That is the final gesture; and one can get little out of it beyond the fact that John Orth was a true Habsburg, who must needs strike an attitude. His exit speeches to Herr Heinrich are, mutatis mutandis, in the same tone as his exit speeches to Countess Marie Larisch and Princess Louisa. We have already given a portion of his farewell speech to the latter; and the rest of it may be quoted here:—
“My uncle looked at us tenderly, for we were on the verge of tears at the idea of losing our kind and brilliant kinsman, and he then said, with calm gravity: ‘I am about to disappear, my dear children, and I shall do so in such a manner that no one will ever find me. When the Emperor is dead, I will return, for then Austria will require my services.
“‘I wish, Louisa and Leopold, that you could come with me, for we three should live the life best suited to us. It cannot be, however, and our ways must part here. You are both, like myself, individualities, and, like me, you will work out your destinies. But we shall become forces that will eventually be felt.’”
One suspects here, of course, that Princess Louisa’s self-consciousness has impaired the exactitude of her recollections. She wants us to believe that the seal of mystery was imprinted, at an early age, on her own brow, and that the Man of Mystery among the Habsburgs recognised her, even in her childhood, as a kindred spirit. Perhaps he did, and perhaps he did not—it matters very little. What really matters is the impression which John Orth left behind him—the impression of a man with dark secrets and deep designs, which he hinted at but would not communicate; one who meant to evaporate like a subtle essence—to be materialised again when there once more was work for him to do in the flesh. That was how he impressed Countess Marie Larisch, when he kissed her hand and left her standing alone on that dark night in the Ring:—
“I watched John of Tuscany as he passed into the fog and disappeared in the gloom of the night. And, when I read later that he had been drowned at sea, I thought of that evening in Vienna when he bade me farewell. Has he died without dying? I think so. And I believe that the Archduke, despite all evidence to the contrary, will return in his own good time.”
But what became of him?
The actual known facts are very few. The Sainte-Marguerite, navigated, not, as Princess Louisa says, by John Orth, but by Captain Sodich, set sail on March 26, 1890, and duly reached La Plata. There she took a fresh crew, and started, with John Orth himself in command and Milly Stübel on board, on a voyage to Valparaiso. Furious gales were raging round the Horn at the time of her passage; and she never reached her destination. The presumption that she had gone down, with her captain and all hands, was very strong; but still hope was not abandoned. There was just a chance that she might have been wrecked on one of the desolate islands off the coast of Chili—islands which have no harbours and no means of communication with the rest of the world. The thing had happened to other ships, and it was just possible that it might have happened to the Sainte-Marguerite. So Don Agostino Aroyo, Minister of the Argentine Republic at Vienna, argued; and Francis Joseph sent an Austrian cruiser to search the coast, in accordance with his suggestions. But without result. The cruiser searched diligently, and found nothing. The sea guarded its secret, and the mystery was as deep as ever.
And then legend got to work, and refused to be stifled, alleging that John Orth was still alive.
There were those who declared that the Sainte-Marguerite had not been lost at sea, but had been given another name, and had either been marooned or entered another port than that for which she was cleared; but that is quite incredible, if not materially impossible. The ship could hardly have been marooned anywhere where she would not, by this time, have been found; and one can imagine no means whereby the silence of the survivors could have been secured. Moreover, the police of the seas and the ports does its work very effectively; and every sailor man is a potential detective who boasts that he can recognise any ship known to him, without needing to read the name painted on her stern. This first theory, therefore, will not by any means hold water; and it was quickly supplanted by the second theory that, though the Sainte-Marguerite was lost, with all hands, John Orth was not on board of her. That is the theory to which Princess Louisa adheres:—
“The chief officer of this vessel” (she writes) “came to Salzburg expressly to see papa, and this man told me he was positive John Orth was alive, and had never gone to Valparaiso. He described how, as the old crew stood watching the Margherita disappear into the evening mists, the person who stood on the bridge, enveloped in a great-coat, and muffled to the eyes, was NOT John Orth, but some one impersonating him. The crew in question returned to Trieste, and one and all believed the evidence of their own eyes at La Plata, and refused to put any credence in the report that their captain had been drowned at sea.”