Her Royal Highness: A Romance of the Chancelleries of Europe

“Alas, Beatriz, I am not my own master. If I were, I should not leave Madrid,” he said earnestly, for that was, after all, the truth.

“And yet, knowing how fondly I love you, Hubert, you will really leave me thus!” she cried, suddenly catching his hand and carrying it to her full red lips. “No,” she went on, tears welling in her wonderful eyes, “you cannot do this. You, too, love me – you know well that you do. Come, do not let us part. I – I know I am foolish – I – ah! no! I love you, Hubert – only you!” And full of her hot Spanish passion she threw her arms about him and burst into a flood of hot tears.

Hubert Waldron bit his lip. He recollected at that moment all the stories concerning her – of the blackmail levied, with her connivance, by the drunken cab-driver whom he himself had once seen in the Puerta del Sol. He remembered his promise to his Chief, and the plain, outspoken words of his friend, Jack Jerningham.

They hardened his heart.

He shook his head and slowly but resolutely, disengaged himself from her passionate embrace.

“No, Beatriz,” he said. “Let us end this. It will, surely, be best for both our sakes. True, I have known you for a long time before you became world-famous as a dancer, but your profession and your interests, like mine, now lie apart. Let us say farewell, and in doing so, let us still remain good friends, with tender memories of one another.”

“Memories!” she cried fiercely, looking into his face with flashing eyes. “They can only be bitter ones for me.”

“And perhaps just as bitter for myself,” he added, still holding her by the wrist and looking into those great black eyes of hers.

“You are very cruel, Hubert!” she declared, her chest beneath its chiffon rising and falling in quick emotion. “You are cruel to a woman!” she repeated in reproach.

“No. It will be best for us in the end – best for both of us. You have your future before you – so have I. In my profession as diplomat I have to bow to the inevitable whenever I am transferred. You are a great dancer – a dancer who has won the applause of Europe. May I not still remain your humble and devoted friend?”

For answer Beatriz, the idol of London at that moment, fell upon his shoulder and shed tears of poignant, bitter regret, while he, with knit brows, held his breath for a moment, and then tenderly bent and kissed her upon the cheek.

Chapter Ten.

Some Curious Stories

The festa of San Sebastiano fell on a Sunday.

The ancient church a mile and a half outside Rome on the Appian Way – the road constructed three hundred years before the birth of Christ – was thronged by the populace in festa attire, for San Sebastiano, built as it is over the Catacombs where reposed the remains of the Christian martyrs, is one of the seven churches to which pilgrims have flocked from every part of western Christendom, while in its chapel is the marble slab bearing what is held by tradition to be the footprints of Christ, and which, therefore, is held by the Romans in special veneration.

Though January, the morning was sunny and cloudless, and with Lady Cathcart, the Ambassador’s wife, and young Edward Mervyn, the rather foppish honorary attaché, Hubert Waldron had motored out to watch the festival with all its gorgeous procession of priests and acolytes, its swinging censers and musical chants.

As at all the festas in Rome, there was the usual crowd of gaping Cookites and the five-guinea excursionists of other agencies, for is not the Eternal City the city of the tourist par excellence? In it he can live in a cheap pension for four lire a night, or he can spend a hundred lire a night in certain hotels de luxe on his room alone.

The road was dusty and crowded as, the ceremony over, the party sped back, past the ruins of the Baths of Caracalla – paltry indeed after those left by Rameses in Egypt – and the churches of Santi Nereo ed Achilleo and San Cesareo, afterwards re-entering the city and speeding up the broad modern Via Nazionale and into the long, straight Via Venti Settembre, at last pulling up before the great grey façade of the British Embassy.

Hubert Waldron was no stranger to Rome. For five years he had lived at the Embassy when his father was Ambassador, and in those days had been very popular in the very exclusive Society of the Italian capital. Nowadays, however, he did not live at the Embassy, but rented the same cosy flat over a bank in the Via Nazionale which had been occupied by his predecessor – a charming, artistic little place which was the very ideal of a bachelor pied-à-terre.

That day there was a smart luncheon-party at the Embassy; among the guests being the Austrian and Russian Ambassadors with their wives, Prince Ghika, of the Roumanian Legation, the stout and wealthy Duca di Carpenito, the old Marchesa Genazzano, a hideous guy with her protruding yellow teeth, yet one of the leaders of Roman Society, the young Marchese Montalcino, who wore upturned moustachios and yellow boots; the pretty Contessa Stella Pizzoli, one of the Queen’s dames de la Cour, and half a dozen others whose names in the Italian capital were as household words.

