Chapter III: The Rival Heir

At the Palace, Zoe was enjoying a new experience, and enjoying not least the humorous side of it, for she was not one of the people who can never see anything funny in what concerns themselves. Entertainments given in her honour, and lavish compliments, were no novelty to her, but she had never hitherto met with the whole-hearted devotion shown by her youthful hostess. A very young girl when the Prince of Dardania carried her captive by the force of a masterful personality and a touch of Eastern fascination, Princess Emilia had felt it to be extremely romantic that after one sight of her he should have broken off the engagement arranged for him by his mother, and refused to marry any one but the little sister of the Magnagrecian monarch. Her brother, the king, yielded to the demand of the two lovers, and Princess Emilia left the greatest centre of culture in Southern Europe to reign over a nation of half-barbarous mountaineers, and incidentally to introduce a new issue and a new complication into the Balkan question. Dardania was now no longer to be regarded as the faithful henchman of Scythia, she looked westwards instead of east; and her Prince had announced publicly that he desired no accession of territory on the Emathian side, while not denying that the rocky coast region of Illyria had attractions which would make him and his Magnagrecian brother-in-law very willing to police and civilise it in unison. Princess Emilia cared nothing for politics, save in their romantic aspect. She thought her husband’s self-denying ordinance with respect to Emathia was most noble, and the Theophanis claim to the throne of the Eastern Empire filled her with enthusiasm, though this was less by reason of its intrinsic merits than because Maurice was Zoe’s brother. Brought up in a highly literary society, the Princess suffered from a kind of mental starvation in her new sphere, for which she tried to compensate herself in every way open to her. She was an omnivorous reader and a born critic, and her favourite maid-of-honour, Donna Olimpia Pazzi, shared her mistress’s tastes, though in a minor degree, as was becoming. Together they plied Zoe with questions and comments on every book ever written, made her read portions of her own novels aloud to them, recited the great poems of their native land with an accent that enhanced the beauty of the words, and called in the Court bard, who held a hereditary place in the household of the Alexeiévitch family, that they might translate to her his wild ballads of border war and revenge. On this particular morning they enjoyed themselves so thoroughly that when the Prince returned from the games he scoffed openly at his wife’s plea of indisposition, and wished he had thought of escaping some very dull gymnastic contests in the same way. When he left them, Princess Emilia linked her arm in Zoe’s, and walked down with her through the Palace garden to the gate by which the house allotted to the Theophanis party was reached.

“You must promise me again that nothing shall prevent you from coming to the reception to-night,” she said. “It is our last chance of welcoming our own friends in peace before my mother-in-law arrives.”

“The Dowager Princess comes to-morrow, doesn’t she?” asked Zoe. Princess Emilia assented with a little grimace.

“Yes, and she says it is because she is yearning to see us again, though she hates me, and can’t forgive Alexis for marrying me. She is really coming to spy, I know. She wishes to see whether your brother is likely to succeed, and endanger her dear Kazimir’s future. You know she hopes to make him Prince of Emathia?”

“I know, and I have often wondered--though perhaps I ought not to say it--why the Prince of Dardania doesn’t support his brother rather than a stranger.”

“Oh, Kazimir is a thorough Scythian,--he is in the Imperial Guard, you know,--and Alexis and he have never agreed. And perhaps it was a little my doing, too. The Princess Dowager had made herself so very disagreeable that I wasn’t sorry when I found out a way to punish her. You think me very wicked? Wait till you see my mother-in-law!”

“I have heard plenty about her,” said Zoe, with an involuntary smile, “and I certainly don’t expect to like her. But she has had rather a sad life lately, hasn’t she? All her plans seem to have gone wrong for the last few years.”

“Then she shouldn’t make such unpleasant plans. You can’t expect me to be glad that her plan for marrying Alexis to that Scythian girl failed?” She drew up her small figure with mock dignity, and Zoe acknowledged that this would be too much to expect. “My mother-in-law has no feeling for romance,” Princess Emilia went on, “though her own marriage was so romantic. All the matches she promotes are cold, calculating, political things. Now I--I palpitate with romance to the tips of my fingers!” she flung them out airily. “That is the sole want I find in you, my sweetest Zeto. You have plenty of romance somewhere about you, but it is all shut up inside you and locked tight, when it ought to overflow into your life. Dearest, indulge me; allow me the chance of arranging a little romance for you!”

“No, thanks,” said Zoe, with a little shiver. “Romances in real life are uncomfortable things, and I’m not sure that people are not happiest without them.”

