Her Royal Highness: A Romance of the Chancelleries of Europe

“No; that is a secret, M’sieur Waldron, which even you must not know. It is my affair, and mine alone,” she replied in a low tone.

“I’m naturally most curious,” he declared, “for if I can assist you to extricate yourself from this impasse I will.”

“I thank you most sincerely,” was her quick response, as she looked up at him with her soft, big eyes. “If at any time I require your assistance I will certainly count upon you. But, alas! I fear that no effort on your part could avail me. There are reasons – reasons beyond my control – which make it imperative that I should marry the man marked out for me.”

“It’s a shame – a downright sin!” he cried fiercely. “No, mademoiselle,” and he grasped her small hand before she could withdraw it; “I will not allow you to sacrifice yourself to your uncle’s whim.”

She shook her head slowly, answering:

“It is, alas! not within your power to prevent it! The matter has already been arranged.”

“Then you are actually betrothed?”

“Yes,” she replied in a hoarse voice. “To a man I hate.”

“Then you must let me act on your behalf. I must – I will?”

“No. You can do nothing to help me. As I have already explained, my life in future can only be one of tragedy – just as yours may be, I fear,” she added in a slow, distinct voice.

“I hardly follow you,” he exclaimed, looking at her much puzzled.

She smiled sadly, turning her big eyes upon his.

“Probably not,” she said. “But does not half Madrid know the tragedy of your love for the dancer, Beatriz Rojas de Ruata, the beautiful woman whose misfortune it is to have a husband in the person of a drunken cab-driver.”

“What!” he gasped, starting and staring at her in amazement. “Then you know Madrid?”

“Yes, I have been in Madrid,” was her answer. “And I have heard in the salons of your mad infatuation for the beautiful opera-dancer. It is common gossip, and most people sigh and sympathise with you, for it is known, too, that Hubert Waldron, of the British Embassy, is the soul of honour – and that such love as his can only bring tragedy in its train.”

“You never told me that you had been in Madrid!”

“Because you have never asked me,” was her calm reply. “But I know much more concerning you, M’sieur Waldron, than you believe,” she said with a mysterious smile. Then, her eyes glowing, she added: “I have heard you discussed in Madrid, in Barcelona, and in San Sebastian, and I know that your love for the beautiful Beatriz Rojas de Ruata is just as fraught with tragedy as the inexorable decree which may, ere long, bind me as wife to the one man whom I hate and detest most in all the world!”

Chapter Five.
A Surprise

Egypt is the strangest land, the weirdest land, the saddest land in all the world.

It is a land of memories, of monuments, and of mysticism; a land of dreams that never come true, a land of mystery, a great cemetery stretching from ancient Ethiopia away to the sea, a great grave hundreds of miles long in which is buried perhaps as many millions of human beings as exist upon our earth to-day.

Against the low-lying shore of the great Nile valley have beaten many of the greatest waves of human history. It is the grave of a hundred dead Egypts, old and forgotten Egypts, that existed and possessed kings and priests and rules and creeds, and died and were succeeded by newer Egypts that now, too, are dead, that in their time believed they reared permanently above the ruins of the past.

The small white steamer lay moored in the evening light at the long stone quay before the sun-baked town of Wady Haifa, close to the modern European railway terminus of the long desert-line to Khartoum.

On board, dinner was in progress in the cramped little saloon, no larger than that of a good-sized yacht, and everyone was in high spirits, for the Second Cataract, a thousand miles from Cairo, had at last been reached.

Amid the cosmopolitan chatter in French, English, Italian and German, Boulos, arrayed in pale pink silk – for the dragoman is ever a chameleon in the colour of his perfumed robes – made his appearance and clapped his hands as signal for silence.

