Chapter I

Of course it was all over when I knew them, and naturally I did not get all the story at once. There they would sit in that little upper room in Switzerland, the Queen sewing, or sometimes just sitting near the window looking at the mountain wall, always beautiful, always in the soft white wool habit, and Clotilde, the lady-in-waiting who had been her maid of honour, feeding the briquets into the tiled stove and feeling the big pitcher on top of it to see if the chill had left the water.

And Rudi, big and still handsome, perhaps trying to read, but really watching the Queen. He hated reading and he loved the Queen. She had been his religion and his creed for so long, poor Rudi. And perhaps he was not clever; only loyal and adoring, and rather tragic.

When he was not watching her he would be looking at his watch, if it were evening. And the Queen would say:

“What time is it now?”

“Eight o’clock.”

“Are you certain he is coming?”

“He said so.”

“Then he will come,” the Queen would say. And she would smooth more carefully the folds of the white gown, and Clotilde would get out the old ivory chess set with its inlays of gold and place it on the table.

The whole room would take on an air of waiting and of listening. Nobody spoke much. It was as if the ears and the minds of all three of them were turned toward the street and the passage below, waiting. And then, more often than not, we would hear Toto’s ringing step on the pavement and he would be coming up the stone staircase, brisk and young.

The Queen, Rudi, Clotilde, would watch the door until it opened and he came in.

All that great story behind them, and this its climax, that Toto should come in now and then in the evenings! That he should sit there, laughing his gay young laugh, and never know that to the other three his presence was the culmination of their lives.

Rudi and Toto at the table, with the lamplight on them, and the Queen in the shadows watching them both. And perhaps Rudi leaning back complacently and saying:

“You perceive, sir, that your king is in danger?”

“Danger! Egad, sir, he is lost!”

And the Queen watching them both, hungrily.

* * * * *

On those evenings Clotilde would slip away and come to my room. It was the least she could do, she felt—to give them that little time alone together. Not that she said this at first. It was only little by little that she told the story, knitting all the time at Rudi’s woollen stockings and unburdening herself at the cost, I always felt, of a certain feeling of disloyalty.

But it was rather a wonderful picture she drew: the roaring of great stags at night in the forest; the feudal life of the old castle on its mountain, where priceless old brocades and tapestries blew to rags in the wind from unmended windows; where a chamberlain lighted the family to bed at night, leading the way along dark and freezing stone passages. And where the Queen, a young girl then, shut off in a shabby nursery with an English “Mees” as a governess, made her own little muslin frocks by hand and was taught four languages.

In the evenings she was brought down to the cold salon and made to play the piano for an hour while the old Duke dozed in a chair with a deerskin over his knees, and her mother listened and criticised.

“She always played very badly at those times,” said Clotilde. “Her hands were so cold and she was always frightened.”

Then, it seems, there was a half-hour’s formal conversation in one of the four languages, the grim Archduchess sitting and the little Princess standing, and after that came the chamberlain, and so to bed.

The gloom lifted a little when Clotilde came to be her maid of honour. And it lifted still further when Rudi was placed on the castle guard, the officers of which were recruited from the lesser nobility. But outside of his sixteen quarterings, whatever that may be, Rudi had exactly his good looks, six uniforms—the dress ones of white breeches, blue tunic laced with gold and high patent leather boots—one horse, a boarhound and his pay. That is, he was supposed to have his pay. The old Archduke held out on him more often than not.

So far, you see, it is quite the usual story. But even here it has its points. There was the night, for instance, after the Archduke had held a boar hunt, when the Archduchess retired in fury to her chamber and the hunting party got vastly tight. When the old Duke was safely asleep a young sprig of royalty who was with the party offered to show them a sleeping beauty upstairs and about a dozen of them started up to the Princess’s door.

“We were awake,” said Clotilde. “And we heard them coming. But the lock on the door would not work. And then we heard Rudi outside the door.”

Rudi, it seems, had nothing but a poker from the fire in the great hall, but he took up his position with it.

“Over my dead body, gentlemen!” he said rather cheerfully. He seems always to have loved a fight.

If he had on the white breeches and the blue tunic he must have been rather a fine sight, poker or no poker. And so they sneaked away again and were found the next morning asleep in all sorts of places.

“One was under the piano,” said Clotilde.

The Duke gave Rudi the back pay that was coming to him as a reward and wrote to the King about it.

“If he had never written that letter— You see, it brought _her_ to the King’s attention. There are times, my dear, when it is best not to be brought to a king’s attention.”

And undeniably this was one of the times. Rudi and the Princess were desperately in love. Desperately and fairly hopelessly. One can imagine the state of affairs had Rudi gone to the Duke and said to him: “Sir, I desire to confer on your daughter my sixteen quarterings, six uniforms, one horse and a boar hound.”

The Princess was not sleeping at night, nor Clotilde either, and Rudi would prowl around under the windows, trying probably to pretend he was a deer, and watching for the last gleam of candlelight. And at first the Princess had thought it was Clotilde he cared for and had been quite despairing.

“But it was not me he cared for,” said Clotilde, and bent a little lower over Rudi’s woollen stocking. “It was always—the Queen.”

Sometimes I have wondered about that little middle-aged lady-in-waiting. Just what went on in her heart so long ago? What has carved the little tragic lines of repression in her cameo-like face? Just what thoughts and memories and thwartings go into those interminable stockings?

There is a photograph of Rudi in his zenith on her little chest of drawers, and once on his name day I found her burning a candle before it.