In the midst of the desolation which had so swiftly and unexpectedly
fallen upon her, the help and solace even of those whom she now knew
to be her enemies--enemies perhaps to the death--were very welcome to
Adelaide de Montpensier. Every sort of trouble that could be taken off
her hands they relieved her of. Hardress travelled to Vienna, which
the prince had made his headquarters, to interview his man of business
and to escort back the prince's sister, Madame de Conde, Princess of
Bourbon, who was now, save Adelaide, the only representative of the
older branch of the ancient line. The younger had bowed the knee to
the Republican Baal in France, and they were not even notified of the
prince's death.
Lord Orrel undertook the arrangement of the funeral and all the legal
formalities connected with it, and Lady Olive was so sweet and tender
in her help and sympathy that, in the midst of her grief, Adelaide
began to love her in spite of herself.
The funeral was without any display that might have signalised the
rank of the dead man, and Louis Xavier de Conde, Prince of Bourbon,
was laid to rest in an ordinary brick grave on the hillside under the
pines of Elsenau. Both Adelaide and her aunt would have applied to the
French authorities to permit his interment in the resting-place of his
ancestors, but the old prince had given special instructions that
while the Republican banner waved over France not even his dead body
should rest in her soil, and so his wishes were, perforce, respected.
The night after the funeral the marquise was sitting at her
writing-table before the window of her private sitting-room. The
window looked put over a vast expanse of undulating forest land,
broken here and there by broad grassy valleys through which ran little
tributaries of the Weser, shining like tiny threads of silver under
the full moon riding high in the heavens.
She had drawn the blind up, and for nearly half-an-hour she had been
gazing dreamily out over the sombre, almost ghostly landscape. The
deep gloom of the far-spreading pine forest harmonised exactly with
her own mood, and yet the twinkle of the streams amidst the glades,
and the glitter of the stars on the far-off horizon, were to her as
symbols of a light shining over and beyond the present darkness of her
soul.
The night had fallen swiftly and darkly upon her. First the vanishing
into impenetrable mystery of the man upon whom rested her hopes and
dreams of one day queening it over France as her ancestress Marie
Antoinette had done, and not only over France as a kingdom, but as
mistress of the world. And now the veil of mystery had been rudely
torn aside, and showed her these English and Americans, the hated
hereditary enemies of her house and country, in possession of the
power which should have been hers. Then, last and worst of all, her
father and her friend, the only real friend she had ever had, the only
human being she had ever really loved--for she barely remembered the
mother who had died when she was scarcely out of her cradle--had been
stricken down by the same blow that had fallen upon her, and lay
yonder on the hillside under the pines, all his high hopes and
splendid ambitions brought to nothing by the swift agony of a single
night.
There was an open book on the table before her--a square volume,
daintily bound in padded Russia-leather, and closed with a silver
spring lock. A gold-mounted stylographic pen lay beside it, and she
held between her fingers a little cunningly contrived silver key which
she had just detached from her watch-chain.
"Shall I write it," she murmured, in a soft, low tone, "or shall I
keep it hidden where no human eyes can read it? But who can ever read
this?" she went on after a little pause, letting her hand fall on the
square volume. "After all, are not all my secrets here? and is not
this the only friend and confidant that I have now left to me? Yes, I
am a woman, when all is said; and I must open my heart to someone, if
only to myself."
She turned the little shaded lamp by her side so that the light fell
on the volume, and she put the key in the lock and opened it. About
half the pages were filled with writing--not in words, but in a kind
of shorthand which could only be read by her father, herself, and
three of the most trusted adherents of their lost cause. Her eyes ran
rapidly over the last few pages. They contained the last chapters in
the book of her life which was now closed. Before she reached the end
a mist of tears was gathering in her long, dark lashes. She wiped it
away with a little lace-edged handkerchief, and took up her pen. She
scored two heavy lines across the bottom of the last written page,
turned over a fresh one, and began to write.
"My father is dead, and with him the dreams which for years we
have dreamt together. Was there ever a more cruel irony of Fate
than this? Was Fate itself ever more unkind to man or woman? Only
a few weeks ago, and I had sold myself, with his consent, so far
did our devotion go to serve the sacred cause of our house, to
this big, handsome Alsatian--a servant of the German Emperor, the
arch-enemy of our country, the owner of the two provinces which my
ancestor Louis tore from Germany. I did it because in high
politics it is necessary sometimes to sacrifice oneself, partly
too because no other man had appealed to me as he did. I knew that
he was running tremendous risks; I believed--yes, and I still
believe, that he was risking everything--rank, honour, liberty,
even life itself, by wearing the uniform of his country's enemy so
that he might learn his enemy's secrets.
"He loves me--yes, if ever man loved woman, he loves me--me,
Adelaide de Conde, Marquise de Montpensier; and I--ah, mon Dieu,
is it possible that the daughter of Marie Antoinette has sunk so
low?--I allowed him to believe that I loved him too. He believes
it now. I suppose he would still believe it, even if he knew what
I know now--that his father is dead, that the secret of the
world-empire which he could have given us, that power for which I
promised myself to him, so that I might share it with him, has
gone, that it is worse than lost, since the Fates have given it
into the hands of the enemies of our house.
