Chapter XXI: Queen and King

The fifth Neustrian Revolution was complete. The _plébiscite_ had been taken, and by an overwhelming majority Prince Timoleon Lucanor Malasorte was requested to proclaim himself Emperor of the Neustrians. Such a request was naturally regarded as a command by the person most concerned, and the telegram which informed foreign countries of the result of the _plébiscite_ contained also the first proclamation of the Emperor Timoleon V. A semi-official _communiqué_ accompanying the intelligence announced that the betrothal of the new monarch to the Grand-Duchess Sonya Eugenovna, cousin of the Emperor of Scythia, would take place almost immediately, and that this union would cement a closer alliance between the two countries than could ever have subsisted while the government of one was an autocracy and of the other a republic. These items of news were received without surprise by Europe generally, but in one distant corner of the continent they resulted in a wholly unexpected series of events.

It happened that there was a luncheon-party at the Palace at Bellaviste, to which the Premier, who had but just received the message from Neustria, came late, bringing the telegram with him. He said nothing until the meal was over, but then asked for an immediate audience of the King. Displeased by the breaking-up of her party, and no more disposed than she had been as Miss Steinherz to accept meekly anything that interfered with her wishes, Queen Félicia sent her equerry to ask her husband and Prince Mirkovics what the news was. The King, who had learnt by experience that his bride was quite capable of pursuing him and assisting at the interview unless her request was complied with, sent her a copy of the telegram, which she read as she moved about among her guests.

“Logan, come right here. I want you this instant!” were the words that startled the room, and made Baroness Radnika, who had accompanied the new Queen as her mistress of the household, look round in distress. She had thought Félicia cured of her Americanisms, but at the first moment of excitement the old habits revived. A covert glance of amusement passed between the ladies of the British and United States legations, and the Baroness threw herself bravely into the breach by trying to start a fresh subject of conversation as Maimie responded to Félicia’s summons.

“Read that, now. I might have been an empress to-day,” said the Queen, putting the telegram into her friend’s hand.

“Well, I guess it isn’t my fault you are not,” was the swift answer, given in an undertone, for Félicia’s words had been distinctly audible.

“That is so. And we can’t alter things now, any way.”

“No; you’ll just have to make the best of them.”

That was all, but Félicia remained pensive for the rest of the day, and there were those at hand who watched her every look and treasured up any incautious word. One of these was King Michael’s aide-de-camp, Captain Andreivics, to whom his master had recently intimated that he might make himself useful by marrying Maimie, so that, while still about the Court, she might be removed from her position of paramount influence with Félicia. Somewhat against his will, so far as his personal feelings were concerned, but with a keen sense of the direction in which his material interests pointed, the aide-de-camp had done his best to obey, only to find himself smartly refused by Maimie, and to become, as he shrewdly suspected, a never-failing subject of amusement to his lady-love and the Queen. To-day he saw his opportunity for a neat little revenge on both of them, for even at this early date the married life of the royal couple was by no means a path of roses. The King’s marriage had been extremely popular in Thracia, on account of the reputed wealth of the bride, which was expected to descend in a golden shower on all classes of the community. But it had proved rather to resemble the grants made to deserving objects by certain philanthropic bodies, which require as a condition of their reception that at least an equal amount shall be raised by the locality benefited. Moreover, the thrifty Thracians, already disturbed in their minds by the cost of the festivities incident upon the state entry of the King and Queen into their capital, found that their new sovereign had no intention of serving the country at the cost of her own wishes. Addresses presented by impassioned patriots implored her to adopt the national costume, which it was quickly known she had pronounced hideous, and to encourage local manufactures by wearing no materials but those made in Thracia, which she flatly refused to do. King Michael had never shown himself particularly amenable to the wishes of his people in the past, but he had a lively sense of the value of popularity, and felt that it would be an excellent thing for Félicia to make a few little sacrifices in the interests of the nation and the dynasty. Unfortunately, however, Félicia did not take this view of things. The King had already become aware that to be her husband meant chiefly that he was responsible for providing her with a “good time” generally, and that any attempt to coerce her would be either ignored or laughed aside. He had sufficient self-control to behave as if his forced acquiescence was due to a natural willingness to indulge his bride as far as possible, but he was keenly on the look-out for some means of inflicting an exemplary defeat upon her. It was unfortunate for him that in the first fall he tried with her, he himself was the defeated party. Félicia’s yacht, the Bluebird, in which they had spent the honeymoon, was about to convey them on a series of visits to various foreign Courts. King Michael wished to arm the vessel and change her status to that of a warship, thus doubling the numerical strength of the Thracian navy at one stroke; but Félicia not only refused her assent to the change, but persisted in continuing to sail the ship under the Stars and Stripes, and retaining her American crew. King Michael saw Maimie’s hand in this, and lacking the wisdom which would have led him to wait for the moment when the crew would begin to grumble at serving so far from home, argued the matter with Félicia on every possible occasion. His only hope of success lay in winning her over to his side, for her marriage-contract secured to her the absolute control of the vessel, but he could not bring himself to let the subject drop, and begin again when she had forgiven his persistence, and things were thus ripe for a quarrel between the two.

