Chapter IV

So she married the King, being taken to him of course in a special train, and having to wear evening dress in it, although it was mid-afternoon, and bowing from the window at the cheering crowds with a forced little smile, and her swollen wrist covered with a band of tulle.

Her frock, Clotilde said, was of rose brocade shot with gold, but what with the open window and the train dust it was quite ruined by the time they arrived. The open window gave her a moment’s hope, at first. But there never was a chance to leap through it and so bring everything to a quick termination.

The Archduchess never took her eyes off her.

But even then, remember, she had no idea of the real extent of the catastrophe.

She only knew that Rudi was gone and that the church did not recognise that she had contracted any marriage with him.

“She had not even a photograph of him,” said Clotilde. “He had given her that one”—she glanced at the one on the chest of drawers—“but they took it from her. Later on I managed to get it, and I have had it ever since.”

So she was married. She had, according to Clotilde, a marvellous trousseau; a hundred fine chemises, for instance, made by hand by the peasants, and all her dresses came from Worth. There was one of rose-coloured velvet with trimmings of silver fringe that required two maids to hold while she got into it.

But there was nobody to hold the burden she carried in her heart.

So she was married again. She dragged her heavy brocade of silver and white up the aisle of the royal chapel amid that glittering crowd of jewelled and stiffly rustling women and men, and swore to do her duty by God and her King. She meant to do that. She could not love the King, but she could be loyal and faithful. And, although it was rather like murder, she could kill the thought of Rudi. Or she thought she could. But she fainted after the ceremony.

“What about Rudi?” I asked. “Didn’t he know what was going on?”

“Not until it was too late.”

He got there the next day and tried to get an audience with the King. But they kept him out, and it is doubtful if the King, from first to last, ever identified Rudi at all.

I think Rudi would have killed him that day had he seen him.

But what would have been the use? She was the Queen then; she had already faced the dreadful ritual of a royal wedding night, been undressed by her strange ladies-in-waiting, and after the King had joined her been locked in by a high official and the keys taken away.

Rudi stayed for a week, but he never even saw her, and then went on to his lonely station in Africa. He was twenty-four, and he took back the streak of snow-white hair the width of two fingers which still gives him such an odd distinction. The Queen’s father and mother left too, the old Archduke to exercise the _droit de seignor_ over any pretty peasant girl who took his fancy and the Archduchess to write those exultant letters to various royal relatives throughout Europe, copies of which have recently appeared in various memoirs.

“She made a quite lovely bride,” she wrote in one of them to the Queen of Sweden. “So composed and still.” Still indeed! Frozen to the very marrow of her! “She went a little faint after the ceremony, but was soon her bright and happy self again.”

And in another:

“She is taking her new responsibilities very seriously, as is proper. Her confessor tells me that she spends some time each day in the chapel, at prayer. A habit, he suggests, which might be emulated to advantage by the court.”

It was dawning on her, you see; the trap was closing and she had nobody to confide in except God. They had sent Clotilde away. She had not enough quarterings, for one thing, and for another, they had always suspected her of collusion with Rudi.

This may provide a key for that other cryptic letter, written some time later by the Archduchess to the English governess, who had more or less been in the secret, and recently published in her autobiography:

“We have at last got rid of C——. Thank God! She has, I hear, gone to Africa for the benefit of her health! As R—— W—— is there, one understands, I think. I can wish neither of them a greater misery than to marry the other, but it might be a desirable solution, and at least final.”

Clotilde has never mentioned that letter to me.

It was all over, apparently. The Queen was settled in her apartment at the palace. Her drawing room was white, a cold room, but not colder or whiter than the young Queen herself. Her dining room was next, a lofty circular room of red marble and black columns, and there the King dined with her occasionally, but less and less often as the weeks went by.

“He liked gaiety, you see,” said Clotilde, “and she could not be gay, although she tried. She puzzled him, I think. After a while he grew morose and when the meal was over he used to lean back and watch her. Not talking, you know. Just watching. Then, if she trembled, it irritated him.”

And around these two the stealthy life of the court, watching and whispering; maids of honour, courtiers, ushers, lackeys. All the ancient panoply, plush and gewgaws and curtsies and hand-kissing; the King with a private exit by which he slipped out to lead his secret man’s life, and the Queen under increasing espionage, and by that time carrying her dreadful secret.

