The Princess Virginia Part 23

"Not quite, though rather strained, I confess." Leopold tempered his words with a faint smile.

"Then I have one more important question to ask, venturing to remind you first that I have acted solely in your interest. If such a step as you contemplate should be my death blow, it is because of my love for you, and Rhaetia. Tell me, your Majesty, this one thing. If it were proved to you that the lady you know as Miss Mowbray, was, not only not the person she pretends to be, but in all other respects unworthy of your love--what would you do?"

"You speak of impossibilities."

"But if they were not impossibilities?"

"In such a case I should do as other men do--spend the rest of life in trying to forget a lost ideal."

"I thank your Majesty. That is all I ask. I suppose you will continue your journey?"

"Yes, as far as Felgarde, where I hope to find Lady Mowbray and her daughter."

"Then, your Majesty, when I've expressed my grat.i.tude for your forebearance--even though I've failed to be convincing--I'll trouble you no longer."

The Chancellor rose, painfully, with a reminiscence of gout, and Leopold stared at him in surprise. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Only that, as I can do no further good here, with your permission, I will get out at the station we are coming into, and go back home again."

The Emperor realized, what he had not noticed until this moment, that the train was slackening speed as it approached the suburbs of a town.

His conversation with the Chancellor had lasted for an hour, and he was far from regretting the prospect of being left in peace. More than once he had come perilously near to losing his temper, forgetting his grat.i.tude and the old man's years. How much longer he could have held out under a continued strain of provocation, he did not know; so he spoke no word of dissuasion when Count von Breitstein picked up his soft hat and b.u.t.toned the gray coat for departure.

"I've pa.s.sed pleasanter hours in your society, I admit," said Leopold, when the train stopped. "But I can thank you for your motives, if not your maxims; and here's my hand."

"It would be most kind of your Majesty to telephone me from Felgarde,"

the Chancellor exclaimed, as if on a sudden thought, while they shook hands, "merely to say whether you remain there; or whether you go further; or whether you return at once. I am too fatigued to travel back immediately to Schloss Breitstein, and shall rest for some hours at least, in my house at Kronburg, so a call will find me there."

"I will do as you ask," said the Emperor. Again he pressed the Chancellor's hand, and it was very cold.

CHAPTER XV

THROUGH THE TELEPHONE

When Leopold arrived at Felgarde he went immediately to the hotel which he had designated as a place of meeting. But no ladies answering to the description he gave had been seen there. Either Miss Mowbray had failed to receive his message, or, having received, had chosen to ignore it.

The doubt, harrowing while it lasted, was solved on returning to the railway station, though certainty proved scarcely less tantalizing than uncertainty had been.

The telegram was still in the hands of the station-master, to whose care it had been addressed. This diligent person professed to have sent a man through the Orient Express, from end to end, calling for Miss Helen Mowbray, but calling in vain. He had no theory more plausible to offer than that the lady had not started from Kronburg; or else that she had left the train at Felgarde before her name had been cried. But certainly she would not have had time to go far, if she were a through pa.s.senger, for the Orient Express stopped but ten minutes at Felgarde.

It was evident throughout the short conversation that the excellent official was on pins and needles. Struck by the Emperor's features, which he had so often seen in painting and photograph, it still seemed impossible that the greatest man in Rhaetia could be traveling thus about the country, in ordinary morning dress, and unattended. Sure at one instant that he must be talking with the Emperor, sure the next that he had been deceived by a likeness, the poor fellow struggled against his confusion in a way that would have amused Leopold, in a different mood.

With a manner that essayed the difficult mean between reverence due to Royalty, and common, every-day politeness, good enough for an ordinary gentleman, the station-master volunteered to ascertain whether the ladies described had gone out and given up their tickets. A few minutes of suspense dragged on; then came the news that no such persons had pa.s.sed.

Here was a stumbling-block. Since Helen Mowbray and her mother had apparently not traveled by the Orient Express, where had they gone on leaving the hotel at Kronburg? Had they after all misled Baroness von Lyndal as to their intentions, for the purpose of blinding the Emperor; or had they simply changed their minds at the last minute, as women may? Could it be possible that they had changed them so completely as to return to Schloss Lyndalberg? Or had they chosen to vanish mysteriously through some back door out of Rhaetia, leaving no trace which even a lover could find?