As for Félicia, she had obtained her ambition, and it wholly failed to satisfy her. Considered as the capital of a Balkan state, Bellaviste was wonderfully advanced, but to her it seemed dull, behind the times, and above all, provincial. The Thracians, who had so sturdily resisted Queen Ernestine’s efforts to Europeanise them, were not more ready to succumb to the fascinations of Queen Félicia, even when these were backed by the prestige of her wealth, and she was beginning to see that her intention of gathering a gay society around her was not likely to become a reality. People who were accustomed to Lutetia and Vindobona might pay a flying visit to this far corner of Europe if a series of special festivities was in progress, but they would not make a long stay, and most emphatically they would never regard Bellaviste seriously as a spot which must be visited once a year. Thus disillusioned, Félicia found herself suddenly face to face with the fact that by her own action, or inaction, long ago she had thrown away the chance of reigning as the supreme arbitress of taste and fashion in the city which to her, as to all good Americans, was the actual centre of the world. Instead of setting the fashions, all she could now do was to be allowed, by the special favour of the great _couturiers_ she patronised, to follow them at secondhand, and her taste could only be imposed upon the small and often recalcitrant circle of Thracian officialdom, instead of upon an admiring world.

Left to herself, Félicia would doubtless have followed Maimie’s prudent advice, and, with the common-sense on which she prided herself, have determined to make the best of her position, but she had gained too many enemies to be allowed to do this. Captain Andreivics found an ally in one of the many ladies to whom King Michael’s unguarded attentions in past years had given hopes of sharing his throne, hopes doomed to be blighted by a sudden and somewhat tardy recollection on his part of the duty he owed to his house. Félicia’s remark to Maimie, her obvious depression during the rest of the day, offered abundant material for disturbing the mind of a husband who was already notoriously prone to jealousy, and almost without knowing it, the conspirators added a touch here, and deepened a shadow there, until the least that could be imagined was that Félicia had played off Prince Timoleon Malasorte and himself against one another until her very marriage-day, and had only chosen him at last because she distrusted his rival’s prospects of establishing himself on the Neustrian throne. Whispers followed as to a certain mysterious cabinet in the inner boudoir which was sacred to her Majesty and Miss Logan. This cabinet had never been seen open, but ladies on duty in the outer rooms had heard it closed and locked, after the Queen and her favourite had sat for a long time rustling papers and talking in low tones. What more likely than that the cabinet contained love-letters, which would prove to King Michael that he had been cruelly duped by his bride, and in which she took a stolen pleasure even now?

There was this amount of inherent probability in the suggestions which Captain Andreivics ventured, somewhat gingerly at first, to throw out, that King Michael was very well aware Félicia had played off Usk and himself against one another in the manner described, so that she might quite conceivably have treated a third unfortunate in the same way without their knowledge. He had viewed her treatment of Usk with a fine indifference, but he was the last man to submit meekly to similar usage himself. Moreover, if there was any foundation for the aide-de-camp’s hints, Maimie also had deceived him in the most barefaced way, which demanded condign punishment. A strong man would have taxed both women openly with the alleged deception, but King Michael preferred to work on different lines. Armed with various bunches of keys, he made his way that evening by a private passage from his rooms to Félicia’s. The door opening into the passage from the inner boudoir was locked, but he opened it with a master-key, after listening to make sure that Félicia and Maimie were not talking inside. The room was empty, and switching on the electric light, he began to try the lock of the cabinet--a fanciful thing of old French workmanship, but well made and in excellent repair--with one key after another. To his disgust, there was not one that would open it, though he found two that seemed to fit. Striking a match, and examining the lock closely by its light, he saw where the difficulty lay, and that it was easily overcome. The blade of his knife, inserted where the doors met, forced back the bolt at once, and the secrets of the cabinet lay open before him. Moreover, the cabinet was packed with them; the mass of evidence was enormous. But as he took out one thing after another at random, he grew more and more perplexed. There were ball-programmes, bouquet-holders, _bonbonnières_, cotillon gifts and favours, a few valentines or Christmas cards of a specially flattering character, some invitations to important or exclusive gatherings. It was an interesting social museum, but it was not what he wanted. He pulled out the drawer at the top. Photographs!--he clutched them eagerly. But they were all of Félicia herself, in every possible variety of dress and attitude, and each marked with the date and place of its taking. More angry than ever, he drew out the deep drawer at the bottom. It was very full, and the rustling of paper rewarded him as he plunged his hand into it. But it was all newspaper--a collection of cuttings from all sorts and conditions of American journals, forming Félicia’s social biography, from her school “graduation” and coming-out ball to her marriage, over which the journalistic mind appeared to have run riot. There were interviews with her of various dates, accompanied by unrecognisable portraits of herself and of “J. Bertram Steinherz, father of Miss Steinherz,” and of “the late Mrs Constance L. Steinherz,” and interior and exterior views of the family abode. Some of the accounts had a small piece of dress-material carefully pinned to them, evidently that of the gown worn at the ball or theatre-party in question, and all were neatly arranged and docketed.

