The Great Court Scandal Part 11

"Oh, dear, no," she said, managing to control her anger by dint of great effort. "It is not at all painful, I a.s.sure you. Perhaps, Trauttenberg, you had better go at once and tell the newsman, so that my absence at the Schilling unveiling will be accounted for."

Thus dismissed, the woman, with her false smiles and pretended sympathy, went forth, and the journals through Germany that day reported, with regret, that the Crown Princess Claire of Marburg was confined to her room, having caught a severe chill on her journey from Vienna, and that she would probably remain indisposed for a week.

When her maids had dressed her she pa.s.sed on into her gorgeous little blue-and-gold boudoir, her own sanctum, for in it were all the little nick-nacks, odds and ends which on her marriage she had brought from her own home at Wartenstein. Every object reminded her of those happy days of her youth, before she was called upon to a.s.sume the shams of royal place and power; before she entered that palace that was to her but a gilded prison.

The long windows of the room looked out upon the beautiful gardens and the great lake, with its playing fountains beyond, while the spring sunlight streaming in gave it an air of cheerfulness even though she was so despondent and heavy of heart. The apartment was gorgeously furnished, as indeed was the whole of the great palace. Upon the backs of the chairs, embroidered in gold upon the damask, was the royal crown and cipher, while the rich carpet was of pale pastel blue. For a long time she stood at the window, looking out across the park.

She saw her husband in his cavalry uniform riding out with an escort clattering behind him, and watched him sadly until he was out of sight.

Then she turned and glanced around the cosy room which everywhere bore traces of her artistic taste and refinement. Upon the side-tables were many photographs, signed portraits of her friends, reigning sovereigns, and royal princes; upon the little centre-table a great old porcelain bowl of fresh tea-roses from the royal hot-houses. Her little buhl escritoire was littered with her private correspondence--most of it being in connection with charities in various parts of the kingdom in which she was interested, or was patroness.

Of money, or of the value of it, she knew scarcely anything. She was very wealthy, of course, for her family were one of the richest in Europe, while the royal house of Marburg was noted for its great wealth; yet she had never in her life held in her possession more than a few hundred marks at a time. Her bills all went to the official of the household whose duty it was to examine and pay them, and to charities she sent drafts through that same gold-spectacled official.

She often wondered what it was like to be poor, to work for a daily wage like the people she saw in the street and in the theatres. They seemed bright, contented, happy, and at least they had their freedom, and loved and married whom they chose.

Only the previous night, when she had entered her carriage at the station, a working-man had held his little child up to her for her to pat its head. She had done so, and then sighed to compare the difference between the royal father and that proud father of the people.

Little Ignatia, sweet and fresh, in her white frock and pale pink sash, was presently brought in by Allen to salute her mother, and the latter s.n.a.t.c.hed up the child gladly in her arms and smothered its chubby face with fond kisses.

But the child noticed the disfigured countenance, and drew herself back to look at it.

"Mother is hurt," she said in English, in her childish speech. "Poor mother!"

"Yes, I fell down, darling," she answered. "Wasn't that very unfortunate? Are you sorry?"

"Very sorry poor mother is hurt," answered the child. "And, why!--one of poor mother's tooths have gone." The Princess saw that Allen was looking at her very hard, therefore she turned to her and explained,--

"It is nothing--nothing; a slight accident. I struck myself."

But the child stroked its mother's face tenderly with the soft, chubby little hand, saying,--

"Poor mother must be more careful another time or I shall scold her.

And Allen will scold her too."

"Mother will promise to be more careful," she a.s.sured the little one, smiling. And then, seating herself, listened for half an hour to the child's amusing prattle, and her joyous antic.i.p.ation of the purchase of a perambulator for her dolly.

With tender hands the Crown Princess retied the broad pink ribbon of the sash, and presently produced some chocolates from the silver bon-bon box which she kept there on purpose for her little one.

And Allen, the rather plain-faced Englishwoman, who was the best of nurses, stood by in silence, wondering how such an accident could have happened to her Imperial mistress, but, of course, unable to put any question to her.

"You may take Ignatia to buy the perambulator, Allen," said she at last in English. "Get a good one; the best you can. And after luncheon let me see it. I shall not go out to-day, so you can bring the Princess back to me at two o'clock."

"Very well, your Highness."

And both she and the child withdrew, the latter receiving the maternal kiss and caramels in each hand.

Again alone, Claire sat for a long time in deep thought. The recollection of those cruel, bitter accusations which her husband had uttered was still uppermost in her mind. What her humble friend Steinbach had told her was, alas! only too true. At Court it was said that she loved Leitolf, and the Crown Prince believed the scandalous libel.

"Ah, if Ferdinand only knew!" she murmured to herself. "If he could only read my heart! Then he would know the truth. Perhaps, instead of hating me as he does, he would be as forbearing as I try to be. He might even try to love me. Yet, alas!" she added bitterly, "such a thing cannot be. The Court of Marburg have decided that, in the interests of their own future, I must be ruined and disgraced. It is destiny, I suppose," she sighed; "my destiny!"

