DANAË was much exercised in her mind by the fact that Prince and Princess Theophanis dined with the Wylies that evening, and that after the meal, when they all repaired to the verandah, Maurice and Wylie made a careful inspection of the surroundings, evidently to see that there were no eavesdroppers at hand. They were plotting something at last, she was sure, and she crouched in the corner of the nursery window, which was as near to them as she could get, and listened eagerly to the scraps of conversation that reached her ears until disgust drove her away. She could hardly have expected that they would speak in Greek for her special benefit, but she felt distinctly injured when she found they were using, not English, which she had begun to pick up, but French. This was for the sake of Armitage’s secretary, M. Lacroix, a soldierly-looking elderly man in a threadbare dress suit, who had sat almost silent throughout the meal. Now, on the verandah, Armitage brought him forward, and insisted on his taking a chair in the midst.
“Before my friend says anything,” he said in his pleasant boyish voice, “I must tell you that he is really not Lacroix at all—nor my secretary at all, for that matter. May I present the Cavaliere Onofrio dei Pazzi?”
“Ah!” said Zoe sharply. Then, as the rest looked at her in surprise, she laughed with some embarrassment. “I think we must have met a relative of yours at the Dardanian court three or four years ago, Cavaliere—Donna Olimpia Pazzi? She was maid of honour to the young Princess of Dardania.”
“That was my daughter, madame—and it is of her that I am come to speak.” He rose from his chair and stood before them, as though to give himself more freedom. “Highnesses, and my kind host, Colonel Wylie, you will hear the story I have to tell, and give me your opinion on it? May I be pardoned if I first say something of myself?”
“Whatever the Cavaliere Pazzi has to tell us we shall be delighted to hear,” said Maurice courteously.
“Highnesses—” the old man spread forth his hands deprecatingly—“it is not for me to recall to your minds the War of Liberation, nor the fact that the hero-king, Carlo Salvatore, took from his own breast the cross of St Eustace and St Martha and pinned it on mine, after a day in which we had fought side by side. Suffice it that the royal house of Magnagrecia has been pleased to regard me with continued favour. I have never been rich, but while my wife lived she made our small income provide amply for our needs. But she died”—he wrung his hands—“leaving me with an infant daughter, and the money, Highnesses—” he threw his arms wide—“it vanished! I am a soldier, not an economist—I confess it to my shame. My august sovereign and his gracious consort came to my aid, and provided for my child’s future. She shared the education of the young Princess Emilia, and was one of the ladies appointed to her household when she was married to the Prince of Dardania. It was by no will of mine that my child went forth into that barbarous country, but I could give her nothing, and her royal mistress promised to find her a husband of suitable rank, and provide a dowry. My little Olimpia parted from me with the tenderest of farewells, and I lived—yes, literally lived upon her letters. But by degrees there came a change in them. The eyes of paternal love are sharp. I suspected a love-affair, and not a happy one. I entreated my child to treat me with frankness, and at length she revealed the truth. She loved a person whose rank was such that they could never hope to marry. I saw the danger of her position, and begged her to return to me. You will ask, Highnesses, why I did not insist, why I did not rush immediately to Bashi Konak and fetch her away. Alas! I was ashamed, afraid, to do so. Behold me living upon my pension—the only portion of my income that could neither be anticipated nor alienated in my more lavish days. A modest apartment provides me shelter for the night; in the day there is the restaurant, the club, the promenade. But what kind of life would that be for a woman young, beautiful, accustomed to courts, who would, moreover, forfeit all expectations from her royal patrons if she quitted the Princess? Without a dowry who would marry her? Therefore I sent her good advice, but—oh, blame me, Highnesses; you cannot blame me more than I blame myself—I allowed her to remain. Then I received a letter overflowing with the innocent joy of a romantic girl who believes that she has obtained her heart’s desire. She was married. Her royal mistress wrote also, to assuage any anxiety that I might feel as to the marriage. It had been solemnised in her own private chapel, she herself and her mother-in-law had been present, every precaution had been taken to ensure its legality, but—” here came a tremendous pause—“it was to be kept secret for the present in view of the circumstances of the bridegroom. My daughter would remain with her mistress, and no difference would appear until Olimpia could be presented to the world as the bride of Prince Romanos of Emathia.”
“Romanos!” cried Princess Theophanis, her voice rising almost to a shriek. “Maurice, Zoe, do you hear? He is married, and to a Latin!”
