyes
of the public, she had decided to be absent on the great festal day of
the year. Malakopf had had the wit to see how skilful was the bait she
had prepared, how admirable its convenience to their plans; he only
failed to grasp the little fact that it was bait.
The club which the Princess had inaugurated with such brilliance in May
had thrived in a way that even she could scarce have anticipated.
Originally the playing-rooms had been open only from three in the
afternoon till three in the morning; but a few months afterwards its
session never rose. The gambling instinct in the people, for so many
years void of fruition, shot up like the aloe flower; already to tamper
with the inalienable right of the people of Rhodopé to gamble in public
rooms would have been more dangerous than to attempt to make penal in
England cold baths or the game of golf; and it was the most skilful
stroke that the ingenuity of the devil could have devised when Malakopf
attempted by this very means to dethrone Sophia from her popularity.
‘It has occurred to you,’ said the Prime Minister that evening, when he
and Petros were smoking, ‘that the Princess will be absent from Rhodopé
on the day that the Assembly is prorogued?’
‘I have talked to her about that,’ said Petros. ‘It seemed to me very
irregular; but she told me how to act.’
‘Indeed! May I have the benefit of your conversation?’
‘She wished me to take her place absolutely,’ said Petros; ‘to speak
from the throne not in her name, but in my own.’
‘Admirable!--nothing could be better,’ said Malakopf. ‘It did not occur
to you, I am afraid, to get that in black and white?’
‘The Princess does not go back on her word,’ said Petros rather stiffly.
‘True; but I should have preferred black and white. Prudence can never
be at fault. But we have our hands full.’
He paused, and decided to tell the Prince of the plan that he had been
maturing.
‘By the thirty-first of December the fruit must be ripe for the
plucking,’ he said. ‘I shall introduce a Bill next month to shut up all
gambling-houses in Rhodopé, and to make even betting an offence. What do
you think of that?’
Again he looked at the Prince to see what he would make of this. Petros
fairly recoiled.
‘It is impossible,’ he said; ‘there will be a revolution.’
‘True, there will be a revolution; but I thought we were working to
bring that about.’
‘But it is insane, this idea of yours,’ said Petros. ‘What line am I to
take, for instance? Am I to oppose you? for if I do not, my chances are
gone. Unless I speak against your Bill, the people will have none of me;
and if I speak for it, where is our combination?’
Malakopf smiled grimly.
‘I thought you did not see how valuable was the Princess’s command to
you to act absolutely in her name, or why I should have preferred it in
black and white. That command is simply the coping-stone of my
structure. You will vote for the Bill, of course; but you will speak
against it. Heaven! is it possible you are so slow? Oh, do you not see?
Reluctantly, regretfully, but with unimpeachable loyalty, you will find
yourself obliged to act in her absence, as she would have you act, as
she told you to act. She could not face the situation herself; she has
run away, and she has left you behind to face the odium of her deed. All
will vote against the Prince, as the representative of his unworthy
wife; but what sympathy there will be for Petros! As for your wife, she
will at once become the most unpopular woman in Rhodopé. The people like
their gambling, and they will not have that stopped, you may be sure;
but they are brave, and they do not like running away. Why, man, it is
the very opportunity for the speech you planned so long ago!’
Prince Petros had risen from his seat, and was pacing up and down the
room excitedly.
‘I see--I see,’ he cried. ‘Yes, it is a splendid idea; it is of the
best. I stand corrected; but would it not be even more telling if I
introduced the Bill myself in her name? As you know, any Bill introduced
by the Crown is carried.’
‘But we do not want the Bill to be carried,’ said Malakopf. ‘We want it
thrown out by an immense majority. The minority, in fact, I expect will
consist of yourself.’
But the Prince’s suggestion had more in it than Malakopf perceived at
once, and than the Prince perceived at all. Any Bill--such was the
autocratic law of Rhodopé--introduced by the Crown passed into law. The
privilege had rarely been used, and this prerogative was practically
obsolete; but there could be no doubt, as the Prince said, that the
Crown was constitutionally within its rights in so acting. Thus, if
Prince Petros introduced the Bill in the Princess’s name, and stuck to
it, it could only fail to become law by a reconstitution of the power of
the Crown--in other words, by a revolution. In this way Malakopf would
be rid not only of the Princess, but also of the Prince, who, despite
his speech against it, would have voted for it. This formed part of his
original, but at present undetailed, programme, and he was fairly
astounded at the fitness of his opportunity. He could kill both with one
stone. So, after a moment, he corrected himself.