“Ah, there is your cold, cautious English spirit--afraid to take the plunge for fear of the consequences! We Magnagrecians are not like that. I waited--oh, so eagerly!--for my romance, and now I live in it. And Olimpia, she is waiting for hers. You can see it in her eyes, can’t you? But you--you hold back; you put out your hands to push romance away; you cry out, ‘Leave me alone! I don’t wish to lose my peace of mind for the sake of a possible overwhelming joy.’”

The vivacious pantomime with which the Princess illustrated her idea of her friend’s mental attitude was irresistible, and Zoe was moved, for peace’ sake, to an imperfect confession.

“You and Donna Olimpia are both very young,” she said. “I have had my romance, and it is over.”

Momentary dismay was succeeded by renewed satisfaction on Princess Emilia’s face. “You shall tell me all about it some day,” she said. “But it is over, is it not?--quite over?” Zoe’s unwilling affirmative seemed to herself like the irrevocable stamping-down of earth upon a grave, but the Princess did not realise the reason of her reluctance. “Then all is well,” she continued enthusiastically. “That is past, done with, but romance is still alive in your heart, and you shall forget that old sadness in a happier present. You will not hold aloof; you will yield yourself to me; is it not so? Do not make me unhappy by refusing happiness if I can put it into your power.”

For a moment Zoe really imagined that the Princess had in some way learnt her story, had penetrated the secret of the gradual death of her hopes as Wylie went serenely on his remorseless way, seeming to be utterly oblivious of the old days when he had been the suppliant, and Zoe had shown herself callous. The bitterness of hope deferred was in her voice as she answered with a catch in her breath, “If I have learnt nothing else since those days, I have, at any rate, learnt to take happiness when it is offered--not to put it off to the future.”

“Ah, I knew you would be reasonable!” cried the Princess, not realising that she was about to destroy the hope so lightly raised. “Then listen. Dear, dear Zeto, you have never met Apolis?”

“The author of ‘Rêves d’Exil’?” Zoe forced herself to answer. “No--I think not; I am sure I have not.”

“He is coming to-night!” announced Princess Emilia, almost with awe. “We met him in Paris; he is the incarnation of romance. You see my plan, then? Here is this gifted poet, himself a disappointed being,--his works show that, don’t they?--and you, cherishing the memory of a dead romance. Why should you not console one another? Think what books you might write in collaboration!”

Zoe’s first impulse was to laugh at the thought of this unknown poet and herself uniting the pageants of their respective bleeding hearts for the edification of Europe, but Princess Emilia was gazing at her with an affection and anxiety hard to resist. “Say you will be kind to him. It is my dearest, most cherished scheme,” she was murmuring.

“I won’t turn my back on him when he is introduced, Principessina,” Zoe assured her. “But I must honestly tell you that your prospect doesn’t appeal to me. I never do care for men of letters in daily life--as witness the Professor. What I like is a man of action.”

“But if Apolis is also a man of action?” said the Princess mysteriously. “Ah, I must not say more, but you cannot imagine how much it might mean to your brother if you could attach him to your cause, and that can only be by attaching him to yourself.”

“A sort of private Byron?” suggested Zoe scoffingly, but Princess Emilia was evidently deeply in earnest.

“You don’t know what hangs upon it,” she repeated as she let Zoe out of the gate, and again Zoe wondered at the importance in her voice.

At the Palace in the evening the reception was of an informal kind, the Prince and Princess moving about among their guests and talking freely. It was especially a literary party, so that instead of the Balkanic athletes who had been prominent at these gatherings of late, the winners in the poetic competitions and the European press representatives formed the majority of those present. Very early in the evening Princess Emilia brought a slender, handsome young man, of an unmistakably Greek type of face, up to Zoe.

“I now have the pleasure of fulfilling one of my life’s ambitions,” she said prettily, “in presenting Apolis to Zeto.”

“And in doing so, madame, you gratify my own chief desire,” was the ready reply of the poet.

Zoe sought in vain for any remark equally compatible with truth and responsive to his politeness, but her failure passed unnoticed, for he was quite capable of taking charge of the conversation without her assistance. He had solved the difficulty of talking about himself without appearing egotistical, by regarding his own history entirely from a literary point of view, producing, as it were, a monograph from it in response to any turn of the talk. Zoe found it quite interesting to note the ingenuity with which he adapted the most hopeless conditions to his purpose, though she was conscious of an uneasy doubt as to the literal veracity of all the experiences he described. When she came to analyse them afterwards, however, she discovered that he had mentioned very few facts, since most of his descriptions concerned feelings and impressions which he had experienced, or might have experienced, in given circumstances. The principal landmarks which emerged from the flood were a long sojourn in Paris, and the cause which led to it, a quarrel with his father--recounted with exquisite but not exactly filial humour--over a beautiful girl whom he had not been allowed to marry. For her sake, therefore, he was an exile from the rocky island, the beloved home of his forefathers, in the unsympathetic West.

