The Widow of Windsor

by Виктория Холт

  The Queen nodded.

  ‘I believe he would have been pleased with the Princess. I think her quiet manner, her good upbringing … all that would have carried weight with him. When Your Majesty has seen for yourself …’

  The Queen sighed.

  ‘Would Your Majesty care to see the Princess and her family now?’

  Victoria nodded. ‘Give me your arm, my child.’

  Wally did so with alacrity.

  The Queen entered the room in which the guests were assembled. Her flowing black robes and her widow’s cap gave a sombre note to the proceedings – but not more so than the Queen herself. Her lips were turned down; there was no smile on her face at all.

  Alix was surprised at herself. She was not afraid of the Queen. She felt sorry for her. Poor Queen of England who was nursing her grief and wanted to go on doing so; who was torturing herself, turning her back on the consolations of life.

  Victoria looked at the tall graceful girl with the lovely hair, the graceful carriage and innocent blue eyes.

  She is charming, thought the Queen, so simply dressed, such exquisite manners and surely that was compassion in her lovely eyes?

  And the Princess’s father. This was the man who had once sought her in marriage. He was handsome and his daughter had inherited his charm. What an extraordinary situation! Bertie’s bride-to-be, the daughter of the man who might have been the Queen’s husband. Yes, she liked Prince Christian and she liked his daughter.

  And Princess Christian? The Queen looked at Louise severely. A domineering woman, she had heard; and no woman should domineer over her husband. It was the wife’s place to be subservient. Albert had felt that very strongly. In the beginning of their life together she had been very foolish and Albert had had to be very patient. She had in time learned the lesson which all women had to learn, but of course it was more difficult for queens.

  I believe she paints her cheeks! thought the Queen. How shocked Albert would have been. He hated any form of artificiality.

  The Queen’s manner was cool as she addressed Alexandra’s parents.

  ‘I can make no promises,’ she said, staring at Louise’s painted cheeks. ‘Everything will depend on whether the Prince of Wales feels sufficiently affectionate towards your daughter to accept her as his wife.’

  Leopold was on tenterhooks. If only Albert had been here he might have made her understand that Prince and Princess Christian were proud and dignified. They wanted this marriage, true; and so did the Queen’s ministers – and so had Albert – but they would not wish Alexandra to marry if she did not wish to, so there was no need to stress this point.

  The Queen looked severely at Alix. ‘You are young,’ she said, ‘and ours is a house of mourning. I do not believe it will ever be anything else. You never knew him and you cannot therefore understand what we have lost.’ She turned away to wipe her eyes and Leopold chose the moment to slip his arm through hers and ask if he might lure her away from the company for a while.

  She showed her eagerness to be lured. The interview was over, leaving a rather bewildered Prince and Princess of Denmark with their daughter strangely enough slightly less so.

  * * *

  In their apartments Louise declared: ‘She was quite insulting.’ ‘She didn’t mean to be, of course,’ Christian defended her.

  ‘She may be the Queen of England but you will one day be the King of Denmark. She seems to forget that. Poor Alix!’

  ‘Alix, my dear,’ said Christian, ‘if you wish to abandon this marriage you have only to say so.’

  ‘Oh no, Papa. I shall not be marrying the Queen.’

  ‘She will always be there.’

  ‘Bertie is quite different.’

  ‘Indeed yes,’ said Christian uneasily.

  ‘She kept staring at me as though there was something abnormal about me,’ complained Louise.

  ‘That’s because you’re my wife,’ replied Christian. ‘She might have been once but she married the incomparable Albert instead.’

  ‘Surely no one is as good as he is made out to be?’

  ‘He was in her eyes,’ said Alix.

  ‘She doesn’t seem to have upset you as she has the rest of us,’ said her mother.

  ‘No, she didn’t upset me. I think I could understand her.’

  As Louise said to Christian when they were alone, Alix was so eager to take Bertie that she would accept his mother at the same time.

