The World Masters Read online

  CHAPTER IX

  In the midst of the desolation which had so swiftly and unexpectedlyfallen upon her, the help and solace even of those whom she now knewto be her enemies--enemies perhaps to the death--were very welcome toAdelaide de Montpensier. Every sort of trouble that could be taken offher hands they relieved her of. Hardress travelled to Vienna, whichthe prince had made his headquarters, to interview his man of businessand to escort back the prince's sister, Madame de Conde, Princess ofBourbon, who was now, save Adelaide, the only representative of theolder branch of the ancient line. The younger had bowed the knee tothe Republican Baal in France, and they were not even notified of theprince's death.

  Lord Orrel undertook the arrangement of the funeral and all the legalformalities connected with it, and Lady Olive was so sweet and tenderin her help and sympathy that, in the midst of her grief, Adelaidebegan to love her in spite of herself.

  The funeral was without any display that might have signalised therank 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 thepines of Elsenau. Both Adelaide and her aunt would have applied to theFrench authorities to permit his interment in the resting-place of hisancestors, but the old prince had given special instructions thatwhile the Republican banner waved over France not even his dead bodyshould rest in her soil, and so his wishes were, perforce, respected.

  The night after the funeral the marquise was sitting at herwriting-table before the window of her private sitting-room. Thewindow looked put over a vast expanse of undulating forest land,broken here and there by broad grassy valleys through which ran littletributaries of the Weser, shining like tiny threads of silver underthe full moon riding high in the heavens.

  She had drawn the blind up, and for nearly half-an-hour she had beengazing dreamily out over the sombre, almost ghostly landscape. Thedeep gloom of the far-spreading pine forest harmonised exactly withher 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 assymbols of a light shining over and beyond the present darkness of hersoul.

  The night had fallen swiftly and darkly upon her. First the vanishinginto impenetrable mystery of the man upon whom rested her hopes anddreams of one day queening it over France as her ancestress MarieAntoinette had done, and not only over France as a kingdom, but asmistress of the world. And now the veil of mystery had been rudelytorn aside, and showed her these English and Americans, the hatedhereditary enemies of her house and country, in possession of thepower which should have been hers. Then, last and worst of all, herfather and her friend, the only real friend she had ever had, the onlyhuman being she had ever really loved--for she barely remembered themother who had died when she was scarcely out of her cradle--had beenstricken down by the same blow that had fallen upon her, and layyonder on the hillside under the pines, all his high hopes andsplendid ambitions brought to nothing by the swift agony of a singlenight.

  There was an open book on the table before her--a square volume,daintily bound in padded Russia-leather, and closed with a silverspring lock. A gold-mounted stylographic pen lay beside it, and sheheld between her fingers a little cunningly contrived silver key whichshe had just detached from her watch-chain.

  "Shall I write it," she murmured, in a soft, low tone, "or shall Ikeep it hidden where no human eyes can read it? But who can ever readthis?" she went on after a little pause, letting her hand fall on thesquare volume. "After all, are not all my secrets here? and is notthis the only friend and confidant that I have now left to me? Yes, Iam a woman, when all is said; and I must open my heart to someone, ifonly to myself."

  She turned the little shaded lamp by her side so that the light fellon the volume, and she put the key in the lock and opened it. Abouthalf the pages were filled with writing--not in words, but in a kindof shorthand which could only be read by her father, herself, andthree of the most trusted adherents of their lost cause. Her eyes ranrapidly over the last few pages. They contained the last chapters inthe book of her life which was now closed. Before she reached the enda mist of tears was gathering in her long, dark lashes. She wiped itaway with a little lace-edged handkerchief, and took up her pen. Shescored 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 her
itage! 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 thetable, and, with her chin between her hands, looked up in silence forsome minutes at the moon sailing through rank after rank of fleecyclouds. 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 herpen, closed the book and locked it, and, as she put it away into adrawer of her writing-table, she murmured:

  "Ah, well, if there is--if there is----" She caught a sight of herselfin the long glass of one of the wardrobes, and she saw a tall,exquisitely-shaped figure of a beautiful woman clad in the plainest ofmourning. She looked at herself with eyes of unsparing criticism, andfound no fault, and she turned away from the glass, saying:

  "Ah, well, if there is--we shall see--and, if there really is, Iwonder what she's like."