The Princess Virginia Part 11

All the world was listening, of course; all the world was watching, too; and no matter what his inclination might have been, his words could be but few.

Once more he thanked and praised her for her courage, her presence of mind; thanked her for remaining, as if she had been granting a favor to him; and asked where she was stopping, in Kronburg as he promised himself the honor of sending to inquire for her health that evening.

His desire would be to call at once in person, he added, but, owing to the program arranged for this day and several days to follow, not only each hour but each moment would be officially occupied. These birthday festivities were troublesome, but duly must be done. And then, Leopold repeated (when he had Miss Mowbray's name and address), the court surgeon and physician would be commanded to attend upon her without delay.

With these words and a chivalrous courtesy at parting, the Emperor was gone, Baron von Lyndal, Grand Master of Ceremonies, and his Baroness having been told off to take care of Miss Mowbray.

In another mood it would have p.r.i.c.ked Virginia's sense of humor to see Baroness von Lyndal's almost shocked surprise at discovering her to be the daughter of that Lady Mowbray whom she was asked to meet. (Luckily all the letters of introduction had reached their destination, it merely remaining, according to etiquette in Rhaetia, for Lady Mowbray to announce her arrival in Kronburg by sending cards to the recipients.) But Virginia had no heart for laughter now.

She had been on the point of forgetting, until reminded by a dig from the spur of necessity, that she was only a masquerader, acting her borrowed part in a pageant. For the first time since she had hopefully taken it up, that part became detestable. She would have given almost anything to throw it off, and be herself: for nothing less than clear sincerity seemed worthy of this day and the event which crowned it.

Nevertheless, in the vulgar language of proverb which no well brought-up Princess should ever stoop to use, she had made her own bed, and she must lie in it. It would not do for her suddenly to give out to the world of Kronburg that she was not, after all, Miss Mowbray, but Princess Virginia of Baumenburg-Drippe. That would not be fair to the Grand d.u.c.h.ess, who had yielded to her wishes, nor fair to her own plans. Above all, it would not be fair to the Emperor, handicapped as he now was by a debt of grat.i.tude. No; Miss Mowbray she was, and Miss Mowbray she must for the present remain.

Naturally the Grand d.u.c.h.ess fainted when her daughter was brought back with ominous red stains upon the gray background of her traveling dress. But the wound was neither deep nor dangerous. The court surgeon was as consoling as he was complimentary, and by the time that messengers from the palace had arrived with inquiries from the Emperor and invitations to the Emperor's ball, the mother of the heroine could dispense with her sal volatile.

She had fortunately much to think of. There was the important question of dress for the ball to-morrow night; there was the still more pressing question of the newspapers, which must not be allowed to publish the borrowed name of Mowbray, lest complications should arise; and there were the questions to be asked of Virginia. How had she felt? How had she dared? How had the Emperor looked, and what had the Emperor said?

If it had been natural for the Grand d.u.c.h.ess to faint, it was equally natural that she should not faint twice. She began to believe, after all, that Providence smiled upon Virginia and her adventure; and she wondered whether the Princess's white satin embroidered with seed pearls, or the silver spangled blue tulle would be more becoming to wear to the ball.

Next day the Rhaetian newspapers devoted columns to the attack upon the Emperor by an anarchist from a certain province (once Italian), who had disguised himself as an official in the employ of the Burgomaster. There were long paragraphs in praise of the lady who, with marvelous courage and presence of mind, had sprung between the Emperor and the a.s.sa.s.sin, receiving on the arm with which she had s.h.i.+elded _Unser Leo_ a glancing blow from the weapon aimed at the Imperial breast. But, thanks to a few earnestly imploring words written by "Lady Mowbray" to Baron von Lyndal, commands impressed upon the landlord of the hotel, and the fact that Rhaetian editors are not as modern as Americans in their methods, the lady was not named. She was a foreigner and a stranger to the capital of Rhaetia; she was, according to the papers, "as yet unknown."

CHAPTER VIII

THE EMPEROR'S BALL

Not a window of the fourteenth century, yellow marble palace on the hill, with its famous Garden of the Nine Fountains, that was not ablaze with light, glittering against a far-away background of violet mountains crowned by snow.

