The following morning the Countess Loschek left for a holiday. Minna,
silent and wretched, had packed her things for her, moving about the
room like a broken thing. And the Countess had sat in a chair by a
window, and said nothing. She sent away food untasted, took no notice of
the packing, and stared, hour after hour, ahead of her.
Certain things were clear enough. Karl could not now be reached by the
old methods. She had, casting caution to the winds, visited the
shop where Peter Niburg was employed. But he was not there, and the
proprietor, bowing deeply, disclaimed all knowledge of his whereabouts.
She would have to go to Karl herself, a difficult matter now. She would
surely be watched. And the thousand desperate plans that she thought
of for escaping from the country and hiding herself,--in America,
perhaps,--those were impossible for the same reason. She was helpless.
She had the choice of but two alternatives, to do as she had been
commanded, for it amounted to that, or to die. The Committee would not
kill her, in case she failed them. It would be unnecessary. Enough that
they place the letter and the code in the hands of the authorities, by
some anonymous means. Well enough she knew the Chancellor’s inflexible
anger, and the Archduchess Annunciata’s cold rage. They would sweep her
away with a gesture, and she would die the death of all traitors.
A week! Time had been when a week of the dragging days at the Palace
had seemed eternity. Now the hours flew. The gold clock on her
dressing-table, a gift from the Archduchess, marked them with flying
hands.
She was, for the first time, cut off from the gossip of the Palace.
The Archduchess let her severely alone. She disliked having anything
interfere with her own comfort, disliked having her routine disturbed.
But the Countess surmised a great deal. She guessed that Hedwig would
defy them, and that they would break her spirit with high words. She
surmised preparations for a hasty marriage--how hasty she dared not
think. And she guessed, too, the hopeless predicament of Nikky Larisch.
She sat and stared ahead.
During the afternoon came a package, rather unskillfully tied with a
gilt cord. Opening it, the Countess disclosed a glove-box of wood, with
a design of rather shaky violets burnt into the cover. Inside was a
note:
I am very sorry you are sick. This is to put your gloves in
when you travel. Please excuse the work. I have done it in
a hurry.
FERDINAND WILLIAM OTTO.
Suddenly the Countess laughed, choking hysterical laughter that alarmed
Minna; horrible laughter, which left her paler than ever, and gasping.
The old castle of the Loscheks looked grim and inhospitable when she
reached it that, night. Built during the years when the unbeliever
overran southern Europe, it stood in a commanding position over a
valley, and a steep, walled road led up to it. The narrow windows of its
turrets were built, in defiance of the Moslem hordes, in the shape
of the cross. Its walls had been hospitable enough, however, when the
crusaders had thronged by to redeem the Holy Sepulcher from the grasp
of the infidel. Here, in its stone hall, they had slept in weary rows on
the floor. From its battlements they had stared south and east along the
road their feet must follow.
But now, its ancient glory and good repute departed, its garrison
gone, its drawbridge and moat things of the past, its very hangings and
furnishings mouldering from long neglect, it hung over the valley, a
past menace, an empty threat.
To this dreary refuge the Countess had fled. She wanted the silence of
its still rooms in which to think. Wretched herself, its wretchedness
called her. As the carriage which had brought her from, the railway
turned into its woods; and she breathed the pungent odor of pine and
balsam, she relaxed for the first time.
Why was she so hopeless? She could escape.
She knew the woods well. None who followed her could know them so well.
She would get away, and somewhere, in a new world, make a fresh start.
Surely, after all, peace was the greatest thing in the world.
Peace! The word attracted her. There were religious houses where one
would be safe enough, refuges high-walled and secure, into which no
alien foot ever penetrated. And, as if to answer the thought, she saw
at that moment across the valley the lights of Etzel, the tower of the
church, with its thirteen bells, the monastery buildings behind it,
and set at its feet, like pilgrims come to pray, the low houses of the
peasants. For the church at Etzel contained a celebrated shrine, none
other than that of Our Lady of the Angels, and here came, from all over
the kingdom, long lines of footsore and weary pilgrims, seeking peace
and sanctity, and some a miracle.