Around the luncheon-table, charmingly arranged with delicate floral decorations, the chatter had been universal, Sir Francis Cathcart, K.C.M.G., the British Ambassador, holding a long and animated conversation with Princess Bezanoff, wife of “The Russian” – as the Tzar’s representative was termed in the diplomatic circle – while Lady Cathcart had been gossiping with the Duca di Carpenito, who was perhaps the greatest landowner in all Italy, and whose ancient Palazzo in the Corso is pointed out to the traveller as one of the finest mediaeval residences in the city.

Waldron, who had taken in the Contessa Stella and sat at her side, was listening to her gossip about the Court, of the doings of the Queen, and of their recent stay at Racconigi. Though most of the conversation at table was in French they spoke in Italian, Hubert speaking that language with scarce a trace of foreign accent.

“Curiously enough, Signor Waldron, I first knew of you by hearing His Majesty speak of you,” remarked the pretty young woman. “I heard him telling General Olivieri, the first aide-de-camp, that you had been attached to the Embassy here.”

“It is a great honour that His Majesty should remember me,” replied the secretary. “He knew me, however, years ago, before he succeeded. I was here with my father, who was Ambassador.”

“Yes. The King said so, and he paid your father a very high compliment. He said that he was the only diplomat whom his father, the late King Victor, ever trusted with a secret.”

Waldron smiled. Then he said:

“His Majesty is exceedingly gracious to me. I had not been back here a week before I had a command to private audience, and he was kind enough to say that he was pleased to resume my acquaintance after my years of absence from Rome. Yes, Contessa,” he added, “here I feel that I am at home and among friends, for I love Italy and her people. Your country possesses a grace and charm which one does not find elsewhere in Europe. There is but one Italy as there is but one Rome in all the world.”

“I fear you flatter us rather too much, Signor Waldron,” replied the pretty young woman. “Now that you have come back to us I hope you will honour my husband with a visit. You know the Palazzo Pizzoli, no doubt, and I hope in the autumn you will come out to us in the Romagna. We can give you a little shooting, I believe. You Englishmen always love that, I know,” she laughed.

“I’m sure I shall be very charmed to make the acquaintance of the Count,” he replied. “And if I may be permitted to call upon you I shall esteem it a great honour, Contessa,” and he smiled at the elegant dame de la Cour with his best diplomatic smile.

“So the young Princess Luisa is in disgrace again, I hear,” remarked the old Marchesa Genazzano, who sat on Waldron’s other hand, showing her yellow teeth as she spoke. “She’s always in some scrape or other. Girls in my day were never allowed the liberty she has – and she a Royal Highness, too!”

“We mustn’t tell tales out of school,” remarked the pretty Countess, with a comical grimace. “Her Royal Highness is, I fear, a sad tomboy. She always was – ever since she left the schoolroom.”

The old Marchesa, a woman of the bluest blood of Italy, and bosom friend of Her Majesty the Queen, grunted.

“Like her mother – like the whole House of Savoy. Always venturesome,” she said.

“But the Princess is charming. Surely you will agree, Marchesa?” protested the dame de la Cour.

“A very delightful girl. But she’s been spoilt. Her mother was too lenient with her, and her goings-on are becoming a public scandal.”

“Hardly that, I think,” remarked the Countess. “I know the King is pretty annoyed very often, yet he hasn’t the heart to put his foot down firmly. Even though she is of royal blood she’s very human, after all.”

“Her flirtations are positively disgraceful,” declared the old Marchesa, a woman of the ancient regime of exclusiveness.

Hubert laughed and said:

“I have not the pleasure of knowing Her Royal Highness – perhaps Her Royal Naughtiness might describe her – but as one who has no knowledge of the circumstances, I might be permitted to remark that the love that beats in the heart of a princess is the same love as that beneath the cotton corsets of the femme de chambre.”

“Ah, you diplomats are incorrigible,” cried the old woman with the yellow teeth. “But the Princess Luisa is becoming a scandal. The Queen declared to me only yesterday that she was intensely annoyed at her niece’s behaviour. Her latest escapade, it seems, has been to go to Bologna and take part in some motor-cycle races, riding astride like a man, and calling herself Signorina Merli. And she actually won one of the races. She carried a passenger in a side-car, a young clerk in a bank there, who, of course, was quite unaware of her real identity.”

