VIRGINIA'S GREAT MOMENT
The first and second dressing gongs had sounded at Schloss Lyndalberg
on the evening of the day after Egon von Breitstein's visit to his
brother, and the Grand Duchess was beginning to wonder uneasily what
kept her daughter, when ringed fingers tapped on the panel of the
door.
"Come in!" she answered, and Virginia appeared, still in the white
tennis dress she had worn that afternoon. She stood for an instant
without speaking, her face so radiantly beautiful that her mother
thought it seemed illumined from a light within.
It had been on the lips of the Grand Duchess to scold the girl for her
tardiness, since to be late was an unpardonable offense, with an
Imperial Majesty in the house. But in that radiance the words died.
"Virginia, what is it? You look--I scarcely know how you look. But
you make me feel that something has happened."
The Princess came slowly across the room, smiling softly, with an air
of one who walks in sleep. Hardly conscious of what she did, she sank
down in a big chair, and sat resting her elbows on her knees, her chin
nestling between her two palms, like a pink-white rose in its calyx.
"You may go, Ernestine," said the Grand Duchess to her maid. "I'll
ring when I want you again."
The elaborate process of waving and dressing her still abundant hair
had fortunately come to a successful end, and Ernestine had just
caused a diamond star to rise above her forehead. She was in a robe de
chambre, and the rest of her toilet could wait till curiosity was
satisfied.
But Virginia still sat dreaming, her happy eyes far away. The Grand
Duchess had to speak twice before the girl heard, and started a
little. "My daughter--have you anything to tell me?"
The Princess roused herself. "Nothing, Mother, really. Except that I'm
the happiest girl on earth."
"Why--what has he said?"
"Not one word that any one mightn't have listened to. But I know now.
He does care. And I think he will say something before we part."
"There's only one more day of his visit here, after to-night."
"One whole long, beautiful day--together."
"But after all, dearest," argued her mother, "what do you expect? If
in truth you were only Miss Mowbray, marriage between you and the
Emperor would be out of the question. You've never gone into the
subject of your feelings about this, quite thoroughly with me, and I
do wish I knew precisely what you hope for from him; what you will
consider the--the keystone of the situation?"
"Only for him to say that he loves me," Virginia confessed. "If I'm
right--if I've brought something new into his life, something which
has shown him that his heart's as important as his head, then there
will come a moment when he can keep silence no longer--when he'll be
forced to say; 'I love you, dear, and because we can't belong to each
other, day is turned into night for me.' Then, when that moment comes,
the tide of my fortune will be at its flood. I shall tell him that I
love him too. And I shall tell him _all the truth_."
"You'll tell him who we really are?"
"Yes. And why I've been masquerading. That it was because, ever since
I was a little girl, he'd been the one man in the world for me;
because, when our marriage was suggested through official channels, I
made up my mind that I must win him first through love, or live single
all my days."
"What if he should be vexed at the deception, and refuse to forgive
you? You know, darling, we shall be in a rather curious position when
everything comes out, as we have made all our friends here under the
name of Mowbray. Of course, the excuse for what we did is, that our
real position is a hundred times higher than the one we assumed, and
all those to whom we've been introduced would be delighted to know us
in our own characters, at the end. But Leopold is a man, not a
romantic girl, as you are. He has always had a reputation for pride
and austerity, for being just before he would let himself be generous;
and it may be that to one of his nature, a wild whim like yours--"
"You think of him as he was before we met, not as he is now, if you
fancy he could be hard with a woman he really loved," said Virginia,
eagerly. "He'll forgive me, dear. I've no fear of him any more.
To-night, I've no fear of anything. He loves me--and--I'm Empress of
the world."
"Many women would be satisfied with Rhaetia," was the practical
response which jumped into the mind of the Grand Duchess; but she
would throw no more cold water upon the rose-flame of her daughter's
exaltation. She kissed the girl on the forehead, breathing a few words
of motherly sympathy; but when the Princess had flown off to her own
room to dress, she shook her diamond-starred head doubtfully.
Virginia's plan sounded poetical, and as easy to carry out as to turn
a kaleidoscope and form a charming new combination of color; or so it
had seemed while the young voice pleaded. But, when the happy face and
radiant eyes no longer illumined the path, the way ahead seemed dark.