“That is the lady to whom you have written as Meteora?” asked Zoe. “Was it her real name?”

“In my earlier poems--yes, mademoiselle. Let me see, what was her real name--Xenocraté? Praxinoë? I cannot remember! How a man’s memory betrays him!”

“But some of the poems to Meteora were among the latest in the book!” objected Zoe.

“To her latest incarnation, mademoiselle. I see the ideal Meteora under the form of many a very unideal woman, alas! Love is one, but the lover perceives it in more places than one.”

“You are frank, monsieur.” Zoe was reflecting how singularly agreeable this theory must be for the poet, and how very inconvenient for the ladies who enjoyed successively the honour of embodying his ideal.

“I am, mademoiselle. I had flattered myself that frankness was the personal note of my work, but it seems that this has not suggested itself to you.”

“Certainly I noticed that Meteora’s personal appearance seemed to vary.”

“Exactly, mademoiselle. Where beauty is, there is the loved one.” His eyes strayed to the graceful figure of Donna Olimpia Pazzi, as she passed them on an errand for the Princess. “Why should such details as the colour of eyes and hair interfere with the course of love?”

“Why, indeed?” said Zoe. “What a _poseur_ the man is!” she thought impatiently. “Would Emilia consider it unkind if I passed him on to some one else now?” Looking round for a way of escape, her eyes encountered the fixed gaze of Professor Panagiotis, who had been walking through the rooms with Maurice, but had stopped dead, and was staring at her companion with something like stupefaction. Maurice turned impatiently to see why he was waiting, but the Professor grasped his arm and drew him towards Zoe, whom he addressed in tones like distant thunder.

“Will you have the goodness, madame, to present that gentleman to his Highness your brother?”

“It is rather difficult, since I only know his pseudonym,” said Zoe. “This is Apolis, the poet, Maurice.”

“Say, rather, this is Prince Romanos Christodoridi, the hereditary enemy of your line,” the Professor corrected her savagely. “Pray, monsieur, how did you come here?”

“I do not acknowledge the right of this person to question me,” said the poet, turning from the Professor and addressing himself to Maurice. “You, sir, are my opponent, I presume. Have you anything to ask?”

“I should certainly be glad to know your object in coming to Bashi Konak,” said Maurice.

“Nothing is simpler, sir--to assert my cause. I learn that negotiations are proceeding here which may gravely prejudice my rights, and I determine to watch over them in person. The Christodoridis are not entirely without friends, even though Professor Panagiotis has chosen to transfer his valuable support to the opposite party.”

“It was time to transfer my support when your father refused to contribute a drachma of his hoarded wealth to the cause on which my whole fortune has been lavished!” burst forth the Professor.

“I refused nothing,--but then I had no hoarded wealth,” said Prince Romanos with dignity. “If money is to liberate Emathia, I acknowledge that Mr Teffany--oh, pardon me; Prince Theophanis, I think?--has the advantage over one who can offer only his pen and his sword; but nothing shall withhold me from contributing my worthless life to the cause of freedom, and requesting Emathia to judge between us.”

“So be it!” said Maurice, holding out his hand. “We are enemies, but friendly ones, I hope. Together we will do our best to free Emathia, and then she shall judge.”

“Sir, you are mad! Impossible!” protested Professor Panagiotis, but Prince Romanos bowed like a duellist about to engage.

“I accept your courtesy, Prince. My freedom of action I must preserve, but there need be no personal enmity between us. That would indeed be impossible in the presence of my accomplished _confrère_, the Princess your sister.”

The elaborate bow towards Zoe, with which he concluded, carried comfort to the anxious heart of Princess Emilia, watching from a distance. In her relief she seized upon Eirene as the nearest available person to whom she could pour forth her feelings.

“I was so frightened!” she said breathlessly. “It was so like a scene in the theatre,--the meeting of the rival heirs,--and they might have fought, or anything.”

“But who is the man?” asked Eirene, in bewilderment.

“Oh, Prince Christodoridi’s son Romanos, the other claimant, you know. When he wrote to my husband that he understood we were promoting a negotiation that gravely concerned his interests, we couldn’t wait to ask how he had heard of it, we could only invite him here. My husband wished to tell you at once, but I persuaded him to let the meeting be a surprise. I wanted Prince Romanos to meet my dear Zeto and fall in love with her without knowing who she was, so that there could be no quarrelling when it became known that he was here.”

“But what good could it do if he did fall in love with her?” asked Eirene blankly, her mind running upon the various disastrous consequences that were bound to ensue from this most inconvenient intrusion.

