But there was yet another party—the ‘Extreme Loyalists,’ as they were ironically termed—who were faithful to Sophia. They were few in number, but fanatically sure of their own orthodoxy. There must be, they said, another explanation; it was not within the bounds of possibility that Sophia had originated this scheme, or was in any way responsible for its execution. These, when asked for any explanation that could hold water, would not commit themselves; some silently held Malakopf responsible, some Prince Petros; others, who had seen the wife of the Mayor of Amandos lose a hundred francs with a very bad grace at the tables, were ready to affirm that she, being born from princely blood, had secret schemes on the throne of Rhodopé. This last explanation was considered to be in indifferent taste; men did not just now desire jokes about the future of the monarchy.
But no crisis of feverish excitement could stay the passage of hours. Christmas Day, with its sequence of festas, was a mockery of merriment, and still there came no sign from those in authority, no word that could in any way allay the rising fever of the people. More than once crowds collected outside the Palace, and shouted for Prince Petros to speak to them. Once he appeared at the window and bowed to them, but shook his head, and those who saw him said he was pale and haggard and unshaved, and the mob dispersed in silence, feeling that perhaps there was a deeper tragedy than they knew. How unlike his gay and gallant figure was that mournful, dishevelled apparition! They would have been even more puzzled if they had been able to see him a moment after turn to Malakopf, who was sitting with him, and ask with a sprightly air, ‘Didn’t I do that well?’
Up till the 28th the serenity of the weather corresponded but ill with the tempest of the political outlook, but on that morning it seemed that even the elements were drawn into the vortex of the storm. A morning of sultry and unseasonable heat, thick like a blanket, ushered in a wailing wind from the east, but in some higher current of the air a rack of thunder-clouds, black and ominous, stole up from behind Corfu, and before evening had spread slowly and impenetrably over the sky. The heat of the morning had given place to a bitter and freezing cold, a cold which pierced the marrow and congealed the vital forces. But the east wind had dropped, and, a portent to behold, flash after flash of remote lightning lit up the gathering darkness of an Arctic night. About midnight the storm burst in a blinding hurricane of sleet and snow, and all the artillery of heaven thundered above it. At Amandos snow was as much a foreigner as thunder; often in summer the great hilltops round were cloaked in thunder-clouds or smouldered with lightning, yet no cloud obscured the brightness of the heaven from the valley. Again, in winter these same hilltops wore white mantles for four months, yet a genial sun, bright and invigorating, shone ever on the town. To lie beneath this double portent was an ominous thing, and the people, tuned to superstition by their new education at the tables, shook their heads, and prophesied a revolution of elements more intimate to them than snow or thunder.
An even livelier disquietude possessed Lady Blanche. The morning of the 29th it were an abuse of language to call a morning at all. The darkness, peopled by nothing but snowflakes and the maddened scream of the wind, seemed more palpable by the faint, sick glimmer of the day than it had been at night. All the forenoon the hurricane waxed ever fiercer, and, like drums, it was possible to hear, amid the shrill clamour of the wind, the booming of the great surges driven on the Cape of Mavromáti, a dozen miles away. Lady Blanche determined to telegraph to the Princess that should leave Corfu at once, even anticipating her arrival by a day rather than risk the danger of arriving an hour too late; but her fears were irremediable, the telegraph-wires to Mavromáti were down, Amandos was cut off from all the world.
Then she would have sent a messenger to Mavromáti with her message, but that too was impossible. Who could hope to pass alive through the forest in which the road lay, where the pines were falling like ninepins and snapping under the snow like matches? Noon came, unmarked except by the clock, and her anxiety grew irrepressible. Outside the Legation windows lay the square of the town, which had been so gay for Sophia’s wedding; to-day it might have been a rural scene in Spitzbergen, so completely had the snow denuded it of its evidences of civilization. A desert of white drifts was all her view; one could scarce believe that a row of houses ran north and south from their door, that a hundred yards away rose the cathedral, or that fifty paces to the left were the steps of the Assembly, which in two days would meet—for what? Yet it was necessary, no less, that Princess Sophia should be here in forty-eight hours, and it was this problem of how it was possible that she should get here that Blanche, crushing her temples in her hands, set herself to solve.
She must get here, so much was certain; that, at any rate, was a fixed point in this awful vagueness. The Adriatic boomed its shipwrecking denial; twelve miles of tree-strewn, snow-drifted forest lay between Mavromáti and Amandos. How, how, and yet again, how?
Of the Princess’s courage to face, if need be, the final storm, the trumpet of the Archangel, Blanche had no doubt. Yet what sane skipper would put to sea in such a madness of the heavens? A telegram must be sent to tell Sophia that all the powers of hell must not hinder her return. The telegram had to be sent. Who could be trusted to go to Mavromáti, and not turn back, saying that the mission was beyond all possibility? Instantly the solution struck her—she would go herself. Lord Abbotsworthy dozing after lunch; she broke in on his slumbers.
‘Oh, father,’ she said, ‘there is not time to explain, but take my word for it. Unless Sophia—unless the Princess—is here before that forged Bill of hers comes before the House on the thirty-first, she is no more Princess of Rhodopé. She, her line, her country, are at stake. She is at Corfu—ah! do not ask me how I know, but I know she is—with the Empress, ready to return. Come she must.’
Lord Abbotsworthy held up a listening hand.
‘Boom! boom!’ he said; ‘that is the Adriatic. But you are so unexpected, Blanche. Dear me, how sleepy I am! Princess Sophia may be at Corfu, or the Falkland Islands; it is all one. Why should she come? In any case, she cannot.’