‘But I am not sure,’ he said, ‘that you are not right after all. Perhaps
yours is the simpler plan, for it makes a revolution inevitable. I will
think it over. Meanwhile, may I ask for a whisky-and-soda? The night is
hot for this time of the year.’
The two were sitting on the great north veranda of the Palace. The air
was exquisitely fresh, with an easterly breeze, though still, as
Malakopf had said, warm for October. But a divine mellowness is over
October in Rhodopé, the sky is a perfect turquoise from sunrise to
sunset, and to sunrise again an inimitable sapphire. The French season
at its height, and a band from the Casino gardens close by made the
night an echo of the brain of Weber. The moon, swung full south, cast a
great square of shadow from the Palace over the garden, and the metallic
tinkle of the water from the bronze Triton fountain falling into its
basin came from the darkness. Beyond, a balustrade of Pentelic marble
bounded the headlong cliff below, and in the hollow beneath the lamps of
Amandos twinkled innumerably. On the great range of Balkan peaks to the
north the earliest snow of the year had already fallen, and the giants
of the range were silver spearheads charging the sky. To the west,
twelve miles away, the lights of Mavromáti, low on the horizon and small
as a glow-worm, were more like a reflection of stars than an authentic
constellation. But from minute to minute a luminous pencil of colour,
now scarlet, now red, now yellow, shot with penetrating clearness across
the land, and even dyed the white Palace walls for a moment in its
passage, marking the rotation of the harbour lights. The murmur of busy
folk buzzed like the swarming of bees from the town, and now and again a
sudden shriller note betokened some infinitesimal excitement of the
street.
But the perfection of the Southern night roused no echo in the heart of
Petros; his thoughts were intent on himself. Little he recked of the
ebony shadows, the white fields of moonshine, the beauty of the muffled
sounds of the night, and in so far as they reached him, they reached
him only by the sense of lordship. Soon, he thought, would the
polychrome light from Mavromáti be his; his, too, would be the cicala
that sang in the bushes; his the luminous evidence of mankind that shone
from the lights of Amandos. For his outlook was but puny; nothing was
great if it was not his, nothing was beautiful unless it owned his
supremacy. Nor was Malakopf more poetically-minded: the spearheads of
the Balkan were only interesting because the map of Europe traced across
that untracked whiteness the boundaries of Rhodopé; the strains of Weber
that came from the club gardens were only beautiful because he had
invested a large sum of money in the Casino, and music was an attraction
to the visitors. Once President of this Republic of Rhodopé, he would
have willingly driven the snow-plough across the Balkans to mark the
limits of his Presidency, if thereby he could add an acre to its
mileage, and painted the country magenta to correspond with the latest
map.
But though the glory of the Southern night gave him no food for
admiration, the last suggestion of the Prince was worth the expenditure
of brain tissue, and the more he considered it, the more suitable did
the Prince’s unwitting scheme appear. It would be necessary, it is true,
to alter the proposed chronology of events, and reserve for the last
meeting of the Assembly before the Christmas holiday the introduction of
the new Bill. The House should not be asked to vote on that day; the
Bill alone should be read, and notice given that the voting would take
place immediately before the prorogation on December 31.
The thought of the scene which would take place on that day almost
dazzled him. The Assembly at Rhodopé had never been, since he had known
it first, a House of melodrama. But on December 31 the scene would
surely beggar the Adelphi Theatre, London. From the throne the Prince
would make a regretful, and no doubt a very foolish, speech on this Bill
for abolishing all gambling within the principality, and since he, as
Sophia’s representative, introduced the Bill, the Assembly would, on
precedent and constitution, record indeed their votes, but, however the
voting went, would be compelled to accept it. But he knew them very
little if such was the event. In his speech the Prince would, as
Malakopf had planned the scene, be forced to support the wishes and the
commands of his wife. She, so he would say, had intended to introduce
the Bill herself, but had been unable to face the situation, and had
left the doing of it to him. All her subjects knew that she had opened
the club herself, knew also the assiduity with which she attended its
sessions. With what face now was she to order its abolition, when the
institution had taken such deep hold on her people? But her purpose was
irrevocably fixed. Abolished it should be, and she claimed (through her
husband) the ancient right of the Crown. For a week past there would
have been but one subject for talk in the principality; indignation
would have flared like a bonfire since the Bill had been introduced.
