RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.
RGL e-Book Cover
Based on an image created with Microsoft Bing software
SHE came into her private sitting-room in the hotel, a great bunch of periwinkle flowers in her hand. Her face glowed with exercise; she laughed softly as she flung the blossoms on the table.
"I have enjoyed myself for one whole afternoon," she said. "I have been scrambling in a delicious wood by myself, and see what treasures I have found!" She touched the flowers tenderly.
"Oh, ma'am!" I began, when a shriek behind me interrupted my reproaches. Maddalena, the Princess's maid, sprang forward and flung herself at her mistress's feet.
"Throw them away!" she cried. "Throw them away. They are flowers of death. Alas! that you should have brought them in!" The girl burst into a storm of tears.
A look of mingled scorn and amusement crossed the face of the Princess.
"Silly child," she said. "Let me hear no more of such folly. Flowers of death? These lovely starry blossoms! How could anyone give them such a name?"
"Indeed, madam! Indeed, it is true," Maddalena sobbed. "With us it is their name. No one would ever bring them into a house here in Italy. They bring death in their train—always death."
She shivered, and, listening to her awe-struck tone, I shivered too. But the Princess laughed. "It is too absurd," she said. "I have always loved these flowers. Their colour pleases me. Now that I find they are dangerous"—her eyes twinkled mischievously—"I shall value them doubly. In fact, this determines me about my gown for the Court ball next month. I will wear gauze of this blue colour, and my flowers shall be—flowers of death!"
She spoke in her own tongue to me and to her other lady, Mademoiselle Garnier, who stood by the window, a silent spectator of the scene. The words were like a challenge to fate, as was her smile. A startled look crossed mademoiselle's face. Maddalena, though she could not understand her mistress, clasped her hands and murmured a prayer under her breath. Then the Princess gathered up her flowers, and, beckoning to her maid, passed into her bedroom.
Mademoiselle Garnier and I, left alone, were silent for a moment. Then I said:
"What a strange little episode, and what a strange superstition."
Mademoiselle's fair face still wore a startled look. Her big blue eyes were opened widely, her voice shook as she answered me:
"These superstitions are strange. They fulfil themselves strangely sometimes. I wish—I wish the Princess had not mocked at this one."
I tried to reassure mademoiselle. Our dear Princess was devoted to her, and, indeed, we all vied with each other in spoiling the little thing. She had only been at the Court for a few months. Brought to the notice of the Princess by a certain Countess Glinsky, she had at once attracted and charmed her Royal Highness, who made a plaything and companion of her, giving her the pet name of Bébé, treating her like the winning child she seemed to us all to be.
We were an oddly mixed community at the Court of Danecovinia, for the Princess delighted in gathering about her persons of all nationalities, and only two of her ladies belonged to the nation of which her husband was reigning Sovereign. I had been with her many years, and my heart was bound up in my Royal mistress and in her happiness. Life at Danecovinia was not always a bed of roses. Plots and counter-plots were constantly in the air. Anarchists had selected the little capital as one of their centres of conspiracy, and the Prince and Princess went about continually with their lives in their hands, though it must have been difficult for the most hardened Anarchist to find anything to lay to the charge of such enlightened and kindly rulers. Yet even now, when we were travelling in Italy, we were under police escort, and the Prince had laid the strictest injunctions upon us to keep the Princess always within sight.
"I wish we could persuade her Royal Highness to be less reckless," I said to Mademoiselle. "She may put herself into deadly danger one day."
"Surely, no one would wish to harm our dear, beautiful lady?" the girl replied.
"It seems impossible," I answered, "but these hateful Anarchists care neither for beauty nor goodness."
"How outspoken you English are," she exclaimed. "Have you no fear of these 'hateful Anarchists,' as you call them? For me, I fear and dread them." She shuddered.
"I am not afraid for myself," I said, "and there hardly seem grounds for fear when I am talking quietly to you."
"No, no; of course not," she smiled, her pretty babyish smile. "I am always a little coward. I am afraid even of a mouse! And of bombs—and dynamite—ah!" She laughed and shivered again, looking like a charming child, with her yellow curls, and big blue eyes, and fresh face.
