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Title: The Pride of Jennico: Being a Memoir of Captain Basil Jennico

Author: Agnes Castle
        Egerton Castle

Release date: February 17, 2016 [eBook #51238]
                Most recently updated: June 14, 2020

Language: English

Credits: E-text prepared by Giovanni Fini, David Edwards, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)


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generously made available by Internet Archive (https://archive.org)



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THE PRIDE OF JENNICO


[Illustration: logo]


THE PRIDE OF JENNICO

Being a Memoir of Captain Basil Jennico

by

AGNES AND EGERTON CASTLE







New York
The Macmillan Company
London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
1899

All rights reserved

Copyright, 1897, 1898,
By The Macmillan Company.

Set up and electrotyped February, 1898. Reprinted February, April, June
three times, July, September, October, December, twice, 1898.

Norwood Press
J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith
Norwood, Mass. U.S.A.




                               CONTENTS

                                PART I

                                                                    Page

       CHAPTER I.  MEMOIR OF CAPTAIN BASIL JENNICO (BEGUN,
                     APPARENTLY IN GREAT TROUBLE AND STRESS OF
                     MIND, AT THE CASTLE OF TOLLENDHAL, IN MORAVIA,
                     ON THE THIRD DAY OF THE GREAT STORM, LATE IN
                     THE YEAR 1771)                                    1

      CHAPTER II.  BASIL JENNICO’S MEMOIR CONTINUED                   23

     CHAPTER III.                                                     45

      CHAPTER IV.                                                     59

       CHAPTER V.                                                     72

      CHAPTER VI.                                                     90

     CHAPTER VII.                                                    101

    CHAPTER VIII.                                                    113

      CHAPTER IX.                                                    124


                                PART II

       CHAPTER I.  MEMOIR OF CAPTAIN BASIL JENNICO (A PORTION,
                      WRITTEN EARLY IN THE YEAR 1772, IN HIS ROOMS
                      AT GRIFFIN’S, CUR ZON STREET)                  143

      CHAPTER II.  CAPTAIN BASIL JENNICO’S MEMOIR CONTINUED          173

     CHAPTER III.  CAPTAIN BASIL JENNICO’S MEMOIR, RESUMED THREE
                      MONTHS LATER, AT FARRINGDON DANE               183

      CHAPTER IV.  NARRATIVE OF AN EPISODE AT WHITE’S CLUB, IN
                     WHICH CAPTAIN JENNICO WAS CONCERNED, SET FORTH
                     FROM CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS                      201

       CHAPTER V.  NARRATIVE OF AN EPISODE AT WHITE’S CONTINUED      218


                               PART III

       CHAPTER I.  MEMOIR OF CAPTAIN BASIL JENNICO
                    (RESUMED IN THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 1773)     230

      CHAPTER II.                                                    252

     CHAPTER III.                                                    266

      CHAPTER IV.                                                    287

       CHAPTER V.                                                    306

      CHAPTER VI.                                                    319

     CHAPTER VII.                                                    332




                         THE PRIDE OF JENNICO




PART I




CHAPTER I

 MEMOIR OF CAPTAIN BASIL JENNICO (BEGUN, APPARENTLY IN GREAT TROUBLE
 AND STRESS OF MIND, AT THE CASTLE OF TOLLENDHAL, IN MORAVIA, ON THE
 THIRD DAY OF THE GREAT STORM, LATE IN THE YEAR 1771)


AS the wind rattles the casements with impotent clutch, howls down
the stair-turret with the voice of a despairing soul, creeps in long
irregular waves between the tapestries and the granite walls of my
chamber and wantons with the flames of logs and candles; knowing, as I
do, that outside the snow is driven relentlessly by the gale, and that
I can hope for no relief from the company of my wretched self,—for
they who have learnt the temper of these wild mountain winds tell me
the storm must last at least three days more in its fury,—I have
bethought me, to keep from going melancholy crazed altogether, to set
me some regular task to do.

And what can more fitly occupy my poor mind than the setting forth,
as clearly as may be, the divers events that have brought me to this
strange plight in this strange place? although, I fear me, it may not
in the end be over-clear, for in sooth I cannot even yet see a way
through the confusion of my thoughts. Nay, I could at times howl in
unison with yonder dismal wind for mad regret; and at times again rage
and hiss and break myself, like the fitful gale, against the walls of
this desolate house for anger at my fate and my folly!

But since I can no more keep my thoughts from wandering to her and
wondering upon her than I can keep my hot blood from running—running
with such swiftness that here, alone in the wide vaulted room, with
blasts from the four corners of the earth playing a very demon’s dance
around me, I am yet all of a fever heat—I will try whether, by laying
bare to myself all I know of her and of myself, all I surmise and guess
of the parts we acted towards each other in this business, I may not
at least come to some understanding, some decision, concerning the
manner in which, as a man, I should comport myself in my most singular
position.

Having reached thus far in his writing, the scribe after shaking the
golden dust of the pounce box over his page paused, musing for a
moment, loosening with unconscious fingers the collar of his coat from
his neck and gazing with wide grey eyes at the dancing flames of the
logs, and the little clouds of ash that ever and anon burst from the
hearth with a spirt when particles of driven snow found their way down
the chimney. Presently the pen resumed its travels:

       *       *       *       *       *

Everything began, of course, through my great-uncle Jennico’s
legacy. Do I regret it? I have sometimes cursed it. Nevertheless,
although tossed between conflicting regrets and yearnings, I cannot
in conscience wish it had not come to pass. Let me be frank. Bitter
and troubling is my lot in the midst of my lonely splendour; but
through the mist which seems in my memory to separate the old life
from the new, those days of yesteryear (for all their carelessness
and fancy-freedom) seem now strangely dull. Yes, it is almost a year
already that it came, this legacy, by which a young Englishman, serving
in his Royal and Imperial Majesty’s Chevau-Legers, was suddenly
transformed, from an obscure Rittmeister with little more worldly goods
than his pay, into one of the richest landowners in the broad Empire,
the master of an historic castle on the Bohemian Marches.

It was indeed an odd turn of fortune’s wheel. But doubtless there is a
predestination in such things, unknown to man.

My great-uncle had always taken a peculiar interest in me. Some fifty
years before my birth, precluded by the religion of our family from
any hope of advancement in the army of our own country, he had himself
entered the Imperial service; and when I had reached the age of
manhood, he insisted on my being sent to him in Vienna to enter upon
the same career. To him I owe my rapid promotion after the Turkish
campaign of 1769. But I question, for all his influence at Court,
whether I should have benefited otherwise than through his advice and
interest, had it not been for an unforeseen series of moves on the part
of my elder brother at home.

One fine day it was announced to us that this latter had been offered
and had accepted a barony in the peerage of Great Britain. At first
it did not transpire upon what grounds a Catholic gentleman should
be so honoured, and we were obliged, my uncle and I, to content
ourselves with the impossible explanation that “Dear Edmund’s value
and abilities and the great services he had rendered by his exertions
in the last Suffolk Elections had been brought to the notice of his
Majesty, who was thus graciously pleased to show his appreciation of
the same.”

Our good mother (who would not be the true woman she is did she not set
a value on the honours of this world), my excellent brother, and, of
course, his ambitious lady, all agreed that it was a mighty fine thing
for Sir Edmund Jennico to become My Lord Rainswick, and they sent us
many grandiloquent missives to that effect.

But with my great-uncle things were vastly different. To all appearance
he had grown, during the course of his sixty odd years in the Imperial
service, into a complete unmitigated foreigner, who spoke English like
a German, if, indeed, the extraordinary jargon he used (under the
impression that it was his mother tongue) could be so called. As a
matter of fact it would have been difficult to say what tongue was my
great-uncle’s own. It was not English nor French—not even the French
of German courts—nor true German, but the oddest compound of all
three, with a strong peppering of Slovack or Hungarian according as the
country in which he served suggested the adjunction. A very persuasive
compound it proved, however, when he took up his commanding voice,
poor man! But, foreigner as he was, covered as his broad chest might be
with foreign orders, freely as he had spent his life’s energy in the
pay of a foreign monarch, my great-uncle Jennico had too much English
pride of race, too much of the old Jennico blood (despite this same had
been so often let for him by Bavarian and Hanoverian, Prussian, French,
and Turk), to brook in peace what he considered a slight upon his grand
family traditions.

Now this was precisely what my brother had committed. In the first
place he had married a lady who, I hear, is amazingly handsome, and
sufficiently wealthy, but about whose lineage it seems altogether
unadvisable to seek clear information. Busy as he was in the midst of
his last campaign, my great-uncle (who even in the wilds of Bulgaria
seemed to keep by some marvellous means in touch with what moves were
being played by the family in distant Suffolk) nevertheless had the
matter probed. And the account he received was not of a satisfactory
nature. I fear me that those around him then did not find the
fierceness of his rule softened by the unwelcome news from that distant
island of Britain.

The Jennicos, although they had been degraded (so my uncle maintained)
by the gift of a paltry baronetcy at the hands of Charles II., as a
reward for their bleeding and losses in the Royal cause, were, he
declared, of a stock with which blood-royal itself might be allied
without derogation. The one great solace of his active life was a
recapitulation of the deeds, real or legendary, that, since the landing
of the Danes on Saxon soil, had marked the passage through history of
those thirty-one authentic generations, the twenty-ninth of which was
so worthily represented by himself. The worship of the name was with
him an absolute craze.

It is undoubtedly to that craze that I owe my accession of fortune—ay,
and my present desolation of heart....

But to resume. When, therefore, already dissatisfied with my brother’s
alliance, he heard that the head of the family proposed to engraft upon
it a different name—a _soi-disant_ superior title—his wrath was loud
and deep:

“Eh quoi! mille millions de Donnerblitzen! what the Teufel idiot think?
what you think?”

I was present when the news arrived; it was in his chancellerie on the
Josefsplatz at Vienna. I shall not lightly forget the old man’s saffron
face.

“Does that Schaffkopf brother of yours not verstand what Jennico to
be means? what thinkest thou? would I be what I am, were it not that I
have ever known, boy, what I was geborn to when I was Jennico geborn?
How comes it that I am what I here am? How is it gecome, thinkest
thou, that I have myself risen to the highest honour in the Empire,
that I am field-marshal this day, above the heads of your princekins,
your grand-dukeleins, highnesses, and serenities? Dummes Vieh!”—with
a parenthetical shake of his fist at the open paper on his desk—“how
is it gecome that I wedded la belle Héritière des Woschutzski, the
most beautiful woman in Silesia, the richest, pardi! the noblest?”
And his Excellency (methinks I see him now) turned to me with sudden
solemnity: “You will answer me,” he said in an altered voice, “you will
answer me (because you are a fool youth), that I have become great
general because I am the bravest soldier, the cleverest commander, of
all the Imperial troops; that I to myself have won the lady for whom
Transparencies had sued in vain because of being the most beautiful man
in the whole Kaiserlich service.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Here the younger Jennico, for all the vexation of spirit which had
suggested the labour of his systematic narrative as a distraction,
could not help smiling to himself, as, with pen raised towards the
standish, he paused for a moment to recall on how many occasions he had
heard this explanation of the Field-Marshal’s success in life. Then the
grating of the quill began afresh:

       *       *       *       *       *

When my venerable relative came to this, I, being an irreverent young
dog, had much ado to keep myself from a great yell of laughter. He was
pleased to remark, latterly, in an approving mood, that I was growing
every day into a more living image of what he remembered himself to
have been in the good times when he wore a cornet’s uniform. I should
therefore have felt delicately flattered, but the fact is that the
tough old soldier, if in the divers accidents of war he had gathered
much glory, had not come off without a fine assortment of disfiguring
wounds. The ball that passed through his cheeks at Leuthen had removed
all his most ornamental teeth, and had given the oddest set to the
lower part of his countenance. It was after Kolin that, the sight
of his left eye being suppressed by the butt end of a lance, he had
started that black patch which imparted a peculiar ferocity to his
aspect, although it seemed, it is true, to sharpen the piercing
qualities of the remaining orb. At Hochkirch, where he culled some of
his greenest laurels, a Prussian bullet in his knee forced on him the
companionship of a stout staff for ever afterwards. He certainly had
been known in former days as _le beau Jennico_, but of its original
cast of feature it is easy to conceive that, after these repeated
finishing touches, his countenance bore but little trace.

“But no,” the dear old man would say, baring his desolate lower tusks
at me, and fixing me with his wild-boar eye, “it is not to my beauty,
Kerl, not to my courage, Kerl, that I owe success, but because I am
geborn Jennico. When man Jennico geborn is, man is geborn to all the
rest—to the beauty, to the bravery. When I wooed your late dead tante,
they, mere ignorant Poles, said to me: ’It is well. You are honoured.
We know you honourable; but are you born? To wed a Countess Woschutzski
one must be born, one must show, honoured sir,’ they said, ’at least
seize quartiers, attested in due proper form.’

“‘Eh!’ said I, ’is that all? See you, you shall have sixteen
quarterings. Sixteen quarterings? Bah! You shall have sixteen
quarterings beyond that, and then sixteen again; and you shall then
learn what it is called to be called Jennico!’—Potztausend!—And
I simply wrote to the Office of Heralds in London, what man calls
College of Arms, for them to look up the records of Jennico and draw
out a right proper pedigree of the familie, spare no cost, right up
to the date of King Knut! Eh? Oh, ei, ei! Kerlchen! You should have
seen the roll of parchment that was in time gesendt—_Teremtété!_ and
_les yeux que fit monsieur mon beau-père_ [my excellent great-uncle
said _mon peau-bère_] when they were geopened to what it means to be
well-born English! A well-born man never knows his blood as he should,
until he sets himself to trace it through all the veins. Blood-royal,
yunker, blood-royal! Once Danish, two times Plantagenet, and once
Stuart, but that a strong dose—he-he, ei, ei! The Merry Monarch, as
the school-books say, had wide paternity, though—verstehts sich—his
daughter (who my grossmutter became) was noble also by her mother. Up
it goes high, weit. Thou shalt see for thyself when thou comest to
Tollendhal. Na, ya, and thou shalt study it too—it all runs in thine
veins also. Forget it not!... And of all her treasures, your aunt
would always tell me there was none she prized more than that document
relating to our family. She had it unrolled upon her bed when she could
no longer use her limbs, and she used to trace out, crying now and
then, the poor soul, what her boy would have carried of honour if he
had lived. Ah, ’twas a million pities she never bore me another!—’tis
the only reproach that darf be made her.... I have consoled myself
hitherto with the thought of my nephew’s youthling; but, Potzblitz,
this Edmund, now the head of our family—ach, the verdamned hound!
Tausend Donnern and Bomben!”—and my great-uncle’s guttural voice would
come rumbling, like gathering thunder indeed, and rise to a frightful
bellow—“to barter his fine old name for the verdamned mummery of a
Baron Rainswick—Rainswick?—pooh! A creation of this Hanover dog!
And what does he give on his side to drive this fine bargain? Na, na,
sprech to me not: I mislike it; nephew, I tell thee, I doubt me but
there is something hinter it yet.

“Nephew Basil,” he then went on, this day I speak of, “if I were not
seventy-three years old I would marry again—I would, to have an heir,
by Heaven! that the true race might not die out!”

And despite his wall-eye, his jaw, his game leg, his generally
disastrous aspect, I believe he might have been as good as his threat,
his seventy-and-three years notwithstanding. But what really deterred
him from such a rash step was his belief (although he would not
gratify me by saying so) that there was at hand as good a Jennico as
he could wish for, and that one, myself, Basil. And he saw in me a
purer sproutling of that noble island race of the north that he was so
fiercely proud of, than he could have produced by a marriage with a
foreigner. For, thorough “Imperial” as he now was, and notwithstanding
his early foreign education (which had begun in the Stuart regiments
of the French king), the dominant thought in the old warrior’s brain
was that a very law of nature required the gentle-born sons of such
a country to be honoured as leaders among foreign men. And great was
the array of names he could summon, should any one be rash enough to
challenge the assertion. Butlers and Lallys, Brownes and Jerninghams,
by Gad! Keiths and Dillons and Berwicks, _morbleu_! Fermors, Loudons,
and Lacys, and how many more if necessary; ay, and Jennicos not the
least of them, I should hope, _teremtété_!

I did not think that my brother had bettered himself by the change, and
still less could I concur in the turn-coat policy he had thought fit
to adopt in order to buy from a Hanoverian King and a bigoted House of
Lords this accession of honour. For my uncle was not far wrong in his
suspicions, and in truth it did not require any strong perspicacity to
realise that it was not for nothing my brother was thus distinguished.
I mean not for his merits—which amounts to the same thing. I made
strong efforts to keep the tidings of his cowardly defection from my
uncle. But family matters were not, as I have said, to be hidden from
Feldmarschall Edmund von Jennico. I believe the news hastened his
dissolution. Repeated fits of anger are pernicious to gouty veterans of
explosive temper. It was barely three weeks after the arrival of the
tidings of my brother having taken the oaths and his seat in the House
of Lords that I was summoned by a messenger, hot foot, from the little
frontier town where I was quartered with my squadron, to attend my
great-uncle’s death-bed. It was a sixteen-hours’ ride through the snow.
I reached this frowning old stronghouse late at night, hastened by a
reminder at each relay ready prepared for me; hastened by the servants
stationed at the gate; hastened on the stairs, at his very door, the
door of this room. I found him sitting in his armchair, almost a corpse
already, fully conscious, grimly triumphant.

“Thou shalt have it all,” was the first thing he whispered to me as
I knelt by his side. His voice was so low that I had to bend my ear
to his mouth. But the pride of race had never seemed to burn with
brighter flame. “Alles ist dein, alles ... aber,” and he caught at me
with his clawlike hand, cold already with the very chill of earth,
“remember that thou the last Jennico bist. Royal blood, Kerlchen, Knut,
Plantagenet, Stuart ... noblesse oblige, remember. Bring no roturière
into the family.”

His heiduck, who had endured his testy temper and his rigid rule for
forty years, suddenly gave a kind of gulp, like a sob, from behind the
chair where he stood, rigid, on duty at his proper post, but with his
hands, instead of resting correctly on hip and sword-handle, joined in
silent prayer. A striking-looking man, for all his short stature, with
his extraordinary breadth of shoulders, his small piercing eyes, his
fantastically hard features all pock-seared, that seemed carved out of
some swarthy, worm-eaten old oak.

“Thou fool!” hissed my uncle, impatiently turning his head at the
sound, and making a vain attempt to seek the ever-present staff with
his trembling fingers. “Basil, crack me the knave on the skull.” Then
he paused a moment, looked at the clock and said in a significant way,
“It is time, János.”

The heiduck instantly moved and left the room, to return promptly,
ushering in a number of the retainers who had evidently been gathered
together and kept in attendance against my arrival.

They ranged themselves silently in a row behind János; and the dying
man in a feeble voice and with the shadow of a gesture towards me, but
holding them all the while under his piercing look, said two or three
times:

“Your master, men, your master.” Whereupon, János leading the way,
every man of them, household-steward, huntsmen, overseers, foresters,
hussars, came forward, kissed my hand, and retired in silence.

Then the end came rapidly. He wandered in his speech and was back in
the past with dead and gone comrades. At the very last he rallied once
more, fixed me with his poor eye that I had never seen dim before, and
spoke with consciousness:

“Thou, the last Jennico, remember. Be true. Tell the renegade I
rejoice, his shame striketh not us. Tell him that he did well to change
his name. Kerlchen, dear son, thou art young and strong, breed a fine
stock. No roture! but sell and settle ... sell and settle.”

Those words came upon his last sigh. His eye flashed once, and then the
light was extinguished.

Thus he passed. His dying thought was for the worthy continuance of
his race. I found myself the possessor, so the tabellions informed me
some days later, of many millions (reckoned by the florins of this
land) besides the great property of Tollendhal—fertile plains as
well as wild forests, and of this same isolated frowning castle with
its fathom-thick walls, its odd pictures of half-savage dead and gone
Woschutzskis, its antique clumsy furniture, tapestries, trophies of
chase and war; master, moreover, of endless tribes of dependants:
heiducks and foresters; females of all ages, whose bare feet in summer
patter oddly on the floors like the tread of animals, whose high-boots
in winter clatter perpetually on the stone flags of stairs and
corridors; serf-peasants, factors, overseers; the strangest mixture of
races that can be imagined: Slovacks, Bohemians, Poles, to labour on
the glebe; Saxons or Austrians to rule over them and cypher out rosters
and returns; Magyars, who condescend to manage my horseflesh and watch
over my safety if nothing else; the travelling bands of gipsies, ever
changing but never failing with the dance, the song and the music,
which is as indispensable as salt to the life of that motley population.

And I, who in a more rational order of things might have been leading
the life of a young squire at home, became sovereign lord of all,
wielding feudal power over strings of vassals who deemed it great
honour to bend the knee before me and kiss my hand.

No doubt, in the beginning, it was vastly fine; especially as so
much wealth meant freedom. For my first act, on my return after the
expiration of my furlough, was to give up the duties of regimental
life, irksome and monotonous in these piping days of peace. Then I
must hie me to Vienna, and there, for the first time of my life of
six-and-twenty years, taste the joy of independence. In Vienna are
enough of dashing sparks and beautiful women, of princes and courtiers,
gamblers and rakes, to teach me how to spend some of my new-found
wealth in a manner suitable to so fashionable a person as myself.

But how astonishingly soon one accustoms oneself to luxury and
authority! It is but three months ago that, having drained the brimming
cup of pleasure to the dregs, I found its first sweetness cloying,
its first alluring sparkle almost insufferable; that, having basked
in perpetual smiles, I came to weary of so much favour. Winning at
play had no fascination for a man with some thirty thousand pounds a
year at his back; and losing large slices of that patrimony which
had, I felt, been left me under an implied trust, was dully galling
to my conscience. I was so uniformly fortunate also in the many duels
in which I was involved among the less favoured—through the kindness
which the fair ladies of Vienna and Bude began to show to _le beau
Jennico_ (the old dictum had been revived in my favour)—that after
disabling four of my newly-found “best friends,” even so piquant an
entertainment lost all pretence of excitement.

And with the progress of disillusion concerning the pleasure of
idleness in wealth, grew more pressing the still small voice which
murmured at my ear that it was not for such an end, not for the
gratification of a mere libertine, gambler, and duellist, that my
great-uncle Jennico had selected me as the depositary of his wealth and
position.

“Sell and settle, sell and settle.” The old man’s words had long enough
been forgotten. It was high time to begin mastering the intricacies
of that vast estate, if ever I was to turn it to the profit of that
stream of noble Jennicos to come. And in my state of satiety the very
remoteness of my new property, its savageness, its proud isolation,
invested it with an odd fascination. From one day to the other I
determined on departure, and left the emptiness of the crowd to seek
the fulness of this wild and beautiful country.

Here for a time I tasted interest in life again; knew a sort
of well-filled peace; felt my soul expand with renewed vigour,
keenness for work and deeds, hope and healthy desire, self-pride
and satisfaction. Then came the foolish adventure which has left me
naked and weak in the very midst of my wealth and power; which has
left rudderless an existence that had set sail so gaily for glorious
happiness.

       *       *       *       *       *

The bell of the horologe, from its snow-capped turret overlooking the
gate of honour in the stronghold of Tollendhal, slowly tolled the tenth
hour of that tempestuous night; and the notes resounded in the room,
now strongly vibrating, now faint and distant, as the wind paused for
a second, or bore them away upon its dishevelled wing. Upon the last
stroke, as Basil Jennico was running over the last page of his fair
paper, the door behind him, creaking on its hinges, was thrown open by
János, the heiduck, displaying in the next chamber a wide table, lit by
two six-branched chandeliers and laid for the evening meal. The twelve
yellow tongues of flame glinted on the silver, the cut glass, and the
snow-white napery, but only to emphasise the sombre depth of the
mediæval room, the desolate eloquence of that solitary seat at the huge
board. János waited till his master, with weary gesture, had cast his
pen aside, and then ceremoniously announced that his lordship’s supper
was ready.

Impatiently enough did the young man dip his fingers in the aiguière of
perfumed water that a damsel on his right offered to him as he passed
through the great doors, drying them on the cloth handed by another
on his left. Frowning he sat him down in his high-backed chair behind
which the heiduck stood ready to present each dish as it was brought up
by other menials, to keep the beaker constantly filled, to answer with
a bow any observation that he might make, should the lord feel disposed
to break silence.

But to-night the Lord of Tollendhal was less disposed than ever in such
a direction. He chafed at the long ceremony; resented the presence of
these creatures who had seen her sit as their mistress at that table,
where now lay nought but vacancy beyond the white cloth; resented even
the silent solicitude that lurked in János’s eyes, though the latter
never broke unauthorised his rule of silence.

The generous wine, in the stillness and the black solitude, bred
presently a yet deeper melancholy. After a perfunctory meal the young
man waved aside a last glass of the amber Tokay that was placed at his
hand, rose, and moodily walked to and fro for some time. Feeling that
the coming hours had no sleep in reserve for a mind in such turmoil as
his, he returned to his writing-table, and, whilst János directed the
servants to bring in and trim fresh candles, and pile more logs upon
the hearth, Basil Jennico resumed his task.




CHAPTER II

BASIL JENNICO’S MEMOIR CONTINUED


MY great-uncle’s will, forcible, concise, indisputable as it was,
had been (so the man of law informed me) drawn out in a great hurry,
dictated, indeed, between spasms of agony and rage. (The poor old man
died of gout in his stomach.) Doubtless, had he felt sure of more
time, he would have burdened the inheritance with many directions and
conditions.

From his broken utterances, however, and from what I had known of him
in life, I gathered a fair idea of what his wishes were. His fifty
years of foreign service had filled him, old pandour that he seemed to
have become, with but increased contempt for the people that surrounded
him, their ways and customs, while his pride as an Englishman was only
equalled by his pride as a Jennico.

“Sell and settle....”

The meaning of the words was clear in the light of the man as I knew
him. I was to sell the great property, carry to England the vast hoard
of foreign wealth, marry as befitted one of the race, and raise a
new and splendid line of Jennicos, to the utter mortification, and
everlasting confusion, of the degenerate head of the house.

Now, though I knew it to be in me, and felt it, indeed, not otherwise
possible, to live my life as true a Jennico as even my uncle could
desire, I by no means deemed it incumbent upon me to set to work and
carry out his plans without first employing my liberty and wealth as
the humour prompted me. Nor was the old country an overpoweringly
attractive place for a young man of my creed and kidney. In Vienna I
was, perhaps, for the moment, the most noted figure—the guest most
sought after that year. In England, at daggers drawn with my brother, I
could only play an everyday part in an unpopular social minority.

It was in full summer weather that, as I have written, already tried by
the first stage of my career of wealth, I came to take possession of my
landed estates. The beauty and wildness of the scenery, the strangeness
of the life in the well-nigh princely position to which this sudden
turn of fortune’s wheel had elevated me, the intoxicating sensation of
holding sway, as feudal lord of these wide tracts of hill and plain,
over so many hundreds of lives—above all, the wholesome reaction
brought about by solitude and communion with nature after the turmoil
of the last months—in short, everything around me and in me made me
less inclined than ever to begin ridding myself of so fair a possession.

And do I wish I had not thus delayed in obeying the injunction that
accompanied the bequest? Odds my life! I am a miserable dog this day
through my disobedience; and yet, would I now undo the past if I could?
A thousand times no! I hate my folly, but hug it, ever closer, ever
dearer. The bitter savour of that incomprehensible yearning clings to
the place: I would not exchange it for the tameness of peace. Weakling
that I am, I would not obliterate, if I could, the memory of those
brief, brief days of which I failed to know the price, until the
perversity of fate cut their thread for ever—ay, perhaps for ever,
after all! And yet, if so, it were wiser to quit these haunted walls
for ever also. But, God! how meagre and livid looks wisdom, the ghost,
by the side of love’s warm and living line!

And now, on! Since I have put my hand to the task, undertaken to set
forth and make clear the actual condition of that vacillating puppet,
the new-fledged Lord of Tollendhal, I will not draw it back, cost me
what pain it may.

No doubt it was this haunting pride of wealth, waxing every day
stronger, even as the pride of birth which my great-uncle had fostered
to such good purpose, the overweening conceit which they bred within
me, that fogged my better judgment and brought me to this pass. And no
doubt, likewise, it is a princely estate that these lords of Tollendhal
of old carved for themselves, and rounded ever wider and nurtured—all
that it should some day, passing through the distaff, come to swell the
pride of Suffolk Jennicos!

