“Tragedy?” she echoed. “Of course, I had completely forgotten.”
Four months earlier Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria had committed suicide by shooting himself at his hunting lodge at Mayerling. Next to his body lay a beautiful young girl, Marie Vetsera, also shot.
“I have a friend in the British Embassy, and I hear a great deal,” Robert told her. “Vienna is in mourning and the atmosphere is very tense because the authorities refuse to tell the truth about what happened. First they pretended that the Prince had died of poison.
“Eventually they were forced to admit that there was a bullet wound in his head. But they are still denying what everyone knows to be true, that it was a suicide pact.”
“How terrible,” Vanda whispered. Then she remembered something else.
“You met Prince Rudolf once, didn't you?”
“Yes, a couple of years ago, when he visited London for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.”
“And you liked him, I remember you saying so. You entertained him and the Prince of Wales one evening.”
Robert grinned reminiscently.
“That's right. Buffalo Bill's travelling show had just arrived from America and we were all mad to see it. We drank too much and became very merry. But then the Prince grew morose and started talking about suicide, which he did frequently, according to one of his entourage.”
Vanda was startled.
“As far back as that?”
“Yes. He was obsessed with the idea of ending his own life. But he seemed a good fellow, and I liked him a great deal then.”
A faint stress on the word 'then' made Vanda look at him quickly.
“Not now?”
After a moment's hesitation he said,
“I once met Marie Vetsera as well. She was desperately trying to arrange an introduction to Rudolf. She idolised him from a distance as though he was an actor she had seen on the stage.”
“Were you there when she finally met him?”
“No. It took her some time. She finally contrived to bring herself to his attention last autumn and a few months later she was dead.”
“How horrible!” Vanda exclaimed.
“Exactly. The world is already beginning to call it a great love story, but I think what Rudolf did was despicable beyond belief. He was thirty with a wife and child and she was eighteen, little more than a child herself. That is not love, not as I understand it.”
There was a new note in Robert's voice and it caused a stir in Vanda's breast.
“What do you understand by love, Robert?”
It was some time before he answered and when he did the strange note was present again.
“Giving,” he said at last. “Putting the other person's needs first. If Rudolf had loved her he would have told her to stop being so silly, go home and find a way to be happy without him. Even if it had hurt him, true love would have made him do what was best for her.”
He was silent again, and Vanda held her breath, not wanting to break the spell she could feel forming around them.
“I think,” he continued slowly, “that if I loved a woman – I mean, really loved her – not just –”
“Not just an adventure,” she prompted.
“Not just an adventure. I won't deny that I have had adventures. You have heard about some of them.”
“Oh, yes,” she said softly.
“But a woman you really love – that's different. At least, I think it would be. I have never felt that sort of love.”
“Never?”
“Never,” he repeated simply. “It sounds bad to say it, but in all my infatuations one part of my brain was alert for my own interests, always ready to pull out if she acted in a way that started warning bells ringing.”
“What kind of way?”
“If she was too obviously interested in my fortune. I might think she was wonderful, but suddenly I would look into her eyes and read the calculations.”
“But you were calculating too,” Vanda pointed out.
“Yes, I suppose I was. That is really my point. When I realised that part of me was standing aloof, it was the end.”
“What was her name?” Vanda asked softly.
“What?”
“You are talking about one particular woman, aren't you?”
“Maybe I am. It's not important.”
'It is to me,' she thought. But said nothing.
“One day I was infatuated with her,” he added in a brooding tone. “The next day I had seen the danger and could not wait to escape.
“But if what I had felt for her had been real love, my defences would not have been bristling as they were. I would have cared more for her happiness than my own. I would have accepted any pain as long as she could have been happy, because that is what real love means.”
“But can you ever find such a perfect woman?” Vanda asked.
He gave her a gentle smile.
“I did not say that she needed to be perfect, only that she had to possess that certain something that tugs at my heart. If she has that she can be as maddening as she likes, irrational, unreasonable – I can quarrel with her, laugh at her, or laugh with her. I may sometimes want to wring her neck, but that doesn't mean I do not love her.”
He stopped. He seemed to have been talking in a dream. Now he looked like a man who had awoken to find himself in a new world.
“I am talking too much,” he said abruptly.
“No, you are not,” she smiled. “I like listening.”
But he shook his head and adroitly turned the conversation into a different direction.
She longed for him to continue, but, wisely, she did not press him.
For the rest of the meal they talked lightly, but beneath the trivial words something was happening that was not trivial at all. It was momentous. Vanda could feel the air singing about her.
At last it was time to retire for the night. Robert escorted her to her compartment and remained watching her door until it closed.
Then he walked slowly to his own compartment, dismissed his valet and sat on the bed, staring at the far wall, seeing nothing but a woman's eyes, soft with tenderness or brilliant with laughter, gazing at him across a table.
Vanda found her bed made up and there was nothing to do but undress and slip between the sheets.
