NOT DOWN IN THE PROGRAMME
LETTERS of introduction for Lady de Courcy and her daughter to those
best worth knowing among Rhaetia's _haute noblesse_ were a part of the
"plan" concocted in the Richmond garden--that plan which the Grand
Duchess had seen and dreaded in Sylvia's shining eyes.
The widow of the Hereditary Grand Duke of Eltzburg-Neuwald was
reported in the papers to be travelling with the Princess Sylvia in
Canada and the United States. Fortunately for the plot, the elder lady
had spent so many years in retirement in England, and had, even in her
youth, met so few Rhaetians, that there was little fear of any
embarrassing _contretemps_. Her objections to the unconventional
attempt to win a lover, instead of resting content with a mere
husband, were based on other grounds; Sylvia had overcome them,
nevertheless; and, in the end, the Grand Duchess had proved not only
docile but positively fertile in expedient. She it was who suggested,
since the adoption of borrowed plumes was a necessity, that de Courcy,
her mother's maiden name, should be chosen.
One friend only had been taken into Sylvia's fullest confidence, and
that friend was a lady whose husband had been British Ambassador at
the Rhaetian Court. She knew "everybody who was anybody" there, and
had entered with a fearful joy into the spirit of the escapade.
Exactly how it was to end she did not see; but so far as she was
concerned, that was a detail; and she had written for Lady de Courcy
all the letters needful as an open sesame to the Court.
Sylvia did not wish to hurry away from Heiligengelt to Salzbrück, even
though the inn was empty (save for her own small party) two days after
their arrival. They had met: the rest lay on the knees of the gods.
And since the best sitting-room was now at the ladies disposal, it was
but fair to Frau Johann that they should remain for a time, if only to
make use of it. When they left at last, after a stay of a week, it was
to go to Salzbrück for the great festivities which were to mark the
Emperor's thirty-first birthday, an event enhanced in national
importance by the fact that the tenth anniversary of his succession
would fall on the same date. On the day of the journey, the Grand
Duchess had a headache and was cross.
"I don't see what you've accomplished so far by this mad freak," she
said fretfully to her daughter, in the train which carried them away
from Pitzbühel. "We've been perched on a mountain-top, like the Ark on
Ararat, for a week, our marrow freezing in our bones; and, after all,
what have we to show for it--unless an incipient influenza?"
Sylvia had nothing to show for it; at least, nothing that she meant to
show; but in a little scented silk bag which nestled against her heart
lay a tiny folded piece of blotting-paper. If you looked at its
reflection in a mirror, you saw, written twice over, in a firm,
opinionated hand, the name, "Mary de Courcy." And Sylvia had found it
in a book after Frau Johann had made the best sitting-room ready for
new occupants. Therefore she loved Heiligengelt; therefore she thought
with silent satisfaction of her visit there.
To learn her full name he must have made inquiries, for Miss M'Pherson
had not uttered it on their progress down the mountain. It had been in
his thoughts, or he would not have committed it to paper in a moment
of idle dreaming. Through all her life Sylvia had known the want of
money, but now she would not have taken a thousand pounds for the
contents of the silken bag.
Hohenburg is the family name of Rhaetia's emperors; therefore
everything in Salzbrück that can be Hohenburg is Hohenburg; and it was
at the Hohenburgerhof, Salzbrück's grandest hotel, that a suite of
rooms had been hired for Lady de Courcy's party.
They had broken the journey at Wandeck; and Sylvia had so timed it
that they should arrive in Salzbrück an hour before the first of the
ceremonies on the birthday eve--the unveiling by the Kaiser of the
great national statue of Rhaetia in the Maximilian Platz, exactly in
front of the Hohenburgerhof. At the station they were told by the
driver of their selected droschky that he would not be able to take
the high, well-born ladies to the main door of the Hohenburgerhof, for
the passage of carriages was forbidden in the Maximilian Platz, where
the crowd had been assembling since dawn for the ceremony; and that he
would be compelled to deposit them and their luggage at a side
entrance. As they left the station, from far away came a burst of
martial music, a military band playing the national air which the
chamois-hunter had heard the English girl singing at Heiligengelt. The
shops were closed for the day; from nearly every window hung a flag or
banner, while the old narrow streets and the broad new streets were
festooned with bunting, wreaths of evergreen, and autumn flowers.
Prosperous citizens in their best, peasants in gay holiday attire,
streamed toward the Maximilian Platz. It seemed to Sylvia that the air
tingled with expectation; she thought that she must have felt the
magnetic thrill in it, even if she had shut her eyes and ears.
"We shall be in time. We shall see the ceremony from our windows," she
excitedly said.
But at the hotel she encountered a keen disappointment. With many
apologies the landlord explained that he had done his best for the
ladies when he received their letter a week before, and that he had
allotted them a good suite, with balconies, overlooking the river at
the back of the house--the situation considered preferable on ordinary
occasions. But, as to rooms in the front, it was impossible; they had
all been taken more than six weeks in advance; one American gentleman
was paying a thousand gulden for an hour's use of a small balcony
leading off the drawing-room.
