The Countess Loschek was alone. Alone and storming. She had sent her
maid away with a sharp word, and now she was pacing the floor.
Hedwig, of all people!
She hated her. She had always hated her. For her youth, first; later,
when she saw how things were going, for the accident that had made her a
granddaughter to the King.
And Karl.
Even this last June, when Karl had made his looked-for visit to the
summer palace where the Court had been in, residence, he had already had
the thing in mind. Even when his arms had been about her, Olga Loschek,
he had been looking over her shoulder, as it were, at Hedwig. He had had
it all in his wicked head, even then. For Karl was wicked. None would
know it better than she, who was risking everything, life itself, for
him. Wicked; ungrateful, and unscrupulous. She loathed him while she
loved him.
The thing would happen. This was the way things were done in Courts.
An intimation from one side that a certain thing would be agreeable
and profitable. A discussion behind closed doors. A reply that the
intimation had been well received. Then the formal proposal, and its
acceptance.
Hedwig would marry Karl. She might be troublesome, would indeed almost
certainly be troublesome. Strangely enough, the Countess hated her the
more for that. To value so lightly the thing for which Olga Loschek
would have given her soul, this in itself was hateful. But there was
more. The Countess saw much with her curiously wide, almost childishly
bland eyes; it was only now that it occurred to her to turn what she
knew of Hedwig and Nikky to account.
She stopped pacing the floor, and sat down. Suppose Hedwig and Nikky
Larisch went away together? Hedwig, she felt, would have the courage
even for that. That would stop things. But Hedwig did not trust her. And
there was about Nikky a dog-like quality of devotion, which warned her
that, the deeper his love for Hedwig, the more unlikely he would be to
bring her to disgrace. Nikky might be difficult.
“The fool!” said the Countess, between her clenched teeth. To both the
Archduchess Annunciata and her henchwoman, people were chiefly divided
into three classes, fools, knaves, and themselves.
She must try for Hedwig’s confidence, then. But Karl! How to reach him?
Not with reproaches, not with anger. She knew her man well. To hold him
off was the first thing. To postpone the formal proposal, and gain
time. If the Chancellor had been right, and things were as bad as they
appeared, the King’s death would precipitate a crisis. Might, indeed,
overturn the throne.
And Karl had changed. The old days when he loved trouble were gone. His
thoughts, like all thoughts these days, she reflected contemptuously,
were turned to peace, not to war. He was for beating his swords into
ploughshares, with a vengeance.
To hold him off, then. To gain time.
The King was very feeble. This affair of yesterday had told on him. The
gossip of the Court was that the day had seen a change for the worse.
His heart was centered on the Crown Prince.
Ah, here was another viewpoint. Suppose the Crown Prince had not come
back? What would happen, with the King dead, and no king? Chaos, of
course. A free hand to revolution. Hedwig fighting for her throne, and
inevitably losing it. Then what about Karl and his dreams of peace?
But that was further than she cared to go just then. She would finish
certain work that she had set out to do, and then she was through. No
longer would dread and terror grip her in the night hours.
But she would finish. Karl should never say she had failed him. In her
new rage against him she was for cleaning the slate at once. She had
in her possession papers for which he waited or pretended to wait;
data secured by means she did not care to remember; plans and figures
carefully compiled--a thousand deaths in one, if, they were found on
her. She would get them out of her hands at once.
It was still but little after five. She brought her papers together on
her small mahogany desk, from such hiding places as women know--the
linings of perfumed sachets, the toes of small slippers, the secret
pocket in a muff; and having locked her doors, put them in order. Her
hands were trembling, but she worked skillfully. She was free until the
dinner hour, but she had a great deal to do. The papers in order, she
went to a panel in the wall of her dressing-room; and, sliding it aside,
revealed the safe in which her jewels were kept. Not that her jewels
were very valuable, but the safe was there, and she used it.
The palace, for that matter, was full of cunningly contrived
hiding-places. Some, in times of stress, had held jewels. Others--rooms
these, built in the stone walls and carefully mapped--had held even
royal refugees themselves. The map was in the King’s possession, and
descended from father to son, a curious old paper, with two of the
hidden rooms marked off in colored inks as closed. Closed, with strange
secrets beyond, quite certainly.
The Countess took out a jewel-case, emptied it, lifted its chamois
cushions, and took out a small book. It was an indifferent hiding-place,
but long immunity had made her careless. Referring to the book, she
wrote a letter in code. It was, to all appearances a friendly letter
referring to a family in her native town, and asking that the recipient
see that assistance be sent them before Thursday of the following week.
The assistance was specified with much detail--at her expense to send
so many blankets, so many loaves of bread, a long list. Having finished,
she destroyed, by burning, a number of papers watching until the
last ash had turned from dull red to smoking gray. The code-book she
hesitated over, but at last, with a shrug of her shoulders, she returned
it to its hiding-place in the jewel case.
Coupled with her bitterness was a sense of relief. Only when the papers
were destroyed had she realized the weight they had been. She summoned
Minna, her maid, and dressed for the street. Then, Minna accompanying
her, she summoned her carriage and went shopping.
She reached the palace again in time to dress for dinner. Somewhere on
that excursion she had left the letter, to be sent to its destination
over the border by special messenger that night.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto, at the moment of her return, was
preparing for bed. At a quarter to seven he had risen, bowed to Miss
Braithwaite, said good-night, and disappeared toward his bedroom and his
waiting valet. But a moment later he reappeared.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, “but I think your watch is fast.”
Miss Braithwaite consulted it. Then, rising she went to the window and
compared at with the moonlike face of the cathedral clock.
“There is a difference of five minutes,” she conceded. “But I have no
confidence in the cathedral clock. It needs oiling, probably. Besides,
there are always pigeons sitting on the hands.”
