LEO VERSUS LEOPOLD
"Ach, Himmel!" exclaimed Frau Yorvan; and "Ach Himmel!" she exclaimed
again, her voice rising to a wail, with a frantic uplifting of the
hands.
The Grand Duchess grew pale, for the apple-cheeked lady suddenly
exhibited these alarming signs of emotion while passing a window of
the private dining-room. Evidently some scene of horror was being
enacted outside; and--Virginia and Miss Portman had been away for many
hours.
It was the time for tea in England, for coffee in Rhaetia; Frau Yorvan
had just brought in coffee for one, with heart-shaped, sugared cakes,
which would have appealed more poignantly to the Grand Duchess's
appetite, if the absent ones had been with her to share them.
Naturally, at the good woman's outburst, her imagination instantly
pictured disaster to the one she loved.
"What--oh, what is it you see?" she implored, her heart leaping, then
falling. But for once, the courtesy due to an honored guest was
forgotten, and the distracted Frau Yorvan fled from the room without
giving an answer.
Half paralyzed with dread of what she might have to see, the Grand
Duchess tottered to the window. Was there--yes, there was a
procession, coming down the hilly street that led to town from the
mountain. Oh, horror upon horror! They were perhaps bringing Virginia
down, injured or dead, her beautiful face crushed out of recognition.
Yet no--there was Virginia herself, the central figure in the
procession. Thank Heaven, it could be nothing worse than an accident
to poor, dear Miss Portman--But there was Miss Portman too; and a very
tall, bronzed peasant man, loaded with cloaks and rücksacks, headed
the band, while the girl and her ex-governess followed after.
Unspeakably relieved, yet still puzzled and vaguely alarmed, the Grand
Duchess threw up the window overlooking the little village square. But
as she strove to attract the truants' attention by waving her hand
and crying out a welcome or a question, whichever should come first,
the words were arrested on her lips. What could be the matter with
Frau Yorvan?
The stout old landlady popped out through the door like a Jack out of
his box, on a very stiff spring, flew to the overloaded peasant, and
almost rudely elbowing Miss Portman aside, began distractedly bobbing
up and down, tearing at the bundle of rücksacks and cloaks. Her
inarticulate cries ascended like incense to the Grand Duchess at the
open window, adding much to the lady's intense bewilderment.
"What has that man been doing?" demanded the Grand Duchess in a loud,
firm voice; but nobody answered, for the very good reason that nobody
heard. The attention of all those below was entirely taken up with
their own concerns.
"Pray, mein frau, let him carry our things indoors," Virginia was
insisting, while the tall man stood among the three women, motionless,
but apparently a prey to conflicting emotions. If the Grand Duchess
had not been obsessed with a certain idea, which was growing in her
mind, she must have seen that his dark face betrayed a mingling of
amusement, impatience, annoyance, and boyish mischief. He looked like
a man who had somehow stumbled into a false position from which it
would be difficult to escape with dignity, yet which he half enjoyed.
Torn between a desire to laugh, and fly into a rage with the officious
landlady, he frowned warningly at Frau Yorvan, smiled at the Princess,
and divided his energies between quick, secret gestures intended for
the eyes of the Rhaetian woman, and endeavors to unburden himself in
his own time and way, of the load he carried.
With each instant the perturbation of the Grand Duchess grew. Why did
the man not speak out what he had to say? Why did the landlady first
strive to seize the things from his back, then suddenly shrink as if
in fear, leaving the tall fellow to his own devices? Ah, but that was
a terrible look he gave her at last--the poor, good woman! Perhaps he
was a brigand! And the Grand Duchess remembered tales she had
read--tales of fearful deeds, even in these modern days, done in wild,
mountain fastnesses, and remote villages such as Alleheiligen. Not in
Rhaetia, perhaps; but then, there was no reason why they should not
happen in Rhaetia, at a place like this. And if there were not
something evil, something to be dreaded about this big, dark-browed
fellow, why had Frau Yorvan uttered that exclamation of frantic dismay
at sight of him, and rushed like a madwoman out of the house?
It occurred to the Grand Duchess that the man must be some notorious
desperado of the mountains, who had obtained her daughter's
confidence, or got her and Miss Portman into his power. But, she
remembered, fortunately some or all of the mysterious gentlemen
stopping at the inn, had returned and were at this moment assembled in
the room adjoining hers. The Grand Duchess resolved that, at the first
sign of insolent behavior or threatening on the part of the luggage
carrier, these noblemen should be promptly summoned by her to the
rescue of her daughter.
Her anxiety was even slightly allayed at this point in her
reflections, by the thought (for she had not quite outgrown an innate
love of romance) that the Emperor himself might go to Virginia's
assistance. His friends were in the next room, having come down from
the mountain about noon, and there seemed little doubt that he was
among them. If he had not already looked out of his window, drawn by
the landlady's excited voice, the Grand Duchess resolved that, in the
circumstances, it was her part as a mother to make him look out. She
had promised to help Virginia, and she would help her by promoting a
romantic first encounter.
In a penetrating voice, which could not fail to reach the ears of the
men next door, or the actors in the scene below, she adjured her
daughter in English.