“Quite sporting,” declared Waldron. “She evidently does not believe much in the royal exclusiveness.”

“Well, she cannot pretend that life at the Quirinale is at all dull. Since the death of her charming mother, the Princess of Milan, she has lived at the Palace, and must have had a very pleasant time.”

“Is she pretty?” asked Waldron, interested.

“Very – and most accomplished,” replied the old stiff-backed Marchesa whose word was law in social Rome. “The House of Savoy is not distinguished by its good looks on the female side, but the Princess Luisa is an exception. Personally, I consider her the best-looking among the marriageable royalties in Europe at the present moment.”

“But are her indiscretions really so very dreadful?” asked the diplomat, “or are they exaggerated?”

“Dreadful!” echoed the noble Montalcino, whose elegant attire and carefully trained moustache were so well-known during the hour of the passeggiate in the Corso. He had been listening to the conversation. “Why, cara mio,” he drawled, “only the other night I saw her with her maid sitting in the stalls at the Salone Margherita, which is, as you know, hardly the place to which a Royal Highness should go. Madonna mia! There are lots of stories about Rome of her escapades,” declared the young sprig of the nobility. “It is said she often escapes from the Palace at night and goes long runs in her car, driving it herself. Bindo Peruzzi found her early one morning broken down away out at Castelnuovo, and gave her a lift back in his car. She got out at the Porta Pia and Bindo pretended not to know who she was. I suppose she sent her chauffeur back for the car later on.”

“Rather a daring escapade for a Royal Highness,” Waldron said. “But, after all, Court life, Court etiquette, and Court exclusiveness must bore a girl to death, if in her youth she has been used to Society, as I suppose she had been during her mother’s lifetime.”

“Oh, of course one may easily make lots of excuses,” shuffled the old Marchesa. “But I feel sure the girl must be a source of great anxiety to both Their Majesties. It would be a great relief to them if she were to marry.”

“They say she is a favourite with the King, and that he never reproves her,” exclaimed the young fellow across the table.

“Well,” declared Hubert, “in any case she must be a merry, go-ahead little person. I shall look forward to meeting her.”

“Oh, no doubt you will, signore, very soon,” laughed the old leader of Society, when just at that moment the Ambassador’s wife gave the signal to rise, and the ladies passed out, the men bowing as they filed from the room.

A quarter of an hour later when the male guests joined the ladies in the big, handsome drawing-room overlooking the garden of the Embassy, the Marchesa beckoned Hubert over to where she was ensconced in a corner.

“Signor Waldron,” she said, “I find that Lady Cathcart has a portrait of Princess Luisa, the young lady whom we have been discussing. Look! It is yonder, on the table in the corner. The one in the oval silver frame.”

Hubert crossed to where she directed and there saw a large oval photograph which he had not before noticed, for he had never particularly examined the portraits in the room. Beneath was scrawled in a bold Italian hand the autograph – “Luisa di Savoia.”

He gazed upon the pictured, smiling face, utterly staggered.

The portrait was that of Lola!

Chapter Eleven.

Strictly Incognita

That afternoon at half-past three o’clock, the hour when in winter all Rome goes out for its airing on the Pincio, Hubert Waldron was idling along the terrace, gazing at the wonderful panorama of the Eternal City stretched away before him in the yellow sundown.

In Rome it is the correct thing to go to the Pincio, and there pay visits to the Roman ladies who sit in their smart carriages or automobiles as they slowly file up the historic hill and down on the other side. There, in those famous gardens of Lucullus, in which in ancient days Messalina, the wife of Claudius, celebrated her orgies, modern Rome daily holds its daily alfresco reception, for everybody who is anybody in the capital goes there to see and to be seen.

Hubert had been chatting with the Baroness Lanzenhofen, an Austrian hostess very popular in Rome, but her carriage had moved on, and now he stood alone near the kerb looking out upon the wonderful view, and about to descend to the city and drive back in a taxi to his rooms in the Via Nazionale.

Behind him a procession of smart equipages of all kinds filed slowly around the terrace, when of a sudden he heard an excited cry – his name:

“Signor Waldron! Signor Waldron!”

