Miss Portman glanced at the person indicated by a nod of the Princess’s head. Undismayed by the mass of human beings that blocked the Leopoldplatz a few yards ahead, he walked rapidly along without the least hesitation. He had the air of knowing exactly what he wanted to do, and how to do it. Even Miss Portman, who had no imagination, saw this by his back. The set of the head on the shoulders was singularly determined, and the walk revealed a consciousness of importance accounted for, perhaps, by the gray and crimson uniform which might be that of some official order. On the sleek, black head was a large cocked hat, adorned with an eagle’s feather, fastened in place by a gaudy jewel, and this hat was pulled down very far over the face.
“Perhaps he knows that they’ll let him through,” said Miss Portman. “He seems to be a dignitary of some sort. We can’t do better, if you’re determined to go on, than keep near him.”
“He has the air of being ready to die,” whispered Virginia, for they were close to the man now.
“How can you tell? We haven’t seen his face,” replied the other, in the same cautious tone.
“No. But look at the back of his neck, and his ears.”
Miss Portman looked and gave a little shiver. She would never have thought of observing it, if her attention had not been called by the Princess. But it was true. The back of the man’s neck and his ears were of a ghastly, yellow white.
“Horrid!” she ejaculated. “He’s probably dying of some contagious disease. Do let’s get away from him.”
“No, no,” said Virginia. “He’s our only hope. They’re going to let him pass through. Listen.”
Miss Portman listened, but as she understood only such words of Rhaetian as she had picked up in the last few weeks, she could merely surmise that he was ordering the crowd out of his way because he had a special message from the Lord Chancellor to the Burgomaster.
The human wall opened; the man darted through, and Miss Portman was dragged after him by the Princess. So close to him had they kept, that they might easily be supposed to be under his escort; and in any case, they passed before there was time to dispute their right of way.
“It must be the secretary of Herr Koffman, the new Burgomaster,” Virginia heard one man say to another. “And those ladies are with him.”
On and on, through the crowd, passed the man in gray and crimson, oblivious of the two women who were using him. There was something about that disagreeable back of his which proclaimed him a man of but one idea at a time. Close to the front line of spectators, however, there came a check. People were vexed at the audacity of the girl and the elderly woman, and would have pushed them back, but at the critical second the blue and silver uniformed band of Rhaetia’s crack regiment, the Imperial Life Guards, struck up an air which told that the Emperor was coming. Promptly the small group concerned forgot its grievance, in excitement, crowding together so that Virginia was pressed to the front, and only Miss Portman was pushed ruthlessly into the background.
The poor lady raised a feeble protest in English, which nobody heeded, unless it were the man who had inadvertently acted as pioneer. At her shrill outburst he turned quickly, as if startled by the sudden cry, and Virginia was so close to him that her chin almost touched his shoulder. For the first time she had a glimpse of his face, which matched the yellow wax of his neck in pallor.
The girl shrank away from him involuntarily. “What a death’s head!” she thought. “A sly, wicked face, and awful eyes. He looks frightened. I wonder why!”
Assured that the sharp cry did not concern him, the man turned to the front again, and having obtained his object – a place in the foremost rank of the crowd, with one incidentally for the Princess – he proceeded to take from his breast a roll of parchment, tied with a narrow ribbon, and sealed with a large red seal. As he drew it out, and rearranged his coat, his hand trembled. It, too, was yellow white. The fellow seemed to have no blood in him.
Virginia, standing now shoulder to shoulder with the man in gray and crimson, had just time to feel a stirring of dislike and perhaps curiosity, when a great cheer arose from thousands of throats. The square rang with a roar of loyal acclamation; men waved tall hats, soft hats, and green peasant hats with feathers. Beautifully dressed women grouped on the high, decorated balconies waved handkerchiefs or scattered roses from gilded baskets; women in gorgeous costumes from far-off provinces held up half-frightened, half-laughing children; and then a white figure on a white charger came riding into the square under the triumphal arch wreathed with flags and flowers.
Other figures followed; men in uniforms of green and gold and red, on coal black horses, yet Virginia saw only the white figure, shining, wonderful.
Under the glittering helmet of steel with its gold eagle, the dark face was clear-cut as a cameo, and the eyes were bright with a proud light. To the crowd, he was the Emperor; a fine, popular, brilliant young man, who ruled his country better than it had been ruled yet by one of his House, and above all, provided many a pleasing spectacle for the people. But to Virginia he was far more; an ideal Sir Galahad, or a St. George strong and brave to slay all dragon-wrongs which might threaten his wide land.
