Her Royal Highness: A Romance of the Chancelleries of Europe

“You are always such a confounded pessimist, my dear Jack,” laughed Waldron.

“Ah, Hubert, I’m a pessimist because I am always on the move from capital to capital and I learn things as I go,” was Jerningham’s quick reply. “You fellows at the Embassies sit down and have a jolly good time at balls, dinners, tea-fights, and gala performances. Why? Because you’re paid for your job – paid to remain ignorant. I’m paid to learn. There’s the little difference.”

“I admit, my dear fellow, that without your service we should be altogether a back number. To your department is due the credit of knowing what is going on in the enemy’s camps.”

“I should think so. I don’t pay out ten thousand a year, more or less, without getting to know something, I can tell you.”

Chapter Eight.

The Great Ghelardi

While Waldron and his friend were discussing matters, shouts suddenly arose everywhere – the golden pig had entered and was being touched for luck by everyone, and men raised their glasses to each other, to wish one another “A Happy New Year.” The Christian year had opened, but the Egyptians in fezes only smiled and acknowledged the compliment. Their year had not yet commenced.

“Well,” exclaimed Jack Jerningham at last. “You haven’t told me much about Beatriz.”

“Why should I, my dear fellow, when there’s nothing to tell?”

“Ah, I’m glad to hear that,” was his friend’s quick response, apparently much relieved, for the fascination of the handsome ballerina for Hubert Waldron was the gossip of half the Embassies of Europe. Hubert was a rising man, the son of a great diplomat, but that foolish infatuation would, if continued, most certainty stand in the way of his advancement. Many of his friends, even the Ambassador’s wife, had given him broad hints that the friendship was a dangerous one. Yet, unfortunately, he had not heeded them.

Every man who is over head and ears in love thinks that his adored one is the perfect incarnation of all the virtues. Even when Waldron had heard her discussed in the Casino, that smart club in the Calle de Alcata, he refused to credit the stories told of her, of the magnificent presents she received from admirers, and more especially from the favoured one, the septuagenarian Duke of Villaneuva y Geltru.

“Why are you so glad to hear it?” Hubert asked, his brow slightly knit, for after all it was a sore subject.

“Well, to tell you the truth, because there is so much gossip flying about.”

“What gossip?”

“Of course you know quite well. Why ask me to repeat it, old chap?”

“But I don’t,” was the other’s reply.

“Well,” exclaimed Jerningham after a pause, “perhaps you are, after all, like most men – you close your ears to the truth because you love her.”

“Yes, Jack, I admit it. I do love her.”

“Then the sooner you realise the actual truth, the better,” declared the other with almost brutal abruptness.

“What truth?”

“My dear fellow, I know – nay, everybody knows – your foolish, quixotic friendship with the girl. You love her, and naturally you believe her to be all that is your ideal. But I assure you she’s not.”

“How in the name of Fate can you know?” asked the diplomat, starting up angrily.

“Well – I’ve been in Spain a lot, remember. I’ve seen and heard things. Why, only a week ago in this very hotel I met old Zeigler, of the German Embassy at Madrid, and he began to discuss her.”

“And what did he say, pray?”

“What everybody else says, that – well, forgive me for saying so – but that you are a fool to continue this dangerous friendship with a woman whose notoriety has now become European.”

“Why should people interest themselves in my affairs?” he cried in angry protest.

“Who knows? It’s the same the world over. But I suppose you know that Beatriz has gone to London with the old Duke?”

“It does not surprise me. She asked me to accompany her and to introduce her, but I couldn’t get back from here in time.”

“She asked you, well knowing that you were tied by the leg – eh?” laughed Jack. “Well, my dear fellow,” he sighed, “I think you’re terribly foolish to continue the acquaintanceship. It can only bring you grief and sorrow. Think of what she was, and what she is now. Can any girl rise from obscurity in such a short time without the golden ladder? Ask yourself.”

“You need not cast ugly insinuations,” was Hubert’s angry retort, yet truth to tell, that fact had ever been in his mind – a suspicion the first seeds of which had been sown one night in the Casino Club, and which had now grown within his heart.