The Princess had been very much attracted by the idea of a gown to match the periwinkle flowers, and, although I believe Maddalena used her most forcible arguments to dissuade our mistress from following out this plan, Her Royal Highness was determined, and Mademoiselle flung herself into the design with all the eager enthusiasm of a born artist.
"Oh! you will see," she said to me, "it will be lovely—lovely. The colour will become the Princess better than any she has ever worn. It will make her eyes shine like twin stars—you will see her beauty as you never saw it before——" She clapped her hands in childish delight, and I confess that my temperament was too much that of the stolid Briton to be seriously upset by superstition, so that Maddalena's remonstrances and my own momentary thrill of fear were alike forgotten.
The ball at which the much-talked-of dress was to be worn would take place upon our return to Danecovinia, and many were the conclaves held by the Princess and her dress-makers, assisted by Mademoiselle Garnier as soon as we arrived in the capital.
The city was unusually peaceful. A feeling of security was in the air; the Prince had lost the look of wearing anxiety he had worn for years. The Princess said to us one day:
"It almost seems as though the snake of Anarchy were scotched at last—this peace is wonderful."
Mademoiselle and I were alone with her. The girl flung herself down beside her mistress, exclaiming eagerly:
"Oh! what joyful news! Does it mean that the Anarchists have left the city? Are they crushed for ever?" Her face flushed, her eyes shone. She looked more than ever like a happy child.
"We hope so," the Princess answered gravely. "We have tried so hard to please our people that, surely, no Anarchist can have any true complaint against us."
"Surely, surely not," Mademoiselle echoed fervently, kissing our dear lady's hands softly; "no one could have true cause to do anything but love you." Her voice was caressingly sweet, and she looked so pretty that I was not surprised when the Princess bent down and kissed her.
"And now we can all enjoy Tuesday evening with light hearts," the girl went on. (Tuesday was to be the night of the ball.) "We need fear nothing. And I shall go and get your flowers myself for the bouquet, ma'am. You will let me arrange your bouquet?" She lifted pleading eyes to the face above her, and the Princess patted her cheek.
"To be sure you shall do that for me, child," she said. "You shall arrange it, and see that the stems are kept moist; it shall be your charge!"
"Yes—my charge—my special charge," Mademoiselle repeated with a quick glance at me, which I answered by a smile. My talent did not lie in the direction either of gowns or bouquets.
"Lovely as I had often before seen our dear Princess look, I never remember to have been so struck with her beauty as I was when she entered her boudoir on that long-looked-for Tuesday evening. Mademoiselle Garnier had been right. The colour of the periwinkle blooms suited our Royal lady to perfection. Soft draperies fell about her in sweeping gauzy folds; her fair hair was crowned with starry flowers; the seemed to move in a sort of cloud of blue loveliness; and when the Prince entered the room a moment later he positively started, uttering an exclamation of profound admiration.
"Beautiful," he said, his eyes fixed upon his lovely wife with a kind of rapture. "But does Maddalena not approve?" The maid appeared at the door, her face so woebegone that the Princess laughed.
"She and I do not quite agree about it," she said hastily, "that is all. Ah! Here are my flowers. My child! How lovely——" And she stretched out her hands to take the great bouquet from Mademoiselle Garnier, who at that instant entered quickly. She had certainly contrived to make the periwinkles into a marvellously lovely bouquet. The big blue flowers and their glossy leaves seemed to be merely tied loosely together into a graceful, trailing handful; yet one could see that they made a solid and coherent whole—securely fastened into the silver holder which the Princess always carried.
"How lovely!" Her Royal Highness repeated. "It completes my gown perfectly. How can I thank you for your trouble, dear child?"
"By carrying my bouquet all the evening in your own dear hands," Mademoiselle answered gracefully, with her charming smile; "then I shall know you really like it."
"What an easy thing to do," the Princess said lightly. "I do not think my bouquet and I will be parted till my poor flowers die."