Then she was silent, staring straight before her at Bronzino's beautiful portrait of the d.u.c.h.ess Eleanor on the wall opposite. The sound of a bugle reached her, followed by the roll of the drums as the palace guard was changed. The love of truth, the conscientiousness which formed so distinct a feature in Claire's character, and mingled with its picturesque delicacy a certain firmness and dignity, she maintained consistently always.

The Trauttenberg returned, but she dismissed her for the day, and when she had left the boudoir the solitary woman murmured bitterly aloud,--

"A day's leave will perhaps allow you to plot and conspire further against the woman to whom you owe everything, and upon whose charity your family exist. Go and report to my husband my appearance this morning, and laugh with your friends at my unhappiness!" She rose and paced the room, her white hands clasped before her in desperation.

"Carl! Carl!" she cried in a hoa.r.s.e, low voice. "I have only your indiscretion to thank for all this! And yet have I not been quite as indiscreet? Why, therefore, should I blame you? No," she said in a whisper, after a pause, "it is more my own fault than yours. I was blind, and you loved me. I foolishly permitted you to come here, because your presence recalled all the happiness of the past--of those sweet, idyllic days at Wartenstein, when we--when we loved each other, and our love was but a day-dream never to be realised. I wonder whether you still recollect those days, as I remember them--those long rambles over the mountains alone by the by-paths that I knew from my childhood days, and how we used to stand together hand in hand and watch the sinking sun flas.h.i.+ng upon the windows of the castle far away. Nine years have gone since those days of our boy-and-girl love--nine long, dark years that have, I verily believe, transformed my very soul. One by one have all my ideals been broken and swept away, and now I can only sit and weep over the dead ashes of the past. The past--ah! what that means to me--life and love and freedom. And the future?" she sighed.

"Alas! only black despair, ignominy, and shame." Again she halted at the window, and hot tears coursed down her pale cheeks. Those words, uttered almost without consciousness on her own part, contained the revelation of a life of love, and disclosed the secret burden of a heart bursting with its own unuttered grief. She was repulsed, she was forsaken, she was outraged where she had bestowed her young heart with all its hopes and wishes. She was entangled inextricably in a web of horrors which she could not even comprehend, yet the result seemed inevitable.

"These people condemn me! They utter their foul calumnies, and cast me from them unjustly," she cried, pus.h.i.+ng her wealth of fair hair from her brow in her desperation. "Is there no justice for me? Can a woman not retain within her heart the fond remembrance of the holy pa.s.sion of her youth--the only time she has loved--without it being condemned as a sin?

without--"

The words died on her dry lips, for at that moment there was a tap at the door, and she gave permission to enter.

One of the royal servants in gorgeous livery bowed and advanced, presenting to her a small packet upon a silver salver, saying,--

"The person who brought this desired that it should be given into your Imperial Highness's hands at once."

She took the packet, and the man withdrew.

A single glance was sufficient to show her that the gummed address label had been penned by Count Carl Leitolf's own hand. Her heart beat quickly as she cut the string and opened the packet, to find within a book--a dull, uninteresting, philosophical treatise in German. There was no note or writing of any kind.

She ran through the leaves quickly, and then stood wondering. Why had he sent her that? The book was one that she certainly could never read to understand. Published some fifteen years before, it bore signs of not being new. She was much puzzled.

That Leitolf had a motive in sending it to her she had no doubt. But what could it denote? Again and again she searched in it to find some words or letters underlined--some communication meant for her eye alone.

Presently, utterly at a loss to understand, she took up the brown-paper wrapping, and looked again at the address. Yes, she was not mistaken.

It was from Carl.

For a few moments she held the paper in her hand, when suddenly she detected that the gummed address label had only been stuck on lightly by being wetted around the edge, and a thought occurred to her to take it off and keep it, together with the book.

Taking up the large ivory paper-knife, she quickly slipped it beneath the label and removed it, when to her astonished eyes there were presented some written words penned across the centre, where the gum had apparently been previously removed.

The words, for her eye alone, were in Carl's handwriting, lightly written, so that they should not show through the label.

The message--the last message from the man who loved her so fondly, and whose heart bled for her in her gilded unhappiness--read:--

"Adieu, my Princess. I leave at noon to-day, because you have willed it so. I have heard of what occurred last night. It is common knowledge in the palace. Be brave, dear heart. May G.o.d now be your comforter.

Recollect, though we shall never again meet, that I shall think ever and eternally of you, my Princess, the sweet-faced woman who was once my own, but who is now, alas! lost to me for ever. Adieu, adieu. I kiss your hand, dear heart, adieu!"

It was his last message. His gentle yet manly resignation, the deep pathos of his farewell, told her how full of agony was his own heart.

How bitter for her, too, that parting, for now she would stand alone and unprotected, without a soul in whom to confide, or of whom to seek advice.

As she reread those faintly-traced words slowly and aloud the light died from her face.

"I kiss your hand, dear heart, adieu!" she murmured, and then, her heart overburdened by grief, she burst into a flood of emotion.

CHAPTER NINE.