Her Majesty's Minister

Chapter Twenty Five

England’s Enemies

Late that night, after the Princess and most of her guests had retired, I entered the billiard-room to get my cigarette-case, which I had left there while playing pool earlier in the evening, and on opening the door found the two Ambassadors Wolkenstein and Hindenburg seated together in the long lounge-chairs in earnest conversation. They were speaking in German, and as I entered I overheard the words “in such a manner as to crush the English power on the sea.” They were uttered by the German representative, and were certainly ominous. It was apparent that both men were aware of the gigantic conspiracy of which the Princess had told me – the plot which aimed at the downfall of our nation. I could see, too, that my sudden entry had disconcerted them, for they both moved uneasily and glanced quickly at each other as though fearing I had overheard some part of what had passed between them. Then Wolkenstein with skilful tact cried in French:

“Ah, my dear Ingram! we thought we alone were the late birds to-night. Come here and chat;” and at the same time he pulled forward one of the long cane chairs, into which, thus bidden, I sank.

What, I wondered, had been the exchange of view’s between these two noted diplomatists? The faces of both were sphinx-like. Our talk at first dealt with nothing more important than the journey across the forest to Barbison which our hostess had arranged for the morrow. I knew, however, that the conversation held before my entrance had been about the European situation. Those men were England’s enemies. My impulse was to rise abruptly and leave them; but it is always the diplomatist’s duty to remain cool, and watch, even though he may be compelled to hobnob with the bitterest opponents of his native land. Therefore I remained, and, concealing my antipathy, lit a cigar and lay back in my chair, carelessly gossiping about the usual trivialities which form the subject of house-party chatter.

“The Princess looked rather pale to-night, I thought,” exclaimed Count de Hindenburg suddenly. “She seemed quite worried.”

“With a château full of guests the life of a hostess is not always devoid of care,” I remarked, blowing a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling.

I alone knew the reason of her paleness and anxiety, and was eager to ascertain what deductions these two shrewd men had made.

“To me,” observed the representative of the Emperor Francis Joseph, “it seemed as though the Princess had been shedding tears. Didn’t you notice that her eyes were just a trifle swollen?” and, turning to me, he added: “She scarcely spoke to you at dinner. Are you the culprit, Ingram?”

Both men laughed.

“Certainly not,” I denied. “Madame has a touch of nerves, I suppose – that’s all. Such a malady is common among women.”

“She looked quite worn out by fatigue,” declared Wolkenstein.

“Because she is never still a single moment in the day. Her thoughts are always for her guests – how to amuse them and to give them a pleasant time. It was the same two years ago,” I said.

“Remarkable woman – quite remarkable!” exclaimed de Hindenburg. “She had sufficient trouble with the rheumatic old Prince to turn any woman’s hair grey; but, on the contrary, she seems now to become younger every day. She’s still one of the prettiest women in Europe.”

“Everyone admits that, of course,” I said.

They exchanged glances, and I fancied that these looks were unusually significant. A flood of recollections of the sunset hour in the forest surged within my mind – how I had striven with firmness to release myself, and how I had been forced to turn away and leave the Princess. In that deep gloom, when the rosy afterglow was fading and the light within the leafy glade so dim that all objects were indistinct, I had seen her wild passion in all its magnificence. Her eyes had burned with the fierce, all-consuming fire of love, her cheeks were white and cold, and her words as reckless as they were passionate. She had charged me with entertaining affection for some other woman – a woman unworthy of my love, she had said with distinct meaning, as though she knew the duplicity of Yolande; and she had sworn an oath with clenched hands to compel me to reciprocate her passion.

The scene between us was one of unreason and of folly. She had been overwhelmed by the impulse of the moment, and I had bowed and left her, my heart full of conflicting emotions, my head reeling. She had suddenly twisted her soft arms about my neck and clung to me, whispering her love and declaring that I was cruel, cold, with a heart like adamant. But I had flung her off, and we had not met until two hours later, when I sat at her right hand at dinner, during which she had scarcely addressed a single word to me.

My companions had, of course, noticed this, and appeared to have cleverly guessed my refusal to accept the offer of the Princess. They little knew the terms upon which she had attempted to make a compact with me – that she was ready to betray them in return for my love.

I smoked on in silence and in wonder. The situation certainly presented a problem which I was utterly unable to solve. That the affections of such a woman as the Princess von Leutenberg were not to be trifled with I knew well, for women of her temperament are capable of anything when once they love with a fierce, uncontrollable, reckless passion such as she had seen fit to display that evening in the deep silence of the forest. Her proposition had, indeed, been a startling one. She had offered me the secret of the plot in return for my love!

