The Second Seal Page 10

  Esterházy sat up and turned his head to take a look at the newcomers. Then, with a quick exclamation, he jumped to his feet and swept off the travelling cap he was wearing. At his sudden gesture, the Duke stood up too. Next moment he found himself gazing straight into the face of Her Imperial Highness, the Archduchess Ilona Theresa.

  Only the low rope and three feet of deck separated them. She was dressed in a coat and skirt of Harris tweed that set off her figure to perfection. Her rich, dark brown hair was hidden by a big flat cap, a blue scarf of some soft material that held it in position framed her pale face and was tied in a large bow under her chin. She was looking directly into de Richleau’s eyes, and her own were wide with surprise at so suddenly being confronted with him.

  The Hungarian Count had noticed nothing unusual in her attitude. Brushing up his black moustache with an elegant flick of the fingers, he greeted her in German, with due deference but as an old friend.

  “What a delightful surprise to come upon your Imperial Highness in such circumstances. I knew that you were due to leave England shortly, but not the actual day of your departure. May I crave the honour of forming one of your suite, and so derive great additional pleasure in my journey home?”

  As he spoke, she turned towards him and extended her hand. “Certainly you may, Count. It is always a pleasure to have your company.”

  Stepping over the rope, he took her hand, bowed low over it, and kissed it. Then, with a smile and a wave towards de Richleau, he said:

  “I pray your Highness, permit me to present an old and treasured friend—a distinguished soldier and traveller, who will prove far more capable of entertaining you than myself—The Duke de Richleau.”

  The whole episode had taken place so unexpectedly, and so suddenly, that there was nothing de Richleau could possibly have done to avoid this embarrassing denouement. He had already removed his hat, so he could now only maintain a suitably grave expression and, remaining where he stood, bow formally before her.

  He expected her to acknowledge his presentation with a bare nod, then evade further conversation with him by saying that she did not wish to increase her suite further; or even to take her revenge by announcing that they had met before and she did not find his company amusing. But she did neither. Instead, she greeted him with the regal graciousness that she might have accorded to a stranger, but her words contained a subtle innuendo that was meant for him alone.

  “I have heard of M. de Richleau. It is said that he is a hunter of great daring, and goes only for the most difficult game. I shall be delighted for him to join my party and entertain us with some of his more successful exploits.” Again she extended her slim hand; and as de Richleau kissed it his heart suddenly began to beat faster from the vivid memory that when last they had met he had held her in his arms and kissed her lips.

  She then introduced the members of her suite. There was a middle-aged couple, the Count and Countess Aulendorf, in whose charge she was obviously travelling; two ladies-in-waiting of about her own age, Baroness Paula von Wolkenstein and Fraulein Sárolta Hunyády; her equerry, Captain Count Adam Grünne; and her treasurer-secretary, Herr Rechberg.

  While she was making the introductions, two sailors appeared and began to erect a canvas screen where the rope crossed the deck. It had, at first, been rigged on the leeward side of the vessel, with the object of screening the Archduchess from the stares of the passengers further forward. But it transpired that she was an excellent sailor and preferred the deck to windward, so the ladies’ maids, valet, grooms and footmen of the party had been given its more sheltered side.

  As the steamer nosed its way out of the harbour it became apparent that, although the day was fine, a cross-wind was making the sea distinctly choppy. So Ilona Theresa turned to the fairer and slighter of her two ladies, and said: “Paula, I know how you hate it when it’s like this. Do please go and lie down in your cabin. You’ll be much more comfortable there.”

  Bobbing a curtsy, the fair girl thanked her and left the group. Then Herr Rechberg stepped forward and asked permission to retire for the same reason. The others tucked their rugs about them and made themselves comfortable in their chairs. But Ilona had been telling Julien Esterhazy about her experiences while in England, for only ten minutes, when the Chief Steward arrived to announce that luncheon was now ready and would be served at any time Her Imperial Highness wished.