This language was the safest to employ, she decided hastily, because
the brigand with the rücksacks would not understand, while the flower
of Rhaetian chivalry in the adjoining room were doubtless acquainted
with all modern languages.
"Helen!" she screamed, loyally remembering in her excitement,
the part she was playing, "Helen, where did you come across that
ferocious-looking ruffian? Can't you see he intends to steal your
rücksacks, or--or blackmail you, or something? Is there no man-servant
about the place whom the landlady can call to help her?"
All four of the actors on the little stage glanced up, aware for the
first time of an audience; and had the Grand Duchess's eyes been
younger, she might have been still further puzzled by the varying and
vivid expressions of their faces. But she saw only that the
dark-browed peasant man, who had glared so haughtily at poor Frau
Yorvan, was throwing off his burden with haste and roughness.
"I do hope he hasn't already stolen anything of value," cried the
Grand Duchess. "Better not let him go until you've looked into your
rücksacks. Remember that silver drinking cup you _would_ take with
you--"
She paused, not so much in deference to Virginia's quick reply, as in
amazement at Frau Yorvan's renewed gesticulations. Was it possible
that the woman understood more English than her guests supposed, and
feared lest the brigand--perhaps equally well instructed--might seek
immediate revenge? His bare knees alone were evidence against his
character in the eyes of the Grand Duchess. They gave him a brazen,
abandoned air; and a young man who cultivated so long a space between
stockings and trousers might be capable of any crime.
"Oh, Mother, you're very much mistaken," Virginia was protesting.
"This man is a great friend of mine, and has saved my life. You must
thank him. If it were not for him, I might never have come back to
you."
At last the meaning of her words penetrated to the intelligence of the
Grand Duchess, through an armor of misapprehension.
"He saved your life?" she echoed. "Oh, then you have been in danger!
Heaven be thanked for your safety--and also that the man's not likely
to know English, or I should never forgive myself for what I've said.
Here is my purse, dearest. Catch it as I throw, and give it to him
just as it is. There are at least twenty pounds in it, and I only wish
I could afford more. But what is the matter, my child? You look ready
to faint."
As she began to speak, she snatched from a desk at which she had been
writing, a netted silver purse. But while she paused, waiting for
Virginia to hold out her hands, the girl forbade the contemplated act
of generosity with an imploring gesture.
"He will accept no reward for what he has done, except our thanks; and
those I give him once again," the girl answered. She then turned to
the chamois hunter, and made him a present of her hand, over which he
bowed with the air of a courtier rather than the rough manner of a
peasant. And the Grand Duchess still hoped that the Emperor might be
at the window, as really it was a pretty picture, and, it seemed to
her, presented a pleasing phase of Virginia's character.
She eagerly awaited her daughter's coming, and having lingered at the
window to watch with impatience the rather ceremonious leave-taking,
she hastened to the door of the improvised sitting-room to welcome the
mountaineers, as they returned to tell their adventures.
"My darling, who do you think was listening and looking from the
window next ours?" she breathlessly inquired, when she had embraced
her newly-restored treasure--for the secret of the adjoining room was
too good to keep until questions had been put. "Can't you guess? I'm
surprised at that, since you were so sure last night of a certain
person's presence not far away. Why, who but your Emperor himself!"
The Princess laughed happily, and kissed her mother's pink cheek.
"Then he must have an astral body," said she, "since one or the other
has been with me all day; and it was to him--or his Doppelgänger--that
you offered your purse to make up for accusing him of stealing!"
The Grand Duchess sat down; not so much because she wished to assume a
sitting position, as because she experienced a sudden, uncontrollable
weakness of the knees. For a moment she was unable to speak, or even
to speculate; but one vague thought did trail dimly across her brain.
"Heavens! what have I done to him? And maybe some day he will be my
son-in-law."
Meanwhile, Frau Yorvan--a strangely subdued Frau Yorvan--had
droopingly followed the chamois hunter into the inn.
"My dear old friend, you must learn not to lose that well-meaning head
of yours," said he in the hall.
"Oh, but, your Majesty--"
"Now, now, must I remind you again that his Majesty is at Kronburg,
or Petersbrück, or some other of his residences, when I am at
Alleheiligen? This time I believe he's at the Baths of Melina. If you
can't remember these things, I fear I shall be driven away from here,
to look for chamois elsewhere than on the Schneehorn."
"Indeed, I will not be so stupid again, your--I mean, I will do my
very best not to forget. But never before have I been so tried. To see
your high-born, imperial shoulders loaded down as if--as if you had
been a common Gepäckträger for tourists, instead of--"
"A chamois hunter. Don't distress yourself, good friend. I've had a
day of excellent sport."
