FACE TO FACE.
“Mansfield, was any one in here last night?”
“Why--er--how do you mean, Count? Oh, when the sheikh’s son brought
the coffee?”
“No, no, much later than that. Was there any one?”
“I--I suppose there must have been. I don’t know.”
“But why do you suppose so? because I ask you, or because you saw some
one? Why can’t you say?”
“Because I am not sure. I saw something.”
“But what could it have been if it was not a person? a ghost?”
An embarrassed laugh from Mansfield revealed that the chance shot had
hit the mark, and Cyril’s eyes gleamed with mischievous delight.
“Come, this is interesting! Let us hear about it.”
“Well, Count, I saw--at least, I thought I saw--two ladies come into
the cave from the passage and look at you.”
“How flattering! Did you see their faces?”
“The first lady was old and bent. I think Mr Hicks caught sight of her
the night before, and frightened her away. There was nothing
particular about her face. The other was taller, but not really tall.
She let her veil fall when she was standing beside you, and I saw that
her hair was white, but her face looked quite young--comparatively.”
Cyril closed his eyes for a moment, then opened them again slowly.
“And did she do nothing but look at me?”
“She clasped her hands--like this. I don’t know whether it was because
she was glad or sorry.”
“Is that all? You are sure there was nothing else?”
“She--she stooped down and--and kissed you, Count.” Mansfield’s
abashed voice would have provoked his auditor to laughter at any other
moment, but now Cyril only nodded approvingly.
“I thought I couldn’t have dreamt it. And after that?”
“They slipped back into the passage, and disappeared suddenly. I can’t
find any door through which they could have gone.”
“Well, we can think of that presently. I am heartily obliged to you,
Mansfield. It’s a comfort to have a man about one who can tell his
tale sensibly, without interlarding it with wretched feeble jokes. Any
one could make a joke of this affair, no doubt, but not when it is
looked at in the proper light. Of course you know who the lady is?”
“I, Count?” Mansfield’s astonished face attested his ignorance
sufficiently.
“It has never once struck you that the Queen of the Desert and Queen
Ernestine are one and the same person? Nor that one of the letters
which the sheikh carried in that leather bag of his was from Fräulein
von Staubach, and contained the news of your invasion of Brutli, and
identified me with the Prince of the Jews?”
“But how long have you known it? and why didn’t you----”
“Share my knowledge with you? Because I thought that you and Hicks
deserved a little punishment for mixing yourselves up in my affairs. I
have not known the truth long, of course. When Fräulein von Staubach
told you that she could not mention my name to the Queen for a
fortnight, that set me on the track. Some time ago I chanced to hear
that the Queen had held out for a whole fortnight before she would
consent to see some one. Of course she was being sent for from here.
When the coincidence had once flashed upon my mind, everything was
clear--the Queen’s persistent isolation on the one hand, and the
extraordinary proceedings of the Arab Princess on the other. The
rescue of the persecuted tribe, the idea of obtaining the mediation of
the Empress of Pannonia--who is Queen Ernestine’s sister-in-law--and
the threatened appeal to the Powers, are all characteristic of her.
Then you know that no one ever heard of the Queen of the Desert until
two years ago, which corresponds roughly with the time Queen Ernestine
disappeared from the public gaze. My hypothesis accounted for all the
facts, and you see it was correct.”
“But how can you be sure, when you didn’t see the lady last night?”
Cyril smiled impatiently. “My dear Mansfield, I felt she was there.
That’s enough for me. Did Hicks see her?”
“No, he was asleep.”
“Then I think you need only mention to him that you saw his old lady
of the night before. Hicks is a good fellow enough, but there are
times when he would sell his soul to purchase a sensation for his
paper. It is just like the Queen to have made this midnight
expedition, but you needn’t--I don’t want----”
“Oh, I understand,” said Mansfield hastily. “He shall never hear about
it from me.”
“And now, Mansfield, we will make a searching investigation of the
walls of the passage. I want to find that secret door through which
the ladies came and went, and then we will pay them a visit.”