“La-dees and gen’lemens,” he cried in his long-drawn-out Arab intonation, “we haf arrived now in Wady Haifa, ze frontier of Sudan. Wady Haifa in ze days of ze khalifa was built of Nile mud, and one of ze strongholds of ze Dervishes. Ze Engleesh Lord Kig’ner, he make Wady Haifa hees headquarter and make one railroad to Khartoum. After ze war zis place he be rebuilt by Engleesh engineer, as to-morrow you will see. After dinner ze Engleesh custom officer he come on board to search for arms or ammunition, for no sporting rifle be allowed in ze Sudan without ze licence, which he cost fifty poun’ sterling. To-morrow I go ashor wiz you la-dees and gen’lemens at ten o’clock. We remain here, in Wady Haifa, till noon ze day after to-morrow to take back ze European mail from Khartoum. Monuments teeckets are not here wanted.”

There was the usual laugh at the mention of “monuments tickets,” for every Nile traveller before leaving Cairo has to obtain a permit from the Department of Antiquities to allow him to visit the excavations. Hence every dragoman up and down the Nile is ever reminding the traveller of his “monument ticket,” and also that “galloping donkeys are not allowed.”

“Monuments teeckets very much wanted; gallopin’ don-kees not al-lowed,” is the parrot-like phrase with which each dragoman concludes his daily address to his charges before setting out upon an excursion.

Dinner over, many of the travellers landed to stroll through the small town, half native, half European, which has lately sprung up at the head of the Sudan railway.

As usual, Chester Dawson escorted Edna and went ashore laughing merrily. Time was, and not so very long ago, when Wady Haifa was an unsafe place for the European, even by day. But under the benign British influence and control it is to-day as safe as Brighton.

Hubert Waldron lit a cigar, and alone ascended the long flight of steps which led from the landing-stage to the quay. On the right lay the long, well-lit European railway station, beyond, a clump of high palms looming dark against the steely night sky. The white train, with its closed sun-shutters, stood ready to start on its long journey south, conveying the European mail over the desert with half a dozen passengers to the capital of the Sudan.

He strolled upon the platform, and watched the bustle and excitement among the natives as they entered the train accompanied by many huge and unwieldy bundles, and much gesticulation and shouting in Arabic. Attached to the end of the train was a long car, through the open door of which it could be seen that it contained living and sleeping apartment.

At the door stood a sturdy, sunburnt Englishman in shirt and trousers and wide-brimmed solar topee. With him Waldron began to chat.

“Yes,” the English engineer replied, “I and my assistant are just off into the desert for three weeks. The train drops us off two hundred miles south, and there we shall remain at work. The track is always requiring repair, and I assure you we find the midday heat is sometimes simply terrible. The only sign of civilisation that we see is when the express passes up to Khartoum at daybreak, and down to Haifa at midnight.”

“Terribly monotonous,” remarked the diplomat, used to the gay society of the capitals.

“Oh, I don’t know,” replied the Englishman, with a rather sad smile. “I gave up London five years ago – I had certain reasons – and I came out here to recommence life and forget. I don’t expect I shall ever go back.”

“Ah! Then London holds some painful memory for you – eh?” remarked Waldron with sympathy.

“Yes,” he answered, with a hard, bitter look upon his face. “But there,” he added quickly, “I suppose I shall get over it – some day.”

“Why, of course you will,” replied the diplomat cheerfully. “We all of us have our private troubles. Some men are not so lucky as to be able to put everything behind them, and go into self-imposed exile.”

“It is best, I assure you,” was the big, bronzed fellow’s reply. Then noticing the signals he shouted into the inner apartment: “We’re off, Clark. Want anything else?”

“No,” came the reply; “everything is right. I’ve just checked it all.”

“We have to take food and water,” the engineer explained to Waldron with a laugh. “Good night.”

“Good night – and good luck,” shouted Hubert, as the train moved off, and a strong, bare arm waved him farewell.

Then after he had watched the red tail-light disappear over the sandy waste he turned, and wondering what skeleton of the past that exile held concealed in his cupboard, strode along the river-bank beneath the belt of palms.

How many Englishmen abroad are self-exiles? How full of bitterness is many a man’s heart in our far-off Colonies? And how many good, sterling fellows are wearily dragging out their monotonous lives, just because of “the woman”? Does she remember? does she care? She probably still lives her own life in her own merry circle – giddy and full of a modern craving for constant excitement. She has, in most cases, conveniently forgotten the man she wronged – forgotten his existence, perhaps even his very name.

