Chapter Seventeen. Her Highness is Outspoken.

“Now, Uncle Colin! It’s really too horrid of you to spy upon me like that! I had no idea you were behind us! I knew old Dmitri was there—he watches me just as a cat watches a mouse. But I never thought you would be so nasty and mean!” And the girl in her fresh white gown stood at the window of the drawing-room drumming impatiently upon the pane with the tips of her long, white fingers, for it was raining outside.

“My dear Natalia,” I said paternally, standing upon the white goat-skin hearthrug, and looking across at her; “I did not watch you intentionally. I travelled by the same train as your friend, and I saw you meet him. Really,” I laughed, “you looked a most interesting pair as you walked together down Queen’s Road. I left you at the corner of Western Road and went on to the ‘Métropole.’”

“Oh! you actually did have the decency to do that!” she exclaimed, turning to me her pretty face clouded by displeasure. “Well, I say quite frankly that I think it was absolutely horrid of you. Surely I may meet a friend without being spied upon at every turn!” she added resentfully.

“Dmitri only does his duty, remember,” I ventured to remark.

“Oh, Dmitri’s a perfect plague. He shadows me everywhere. His crafty face irritates me whenever I see it.”

“This constant surveillance is only for your own protection,” I said. “Recollect that you are a member of the Imperial family, and that already six of your uncles and cousins, as well as your poor father, have met with violent deaths at the hands of the revolutionists.”

“I know. But it is perfectly absurd ever to dream that they want to kill me—a girl whose only object is to live quietly and enjoy her life.”

“And her flirtations,” I added, striving to make her laugh.

I was successful, for a smile came to her pretty, pouting lips, and she said:

“Well, Uncle Colin, other girls may flirt and have men friends. Therefore I can’t see why it is so actually sinful for me to do the same.”

“But think for a moment of your position!”

“Position!” she echoed. “I’m only plain Miss Natalia Gottorp here. Why should I study my family?”

“Ah!” I sighed. “I know how wayward you are. No amount of argument will, I fear, ever convince you of your error.”

“Oh, yes,” she sighed, in imitation of the sadness of my tone, saying: “I know what a source of trouble and deep anxiety the wicked, wayward child is to you.” Then, next moment, she burst out into a merry, mischievous laugh, adding:

“It’s really too bad of me to tease you, poor old Uncle Colin, isn’t it? But there, you’re not really old. I looked you up in ‘Who’s Who’ only yesterday. You’re only thirty-two next Thursday week. And if you are a very good boy I’ll give you a nice little present. Shall I work you a pair of slippers—eh?” she asked, with sarcasm, “or a winter waistcoat?”

“Thanks. I hate girls’ needlework,” I replied frankly, amused at her sudden change of demeanour.

“Very well. You shall have a new cigarette-case, a solid gold one, with our grand Imperial arms engraved on it and underneath the words ‘From Tattie.’ How will that do—eh?” she laughed.

“Ah! now you’re only trying to tease me,” I said. “I wonder if you tease Mr Drury like that?”

“Oh! Dick knows me. He doesn’t mind it in the least,” she declared, looking at me with those wonderful eyes that were so much admired everywhere. “Have a cigarette,” and she handed me a box of Petroffs, and taking one herself, lit it, and then threw herself negligently into an armchair, lazily displaying a pair of neat silk stockinged ankles and patent-leather shoes.

“I certainly think that Mr Dick is a very lucky young fellow,” I said, “though I tell you openly that I entirely disapprove of these constant meetings. Remember your promise to me before we left Petersburg.”

“Well, I’ve been a very wayward child—even an incorrigible child, I suppose—and I’ve broken my promise. That’s all,” she said, blowing a cloud of smoke from her red lips. Like all Russian ladies, she enjoyed a cigarette.

“I certainly think you ought to have kept your word,” I said.

“But Dick, I tell you, is an old friend. I couldn’t cut him, could I?”

“You need not have cut him,” I said. “But I consider it unnecessary to steal out of the house after Miss West has gone to bed, and meet him at the station at one o’clock in the morning.”

“Then upon that point we’ll agree to differ. I’m old enough to be my own mistress, and if you continue to lecture me, I shall be very annoyed with you.”

“My dear Natalia, I do not blame you in the least for falling in love. How can I?” I said in a changed tone, for I knew that the young lady so petted and spoiled by her earlier training must be treated with greatest caution and tact. “Why, shall I confess a truth?” I asked, looking her straight in the face.