The carriage drove on; Minna, on the box, crossed herself at sight of
the church, and chatted with the driver, a great figure who crowded her
to the very edge of the seat.
“I am glad to be here,” she said. “I am sick of grandeur. My home is
in Etzel.” She turned and inspected the man beside her. “You are a
newcomer, I think?”
“I have but just come to Etzel.”
“Then you cannot tell me about my people.” She was disappointed.
“And you,” inquired the driver,--“you will stay for a visit?”
“A week only. But better than nothing.”
“After that, you return to the city?”
“Yes. Madame the Countess--you would know, if you were
Etzel-born--Madame the Countess is lady-in-waiting to Her Royal
Highness, the Archduchess Annunciata.”
“So!” said the driver. But he was not curious, and the broken road
demanded his attention. He was but newly come, so very newly that he did
not know his way, and once made a wrong turning.
The Countess relaxed. She had not been followed. None but themselves had
left the train. She was sure of that. And looking back, she satisfied
herself that no stealthy foot-traveler dogged their slow progress. She
breathed quietly, for the first time.
She slept that night. She had wired ahead of her coming, and the
old caretaker and his wife had opened a few rooms, her boudoir and
dressing-room, and a breakfast-room on the first floor. They had swept
the hall too, and built a fire there, but it had been built for a great
household, and its emptiness chilled her.
At four o’clock in the morning she roused at the ringing of a bell,
telling that masses had already begun at the church. For with the
approach of Lent pilgrimages had greatly increased in numbers. But she
slept again, to waken to full sunlight, greatly refreshed.
When she had breakfasted and dressed, she went out on a balcony, and
looked down at the valley. It was late. Already the peasants of Etzel
had gone out to their fields. Children played along its single streets.
A few women on the steps of the church made rosaries of beads which they
strung with deft fingers. A band of pilgrims struggled up the valley,
the men carrying their coats, for the sun was warm, and the women
holding their skirts from the dust.
As they neared the church, however, coats were donned. The procession
took on order and dignity. The sight was a familiar one to the Countess.
Her eyes dropped to the old wall below, where in the sunshine the
caretaker was beating a rug. Close to him, in intimate and cautious
conversation, was the driver of the night before. Glancing up, they saw
her and at once separated.
Gone was peace, then. The Countess knew knew certainly. “Our eyes see
everywhere.” Eyes, indeed, eyes that even now the caretaker raised
furtively from his rug.
Nevertheless, the Countess was minded to experiment, to be certain. For
none is so suspicious, she knew, as one who fears suspicion. None so
guilty as the guilty. During the forenoon she walked through the
woods, going briskly, with vigorous, mountainbred feet. No crackle of
underbrush disturbed her. Swift turnings revealed no lurking figures
skulking behind the trunks of trees. But where an ancient stone bridge
crossed a mountain stream, she came on the huge driver of the night
before reflectively fishing.
He saluted her gravely, and the Countess paused and looked at him. “You
have caught no fish, my friend?” she said.
“No, madame. But one plays about my hook.”
She turned back. Eyes everywhere, and arms, great hairy arms. And feet
that, for all their size, must step lightly!
Restlessness followed her. She was a virtual Prisoner, free only in
name. And the vigilance of the Terrorists obsessed her. She found a
day gone, and no plan made. She had come here to think, and consecutive
thought was impossible. She went to vespers at the church, and sat
huddled in a corner. She suspected every eye that turned on her in frank
curiosity. When, during the “Salve Regina,” the fathers, followed by
their pupils, went slowly down the aisle, in reverent procession between
rows of Pilgrims, she saw in their habits only a grim reminder of the
black disguises of the Terrorists.
On the second day she made a desperate resolve, and characteristically
put it into execution at once. She sent for the caretaker. When he came,
uneasy, for the Loscheks were justly feared in the country side, and
even the thing of which he knew gave him small courage, she lost no time
in evasion.
“Go,” she said; “and bring here your accomplice--”
“My accomplice, madame! I do not--”
“You heard me,” she said.
He turned, half sullen, half terrified, and paused. “Which do you refer
to, madame?”