My castle rises boldly on the northernmost spur of the Glatzer Mounts,
and defiantly overlooks the marches of three kingdoms. Its lands and
dependencies, though chiefly Moravian, extend over the Bohemian border
as well as into that Silesia they now are able to call Prussian. North
and west it is flanked by woods that grow wilder, denser, as they
spread inwards towards the Giant Mountains. On the southern slopes are
my vineyards, growths of note, as I hear. My territories reach, on the
one hand, farther than can be seen under the blue horizon, into the
Eastern plains, flat and rich, that stretch with curious suddenness
immediately at the foot of the high district; upon the other hand, on
the Moravian side, I doubt whether even my head steward himself knows
exactly how much of the timber-laden hill-ranges can be claimed as
appertaining to the estate. All the peaks I can descry in a fine day
from these casements are mine, I believe; on their flanks are forests
as rich in game—boar and buck, wolf and bear, not to speak of lesser
quarry—as are the plains below in corn and maize and cattle—_que
sais-je?_ A goodly heritage indeed!

I promised myself many a rare day’s sport so soon as the time waxed
ripe. Meanwhile, my days were spent in rambles over the land, under
pretence of making acquaintance with the farms and the villages, and
the population living on the soil and working out its wealth for my
use, but in reality for the enjoyment of delicious sylvan and rustic
idleness through which the memory of recent Viennese dissipations was
like that of a fevered dream.

The spirit of my country-keeping ancestors lived again within me and
was satisfied. Yet there were times, too, when this freedom of fancy
became loneliness—when my eyes tired of green trees, and my ears
hungered for the voice of some human being whom I could meet as an
equal, with whom I could consort, soul and wit. Then I would resolve
that, come the autumn, I would fill the frowning stronghouse with a
rousing throng of gallant hunters and fair women such as it had never
seen before. Ay, and they should come over, even from old England, to
taste of the Jennico hospitality!

It was in one of these glorious moods that, upon a September day,
sultry as summer, although there was a touch of autumn decay in the
air as well as in the tints around me, I sallied forth, after noon,
to tramp on foot an as yet unexplored quarter of my domain. I had
donned, according to my wont (as being more suitable to the roughness
of the paths than the smallclothes, skirted coats, high heels and
cocked hat of Viennese fashion), the dress of the Moravian peasant—I
gather that it pleases the people’s heart to see their seigneur grace
their national garb on occasions. There was a goodly store of such
costumes among the cupboards full of hereditary habiliments and furs
preserved at Tollendhal, after the fashion of the country, with the
care that English housewives bestow upon their stores of linen. My
peasant suit was, of course, fine of cloth and natty of cut, and the
symmetry of the handsome figure I saw in my glass reminded me more of
the pastoral disguises that were the courtly fashion of some years
back than of our half-savage ill-smelling boors. Thus it was pleasant
as well as comfortable to wear, and at that time even so trifling a
sensation of gratified vanity had its price. But, although thus freed
of the incumbrance of a gentleman’s attire, I could not shake off the
watchful tyranny of János, the solemn heiduck who never allowed me to
stir abroad at all without his escort, nor, indeed (if my whim took me
far afield), without the further retinue of two jägers, twin brothers,
and faithful beyond a doubt. These, carbine on shoulder, and hanger on
thigh, had their orders to follow their lord through thick and thin,
and keep within sight and sound of whistle.

In such odd style of state, on this day, destined to begin for me
a new chapter in life, I took my course; and for a long hour or so
walked along the rocky cornice that overhangs the plains. The land
looked bare and wide and solitary, the fields lay in sallow leanness
bereft of waving crops, but I knew that all my golden grain was stacked
safely in the heart of the earth, where these folk hoard its fruits
for safety from fire. The air was so empty of human sounds, save the
monotonous tramp of my escort behind me, that all the murmurs of wind
and foliage struck with singular loudness upon my ear. Over night,
there had, by my leave, been songs and dancing in the courtyard of
Tollendhal, and the odd tunes, the capricious rhythm of the gipsy
musicians, came back upon me as I walked in the midst of my thoughts.
These melodies are fitful and plaintive as the sounds of nature itself,
they come hurrying and slackening, rising and falling, with as true a
harmony and as unmeasured a measure,—now in a very passion of haste,
and now with a dreamy long-drawn sigh. I was thinking on this, and on
the love of the Empress for that music (my Empress that had been when
I wore her uniform, ay, and my Empress still so long as I retain these
noble lands), when I came to a field, sloping from the crag towards
the plain, where an aftermath of grass had been left to dry. There
was a little belt of trees, which threw a grateful shade; and feeling
something weary I flung me down on the scented hay. It was on the
Silesian portion of my land. Against the horizon, the white and brown
of some townlet, clustering round the ace-of-club-shaped roof of its
church-tower, rose glittering above the blue haze. A little beyond the
field ran a white road. So I reclined, looking vaguely into the unknown
but inviting distance, musing on the extent of those possessions so
wide-spread that I had not as yet been able to ride all their marches,
ever and anon recognising vaguely in the voice of the breeze through
the foliage an echo of the music that had been haunting my thoughts
all day. Everything conspired to bring me pleasant fancies. I began
to dream of past scenes and future fortunes, smiling at the thought
of what my dashing friends would say if they saw _le beau Jennico_ in
this bucolic attitude, wondering if any of my Court acquaintances would
recognise him in his peasant garb.

Ah me, how eternally and lovingly I thought of my proud and brilliant
self then!...

I cannot recall how soon this musing became deep sleep, but sleep
I did and dream—a singular, vivid dream, which was in a manner a
continuation of my waking thoughts. I seemed to be at a great _fête_ at
the Imperial Palace, one of the countless throng of guests. The lights
were brilliant, blinding, but I saw many faces I knew, and we all were
waiting most eagerly for some wonderful event. No one was speaking, and
the only sounds were the rustling and brushing of the ladies’ brocades
and the jingle of the officers’ spurs, with over and above the wail
of the czimbalom. All at once I knew, as we do in dreams, what we
were expecting, and why this splendid feast had been prepared. Marie
Antoinette, the fair young Dauphine of France, the memory of whose
grace still hangs about the Court, had come back to visit her own
country. The crowd grew closer and closer. The crowd about me surged
forward to catch a glimpse of her as she passed, and I with the rest,
when suddenly my great-uncle stood before me, immensely bestarred and
beribboned in his field-marshal’s uniform, and with the black patch on
his eye so black that it quite dazzled me.

“Na, Kerlchen,” he was saying to me, “thou hast luck! Her Imperial and
Royal Highness has chosen the young Jennico to dance with ... as the
old one is too old.”

Now I, in common with the young men about me, have grown to cherish
since my coming to this land a strange enthusiasm for the most womanly
and beautiful of all the Empress’s daughters, and therefore, even in my
dream, my heart began to beat very fast, and I scarce knew which way
to turn. I was much troubled too by the music, which went on always
louder and quicker above my head, somewhere in the air, for I knew
that no such things as country dances are danced at Court, and that I
myself would make but a poor figure in such; yet a peasant dance it
undoubtedly was. Next, my uncle was gone, and though I could not see
her, I knew the Princess was coming by the swish of her skirt as she
walked. I heard her voice as clear as a silver bell. “_Où est-il?_”
it said, and I felt she was looking for me. I struggled in vain to
answer or turn to her, and the voice cried again: “_Où est-il?_” upon
which another voice with a quaver in its tones made reply: “_Par ici,
Altesse!_”

The sound must have been very close to me, for it startled me from my
deep sleep into, as it were, an outer court of dreams. And between
slumber and consciousness I became aware that I was lying somewhere
very hot and comfortable; that, while some irresistible power kept
my eyes closed, my ears were not so, and I could hear the two voices
talking together; and, in my wandering brain believed them still to
belong to the Princess Marie Antoinette and her attendant.

“It is a peasant,” said the first voice: that was the Princess of
course. There was something of scorn in the tone, and I became acutely
and unpleasantly conscious of my red embroidered shirt. But the other
made answer: “He is handsome,” and then: “His hands are not those of a
peasant,” and, “_Regardez ma chère_; peasants do not wear such jewelled
watches!” A sudden shadow fell over me and was gone in an instant.
There was a flicker of laughter and I sat up.

During my sleep the shade of the sun had shifted and I lay in the full
glare, and so, as I opened my eyes, I could see nothing.

I heard the laughter of my dream again, and I knew that the mocking cry
of “_Prenez garde, Altesse!_” that still rang in the air did not belong
to my sleep. But as I rubbed my eyes and looked out once again, I
caught first a glimpse of a slender creature bending over me, outlined
it seemed in fire and shimmering between black and gold. My next glance
filled me with a woeful disappointment, for I declare, what with my
dream and my odd awakening, I expected to find before me a beauty no
less bewitching than that of her Royal Highness herself. What I beheld
was but a slim slip of a creature who, from the tip of her somewhat
battered shepherdess hat to the hem of her loosely hanging skirts, gave
me an impression of being all yellow, save for the dark cloud of her
hair. Her skin seemed golden yellow like old ivory, her eyes seemed to
shoot yellow sparks, her gown was yellow as any primrose. As she bent
to watch me, her lip was arched into a smile; it had a deep dimple on
the left side. Thus I saw her in a sort of flash and scrambled to my
feet still half drunk with drowsiness, crying out like a fool:

“_Où est son Altesse? Où est son Altesse?_”

She clapped her hands and turned with a crow of laughter to some one
behind me. And then I became aware that, as in the dream, there were
two. I also turned.

My eyes were in their normal state again, but for a moment I thought
myself still wandering. Here was her Highness. A Princess, indeed, as
beautiful as any vision and yet most exquisitely embodied in the flesh;
a Princess in this wilderness! It seemed a thing impossible, and yet my
eyes now only corroborated the evidence of my ears.

I marked, almost without knowing, the rope of pearls that bound her
throat (I had become a judge of jewels by being the possessor of
so many). I marked her garments, garments, for all their intended
simplicity, rich, and bearing to my not untutored observation the
latest stamp of fashion. But above all I marked her air of race, her
countenance, young with the first bloom of youth, mantled with blushes
yet set with a royal dignity.

I have, since that eventful day, passed through so many phases of
feeling, sweet and violent, my present sentiments are so fantastically
disturbed, that I must try to the last of this writing and see matters
still as I saw them at the time. Yes, beyond doubt what I noticed
most, what appealed to me most deeply then, was the great air of race
blended and softened by womanly candour and grace. She looked at me
gravely, with wide brown eyes, and I stumbled into my best courtly bow.

“He wants to know,” said the damsel of the yellow skirts, this time in
German, the clear, clean utterance of which had nothing of the broad
Austrian sounds I was accustomed to hear—“he wants to know ’where is
the Highness?’ But he seems to have guessed where she stands, without
the telling. Truly ’tis a pity the Lord Chamberlain is not at his post
to make a presentation in due form!”

The lady thus addressed took a step towards her companion, with what
seemed a protest on her lip. But the latter, her small face quivering
with mischief and eagerness, whispered something in her ear, and the
beautiful brown eyes fixed themselves once again smilingly on me.

“Know, sir,” continued the speaker then, “since you are so indiscreet
as to wake at the wrong moment, and surprise an incognito, the
mysteries of which were certainly not meant for such as you, that
Altesse she is. _Son Altesse Sérénissime la Princesse Marie Ottilie._
Marie is her Highness’s first name, and Ottilie is her Highness’s last
name. And between the two and after those two, being as I said an
Altesse Sérénissime, she has of course a dozen other names; but more
than this it does not suit her Highness that you should know. Now if
you will do me, a humble attendant that I am, the courtesy to state
who you are, who, in a Silesian boor’s attire, speak French and wear
diamond watches to your belt, I can proceed with the introduction, even
in the absence of the Lord Chamberlain.”

The minx had an easy assurance of manner which could only have been
bred at Court. Her mistress listened to her with what seemed a tolerant
affection.

Looking round, bewildered and awkwardly conscious of my peasant dress,
I beheld my two chasseurs, standing stolidly sentinel on the exact spot
where I had last seen them before dropping asleep. Old János, from a
nearer distance, watched us suspiciously. As I thus looked round I
became aware of a new feature in the landscape—a ponderous coach also
attended by two chasseurs in unknown uniforms waiting some hundred
paces off, down the road.

To keep myself something in countenance despite my incongruous garb
(and also perchance for the little meanness that I was not displeased
to show this Princess that I too kept a state of my own), I lifted my
hand and beckoned to my retinue, which instantly advanced and halted in
a rank with rigid precision five paces behind me.

“Gracious madam,” said I in German, bowing to her who had dubbed
herself the lady-in-waiting, with a touch, I flattered myself, of
her own light mockery of tone, “I shall indeed feel honoured if her
Serene Highness will deign to permit the presentation of so unimportant
a person as myself—in other words of Basil Jennico of Farringdon
Dane, in the county of Suffolk, in the Kingdom of Great Britain,
lately a captain in his Royal Imperial Majesty’s Moravian Regiment of
Chevau-Legers, now master of the Castle of Tollendhal, not far distant,
and lord of its domain.” Here, led by János, my three retainers saluted.

I thought I saw in the Princess’s eyes that I had created a certain
impression, but my consequent complacency did not escape the notice of
the irrepressible lady-in-waiting. She promptly did her best to mar the
situation.

“Fi donc,” she cried, in French, “we are at Court, Monsieur, and at the
Court of—at the Court of her Highness we are not such savages as to
perform introductions in German.”

Then, drawing up her slight figure and composing her face into
preternatural gravity, she took two steps forward and another
sideways, accompanied by as many bows, and resting her hand at arm’s
length on the china head of her stick, with the most ridiculous
assumption of finikin importance and with a quavering voice which,
although I have never known him, I recognised instantly as the
Chamberlain’s, she announced:

“Monsieur Basile Jean Nigaud de la Faridondaine, dans le comté où l’on
Suffoque, ... d’importance, au royaume de la Grande Bretagne, maître du
Castel des Fous, ici proche, et seigneur des alentours,—ahem!”

Inwardly cursing the young woman’s buffoonery and the incredible
facility with which she had so instantly burlesqued an undoubtedly
impressive recital, I had no choice but to make my three bows with
what good grace I could muster. Whereupon, the Princess, still smiling
but with a somewhat puzzled air, made me a curtsey. As for the
lady-in-waiting, nothing abashed, she took an imaginary pinch of most
excellent snuff with a pretence of high satisfaction; then laughed
aloud and long, till my ears burned and her own dimple literally rioted.

“And now, to complete the ceremony,” said she, as soon as she could
speak at all, “let me introduce the Court, represented to-day by
myself. Mademoiselle Marie Ottilie. Two Ottilies as you will perceive,
but easily explained, thus: Feu the Highest her Sérénissime’s
gracious ducal grandmother being an Ottilie and godmother to us
both—Mademoiselle Ottilie: the rest concerns you not. Well, Monsieur
de la Faridondaine, Capitaine et Seigneur, etc., etc.,—charmed to
have made your acquaintance. So far, so good. But ... these gentlemen?
Surely also nobles in disguise. Will you not continue the ceremony?”

She waved a little sunburnt hand towards my immovable body-guard, and
the full absurdity of my position struck me with the keenest sense of
mortification.

I looked back at the three, biting my lips, and miserably uncertain how
to conduct myself so as to save some shred of dignity. My ancient János
had seen too many strange things during his forty years’ attendance on
my great-uncle to betray the smallest surprise at the present singular
situation; but out of both their handsome faces, set like bronze,—they
had better not have moved a muscle otherwise or János would have known
the reason why,—the eyes of my twin attendants roamed from me to the
ladies, and from the ladies to me, with the most devouring curiosity.
I tartly dismissed them all again to a distance, and then, turning to
the mysterious Princess I begged to know, in my most courtlike manner
if I might presume to lay my services at her feet for the time of her
sojourn in this, my land.

With the same adorable yet dignified bashfulness that I had
already noted in her, the lovely woman looked hesitatingly at her
lady-in-waiting, which lively wench, not being troubled with timidity
(as she had already sufficiently demonstrated), promptly took upon
herself to answer me. But this time she so delightfully fell in with my
own wishes that I was fain to forgive her all that had gone before.

“But certainly,” she exclaimed, “her Serene Highness will condescend
to accept the services of M. de Jean Nigaud. It is not every day that
brings forth such romantic encounters. Know, sir, that we are two
damozels that have by the most extraordinary succession of fortunate
accidents escaped from school. You wonder? By school, I mean the
insupportable tedium, etiquette, and dulness of the Court of his most
gracious and worshipful Serenity the father of her Highness. We came
out this noon to make hay, and hay we will make. Or rather we shall sit
on the hay, and you shall make a throne for the Princess, and a little
tabouret for me, and then you may sit you down and entertain us ...
but on the ground, and at a respectful distance, that none may say
we do not observe proper forms and conventions, for all that we are
holiday-making. And you shall explain to us how you, an Englishman,
came to be master of Château des Fous, and masquerading in peasant’s
attire. Is masquerading a condition of tenure? After which, her Serene
Highness having only one fault, that being her angelic softness of
heart, which is pushed to the degree of absolute weakness, she will
permit me to narrate to you (as much as is good for you to know)
how we came to be here at such a distance from our own country, and
in such curious freedom—for her Highness quite sees that you are
rapidly becoming ill with suppressed curiosity, and fears that you may
otherwise burst with it on your way home to your great castle, or at
least that the pressure on the brain may seriously affect its delicate
balance—if indeed,” with a peal of her reckless childish laughter,
“you are not already a lunatic, and those your keepers!”

This last piece of impudence might have proved even too much for my
desire to cultivate an acquaintance so extraordinarily attractive to
one of my turn of mind and so alluring by its mysteriousness, but that
I happened to catch a glance from her Highness’s eyes even as the
speaker finished her tirade, which glance, deprecating and at the same
time full of a kindly and gentle interest, set my heart to beat in a
curious fashion between pleasure and pain. I hastened therefore to obey
the younger lady’s behests, and began to gather together enough of the
sweet-smelling hay to form a throne for so noble and fair an occupant.

Whereupon the little creature herself—she seemed little by reason
of her slenderness and childishness, but in truth she was as tall as
her tall and beautiful mistress—fell to helping me with such right
good-will, flashing upon me, as she flitted hither and thither, such
altogether innocently mocking looks from her yellow-hazel eyes, that
I should have been born with a deeper vanity, and a sourer temper, to
have kept a grudge against her.

Once seated in our fragrant court, in the order laid down for us, the
attendant, so soon as she had recovered breath sufficient, began to ply
me with questions so multiplied, so searching, and so pointed, that
she very soon extracted from me every detail she wished to know about
myself, past and present.

But although, as from a chartered and privileged advocate, the sharp
cross-questioning came from the Mademoiselle Marie Ottilie, it was
to the soft dumb inquiry I read in the Princess Marie Ottilie’s eyes
that were addressed my answers. And then those eyes and the listening
beauty of that gracious face, made it hard for me to realise, as later
reflection proved, that their owner did not utter a single word during
the whole time we sat there together.




CHAPTER III


I MIND me that when she had drawn from me all she had wanted to know,
the little lady’s pert tongue became still for a while, and that she
stretched her long young limbs and lay back upon her mound of hay with
the most absolute unconcern either of my presence or of the Princess’s,
gazing skyward with a sudden gravity in her look. As for me, I was
content to sit in silence too, glad of the quiet, because it gave me
leisure to taste the full zest of this fortunate and singular meeting.
I thought I had never seen a human being whom silence became so well as
the Princess Ottilie. Contrasted with the recklessness and chatter of
her companion her attitude struck me as the most perfectly dignified it
had ever been my lot to observe.

Presently the nymph in yellow roused herself from her reverie, and sat
up, with her battered hat completely on one side and broken bits of
grass sticking in the tangled mass of her brown hair. She arched her
lip at me with her malicious smile, and addressed her companion.

“Is it your Highness’s pleasure,” she asked, “that I should gratify
some of this young English nobleman’s curiosity concerning the
wandering of a Princess in so unprincely a fashion?”

“Ach!” rebuked her Highness, on the wings of a soft sigh. The truth of
the girl’s assertion that her mistress’s kindness of heart amounted to
weakness, was very patent; the dependant was undoubtedly indulged to
the verge of impertinence, although it is also true that her manner
seemed to stop short of any open show of disrespect.

“Now attention, please, Monsieur de la Faridondaine! His Most
Absolutely to be Revered and Most Gracious Serenity, father of her
Highness, reigns over a certain land, a great many leagues from here,”
she began, with all the gusto of one who revels in the sound of her own
voice. “Her Highness is his only daughter, and this August Person has
the condescension to feel for her some of those sentiments of paternal
affection which are common even to the lowest peasant. You have been
about Courts, Monsieur Jean Nigaud, the fact is patent and indubitable.
You can therefore realise the extent of such condescension. A little
while ago, moved by these sentiments, my gracious Sovereign believed
there was a paleness upon her Highness his daughter’s cheek.”

Involuntarily I looked at the Princess, to see, with a curious elation,
how the rich colour rushed, under my gaze, yet more richly into her
face.

“It does not appear now,” pursued the imperturbable speaker, whom no
blink of mine seemed to escape, “but there _was_ a paleness, and the
Court doctor decided there was likewise a trifling loss of tone and
want of strength. He recommended a change of air, tonic baths, and
grape cure. In consequence, after due deliberation and consultation, it
was decreed that her Highness should be sent to a certain region in the
mountains, where Höchst die Selbe has a grand, a most high, ducal aunt,
the said region being noted for its salubrious air, its baths, the
quality and extent of its vineyards. In company, therefore, of a few
indispensable court officials—the Lord Chamberlain (as a responsible
person for her Highness’s movements), the most gracious a certain aged
and high born Gräfin (our chief Court lady, once the Highness’s own
gouvernante), the second Court doctor, the third officier de bouche,
and mine own humble self——”

Here she paused, and, with a sudden assumption of dolefulness that was
certainly comic, proceeded in quite another voice:

“I am a person of no consequence at Court, Monsieur de la
Faridondaine. I am merely tolerated because of her Highness’s goodness,
and also because, you must know, that I have a reputation of being a
source of amusement to her Serenity. You may already have noticed that
it is fairly well founded that I am talkative and entertaining, as a
lady-in-waiting should be, and this is the reason why I have attained a
position to which my birth does not entitle me.”

A little frown came across the Princess’s smooth brow at these words.
She shot a look of deprecation at her attendant, but the latter went
on, resuming her former manner, in a bubbling of merriment:

“Facts are facts, you see—I am even hardly _born_. My mother happened
to be liked by the mother of her Serene Highness—an angel—and when
I was orphaned she took me closer to her. So we grew up together, her
Highness and I, and so I come to be in so grand a place as a Court.
There, Monsieur, you have in a word the history of Mademoiselle Marie
Ottilie. I have no wish that she should ever seem to have appeared
under false colours.”

The Princess, whose sensitive blood had again risen to a crimson tide,
cast a very uneasy look at her companion. I could see how much her
affectionate delicacy was wounded by this unnecessary candour.

But little mademoiselle, after returning the glance with one as
mischievous and unfeeling as a jackdaw’s, continued, hugging her knees
with every appearance of enjoyment:

“And now we come to the series of delightful accidents which brought
us here. Behold! no sooner had we left the Court of—the Court her
Highness belongs to—than the smallpox broke out in the Residenz and in
the palace itself. The father of her Serenity had had it; there was no
danger for _him_, and he was in the act of congratulating himself upon
having sent the Princess out of the way, when, in the most charming
manner (for the Ducal Court of her Highness’s aunt was even duller
than Höchst die Selbe’s own, and after the tenth bunch of grapes you
get rather tired of a grape cure, and as for mud baths—oh fie, the
horror!), we discovered that we had brought the pretty illness with us.
And first one and then the other of the retinue sickened and fell ill.
Then a Court lady of the Duchess took it, and next who should develop
symptoms but the old growl-bear and scratch-cat, our own chief Hofdame,
chief duenna, and chief bore. That was a stroke of fortune, you must
admit! But wait a moment, you have not heard the best of it yet.”

At the very first mention of the smallpox the Princess grew pale, and
made the sign of the cross. And indeed it seemed to me, myself, a
tempting of Providence to joke thus lightly about a malady so dangerous
to life and so fatal to looks. But the girl proceeded coolly:

“Her Serene Highness, like her most venerated brother, had had the
disease; I believe they underwent it together in their Serene Babyhood.
But her Serene Highness was deeply alarmed by the danger to which her
Serene niece was exposed. The Court doctor was no less concerned—it
is a bad thing for a Court doctor if a princess in his charge fall a
victim to an epidemic—so they put their heads together and resolved
to send the exalted young lady into some safer region, in company of
such of her retinue as seemed in the soundest health. An aged lady,
mother of M. de Schreckendorf, our Chamberlain already described to
you, dwells in these plains. As a matter of fact,” said the speaker,
pointing a small finger in the direction of the town, “her castle
is yonder. The Duchess had once condescended to spend a night there
to break a journey, and it had remained stamped on her ducal memory
that the place was quiet,—not to say a desert,—that there were
vineyards close by, and also that the air was particularly salubrious.
She knew, too, that the Countess Schreckendorf was quite equal to the
guarding of any youthful Serenity, in short, a dragon of etiquette,
narrow-mindedness, prudery, and ugliness. Together, therefore, with the
Chamberlain, a few women, and the poor doctor, we were packed into a
ducal chariot, and carted here, the Countess receiving the strictest
orders not to divulge the tremendous altitude of her visitor’s rank.
She would die rather than betray the trust,—especially as to thwart
innocent impulses is one of her chief pleasures, nay, I may say her
only pleasure in life. Little does she or the Highness her mistress
suspect the existence of a Seigneur de la Faridondaine, roaming about
in the guise of a simple Silesian shepherd and pretending to sleep in
order to surprise the little secrets of wandering princesses! We were
told, when we asked whether there was no neighbourly creature within
reach, that the only one for leagues was a fearful old man with one eye
and one tooth, who goes about using his cane as freely on every one’s
shoulders as the Prussian king himself. Well, never mind, don’t speak,
I have yet the cream of the tale to offer! We arrived here three weeks
ago and found the grapes no more spicy, the castle no more amusing,
and the neighbourhood more boring than even the ducal Court itself. But
one excellent day, the good little Chamberlain began to look poorly,
complained of his poor little head, and retired to his room. The next
morning what does the doctor do, but pack _him_ into a coach and drive
away with him like a fury. Neither coach, nor postillions, nor doctor,
nor Chamberlain, have been seen or heard of since! But I, who am
awake with the birds, from my chamber window saw them go—for I heard
the clatter in the courtyard, and by nature, M. the Captain, I am as
curious as a magpie.”

“Oh, that,” said I with conviction, “you need not tell me!”

She seemed vastly tickled by the frankness of this my first observation
after such long listening, and had to throw herself back on the hay,
and laugh her laugh out, before she could sit up again and continue:

“So, as I was saying, I saw the departure. The doctor looked livid with
fright, and as for the Herr Chamberlain, he was muffled up in blankets
and coats, but I got a glimpse of his face for all that, and _it was
spotted all over with great red spots_!”

The Princess pushed her hat off her forehead, and turned upon her
lady-in-waiting a face that had grown almost livid.

“Pooh!” said the lady-in-waiting; “your Highness is over-nervous; ’tis
now a good fortnight since the old gentleman left us, and if you or I
were to have had it we should have shown symptoms long ago. Well, sir,
to continue: our worthy hostess the Countess was in a fine fume, as
you can fancy, between duty and natural affection, terror and anxiety.
She was by way of keeping the whole matter a dead secret both from us
and from the servants; but the fumigations she set going in the house,
the airing, the dosing, together with her own frantic demeanour, would
have been enough to enlighten even obtuser wits than ours. With one
exception all our servants fled, and all hers. She had to replace
them from a distance. The anger, the responsibility, the agitation
generally, were too much for her years and constitution; and three
days ago—in the act (as we discovered) of writing to the Duchess for
instructions, for she had expected the Court doctor would have sent
on special messengers to the courts of her Highness’s relatives, and
was in a perfect fever at receiving no news—as I say, in the very act
of writing evidently to despatch another post herself, the poor old
lady was struck with paralysis, and was carried speechless to bed.
Now, Monsieur Jean Nigaud, you English are a practical race. Do you
not agree with me that since the Lord, in His wisdom, decreed that it
was good for the Countess’s soul to have a little physical affliction,
it could not have happened at a better moment for us? I know that her
Highness disapproves of what she calls my heartlessness, but I cannot
but rejoice in our freedom.

“The Countess is recovering, but she won’t speak plain for a long
time to come. Meanwhile we are free—free as air! Our only personal
attendant is my own—my old nurse. You shall see her. She speaks but
little, but she adores me. But as we cannot understand a word of the
language spoken here, and the resources of this district are few, I
will own to you, her Highness has found it a little dull, in spite of
her lady-in-waiting’s well-known gift of entertainment, up to to-day.”

She threw me an arch look as she spoke, but the Princess, rising with
the dignity peculiar to her, conveyed her sense that the joke had this
time been carried a little too far.