King Michael stood before the rifled cabinet in a towering rage. He was in no mood for the consolation, of which the examination of his wife’s dearest treasures might have assured him, that she loved no one but herself; all he felt was that he was in an absurd and ungraceful position. To put everything back as he had found it was almost an impossibility, even if he could get the cabinet-door to lock again. If he could not, Félicia and that American woman would guess the truth at once. Only one person would tamper with the cabinet so clumsily if he ventured to do it all. He was beginning to lay the papers in the drawer as smoothly as he could, trusting that Félicia might not remember the exact order in which she had left them, when he was horrified by the sound of voices in the next room.

“I just wish that Paris store would hurry up with those albums, Maime,” said Félicia, and her voice was coming closer. “When one has them make things to one’s own design, they’re so awfully long about it.”

“I’d have them send one at a time, just as they’re finished,” Maimie answered. “Then we can start on your graduation right away.”

“I guess I will,” said Félicia, as she drew the curtain aside. “Say!” she cried shrilly, “and what are you doing here, Michael?”

She seemed to grow taller as he looked at her, and towered above him so magnificently that he was conscious of actual fear. He tried to bluster the matter out.

“And if I am here, madame, has not your husband a right to--to----”

“To go through my private papers?” with deadly quietness.

“Exactly. I claim that right, and I exercise it.”

“And to break into my bureau?” Her quick eye had caught sight of the knife, and she took possession of it before he could prevent her. “Thanks for the warning. You may claim your right just as much as ever you want to, but you’ve exercised it for the last time.”

“In that you will find yourself mistaken, madame.”

“You are pretty much mistaken if you think you’ll have the chance of doing it again. Why, you little miserable----” she stopped suddenly. “But I won’t call you names. You’ll hear plenty before long from other people.”

“In your present rank of life, madame, it is not the custom to make the world a sharer in family disputes.”

“It is unavoidable at times,” drawled Félicia--“when a separation is to be arranged, for instance.”

“This is preposterous. You have no grounds for anything of the kind.”

“Just wait until I go way back to the States and ask for one.”

“Do you imagine that you will be permitted to visit America for any such purpose? No, madame, let us look at this affair in a sensible light. If I have damaged your cabinet, I will replace it. Your interesting records you will find untouched, and I shall be happy to add some article of value to your collection--” he waved his hand towards the drawers of nicknacks--“to show my regret for this slight misunderstanding. You will be so good as to make your own choice.”

“And you think you can bribe an American woman to overlook an insult like this?” demanded Félicia, but Maimie was at her side.

“Don’t fuss over it any more to-night, Fay. Leave things till morning.”

“Miss Logan’s advice is excellent. I trust I shall find you in a more accommodating temper in the morning, madame. I wish you a very good night,” and King Michael left the room with what dignity he could muster. At a sign from Félicia, Maimie locked the door after him.

“Maime, what about the Bluebird’s steam launch?” asked Félicia quickly.

“It was to wait around at the steps up to midnight to see if there was any change in the orders for to-morrow. Are you real set on it, Fay?”

“Dead set,” responded Félicia through her teeth. “Send those girls to bed. Let them know I’m just pining for a walk on the terrace.”

While Maimie went obediently to dismiss the dressers, Félicia threw on a cloak, and pulled the hood over her head. She had another cloak ready for Maimie when she returned, but close upon her heels came Baroness Radnika, with an anxious face.