And how many men, too, have stood by and allowed their lives to be wrecked for the purpose of preserving a woman’s good name. But does the woman ever thank him? Alas! but seldom – very seldom.

True, the follies of life are mostly the man’s. But the woman does not always pay – as some would have us believe.

Waldron, puffing thoughtfully at his cigar, his thoughts far away from the Nile – for he was recalling a certain evening in Madrid when he had sat alone with Beatriz in her beautiful flat in the Calle de Alcalâ – had passed through the darkness of the palms, and out upon the path which still led beside the wide river, towards the Second Cataract.

From the shadows of the opposite shore came the low beating of a tom-tom and the Arab boatman’s chant – that rather mournful chant one hears everywhere along the Nile from the Nyanza to the sea, and which ends in “Al-lah-hey! Al-lah-hey!” Allah! Always the call to Allah.

The sun – the same sun god that was worshipped at Abu Simbel – had gone long ago, tired Nubia slept in peace, and the stars that gazed down upon her fretted not the night with thoughts of the creeds of men.

Again Hubert Waldron reached another small clump of palms close to the water’s edge, and as he passed noiselessly across the sand he suddenly became conscious that he was not alone.

Voices in French broke the silence, and he suddenly halted.

Then before him, silhouetted against the blue, clear light of the desert night, rose two figures – Europeans, a man and a woman.

The woman, who wore a white dress, was clasped in the arms of the man, while he rained hot, passionate kisses upon her brow.

Waldron stood upon the soft sand, a silent witness of that exchange of passionate caresses. He feared to move lest he should attract their attention and be accused of eavesdropping.

From where he was, half concealed by the big trunk of a date-palm, he could distinctly hear the words uttered by the man.

“I have been here for three days awaiting you, darling. I travelled by Port Sudan and Khartoum, and then on here to meet you.”

“And I, too, Henri, have been wondering if you would arrive here in time,” was the girl’s response, as her head lay in sweet content upon her lover’s shoulder. “Imagine my delight when the Arab came on board and slipped your note into my hand.”

“Ah, Lola darling, how I have longed for this moment! – longed to hold you in my arms once again,” he cried.

Lola!

Hubert Waldron held his breath, scarce believing his own ears.

Yes, it was her voice – the voice he knew so well. She had met her lover there – in that out-of-the-way spot – he having travelled by the Red Sea route to the Sudan in order to keep the tryst.

Waldron stood there listening, like a man in a dream.

It was all plain now. The man who had been marked out as Lola’s husband she hated, because of her secret love for that young Frenchman in whose arms she now stood clasped.

He was telling her how he had left Brindisi three weeks before, and going down the Red Sea had landed at Port Sudan, afterwards taking sail to Khartoum and then post-haste across the desert to Haifa.

“Had I not caught the coasting steamer I could not have reached here until you had left,” he added.

“Yes, Henri. But you must be most careful,” she urged. “My uncle must never suspect – he must never dream the truth.”

“I know, darling. If I travel back to Cairo with you I will exercise the utmost discretion, never fear.”

“Neither by word nor by look must the truth ever be betrayed,” she said. “Remember, Henri, my whole future is in your hands.”

“Can I ever forget that, my darling?” he cried, kissing her with all the frantically amorous passion of a Frenchman.

“It is dangerous,” she declared. “Too dangerous, I fear. Gigleux is ubiquitous.”

“He always is. But leave it all to me,” the man hastened to assure her, holding her ungloved hand and raising it fervently to his lips. “I shall join your steamer as an ordinary passenger just before you sail.”

“But you must avoid me. Promise me to do that?” she implored in a low, earnest tone.

“I will promise you anything, my darling – because I love you better than my life,” was his low, earnest answer, as he tenderly stroked the soft hair from her brow. “Do you recollect our last evening together in Rome, eh?”

“Shall I ever forget?” was her reply. “I risked everything that night to escape and come to you.”

“Then you really do love me, Lola – truly?” For answer she flung her long arms around his neck and kissed him fondly. And she then remained silent in his strong embrace.

