CHAPTER XX.
REDINTEGRATIO AMORIS.
TO the surprise and delight of Mr Hicks, the attack of brain fever which he had feared for his patient did not ensue. Cyril remained for several days in a state of exhaustion amounting to stupor, in which he displayed no interest in outside affairs, and showed a curious irritability when the faithful Paschics tried to induce him to take in hand the routine work which had fallen into arrears during his absence. Of important business there was happily none to settle, for Europe was conscious that the master-hand was once more on the reins, and the anti-Semitic agitation died down as quickly as it had arisen, without making necessary any very drastic measures. Thus relieved from anxiety, Cyril turned impatiently from the records of work done, and copies of answered letters, to which Paschics tried to direct his attention.
“Let me rest, Paschics. Don’t you see I am utterly worn out? Your letter-books convey no meaning whatever to my mind. If another crisis arises, you can let me know; but now I must rest.”
“Nature is taking her revenge,” said the doctor whom Mr Hicks had felt it his duty to call in. “His Excellency’s brain has been overworked, and the cause of the strain is now regarded with loathing. The Count must take a holiday, and afterwards he will return to business with fresh zest. When this drowsiness passes off, get him up to Brutli or one of the other villages on Anti-Lebanon, and let him live in the open air.”
“That doctor is what I call a sensible man,” muttered Cyril drowsily when the prescription was repeated to him. “Let some one take rooms at Brutli, and find out whether the Queen has arrived.”
In pursuance of these instructions, Mansfield rode up to the village two or three days later. The hardships of the desert journey had made no permanent impression upon him, and after a nap which lasted the better part of two days the brownness of his skin and a hollow look about his cheeks were the only signs remaining of three weeks’ plain living and hard riding. He was in the best of spirits when he dismounted at the door of the inn and inquired of the landlord whether the Queen’s attendants still had their quarters there. M. Stefanovics, he found, had been spending the morning at the Institution in attendance upon her Majesty, but was expected to return shortly, and General Banics was in his rooms, whither Mansfield betook himself. The General answered his inquiry for M. Stefanovics with perceptible stiffness.
“I expect my colleague to return to lunch, certainly, but I cannot answer for his movements. His attendance upon the Queen has occupied a large proportion of his time of late. Her Majesty is pleased no longer to seclude herself so completely from the world. I had the honour of attending her upon a mountain ride yesterday.” At the close of this long series of brief sentences, General Banics confronted Mansfield with an expression of great severity, as though to say, “Allude to the indiscreet revelations made to you on your last visit if you dare!”
“I am glad her Majesty is so much better—in spirits, I mean,” Mansfield added hastily. “Do you think there is any chance of my being permitted to see her?”
“To see the Queen? you must be mad! And why is her Majesty to receive you, pray?”
“I am the bearer of a message from Count Mortimer.”
“From Count Mortimer? You did not say that when you were here last.”
“It was unnecessary. You did not ask me.”
Suspicion and indignation strove for the mastery in General Banics’s countenance. “Excuse me, I see my colleague coming. I must meet him,” he said brusquely, and hurried off to intercept M. Stefanovics on his way across the yard, and inform him of this new development of affairs. The chamberlain looked aghast.
“Did you obtain an interview with her Majesty the last time you were here, monsieur?” he demanded of Mansfield, plunging violently up the steps of the verandah as he spoke.
“No, I saw no one but a lady-in-waiting named Von Staubach.”
“There!” said M. Stefanovics, obviously much relieved, to General Banics, “you see the change in her Majesty cannot be owing to——” a reproving glance cut him short, and he turned again to Mansfield. “But what is your message, monsieur? or is it private?”
“Oh, no, not at all. Count Mortimer is ordered to make a short stay at Brutli for his health, and he is anxious to know whether his presence here would be disagreeable to her Majesty.”
“This is an outrage!” cried M. Stefanovics, almost dancing with rage. “Is it possible that the man can dare to force his presence again upon our august mistress, pursuing her even into the solitudes whither she has retreated to hide her sorrows? He, of all people! Such shamelessness is incredible.”
“Stefanovics, you are a fool!” growled General Banics. “How can it affect her Majesty if the Count comes here? His movements have no interest for her. His sending this message is a piece of impertinence. If you attribute any importance to it, you encourage the man in his presumption.”