Turning in sudden surprise, he found himself face to face with Lola who, seated alone in one of the royal carriages – a splendid landau bearing the arms of Savoy upon its panels, a footman and coachman in the royal livery and powdered hair – was smiling at him mischievously.

He raised his hat and advancing eagerly took the little white-gloved hand outstretched to him, for the carriage had already pulled up, the fine pair of bays champing impatiently at their bits.

“Well!” he cried. “This is really a great surprise!”

“Yes. I heard that you had been transferred here from Madrid,” she laughed, speaking in English. “But oh! I’ve got lots to explain. I want to see you, Mr Waldron – to see you very particularly. I came here this afternoon to find out if you were here. May I call on you this evening? I know where you live, in the Via Nazionale. When will you be at home?”

He was rather taken aback. Ever since his discovery of her portrait in the Embassy a couple of hours ago he had been plunged in thought, for did he not know her secret – the secret of this madcap Princess who had scandalised the Royal House of Savoy?

“This is really a great surprise to me, Mademoiselle Lola,” he answered, scarce knowing what he said. “I, too, would like to have a chat with you. But is it really wise for you to come to my rooms?” he asked in English, glancing at the two royal servants sitting statuesque upon the box.

“Nobody will know. These men do not know English. Shall we say at ten o’clock to-night? I can get away then – not before, I fear. We have a Court dinner.”

“Very well,” he said, looking into her splendid dark eyes. “At ten o’clock then.”

“Addio– eh! Till ten o’clock?” she laughed.

“But are you sure it would not be an injudicious step – to visit a bachelor in his rooms?” he queried gravely.

“I don’t care, Signor Waldron – if you don’t. I always take every precaution. My maid, Renata, is as silent as the Sphinx we saw in Egypt. Do you remember? And how I fell off my camel?”

“Shall I ever forget those days?” he remarked as he took the outstretched hand and bowed over it. “Very well, mademoiselle – at ten o’clock.”

“Bene. Then I will explain matters. You must be terribly puzzled. I see it in your face,” she laughed.

He smiled and as he stood hat in hand the royal carriage moved off, the onlookers staring to note that the popular young Princess should have stopped and have spoken to a man, an ordinary foot-passenger on the Pincio.

For a second the diplomat glanced after her, then he turned upon his heel and began to descend the winding roadway, past those busts of all the distinguished Italians from Julius Caesar to Marin.

Before him lay that wonderful view of Rome, where beyond the Porta del Popolo and the new quarter with the Palazzo di Giustizia, on the opposite bank of the Tiber, rose the great dome of St. Peter’s from the grey mists of the sunset, while on the right stood the spire of the Church of Lourdes, the Vatican, and a portion of the Leontine wall. Away on the right rose Monte Mario with its dark funereal cypresses, while to the left of St. Peter’s could be seen the round castle of Sant Angelo with the bronze angel that crowned it. The pines on the height of the castle were familiar to him, being those of the Villa Lante on the Janiculum with the Passeggiata Margherita on which the great statue of Garibaldi was the most conspicuous object.

And as he went along his mind was filled with thoughts of the strange situation, and of the amazing discovery he had that day made.

Lola, his charming little friend of the Nile, at whose side he had so often ridden over the desert, was actually a Princess of the blood-royal – the madcap Princess of the House of Savoy! And ere he had descended the hill her splendid carriage with its jingling harness flashed by him and she nodded merrily as he raised his hat, while two cavalry officers, recognising her, raised their hands in ceremonious salute.

He was reflecting upon those idle sunny days in the far-off Nile-land, those evenings when the western sky was diffused and glorified with gold and saffron, and the shades of night crept up from the silent bosom of the desert where the Bedouins and Bishareen halted their caravans to camp.

In that sunset hour he knew that the faces of the devout were now turned towards Mecca – away from that golden mystery and beauty that the sun had placed in the west – to recite their evening prayers. And up from the mists, as he gazed away across to the low purple hills of the Campagna rose that sweet, smiling, beautiful face – the face which he had once again gazed upon, though he had believed it had passed out of his ken for ever.

Punctually at ten o’clock that evening Waldron’s English valet, Peters – the faithful, clean-shaven, but hunch-backed old Peters who had been with him over ten years – ushered Lola, a sweet-faced, girlish figure into his sitting-room where he stood ready to receive her.