“I knew about it,” said Zoe.
“My dear Zoe!” said her brother. “Was it fair to keep a thing like that from us?”
“I had no choice. She swore me to secrecy. It was on the day of his election—she was worried and excited—there had been some absurd idea among the people of his marrying me, you know—” she addressed the explanation to her husband—“and she could not stand it, poor thing. So she told me.”
“And you kept it secret—depriving Maurice of his throne, endangering the rights of your own child!” cried Eirene.
“I tell you there was no choice. She made me promise. And the election was over. It is not as if this had come out first.”
“What does that signify? They would have swept Romanos from the throne, sent him back to his beggarly Strio. It would have been the turning-point. Zoe, I can never, never forgive you. Maurice’s future—the future of your house—was in your hands, and you deliberately cast it away.”
“Pardon me, Princess,” said Wylie. “It seems to me that my wife was not free to act.”
“Most certainly she was not,” said Maurice decisively. “When Prince Romanos and I submitted our claims to the choice of the Emathians, we pledged ourselves to abide by the result. When that had once been announced, we could not have taken advantage of Christodoridi’s marriage to oust him, even if it had come to our knowledge.”
“Oh, you are mad, all mad!” cried Eirene bitterly. “I, who sacrificed my child in the cause of the house of Theophanis, I cry shame upon you.”
Maurice’s face hardened. “We fought in Hagiamavra for the freedom of Emathia, Eirene, not for our own aggrandisement. And we are interrupting the Cavaliere Pazzi in his recital. Pray, monsieur, proceed.”
The Cavaliere bowed. “At your Highness’s gracious command. The news that the marriage had actually taken place threw me into a great difficulty, Highnesses. My first impulse was to cross at once to Dardania, and snatch my daughter from a position likely to prove so compromising. But cooler reflection assured me that such an action could only give rise to suspicions in the highest degree injurious to her. I wrote therefore—with all a father’s authority, but I trust also with the natural sympathy of one who himself has loved—to desire her to obtain leave of absence from the Princess. A visit to her solitary parent would surely be the most natural thing in the world, and could be prolonged indefinitely until her husband found himself able to visit Magnagrecia and claim his bride from her paternal home. But alas! the love and obedience to which I had never appealed in vain in my child had turned traitor, and were now enlisted against me. My precaution precipitated the very evil it was designed to prevent. Olimpia’s letters expressed the strongest reluctance to comply with my request. The fear of offending the Princess her mistress, of becoming a burden upon me—ah, well I perceived that these were only excuses; her true object was to remain as near her husband as possible. At last I resolved on the strong measures from which I had shrunk at first, and bade her be ready, for I was coming to fetch her. What evil fate caused the arrival of that letter of mine to coincide with a visit of Prince Romanos to the Dardanian court? When I received an answer, it was to tell me that Olimpia had accompanied her husband on his return to Emathia, though the time was not yet propitious for him to acknowledge her. Then, when it was too late, I hesitated no longer, and went in search of my daughter. I found her in the island of Thamnos, just outside Emathian waters. Her husband had been obliged to visit Czarigrad, and durst not leave her behind at Therma. There was no prospect of his acknowledging her at present, so that she could not go with him. Highnesses, our interview was a sad one—it tears the heart to recall it. I besought my daughter on my knees to return with me—to force the hand of the man who was risking her reputation for his convenience. She refused, she had cast in her lot with him. Then I begged her to permit me to remain and confront him, to urge upon him the absolute necessity of postponing no longer the step which he constantly assured her it was his firm intention to take in the near future. If he would call in the servants and the crew of his vessel, and declare before them that she was his wife—I would be content for the present with that. The state entry into Therma, the public recognition, might come later. But she refused to let me stay. Evidently she feared what might happen if we met. She assured me solemnly that if I declared my conditions she would take sides with her husband, and agree with him that the time was not yet ripe. She and he and her personal attendants knew that she was his lawful wife, and with that she was content. Highnesses, she was not content. I saw it in her convulsed face, heard it in her agitated accents, but the husband now took the first place, and the father must yield. Sorrowfully I left my child, and since that day I never seen her.”
“You heard from her, surely?” cried Zoe.
“Did she remain in Thamnos, or accompany the Prince to Therma?” asked Wylie.