“What if he should never love me?” was the one sharp thought which pierced her pride of him.
The people were proud, too, as he sat there controlling the white war-horse with its gold and silver trappings, the crusted jewels of many Orders sparkling on his breast, while he saluted his subjects, in his soldier’s way.
For a moment there was a pause, save for a shouting, which rose and rose again; then he alighted, whereupon important looking men with ribbons and decorations came forward bowing, to receive the Emperor. The ceremony of unveiling the statue of Rhaetia was about to begin.
To reach the great crimson-draped platform on which he was to stand, the Emperor must pass within a few yards of Virginia. His gaze flashed over the gay crowd. What if it should rest upon her? The girl’s heart was in her throat. She could feel it beating there; and for a moment the tall, white figure was lost in a mist which dimmed her eyes.
She had forgotten how she came to this place of vantage, forgotten the pale man in gray and red to whom she owed her good fortune; but suddenly, while her heart was at its loudest, and the mist before her eyes at its thickest, she grew conscious again of his existence, poignantly conscious of his close presence. So near her he stood that a quick start, a gathering of his muscles for a spring, shot like an electric message through her own body.
The mist was burnt up in the flame of a strange enlightenment, a clarity of vision which showed, not only the hero of the day, the throng, and the wax-white man beside her, but something which was in the soul of that man as well.
“He is going to kill the Emperor.”
It was as if a voice spoke the words in her ear. She knew now why she had struggled to win this place, why she had succeeded, what she had to do – or die in failing to do.
Leopold was not half a dozen yards away, and was coming nearer. No one but Virginia suspected evil. She alone had felt the thrill of a murderer’s nerves, the tense spring of his muscles. She alone guessed what the roll of parchment hid.
“Now – now!” the voice seemed to whisper again, and she had no fear.
While the crowd shouted wildly for “Unser Leo!” a man in gray and red leaped, catlike, at the white figure that advanced. Something sharp and bright flashed out from a roll of parchment, catching the sun in a streak of steely light.
Leopold saw, but not in time to swerve. The crowd shrieked, rushed forward, too late, and the blade would have drunk his life, had not the girl who had felt all, seen all, struck up the arm before it fell.
The rest was darkness for her. She knew only that she was sobbing, and that the great square with its crowded balconies, its ropes of green, its waving flags, seemed to collapse upon her and blot her out.
It was Leopold who caught her as she swayed: and while the people surged around the thwarted murderer, the Emperor sprang up the steps of the great crimson platform, with the girl against his heart.
It was her blood that stained the pure white of his uniform, the blood from her arm wounded in his defense. And holding her up he stood dominating the crowd.
Down there at the foot of the steps, the man in gray and red was like a spent fox among the hounds, and Leopold’s people in the fury of their rage would have torn him in pieces as the hounds tear the fox, despite the cordon of police that gathered round him. But the voice of the Emperor bade his subjects fall back.
“My people shall not be assassins,” he cried to them. “Let the law deal with the madman; it is my will. Look at me, alive and unhurt. Now, give your cheers for the lady who has saved my life, and the ceremonies shall go on.”
Three cheers, had he said? They gave three times three, and bade fair to split the skies with shouts for the Emperor. While women laughed and wept and all eyes were upon that noble pair on the red platform, something limp and gray was hurried out of sight and off to prison. On a signal the national anthem began; the voices of the people joined the brass instruments. All Kronburg was singing; or asking “Who is she?” of the girl at the Emperor’s side.
CHAPTER VII
THE HONORS OF THE DAY
It is those in the thick of the battle who can afterwards tell least about it; and to the Princess those five minutes – moments the most tremendous, the most vital of her life – were afterwards in memory like a dream.
She had seen that a man was ghastly pale; she had caught a gleam of fear in his eye; she had felt a tigerish quiver run through his frame as the crowd pressed him against her. Instinct – and love – had told her the rest, and taught her how to act.
Vaguely she recalled later, that she had thrown herself forward and struck up the knife. An impression of that knife as the light gleamed on it, alone was clear. Sickening, she had thought of the dull sound it would make in falling, of the blood that would spout from a rent in the white coat, among the jeweled orders. She had thought, as one thinks in dying, of existence in a world empty of Leopold, and she had known that unless he could be saved, her one wish was to go out of the world with him.