Mr Hicks, returning at this moment from conferring with the sheikh on
the subject of a change of food for the party, was duly informed of
the reappearance of his ghost, and joined with extreme zeal in the
hunt for the door, although a close observer might have perceived that
when his face was turned away from the others it underwent a series of
extraordinary contortions, suggestive of suppressed mirth. For some
time the search was fruitless, the smooth surface of the rock on both
sides of the passage displaying no indication of any joint or crack,
even when examined minutely with the aid of a lamp.
“Mansfield,” said Cyril at last, “lie down where you were last night,
and tell me exactly how far the lady had got when she disappeared.”
Mansfield obeyed, and was able to indicate the spot with tolerable
precision, by estimating its distance from the edge of the curtain.
“Now, Hicks,” said Cyril, “the lamp here, please. I think we may be
pretty sure that the door is in the left-hand wall, as that is the
side on which the hill is, and I should imagine we shall find the
spring two or three feet either to the right or the left of the point
at which the lady vanished.”
He began to test the wall by pressing it carefully with his fingers,
keeping his left hand a few inches higher than his right, and before
very long Mr Hicks gave a shout.
“You’ve hit it, Count! I saw something give that time, and here’s a
break in the wall ahead of you. Guess you’d better let me help you
shove.”
But the stone door moved so easily upon its pivot that this was
unnecessary. It swung open without the slightest sound, revealing the
foot of a flight of steps cut in the rock.
“Now this is what I call real thoughtful of the Lady Zenobia,” said Mr
Hicks. “If she found it necessary to assist a friend into the next
world, there was no need to have corpses lying around upstairs. She
could plant them out in her lot down here quite comfortably, and no
one the wiser.”
“Now,” said Cyril, panting a little, “you and I will make a voyage of
discovery, Mansfield. Do you know, Hicks, I think your nocturnal
visitor must be an old acquaintance of mine, Baroness von Hilfenstein?
I needn’t tell you in whose household she is, and you won’t be
surprised to hear that I intend to make a call on her.”
“You don’t calculate to leave me out of the party, Count, I hope?”
“I’m afraid I must on this occasion. Who is to receive the sheikh and
bamboozle him as to our doings, if we all go? He would scour the
passages, thinking we were trying to escape, and we should be brought
back before we could do anything.”
“That’s so, sir. Go ahead,” and Mr Hicks got out his fountain pen and
his writing-pad, and set to work on a letter to his paper, while
Mansfield, by Cyril’s directions, made himself as smart as his
extremely limited resources allowed. His employer was one of those
fortunate people who contrive always to be presentable in spite of the
most adverse circumstances, but he displayed unwonted anxiety about
his appearance on this occasion, and Mr Hicks smiled grimly as he
closed the stone door upon the flickering light carried by Mansfield.
“You ought to have known me better, Count. As if all this prinking
wouldn’t tell me what was on hand even if I hadn’t used my eyes last
night! You deserve I should make a real blood-curdling,
soul-thrilling, romantic, pathetic life-drama out of you and your
Queen, but you and I are partners, and I’m on the square, any way.”
The rock-cut staircase up which Cyril and Mansfield made their way was
narrow and winding, but quite dry, and the edges of the stone were as
sharp as if they had only been hewn a day. Air was admitted from the
outer world by means of shafts reaching to the face of the rock, but
these were too small to allow the entrance of more than a ray of
light, which served to increase by contrast the surrounding darkness.
A quantity of sand, admitted in the course of ages through these
air-shafts, was heaped in the corners, but Cyril pointed out to
Mansfield that the flowing robes of the nocturnal visitors had swept a
clear pathway in the middle of the steps. The two men went on, up and
up, now turning to the right and now to the left, sometimes finding
themselves on ground which was almost level, and again confronted with
steps nearly two feet high, until there was a change in the sound of
their echoing footsteps, and they discovered that instead of solid
rock the walls and roof were now of masonry.
“This is the wall of the fortress, then!” said Cyril. “Interesting
question where we shall come out--in the palace itself, or hopelessly
outside.”