She turned to the church for comfort and at last she confessed to her private chaplain.

“He was aghast,” said Clotilde. “He seems not to have known what to do. He prayed all of one night before the altar—an old man, too—and in the end he told her not to tell the King.”

One can see that old priest, too, I think, stretched on the cold stones and later going perhaps to his bishop. Heads together, weighing as well as praying; the very survival of the state perhaps at stake, and two old men divided between their God and their country.

And the King, disappointed and suspicious of he knew not what. A little man, vain and arrogant, accustomed to reach out and take what he wanted, and now finding that the spirit of this simple girl was as elusive as before he married her. Even jealous of the fact that her slim height made him seem shorter. Made him, if one can understand, a little less the King.

“He always walked a step or so ahead of her and it made her feel very awkward and very alone,” said Clotilde.

On gala evenings, then, the brilliant assembly: women in satins and brocades—the tiny waists, sharply defined busts and heavy draperies of the period—hung with jewels, watching and waiting; men in uniforms and orders; the famous throne-room with its great paintings and its dozen of glittering crystal chandeliers; and then the Groom of the Chambers throwing wide the doors and the entrance of the royal party, the King, small, cold and suspicious, just a little ahead of the Queen!

And somewhere in Africa Rudi staring at the northern stars.

It was after such a night that the Queen fainted again, falling with a crash against her enormous dressing-table, laden with glittering glass and gold, and receiving the little triangular scar on her forehead which she still tries to cover with her soft hair.

And soon after that it was announced to the King by the court physicians that the Queen would bear him a child.

It is impossible to convey the delicacy with which Clotilde told me that this expected heir to the throne, so loudly heralded, so politically vital, was not the King’s child, but Rudi’s. . . .

“If she had only let me know!” Clotilde said. “You see, I went to Africa that winter and I—saw Rudi. I could have told him and we might have thought of something. I believe she asked for me, but the King did not approve of my coming to her.”

Perhaps it is not fair to read between the lines. Perhaps Clotilde did go to Africa because of “trouble in her chest.” But I think she went out of a great hunger, to see Rudi again. Why not? After all, the Queen was lost to him, and he was young. They were all so pitifully young.

But Rudi was changed.

“He was very thin,” she said, “and so bitter! I cannot tell you how bitter. And he seemed somehow to have turned against me too. I only saw him once.” She hesitated. “No, I saw him twice, my dear. Why should I not tell you that? It is all so long ago, and I think he was a little mad at that time.”

It seems, then, that she saw Rudi at the hotel one morning, where he had come from his post out in the desert. He seemed to have been brooding, and he would not hear the Queen’s name at all.

“He had been too much alone, with the natives,” Clotilde explained. “He wasn’t even very tidy and—he had been drinking, I think.”

But there was no doubt that he had been drinking later on. Toward evening she received a scrawl from him telling her to come to a certain little square in the native quarter that night and receive a message for the Queen. She went, accompanied by her maid, and they found the square filled with howling, singing and dancing men and women, and in a cleared space, between two beating drums, Rudi sitting cross-legged on a mat.

His eyes were bloodshot and he had a lamp and a candle burning in front of him.

Clotilde edged her way near him and said clearly: “You are to come back with me, Rudi. Back to the hotel. This is no place for you.”

“It’s a good place. A damn fine place,” he said thickly.

“But you have a message for _her_, haven’t you?” she coaxed.

“I had a message, but I forget it,” he muttered. “Ah, yes!” He waved a hand at the frenzied crowd. “_This_ is the message. Go back and tell her of my marriage feast. It may lack the resplendence of hers, but it has its points. It has its points.”

And at that moment a huge black woman decked out in silver bangles and beads came out of a house, followed by a crowd of yelling women, and came toward him.

The drums blared and the people shrieked with laughter. Clotilde turned away sick at heart, and made her way back to the hotel. But before she got there Rudi had followed her and caught her by the arm. He was not drunk any longer.

“If you tell her that I’ll kill you,” he said.

“Where’s your woman?”

“I don’t know,” he said wearily. “I never saw her before.”

He made no further explanation. At the hotel he got his horse, and the last she saw of him he was riding hell for leather down the narrow street and toward the desert.