Part 17 (1/2)
They rode as if their lives were at stake. And they rode without a word. At last they came to the suburbs, then into the outskirts of the town. In the distance, a church clock chimed the quarter before one.
The two looked at each other. Five minutes, and the station was but a mile away. They would do the trick yet!
The upright line between Maximilian's black brows relaxed. He threw up his head and smiled like a boy, looking--Loewenstein thought--as he looked when they camped in the Weisshorn and shot chamois.
”You shall have something to make you remember to-day, if all goes well,” he said to the aide-de-camp; then drew in his breath sharply, for Selim had stumbled. A dozen yards away, on the dusty white of the road, lay a black crescent--Selim's shoe.
Quick as light, Maximilian sprang off. ”Give me your mare, von Loewenstein,” he said. ”I must go on alone.”
So they made the change, and the younger man watched his master disappear in a cloud of dust, as he, on Selim's back, followed slowly after. And he wished that he knew whether the little Baroness Marie would have said yes or no, and whether the Emperor's business with the Orient express were business of state or love.
Kohinoor had not the staying power of Selim; she was good for a spurt of speed; but she knew when she had had enough, and no mortal power could persuade her otherwise, when she thought that such a time had arrived. People stared to see a man urging a smoking thoroughbred through the broad Bahnhofstra.s.se in Salzbruck, at a speed forbidden within the town limits, and stared still more at beholding a gendarme leap forward with a warning shout, then blunder back again speechless, with a crimson face under his s.h.i.+ning helmet. Horse and man dashed by so madly that few could tell whether the rider were a person of importance at the Court, or a stranger. But a soldier of cavalry swaggering away from barracks with a friend, said, ”Do you know who that is?”
”By the way he rides I should say it was his Satanic Majesty,”
declared the other, a country recruit.
”You're not far wrong, maybe; but, all the same, it is His Majesty our Emperor,” replied the first.
The hands on the big, white clock-face looking down from the Bahnhof tower pointed at five minutes to one, when Maximilian reined up the mare before the main entrance, and bade a _dienstmann_ hold his horse, as if he had been a common townsman. Something the fellow shouted about being there to carry luggage, not to hold horses (for he did not know the Emperor by sight), but Maximilian waited neither to hear nor argue. He sprang up the broad stone stairway, three steps at a time.
”Has the Orient express gone yet?” he demanded of the man at the door of the departure platform.
”Five minutes ago,” returned the official, not troubling to look up.
An unreasoning fury against fate raged in Maximilian's breast. He ruled this country, yet everything in it seemed to combine in a plot to thwart his dearest desire. For a moment he felt as if he had come up against a blank wall and saw no present way of getting round it; but that was only for an instant, since the Emperor was not a man of slow decisions. His first step was to inquire what was the earliest stop made by the Orient express. In three hours, he learned, it would reach Wandeck, the last station on the Rhaetian side of the frontier.
What was the next train, then, leaving Salzbruck for Wandeck? In twenty minutes, a _personenzug_ would go out. After that, there would be no other train for two hours. The _personenzug_ would arrive at Wandeck only fifty minutes earlier than the _schnellzug_ following so much later, therefore most people preferred to wait. But Maximilian, having gathered this intelligence, was not of the majority; he chose the fifty minutes in Wandeck, for even if he courted publicity by engaging a special, so long a time must pa.s.s before it could be ready that he would gain no advantage.
Before taking his ticket, however, he telephoned the Hohenburgerhof, to satisfy himself beyond doubt that the De Courcys had actually gone.
There was a delay of a few minutes before the answer came; but presently he was informed that the ladies had left the hotel. This decided his plan of action once for all, and the short remaining interval before the departure of the slow train he s.n.a.t.c.hed for writing out two telegrams, one to Baroness von Lynar, the other to a person more important.
The first words of the latter ran fluently. ”Miss Mary de Courcy, Orient express, care of the stationmaster, Wandeck,” he wrote. ”I beg that you will leave the train here and wait for me. I am following, and will arrive in Wandeek three hours after you. I will look for you and hope to find you at the Maximilianhof.”
So far it was very simple. He had expressed his wish and signified his intention, which would have been enough if Miss de Courcy were a loyal subject of his own. But unfortunately she had exhibited no signs of subjection; and the question arose, would she grant the most ardently expressed request, unless he could offer some new inducement? On reflection, he was ruefully compelled to admit that she probably would not. Yet what had he to urge that he had not urged last night? What could he say, at this eleventh hour, which would keep her from pa.s.sing forever beyond his dominions and beyond hope of recall?
As he stood, pen in hand (each moment of hesitation at the risk of missing his chosen train), a curious memory came to him. He recalled a fairy tale which had been a favourite of his childhood, and had helped to form his resolve that, when _he_ grew to manhood, he would never miss an opportunity through vacillation. The story had for its hero a prince who went abroad so seek his fortune, and received from one of the Fates three magic citrons which he was told to cut by the side of a fountain. Obeying, from the first citron sprang a beautiful maiden, who demanded a drink of water; and while the prince gazed in amazement, vanished. With the second citron, it was the same; and the third maiden would have been irrevocably lost also, had not the youth recovered his presence of mind at the last moment.
Now, Maximilian said to himself, his knife was on the rind of the last citron. Let him think well before he cut, that his one remaining chance of happiness might not vanish like the two fairy maidens.
He had believed it impossible for a man to love a woman more than he loved Mary de Courcy; but, knowing that he was on the point of losing her, he found his love a thousand-fold greater than he had known. The sacrifice he had been ready to make had loomed large in his eyes; now, it was nothing, since it had not sufficed to win or keep her. What, then, could he do? What other resource had he left?
Suddenly it seemed that a great light shone before his eyes, like a meteor bursting, and a voice whispered in his ear a thought that ran like fire through his veins.
_Why not?_ he asked of his heart. Who was bold enough to say ”no” to the Emperor's ”yes”? Had he not proved more than once that his strength, his will, made him a law unto himself?
A dark flush stained his face, and he wrote quickly on and on. When he had finished, and signed his telegram ”The Chamois Hunter,” he hurried away to buy a ticket, and was only just in time. He sprang into an empty first-cla.s.s carriage, and threw himself into a seat as the train began to move slowly out of the station.
In his brain rang the intoxicating music of his great resolve. He could see nothing, think of nothing but that. His arms ached to clasp the girl he loved; his lips, cheated last night, already felt her kisses. For she would give them now, and she would give herself. He was treading the past of an Empire under foot to win her, and every throb of the engine brought them nearer together.
But such moments of exaltation come seldom in a lifetime. The heart of man or woman could not go on forever playing the wild refrain of their accompaniment; and so it was that, as the minutes pa.s.sed, the song of the blood in Maximilian's veins fell to a minor key. He thought still of Sylvia, and thought of her with pa.s.sion which would be satisfied at any cost; but he thought of lesser things as well. He viewed the course which his meditated action laid out before him, like a man who rides a race for life or death across strange country, where none have pa.s.sed before.