She lay in the darkness, intensely aware that Robert was just a few inches away on the other side of the wall. She felt strangely restless and sleep would not come.
She could not help listening and from time to time she could hear movement from beyond the wall, as though he too was restless.
After a long time she fell asleep.
CHAPTER SEVEN
From Vienna they caught the ordinary train to Venice, which was nothing like the Orient Express. They arrived in the evening with just time to find a hotel.
For three days they wandered the beautiful city on the water, peaceful and happy, with no alarms or dramas. It was as if they had discovered a treasure that neither dared to touch, nor look at too closely, lest they find that it was not really there.
In the evenings they would find some tiny restaurant and sit over a glass of wine into the small hours, before strolling slowly back to the hotel. They said very little that could not have been overheard by the whole world. They seldom spoke of themselves or each other. And yet all the time the sensation of truth grew stronger, more urgent and more incredibly sweet.
On the fourth day they ran into an old Italian acquaintance of Robert's and their privacy was over.
“Now we must go and pay a visit to Duke Angelo and his family,” Robert told her. “By this afternoon the grapevine will have told them that we are in Venice.”
“Who is Duke Angelo?” she asked.
Robert rolled off a long, complicated name that she could barely follow.
“You are right,” she remarked. “Duke Angelo is easier.”
“He is a very important man in these parts. The Duchess was a great beauty and her son and daughters t
ake after her.”
The next day they hired a gondola to take them down the Grand Canal to the Palazzo Firese where the Duke and Duchess lived.
As he had predicted the grapevine had worked and as they approached the landing stage, the whole family came out to greet them.
“Elena,” Robert said, “You are even lovelier than you were when I last saw you.”
His hostess smiled at him and replied in English,
“You always pay the most delightful compliments. I have told my son he should emulate you if he wants people to think him charming.”
Robert laughed.
Duke Angelo was a heavily built, middle aged man, who was still handsome. Vanda thought she might have been attracted to him once, but now she recognised that could never be possible.
He led them into the huge, ornate palace, with its elegant tiled floors and traditional decoration. Everywhere Vanda could see servants scurrying, arranging what seemed to be thousands of flowers in vases.
“Now our happiness is complete,” the Duke sighed. “As you can see, we are celebrating and your arrival makes everything perfect.”
“Our daughter is getting married tomorrow,” the Duchess explained.
“Then we have picked the wrong time to intrude,” Robert pointed out hastily. “Had we known –”
“Had you known, I hope you would still have visited us,” the Duke said at once. “Of course you will attend the wedding. No arguments. It is settled.”
As Robert had said, the young members of the family were as handsome as their parents. The most beautiful of all was the eldest daughter, Ginetta, who was to be the bride. She glowed with her love and when she spoke of her fiancé, Alberto, a look of special tenderness came into her eyes.
“We had to wait to be married,” she confided to Vanda, because Alberto's father is only a Baron and Papa said I must not marry beneath me. But I told him that if my husband is a good man, then that is as high as a man can be, whatever his title.
“At first Papa was angry, but I told him that I would never marry anyone else. He and Mama introduced me to many suitors, but I refused them all, and after three years they gave in.”
“Three years?” Vanda echoed, startled. “You waited for three years?”
“Si,” Ginetta said. “And for much of that time we were not allowed to see each other. But at last my parents realised that our love was strong enough to overcome any obstacle and so they agreed to our marriage.”
She gave an impish chuckle. “Also they were afraid I would be an old maid. My sister Marcella wants to marry and that is not easy unless I marry first.”
Vanda did not know what to say. She was awed by the powerful love and fidelity of these young Venetians. To wait for three years and not even be allowed to see the man she loved!
She wondered if she herself would be able to cope with such restrictions.
But she knew that it would be possible. If the man was the right one, the one to whom she had given her heart forever and was certain that she also possessed his, anything was possible.
But only the right man could give her the courage to defy the world in lonely waiting.
She heard a sound from the garden and looked up. Robert was coming through the door, his form turned to a silhouette by the dazzling light outside against the muted light from within.
For a moment she could hardly see him and yet she knew it was him. She would have known him anywhere.
Only the right man –
“Is anything wrong?” he asked, walking towards her.
“Of course not,” she responded, a little self-consciously.
“You looked strange, as though you had seen into another world.”
“Perhaps I have.”
“Are you going to tell me about it?”
Smiling, she shook her head.
“No, I do not think so.”
“That is not like you. Normally you tell me what you are thinking.”
“Well, as you said – another world.”
She hurried away, leaving him looking after her with a slight puzzled frown and a question in his eyes.
As Ginetta had said, Marcella was also planning her marriage and her fiancé was present. He was a tall, aloof young man, with little conversation and Vanda found it hard to warm to him.
She felt much more at home with Alberto, a bright-eyed, eager young man, who could not take his eyes from his bride. The two of them seemed to be enclosed in an aura of love and joy.
