The Archduchess was having tea. Her boudoir was a crowded little room.
Nikky had once observed confidentially to Miss Braithwaite that it
was exactly like her, all hung and furnished with things that were not
needed. The Archduchess liked it because it was warm. The palace rooms
were mostly large and chilly. She lad a fire there on the warmest days
in spring, and liked to put the coals on, herself. She wrapped them in
pieces of paper so she would not soil her hands.
This afternoon she was not alone. Lounging at a window was the lady
who was in waiting at the time, the Countess Loschek. Just now she was
getting rather a wigging, but she was remarkably calm.
“The last three times,” the Archduchess said, stirring her tea, “you
have had a sore throat.”
“It is such a dull book,” explained the Countess.
“Not at all. It is an improving book. If you would put your mind on
it when you are reading, Olga, you would enjoy it. And you would learn
something, besides. In my opinion,” went on the Archduchess, tasting her
tea, “you smoke too many cigarettes.”
The Countess yawned, but silently, at her window.
Then she consulted a thermometer. “Eighty!” she said briefly, and,
coming over, sat down by the tea-table.
The Countess Loschek was thirty, and very handsome, in an insolent way.
She was supposed to be the best-dressed woman at the Court, and to rule
Annunciata with an iron hand, although it was known that they quarreled
a great deal over small things, especially over the coal fire.
Some said that the real thing that held them together was resentment
that the little Crown Prince stood between the Princess Hedwig and the
throne. Annunciata was not young, but she was younger than her dead
brother, Hubert. And others said it was because the Countess gathered
up and brought in the news of the Court--the small intrigues and the
scandals that constitute life in the restricted walls of a palace.
There is a great deal of gossip in a palace where the king is old and
everything rather stupid and dull.
The Countess yawned again.
“Where is Hedwig?” demanded the Archduchess.
“Her Royal Highness is in the nursery, probably.”
“Why probably?”
“She goes there a great deal.”
The Archduchess eyed her. “Well, out with it,” she said. “There is
something seething in that wicked brain of yours.”
The Countess shrugged her shoulders. Not that she resented having a
wicked brain. She rather fancied the idea. “She and young Lieutenant
Larisch have tea quite frequently with His Royal Highness.”
“How frequently?”
“Three times this last week, madame.”
“Little fool!” said Annunciata. But she frowned, and sat tapping her
teacup with her spoon. She was just a trifle afraid of Hedwig, and she
was more anxious than she would have cared to acknowledge. “It is being
talked about, of course?”
The Countess shrugged her shoulders.
“Don’t do that!” commanded the Archduchess sharply. “How far do you
think the thing has gone?”
“He is quite mad about her.”
“And Hedwig--but she is silly enough for anything. Do they meet anywhere
else?”
“At the riding-school, I believe. At least, I--”
Here a maid entered and stood waiting at the end of the screen. The
Archduchess Annunciata would have none of the palace flunkies about her
when she could help it. She had had enough of men, she maintained, in
the person of her late husband, whom she had detested. So except at
dinner she was attended by tidy little maids, in gray Quaker costumes,
who could carry tea-trays into her crowded boudoir without breaking
things.
“His Excellency, General Mettlich,” said the maid.
The Archduchess nodded her august head, and the maid retired. “Go away,
Olga,” said the Archduchess. “And you might,” she suggested grimly,
“gargle your throat.”
The Chancellor had passed a troubled night. Being old, like the King, he
required little sleep. And for most of the time between one o’clock and
his rising hour of five he had lain in his narrow camp-bed and thought.
He had not confided all his worries to the King.
Evidences of renewed activity on the part of the Terrorists were many.
In the past month two of his best secret agents had disappeared. One had
been found the day before, stabbed in the back. The Chancellor had
seen the body--an unpleasant sight. But it was not of the dead man that
General Mettlich thought. It was of the other. The dead tell nothing.
But the living, under torture, tell many things. And this man Haeckel,
young as he was, knew much that was vital. Knew the working of the
Secret Service, the names of the outer circle of twelve, knew the codes
and passwords, knew, too the ways of the palace, the hidden room
always ready for emergency, even the passage that led by devious ways,
underground, to a distant part of the great park.
At five General Mettlich had risen, exercised before an open window with
an old pair of iron dumbbells, had followed this with a cold bath and
hot coffee, and had gone to early Mass at the Cathedral.
And there, on his knees, he had prayed for a little help. He was, he
said, getting old and infirm, and he had been too apt all his life to
rely on his own right arm. But things were getting rather difficult. He
prayed to Our Lady for intercession for the little Prince. He felt, in
his old heart, that the Mother would understand the situation, and
how he felt about it. And he asked in a general supplication, and very
humbly, for a few years more of life. Not that life meant anything to
him personally. He had outlived most of those he loved. But that he
might serve the King, and after him the boy who would be Otto IX. He
added, for fear they might not understand, having a great deal to
look after, that he had earned all this by many years of loyalty, and
besides, that he knew the situation better than any one else.
He felt much better after that. Especially as, at the moment he rose
from his knees, the cathedral clock had chimed and then struck seven.
He had found seven a very lucky number, So now he entered the boudoir of
the Archduchess Annunciata, and the Countess went out another door, and
closed it behind her, immediately opening it about an inch.
The Chancellor strode around the screen, scratching two tables with his
sword as he advanced, and kissed the hand of the Princess Annunciata.
They were old enemies and therefore always very polite to each other.
The Archduchess offered him a cup of tea, which he took, although she
always made very bad tea. And for a few moments they discussed things.
Thus: the King’s condition; the replanting of the Place with trees;
and the date of bringing out the Princess Hilda, who was still in the
schoolroom.
But the Archduchess suddenly came to business. She was an abrupt person.
“And now, General,” she said, “what is it?”
“I am in trouble, Highness,” replied the Chancellor simply.
“We are most of us in that condition at all times. I suppose you mean
this absurd affair of yesterday. Why such a turmoil about it? The boy
ran away. When he was ready he returned. It was absurd, and I dare say
you and I both are being held for our sins. But he is here now, and
safe.”
“I am afraid he is not as safe as you think, madame.”
“Why?”
He sat forward on the edge of his chair, and told her of the students
at the University, who were being fired by some powerful voice; of the
disappearance of the two spies; of the evidence that the Committee of
Ten was meeting again, and the failure to discover their meeting-place;
of disaffection among the people, according to the reports of his
agents. And then to the real purpose of his visit. Karl of Karnia had,
unofficially, proposed for the Princess Hedwig. He had himself broached
the matter to the King, who had at least taken it under advisement. The
Archduchess listened, rather pale. There was no mistaking the urgency in
the Chancellor’s voice.
“Madame after centuries of independence we now face a crisis which we
cannot meet alone. Believe me, I know of what I speak. United, we
could stand against the world. But a divided kingdom, a disloyal and
discontented people, spells the end.”
And at last he convinced her. But, because she was built of a contrary
mould, she voiced an objection, not to the scheme, but to Karl himself.
“I dislike him. He is arrogant and stupid.”
“But powerful, madame. And--what else is there to do?”
There was nothing else, and she knew it. But she refused to broach the
matter to Hedwig.
She stated, and perhaps not without reason, that such a move was to damn
the whole thing at once. She did not use exactly these words, but
their royal equivalent. And it ended with the Chancellor, looking most
ferocious but inwardly uneasy, undertaking to put, as one may say, a
flea into the Princess Hedwig’s small ear.
As he strode out, the door into the next room closed quietly.