THE EMPEROR AT BAY
Iron Heart was dressed in the long, double-breasted gray overcoat and
the soft gray hat in which all snapshot photographs (no others had
ever been taken) showed the Chancellor of Rhaetia.
At sight of the Emperor off came the famous hat, baring the bald dome
of the fine old head, fringed with hair of curiously mingled black and
white.
"Good day, your Majesty," he said, with no sign of surprise in his
voice or face.
The train rocked, going round a curve, and it was with difficulty that
the Chancellor kept his footing; but he stood rigidly erect,
supporting himself in the doorway, until the Emperor with more
politeness than enthusiasm, invited him to enter and be seated.
"I'm glad you're well enough to travel, Chancellor," said Leopold.
"We had none too encouraging an account of you from Captain von
Breitstein."
"I travel because you travel, your Majesty," replied the old man. "It
is kind of you to tolerate me here, and I appreciate it."
Now, they sat facing each other; and the young man, fighting down a
sense of guilt--familiar to him in boyish days, when about to be taken
to task by the Chancellor--gazed fixedly at the hard, clever face on
which the afternoon sun scored the detail of each wrinkle.
"Indeed?" was the Emperor's only answer.
"Your Majesty, I have served you and your father before you, well, I
hope, faithfully, I know. I think you trust me."
"No man more. But this sounds a portentous preface. Is it possible you
imagine it necessary to 'lead up' to a subject, if I can please myself
by doing you a favor?"
"If I have seemed to lead up to what I wish to say, your Majesty, it
is only for the sake of explanation. You are wondering, no doubt, how
I knew you would travel to-day, and in this train; also why I have
ventured to follow. Your intention I learned by accident." (The
Chancellor did not explain by what diplomacy that "accident" had been
brought about.) "Wishing much to talk over with you a pressing matter
that should not be delayed, I took this liberty, and seized this
opportunity.
"Some men would, in my place, pretend that business of their own had
brought them, and that the train had been chosen by chance. But your
Majesty knows me as a blunt man, when I serve him not as diplomat, but
as friend. I'm not one to work in the dark with those who trust me,
and I want your Majesty to know the truth." (Which perhaps he did, but
not the whole truth.)
"You raise my curiosity," said Leopold.
"Then have I your indulgence to speak frankly, not entirely as a
humble subject to his Emperor, but as an old man to a young man?"
"I'd have you speak as a friend," said Leopold. But a slight
constraint hardened his voice, as he prepared himself for something
disagreeable.
"I've had a letter from the Crown Prince of Hungaria. It has come to
his ears that there is a certain reason for your Majesty's delay in
following up the first overtures for an alliance with his family.
Malicious tongues have whispered that your Majesty's attentions are
otherwise engaged; and the young Adalbert has addressed me in a
friendly way begging that the rumor may be contradicted or confirmed."
"I'm not sure that negotiations had gone far enough to give him the
right to be inquisitive," returned Leopold, flushing.
The Chancellor spread out his old, veined hands in a gesture of
appeal. "I fear," he said, "that in my anxiety for your Majesty's
welfare and the good of Rhaetia, I may have exceeded my instructions.
My one excuse is, that I believed your mind to be definitely made up.
I still believe it to be so. I would listen to no one who should try
to persuade me of the contrary, and I will write Adalbert--"
"You must get yourself and me out of the scrape as best you can, since
you admit you got us into it," broke in the Emperor, with an uneasy
laugh. "If Princess Virginia of Baumenburg-Drippe is as charming as
she is said to be, her difficulty will be in choosing a husband, not
in getting one. For once, my dear Chancellor, gossip has told the
truth; and I wouldn't pay the Princess so poor a compliment as to ask
for her hand, when I've no heart left to give her in exchange for it.
There's some one else--"
"It is of that some one else I would venture to speak, your Majesty.
Gossip has named her. May I?"
"I'll save you the trouble. For I'm not ashamed that the common fate
has overtaken me--common, because every man loves once before he dies;
and yet uncommon, because no man ever loved a woman so worthy.
Chancellor, there's no woman in the world like Miss Helen Mowbray, the
lady to whom I owe my life."
"It's natural you should be grateful, your Majesty, but--"
"It's natural I should be in love."
"Natural that a young man inexperienced in affairs of the heart,
should mistake warm gratitude for love. Impossible that the mistake
should be allowed to continue."
Leopold's eyes grew dark. "In such a connection," he said, "it would
be better not to mention the word 'mistake.' I'm glad you are here;
for now you can learn from me my intentions toward that lady--"
"Intentions, did you say, your Majesty? I fear I grow hard of
hearing."