He was hot and panting, and his voice vibrated strangely. Mansfield
suggested a rest, but he shook his head. “No, no,” he said
impatiently; “let us go through with it now, and know the worst.”
The passage ended abruptly in a stone door like that by which they had
left the cave. Mansfield pushed it open, cautiously at first, for in
the blinding glare of sunlight into which it admitted them they could
not at once see where they were. Then came disappointment. True, they
stood inside the circuit of the vast wall visible from the plain, but
before them loomed the huge side of the palace, blank and windowless,
built of immense blocks of bevelled stone. Travelling upwards from one
course of Cyclopean masonry to another, the eye could discover no
opening into the interior of the building until it reached the
colonnade supported on columns which crowned the roof. Between the
palace and the outer wall was a space of waste ground overgrown with
coarse dry grass and low bushes, and Mansfield crept softly among the
scattered rocks and fragments of carved stone, which lay everywhere
around, towards the back of the building, and peered round the corner.
“Nothing there but a few servants’ huts and attempts at
gardening--certainly no door into the palace,” he whispered,
returning.
“Very well, we will try this way,” said Cyril, turning to the right,
but here again was disappointment. The entrance to the palace was
before them, indeed--a huge pillared portico with great stone doors;
but these were as closely shut as the wooden gate facing them, which
the angry lady had fastened behind her two days before. A small grated
window above the door was the only opening here, and it was far beyond
even Mansfield’s reach. But Cyril did not exhibit any sign of
discouragement.
“Take one,” he said, sitting down at the base of one of the columns
and holding out his cigar-case. “There are only two left, but Sir
Philip Sidney’s generosity was nothing to mine when there is anything
to be gained by it. What I want to gain just now is an interview with
the lady of the gateway, whom I take to be Princess Anna Mirkovics.”
Mansfield obeyed, much puzzled, and they smoked in silence for some
minutes. Then a female voice, speaking in German, broke the stillness.
“Those servants again!” it said. “How often have I forbidden them to
smoke in the neighbourhood of the Queen’s apartments! They know how
much she dislikes the smell. Which of them can it be?”
“Drawn!” whispered Cyril. “Though it is a little hard to have one’s
best cigars mistaken for the stuff these fellows smoke, isn’t it?”
“Markor! Zachary! Johannes! which of you is smoking out there?” cried
the voice, which Mansfield recognised as that of the lady of the
gateway, in Arabic, and her face appeared at the window. She recoiled
precipitately when she saw Cyril, who bowed to her with the utmost
politeness.
“You here!” she cried, her eyes dilating as they had done before.
“What do you want?”
“An audience of her Majesty, mademoiselle.”
“I thought so. I felt sure you would come cringing back to the woman
you had wronged, but you shall not see her. I will not have her made
miserable a second time by you.”
“Mademoiselle, I acknowledge you readily as a true prophet--I will
even confess that your reproaches are deserved--but it lies with her
Majesty, and not with you, to grant or refuse me an interview.”
“It does lie with me. I refuse to submit your request to her Majesty,
do you understand? I take upon myself the responsibility of excluding
you from her presence. You shall not tear open the cruel wound you
once made. I will have you dragged back again to your prison.”
“Pardon me, mademoiselle. I am master of the situation at present, for
I fancy the Arabs would obey my orders--perhaps as readily as your
own. In any case, the sounds of a scuffle would attract the Queen’s
attention.”
“I have no fear of the fidelity of the Arabs, Count.”
“Then pray test it, mademoiselle. I ask merely that my presence here
should come to her Majesty’s knowledge. Her pleasure is my law. If she
refuses to grant me an audience, I will go away without another word.”
“Then consider that she has refused it, for it will not be granted. I
am bold enough to risk her Majesty’s displeasure when it falls to me
to guard her happiness. You need not hope to move me by an air of
meekness, of suffering. Pray remain there in the sun the whole day. I
rejoice to see you shut out--unable to reach her. Nothing could please
me better.”