Chapter Six.
More Concerning the Stranger

At their feet, winding its way for thousands of miles between limitless areas of sand, its banks lined for narrow distances with green fields and the habitations of men, flowed dark and wondrous the one thing that makes human life possible in all the lands of the Sudan and of Egypt – flowed from sources that for ages were undiscovered, and which even in this day of boasted knowledge are yet incompletely known – the Nile.

In the lazy indolence of that sun-baked land of silence, idleness and love, affection is quickly cultivated, as the fast-living set who go up there each winter know well. Hubert Waldron, man of the world that he was, had watched and knew. He stood there, however, dumbfounded, for there was now presented a very strange and curious state of affairs. Lola, the dark-eyed girl who had enchanted him and held him by the great mystery which surrounded her, was now revealed keeping tryst with a stranger – a mysterious Frenchman who had come up from the blazing Sudan – a man who had come from nowhere.

He strained his eyes in an endeavour to distinguish the stranger’s outline, but in vain. The man was standing in the deep shadow. Only the girl’s familiar form silhouetted against the starlit sky.

“We must be very careful of my uncle,” the girl urged. “The slightest suspicion, and we shall assuredly be parted, and for ever.”

“I will exercise every discretion, never fear, dearest,” was his reassuring reply, and again he took her soft, fair face in both his hands and kissed her passionately upon the lips.

“But, Henri,” she exclaimed presently, “are you quite sure they suspect nothing at home – that you have never betrayed to anyone your affection for me? Remember, there are spies everywhere.”

“Surely you can trust me, my darling?” he asked in reproach.

“Of course, dear,” she cried, again raising her lips and kissing him fondly. “But, naturally, I am full of fear lest our secret be known.”

“It cannot be known,” was his confident reply. “We can both keep the truth from others. Trust me.”

“And when we return to Europe. What then?” she asked in a low, changed tone.

“Then we shall see. Why try and look into the future? It is useless to anticipate difficulties which may not, after all, exist,” he said cheerfully, again stroking her hair with tenderness.

He spoke in French in a soft, refined voice, and was evidently a gentleman, though he still stood in the shadow and was therefore undistinguishable. He was holding the girl in his arms and a silence had fallen between them – a silence only broken by the low lapping of the Nile waters, and that rhythmic chant now receding: “Ah-lal-hey! Al-lal-hey?”

“My darling!” whispered the stranger passionately. “My own faithful darling. I love you – ah! so much more than you can ever tell. And, alas! I am so unworthy of you.”

She, in return, sighed upon his breast and declared that she loved but one man in all the world – himself.

“Since that night we first met, Lola – you remember it,” he said, “my only thought has been of you.”

“Ah, yes,” was her reply. “At my aunt’s ball in Vienna. I recollect how the Baron von Karlstadt introduced us, and how you bowed and invited me to dance. Shall I ever forget that evening, Henri – just over a year ago.”

“And old Gigleux? Is he still quite as troublesome as ever?”

“Just. He has eyes in the back of his head.”

“And Mademoiselle Lambert – is she loyal to you?”

“I fear not, alas!” was Lola’s reply. “She is paid to spy upon me. At least that has latterly become my impression. I have wanted to become her friend, but she is unapproachable.”

“Then we must exercise every discretion. On board I shall avoid you studiously. We can, of course, meet again in Cairo, for it is a big city, and you will sometimes be free.”

“Yes. Till then, adieu, Henri. But,” she added, “it will be so hard to be near you for the next three weeks and never speak.”

“It must be. Gigleux is no fool, remember,” the man replied.

“I must be getting back. They will miss me,” she said wistfully. “How shall I be able to pass you by dozens of times a day, Henri, maybe sit down at the same table with you, and betray no sign of recognition? I really don’t know.”

“But you must, darling! You must – for both our sakes,” he argued, and then he once again clasped her in his strong arms and smothered her with his fierce passionate caresses.

Hubert Waldron witnessed it all. He held his breath and bit his lip. Who could be this mysterious Henri – this secret lover whom Lola had met by appointment in that far-off, out-of-the-world place?