  Alix put on a black dress for dinner.

  ‘My dear child,’ said Louise, ‘you look as though you’re in mourning.’

  ‘She is,’ replied Alix, ‘so perhaps we should be in sympathy with her.’

  Louise said: ‘Well, it is becoming. It shows up your skin and hair to perfection, and simplicity can sometimes be more effective than fuss and feathers – as Countess Danner might learn.’

  The Queen did not appear at dinner but afterwards she joined them.

  Her eyes lighted up with pleasure when she saw Alix in her black dress. She understood the gesture at once.

  ‘My dear child,’ was all she said, but there were tears in her eyes.

  And there was no doubt in the minds of all observers that Alix had come through the trying ordeal very well indeed.

  * * *

  The Queen had shown her approval. She complained that Princess Louise was deaf and therefore difficult to talk to and that she painted her cheeks and she did not care for what she had heard of her; but Alexandra was charming and so was her father, though of course Denmark was not the most important of countries. However, Bertie might go on with his courtship.

  The Queen travelled on to Coburg to see Albert’s brother Ernest, whose conduct she was beginning to find most unsatisfactory now that Albert was not there to advise and criticise him. She visited once more the haunts of his childhood, wept over his relics in the Museum he had founded with his brother, and in fact wallowed afresh in her grief.

  Alix with her parents returned to the house they had rented in Ostend, and the very next day Bertie joined them there.

  Alix was happy. How different he was from his mother. It seemed so strange that he should be the son of a mother and such a father. No one could have been more unlike the sainted Albert. Thank heaven! thought Alix with a laugh.

  Bertie was amusing and light-hearted. He talked of his adventures in North Africa and the Far East – but he did not mention marriage. That was of course to be a more ceremonial affair. And almost immediately there was an invitation from Uncle Leopold for them to return to Laeken Palace and Alix realised that this was going to be the scene for the great occasion.

  Uncle Leopold was beaming with pleasure. The Queen’s departure had lifted a great cloud from the Palace. Now there would be a magnificent luncheon with all the guests arriving as arranged and a great deal of animated conversation and laughter. Uncle Leopold, as he usually did, talked a great deal about his ailments, but he did it in a manner which suggested they were like a lot of relations whose tiresomeness he found intriguing.

  After the luncheon he suggested that his guests might like to see the gardens and they all wandered out in little groups. Bertie and Alix were alone. She talked to him about the flowers, of which she was very knowledgeable, and finally they found themselves in a secluded grotto where Bertie suggested they sit down for a moment.

  ‘Alix,’ he said, ‘I think you know what I’m going to say. Will you marry me?’

  Alix was too straightforward to make a pretence of surprise.

  ‘If you are asking me because you want me to with all your heart, the answer is Yes. If it is because the Queen has commanded you to do so, it is No.’

  Bertie laughed and taking her hands kissed her. There was nothing inexpert about Bertie’s methods of kissing, and he could admirably convey his feelings by the act.

  ‘I think the answer is yes,’ said Alix laughing.

  Bertie kissed her again. She was the most beautiful Princess he had ever seen, he told her. When he saw her in the Cathe
dral he could not believe his good fortune.

  ‘And when I realised what it was all about nor could I.’

  ‘Then we are indeed the happy pair.’

  Bertie told her how he had been aware of her beauty before he had seen her – he was not counting those occasions in their childhood when he had been too obtuse to notice her – because he had seen a picture of her. It must have been one of those photographs of royal people which were sold in shops because a friend of his was telling him about a young woman with whom he had fallen in love and had brought a picture out of his pocket to show him.

  ‘When I saw it,’ explained Bertie, ‘I thought it was the loveliest face I had ever seen. I said: “Why, she’s beautiful!” Then he saw what he had done. He had shown me the wrong picture. “That’s not my girl,” he said. “That’s a picture of the Princess Alexandra.”’