With my two companions I chatted on until nearly two o’clock; then we separated, and I passed through the long oak corridors to my room. Upon the dressing-table I found a note lying. It was sealed with black wax, with the Leutenberg arms. I tore it open. It gave out an odour of fresh violets, and I saw instantly that the handwriting was Léonie’s.

“I have been foolish in my confession to you, Gerald,” she wrote in French. “But my heart was so full that I could conceal the truth no longer. I saw from your manner at dinner to-night that you despise me, and intend to hold me at a distance as an unwelcome woman who has flung herself into your arms. But I cannot help it. The misfortune – nay, the curse upon me – is that I love you. Would to Heaven that I did not! Because of you I have forgotten eatery thing – my duty to myself as a woman, my duty to my family as one of a noble house, my duty to my country, my duty to my Creator. When I left Paris long ago, I crossed the Atlantic, resolved to forget you; but all was in vain. I returned to Rudolstadt and shut myself up in retirement, striving to wean myself from the mad passion which had arisen within me. All, however, was futile, and at last I broke the bonds and returned to Paris. A month has gone by, and now I have told you the truth; I have confessed. To-morrow morning at eleven I shall walk alone through the forest, along the road that leads to By. My offer to you – an offer made, I admit, in desperation – still stands. If you accept it you will be enabled to save your country from her enemies, and we shall both find peace and happiness; if not, then the plot will be carried out, and at least one woman’s life will be wrecked – the solitary and unhappy woman who writes these lines and whose name is Léonie.”

She had written that letter calmly and coolly, for the handwriting showed no haste. Evidently she had penned it in the seclusion of her chamber, and Suzanne, her maid, had placed it upon my dressing-table.

I stood with the letter in my hand. My eyes caught my own reflection in the long silver-framed mirror, and I was struck by the haggard, anxious expression upon my own countenance. My personal appearance startled me.

Well I knew the character of this pale and beautiful woman whom all Paris had admired. The impression she gave everyone was that of perpetual and irreconcilable contrast. I had long ago recognised her high mental accomplishments, her unequalled grace, her woman’s wit and woman’s wiles, her almost irresistible allurements, her moments of classic grandeur, her storms of temper, her vivacity of imagination, her petulant caprice, her tenderness and her truth, her childish susceptibility to flattery, her magnificent spirit, and her princely pride. She had dazzled my faculties, perplexed my judgment, bewildered and bewitched my fancy. I was conscious of a kind of fascination against which my moral sense rebelled.

With all her perverseness, egotism, and caprice, she, nevertheless, I knew, mingled a capacity for warm affection and kindly feeling, or, rather, what one might call a constitutional good-nature, and was lavishly generous to her favourites and dependants. She was a Princess in every sense of the word, her right royal wilfulness and impatience often fathering the strangest caprice. There were actually moments when she seemed desirous of picking a quarrel with such immensities as time and space, and, with the air of a lioness at bay, regarded those who dared to remember what she chose to forget.

She had given me but little time to decide. To-morrow at eleven she would slip away from her guests and await me in that long, tunnel-like passage leading through the forest to the ancient town of Moret, at the confluence of the willow-lined Loing with the broad Seine. Its walls and gates, dating from the time of Charlemagne, still remain, and right in the heart of the little town stands the square old donjon keep, now ivy-grown and with its moat full of a profusion of sweet-smelling tea-roses.

I could save England if, in return for her secret, I gave her my love. Has any man ever found himself in similar perplexity?

Calmly I reasoned with myself, turning again to her letter, and feeling convinced that this sudden passion of hers was but a momentary caprice. No woman, if she were cool and reasonable, would have acted as she had done, for she must have recognised that the difference in our stations rendered marriage impossible.

My duty to my country was to learn the truth about this gigantic conspiracy; yet, at the same time, my duty towards myself and towards the Princess was to leave Chantoiseau at once and forget all that had occurred. Signs had not been wanting in Paris during the past few days to corroborate what she had told me regarding the conspiracy of certain Powers against the prestige of their hated rival England. There was a lull in diplomatic affairs that was ominous; a distinctly oppressive atmosphere which foreboded a storm.

Far into the night I sat thinking, trying to devise some plan by which I could obtain knowledge of her secret without committing myself. But I could find none – absolutely none.