More than this she had not thought or known. What she did was done scarcely by her own volition, and she seemed to wake with a start at last, to hear herself sobbing, and to feel the throb, throb, of a hot pain in her arm.
A hundred hands – not quick enough to save, yet quick enough to follow the lead given by her – had fought to seize the man in gray, and stop a second blow. They had borne him away; while as for Virginia, her work done, she forgot everything and every one but Leopold.
Reviving, she had heard him speak to the crowd, and told herself dreamily that, were she dying, his voice could bring her back if he called. She even listened to each word that rang out like a cathedral bell, above the babel. Still he held her, and when the cheers came, she scarcely understood that they were for her as well as for Leopold the Emperor. Afterwards, the necessity for public action over, he bent his head close enough to whisper, “Thank you”; and then for Virginia every syllable was clear.
“You are the bravest woman alive,” he said. “I had to keep them from killing that ruffian, but now I can speak to you alone. I thank you for what you did, with my whole heart, and I pray Heaven you’re not seriously hurt.”
“No, not hurt, and very happy,” the Princess answered, hardly knowing what she said. She felt like a soul released from its body, floating in blue ether. What could it matter if that body ached or bled? Leopold was safe, and she had saved him.
He pointed to her sleeve. “The knife struck you. Your arm’s bleeding, and the wound must be seen immediately by my own surgeon. Would that I could go with you myself, but duty keeps me here; you understand that. Baron von Lyndal and his wife will at once take you home, wherever you may be staying. They – ”
“But I would rather stop and see the rest,” said Virginia. “I’m quite well now, not even weak, and I can go down to my friend – ”
“If you’re able to stop, it must be here with me,” answered Leopold. “After the service you have done for me and for the country, it is your place.”
The ladies of the court, who, with their husbands, had been waiting to congratulate Leopold, crowded round the girl as the Emperor turned to them with a look and gesture of invitation. A seat was given her, and the arm in its blood-stained sleeve was hastily bound up. She was the heroine of the day, dividing honors with its hero.
There was scarcely a grande dame among the brilliant assemblage on the Emperor’s platform, to whom Lady Mowbray and her daughter had not a letter of introduction, from their invaluable friend. But no one knew at this moment of any title to their recognition possessed by the girl, other than the right she had earned by her splendid deed. All smiled on her through grateful tears, though there were some who would have given their ten fingers to have stepped into her place.
Thus Virginia sat through the ceremonies, careless that thousands of eyes were on her face, thinking only of one pair of eyes, which spared a glance for her now and then; hardly seeing the statue of Rhaetia whose glorious marble womanhood unveiled roused a storm of enthusiasm from the crowd; hearing only the short, stirring speech made by Leopold.
When everything was over, and the people had no excuse to linger save to see the Emperor ride away and the great personages disperse, Leopold turned again to Virginia.
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 pricked 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 Duchess, 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 gratitude. No; Miss Mowbray she was, and Miss Mowbray she must for the present remain.
Naturally the Grand Duchess 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 Duchess 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 assassin, receiving on the arm with which she had shielded 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 pass 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 cushions, blushing, 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 Duchess 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 passed 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-knobbed 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 classical 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 glass 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 passionately 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 vanishing 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 sexes 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 circumstances.”
“What circumstances?” 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 roué.”
“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?”
The Chancellor’s voice was angry at last, as well as stern, for he could not bear persistence – in other people – unless it were to further some cause of his own. To the delight of the woman who had once tried in vain to melt his iron heart, Count von Breitstein began to look somewhat like a baited bull. Really, said the Baroness to herself, there was an actual resemblance in feature; and joyously she searched for a few more little ribbon-tipped banderillos.
What fun it was to ruffle the temper of the surly old brute who had humiliated her woman’s vanity in days long past, but not forgotten! She knew the Chancellor’s desire for the Emperor’s marriage as soon as a suitable match could be found; and though she was not in the secret of his plans, would have felt little surprise at learning that some eligible Royal girl had already been selected. Now, how amusing it would be actually to make the old man tremble for the success of his hopes, even if it should turn out in the end to be impossible or undesirable to upset them!
“What could there be more – in honor?” she echoed lightly after an instant given to reflection.
“Why, the Emperor and the girl will see a great deal of each other, unless you banish or imprison the Mowbrays. There’ll be many dances together, many calls; in fact, a serial romance instead of a short story. Why shouldn’t his Majesty know the pleasure of a – platonic friendship with a beautiful and charming young woman?”