“I did receive letters from her, madame. The letters were posted in Therma, Colonel, and she gave me to understand that she was occupying a villa on the Prince’s property, not far from the city. To its actual position she gave me no clue—doubtless fearing that I might again attempt to see her. The first letter I received after our unhappy parting begged me very earnestly to make no further allusion to the question of her recognition, but to think of her as an ordinary wife, married to a private person whose business obliged him to be a good deal away from her. She had perfect confidence in her husband, feeling sure that he would acknowledge her at the earliest possible moment, and in the meantime she lived a rather lonely but by no means unhappy life. She amused herself with gardening and the study of the Emathian languages and her husband spent with her every moment that he could snatch from the cares of state. At length she referred of her own accord to the subject she had begged me not to mention. If her child should be a boy, she was sure the Prince would take that opportunity of acknowledging her. The child was born. It was a boy, and it was baptised John, after the last of the Emperors, by the Greek rite. Olimpia assured me continually of her husband’s delight in his heir, but there was no word of recognition. At last I lost patience, Highnesses, for what could happen that could provide a more favourable moment for the announcement? I wrote to my child then that the Prince’s perpetual postponement of his promise absolved me from my engagement of silence, and that I was intending to take steps to announce the marriage on my own account.”
“That was a dangerous thing to do, monsieur,” said Wylie.
“It was, Colonel. I recognise it now, but it was at the time that rumours of an alliance between Romanos and a Scythian Princess were freshly mooted. I desired to cut the ground from under his feet, in case he should actually be meditating any baseness of the kind. But, Highnesses, I endeavoured to mitigate any harshness which my proposal might seem to imply. I was about to visit Therma, I told Olimpia, and then I would lay before her husband a fact which would go far to remove any objections his subjects might be expected to entertain to the marriage.”
“And pray, monsieur, what was that?” demanded Eirene, her pale face flushed, and her eyes glowing.
“Simply, madame, that in the poverty-stricken veteran before you, you behold the great-great-grandson of Maxim Psicha.”
“Maxim Ghazi?” cried Wylie. “But why not have used that weapon before, Cavaliere?” For the name of the great Illyrian hero of the eighteenth century, who had built up a short-lived Christian state in his native highlands, and but for his early death by treachery, would probably have succeeded in driving the Roumis from Illyria, was one to conjure with among both Greeks and Slavs in Emathia.
“I was not aware of its value, Colonel. It is only the changes of these later years that have taught the world there is any Illyrian question at all. The formation of one Balkan state after another, and finally the emergence of Emathia from Roumi tyranny, have revived in the Illyrians the national feeling that has slumbered for generations, and which the Roumis did their best to stamp out by promoting local and tribal feuds. I have of course always been aware of my descent from the son of Maxim Psicha, whose mother fled with him to Magnagrecia on her husband’s murder, and who married an heiress of the Pazzi and took her name, but it was not until last year, when a deputation of Illyrian notables visited me in my humble lodging, and invited me formally to place myself at the head of their struggle for freedom, that I recognised it had any bearings on present-day politics.”
Wylie looked across at his brother-in-law with raised eyebrows, and Maurice spoke.
“You may not be aware, monsieur, that I myself was offered the crown of Illyria at the beginning of last year, and invited to negociate a British protectorate over the country when I refused it?”
“I was informed so, Highness, but you will permit me to say that it was your British birth, to which the Greeks in Emathia object, and not your Greek descent, which has no interest for the Illyrians, that led to the offer. When you referred the deputation to Prince Romanos and the Assembly at Therma, they turned their thoughts from you to the descendant of Maxim Psicha.”
“Another opportunity lost!” cried Eirene.
“But you would have objected strongly to their adopting me on any other ground than as the heir of John Theophanis,” said Maurice. “At any rate, it is satisfactory to know why the offer collapsed so suddenly. But I cannot imagine, Cavaliere, why Prince Romanos did not jump at your news. His subjects would not have objected to his marrying anyone who brought with her as a dowry the future adhesion of Illyria.”
“Alas, Highness! the news was never told. I received an urgent letter from Olimpia, entreating me to write what I had to say, but on no account to come to Therma. The moment was most unpropitious, and my visit might do irreparable harm by setting people talking. I could well understand that the moment was unfortunate for my son-in-law, for the rumours of his impending marriage were becoming more definite. As you have no doubt seen, his photograph and that of the Grand Duchess Feodora were published together in the papers, and it was positively, though not officially, announced that they were engaged. I did not wish to embarrass Olimpia by insisting on visiting her against her wishes, but I wrote very strongly pressing my point, and refusing to commit my news to paper. I have had no reply to that letter, Highnesses—no further letter of any kind from my daughter.”