He recollected that Lola had flirted with him and that she had amused herself by allowing him to pay her compliments. Yet the existence of one whom she loved so devotedly in secret was now revealed, and he stood aghast, filled with chagrin at the unexpected revelation.

The pair, locked in each other’s arms, moved slowly forward in his direction.

She was urging him to allow her to get back, but he was persuading her to remain a little longer.

“Think of all the long weeks and months we have been parted, sweetheart!” he was saying. “Besides we must not speak again until we get to Cairo. I shall remain at the little hotel over to-morrow. But it would be far too dangerous for us to meet. One or other of the passengers might discover us.”

“Yes,” she sighed; “we shall be compelled to exercise the greatest caution always. All my future depends on the preservation of our secret.”

Waldron slipped from his hiding-place and away behind another tree, just before the pair passed the spot where he had been standing.

He watched them as they went forth into the light, and at last realised that the man was tall and slim, though, of course, he could not see his face.

He watched their parting, a long and tender farewell. The ardent lover kissed her upon the lips many times, kissed her cheeks, kissed her soft white hands, and then at last reluctantly released her and stood watching as she hurried on to the next belt of palms back to the landing-stage.

Afterwards he strode leisurely on behind her, and was soon lost to view in the black shadows.

A fortnight – fourteen lazy days of idleness and sunshine – had gone by.

The white double-decked steamer descending the Nile had left modern Luxor, with its gorgeous Winter Palace Hotel on the site of ancient Thebes. It had passed the wonderful temple standing upon the bank, and was steering due northward for Cairo, still a week’s journey distant.

In the west a great sea of crimson spread over the clear sky, and shafts of golden light fell upon the sand-dunes that barred the view in that direction. Away in the farther distance to the west the steel-like rim of the utter desert also seemed somewhat softened by that mellow light which diffused all the face of nature. During all the full hours of the day that rigid desert ruin, where lay the valley of the tombs of the kings, had seemed to repel, to warn back, to caution that there lay the limit beyond which the human being might not go. But in the falling light it had surrendered, and in its softer appearance it seemed to promise that it, like destiny and death, would surrender its uttermost secrets to those whose hearts were brave enough to approach it without fear.

The tea interval was over, and it was the lazy hour before dinner. Most of the travellers were in their cabins dressing, for the European ever clings to the dinner-jacket or evening blouse. On board that small steamer were men – Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Americans – whose wealth could be reckoned at over a hundred millions sterling, men who wore bad hats and rather shabby clothes, but whose women-kind were always loud-speaking and bizarre. Truly the winter world of Egypt is a strange one of moneyed leisure, of reckless extravagance, and of all the modern vices of this our twentieth-century world.

The white steamer, with its silent, pensive reis squatting in the bows with his eternal cigarette, ever watchful of the appearance of the broad grey-green waters, puffed onward around the sudden bend.

To the east, the Arabian Desert – beautiful beyond words, but where, save in a few narrow oases, Nature forbade the habitancy of man – stretched away to the Red Sea and far on into Asia. And to the west, frowning now as though in hatred of the green Nile with its fertility, lay the Libyan Desert, which, with its great mother the Sahara, held so much of Africa in its cruel grasp, and which was as unlovely and repelling as its sister of Arabia was bright and beautiful.

And Egypt – the Egypt of life and fertility, of men and history, tradition, and of modern travel – lay a green and smiling land between the two deserts as a human life lies between the two great eternities before birth and after death; or as a notable writer once put it: as the moment of the present lies between the lost past and the undiscovered future.

Waldron had already dressed, and was lying back in a long deck-chair enjoying a cigarette, and gazing away at the crimson sunset, when a tall, thin-faced man of thirty passed along the deck. He, too, was in the conventional dinner-jacket and black cravat, but to his fellow-travellers he was a mystery, for ever since joining them at Wady, Haifa he had kept himself much to himself, and hardly spoken to anyone.

His name was Henri Pujalet, and he was from Paris. His father, Henri Pujalet, the well-known banker of the Rue des Capucines, had died two years before, leaving to his eldest son his great wealth. That was all that was known of him.

Only Hubert Waldron knew the truth – the secret of Lola’s love.

