Part 3

“Nothing,” I answered. “Why do you ask?”

“You act as if you’d had a stroke. Aren’t you going to drive on?”

“No. Yes. I’m going back,” I said, and turned the car.

“You don’t mean to follow, then?”

“There’s something I need to do at once at Biarritz,” I answered. It was true. I needed to find out whether she was the Princess, or—just a girl.

THE GIRL

It was easy to learn that she was not the Princess. I did that by going into a stationer’s shop and asking for a photograph of the royal lovers. It was not quite so easy to find out who she was, without pinning my new secret on my sleeve; but luckily everyone in Biarritz boasted knowledge of the King’s affairs, and the affairs of the pretty Princess. Christopher Trevenna made himself agreeable after dinner to the lady with the nose, who would probably have shrunk away in fear if she had known that she was talking with the Marqués de Casa Triana.

I, in my character of Trevenna, found out that the Princess had a friend, Lady Monica Vale, daughter of the widowed Countess of Vale-Avon, who, when at home, lived in the Isle of Wight. At present, the two were staying at Biarritz, in a villa; and Lady Monica, a girl of eighteen or nineteen, sometimes had the honour of going out with the Princesses, in the King’s motor.

There were other privileged friends as well; but the description of Lady Monica Vale, though painted with a colourless brush, was unmistakable.

Casually I inquired the name of the house where Lady Vale-Avon and her daughter were staying, and having learned it, I made an excuse to escape from the lady with the nose.

It was half-past ten o’clock, and a night flooded with moonlight. I strolled out, smoking a cigarette, and in ten minutes stood before the garden gate of the Villa Esmeralda.

There were lights in three or four of the windows, sparkling among close-growing trees; and I had not finished my second cigarette, when a carriage drove round the corner and stopped.

I moved into the background. A groom jumped down, unfastened the gate, and having opened the brougham door, respectfully aided a middle-aged lady to descend.

The moonlight showed me a clear, proud profile, and fired the diamonds in a tiara which crowned a head of waved grey hair.

There were billows of violet satin and lace to keep off the ground; and as the groom helped the wearer to adjust them under her chinchilla coat, a girl sprang out of the carriage, her white figure and rippling hair of daffodil gold in full moonlight.

I stood as a man might stand who sees a vision, hardly breathing. I made no sound, yet she turned and saw me, sheltered as I was by the dappled trunk of a tall plane-tree. It was as if I had called, and she had answered.

I knew she remembered me, and that she did not misunderstand my presence. There was no anger in her face, only surprise, and a light which was hidden as she dropped her head, and passed on through the gate.

I could have sung the song of the stars. She had not forgotten me since the afternoon. The look in my eyes then, had arrested some thought of hers, and set me apart in her mind from other men.

It was no stupid conceit which made me feel this, but a kind of exalted conviction.

When the gate was shut, I took off my hat and looked at the lighted windows. I could make her care. I said to myself, “We’re meant for each other. And if that’s true, though all the mountains in the world were piled up as barriers between us, I’d cross them.”

That was a vow. And through the remaining hours of the night I tried to plan how it would be best to begin its fulfilment.

Men who have gone through a campaign as close friends, have few secrets from one another; and I had none from Dick Waring. Nevertheless, I would now have kept one if it were possible; but it was not. If I had not told him, he would have guessed, and then he might have thought that he had the right to chaff me on losing my head.

It is only a happy lover who can bear to be chaffed, however, and a few words were enough to show my tactful American where to set his feet on the slippery path.

He too had seen the girl; therefore he could not be surprised at my state of mind. But he regretted it, and urged that the best I could do was to go away, before the thought of her had taken too deep a hold upon me.

“You see,” he said, “you’re in a hopeless position; and it’s better to look facts in the face. If you’d fallen in love with almost any other girl, except Princess Ena herself, you might have hoped. But as it is, what have you to look forward to? You oughtn’t to have come to Biarritz. In the circumstances, and with the King here, it was bravado. Friends of his, enemies of yours, might even say it was bad taste, which is worse. And then, having come, you proceed to follow the King’s motor-car; you fall head over ears in love with a girl in it, a friend of the bride-elect, to whom your real name, if she’s not heard it already, could easily be made to seem anathema maranatha. But that’s not all. You’re here under a name not your own. If you should by luck or ill-luck get a chance to meet Lady Monica, you couldn’t be introduced to her as Christopher Trevenna; it would be a false pretence; still less could you throw your real name in her face; for between the King of Spain as a friend, and you as an acquaintance, the girl would be in an uncomfortable position, to say the least. No, my dear fellow, you can’t meet this young lady; and the only thing for your peace of mind, if you’ve really fallen in love, is to go away.”

I had no arguments with which to meet Dick’s. I listened in silence, but—I made no preparation for departure. If there was nothing to be gained by staying, at least there was as little to be gained by going; for I knew that I should not forget the girl. If I were struck blind, her face would still live for my eyes, white and pure against a background of darkness.

We stayed on at Biarritz, but I behaved with circumspection, and made no further attempts to put myself in the King’s Way, though he arrived at the Villa Mouriscot every morning from San Sebastian. Dick approved my conduct and, pitying my depression, perhaps repented his hardness. He found several Parisian friends at Biarritz, and when we had been there for three days, he came back to the hotel from the Casino one night with an important air.

“Strange how one’s tempted to do things one knows one oughtn’t to do,” said he. “Now, it’s unwise to tell you I’ve met a man who knows Lady Monica Vale, yet I’m doing it.”