Outside the tall, bronze gates where marble lions crouched, the crowd who might not pa.s.s beyond stared, chattered, pointed and exclaimed, without jealousy of their betters. _Unser Leo_ was giving a ball, and it was enough for their happiness to watch the slow moving line of splendid state coaches, gorgeous automobiles, and neat broughams with well-known crests upon their doors; to strive good-naturedly for a peep at the faces and dresses, the jewels and picturesque uniforms; to comment upon all freely but never impudently, asking one another what would be for supper, and with whom the Emperor would dance.

"There she is--there's the beautiful young foreign lady who saved him!" cried a girl in the throng. "I was there and saw her, I tell you. Isn't she an angel?"

Instantly a hearty cheer went up, growing in volume, and the green-coated policemen had to keep back the crowd that would have stopped the horses and pressed close for a long look into a plain, dark-blue brougham.

Virginia shrank out of sight against the cus.h.i.+ons, blus.h.i.+ng, and breathing quickly as she caught her mother's hand.

"Dear people,--dear, kind people," she thought. "I love them for loving him. I wonder, oh I wonder, if they will ever see me and cheer me, driving by his side?"

She had chosen to wear the white dress with the pearls, though up to the last moment the Grand d.u.c.h.ess had suffered tortures of indecision between that and the blue, to say nothing of a pink chiffon trimmed with crushed roses. Before the carriage brought them to the palace doors, the girl's blush had faded, and her face was as white as her gown when at her mother's side she pa.s.sed between bowing lackeys through the marble Hall of Lions, on through the frescoed Rittersaal to the throne room where the Emperor's guests awaited his coming.

It was etiquette not to arrive a moment later than ten o'clock; and a few minutes after the hour Baron von Lyndal, in his official capacity as Grand Master of Ceremonies, struck the polished floor twice with his gold-k.n.o.bbed wand of ivory. This signaled the approach of the court from the Imperial dinner party, and Leopold entered, with a stout, middle-aged Royal Highness from Russia on his arm.

Until his arrival the beautiful Miss Mowbray had held all eyes; and even when he appeared, she was not forgotten. Every one was on tenter hooks to see how she would be greeted by the grateful Emperor.

The instant that his dark head towered above other heads in the throne room, it was observed even by those not usually observant, that never had Leopold been so handsome.

His was a face remarkable for intellect and firmness rather than for cla.s.sical beauty of feature, though his features were strong and clearly cut; but to-night the sternness that sometimes marred them in the eyes of women was smoothed away. He looked young and ardent, almost boyish, like a man who has suddenly found an absorbing new interest in life.

The first dance he went through with the Russian Royalty, who was the guest of the evening; and, still rigidly conforming to the line of duty (which obtains in court ball-rooms as on battlefields), the second, third and fourth dances were for the Emperor penances instead of pleasures. But for the fifth--a waltz--he bowed before Virginia.

During this long hour there had been hardly a movement, smile or glance of hers which he had not contrived to see, since his entrance.

He knew just how well Baron von Lyndal carried out his instructions concerning Miss Mowbray. He saw each partner presented to her for a dance the Emperor might not claim; and to save his life, or a national crisis, he could not have forced the same expression in speaking with her Royal Highness from Russia, as that which spontaneously brightened his face when at last he approached Virginia.

"Who is that girl?" asked Count von Breitstein, in his usual abrupt manner, as the arm of Leopold girdled the slim waist of the Princess, and the eyes of Leopold drank light from another pair of eyes lifted to his in laughter.

It was to Baroness von Lyndal that the old Chancellor put his question, and she fluttered a tiny, diamond-spangled fan of lace to hide lips that would smile, as she answered, "What, Chancellor, are you jesting, or don't you really know who that girl is?"

Count von Breitstein turned eyes cold and gray as gla.s.s away from the two figures moving rhythmically with the music, to the face of the once celebrated beauty. Long ago he had admired Baroness von Lyndal as pa.s.sionately as it was in him to admire any woman; but that day was so far distant as to be remembered with scorn, and now, such power as she had over him was merely to excite a feeling of irritation.

"I seldom trouble myself to jest," he answered.