She had seen only the one. Then there were others. Who could tell how
many others?
“The one who drove here.”
So he went, leaving her to desperate reflection. When he returned, it
was to usher in the heavy figure of the spy.
“Which of you is in authority?” she demanded.
“I, madame.” It was the spy who spoke.
She dismissed the caretaker with a gesture.
“Have you any discretion over me? Or must you refer matters to those who
sent you?”
“I must refer to them.”
“How long will it take to send a message and receive a reply?”
He considered. “Until to-morrow night, madame.”
Another day gone, then, and nothing determined!
“Now, listen,” she said, “and listen carefully. I have come here to
decide a certain question. Whether you know what that question is or
not, does not matter. But before I decide it I must take a certain
journey. I wish to make that journey. It is into Karnia.”
She watched him. “It is impossible. My instructions--”
“I am not asking your permission. I wish to send a letter to the
Committee. They, and they alone, will determine this thing. Will you
send the letter?”
When he hesitated, perplexed, she got up and moved to her writing-table.
“I shall write the letter,” she said haughtily. “See that it is sent.
When I report at the end of the time that I have sent such a letter, you
can judge better than I the result if it has not been received.”
He was still dubious, but she wrote the letter and gave it to him, her
face proud and scornful. But she was not easy, for all that, and she
watched from her balcony to see if any messenger left the castle and
descended the mountain road. She was rewarded, an hour later, by seeing
a figure leave the old gateway and start afoot toward the village, a
pale-faced man with colorless hair. A part of the hidden guard that
surrounded her, she knew, and somehow familiar. But, although she racked
her brains, she could not remember where she had seen him.
For the next twenty-four hours she waited. Life became one long
endurance. She hated the forest, since she might not visit it alone. She
hated the castle, because it was her prison. She stood for hours that
first day on her balcony, surveying with scornful eyes the procession
of the devout, weary women, perspiring men, lines of children going to
something they did not comprehend, and carrying clenched in small, warm
hands drooping bunches of early mountain flowers.
And always, calling her to something she scorned, rang the bells for
mass or for vespers. The very tower below beckoned her to peace--her,
for whom there would never again be peace. She cursed the bell savagely,
put her fingers in her ears, to be wakened at dawn the next morning to
its insistent call.
There was no more sleep for her. She lay there in her bare room and gave
herself to bitter reflection. Here, in this very castle, she had met
Karl. That was eleven years before. Prince Hubert was living. During
a period of peace between the two countries a truce had been arranged,
treaties signed, with every prospect of permanence. During that time
Karl and Hubert, glad of peace, had come here for the hunting. She
remembered the stir about their coming, her father’s hurried efforts to
get things in order, the cleaning and refurbishing, the peasants called
in to serve the royal guests, and stripped of their quaint costumes to
be put into ill-fitting livery.
They had bought her a new frock for evening wear, the father who was
now dead, and the old aunt who had raised her--an ugly black satin, too
mature for her. She had put it on in that very room, and wept in very
despair.
Then came the arrival, her father on the doorstep, she and her aunt
behind him, and in the hall, lines of uneasy and shuffling peasants. How
awkward and ill at ease they must have seemed! Then came the carriage,
Hubert alighting first, then Karl. Karl had seen her instantly, over her
father’s bent back.
Lying there, seeing things with the clear vision of the dawn, she
wondered whether, had she met Karl later, in her sophisticated maturity,
she would have fallen in love with him. There was no way to know. He had
dawned on her then, almost the first man of rank she had ever seen. She
saw him, not only with fresh eyes, but through the halo of his position.
He was the Crown Prince of Karnia then, more dashing than Hubert, who
was already married and had always been a serious youth, handsomer, a
blond in a country of few blond men. His joyous smile had not taken on
the mocking twist it acquired later. His blue eyes were gay and joyous.
When she had bowed and would have kissed his hand, it had been Karl who
kissed hers, and straightened to smile down at her.
“This is a very happy day, Countess,” he had said.
Then the old aunt had hustled forward, and the peasants had bowed
nervously, and bustle and noise had filled the old place.