The shadows were lengthening, the wind had fallen, it was an hour of
great peace and beauty in the land. The Princess took a few steps
towards the road where waited the carriage; I ran forward and presumed
to offer her my arm, which she very graciously, but not without a
blush, accepted. The maid of honour, springing to her feet, followed
us, tripping over the rough ground, with a torn frock and her hat
hanging on her neck by its ribbons. I mind me well how the chasseurs
of the equipage stared to see their lady come leaning on the arm of a
peasant. How they stared, too, at the unabashed, untidy apparition of
the lady-in-waiting! But she, humming a little song as she went, seemed
the last in the world to care what impression she made.

As we neared the coach, a tall woman all in black, with a black shawl
over her black hair, jet-black eyes, staring blankly out of a swarthy
face, descended from it. She looked altogether so dark and forbidding
a vision that I gave a start when I saw her thus unexpectedly. She
seemed a sort of blot on the whole smiling, sunny landscape. But as
Mademoiselle Ottilie drew near, the woman turned to her, her whole face
breaking pleasantly into a very eloquence of silent, eager love.

Of course I guessed at once that this was the nurse to whom the saucy
maiden had already referred. I heard them whisper to each other (and
it seemed to me as if the woman were remonstrating with her mistress)
while I installed the Princess on her cushions. Then both rejoined us
to enter the carriage likewise. Before she jumped in, Mademoiselle
Ottilie tapped her nurse on the shoulder with the sort of indifferent,
kind little pat one would bestow on a dog. The woman caught the
careless hand and kissed it, and her eyes as she looked after the
girl’s figure were absolutely adoring; but her whole countenance again
clouded over strangely when her glance fell upon us. At length they all
three were seated, and my graceful retirement was clearly expected. But
still I lingered.

“The vintage had begun in my vineyards,” quoth I hesitatingly; “if her
Highness would honour me by coming again upon my lands, the sight might
interest her.”

The Princess hesitated, and then, evidently doubtful as to the
propriety of the step, threw a questioning glance at her companion.

“But certainly,” said the latter instantly, “why not accept? Your
Highness has been advised to keep in the open air as much as possible,
and your Highness has likewise been recommended innocent diversion:
nothing could be better. When shall we say?”

“If to-morrow would suit,” I suggested boldly, “I could ride over after
noon, if her Highness would permit me to be her escort. And perhaps she
will also further honour me by accepting some slight refreshment at my
castle. It is worth seeing,” I said, for I saw no reason why I should
be bashful in pushing my advantages, “if your Highness is not afraid
to enter Le Château des Fous?” I ventured to look deep into her eyes
as I spoke, and I remember how those eyes wavered shyly from my gaze,
and how the white lids fell over them. And I remember, too, with what a
sudden mad exultation leaped my heart.

But, as before, it was the lady-in-waiting who answered.

“Afraid! who is afraid? Your Highness, will you not comfort the poor
young man and tell him you are not afraid?”

“If your Highness would deign,” said I, pleadingly, and leaning forward
into the carriage.

And then she looked at me, and said to me in the sweetest guttural in
all the world, “No, I am not afraid.”

We were speaking French. I bowed low, fearing to spoil it all by
another word. The Princess stretched out her hand and I kissed the
back of her glove, and then I had the privilege of also kissing Miss
Ottilie’s sunburnt, scratched, and rather grimy bare little paw, which
she, with affected dignity, thrust forward for my salute.

The carriage drove away, and as it went I mind me how the nurse looked
after me with a darkling anxiety, and also how as I stalked homewards
through the evening glow, with my body-guard tramping steadily behind
me, I kept recalling the sound of the four gracious words with which
the Princess had consented to accept of my hospitality.

She had said, it is true, “_Che n’ai bas beur_,” but none the less was
the memory a delicate delight to my heart the whole night through.




CHAPTER IV


I HAD questioned János on our homeward way concerning my new
acquaintances; but the fellow was so ill-disposed by nature to external
gossip, so wholly occupied with the minute fulfilment of his daily
task, which was to watch over the well-being and safety of his master,
that he had gathered no acquaintance with affairs outside his province.
With the head factor, however, whom I sent for immediately after
supper, I was more fortunate. This man, Karl Schultz, is Saxon-born,
and consequently one of the few of my numerous dependants with whom I
can hold converse here. It was but natural that among the peasantry
the advent of strangers, evidently of wealth and distinction, should
have created some stir, and it is Schultz’s business, among many other
things, to know what the peasantry talk about; although in this more
contented part of the world this sort of knowledge is not of such
importance as among our neighbours the Poles. Schultz, therefore, was
aware of the arrival of the ladies, likewise of the rumour of smallpox,
which had, so he informed me, not only driven all the servants out of
the Castle of Schreckendorf, but spread something like a panic over the
country-side. Tidings had also come to his ears that two gentlemen—one
of them suffering from the dreadful malady (doubtless the poor
Chamberlain)—had been abandoned in their carriage by their postillions
and servants at the small village of Kittlitz, some forty miles from
here, just over the Lusatian border. He corroborated, in fact, greatly
to my joy, all that I had been told; for I had had an uneasy fear
upon me, now and again, as I marched home in the evening chill, that
I had been too ready to lend credence to a romantic and improbable
story. But, better than all, Schultz, having felt a special curiosity
concerning visitors from his own country, had, despite the attempt to
keep the matter secret, contrived to satisfy himself to the full as to
their identity. And thus did I, to my no small triumph, from the first
day easily penetrate the ill-guarded incognita.

The beautiful wandering Princess was the only daughter of the old
reigning house of Lausitz-Rothenburg; and it was from Georgenbrunn,
where she had been on a visit to her aunt the Dowager Duchess of
Saxony, that the second outbreak of the epidemic had driven her to
take refuge with the Countess Schreckendorf in our neighbourhood.

Vastly satisfied with my discovery, and not a little fluttered by the
impending honour, I made elaborate preparations the next day against
the coming of such guests. We rifled the gardens, the greenhouses, and
the storerooms, and contrived a collation the elegance of which taxed
our resources to the uttermost.

Not in peasant garb did I start at noon upon my romantic quest, but
in my finest riding suit of mulberry cloth embroidered with green and
silver, (of what good auguries did I not think when I remembered that
green and white were actually the colours of the Maison de Lusace, and
that in this discreet manner I could wear on my sleeve the mark of a
delicate homage?), ruffles of finest Mechlin fluttered on my throat and
wrists, and a hat of the very latest cock was disposed jauntily at the
exact angle prescribed by the Vienna mode.

With my trim fellows behind me, and with as perfect a piece of
horseflesh between my knees as the Emperor himself could ever hope to
bestride, I set out in high delight and anticipation.

Now, on this freezing winter’s night, when I look back upon those
days and the days that followed, it seems to me as though it were all
a dream. The past events are wrapped to memory in a kind of haze,
out of which certain hours marked above the rest stand out alone in
clearness.—That particular day stands forth perhaps the clearest of
all.

I remember that the Princess Ottilie looked even more queenly to my
mind than at first, with her fair hair powdered and a patch upon the
satin whiteness of her chin. In the complacency of my young man’s
vanity, I was exceedingly elated that she should have considered
it worth while to adorn herself for me. I remember, too, that the
lady-in-waiting examined me critically, and cast a look of approval
upon my altered appearance; that she spoke less and that her mistress
spoke more than upon our first meeting; that even the presence, mute,
dark, and scowling, of their female attendant could not spoil the
pleasure of our intercourse.

In the vineyards, it is true, an incident occurred which for a moment
threatened to mar my perfect satisfaction. The peasant girls—it is the
custom of the country on the appearance of strangers in the midst of
their work—gathered round each lady, surrounding her in wild dancing
bands, threatening in song to load her shoulders with a heavy hodful
of grapes unless she paid a ransom. It was of course most unseemly,
considering the quality of the company I was entertaining, and I had
not foreseen the possibility of such a breach of respect. Never before,
it was evident, in the delicately nurtured life of the Princess, had
such rough amusement been allowed to approach her. This being the
case, it was not astonishing that the admirable composure of her usual
attitude should break down—her dignity give way to the emotion of
fear. She called—nay, she screamed—to me for help. The while her
pert lady-in-waiting, no whit abashed, laughed back at her circle of
grinning sunburnt prancers, threw mocking good-humoured gibes at them
in German, and finally was sharp enough to draw her purse and pay
for her footing, crying out to her mistress to do the same. But the
latter was in no state to listen to advice, and, alas! I found myself
powerless to deliver the distressed lady. In my ignorance of their
language I could do nothing short of use brute force to control my
savages, who were after all (it seems) but acting in good faith upon an
old-established privilege. So I was fain, in my turn, to summon Schultz
to the rescue from a distant part of the ground. He, practical fellow,
made no bones about the matter; with a bellow and a knowing whirl of
his cane every stroke of which told with a dull thwack, he promptly
dispersed the indiscreet merrymakers.

I suppose it is my English blood that rises within me at the sight of
a woman struck. Upon the impulse of the first moment I had well-nigh
wrenched the staff from his hands and laid it about his shoulders;
but fortunately, on second thought, I had wisdom enough to refrain
from an act which would have been so fatal to all future discipline.
Nevertheless, as I stood by, a passive spectator of it, the blood
mounted, for very shame, to my cheek, and I felt myself degraded to the
level of my administrator’s brutality.

The poor fools fell apart, screaming between laughter and pain.
One handsome wench I marked, indeed, who withdrew to the side of a
sullen gipsy-looking fellow, her husband or lover apparently; and as
she muttered low in his ear they both cast looks charged with such
murderous import, not only at the uncompromising justiciary, but also
at me, and the man’s hand stole instinctively to his back with so
significant a gesture, that I realised for the first time quite fully
that there might be good reasons for János’s precautions anent the
lord’s precious person when the lord took his walks abroad.

Another girl passed me close by, sobbing aloud, as she returned to her
labour. She rubbed her shoulder sorely, and the tears hopped off the
rim of her fat cheeks, contorted like those of a blubbering child. In
half-ashamed and sneaking fashion, yet unable to resist the urging of
my heart, I followed her behind the next row of vines and touched her
on the arm.

She recognised me with a start, and I, all fearful of being noticed by
the others, in haste and without a word—as what word could I find in
which to communicate with a Slovack?—hastily dropped a consolatory
coin, the first that met my touch, into her palm.

It was a poor plain creature with dull eyes, coarse lips, and matted
hair, and she gazed at me a moment stupidly bewildered. But the next
instant, reading I know not what of sympathy and benevolence in my
face, as a dog may read in his master’s eyes, she fell at my feet,
letting the gold slip out of her grasp that she might the better seize
my hand in hers and cover it with kisses, pouring forth the while a
litany of gratitude, as unintelligible to me as if she had been indeed
a dog whining at my feet.

To put an end to the absurd situation, distasteful to my British
free-born pride for all my foreign training, I pushed her from me and
turned away, to find the lady-in-waiting at my elbow.

Instead, however, of making my weakness a mark for her wit, this
latter, to my great relief, and likewise to my astonishment, looked
wistfully from the ugly besmeared face to the coin lying on the black
soil, then at my countenance, which at that moment was, I felt, that of
a detected schoolboy. And then, without a word, she followed me back to
her mistress’s side.

My august visitor had not yet regained her wonted serenity. Still
fluttered, she showed me something of a pouting visage. I thought to
discern in her not only satisfaction at the punishment she had seen
administered, but some resentment at my passive attitude. And this, I
confess, surprised me in her, who seemed so gentle and womanly. But I
told myself then that it was but natural in one born as she was to a
throne.

On the other hand, while I confounded myself in excuses and
explanations, blaming myself for having (through my inexperience of
this country) neglected to prevent the possibility of so untoward an
incident, I heard behind me the voice of the young Court lady, rating
Schultz in most explicit German for the heaviness of his hand upon my
folk. And, as the Princess gradually became mollified towards me and
showed me once again her own smiling graciousness, I contrasted her
little show of haughtiness with the unreserve of her companion, and
convinced myself that it did but become her (being what she was). The
while I watched Mademoiselle Ottilie, mingling with peasants as if she
had been born among them, with an ever renewed wonder that she should
have been chosen for the high position she occupied.

Later on my guest, according to her promise, condescended to rest and
refresh herself in the castle. This was the culminating moment of a
golden afternoon. I felt the full pride of possession when I led her
in through the old halls that bore the mark of so many centuries of
noble masters; although indeed, as a Jennico, I had no inherited right
to peacock in the glories of the House of Tollendhal. But, at each
portrait before which she was gracious enough to halt, I took care to
speak of some notable contemporary among the men and women of my own
old line, in that distant enchanted island of the North, where the men
are so brave and strong and the women so fair. And, without stretching
any point, I am sure the line of Jennico lost nothing in the comparison.

She was, I saw, beyond mistake impressed. I rejoiced to note that I
was rapidly becoming a person of importance in her eyes. Even the
lady-in-waiting continued to measure me with an altered and thoughtful
look.

Between the eating of our meal together—which, as I said, was quite
a delicate little feast, and did honour to my barefooted kitchen
retinue—and the departure of my visitors, I took them through many
of the chambers, and showed them some of the treasures, quaint
antiquities, and relics that my great-uncle had inherited or himself
collected. On a little table under his picture—yonder on that wall
it hangs before me—I had spread forth in a glass case, with a sort
of tender and pious memory of the rigid old hero, his own personal
decorations and honours, from the first cross he had won in comparative
youth to the last blazing order that a royal hand had pinned over the
shrunken chest of the field-marshal. In this portrait, painted some
five years before his death, my uncle had insisted on appearing full
face, with a fine scorn of any palliation of the black patch or the
broken jaw. It is a grim enough presentment in consequence,—the artist
having evidently rather relished his task,—and sometimes, indeed, when
I am alone here in this great room at night, and it seems as if the
candle-light does but serve to heighten the gloom of the shadows, I
find my uncle’s one eye following me with so living a sternness that I
can scarce endure it.

But that day of which I am writing, I thought there was benignity in
the fierce orb as it surveyed such honourable company, and even an
actual touch of geniality in the set of the black patch.

As I opened the case, both the ladies fell, women-like, to fingering
the rich jewels. There was a snuff-box set around with diamonds, upon
the lid of which was painted a portrait of the Dauphine. This, Maria
Theresa had herself given to my uncle on the occasion of her daughter’s
marriage, to which it was deemed my uncle’s firm attitude in council
over the Franco-Austrian difficulty had not a little contributed.

With a cry of admiration, the Princess took it up. “Ach, what
diamonds!” she said. I looked from the exquisite face on the ivory to
the no less exquisite countenance bending above it, and I was struck by
the resemblance which had no doubt unconsciously been haunting me ever
since I first met her. The arch of the dark eyebrow, the supercilious
droop of the eyelid, the curve of the short upper lip, and the pout of
the full under one, even the high poise of the head on the long throat,
were curiously similar. I exclaimed upon the coincidence, while the
Princess flushed with a sort of mingled pleasure and bashfulness.

Mademoiselle Ottilie took up the miniature in her turn, and, after
gravely comparing it with her own elfish, sunburnt visage in the glass,
gazed at her mistress; then, heaving a lugubrious sigh, she assented
to my remarks, adding, however, that there was no ground for surprise,
as the Princess Marie Ottilie was actually cousin to her Royal Highness
the Dauphine.

The Princess blushed again, and lifted up her hand as if to warn her
companion. But the latter, with her almost uncanny perspicacity,
continued, turning to me:

“Of course, M. de Jennico” (she had at last mastered my name)—“of
course, M. de Jennico has found out all about us by this time, and is
perfectly aware of her Highness’s identity.”

Then she added, and her eyes danced:

“Since M. de Jennico is so fond of genealogy” (among the curiosities of
the place I had naturally shown them my uncle’s monumental pedigree),
“he can amuse himself in tracing the connection and relationships—no
doubt he has the ’Almanach de Gotha’—between the houses of Hapsburg
and the Catholic house of Lausitz-Rothenburg.”

And indeed, although she meant this in sarcasm, when, after I had
escorted them home, I returned, through the mists and shades of
twilight, to my solitude (now peopled for me with delightful present,
and God knows what fantastic future, visions), I did produce that
excellent new book, the “Almanach de Gotha,” and found great interest
in tracing the blood-relation between the Dauphine and the fairest of
princesses. And afterwards, moved by some spirit of vainglory, I amused
myself by comparing on the map the relative sizes of the Duchy of
Lausitz and the lands of Tollendhal.

And next I was moved to unroll once again my uncle’s pedigree, and to
study the fine chain of noble links of which I stand the last worthy
Jennico, when something that had been lying unformed in my mind during
these last hours of strange excitement suddenly took audacious and
definite shape.




CHAPTER V


WHAT first entered my brain as the wildest possibility grew rapidly
to a desire which possessed my whole being with absolute passion. The
situation was in itself so singular and tantalising, and the Princess
was so beautiful a woman, to be on these terms of delicious intimacy
with the daughter of one of Europe’s sovereigns (a little sovereign it
is true, but great by race and connection), to meet her constantly in
absolute defiance of all the laws of etiquette, yet to see her wear
through it all as unapproachable a dignity, as serene an aspect of
condescension, as though she were presiding at her father’s Court—it
was enough, surely, to have turned the head of a wiser man than myself!

It was not long before Mademoiselle Ottilie, the lady-in-waiting,
discovered the secret madness of my thoughts—in the light of what
has since occurred I can truly call it so. And she it was who, for
purposes of her own, shovelled coals on the fire and fanned the flame.
One way or another, generally on her initiative, but always by her
arrangement, we three met, and met daily.

On the evening of a day passed in their company, with the impression
strong upon me of the Princess’s farewell look, which had held, I
fancied, something different to its wont; with the knowledge that I
had, unrebuked, pressed and kissed that fair hand after a fashion more
daring than respectful, with my blood in a fever and my brain in a
whirl, now seeming sure of success, now coldly awake to my folly, I
bethought me of taking counsel again with my great-uncle’s pedigree.
And heartened by the proofs that the blood of Jennico was good enough
for any alliance, I fell to completing the document by bringing it
up to date as far as concerned myself. Now, when I in goodly black
letters had set down my own cognomen so fair upon the parchment, I was
further seized with the fancy to fill in the space left blank for my
future marriage; and I lightly traced in pencil, opposite the words
“Basil Jennico, Lord of Tollendhal,” the full titles and names, which
by this time I had studied till I knew them off by heart, of her Serene
Highness the Princess Marie Caroline Dorothée Josephine Charlotte
Ottilie of Lausitz.

It made such a pretty show after all that had gone before, and it
brought such visions with it of the glories the name of Jennico might
yet rise to, that I could not find it in me to erase it again, and so
left it as it stood, telling myself, as I rolled up the great deed
again and hooked it in its place beneath my uncle’s portrait, that it
would not be my fault if the glorious entry did not remain there for
ever.

The next time the ladies visited me, Mademoiselle Ottilie—flitting
like a little curious brown moth about the great room, dancing
pirouettes beneath my uncle’s portrait, and now and again pausing
to make a comical grimace at his forbidding countenance, while I
entertained her mistress at its further end—must needs be pricked by
the desire to study the important document, which I had, as I have
said, already submitted to her view.

Struck by her sudden silence and stillness, I rose and crossed the
room to find her with the parchment rolled out before her, absorbed in
contemplation, her elbows on the table, her face leaning on her hands.
With a fierce rush of blood to my cheeks, in a confusion that set every
pulse throbbing, I attempted to withdraw from her the evidence of what
must seem the most impudent delusion. But she held tight with her
elbows, and then, disregarding my muttered explanation that I intended
to rub out at once the nonsense I had written in a moment of idleness,
she laid her small finger upon the place, and, looking at me gravely,
said:

“Why not?”

The whole room whirled round with me.

“My God,” I cried, “don’t mock me!”

But she, with a new ring of feeling in her voice, said earnestly:

“She has such misery before her if her father carries out his will.”

To hear these words from her, who of all others must be in her
mistress’s confidence, ought, however amazing to reason and common
sense, to have been a spur to one whose ambition soared so high.
Nevertheless, I hesitated. To be honest with myself, not from a lover’s
diffidence, from a lover’s dread of losing even hope, but rather from
the fear of placing myself in an absurd position—of risking the deadly
humiliation of a refusal.

I dared therefore nothing but soft looks, soft words, soft pressures of
the hand; and the Princess received them all as she received everything
that had gone before. From one in her position this might seem of
itself encouragement enough in all conscience; but I waited in vain
for some break in her unruffled composure—some instant in which I
could mark that the Princess was lost in the woman. And so what drew
me most to her kept me back. At the same time a rooted distrust of the
little lady-in-waiting, a certain contempt, too, for her personality
as belonging to that roture so despised of my great-uncle and myself,
prevented me from placing confidence in her.

But she, nevertheless, precipitated the climax. It was three days after
the scene in my great-uncle’s room, one Sunday morning, beside the
holy-water font in the little chapel of Schreckendorf Castle, whither,
upon the invitation of its present visitors—my own priest being ill,
poor man, of an ague—I had betaken myself to hear mass. The Princess
had passed out first, and had condescended, smiling, to brush the
pious drops from my finger; but Mademoiselle Ottilie paused as she too
touched with hers my outstretched hand, and said in my ear as crossly
as a spoilt child:

“You are not a very ardent lover, M. de Jennico. The days are going by;
the Countess Schreckendorf is beginning to speak quite plain again. It
is impossible that her Highness should be left in this liberty much
longer.”

I caught her hand as she would have hurried away.

“If I could be sure that this is not some foolish jest,” I said in a
fierce whisper in her ear.

And she to me back again as fiercely:

“You are afraid!” she said with a curling lip.

That settled it.

I rode straight home, though I was expected to have joined the ladies
in some expedition. I spent the whole day in a most intolerable state
of agitation; and then, my mind made up, I sat down after supper to
write, beneath my uncle’s portrait. And the first half of the night
went by in writing and re-writing the letter which was to offer the
hand and heart of Basil Jennico to the Princess Marie Ottilie of
Lausitz.

I wrote and tore up till the ground around me was strewn with the
fragments of paper; and now I seemed too bold, when the whole
incongruity and absurdity of my desire took tangible form to mock me in
the silence of the night; and now too humble, when in the flickering
glimmer of candle-light my great-uncle would frown down upon me, and I
could hear him say:

“Remember that thou Jennico bist!”

At last a letter lay before me by which I resolved to abide. I believe
that it was an odd mixture of consciousness of my own temerity in
aspiring so high, and at the same time of conviction that the house of
Jennico could only confer, and not receive, honour. I even proposed to
present myself boldly with my credentials at the Court of Lausitz (and
here of course the famous pedigree came in once more), and I modestly
added that, considering my wealth and connections, I ventured to hope
the Duke, her father, might favourably consider my pretensions.

This written and sealed, I was able to sleep for the rest of the night,
but was awake again with dawn and counting the minutes until I could
decently despatch a mounted messenger to Schreckendorf.

When the man rode forth I believe it was a little after eight; and I
know that it was on the stroke of one when I heard his horse’s hoofs
ringing again in the courtyard. But time had no measure for the strange
agony of doubt in which I passed those hours, not (once again have I to
admit it) because I loved her too dearly to bear the thought of life
without her, but because of my fierce pride, which would not brook the
shame of a refusal.

I called in a frenzy to hurry the lagging fool into my presence; and
yet when he laid the letter on my table I stared at the great seal
without daring to open it. And when at last I did so my hand trembled
like an aspen leaf.

 “Monsieur de Jennico,” it began abruptly, “I ought to call you mad,
 for what you propose is nothing less indeed than madness. You little
 know the fetters that bind such lives as mine, and I could laugh and
 weep together to think of what the Duke, my father, would say were you
 really to present yourself before him as you suggest.”

So it ran, and as I read I thought I was contemned, and in my fury
would have crushed the letter in my hand, when a word below caught my
eye, and with an intensity of joy on a par only with the passion of
wounded pride that had preceded it, I read on:

 “But, dear Monsieur de Jennico,” so ran the letter then, “since you
 love me, and since you honour me by telling me so; since you offer me
 so generously all you have to give, I will be honest with you and tell
 you that my present life has no charm for me. I know only too well
 what the future holds for me in my own home, and I am willing to trust
 myself to you and to your promises rather than face the lot already
 drawn for me.

 “Therefore, Monsieur de Jennico, if it be true that, as you say, all
 your happiness depends upon my answer, I trust it may be for the
 benefit of both that I should say ’Yes’ to you to-day. But what is
 to be must be secretly done, and soon Are you willing, to obtain
 your desire, to risk a little, when I am willing to risk so much in
 granting it? If so, meet my lady-in-waiting to-day at six, alone,
 where we first met, and she will tell you all that I have decided.”

It was signed simply—“Marie Ottilie.”

There was no hint of answering love to my passionate declaration, but
I did not miss it. I had won my Princess, and the few clear words in
which she laid bare before me the whole extent of my presumption only
added to the exquisite zest of my conquest.

It was a very autumn day—autumn comes quickly in these lands. It had
been raining, and I rode down from the higher level into a sea of white
writhing mists. It was still and warm—one of those heavy days that
as a rule seem like to clog the blood and fill one with reasonless
foreboding. I remember all that now; but I know that there was no place
for foreboding in my exulting heart as I sallied out full early to the
trysting-place.

The mare I rode, because of the close atmosphere and her own headstrong
temper, was in a great lather when I arrived at the little pine-wood,
and I dismounted and began to lead her gently to and fro (for I loved
the pretty creature, who was as fond and skittish as a woman) that she
might cool by degrees and take no injury. I was petting and fondling
her sleek coat, when of a sudden, without my having had the least
warning of her coming, I turned to find Mademoiselle Ottilie before me.

She looked at me straight with one of those odd searching looks which I
had now and again seen her fix upon me; and without either “Good-even”
or “How-do-you-do,” she said abruptly:

“I saw you coming all the way along the white road from the moment it
turns the corner, and I saw how your mare fought you, and how difficult
it was to bring her past the great beam of the well yonder. You made
her obey, but you have not left a scratch upon her sides—yet you wear
spurs.”

She looked at me with the most earnest inquiry, and, ruffled by the
futility of the question when so much was at stake, I said to her
somewhat sharply:

“What has this to do, Mademoiselle, with our meeting here to-day?”

“It has this to do, Monsieur,” she answered me composedly, “that her
Highness’s interests are as dear to me as my own, and that I am glad
to learn that the man she is to wed has a merciful heart. I know a
man,” she went on, “in our own country who passes for the finest, the
bravest, the most gallant, but when he brings a horse in from the
chase its legs will be trembling and it will be panting so that it can
scarce draw breath, because the rider is so brave and dashing that he
must go the fastest of all, and he will have left his mark upon the
poor beast’s sides in great furrows where he has ploughed them with his
spurs. He is greatly admired by every one; but his horses die, and his
hounds shrink when he moves his hand: that is what my country-people
call being manly—being a real cavalier!”

The scorn of her tone was something beyond the mere girlish pettishness
I generally associated with her; but to me, except as she represented
or influenced her mistress, she had never had any interest. And so
again impatiently I brought her back to the object of our meeting.

“Her Highness has entrusted you with a message?” I asked.

“Her Highness would first of all know,” said the maid of honour, “if
you fully realise the difficulties you may bring upon yourself by the
marriage you propose?”

“The Princess,” said I proudly, “has condescended to say that she will
trust herself to me. After that, as far as I am concerned, there can be
no question of difficulty. As for her, if she will consent to accompany
me to England, no trouble or reproach need ever reach her ears. If she
prefers to remain here, I shall none the less be able to protect my
wife, were it against the whole Empire itself.”

“That is the right spirit,” said Mademoiselle Ottilie, nodding her
head approvingly. “What you say has not got a grain of common sense,
but that is all as it should be. And next,” she continued, drawing
closer to me, for there was a twilight dimness about us, and standing
on tiptoe in the endeavour to bring her gaze on a level with mine, “her
Highness wishes to know”—she dropped her voice a little—“if you love
her very much?”

As if the gaze of those yellow hazel eyes of hers had cast a sudden
revealing light upon my soul, I stood abashed and dumb, self-convicted
by my silence. Love! Did I love her whom I would make my wife? Taken
up with schemes of vainglory and ambition, what room had I in my heart
for love? In all my triumph at having won her, was there one qualifying
thread of tenderness? Would I, in fine, have sought the woman,
beautiful though she was, were she not the Princess?

In a sort of turmoil I asked myself these things under the compelling
earnestness of Mademoiselle Ottilie’s eyes, and everything in myself
looked strange and hideous to myself, as beneath a vivid lightning
flash the most familiar scene assumes a singular and appalling aspect.

In another moment she moved away and turned aside from me; and then,
even as after the lightning flash all things resume their normal
aspect, I wondered at my own weak folly, and my blood rose hotly
against the impertinence that had evoked it.

“By what right,” said I, “Mademoiselle, do you ask me such a question?
If it be indeed by order of her Highness, pray tell her that when she
will put it to me herself I will answer it to herself.”

The maid of honour wheeled round with her arch, inscrutable smile.