"Ah, one knows that truly great men are born without a sense of humor; those who have it are never as successful in life as those without,"

smiled the Baroness, who was by birth a Hungarian, and loved laughter better than anything else, except compliments upon her vanis.h.i.+ng beauty. "How stupid of me to have tried your patience. 'That girl,' as you so uncompromisingly call her, has two claims to attention at court. She is the English Miss Helen Mowbray whose mother has come to Kronburg armed with sheaves of introductions to us all. She is also the young woman of whom the papers are full to-day, for it is she who saved the Emperor's life."

"Indeed," said the Chancellor, a gray gleam in his eye as he watched the white figure floating on the tide of music, in the arms of Leopold. "Indeed."

"I thought you would have known, for you know most things before other people hear of them," went on the Baroness. "Lady Mowbray and her daughter are stopping at the Hohenlangenwald Hotel. That's the mother sitting on the left of Princess Neufried,--the pretty, Dresden china person. But the girl is a great beauty."

"It's generous of you to say so, Baroness," replied the Chancellor. "I didn't see the young lady's face at all clearly yesterday; I was stationed too far away; and dress makes a great difference. As for what she did," went on the old man, whose coldness to women and merciless justice to both s.e.xes alike had earned him the nickname of "Iron Heart," "as for what she did, if it had not been she who intervened between the Emperor and death, it would have been the fate of another to do so. It was a fortunate thing for the girl, we may say, that it happened to be her arm which struck up the weapon."

"Or she wouldn't be here to-night, you mean," laughed the Baroness.

"Don't you think, then, that his Majesty is right to single her out for so much honor?" Her eyes were on the dancers; yet that mysterious skill which most women of the world have learned, taught her how not to miss the slightest change of expression, if there were any, on the Chancellor's square, lined face.

"His Majesty is always right," he replied diplomatically. "An invitation to a ball; a dance or two; a few compliments; a call to pay his respects; a gentleman could not be less gracious. And his Majesty is one of the first gentlemen in Europe."

"He has had good training, what to do and what not to do." The Baroness flung her little sop of flattery to Cerberus with a dainty ghost of a bow for the man who had been as a second father to Leopold since the late Emperor's death. "But--we're old friends, Chancellor,"

(she was not to blame that they had not been more in the days before she became Baroness von Lyndal), "so tell me; can you look at the girl's face and the Emperor's, and still say that everything will end with an invitation, a dance, some compliments, and a call to pay respects?"

Iron Heart frowned and sneered, wondering what he could have seen, twenty-two years ago, to admire in this flighty woman. He would have escaped from her now, if escape had been feasible; but he could not be openly rude to the wife of the Grand Master of Ceremonies, at the Emperor's ball. And besides, he was not unwilling, perhaps, to show the lady that her sentimental and unsuitable innuendos were as the buzzing of a fly about his ears.

"I'm close upon seventy, and no longer a fair judge of a woman's attractions," he returned carelessly. "A look at her face conveys nothing to me. But, were she Helen of Troy instead of Helen Mowbray, the invitation, the dance, the compliments, and the call--with the present of some jeweled souvenir--are all that are permissible in the circ.u.mstances."

"What circ.u.mstances?" and the Baroness looked as innocent as an inquiring child.

"The lady is not of Royal blood. And his Majesty, I thank Heaven, is not a roue."

"He has a heart, though you trained him, Chancellor; and he has eyes.

He may never have used them to much purpose before, yet there must be a first time. And the higher and more strongly built the tower, once it begins to topple, the greater is the fall thereof."

"Is it the sense of humor, which you say I lack, that gives you pleasure in discussing the wildest improbabilities, as if they were events to be considered seriously? If it is, I'm not sorry to lack it.

In any case, it's as well that neither you nor I is the Emperor's keeper."

"We're at least his very good friends, I as well as you, in my humbler way, Chancellor. And you and I have known each other for twenty-two years. If it amuses me to discuss improbabilities, why not? Since you call them improbabilities, it can do no harm to dwell upon them as ingredients for romance. Not for worlds would I suggest that his Majesty isn't an example for all men to follow, nor that poor, pretty Miss Mowbray could be tempted to indiscretion. But yet I'd be ready to make a wager--the Emperor being human, and the girl a beauty--that an acquaintance so romantically begun won't end with a ball and a call."

"What could there possibly be more--or what you hint at as more--in honor?"