A STRONG MEASURE
Duke Theodor wore a troubled face next morning, and its cause stood
before him, insistent, uncompromising, in the person of his terrible
Chancellor. The pains which his Highness was at to remain wrapped in
the cloak of his pompous dignity, in spite of the determined wind of a
strong will which kept now fluttering the thin material, now blowing it
aside and, occasionally, with a fierce gust threatening to tear it into
ribbons, were quite as pitiable as amusing. The measure which Rollmar
was, with his usual dogged persistence, forcing upon his sovereign was
more than strong. It was startling, and indeed, from the Duke’s point
of view, heroic. For it amounted, put plainly--and, after but little
courtly preamble, the stern old minister so put it--to the imprisonment
of his daughter, with a view to keeping her safe till Prince Ludwig
should think proper to come and claim her.
“It is preposterous,” exclaimed the Duke. “I cannot do it.”
“It is essential,” retorted Rollmar. “Your Highness must do it.”
“The girl will come to her senses without that,” said his highness.
“I doubt whether she will come to her senses with it,” returned the
Chancellor. “Only, once under lock and key, her state of mind will not
so much matter.”
“I could not consent to such a severe measure,” the Duke maintained
weakly, “except under the stress of absolute necessity.”
“Which necessity has arisen,” Rollmar insisted calmly.
“You will convince me of that, Excellency.”
“Readily, your Highness. If the facts of these clandestine meetings
with this young officer are not sufficient proof of the necessity.”
“Why not take--ah’m--preventive measures against him, Baron?” said the
Duke, brightening with a plausible argument.
“Your Highness may rest assured that we are doing so,” Rollmar answered
a little testily.
“You are a long time about it,” rejoined the Duke with a suggestion
of malicious satisfaction at the idea of his infallible minister’s
discomfiture. “Surely, Baron, you are not withheld by any scruples on
account of the transgressor being a foreigner and a guest?”
There was a very obvious and cheap sneer in this, since it was
notorious that Chancellor Rollmar was the last man in Europe to be
influenced by such considerations.
But a weak man does not as a rule gain much satisfaction from sneering
at a strong one. It would have taken a more masterly brain and a
sharper tongue than Duke Theodor’s to put Rollmar out of countenance.
He simply replied--
“I am quite confident that in such a case any act of punishment which
it might be expedient to inflict would be covered by the cloak of your
Highness’s gracious approval. But, to return to facts, I regret to say
I am unable to inform you, sir, at this moment with absolute certainty
that my orders have been duly executed.”
The Duke raised his eyebrows, still hugging the idea of his
master-servant’s failure. “How is that, Baron? You have as a rule, I
understand, but to point your finger.”
The Baron greatly resented the way in which he was being cross-examined
about his discomfiture; it was bad enough to realise it, without being
worried into confessing it. He had expected the Duke to fall in with
his views without opposition or even protest, but as he did not seem
inclined to do so, the wily old diplomatist told himself that he must
weight his proposal with the story which would force it through as
imperative.
“Your Highness knows my aversion to a blunder,” he replied
impressively. “It was necessary to make quite certain that the finger
could point to the right man. It was only last night that I became
sure of that. The agent whom I employed to--to put any further scandal
out of the question executed his orders to the satisfaction of certain
witnesses. But it was with as much astonishment as regret that I learnt
this morning that the culprit’s body had mysteriously disappeared.”
“Indeed!” There was enough sensation in the story to interest the
shallow mind of the royal _pococurante_.
“On my way to the palace just now,” Rollmar proceeded, in the cold tone
of one who drives home an unassailable argument, “I was informed that
one of my agents, to whom I had given certain particular instructions,
had been found stabbed to death outside the park wall.”
“Horrible! Atrocious!” cried the Duke, thinking of his own safety.
“This news,” continued the Chancellor, in the same dry voice, “tends
to confirm my suspicion of treachery in the person I employed. Your
Highness will comprehend,” he broke off to interpolate the explanation
as a teacher might elucidate a stiff passage in a pupil’s reading,
“that we cannot command men of unimpeachable integrity to do work of
this sort. We rely on their interest rather than their honesty.”
“Quite so,” said his Highness. “No doubt two knaves are more useful
for certain purposes than one honest man.”
“At least they are more available,” Rollmar said dryly. “Now, this
second episode points to the possibility of our lieutenant being still
alive. I say it is possible, though not probable. Still, considering
the high interests involved, we cannot afford to ignore the chance. If
we have failed, most unexpectedly, to put an end to the affair on one
side we are bound to resort to the other. That, your Highness, is the
reason why I have every confidence in proposing to you a measure which
I feel must be distasteful to your Highness’s affection.”
The Duke shook his head vaguely. “A doubtful remedy and a great risk,
Baron.”
“Pardon me, sire. A very certain remedy and a removal of risk.”
“Surely not of scandal?” the Duke argued. “A pretty thing to be said
that we could only keep our Princess to the match by locking her away
from every other man. And a fine prospect for their married happiness.”
“Such a state of affairs is not uncommon in royal circles,” Rollmar
observed, with a little cynical grin. “Where policy of state is
concerned small considerations must give way to great. Princess
Ruperta will not be the first royal bride who has had to be caged.