“Pardon me, mademoiselle, there is one thing wanting to complete your
enjoyment. If her Majesty rejoiced to see me shut out, then you could
be happy indeed. But you are afraid to lay my request before her,
because you know that she would grant it.”
“I cannot stand talking all day,” said the lady angrily. “You, Count,
have doubtless plenty of time to spare. I hope you may enjoy
yourself!”
She disappeared from the grating, and all through the long, hot,
noonday hours Cyril held his ground, with Mansfield, as determined as
himself, at his side. Recommended to find his way back to the cave and
take counsel with Mr Hicks, Mansfield refused to leave his post in the
portico. With the nature of the grudge that Princess Anna Mirkovics
cherished against Count Mortimer he was unacquainted; but she seemed
to have little regard for consequences provided she could obtain her
revenge. In the course of the afternoon she appeared again at the
window, fresh from a cool siesta--so, with a refinement of cruelty,
she informed them--and jeered at Cyril’s persistence in remaining
where he was not wanted, and where he could do no good. Even Mansfield
grew fainthearted after this. Cyril’s paleness and evident exhaustion
alarmed him, and he suggested a retreat to the cave and the employment
of Mr Hicks as ambassador. But Cyril was resolute.
“I’ll stay here till I get in, or die on her doorstep!” he said
fiercely, and Mansfield offered no further suggestions. Their patience
met with its reward at last, although this would scarcely have
happened had Princess Anna been able to resist informing Cyril that
the Queen was about to spend the evening in the garden, and he might
therefore give up the hope of attracting her attention. Scarcely had
she departed when another face appeared at the grating, that of
Baroness von Hilfenstein, coming to see who it was that had been
conversing in French with her colleague.
“You here, Count!” she said, with reproachful incredulity. “This is
a--a--an unpleasant surprise.”
“Baroness, you are very cruel, when I have spent the whole day here in
the hope of catching a glimpse of you.”
“You can hardly expect me to believe that, Count.”
“Even though you know you are going to get me an interview with the
Queen?”
The Baroness threw up her hands. “Not that, Count, not that!” she
pleaded piteously. “You would not make such an inexpedient, ill-timed
request?”
“But I do make exactly that request, Baroness. One word with her
Majesty--that will tell me all I want to know.”
“But, my dear Count,” said the old lady persuasively, “you must really
be patient. Her Majesty was quite gratified--yes, I think I may
without impropriety use the word--to hear from Fräulein von Staubach
that you were anxious to wait upon her, and I think it is extremely
probable that she will command your presence when the Court returns to
Brutli. But now--I really could not say how she would receive this
unfortunate application of yours!”
“I will take my chance of that, Baroness. And here I stay until you
assure me that her Majesty positively refuses to receive me.”
“Now, Count, be reasonable.” The Baroness was much distressed by
Cyril’s persistence. “I am sure you don’t wish to involve her Majesty
in any unpleasantness? And poor dear Princess Anna, who has made such
sacrifices, and shown such devotion to the Queen, would almost break
her heart if she saw you received in audience. You see, she does not
even know of Fräulein von Staubach’s letter--I happened to be in
attendance when her Majesty opened it, and we thought it better to--to
spare her feelings. Of course you understand?”
“Am I to understand that Princess Anna’s feelings will be considered
before mine? I know I have not deserved consideration, but----”
“Her Majesty is all consideration, Count. She knows that the Prince of
the Jews is here, for one of the Armenian servants heard it from the
Arabs, but she believes you think she is at Brutli. She is able to
identify the Prince of the Jews, but she does not know that you have
found out who the Queen of the Desert is.”
“I see,” said Cyril meditatively. “Then this explains why you played
the ghost the night before last, Baroness--and last night also?”
“Count!” The poor Baroness renounced the unequal struggle. “You knew
it all the time, then? I was over-persuaded--her Majesty insisted--I
was horrified, but still--Oh, come in, Count,” she began to unfasten
the door. “You must say what you like to the Queen. I might have known
that if you were determined to get in you would. Will your--your suite
accompany you?” glancing doubtfully at Mansfield.