"At least you will never grow slow of understanding. I did speak of my
intentions toward Miss Mowbray."
"You would give the lady some magnificent estate, some splendid
acknowledgment--"
"Whether splendid or not would be a matter of opinion," laughed the
Emperor. "I shall offer her a present of myself."
The old man had been sitting with his chin sunk into his short neck,
peering out from under his brows in a way he had; but he lifted his
head suddenly, with a look in his eyes like that of an animal who
scents danger from an unexpected quarter.
"Your Majesty!" he exclaimed. "You are your father's son, you are
Rhaetian, and your standard of honor--"
"I hope to marry Miss Mowbray," Leopold cut him short.
The Chancellor's jaw dropped, and he grew pale. "I had dreamed of
nothing as bad as this," he blurted out, with no thought or wish to
sugar the truth. "I feared a young man's rashness. I dreaded scandal.
But, forgive me, your Majesty, for you a morganatic marriage would be
madness--"
"A morganatic marriage I did think of at first. But on second thoughts
I saw it would be ungrateful."
"Ah yes, to the country which expects so much of you."
"No, to the woman who has the right to all or nothing. I will make her
Empress of Rhaetia."
With a cry the Chancellor sprang up. His eyes glared like the eyes of
a bull who receives the death stroke. His working lips, and the hollow
sound in his throat alarmed the Emperor.
"No, your Majesty. No!" he panted.
"But I say yes," Leopold answered, "and let no man give me nay. I've
thought it all out. I will make her a Countess first. Then, she shall
be made my Empress."
"Your Majesty, it is not possible."
"Take care, Chancellor."
"She has been deceiving you. She has neither the birth, the position,
nor the name she claims to have, and I can prove it."
"You are mad, von Breitstein," the Emperor flung at him. "That can be
your only excuse for such words."
"I am not mad, but I am old and wise, your Majesty. To-day you have
made me feel that I am very old. Punish me as you will for my
frankness. My work for you and yours is nearly done. Cheerfully will I
submit to my dismissal if only this last effort in your service may
save the ship of state from wreck. I would not make an accusation
which I could not prove. And I can prove that the two English ladies
who have been staying at Schloss Lyndalberg are not the persons they
pretend to be."
"Who has been lying to you?" cried Leopold, who held between clenched
hands the temper he vowed not to lose with this old man.
"To me, no one. To your Majesty, to society in Kronburg, two
adventuresses have lied."
The Emperor caught his breath. "If you were a young man I would kill
you for that," he said.
"I know you would. As it is, my life is yours. But before you take it,
for God's sake, for your father's sake, hear me out."
Leopold did not speak for a moment, but stared at the vanishing
landscape, which he saw through a red haze. "Very well," he said at
last, "I will hear you, because I fear nothing you can say."
"When I heard of your Majesty's--admiration for a certain lady," the
Chancellor began quickly, lest the Emperor should change his mind, "I
looked for her name and her mother's in Burke's Peerage. There I found
Lady Mowbray, widow of a dead Baron of that ilk; mother of a son,
still a child, and of one daughter, a young woman with many names and
twenty-eight years.
"This surprised me, as the Miss Mowbray I had seen at the birthday
ball looked no more than eighteen, and--I was told--confessed to
twenty. The Mowbrays, I learned by a little further research in
Burke, were distantly connected by marriage with the family of
Baumenburg-Drippe. This seemed an odd coincidence, in the circumstances.
But acting as duty bade me act, I wired to two persons: Baron von Sark,
your Majesty's ambassador to Great Britain; and the Crown Prince of
Hungaria, the brother of Princess Virginia."
"What did you telegraph?" asked the Emperor, icily.
"Nothing compromising to your Majesty, you may well believe. I
inquired of Adalbert if he had English relations, a Lady Mowbray and
daughter Helen, traveling in Rhaetia; and I begged that, if so, he
would describe their appearance by telegram. To von Sark I said that
particulars by wire concerning the widow of Lord Mowbray and daughter
Helen, would put me under personal obligation. Both these messages I
sent off night before last. Yesterday I received Adalbert's answer;
this morning, von Sark's. They are here," and the Chancellor tapped
the breast of his gray coat. "Will your Majesty read them?"
"If you wish," replied Leopold at his haughtiest and coldest.
The old man unbuttoned his coat and produced a coroneted pocket-book,
a souvenir of friendship on his last birthday from the Emperor.
Leopold saw it, and remembered, as the Chancellor hoped he would.