At early morning, before the others were astir, I took a stroll down the hill to where the clear Seine wound beneath the chalk cliff. The larks were soaring high, filling the air with their song. The boatmen going down-stream shouted wittily to each other between their hands, and the bronzed villagers on their way to work in the vineyards chanted merrily the latest popular airs. Life is easy and prosperous among the peasantry around the Fontainebleau forest. In those clean white villages of the Department of Seine et Marne there is little, if any, poverty. I wandered through the pretty, flower-embowered village of Thomery, and, crossing the river by the long iron bridge, entered the smiling little hamlet of Champagne – a quaint and comely group of small cottages, where lived the vineyard-workers. This hamlet is famous for miles round because of a particularly venomous breed of vipers which infest the sun-kissed lands in its neighbourhood. Although only six o’clock, the prosperous little place was already busy, and as I wandered through the village, past the grey old church, and along the wide, well-kept road beside the river, I smiled to think that the name of that old-world place was known everywhere from Piccadilly to Peru, and was synonymous with wealth, luxury, and riotous living.

Heedless as to where I went, so deeply engaged was I in conflicting feelings and in trying to determine whether I should keep that appointment on the footpath to Moret, at last I found myself in Samoreau, where, crossing by the ferry, I returned to the forest, and at eight o’clock was back again, idling with several of the guests on the lawn in front of the château.

After drinking my coffee, I sat in the window of one of the petit salons that overlooked the valley and took up a pen, meaning to write to my hostess, for I had resolved to send her a note of regret, and return at once to Paris. I could remain there no longer.

Scarcely had I taken the note-paper from the escritoire, when the Baroness de Chalencon entered, fussy as usual and full of the excursion to Barbison.

“Léonie tells me you are not accompanying us,” she cried in French. “I’ve been searching for you everywhere. Why, my dear Gerald, you must come.”

“I regret, Baronne, that I can’t,” I answered. “I have to go to Paris by the midday train.”

“How horribly unsociable you are!” she exclaimed. “Surely you can postpone your journey to Paris! Wolkenstein and the others have declared that we can’t do without you.”

“Express to them my regrets,” I said. “But to-day it is utterly impossible. I must be at the Embassy this afternoon. I have important business there.”

“Well, I suppose if you failed to put in an appearance, a crisis in Europe would not result, would it?” she observed with a touch of grim irony. “At the Rue de Lille or the Rue de Varenne,” she added, meaning the German and Austrian Embassies, “they take things far more easily than you do. That’s the worst of you English – you are always so very enthusiastic and so painfully businesslike.”

“I am compelled to do my duty,” I answered briefly.

“Most certainly,” answered the Baroness. “But you might surely be sociable as well! This is not like you, M’sieur Ingram.”

“I must apologise, Baronne,” I said. “But, believe me, it is impossible for me to go to Barbison to-day. I have urgent correspondence here to attend to, and afterwards I must run up to Paris.”

When she saw that I was firm, she reluctantly left me, saying as she disappeared through the door:

“I really don’t know what is coming to you. You are not at all the light and soul of the summer picnics, as you once used to be.”

“I’m growing old,” I shouted with a laugh.

She halted, turned back, and, putting her head inside the room again, retorted in a low, distinct voice:

“Or have fallen in love – which is it?”

I treated her suggestion with ridicule, and in the end she retired, laughing merrily, for at heart she was a pleasant woman, with whom I was always on excellent terms of friendship.

Then I sat down again to write, hoping to remain undisturbed. But although I held the pen poised in my hand I could think of no excuse. Three carriages drew up before the château, the coachmen wearing those handsome scarlet vests, conical hats, and many gold buttons, which together represent the mode in Fontainebleau and at Monte Carlo; and the guests, a merry, laughing, chattering crowd, mounted into the vehicles. Big picnic baskets, with the gilt tops of champagne bottles peeping out, were placed in a light cart to follow the excursionists, and two of the guests – men from Vienna – mounted the horses held by the grooms. Then, when all was ready, the whips cracked, there was a loud shouting of farewells to the hostess, who stood directing her servants, and the whole party moved off and away to the leafy forest lying below.

I looked down from the window, and saw the Princess standing on the drive – a sweet, girlish figure in her white dress, her slim waist girdled with blue, and her fair hair bound tightly beneath her sailor-hat. She scarcely looked more than nineteen as she stood there in the morning sunlight, smiling and waving her little hand to her departing guests.