“Yes, do,” she said.

“Well, if I were ten years younger I should most certainly fall in love with you myself,” I laughed.

“Don’t be so silly, Uncle Colin!” she exclaimed. “But would that be so very terrible? Why, you’re not an old man yet,” she added, her cheeks having flushed slightly at my words.

“Now you’re blushing,” I said.

“I’m not!” she cried stoutly. “You’re simply horrid this morning,” she declared vehemently, turning away from me.

“Is it horrid of me to pay you a compliment?” I asked. “I merely expressed a devout wish that I were standing in Drury’s shoes. Every man likes to be kissed by a pretty girl, whether she be a shopgirl or a Grand Duchess.”

“Oh, yes. You are quite right there. Most men make fools of themselves over women.”

“Especially when their beauty is so world-famed as that of the Grand Duchess Natalia!”

“Now, there you are again!” she cried. “I do wish you’d change the topic of conversation. You’re horrid, I say.”

And she gave a quick gesture of impatience, blew a great cloud of smoke from her lips and put down her half-consumed cigarette upon the little silver ashtray.

“Oh, my!” she exclaimed at last. “What a funny lover you would make, Uncle Colin! You fancy yourself as old as Methuselah, and your hide-bound ideas of etiquette, your straitlaced morality, and your respect of les convenances are those in vogue when your revered Queen Victoria ascended the throne of Great Britain. You’re not living with the times, my dear uncle. You’re an old-fashioned diplomat. To-day the world is very different to that in which your father was born.”

“I quite agree. And I regret that it is so,” I replied. “These are surely very lax and degenerating days, when girls may go out unchaperoned, and the meeting of a man in the early hours of the morning passes unremarked.”

“It unfortunately hasn’t passed unremarked,” she said, with a pretty pout. “You take jolly good care to rub it in every moment! It really isn’t fair,” she declared. “I’m very fond of you, Uncle Colin, but you are really a little too old-fashioned.”

“You are comparing me with young Drury, I suppose?”

“Oh, Dick isn’t a bit old-fashioned, I assure you,” she declared. “He’s been at Oxford. He doesn’t dream and let the world go by. But, Uncle Colin,” she went on, “I wonder that you, a diplomat, are so stiff and proper. I suppose it’s the approved British diplomatic training. I’m only a girl, and therefore am not supposed to know any of the tremendous secrets of diplomacy. But it always strikes me that, for the most part, you diplomats are exceptionally dull folk. In our Court circle we always declare them to be inflated with a sense of their own importance, and fifty years behind the times.”

I laughed outright. Her view was certainly a common-sense one. The whole training of British diplomacy is to continue the traditions of Pitt and Beaconsfield. Diplomacy does not, alas! admit a new and modern régime affecting the world; it ignores modern thought, modern conditions and modern methods. “Up-to-date” is an expression unknown in the diplomat’s vocabulary. The Foreign Office instil the lazy, do-nothing policy of the past, the traditions of Palmerston, Clarendon and Dudley are still the traditions of to-day in every British Embassy throughout the world; and, unfortunately for Britain, the lesson has yet to be learned by our diplomacy that to be strong is to be acute and subtle, and to be dictatorial is to be entirely up-to-date. The German diplomacy is that of keen progress and anticipation; that of Turkey craft and cunning; of France, tact, with exquisite politeness. But Britain pursues her heavy, blundering “John Bull” programme, which, though effective in the days of Beaconsfield, now only results in the nation’s isolation and derision, certain of her ambassadors to the Powers being familiarly known at the Courts to which they are accredited as “The Man with the Gun.”

“What you say is, in a sense, quite true,” I admitted. “But I’m so sorry if I’m really very dull. I don’t mean to be.”

“Oh! You’ll improve under my tuition—and Dick’s—no doubt,” she exclaimed reassuringly.

Her Highness was nothing if not outspoken.

“The fact is, Uncle Colin,” she went on seriously, “you’re far too old-fashioned for your age. You are not old, but your ideas are so horribly antiquated. Girls of to-day are allowed a freedom which our grandmothers would have held as perfectly sinful. Girls have become independent. A young fellow takes a girl out to dinner and to the theatre, and even to supper nowadays, and nobody holds up their hands in pious horror—only you! It isn’t fair,” she declared.

“Girls of the people are allowed a great deal of latitude, I admit. And as far as I can see, the world is none the worse for it,” I said. “But what other girls may do, you, an Imperial Highness, unfortunately may not.”

