by John Buchan
“I shall kiss you too,” said Janet Roylance, “for we’re going to be cousins, you know. Allie, I wish you joy. Jaikie, I love you. Archie? Oh, he has to stay in bed for a little — the doctor has just seen him. He’s all right, but his arm wants a rest, and he got quite a nasty smack on the head. . . . Let’s have breakfast. I don’t suppose there’s any hope of kippers.”
As they sat down at a table in the window Alison picked up the newspaper. She frowned at the pictures from Melina. Her coffee grew cold as she puzzled over the headlines.
“I wish I could read this stuff,” she said. “Everything seems to have gone according to plan, but the question is, what is the next step? You realise, don’t you, that we’ve still a nasty fence to lep. We’ve got over the worst, for the Blood-red Rook has taken Prince John to her bosom. She’ll probably insist on marrying him, for she believes he saved her life, and I doubt if he is man enough to escape her. Perhaps he won’t want to, for she’s a glorious creature, but — Jaikie, I think you are lucky to have found a homely person like me. Being married to her would be rather like domesticating a Valkyrie. You managed that business pretty well, you know.”
“I don’t deserve much credit, for I was only fumbling in the dark. Mr Glynde was the real genius. Do you think he arranged for the Countess to turn up, or was it an unrehearsed effect? If he arranged it he took a pretty big risk.”
“I believe she took the bit in her teeth. Couldn’t bear to be left out of anything. But what about Cousin Ran? He has disappeared over the skyline, and the only message he left was that we were to go back to Tarta and await developments. I’m worried about those developments, for we don’t know what may happen. Everything has gone smoothly — except of course our trouble with Mastrovin — but I’m afraid there may be an ugly snag at the end.”
“You mean Mr McCunn?”
“I mean the Archduke Hadrian, who is now in the royal palace at Melina wishing to goodness that he was safe home at Blaweary.”
“I trust him to pull it off,” said Jaikie.
“But it’s no good trusting Dickson unless other people play up. Just consider what we’ve done. We’ve worked a huge practical joke on Juventus, and if Juventus ever came to know about it everything would be in the soup. Here you have the youth of Evallonia, burning with enthusiasm and rejoicing in their young prince, whom they mean to make king instead of an elderly dotard. What is Juventus going to say if they discover that the whole thing has been a plant to which their young prince has been a consenting party? Prince John’s stock would fall pretty fast. You’ve wallowed in super-cherie from your cradle, Jaikie dear, so you don’t realise how it upsets ordinary people, especially if they are young and earnest.”
Jaikie laughed. “I believe you are right. Everybody’s got their own panache, and the public-school notion of good form isn’t really very different from what in foreigners we call melodrama. I mean, it’s just as artificial.”
“Anyhow, there’s not a scrap of humour in it,” said Alison. “The one thing the Rook won’t stand is to be made ridiculous. No more will Juventus. So it’s desperately important that Dickson should disappear into the night and leave no traces. How many people are in the plot?”
Jaikie as usual counted on his fingers.
“There’s we three — and Sir Archie — and Ashie — and Prince John — and Prince Odalchini — and I suppose Count Casimir and maybe one or two other Monarchists. Not more than that, and it’s everybody’s interest to keep it deadly secret.”
“That’s all right if we can be certain about Dickson getting quietly away in time. But supposing Juventus catches him. Then it’s bound to come out. I don’t mean that they’ll do him any harm beyond slinging him across the frontier. But he’ll look a fool and we’ll look fools — and, much more important, Prince John will look a fool and a bit of a knave — and the Monarchist leaders, who Ran says are the only people that can help Juventus to make a success of the Government. . . . We must get busy at once. Since that ruffian Ran has vanished, we must get hold of Prince John.”