"And so it is gone--worse than gone--and so, my friend Victor, I
am afraid you will have to find out in the course of circumstances
that a woman's smiles do not always mean a reflection of the light
in her lover's eyes, and that her kisses do not always mean love.
It is a pity, because, after all, I believe you are a true
Frenchman, even if you wear a German uniform; and if that dream
had become a reality, and you and I had shared the throne of
France, perhaps I should have loved you as well and as truly as
most queens have loved their consorts.
"But, alas, my poor Victor, the sceptre has passed away--for the
time being, at least--from the House of Bourbon. It is given into
the hands of our enemies, and so you, by force of fate, must stand
aside. I shall not tell you this yet, because afterwards, perhaps,
you may be useful. I wonder what you would think of me--even you,
a man who in the old days would only have been a sort of slave,
living or dying socially as the great Louis smiled or frowned upon
you--I wonder what you would think if you could look over my
shoulder and read this writing and see a woman's soul laid naked
on this page. Perhaps you might think me utterly mean and
contemptible--you would if you didn't understand; but if you did,
if you could see all and understand all--well, then, you might
hate me, but I think you would be man enough to respect me.
"At least you are diplomatist enough to know, after all, in the
great game of politics, a game that is played for the mastery of
kingdoms and peoples, to say nothing of the empire of the world,
women have to count themselves as pawns. Even the cleverest, the
most brilliant, the most beautiful of us--that is all we are.
Sometimes our beauty or the charm of our subtle wit may win the
outer senses of the rulers of the world; they may admire us
physically or mentally, or both, but even at the best, it is only
the man that we enslave. The man goes to sleep for a night, he
dreams perhaps of our beauty and the delight of our society, but
in the morning it is the statesman that wakes, and he looks back
on the little weakness of the night before, and thinks of us as an
ordinary man might think of the one extra liqueur which he ought
not to have taken after a good dinner.
"And now these English--these people into whose hands Fate has
given my heritage! Ah, cruel Fate; why did you not make them
hateful, vulgar, common--something that I could hate and tread
under foot--something that I could think as far beneath me as the
bourgeois canaille of Republican France? But you have made them
aristocratic! Lord Orrel's lineage goes back past the days of St
Louis. His ancestors fought side by side with mine in the first
Crusade. True, they have mixed their blood with that American
froth, the skimming of the pot-bouille of the nations, but still,
after all, the old blood tells.
"Lady Olive--how I wish that she were either vulgar or ugly, so
that I could hate her!--is a daughter of the Plantagenets fit to
mate with a Prince of Bourbon, if there were one worthy of her.
Lord Orrel might have been one of those who went with the Eighth
Henry to meet Francis on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, patrician
in every turn of voice and manner and movement. And Shafto
Hardress, who will be Earl of Orrel some day, and master of the
world: yes, he is a patrician too; but with him there is something
a little different--the American blood perhaps--keen, quick,
alert, one moment indolently smoking his cigar and sipping his
coffee, the next on his feet, ready to assume the destinies of
nations. A man, too, strong and kindly--a man who would risk his
life to save a drowning dog, and yet strike down an enemy in his
path, so that he might rise a foot or so on the ladder of fame or
power. But he is more than that, he wants far more than the empty
fame of applause. The fame he wants is that which comes from
acknowledged power. You can see the dreamer in his eyes and on his
forehead, and you can see the doer on that beautiful, pitiless
mouth of his and the square, strong jaw which is under it.
"What a man to love and to be loved by! What would he think, I
wonder, if he could read what I am writing here! And yet, are not
all things possible? Is it not the unexpected that comes to pass?
Why not? Behold, I am left desolate, the garden that I called my
heart is a wilderness--a wilderness ploughed up by the ploughshare
of sorrow and bitterness, and so it lies fallow. Would it be
possible for him to sow the seed for which it is waiting?--and
then the harvest would be the empire of the world shared between
us! Well, after all, I am not only Adelaide de Conde, daughter of
a lost dynasty. I am a woman, with all the passions and ambitions
of our race burning hot within me. If I cannot sit on the throne
of the Bourbons, why should I not be empress-consort on the throne
of a world-wide empire?--why not? It would be a magnificent
destiny!"
When she had written this she laid her pen down, put her elbows on the
table, and, with her chin between her hands, looked up in silence for
some minutes at the moon sailing through rank after rank of fleecy
clouds. Then she took up her pen again, and wrote:
"I wonder if there is another woman?"
She looked at the last words for a moment or two, then put down her
pen, closed the book and locked it, and, as she put it away into a
drawer of her writing-table, she murmured:
"Ah, well, if there is--if there is----" She caught a sight of herself
in the long glass of one of the wardrobes, and she saw a tall,
exquisitely-shaped figure of a beautiful woman clad in the plainest of
mourning. She looked at herself with eyes of unsparing criticism, and
found no fault, and she turned away from the glass, saying:
"Ah, well, if there is--we shall see--and, if there really is, I
wonder what she's like."