"Here are the telegrams, your Majesty," he said. "The first one is
from the Crown Prince of Hungaria."
"Have no idea where Lady Mowbray and daughter are traveling; may be
Rhaetia or North Pole," Adalbert had written with characteristic
flippancy. "Have seen neither for eight years, and scarcely know them.
But Lady M. tall brown old party with nose like hobbyhorse. Helen
dark, nose like mother's, wears glasses."
With no betrayal of feeling, Leopold laid the telegram on the red
plush seat, and unfolded the other.
"Pardon delay," the Rhaetian ambassador's message began. "Have been
making inquiries. Lady Mowbray has been widow for ten years. Not rich.
During son's minority has let her town and country houses, lives much
abroad. Very high church, intellectual, at present in Calcutta, where
her daughter Helen, twenty-eight, not pretty, is lately engaged to
marry middle-aged Judge of some distinction."
"So!" And the Emperor threw aside the second bit of paper. "It is on
such slight grounds as these that a man of the world can label two
ladies 'adventuresses'!"
The Chancellor was bitterly disappointed. He had counted on the
impression which these telegrams must make, and unless Leopold were
acting, it was now certain that love had driven him out of his senses.
But if the Emperor were mad, he must be treated accordingly, and the
old statesman condescended to "bluff."
"There is still more to tell," he said, "if your Majesty has not heard
enough. But I think when you have reflected you will not wish for
more. It is clear that the women calling themselves Mowbrays have had
the audacity to present themselves here under false colors. They have
either deceived Lady Lambert, who introduced them to Rhaetian society,
or--still more likely--they have cleverly forged their letters of
introduction."
"Why didn't you telegraph to Lady Lambert, while your hand was in?"
sneered Leopold.
"I did, your Majesty, or rather, not knowing her present address I
wired a friend of mine, an acquaintance of hers, begging him to make
inquiries, without using my name. But I have not yet received an
answer to that telegram."
"Until you do, I should think that even a cynic like yourself might
give two defenseless, inoffensive ladies the benefit of the doubt."
"Inoffensive?" echoed von Breitstein. "Inoffensive, when they came to
this country to ensnare your Majesty through the girl's beauty? But,
great Heaven, it is true that I am growing old! I have forgotten to
ask your Majesty whether you have gone so far as to mention the word
marriage to Miss Mowbray?"
"I'll answer that question by another. Do you really believe that
Miss Mowbray came to Rhaetia to 'entrap' me?"
"I do. Though I scarcely think that even her ambition flew as high as
you are encouraging it to soar."
"In case you're right she would have been overjoyed with an offer of
morganatic marriage."
"Overjoyed is a poor word. Overwhelmed might be nearer."
"Yet I tell you she refused me last night, and is leaving Rhaetia
to-day rather than listen to further entreaties."
Leopold bent forward to launch this thunderbolt, his brown hands on
his knees, his eyes eager. The memories, half bitter, half sweet,
called up by his own words, caused Virginia to appear more beautiful,
more desirable even than before.
He was delighted with the expression of the Chancellor's face. "Now,
what arguments have you left?" he broke out in the brief silence.
"All I had before--and many new ones. For what your Majesty has said
shows the lady more ambitious, more astute, therefore more dangerous
than I had guessed. She staked everything on the power of her charms.
And she might have won, had you not an old servant who wouldn't be
fooled by the witcheries of a fair Helen."
"She has won," said Leopold. Then, quickly, "God forgive me for
chiming in with your bitter humor, as if she'd played a game. By
simply being herself, she has won me--such as I am. She's proved that
if she cares at all, it's for the man, and not the Emperor, since she
called the offer you think so magnificent, an insult. Yes, Chancellor,
that was the word she used; and it was almost the last she said to me:
which is the reason I'm traveling to-day. And none of your boasted
'proofs' can hold me back."
"By Heaven, your Majesty must look upon yourself from the point of
view you credit to the girl. You forget the Emperor in the man."
"The two need not be separated."
"Love indeed makes men blind, and spares not the eyes of Emperors."
"I've pledged myself to bear with you, Chancellor."
"And I know you'll keep your word. I must speak, for Rhaetia, and your
better self. You are following this--lady to give her your Empire for
a toy."
"She must first accept the Emperor as her husband."
"A lady who has so poor a name of her own that she steals one which
doesn't belong to her. The nation won't bear it."