“Settle it between yourselves, gentlemen,” said Mansfield mildly. “I am fortunate in having her Majesty as the final court of appeal.”
M. Stefanovics dragged the General aside, and they talked rapidly and emphatically for some minutes, such sentences reaching Mansfield as, “Can he have written already?” “He is aiming at re-establishing his old ascendency.” “He thinks that by coming here ill he will move her pity.”
“Monsieur,” said M. Stefanovics, returning, and addressing Mansfield with a judicial air, “we wish to know whether your master has any ulterior object in this extraordinary proceeding?”
“Really,” replied Mansfield, with extreme innocence, “I can’t say.”
“But does he entertain any hopes—any designs——”
“If you will be so good as to ask me a plain question, monsieur, I will try to give you a plain answer.”
“Then is he hoping to resume his old position with her Majesty?”
“May I ask what that was?”
“He was privately betrothed to her.”
“If it was private, how is it that you know anything about it?”
Confusion kept M. Stefanovics silent for a moment. “Madame Stefanovics was in the secret,” he said at last, “and when the affair terminated, she revealed the whole thing to me, in her indignation against Count Mortimer.”
“You and your wife are a pair of chatterboxes!” cried General Banics suddenly, in a fury of indignation. “No secrets are safe with you.”
“Thank you, General,” said Mansfield warmly; “I accept the reproof. Count Mortimer’s secrets are safe with me. Not even to you will I reveal them.”
M. Stefanovics had been speechless and almost black in the face with rage, but his delight on hearing his colleague thus hoist with his own petard relieved his mind, and he broke into a shout of laughter.
“Aha, General, the Englishman is too clever for us! Come, monsieur, what is it you ask?”
“All I want you to do is to let me wait in the anteroom while you carry the message to the Queen, so that I may be at hand if her Majesty is pleased to wish to ask me anything.”
“Excellent!” said M. Stefanovics, his good-humour quite restored. “Your demands are commendably moderate, monsieur. You will join us at lunch first?”
The meal passed off peacefully, although General Banics preserved a persistent silence and an expression of cold contempt towards both Mansfield and M. Stefanovics, and when it became his duty to conduct the uninvited guest to the Institution in the afternoon, he relieved the monotony of the climb by a single remark only.
“Understand, monsieur,” he burst out, standing still in the middle of the pathway, and glaring down at Mansfield, who was following him, “if your master succeeds in adding so much as a finger’s weight to her Majesty’s sorrows, I will kill him in her very presence!”
“There would be two people to reckon with in such a case, General—her Majesty and Count Mortimer himself,” said Mansfield, with great calmness. “It will be time enough, surely, to avenge the Queen when she asks for your help?”
The cool reasonableness of this speech stung the General to the quick, and uttering an inarticulate grunt, he turned to resume the march up the hill. Arrived at the Institution, he left Mansfield in the deaconesses’ guest-chamber, while he went to inquire the Queen’s pleasure, returning shortly, with a very bad grace, to say that her Majesty desired his attendance. The Queen was sitting in a marble verandah, which looked upon a small enclosed garden, warm and bright in spite of the advanced season of the year, and musical with fountains. Madame Stefanovics, a lady almost as stout and comfortable-looking as her husband, was with her, but when General Banics had presented Mansfield and retired to the door, she also retreated out of earshot, and Ernestine gave her visitor a significant smile.
“We must not shock Banics,” she said. “He does not know that I have ever seen you before. But tell me, is the Count’s illness serious?” her voice shook with anxiety.
“Oh no, madame. It is merely over-fatigue from the journey.”
“Ah, the sheikh told me of your wonderful adventures. But I was terrified when Banics said he was ill. You see, in his case I cannot be sure whether his illnesses are merely—political, or whether he is making light of a serious malady for reasons of state.”
“Indeed, madame, this attack is genuine, but only temporary, I am sure.”
The confident assurance brought the smile again to the Queen’s face. “He must recover quickly, for I am all impatience to see him. There is so much to be arranged, you know. Only the ladies are in the secret, and I have left Anna Mirkovics to act as my deputy at Sitt Zeynab. Banics and Stefanovics must hear of the betrothal before it is announced to the world. They have been so faithful to me. You will tell the Count this?”