“Oh!” she said, “believe me, you have answered me very well. I was
already convinced of the sincerity and ardour of your attachment to
... her Highness—so convinced, indeed, that I am here to-night for
the sole purpose of helping both you and her to your most insane of
marriages. The Princess is accustomed to rely upon me for everything,
and upon me, therefore, falls the whole burden of preparation and
responsibility. Whether the end of all this will be a dungeon for the
lady-in-waiting, if indeed the Duke does not have her executed for
high treason, is naturally a contingency which neither of you will
consider worth a moment’s thought. It is quite certain, however, that
without me you would both do something inconceivably stupid, and ruin
all. But, voyons, Monsieur de Jennico,” she went on with sudden gravity
of demeanour, “this is no time for pleasantry. It is a very serious
matter. You are wasting precious moments in a singularly light-hearted
fashion, it seems to me.”

The reproach came well from her! But she left me no time to protest.

“I am here,” she said, “as you know, to tell you what the Princess has
decided, and how we must act if the whole thing is not to fail. First
of all, the arrival of some important person from the Court of Lausitz
may take place any day, and then—’Bonjour!’” She blew an airy kiss and
waved her hand, while with a cold thrill I realised the irrefutable
truth of her words.

“If it is to be,” she went on, unconsciously repeating almost the exact
text of her mistress’s letter to me, “it must be at once and in secret.
Mind, not a word to a soul till all is accomplished! On your honour I
lay it! And she, her Highness, enjoins it upon you not to betray her to
any single human being before you have acquired the right to protect
her. It is surely not too much to ask!”

She spoke with deep solemnity, and yet characteristically cut short my
asseverations.

“And, that being settled, and you being willing to take this lady for
your wife,—probably without a stiver, and certainly with her father’s
curse” (I smiled proudly in the arrogance of my heart: all Duke as he
was I did not doubt, once the first storm over, but that my exalted
father-in-law would find very extenuating circumstances for his wilful
daughter’s choice).—“that being settled,” continued Miss Ottilie, “it
only remains to know—are you prepared to enter the marriage state two
nights hence?”

“I wish,” said I, and could not keep the note of exultation from my
voice at having the rare prize thus actually within my reach—“I wish
you would ask me for some harder proof of my complete devotion to her
Highness.”

“Well, then,” she said hastily, whispering as if the pines could
overhear us, “so be it! I have not been idle to-day, and I have laid
the plot. You know the little church in that wretched village of
Wilhelmsdhal we posted through two days ago? The priest there is very
old and very poor and like a child, because he has always lived among
the peasants; and now indeed he is almost too old to be their priest
any more. I saw him to-day, and told him that two who loved each other
were in great straits because people wanted to wed the maiden to a bad
and cruel man,—that is true, Monsieur de Jennico,—I told him that
these two would die of grief, or lose their souls, perhaps, were they
separated, because of the love they bore each other.... There, sir, I
permitted myself a poetical license! To be brief, I promised him in
your name what seemed a great sum for his poor, a thousand thalers—you
will see to that—and he has promised me to wed you on Wednesday night,
at eight of the clock, secretly, in his poor little church. He is so
old and so simple it was like misleading a child, but nevertheless,
the cause being good, I trust I may be forgiven. Drive straight to the
church, and there you will find one who will direct you. The Princess
will not see you again till she meets you before the altar. You will
bring her home to your castle. A maid will accompany her. And that is
all. Adieu, Monsieur de Jennico.”

She stretched out her hand and her voice trembled.

“You will not see the maid of honour perhaps ever again. Her task is
done,” she added.

I took her hand, touched by her accent of earnestness, and gratefully
awoke to the fact that she alone had made the impossible possible to
my desire. I looked at her face, close to mine in the faint light; and
as she smiled at me, a little sadly, I was struck with the delicate
beauty of the curve of her lip, and the exquisite finishing touch of
the dimple that came and went beside it, and the thought flashed into
my mind—“That little maid may one day blossom into the sort of woman
that drives men mad.”

She slipped her hand from mine as I would have kissed it, and nodded at
me with a return of the cool impudence that had so often vexed me.

“Good-bye, gallant cavalier,” she said mockingly.

She whistled as if for a dog, and I saw the black figure of the nurse
start from the shadow of the trees a few yards away, and, meeting, they
joined in the mist and merged swiftly into it.

Whereupon I mounted the mare, who was sorely tried by her long waiting;
and as we cantered homewards I was haunted, through the extraordinary
blaze of my triumphant thoughts, to my own exasperation and surprise,
oddly and unwillingly, by the arch sweetness of the maid of honour’s
smile.

And once (I blushed all alone in the darkness for the shame of such
a thought in my mind at such a moment) I caught myself picturing the
sweetness a man might find in pressing his lips upon the tantalising
dimple.




CHAPTER VI


THE night before my wedding-day—it was natural enough—there was a
restlessness upon me which would not let me sleep, or think of sleep.

When supper was over I bade my servants retire. They had thought
me cracked, and with reason, I believe, for the way in which I had
wandered about the house all day, moving and shifting and preparing,
and giving orders to no seeming purpose. I sat down in my uncle’s room,
and, drawing the chair he had died in opposite his portrait, I held a
strange conclave with (as I believed then) his ghost. I know now that
if any spirit communed with me that night it was my own evil angel.

I had had the light set where it best illuminated the well-known
countenance. At my elbow was a goodly bottle of his famous red wine.

“Na, old one,” said I aloud, leaning back in my chair in luxurious
self-satisfaction and proud complacency, “am I doing well for the
old name? Who knows if one day thou countest not kings among thy
descendants!”

Methought the old man grinned back at me, his hideous tusked grin.

“‘Tis well, Kerlchen,” he said.

I unrolled the pedigree. That cursed parchment, what a part it has
played in my life!—as evil a part, as fatal as the apple by which our
first parents fell. It is pride that damns us all! And I read aloud the
entries I had made: they sounded very well, and so my uncle thought—or
seemed to—for I swear he winked at me and said:

“Write it in ink, lad; that must stand clear, for das klingt schön.”

And then, though I was very comfortable, I had to get up and find the
ink and engross the noble record of my marriage, filling in the date
with care, for my uncle, dead or alive, was not one to disobey.

“‘Tis good,” then again said my uncle, “and thou dost well. But
remember, without I had done so well, lad, thou hadst not risen thus.
And what,” added my uncle, sniggering, “will the Brüderl say when he
hears the news—hey, nephew Basil?”

I had thought of that myself: it was another glorious pull over the
renegade!

Whereupon my uncle—it was surely the proud fiend himself bent upon my
destruction—fell to telling me I must write to my family at once,
that the letter might be despatched in the morning.

I protested. I was bound to secrecy, I told him. But he scowled,
and would have it that I must remember my duty to my mother, and he
further made me a very long sermon upon the curses that will befall a
bad child. And thus egged on—and what could I do?—I indited a very
flaming document indeed, and under the seal of the strictest confidence
made my poor mother acquainted with all the greatness her son was
bringing into his family, and bade her rejoice with him.

The night was well worn when I had finished, and the bottle of potent
Burgundy was nearly out too. Then, meaning to rise and withdraw, I fell
asleep in my chair. It was grey dawn before I awoke, and I was cold as
I stretched myself and staggered to my feet. In the weird thin light
my uncle’s face now shone out drawn and austere, with something of the
look I remembered it to have borne in death.

But it was the dawn of my wedding-day, and I went to my bed—stumbling
over old János, who sat, the faithful dog! asleep on the threshold—to
dream of my wedding ... a wedding with royal pomp, to the blare of
trumpets and the acclamations of a multitude:

“Jennico hoch—hoch dem edlen Jennico!”

The village of Wilhelmsdhal is quite an hour’s drive (even at the pace
of my good horses) along the downhill road which leads from my uplifted
mansion into the valley land; it takes two hours for the return way.

For safety’s sake I made the announcement of my approaching marriage
to the household as late in the day as possible, and, though sorely
tempted to betray the exalted rank of the future mistress to the
astonished major-domo, to whom János, with his usual imperturbability,
interpreted my commands, I refrained, with a sense that the impression
created would only after all be heightened if the disclosure were
withheld till the actual apparition of the newly-made wife.

But in the vain arrogance of my delight I ordered every detail of the
reception which was to greet us, and which I was determined should be
magnificent enough to make up for the enforced hole-and-corner secrecy
of the marriage ceremony.

Schultz the factor, my chief huntsman, and the highest among my people
were to head torch-light processions of their particular subordinates
at stated places along the avenue that led upwards to the house.
There was to be feasting and music in the courtyard. Flowers were to
be strewn from the very threshold of her new home to the door of my
Princess’s bridal chamber.

God knows all the extravagance I planned! It makes me sick now to think
back on it!

And the wedding! Ah! that was a wedding to be proud of!

It was a dull and cloudy evening, with a high, moist wind that came
in wild gusts, sweeping over the plains and tearing the leaves from
the forest trees, bringing with it now a swift moonlit clearing upon
the lowering face of heaven, now only thicker darkness and torrents of
rain. It was all but night already in the forest roads when I started,
and quite night as I emerged from out of the shelter of the mountains
into the flat country. János sat on the box and my chasseurs hung on
behind, and my four horses kept up a splendid pace upon the level
ground. I had dressed very fine, as became a bridegroom; but fortunate
it was that I had brought a dark cloak with me, for a fearful burst
of storm-rain came down upon me as I jumped out from the carriage at
the church door. And indeed, despite that protection, my fine white
satin clothes were splashed with mud, my carefully powdered queue sadly
disarranged in the few steps I had to take before reaching shelter, for
the wind blew a very hurricane, and the rain came down like the rain
of the deluge.

The church porch was lit only by an ill-trimmed wick floating in a
saucer of oil; but by the flickering light, envious and frail as it
was, I discerned at once the figure of Mademoiselle Ottilie’s nurse
awaiting us. Without a word she beckoned to me to follow her into the
church.

The place struck cold and damp with a death-like closeness after the
warm blustering air I had just left. It was even darker than the porch
outside, its sole illumination proceeding from the faint glow of the
little sanctuary lamp and the sullen yellow flame of two or three
tallow candles stuck on spikes before a rough wooden statue on a pillar
at one side. I, flanked by János and his two satellites, followed the
gaunt figure to the very altar rails, where, with an imperious gesture,
she signed to me to take my place.

Before turning to go she stood still a second looking at me, and
methought—or it may have been a fancy born of the dismal place and
the dismal gloom—that I had never seen a human countenance express so
much hatred as did that woman’s in the mysterious gleam of the lamp. My
heart contracted with an omen of forthcoming ill.

Then I heard her feet go down the aisle, the door open and close,
and we were left alone. In the silence of the church—the most
poverty-stricken and desolate, the most miserable, the most ruined to
be yet used as the House of God, I think I had ever entered—at the
foot of the altar of my faith, a sudden misgiving seized upon me. How
would all this end? I was going to bind myself for life with the most
solemn vows. Would all the honour and glory of the alliance compensate
me for the loss of my liberty?

I was only twenty-six, and I knew of her who was henceforth to be my
second self no more, rather less, than I knew of any of the barefooted
maids that slipped grinning about the passages of Tollendhal. To be
frank with myself, the glamour of gratified vanity once stripped from
before the eye of my inmost soul, what was the naked, hideous truth?
I had no more love for her—man for woman—than for rosy Kathi or
black-browed Sarolta!

Here my reflections were broken in upon by that very patter of naked
soles that had been in my thoughts, and a little ragged boy, in a
dilapidated surplice, ran round the sanctuary from some back door,
and fell to lighting a pair of candles on the altar, a proceeding
which only seemed once more to heighten the darkness. Presently, in a
surplice and cassock as tattered as his acolyte’s, with long white hair
lying unkempt upon his shoulders, an old priest—in sooth, the oldest
man I have ever seen alive, I believe—came forth with tottering steps;
before him the tattered urchin, behind him a sacristan well-nigh as
antique as himself, and as utterly pauperised.

These were to be the ministers of my grand marriage!

But almost immediately a fresh clamour of opening doors, and a light,
sedate footfall, struck my ear, and all doubt and dismay disappeared
like magic. Closely enveloped in the folds of a voluminous dark velvet
cloak, with its hood drawn forward over her head, and beneath this
shade her face muffled in the gathers of a white lace veil, I knew the
stately height of my bride as she advanced towards me—and the sight
of her, the sound of her brave step, set my heart dancing with the old
triumph.

She stood beside me, and as the words were spoken I thought no more of
the mean surroundings, of the evil omens, of the responsibilities and
consequences of my act. It was nothing to me now that the old priest
who wedded us, and his companion who ministered to him, should look
more like mouldering corpses than living men—that the nurse’s burning
eyes should still seek my face with evil look. I had no thought to
spare for the position of my bride herself—her filial disobedience,
her loneliness—no feeling of tenderness for the touching character
of her confidence in me—no doubt as to her future happiness as my
wife, nor as to my capacity for compensating her for the sacrifice of
so much. I did not wonder at, nay, notice even, the absence of the
lady-in-waiting—that moving spirit of our courtship. My whole soul was
possessed with triumph. I was self-centred on my own success. The words
were spoken; my voice rang out boldly, but hers was the barest breath
of speech behind her muffling drapery. I slipped the ring (it had been
my aunt’s), with a passing wonder that it should prove so much too
large, upon the slender finger, that hardly protruded from a fall of
enveloping lace.

We were drenched with a perfect shower of holy water out of a tin
bucket; and then, man and wife, we went to the sacristy to sign our
names by the light of one smoking tallow candle.

I dashed mine forth with splendid flourish—the good old name of
Jennico of Farringdon Dane and Tollendhal, all my qualifications,
territorial, military, and inherited. And she penned hers in the
flowing handwriting I already knew, Marie Ottilie: the lofty, simple
signature, as I thought with swelling heart, of sovereigns!

I pressed into the old priest’s cold fingers, as he peered at us
from the book, right and left, with dull, bewildered eyes, in which
I thought to see the dawn of a vague misgiving, a purse bulging with
notes to the value of double the sum promised; and then, with her hand
upon my arm, I led her to my carriage.

The rain had begun again and the wind was storming when we drove
off, my wife and I. And for a little while—a long time it seemed to
me—there was silence between us, broken only by the beating of the
drops against the panes of the carriage, and the steady tramp of my
horses’ hoofs on the wet road. Now that I had accomplished my wish,
a strange embarrassment fell upon me. I had no desire to speak of
love to the woman I had won. I had won her, I had triumphed—that was
sufficient. I would not have undone my deed for the world; but none the
less the man who finds himself the husband and has never been the lover
is placed in a singular position.

I looked at the veiled figure beside me and wondered at its stillness.
The light of the little lantern inside the carriage flickered upon the
crimson of the velvet cloak and the white folds of the veil that hid
her face from me. Then I awoke to the consciousness of the sorry figure
I must present in her eyes, and, drawing from my pocket a ring,—the
richest I had been able to find among my aunt’s rich store,—I took the
hand that lay half hidden and passive beside me, meaning to slip the
jewel over the plain gold circlet I had already placed upon it. Now,
as I took the hand into my own, I was struck with its smallness, its
slenderness, its lightness; I remembered that even in the dark church,
and with but the tips of the fingers resting in my own, a similar
impression had vaguely struck me. I lifted it, spread out the little,
long, thin fingers—too often had I kissed the dimpled firm hand of her
Serene Highness not to know the difference! This was my wife’s hand;
there was my ring. But who was my wife?

I felt like a man in a bad dream. I do not know if I spoke or not; but
every fibre of me was crying out aloud, as it were, in a frenzy. I
suppose I turned, or looked; at any rate my companion, as if in answer
to a question, said composedly:

“Yes, sir, it is so.” At the same moment, putting up her veil with
her right hand, she disclosed to me the features of Ottilie, the
lady-in-waiting.




CHAPTER VII


I MUST have stared like a madman. For very fear of my own violence, I
dared not move or speak. Mademoiselle Ottilie, or, to call her by her
proper name, Madame de Jennico, very composedly removed her veil from
her hair, pushed back her hood, and withdrew the hand which I still
unconsciously clutched. Then she turned and looked at me as if waiting
for me to speak first. I said in a sort of whisper:

“What does this mean?”

“It means, Monsieur de Jennico, that, for your own good, you have been
deceived.”

There was a little quiver in her voice. Was it fear? Was it mockery? I
thought the latter, and the strenuous control I was endeavouring to put
upon my seething passion of fury and bewilderment broke down. I threw
up my arms, the natural gesture of a man driven beyond bounds, and as
I did so felt the figure beside me make a sudden, abrupt movement. I
thought that she shrank from me—that she feared lest I, _I_, Basil
Jennico, would strike _her_, a woman! This aroused me at once to a
sense of my own position, and at the same time to one of bitterest
contempt for her. But as I wheeled round to gaze at her, I saw that
whatever charges might be laid upon her—and God knows she had wrought
a singular evil upon me!—the accusation of cowardice could not be part
of them. Her face showed white, indeed, in the pale light, her features
set; but her eyes looked fearlessly into mine. Every line of her figure
expressed the most dauntless determination. She was braced to endure,
ready to face, what she had drawn upon herself. This was no craven,
rather the very spirit of daring.

“In God’s name,” I cried, “why have you done this?”

“And did you think,” she said, looking at me, I thought, with a
sort of pity, “that princesses, out of fairy tales, are so ready to
marry lovers of low degree, no matter how rich or how gallant? Oh, I
know what you would say—that you are well-born; but for all that,
princesses do not wed with such as you, sir!”

Every drop of my blood revolted against the smart of this humiliation.
Stammering and protesting, my wrath overflowed my lips.

“But this deception,—this impossible, insane fraud,—what is its
object? What is _your_ object? You encouraged me—you incited me.
Confusion!” I cried and clasped my head. “I think I am going mad!”

“Her Serene Highness thought that she would like to see me settled in
life,” said my bride, with the old look of derision on her face.

I seized her hand.

“It was the Princess’s plan, then?” I asked in a whisper; and it seemed
to me as if everything turned to crimson before my eyes.

She met my look—and it must have been a terrible one—with the same
dauntlessness as before, and answered, after a little pause, with cool
deliberation:

“Yes, it was the Princess’s plan.”

The carriage drove on through the rain; and again there was silence
between us. My pulses beat loud in my ears; I saw, as if written in
fire, the whole devilish plot to humiliate me for my presumption. I saw
myself as I must appear to that high-born lady—a ridiculous aspirant
whose claim was too absurd even to be seriously dealt with. And she,
the creature who had lent herself to my shame, without whose glib
tongue and pert audacious counsels I had never presumed, who had dared
to carry out, smiling, so gross a fraud, to wear my ring and front me
still—how was I to deal with her?

These were the thoughts that surged backward and forwards in my mind,
futile wreckage on stormy sea, in the first passion of my anger.

“You know,” I said at last, and felt like a man who touches solid earth
at last, “that this is no marriage.”

Her countenance expressed at this the most open amazement and the most
righteous indignation.

“How, sir,” she cried—“has not the priest wedded us? Are we not of the
same faith, and does not the same Church bind us? Have not we together
received a most solemn sacrament? Have not you, Basil, and I, Marie
Ottilie, sworn faith to each other until death do us part? You may like
it or not, Monsieur de Jennico, but we are none the less man and wife,
as fast as Church can make us.”

As she spoke she smiled again, and looked at me with that dimple coming
and going beside the curve of her lip.

As they say men do at the point of some violent death, so I saw in the
space of a second my whole life stretched before me, past and future.

I saw the two alternatives that lay to my hand, and their full
consequences.

I knew what the audacious little deceiver beside me ignored—that it
rested upon my pleasure alone to acknowledge or not the validity of
this marriage. Let me take the step which as a man of honour I ought
to take, which as a Jennico and my uncle’s heir I was pledged in
conscience to take, it was to hold myself up to universal mockery—and
I should lay bare before a grinning world the whole extent of my
pretensions and their requital.

On the other hand, let me keep my secret for a while and seemingly
accept my wife: the whole point of the cursed jest would fail.

Let me show the Princess that my love for her was not so overpowering,
nor my disappointment so heart-breaking, but that I had been able to
find temporary compensation in the substitute with whom she had herself
provided me. There are more souls lost, I believe, through the fear of
ridicule than through all the temptations of the world, the flesh, and
the devil!

My resolution was promptly taken: my revenge would be more exquisite
and subtle than the trick that had been played upon me.

I would take her to my home, this damsel whom no feeling of maidenly
restraint, of womanly compassion, had kept from acting so base a part;
and for a while, at least, not all the world should guess but that
in winning her my dearest wish had been accomplished. Afterwards,
when I had tamed that insolent spirit, when I had taught this wild
tassel-gentle to come to my hand and fly at my bidding—and I smiled
to myself as I laid that plan which was full as cruel as the deception
that had been practised upon me, and which I am ashamed to set out in
black and white before me now—afterwards, when I chose to repudiate
the woman who had usurped my name through the most barefaced imposture,
if I knew the law both of land and Church, I could not be gainsaid.
I had warned her that this marriage was no marriage. What could a
gentleman do more?

A sudden calmness fell over me; it struck me that the laugh would be on
my side after all.

My companion was first to speak. She settled herself in the corner of
the carriage something like a bird that settles down in its nest, and,
still with her eyes, which now looked very dark in the uncertain light,
fixed upon me, said in a tone of the utmost security:

“You can beat me of course, if you like, and you can murder me if you
are very, very angry; but you cannot undo what is done. I am your
wife!” She gave a little nod which was the perfection of impudence.
She was like some wild thing of the woods that has never seen a human
being before, and is absolutely fearless because of its absolute
ignorance. I ought to have pitied her, seeing how young, how childish,
she was. But though there sprang into my heart strange feelings,
and that dimple tempted me more and more, there was no relenting in
my angry soul. Only I told myself that my revenge would be sweet.
And I was half distraught, I think, between the conflict of pride,
disappointment, and the strange alluring charm that this being who had
so betrayed me was yet beginning to have upon me.

The speed of our four horses was slackening; we were already on the
mountain road which led to my castle. There was a glimmer of moon
again, the rain-beat was silent on the panes, and I could see from
a turning in the road the red gleam of the torch-bearers whom I had
ordered for the bridal welcome.

The monstrous absurdity of the situation struck me afresh, and my
resolution grew firmer. How could I expose myself, a poor tricked fool,
to the eyes of that people who regarded me as something not unlike a
demi-god? No, I would keep the woman. She had sought me, not I her. I
would keep her for a space at least, and let no man suspect that she
was not my choice. And then, in the ripeness of time, when I would sell
this old rook’s nest and betake me home to England as a dutiful nephew,
why, then my lady Princess should have her maid of honour back again,
and see if she would find it so easy to settle her in life once more!
What pity should I have upon her who had no pity for me, who had sold
her maiden pride in such a sordid barter for a husband? This was no
mere tool of a woman’s scorn. No! Contemned by her I had wooed, played
with, no doubt I had been; but I had seen enough of the relations of
the two girls not to know well who was the moving spirit in all their
actions. This lady had had an eye to her own interests while lending
herself to my humiliation. Thinking upon it now with as cool a brain as
I might,—and once I had settled upon my resolve, the first frenzy of
my rage died away,—I told myself that the new Madam Jennico lied when
she said it was altogether the Princess’s plan; and indeed I afterwards
heard from her own lips that in this I had guessed but a third of the
actual truth.

And now, as we were drawing close to the first post where my
over-docile and zealous retainers were already raising a fearful
clamour, and I must perforce assume some attitude to face the people,
I turned to my strange bride, and said to her:

“Do you think, then, it is the right of a husband to strike or slay his
wife? If so, I marvel that you should have been so eager to enter upon
the wedded state.”

She put out her hand to me, and for the first time her composure
wavered. The tears welled into her eyes and her lip quivered.

“No,” she said; “and therefore I chose you, Monsieur de Jennico, not
for your fine riches, not for your pedigree,”—and here, the little
demon! it seemed she could not refrain from a malicious smile under
the very mist of her tears,—“but because you are an Englishman, and
incapable of harshness to a woman.”

“And so,” said I, not believing her disinterested asseveration a
whit, but with a queer feeling at my heart at once bitterly angry at
each word that betrayed the determination of her deceit and her most
unwomanly machinations, and yet, and yet strangely melted to her, “it
is reckoning on my weak good-nature that you have played me this trick?”

“No, sir,” she said, flushing, “I reckoned on your manliness.” And then
she added, with the most singular simplicity: “I liked you, besides,
too well to see you unhappily married, and the other Ottilie would
have made you a wretched wife.”

I burst out laughing, for, by the manes of my great-uncle, the
explanation was comic! And she fell to laughing too,—my servants must
have thought we were a merry couple! And, as she laughed and I looked
at her, knowing her now my own, and looking at her therefore with
other eyes, I deemed I had never seen a woman laugh to such bewitching
purpose! And though I was full of my cruel intent, and though I dubbed
her false and shameless and as deceitful a little cat as ever a man
could meet, yet the dimple drew me, and I put my arms around her and
kissed it. _As my lips touched hers I knew I was a lost man!_

The next moment we were surrounded with a tribe of leaping peasants,
the horses were plunging, torches were waving and casting shadows
upon the savage, laughing faces. If I had cursed myself for my happy
thought before, I cursed myself still more now; but the situation had
to be accepted. And the way in which my bride, blushing crimson from
my kiss,—she who had no blush to spare for herself before this night,
adapted herself to it was a marvel to me, as indeed all that I was to
see or learn of her during our brief moon of wedded life was likewise
to prove.

I am bound to say that the Princess herself could not have behaved with
a better grace than this burgher daughter amid the wild peasants and
their almost Eastern fashion of receiving their liege lady.

Within a little distance of the house it became impossible to advance
with the carriage, and we were fain to order a halt and alight all
in the stormy wind, and proceed on foot through the throng which had
gathered thick and close about the gates, and which even Schultz’s
stout cane failed to disperse. My wife—I did not call her so then
in my mind, but now I can call her by no other name—my wife passed
through them as if she had done nothing all her life but receive the
homage of the people. She gave her hand to be kissed to half a hundred
fierce lips; she smiled at the poor women who clutched the hem of her
gown and knelt before her. The flush my kiss had called into being had
not yet faded from her cheek; there was a light in her eye, a smile
upon her lip. As I looked at her and watched I could not but admit that
there was no need for me to feel ashamed of her, that night.

I had sworn to give my bride a royal reception, and a royal reception
she received.

Schultz had generously carried out his instructions. We sat down to a
sumptuous meal which would not have misbefitted the Emperor himself.
I could not eat. The acclamations and the rejoicings struck cold upon
my ear. But the bride—enigma to me then as now—sat erect in her great
chair at the other end of the great table, and smiled and drank and
feasted daintily, and met my eye now and again with as pretty and as
blushing a look as if I had chosen her among a thousand. The gipsies
played their maddening music—the music of my dream—and the cries
in the courtyard rose now and then to a very clamour of enthusiasm.
Schultz, with a truly German sentimentality, had presented his new
mistress with a large bouquet of white flowers. The smell of them
turned me faint. I knew that in the great room beyond, all illuminated
by a hundred wax candles, was the portrait of my uncle, stern and
solitary. I would not have dared to go into that room that night to
have met the look of his single watchful eye.

And yet, O God! how are we made and of what strange clay! What would
I not give now to be back at that hour! What would I not give to see
her there at the head of my board once more! What is all the world to
me—what all the traditions of my family—what even the knowledge of
her deceit and my humiliation, compared with the waste and desolation
of my life without her!




CHAPTER VIII


AND now what I must set down of myself is so passing strange that
had I not, I myself, lived through it, were I not now in an earthly
hell for the mere want of her, I could not have believed that human
nature—above all the superior quality of human nature appertaining to
Basil Jennico—could be so weak a thing.

I had meant to be master: I found myself a slave! And slave of what?
A dimple, a pair of yellow eyes, veiled by long black lashes—a saucy
child!

I had meant to have held her merely as my toy, at the whim of my will
and pleasure: and behold! the very sound of her voice, the fall of her
light foot, would set my blood leaping; under the glance of her wilful
eye my whole being would become as wax to the flame.

In olden days people would have said I was bewitched.

I think, looking back on it all now, that it was perhaps her singular
dissimilarity from any other woman I had ever met that began the spell.
Had she opposed to my anger, on that memorable night of our marriage,
the ordinary arms of a woman discovered; had she wept, implored,
bewailed her fate, who shall say that, even at the cost of my vanity,
I might not have driven her straight back to her Princess? Who shall
say that I should have wished to keep her, even to save myself from
ridicule? It is impossible for me now to unravel the tangled threads
of that woof that has proved the winding-sheet of my young happiness;
but this I know—this of my baseness and my better nature—that once I
had kissed her I was no longer a free man. And every day that passed,
every hour I spent beside her, welded closer and firmer the chains of
my servitude.

She was an enigma which I ever failed to solve. That alone was
alluring. Judged by her actions, most barefaced little schemer,
most arrant adventuress plotting for a wealthy match, there was
yet something about her which absolutely forbade me to harbour in
her presence an unworthy thought of her. Guilty of deceit such as
hers had been towards me, she ought to have displayed either a
conscience-stricken or a brazen soul: I found her emanate an atmosphere
not only of childlike innocence but of lofty purity that often made me
blush for my grosser imaginings.