For four days the royal hunters had stayed. On the third day Karl had
pleaded fatigue, and they had walked through the pine woods. On that
very devil’s bridge he had kissed her. They had had serious talks, too.
Karl was ambitious, even then. The two countries were at peace, but for
how long? Contrary to opinion, he said, it was not rulers who led their
people into war. It was the people who forced those wars. He spoke of
long antagonisms, old jealousies, trade relations.
She had listened, flattered, had been an intelligent audience. Even now,
she felt that it was her intelligence as much as her beauty that had
ensnared Karl. For ensnared he had been. She had dreamed wild dreams
that night after he kissed her, dreams of being his wife. She was not
too young to know passion in a man’s eyes, and Karl’s had burned with
it.
Then, the next day, while the hunters were away, her aunt had come to
her, ugly, dowdy, and alarmed. “Little fool!” she had said. “They play,
these princes. But they are evil with women, and dangerous. I have seen
your eyes on him, sick with love. And Karl will amuse himself--it is the
blood--and go away, laughing.”
She had been working with the satin dress, trying to make it lovely
for him. Over it her eyes had met her aunt’s, small and twitching with
anxiety. “But suppose he cares for me?” she had asked. “Sometimes I
think--Why should you say he is evil?”
“Bah!”
She had grown angry then and, flinging the dress on the floor, had risen
haughtily. “I think he will marry me,” she had announced, to be met with
blank surprise, followed by cackling old laughter.
Karl had gone away, kissing her passionately, before he left her, in the
dark hall. And many things had followed. A cousin, married into Karnia
became lady-in-waiting to the old Queen. Olga Loschek had visited her.
No accident all this, but a carefully thought-out plan of Karl’s. She
had met Karl again. She was no longer the ill-dressed, awkward girl of
the mountains, and his passion grew, rather than died.
He had made further love to her then, urged her to go away with him on
a journey to the eastern end of the kingdom, would, indeed, have
compromised her hopelessly. But, young as she was, she had had courage
and strength; perhaps shrewdness too. Few women could have resisted him.
He was gentleness itself with her, kindly, considerate, passionate. But
she had kept her head.
And because she had kept her head, she had kept him. Through his many
lapses, his occasional mad adventures, he had always come back to her.
Having never possessed her, he had always wanted her. But not enough,
she said drearily to herself, to pay the price of marriage.
She was fair enough to him. Nothing but a morganatic marriage would be
possible, and this would deprive his children of the throne. But less
than marriage she would not have.
The old Queen died. Her cousin retired to the country, and raised
pheasants for gayety. Olga Loschek’s visits to Karnia ceased. In time a
place was made for her at the Court of Livonia and a brilliant marriage
for her was predicted. But she did not marry. Now and then she retired
to the castle near the border, and Karl visited her there. And, at last,
after years, the inevitable happened.
She was deeply in love, and the years were passing. The burden of
resistance had always been on her, and marriage was out of the question.
She was alone now. Her father had died, and the old aunt was in
seclusion in a nunnery, where she pottered around a garden and knitted
endless garments for the poor.
For a time Olga had been very happy. Karl’s motor crossed the mountains,
and he came on foot through the woods. No breath of scandal touched her.
And, outwardly, Karl did not change. He was still her ardent lover. But
the times when they could meet were few.
And the Court of Livonia heard rumors--a gamekeeper’s daughter, an
actress in his own capital, these were but two of the many. Olga Loschek
was clever. She never reproached him or brought him to task. She had
felt that, whatever his lapses, the years had made her necessary to him.
The war that followed the truce had seen her Karl’s spy in Livonia. She
had undertaken it that the burden of gratitude should be on him--a false
step, for men chafe under the necessity for gratitude.
Then had come another peace, and his visit to the summer palace. There
he had seen Hedwig, grown since his last visit to lovely girlhood, and
having what Olga Loschek could never again possess, youth.
And now he would marry her, and Olga Loschek, his tool and spy, was in
danger of her life.
That day, toward evening, the huge man presented himself. He brought no
letter, but an oral message. “Permission is given, madame,” he said. “I
myself shall accompany you.”