Read Ebook: A Crowned Queen: The Romance of a Minister of State by Grier Sydney C

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 2799 lines and 168992 words, and 56 pages

ntil her physicians refuse to allow her to remain longer," she replied, with a touch of defiance in her tone. "Is there anything extraordinary in that?"

"What could be more natural, madame?"

"My mother is endangering her own health by coming to Thracia at this season," the Queen went on warmly; "but she refuses to forsake me in my bereavement."

"Her Royal Highness's visit is entirely of a personal and private character, madame, if I may presume to ask?"

"Entirely. May I inquire your reason for asking?"

"It is immaterial, madame. Your Majesty's statement is altogether satisfactory."

"I must insist on your answering me, monsieur." The Queen's tone was imperious, and her eyes shone angrily.

"Since your Majesty insists--If her Royal Highness's visit were of a political character, I should be compelled to entreat your Majesty to seek another Premier."

"What! you threaten me, M. le Ministre?"

"Pardon me, madame. I spoke only by your Majesty's command."

This was undeniably true, and the Queen turned again to her papers with a good deal of impatience. Presently she looked up once more--

"I believe, monsieur, that my husband intrusted to his valet a letter addressed to you, engaging your care for his son?"

"It is true that his Majesty honoured me so far, madame."

"I regret that his Majesty did not see fit to ask me to hand it to you. I can assure you I should not have destroyed it."

"Little fool!" thought Cyril. "If she is trying to irritate Drakovics by a display of petulance, she ought to know that nothing could please him better." But the Premier was equal to the occasion.

"Madame," he said, in the tone of one who deals gently with a froward child, "I could not have valued such a proof of his Majesty's confidence more highly than I do; but my pleasure in it would have been enhanced had I received it from your hands."

The Queen crimsoned again under the ironical compliment, and M. Drakovics heightened its effect by humbly asking permission to retire, leaving Cyril to finish his business with her. When the door had closed behind the Premier, Cyril took a bold step--

"You would say, 'Do not quarrel with M. Drakovics,'" put in the Queen quickly. "Is not that so?"

"I see that there is no need for me to volunteer advice, madame."

"But tell me, why does he hate my mother so much?"

"Will not your Majesty make some allowance for the natural anxiety of a Minister who sees his country threatened on all sides by insidious foes? Our only hope of preserving Thracia as an independent kingdom lies in our maintaining an equilibrium in the influence of the Powers surrounding us. If we allow one to gain an advantage, we not only encourage that Power to further encroachments, but we stimulate the opposing Powers to demand similar advantages. Not to refer too particularly to past difficulties, need I do more than remind your Majesty that in the past her Royal Highness has not exactly proved herself a successful politician, as we in Thracia consider it? M. Drakovics is doubtless afraid that in the kindness of her heart the Princess might possibly be induced to use her influence with your Majesty in favour of the commercial concessions, say, which Pannonia is now seeking to obtain, and this would complicate his task very much. Of course, the case I have suggested is merely an illustration."

"Then what is your advice on this point, Count?"

"It is neither brilliant nor particularly agreeable, madame--simply to take no step, enter into no agreement, without the knowledge and hearty assent of your responsible Ministers,--that is to say, of M. Drakovics."

"Ah, you are the friend of M. Drakovics?"

"I was the friend of your husband, madame, and I promised him to do my best for his son."

Her face cleared. "Ah, that is it," she said. "I must not risk Michael's kingdom for my caprice, nor even to please my mother. You are right to remind me of this, Count. If my child were to lose a single village, or the smallest fraction of the power which he ought to possess in Europe, through any measure of mine, I could never forgive myself. I could not face him when he grew up."

"His Majesty is to be congratulated on possessing so conscientious a guardian of his interests, madame."

"But it is not only that. It is not merely a question of preserving the kingdom for him, but of fitting him for the kingdom. During this last dreadful fortnight I have become very anxious about his education. Do you not think he ought to be taught something?"

"For his sake and yours, madame, I trust your Majesty will not teach him to dislike his advisers," said Cyril drily.

"I think that if he learns that from any one, it will be from the advisers themselves," said the Queen, an angry flush rising to her forehead; but as Cyril merely bowed in answer to the taunt, her face changed. "I am doing you an injustice, Count. You are thinking of what my husband said that day. But it was not fair."

As she guessed, Cyril's thoughts had gone back, like her own, to a day shortly before his visit to England, when Otto Georg and he, catching sight of the little Prince marching solemnly up and down the terrace in charge of Mrs Jones, had sallied out and carried off the child in triumph to the King's study, where they indulged in a glorious romp. When the fun was at its height the Queen had entered, and without taking any notice of her husband or of Cyril, had led away Prince Michael to his nurse, telling him in her iciest voice that it was the hour for his walk, and that she never allowed it to be interfered with. As she reached the door, dragging with her the unwilling child, puzzled to find himself scolded for what his father had done, the King's wrath blazed forth--

"Take care, madame! The child is in your hands for the present, but in a year or two it will be a different matter. You had better not teach him to hate his father, for I might return the compliment."