“Certainly, madame. Does your Majesty wish to send him any other message?”
“Tell him”—she paused, and the smile grew dazzling—“give him all the messages you would wish to receive were you in his place. You understand?”
She held out her hand, and Mansfield kissed it and retired in a state of ecstatic confusion. Philippa was Philippa still, and there was no one like her in all the world, but here was a woman in whose cause a man might joyfully die, and dying, ask no reward but a glance from her eyes. Once Mansfield had wondered at Cyril’s renewed devotion to the Queen, which seemed so foreign to his character, and was kept in such strict subjection by his own will, but since he had seen her he had ceased to wonder. No man who had once succumbed to her charm of manner, however valiantly he might struggle against it, could ever escape from his bondage to those smiles. Mansfield felt no surprise at the fierceness with which General Banics was prepared to defend his mistress. It was only natural. In the General’s circumstances, Mansfield would have been impelled to do the same himself.
Two days later, Cyril, with his train of attendants, was established in the village inn, to the huge delight of the landlord, whose self-satisfaction made itself felt even in Damascus, leading, as it did, to visions of a huge hotel, to be built alla Franca on the site of the present modest edifice, and to become renowned throughout the Levant as a sanatorium. On the evening of Cyril’s arrival, General Banics, with fierce disinclination bristling in every hair of his moustache, took his way across the courtyard in uniform to inquire after his health, and to intimate that her Majesty had been pleased to consent to receive him the next day. The reception was a very formal, full-dress affair, designed for the sole benefit of the Thracian officials and Fräulein von Staubach, who had been excluded from the secret of the desert reconciliation owing to a well-grounded distrust of her discretion. Still, since she believed firmly that the Queen had returned to ordinary life solely on account of her letter, despatched after Mansfield’s first visit to Brutli, she was not without her compensations. Everything was done with great ceremony, and the deaconesses and their Syrian flock were duly impressed, while Cyril was so much exhausted that he could scarcely mount his horse to ride back to the inn. The suggestion of the formal audience had been his own, however, and his return was followed by a message brought by M. Stefanovics, to the effect that her Majesty had been grieved to see how ill Count Mortimer was looking, and that she hoped he would avail himself of her pleasant sheltered garden whenever he felt well enough to be out of doors. It was not to be expected that his presence should exclude the Queen from her own domain, or that their meeting there should be marked by the formality of the state reception, and towards the end of the first afternoon Fräulein von Staubach, who had been in attendance, crept noiselessly into the house, and ran to the room where Baroness von Hilfenstein and Madame Stefanovics were sitting.
“It is all settled! They are reconciled, the betrothal is renewed!” she cried rapturously. “I saw them exchange flowers—roses and sprays of myrtle. Oh, I was sure it would come right! I just slipped in to tell you. I could not wait.”
“But how can you be certain?” asked Madame Stefanovics cautiously.
“Certain! I shall ask her Majesty,” was the reply, as Fräulein von Staubach slipped back to her post. It was with the freedom of a privileged confidant that she attacked the Queen that evening.
“Dearest madame, may we not be allowed to congratulate you? Is not something going to happen that will make us all very happy? You know that your happiness is ours.”
“Is that so, Sophie? Then you must be very happy at this moment.”
“Indeed I am, madame. May I make the rest happy too?”
“No; I will tell Banics and Stefanovics myself,” said the Queen, and she did so the next morning. Whatever their secret thoughts were upon the matter, they appreciated their mistress’s consideration in communicating the news personally, and crushed down their feelings nobly when they congratulated Cyril. There was to be no secrecy this time about the betrothal. If Cyril had desired any delay in the announcement, he could not have asked it, with the memory of that twelve years’ engagement, which Ernestine had accepted with such unwillingness, and which had ended so sadly, fresh in his mind. They exchanged rings, therefore, in German fashion, and after taking this decisive step, notified their respective relations of the understanding to which they had come.