She ought, by rights, to have feared me—to have been humble at least:
she was as proud as Lucifer before the fall and as fearless as he when
he dared defy his Creator. She ought to have mistrusted me, shown doubt
of how I would treat her: and alas! in what words could I describe the
confidence she gave me? so generous, so sublime, so guileless. It would
have forced one less enamoured than myself into endeavouring to deserve
it for very shame!

A creature of infinite variety of moods, with never a sour one among
them; the serenest temper and the merriest heart I have ever known; a
laugh to make an old man young, and a smile to make a young man mad; as
fresh as spring; as young and as fanciful! I never knew in what word
she would answer me, what thing she would do, in what humour I should
find her. Yet her tact was exquisite. She dared all and never bruised
a fibre (till that last terrible day, my poor lost love!). And besides
and beyond this, there was yet another thing about her which drew me on
till I was all lost in love. She was elusive. I never felt sure of her,
never felt that she was wholly mine. Her tenderness—oh, my God, her
tenderness!—was divine, and yet I felt I had not all she had to give.
There was still a secret hanging upon that exquisite lip, a mystery
that I had yet to solve, a land that lay unexplored before me. And it
comes upon me like madness, now that she is gone from me, perhaps for
ever, that I may never know the word of the riddle.

I have said that the past is like a dream to look back upon; no part of
it is more dreamlike than the days which followed my strange wedding.
They seemed to melt into each other, and yet it is the memory of them
which is at once my joy and my torture now.

At first she did not touch, nor did I, upon the question which lay
like a covered fire always smouldering between us; and in a while it
came about with me that I lived as a gambler upon the pleasure of
the moment. And though in my heart I had not told myself yet that I
would give up my revenge,—though it was hidden there, a sleeping
viper, cruel and implacable,—I strove to forget it, strove to think
neither of the future nor of the past. I hung a curtain over my uncle’s
picture, at which old János nearly broke his heart. I rolled up the
pedigree very tight and rammed it into a drawer ... and the autumn days
seemed all too short for the golden hours they gave me.

No one came to disturb us in our solitude, no hint from the outer
world. We two were as apart in our honeymoon as the most jealous
lovers could wish. I knew not what had become of the Princess. In very
truth I could not bear to think of her; the memory of the absurd part I
had been made to play was so unpalatable, was associated with so much
that was painful and humiliating, and brought with it such a train of
disquieting reflections that I drove it from me systematically. I never
wanted to see the woman again, to hear her voice, or even learn what
had become of her. That I never had one particle of lover’s love for
her was plainer than ever to me now, in the midst of the new feelings
with which my unsought bride inspired me. I knew what love meant at
last, and would at times be filled with an angry contempt for myself,
that she who had proved herself so all unworthy should be the one to
have this power upon me.

Thus the days went by quite aimlessly. And by-and-by as they went the
thought of what I had planned to do became less and less welcome to
me, not (to my shame be it said) for its wickedness, but because I
could not contemplate life without my present happiness. And after yet
a while the idea (at first rejected as monstrous, impossible, nay,
even as a base breach of faith to my dead uncle) that I might make the
sacrifice of my Jennico pride and actually content myself after all
with this unfit alliance, began to take shape within me. Gradually
this idea grew dearer to me hour by hour, though I still in secret
held to the possibility of my other plan, as a sort of “rod in pickle”
over the head of my perverse companion, and caressed it now and again
in my inmost soul—when she was most provoking—as a method to bring
her to my knees in dire humiliation, but only to have the ultimate
sweetness of nobly forgiving her. For Ottilie was far from showing a
proper spirit of contrition or a fitting sense of what she owed me; and
this galled me at times to the quick. I had never ceased to entertain
the resolve of taming the wild little lady, although I found it
increasingly difficult to begin the process.

Alone we were by no means lonely, even though the days fell away into
a month’s length. We rode together, we drove, we walked; she chattered
like a magpie, and I never knew a second’s dulness. She whipped my
blood for me like a frosty wind, and, or so it seemed to me, took a
new bloom, a new beauty in her happiness. For she was happy. The only
sour visage in Tollendhal at the time was, I think, that of the strange
nurse. I had found her waiting in my wife’s bedroom the night of our
homecoming. She never spoke to me during the whole time of her stay,
nor to Schultz, although he was her countryman. With the others, of
course (saving János) she could not have exchanged a word, and but
that she spoke with her mistress sometimes, I should have thought her
dumb. That woman hated me. I have seen her eyes follow me about as if
she would willingly murder me; but her nursling she loved in quite as
vehement a fashion, and therefore I bore with her.

We had been married a week when Ottilie first made allusion to the
Princess. We were to ride out on that day, and she came down to
breakfast all equipped but for one boot.

I have never seen so daintily untidy a person as she was in all my
life. Her hair smelt of fresh violets, but there was always a twist
out of place, or a little curl that had broken loose. Her clothes were
of singular fineness and richness, but she would tear them and tatter
them like a very schoolgirl romp. And so that morning she tripped in
with one pink satin bedroom slipper and one yellow leather riding boot.
I would not let her send for her dark-visaged attendant to repair the
neglect, but fetched the boot myself and knelt to put it on. As I took
off the slipper I paused for a moment weighing it in my hand. It was
so little a thing, so slender, so pretty! She looked down at me with a
smile, and said composedly:

“Do you think, sir, that the other Ottilie could have put on that shoe?”

It was, as I said, the first time that the subject had been mentioned
between us since the night of our marriage. I felt as if a cloud came
over me, and looked up darkly at her. It was not wise, surely, I
thought in my heart, to touch upon what I was willing to forget. But
she had no misgiving. She slipped out from under her long riding skirt
the small unbooted foot in its shining pink silk stocking, and said:

“You would _not_ have liked, Monsieur de Jennico, to have acted
lady’s-maid to her, for you are very fastidious, as it did not take me
long to find out. Oh,” she went on, “if you knew how grateful you ought
to be to me for preventing you from marrying her! You would have been
so unhappy, and you deserved a better fate.”

“But I thought,” said I—and such was my weakness that the sight of her
pretty foot took away my anger, and I was all lost in the discovery of
how everything about her seemed to curve: her hair in its ripples, her
lip in its arch, her nostrils, her little chin, her lithe young waist,
and now, her foot—“I thought,” and as I spoke I took it into my hand,
“it was the Princess’s plan.”

“Did I say so?” she said lightly. “That woman was never capable of
a plan in her life! No, sir, I always made her do what I liked. Her
intelligence was just brilliant enough to allow her to realise that she
had better follow my advice. Will you put on my boot, sir? Ah! what
treachery.” I held her tightly by the heel and looked up well pleased
at her laughing face—I loved to watch her laugh—and then I kissed
her silk stocking and put the boot on. To such depths had I come in my
unreasoning infatuation. I felt no anger with her for the revelation
which, indeed, as I think I have previously set down, was from the
beginning scarcely news to me. I had yet to learn how completely
innocent of all complicity in the deception played upon me was her
poor Serenity, how innocent even of the pride and contempt I still
attributed to her!

The season for the chase had opened; once or twice I had already been
out with the keepers after stags, or wild boars, and my wife, a pretty
figure in her three-cornered hat and fine green riding suit, had ridden
courageously at my side. At the beginning of the third week we made a
journey higher into the mountains and stayed a few days at a certain
hunting-box, the absolute isolation of which seemed by contrast to
make Tollendhal a very vortex. The wild place pleased her fancy. We
had some splendid boar-hunting in the almost inaccessible passes of
the mountains, and Ottilie showed herself as keen at the chase as I,
although, woman-like, she shrank from the finish. She vowed she loved
the loneliness, the simplicity, of the rough wood-built lodge, the
savageness of the scenery. She loved too the novel excitement of the
life, the long day’s riding, the sleepy supper by the roaring wood
fire, with the howl of the dogs outside, and the cry of the autumn wind
about the heights. She begged me with pretty insistence that we should
come back and spend the best part of the coming month in this airy nest.

“We are more alone,” she said coaxingly, with one of her rare fits of
tenderness. “You are more mine, Basil.” And I promised her that we
should only return to Tollendhal to settle matters with the steward and
provide ourselves with what we wanted, and then that we should have
a new honeymoon. I would have promised anything at such a moment. It
is the truth that in those days, somehow, we had, as she said, grown
closer to each other.

On the last night, wearied out by the long hours on horseback, she had
fallen asleep as she sat in a great carved wooden chair by the flaming
hearth, while I sat upon the other side, wakeful, watching her, full of
thought. She looked all a child as she slept, her face small and pale
and tired, the shadow of the long lashes very black upon her cheeks.
And then came upon me like a sort of nightmare the memory of what I had
meant to make of this young creature who had trusted herself to me. For
the first time I faced my future boldly, and took a great resolve in
the silence, listening to the fall of her light breath, and the sullen
roar of the wind in the pine forest without.

I resolved to sacrifice my pride and keep my low-born wife.




CHAPTER IX


IT WAS full of this resolve, with an uplifted consciousness of my
own virtue, that I started next morning beside her upon our homeward
way. The day was very bright; and the bare trees, with here and there
a yellow or red leaf, showed against a sky of palest blue. There
was a frost about us, and our horses were fresh and full of pranks,
as we wound down the rocky paths. My wife, too, was in a skittish
humour, which irritated me a little as being ill-assorted to my own
high-strung feelings and my secret sense of magnanimity. She mocked at
my solemn face, she sang ends of silly songs to herself. I would have
spoken to her of what was on my heart; I would have had her grateful
to me, conscious of her own sin and my generosity. But I could get
her to hearken to no serious speech. She called me “Monsieur de la
Faridondaine,” and plucked a bunch of ash berries as we rode, and
stuck them over one ear, and asked me, her face dimpling, if it was
not becoming to her. And then, when I still urged that I would talk of
grave matters, she pulled a grimace, and fell to mimicking Schultz
with “Jawohl, Gnädigster Herr,” till I was fain to laugh with her and
put off my sermon till the audience was better disposed.

But my heart was something sore against her. And when we reached home,
I found _that_ awaiting me which awoke a flame of the fierce resentment
of the first hour of discovery. It was a letter from my mother in
answer to the wild, inflated, triumphant lucubration I had sent her on
the eve of my wedding-day. I had, of course, not attempted to undeceive
her—in fact, as I have already set down, it was only within the last
twenty-four hours that I had settled upon a definite plan of action.
My dear mother, who dearly loved, as she herself admitted, the princes
of this earth, was in a tremendous flutter at my exalted alliance. I
read her words, her proud congratulations, with a feeling of absolute
nausea. My brother, she wrote, was torn betwixt a sense of the
increased family importance and the greenest envy, that I, who had paid
no price of honour for the gaining of them, should have risen to such
heights of grandeur and wealth. Not hearing from me since the great
announcement, she had ventured (so she confessed) to confide my secret
to a few dear friends, and “it had got about strangely,” she added
naïvely. The whole Catholic world, the whole English world of fashion,
was ringing with the news of the great Jennico match. In fact, the
poor lady was as nearly beside herself with pride and glory when she
wrote to me, as I had been when I gave her the news. I did not—I am
glad to say this—I did not for a second waver in my resolution of
fidelity to my wife, but I told myself, with an intolerable sense of
injury, that I could never face the shame of returning to England
again; that the full sacrifice entailed upon me was not only the
degradation of an unsuitable alliance, but that hardest of trials to
the true-blooded Englishman, perpetual expatriation!

In this grim and bitter temper I marched into the room where I now sit,
and drew back the curtain from my uncle’s picture and took forth the
pedigree from its hidden recess. The old man wore, as I knew he would,
a most severe countenance.

But I turned my back upon him in a disrespectful fashion I had never
dared display during his life, and spread out again that fateful
roll of parchment on the table before me, while with penknife and
pumicestone I sought to efface all traces of that vainglorious entry
that mocked me in its clear black and white. The blood was surging in
my head and singing in my ears, when I heard a light step, and looking
up saw Ottilie. She could not have come at a worse moment. She held
letters in her hand, which upon seeing me she thrust into her pocket
with a sly look and something of a blush. She too, it seemed, had
found a courier awaiting her; the secretness of the action stirred the
heat of my feelings against her yet more. But I strove to be calm and
judicial.

“Ottilie,” I said, “come here. I have to converse with you on matters
of importance.”

She drew near me; pouting and with a lagging step, like a naughty child.

“That sacred pedigree,” she said, and thrust out her under-lip. She
spoke in French, which gave the words altogether a different meaning,
and in my then humour I was hugely shocked to hear such an expression
from her lips.

“You behave strangely,” I said, with coldness, not to be mollified by
the half-pleading, half-mischievous glance she cast upon me, “and you
speak like a child. There has been enough of childishness, enough of
folly, in this business. It is time to be serious,” I said, and struck
the table with my flat palm as I spoke.

“Well, let us be serious,” she retorted, slapping the table too, and
then sat down beside me, propping her chin upon her hands in her
favourite attitude. “Am I not serious?” she proceeded, looking at me
with a face of mock solemnity. “Well, Mr. my husband, what do you wish
of me?”

“Have you ever thought, Ottilie,” said I, “of the position you
have placed me in? I have been obliged to-day to come to a grave
resolution—I have had to make up my mind to give up my country and
remain here for the rest of my life. It is in direct defiance to my
uncle’s commands and last wishes, and it is no pleasant thing to an
Englishman to give up his native land.”

“If so, why do it?” she said coolly. “I am quite willing to go to
England. In fact, I should rather like it.”

“Because, before heaven, madam,” said I, irritated beyond bounds, “you
have left me no other alternative. Do you think I am going home to be a
laughing-stock among my people?”

“Then,” she said with lightning quickness, “you broke your promise of
secrecy. It is your own fault: you should have kept your word.”

Struck by the irrefutable truth of this remark, although at the same
time my wrath was secretly accumulating against her for this systematic
indifference to her own share in a transaction where she was the chief
person to blame, I kept silence for a moment, drumming with my fingers
on the table.

“Eh bien!” she said at last, with a note of amusement and tender
indulgence in her voice as a mother might speak to her unreasonable
infant. “This terrible resolution taken, what follows? You have
effaced, I see, your entry in the famous pedigree, and you would now
fill it up with the detail of your real alliance? Is that it?”

I glanced up at her: her eyes were dancing with an eager light, her lip
trembling as if over some merry word she yet forbore to speak. Her want
of sympathy in sight of my evident distress was hard to bear.

“Yes,” I answered, “the pedigree must be filled up. I don’t even know
your whole name, nor who your father was, nor yet your mother. I have
your word for it, however,” I said, and the sentence was bitter to me
to speak, “that your family was originally of burgher origin.”

“Put down,” she answered, “Marie Ottilie Pahlen, daughter of the
deceased Herrn Geheimrath Baron Pahlen, Hof Doctor to his Serene
Highness the Reigning Duke of Lausitz.”

The pen dropped from my hand.

“Your father was a doctor?” I asked in an extinguished voice.

“Ennobled,” she returned promptly, “after successfully piloting his
Serene Highness through a bad attack of jaundice.”

“And your mother?” I murmured, clinging yet to the hope that on the
mother’s side at least the connection might prove a little more worthy
of the House of Jennico.

She hesitated and glanced at me. Once more I seemed to see some
inner source of mirth bubble on her lip; or was it only that she was
possessed by the very spirit of mischief? Anyhow, she forced her smile
to gravity again and answered me steadily, while her eyes sought mine
with a curious determined meaning at variance with the mock meekness of
the rest of her countenance.

“Put down, Monsieur de Jennico,—’and of Sophia Müller, likewise
deceased,’ and add if you like, ’once personal maid to her Serene
Highness the Dowager Duchess, Marie Ottilie of Lausitz.’”

I sat like a man struck silly, and in the tide of fury that swept
over me my single lucid thought was that if I spoke or moved I should
disgrace myself. And she chose that moment, poor child, to come over to
me and place her arms round my neck, and say caressingly in my ear:

“Write it, write it, sir, and then tell me that, seeing that I am I,
and that I should not be different from myself were I the daughter of
the Emperor, all this matters little to you since we love each other.”

I put her from me: my hands were trembling, but I was very gentle.
I brought her round to face me, and she awaited my answer with a
triumphant smile. It was that smile undid me and her. She made too sure
of me—she had conquered me too easily all along.

“You ask overmuch,” I said when I could command my voice enough to
speak, “you take overmuch for granted. You forget how you have deceived
me; how you have betrayed me. I am willing,” I said, “to believe you
have not been all to blame, that you were encouraged and upheld by
another, but this does not exonerate you from the chief share in a very
questionable transaction.”

The words fell cuttingly. I saw how the smile faded from her face, saw
how the pretty dimple lingered a second like a pale ghost of itself,
and then was lost in the droop of her lip, which trembled like a
chidden babe’s. And I took a cruel joy to think I had hit her at last.
But in a second or two she spoke with all her old courage.

“It is well,” she said, “to blame where blame is due. If you wish to
blame any one for our marriage, blame me alone. The other Ottilie
never received your letter; never knew you wanted to marry her; had
nothing to say to what you call my betrayal of you. She would have
prevented this marriage if she could. Nay, I will tell you more: I
believe she might even have married you had I given her the chance.
But I knew you would marry her solely because of her position, of her
title; that you had no love for her beyond your insane love of her
royal blood. I thought you worthy of better things; I thought you could
rise above so pitiable a weakness; I thought you could learn of love
that love alone is worth living for! And if you have not learned, if
indeed, my scholar, you have been taught nothing in love’s school, if
you can lay bare your soul now and tell yourself that you would rather
have had the wife you wanted in your overweening vanity than the wife
I am to you, why then, sir, I have made a grievous mistake, and I am
willing to acknowledge that I have committed an irrevocable wrong both
to you and to myself.”

Now, as she spoke, I was torn by a strange mixture of feelings, and
my love for her contended with my pride, my wounded vanity, my sense
of injury. I could not in truth answer that I would rather have been
wedded to the Princess, for one thing had these weeks made clear to me
above all things, and that was that married life with her would have
been intolerable. But my anger against the woman I did love in spite
of myself was not lessened by the tone of reproachful superiority she
assumed; and because of the truth of her rebuke it was the harder for
my self-love to bear. Before I could muster words clear enough and
severe enough to answer her with, she proceeded:

“Come, Basil, come, rise above this failing which is so unworthy
of you. Throw that musty old pedigree away before it eats all the
manliness out of your life. What does it mean but that you can trace
your family up to a greater number of probable rascals, hard and
selfish old men, than another? Be proud of yourself for what you are;
be proud of your forefathers, indeed, if they have done fine deeds of
valour, or virtue; but this cant about birth for birth’s sake, about
the superiority of aristocracy as aristocracy—what does it amount to?
It is to me the most foolish of superstitions. Was that old man,” she
asked, pointing to my uncle, who frowned upon her murderously—“was
that old man a better man than his heiduck János? Was he a braver
soldier? Was he a better servant to _his_ master? Was he more honest
in his dealings? shrewder in his counsel? I tell you I honour János
as much as I would have honoured him. I tell you that if I love you,
I love you for what you are, not because you are descended from some
ignorant savage king, not because you can boast that the blood of the
worst of men and sovereigns, the most profligate, the most treacherous,
the most faithless, Charles Stuart, runs in your veins—I hope, sir, as
little of it as possible.”

I sprang to my feet. To be thus rated by her who should be kneeling for
forgiveness! It was intolerable.

“I think,” I thundered, “that, considering your position, a little
humility would be more becoming than this attitude! You should remember
that you are here on tolerance only; that it is to my generosity alone
that you owe the right to call yourself an honest woman.”

“What do you mean?” said she, as fiercely as I had spoken myself.

“I mean,” said I—“I mean, madam, that you are what I choose to make
you. That marriage you so skilfully encompassed is, if I choose it, no
marriage.”

She put her hands to her head like one who has turned suddenly giddy.

“You married me before God’s altar,” she said in a sort of whisper;
“you married me, and you took me home.”

I was still too angry to stay my tongue.

With a bitter laugh, “I married the Princess,” I said, “but I took the
servant home.”

A burning tide of blood rushed to her brow; I saw it unseeing, as a
man does in passion; but I have lived that scene over and over again,
waking and dreaming, since, and every detail of it is stamped upon my
brain. Next she grew livid white, and spread out her hands, as though a
precipice had suddenly opened before her; and then she cried:

“And this is your English honour!” and turning on her heel she left me.

The scorn of her tone cut me like a whip. I swore a mighty oath that
I would never forgive her till she sued for pardon. She must be
taught who was master. In solitude she should reflect, and learn to
rue her sins to me—her audacity—her unwarrantable presumption—her
ingratitude!

All in my white heat of anger I summoned János and bade him tell his
mistress’s nurse that I had gone into the mountains for a week. And
then I ordered a fresh horse, and followed only by the old man, dashed
off like one possessed into the rocky wastes.

Alone in the solitary hut, by that hearth where but the night previous
my heart had overflowed with such tenderness for her, I sat and
nursed my grievances and brooded upon my wrongs till they grew to
overpowering size and multiplied a thousandfold; and curious it is that
what I thought of most was the bitter unfairness to me, the monstrous
injustice of her contempt, at the very moment when I had meant to
sacrifice my life and prospects to her. I told myself she did not love
me, had never loved me, and worked myself to a pitch of frenzy over
that thought. The memory of her announcement on this afternoon, the
full knowledge of her deceit, the confession of her worse than burgher
origin, weighed not now one feather-weight in my resentment. That I had
cast from me as the least of my troubles; so can a man change and so
can love swallow up all other passions! No doubt, I told myself, she
was mocking me now in her own mind; no doubt she reckoned that her poor
infatuated fool would come creeping back with all promptitude and beg
for her smile. She should learn at last that she had married a man; not
till I saw her down at my very feet would I take her back to my breast.

All next day I hunted in a bitter wind and in a bitter temper. There
were clouds arising, my huntsmen told me, that looked very like snow
clouds, and I must beware being snowed up upon the height. I was in
the humour to welcome hardship and even danger, and so the whole day
we rode after an old rogue boar and came back in darkness, at no
small risk, empty handed, and the roughness of my temper by no means
improved. Next day the weather still held up, and again I hunted.
My men must have wondered what had come over their erstwhile genial
master. Even my uncle could not have shown them a harder rule or ridden
them with less consideration through the hardest of ways in the teeth
of the most fiendish of winds.

That night, again, I sat and brooded by the leaping flame of the pine
logs, but it was in a different mood. All my surly determination, my
righteous indignation, had melted from me, leaving me as weak as water.
Of a sudden in the closest heat of the chase there had come to me an
awful vision of what I had done; a terrible swift realisation of the
insult I had flung at the face of the woman who was indeed the wife of
my heart and love. Oh, God, what had I done? I had sought to humble
her—I had but debased myself! Through the whole day her words, “Is
this your English honour?” had rung a dismal rhythm in my ear to the
beat of my horse’s hoofs on the hard ground, to the call of the horn
amid the winding rocks. The vision of her faded smile, of her dimple
paled to a pitiable ghost, of her babyish drooping lip, and then of her
white face struck with such scorn, haunted me to madness. I sickened
from my food as I sat to my supper, and put down my cup untasted. And
now as the wind whistled and the foreboded storm was gathering upon us,
the longing to see her, to be with her, to kneel at her feet—yes, _I_
would now be the one to kneel—came upon me with such violence that I
could not withstand it.

I ordered my horses. I would listen to no remonstrance, no warning.
I must return to Tollendhal, I said, were all the powers of darkness
leagued against me. And return I did. It was a piece of foolhardiness
in which I ran, unheeding, the risk of my life; but the Providence that
protects madmen protected me that night, and Janos and I arrived in
safety through a gale of wind and a fall of snow that might indeed have
proved our death. All covered with rime I ran into the house and up to
the door of her room. It was past midnight, and there I paused for a
moment fearing to disturb her.

Two or three of the women came pattering down the passage to me and
with expressive gestures addressed me volubly; one of the girls was
weeping. I could not understand a word they said, but with a new
terror I burst open the door of the bedroom. In this appalling dread I
realised for the first time how I loved my wife!

The room was all empty and all dark; I called for lights. There was no
trace of her presence; her bed had not been slept in. Like a maniac
I tore about the house, seeking her, shrieking her name, demanding
explanations from those to whom my speech meant nothing. I recked
little of my dignity, little of the impression I must create upon
my household! And at last János, his wrinkled face withered up and
contorted with the trouble he dared not speak, gave me the tidings that
the gracious lady had gone. She and her nurse had set forth on foot and
left no message with any one.

What need is there for me to write down what I endured that black
night? When I look back upon it it is as one may look back upon some
terrible nightmare, some hideous memory of delirium. She had left me,
and left me thus, without a word, and with but one sign. The cursed
pedigree was still spread upon the table where we had quarrelled. I
found upon it her wedding ring. A great cross had been drawn over the
half-written entry of our marriage. That was all, but it was surely
enough. The jewels I had given her were carefully packed in their cases
and laid upon a table in her room. Her own things had been gathered
together the day of her departure, which was the day I left her, and
they had been fetched the next morning by some strange servant in an
unknown travelling coach. More than this I have not been able to glean,
for the storm has rendered the ways impassable; but it is rumoured that
the Countess de Schreckendorf is dead, and that the Princess also has
left the country.

I have no more to say. It is only two nights ago since I came home to
such misery, and how I have passed the hours, what needs it to set
forth? At times I tell myself that it is better so, that she is false
and base, and that I were the poorest of wretches to forgive her. But
at times again I see the whole naked truth before me, and I know that
she was to me what no woman can be again. And my uncle looks down at me
as I write, with a sour frowning face, and seems—strange it is, yet
true—to revile me now with bitter scorn, not for having kept her, the
roturière, but for having driven her from my castle!

“Thou hadst her; thou couldst not hold her,” he seems to snarl.

Old man, old man, it is your teaching that has undone me; do you
reproach me now that it has wrought my ruin?

       *       *       *       *       *

Basil Jennico flung his pen from him; the logs in the hearth had burnt
themselves to white ash; his candles were guttering in their sockets,
and behind the close-drawn curtains the faint dawn was spreading over a
world of snow. The wind still howled, the storm was still unabated.

“Another day,” groaned he, “another hateful day!” He flung his arms
before him and his head down upon them. So sleep came upon him; and
so old János, creeping in a little later, red-eyed from his watchful
night, found him. The sleeper woke as the man, with hands rough and
gnarled, yet tender as a woman’s, strove to lift him to an easier
attitude; woke and looked at him with a fixed semi-conscious stare.

“Ottilie!” he cried wildly, and suddenly brought back to grey reality
stopped and clasped his head. There was in the old servant’s hard and
all but immutable face so wistful a yearning of kindred sorrow that,
suddenly catching sight of it in the midst of his despair, the young
man broke down and fell forward like a child upon that faithful breast.

“Courage, honoured master,” said János, “we will find her again.”




PART II




CHAPTER I

 MEMOIR OF CAPTAIN BASIL JENNICO (A PORTION, WRITTEN EARLY IN THE YEAR
 1772, IN HIS ROOMS AT GRIFFIN’S, CURZON STREET)


HOME in England once again, if home it can be called, this set of hired
chambers, so dreary within, with outside the lowering fog and the
unfamiliar sounds that were once so familiar. It is all strange, after
eight years’ exile; and the grime, the noise, the narrow limits, the
bustle of this great city, weary me after the noble silence, the wide
life, at Tollendhal.

It was with no lightening of my thoughts that I saw the white cliffs of
old England break the sullen grey of the horizon, with no patriotic joy
that I set foot on my native soil again, but rather with a heavy, heavy
heart. What can this land be to me now but a land of exile? All that
makes home to a man I have left behind me.

I hardly know why I have resumed the thread of this miserable story.
God knows that I have no good thing to narrate, and that this
setting forth, this storing, as it were, of my bitter harvest of
disappointments, can bring no solace with it. And yet man must hope as
long as life lasts; and the hope keeps springing up again, in defiance
of all reason, that, somehow, some day, we shall meet again. Therefore
I write, in order that, should such a day come, she may read for
herself and learn how the thought of her filled each moment of my life
since our parting; that she may read how I have sought her, how I have
mourned for her; that she may know that my love has never failed her.

This it is that heartens me to my task. Moreover, all else is so
savourless that I know not how otherwise to fill the time. I have been
here five weeks; there are many houses where I am welcome, many friends
who would gladly lend me their company, many places where young men can
find distraction of divers kinds and degrees; but I have not succeeded
in bringing myself to take up the new life with any zest: I had rather
dwell upon the past in spite of all its bitterness, than face the
desolation of the present.

It was on the third day of the great storm that the pen fell from my
hand at Tollendhal, and for four and twenty hours more that self-same
storm raged in violence. One word of my old servant’s had brought me
on a sudden to a definite purpose. I was full of eager hope of tracing
her, of finding her, once it were possible to start upon the quest. For
the gale which kept me prisoner must have retarded her likewise; and
even with two days’ start, I told myself, she could not have gone far
upon her road.