Sylvia was pale with disappointment. "I will go down into the crowd
and take my chance," she said to her mother when they had been shown
into the handsome rooms, so satisfactory in everything but situation.
"My dear--impossible," exclaimed the Grand Duchess. "I could not think
of allowing it. Only fancy what a crush there will be--people trampling
on each other for places. You could see nothing."
"But I couldn't bear to stay shut up here," pleaded Sylvia, "while
that music plays and the crowds shout themselves hoarse for the
Emperor. Something inside me seems to say that I must be there. And
Miss M'Pherson and I will take care of each other."
Somehow--she hardly knew how--consent was as usual wrung from the
Grand Duchess's reluctance, the only stipulation being that Sylvia and
her chaperon should keep close to the hotel, returning at once if they
found themselves in danger of being borne away by the crowd.
Their rooms were on the first floor, and the girl hurried down the
broad flight of marble stairs, without sending for the lift, Miss
M'Pherson following upon her heels.
They could not get out by the front door, for people had paid for
places there, and would not yield an inch even for a moment; while the
two or three steps below and the pavement in front were closely
blocked.
Matters began to look hopeless, but Sylvia would not yet be daunted.
They tried the wide entrance, and found it free, the street into which
it led being comparatively empty; but beyond, where it joined the
great open square of the Maximilian Platz, there was a solid wall of
human beings.
"We might as well go back," said Miss M'Pherson, who had not Sylvia's
keenness for the undertaking. She was comfortably fatigued after the
journey, and would rather have had a cup of tea than see fifty
emperors unveil as many statues.
"Look at that man just ahead," whispered the Princess; "_he_ doesn't
mean to go back. Let us keep close behind him, and see what he is
going to do. He has the air of one who has made up his mind to get
something or do something, which he won't easily give up."
Miss M'Pherson brought a critical gaze to bear upon the person
indicated. He was striding rapidly along, a few yards in advance, only
his back being visible; but it was a singularly determined back; and
it was clad in a gray and crimson uniform. On his head he wore a
cocked hat, adorned with an eagle's feather, fastened by a gaudy
jewel. As Miss M'Pherson observed these details, she noted half
unconsciously that the man's neck between the collar of his coat and
the sleek black hair was yellow-white as old parchment.
"He looks like an official of some sort," she remarked. "Maybe the
crowd will open to let him through."
"So I was thinking," hopefully responded Sylvia. "And when the crowd
opens for him, if we're clever, it may open for us too. He's a
hateful-looking man, and I have taken a dislike to him without a sight
of his face; but we must use him as if he were a Cairene cyce."
"He really _is_ going through!" exclaimed Miss M'Pherson.
They were close upon their unconscious pioneer now; and as--in
peremptory tones--he informed the human wall that it must divide
to let him pass, because he had come with a special message to
the Lord Chancellor from the Burgomaster, the Princess Sylvia of
Eltzburg-Neuwald could have laid her hands upon the gray shoulders,
epauletted with red.
The wall obeyed, evidently recognizing the authority of his uniform.
"It must be the secretary of Herr Hermann, the Burgomaster," Sylvia
heard one man murmur knowingly to another. "Something of importance
has, perhaps, been forgotten, or special news has been received and
must be reported."
Good-naturedly the crowd gave way for the new comer; and, to Sylvia's
joy, she was sucked into the whirlpool in his wake. Near the front,
people would have stopped her if they could, knowing that she, at
least, had no official right of entrance; but at the critical instant
the blue-and-silver uniformed band of Rhaetia's crack regiment, the
"Kaiser's Own," struck up an air which told them the Emperor was
approaching. Angry ones were content with keeping out the tall, thin
English spinster in tweed, hustling and pushing her into the
background, when she would shrilly have protested in her native tongue
that "really, _really_ she _must_ be allowed to pass with her friend!"
The man who had announced his mission from the Burgomaster must have
felt that someone pressed after him with particularity, for, as he
reached the front rank on the densely packed pavement, he wheeled
sharply round. Sylvia, her little chin almost resting on his shoulder,
met his gaze, shrinking away from the breath that swept hot across her
cheek.
"Just the face I gave his back credit for," she thought ungratefully.
"Sly and cruel, brutal, too--and, how curiously pale!"
A pair of black eyes, small, glassy, with a peculiar flatness of the
cornea, had aimed at her a glance of suspicion; and she seemed still
to feel their penetrating stare, when the face was turned away again.
Having obtained his desire--a position in the front rank of the
spectators, and incidentally a place for Sylvia too--the man in gray
and red proceeded to take from his breast a roll of parchment, tied
with narrow ribbon and sealed with a crimson seal.
Sylvia, standing shoulder to shoulder with him, had just time to
wonder if the fellow were going to read some proclamation, when a
great cheer arose from thousands of throats; men waved their hats;
peasant women held up their children, while ladies threw roses from
the decorated balconies. A white figure on a white charger came riding
into the square, under the gay-coloured triumphal arch of flags and
flowers.