“Please forgive me if I’ve hurt your feelings, but we’re old friends and you know how very blunt I am. It’s my failing,” he said in a tone of apology. “But the name of the fair Beatriz has of late been coupled with half a dozen admirers. When I was in Madrid four months ago I heard that Enrique de Egas, the director of the opera, was her very intimate friend, and also that young Juan Ordonez had given her a pearl necklace worth eighteen thousand pounds, while there were whispers concerning Pedro de Padras, Conrado Giaquinto, Sanchez Ferrer and several other nuts of the Spanish nobility with whom you are acquainted. They laugh at you behind your back.”

“Yes,” Hubert responded, quite undisturbed. “But surely you know that it gratifies the vanity of those young bloods of Madrid if their names are coupled with that of a pretty woman. It is the same in Vienna, the same in Rome.”

“Ah, my dear fellow, I see you are hopelessly in love,” declared the other. “I was – once. But the scales fell from my eyes just in time, as I sincerely hope they will fall from yours.”

Waldron remained silent. In his pocket lay a letter which he had received only that morning from Beatriz, dated from the Carlton Hotel in London, a letter full of expressions of undying affection, and of longing to be again at his side.

Were those her true sentiments, he wondered? Had Jack Jerningham, on the other hand, told him the bitter truth? He had first met her a couple of months after her arrival in Madrid when she, poor and simply dressed, was dancing at the Trianon, and as yet unknown. Young Regan, one of the attachés, had introduced her, and the trio had had supper together at Lhardy’s, in the Carrera de San Jeronimo, and on the following day he had taken her for a drive in the El Retero, the beautiful park of Madrid, and afterwards to the Plaza de Toros where the famous Sevilian Espada Ricardo Torres, known to all Spain as “Bombita,” dispatched five bulls after some marvellous pases de pecho, redondos and cambiados before giving the estocada, or death-blow.

He remembered the hot afternoon and the breathless tension of the multitude as “Bombita” with his red cloth met the rush of the infuriated bull, stepped nimbly aside and then plunged his sword downwards through the animal’s neck into its heart. Then came the roar of wild applause in which his dark-haired companion joined with such enthusiasm that her cheeks glowed red with excitement.

In that crowded bar, thick with tobacco smoke and noisy with the laughter of well-dressed men, the beautiful face of the dancer who, since that blazing well-remembered day, had won fame all over Europe, rose before him in the mists. Did he really love her, he asked himself as Jack Jerningham sat at his side, now smoking in silence. Yes he did, alas! he did.

And yet how strange – how very foolish, after all. He, Hubert Waldron, who for years had lived the exotic social life of diplomacy, who, being a smart, handsome man, had received the smiles and languishing glances of a thousand women of all ages, had fallen in love with that girl of the people – the daughter of a drunken dock labourer.

His friend Jerningham watched him covertly and wondered what was passing in his mind.

“I hope I haven’t offended you, Waldron,” he ventured to exclaim at last. “Perhaps I ought not to have spoken so frankly.”

“Oh, you haven’t offended me in the least, my dear old chap,” was the other’s open reply. “I may have been a fool. Probably I am. But tell me frankly are you really certain that all these stories concerning Beatriz have any foundation in fact?”

“Any foundation?” echoed the other, staring at him with his blue eyes. “You have only to go about the capital with your ears open, and you will hear stranger and more scandalous stories than those. There is the husband, you know, the cab-driver, who threatened the Duke with divorce, and has been paid a hundred thousand pesetas as hush-money.”

“Is that a fact?” gasped his friend. “Are you quite certain of it? I can’t really believe it.”

“I’m quite certain of it. Ask Carreno, the advocate in the Calle Mayor. He made the payment, and told me with his own lips. The story is common property all over Madrid.”

Waldron’s countenance changed, but he made no reply.

“The woman and her husband are making a very substantial harvest out of it, depend upon it, Hubert. Therefore I do, as your old pal, beg of you to reconsider the whole situation. Is it really judicious for you to be associated any longer with her? I know I have no right to dictate to you – or even to make the suggestion. But I venture to do so for your own sake.”

“I know! I know!” was his impatient reply. “Yes. I’ve been a fool, no doubt, Jack – a damned idiot.”

“No; don’t condemn yourself until you have made your own inquiries. When you get back to the Embassy look around and learn the truth. Then I hope you will become convinced of the foundation of my allegations. When you are, let me know, old chap, won’t you?”

