Her Royal Highness Part 13

For answer Beatriz, the idol of London at that moment, fell upon his shoulder and shed tears of poignant, bitter regret, while he, with knit brows, held his breath for a moment, and then tenderly bent and kissed her upon the cheek.

CHAPTER TEN.

SOME CURIOUS STORIES.

The _festa_ of San Sebastiano fell on a Sunday.

The ancient church a mile and a half outside Rome on the Appian Way--the road constructed three hundred years before the birth of Christ--was thronged by the populace in _festa_ attire, for San Sebastiano, built as it is over the Catacombs where reposed the remains of the Christian martyrs, is one of the seven churches to which pilgrims have flocked from every part of western Christendom, while in its chapel is the marble slab bearing what is held by tradition to be the footprints of Christ, and which, therefore, is held by the Romans in special veneration.

Though January, the morning was sunny and cloudless, and with Lady Cathcart, the Amba.s.sador's wife, and young Edward Mervyn, the rather foppish honorary attache, Hubert Waldron had motored out to watch the festival with all its gorgeous procession of priests and acolytes, its swinging censers and musical chants.

As at all the _festas_ in Rome, there was the usual crowd of gaping Cookites and the five-guinea excursionists of other agencies, for is not the Eternal City the city of the tourist _par excellence_? In it he can live in a cheap _pension_ for four lire a night, or he can spend a hundred lire a night in certain _hotels de luxe_ on his room alone.

The road was dusty and crowded as, the ceremony over, the party sped back, past the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla--paltry indeed after those left by Rameses in Egypt--and the churches of Santi Nereo ed Achilleo and San Cesareo, afterwards re-entering the city and speeding up the broad modern Via n.a.z.ionale and into the long, straight Via Venti Settembre, at last pulling up before the great grey facade of the British Emba.s.sy.

Hubert Waldron was no stranger to Rome. For five years he had lived at the Emba.s.sy when his father was Amba.s.sador, and in those days had been very popular in the very exclusive Society of the Italian capital.

Nowadays, however, he did not live at the Emba.s.sy, but rented the same cosy flat over a bank in the Via n.a.z.ionale which had been occupied by his predecessor--a charming, artistic little place which was the very ideal of a bachelor _pied-a-terre_.

That day there was a smart luncheon-party at the Emba.s.sy; among the guests being the Austrian and Russian Amba.s.sadors with their wives, Prince Ghika, of the Roumanian Legation, the stout and wealthy Duca di Carpenito, the old Marchesa Genazzano, a hideous guy with her protruding yellow teeth, yet one of the leaders of Roman Society, the young Marchese Montalcino, who wore upturned moustachios and yellow boots; the pretty Contessa Stella Pizzoli, one of the Queen's _dames de la Cour_, and half a dozen others whose names in the Italian capital were as household words.

Around the luncheon-table, charmingly arranged with delicate floral decorations, the chatter had been universal, Sir Francis Cathcart, K.C.M.G., the British Amba.s.sador, holding a long and animated conversation with Princess Bezanoff, wife of "The Russian"--as the Tzar's representative was termed in the diplomatic circle--while Lady Cathcart had been gossiping with the Duca di Carpenito, who was perhaps the greatest landowner in all Italy, and whose ancient Palazzo in the Corso is pointed out to the traveller as one of the finest mediaeval residences in the city.

Waldron, who had taken in the Contessa Stella and sat at her side, was listening to her gossip about the Court, of the doings of the Queen, and of their recent stay at Racconigi. Though most of the conversation at table was in French they spoke in Italian, Hubert speaking that language with scarce a trace of foreign accent.

"Curiously enough, Signor Waldron, I first knew of you by hearing His Majesty speak of you," remarked the pretty young woman. "I heard him telling General Olivieri, the first aide-de-camp, that you had been attached to the Emba.s.sy here."

"It is a great honour that His Majesty should remember me," replied the secretary. "He knew me, however, years ago, before he succeeded. I was here with my father, who was Amba.s.sador."

"Yes. The King said so, and he paid your father a very high compliment.

He said that he was the only diplomat whom his father, the late King Victor, ever trusted with a secret."

Waldron smiled. Then he said:

"His Majesty is exceedingly gracious to me. I had not been back here a week before I had a command to private audience, and he was kind enough to say that he was pleased to resume my acquaintance after my years of absence from Rome. Yes, Contessa," he added, "here I feel that I am at home and among friends, for I love Italy and her people. Your country possesses a grace and charm which one does not find elsewhere in Europe.

There is but one Italy as there is but one Rome in all the world."

"I fear you flatter us rather too much, Signor Waldron," replied the pretty young woman. "Now that you have come back to us I hope you will honour my husband with a visit. You know the Palazzo Pizzoli, no doubt, and I hope in the autumn you will come out to us in the Romagna. We can give you a little shooting, I believe. You Englishmen always love that, I know," she laughed.

"I'm sure I shall be very charmed to make the acquaintance of the Count," he replied. "And if I may be permitted to call upon you I shall esteem it a great honour, Contessa," and he smiled at the elegant _dame de la Cour_ with his best diplomatic smile.