Half Rhodopé spent rapturous evenings in the Casino; they would not
lightly give them up. But the Prince, as primed by Malakopf, would speak
with strength and conviction. He would commit himself hopelessly to a
policy of loyalty to his wife. His position (he would say) was most
trying, but he was bound by every code of honour to support without
reservation her whom he represented. Such were her commands. The Bill
was introduced by the Crown; let them vote if they pleased; the measure
became law.
Malakopf’s eye glowed. He saw himself rise before the assembled House,
and to the Prince’s dumb and infinite dismay, oppose the Bill. Such a
course, he knew, was without shadow of precedent. He would adopt it
without attempt at excuse. He would denounce the Princess. As they all
knew, she spent her holidays at Monte Carlo--much needed holidays,
indeed! She was worn out, was she not, with the prosecution of State
affairs! His brother ministers knew how wide and numerous were the yawns
with which she honoured their audiences. The Bill could not become law;
simply it was one of the things that did not happen. Yet it must become
law unless they took a line of their own. On his part, he begged to move
that the question of the Bill before the House be postponed a moment,
for he had another proposal to make. The House (so he told himself in
these imaginings) would vote on the postponement of the Bill for the
abolition of gambling; the House would carry it. Then he would propose
nothing short of a revolution, the dethronement of the line of Ægina,
who, in the person of the Princess, sought to curtail the inalienable
right of gambling inaugurated by herself. In this, and in no other way,
could liberty be secured them.
But it was far better that the Bill, if such was to be his policy,
should be introduced just before the Christmas vacation, and that no
voting should take place till the last day of December, to give a whole
week for the fermentation of righteous wrath to come to a head. And it
would not be a bad thing to let a hint of what was coming be in the air,
to let the free spirit of the citizens chafe at the thought of so
grievous a curtailment of their liberties, to let Distrust flap its
obscene wings about the streets. Again his own investment in the club
itself had turned out most profitable, for the half-year’s dividend had
been declared at 20 per cent. This, too, he had no mind to lose.
By the beginning of December it was already a matter for street-corner
gossip as to whether there was any truth in this extraordinary report
that the Princess Sophia would introduce by the mouth of her husband a
Bill for the abolition of gambling. To most the thing seemed scarcely
credible, and the more loyal of her subjects flatly refused to entertain
so preposterous a suggestion. It was inconceivable that the queen of
gamblers should attempt to deprive her subjects of the right to indulge
in her own favourite pursuit, and it was bitter to contemplate her at
Monte Carlo directing from the St. Peter’s of the goddess the closing of
this remote little chapel. Others, who pretended to more authentic
information, declared that she was acting under the persuasion of the
Prince, who, as it was well known, did not frequent the club, and though
he had invested in it, rather disapproved of it than otherwise. By
degrees this view of the question obtained a following, and as it grew
by so much the popularity of the Prince waned and the delight of
Malakopf waxed. Petros had never been seen at the club since his wife’s
departure, and this alone was sufficient to raise a prejudice against
him. The air was full of disquietude, which increased as the days went
on.
This disquietude was only not shared by Malakopf; indeed, the Fates
seemed to be propitious for him. Sophia away, the odium of the proposed
change gradually attaching to the Prince--no combination of
circumstances could have been luckier. The exact execution of his great
stroke must be largely left for the future to decide, but at present
things were working out just as he desired. He was studious to keep the
Prince unaware, as far as might be, of the growing feeling against him,
for fear he might turn craven at the end, and not give him his full
opportunity.