In the meantime, the news filtered down into the village through the gossip of the servants, and quickly reached Colonel Czartoriski at Damascus by the agency of one of the men employed at the inn, with whom he had bargained to keep him informed of all that went on. Unfortunately, however, the announcement that the Queen had begun to appear in public and to receive visitors only arrived at the same time; so that he found it was too late to carry out his orders and anticipate a reconciliation. In this dilemma he telegraphed to the Princess of Dardania for instructions, receiving the prompt reply, “Deliver my letter to her immediately,” and this he proceeded at once to do. It was with the utmost reluctance that Ernestine consented to receive him. The shrinking dread of her cousin, with which the sufferings endured at her hands had filled her, made her feel instinctively that the request boded ill to her new happiness, and she was only partially reassured by the reminder from her ladies that Colonel Czartoriski had been entreating an opportunity of delivering his mistress’s letter for months past, so that it could not possibly be concerned with the engagement. She received the visitor with the utmost formality, accepted at his hands the packet with which he was charged, made and answered the customary polite inquiries, and dismissed him, graciously but with marked coldness. She was not by nature a vindictive woman, but the injuries which the Princess of Dardania had done her were such as she could never forgive.
A few minutes later, Cyril, lounging idly on the grass beside one of the fountains in the garden, was disturbed by Fräulein von Staubach, who told him that the Queen wished to speak to him, adding the gratuitous information that her Majesty was very much troubled about something. He found Ernestine, as usual, in the marble verandah which served her as a presence-chamber. She had an open letter before her, and her face was very pale as she looked up at him.
“Cyril,” she said fearfully, “this comes from my cousin Ottilie.”
“Now for it!” was Cyril’s inward comment, as he braced himself to meet the blow, the imminence of which had been little present to his mind of late. “I hope it hasn’t brought you any bad news?” he added, with a coolness which he was far from feeling, but which tended to reassure the Queen.
“I have only looked at the first page,” she said; “but I can see that it is an attack upon you. She says that you have injured her deeply—that you belong to her, and not to me. Cyril, I must know, I must be sure! Do you love her? have you ever loved her?”
“I have never loved her, and I don’t now.”
“You have never asked her to marry you?”
“Never.”
“Then that is all I want to know.” She sprang up, and lifting the perforated cover from the mangal, or brazier, which stood close to the divan, threw the letter upon the glowing charcoal. “I won’t read any more. I am not interested in what she says against you. If you had really belonged to her, I would have given you up, though it would have broken my heart; but I can trust you, Cyril, and I do. You may have injured her, as she says—I know I am shut out of your political schemes,” she smiled sadly, “and I don’t ask how or why it was—but it was not in that way.”
“My dearest, I wish I was more worthy of your trust.”
“Trust me, my beloved; I shall always trust you.”
The subject of the unread letter was not again touched upon between them, but Ernestine did not forget it. She had a conviction that Colonel Czartoriski would linger in the neighbourhood in order to watch the effect of his embassy, and inform his mistress of the result. That very evening she caught a glimpse of him, half-concealed among the trees by the wayside, watching her as she rode. This was merely what she had expected, and she had prepared a disappointment for him. Turning and beckoning with smiling imperiousness to Cyril, who was close behind, she reined in her horse that he might ride beside her. As they rode, she engaged him in a low-toned confidential conversation, quite contrary to her wont in public, stretching out a hand the while to play with his horse’s mane. A second glance showed her presently that Colonel Czartoriski had seen enough, and was retreating down the road, with defeat in all his aspect, and she shook her riding-whip at his unconscious form.
“Go and tell your mistress exactly what you saw!” she cried passionately, and laughed at the sudden dawn of comprehension in Cyril’s face.
Baffled in his quest, Colonel Czartoriski left Brutli, acting upon instructions from the Princess of Dardania, and a few days of intense quiet and happiness succeeded his departure. The unfeigned joy felt by all the attendants of the betrothed pair in their reconciliation was reflected in the faces of the deaconesses and their Syrian peasants, and smiling looks and gifts of flowers or fruit greeted both Cyril and Ernestine everywhere. Even the melancholy Paschics went about with a beaming countenance and a flower in his buttonhole, and Mr Hicks’s characteristic pessimism displayed itself only in a remark aside to Mansfield, to the effect that this was the calm before the storm. What he wanted to know was, what would all those European kings think about it?
It happened that the Chevalier Goldberg was at the Schloss at Vindobona, closeted with the Emperor on a matter of high financial importance, when the Queen’s letter to her Pannonian kinsfolk arrived. The Chevalier had received the news of the engagement by telegram some days before, and therefore his presence at the palace on this particular morning may or may not have been accidental.