"You speak for yourself, not for Rhaetia," said Leopold. "Though I'm
not so old as you by half your years, I believe I can judge my people
better than you do. The law which bids an Emperor of Rhaetia match
with Royalty is an unwritten law, a law solely of customs, handed down
through the generations. I'll not spoil my life by submitting to its
yoke, since by breaking it the nation gains, as I do. I could go to
the world's end and not find a woman as worthy to be my wife and
Empress of Rhaetia as Helen Mowbray."
"You have never seen Princess Virginia."
"I've no wish to see her. There's but one woman for me, and I swear to
you, if I lose her, I'll go to my grave unmarried. Let the crown fall
to my uncle's son. I'll not perjure myself even for Rhaetia."
The Chancellor bowed his head and held up his hands, for by that
gesture alone could he express his despair.
"If my people love me, they'll love my wife, and rejoice in my
happiness," Leopold went on, sharply. "If they complain, why, we
shall see who's master; whether or not the Emperor of Rhaetia is a
mere figurehead. In some countries Royalty is but an ornamental
survival of a picturesque past, a King or Queen is a mere puppet which
the nation loads with luxury to do itself honor. That's not true of
Rhaetia, though, as I'm ready to prove, if prove it I must. But I
believe I shall be spared the trouble. We Rhaetians love romance; you
are perhaps the one exception. While as for the story you've told me,
I would not give that for it!" And the Emperor snapped his fingers.
"You still believe the ladies have a right to the name of Mowbray?"
"I believe that they are of stainless reputation, and that any seeming
mystery can be explained. Miss Mowbray is herself. That's enough for
me. Perhaps, Chancellor, there are two Lady Mowbrays."
"Only one is mentioned in Burke."
"Burke isn't gospel."
"Pardon me. It's the gospel of the British peerage. It can no more be
guilty of error than Euclid."
"Nor can Miss Mowbray be guilty of wrong. I should still stake my life
on that, even had your conclusions not been lame ones."
The old man accepted this rebuff in silence. But it was not the
silence of absolute hopelessness. It was only such a pause as a
prize-fighter makes between rounds.
"Your Majesty will not be in too great haste, at all events, I trust,"
he said at last. "At least a little reflection, a little patience, to
cool the blood. I have not laid down all my cards yet."
"It's often bad policy not to lead trumps," replied Leopold.
"Often, but not always. Time, and the end of the play will show. Is
your Majesty's indulgence for the old man quite exhausted?"
"Not quite, though rather strained, I confess." Leopold tempered his
words with a faint smile.
"Then I have one more important question to ask, venturing to remind
you first that I have acted solely in your interest. If such a step as
you contemplate should be my death blow, it is because of my love for
you, and Rhaetia. Tell me, your Majesty, this one thing. If it were
proved to you that the lady you know as Miss Mowbray, was, not only
not the person she pretends to be, but in all other respects unworthy
of your love--what would you do?"
"You speak of impossibilities."
"But if they were not impossibilities?"
"In such a case I should do as other men do--spend the rest of life in
trying to forget a lost ideal."
"I thank your Majesty. That is all I ask. I suppose you will continue
your journey?"
"Yes, as far as Felgarde, where I hope to find Lady Mowbray and her
daughter."
"Then, your Majesty, when I've expressed my gratitude for your
forebearance--even though I've failed to be convincing--I'll trouble
you no longer."
The Chancellor rose, painfully, with a reminiscence of gout, and
Leopold stared at him in surprise. "What do you mean?" he asked.
"Only that, as I can do no further good here, with your permission, I
will get out at the station we are coming into, and go back home
again."
The Emperor realized, what he had not noticed until this moment, that
the train was slackening speed as it approached the suburbs of a town.
His conversation with the Chancellor had lasted for an hour, and he
was far from regretting the prospect of being left in peace. More than
once he had come perilously near to losing his temper, forgetting his
gratitude and the old man's years. How much longer he could have held
out under a continued strain of provocation, he did not know; so he
spoke no word of dissuasion when Count von Breitstein picked up his
soft hat and buttoned the gray coat for departure.
"I've passed pleasanter hours in your society, I admit," said Leopold,
when the train stopped. "But I can thank you for your motives, if not
your maxims; and here's my hand."
"It would be most kind of your Majesty to telephone me from Felgarde,"
the Chancellor exclaimed, as if on a sudden thought, while they shook
hands, "merely to say whether you remain there; or whether you go
further; or whether you return at once. I am too fatigued to travel
back immediately to Schloss Breitstein, and shall rest for some hours
at least, in my house at Kronburg, so a call will find me there."
"I will do as you ask," said the Emperor. Again he pressed the
Chancellor's hand, and it was very cold.