  It was a very happy quarter of an hour they spent in the grotto, and at the end of that time they had no doubt whatever that they were in love.

  They were radiant when they entered the Palace and were immediately sought out by Uncle Leopold who came towards them, limping effectively to call attention to his rheumatism, and embracing them both warmly.

  ‘My dear children,’ he said, ‘there’s no need to tell me. I know.’ And he thought: This could mean England will support Denmark if Prussia should stretch out its greedy hands to interfere with Schleswig-Holstein, which would be very much to the advantage of Belgium.

  * * *

  The few days passed idyllically and then there must be separation.

  The Queen decided that Bertie and Alix must say good-bye and not meet again until the wedding day. It was most unseemly for them to be too much in each other’s company before they were married. Heaven knew what might happen. And she did not trust the Princess Louise, who had a reputation for being master in the house, and was deaf and painted her cheeks.

  As she progressed on her journey she grew a little startled because news of the betrothal had seeped out and the Germans were not pleased. Her welcome was lukewarm in spite of her flowing widow’s weeds and her sorrow. Ernest was most difficult. He didn’t approve of the Danish match at all, and had in fact brought forth a big rebuke from Albert in the last year of his life for attempting to interfere. Vicky was not very popular in Prussia, particularly now that it was known that she had had a hand in helping to arrange the marriage.

  Oh dear, the Queen had always wanted friendship with Germany because Albert was a German, she was half German herself, Vicky was married to one, her darling grandson Wilhelm was one. To be on bad terms with Germany was like a rift in the family.

  And as she went on her sorrowing way she grew more and more uneasy.

  * * *

  The journey had done little to comfort the Queen. She had gone to the land of his birth, visited places which they had seen together, wept copious tears, talking of him incessantly; she had not expected to be happy, but she had expected sympathy. She would have to watch Ernest, who was ruling Saxe-Coburg in a most unsatisfactory manner. Albert had wanted his second son Alfred to inherit Saxe-Coburg on the death of Ernest and that meant of course that the dear angel looking down on her from his place of honour above would expect her to make sure that Alfred’s inheritance was not ruined before it came to him. Ernest had no children – which was not to be wondered at considering the life he had led. How different from his angelic brother! His debts were numerous. She must make sure that when the time came Affie was not burdened with them.

  ‘Oh, Albert, my precious love, why are you not here to manage these matters? What can I do without you? What can England do without you?’

  She told her wardrobe maid, Annie MacDonald, that she longed to join him in the mausoleum at Frogmore. But Annie replied in that rather curt way which some of her favoured servants used towards her, ‘Well, M’am, you’ve got your duty to do. You’ve got the country to look after. And going and lying down there in Frogmore is not what the Prince would have wanted. He’d rather you stayed up here and got on with the work.’

  ‘Oh, Annie, you are right,’ she cried weeping.

  And she wondered what she could do without people like Annie and John Brown (dear Scots both of them) up at Balmoral who spoke to her in that familiar way which endeared them to her because it showed how faithful they were.

  She was certainly worried about Bertie. When had she not been worried about Bertie? Their eldest son had been an anxiety to them both. But for Bertie’s wicked conduct at the Curragh Camp … But she should not think of that because it made her so angry and she must try to think of what was best for the country – as Annie so rightly pointed out.

  Albert had said that if there was a match with Denmark the Princess Alexandra would have to understand that the Prince of Wales was marrying her and not her relations, which meant of course that whatever happened about Schleswig-Holstein would be no concern of England’s – that was no family concern. It might well be a political one.

  Did Alexandra understand this? The girl seemed docile. But she had that dreadful mother. A woman who painted her cheeks. What would Albert have said!

  This must be made clear; and she herself must see that Alexandra’s position was absolutely clear to her before she could be allowed to become the Princess of Wales.