She represents the price of a kingdom; surely it is wise to keep our
treasure under lock and key, away from irresponsible pilferers. But I
do not propose, Highness, that our precautions should become known. The
Princess’s health needs change of air. A few weeks’ residence in the
Castle of Krell has been prescribed.”
The Duke winced. “Krell has an ominous sound,” he said smiling feebly.
“It need not be Krell.”
The minister had evidently made up his mind. “Krell has a dark
history,” he agreed casually, “which renders it not the liveliest
abode in the world, for which reason, your Highness, it seems exactly
the place to bring a wayward young lady to her senses. Moreover,
its natural situation renders it an ideal retreat from undesirable
Philanders. May I take it that your Highness will give the necessary
orders for the Princess’s journey to-morrow?”
His Highness seemed, notwithstanding his wise old counsellor’s
persistence, to have a flat refusal on his lips. However, he checked
it, and, rising, took a turn across the room in considerable
discomposure. Rollmar stood watching him from beneath his knit brows
with a smile of mingled confidence and contempt. The Duke came back.
“I cannot consent to this,” he declared with a prodigious effort to be
and, what was more to the point, to seem resolute; “at least not at
this moment. So severe, so drastic a measure must not be taken in a
hurry.”
“It is,” replied the Chancellor with calm sententiousness, “almost
invariably, without loss of time that drastic measures have to be
taken. The need of such argues urgency.”
“That may be,” the Duke returned loftily. “But this is a matter wherein
my daughter’s welfare and happiness are concerned.”
“Wherein the welfare and glory of your duchy are involved.”
“I am not so sure,” said the Duke, abandoning direct argument, “that it
is, after all, so great a matter.”
“But I am,” the minister retorted. “You must pardon me, Highness, if
I insist that this alliance is of the very highest consequences. An
importance not to be weighed for an instant against the young lady’s
few days of discontent or even discomfort.”
He had changed his tone now and spoke with almost peremptory
insistence. The man’s strong will and character came out and seemed to
beat down in a moment the feeble faculties arrayed against them.
“I repeat,” said the Duke, visibly weakening, “there is no such great
hurry.”
“I regret to take an entirely opposite view to your Highness.”
He was firm, and his master knew by experience what his firmness
meant. In spite of a long series of abject failures Duke Theodor still
persisted in trying an occasional mental fall with the Samson who
clasped the pillars of his royal house.
“Prince Ludwig is behaving cavalierly,” said the Duke, fishing about
for an argument, as a man will prolong a hopeless game of chess. “I
have reason to suppose my daughter resents it. He cannot complain, and
we may.”
“It is not our policy to complain or to give the Beroldsteiners cause
for dissatisfaction,” the Chancellor returned shortly, as declining to
do more than suggest that his view was not to be traversed.
The royal temper began to give way under the minister’s somewhat
contemptuous persistence. “It simply amounts to this then, Baron. That
while Prince Ludwig chooses to prolong his rustication, my daughter
is, like Andromeda, to be chained to the rock of Krell to await his
pleasure.”
“That,” said Rollmar, “is one way of describing the position. But the
simile scarcely holds good, since our Minotaur comes not to destroy but
to enrich.”
“And therefore,” said the Duke, following out the idea with a weak
mind’s love of trivialities, “it becomes necessary in our case to slay,
not the Minotaur, but Perseus.”
Rollmar gave an assenting bow. “Since the Minotaur is assuredly the
better match. Andromeda will be chained for her advantage, not against
her destruction.”
“I do not like chains,” the Duke protested.
“They are,” said Rollmar, “the unseen insignia of royalty. I have done
my best for many years to keep them from galling your Highness. But if
you persist in feeling for them, I can do no more. Perhaps it is as
well; I may have done too much already.”
There was in this, as the Duke knew well, a covert threat of
retirement; and, much as he would have liked to take at his word the
determined and exacting old minister, who constituted the most galling
of all his fetters, yet for the safety of his kingdom and, what touched
him nearer, his own personal security, he dared not. Cold-blooded,
cruel, relentless, false when expediency called for deceit, overbearing
and contemptuous to the master whom he led by the nose, Chancellor
Rollmar was yet honest enough of purpose in his patriotism and his
schemes for the aggrandisement of the little kingdom he ruled with so
strong a hand.
So Duke Theodor had in the end to give in--which, to save time and
trouble, he might well have done at the beginning--and consent
that Princess Ruperta should from that very hour be placed under
surveillance, and that the next day she should be conducted to the
fortress-castle of Krell which had been the prison, and occasionally
the grave, of certain persons who from time to time had had the
temerity to oppose or offend the implacable Chancellor. The name of
Krell had become almost a terror, and Rollmar was wise in choosing it
as a retreat eminently adapted to bring the perverse Princess to a
sense of obedience to his will.
The Duke had, with an ill grace, given a forced and grudging consent
to the arrangement, and the Chancellor, having gained his point by
what he considered an exorbitant expenditure of time and patience, was
proceeding to mention other and less personal business of state, when
word was brought that a despatch-rider had just arrived with important
news from Beroldstein.
With an unusual show of eagerness, Rollmar had the despatch brought in.
“Has Prince Ludwig come to light?” the Duke inquired.
“No. But he will,” Rollmar answered. “King Josef is dead.”