Chapter Thirty One. The Painful Truth.

With Her Highness’s permission I had despatched a reassuring telegram in the private cipher to the Emperor prefixed by the word “Bathildis”—a message which, I think, greatly puzzled the local postmaster at Lochearnhead. Another I had sent to Miss West, and then returned to the small hotel at the loch-side where I intended to spend the night.

I had left the pair together, and strolled out across the lawn. Of what happened afterwards I was in ignorance. The girl had come in search of me a quarter of an hour later, pale, trembling and tearful, and in a broken voice told me that they had parted.

I took her soft little hand, and looking straight into her eyes asked:

“Does he know the truth?”

She shook her head slowly in the negative.

“I—I have resolved to return to Russia,” she said simply, in a faltering voice.

“To see the Emperor?” I asked eagerly. “To tell him the truth—eh?”

Her white lips were compressed. She only drew a long, deep breath.

“Dick has gone,” she said at last, in a strange, dreamy voice. “And—and I must go back again to all the horrible dreariness and formality of the life to which, I suppose, I was born. Ah! Uncle Colin—I—I can’t tell you how I feel. My happiness is all at an end—for ever.”

“Come, come,” I said, placing my hand tenderly upon the girl’s shoulder. “You will go back to Petersburg—and you will learn to forget. We all of us have similar disappointments, similar sorrows. I, too, have had mine.”

But she only shook her head, bursting into tears as she slowly disengaged herself from me.

Then, with head sunk upon her chest in blank despair and sobbing bitterly, she turned from me, and in the clear, crimson afterglow, went slowly back up the garden-path to the house.

I stood gazing upon her slim, dejected figure until it was lost around the bend of the laurels. Then I retraced my steps towards the little lake-side village.

At ten o’clock that night, while writing a letter in the small hotel sitting-room, Richard Drury was shown in.

His face was paler than usual, hard and set.

He apologised for disturbing me at that hour, but I offered him a chair and handed him my cigarette-case. His boots were very dusty, I noticed; therefore I surmised that since leaving his well-beloved he had been tramping the roads.

“I am much puzzled, Mr Trewinnard,” he blurted forth a moment later. “Miss Gottorp has suddenly sent me from her and refused to see me again.”

“That is to be much regretted,” I said. “Before I left I heard her declare that there were certain circumstances which rendered it impossible for you to marry. I therefore know that your interview this evening must have been a painful one.”

“Painful!” he echoed wildly. “I love her, Mr Trewinnard! I confess it to you, because you are her friend and mine.”

“I honestly believe you do, Drury. But,” I sighed, “yours is, I fear, an unfortunate—a very unfortunate attachment.”

I was debating within myself whether or not it were wise to reveal to him Natalia’s identity. Surely no good could now accrue from further secrecy, especially as she had resolved to return at once to Russia.

I saw how agitated the poor fellow was, and how deep and fervent was his affection for the girl who, after all, was sacrificing her great love to perform a duty to her oppressed nation and to avenge the lives of thousands of her innocent compatriots.

“Yes. I know that my affection for her is an unfortunate one,” he said, in a thick voice. “She has talked strangely about this barrier between us, and how that marriage is not permitted to her. It is all so mysterious, so utterly incomprehensible, Mr Trewinnard. She is concealing something. She has some secret, and I feel sure that you, as an intimate friend of her family, are aware of it.” Then after a slight pause he grew calm and, looking me straight in the face, asked: “May I not know it? Will you not tell me the truth?”

“Why should I, Drury, when the truth must only cause you pain?” I queried. “You have suffered enough already. Why not go away and forget? Time heals most broken hearts.”

“It will never heal mine,” he declared, adding: “Her words this evening have greatly puzzled me. I cannot see why we may not marry. She has no parents, I understand. Yet how is it that she seems eternally watched by certain suspicious-looking foreigners? Why is her life—and even mine—threatened as it is?”

For a few moments I did not speak. My eyes were fixed upon his strong, handsome face, tanned as it was by healthy exercise.

“If you wish to add to your grief by ascertaining the truth, Drury, I will tell you,” I said quietly.

“Yes,” he cried. “Tell me—I can bear anything now. Tell me why she refuses any longer to allow me at her side—I who love her so devotedly.”

“Her decision is only a just one,” I replied. “It must cause you deep grief, I know, but it is better for you to be made aware of the truth at once, for she knew that a great and poignant sorrow must fall upon you both one day.”

“Why?” he asked, still puzzled and leaning in his chair towards me.

“Because the woman you love—whom you know as Miss Gottorp—has never yet revealed her true identity to you.”

“Ah! I see!” he cried, starting to his feet. “I guess what you are going to say. She—she is already married!”

“No.”

“Thank God for that!” he gasped. “Well, tell me.”

Again I paused, my eyes fixed steadily upon his.

“Her true name is not Gottorp. She is Her Imperial Highness the Grand Duchess Natalia Olga Nicolaievna of Russia, niece of His Majesty the Emperor!”

The man before me stared at me with open mouth in blank amazement.

“The Grand Duchess Natalia!” he echoed. “Impossible!”

“It is true,” I went on. “At Eastbourne, in her school-days, she was known as Miss Gottorp—which is one of the family names of the Imperial Romanoffs—and on her return to Brighton she resumed that name. The suspicious-looking foreigners who have puzzled you by haunting her so continuously are agents of Russian police, attached to her for her personal protection; while the threats against her have emanated from the Revolutionary Party. And,” I added, “you can surely now see the existence of the barrier between you—you can discern why, at last, foreseeing tragedy in her love for you, Her Highness has summoned courage and, even though it has broken her heart, has resolved to part from you in order to spare you further anxiety and pain.”

For some moments he did not speak.

“Her family have discovered her friendship, I suppose,” he murmured at last, in a low, despairing voice.

“Her family have not influenced her in the least,” I assured him. “She told me the truth that she could not deceive you any longer, or allow you to build up false hopes, knowing as she did that you could never become her husband.”

“Ah! my God! all this is cruel, Mr Trewinnard!” he burst forth, with clenched hands. “I have all along believed her to be a girl of the upper middle-class, like myself. I never dreamed of her real rank or birth which precluded her from becoming my wife! But I see it all now—I see how—how utterly impossible it is for me to think of marriage with Her Imperial Highness. I—I—”

He could not finish his sentence. He stretched out his strong hand to me, and in a broken breath murmured a word of thanks.

In his kind, manly eyes I saw the bright light of unshed tears. His voice was choked by emotion as, turning upon his heel, poor fellow! he abruptly left the room, crushed beneath the heavy blow which had so suddenly fallen upon him.