To be sure the Princess had so far walked triumphantly along the
high-road to success, but it was not always a good beginning which led
to a good end; and the Grand Duchess felt, as she rang for Ernestine,
that her nerves would be strained to breaking point until matters were
definitely settled, for better or for worse.
Virginia had never been lovelier than she was that night at dinner,
and Egon von Breitstein's admiration for her beauty had in it a
fascinating new ingredient. Until yesterday, he had said to himself,
"If she be not fair to me, what care I how fair she be?" But now,
there was a vague idea that she might after all be for him, and he
took enormous pleasure in the thought that he was falling in love with
a girl who had captured the Emperor's heart.
Egon glanced very often at Leopold, contrasting his sovereign's
appearance unfavorably with his own. The Emperor was thin and dark,
with a grave cast of feature, while Egon's face kept the color and
youthfulness of the early twenties. He was older than Leopold, but he
looked a boy. Alma Tadema would have wreathed him with vine leaves,
draped him with tiger skins, and set him down on a marble bench
against a burning sapphire sky, where he would have appeared more
suitably clad than in the stiff blue and silver uniform of a crack
Rhaetian regiment.
Leopold, on the contrary, would never be painted except as a soldier;
and it seemed to Egon that no normal girl could help thinking him a
far handsomer fellow than the Emperor. For the moment, of course,
Miss Mowbray did not notice him, because his Imperial Majesty loomed
large in the foreground of her imagination; but the Chancellor had
evidently a plan in his head for removing that stately obstacle into
the dim perspective.
Egon had not heard Miss Mowbray spoken of as an heiress, therefore,
even had there been no Emperor in the way, he would not have worshiped
at the shrine. But now, behold the shrine, attractive before, newly
and alluringly decked! Egon wondered much over his half-brother's
apparently impulsive offer, and the contradictory command, which had,
a little later, enjoined waiting.
He was delighted, however, that he had not been forbidden to make
himself agreeable; and his idea was, as soon as dinner should be over,
to find a place at Miss Mowbray's side before any other man should
have time to take it. But unluckily for this plan, Baron von Lyndal
detained him for a few moments with praise of a new remedy which might
cure the Chancellor's gout; and when he escaped from his host to look
for Miss Mowbray in the white drawing-room she was not there.
From the music room adjoining, however, came sounds which drew him
toward the door. He knew Miss Mowbray's soft, coaxing touch on the
piano: she was there, "playing in a whisper," as he had heard her call
it. Perhaps she was going to sing, as she had once or twice before,
and would need some one to turn the pages of her music. Egon thought
that he would much like to be the some one, and was in the act of
parting the white velvet portières that covered the doorway, when his
hostess smilingly beckoned him away.
"The Emperor has just asked Miss Mowbray to teach him some
old-fashioned Scotch or English air (I'm afraid I don't quite know the
difference!) called 'Annie Laurie,'" the Baroness explained. "He was
charmed with it when she sang the other evening, and I've been
assuring him that the song would exactly suit his voice. We mustn't
disturb them while the lesson is going on. Tell me--I've hardly had a
moment to ask you--how did you find the Chancellor?"
Chained to a forced allegiance, Egon mechanically answered the
questions of the Baroness without making absurd mistakes, the while
his ears burned to hear what was going on behind the white curtain.
Everybody knew of the music lesson, now, and chatted in tones of
tactful monotony, never speaking too loudly to disturb the singers,
never too cautiously, lest they should seem to listen. Once, and then
again, the creamy _mezzo soprano_ and the rich tenor that was almost a
baritone, sang conscientiously through the verses of "Annie Laurie"
from beginning to end; then a few desultory chords were struck on the
piano; and at last there was silence behind the white curtains, in the
music room.
Were the two still there? To interrupt such a tête-a-tête seemed out
of the question, but not to know what was happening Egon found too
hard to bear, and the arrival of a telegram for Lady Mowbray came as
opportunely as if Providence had had his special needs in mind.
Evidently it was not a pleasant telegram, for, as she read it, the
Dresden china lady showed plainly that she was disconcerted. Her
pretty face lost its color; her eyes dilated as if she had tasted a
drop of belladonna on sugar; she patted her lips with her lace
handkerchief, and finally rose from her chair, looking dazed and
distressed.
"I've had rather bad news," she admitted to Baroness von Lyndal, who
was all solicitude. "Oh, nothing really serious, I trust, but still,
disquieting. It is from a dear friend. I think I had better go to my
room, and talk things over with Helen. Would you be kind enough to
tell her when she comes in that she's to follow me there? Don't send
for her till then; it's not necessary. But I shall want her by and
by."