But I reckoned without the difficulties which the first great snowfall
of the year, before the hard frost comes to make it passable for
sledging, was creating for us in these heights where the drifts fill to
such depth. Day and night my fellows worked to cut a way for me down to
the imperial road; and I worked with them, watched, encouraged them,
and all, it seemed, to so little purpose that I thought I should have
gone mad outright. The cruel heavens now smiled, now frowned, upon our
work, so that, between frost and thaw and thaw and frost, the task was
doubled, and my prison bars seemed to grow stronger instead of less.

In this way it came to pass that it was full ten days from the time
that she had left Tollendhal that I was at length able to start forth
in pursuit.

My first stage was of course to the castle of the old Countess
Schreckendorf, where I found the place well-nigh deserted, its mistress
having been, even as I had been informed, a fortnight dead and buried.
But there was a servant in charge of the empty, desolate house, and
from her I gleaned tidings both precise and sufficient.

The Princess had remained quietly at Schreckendorf during the weeks
which had followed upon my marriage, but on the day previous to our
return to Tollendhal from the shooting-lodge, a couple of couriers had
arrived at the Countess’s gates close one upon the other, bringing, it
would seem, important letters for the Princess, who had been greatly
agitated upon receipt of them. She had hastily despatched a mounted
messenger to my wife, whether with a private communication from herself
or merely to forward missives addressed to her from her own home I know
not; but at any rate the papers which Ottilie had hidden from me that
fatal day were brought her by this man. After she left Tollendhal a few
hours later, my wife had arrived at Schreckendorf in a peasant’s cart.
That same evening two travelling coaches, bringing ladies, officers,
and servants, had made their appearance at the castle; it was one of
these coaches which went to the stronghouse next morning and bore away
Ottilie’s belongings. In the afternoon the whole party, including my
wife, had set forth in great haste for the north, despite universal
warning of the gathering storm. There could be no doubt but that their
destination was Lausitz, most probably the Residence itself, Budissin.

When I had ascertained all this I promptly decided upon my course.
Taking with me János only, I instantly started for the next post-town,
where we were able to secure fresh horses, and whence we pushed on the
same night some twenty miles farther.

Not until the sixth evening, however, despite our extraordinarily hard
travelling, did we, mounted upon a pair of sorry and worn-out nags,
find ourselves crossing the bridge under the towered gates of Budissin.
That was then the sixteenth day from the date of my wife’s flight.

It seemed a singularly deserted town as we stumbled over the cobbles of
the streets, with the early dusk of the November day closing in upon
us—so few people passed us as we went, so few windows cast a light
into the gloom, so many houses and shops presented but blank closed
shutter-fronts. János knew his way, having ridden with my uncle in all
this district during the late war. There was a very good inn, he told
me, on the Burg Platz, in the shadow of the palace; and as nothing
could suit my purpose better, to the “Silver Lion of Lusatia” we
therefore turned our horses’ heads.

It was cheering, after our long wayfaring, and the dismal
nightmare-like impression of our passage through the empty town, to see
the casements of that same “Silver Lion” shine afar off ruddily; and
my heart leaped within me to discern, dimly sketched behind it, the
towering outline of the palace, wherein, no doubt, my lost bird had
found refuge.

The voice of the red-faced host who, at sound of clattering hoofs
before his door, came bustling to greet us as fast as his goodly bulk
would allow, struck on my ear with cheering omen.

“God greet ye, my lords!” he cried, as he lent a shoulder for my
descent; “you are welcome this bitter night to fireside and supper.
Enter, my lords; I have good wine, good beds, good supper, for your
lordships, and the best beer that is brewed between Munich and Berlin.
Joseph, thou rag, see to his lordship’s horses; wife, come greet our
worshipful visitors!”

I write down the jargon much as I heard it, for, as I write, I am back
again at that moment and feel once more the glow of hope which crept
into my heart, even as the genial warmth of the room unbent my frozen
limbs. I had reached my journey’s end, and the old rhyme in the play,
“journeys end in lovers meeting,” rang a merry burden in my thoughts.

I marvel now that my hopes should have been so forward; that I should
have reckoned so much more upon her woman’s love than upon her woman’s
pride. Indeed, I had not deemed my sin so great but that my penitence
would amply atone. So I was all eagerness to satisfy my hungering heart
by tidings of her, and could hardly sit still to my supper—though
we had ridden hard and I was famished—till I had induced mine host
to sit beside me and crack a bottle of his most recommended Rhenish,
which should unloose a tongue that scarcely needed such inducement. For
her sake, that no scandal might be bruited about her fair name, I had
determined to proceed cautiously.

“You have a fine town here, friend,” said I, “so far as I can judge
this dark night.”

“Truly, your lordship may say so,” said he, and smacked his lips that I
might understand how great a relish this fruit of his cellar left on a
man’s palate.

“But it has a deserted look,” said I idly, just to encourage him in
talk; “so many houses shut up—so few people about.”

He rolled the wine round his mouth in a reflective manner, then
swallowed it with a gulp, and threw an uneasy look at me. At the same
instant there flashed upon my mind what, strange as it may seem, I
had clean forgotten in the turmoil of my thoughts and the hurry of my
pursuit: the reason for the very state of affairs I was commenting
on—the plague of smallpox, the malady that had driven the Princess to
my land! Ay, in very truth the town had a plague-stricken look, and I
felt myself turn pale to think my wife had come back to this nest of
infection.

“The sickness,” said I then quickly,—“has it abated here? Nay, I know
all about it, man, and have no fear of it. But how fares it in the town
and in the palace?”

“Oh, the sickness!” quoth mine host with a great awkward laugh.
“His lordship means these few little cases of smallpox. Na, it had
been nothing, and is all over now; only folk were such cowards and
frightened themselves sick, and families fled because of this same
foolish fear. Now myself, as his lordship sees, myself and my family
and my servants, we have not known a day’s ill-health, because we kept
our hearts up and drank good stuff. ’It is,’ as I said to his Highness
himself, who never left the place, but went out in our midst, the noble
prince, and spat at fear (besides that he had already had it, like
myself),—’it is the wine,’ said I, ’or the beer, if you know where to
get it, that keeps a man sound.’ And his Highness says to me——”

But here I interrupted the speaker in a voice the trembling of which I
could not control.

“Is the Duke at the palace now, then, with all his household?”

“He has been so, my lord,” said the man eagerly, “up to the last week;
so long, indeed, as there was a suspicion of illness among us. But
now he is at the summer castle, Ottilienruhe, near Rothenburg. ’Tis
but three leagues from the town. The Princess, sir, is always fond
of Ottilienruhe, even in this cold weather. And as she has but just
returned from visiting at another Court, his Highness, her father, has
gone to join her thither. Our Princess, sir, is a most beautiful young
lady; nay, if you will allow me, I will show you a portrait of her,
which we have framed in my wife’s room. A beautiful young lady, sir!
There will be rare festivities when she weds her cousin, the Margrave
of Liegnitz-Rothenburg. We have his portrait, too—a very noble
gentleman! I would show you these pictures; I think you would admire
them.”

But I arrested him with a gesture, as, in the hopes of distracting my
attention from an awkward topic, he was about to roll his bulk in quest
of these treasures.

I had no wish, indeed, to feast my eyes upon that face, the lineaments
of which, with all their beauty, I could not bear to recall. What was
it to me whom _that_ Ottilie married? If they had had a portrait of my
Ottilie, indeed!... But, sweet soul, she had told me herself of her
obscurity and unimportance.

“And so,” said I, “they are at the summer palace, your reigning family?”

And though I had hugged the thought of her dear living presence so
close to me this night, behind yonder palace walls, I nevertheless
rejoiced to learn that she was safer harboured.

“The Princess has her retinue with her, I suppose?”

“Oh, ay,” said the innkeeper, rising as he spoke and clacking his
tongue again over the last drop of his wine. “Though our Princess is
so simple a lass, if I may say so without disrespect, and loves not
Court fashions. But she has one favourite companion, and they are as
sisters together, so that when one sees her Highness, one may be sure
the Fräulein is not far distant. Oh, ay, sir, they have returned from
their travels together, though I have heard it rumoured that one or two
of her Highness’s attendants have been left behind, dead or ailing. Na,
it is better to stay at home: strange places are unwholesome!”

He opened the stove door and shoved in two or three great logs, and I
turned and stretched my limbs to the warmth with lazy content, and, for
the first time for many a long day and night, a restful heart.

To-morrow I should see her. When I slept that night I dreamed golden
dreams.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next day dawned upon a world all involved in creeping grizzling
mist, that seemed to ooze even into the comfortable rooms of the
“Silver Lion”; that wrapped from my view the lofty towers of the palace
beyond my window, and damped even my buoyant confidence. My good János
had the toothache, and though it was not in him to complain, the
sight of his swollen, suffering face did not further encourage me to
cheer. A little before noon we mounted to ride forth to Ottilienruhe
in the dismal weather. Our garments, despite the heiduck’s endless
brushing, bore many traces of our hard journey. We cut but a poor
figure, I thought, in these stained, rusty clothes; and the young
lord of Tollendhal was ill-mounted upon the wretched jade, which had,
nevertheless, faithfully served him upon his last cruel stage. The
poor nag was yet full weary, and stumbled and drooped her head, while
János’s white-faced bay might have stood for the very image of starving
antiquity.

I winced as I thought of Ottilie’s mocking glance; but the haste to see
her overcame even my delicate vanity.

Following my host’s directions, who marvelled greatly at our
eccentricity that we should leave a warm stove door and good cheer from
mere travellers’ curiosity on such a day, we pattered forth through
the town again—through streets yet more ghost-like in their daylight
emptiness than they had seemed yestereven; pattered once more across
the wood of the bridge beneath which the sullen waters ran, without
appearing to run, as grey and leaden as the heavens above.

And after two hours’ dreary tramp along a poplar-bordered, deserted
road, we saw before us the gilded iron gateway of Ottilienruhe. Beyond
there was a vision of French gardens; of bowling-greens all drenched;
of flat terraces whereon the yews, fantastically cut, stood about like
the pieces of a chessboard. Beyond that again rose the odd Grecian
porticos and colonnades, the Chinese cupolas, appertaining to the
summer pleasaunce of the reigning house.

It might have looked fair enough under bright skies in summer weather,
with roses on the empty beds and sunshine on the little yellow spires;
but it seemed a most desolate place as it lay beneath my eyes that
noon. I told myself I should find sunshine enough within, yet my heart
lay heavy in my breast.

A sentry, with his pointed fur cap drawn down over his eyes, with
the collar of his great-coat drawn up above his ears, so that of his
countenance only the end of a red nose was visible to the world,
marched up and down before the gates, and, as we made ready to halt,
challenged us roughly.

At the sound of his call two more sentries appeared at different
points, and tramped towards us with suspicion in their bearing.

Evidently the Duke was well guarded. I rode a few steps forward, when,
to my astonishment, it being full peace-time, the fellow brought his
musket to the ready, and again cautioned me to pass on my way.

“But my way is to the palace,” I bawled to him defiantly, despite
the consciousness that the doubtful impression I must myself create
could not be mitigated by the sight of János behind me. For I am
bound to say that in the plain garb I had insisted on his donning,
now much disordered, as I have said, by our travels, with the natural
grimness of his countenance enhanced by a screw of pain, a more
truculent-looking ruffian it would have been hard to find.

But so far I did not anticipate any more serious difficulty than what
a few arguments could remove: and I carried a heavy purse. So I added
boldly:

“I have business at the palace.”

The man lowered his weapon and came a step nearer.

“Whence come you?” he asked more civilly.

“From Budissin,” said I.

The musket instantly went up again, and its bearer retreated hastily a
couple of paces.

“‘Tis against orders,” he said, “because of the sickness; no one from
Budissin may pass the gates.”

The sickness again! I had, then, by my impetuosity, my haste to follow
in her traces, but raised a new barrier between us.

I dismounted, threw my reins to János, and advanced upon the soldier.

“But, friend,” said I——

The fellow covered me with his weapon.

“Stand!” he cried roughly; “stand, or I fire!”

I stood back stock-still. Here was a quandary indeed!

“But, my God!” I cried to him, “I am a traveller. I have but passed
through the town. I have come these eighty leagues upon urgent
business, and I must see some one who I am told is in the palace.”

So saying I drew forth a louis d’or, a stock of which I kept loose for
such emergencies in my side pocket, and tossed it to the rascal.

“Now get me speech with a person in authority,” said I.

With one hand, and without lowering his fire-lock, he nimbly caught the
coin on the fling and placed it in his mouth, after which he shook his
head and remarked indistinctly:

“‘Tis no use.”

And then at last my sorely-tried patience broke down, impotent
otherwise in front of his menacing barrel. I cursed him long and
loud with that choiceness and variety of epithet of which my own
squadron-life experience as well as my apprenticeship to my great-uncle
had given me a command.

The clamour we made first drew the other soldiers, and next a little
dapper officer from the guard-room behind the inner gate, who ran out
towards us, and at the utmost pitch of his naturally piping voice
demanded in the name of all gods, thunders, and lightning-blasts what
the matter was.

My particular sentinel’s utterance was something impeded by the louis
d’or in his cheek, and I was consequently able to offer an explanation
before him. Uncovering my head and bowing, I introduced myself in
elegant phraseology, though of necessity, for the distance between us,
in tones more suited to the parade ground than to a polite ceremony,
and laid bare my unfortunate position. I bewailed that through my brief
halt in Budissin, ignorant of the infection, I had evidently made
myself amenable to quarantine, and requested his courteous assistance
in the matter.

My name was evidently quite unfamiliar to his ears, but, perceiving
that he had to deal with an equal, the little officer at once returned
my salute with an extra flourish, and my civility by ordering the
sentry to stand aside. Then, advancing gingerly in the mud to a more
reasonable interval for conversation, he informed me, with another
sweeping bow, that he was Captain Freiherr von Krappitz, and that,
while it would be his pleasure to serve me in every possible manner, he
regretted deeply that his orders were such that he could only ratify
the sentry’s conduct.

“And are there no means, then,” cried I “by which I can communicate in
person with any resident of the palace?”

“In person,” said the officer “I regret, none. His Serene Highness’s
orders are stringent, and when I tell you that our Princess is actually
behind these walls, you will understand the necessity. The sickness has
been appalling,” he added.

He must have seen the blank dismay upon my countenance, for his own
sharp visage expressed a comical mixture of sympathy and curiosity, and
again approaching two steps he proceeded:

“I could perhaps convey some message. I shall soon be relieved from
duty here. The person you wish to see is——?”

“It is a lady,” said I, flushing.

This was what the little gentleman had evidently expected. Suppressing
a grin of satisfaction, he gave another salute and placed himself
quite at my disposal. But I had an unsurmountable objection to announce
my real relationship to the woman who had fled from my protection.
Courteous as my interlocutor was, and honourable and kind as he seemed
to be, I could send no message to my wife through him.

“If you will see to the safe delivery of a letter,” said I, “I should
be grateful indeed.”

His face fell.

“It is possible, perhaps,” he said dubiously, “but less easy of
accomplishment. There will be the necessity of disinfection. If you
think your billet-doux—forgive me for supposing you to be a sufferer
from the tender passion, and believe me I speak with sympathy” (here he
thumped his little chest and heaved from its restricted depths a noisy
sigh)—“if you think your billet-doux will not lose of its sweetness by
a prolonged immersion in vinegar, I will do what I can. Nay, I think I
can promise you that your letter will be delivered, if you will kindly
inform me who the fair recipient is to be.”

Again I hesitated. I would not call her by her maiden name; to speak
of her as my wife, to bawl my strange story on the high road, was not
only intolerable to my pride, but seemed inadvisable and certainly
imprudent in my ignorance of her attitude at the Court.

“It is,” said I, “one of your Princess’s Court ladies.” And here his
volubility spared me further circumlocution.

“It can certainly not be,” he cried, “that you have formed an unhappy
attachment for the Frau Gräfin von Kornstein? There remains then only
the young Comtesse d’Assier, Fräulein von Auerbach and her sister, and
Fräulein Ottilie Pahlen—these are all of our fair circle that are now
in attendance at the palace.”

“It is the last lady,” I said, and was at once glad of my own
circumspection and troubled in my mind that she should be keeping her
secret so well.

“Mes compliments,” said he with a smirk, but I thought also with a
shade of patronage, as if by mentioning her last he had also shown her
to be the last in his worldly esteem. Once, doubtless, this would have
galled me.

“Then if I write now,” I cried, “and you, according to your kind offer,
take charge of my letter, how soon can it be in her hands?”

“But as soon as the guard has relieved me, good sir, am I free to act
the gallant Mercury—pity it is that these sordid details of sickness
and quarantine should come to spoil so pretty an errand. This was a
fair Court for Cupid before the ugly plague came on us. Yes,” he added,
“I have seen days!”

I had already drawn out my tablets, and, thanking him hurriedly
(without, I fear, evincing much interest in his sentimental
reflections), turned and, making a standing desk of my horse, with the
sheet spread upon the saddle, began, all in the dreary drizzle, to
trace with fingers stiffened from the cold the few lines which were to
bring my wife back to me.

I had little time for composition, and so wrote the words as they
welled up from my heart.

“Dear love,” said I, in the French which had been the language of our
happiest moments, “your poor scholar has learnt his lesson so well
that he cannot live without his teacher. Forget what has come between
us. Remember only all that unites us, and forgive. I have, it seems,
involved myself in difficulty by passing through Budissin, and so will,
I fear, have to endure delay before being permitted sight of your
sweet face again. But let me have a word which may help me to bear the
separation, let me know that I may carry home my wife.” I signed it,
“Your poor scholar and loving husband.” Then I folded it, fastened it
with a wafer, and after a minute’s pause decided to burn my ships and
address it by the right name of her to whom I destined it—“Madame
Ottilie de Jennico, Dame d’honneur de S. A. S. la Princesse Marie
Ottilie de Lusace.”

Bending over the living desk,—the poor patient brute never budged but
for his heaving flanks,—I laid for a second, unperceived I thought, my
lips upon that name which haunted me, sleeping and waking, and turning,
with the letter in my hand, found the Freiherr watching me, with his
head upon one side and so comic an air of sympathy that, at another
moment, I should have burst out laughing.

“It is mille dommages,” quoth he as, bending his supple spine again,
he drew his sword with a charming gesture of courtesy, “that this
chaste salute should have to pass through the bitter waves of the Court
doctor’s vinegar basin before reaching the virginal lips for which it
is intended.”

“Then I may rely upon your countenance?” said I, unmindful of his mock
Versailles floweriness as I fixed my missive to the point of the sword
extended towards me for that purpose by the longest arm the little
fellow could make. I knew he would not read the tell-tale inscription
until the unpoetic process he had so feelingly lamented should have
been gone through, and I wondered something anxiously whether it would
not prove another complication, my wife in her wounded pride having
thus chosen to conceal our marriage—in truth, I might have known it:
had she not shaken off my ring? Seeing upon what grounds we had parted,
however, I dared not have addressed her otherwise, and so could see no
way but to run some risk.

“When may I hope to receive an answer?—you will forgive my
impatience,” said I, with a somewhat rueful smile, “for you have some
knowledge of the human heart, I see, and so I venture further to
trespass on your great courtesy. I will meet here any messenger you may
depute at any hour you name this afternoon.”

“Myself, sir, myself,” said the good-natured gentleman, “and in as
short a space as possible. Shall we say three o’clock?”

There were then a few minutes wanting to noon by my uncle’s famous
chronometer. Three hours seemed long, but, as we must ever learn to do
in life, I had to be content with a slice where I wanted the loaf. (Now
I have not even a crumb for my starving heart, and yet I live.)

As I had surmised, my messenger continued to hold the missive at the
extreme length of his weapon and arm, while we made our divers congees
and compliments. Thus we parted, he to withdraw to his guard-house, and
I, with my attendant, to ride back to the nearest village, with what
appetite we might for our noonday meal.

I rode alone again to the rendezvous, full early, poor fool! János
I had sent on to find lodgings for me in the neighbourhood, out of
range of infection, so that my time of purgatory need not be an hour
prolonged.

The sky had cleared somewhat and it rained no more, but there was now
a penetrating and moisture-charged wind. A little after the stroke of
three my friend of the morning came forth, waved aside the sentry as
before, and halted within the former distance, while I dismounted. His
countenance was far from bearing the beaming cordiality with which
he had last surveyed me, nor had his bow anything like its previous
depth and roundness. He drew a folded paper from his pocket, attached
it to the point of his sword, according to the process I had already
witnessed, and presented it to me, observing drily:

“I regret, sir, that there seems to be some mistake about this matter.
The Court doctor, who duly delivered the letter at the palace, informs
me that none of her Highness’s ladies-in-waiting will consent to
receive it, it being indeed addressed to some person unknown among
them. There is no lady of the name of Jennico among her Highness’s
attendants.”

I felt myself blanching.

“Am I to understand,” said I, “that Fräulein Ottilie Pahlen has
repudiated this letter?”

“My good sir,” said he, looking at me, I thought, with a sort of
compassion, as if he feared I was weak in my head, “I understand from
the Court doctor that Mademoiselle Pahlen was the lady to whom the
letter was at once offered, according to my request and yours. There is
perhaps some mystery?”—here his interest seemed to flicker up again,
and he smiled as who would say, “_confide in me_”; but I could not
bring my tongue to this humiliation, less than ever then.

I flicked the poor, vinegar-sodden, despised epistle from the point of
his sword, and, spreading it out once again, added to it in a sort of
frenzy this appeal:

“For God’s sake forgive me! You cannot mean to send me away like this.
Ottilie, write me one line, for from my soul I love you.”

Then I pasted the sheet again, and, drawing a line through the title,
wrote above it in great letters:

“Fräulein Ottilie Pahlen,” and then I said to the officer:

“You will be doing a deed of truer kindness than you can imagine,
Captain von Krappitz, if you will have this letter placed again in the
hands of Fräulein Pahlen. More I cannot say now, but some day, if my
fortune is not more evil than I dare reflect upon, I will explain.”

“Wait here half an hour,” he responded with a return of his good
nature; “I am off duty and free for the rest of the day. If I can
induce the Court doctor to attend to me—in truth, he is of a very
surly mood this afternoon—I trust you may see me return a messenger of
better tidings.”

Besides a very bubbling heat of curiosity there was real amiability in
this readiness to help me.

The half hour sped and half an hour beyond it—why do I linger upon
such details? From sheer cowardly reluctance, I believe, to describe
those moments of my great despair.

And then a cockscomb of a servant fellow, in gorgeous livery and
ribboned cue, stepped forth from the gates, sniffing a bunch of
stinking herbs, and stood and surveyed me for a second from head to
foot, grinning all over his insolent visage, till I wonder how I kept
my riding-whip from searing it across.

“Well, sir?” said I sternly.

He felt, maybe, the note of master in my voice, for he cringed a
little, and, more civilly than his countenance suggested, requested to
know if I was the gentleman with whom Captain the Freiherr von Krappitz
had recently been conversing. Upon my reply he gingerly held up a
filthy rag of paper, in which I recognised, with a failing of the heart
such as I cannot set forth in words, my own letter once more. And in
sight of my discomfiture, resuming his native impudence, he proceeded
in loud tones:

“My master bids me inform you that he can no longer be the means of
annoying a young lady whom he respects so much as Mademoiselle Pahlen.
She has requested that your letter may be returned to you again, and
declares that she knows no such person as yourself, and is quite at a
loss why she should be made the object of this strange persecution.”

The rogue sang out the words as one repeating a lesson in which he has
been well drilled.

As I stood staring at him, all other feelings swallowed up in the
overwhelming tide of my disappointment, I saw him, as in a dream,
toss the much-travelled note in the mud between us, turn on his heel,
exchange a grin with the nearest sentry, jerk his thumb over his
shoulder in my direction, tap his forehead significantly, and finally
swagger out of sight behind the little wicket.

And still I stood immovable, unable to formulate a single thought in my
paralysed brain, the whole world before me a dull blank, yet knowing
that, when I should begin to feel again, it would be hell indeed.

A shout from the sentry suddenly aroused me.

“‘Tis better,” he called, “that you should move on.”

And in good sooth what had I more to do before those gates? I mounted
my horse and rode backwards and forwards upon that wretched scrap of
paper that had been charged with all the dearest longings of my heart,
until it lay indistinguishable in the mud around it. Then I set spurs
to my jade, and we rode, a well-matched couple, away towards the
strange village where I was to meet János.

       *       *       *       *       *

With the memory of that bitterest hour of his life burning so hot
within him that he could continue his sedentary task no longer, but
must rise and pace the room after the sullen way now well known to
János as betokening his master’s worst moments, Basil Jennico laughed
aloud. Pride must have a fall! God knows his pride had had falls
enough to kill the most robust of vices.

Had ever man been so humiliated, so contemned as he? Had ever poor soul
been made to suffer more relentlessly where it had sinned?

“I have been brought low, very low,” said he to himself, and thought of
the early days at Tollendhal when its young lord had deemed the whole
earth created for his use. Yet, even as he spoke, he knew in his heart
that the pride that was born in him would die with him only, and that
if it had been mastered awhile it was only but because love had been
stronger still.

When he had taken the roturière unreservedly to his heart; when he
had returned from the mountains to seek reconciliation; when he had
followed her upon her flight, had twice besought her to return to him;
when he had made his third and last futile appeal in the face of a
slashing rebuff, pride had lain beneath the heel of love. He had been
beaten, after all, by a pride greater than his own; and he knew that
were she to call him even now, he would come to her bidding in spite of
all and through all.

The boards of the narrow, irregular room creaked beneath his impatient
tread. Outside, the sounds of traffic were dying away. The last
belated coaches had clattered down the streets, the tall running
footman had extinguished his link. Basil Jennico turned instinctively
towards the south, like the restless compass-needle, a way that had
grown into a habit of late as his spirit strove to bridge across the
leagues of sea and land that lay between him and his wife.

Was she thinking of him now? What was his curse was at the same time
his triumph: he defied her to forget him any more than he could forget
her! Those hours, had she not shared them with him? Come what would, no
man could lay claim to be to her what he had been. _No man—that way
madness lay!_...

He looked round at the pages scored with his writings and gave a
heart-sick sigh, and then at the door of the room beyond, wherein
stood that huge four-post bed where he had tossed through such
sleepless hours and dreamed such dreams that the waking moment held the
bitterness of death. Next he thought of the town beyond, so full, yet
to him so empty.

How to pass the time that went by with such leaden feet? The days were
bad enough, but the nights—the nights were terrible! Should he don his
most brilliant suit and hie him out into the throng of men of fashion?
Some of the Woschutzski gold would not come amiss at the dicing-table
of my Lady Brambury, or at the Cocoa-tree, or yet the Hummums, where
(his head being as strong as the best of them) he could crack a few
bottles in good company. Good company, forsooth! What could all the
world be to him for want of that one small being? He might drink
himself into oblivion, perhaps, a few hours’ oblivion, and be carried
home in the early morning and wake at midday with a new headache and
the old heartache. Pah!

Of three evils choose the least: since the great feather bed would hold
no sleep yet awhile; since to drag his misery into company was to add
fire to its fever, Mr. Jennico sat down again to his task, hoping so to
weary his brain that it would grant him a few hours’ dreamless rest.




CHAPTER II

CAPTAIN BASIL JENNICO’S MEMOIR CONTINUED


THERE is very little more to tell. The new inn wherein I found János
established was but a poor place in a poor village, a sort of summer
resort abandoned in winter-time save by its own wretched inhabitants.
The private chamber allotted to me—it was the only one—was bitter
cold, but my choice lay between that and the common room below, full of
evil smells and reeking boors and stifling stove heat.

But I was in no mood to reck of bodily inconvenience. My further
action had to be determined upon; and, torn two ways between anger and
longing, I passed the evening and the greater part of the night in
futile battle with myself.

At length I resolved upon a plan which brought some calm into my soul,
and with it a creeping ray of hope.

I would lay my case before the Princess herself. She had been ever
kindly in her dealings towards me. I had no reason to imagine but that
she was well disposed in my favour; she had had no part in her maid
of honour’s double dealings with me: I would pray her to speak to the
wayward being on my behalf, to place before her her duty towards the
husband she had herself chosen.

Thus next morning, as clearly, temperately, and respectfully as might
be, I indited my letter, sealed it upon each fold with the Jennico
coat-of-arms, and, after deliberation, despatched János with it. The
fellow had, according to my orders, purchased fresh horses, and cut a
better figure than the yesterday’s, when he set off upon his errand.
Duly and minutely instructed, he was to present himself at another
gate of the palace, and I trusted that, making good use of the purse
with which he was supplied, his mission might be more successfully
accomplished than had been mine.

