The Great Court Scandal

“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 assured the little one, smiling. And then, seating herself, listened for half an hour to the child’s amusing prattle, and her joyous anticipation 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 Duchess 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 hoarse, 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 flashing 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, pushing 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 passion 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 God 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 re-read 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

The Three Strangers

By noon all Treysa knew, through the papers, of the indisposition of the Crown Princess; and during the afternoon many smart carriages called at the gates of the royal palace to inquire after her Imperial Highness’s health.

The pompous, scarlet-liveried porters told every one that the Princess had, unfortunately, caught a severe chill on her journey from Vienna, and her medical advisers, although they did not consider it serious, thought, as a precaution, it was best that for a few days she should remain confined to her room.

Meanwhile the Princess, in her silent, stunning, overwhelming sorrow, was wondering how she might call Steinbach. She was unapproachable to any but the Court set, therefore to call a commoner would be an unheard-of breach of etiquette. And yet she desired to see him and obtain his advice. In all that gay, scheming circle about her he was the only person whom she could trust. He was devoted to her service because of the little charitable actions she had rendered him. She knew that he would if necessary lay down his very life in order to serve her, for he was one of the very few who did not misjudge her.

The long day dragged by. She wrote many letters – mostly to her family and friends in Vienna. Then taking a sheet of the royal notepaper from the rack, she again settled herself, after pacing the boudoir in thought for some time, and penned a long letter, which when finished she re-read and carefully corrected, afterwards addressing it in German to “His Imperial Majesty the Emperor, Vienna,” and sealing it with her own private seal.

“He misjudges me,” she said to herself very gravely; “therefore it is only right that I should defend myself.”

Then she rang, and in answer to her summons one of the royal footmen appeared.

“I want a special messenger to carry a letter for me to Vienna. Go at once to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and ask the Under-Secretary, Fischer, whether Steinbach may be placed at my service,” she commanded.

“Yes, your Imperial Highness,” answered the clean-shaven, grave-faced man, who bowed and then withdrew.

Allen soon afterwards brought in little Ignatia to show the doll’s perambulator, with which the child was delighted, wheeling it up and down the boudoir. With the little one her mother played for upwards of an hour. The bright little chatterbox caused her to forget the tragedy of her own young life, and Allen’s kindly English ways were to her so much more sympathetic than the stiff formalities of her treacherous lady-in-waiting.

The little one in her pretty speeches told her mother of her adventures in the toy-shops of Treysa, where she was, of course, recognised, and where the shopkeepers often presented her little Royal Highness with dolls and games. In the capital the tiny Ignatia was a very important and popular personage everywhere; certainly more popular with the people than the parrot-faced, hard-hearted old King himself.

Presently, while the Crown Princess was carrying her little one pick-a-pack up and down the room, the child crowing with delight at its mother’s romping and caresses, there came a loud summons at the door, the rap that announced a visitor, and the same grave-faced manservant opened the long white doors, saying, —

“Your Imperial Highness. Will it please you to receive Herr Steinbach of the Department of Foreign Affairs?”

“Bring Herr Steinbach here,” she commanded, and then, kissing the child quickly, dismissed both her and her nurse.

A few moments later the clean-shaven, dark-haired man in sombre black was ushered in, and bending, kissed the Crown Princess’s hand with reverent formality.

As soon as they were alone she turned to him, and, taking up the letter, said, —

“I wish you, Steinbach, to travel to Vienna by the express to-night, obtain audience of the Emperor, and hand this to him. Into no other hand must you deliver it, remember. In order to obtain your audience you may say that I have sent you; otherwise you will probably be refused. If there is a reply, you will bring it; if not – well, it does not matter.”

The quick-eyed man, bowing again, took the letter, glanced at the superscription, and placing it in the inner pocket of his coat, said, —

“I will carry out your Imperial Highness’s directions.”

The Princess crossed to the door and opened it in order to satisfy herself that there were no eavesdroppers outside. Then returning to where the man stood, she said in a low voice, —

“I see that you are puzzled by the injury to my face when the papers are saying I have a chill. I met with a slight accident last night.” Then in the next breath she asked, “What is the latest phase of this conspiracy against me, Steinbach? Tell me. You need conceal nothing for fear of hurting my feelings.”

The man hesitated a moment; then he replied, —

“Well, your Imperial Highness, a great deal of chatter has been circulated regarding Count Leitolf. They now say that, having grown tired of him, you have contrived to have him transferred to Rome.”

“Well?”

“They also say that you visited Leitolf while you were in Vienna. And I regret,” he added, “that your enemies are now spreading evil reports of you among the people. Certain journalists are being bribed to print articles which contain hints against your Highness’s honour.”

“This is outrageous!” she cried. “Having ruined me in the eyes of my husband and the King, they now seek to turn the people against me! It is infamous!”

“Exactly. That really seems their intention. They know that your Highness is the most popular person in the whole Kingdom, and they intend that your popularity shall wane.”

“And I am helpless, Steinbach, utterly helpless,” she cried in desperation. “I have no friend except yourself.”

The man sighed, for he was full of sympathy for the beautiful but unjustly-treated woman, whose brave heart he knew was broken. He was aware of the love-story of long ago between the Count and herself, but he knew her too well to believe any of those scandalous tales concerning her. He knew well how, from the very first days of her married life, she had been compelled to endure sneers, insult, and libellous report. The King and Queen themselves had been so harsh and unbending that she had always held aloof from them. Her every action, either in private or in public, they criticised adversely. She even wore her tiaras, her jewels, and her decorations in a manner with which they found fault; and whatever dress she assumed at the various functions, the sharp-tongued old Queen, merely in order to annoy her, would declare that she looked absolutely hideous. And all this to a bride of twenty-one, and one of the most beautiful girls in Europe!

All, from the King himself down to the veriest palace lackey, had apparently united to crush her, to break her spirit, and drive her to despair.

“I hope, as I declared when we last met, Princess, that I shall ever remain your friend,” said the humble employé of the Foreign Ministry. “I only wish that I could serve you to some good purpose – I mean, to do something that might increase your happiness. Forgive me, your Highness, for saying so.”

“The only way to give me happiness, Steinbach, is to give me freedom,” she said sadly, as though speaking to herself. “Freedom – ah, how I long for it! How I long to escape from this accursed palace, and live as the people live! I tell you,” she added in a low, half-whisper, her pale, disfigured face assuming a deadly earnest look – “I tell you that sometimes I feel – well, I feel that I can’t endure it much longer, and that I’m slowly being driven insane.”

He started at her words, and looked her straight in the face. Should he tell her the truth of an amazing discovery he had made only on the previous day; or was it really kinder to her to hold his tongue?

His very heart bled for her. To her influence he owed all – everything.

No; he could not tell her of that new and dastardly plot against her – at least not yet. Surely it was not yet matured! When he returned from Vienna would be quite time enough to warn her against her increased peril. Now that Leitolf had left her, life might perhaps be a trifle more happy; therefore why should he, of all men, arouse her suspicions and cause her increased anxiety?

Steinbach was a cautious man; his chief fault perhaps was his over-cautiousness. In this affair he might well have spoken frankly; yet his desire always was to avoid hurting the feelings of the woman with whom he so deeply sympathised – the Imperial Princess, to whom he acted as humble, devoted, and secret friend.

“You must not allow such fears to take possession of you,” he urged. “Do not heed what is said regarding you. Remember only that your own conscience is clear, even though your life is, alas, a martyrdom! Let them see that you are heedless and defiant, and ere long they will grow tired of their efforts, and you will assume a power at Court far greater than hitherto.”

“Ah no – never!” she sighed. “They are all against me – all. If they do not crush me by force, they will do so by subterfuge,” declared the unhappy woman. “But,” she added quickly with an effort, “do not let us speak of it further. I can only thank you for telling me the truth. Go to-night to Vienna, and if there is a reply, bring it to me immediately. And stay – what can I do to give you recompense? You have no decoration! I will write at once a recommendation for you for the cross of St. Michael, and whenever you wear it you will, I hope, remember the grateful woman who conferred it upon you.”

“I thank your Highness most truly,” he said. “I have coveted the high honour for many years, and I can in turn only reassure you that any mission you may entrust to me will always be carried out in secret and faithfully.”

“Then adieu, Steinbach,” she said, dismissing him. “Bon voyage, and a quick return from Vienna – my own dear Vienna, where once I was so very happy.”

The man in black bent low and again kissed the back of the soft white hand, then, backing out of the door, bowed again and withdrew.

When Henriette came that evening to change her dress the woman said in French, —

“I ask your Imperial Highness’s pardon, but the Prince, who returned half an hour ago, commanded me to say that he would dine with you this evening, and that there would be three men guests.”

“Guests!” she cried. “But the Prince must be mad! How can I receive guests in this state, Henriette?”

“I explained that your Imperial Highness was not in a fit state to dine in public,” said the maid quietly; “but the Prince replied that he commanded it.”