  She smiled and shook her head. “I believe it is going to be really rough when we get farther out, and I don’t want to miss a minute of it. I will have a cup of soup and a chicken sandwich up here. But that is no reason why any of you should be deprived of a proper meal. You will please all go below and enjoy your luncheon. I insist upon it.”

  It was clearly a command, so no one thought of remonstrating. Count Grünne summoned a tall footman, who took up his position behind the Archduchess’ chair, in case she required anything; and, with the plump, grey-haired Countess Aulendorf leading the way, the rest of the party went below to the dining-saloon.

  As the stranger in their midst, de Richleau was given the place of honour at the table, with Countess Aulendorf on his right and the dark-haired Fraulein Sárolta Hunyády on his left. While the hors d’œuvres were served the talk continued to be about Ilona’s visit to England, and after a while the Countess remarked a trifle tartly: “In some ways it was quite enjoyable, but I shall be extremely glad to get her home.”

  “Why do you say that, Countess?” inquired Esterházy. “I have always understood her to be a model of propriety and tact.”

  “She was until quite recently,” the Countess sighed. “No mistress of a princess’ household could have asked to be responsible for a more docile and well-behaved girl, particularly at her age.”

  “Ah! There you have it, my dear,” remarked the elderly Count. “She should have been married long before this, and at the first opportunity I mean to speak to the Emperor about it.”

  Adam Grünne was a short, dark man, with broad shoulders, and a small brown moustache. He gave a quick shrug. “The trouble with the Emperor is his great age. He hardly notices any longer as the years drift by, and probably thinks of his granddaughter as still scarcely out of the nursery.”

  “But tell us, Countess,” Esterházy urged, “what pranks has your lovely charge been up to?”

  “Oh, nothing very serious; yet enough to cause me considerable anxiety. On three occasions during the past fortnight she got up before the household was astir, ordered a horse to be saddled for her, and went riding, with only a groom in attendance, in Hyde Park. Even more perturbing, she slipped out of the house one afternoon all on her own and went shopping in Bond Street. Then, when I remonstrated with her, she only laughed and declared that she was tired of being treated like a child.”

  Sárolta Hunyády kept her dark eyes fixed demurely on her plate. She had abetted these escapades and knew that the Countess had more grounds for her disquietude than she chose to relate. Without consulting anyone, Ilona had sacked her elderly tiring-woman and engaged a flighty-looking French maid through someone she had met at one of the embassies. When asked for an explanation, she had replied sharply that she did not intend to be spied upon any longer. At two balls she had drunk just a little too much champagne; not enough for anyone who did not know her intimately to notice it, but enough to make her refuse to come home at the time scheduled for her departure; and, as etiquette forbade anyone leaving before she did, hundreds of people had been kept up till five in the morning. Then there had been the episode of the book. Only Sárolta knew how Ilona had got hold of it. She was a bright young minx herself and prepared to take any risk to make her charming mistress’ life a little more amusing. It had been a copy of Three Weeks by Elinor Glyn, and when poor old Olga Aulendorf had caught her charge reading it she had nearly had a fit. None of them could imagine what particular devil had got into Ilona these past ten days or so, but Sárolta hoped that he had found a permanent home, as that would mean much more exciting times than she had
been used to when they got back to Vienna.

  Count Aulendorf stroked his pointed grey beard with a well-manicured hand, then quite unconsciously poured cold water on Sárolta’s thoughts by saying to his wife: “Really, my dear, I don’t think you have any great cause to worry. Compared with ourselves, the English are very unconventional, and no doubt it is having been so much in their company that has affected her. As soon as she gets back to the more decorous atmosphere of the Emperor’s court she will soon settle down again. I am much more concerned about her health.”

  “Why do you say that, sir?” de Richleau asked. “She looks the very picture of healthy young womanhood to me.”

  “Yes, she looks strong enough, I agree. But as a young girl she was delicate. That was the main reason why the abortive arrangements for her marriage were put off longer than they would normally have been. But it is her cough that worries me, and the hectic flush that colours her cheeks every time she gets at all excited.”

  “Has she seen a doctor?” inquired the Duke.