"For that I am thankful. But to see your--to see you coming back in
such an unsuitable way, has given me a weakness of the heart. How can
I order myself civilly to those ladies, who have--"
"Who have given peasant Leopold some hours of amusement. Be more civil
than ever, for my sake. And by the way, can you tell me the names of
the ladies? That one of them--a companion, I judge--is a Miss
Manchester, I have heard in conversation; but the others--"
"They are mother and daughter--sir. The elder, who in her ignorance,
cried out such treasonable abominations from the window (as I could
tell even with the little English I have picked up) is Lady Mowbray. I
have seen the name written down; and I know how to speak it because I
have heard it pronounced by the companion, the Mees Manchester. The
younger--the beautiful one--is also a Mees--and the mother calls her
Hélène. They talk together in English, also in French, and though I
have so few words of either language, I could tell that London was
mentioned between them more than once, while I waited on the table.
Besides, it is painted in black letters on their traveling boxes."
"You did not expect their arrival?"
"Oh, no, sir. Had they written beforehand, at this season, when I
generally expect to be honored by your presence, I should have
answered that the house was full--or closed--or any excuse which
occurred to me, to keep strangers away. But none have ever before
arrived so late in the year, and I was taken all unawares when my son
Alois drove them up last night. He did not know you had arrived, as
the papers spoke so positively of your visit to the Baths; and I could
not send travelers away; you have bidden me not to do so, once they
are in the house. But these ladies are here but for a day or two more,
on their way to Kronburg for a visit; and I thought--"
"You did quite right, Frau Yorvan. Has my messenger come up with
letters?"
"Yes, your--yes, sir. Just now also a telegram was brought by another
messenger, who came and left in a great hurry."
The chamois hunter shrugged his shoulders, and sighed an impatient
sigh. "It's too much to expect that I should be left in peace for a
single day, even here," he muttered, as he went toward the stairs.
To reach Frau Yorvan's best sitting-room (selfishly occupied,
according to one opinion, by four men absent all day on a mountain),
he was obliged to pass by a door through which issued unusual sounds.
So unusual were they, that the Emperor paused.
Some one was striking the preliminary chords of a volkslied on his
favorite instrument, a Rhaetian variation of the zither. As he
lingered, listening, a voice began to sing--ah, but a voice!
Softly seductive it was as the cooing of a dove in the spring, to its
mate; pure as the purling of a brook among meadow flowers; rich as the
deep notes of a nightingale in his passion for the moon. And for the
song, it was the heart-breaking cry of a young Rhaetian peasant who,
lying near death in a strange land, longs for one ray of sunrise light
on the bare mountain tops of the homeland, more earnestly than for his
first sight of an unknown Heaven.
The man outside the door did not move until the voice was still. He
knew well, though he could not see, who the singer had been. It was
impossible for the plump lady at the window, or the thin lady with the
glasses, to own a voice like that. It was the girl's. She only, of the
trio, could so exhale her soul in the very perfume of sound. For to
his fancy, it was like hearing the fragrance of a rose breathed aloud.
"I have heard an angel," he said to himself. But in reality he had
heard Princess Virginia of Baumenburg-Drippe, showing off her very
prettiest accomplishment, in the childish hope that the man she loved
might hear.
Leopold of Rhaetia had heard many golden voices--golden in more senses
of the word than one--but never before, it seemed to him, a voice
which so stirred his spirit with pain that was bitter-sweet, pleasure
as blinding as pain, and a vague yearning for something beautiful
which he had never known.
If he had been asked what that something was, he could not, if he
would, have told; for a man cannot explain that part of himself which
he has never even tried to understand.
Before he had moved many paces from the door, the lovely voice, no
longer plaintive, but swelling to brilliant triumph, broke into the
national anthem of Rhaetia--warlike, inspiring as the Marseillaise,
but wilder, calling her sons to face death singing, in the defense.
"She's an English girl, yet she sings our Rhaetian music as no
Rhaetian woman I have ever heard, can sing it," he told himself,
slowly passing on to his own door. "She is a new type to me. I don't
think there can be many like her. A pity that she is not a Princess,
or else--that Leopold the Emperor and Leo the chamois hunter are not
two men. Still, the chamois hunter of Rhaetia would be no match for
Miss Mowbray of London, so the weights would balance in the scales as
unevenly as now."
He gave a sigh, and a smile that lifted his eyebrows. Then he opened
the door of his sitting-room, to forget among certain documents which
urged the importance of an immediate return to duty, the difference
between Leopold and Leo, the difference between women and a Woman.
"Good-by to our mountains, to-morrow morning," he said to his three
chosen companions. "Hey for work and Kronburg."
_She_ was going to Kronburg in a few days, according to Frau Yorvan.
But Kronburg was not Alleheiligen; and Leopold, the Emperor, was not,
at his palace, in the way of meeting tourists--or even "explorers."
"She'll never know to whom she gave her ring," he thought with the
dense innocence of a man who has studied all books save women's looks.
"And I'll never know who gives her a plain gold one for the finger on
which she once wore this."
But in the next room, divided from him by a single wall, sat Princess
Virginia of Baumenburg-Drippe.
"When we meet again at Kronburg, he mustn't dream that I knew all the
time," she was saying to herself. "That would spoil everything--just
at first. Yet oh, some day how I should love to confess all--all! Only
I couldn't possibly confess except to a man who would excuse, or
perhaps even approve, because he had learned to love me--well. And
what shall I do, how shall I bear my life now I've seen him, if that
day should never come?"