The effect of all this was that the conferences between her husband and the Prime Minister lapsed into their former frequency, and not a day passed but they were closeted together. Even the astuter Malakopf, lulled into security by the Princess’s negligence of State matters, no longer went through the formality of asking for her when he wished to confer with the Crown. Yet the situation was more critical than she knew. Already there was a party in the House almost hostile to her, for the sedulity with which she kept her seat in the club, when should have been in the Council Chamber, though successful in its object, namely, that of giving increased confidence to the two main actors in the conspiracy, had had a certain effect in alienating from her many of her more sober-minded deputies. They saw with pain her unreasonable passion for the cards and her total neglect of the duties of a reigning monarch. They saw with silent sympathy the heroic efforts of the Prince to cover the deficiencies of his wife. Himself well equipped as a debater, he was primed and loaded by Malakopf, and his contributions to the debates were an edification. Yet the Princess played her part with consummate skill, and she trusted to the loyalty of the people to back her up when the great scene came. Her yawns were the picture of realistic art, her intolerance of Malakopf a triumph of sincerity. Thereby the caution of the Prime Minister was slowly and insidiously relaxed, and the four years he had originally given to the dynasty were much abbreviated in his mind; for in its sinister depths he was revolving a new and startling idea, suggested to him by the Princess’s absence. In itself it was so simple that he almost distrusted it; but as the days went on it grew more and more seductive.
August cooled into September, and the day of the Princess’s departure for her necessary holiday was fixed for October 7. It was tacitly understood between her and Petros that the Prince would not accompany her, and such had been the success of his Regency the year before that now Sophia begged him never to send her anything referring, however remotely, to State matters.
‘I am sick of the sceptre!’ she said to him the day before she left; ‘and you, Petros, are still rather fond of it. Oh, you remind me so much of a child dressing up in Court finery; when it comes to put the finery on in earnest, how bored it is! And you, Petros, if ever you held the sceptre in your own name, you would find it a bad companion of your days and nights. Sometimes I am almost tempted to abdicate this throne of Rhodopé, yet what sort of private person should I make? I am a Princess of royal blood; I cannot help it; and the burden will be with me always.’
‘How can you say such things, dearest!’ said Petros, with well-simulated warmth. ‘It is an idle modesty that makes you seem to be ignorant of the adoration with which your subjects—I the humblest—regard you. Which of them, think you, would not willingly die for you? True, you could never be a private person, any more than a farmer’s wife could be a queen, though she thinks she could.’
‘Well, therein I am better than the farmer’s wife,’ sighed Sophia. ‘She thinks she could be me; I know I could not be her. But let me have a good holiday, Petros; don’t send me anything to sign or to consider. Consider everything yourself, and sign what you please; and get through all the business you possibly can, so that there will not be so much next Session.’
‘You must give me more explicit instructions, dear,’ said the Prince. ‘It is not likely that any measure of great importance will come before the House, but what am I to do about proroguing it? You will hardly wish me to deliver the Speech from the Throne?’
‘And why not, dear Petros?’ said she.
She was sitting in a deep armchair in shadow, fanning herself slowly, he under the full light of a lamp, and as she spoke she leaned back and watched his face intently. She saw his eye brighten, a flush steal over his face, and his right hand clenched, as if it already held the sceptre.
‘Why not, Petros?’ she repeated.
‘Because that is so essentially the prerogative of the Crown,’ he said. ‘How am I to thank your Ministers for their labours? In whose name?’