It was clear that Lady Mowbray did not wish her daughter to be
disturbed. Still, Egon von Breitstein thought he might fairly let his
anxiety run away with him. As the Baroness accompanied her guest to
the door, he took it upon himself to search for Miss Mowbray, for now,
if the Emperor should curse him for a spoil-sport, he would have the
best of excuses. Lady Mowbray was in need of her daughter.
He lifted the white curtain and peeped through a small ante-chamber
into the music room beyond. It was empty; but one of the long windows
leading into the rose garden was wide open.
The month of September was dying, and away in the Rhaetian mountains
winter had begun; yet in the lap of the low country summer lingered.
The air was soft, and sweet with the perfume of roses, roses living,
and roses dead in a potpourri of scattered petals on the grass. It
was a garden for lovers, and a night for lovers.
Egon went to the open window and looked out, but dared not let his
feet take the direction of his eyes, though he was sure that somewhere
in the garden Miss Mowbray and the Emperor were to be found.
"They will come in again this way," he said to himself, "for they will
want people to think they have never left the music room; and for that
very reason they won't stop too long. They must have some regard for
the conventions. If I wait--"
He did not finish the sentence in his mind; nevertheless he examined
the resources of the window niche with a critical eye.
There was a deep enclosure between the window frame and the long,
straight curtains of olive green satin which matched the decoration of
the music room. By drawing the curtains a few inches further forward,
one could make a screen which would hide one from observation by any
person in the room, or outside, in the garden. So Egon did draw the
curtain, and framed in his shelter like a saint in a niche, he stood
peering into the silver night.
The moon was rising over the lake, and long, pale rays of level light
were stealing up the paths, like the fingers of a blind child that
caress gropingly the features of a beloved face.
Egon could not see the whole garden, or all the paths among the roses;
but if the Emperor and his companion came back by the way they had
gone, he would know presently whether they walked in the attitude of
friends or lovers. It was so necessary for his plans to know this,
that he thought it worth while to exercise a little patience in
waiting. Of course, if they were lovers, good-by to his hopes; and he
would never have so good a chance as this to make sure.
All things in the garden that were not white were gray as a dove's
wings. Even the shadows were not black. And the sky was gray, with the
soft gray of velvet, under a crust of diamonds which flashed as the
spangles on a woman's fan flash, when it trembles in her hand.
White moths, happily ignorant that summer would come no more for them,
drifted out from the shadows like rose petals blown by the soft wind.
On a trellis, a crowding sisterhood of pale roses drooped their heads
downward _in memento mori_. It was a silver night; a night of
enchantment.
Leopold had meant to take Virginia out only to see the moon rise over
the water, turning the great smooth sheet of jet into a silver shield;
for there had been clouds or spurts of rain on other nights, and he
had said to himself that never again, perhaps, would they two stand
together under the white spell of the moon. He had meant to keep her
for five minutes, or ten at the most, and then to bring her back; but
they had walked down to the path which girdled the cliff above the
lake. The moon touched her golden hair and her pure face like a
benediction. He dared not look at her thus for long, and when there
came a sudden quick rustling in the grass at their feet, he bent down,
glad of any change in the current of his thoughts.
Some tiny, winged thing of the night sought a lodging in a bell-shaped
flower whose blue color the moon had drunk, and as Leopold stooped,
the same impulse made Virginia bend.
He stretched out his hand to gather the low-growing branch of
blossoms, which he would give the girl as a souvenir of this hour, and
their fingers met. Lake and garden swam before the eyes of the
Princess as the Emperor's hand closed over hers.
Her great moment had come; yet now that it was here, womanlike she
wished it away--not gone forever, oh no, but waiting just round the
corner of the future.
"The flowers are yours--I give them to you," she laughed, as if she
fancied it was in eagerness to grasp the disputed spray that he had
pressed her fingers.
"You are the one flower I want--flower of all the world," he answered,
in a choked voice, speaking words he had not meant to speak; but the
ice barriers that held back the torrent of which he had told her, had
melted long ago and now had been swept away. Other barriers which he
had built up in their place--his convictions, his duty as a man at the
head of a nation--were gone too. "I love you," he stammered, "I love
you far better than my life, which you saved. I've loved you ever
since our first hour together on the mountain, but every day my love
has grown a thousand fold, until now it's greater and higher than any
mountain. I can fight against myself no longer. I thought I was
strong, but this love is stronger than I am. Say that you care for
me--only say that."