“You will not walk on the terrace to-night, madame?” she said uneasily. “It is cold, and the damp is rising from the river. I thought I would venture to speak when I heard Miss Logan telling your dressers.”

“I am going out,” said Félicia. “I can’t stay indoors to-night.”

“It is something more,” said the Baroness, coming closer, and laying her hands on Félicia’s shoulders. “Forgive me, madame, but I see it in your face. You will not gratify your slanderers by giving them such a handle against you? Ah, dear child, I loved your father; bear with me, and listen to me now. Don’t take this step, whatever it may be. You are excited--agitated----”

“Feel of my hand, Baroness. There’s no excitement there--not much! I’m real fond of you, but I can’t have you delay me this way. The step I am going to take is due to myself, and nobody will blame me when they know the reason. If you’ll sort these things here, I’ll be grateful, for I may send for them soon, and I’m sorry that you’ll just have to stay here till morning.”

She withdrew herself from the clinging hands as she spoke, and before the Baroness knew what she was going to do, she had passed under the curtain Maimie was holding, and locked the door of the larger boudoir. This portion of the palace was now deserted for the night, and the Baroness could not make up her mind to attract the attention of any of the sentries in the garden to her position. Perhaps she had misjudged Félicia; she might only be intending to walk on the terrace, as she had said, but the Baroness’s heart misgave her as she remembered that the Bluebird was lying at the mouth of the river, with her fires banked, in case the King and Queen should be able to make a start early on the morrow. She would have been more anxious still if she had known that the yacht’s steam-launch was waiting off the palace itself for orders, and that those orders were conveyed to it by Félicia in person. But when the astonishing news arrived in the morning that the Queen was missing, and that her yacht had steamed out to sea in the night, it was the Baroness, released after a weary vigil, who undertook to face the King in the first fury of his wrath. He would send his gunboat to pursue the Bluebird, he would telegraph to every port that she was to be detained, he would enlist the help of every government in Europe to restore his truant wife, and he would--he would--words failed to express the punishment that should be meted out to every one concerned in the affair. But the Baroness held her ground, and fought Félicia’s battle with a courage which was absolutely regardless of the King’s frantic displeasure. To prevent a scandal, and leave the way open for the two to be brought together again, was her only aim, and she had her reward, when she left the King’s presence at last, in the brief announcement which was to be added to the daily Court Circular:--

“Her Majesty the Queen, attended by Miss Logan, left Bellaviste last night on board the royal yacht Bluebird for a short cruise. His Majesty the King, who had intended to accompany her Majesty, is detained some time longer by the course of public affairs.”

“For real genuine slave-driving commend me to a pretty woman who knows her own value--as all pretty women ought to,” added Mr Hicks gallantly, repenting, apparently, of his opening complaint.

“Who is the lady?” asked Usk.

“No less a person than her Majesty Queen Félicia, sir. She is lying off Paranati in the Bluebird, and has had the mate come over the mountains on horseback at the risk of his life, with a message for me that she has no use for matrimony just now, and I may as well fix up a separation.”

“What, already?” cried Usk, with unintentional irony.

“Why, certainly. The King has insulted her unpardonably, so she says, and I guess there isn’t anything to be done but eliminate him for the future.”

“Then you will be obliged to go to her at Paranati?”

“That’s so, and it makes me real mad. I had concluded to wander around in these parts some, and try and solve the mystery of this last disappearance of the Count’s, and now I don’t see but you’ll have to do what you can without me. What riles me is the way things seem to work for the other side all the time. It’s that which is telling on Lady Usk too, I guess.”

Usk nodded gravely, for it seemed as if Helene could not forgive herself for her failure to rescue Cyril. In vain her husband and Mr Hicks pointed out that she could not in any case have saved him by herself, and that the circumstances made it impossible for her to get together a band of helpers. She was convinced that there was something she might have done if she had had more presence of mind, or even--to go back to the beginning of her misfortunes--that she would have done far better not to approach the Pelenko mansion at all, rather than give the alarm by her sudden appearance there, and thus enable Dr Gregorescu to remove his patient. That there was some truth in this could not be denied, and Helene brooded over it until she was at times persuaded that Usk must hate her for her disastrous interference, and she made herself miserable over an alienation which was quite imaginary. To Usk such a state of mind was utterly incomprehensible. Helene was tired after her adventures and inclined to be morbid, he thought, and he dragged her out into the fresh air, and scolded her good-humouredly, never dreaming that she took his scoldings seriously to heart, and believed that he invited her out with him as a matter of duty.