She laid her face lightly against the blossoms, and I glanced unthinkingly at Mademoiselle. The expression in her eyes held me spellbound. It was like the look of a snake about to strike, full of deadly malice, and I nearly cried out. But in the flash of a second the look had passed—Mademoiselle was her innocent sweet self again, and I supposed that I had been the victim of a distorted imagination.
The lulling of our fears, the security that hung over the city made us all able to enjoy the ball to the full, and the gay scene was delightful to watch.
About half-way through the evening I stood at one end of the great room amusing myself by looking on, when the Prince joined me.
"Miss Graham," he said, "I think I shall stipulate that my wife always wears that indefinable colour. I have never seen her look so lovely." His face was turned towards the balcony opposite to us. My eye followed his glance. The Princess leant upon the balustrade, looking down into the room below. The light of hundreds of candles fell upon her face, and the blue loveliness of her cloudy dress enhanced her own loveliness. She held her bouquet in her hand; the light caught the blossoms till they twinkled like stars.
As we watched Mademoiselle went slowly beneath the balcony and lifted her face to smile at the Princess. Her Royal Highness stooped to say something to the girl—what it was we could not, of course, hear—and in stooping her hold of the bouquet slackened, and I saw the great handful of flowers fall from her hand at Mademoiselle's feet. At the same instant a fearful sound rent the air—the ballroom seemed to be suddenly full of smoke, and dust, and splinters of wood; and everything grew dark. Terrible cries arose on every side, and I heard the Prince say:
"Good God! My wife!"
He seized my hand and dragged me with him round the room to the entrance of the balcony. By the time we had climbed the stairs the smoke and dust had cleared away, and we could at least see the wild confusion round us. Scared faces, hurrying feet, a clamour of terrified voices, an atmosphere of ungovernable horror—these were on every hand.
And in the midst of it all, at the head of the stairs, stood the Princess—her face deadly white, but quite calm; her eyes shining—less with fear than with courage. The Prince sprang to her side. I heard him say:
"You are safe, my sweet!" And her smile was sufficient answer. She put one of her hands into his, the other she stretched out to me.
"But Bébé," she said, after a minute. "Where is Bébé? She must be so frightened, poor child. She had such a dread of explosions," and the Princess actually smiled again. "Let us go and find her."
We descended the stairs, to find people hurrying from every direction towards the spot where that cloud of smoke and dust had first risen; and then—only then I did remember that in that very spot I had seen Mademoiselle Garnier lift her face to the Princess—I had seen the bouquet of periwinkles fall at the girl's feet.
A sick feeling of horror swept over me, a gulf of blackness seemed to be opening at my feet.
An awed silence fell upon the little group of officers who first reached the fatal spot below the balcony. The Prince said sharply, "What is it?" Then he fell silent, too, and the Princess, who had been beside him, drew back and grasped my hand, her face full of horror.
"Bébé," she whispered, "my poor Bébé!"
Then I, too, saw. The girl lay dead at our feet, upon her childish face a smile of the same unspeakable malice which I had seen upon it a few hours before; round her the scattered fragments of the flowers which she had arranged for our Royal mistress.
Which she had arranged! In one of those flashes of intuition which come to us sometimes I saw it all! Bébé—the innocent, childish Bébé—had intended to kill our dear, gracious Princess. Alas! for the wickedness of human nature.
It was all too true. The whole plot was ultimately discovered, and it transpired that Bébé was one of a daring band of Anarchists, and to her had fallen the task of first ingratiating herself with and then killing the Princess. With devilish ingenuity her accomplices manufactured a tiny clock, which at a given moment should explode. The new and powerful explosive it contained was designed to kill its victim by the force of its shock, without maiming or disfigurement, and the clock had been set to go off just a quarter of an hour later than the instant at which the Princess had by strange chance dropped the bouquet. The force of its concussion with the floor had hastened the explosion, and the would-be author of the dastardly deed became instead the victim.
The Princess was for a time broken-hearted over the treachery of her favourite. But Maddalena, when she heard of the tragedy, shook her head sagely, saying with gravity, but with a triumphant ring in her voice:
"Did I not speak truth when I said the flowers were of ill-omen? Did I not truly call them—Flowers of Death?"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.