“May I wait for five minutes?”
“What could you do in five minutes?”
“Well,” he suggested, rather pleadingly, “we might have a little
conversation, if you axe not too tired.”
Miss Braithwaite sighed. It had been a long day and not a calm one, and
conversation with His Highness meant questions, mostly.
“Very well,” she said.
“I’m not at all sleepy,” Prince Ferdinand William Otto observed,
climbing on a chair. “I thought you might tell me about America. I’m
awfully curious about America.”
“I suppose you mean the United States.”
“I’m not sure. It has New York, in it, anyhow. They don’t have kings, do
they?”
“No,” said Miss Braithwaite, shortly. She hated republics.
“What I wondered was,” said Ferdinand William Otto, swinging his
legs, “how they managed without a king. Who tells them what to do? I’m
interested, because I met a boy yesterday who came from there, and he
talked quite a lot about it. He was a very interesting boy.”
Miss Braithwaite waived the matter of yesterday. “In a republic,” she
said, “the people think they can govern themselves. But they do it
very badly. The average intelligence among people in the mass is always
rather low.”
“He said,” went on His Royal Highness, pursuing a line of thought, “that
the greatest man in the world was a man named Lincoln. But that he
is dead. And he said that kings were nuisances, and didn’t earn their
bread-and-butter. Of course,” Otto hastened to explain, “he didn’t know
that my grandfather is a king. After that, I didn’t exactly like to tell
him. It would have made him very uncomfortable.” Here he yawned, but
covered it with a polite hand, and Oskar, his valet, came to the doorway
and stood waiting. He was a dignified person in a plum-colored livery,
because the King considered black gloomy for a child.
The Crown Prince slipped to the floor, and stood with his feet rather
wide apart, looking steadfastly at Miss Braithwaite. “I would like very
much to see that boy again,” he observed. “He was a nice boy, and very
kind-hearted. If we could go to the Scenic Railway when we are out in
the carriage, I--I’d enjoy it.” He saw refusal in her face, for he added
hurriedly, “Not to ride. I just want to look at it.”
Miss Braithwaite was touched, but firm. She explained that it would be
better if the Crown Prince did not see the boy again; and to soften
the refusal, she reminded him that the American child did not like
royalties, and that even to wave from his carriage with the gold wheels
would therefore be a tactical error.
Prince Ferdinand William Otto listened, and Oskar waited. And something
that had been joyous and singing in a small boy’s heart was suddenly
still.
“I had forgotten about that,” he said.
Then Miss Braithwaite rose, and the Prince put his heels together with a
click, and bowed, as he had been taught to do.
“Good-night,” he said.
“Good-night, Your Highness,” replied Miss Braithwaite.
At the door Prince Ferdinand William Otto turned and bowed again. Then
he went out, and the door closed behind him.
He washed himself, with Oskar standing by, holding a great soft towel.
Even the towels were too large. And he brushed his teeth, and had two
drinks of water, because a stiffish feeling in his throat persisted.
And at last he crawled up into the high bed that was so much too big for
him, and had to crawl out again, because he had forgotten his prayers.
When everything was done, and the hour of putting out the light could
no longer be delayed, he said goodnight to Oskar, who bowed. There was
a great deal of, bowing in Otto’s world. Then, whisk! it was dark, with
only the moon face of the cathedral clock for company. And as it was now
twenty minutes past seven, the two hands drooped until it looked like a
face with a cruel mouth and was really very poor company.
Oskar, having bowed himself into the corridor and past the two sentries,
reported to a very great dignitary across the hall that His Royal
Highness the Crown Prince Ferdinand William Otto was in bed. And the
dignitary had a chance to go away and get his dinner.
But alone in his great bed, the Crown Prince was shedding a few
shamefaced tears. He was extremely ashamed of them. He felt that under
no circumstances would his soldier father have behaved so. He reached
out and secured one of the two clean folded handkerchiefs that were
always placed on the bedside stand at night, and blew his nose very
loudly. But he could not sleep.
He gave Miss Braithwaite time to go to her sitting-room, and for eight
o’clock to pass, because once every hour, all night, a young gentleman
of the Court, appointed for this purpose and dubbed a “wet-nurse” by
jealous comrades, cautiously opened his door and made a stealthy circuit
of the room, to see that all was well.
The Crown Prince got up. He neglected to put on his bedroom slippers,
of course, and in his bare feet be padded across the room to the study
door. It was not entirely dark. A night-light burned there. It stood on
a table directly under the two crossed swords. Beneath the swords, in a
burnt-wood frame, were the pictures of his father and mother. Hedwig had
given him a wood-burning outfit at Christmas, and he had done the work
himself. It consisted of the royal arms, somewhat out of drawing and
not exactly in the center of the frame, and a floral border of daisies,
extremely geometrical, because he had drawn them in first with a
compass.
The boy, however, gave the pictures only a hasty glance and proceeded,
in a business-like manner, to carry a straight chair to the cabinet. On
the top shelf sat the old cloth dog. Its shoe-button eyes looked glazed
with sleep, but its ears were quite alert. Very cautiously the Crown
Prince unlocked the door, stepped precariously to the lower shelf of the
cabinet, hung there by one royal hand, and lifted the dog down.
At nine o’clock the wet-nurse took off his sword in another room and
leaned it against a chair. Then he examined his revolver, in accordance
with a formula prescribed by the old King. Then he went in and
examined the room with a flashlight, and listened to the Crown Prince’s
breathing. He had been a croupy baby. And, at last, he turned the
flashlight on to the bed. A pair of shoe-button eyes stared at him from
the pillow.
“Well, I’m damned,” said the wet-nurse And went out, looking thoughtful.