And indeed, so far as he was concerned, this was the case. He came
back sooner than I had supposed it possible, to inform me that, having
been able to say he was not from Budissin, he had been received with
civility, and permitted to wait at the guard-house of the north
entrance while my letter was carried to the palace. After a short time,
the messenger who had taken charge of it had returned, demanded and
carefully noted my name, qualities, and exact whereabouts, and bidden
him go back to his master with the assurance that the Princess would
send her answer.

I waited, tramping the short breadth of my miserable room like a caged
wolf, anxiously peering every other minute through the rain-stained
window which overlooked the high road.

Reason seemed to offer but one conclusion concerning the result of
the last appeal: she would come back to me. My offence—bad as it had
been, unmanly towards the woman who had lain in my arms, unworthy of
a gentleman towards the lady whom he had resolved to acknowledge as
his wife—my offence was not one that so true a penitence might not
amply atone for. That was what reason said. But, as often as confidence
began to rise in my heart, an instinctive dread overcame it, an
unaccountable, ominous misgiving that the happiness I had once held in
my hand and so perversely cast from me was never to be mine again. And,
as the hours slowly fell away, the dread became more poignant, and the
effort to hope more futile.

János had returned with his message about noon. It must have been at
least five o’clock (for the world outside was wrapped in murky shadow)
when there came a sound on the road that made my heart leap: a clatter
of horses’ hoofs and the rumbling of a coach. I threw open my window
and thrust out my head. How vividly the impression comes back on me
now!—the cold rain upon my throbbing temples, the blinding light of
joy that filled my brain as I strained my eyes to distinguish in the
dusk the nature of the vehicle which announced its approach with such
important noise. It was a carriage, guarded by an escort of dragoons,
who rode by the door, musket on thigh. An escort! It must be the
Princess herself: the Princess come in person, the noble and gentle
lady, to bring me back my wife, my love!

Fool! Fool! Fool thrice told! for my vainglorious self-conceit, my
loving, yearning heart!

My spirits bounded at one leap to their old important, arrogant level.
I threw a hasty glance in the mirror to note that the pallor of my
countenance and the disorder of my unpowdered hair were after all
not unbecoming. As I dashed along the narrow wooden passage and down
the breakneck creaking stairs I will not say that in all the glow of
my heart, that had been so cold, there was not now, in this sudden
relief from the iron pressure of anxiety, a point of anger against the
little truant—a vague determination to establish a certain balance of
account, to inflict some mild penance upon her as a set-off against the
very bitter one she had imposed on me. A minute ago I would have knelt
before her and humbled myself to the very dust: when I reached the door
of the drinking-room I was already pluming myself upon a resolution to
be merciful.

I broke into the room out of the darkness with my head high, and was at
first so dazzled by the light within, as well as by the reeling triumph
in my brain, that for an instant I could distinguish nothing.

Then, with a sickening revulsion, with such rage as may have torn the
soul of Lucifer struck from the heights of heaven to the depths of
hell, I saw the single figure of Captain von Krappitz standing in the
middle of the floor with much gravity and importance of demeanour.
Flattened against the walls, the boors stood open-mouthed, all struck
with amazement; and the little host was bowing anxiously to the belaced
officer. Two dragoons guarded the door.

Before even a word was uttered I felt that all was over for me.

Concentrating my energies, then, to face misfortune with as brave a
front as I might, I halted before my friend of yesterday, and waited in
silence for him to open proceedings.

He bowed to me with great courtesy, looking upon me the while with eyes
at once compassionate, curious, and yet respectful, as though upon one
of newly-discovered importance, and said:

“I grieve, sir, to be the bearer of an order which may cause you
displeasure, but I beg you, being a soldier yourself, to consider me
only as the instrument which does not presume to judge but obeys. Be
pleased to read this—it is addressed to you.”

I took the great sealed envelope with fingers as cold and heavy as
marble, broke it open mechanically, and read. At first it was without
any comprehension of the words, which were nevertheless set forth in a
very free, flowing hand, but presently, as the blood rushed in a tide
of sudden anger to my brain, with a quickening and redoubled intensity
of intelligence.

 “The Princess Marie Ottilie of Sachs-Lausitz,” so ran the precious
 document, “has received M. de Jennico’s letter concerning a certain
 lady.

 “M. de Jennico has already been given clearly to understand that his
 importunities are distressing.

 “As the lady in question is a member of the Princess’s household, M.
 de Jennico will not be surprised at the steps which are now taken to
 secure her against further persecution. He is advised to accept the
 escort of the officer who carries this letter, and warned that any
 attempt at resistance, or any future infringement of the order issued
 by command of his Serene Highness, will be visited in the severest
 manner.”

In a bloody heat of rage I looked up, ready for any folly—to
strangle the poor courteous little instrument of a woman’s implacable
resentment—to find death on the bayonets of the hulking sentinels at
the door, and be glad of it, so that I had shed somebody’s blood for
these insults! But, meeting Captain von Krappitz’s steady glance, I
paused. And in that pause my sense returned.

If love itself be a madness, as they say, what name shall we give to
our wrath against those that we love! For that minute no poor chained
Bedlamite could have been more dangerously mad than I. But my British
dread of ridicule saved my life that day, and perhaps that of others
besides.

Perhaps also the real pity, the sympathy, that was stamped on the
captain’s honest face had something to say to calming me. At any rate,
I recovered from my convulsion, and awoke to the fact that blood was
running down my shirt from where I had clenched my teeth upon my lip.

I must have been a fearsome object to behold, and I have a good opinion
of Captain von Krappitz’s coolness that he should thus have stood and
faced a man of twice his size and, in such a frenzy, of probably four
times his strength, with never a signal to his guard or even a step in
retreat.

Said this gentleman then, delicately averting his eyes from my
countenance, so soon as he saw I had come to my senses:

“If you will glance at this paper you will see that my orders are
stringent, and I shall be greatly indebted to your courtesy if you
will co-operate in their being carried out in the least unpleasant
manner possible. Indeed, sir,” he added in my ear hastily and kindly,
“resistance would be worse than useless.”

I glanced at the paper he presented to me, caught the words: “Order
to Captain Freiherr von Krappitz to convey M. de Jennico beyond the
frontier of Lusatia, at any point he may himself choose”; caught a
further glimpse of such expressions: “formal warning to M. de Jennico
never to set foot more within the dominions of the Duke of Lausitz,”
“severe penalty,” and so forth. I glanced, and tossed the paper
contemptuously on the table.

That wife of mine had greater interest at the Court than she had been
wont to pretend, and she was using it to some purpose. She was mightily
determined that her offending husband should pay his debt to her pride,
to the last stripe of his punishment.

I smiled in the bitterness of my soul. I was sane enough now, God
knows!

Well, she should have her wish, she should be persecuted no longer.

“I place myself entirely at your convenience,” said M. de Krappitz
discreetly, adding, however, the significant remark, “my order gives me
twelve hours.”

He picked up the document as he spoke, folded it carefully, and placed
it in his breast pocket.

“Oh, as for me,” said I, “I ask for no respite.” (Could I desire to
waste a second before shaking the dust of this cursed country from
my feet?) “The time but to warn my servant and bid him truss up my
portmanteau and saddle the horses. I understand,” I added, with what,
I fear, was a withering smile, “that you are kind enough to offer me a
seat in your carriage?”

“Ah, my dear sir,” returned the little man, with an expression of
relief, “what a delightful thing it is to deal with an homme d’esprit!”

And so, in scarce half-an-hour’s time, the triumphal procession was
ready to set forth. I entered the coach, the Freiherr took his seat
behind me, János, impassive, mounted his horse between two dragoons,
whilst my own mount was led by a third soldier in the rear. And in this
order we set off at a round pace for the Silesian frontier, where I
begged to be deposited.

At first my good-tempered and garrulous escort tried in vain to
beguile me into some conversation upon such abstract subjects as music
and poetry. But his well-meant efforts failed before my hopeless
taciturnity, and it was in silence that we concluded the transit
between Rothenburg and the border.

As we parted, however, he held out his hand. “Sans rancune, camarade,”
said he.

What could I do but clasp the good-natured little paw as heartily as
I might, and echo, although most untruly, “Sans rancune”? To the very
throat I was full of rancour for everything belonging to Lusatia, and I
swear the bitterness of it lay a palpable taste on my tongue.

A free man again, I threw myself upon my horse, and took the
straightest road for my empty home. János had the wit to speak no word
to me, save a direction now and again as to the proper way. And we rode
like furies through the cold, wet night.

“Breed a fine stock ...” had said my good uncle to his heir.

At least, I thought—and the sound of my laugh rang ghastly even in my
own ears—if I have brought roture into the family, I am not like now
to graft it on the family tree!




CHAPTER III

CAPTAIN BASIL JENNICO’S MEMOIR, RESUMED THREE MONTHS LATER, AT
FARRINGDON DANE


  SUFFOLK, _14th April, 1772_.

I HAD thought upon that day when, in my ill temper, I irreparably
insulted my wife, that I could never bring myself to face the exposure
which a return to England would necessarily bring about. But when I
found the desolation and the haunting memories of Tollendhal like to
rob me of all I had left of reason and manliness; when, to my restless
spirit, the thought of home seemed to promise some chance of diversion
and relief, I did not hesitate. Without delay I set to work to put
matters at Tollendhal upon a sufficiently regular scale, also to have
realised and transferred to my London bankers a sum of money large
enough to meet any reasonable demand. This business accomplished, in
less than a month from the date of the ill-fated Rothenburg expedition
I found myself breathing my native air again.

Before my departure I charged Schultz—and I know I can rely upon his
faithfulness—to be perpetually on the look-out for any communication
from Lausitz, and to be ready to give any one immediate cognisance of
my whereabouts. It is a forlorn hope.

Although the humour had come upon me to go back to my own land—after
the fashion, I fancy, that a sick man deems he will be better anywhere
than where he is—and although I did not hesitate to gratify that
humour, I was, nevertheless, not blind to the peculiar position I must
occupy among my people. I had no desire to lay claim to the honours I
had so prematurely announced, no desire to present myself under false
colours, even were such an imposture likely to succeed; but neither
did I see why I should lay bare to the jeers of the fashionable world,
to the sneers of dear relatives and friends, or, more intolerable
still, to their compassion, the whole pitiful plot of that comedy which
has turned to such tragedy for me. So, when I wrote to my mother to
announce my arrival, I adopted a purposely evasive tone.

 “It is deeply unfortunate,” I wrote, “that you should have broken the
 bond of secrecy which I enjoined upon you when I informed you of my
 intended marriage. You know too much of the world, my dear mother,
 not to understand that when a commoner like myself, however well
 born and dowered, would contract an alliance with the heiress of
 a reigning house, it is more than likely that there may be a ’slip
 ’twixt the cup and the lip.’ My cup has been spilt. I come home, a
 broken-hearted man, to find myself, I fear, owing to your breach of
 confidence, the laughing-stock of our society. But the yearning for
 home is too strong upon me to be resisted; I am returning to England
 at once. If you would not add yet more to the bitterness of my lot you
 will strenuously deny the report you indiscreetly spread, and warn
 curiosity-mongers from daring to probe a wound which I could not bear
 even your hand to touch.”

These words, by which I intended to spare myself at least the
humiliation of personal explanation, have produced an unexpected
effect. My poor mother performed her task so well that I find myself
quite as much the hero of the hour over here as if I had brought back
my exalted bride.

The mystery in which I am shrouded, the obvious melancholy of my
demeanour, the very indifference with which I receive all notice,
added, of course, to my wealth, and possibly to the belief that I
am still a prize in the matrimonial market, my extraordinary luck
at cards, when I can be induced to play, my carelessness to loss or
gain—all this has placed me upon a pinnacle which is as gratifying to
my mother as (or, so I hear, for I have declined all reconciliation
with the renegade) it is galling to my brother and his family.

But the best yet, so far as I am concerned, is that no one has dared to
put to me an indiscreet question, and that even my mother, although her
wistful eyes implore my confidence, respects my silence.

Now, having tried in vain to find a solace in the pleasures of town,
I have betaken myself to that part of the island which is the cradle
of our race, to try whether a taste of good old English sport may not
revive some interest in my life.

Often in that last month at Tollendhal, when the whole land was locked
in ice and the grey sky looked down pitilessly upon the white earth,
day by day, with never a change and scarcely a shadow, I thought of
the green winters of my youth in the old country; of rousing gallops,
with the west wind in my face, across wide fields all verdant still
and homely; of honest English faces, English voices, the tongue of the
hounds, the blast of the cracked horn, with almost a passion of desire.
It seemed to me that, if I could be back in the midst of it all again,
I might feel as the boy Basil had felt, and be rid, were it but for the
space of a good cross-country run, of that present Basil Jennico whose
brain was so weary of working upon the same useless round, whose heart
was so sore within him.

So soon therefore as the weather broke—for the winter has been
hard even in this milder climate—I accepted my mother’s offer of
her dower-house, set up a goodly stable of hunters, and established
myself at the Manor of Farringdon Dane. I have actually derived some
satisfaction from a couple of days’ sport, to which a sight of my lord
brother’s discomfiture, each time I cut him deliberately in the face of
the whole field, has added perhaps a grain.

       *       *       *       *       *

  _April 29th._

I am this day like the man in the Gospel who, having driven out
the devil from his heart and swept and garnished it, finds himself
presently possessed of seven devils worse than the first! The demon of
wrath I had exorcised, I believed, long ago; the fiend of unrest and
longing I had thought these days to have laid too. In spite of her too
obdurate resentment, I had no feeling for my wife, wherever she might
be, but tenderness. Now, oh, Ottilie, Ottilie! do I most hate thee
or love thee? I know not, by my soul! Yet this at least I do know:
mine thou art, and mine thou shalt remain, though we never meet again
on earth: mine, as I am thine, though the true, good race of Jennico
wither and die on my barren stock.

But what serves it to rant in this fashion to myself when I have not
even the satisfaction of hearing a contradiction—not even an excuse
to shake my fury? Small satisfaction likewise has that puling, mincing
messenger to carry back to you, my wife. Poor old man! I am fain to
laugh even in my anger when I recall his panic-stricken countenance of
an hour ago.

The hounds were to meet at ten this morning at Sir Percy Spalding’s,
not three miles from here, and so I was taking the day easy. I had but
just finished breakfast, and was standing on the steps of the porch
quaffing a draught of ale, as I awaited my horse, sniffing the while
the moist southern wind; and my thoughts for once were pleasantly
occupied—for once the gnawing canker was at rest within me. Presently
my attention was awakened by the rumbling sound of wheels; and, looking
towards the avenue, yet so sparsely be-leaved as to afford a clear view
down its whole length, I saw coming along it, at slow pace, a heavy
vehicle, which in time disclosed itself as a shabby, hired travelling
chaise, drawn by an ancient horse, and driven by that drunken scoundrel
Bateman from Yarmouth, once a familiar figure to my childish eyes. My
heart leaped. I expected no one—my mother was at Cheltenham for the
waters—no one, save, indeed, her whom I ever unconsciously await!

It was perhaps the unreasonable disappointment that fell upon me, when,
gazing eagerly for a glimpse of the occupant, as the carriage lumbered
through the inner gate, I saw that it contained but the single figure
of an old man (huddled, despite the spring warmth of the day, in furs
to the very chin) that turned me into so bitter and black a temper.

Even as the chaise drove up before the steps, and as I stood staring
down at it, motionless, although within me there was turmoil enough,
the fellows came round with my horses. Bess, the Irish mare, took
umbrage at the little grotesque figure that, with an alertness one
would scarcely have given it credit for, skipped from the chaise,
looking more like one of those images I have seen on Saxon clocks than
anything human. How she plunged and how the fool that held her stared,
and how I cursed him for not minding his business—it was a vast relief
to my feelings—and how the old gentleman regarded us as one newly come
among savages, and how he finally advanced upon me mincing—I laugh
again to think back upon it! But I had no mind to laughter then. ’Twas
plain, before he opened his mouth to speak, that my visitor hailed
from foreign parts. And at closer acquaintance the reason why, even
from a distance, he had appeared to me as something less than human,
became evident. His countenance was shrivelled and seared by recent
smallpox; scarred in a manner perfectly fantastic to behold.

That curse of my life, that persistent hope—I believe I could get
along well enough, but ’tis the hope that kills me—began to stir
within me.

“Have I the honour of speaking to Captain Basil de Jennico?” said the
puppet in French; and before the question was well out of his mouth, I
had capped it with another, breathless:

“Come you not from Rothenburg?”

He bowed and scraped: each saw he had his answer. I was all civility
now, Heaven help me! and cordial enough to make up for a more
discourteous reception.

I ordered my horses back to the stables, dismissed the chaise, in spite
of the newcomer’s protestations, and led him within the house, calling
for refreshments for him; all the while a thousand questions, to which
I yet dreaded the answers, burning on my tongue.

I had installed him in the deepest armchair in the apartment I
habitually used; I had kindled a fire with my own hands, for he was
shivering in his furs, whether from fear, embarrassment, or cold, I
know not—maybe all three together; I had placed a glass of wine at his
elbow, which he sipped nervously when I pressed him; and then, when I
knew that I should hear what had brought him, from very cowardliness I
was mute. It seemed to me as if my courtesies embarrassed him, and that
this augured ill, although (I reasoned with myself) if she should send
me a messenger at all, I ought to anticipate good tidings.

“I am fortunate, sir,” began the old man in quavering tones, “to find
you at home. Sir, I have come a long way to seek you. I went first
to your castle at Tollendhal, where your steward, a countryman of my
own, to whose politeness I am much indebted, gave me very careful
instructions as to the road to your English domicile. A most worthy and
amiable person! I should not so soon have had the advantage of making
your acquaintance had it not been for the help he gave me. I have come
by Yarmouth, sir: the wind was all in our favour. I am informed we had
a good passage.” Here he shivered, and a yet greener shade underspread
the scars upon his brow. “But I am not accustomed to the sea, and I
have been ill, sir, lately, very ill.”

He coughed awkwardly, reached out his trembling hand for the wine, but
put down the glass again untasted.

“Surely I am right in believing,” said I, “that you come from some
one very dear to me—from one from whom I am parted by a series of
unfortunate misunderstandings?” I felt my lips grow cold as I spoke,
and I know that I panted.

“If you have a letter,” said I, “give it to me.”

I reached out my hand, and saw, with a strange sort of self-pity, that
it shook no less than had the old man’s withered claw.

“Or if you have a message,” cried I, breaking out at last, “speak, for
God’s sake!”

He drew back from my impetuosity. There was fear of me in his eye; at
the same time, I thought, with a chill about my heart, compassion.

“My good sir,” he said, between “hums” and “ha’s” which well-nigh
drove me distracted, “I believe I may say—in fact, I will venture to
assert that I have come from the—ahem, ahem!—young lady I apprehend
you speak of. I have been made aware of the—ah, hum!—unfortunate
circumstances. The young lady——.” Here he hitched himself up in his
chair and began to fumble in the skirts of his floating coat. Between
his furs and his feebleness this was a sufficiently lengthy operation
to give time for my hopes to kindle stronger again and my small stock
of patience to fail.

“You are doubtless prepared to hear,” he went on at length, “that
the young lady, being now fully alive to the consequence of
her—her—ill-considered conduct—a girlish freak, sir, a child’s, I
may say!—believes that she will be meeting your wishes, nay, your
express desire, by joining with you in an application to his Holiness
for the immediate annulment of so irregular a marriage.”

“What?” cried I with a roar, leaping from my chair. So occupied had
I been in watching the movements of his hands as he fingered a great
pocket-book, expecting him every instant to produce a letter from her
to me, that I had scarce heeded the drift of his babble till the last
words struck upon my ear.

“Annul our marriage!” I thundered, “at my desire! In the devil’s name,
who are you, and whence come you, for it could not be my wife who has
sent you with such a message to me?”

The little man had jumped, too, at my violence—like a grasshopper. But
my question evidently touched his pride in a sensitive quarter, and
roused him to a sense of offence in which he forgot his tremors.

“Truly, sir, truly, you remind me,” he said tartly. “If you will have
but a little patience, I was in the very act of seeking my credentials
when you so—ahem!—impetuously interrupted me.”

As he spoke, with a skip and a bow, which recalled I know not what
vague memory of a bygone merry hour, he drew forth a folded sheet, and,
unfolding it, presented it to me. I knew the handwriting too well to
doubt its authenticity. How often had I conned and kissed the few poor
lines she had ever written to me; ay, although they had been penned in
her assumed character!

 “TO M. DE JENNICO—

 “I empower M. de Schreckendorf to act for me in the affair M. de
 Jennico wots of, and I agree beforehand to all his arrangements.”

 (Thereto the signature.)

Not a word more; not a word of regret, even of anger! The same
implacable, unbending resentment.

I stood staring at the lines, reading them and re-reading them, and
each letter seemed to print itself like fire upon my soul. I heard, as
in a dream, my visitor pour forth further explanations, still in that
tone of injury my roughness had evoked.

“I am myself, sir, a friend. Yes, I may say a friend, an old friend, of
the young lady. Her parents—ahem!—have always reposed confidence in
me. I, sir, am M. de Schreckendorf. The very fact, I should think, of
my being in possession of this letter, of this document”—here there
was a great rattling of stiff parchment—“will assure you, I should
hope, of my identity. Nevertheless, if you wish further proof, I have a
letter to our ambassador in London, and I am willing to accompany you
to his house, or meet you there at your convenience. Indeed, it would
perhaps be more proper and correct, in every way, that the whole matter
should be settled and the documents duly attested at the residence of
the accredited representative of Lusatia. I will not disguise to you
that his Serene Highness, the Duke himself, takes—takes an interest
in the lady, and is desirous of having this business, which so nearly
affects the welfare and credit of a well-known member of his Court,
settled in the promptest and most efficacious manner. A sad escapade,
you must admit yourself!”

And all the while my heart was crying out within me in an agony, “Oh,
Ottilie, how could you, how could you? Was the memory of those days
nothing to you? Is the knowledge of my love and sorrow nothing to you?
Are you a woman, and have you no forgiveness?”

Taking perhaps my silence for acquiescence (for this messenger of
my wife, albeit entrusted with so delicate a mission, was no shrewd
diplomatist), M. de Schreckendorf here spread out with an agreeable
flourish an amazing-looking Latin document with rubrics ready filled
up, it seemed, but for certain spaces left blank, for the names, I
suppose, of the appealing parties.

“I have been led to understand,” pursued he then in tones of greatly
increased confidence, “that you entirely concur in the lady’s desire
for the annulment of this contestable union, the actual legality
of which, indeed, is too doubtful to be worth discussing. From the
religious point of view, however, one of chief importance to my young
friend (I think I may call her so), the matter is otherwise serious,
for there was, no doubt, a sacrament administered by a priest, duly
ordained, but unfortunately, through old age and natural infirmity,
wanting in due prudence, and further misled as to the identity of
one of the contracting persons. A sacrament, sir, there undoubtedly
was; but I am glad to inform you that special leading divines have
been already approached upon the subject, and they give good hope,
sir, good hope, that a properly drawn up petition, supported by the
signatures of the two persons concerned, will meet at Rome with most
favourable consideration. The ecclesiastical part of the difficulty
once settled, the legal one goes of itself.”

I was gradually becoming attentive to the run of his glib speech. I
hardly know now how I contained myself so far, but I kept a rigid
silence, and for yet another minute or two gave him all my ear.

“Such being the case,” he continued, “I need hardly trouble you to
disturb yourself by journeying all the way to London. We need proceed
no farther than Yarmouth, indeed, and there in the presence of two
competent witnesses—I would suggest a priest of our religion and some
neighbouring gentleman of substance—all you will have to do is just
to sign this document. I repeat, I understand that you are naturally
anxious likewise to be delivered from a marriage in which you have
considered yourself aggrieved: and not unnaturally.” Here the little
monster threw a sly look at me, and added: “You were made the victim
of a little deception, eh? Then in the course of a few months—Rome is
always slow, you know—you will both be as free as air! With no more
loss to either of you than the loss of—ahem!—a little inexperience.”

As free as air! _Ottilie as free as air!_ Then it was that the violence
of my wrath overflowed. That moment is a blank to my memory. I only
know that I heard the sound of my own voice ringing with shattering
violence in the room, and I came to myself again to find that, with
a strength my fury alone could have lent, I was shredding the tough
parchment between my fingers, so that the ground was strewn with its
rags. What most restored me to something like composure was the abject
terror of the unlucky messenger, who, huddled away from me in a corner
of the room, was peeping round a chair at me, much as you might see a
monkey caught in mischief. His teeth were chattering! Good anger was
wasted on so miserable an object, and indeed the feelings that swayed
me had had roots in ground such as he could never tread upon.

“Come out, M. de Schreckendorf,” I said, with a calmness which
surprised myself—but there are times when a man’s courage rises with
the very magnitude of a calamity—“you have nothing to fear from me.
You will want an answer to carry back to her that sent you. Take her
this.”

I stooped as I spoke, and gathered together the shreds of the
document, folded them in a great sheet of paper, and tied it with
ribbon into a neat parcel.

“Not a word,” I went on; “I will hear no more! When you have rested and
partaken of refreshment, one of my carriages will be at your disposal
for whatever point you may desire to reach to-day. Stay, you will want
some evidence to show that you have fulfilled your embassy.”

Sitting down to my writing-table, I hastily addressed the packet to
“Madame Basil de Jennico,” adding thereafter her distinctive title
as maid of honour. This done, I sealed it with my great seal, M. de
Schreckendorf meanwhile uttering uncouth little groans.

“Here, sir,” said I, holding out the packet with its bold inscription,
“they will no longer, it is evident, deny the existence at the Court of
Lusatia of the person I have here addressed. Here, sir. Take this to my
wife, and tell her that her husband has more respect than she has for
the holy sacrament he received with her. Here, sir!”

At every “Here, sir,” I advanced a step upon him, holding out the
bundle, and at every step I took he retreated, till impatiently I flung
it on the table nearest him, and making him a low ironical bow of
farewell, turned to leave him.

I paused a moment on the threshold of the room, however, and had the
satisfaction of seeing him, after throwing his hands heavenwards, as if
in despairing protest, bring them down again on the packet and proceed
to stuff it into the recesses of his coat.

I turned once more to go, when to my surprise he called after me in
tones unexpectedly stern and loud:

“Young man, young man, this is a grave mistake; have a care!”

I shrugged my shoulders and slammed the door upon his warning cry. Nor,
though he subsequently sent twice by my servants—first to demand, then
to supplicate, a further interview—would I consent to parley with him
again.

I passed a couple of restless hours, until, at length, from an upper
window I saw him depart from my house in far greater state and comfort
than he had come.

Now, as I write, I know that he is being whirled along the Yarmouth
road at the best pace of my fine horses, speeding back to Lausitz to
take my wife my eloquent answer.




CHAPTER IV

 NARRATIVE OF AN EPISODE AT WHITE’S CLUB, IN WHICH CAPTAIN JENNICO WAS
 CONCERNED, SET FORTH FROM CONTEMPORARY ACCOUNTS


THE tenth hour of an October night had rung out over a fog-swathed
London; yet, despite the time of year, unfashionable for town life,
despite the unpropitious weather, the long card-room at White’s was
rapidly filling. The tables, each lit by its own set of candles, shone
dimly like a little green archipelago in a sea of mist. Groups were
gathering round sundry of these boards; the dice had begun to rattle,
voices to ring out. The nightly scene was being repeated, wherein all
were actors, down to the waiters, who had their private bets, and lost
and won with their patrons.

Somewhat apart in the seclusion of a window-recess, cosily ensconced
so as to profit of the warmth of the great yellow fire, sat three
gentlemen. A fourth chair remained vacant at their table; and from
the impatient glances which two of the party now and again turned
upon the different doors, it was evident that the arrival of its
expected occupant was overdue. The third gentleman, who bore the stamp
of a distinctly foreign race,—although his hair, which he wore but
slightly powdered, was of a fair hue, and his face rather sanguine
than dark,—seemed to endure the delay with complete indifference.
His attention was wholly given to the shuffling of a pack of cards,
which he manipulated with extreme dexterity, while he listened to his
companions’ remarks with impassive countenance. He was a handsome
man, despite a bulk of frame and feature which almost amounted to
coarseness; hardly yet in the prime of life, with full blue eyes
and full red lips, which took, when he spoke or smiled, a curious
curve, baring the canine in almost sinister fashion. The Chevalier
de Ville-Rouge, introduced at White’s by the Prussian Ambassador, as
a distinguished officer of the great Frederick visiting England for
his pleasure, had shown himself so daring a player as to be welcomed
among the most noted gamblers. He had lost and won large sums with
great breeding, and had in his six weeks’ stay contrived to improve
an imperfect knowledge of an alien tongue in such fashion as to make
intercourse with his English companions quite sufficiently easy.