But it was not the Prince who chose to visit them as they were finishing breakfast, but the Countess Araminta. Jaikie had seen her in camp as Praefectus, and was prepared to some extent for her air of command, but the others only knew her as the exotic figure of London and Geneva, and as the excited girl whose nerves the night before had been stretched to breaking-point. Now she seemed the incarnation of youthful vigour. The door was respectfully held open by an aide-de-camp, and she made an entrance like a tragedy queen. She wore the uniform of Juventus, but her favourite colour glowed in a cape which hung over one shoulder. There was colour too in her cheeks, and her fine eyes had lost their sullenness. Everything about her, her trim form, the tilt of her head, the alert grace of her carriage, spoke of confidence and power. Jaikie gasped, for he had never seen anything quite like her. “Incessu patuit dea,” he thought, out of a vague classical reminiscence.
They all stood up to greet her.
“My friends, my good friends,” she cried. She put a hand on Jaikie’s shoulder, and for one awe-stricken moment he thought she was going to kiss him.
She smiled upon them in turn. “Your husband is almost well,” she told Janet. “I have seen the doctor. . . . What do you wish to do, for it is for you to choose? I must go back to my camp, for here in Krovolin during the next few days the whole forces of Juventus will concentrate. I shall be very busy, but I will instruct others to attend to you. What are your wishes? You have marched some distance with Juventus — do you care to finish the course, and enter Melina with us? You have earned the right to that.”
“You are very kind,” said Janet. “But if you don’t mind, I believe we ought to go home. You see, my husband should be in Geneva . . . and I’m responsible for my cousin Alison. . . . I think if Archie were here he would agree with me. Would it be possible for us to go back to Tarta and rest there for a day or two? We don’t want to leave Evallonia till we know that you have won, but — you won’t misunderstand me — I don’t think we should take any part in the rest of the show. You see, we are foreigners, and it is important that everybody should realise that this is your business and nobody else’s. My husband is a member of our Parliament, and there might be some criticism if he were mixed up in it — not so much criticism of him as of you. So I think we had better go to Tarta.”
Janet spoke diffidently, for she did not know how Juventus might regard the House of the Four Winds and its owner. But to her surprise the Countess made no objection.
“You shall do as you wish,” she said. “Perhaps you are right and it would be wise to have no foreign names mentioned. But you must not think that we shall be opposed and must take Melina by storm. We shall enter the city with all the bells ringing.”
She saw Janet’s glance fall on the newspaper on the floor.
“You think there is a rival king? Ah, but he will not remain. He will not want to remain. The people will not want him. Trust me, he will yield at once to the desire of his country.”
“What will you do with the Archduke?” Alison asked.
“We will treat him with distinguished respect,” was the answer. “Is he not the brother of our late king and the uncle of him who is to be our king? If his health permits, he will be the right-hand counsellor of the Throne, for he is old and very wise. At the Coronation he will carry the Sacred Lamp and the Mantle of St Sylvester, and deliver with his own voice the solemn charge given to all Evallonia’s sovereigns.”
Alison groaned inwardly, having a vision of Dickson in this august rôle.
“I must leave you,” said the Countess. “You have done great service to my country’s cause, for which from my heart I thank you. An evil thing has been destroyed, which could not indeed have defeated Juventus but which might have been a thorn in its side.”
“Have you got rid of Mastrovin’s gang?” Jaikie asked.
She looked down on him smiling, her hand still on his shoulder.
“They are being
rounded up,” she replied; “but indeed they count for nothing since he is dead. Mastrovin is not of great importance — not now, though once he was Evallonia’s evil genius. At the worst he was capable of murder in the dark. He was a survivor of old black days that the world is forgetting. He was a prophet of foolish crooked things that soon all men will loath.”
Her voice had risen, her face had flushed, she drew herself up to her slim height, and in that room, amid the debris of breakfast and with the sun through the long windows making a dazzle of light around her, the Countess Araminta became for a moment her ancestress who had ridden with John Sobieski against the Turk. To three deeply impressed listeners she expounded her creed.
