The d.u.c.h.ess clutched Othomar's arm, almost fainting. The rumour spread around them. The equerries dragged their partners along half-swooning.

Two were seen carried away in a dead faint. The Queen of Syria stood vacantly beside the Archduke of Carinthia, who put his arm round her heavy waist to dance. She did not yet seem able to make up her mind.

Othomar pa.s.sed his arm round the d.u.c.h.ess:

"O G.o.d, I can't do it!" she stammered. "For G.o.d's sake, highness, don't ask me!..."

"We must," he said. "His majesty wishes it...."

"His majesty wishes...." she repeated.

Her legs trembled beneath her as though with electric thrills. Then she let him take her and they danced.

Every one danced.

The empress had rushed up the stairs and along the galleries to the bedroom-floor. She did not see that two ladies were following her; she thrust back a door:

"Berengar!" she screamed.

The young prince's bedroom was lighted. The boy had half-risen, in his little shirt, from his camp-bed. His valet and a chambermaid stood in dismay in the middle of the room.

"Berengar!" the empress gasped out, rejoicing when she saw him unharmed.

She threw her arms around him, pressed him to her bosom.

"Oh, mamma, you're hurting me!" cried the boy, indignantly.

Her jewels had brought a drop of blood from his little bare chest. She now embraced him more gently, with nervous sobs that choked in her throat. A spray of diamond ostrich-feathers fell to the ground; the maid picked them up with awkward fingers.

"Mamma, are they blowing up the palace?"

"No, Berengar, no, it's nothing...."

"Mamma, I want to go and look! I must see what's happening!"

"Berengar...."

The door had been left open; the emperor entered, calmly. The ladies stood in the corridor, waiting for the empress....

"Papa, may I go with you and look?"

"No, Berengar, there's nothing to see. Go to sleep...."

Then he offered his arm to Elizabeth:

"Madam," he said, tranquilly.

She threw him an imploring glance. He continued to hold out his arm to her. Then she kissed the boy once more, soothed him to sleep:

"Wait a moment," she stammered to Oscar.

She went to the gla.s.s; the maid, with her clumsy fingers, fastened the jewelled spray to the edge of the low-cut bodice, spread out the square train.

"I'm ready," the empress said to Oscar, in a lifeless voice.

She took his arm; the emperor just pressed her hand; and they nodded once more to Berengar and went.

Arm-in-arm the imperial pair appeared for the second time at the ball.

The empress was pale but smiling. She was magnificent, delicate with dainty majesty in the trailing white velvet, upon which, on the bodice and over the front of the skirt, flickered sprays of diamond ostrich-feathers, formed into fleurs-de-lys. An empress' crown of brilliants crowned her small, round head.

It was two o'clock. Generally the sovereigns were accustomed to stay till one o'clock at the court b.a.l.l.s. The Queen of Syria, however, in her exuberant love of life, had begged them to stay longer. They had consented. Had they left at one o'clock, the explosion would have taken place at the moment when Oscar would probably just have entered his apartments. They had first talked of the anterooms only: but it would now appear that great damage had also been done to the emperor's own room.

Supper began. They supped in a large hall; from every table rose a palm-tree and the hall was thus turned into a forest of palms. The floor was strewn with gold sand, which powdered the trains as their wearers walked upon it. Electric light shone through the long leaves like moonlight. In this moonlight the faces remained deadly white, like patches of chalk, above the glittering crystal and all the gold plate.

The music clattered with great cymbal-strokes of bra.s.s.

5

"To HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN OF GOTHLAND.

"IMPERIAL, "LIPARA, "--_May_, 18--.

"MY DEAREST SISTER,

"At last I can find time to write to you. The excitement of the visit of our good Syrians is over and Lipara has calmed down. But my reflections are nothing but sadness. And this is why, Olga.

"I fear that Othomar is much more ill than the doctors perceive. He has become thinner and looks very bad. He never complains much, but yet he told me lately that he often felt tired. The doctors think that he needs a rest and recommend a long sea-voyage. His journey through Europe, about which I wrote to you in my last, will have to be postponed. And now I want to ask you a favour.

"I know that Herman is soon going to take a long voyage on the _Viking_ to India, j.a.pan and America; and it would be my fondest wish at this moment that Othomar might accompany him. When the doctors advised a sea-voyage, I discussed the matter to Oscar, but we came to no decision.

My boy, you must know, Olga, has no friend of his own age; and this made me so sad and we did not know how nor with whom to send him on this voyage in a way which would be pleasant for him and which would not involve a solitary banishment from our home-circle. He is on excellent terms with his equerries, but yet that is not what I should desire: a cordial, mutual, confidential friendship with some one of his own age with whom he could spend a certain time, solely with a view to enjoyment and relaxation.

