Chapter X

All this time the Queen had been known as Rudi’s wife. It simplified things in their roving lives. And it was as Madame W—— that I first met her in London. She gave me French lessons, coming daily to my apartment at Claridge’s. She was extraordinarily beautiful, even in the plain black she wore for the street, and she had a curious habit of fingering and occasionally staring at the only ornament she ever wore, an amethyst cross on a fine gold chain.

That was during the period when Rudi and Clotilde were hunting her all over Europe.

I suppose there comes a time when every woman questions the love that surrounds her, when tenderness and self-sacrifice seem merely kindness and tolerance, when motives appear twisted and even a caress can be felt a betrayal.

And the Queen was a woman now. She knew that Rudi was leading an unnatural life and she seems to have brooded over it. While Rudi had taken Clotilde for granted, the Queen could so take neither of them any longer. The thought that Rudi was giving her everything and she giving nothing in exchange grew increasingly bitter to her.

When I met her she had run away.

“She had begun to feel she was a burden,” was Clotilde’s explanation. “She could not see that she was our universe. And then”—she glanced at me—“you know how women are. She thought if she went away Rudi could claim his father’s estate and marry me.”

And there had been a precipitating cause at the end. Clotilde had been “silly enough” to have a crying spell over something or other, and Rudi had become sufficiently conscious of her for the moment to try to comfort her.

“He put his arm around me, as a brother would,” she explained. “But she happened to come to the door just then and—she went away that night.”

So the Queen taught me French, and Rudi agonised again. It was during this interval, I believe, that he entered into the conspiracy to overthrow the King, but seems never to have gone very far with it; it was more an outpouring of his hate of the King than any political conviction.

But her flight brought about a curious meeting, and I was an unconscious witness to it.

She left it to me to choose the subject for the day and I idly selected the royal wedding at Windsor.

“One wonders,” I said, in my laborious French, “whether these marriages are ever truly happy. They can know so little of each other.”

Her face set somewhat.

“Some adapt themselves. Others perhaps—cannot.”

“The King of —— is at Windsor,” I struggled on, “but his entourage is here. Also the little Crown Prince.”

“Here!” she said, and slowly got to her feet. “Here!”

“Across the hall.”

She went to the window and stood looking out on that vista of dingy slate roofs and old chimneys which the upper floors of Claridge’s offer to its guests, and when she turned around I could see that she was oddly pale.

“A long time ago,” she said, “I—knew the Crown Prince as a baby. If I could only see him now—”

“He is in and out quite often.”

“Would you mind if I leave the door a little open? I could sit here quietly and—if it would not disturb you, mademoiselle.”

There was no more French lesson. I think she had quite forgotten why she came. I was—Heaven forgive me—a trifle amused and maybe a bit bored. All week I had seen the London crowds trampling and crushing to catch a glimpse of visiting royalties. I had seen Madame Tussaud’s almost mobbed while a group of maids of honour inside had visited the waxworks. And now my lesson was ended.

She sat, her hands clenched in her lap, and bent a bit forward. During a half hour or so she did not move at all. And at last at dusk we heard the elevator and a boyish voice and clatter coming along the hall. She got up then and the boy came in sight.

“Toto!” she said softly.

The boy stopped and peered into the darkness of the room.

“Somebody called me,” he said to the tutor who accompanied him.

“Nobody called you.”

“It said ‘Toto,’” the child insisted.

She stood, her whole body tense, but she did not speak again, and then the tutor opened the door across and took the boy inside. When I turned from lighting the lamps she had closed the door and stood fingering and staring at the little cross.

“Shall we have the lesson to-morrow at the usual time, madame?” I asked.

“The lesson?” she said vaguely. “Ah, yes, of course. If the hour is convenient to you.”

But there never was another lesson. Later on, years later, I was to learn from Clotilde that she was run down that night in the crowd at Oxford Circus and very badly hurt. Maybe it was an accident—suicide was a mortal sin to her—but it may not have been. The closing of that door across the hall had been too significant; just a good substantial door, like everything in Claridge’s, but its quiet closing had somehow spelled finality.

But when she thought she was dying she sent for Rudi.

“And he saved her,” Clotilde said. “You see, he promised her the boy.”