“Perhaps. But, to be quite honest, not entirely that. It is rather a relief to fling the bare facts into somebody’s teeth. When you have been shut up within yourself for many years, it suddenly becomes necessary to lift the lid and let the steam escape. Of course I cannot give all the facts to the public. It would not be fair to the King, in the first place. Moreover, when I set foot on German soil and assumed the name of Margarethe Styr, it was with the firm intention of beginning life over again. I had no scruple about holding my tongue on many subjects. I brought to the Germans the equivalent of all they could give to me. We are quits. I experience a kind of defiance now and again, a desire to assert my complete liberty and independence by proclaiming the truth from the housetops. But of course I do nothing of the sort.”
She did not ask him to keep her counsel, and he volunteered no promise, two facts that must have struck them as significant had either been in the analytical temper. But Ordham was wondering if she would ever tell him the whole story; and she, if the excited stir of her mind were due to the unwonted occurrence of talking to a young man alone in a forest at night, after eight years of almost complete disassociation from his sex; or if it were merely the usual nervous aftermath of song. But she had no time to define her sensations at the moment. There was a rapid step in the forest. Out of the shadows emerged the King’s personal footman, Meyr, who announced that his Majesty’s coach was in the courtyard, ready for the customary midnight drive, and that his Majesty requested the pleasure of the company of the Gräfin Tann and Herr Ordham.
“I won’t go,” said Ordham, in English. “I wish to stay here and talk to you. Please don’t get up.”
“Not even for the pleasure of talking to you would I risk being dismissed out of Bavaria to-morrow. This is the sovereign that takes no excuse. And why should I deny him? Has he not made me what I am? And do you realize that a great honour is being conferred upon you?—upon us both? So far as I know, he has never invited any one to drive with him at night before.”
“I will go for the sake of remaining with you, and only hope it may prove half as interesting as our talk would have been.”
He walked beside her down the hill, grumbling all the way. In the upper courtyard was a large open coach, bountifully gilded, to which six white horses were harnessed. On two were postilions; an outrider carried an unlighted torch. A footman was on the box beside the coachman, but there was none behind. Ordham’s eyes sparkled as he put on without further protest the overcoat and hat with which his apologetic servant awaited him; and had they been less under control, would have danced a moment later when the King’s valet came hastily from the castle with the announcement, which surprised no one but the English stranger, that his Majesty found himself too indisposed to go out that night, and begged that his guests would use the carriage at their pleasure. Countess Tann, whose maid had muffled her in a white hood and cloak, half turned from the coach, but she suddenly found herself handed in and Ordham seated beside her.
“This is quite wonderful!” he cried, as the horses seemed to make a flying leap over the drawbridge. “And I thought this visit was to be a failure. Blessed be the fates!”
And in spite of all that followed he never recalled that pæan.
V
ORDHAM AND THE STYR
The six horses seemed to take another leap through the air as they left the lower courtyard, and Ordham expected to land on the tree-tops below. But those horses, that had the motion of winged things, flew unerringly along the lower road, through the dark forest, down the mountain side to Füssen. In this loyal village every window, suddenly lighted, was flung open, heads of old and young appeared, and delighted cries of “Heil unserem König, Heil!” rang after the undetected occupants of the coach when they were once more in the forest. Up hill and down hill flew the horses, out of the forest again, toward snow peaks that seemed to be flying about in distraction, sometimes rushing to meet these mad riders of the night. The coachman and footman kept their seats as if a part of the bounding vehicle. But Ordham and his companion were so tossed about that he soon gathered up the cushions and packed them round her, then leaning his weight on those between them, braced his feet on the opposite seat. He made no attempt to hold her in place as another man might have done, he did not even touch her; and Margarethe Styr, who had been accustomed to men that took every possible advantage of a woman’s helplessness, gave him a place in her regard that she never permanently revoked.