His crime was that he actually married the girl. It had always been the
fashion for an Austrian Archduke to keep an opera-dancer, whether he
liked it or not, just as he always kept a racehorse, even though he
cared nothing about racing. For any scion of the Imperial House she was
a necessary part of the surroundings, an item in the entourage of Court.
He maintained her just as our Royal Family pay subscriptions to
charities, or lay the foundation-stone of a church. It was expected of
him. _Noblesse oblige_. Descent from the House of Hapsburg involves its
duties as well as its rights. The opera-dancer was as essential to
Archducal existence as the seventy-seventh quartering on the Hapsburg
arms. She was the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual
Imperialness. She justified the title of "Transparency." She was the
mark of true heredity, like the Hapsburg lip. As the advertisements say,
no Archduke should be without one.
But really to love an opera-dancer was a scandal for derision, moving
all the Courts of the Empire to scorn. Actually to marry her was a crime
beyond forgiveness. It shook the Throne. It came very near the sin of
treason, for which the penalties prescribed may hardly be whispered in
polite ears. To mingle the Imperial blood with a creature born without
a title, and to demand human and divine sanction for the deed! It
brought a blush to the cheek of heraldry. What of the possible results
of a union with a being from the stage? Only if illegitimate, could such
results legitimately be recognised; only if ignoble in the eyes of
morality, could they be received without censure among the nobility. It
was not fair to put all one's Imperial relations, to say nothing of the
Court officials, the Lord High Chamberlain, the Keepers of the Pedigree,
the Diamond Sticks in Waiting, the Grooms of the Bedchamber, and the
Valets Extraordinary--it was not fair to put their poor brains into such
a quandary of contradiction and perplexity. And who shall tell the
divine wrath of that august figure, obscurely visible in the recesses of
ancestral homes, upon whose brow had descended the diadem of Roman
Emperors, the crown of Christ's Vicar in things terrestrial, and who,
when he was not actually wearing the symbol of Imperial supremacy,
enjoyed the absolute right to assume the regalia of eight kingdoms in
turn, including the sacred kingdom of Jerusalem, and possessed
forty-three other titles to pre-eminent nobility, not counting the
etceteras with which each separate string of titles was concluded? Who,
without profanity, shall tell his wrath?
It was the Archduke Johann Salvator of Austria, head of the Tuscan
branch of the House of Hapsburg, who confronted in his own person that
Imperial wrath, and committed the inexpiable crime of marriage. It is
true that he was not entirely to blame. He did not succumb without a
struggle, and his efforts to resist the temptation to legality appear to
have been sincere. Indeed, as has so often happened since the days of
Eve, it was chiefly the woman's fault. He honestly endeavoured to make
her his mistress, in accordance with all Archducal precedent, but she
persistently, nay, obstinately, refused the honour of Imperial shame.
With a rigidity that in other circumstances might, perhaps, have been
commended, but, in relation to an Archduke, can only be described as
designing, she insisted upon marriage. She was but Fraulein Milli
Stubel, light-skirted dancer at the Court Opera-House, but, with
unexampled hardihood, she maintained her headlong course along the
criminal path of virtue. What could a man do when exposed to temptation
so severe?
The Archduke was in love, and love is an incalculable force, driving all
of us at times irresistibly to deeds of civil and ecclesiastical
wedlock. He was a soldier, a good soldier, in itself an unusual and
suspicious characteristic in one of the Hapsburg blood. He was a
musician and a man of culture--qualities that, in a prince, must be
taken as dangerous indications of an unbalanced mind. He was an intimate
friend of the Crown Prince Rudolph, that bewildering personality, whose
own fate was so unhappy, so obscure. Skill in war, intelligence,
knowledge, friendship all marked him out as a man only too likely to
bring discredit on Archducal tradition. His peers in birth shook their
heads, and muttered the German synonym for "crank." Worse than all, he
was in love--in love with a woman of dangerous virtue. What could such a
man do against temptation? Struggle as he might, he could not long repel
the seductive advances of honourable action. He loved, he fell, he
married.