“That’s just where we don’t agree,” she said in a tone meant to be impertinent, her straight nose slightly raised as she spoke. “I intend to do as other girls do—at least, while I’m plain Miss Gottorp. They call me the ‘Little Alien’—so Miss West heard me called the other day.”

“No,” I said very firmly, looking straight at her as she lolled easily in her chair, her chin resting on her white palm as she gazed at me from beneath her long, dark lashes. “You really must respect the convenances. If you take a stroll with young Drury, do so at least in the daylight.”

“And with Dmitri watching me all the time from across the road. Not quite,” she said. “I like the Esplanade when it is quiet and everybody is in bed. It is so pleasant on these warm nights to sit upon a seat and enjoy the moonlight on the sea. Sounds like an extract from a novel, doesn’t it?” and she laughed merrily.

“I fear you are becoming romantic,” I said. “Every girl becomes so at one period of her life.”

“Do you think so?” she asked, smiling. “Myself, I don’t fancy I have any romance in me. The Romanoffs are not a romantic lot as a rule. They are usually too mercenary. I love nice things.”

“Because you are cultured and possess good taste. That is exactly what leads to romance.”

“I have the good taste to choose Dick as a friend, I suppose you mean?” she asked, with an intention to irritate me.

“Ah, I did not exactly say that.”

“But you meant it, nevertheless. You know you did, Uncle Colin.”

I did not reply for a few moments. I was recalling what Dmitri had told me—that strange allegation of his that this young man, Richard Drury, was an enigma, an adventurer. He had told me that he was no fit companion for her, and yet when pressed he apparently could give no plain reason. He had been unable to discover much concerning the young fellow—probably because of his failure it seemed he had become convinced that the object of his inquiry was an adventurer.

Suddenly rising, I stood before her, and placing my hand upon her shoulder, said:

“I came here this morning to speak to you very seriously, Natalia. Can you really be serious for once?”

“I’m always serious,” she replied. “Well—another lecture?”

“No, not a lecture, you incorrigible little flirt. I want to ask you a plain question. Please answer me, for a great deal—a very great deal—depends upon it. Are you aware of what was contained in those letters which Madame de Rosen gave you for safe-keeping?”

“I have long ago assured you that I am. Why do you ask again?”

“Because there is one point which I wish to clear up,” I said. “I thought you told me that they were in a sealed envelope?”

“So they were. But when I heard of Marya’s exile, and that Luba had been sent with her, I broke open the seal and investigated the contents.”

“And what did you find?”

“Ah! That is my business, Uncle Colin. I have already told you that I absolutely refuse to betray the secrets of my poor dear friend. You surely ought not to ask me. You have no right to press me to commit such a breach of trust.”

“I ask you because so much depends upon the extent of your knowledge,” I said. “I have already solved the secret of the disappearance of the letters from the place where you hid them in the palace.”

“Then you know who stole them!” she gasped, starting to her feet. “Tell me. Who was the thief?”

“A man whom you do not know. He has confessed to me. He was not a willing thief, but a wretched assassin, whom General Markoff holds as his catspaw, and compels to perform his dirty work.”

“Then the General has secured them! My suspicions are confirmed!” she gasped, all the colour dying from her beautiful face.

“He has. The theft was committed under compulsion, and at imminent risk to the thief, who most certainly would have been shot by the sentries, if discovered. The letters were handed by him back to General Markoff.”

My words held her dumbfounded for a few seconds. She did not speak. Then she said in a hard, changed tone:

“Ah! Markoff has destroyed them! The proof no longer exists, therefore I am powerless! How I wish I were permitted to speak—to reveal the truth!”

Her teeth were set, her face was white and hard, and the fingers of both hands had clenched themselves into the palms.

“But you know the truth!” I cried. “Will you not speak? Will you never reveal it? It is surely your duty to do so,” I urged.

But she only shook her head sadly, saying:

“I cannot betray her confidence.”

“Remember,” I said, “by exposing this secret which Markoff has been at such infinite pains to keep, you can perhaps obtain the release of poor Marya and her daughter! Is it not your plain duty?” I urged in a low, earnest voice.

But she only again shook her head resolutely.

“No, I cannot expose the secrets of my lost friend. It was her secret which I swore to her I would never reveal,” she responded in a harsh, strained voice. “Markoff has secured the proofs and destroyed them. I suspected it from the first. That brute is my bitterest enemy, as he is also Marya’s. But, alas! he is all-powerful! He has played a clever double game—and he has won—he has won!”