“Really, Mr Waldron, what awfully jolly quarters you have here!” she exclaimed, glancing quickly around the well-furnished bachelor room. The man he had succeeded at the Embassy believed in personal comfort, and had furnished his flat in English style. Therefore he had been fortunate in being able to purchase it cheaply, for its owner had been transferred to Tokio.

“Yes,” her host agreed: “they’re not half bad. But,” he added, “do you really think it prudent to come and visit me at this hour?”

“Why not? I couldn’t very well come in the daytime. Somebody might recognise me.”

“But is not ten o’clock at night a rather unusual time for a young lady to visit a bachelor?” he queried.

“Well, I don’t mind,” she laughed gaily. “But there, you’re such a dear, conventional old thing!”

He noted that, contrary to her appearance in the afternoon, when she had worn a smart costume and hat which was evidently the latest creation of the Rue de la Paix, she was now very neatly, almost shabbily dressed in a plain blue serge coat and skirt which had seen its best days, a small, close-fitting little hat which showed evident signs of wear, and sadly worn furs.

She noticed that he surveyed her as she took the armchair he offered her.

“Yes,” she said, “it is very fortunate that my maid, Renata, is about the same figure as myself, and that her clothes fit me. I usually pass as her when I go out at night. The sentries change every week, so as long as I am dressed as a maid I have no difficulty – though I sometimes have trouble to avoid the other servants.”

“I should think you run very great risks of recognition,” he remarked. “And if the truth leaked out would there not be some serious trouble?”

“Trouble! Oh, I dread to think of it!” she declared with a shrug of the shoulders. “I receive daily lectures about my non-observance of the social amenities, my lack of personal pride, and all that. But there – Mr Waldron, you must, I know, have been greatly surprised at meeting me to-day. I know I deceived you. But it was imperative, as I was then travelling incognita. So I hope you will forgive me.”

“You practised a very cruel deception upon me,” he said with mock severity. “And I don’t know if I really ought to forgive you.”

“Oh yes, you will – you dear old thing,” she cried persuasively, laughing in his face. He was double her age, therefore the endearing terms in which she addressed him were not exactly out of place. Yet, remembering the secret lover, he wondered what had become of him.

“Then old Gigleux was not your uncle, after all?” remarked Waldron, for he remembered how Jack Jerningham had recognised him on that New Year’s night at Shepheard’s.

“No. Listen and I’ll tell you the truth,” the Princess said in very good English. She was delightfully unconventional. “You see my aunt, the Queen, was very much annoyed because I motored to Florence alone, and some gossip got about regarding me – because I went to a fancy-dress ball with a gentleman I know. Well, I fear I was a little hot-tempered, with the result that I was unceremoniously packed off on a long tour to Egypt and given into the charge of Miss Lambert and old Ghelardi, who had been in the German Service, but who had just returned to Italy and was appointed by the King as Chief of our Secret Police. I was ordered by the King to assume the name of Duprez, while Ghelardi was to be known as Jules Gigleux. And I think we kept up the farce fairly well – didn’t we?”

“Most excellently. Nobody had the slightest suspicion of the truth, I feel sure.”

“I know I told you some awful stories – about my poverty, and all that. But you will forgive me – won’t you?” she implored.

“Of course,” replied the diplomat, charmed by her sweetness and frankness of manner. “It was necessary in order to preserve your incognita. I realise now the reason why your pseudo-uncle regarded me with such a decided antipathy. First he feared lest we might fall in love with each other – ”

“And there was no fear of that, was there?” she laughed, interrupting.

“I don’t know exactly,” he answered half-dubiously. “You flirted with me outrageously sometimes.”

“Ah, I know I did! It was, I admit, too bad of me, Mr Waldron. But I do hope even now you’ve found me out in all those white lies that it will make no difference to our friendship.”

“Why, not in the least,” he declared. “I am greatly honoured by Your Royal Highness’s friendship.”

“No, no,” she cried impatiently, “not Highness to you, Mr Waldron. Lola – still Lola, please.”

“Very well,” laughed the man. “But surely that will sound too familiar from one in my station?”

“When we are alone, I mean. Of course in Society, or at Court I may be Her Royal Highness the Principessa Luisa Anna Romana Elisabetta Marie Giovanna di Savoia – and half a dozen other names and titles if you like. They really don’t trouble me,” and she carelessly cast her well-worn sealskin muff upon the couch near her.