“Oh, but he could not fight against her brother then!” said Princess Emilia with conviction. “And Zeto might say she would not marry him unless he consented to acknowledge Prince Theophanis as the rightful heir. Of course I hoped she would fall in love with him too, because then she could make him do anything she wanted. That was why I did not tell her who he was, lest she should steel her heart against him as the enemy of her family.”

“It would have done no good if we had known of his coming earlier,” murmured Eirene, still intent upon her own thoughts. “We should not have been able to do anything,--it is not time yet.”

Princess Emilia listened with a puzzled face. “But you do think mine was a good plan, don’t you?” she asked. “I can’t quite decide whether it has succeeded or not yet, but you would be glad if it did?”

“Glad? Oh, yes!” laughed Eirene drearily. “But you don’t realise that Zoe is not the right girl to make a plan like that succeed. And he is not the right man.”

The worst forebodings of Eirene and the Professor were justified by the effect produced on the Emathian delegates by the appearance of Prince Romanos. All the animosities and differences of opinion which had begun to show signs of slumbering broke out afresh, and purely practical questions were shelved indefinitely in view of the primary importance of a disputed title. Among the bewildering complexities of race, religion, and political feeling that divided the delegates, it became gradually clear that while the Slavs, with whom went those of Scythian sympathies, were on Maurice’s side, the Greeks, and with them the friends of Pannonian ascendency, took that of Prince Romanos. A small group of Greeks--the personal adherents of Professor Panagiotis--remained faithful to Maurice, and an irreconcilable party, headed by Lazar Nilischeff, advocated the cutting of the Gordian knot by a request to Thracia to take over the whole of Emathia, while there were isolated supporters of similar action on the part of Mœsia and Morea. Still, the salient fact was that the harmony, and therefore the advantage, of the conference was destroyed. It was no use continuing to thresh out the questions from the discussion of which the rough draft of a constitution had gradually been emerging; and even Wylie’s scheme of raising a body of Sikhs, time-expired soldiers of the Indian army, as the nucleus of a central police, which had been warmly welcomed on the one hand and as violently opposed on the other, had lost its interest. As the less educated among the delegates demanded with one voice, whenever any attempt was made to continue the interrupted deliberations, what was the good of fiddling about details when the essential question, Who was to rule Emathia as the nominee of the Powers and the people? was still undecided. Passing _popas_ were seized upon and catechised, and expeditions were made to interrogate mountain hermits of special sanctity, with the result of a wonderfully varied collection of answers. Was Maurice Theophanis, descendant in the direct line of the elder son of the Emperor John, debarred from succeeding by the fact that neither his immediate ancestors nor himself were members of the Orthodox Church? Did her marriage with a schismatic also invalidate the claim of his wife Eirene, descended from the younger son of John Theophanis? And in view of this flaw, was the otherwise inferior claim of the Christodoridi family, who sprang only from a female descendant of the Emperor, that which ought to prevail?

The arguments were interminable and warm, and the arbitrators to whom it was suggested to refer the matter ranged from the Hercynian Emperor to the President of the United States. Prince Romanos himself adhered firmly to the condition he had announced on his first appearance before the delegates. He was prepared to submit his claim to the arbitration of the Œcumenical Patriarch, and abide by his decision. Could anything be fairer, as the question was one of religion? Since it was practically a foregone conclusion that the Patriarch would decide in favour of the Orthodox candidate of Orthodox descent, Maurice and his supporters were unable to feel the same confidence in his impartiality, but a rift began to make itself felt between the Emathian Slavs and those with Scythian sympathies. The latter, though usually much opposed to the claims of the Patriarch, supported the reference of the matter to him, and in consequence of this defection it became clear that, in case of a division, Maurice would be outvoted. This point was not actually reached, but on the adjournment of the debate Professor Panagiotis hurried to Eirene.

“This is what I feared!” he cried. “It is an arrangement between Scythia and Pannonia. In order to gain time, one of them will support your husband, the other the Christodoridis, and they will both favour a reference to the Œcumenical Patriarch, who will take from a year to a year and a half to give his decision. We can do nothing until the snow melts, and yet, unless we can checkmate this plan, we are condemned to a delay that will be fatal to our hopes.”

“We must try to work on Prince Romanos,” suggested Eirene, but not cheerfully. “The Princess of Dardania is very anxious that he should marry Princess Zoe.”

“Ah, if that might be!” cried the Professor quickly. “But it is too much to hope.”

“But what good could it do?” asked Eirene, as she had asked of Princess Emilia. “He would hardly withdraw his claim through affection for her.”

“No, but if he marries her, he marries a schismatic, and his claim becomes infinitely weaker than your own,” was the fierce answer. Their eyes met, and Eirene drew a long breath. If Zoe’s fate had depended upon the deliberations of these two plotters, it would have been settled there and then.