"So the young Princess Luisa is in disgrace again, I hear," remarked the old Marchesa Genazzano, who sat on Waldron's other hand, showing her yellow teeth as she spoke. "She's always in some sc.r.a.pe or other.

Girls in my day were never allowed the liberty she has--and she a Royal Highness, too!"

"We mustn't tell tales out of school," remarked the pretty Countess, with a comical grimace. "Her Royal Highness is, I fear, a sad tomboy.

She always was--ever since she left the schoolroom."

The old Marchesa, a woman of the bluest blood of Italy, and bosom friend of Her Majesty the Queen, grunted.

"Like her mother--like the whole House of Savoy. Always venturesome,"

she said.

"But the Princess is charming. Surely you will agree, Marchesa?"

protested the _dame de la Cour_.

"A very delightful girl. But she's been spoilt. Her mother was too lenient with her, and her goings-on are becoming a public scandal."

"Hardly that, I think," remarked the Countess. "I know the King is pretty annoyed very often, yet he hasn't the heart to put his foot down firmly. Even though she is of royal blood she's very human, after all."

"Her flirtations are positively disgraceful," declared the old Marchesa, a woman of the ancient regime of exclusiveness.

Hubert laughed and said:

"I have not the pleasure of knowing Her Royal Highness--perhaps Her Royal Naughtiness might describe her--but as one who has no knowledge of the circ.u.mstances, I might be permitted to remark that the love that beats in the heart of a princess is the same love as that beneath the cotton corsets of the _femme de chambre_."

"Ah, you diplomats are incorrigible," cried the old woman with the yellow teeth. "But the Princess Luisa is becoming a scandal. The Queen declared to me only yesterday that she was intensely annoyed at her niece's behaviour. Her latest escapade, it seems, has been to go to Bologna and take part in some motor-cycle races, riding astride like a man, and calling herself Signorina Merli. And she actually won one of the races. She carried a pa.s.senger in a side-car, a young clerk in a bank there, who, of course, was quite unaware of her real ident.i.ty."

"Quite sporting," declared Waldron. "She evidently does not believe much in the royal exclusiveness."

"Well, she cannot pretend that life at the Quirinale is at all dull.

Since the death of her charming mother, the Princess of Milan, she has lived at the Palace, and must have had a very pleasant time."

"Is she pretty?" asked Waldron, interested.

"Very--and most accomplished," replied the old stiff-backed Marchesa whose word was law in social Rome. "The House of Savoy is not distinguished by its good looks on the female side, but the Princess Luisa is an exception. Personally, I consider her the best-looking among the marriageable royalties in Europe at the present moment."

"But are her indiscretions really so very dreadful?" asked the diplomat, "or are they exaggerated?"

"Dreadful!" echoed the n.o.ble Montalcino, whose elegant attire and carefully trained moustache were so well-known during the hour of the _pa.s.seggiate_ in the Corso. He had been listening to the conversation.

"Why, _cara mio_," he drawled, "only the other night I saw her with her maid sitting in the stalls at the Salone Margherita, which is, as you know, hardly the place to which a Royal Highness should go. _Madonna mia_! There are lots of stories about Rome of her escapades," declared the young sprig of the n.o.bility. "It is said she often escapes from the Palace at night and goes long runs in her car, driving it herself.

Bindo Peruzzi found her early one morning broken down away out at Castelnuovo, and gave her a lift back in his car. She got out at the Porta Pia and Bindo pretended not to know who she was. I suppose she sent her chauffeur back for the car later on."

"Rather a daring escapade for a Royal Highness," Waldron said. "But, after all, Court life, Court etiquette, and Court exclusiveness must bore a girl to death, if in her youth she has been used to Society, as I suppose she had been during her mother's lifetime."

"Oh, of course one may easily make lots of excuses," shuffled the old Marchesa. "But I feel sure the girl must be a source of great anxiety to both Their Majesties. It would be a great relief to them if she were to marry."

"They say she is a favourite with the King, and that he never reproves her," exclaimed the young fellow across the table.

"Well," declared Hubert, "in any case she must be a merry, go-ahead little person. I shall look forward to meeting her."

"Oh, no doubt you will, signore, very soon," laughed the old leader of Society, when just at that moment the Amba.s.sador's wife gave the signal to rise, and the ladies pa.s.sed out, the men bowing as they filed from the room.

A quarter of an hour later when the male guests joined the ladies in the big, handsome drawing-room overlooking the garden of the Emba.s.sy, the Marchesa beckoned Hubert over to where she was ensconced in a corner.

"Signor Waldron," she said, "I find that Lady Cathcart has a portrait of Princess Luisa, the young lady whom we have been discussing. Look! It is yonder, on the table in the corner. The one in the oval silver frame."

Hubert crossed to where she directed and there saw a large oval photograph which he had not before noticed, for he had never particularly examined the portraits in the room. Beneath was scrawled in a bold Italian hand the autograph--"Luisa di Savoia."

He gazed upon the pictured, smiling face, utterly staggered.