At that moment a stout, elderly man, accompanied by another a trifle his junior, who wore the button of the Legion d’Honneur in the lapel of his dress-coat, elbowed their way laboriously up to the bar.

Jack Jerningham’s quick eyes discerned them, whereupon in amazement he ejaculated in a low whisper the somewhat vulgar expression:

“Good God!”

Hubert looked up and saw old Jules Gigleux.

“What?” he asked in surprise.

“Why, look at the elder man – that old fellow with the white, close-cropped hair. Don’t you know him?” he asked in a low voice, indicating Lola’s uncle.

“Know him? Yes. He’s been up the Nile with us. He is a Frenchman named Gigleux.”

“Gigleux!” echoed his friend. “By Gad! and a rather good alias. No, my dear fellow. Look at him well. He is the greatest and most cunning secret agent Germany has ever possessed – the arch-enemy of England, the Chief of the German Secret Service – an Italian whose real name is Luigi Ghelardi, though he goes by a dozen aliases. It is he who controls the whole service of German espionage throughout the world, and he is the unscrupulous chief of the horde of spies who are infesting the Eastern counties of England and preparing for ‘the day.’”

At that second the man referred to glanced across and nodded pleasant recognition with Waldron, though he apparently had no knowledge of his companion.

“Is that really true?” gasped Hubert, utterly astounded and aghast, staring open-mouthed at Lola’s uncle.

“Most certainly. I know him by sight, only too well.”

“Then that accounts for the fact that I found him prying into my belongings in my cabin up the Nile!” exclaimed his friend, to whom the truth had come as an astounding and staggering revelation. And so the dainty Lola – the girl of mystery – was niece of the chief spy of England’s enemies.

Chapter Nine.

At Downing Street

Hubert Waldron mounted the great staircase of the Foreign Office in Downing Street full of trepidation.

The Earl of Westmere, His Majesty’s principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, desired to see him.

On New Year’s night, an hour after his conversation with Jack Jerningham, he had found in his room at the Savoy an urgent telegram from the Embassy recalling him home at once. He had, therefore, left Port Said by the Indian mail next day, and had travelled post-haste to London.

He had arrived at Charing Cross at four o’clock, driven to the St. James’s Club, and after a wash, had taken a taxi to Downing Street.

The uniformed messenger who conducted him up the great staircase halted before a big mahogany door, tapped upon it, and next second Hubert found himself in that big, old-fashioned, rather severe room wherein, at a great littered writing-table, sat his white-haired Chief.

“Good afternoon, Waldron,” exclaimed the tall, thin-faced statesman rising briskly and putting out his hand affably, an action which at once set the diplomat at his ease. He had feared that gossip regarding the opera-dancer had reached his ears, and that his reception might be a very cool one.

“I didn’t expect you until to-morrow. You’ve come from Cairo, haven’t you?”

“I came straight through by Brindisi,” was the other’s reply, seating himself in the padded chair which his Chief indicated.

“A gay season there, I hear – eh?”

“Quite. But I’ve been on leave in Upper Egypt.”

“And a most excellent spot during this horrible weather we’re having in London. Wish I were there now.”

And the Earl, a rather spare, refined man whose clean-shaven features were strongly marked, and who wore the regulation morning coat and grey striped trousers, crossed to the big fireplace and flung into it a shovelful of coals.

That room in which Hubert had only been once before he well-remembered. Its sombre walls that had listened to so many international secrets were painted dark green; upon one side was an old painting of Palmerston who had once occupied that selfsame room, while over the black marble mantelshelf hung a fine modern portrait of His Majesty, King George V.

The old Turkey carpet was dingy and worn, and about the place where the director of Great Britain’s foreign policy so often interviewed the ambassadors of the Powers, was an air of sombre, yet dignified gloom.

“I’ve called you home, Waldron,” said the Earl deliberately as he re-seated himself at his great table, piled as it was with State papers and dispatches from England’s representatives abroad, “because I want to have a chat with you.”

He was interrupted by a tap upon the door, and a man in uniform announced:

“Captain Rayne, m’lord.”

“Oh, come in, Rayne,” exclaimed the Minister for Foreign Affairs, as a smart, well-dressed, middle-aged man entered, nodding acquaintance with Waldron. “Let’s see! You’re taking the turn to Berlin and Petersburg?”

“Yes, sir,” replied the King’s Foreign Service messenger.