In London, of all places, this crime against all the natural dictates of
Society was ultimately perpetrated. We do not know what church lent
itself to the deed, or what hotel gave shelter to the culprits' shame.
By hunting up the marriage register of Johann Orth (to such shifts may
an Archduke be reduced in the pursuit of virtue), one might, perhaps,
discover the name of the officiating clergyman, and we can confidently
assume he will not be found upon the bench of Bishops. But it is all
many years ago now, and directly after the marriage, as though in the
vain hope of concealing every trace of his offence, Johann Orth
purchased a little German ship, which he called by the symbolic name of
_Santa Margherita_--for St. Margaret suffered martyrdom for the sin of
rejecting a ruler's dishonourable proposals--and so they sailed for
South America. By what means the wedded fugitives purposed there to
support their guiltless passion, is uncertain. But we know that they
arrived, that the captain gave himself out as ill, and left the ship,
together with most of the crew, no doubt in apprehension of divine
vengeance, if they should seem any longer to participate in the breach
of royal etiquette. We further know that, in July 1890, the legal lovers
sailed from Buenos Ayres, with a fresh crew, the Archduke himself in
command, and were never heard of more.
An Austrian cruiser was sent to search the coasts, in vain. No letters
came; no ship has ever hailed the vessel of their iniquity. The
insurance companies have long paid the claims upon the Archduke's
premiums for his life, and that fact alone is almost as desirable an
evidence as a death-certificate to his heir. But one Sunday in July
1910, the Imperial Court of Austria also issued an edict to appear
simultaneously in the chief official gazettes of the habitable globe,
declaring that, unless within six months further particulars were
supplied concerning one, namely, the Archduke Johann Salvator, of the
House of Austria and Tuscany, otherwise and hereinafter known as Johann
Orth, master mariner, and concerning his alleged decease, together with
that of one Milli Orth, _née_ Stubel, his reputed accomplice in
matrimony, the property, estates, effects, titles, jewels, family
vaults, and other goods of the aforesaid Johann Orth, should forthwith
and therewithal pass into the possession of the Archduke Joseph
Ferdinand, nephew and presumptive heir of the aforesaid Johann Orth, to
the estimated value of £150,000 sterling, in excess or defect thereof as
the case might be, it being thereafter presumed that the aforesaid
Johann Orth, together with the aforesaid Milli Orth, his reputed
accomplice in matrimony, did meet or encounter their death upon the high
seas by the act or other intervention of God.
Oh, never believe it! There is an unsuspected island in untravelled
seas. Like the island of Tirnanog, which is the Irish land of eternal
youth, it lies below the sunset, brighter than the island-valley of
Avilion:
"Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow,
Nor ever wind blows loudly; but it lies
Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns
And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea."
To that island have those star-like lovers fared, since they gave the
world and all its Imperial Courts the slip. There they have discovered
an innocent and lovely race, adorned only with shells and the flowers of
hibiscus; and, intermingled with that race, in accordance with
indigenous marriage ceremonies, the crew of the _Santa Margherita_ now
rear a dusky brood. In her last extant letter, addressed to the leader
of the _corps de ballet_ at the Ring Theatre in Vienna, Madame Milli
Orth herself hinted at a No-Man's Land, which they were seeking as the
home of their future happiness. They have found it now, having trodden
the golden path of rays. There palls not wealth, or state, or any rank,
nor ever Court snores loudly, but men and women meet each evening to
discuss the next day's occupation, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer
collects the unearned increment in the form of the shell called Venus'
ear. For a time, indeed, Johann Orth attempted to maintain a kind of
kingship, on the strength of his superior pedigree. But when a
democratic cabin-boy one day turned and told him to stow his Hapsburg
lip, the beautiful ex-opera-dancer burst out laughing, and Johann agreed
in future to be called Archduke only on Sundays. With their eldest son,
now a fine young man coming to maturity, the title is expected to
expire.