“I am afraid I shall need his arm,” said Cyril, with a laugh. He was
shaking from head to foot as Mansfield helped him through the doorway
and across the paved hall into which it led. The Baroness, in a state
of extreme trepidation, went before them, turning at every few steps
to hasten them on, or warn them not to speak, but they met no one. A
door at the farther end of the long hall led into an inner courtyard,
which was partially laid out as a garden, and surrounded by a
half-ruined colonnade, entwined with gourds and other creeping plants.
In the shade of the dwarf palms and shrubs at the opposite side could
be seen two white-robed figures.
“Her Majesty walks here in the evenings,” said the Baroness, with a
gasp of uncontrollable excitement, “and Princess Anna is with her.
When they pass this doorway you must do what you think best,” and she
fled back into the hall.
“Mansfield! when she comes, help me to kneel down, and then make
yourself scarce,” said Cyril breathlessly.
He was gripping Mansfield’s arm hard as they stood in the shadow of
the doorway, and the two women, unconscious of their presence, came
slowly towards them. Anna Mirkovics seemed to be talking excitedly,
regardless of etiquette, but the Queen paid little or no attention to
her, pacing the time-worn stones in silence, with her eyes on the
ground, and a half-smile upon her lips.
“Surely, madame, you were not really thinking of returning to Brutli
at present?” cried her companion, as they turned the corner.
“Now!” panted Cyril to Mansfield, and as the Queen approached he fell
on his knees before her. She started back, and Anna Mirkovics
screamed. Mansfield had retreated swiftly into the doorway.
“_Cyril_!” cried the Queen, irrepressible joy in her voice; then, more
doubtfully, “Is it you, Count?”
“My dearest, forgive me!”
“Madame!” Anna Mirkovics had recovered herself, “allow me to have this
person removed. Is he to be permitted to intrude himself upon you in
this insolent manner? Madame, you will not suffer him to approach
you?”
“Anna, you forget yourself.” The maid of honour shrank before the
tone, and the gesture with which the Queen waved her aside, but she
made another valiant effort.
“Oh, madame, listen to me for one moment! You know how I love
you--that I would give everything I have in the world to provide a
moment’s happiness for you. Don’t expose yourself again to this man’s
cruelty. He returns to you merely that he may gratify his ambition. He
cannot love. Trust me, madame; I love you better than my life.”
“I am in your hands, Ernestine,” said Cyril faintly. “If you command
me to leave you, I will go at once.”
“To leave me, when I have been waiting years for you? I knew you would
come back, Cyril, but I was often sick with longing. Go, Anna; you do
not understand. If Count Mortimer were to forsake me again to-morrow,
I would welcome him now.”
“Oh, my dearest, I have not deserved this!” broke from Cyril. “That
day--that day--when you knelt to me, and I would not listen----”
“Don’t, don’t!” murmured the Queen painfully. “I can’t bear to
remember it. Oh, Cyril, you would not even send me a kind word! You
did not know how I loved you, or you could not have been so cruel.”
“I didn’t even know how I loved you, Ernestine. I thought it was all
over, but I have never had a happy moment since.”
“I am so glad!” she replied, with a radiant smile. “That is selfish of
me, isn’t it? but I was always jealous of your policy, you know.
Cyril, my beloved, if you knew how I have prayed for this day! I used
to wish that I might die, because I thought you would come to me if I
was dying. But now--oh, I am too happy! No, you are not to kiss my
hands. Come and sit here, and tell me what you have been doing all
these years.”
A despairing groan at his side made Mansfield start, as he stood in
the shadowy hall, out of earshot of the garden. Turning quickly, he
saw Cyril leading the Queen to a seat, and found that Princess Anna,
in the shadows beside him, was also a witness of the reconciliation.
The sight seemed to destroy her self-command altogether, for she fell
upon him as the nearest victim, and stormed at him in Thracian for
some minutes. Then, either because her anger had exhausted itself, or
because she was mollified by his enforced meekness under her attack,
she burst into tears, and was led away, sobbing bitterly, by Baroness
von Hilfenstein, who appeared opportunely from out of the gloom.