The Road to Paris Part 34

"You know where to find me, Monsieur de St. Valier!"

At d.i.c.k's first words to Catherine, the Landgrave, with a sudden e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n and frown, had turned and walked precipitately from the room. The Landgravine, seeing Gerard's movement, had instantly hastened out by another door, that her eyes might not be outraged by a scene. It was the duty of all the guests to follow, and so, as if by magic, while the two young men stood gazing at each other, with Catherine looking on as if turned to marble, the three found themselves alone in the a.s.sembly rooms. Gerard was the first to perceive this fact. His face suddenly lost its look of wrathful challenge, and took on one of deep sorrow and concern. "_Mon Dieu!_" he moaned. "We are lost! Oh, d.i.c.k, why did you come here? Why didn't you understand?"

"What do you mean? Understand what?" asked d.i.c.k, with a sudden fear of having made a terrible false step.

"That it was for your own sake and ours we pretended not to know you,"

replied Gerard, despairingly. "The Landgrave attributed my sister's repulses to the fact that she loved another. We have tried to conceal who that other was, lest the Landgrave should destroy you; we thought best to keep even our acquaintance with you unknown at court, so lynx-eyed is that evil old lieutenant of police, Rothenstein. But now all is out, and your chance of making your fortune is ruined! Even your life is in peril if you stay in Ca.s.sel another hour!"

"Let me understand!" cried d.i.c.k. "Repulses, you said?" He turned to Catherine. "Then it is only in the Landgrave's evil hopes, not in fact, that you are his--that you--"

"How can you ask?" said Catherine, with a world of patient reproach in her voice and eyes.

d.i.c.k knelt at her feet. "Forgive me!" he said, in a broken voice that could utter no more.

She held out her hand. He pressed it to his lips.

"And what are we to do now?" he asked, rising.

"You must leave Ca.s.sel," said Gerard.

"We must all leave Ca.s.sel," said d.i.c.k.

"It is impossible for us to do so, at present," replied Gerard, in despair. "We have no other resource,--no way of living."

"But the bequest you came from America to receive?"

"We were disappointed of that. Our right has been disputed, and the matter is in the courts."

"Your relations in Quebec, and the estate concerning which you were in Philadelphia?"

"We quarrelled with our uncle in Quebec, and we would die before we would go back to his charity. Our share of the Philadelphia estate was a trifle, and was spent long ago."

"But you must leave Ca.s.sel! I shall find a way to provide for us all!"

"You forget," put in Catherine, "that my brother dare not leave without a discharge from the military service. He would be taken as a deserter, and shot. Trust me, Wetheral! I can hold the Landgrave aloof. His caprice will soon pa.s.s. You alone are in danger. It is best for us to stay till all can be properly arranged for our future somewhere else."

"Then if you stay, I stay!" said d.i.c.k, quietly. "I will act as if nothing had occurred, and await the consequences. After all, the Landgrave alone could have understood my meaning, when my miserable tongue so unjustly a.s.sailed you. The others would think my words merely the ravings of an unrequited lover. Yes, I will stay and see what comes of it!"

"Perhaps you are right," said Gerard.

"Thank G.o.d, then, we do not have to say farewell!" said Catherine, resting her eyes tenderly on d.i.c.k. "I must hasten to the Landgravine.

Good night! Trust me,--and be on your guard!"

"I trust you," said d.i.c.k, kissing her hand again. "But let the Landgrave take care!"

d.i.c.k then took leave of Gerard, whose presence in the palace was a matter of duty and not of privilege, and hastened to his inn.

The next day, he went at the usual hour to his room at the Academy of Arts. In the course of the forenoon he received orders to submit in writing his account of his mission to the Dusseldorf gallery. He was glad that he did not have to report to the Landgrave in person, for he had no desire either to meet that sovereign again or to enter the palace. In the afternoon Catherine came to the glover's house, this time attended by old Antoine, who had accompanied the St. Valiers from Quebec. The attendance of a man-servant was part of a lady-in-waiting's pay, and Catherine had been able to secure Antoine's appointment to her service in the palace. Hitherto, other duties had been allowed to prevent his following her to her brother's. Catherine brought the news that d.i.c.k's supposition had proven correct,--the belief in the palace was that his outburst had been merely a disappointed lover's.

In the evening, while d.i.c.k was alone in his room, there came a discreet knock at his door. Opening, he let in a man cloaked and m.u.f.fled, who immediately closed the door in a mysterious and secretive manner. The visitor then turned back his cloak and disclosed the face of Count Mesmer, the callous, self-a.s.sertive chamberlain. He was unattended.