Meantime Lady Blanche kept an eager eye on the development of the
situation, and noted every chop and change of popular feeling. She had
already telegraphed to Sophia the rumour of the Bill, advising her to
leave Monte Carlo instantly, so as to be nearer at hand, in case of any
precipitation of events. The Princess had telegraphed back that she was
on the point of leaving, and said that her next address would be at the
Empress’ Villa in Corfu, where she would be known to the postal
authorities as the Countess of Ægina. As there was plenty of time for a
letter to reach her before her arrival, Lady Blanche wrote to her at
length, describing the exact condition of affairs, and recommending her
to keep steam up on her yacht, since there was no knowing when the
crisis would come. It seemed probable, however, as it was now definitely
announced that the Bill would be introduced on the day before the
Christmas vacation, but that no voting would take place then, nor any
speech from Prince Petros, that the last day of December was the date
determined by the two conspirators for their grand _coup_.
The Bill was to be read, so Malakopf and Prince Petros had planned it,
immediately before the adjournment of the House for the Christmas
vacation. After reading it, the Prince would simply give notice that the
voting on the Bill would take place on December 31, after which the
House would rise. He would then return straight to the Palace, and as
far as possible, so Malakopf advised, keep there till the day for the
debate came on. There was sure to be a considerable public excitement,
and the Prince’s speech, in which he would tell them that his wife had
strictly laid on him the communication of this calamitous and
regrettable resolution, would come with redoubled force if he had been
known to have shut himself up under the painful stress of his feelings.
The day for the reading of the Bill arrived, and the House was packed.
The business of the day was transacted with immense indifference and
rapidity, and when it was finished a dead dense silence fell on the
Assembly. Then Prince Petros rose from the throne, and stepped forward
to the edge of the little platform, where sat the monarch and the
Ministers.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘Her Royal Highness the Princess Sophia has bid me
read to you the text of a Bill she introduces through me. On this Bill I
shall myself speak on December the thirty-first, immediately before the
rising of the House. To-day I shall simply read the text of it to you,
and the House will then, without comment or debate, rise for the
Christmas vacation. How much I regret----’ he began, then stopped, and
read the following:
‘“That all gambling-houses in the realm of Rhodopé of every sort
and degree, private or public, be closed, and that no game of
hazard be henceforward played therein.
‘“That to play any such game in public, or to bet in public, be a
felony.
‘“That licenses shall be withdrawn from every licensed
gambling-house in the aforementioned realm of Rhodopé.
‘“That the building known as the club be converted into an asylum
for decayed and idiotic old gentlemen, the purpose for which the
ground was originally intended.
‘“That the person known as Pierre be sent back to Monte Carlo, his
passage (second-class) paid.
‘“That these regulations come into effect on the first day of
January (new style), 1857.
‘“SOPHIA,
‘“_Hereditary Princess of Rhodopé_.”’
Dead silence followed; and the Prince, commanding his voice with
difficulty, adjourned the House, bowed to the deputies, and retired
through the private door which led to the steps communicating with the
Palace gardens.
Copies of the Bill were laid on the table in the House, and each Member
took one (these papers now fetch a high price among collectors of
curios); one also was brought to the British Legation, and Lady Blanche,
coming in from her ride just before dinner, saw and read it. The next
moment a frenzied Amazon figure sped up the stairs, and ten minutes
afterwards a telegram in cipher was handed to the Secretary, who was
writing in the Chancery. It was addressed to the Countess of Ægina, care
of the Empress of Austria, Corfu. Blanche had grasped the situation in
its completeness. She saw that the _grand coup_ was to be played on
December 31, and that till then it was better that Princess Sophia
should not be in Rhodopé. In a talk the two had had together, they had
decided that the Princess’s appearance had best be sudden, like a
lightning stroke, that in the very moment of the crisis she should again
be with them, not to nip the bud, but to cull the flower of full-blown
conspiracy.
Consequently her telegram ran:
‘Be in Amandos secretly on the afternoon of the thirty-first; the
House assembles at half-past three. I will meet you at Mavromáti.
For safety change the name of the _Felatrune_. Telegraph to me the
changed name.’
Late that night a telegram was handed in at the Legation, addressed to
Lady Blanche. It contained one word:
‘Revenge.’