The Earl took from a drawer a letter he had already written and sealed in an official envelope bearing a blue cross, and handed it to him saying:

“This is for Petersburg – most urgent. I have nothing for Berlin, but Sir Charles has, I believe. You will bring me back an answer to this dispatch with all haste, please.”

“To-day is Tuesday, sir; I shall be back next Tuesday if Sir Henry is in Petersburg,” replied the King’s messenger with an air as unconcerned as though he were going to Hampstead.

“Yes, he is.”

“Then nothing else, sir?”

“Nothing, Rayne – except what Sir Charles may have. Good afternoon.”

And the King’s messenger, who spent his days travelling to and fro across the face of Europe, placed the confidential dispatch addressed to the British Ambassador to the Court of the Tzar in his pocket, bowed, and went forth on his weary seven days’ journey to the Russian capital and back.

“As I was saying, Waldron,” the Earl continued when the door had again closed, “I asked you to come home because I consider the time has now come when you should have promotion. As a friend of your late, respected father, I have naturally watched your career in the Service with greatest interest, and have been much gratified at the shrewd qualities you have shown, therefore I am giving you promotion, and have appointed you as second secretary to Rome.”

“To Rome!” echoed Waldron, his eyes opening widely. “I – I’m sure, Lord Westmere, I cannot thank you sufficiently for your appreciation of my services, or for sending me to the one post I wished for most of all.”

“I know, Waldron,” laughed his lordship pleasantly. “You know Rome, for you lived there for some years. You were honorary attaché there under your father, and I think you speak Italian very well indeed, if I remember aright.”

“I have a fair knowledge of the language,” was the diplomat’s modest response.

“Then go to Rome and continue the career you have followed with such success. Your father’s most brilliant work was accomplished in Italy, and I hope his mantle will fall upon you, Waldron.”

“Your words are most encouraging, Lord Westmere,” declared the younger man who, on entering there, had feared a reprimand for his friendship with the Spanish dancer. “You may rely on me to do my best.”

“Of that I am quite certain. The Waldrons have been diplomats for over a century, and you will never disgrace their reputation,” said the strongest man of the British Cabinet, the man who had learned diplomacy under Salisbury and to whom the nation now entrusted its good relations with the Powers. “But,” his lordship added, “will you, quite unofficially, allow me to give you a word of friendly advice?” And he looked the secretary of the Embassy full in the face.

“Most willingly. Any advice from my Chief I will be most certain to follow,” was the other’s earnest reply.

“Well, perhaps it is a rather delicate matter, and one to which I, in my official position, ought not to refer, but as one who takes a very keen interest in your future, I feel that I must speak.”

Waldron grew paler. He knew what was coming. “It is within my knowledge,” went on his lordship, “that towards a certain lady in Madrid you have been unduly friendly – a lady whose name is not exactly free from scandal.”

“That is so,” he admitted.

“Then, Waldron, why do you not recollect Palmerston’s advice to the young man newly appointed to a post abroad?” he asked gravely. “Palmerston said that the necessary qualifications of a diplomat on being attached to an Embassy was that he should be able to lie artistically, to flirt elegantly, to dress smartly, to be polite to every woman, be she princess or laundress, but never on any account to commit the fatal error of falling in love. Remember that with the diplomat love at once puts an end to all his sphere of usefulness. Do not let this happen in your case, I beg of you.” Hubert did not reply for some seconds. At last he said in a rather a husky, confused voice:

“It is most kind of you to speak to me in such terms, Lord Westmere, and I fully appreciate the great interest which you have always shown me. Will it be sufficient to promise you that I will not repeat the folly of which I fear I have been guilty?”

“Excellent, my dear Waldron, excellent?” cried the white-haired Cabinet Minister, rising and shaking his hand warmly. “I’m glad you’ve seen the folly of it all. That dancing-girl is an unfit associate for you, that’s certain; so forget her. Take up your post at Rome as early as you can, and fulfil your promise to me to do your best.”

The Earl had risen as a sign that the interview was over. He was usually a sharp-speaking, brusque and busy man. To interviewers he was brief, and had earned for himself the reputation of the most hard and unapproachable man in the Service which he controlled. But Hubert Waldron had certainly not found him so, and as he descended the great handsome staircase and went out into the falling fog in Downing Street, he could not help a feeling of joy that he had been promoted over the heads of a dozen others to the second secretaryship of His Majesty’s Embassy to the Quirinale.