"I do care," Virginia whispered. She had prayed for this, lived for
this, and she was drowning in happiness. Yet she had pictured a
different scene, a scene of storm and stress. She had heard in fancy
broken words of sorrow and noble renunciation on his lips, and in
anticipating his suffering she had felt the joy her revelation would
give. "I care--so much, so much! How hard it will be to part."
"If you care, then we shall not be parted," said Leopold.
The Princess looked up at him in wonder, holding back as he would have
caught her in his arms. What could he mean? What plan was in his mind
that, believing her to be Helen Mowbray, yet made it possible for him
to reassure her so?
"I don't understand," she faltered. "You are the Emperor, and I am no
more than--"
"You are my wife, if you love me."
In the shock of her ecstatic surprise she was helpless to resist him
longer, and he held her close and passionately, his lips on her hair,
her face crushed against his heart. She could hear it beating, feel it
throb under her cheek. His wife? Then he loved her enough for that.
Yet how was it possible for him to stand ready, for her sake, to
override the laws of his own land?
"My darling--my wife!" he said again. "To think that you love me."
"I have loved you from the first," the Princess confessed, "but I was
afraid you would feel, even if you cared, that we must say good-by.
Now--" And in an instant the whole truth would have been out; but the
word "good-by" stabbed him, and he could not let it pass.
"We shall not say good-by, not for an hour," he cried. "After this I
could not lose you. There's nothing to prevent my being your husband,
you my wife. Would to God you were of Royal blood, and you should be
my Empress--the fairest Empress that poet or historian ever saw--but
we're prisoners of Fate, you and I. We must take the goods the gods
provide. My goddess you will always be, but the Empress of Rhaetia,
even my love isn't powerful enough to make you. If I am to you only
half what you are to me, you'll be satisfied with the empire of my
heart."
Suddenly the warm blood in Virginia's veins grew chill. It was as if a
wind had blown up from the dark depths of the lake, to strike like ice
into her soul. An instant more and he would have known that she was a
Princess of the Blood, and through his whole life she could have gone
on worshiping him because he had been ready to break down all barriers
for her love, before he guessed there need be none to break. Now her
warm impulse of gratitude was frozen by the biting blast of
disillusionment; but still there was hope left. It might be that she
misunderstood him. She would not judge him yet.
"The empire of your heart," she echoed. "If that were mine I should be
richer than with all the treasures of the earth. If you were Leo, the
chamois hunter, I would love you as I love you now, because in
yourself you are the one man for me; and I'd go with you to the end of
the world, as your wife. But you're not the chamois hunter; you are
the man I love, yet you are the Emperor. Being the Emperor, had you
talked of a hopeless love and a promise not to forget, having nothing
else to give me, because of your high destiny and my humbler one, I
could still have been happy. Yet you speak of more than that. You
speak of something I can't understand. It seems to me that what a
Royal man offers the woman he loves should be all or nothing."
"I do offer you all," said Leopold. "All myself, my life, the heart
and soul of me--all that's my own to give. The rest--belongs to
Rhaetia."
"Then what do you mean by--"
"Don't you understand, my sweet, that I've asked you to be my wife?
What can a man ask more of a woman?"
"Your wife--but not the Empress. How can the two be apart?"
He tried to take her once more in his arms, but when he saw that she
would not have it so, he held his love in check, and waited. He was
sure that he would not need to wait long, for not only had he laid his
love at her feet, but had pledged himself to a tremendous sacrifice on
love's altar.
The step which in a moment of passion he had now resolved to take
would create dissension among his people, alienate one who had been
his second father, rouse England, America and Germany to anger,
because of the Princess whose name rumor had already coupled with his,
and raise in every direction a storm of disapproval. When this girl
whom he loved realized the immensity of the concession he was making
because of his reverent love for her, she would give her life to him,
now and forever.
Tenderly he took her hand and lifted it to his lips; then, when
she did not draw it away (because he was to have his chance of
explanation) he held it between both his own, as he talked on.