Others followed: men in rich dark uniforms, on coal-black horses;
yet Sylvia saw only one, glittering white from head to foot, like
hoar-frost in sunlight. Under the shining helmet of steel, the
earnest face looked clear-cut as cameo. To the crowd he was the
Kaiser--a fine, popular, clever young man, who ruled his country well,
and, above all provided many a pleasing spectacle; to the girl he was
an ideal St. George, strong and brave to slay modern dragons, right
all crying wrongs.
How stately and splendid he looked, controlling the white charger,
with its clanking silver trappings; how the jewelled orders on his
breast sparkled, as he saluted his enthusiastic subjects!
"What if he should never love me?" Sylvia thought, as she often
thought, with a sharp, jealous spasm of the heart.
Now he was vaulting from his horse, while men in uniforms, and men
with ribbons and decorations, came forward, bowing, to receive him.
The ceremony of unveiling the statue of Rhaetia, executed by one of
the world's most famous sculptors, was about to begin.
To reach the great crimson-draped platform on which he was presently
to take his stand, the Emperor must pass within a few yards of Sylvia.
His eyes travelled over the brightly coloured throng; what if they
should fall upon her? The girl's heart was in her throat; she could
feel it beating there, and for a moment the tall white figure was lost
in a mist that rose before her eyes.
She had forgotten how she came there--forgotten the stranger in gray
and red to whom she owed her great good fortune; when suddenly, while
the mist was at its thickest, she grew conscious of the man's
presence. So near her he stood, that a quick start, a gathering of his
muscles for a spring, flashed like a message by telegraph through her
own body. The mist clouding her senses was burnt up in the flame of a
strange enlightenment--a clarity of vision which showed not only the
hero of the day, the crowd, and the man beside her, but the guilty
soul of that man as well.
"He is going to kill the Emperor!"
It was as if a voice hissed the words into her ears; she knew now why
she had struggled to win this place, why she had succeeded, what she
had to do--or die in failing to do.
The Emperor was not half a dozen yards away. She alone had felt that
murderous thrilling, heard that panting breath; she alone guessed what
the roll of parchment hid.
While the crowd shouted for "Unser Max!" a figure, gray and red, leapt
toward the white one, with clenched hand upraised, something sharp and
bright catching the sun in a streak of steely light as it rose and
fell.
Maximilian saw, yet not in time to swerve aside. The blade swooped
hawk-like, scenting blood. A second's fraction, and it would have
drunk deep--a Royal draught; but an arm struck it up and a girl was
sobbing; while for her the heavens above and the earth below merged
together in whirling chaos.
* * * * *
The man in red and gray was like a fox among the hounds; and the
crowd, in the madness of sudden rage, would have rent him limb from
limb, despite the cordon of police that quickly gathered round him;
but the Emperor's ringing voice commanded instant obedience. Only
those in the front ranks, or the windows above, had seen the attack
and the unknown girl's intervention; yet the shouts of those who had
witnessed the furious rush forward, the shrieks of the ladies on the
balconies, flashed the news through the Maximilian Platz that there
had been an attempt on the Kaiser's life. That little yellow man in
the Burgomaster's red and gray--he who had pushed past everybody on
the pretense of official business--he it was who had done the deed.
Kill him--kill him!--trample him down, tear out the vile heart of him
and fling it to the dogs! What of the police? This is not their
affair, but the people's--the people who love "Unser Max" and would
die for the Kaiser. Away with the police!--but no--silence, silence
for the Kaiser. What is he saying? "My people shall not be murderers;
let the law deal with the madman--it is my command. Three cheers for
the lady to whom your Kaiser owes his life, and then the ceremonies
shall go on!"
Three cheers? Three times three, and split the skies with shouts for
the Kaiser. How the women cry, when they ought to be laughing! A
chance now for the police to hurry the limp thing in gray and red away
out of sight and off to prison, for every one turns to the Emperor,
just saved from the assassin's knife. He has sprung up the steps of
the great crimson-covered platform, half carrying, half leading, a
beautiful pale girl, who stifles her hysterical sobbing and tries to
hide the blood that drips from a wound in her arm. Who is she? Has any
one seen her before? God grant it is a Rhaetian who has had the good
fortune and courage to save the Emperor's life! Yet what does it
matter? There he stands, well and unhurt, holding her by his side,
that all the people may see her and give thanks. She is worthy to be a
goddess in their eyes; the radiance of her beauty--as for a few
seconds she stands gazing up into his face, then hiding hers between
trembling hands--seems supernatural. It is only for a moment that they
see her, as the shouts of praise to heaven, and the cheers for
Maximilian and the stranger who saved him, drown the music for which a
signal has been given; for the programme of the day is to be finished
and the episode to be set aside.
"God keep our Kaiser!" the band plays; and as if the order of events
had been undisturbed, the ceremony of unveiling the statue goes on.