“Ah, my dear friend!” he cried in his enthusiastic French way as he approached the Englishman. “Well – how goes it?”

“Very well, thanks,” responded the diplomat in French, for truth to tell he had cultivated the stranger’s acquaintance and had watched with amused curiosity the subtle glances which Lola sometimes cast towards him.

The secret lover sank into a chair at the diplomat’s side and slowly lit a cigarette.

He was a good-looking – even handsome – man, with refined and regular features, a smiling, complacent expression, and a small, well-trimmed moustache. But his cheek-bones were high, and his eyes rather narrowly set. To-day no young Frenchman – as was the fashion ten years ago – wears a beard. Time was when the beard was carefully oiled, perfumed, trimmed and curled. But to-day the fashion in France is a hairless face – as in America and in England.

Waldron examined his companion for the hundredth time. Yes, he was a mystery. He had given the name of Pujalet to the steward, but was that his real name? Was he the son of Pujalet, the dead banker of the Rue des Capucines?

Old Gigleux often chatted with him, for were they not compatriots? But the white-headed old fellow apparently held no suspicion that he was his niece’s secret lover who had travelled those many miles from Europe in order to be near her.

The situation was not without its humours. Of all the persons on board that gay crowd returning to Cairo to spend New Year’s Day, only Hubert Waldron knew the truth. And as a diplomat he stood by and watched in silence, aware that the looker-on always sees most of the game.

He had had many amusing chats on deck and in the smoking-room with Henri Pujalet, whom he had found to be a much more cosmopolitan person than he had at first imagined. He seemed to know Europe well – even Madrid – for he spoke of certain dishes at the Lhardy and the excellence of the wines at the Tournié in the Calle Mayor, of the “Flamenco” at the Gate Nero, and the smart teas in the ideal room in the Calle de Alcata; all of which were familiar, of course, to Waldron.

Equally familiar to him was Petersburg, with Cubat’s and such-like resorts; he knew the gay Boulevard Hotel in Bucharest, and the excellence of its sterlet, the Nazionale and “Father Abraham’s” in Rome; the Hungaria in Budapest, the Adlon in Berlin, the Pera Palace in Constantinople, as indeed most of the other well-known resorts to which the constant traveller across Europe naturally drifts at one time or another.

That Henri Pujalet was a cosmopolitan was perfectly clear to his companion. Yet he was, as certainly, a man of mystery.

Hubert Waldron, a shrewd observer and a keen investigator of anything appertaining to mystery, watched him daily, and daily became more and more interested.

His suspicions were aroused that all was not quite right. Pujalet’s attitude towards Lola was quite remarkable. Not by the slightest glance or gesture did he give away his secret. To all on board he was to mademoiselle a stranger, and, moreover, perfectly oblivious to her very existence.

The two men chatted idly until suddenly the dinner-gong was sounded by a black-faced, grinning Nubian, who carried it up and down the deck beating it noisily.

Then he descended to the big white-and-gold saloon, where a few moments later there assembled a merry, chattering, and laughing crowd.

In the midst of dinner Waldron rose from the table and ascended to the upper deck and got his handkerchief. As he approached his cabin, however, he saw someone leave it, and disappear round the stern of the vessel. The incident instantly impressed itself upon his mind as a curious one, and in his evening slippers he sped lightly to the end of the deck and gazed after the receding figure of the fugitive.

It was Henri Pujalet!

Waldron returned instantly to his cabin in wonder why the Frenchman had intruded there.

As far as he could see nothing had been disturbed. All was in order, just as he had left it after dressing.

Only one object had been moved – his small, steel, travelling dispatch-box, enclosed in its green canvas case. This, which had been upon a shelf, was now lying upon the bed. The green canvas cover had been unfastened, displaying the patent brass lock by the famous maker.

It had been examined and tampered with. An attempt had, no doubt, been made to open it, and the person who had made that attempt was none other than the tall, good-looking man who had so swiftly and silently descended to the saloon and now, unnoticed, retaken his place at dinner.

“Well,” gasped Waldron, taking out his keys and unlocking the steel box to reassure himself that his private papers were intact, “this is curious – distinctly curious, to say the least!”