What fresh insult had her husband in store for her? Did he wish to exhibit her poor bruised face publicly before her friends? It was monstrous!

Yet he had commanded; therefore she allowed Henriette to brush her fair hair and dress her in a black net dinner-gown, one that she often wore when dining in the privacy of her own apartments. Henriette cleverly contrived, by the aid of powder and a few touches of make-up, to half conceal her mistress’s disfiguration; therefore at eight o’clock the Princess Claire entered the fine white-and-gold reception-room, lit by its hundreds of small electric lamps, and there found her husband in uniform, speaking earnestly with three elderly and rather distinguished-looking men in plain evening dress.

Turning, he smiled at her as though nothing had occurred between them, and then introduced his friends by name; but of their names she took no notice. They were strangers, and to her quite uninteresting.

Yet she bowed, smiled, and put on that air of graciousness that, on account of her Court training, she could now assume at will.

The men were from somewhere in North Germany, she detected by their speech, and at the dinner-table the conversation was mostly upon the advance of science; therefore she concluded, from their spectacled appearance and the technical terms they used, that they were scientists from Berlin to whom her husband wished to be kind, and had invited them quite without formality.

Their conversation did not interest her in the least; therefore she remained almost silent throughout the meal, except now and then to address a remark to one or other of her guests. She noticed that once or twice they exchanged strange glances. What could it mean?

At last she rose, and after they had bowed her out they reseated themselves, and all four began conversing in a lower tone in English, lest any servant should enter unexpectedly.

Then ten minutes later, at a signal from the Prince, they rose and passed into the fumoir, a pretty room panelled with cedar-wood, and with great palms and plashing fountains, where coffee was served and cigars were lit.

There the conversation in an undertone in English was again resumed, the Prince being apparently very interested in something which his guests were explaining. Though the door was closed and they believed themselves in perfect privacy, there was a listener standing in the adjoining room, where the cedar panelling only acted as a partition.

It was the Princess Claire. Her curiosity had been aroused as to who the strangers really were.

She could hear them speaking in English at first with difficulty, but presently her husband spoke. The words he uttered were clear. In an instant they revealed to her an awful, unexpected truth.

She held her breath, her left hand upon her bare chest above her corsage, her mouth open, her white face drawn and haggard.

Scarce believing her own ears, she again listened. Could it really be true?

Her husband again spoke. Ah yes! of the words he uttered there could be not the slightest doubt. She was doomed.

With uneven steps she staggered from her hiding-place along the corridor to her own room, and on opening the door she fell forward senseless upon the carpet.

Chapter Ten

The Peril of the Princess

That night, six hours later, when the great palace was silent save for the tramping of the sentries, the Princess sat in the big chair at her window, looking out upon the park, white beneath the bright moonbeams.

The room was in darkness, save for the tiny silver lamp burning before the picture of the Madonna. The Trauttenberg had found her lying insensible, and with Henriette’s aid had restored her to consciousness and put her to bed. Then the Countess had gone along to the Crown Prince and told him that his wife had been seized with a fainting fit, and was indisposed.

And the three guests, when he told them, exchanged significant glances, and were silent.

In the darkness, with the moonlight falling across the room, the Princess, in her white silk dressing-gown, sat staring straight before her out upon the fairy-like scene presented below. No word escaped her pale lips, yet she shuddered, and drew her laces about her as though she were chilled.

She was recalling those hard words of her husband’s which she had overheard – the words that revealed to her the ghastly truth. If ever she had suffered during her married life, she suffered at that moment. It was cruel, unjust, dastardly. Was there no love or justice for her?

The truth was a ghastly one. Those three strangers whom her husband had introduced to her table as guests were doctors, two from Berlin and the third from Cologne – specialists in mental disease. They had come there for the purpose of adding their testimony and certificates to that of Veltman, the crafty, thin-nosed Court physician, to declare that she was insane!

What fees were promised those men, or how that plot had been matured, she could only imagine. Yet the grim fact remained that her enemies, with the old King and her husband at their head, intended to confine her in an asylum.

She had heard her husband himself suggest that on the morrow they should meet Veltman, a white-bearded, bald-headed old charlatan whom she detested, and add their testimony to his that she was not responsible for her actions. Could anything be more cold-blooded, more absolutely outrageous? Those words of her husband showed her plainly that in his heart there now remained not one single spark either of affection or of sentiment. He was anxious, at all hazards and at whatever cost, by fair means or foul, to rid himself of her.