"Good evening, Count," said d.i.c.k, bracing himself for any evil this visit might portend.

The Count took a chair at one side of a small table on which stood a lighted candle. d.i.c.k sat at the opposite side.

"My friend," began the Count, in a half patronizing, half overbearing manner, "that was an unwise explosion at the palace last evening."

"What do you mean?" demanded d.i.c.k, ruffling up.

"Oh, be calm! I don't blame you, except for bad judgment. You see, I am one of the few who knew what it all meant. I am a man who keeps his eyes open. I have not been blind to what has been going on between you and the beautiful lady-in-waiting. Neither have I been blind to the intentions of the Landgrave. By knowing that two and two make four, I understood last night's little scene perfectly."

"Then perhaps you have come to explain it to me!"

"Ach, my young friend, you come too quickly to conclusions! Wait and listen, and be not sarcastic! Why do I say last night's explosion was injudicious? Because it could only make matters worse, whereas there was, unknown to you, a secret way of mending them. Why do I speak of the Landgrave's intentions? Because he is as certain to carry them out as it is that this candle burns, if the power shall remain to him. Did any one ever hear of anything ever standing in a prince's way when he wanted a particular woman?"

"It is time then for an exception to the rule."

"And if there shall be an exception in this case, what will cause it?"

"The lady herself," said d.i.c.k, half inclined to strike the Count's face across the table.

"The lady herself! Granted that she be a paragon of virtue, do you suppose that the will of an obscure lady-in-waiting will endure long as an obstacle to the desires of a Landgrave of Hesse-Ca.s.sel, whose power over his subjects is absolute? What becomes of a woman who resists such power? How long does her life remain tolerable? What happens to those who support her resistance? Do princes have any pity for those who oppose their will, and will Frederick II. have any conscience where his desire to possess a woman is concerned?"

d.i.c.k shuddered. He knew what princely consciences were like, and that the sovereigns of Germany, of whatever t.i.tle, had over their own people unlimited authority.

"But," he said, in a slightly husky voice, "you spoke as if there might be an exception in this case."

"And I asked you what would cause it. You could not tell me. Shall I tell you? Can I trust you?"

"Certainly."

"Do you give me your word of honor that what I am about to say to you shall be kept a secret as inviolable as you would have the honor of your beloved one?"

"Yes,--my word of honor, as a gentleman."

"Then the cause will be this. You know the Landgrave is a Catholic. You know his subjects are Protestants. You can imagine whether they have in their hearts forgiven him for forsaking the religion of his fathers. You know that the hereditary prince has no love--no words, even--for his father, the Landgrave. You know also the Landgrave's reputation in the matter of morality, and that he is nearly sixty. Now, suppose a certain number of the court officers, and of those guards who are on duty about the palace and the city, should one fine day lock his highness in a chamber, place soldiers at the door, and declare the hereditary prince to be Landgrave in his stead."

"Dethrone the Landgrave!"

"It would be merely bringing the Landgrave's son to the throne a few years sooner than he would reach it in the order of nature. Do you fancy he would protest long, when despatches arrived at Hanau, inviting him to Ca.s.sel? Remember his feelings towards his father, and that he is already thirty-five years old. Do you think the people would object to a young and virtuous sovereign, who is not an apostate? Do you think the army would hold out in behalf of a Landgrave that hires it out, regiment by regiment, to another nation? What though the hereditary prince does likewise with his troops? Would the soldiers not relish a revenge upon the father, nevertheless? And, if the Landgrave's army should really stand in the way of all this, has not the hereditary prince the troops of Hanau, as well as the Hanoverian regiments there? Perhaps you think other powers would step in to prevent this forced abdication? Then bear in mind that the hereditary prince is the son of the daughter of an English king, and that that princess of England was ill-treated by the Landgrave. It is true, the present Landgravine is a collateral descendant of the house of Prussia, but, when we consider on what terms she lives with her husband, do we not find all the more reason why the King of Prussia should take no hand in the Landgrave's behalf? In fine, my young friend, when the Landgrave is shorn of his power, we shall have nothing to fear from him on the score of our sweethearts!"

And Mesmer leaned back in his chair, with a self-laudatory smile, like an orator who has made his point.

"But," asked d.i.c.k, eagerly, leaning forward on the table, to be nearer the Count, "when is all this to be brought about?"

"First tell me, are you willing to do what you can to help bring it about?"

"Willing? I am eager! Tell me what I am to do!"