“Mastrovin is dead,” she said; “but that is no matter, for he and his kind were dead long ago. They were revenants, ghosts, hideous futile ghosts. They lived by hate, hating what they did not understand. They were full of little vanities and fears, and were fit for nothing but to destroy. Back-numbers you call them in England — I call them shadows of the dark which vanish when the light comes. We of Juventus do not hate, we love, but in our love we are implacable. We love everything in our land, all that is old in it and all that is new, and we love all our people, from the greatest to the humblest. We have given back to Evallonia her soul, and once again we shall make her a great nation. But it will be a new nation, for everyone will share in its government.” She paused. “All will be sovereigns, because all will be subjects.”
She was a true actress, for she knew how to make the proper exit. Her rapt face softened. With one hand still on Jaikie’s shoulder she laid the other on Alison’s head and stroked her hair.
“Will you lend me your lover, my dear?” she said. “Only for a little — since he will join you at Tarta. I think he may be useful as a liaison between Juventus and those who doubtless mean well but have been badly advised.”
Then she was gone, and all the colour and half the light seemed to have left the room.
“Gosh!” Jaikie exclaimed, when they were alone. “It looks as if I were for it.” He remembered the phrase about subjects and sovereigns as coming from a philosopher on whom at Cambridge he had once written an essay. No doubt she had got it from Dr Jagon, and he had qualms as to what might happen if the public-school code got mixed up with philosophy.
Janet looked grave.
“What a woman!” she said. “I like her, but I’m scared by her. The Blood-red Rook is not the name — she’s the genuine eagle. I’m more anxious than ever about Mr McCunn. Juventus is a marvellous thing, but she said herself that it was implacable. There’s nothing in the world so implacable as the poet if you attempt to guy his poetry, and that’s what we have been doing. There’s going to be a terrible mix-up unless Dickson can disappear in about two days and leave no traces behind him; and I don’t see how that’s to be managed now that he is planted in a palace in the middle of an excited city.”
To three anxious consultants there entered Prince John. Somehow or other he had got in touch with his kit, for he was smartly dressed in a suit of light flannels, with a rose in his buttonhole.
“I’m supposed to be still incognito,” he explained, “and I have to lurk here till the concentration of Juventus is complete. That should be some time to-morrow. Sir Archie is all right. I’ve just seen him, and he is to be allowed to get up after luncheon. I hope you can control him, Lady Roylance, for I can’t. He is determined to be in at the finish, he says, and was simply blasphemous when I told him that he was an alien and must keep out of it. It won’t do, you know. You must all go back to Tarta at once. He doesn’t quite appreciate the delicacy of the situation or what compromising people you are.”
“We do,” said Janet. “We’ve just had a discourse from the Countess. You won’t find it easy to live up to that young woman, sir.”
Prince John laughed.
“I think I can manage Mintha. She is disposed to be very humble and respectful with me, for she has always been a staunch royalist. Saved her life, too, she thinks — though I don’t believe Mastrovin meant his shot for her — I believe he spotted me, and he always wanted to do me in. She’s by way of being our prophetess, but she is no fool, and, besides, there’s any number of sober-minded people to keep her straight. What I have to live up to is Juventus itself, and that will take some doing. It’s a tremendous thing, you know, far bigger and finer than any of us thought, and it’s going to be the salvation of Evallonia. Perhaps more than that. What was it your Pitt said—’Save its country by its efforts and Europe by its example’? But it’s youth, and youth takes itself seriously, and if anybody laughs at it or tries to play tricks with it he’ll get hurt. That’s where we are rather on the knife-edge.”
“My dear Uncle Hadrian,” he went on, “is in bed at home in France and reported to be sinking. That is Odalchini’s last word, and Odalchini has the affair well in hand. My uncle’s secretary is under his orders, and not a scrap of news is allowed to leave the chateau.”
“The Countess seems to be better disposed to Prince Odalchini,” said Janet.
