“He had forgotten his sword,” she said. “When he had gone I found it
lying on my bed. I hid it in my closet and a maid found it there the
next day and somehow it got about. I had a really dreadful time.”
But it did one bit of good. It convinced the Archduchess that Rudi was
only interested in Clotilde. She had been rather suspicious. “So long as
you are here,” she said contemptuously to Clotilde, “you will not
receive young men in your bedroom. After the Princess’s marriage you can
go where you will and do what you like. Sell yourself or give yourself
away. It is nothing to me. But until then——”
She made a rather dreadful gesture, not improved by her appearance, and
Clotilde went away.
“It was bedtime,” Clotilde said, “and the Ambassadress had told her the
Viennese ladies were sleeping in masks of fresh veal to improve their
complexions; she was trying it.”
She was hoping, you see, after all the lean years, to go back to court
again. But one can see the old Archduke, who loved a pretty woman,
coming to the door of his wife’s bedroom that night and there
confronting that horrible mask!
When the ambassadress went away, still in the brown Swedish gloves
without which she had never been seen during the visit, it was certain
that she would return a favourable report to the King. But she said a
few pertinent words to the Archduchess before she left.
“She is sweetly pretty and—virginal,” she said. “But for Heaven’s sake,
madame, get her some clothes. Get Worth up here, or have him send
somebody.”
The Archduchess was mean about money; and she demurred.
“It is her very simplicity——”
“Fiddlesticks!” said the Ambassadress, or its equivalent. “Keep her
simple, of course, but dress her. And”—she glanced at Clotilde, who was
present, and lowered her voice—“get rid of that handsome what’s his
name.”
“I am not worried about Rudi,” said the Archduchess, and curled her lip.
She knew what she knew.
So the Ambassadress went away, carrying on her lap a new bonnet she had
never had a chance to wear in that forsaken spot, and sitting well
forward in the berlin to save her drapery. And somehow or other the
Princess seems to have thought the affair had blown over. But not
Clotilde.
“I _knew_,” she said. “Who would not, with King’s messengers coming and
going and with Worth sending people to measure her for clothes! Such
clothes, my dear! And how lovely she looked in them!”
Young unmarried women in those days, it appears, were forbidden the
satins and velvets of their elders, but Worth made her lovely things as
dainty and airy as herself. She had a frock of pink tulle, looped with
festoons of white camellias and a white ball gown embroidered in seed
pearls. And since she rode beautifully, there was a riding costume of
dark blue, so tight that she had to be sewed into it every time she put
it on. The tailor from the village came up to do it.
“And Rudi knew,” Clotilde said. “He was like a madman with me; with her,
of course, he was all gentleness. But his eyes seemed sunk in his head
and I think he slept very little.”
They managed to meet, of course. The Princess would take a book of poems
and wander out into the woods—with Clotilde—and Rudi would be there.
And then Clotilde would wander off by herself and leave them alone
together.
“It was rather dull for you.”
“I always took some embroidery, my dear.”
But I wonder how much she sewed? I wonder if she did not, now and then,
lie face down on the fallen leaves and fight back her own sorrow.
Gradually, too, the little Princess began to get frightened. They were
doing over the royal suite, for one thing, and Clotilde particularly
described the bedroom.
I think the dear soul still regarded it as exquisite. It appeared that
the walls were sea-green, the furniture freshly gilded, a new Brussels
carpet was laid down, and all the pictures had bows of yellow ribbon
surmounting them.
The Princess began to be shadowed under the eyes, and when they were
fitting on the new frocks she was rather frozen. And one day Clotilde,
coming back to them in the woods, found Rudi’s head buried in her lap,
and the Princess, with a new and older look in her eyes, smoothing his
bright hair.
“They were so helpless,” she said. “We all were. They could not even run
away. No priest would have married them. And what made it worse was not
knowing what was going on. Nobody told her anything. All they could do
was to wait.”
Then came word that the King would visit the Duke, coming more or less
incognito. But as he brought four of his gentlemen, each with a servant,
and four valets, the accommodations of the shabby old palace were pretty
well taxed.