  “Not recently. I tried to persuade her to see one in London, but she refused. Probably because she feared he might prescribe the curtailing of her amusements.”

  “I think,” put in Grünne, “that her cough has only been worse recently owing to the dampness of the English climate. A few weeks at Ischl should soon make it disappear.”

  “Or at Godolfo,” added Esterházy, who naturally favoured his native country. “She loves horses, and nowhere in the world can she get better riding than we can give her on our Hungarian plains.”

  The talk then turned to the Duke’s last visit to Budapest, and he inquired after numerous friends he had made there. Several of them were known to various members of the party, and during the rest of luncheon they gossiped cheerfully about their mutual acquaintances.

  By the time they got back on deck the sky had clouded over, and a heavy sea was running. It was clear that Ilona’s hopes were to be fulfilled, and that long before they reached Ostend the ship would be ploughing her way through a storm. The Archduchess looked up at her duenna and said:

  “I fear the weather is going to favour me at your expense, Frau Grafin. Please do not attend me further if you would prefer to lie down. And I know that on such occasions you like to have the Herr Graf with you; so I willingly excuse him too, from further attendance.”

  With a murmur of thanks the Aulendorfs retired. Then, as a bigger wave than they had yet encountered lifted the ship high in the water, Sárolta asked if she might follow them. Esterházy offered to take her below, and was evidently not feeling very well himself, as he did not return. But, meanwhile, Grünne and de Richleau had seated themselves on either side of Ilona and she had asked the Duke to tell them about some of his narrow escapes while after big game.

  The Duke had been on safari in the Belgian Congo, and shot tiger from the backs of Rajahs’ elephants in India, but so had many other people; whereas far fewer had hunted in the jungles of South America and, having taken part in several minor wars there, he had had many opportunities to do so.

  In consequence, he began to talk of the Amazon, with its hundred mile-wide mouth, turgid sheets of fast-flowing oily water, and tributaries so long that by comparison all but the largest rivers in Europe were only streams. He told of the moist, exhausting atmosphere that made one feel like a prisoner in some vast over-heated greenhouse; of the clouds of mosquitoes; of the snakes, tarantulas and leeches that swarmed on the banks of every creek; of the swamps from which one could see the fever rising like a grey mist in the evenings; and of the alligators, jaguars, and hostile natives with poison blow-pipes—all of which lurked unseen and might at any time deal death to the unwary traveller.

  But he also endeavoured to convey the beauty of the scene; the unending primeval forests, in which the branches of the huge creeper-covered trees met overhead so thickly that the blazing tropical sun filtered through only as a dappled twilight; the astounding riot of colour, the vivid green of the rank vegetation caught by a patch of sunlight, and the dazzling blue of patches of sky overhead; the monstrous white fungi, bigger than a man and splotched with red; the silvery ferns; the yellow lizards; the birds and butterflies of every hue; and, above all, the fascination of the unending mysterious silence in these distant places where white men had so rarely penetrated.

  He went on to relate a few episodes in which he had unexpectedly come face to face with dangerous animals, and others in which he had seen rare species that had never yet been captured for a European zoo. Then, as he paused, she said:

  “You seem to have had many narrow escapes. Tell us, now, which of your experiences you found most frightful.”

  He smiled. “I think my most terrifying experience was being caught and nearly crushed to death by a boa-constrictor, when my rifle was out of reach, and none of my people within call. I managed to force the brute’s head against the trunk of a tree and hack it off with my knife, but I was only just in time, and it took me over a fortnight to recover.”

  “Gracious God!” she exclaimed, her deep blue eyes widening. “That was certainly a desperate situation. In fact it is difficult to imagine one more terrifying, even in a nightmare.”

  “It was, indeed, just like a nightmare while it lasted, and I was very lucky to get away alive. But your Imperial Highness asked me a moment ago to relate, not my most terrifying, but my most frightful experience; and that is a very different story.”

  “I don’t quite follow, Duke. But please go on.”