Leopold could not help recalling the Chancellor's "revelations," but dismissed them as soon as they had crept into his brain. No matter where the clue to the tangle might lie, he told himself that it was not in any act of which Helen Mowbray need be ashamed.

He could think of nothing more to do but to go dismally back to Kronburg, and await developments--or rather, to stir them up by every means in his power. This was the course he finally chose; and, just as he was about to act upon his decision, he remembered his carelessly given promise to Count von Breitstein.

There was a telephone in the railway station at Felgarde, and Leopold himself called up the Chancellor at Kronburg.

"My friends are not here. I'm starting for Kronburg as soon as possible, either by the next train, or by special," he announced, after a far-away squeak had signified Count von Breitstein's presence at the other end. "I don't see why you wish to know, but I would not break my promise. That's all; good-by--Eh?--What was that you said?"

"I have a--curious--piece of--news for you," came over the wire in the Chancellor's voice. "It's--about the--ladies."

"What is it?" asked Leopold.

"I hinted that I had more information which I could not give you then.

But I am in a different position now. You did not find your friends in the Orient Express."

"No," said the Emperor.

"They gave out that they were leaving Rhaetia. But they haven't crossed the frontier."

"Thanks. That's exactly what I wanted to know."

"You remember a certain person whose name can't be mentioned over the telephone, buying a hunting lodge near the village of Inseleden, in the Buchenwald, last year?"

"Yes. I remember very well. But what has that to do with my friends?"

"The younger lady has gone there without her mother, who remains in Kronburg, with the companion. It seems that the present owner of the hunting lodge has been acquainted with them for some time, though he was ignorant of their masquerade. You see, he knows them only under their real name. The young lady is a singer in comic operas, a Miss Jenny Brett, whose _dossier_ can be given you on demand. The owner of the hunting lodge arrived at his place this morning, motored into Kronburg, where the young lady had waited, evidently informed of his coming. She invited him to pay her a visit at her hotel; he accepted, and returned the invitation, which she accepted."

"You are misinformed. The lady was never an opera singer. And I'm certain she would neither receive the person you mention, nor go to visit him."

"Will you drive out to the lodge to-night, when you reach Kronburg, and honor the gentleman with an unexpected call?"

"I will, d--n you, but not for the reason you think," cried the Emperor. It was the first time in his life that he had ever used strong language to the Chancellor.

He dropped the receiver, flung down a gold coin with his own head upon it (at the moment he could have wished that he had no other) and waving away an offer of change, rushed out of the office.

Under his breath he swore again, the strongest oaths which the rich language of his fatherland provided, anathematizing not the beloved woman, maligned, but the man who maligned her.

There would be death in the thought that she could be false to herself, and her confession of love for him; but then, it was unthinkable. Let the whole world reek with foulness; his love must still s.h.i.+ne above it, white and remote as the young moon.

This old man--whose life would scarce have been safe if, in his Emperor's present mood, the two had been together--this old man had a grudge against the one perfect girl on earth. There was no black rag of scandal he would not stoop to pick out of the mud and fly as a flag of battle, soothing his conscience--if he had one--by saying it was for "Rhaetia's good."

Telling himself that these things were truths, Leopold hurried away to inquire for the next train back to Kronburg. There would not be another for three hours, he found, and as nothing could have induced him to wait three hours, or even two, he ordered a special. There was a raging tiger in his breast, which would not cease to tear him until he had seen Helen Mowbray, laid his Empire at her feet, received her answer, and through it, punished the Chancellor.

The special, he was told, could be ready in less than an hour. The journey to Kronburg would occupy nearly three more, and it would be close upon nine before he could start with Count von Breitstein, for the hunting lodge which he had promised to visit. But the Chancellor would doubtless have his electric carriage ready for the desired expedition, and they could reach their destination in twenty minutes.

This was not too long a time to give up to proving the old man wrong; for to do this, not to find Helen Mowbray, was Leopold's motive in consenting. She would not be there, and the Emperor was going because she would not. He wanted to witness von Breitstein's confusion, for humiliation was the bitterest punishment which could possibly be inflicted on the proud and opinionated old man.