The son of the house was Mario, handsome, nervous and as elegant as quicksilver. He was also extremely self centred, although he covered it by huge charm. He sat next to Vanda over lunch and told her about his ambitions to be an artist.
“This afternoon I will take you to my studio,” he announced, without asking if she liked the idea.
“Thank you,” she replied, too amused to be offended.
As soon as lunch was over, he took her hand imperiously and whisked her away to the top of the great house. Here was his studio with windows in each of the four walls, so that light streamed in all the time.
“What a wonderful place!” she exclaimed, turning round and round in delight.
“Stay there!” Mario said suddenly, seizing up a sketch pad and making rapid strokes. “I want to catch you just as you are.”
After a while he said,
“All right, now you can move. Look at me. Now move towards me slowly – slowly – that's right.”
He was making more quick strokes. At last he showed her both pictures which he had created so quickly and she could see how talented he was. The full length picture was vivid with life and the face was indeed an incredible likeness.
“I shall keep these,” he asserted, “so that I may study your beauty whenever I wish.”
“Thank you, kind sir,” she replied, politely, but not encouraging him.
“Is that how you accept a tribute to your beauty? Or have you received so many that you are now blasé?”
“I do not think any woman becomes blasé about compliments,” she replied, “but she would be very silly to believe them all.”
“But you must know how beautiful you are,” he continued insistently. “Just as you must know that I am at your feet.”
“No, I did not know that,” she responded lightly. “Nor do I really wish to know it.”
“Ah, you are a mistress at luring a man on.”
“I am no such thing.”
“Any woman as beautiful as you knows the game that we are playing. Even to look at you inspires a man to want to draw you or perhaps to make love to you.”
“I think he had better not try,” she said firmly.
“But you are an inspiration to me. Naturally I want to kiss you and then I want –”
Now she was sure that she regretted coming up to his studio with this over-confident young man. Whoever she wanted to kiss, it certainly was not him.
“I think it is time for me to go,” she said, turning to the door.
But before she could reach it, the door opened and Robert stood on the threshold.
“So there you are,” he said to Vanda. “Ginetta told me you might have come to the studio with Piero.”
“My name is Mario,” said the artist.
“So it is.”
“Then why do you call me Piero?”
“You remind me of someone I used to know,” Robert said, giving him a deadly smile. “For the moment I cannot think who he is.”
Vanda had to choke back the laughter. Her eyes met Robert's in a moment of perfectly shared amusement. And she found it every bit as sweet as the excitement that increasingly possessed her in his presence.
Ginetta and Alberto slipped into the room, holding hands.
“I was about to tell our guests about Greece,” Mario declared, changing the subject diplomatically. “How it is a land of love and passion that inspires all artists.”
“Oh, yes, I love to talk about Greece,” Ginetta exclaimed. To Vanda she said, “that i
s where Alberto and I met.”
“You met amongst the Gods of love,” Mario proclaimed grandiloquently, “and they cast their benediction on you.”
Ginetta giggled.
“Actually we met in the hotel lobby,” she admitted.
“But the Gods of love are everywhere,” Mario said. “So you still met beneath their kindly eyes.”
“That is true,” Ginetta agreed. “And then Alberto started to tell me all about the Greek Gods. Aphrodite and Eros, the Gods of love – and so many others.”
“Look, I have painted them all,” Mario shouted dramatically.
He began to pull out several canvases, all of brilliantly coloured figures representing the old Greek deities. There was Artemis, the huntress with her bow and arrow, Apollo, God of the sun, who also reigned over music, playing his lyre.
“That's Athene,” he said, showing a woman with an owl on her shoulder. “Goddess of wisdom.”
“There are so many Gods,” Vanda breathed.
“Yes, there is a whole family of them in Greece,” Mario said. “You choose one for every occasion.”
“But the most significant ones are the Gods of love,” Ginetta breathed.
She gazed adoringly into Alberto's face.
“They were the Gods who brought us together and gave us the courage to defy the world for our love.”
“Yes, dearest,” he breathed. “And they will keep us together and in love for always.”
“That's why we are going back to Greece for our honeymoon,” Ginetta announced. “We shall visit the shrines of the Gods, so that we can thank them for what they did for us. Then we shall marry again in an ancient Greek temple with the blessing of all the Gods.”
“You talk about them as though they were real people,” Robert observed, looking at them curiously.
“In a way they are real,” Alberto agreed. “They have been our friends. They have protected us as they always protect true lovers. So we will start our marriage by going to see them and laying offerings of gratitude on their altars.”
“But do not tell the Cardinal who will marry us tomorrow,” Ginetta laughed. “I don't think he would quite approve!”
Vanda studied the pictures more closely, realising that Mario was almost as good an artist as he thought he was, because each of these figures was alive with personality.
In Search of Love Page 9
