The impossible had happened.
CHAPTER XIX
THE THIRD COURSE
The Prince came forward. "What a delightful surprise," he said. "How good of you both to look me up! But I wish my prophetic soul had warned me to keep back dinner. We have just reached the third course."
And his eyes met the Chancellor"s.
"All the same," he went on, "I beg that you will honor me by dining.
Everything can be ready in a moment; and the _bisque eccrevisso_--"
"Thank you," cut in the Emperor. "We cannot dine." His voice came hoa.r.s.ely, as if a fierce hand pinched his throat. "Our call is purely one of business, and--a moment will see it finished. We owe you an explanation for this intrusion." He paused. All his calculations were upset by the Chancellor"s triumph; for to plan beforehand, what he should do if he found Helen Mowbray dining here alone with the Prince, would have been to insult her. His campaign had been arranged in the event of the Chancellor"s defeat.
Now, the one course he saw open before him was frankness.
To look at the girl, and meet guilt or defiance in her eyes would be agony, therefore he would not look, though he saw her, and her alone, as he stood gazing with a strained fixedness at the Prince.
He knew that she had risen, not in frightened haste, but with a leisured and dainty dignity. Now, her face was turned to him. He felt it, as a blind man may feel the rising of the sun.
He wished that she had died before this moment, that they had both died last night in the garden, while he held her in his arms, and their hearts beat together. She had told him then that she loved him; yet she was here, with this man--here, of her own free will, the same girl he had worshiped as a G.o.ddess in the white moonlight, twenty-four hours ago.
The thought was hot in his heart as the searing touch of iron red from the fire. The same girl!
His blood sang in his ears, a song of death, and for an instant all was black around him. He groped in black chaos where there was neither light nor hope, and dully he was conscious of the Chancellor"s voice saying, "Your Majesty, if you are satisfied, would you not rather go?"
Then the dark spell broke. Light showered over him, as from a golden fountain, for in spite of himself he had met the girl"s eyes. The same eyes, because she was the same girl; sweet eyes, pure and innocent, and wistfully appealing.
"My G.o.d!" he cried, "tell me why you are here, and whatever you may say, I will believe you, in spite of all and through all, because you are You, and I know that you can do no wrong."
"Your Majesty!" exclaimed the Chancellor. But the Emperor did not hear. With a broken exclamation that was half a sob, the girl held out both her hands, and Leopold sprang forward to crush them between his ice-cold palms.
"Thank Heaven!" she faltered. "You are true! You"ve stood the test. I love you."
"At last, then, I can introduce you to my sister Virginia," said the Crown Prince of Hungaria, with a great sigh of relief for the ending of his difficult part.
CHAPTER XX
AFTER THE CURTAIN WENT DOWN
They were alone together. Adalbert and Count von Breitstein had stolen from the room, and had ceased to exist for Leopold and Virginia.
"I"ll tell you now, why I"m here, and everything else," she was saying; but the Emperor stopped her.
"Ever since I came to myself, I wanted no explanation," he said. "I wanted only you. That is all I want now. I am the happiest man in the universe. Why should I ask how I came by my happiness? Virginia!
Virginia! It"s a more beautiful name even than Helen."
"But listen," she pleaded. "There are some things--just a few things--that I long to tell you. Please let me. Last night I wished to go into a convent. Oh, it was because I loved you so much, I wanted you to seem perfect, as my hero of romance, just as you were already perfect as an Emperor. To think that I should have been far away, out of Rhaetia, by this time, if Miss Portman hadn"t been ill. Dear Miss Portman! Maybe if we"d gone, nothing would ever have come right. Who can say?
"You know, my brother came to our hotel this afternoon. When his card arrived, we couldn"t tell whether he knew our secret or not; but when we had let him come up, we had only to see his face of surprise! He was angry, too, as well as surprised, for he blurted out that there were all sorts of horrid suspicions against us, and mother explained everything to him before I could have stopped her, even if I would; how I had not wanted to accept you unless you could learn to love me for myself, and then--how I had been disappointed. No, don"t speak; that"s all over now. You"ve more than atoned, a thousand times more.
"Dal explained things, too, then--very different things; about a plan of the Chancellor"s to disgust you with me, and how he--Dal--had played into the Chancellor"s hands, because, you see, he thought he was acting wisely for his neglected sister"s sake, and because he had really supposed an actress he knows was masquerading as Miss Mowbray. Very imprudently he"d told her that some day there might be--something between you and his sister. She knew quite well, too, that the real Mowbrays were our cousins; so you see, as she and he have quarreled it might have been an easy and clever way for an unscrupulous woman to take revenge. Dal would have gone, and perhaps have said dreadful things to the Chancellor, who was waiting down-stairs for news, but I begged him not. From being the saddest girl in the world, I"d suddenly become the happiest, for the Chancellor had told Dal, and Dal had told me, that you had _followed Helen Mowbray to ask her to be the Empress_. That changed everything, for then I knew you really loved her; but--just to punish you for what I suffered through you last night, I longed to put you to one more test. I said, "Let the Chancellor carry out his plot. Let me go with you to your hunting lodge." At first Dal wouldn"t consent, but when I begged him, he did,--for generally I can get my way with people, I warn you.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "_We shall never be old, for we love each other," said the Emperor_]
"That"s all, except that I hadn"t realized how severe the test would be, until you came in and I saw the look in your eyes. It was a dagger of ice in my heart. I prayed Heaven to make you believe in me, without a word, oh, _how_ I prayed through all that dreadful moment, and how I looked at you, saying with my eyes, "I love you; I am true." If you had failed me then, it would have killed me, but--"
"There could be no but," the Emperor broke in. "To doubt is not to love. When a man loves, he knows. Even out of darkness, a light comes and tells him."
"Then you forgive me--for to-night, and for everything, from the beginning?"
"Forgive you?"
"And if I"d been different, more like other girls content with a conventional affection, you wouldn"t have loved me more?"
He took her in his arms and held her as if he would never let her go.
"If you had been different, I wouldn"t have loved you at all," he said. "But if _things_ had been different, I couldn"t have helped loving you, just the same. I should have been fated to fall in love with Princess Virginia of Baumenburg-Drippe at first sight, exactly I as fell in love with Helen Mowbray--"
"Ah, but at best you"d have fallen in love with Virginia because it was your duty; and you fell in love with Helen Mowbray because it was your duty not to. Which makes it so much nicer."
"It was no question of duty, but of destiny," said the Emperor. "The stars ordained that I should love you."
"Then I wish--" and Virginia laughed happily, as she could afford to laugh now--"that the stars had told me, last summer. It would have saved me a great deal of trouble. And yet I don"t know," she added thoughtfully, "it"s been a wonderful adventure. We shall often talk of it when we"re old."
"We shall never be old, for we love each other," said the Emperor.
THE END