  “It was at a time when my rifle went off unexpectedly. Long use of firearms has formed in me the habit of being very careful with them. But on this particular evening I forgot that I had told my servant to keep a loaded rifle handy in the camp all day, in case a big black panther which had been prowling around on the previous night made its appearance. I had among my weapons a pair of rifles that were of exactly the same pattern, and had used one of them that morning. By mistake, I picked up the wrong one of the pair and was just about to see if it had been cleaned properly. To a hunter like myself, you will appreciate that every moving thing is a mark upon which to practise swift sighting, even with an unloaded weapon. At that moment the most beautiful thing I have ever seen came into my view. It was a big butterfly the colour of roses and cream, with lustrous brown edges to its wings, and on each it had a circle of rich dark blue—the very colour, if I may say so, of your Imperial Highness’ eyes. For quite a time I watched it, fascinated by its beauty. Then, as it drew away from me I took a practice sight on it with my rifle and squeezed the trigger.”

  “Oh, dear! Did you kill it?”

  “No. It was distant and high above me; but it staggered for a moment in its flight, so my bullet must have touched it, however lightly, and proved a rude, unnerving shock. I only pray that my rash and thoughtless act may not have done it any permanent injury, and made it afraid of men in future.”

  “Aren’t you being a bit squeamish about a butterfly?” laughed Count Grünne.

  “This one was an aristocrat of its species,” replied the Duke seriously. “She had all the exquisite loveliness of a young princess. She was, perhaps, on her first flight. I had her quite close to me for a moment, and the colour of her wings had not been smudged by rough contact of any kind. My brutality was unintentional, but, even so, I count it a frightful thing to have deprived so wonderful a creature of even a fraction of her bloom.”

  They had been talking for over an hour and the ship was now pitching and rolling with considerable violence. Dark, angry clouds hung low in the sky from horizon to horizon. Big spots of rain began to splash upon the deck. Count Grünne unwrapped himself from his rug, stood up, and said:

  “Would not your Highness prefer to take shelter? It’s going to pour in torrents in a few minutes.”

  “Don’t be silly, Adam,” she reproved him. “You know there is nothing I enjoy more than to feel the rain lashing my cheeks. Get under cover if you want to, but give me my ulster first.”

  He obediently
put the rainproof cloak round her shoulders, but sat down again with a smothered sigh of resignation.

  De Richleau smiled at her. “It seems, Princess, that you inherit your grandmother’s love of foul weather. I have heard it said that at times the Empress Elizabeth went to the length of ordering herself to be lashed to the mast so that she might enjoy the beauty of a tempest.”

  “That is true. People say that I have a lot of other things in common with my grandmother Elizabeth, too. Her love of horses and travel; even my face is said to resemble hers.”

  They sat silent for a time, while the rain came down in earnest, and the Duke recalled what he knew of the strange woman of whom they had just spoken. She had been the second daughter of Max, Duke in Bavaria, the curious title having been given to him as the head of a younger branch of the family, to distinguish him from the king of that name. Back in the ’fifties a marriage had been planned between his eldest daughter and the young Franz-Joseph, Emperor of Austria. But the Emperor had chanced to see the younger daughter and, captivated by her dark beauty, he had insisted on marrying her instead. His love for her had endured until her tragic assassination in 1898, but she had not made him a good Empress, mainly on account of her acute shyness, which amounted almost to a mental aberration. She abhorred public functions and even being looked at by strangers, and had seized upon her delicate health as an excuse to leave the court, often for many months at a stretch, whenever she could possibly do so. Her travels had taken her as far as Madeira, and to England and Ireland, where she had hunted with great recklessness. To secure solitude had been a mania with her, and in the latter part of her life she had had built for herself a beautiful little retreat, after the pattern of an ancient Greek palace, on the island of Corfu. She had, from her first arrival in Vienna, developed a passionate admiration for everything Hungarian, and the one service that this gifted but morbid lady had rendered to her country was the binding of the Dual Monarchy together, at a time when Hungarian discontent had risen to a pitch that everyone else believed the two kingdoms must inevitably split apart.