"Dearest one," he said, "when I first knew I loved you--loved you as I
didn't dream I could love a woman--for your sake and my own, I would
have avoided meeting you too often. This I tell you frankly. I didn't
see how, in honor, such a love could end except in despair for me, and
sorrow even for you, if you should come to care. Had you and Lady
Mowbray stayed on at the hotel in Kronburg, I think I could have held
to my resolve. But when Baroness von Lyndal suggested your coming
here, my heart leaped up. I said in my mind, 'At least I shall have
the joy of seeing her every day, for a time, without doing anything to
darken her future. Afterwards, when she has gone out of my life, I
shall have that radiance to remember. And so no harm will be done in
the end, except that I shall have to pay, by suffering.' Still, I had
no thought of the future without a parting; I felt that inevitable.
And the suffering came hand in hand with the joy, for not a night
here at Lyndalberg have I slept. If I had been weak, I should have
groaned aloud in the agony of renunciation.
"My rooms open on a lawn. More than once I've come out into the
darkness, when all the household was sleeping. Some times I have
walked to this very spot where you and I stand now--heart to heart for
the first time, my darling--asking myself whether there were any way
out of the labyrinth. It was not until I brought you here and saw you
by my side with the moon rays for a crown, that a flash of blinding
light seemed to pierce the clouds. Suddenly I saw all things clearly,
and though there will be difficulties, I count them as overcome."
"Still you haven't answered my question," said Virginia in a low,
strained voice.
"I'm coming to that now. It was best that you should know first
all that's been troubling my heart and brain during these few,
bitter-sweet days which have taught me so much. You know, men who have
their place at the head of great nations can't think first of
themselves, or even of those they love better than themselves. If they
hope to snatch at personal happiness, they must take the one way open
to them, and be thankful.
"Don't do me the horrible injustice to believe that I wouldn't be
proud to show you to my subjects as their Empress; but instead, I can
offer only what men of Royal blood for hundreds of years have offered
to women whom they honored as well as loved. You must have heard even
in England of what is called a morganatic marriage? It is that I offer
you."
With a cry of pain--the cruel pain of wounded, disappointed love--the
Princess tore her hand from his.
"Never!" she exclaimed. "It's an insult."
"An insult? No, a thousand times no. I see that even now you don't
understand."
"I think that I understand very well, too well," said Virginia,
brokenly. The beautiful fairy palace of happiness that she had watched
as it grew, lay shattered, destroyed in the moment which ought to have
seen its triumphant completion.
[Illustration: _"Never!" she exclaimed. "It's an insult"_]
"I tell you that you cannot understand, or you wouldn't say--you
wouldn't dare to say, my love--that I'd insulted you. Don't you see,
don't you know, that you would be my wife in the sight of all men,
as well as in the sight of God."
"Your wife, you call it!" the Princess gave a harsh little laugh which
hurt as tears could not hurt. "You seem to have strange ideas of that
word, which has always been sacred to me. A morganatic marriage! That
is a mere pretense, an hypocrisy. I would be 'your wife,' you say. I
would give you all my love, all my life. You, in return, would give
me--your left hand. And you know well that, in a country which
tolerates such a one-sided travesty of marriage, the laws would hold
you free to marry another woman--a Royal woman, whom you could make an
Empress--as free as if I had no existence."
"Great Heaven, that you should speak so!" he broke out. "What if the
law did hold me free? Can you dream--do you put me so low as to dream
that my heart would hold me free? My soul would be bound to you
forever."
"So you may believe, now. But the knowledge that you could change
would be death to me--a death to die daily. Yes, I tell you again, it
was an insult to offer a lot so miserable, so contemptible, to a woman
you profess to love. How could you do it? If only you had never
spoken the hateful words! If only you had left me the ideal I had of
you--noble, glorious, above the whole world of men. But after all you
are selfish,--cruel. If you had said 'I love you, yet we must part,
for Duty stands between us.' I could--but no, I can never tell you now
what I could have answered if you had said that, instead of breaking
my heart."
Under the fire of her reproach he stood still, his lips tight, his
shoulders braced, as if he held his breast open for the knife.
"By Heaven, it is you who are cruel," he said at last. "How can I make
you see your injustice?"
"In no way. There's nothing more to be said between us two after this,
except--good-by."
"It shall not be good-by."
"It must. I wish it."
He had caught her dress as she turned to go, but now he released her.
"You wish it? It's not true that you love me, then?"
"It was true. Everything--everything in my whole life--is changed from
this hour. It would be better if I'd never seen you. Good-by."