“It’s a real misfortune that your mother is set fast at Geneva, and Queen Ernestine at Vindobona,” Mr Hicks went on. “You and I, Lord Usk, we don’t know just the way to get hold of a little sensitive girl like that, and put things so’s she must take a cheerful view of them. We can’t seem to fix it that she should have a good cry, and feel better, which is what she wants.”

Usk was silent. His private opinion was that Helene cried a great deal without feeling any better, but he was not going to say this to Mr Hicks, although he did not resent his curious assumption of a share in the charge of her, knowing that any woman in trouble imposed a responsibility upon the American to see that she was comforted or righted.

“Did you try suggesting to her that her mother should come here?” Mr Hicks asked.

“Yes; but it was no good. She said at once that her mother couldn’t leave her father, and that the Grand-Duke wouldn’t like this place at all.”

“No; I guess he’d raise Cain a few dozen times a day, which wouldn’t be soothing to his daughter’s nerves. And did you propose that she should take a fortnight’s vacation, and go right home to them?”

“Yes; and it made her perfectly miserable. She thought I wanted to send her away from me, and she was so unhappy I had to promise never to suggest such a thing again.”

“Well, well!” remarked Mr Hicks soothingly, “things will pan out all right yet. You know the pay-dirt’s there, and by and bye you’ll get down to the bed-rock, and find you’re come upon a real Bonanza. That’ll be when you understand her all through, see? And for the present you’ll do your level best to be father and mother to her as well as husband. That starched stone image of a maid of hers is worse than no one. And I wouldn’t wonder if things will all go smooth when once we start finding the Count, any way. That little lady of yours has so much grit that it only needs an emergency to bring her along smiling.”

“Pity the emergency doesn’t hurry up!” said Usk. “Why, Hicks, there must be a countryman of yours inside there,” as a slow voice of extraordinary solemnity, speaking in English, made itself audible on the terrace where they sat.

“That’s the mate of the Bluebird,” responded Mr Hicks. “I told him come out here when he was finished stoking. Is that you, Mr Bradwell? Come right out. Did the folks give you a good square meal?”

“According to their lights, sir, according to their lights.” The sailor, a gaunt middle-aged man, emerged from the doorway and bowed to Usk. “They don’t know to fix that sort of thing properly here.”

“Nor anywhere out of the States,” agreed Mr Hicks heartily. “I don’t wonder her Majesty is tired of these one-horse countries. Did I hear you say she didn’t incline to go back to Thracia alive?”

“Won’t trust herself on shore, not even to visit the Prince and Princess,” was the reply. “Ship prepared for action, rifles got up and ball ammunition served out. Boats patrolling around all night, watch on deck forbidden to snooze.”

“Ah, she knows her way about!” said Mr Hicks admiringly. For a few minutes they smoked in silence, and then the sailor inquired suddenly--

“Is there any sort of a State asylum in these parts?”

“Not much there isn’t--not near here, any way. What’s the racket?”

“What would be your candid opinion of a man that located one in the mountains, just over the Dardanian frontier there?”

“Either that he was the worst kind of a fool, or that he had concluded it was safer to keep himself out of sight.”

“Well,” pursued the sailor slowly, “there’s one of our firemen taken to hurling chunks of coal at the other men instead of into the furnaces. It ain’t only his fun, but the rest of the boys object to it. It seemed sort of suitable when I asked that guide of mine this afternoon what a certain house was, and he gave me to understand it was a lunatic asylum. I don’t see but a week or two way up there while we’re lying off Paranati might set this nigger right.”

“You didn’t go so far as make any inquiries?” asked Mr Hicks.

“Well, I just did, as we were giving the horses a rest in the village. Saw the doctor chap, ain’t been long at the business, only one patient at present, old fellow who’s forgotten his own name, but looks smart enough.”

“What’s the doctor’s name?” broke from Usk and Mr Hicks together.

“Gregory? no, something sort of foreign-sounding--Gregorescu, here it is. I said I would have him hear from me.”

“So you shall, to-morrow morning,” said Mr Hicks, “and I’ll go along there with you.”

“The doctor would as lief be rid of this old fellow, I guess. He told me he was quite safe to be allowed out, but he didn’t know where to find his friends.”

“Then his friends will find him. Did you say you were coming here?”

“Well, yes, I guess I did.”

“I don’t just see this,” murmured Mr Hicks, “but we will look into it to-morrow.”