Next day the Morning Post told the world that the Honourable Hubert Waldron, M.V.O., was in London, and that same afternoon he received at his club a note from Beatriz, urging him to call at the Carlton.

Throughout the whole evening he debated within himself whether he should see her in order to wish her farewell. If he did not then she would regard him as brutal and impolite. He remembered those letters of hers, so full of passionate outpourings, and while he ate his dinner alone in a corner of the club dining-room they decided him.

He sent her a reply by hand that he would call at the hotel at half-past eleven, after she had finished her performance at the theatre.

Punctually at that hour a page-boy took him up in the lift, and passing along a corridor they halted at a door.

The page rapped, whereupon it opened, and next second the tall, handsome Spanish woman in a wonderful evening gown flew into Hubert’s arms crying in Spanish in wild glee:

“Ah! At last, my own dear Hubert – at last! What pleasure!”

But he only took her hand, and bowing low with grave courtliness, kissed it.

“Come, sit down,” she urged, pulling him towards a soft settee. “Tell me, when did you arrive from Egypt? The Duke saw the arrival in the paper this morning, and told me.”

“Then the Duke is still here,” he asked with affected unconcern.

“Of course. Why? He knows your English quite well, and, alas! I do not. Oh, it is so difficult! What I should do without him, I don’t know,” she went on volubly with much gesticulation. Those great dark eyes of hers and her raven-black hair gave a wonderful vivacity to her handsome Andalusian countenance. Her portraits were in all the illustrated papers, and during the day he had learnt how, by her wonderful dancing, she had taken London by storm.

“And what kind of reception have you had?” he asked gravely in Spanish, as he seated himself upon the settee before her.

“Superb!” she declared, her great eyes brightening. “Your English audiences are so intensely sympathetic. I love London. I think I dance better here in your cold, foggy city than in Madrid. Why, I do not know. Perhaps it is because I feel somehow at home with the English – because you, Hubert, are my dear friend.” And then she chattered on with hands and arms thrown about in quick gesticulation, describing to him her life during the past three weeks, and how full of gaiety and enjoyment had every moment been.

“Photographers and interviewers have pestered me to death. Ah! Your London journalists are so pressing. They are not lazy and open to bribery, as ours in Madrid. Twice I have danced at private parties and received large fees. Yes – you in London pay well – better even than Petersburg. At the Palace they want me to return for a month next September.”

“And you will accept, of course?”

She hesitated. She was standing at the table, her slim white fingers idly toying with a huge bunch of lilies-of-the-valley which had been thrown to her that night by some unknown admirer.

“Perhaps,” she replied. “At present I do not exactly know. I have also danced twice for charity – some hospital, I think. My manager, Cohen, arranged it. He is simply splendid – better even than he was in Russia.”

“I’m so glad you’re enjoying it, Beatriz,” Hubert said. “I was sorry I could not get back from Egypt. But I was nearly a thousand miles from Cairo when I got your telegram.”

“Oh, it really did not matter,” she declared. “The Duke has been most kind to me.”

“Yes – the Duke – always the Duke,” he said in a hard, changed voice.

She turned and looked at him in quick surprise.

“What – then are you jealous, you dear old Hubert?” she asked with a laugh.

“Not in the least,” was his quick reply. “But while you have the Duke you surely do not require my assistance. You have, it seems, got on in London excellently without me.”

“Because you were unable to come. Have I offended you?” she asked. “Come, forgive me if I have,” she urged, crossing to him, placing her hand upon his coat sleeve and looking up into his face. “I return to Madrid next Monday. You shall travel with me – eh?”

“I am not going back to Madrid,” was his slow reply, his eyes fixed upon hers.

“Not going back!” she echoed. “Why not?”

“I have been transferred to the Embassy in Rome. I leave for Italy the day after to-morrow.”

“To Italy,” she whispered blankly. “Then – then you will no longer be in Spain?”

“No. My term in Madrid has ended,” he answered in a hard, strained voice, for even then he found it hard to bid her farewell.

“Ah!” she cried suddenly. “I see – I see it in your manner! You are tired of me – you are displeased with the Duke. You are jealous of him – jealous that men should flatter me. You, my dear friend, in whom I held such high respect, will not desert me.”