  * * *

  The family was back at the Yellow Palace. Alix and Dagmar shut themselves up in Alix’s bedroom and Alix told her sister what had happened at the Laeken Palace. It was all very exciting. Bertie was wonderful. He loved her – for herself – and she loved him; and they were going to live happily ever after.

  Dagmar listened wide-eyed; she knew that her turn would come very soon. Thyra they decided was too young to share their confidences. She merely knew that Alix was going to be married and everyone was very excited about it.

  The gong was sounding for luncheon. Alix had been looking at her dresses and wondering what alterations she could make to some of them. Though of course she would probably have a new trousseau. Her eyes sparkled at the thought. She would choose the colours and consult the dressmaker. What fun that would be. To have exactly the material one wanted – not to have to makeshift.

  She realised that it must have been some minutes since the gong had sounded. She would be late again.

  She was right: she was, and the family were all at table. Her father looked at her with tender reproach. She was getting a little old now to be denied a second helping, or to stand while drinking her coffee. Prince Christian realised that all his attempts to cure her besetting sin had failed.

  So he said nothing and she slid into her seat. Conversation was a little strained, she sensed, though the younger ones were not aware of it, so she was not surprised that when the meal was over she was asked to step into her father’s study.

  There her parents said that they had something to tell her and it was obvious from their expressions that it was not very pleasant.

  ‘We have had a letter from Queen Victoria,’ said Prince Christian.

  ‘An ultimatum,’ retorted his wife.

  ‘Dear Alix,’ said Christian tenderly, ‘I’m afraid this is going to be something of an ordeal. The Queen wants you to go to England without us and to spend a month with her.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Alix.

  ‘Can you imagine it?’ cried Louise.

  ‘Yes, Mama. It will give me an opportunity to get to know her.’

  The parents exchanged glances. Truly Alexandra was a strange girl. She seemed to have no fear of the forbidding Queen and her house of mourning.

  ‘You mean to say that you don’t mind?’

  ‘I think we shall be all right together, Mama,’ said Alexandra.

  She couldn’t of course realise what it meant, thought her parents. Or was she so besottedly in love with Bertie that she was prepared to face any ordeal for his sake?

  ‘You will have to be punctual in England,’ her father warned her.

  ‘I shall try hard, Papa, but I daresay I shall slip up
now and then,’ she replied with a smile.

  * * *

  Bertie was horrified. Poor Alix to be submitted to that. Oh God, he thought, I must save her.

  He was delighted with the prospects of his marriage. She was a real beauty and she had charm too and poise. He would have found it very difficult to discover a Princess as attractive as Alix. He was in a way in love with her; he could easily fall in love with pretty women; they interested him more than anything else. He liked gambling, jolly company, practical jokes, lots of fun – all the things he had been deprived of by his parents so far, but women came first. All that would be changed once he was married. The Queen could scarcely treat a married man as though he were a child.

  Alix – dear, jolly, beautiful Alix – would be the means of giving him his freedom, so naturally he was in love with her.

  He really must care about her quite a lot for he was very indignant at the thought of her having to face that ordeal. Imagine being shut up for a month with Mama at dreary Osborne or Windsor – or Balmoral with that tiresome John Brown hovering over the Queen as though she were incapable and he was her keeper, and anywhere was dreary where Mama was nowadays. Poor Alix, she would have to listen to accounts of the perfections of the Prince Consort, his virtues, the lack of appreciation, how he had lived, how he had died. Surely she wouldn’t bring up that incident of the Curragh Camp? He’d soon explain that away if she did, and in any case he fancied Alix was not so strait-laced as not to understand that there was no great harm in sowing a few wild oats before marriage.

  Poor dear Alix – he had to save her if he could. He appealed to Uncle Leopold, who saw his point.

  Oh no, said Leopold, that was too much. Poor Alix would need to be at home to prepare herself for her wedding. She could not be expected to come to England in the winter of all times and share in the Queen’s mourning. He promised to write to the Queen, which he did.