“Well, Goldberg, so our friend Mortimer is to marry Queen Ernestine?” said the Emperor, returning to the room after being summoned away by a message from the Empress.
“So I have heard, sir.”
“Well, no one is likely to offer any real objection. The Emperor Sigismund will dislike the idea, no doubt, but he has no means of coercing the Queen, and her son’s past treatment of her debars him from putting in a claim to interfere. But it is a preposterous affair, for Mortimer is little better than a beggar. I thought, Goldberg, that you financiers always made a point of paying your instruments well, that they might do you credit?”
“I have sometimes thought, sir, that your Majesty, and I, and the Syndicate I represent, and various other important people, are only the instruments—the pawns, if you will—of this little Englishman, who plays because it interests him to move the pieces.”
The Emperor smiled. “We shall have to do something for him, I suppose,” he said. “Is there anything that strikes you as particularly suitable?”
“Ah, sir, your Majesty knows that there is one post for which Count Mortimer is supremely fitted. His appointment to it would be welcomed with acclamation by the Jews all over the world.”
“You are sure of that? Well, I will set on foot negotiations. I am uneasy—in common with the whole Catholic world—about those fortified convents which Scythia has for years been so busy erecting on every point of vantage round Jerusalem. At the present moment I think we should be able to make her see reason; but when this famine is over——! But the Jews must be unanimous, Chevalier. That is indispensable.”
“I cannot conceive that any opposition could arise, sir.”
“Tell me, Goldberg, is Mortimer marrying the Queen in order to become Prince of Palestine, or seeking to become Prince of Palestine that he may marry the Queen?”
“I cannot say, sir. I can only surmise that it will be the proudest moment of his life when he can lay his coronet at her Majesty’s feet.”
“You are diplomatic. After all, his motives do not concern us.”
“May I entreat a favour of your Majesty? My friend has done me the honour to invite me to assist at his wedding, and if I might be permitted to inform him of the gracious intentions with which——”
“You may intimate in private the probable course of events, but not publicly. When is the wedding? Not settled? Oh, you need not try to deceive me for politeness’ sake, Chevalier. It is better that I should not know until it is all over. Make it a chose jugée; there is no going behind that, you know. The sooner the better.”
The day after this interview had taken place at Vindobona, a letter from Cyril reached Llandiarmid, communicating the great news to Lord Caerleon, and containing a proposal which excited the younger members of the family almost to the verge of lunacy.
“I want you to do something for me, Caerleon. Will you bring Nadia and the young ones to Damascus for the wedding? I need not tell you what a pleasure your presence would be to me, and Ernestine would appreciate the kindness deeply, especially as none of her own family are likely to be here. You need give yourselves no trouble. Goldberg has taken Ormsea’s yacht, the White Lady, for a year or two, and will pick you up at Brindisi and bring you straight to Beyrout. He is charged also with the duty of securing the parson, for there does not happen to be an English clergyman here at this moment, and we have decided that it would be unfair to ask any of the German missionaries to officiate, since they stand in such abject terror of the Emperor Sigismund. I have made up my mind you will all come. Bring Wright with you, if you can tear the old fellow away from domestic joys. It will be something for him to remember all the rest of his life. It is just possible that there may be some further sights and ceremonies that will interest you after the wedding; but I don’t want to estimate prematurely the yield of the international incubator. Telegraph to Goldberg at Venice if you can come, and entreat Nadia—for Ernestine’s sake, for my sake, for any sake—to leave her Needlework Guild and Nursing Association and Society for Making People Virtuous by Act of Parliament to take care of themselves for a month or so, and to give the bride the support of her presence. I know you’ll come, old man.”
“Oh, father!” burst from Philippa, as her father finished reading the letter aloud. “Oh, mother!”
“You feel that we ought to go, Carlino?” said Lady Caerleon.
“Now, how did you know that? Well, yes, I do.”
“Of course,” said Philippa; “and Usk’s vacation begins to-morrow. He can meet us in London as we pass through. It all fits in beautifully. To see Uncle Cyril married, and to a Queen! It’s like a book—like an old romance. Don’t you feel as if you were a Crusader, father? To go to Palestine, and all this as well!”