Cyril could recall now the way in which the Queen had departed without deigning to reply, her head held a little higher as she passed through the door, while Otto Georg, angry that he had forgotten himself so far as to use threats to his wife in the presence of a third party, relieved his feelings by a burst of hearty vituperation as soon as she was out of hearing. This had happened only two months ago.

"His Majesty spoke in a moment of irritation, madame."

"Your Majesty wished to say something about the King's education?"

"Yes," said the Queen, returning hastily from her attempt at self-justification, "it was an idea of my mother's. No; she has not been taking part in politics--it is quite a domestic matter. We both feel that the King ought to begin to learn something, and I had looked forward to teaching him myself; but my mother thinks I should not have time to give him regular lessons, and I suppose that is quite true. She suggests that I should appoint as his governess a certain Fr?ulein von Staubach, who has been lectrice to my aunt the Queen of Moesia until quite lately. She is a very highly cultivated and excellent woman, besides being very fond of children--But do you know her?"

"And a bitter enemy of Drakovics's and of mine!" Cyril had added mentally to the list of Fr?ulein von Staubach's good qualities. He had no difficulty in fathoming the Princess's motives when he remembered an occasion on which Fr?ulein von Staubach had been a passive, if not an active, participant in carrying out a practical joke of which he had been the victim. The mystification had had important political consequences, and Cyril nourished feelings which were the reverse of friendly towards all those who had taken part in it--feelings which he had no doubt were fully reciprocated. But it was unnecessary to explain all this to the Queen.

"I had the honour of meeting the lady some years ago, when I spent a short time in Moesia, madame," he answered.

"Ah, then you must know how suitable a person she is for the post. She is devoted to my aunt and to our house, and that is what I want. I could not bear that any one should come between my boy and me."

"A most natural sentiment, madame."

"Then you will try and bring M. Drakovics to see it in the same light? Of course, under present circumstances, he will expect to be consulted. But I may depend upon you to smooth the way?"

"So that is what all this frankness comes to!" was Cyril's mental exclamation. "I might have guessed that she wanted me to do her a favour. Why didn't the little schemer try some of her wiles upon poor old Otto Georg instead of slanging him? It would have made things pleasanter even if it meant nothing. I will do my utmost to further your Majesty's wishes," he said aloud.

"But you are not satisfied," said the Queen mournfully. "You think I am devising some plot against yourself and your dear friend M. Drakovics. Cannot you understand that my boy is everything to me? If we were parted--if he were turned against me--it would kill me."

Cyril was saved the embarrassment of a reply by a violent fumbling at the door. At a sign from the Queen he opened it, and admitted the little King, who ran up to his mother with a headless tin soldier in one hand and a picture-book in the other.

"Little mother, there's no one to play with me," he wailed, dropping his toys and climbing into her lap. She gathered him up in her arms, and looked across him at Cyril.

"He is all I have left," she said reproachfully, "and I am all that he has. You see that he cannot do without me. I rely on you to help me in appointing Fr?ulein von Staubach. She will not try to separate him from me. You were his father's friend."

"Either she is a different creature since Otto Georg's death," he said to himself, "or she is the finest actress I know. She used to be simply a jealous wife; at her husband's death-bed she was a heroine of tragedy; and now she is nothing but a scheming little woman, who hasn't art enough to conceal the fact that she is a schemer. What a creature of moods she must be! I could have sworn that she would never forgive me that death-bed reconciliation; but though it is disappointing, artistically speaking, that she has stepped down from her tragic pedestal, it will make her much easier to work with if only the phase lasts. But it really is much less interesting. Can it possibly be all acting? Was she merely wearing a mask to-day? But no, it was too clumsy. The transition from hatred to friendliness was not gradual enough to be artistic. No! I see what it is. The Princess, finding her daughter in a state of hot indignation against me on her arrival, has talked at me industriously for the fortnight. At first the Queen agreed with her, then she got bored, and lastly she became indignant. She determined to prove her mother in the wrong by converting the enemy into a friend. If she could succeed, it would justify her for being so weak as to promise she would trust me. Ah, Madame la Princesse! you have done me a service you little intended, simply through not seeing when you had said enough. And as for you, Queen Ernestine, I shall know how to manage you in future. When you are intending to play a very deep game, you shouldn't show your cards quite so openly."

But in spite of Cyril's lack of illusions, the picture of the Queen as he had last seen her recurred to him. Her dark eyes looked tearfully at him over the child's golden curls and white frock, and her reproachful voice said, "He is all that I have left." He could only succeed in banishing the impression from his mind by assuring himself that she had arranged for the little King's appearance at the moment, with a view to the effect to be produced on himself, and even then it was apt to return to him unbidden. This was especially the case one afternoon about a week later, when, looking in at the Premier's office, he found M. Drakovics sitting idle, gazing into futurity with knitted brows and folded arms.

"Sorry to see that you have something on your mind, monsieur!" was the irreverent greeting which roused the Premier from his brown study. He sat up suddenly, and tried to look as though the shot had not told.

"You are wiser than I am, Count. I am not aware that there is anything special on my mind at present."

"No?" asked Cyril, with a note of concern in his voice. "And yet such sudden lapses of memory as this are a bad sign, surely?" and he met M. Drakovics's frown with a gaze of bland unconsciousness.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet