CHAPTER IX
In the midst of the desolation which had so swiftly and unexpectedly fallen upon her, the help and solace even of those whom she now knew to be her enemies—enemies perhaps to the death—were very welcome to Adelaide de Montpensier. Every sort of trouble that could be taken off her hands they relieved her of. Hardress travelled to Vienna, which the prince had made his headquarters, to interview his man of business and to escort back the prince's sister, Madame de Condé, Princess of Bourbon, who was now, save Adelaide, the only representative of the older branch of the ancient line. The younger had bowed the knee to the Republican Baal in France, and they were not even notified of the prince's death.
Lord Orrel undertook the arrangement of the funeral and all the legal formalities connected with it, and Lady Olive was so sweet and tender in her help and sympathy that, in the midst of her grief, Adelaide began to love her in spite of herself.
The funeral was without any display that might have signalised the rank of the dead man, and Louis Xavier de Condé, Prince of Bourbon, was laid to rest in an ordinary brick grave on the hillside under the pines of Elsenau. Both Adelaide and her aunt would have applied to the French authorities to permit his interment in the resting-place of his ancestors, but the old prince had given special instructions that while the Republican banner waved over France not even his dead body should rest in her soil, and so his wishes were, perforce, respected.
The night after the funeral the marquise was sitting at her writing-table before the window of her private sitting-room. The window looked put over a vast expanse of undulating forest land, broken here and there by broad grassy valleys through which ran little tributaries of the Weser, shining like tiny threads of silver under the full moon riding high in the heavens.
She had drawn the blind up, and for nearly half-an-hour she had been gazing dreamily out over the sombre, almost ghostly landscape. The deep gloom of the far-spreading pine forest harmonised exactly with her own mood, and yet the twinkle of the streams amidst the glades, and the glitter of the stars on the far-off horizon, were to her as symbols of a light shining over and beyond the present darkness of her soul.
The night had fallen swiftly and darkly upon her. First the vanishing into impenetrable mystery of the man upon whom rested her hopes and dreams of one day queening it over France as her ancestress Marie Antoinette had done, and not only over France as a kingdom, but as mistress of the world. And now the veil of mystery had been rudely torn aside, and showed her these English and Americans, the hated hereditary enemies of her house and country, in possession of the power which should have been hers. Then, last and worst of all, her father and her friend, the only real friend she had ever had, the only human being she had ever really loved—for she barely remembered the mother who had died when she was scarcely out of her cradle—had been stricken down by the same blow that had fallen upon her, and lay yonder on the hillside under the pines, all his high hopes and splendid ambitions brought to nothing by the swift agony of a single night.
There was an open book on the table before her—a square volume, daintily bound in padded Russia-leather, and closed with a silver spring lock. A gold-mounted stylographic pen lay beside it, and she held between her fingers a little cunningly contrived silver key which she had just detached from her watch-chain.
"Shall I write it," she murmured, in a soft, low tone, "or shall I keep it hidden where no human eyes can read it? But who can ever read this?" she went on after a little pause, letting her hand fall on the square volume. "After all, are not all my secrets here? and is not this the only friend and confidant that I have now left to me? Yes, I am a woman, when all is said; and I must open my heart to someone, if only to myself."
She turned the little shaded lamp by her side so that the light fell on the volume, and she put the key in the lock and opened it. About half the pages were filled with writing—not in words, but in a kind of shorthand which could only be read by her father, herself, and three of the most trusted adherents of their lost cause. Her eyes ran rapidly over the last few pages. They contained the last chapters in the book of her life which was now closed. Before she reached the end a mist of tears was gathering in her long, dark lashes. She wiped it away with a little lace-edged handkerchief, and took up her pen. She scored two heavy lines across the bottom of the last written page, turned over a fresh one, and began to write.