“She is. Odalchini has opened negotiations with Juventus. He has let it be known that he and his friends will not contest my right to the throne, and that the Archduke has bowed to this view and proposes to leave the country. Of course he speaks for Casimir and the rest. That is all according to plan. Presently His Royal Highness will issue a proclamation resigning all claims. But in the meantime our unhappy Scotch friend is masquerading in the palace of Melina — in deep seclusion, of course, for the Archduke is an old and frail man, and is seeing no one as yet — but still there, with the whole capital agog for a sight of him. You will say, smuggle him out and away with him across the frontier. But Juventus has other ideas — Mintha has other ideas. There is to be a spectacular meeting between uncle and nephew — a noble renunciation — a tender reconciliation — and the two surviving males of the Evallonian royal house are to play a joint part in the restoration of the monarchy. Juventus has the good sense to understand that it needs Casimir and his lot to help it to get the land straight, and it thinks that that will be best managed by having its claimant and their claimant working in double harness. I say ‘Juventus thinks,’ but it’s that hussy Mintha who does the thinking, and the others accept it. That’s the curse of a romantic girl in politics. . . . So there’s the tangle we’re in. There will be the devil to pay if the Archduke isn’t out of the country within three days without anyone setting eyes on him, and that’s going to be a large-size job for somebody.”
“For whom?” Jaikie asked.
“Principally for you,” was the answer. “You seem to get all the worst jobs in this business. You’re young, you see — you’re our Juventus.”
“She says I have to go with her.”
“You have to stay here. I asked for you. Thank Heaven she has taken an enormous fancy to you. Miss Alison needn’t be jealous, for Mintha has about as much sex as a walking-stick. I daresay she would insist on marrying me, if she thought the country needed it, but I shall take jolly good care to avoid that. No warrior-queen for me. . . . All of you except Jaikie go back to Tarta this afternoon, and there Odalchini will keep you advised about what is happening. Jaikie stays here, and as soon as possible he goes to Melina. Don’t look so doleful, my son. You won’t be alone there. Randal Glynde, to the best of my belief, is by this time in the palace.”
Late that afternoon Janet and Alison, accompanied by a bitterly protesting Archie, left Krovolin for the House of the Four Winds. Next day there began for Jaikie two crowded days filled with a manifold of new experiences. The wings of Juventus, hitherto on the periphery of Evallonia, drew towards the centre. The whole business was a masterpiece of organisation, and profoundly impressed him with the fact that this was no flutter of youth, but a miraculous union of youth and experience. Three-fourths of the higher officers were mature men, some of them indeed old soldiers of Evallonia in the Great War. The discipline was military, and the movements had full military precision, but it
was clear that this was a civilian army, with every form of expert knowledge in it, and trained more for civil reconstruction than for war.
Dr Jagon, who embraced him publicly, enlarged on its novel character. “It is triumphant democracy,” he declared, “purged of the demagogue. Its root is not emotion but reason — sentiment, indeed, of the purest, but sentiment rationalised. It is the State disciplined and enlightened. It is an example to all the world, the pioneer of marching humanity. God be praised that I have lived to see this day.”
Prince John’s presence was formally made known, and at a review of the wings he took his place, in the uniform of Juventus, as Commander-in-Chief. The newspapers published his appeal to the nation, in which he had judiciously toned down Dr Jagon’s philosophy and the Countess’s heroics. Presently, too, they issued another document, the submission of the Monarchist leaders. City and camp were kindled to a fervour of patriotism, and addresses poured in from every corner of the land.
On the afternoon of the second day Jaikie was summoned to the Prince’s quarters, where the Countess and the other wing commanders were present. There he was given his instructions. “You will proceed at once to Melina, Mr Galt,” said the Prince, “and confer with Count Casimir Muresco, with whom I believe you are already acquainted. To-morrow we advance to the capital, of whose submission we have been already assured. We desire that His Royal Highness the Archduke should be associated with our reception, and we have prepared a programme for the approval of His Royal Highness and his advisers. On our behalf and on behalf of Juventus you will see that this programme is carried out. I think that I am expressing the wishes of my headquarters staff.”
The wing commanders bowed gravely, and the Countess favoured Jaikie with an encouraging smile. He thought that he detected in Prince John’s eye the faintest suspicion of a wink. As he was getting into his car, with an aide-de-camp and an orderly to attend him, Ashie appeared and drew him aside.
“For God’s sake,” he whispered, “get your old man out of the way. Shoot him and bury him if necessary.”