His auditors were silent, and looked at one another. The inference was obvious, but no one liked to put it into words. At last Maurice spoke.
“Pardon me, Cavaliere; do I understand that you have had no news of Donna Olimpia from that day to this?”
“If they can be called news, I have had one or two brief notes from her husband—assurances that Olimpia could not write, but sent her love and implored me not to be anxious, and above all not to come to Therma. Nothing in her own writing—not even a pencilled signature. I wrote again urgently, demanding definite tidings of the nature of her illness, the opinion of her doctors—above all, some word from herself, failing which, I should start for Therma at once. What did I receive, Highnesses? A long letter purporting to be written by Prince Romanos at his wife’s dictation. Why do I say ‘purporting’? Because it was never dictated by Olimpia. It was not the letter which a loving, ailing woman would send to the fond father who was breaking his heart for her at a distance. It was the letter of a poet trying to put himself in such a woman’s place, full of images that would not occur to her, of words that she would not dream of using. Highnesses, when I received that letter, my mind was made up. I also have a soul capable of stratagem. I left behind me letters to be posted at my usual weekly intervals, and started for Therma by sea.”
He paused, to deepen the impression, then hurried on, his words seeming to overflow one another. “I said, Highnesses, that I possessed a mind capable of stratagem. To that let my proceedings on approaching Therma be witness. I sent my old soldier-servant on shore with my passport, and wearing clothes of mine, while I remained on board the steamer. No sooner was the name on the passport perceived than he was detained, and refused permission to proceed into the city. At the police-office he was photographed, his physical measurements taken, as though he were a criminal, and he was reconducted on board, informed that he would not be allowed to land. My worst suspicions were confirmed, but I have one consolation. Neither the photograph nor the measurements thus obtained will help the Therma police when they have to deal, not with old Filippi, but with me.”
“I think you are very wise, monsieur,” said Wylie. “I understand also that Prince Romanos has never seen you? You decided, then, to make your next attempt to enter Therma by land?”
“No, that was my idea,” said Armitage proudly. “We met at Trieste, and the Cavaliere heard I was bound for Therma, and asked me to take him in the yacht, but I thought it would be much safer to get in by the back door. So I got him a brand-new passport, and they let him pass the frontier without the slightest suspicion as Lacroix and my secretary. I thought he might go on to Therma to see about rooms for me, and make inquiries on his own account, and then when he has found Donna Olimpia, we can bring the yacht up and get her off in it.”
“But what do you think has happened to her?” asked Maurice.
“Why, that she’s imprisoned somewhere, of course.”
“Not likely,” said Wylie. “Unless she has altogether broken with her husband, he would have been able to get her to write to her father and beg him again not to come. No, I’m afraid it’s worse than that——” Zoe pinched his arm, and he changed the form of his sentence suddenly. “But after all, it’s quite possible that she has refused to be bamboozled any longer, and he has shut her up somewhere lest she should spoil his matrimonial projects.”
“Do you think he can have carried her off to Strio?” said Zoe. “Don’t you remember that stagey old ruffian of a father of his? He said to me so evilly that Strio had dungeons as well as palaces, when he thought I aspired to the honour of being his daughter-in-law.”
“But they are on the worst possible terms,” said Armitage.
“Do you know, I should say that Professor Panagiotis would be the best person to enlist on your side, Cavaliere,” said Maurice suddenly. “He is very keen on the Scythian match, but he can have no idea of the harm he has been doing.”
“No, wait,” said Wylie. “Imagine the Professor’s feelings when he finds out that he has been tricked all along—that the Scythian match can’t take place, and never could have done. I don’t think it would be for Donna Olimpia’s safety for him to make that discovery, and I am sure it will lose Prince Romanos his throne.”
“That last consideration would have no weight with me, Colonel,” said the Cavaliere. “Whether my son-in-law retains his position or not is a matter of indifference. My sole object now is to rescue my daughter from his clutches, and to carry off her and her child into safety—if it is not too late. After that forged letter I could believe him capable of sinking to any depths of baseness. And if it is so, if he has repaid Olimpia’s confidence with treachery, then I will unveil his iniquity and hound him from his throne, if I have to tramp barefoot through Europe.”
Eirene crossed quickly to where he stood. “Be it so!” she said, holding out her hand. “We are united. We will make it clear what he really is, and drive him from the throne he has usurped.”