"I know quite well that it is to some extent my boy's fault and due to his innate diffidence and reticence. Nevertheless he has qualities for which he could easily be loved, if they were known, if he allowed them to appear. Don't you agree, Olga? You are fond of him too: it is not only my own blind mother's love that finds my son lovable and sympathetic? And that is why I should be so very glad if Herman would take him with him and learn to know him better: who knows whether they would not then come to love each other! Othomar has already told me that, on their journey through the north of Liparia, they were drawn much closer together than they had thought they would be; but it was a busy time: every moment was filled with duties and business and they had no time to talk together and get to know each other. And yet, at such a difficult period of united labour, two young men can learn to know each other even without talking. At any rate, they have already become more friendly. At one time, Olga, they used to dislike each other, to my bitter sorrow; they would even not meet; even outwardly there was nothing but coolness between them: oh, how unhappy all this used to make me, when I saw our boys so hostile to each other and remembered how _we_ used to be, Olga, when we were girls together in our beautiful old castle near Bucharest! How we lived bound up in each other! Olga, Olga, how terribly long ago that all is! Our parents are dead, our brothers dispersed, the castle is deserted and we are separated: when do we see each other? Scarcely now and then, for a couple of days at a time, when we meet somewhere for a wedding of relations; and then these are always restless days, when we can see next to nothing of each other. Then, sometimes, not even every year, a fortnight either in Gothland or here.

You sometimes reproach me that I, who am so fond of Gothland, come to you so seldom, but it is always for the same reason: Othomar does not care to leave Liparia and I can't leave my husband. I can be strong when I am at his side, but alone I am so weak, Olga. That anything might happen to _him_ which I should not share increases my dread unbearably.

I felt that again quite lately, when I was with Thera at Altara: our visit was announced and binding; and, however unwilling I was to leave Oscar, I was obliged to go, was I not? It was just at that trying period; Lipara was under martial law. But Oscar wished me to go and I went. Oh, how I suffered at that time!

"But I am becoming used to my fears, I do not complain and I accept life as it comes; I only hope that my boy will also learn to accept it thus.

Perhaps he will learn. Indeed it is not so easy for him, for he will have to do more than his mother, who, as a woman, can be much more pa.s.sive; and it is easier to learn to acquiesce pa.s.sively than actively.

But the Saints will surely give him strength later to bear his lot and his crown; this I rely upon. And yet, O Olga, it makes me so immensely sad that we are sovereigns! But let me not continue in this strain: it weakens one, it is not right, it is not right....

"There is also a secret reason why I should like to get Othomar away from Lipara, though it always grieves me so much to part from my darling. There seems after all to be some truth in those rumours about the d.u.c.h.ess of Yemena: Oscar asked Myxila about it and he could not deny it and even said that it was generally known. I do my best not to take it too much to heart, Olga, but I think it a terrible thing. O G.o.d, let me not think or write about it any more; otherwise it will go whirling so in my poor head! What can my son see in a woman who is older than his own mother! What a terrible world, this is, Olga, in which these things take place; and how can there be such women, whom you and I will never understand! For, after all, temperament is not everything: every woman has her own heart; and in that we ought all to see one another; but it would seem that we can't. In my sadness about this, I prefer to a.s.sume that the woman loves my boy and therefore deceives her husband. Oh, it is so wicked also of my boy: why need he be like this, he who is otherwise so good! I just a.s.sume that she loves him. Not long ago we had my last drawing-room, the function with which, as you know, our winter-season ends; and, when she came up to me and bowed before me and pressed her lips to my hand, she must have felt my disapproval and my sadness radiating from my fingers, for she rose out of her curtsey with a desperate look of anguish in her eyes and a sort of sob in her throat!

I stared at her coldly, but all the same I pitied her, Olga, for, when a woman of our world is so little able to control herself at a ceremonial moment, in the presence of her empress, her soul must have sustained a severe shock: do you not think so too?

"We are now quiet. In a week we are going to our summer-quarters in Xara, at Castel Xaveria; the weather is already very hot here. I should so much like to have your answer before we leave and to know how Herman takes my request. I know that he is very fond of me and will doubtless gladly grant it and that he will try to like Othomar for my sake; and let me hasten to add that it is also _Othomar's_ dearest wish that he should travel with Herman. The sea-voyage did not attract him in the least at first, because he knew of no one to take with him and he said he preferred to go with us to Castel Xaveria; but, when I mentioned Herman, he joined in my plan entirely.

"Olga, what will the summer bring us, peace or not? I dare not hope. The winter has been horrible; our northern provinces have not yet recovered from the disasters. The misery there is irretrievable. There is an epidemic of typhoid and there have been many cases of cholera. The strikes in the east are now over, but I am so afraid of that rough, violent repression. Oh, if everything could only be done with gentleness! That attempt on Othomar's life and the explosion at the last ball have also made me so ill. How I should love to see you and take you in my arms: can you not come to Castel Xaveria and spend the summer with us? It would give me such intense, such intense pleasure!

"Kiss Siegfried and the children for me. And answer me soon, will you not? I embrace you fervently.

"Your affectionate sister,