The youngest of the trio at the table in the corner, this foggy
night, was naturally the one to display his feelings most openly. A
clean-faced, square-built English lad, fresh it would seem from the
playing fields of school, yet master of his title and fortune, and
cornet in the Life Guards, Sir John Beddoes was already a familiar
figure in the club, as indeed his finances could bear doleful
testimony. The green cuff-guards adjusted over his delicate ruffles,
the tablets and pencil ready at his elbow, it was clear he was itching
to put another slice of his patrimony to the hazard. His opposite
neighbour, Beau Carew (as he dearly loved to hear himself dubbed), was
a man of another kidney, and fifteen years of nights, systematically
turned into days, had left their stamp upon features once noted for
their beauty. Though ready now with a sneer or jest for his companion’s
youthful eagerness, his eyes wandering restlessly from the clock to the
doors betrayed an almost equal anxiety to begin the business of the
evening.

“Devil take Jennico!” cried the Baronet at last, striking the table
so that the dice leaped in their box; “‘pon my soul it’s too bad! He
gave me an appointment here at ten to-night, and it wants now but six
minutes to eleven.”

“Bet he comes before the clock strikes,” interposed Mr. Carew; “ten
guineas?”

“Done with you, Dick,” said Sir John promptly.

The bet was registered, and five minutes passed in watching the
timepiece on the mantel-shelf: all the young Baronet’s eagerness being
now against the event he had been burning to hasten. The strokes rang
out. With a smile he held out his broad palm, into which Carew duly
dropped ten pieces.

“‘Tis the first bit of luck the fellow has brought me yet. Gad, I
believe my luck has turned! Why the devil don’t he come, that I may
ease him of a little of that superfluous wealth of his? I swear he gets
more swollen day by day, while we grow lean—eh, Carew?—like the kine
in the Bible. D—— him!”

“The water goes to the river, as the French say, in spite of all our
dams,” sniggered Carew; “but as for me I am content that you should go
on playing with Jennico so that I may back him; my purse has not been
in such good condition for many a long day. Poor devil! How monstrous
unfortunate his amours must still be! I only wish,” with a conscious
wriggle, “he could give me the recipe.”

“Yet you have lost on him now,” retorted Beddoes, tapping his breast
pocket, “and if you back him to-night, you lose on him again, I warn
you. I am in the vein, I tell ye! But there is the quarter! Rot him,
I believe he is going to rat after all! Bet you he don’t come till
half-past, Carew. Fifty?”

“Done,” said Carew quietly, noting down the entry. “He _is_ erratic, I
grant you—he, he, he!—did you note me, Chevalier? But he has a taste
for the table, though I believe he’d as soon lose as win, were it only
for the sake of change. ’Tis about all he cares for—the dullest dog!
Bet you there is not a man in the room has heard him laugh.”

“You won’t find any fool to take up that bet, Carew. Heigh-ho! I’d
willingly accommodate myself with a little of his melancholy at the
price.”

“Better look up a princess for yourself then, Jack,” said Carew;
“perhaps the Chevalier here can give you an introduction to some other
fascinating German Highness.”

“Won’t it do over here?” asked Beddoes, with a grin. “D’ye think I’d
have a chance with Augusta? Twenty past! Let him keep away till the
half-hour now. Zounds! ’twould be a mean trick if he failed me on my
lucky night; though I don’t want him for ten minutes yet. He has fairly
cleared me out; the team will have to go next if I don’t get back some
of my I O U’s.”

“Why, it would be a very good thing for thee, Jack, if he played thee
false. I say so though I should lose most damnably by it. Thy team
will go, thy coaches will go, thy carts, thy grooms, thy dog, thy cat.
Why, man, thou must lose—’tis as plain as the nose on Lady Maria’s
face. And he must win, poor wretch, and I too, since I back him. Ask
the Chevalier if it is not a text of truth all the world over: lucky
at cards, unlucky in love. Never look so sulky, boy; ’tis providential
compensation.”

“You surprise _me_, gentlemen,” said the Chevalier, with a strong
guttural accent, lifting as he spoke his heavy lids for the first
time. “I was not aware that Captain Jennico was so afflicted in his
affections.”

“You surprise _me_, Chevalier,” returned Carew gaily. “I deemed you
and he such friends. Why, I won a hundred from my Lord Ullswater but
yestereven by wagering him that you would be the only man in the room
to whom Jennico would speak more than ten words within the hour. The
counting was not difficult. He said sixty-four to you and five to Jack.”

“Mr. Jennico has certainly shown me both kindness and sympathy,” said
the Chevalier, who had now folded his strong white hands over the pack
of cards, and sat the very embodiment of repose. “Doubtless our having
both served in the same part of the world, though under different
standards, has somewhat drawn us together: but he has not made me his
confidant.”

“And so you don’t know the tale of Jennico and the Princess? ’Tis a
dashed fine tale. Carew, you are a wit, or think you are—it comes to
much the same thing: tune up, man, give your version; for,” turning to
the Chevalier again, “there are now as many versions current as days in
the month. ’Tis twenty-five minutes past; you had better get your I O U
ready, Master Carew.”

“I have three hundred chances yet,” said Carew. Then turning to the
foreigner, “Would you really, sir, care to hear the true story of our
friend’s discomfiture? I am about the only man in town that knows the
_true_ one; but all that’s old scandal now—town talk of last year, as
stale as Lady Villiers’s nine virgin daughters. There are a dozen new
ones since. Would you not rather hear the last of his Royal Highness
the Duke of C. and Lady W.? That is choice if you like, and as fresh as
Rosalinda’s last admirer—eh, John?”

“I am not fond,” said the Chevalier drily, “of hearing those discussed
who, being High Born, have the right to claim respect and homage. But
I confess to some interest in my friend Mr. Jennico.”

“Begad, then,” responded Mr. Carew, flicking a grain of snuff from the
ruffles of his pouting bosom, “I cannot promise to spare your scruples
concerning scandal in high quarters, for the heroine of the romance
is, it would appear, one of your own German royalties; but since you
wish the story, you shall have it. There is then a certain Dorothea
Maria Augusta Carolina Sophia, etc., etc., daughter of some Duke of
Alsatia, Swabia, Dalmatia—no, stay, Lusatia, wherever that may be;
ay, that’s the name—one of your two hundred odd principalities—you
know all about it, I don’t—and Jennico, who, as you are aware, was in
the Imperial service, met this wondrously beautiful Princess at some
Court function somewhere. They danced, they conversed, she was fair and
he was fond—fill it in for yourself. He thought himself a tremendous
cock of the walk; to be brief, he aspired to act King Cophetua and
the beggar maid, turned the other way, with the exception that he is
as rich as Crœsus. He made so sure of the lady’s favour that he wrote
over to his mother to announce the marriage as a settled thing. A royal
alliance, with the prospect of speedily mounting to the throne on the
strength of his wife’s pretensions! Ha, ha!”

“‘Tis a droll story,” said the Chevalier gravely; “and then?”

“Oh, then!—Zounds! you can conceive the flutter in the dovecot over
him. My Lady Jennico, his mother, was blown out with pride, swimming in
the higher regions, a perfect balloon! Gad, she would no longer bow to
any one less than a Duke! She ran hither and thither cackling the news
like the hen that has laid an egg. She sent—I was told on the best
authority—to the Lord Chamberlain to know what precedence the young
couple would be given at the next Birthday. She called at the College
of Arms to inquire about the exact marshalling of the coat of Lusatia
with that of Jennico. He, he! And whether the resultant monstrosity
would comport a royal crown!”

“Faith, that’s a good one,” said Sir John, with a guffaw; “I had not
heard _that_, Carew.”

“Fact, fact, I assure you,” smiled the wit.

“Very droll,” repeated M. de Ville-Rouge, with impassive muscles.

“When,” continued Carew, “lo and behold, what a falling off was there,
as young Roscius says! What a come down! Humpty-Dumpty was nothing to
it—poor Lady Jennico’s egg! Ah! well, we all know pride must have a
fall. Your fair compatriot, sir, had but amused herself with the fine
Englishman, for which I would be loath to blame her. She gave him,
it is said, indeed, every pledge of her affection. But when he began
to prate of rings and marriage lines, and pressed her to become Mrs.
Jennico, she found him a little too presumptuous—at least, I take it
so; and being, it would seem, of a merry turn of mind, devised a little
joke to play upon him. Pretending to yield at last to his urgency, she
gave her consent to a secret marriage, and in the dark chapel palmed
off her chambermaid upon him! Ha, ha! So the poor devil, carrying off
his bride by night in high glee, thinking himself a very fine fellow
indeed, never discovered till he had brought her home that he had given
his hand and name to a squinting, sausage-nosed, carroty maid, daughter
of the Court confectioner, called in baptism by the Princess’s names,
like half the girls in the town. The story goes that the Princess with
all the Court were waiting at his house to see the happy pair arrive,
and I have had secret, but absolutely incontestable, information that
the Princess laughed till she had to be bled.”

M. de Ville-Rouge smiled at last in evident appreciation of the humour
of the situation.

“It is, on my honour, a most comic story,” he said. “But how come you
so well acquainted with the matter? Surely my poor friend Jennico has
ill-chosen his confidant.”

“Devil a word have I heard from Jennico,” said Carew. “Faith, he has
ever been the same cheerful, conversational fellow you wot of, and
it would take a bold man to question him. But truth, you know, will
out—truth will out in time.”

“Ay,” said the Chevalier, and was shaken with silent merriment.

“Half-past eleven,” roared the Baronet, suddenly, stretching out a
great paw and snapping his fingers under the beau’s face.

“Zounds!” cried the wit, turning to look at the clock with some
discomposure; “no, Jack, no, there is still a fraction of a minute—the
half-hour has not struck. And, by Heaven, here’s our man! Had you not
better sup with Rosalinda to-night?”

Sir John, in the act of looking round pettishly—he had not yet
reached that enviable state of mind in which a gambler declares that
the greatest delight after winning is that of losing—found his
attention unexpectedly arrested by the countenance of the Chevalier
de Ville-Rouge, which presented at that moment such an extraordinary
appearance that the young man forgot his irritation, and remained
gazing at it in open-mouthed astonishment.

The features, usually remarkable for their set, rather heavy composure,
were perturbed to the verge of distortion. The whole face was stained
with angry purple, the veins of the forehead swollen like whipcord.

Sir John Beddoes’s wits were none of the sharpest, but it was clear
even to him that the emotion thus expressed was one of furious
disappointment.

But while he cudgelled his brains for an explanation of this sudden
humour in a man who was neither winner nor loser by Basil Jennico’s
appearance, the face of the Chevalier resumed its wonted indifferent
expression and dulness of hue with a rapidity that altogether
confounded the observer.

By this time the tall figure of the new-comer had wended its way down
the room and was close upon them. All turned to greet him, and poor Sir
John found his feelings once more subjected to a shock.

The acquaintances of Basil Jennico were accustomed to find his brow
charged with gloom, to see his cheek wear the pallor of one who sleeps
little and thinks much. But in his demeanour to-night was more than
the usual sombreness, on his countenance other than natural pallor.
As he stood for a moment responding absently to the Chevalier’s hearty
greeting, and Carew’s bantering salutation of “All hail!” it became
further apparent that his dress was disordered, that his ruffles were
torn and blood-stained, that his brocade jacket was jaggedly rent upon
the left side, and also ominously stained here and there.

“Gadzooks, man!” exclaimed Carew, his bleared grey eyes lighting at
the prospect of a new wholesale scandal for his little retail shop.
“What has happened thee? Wounded? How? Ah, best not inquire perhaps!
Beddoes, lad, see you he has got reasons for his delay. Who knows but
that you may have a chance to-night after all. A deadly dig, well
aimed under the fifth rib, a true Benedick’s pinking; or shall we say
goring?—ahem! Have a care, Jennico, these wounds from horned beasts
are reputed ill to heal. Ah, sad dog, sad dog! I will warrant thou hast
had the balance nevertheless to thy credit. Now do I remember a little
lady was casting very curious looks at you at Almack’s last night.”

Basil had flung himself into the chair that had so long awaited him,
and seemed to lend but a half-apprehending ear to the prattler on his
left, who, as he leant towards him, was hardly able to restrain his
eager hand from fingering the hurt so unmistakably evidenced. On the
right the Chevalier as unsuccessfully pressed him with earnest queries,
manifesting, it would seem, a genuine anxiety.

“Great God, my friend! what has happened?”

The stentorian tones of Sir John Beddoes, who saw an opportunity of
retrieving his fortunes, here broke in hastily upon Carew’s flow of
words: “Bet you double or quits it was _not_ Lady Sue,” and aroused Mr.
Jennico’s attention.

“I should be loath to spoil sport,” he said, “but I advise no one to
bet on my bonnes fortunes. This scratch—for it is nothing more, Mr.
Carew, and I would show it to you with pleasure in reward for your
flattering interest, but the surgeon has just bound it up very neatly,
and it would be a pity to disturb his handiwork—is but the sixth of
a series of attempts on my life, made within the last six weeks, by
persons unknown, for purposes likewise unknown.”

“Dash it, Jennico, you might have let me enter the bet,” said the
Baronet sulkily, while Carew, sniffing a choicer titbit of gossip than
he had expected, wriggled with pleasure, and the Chevalier expressed
unbounded amazement that such a state of things could exist, above all
in England.

“It is even so,” resumed Basil, turning to the last speaker as if glad
to give vent to some of his pent-up irritation. “I confess that when I
returned to my native land I did expect to find at least a quiet life.
Why, in my house at Tollendhal, where those who surrounded me were
half savages, ruled by the stick and the halter, where it was deemed
imprudent for the master to walk the roads without his body-guard,
there was never so much as a stone thrown after me. But here, in old
England, my life, I believe, would not be worth backing for a week.” He
looked round with a smile in which melancholy and disdain were blended.

“Now, d—— me!” cried Sir John, struck in his easy good nature into
sudden warmth and sympathy, “nay, now d—— me, Jennico! I will take
any man a hundred guineas that you are alive this day month.”

“Done!” said the Chevalier, with such unexpected energy that all three
turned round to look at him with surprise; perceiving which he went on,
laughing to conceal an evident embarrassment: “Your betting habits here
are infectious, but while I will not withdraw, I am prepared to be glad
to lose rather than gain for once.” He fixed Basil across the table
with his brooding eye as he spoke, and bowed to him, then turned to
the Baronet. “No, Sir Beddoes, I am not going to recede from the wager.”

This, as a wager worth recording, was forthwith entered into the club
book. Basil looked on, half in amusement, half in bitterness.

“‘Tis likely, after all,” he said, addressing Sir John, “that you may
win and that the Chevalier may be afforded the pleasure of losing, for
I seem to bear a charmed life. Perhaps,” he added with a sigh, “because
I care so little for it. Though to be sure there is something galling
to a man in being shot at from behind a hedge and set on in the dark;
in not knowing where the murderer may be lying in wait for him, at what
street corner, at what turn of the road, behind what hayrick. If I have
not kept my appointment over punctually to-night, it is because a rogue
has had me by the Park gateway in Piccadilly. There is more here than
mere accidental villainy. The next will be that I shall see murder in
my own servant’s eyes. Or, who knows, find it lying at the bottom of my
cup. Pah! I am as bold as most men; I would welcome death more readily
than most; but, by Heaven! it is unfair treatment, and I have had more
than my share of it.”

“Why, Jennico,” said Carew, “you never spoke a word of this before. A
fellow has no right to keep such doings dark. Tell us the details.”

“Ay, tell us all about it,” said Sir John, with round eyes ready to
start from their orbits.

“True,” said Basil, “you have now an interest, Jack, in knowing what
sort of odds are against you. Well, you shall learn all you wish; but
let us to supper, gentlemen, meanwhile, that we may lose no further
time and start better fortified upon the evening’s business, if Beddoes
is still anxious for his revenge.”




CHAPTER V

NARRATIVE OF AN EPISODE AT WHITE’S CONTINUED


IT was over a dish of devilled kidneys and a couple of bottles of
Burgundy that—pressed by the eager curiosity of his English friends,
no less than by the interest M. de Ville-Rouge continued to profess
in his concerns with all Teutonic earnestness—Basil Jennico began to
narrate his misadventures in the same tone of ironical resentment with
which he had already alluded to them.

“It began at Farringdon Dane,” he said, “on the little property in
Suffolk which my mother has placed at my disposal. ’Twas some six weeks
gone, walking through the wood at sundown, I was shot at from behind a
tree. The charge passed within an inch of my face, to embed itself in a
sapling behind me. I was, according to my wont—an evil habit—deeply
absorbed in thought, and was alone; consequently, although I searched
the copse from end to end, I could find no trace of my well-wisher.
That was number one. I gave very little heed to the occurrence at
first, believing it to be some poacher’s trick, or maybe the unwitting
act of what you call in your country, Chevalier, a Sunday sportsman,
who mistook my brown beaver for the hide of a nobler quarry. But the
next attempt gave me more serious food for reflection. This time I
was shot at while sitting reading in my study at night, when all the
household had retired. It was close weather, and I had drawn the
curtains and opened the windows. The bullet again whizzed by my ear,
and this time shattered the lamp beside me. No doubt the total darkness
which ensued saved me from a second and better aim.”

“You are a fortunate young man,” said the Chevalier gravely.

“Do you think so, Chevalier?” answered Jennico, with a smile which all
the bitterness of his thoughts could not altogether rob of sweetness.
“I do not think any one need envy my fate. Well, gentlemen, you can
conceive the uproar which ensued upon the event I have just described.
The best efforts of myself, my servants, and my dogs failed, however,
to track the fugitive, although the marks of what seemed a very neat
pair of shoes were imprinted on my mother’s most choice flowerbeds.
After this adventure I received a couple more of such tokens of
good-will in the country. Once I was shot at crossing a ford in full
daylight, and my poor nag was struck; this time I did catch a glimpse
of the scoundrel, but he was mounted too, and poor Bess, though she
did her utmost, fell dead after the first twenty strides in pursuit.
Thereupon my mother grew so morbidly nervous, and the mystery resisting
all our attempts at elucidation, I gave way to her entreaties and
returned to London, where she deemed I would find myself in greater
safety.”

“And has your friend followed you up here?” exclaimed Sir John,
forgetting his supper in his interest. “By George, this is a good
story!”

“I was stopped on the road by a highwayman,” answered Mr. Jennico
quietly. “Nothing unusual in that, you will say; but there was
something a little out of the common nevertheless in the fact that he
fired his pistol at me without the formality of bidding me stand and
deliver; which formality, I believe, is according to the etiquette of
the road. I am glad to tell you that I think we left our mark on the
gentleman this time, for as he rode away he bent over his saddle, we
thought, like one who will not ride very far. But, faith! the brood is
not extirpated, and the worthy folk who display such an interest in me,
finding hot lead so unsuccessful, have now taken to cold steel.”

Sir John Beddoes damned his immortal soul with great fervour.

“Pray, sir,” remarked Mr. Carew with an insinuating smile, “may not the
identity of the murderer be of easier solution than you deem? Are there
no heirs to your money?”

“I might pretend to misunderstand you, Mr. Carew,” said Basil,
flushing, “although your meaning is plain. Permit me to say, however,
that I fail to find a point to the jest.”

“‘Twas hardly likely you would find humour in a point so inconveniently
aimed against yourself,” answered Carew airily. “But ’tis a rarity,
Jennico, to find a man ready to take up the cudgels for his heirs and
successors. Nevertheless, I crave your pardon, the more so because I am
fain to know what befell you to-night.”

“To-night was an ill night to choose for so evil an attempt,” said
the Chevalier, rousing himself from a fit of musing and looking
reflectively round upon the fog, which hung ever closer even in the
warm and well-lit room.

“It was the very night for their purpose, my dear Chevalier,” returned
the young man with artificial gaiety. “Faith, it was like to have
succeeded with them, and I make sure mine enemy, whoever he may be,
is pluming himself even now upon the world well rid of my cumbersome
existence. I was on foot, too, and what with the darkness and emptiness
of the streets I was, I may say, delivered into their hands. But they
are sad bunglers. One of my pretty fellows in Moravia would have done
such a job for me, were I in the way to require it, as cleanly and with
as little ado as you pick your first pheasant in October, Jack. And yet
it may be that I am providentially preserved—preserved for a better
fate.” Here he tossed off his glass as if to a silent toast.

“But why on foot, my dear Jennico? On foot—fie, fie, and in this
weather! What could you expect?” cried Carew with a shiver of horror.

“If you were not so fond of interruption, Mr. Carew,” said the
Chevalier with a sinister smile, “perhaps we might sooner get to the
end of Mr. Jennico’s story. We are all eagerness to hear about this
last miraculous preservation.”

“I hardly know myself how I come to be alive! I could get no sedan,
my dear Carew, and that was just the rub. What with Lady Bedford’s
card-party and the fog, there was not one to be had within a mile, and
I had given my stablemen a holiday. I sent my servant upon the quest
for a chair, but got tired of waiting, mindful of my appointment with
my friend and neighbour here, and so it was that I set forth, as I
said, on foot and alone. The mist was none so thick but that I could
find my way, and I was pursuing it at a round pace when, opposite
Devonshire House, some fellow bearing a link crossed from over the
road, came straight upon me without a word, raised his torch, and
peered intently into my face. I halted, but before I could demand the
meaning of his insolence down went his fire-brand fizzing into the
mud, out came his sword, and I was struck with such extreme violence
that, in the very attempt to recover my balance, I fell backwards all
my length upon the pavement, skewered like a chicken, and carrying
the skewer with me. Some gentlemen happened to reach the spot at that
moment, there was a cry for the watch, but the rogue had made good use
of his heels and the fog, and was out of sight and hearing in a moment.”

“Verdammt villain!” cried M. de Ville-Rouge, whose brow had grown ever
blacker during this account. “Say, my amiable friend, did you not get
even a lunge at him?”

“Lunge, man! I was skewered, I tell you; I could not even draw! His
sword—’twas as sharp as a razor, a fine sword, I have had it brought
to my chambers—had gone clean through innumerable folds of cloak
and cape, back and front, only to graze my ribs after all. It was
bent double by the fall, and it took the strength of the watchman and
the two gentlemen to draw it out again. By George! they thought I was
spitted beyond hope.”

“A foul affair altogether,” murmured Carew absently; but the sorry jest
was lost in the strident tones of the Chevalier, who now anxiously
plied Basil as to the surgeon’s opinion of the wound, and expressed
himself relieved beyond measure by the reply.

At this juncture Sir John Beddoes, who had drunk enough to inflame his
gambler’s ardour to boisterous pitch, began to clamour for his promised
revenge, and the whole party once more adjourned to the card-room.

In his heart, Basil Jennico would have been genuinely glad to be
unsuccessful at the hazard that night; partly from a good-natured
dislike to be the cause of the foolish young man’s complete ruin,
partly from a more personal feeling of superstition. But the luck ran
as persistently in his favour as ever.

Carew, with drawn tablets, began loudly to back the winner, challenging
all his acquaintance to wager against him. But although the high play
and Sir John’s increasing excitement and restlessness, as well as the
extraordinary good fortune which cleaved to Jennico, soon attracted
a circle of watchers, men were chary of courting what seemed certain
loss, and Carew found his easy gains not likely further to accrue.

Suddenly the Chevalier, who, with his cheek resting upon his hand,
had seemed plunged in deep reflection ever since they had left the
supper-room, rose, and with an air of geniality which sat awkwardly
enough upon him, cried out to the surprise of all—for he had not been
wont to back any player in the club:

“And there is really no one to side with my good friend Beddoes
to-night? Why then, Mr. Carew, I will be the man. Thunder-weather,
Beddoes,” clapping him on the shoulder—“I believe the luck will turn
yet; so brave a heart must needs force fortune! What shall it be, Mr.
Carew? Something substantial to encourage our friend.”

Jennico looked down at the pile of vouchers which lay at his elbow. It
amounted already to a terrible sum. Then he looked across at the boy’s
face, drawn, almost haggard in spite of its youth and chubbiness, and
sighed impatiently. He could not advise the fool to go home to bed;
yet for himself he was heartily sick of these winnings. The dice were
thrown again, Sir John’s hand trembling like a leaf; and again Basil
won, and again vouchers were added to the heap.

M. de Ville-Rouge threw a dark glance at the winner as he stepped up to
Carew to settle his own debt.

“You should not have backed me,” said Sir John ruefully, lifting his
eyes from the contemplation of the paper that meant for him another
step towards ruin. “The devil’s in it; I will play no more to-night!”

“Nay, then,” cried the Chevalier, “by your leave I will take your
place. I for one am no such believer in the continuance of Mr.
Jennico’s good luck.”

There was something harsh, almost offensive, in the tone of the last
words, and Basil turned in surprise towards the speaker.

“The Chevalier,” he said, “is very ready to risk his gold against me
to-night.”

“‘Tis so, sir,” returned the Chevalier, with such singular arrogance
that the watchers looked at each other significantly, and Carew
whispered to a young man behind his chair, “Faith, our foreign friend
is a bad loser after all!”

Basil had flushed, but he made no reply, and contented himself with
raising his eyebrows somewhat contemptuously, while he languidly pushed
his own dice-box across the table towards his new opponent.

“Come,” said the Chevalier, seizing it and shaking it fiercely, “I will
not mince the stake. A hundred guineas on the main.”

He threw, and the result of all his rattling being after all the lowest
cast of the evening, there was an ill-suppressed titter round the
table. Basil made no attempt to hide his smile as he lazily turned over
his dice and threw just one higher.

The German’s face had grown suffused with dark angry crimson; the veins
of his throat and his temples began to swell.

“Double or quits,” he cried huskily. He threw and lost; doubled his
stake, threw and lost again.

There was something about the scene that aroused the audience to more
potent interest than the ordinary nightly repeated spectacle of loss
and gain.

The extraordinary passion displayed by the foreigner, not only in his
inflamed countenance, but in the very motion of his hands, in the rigid
tension of his whole body, presented a strange contrast to the languor
of his opponent. It was, moreover, a revelation in one who had been
known hitherto as courteous and composed to formality.

“It is to be hoped some one has a lancet,” said Carew, “for I believe
the gentleman will have an apoplexy unless a little blood be let soon.”

“I fear me,” answered his companion, “that there will be more blood let
than you think for. Did you mark that look?”

At the same instant the Chevalier flung down his box with such
violence that the dice, rebounding, flew about the room, and gazed
across at Basil with open hatred, as one glad to give vent at last to
long-pent-up fury.

“By Heaven, Mr. Jennico!” he cried, “were it not that I have been told
how well you have qualified for this success, I should think there was
more in such marvellous throwing of dice than met the eye. But your
love affairs, I hear,—and I should have borne it in mind,—have been
so disastrous, so more than usually disastrous,” here his voice broke
into a sort of snarl, “as to afford sufficient explanation for the
marvel.”

There was a cold silence. Then Jennico rose, white as death.

“If you know so much about me, sir,” he said in tones that for all
the anger that vibrated in them fell harmoniously upon the ear after
the Chevalier’s savage outburst, “you should know too that there
is a subject upon which I never allow any one to touch. Your first
insinuation I pass over with the contempt it deserves, but as regards
your observation on what you are pleased to call my love affairs, I can
only consider it as an intentional insult. And this is my answer.”

The German in his turn had sprung to his feet, but Basil Jennico leant
across the table, and before he could guard himself struck him lightly
but deliberately across the mouth.




PART III




CHAPTER I

MEMOIR OF CAPTAIN BASIL JENNICO (RESUMED IN THE SPRING OF THE YEAR 1773)


  IN MY CASTLE OF TOLLENDHAL, _March, 1773_.

IT is the will of one whose wishes are law to me that I should proceed
with these pages, begun under such stress of mental trouble, until I
bring the tangled story of Basil Jennico’s marriage to its singular
settlement.

Without, as I now write, all over the land, the ice-bound brooks are
melting, and our fields and roads are deep in impassable mud. The whole
air is full of the breath of spring, as grateful to the nostrils as it
is stirring to the blood of man, to the sap of trees.

But it is ill getting about, for all that the springtime is so
sweet—as sweet and as capricious as a woman wooed—and thus there is
time for this occupation of scribe; yet it is a curious task for one
bred to so vastly different a trade; neither, God knows, do I find time
heavy on my hands just now! Nevertheless, I must even end this preface
as I have begun it, and say that I am fain to do as I am bidden.

The last line I traced upon these sheets (I am filled with a good deal
of wonder at, and no little admiration of myself, when I view what a
goodly mass I have already blackened) was penned at one of the darkest
moments of that dark year.

M. de Schreckendorf—little messenger of such ill omen—had but just
departed, and in the month that followed his visit the courage had
failed me to resume my melancholy record, though truly I had things
to relate that a man might consider like to form a more than usually
thrilling chapter of autobiography.

Towards the beginning of September, I, still a dweller upon my mother’s
little property—most peaceful haunt, it would seem, in the heart of
our peaceful land—began to find myself the object of a series of
murderous attacks—these, so repeated and inveterate, that it was
evident that they were dictated by the most deliberate purpose, and
the more alarming, perhaps, that I could give then no guess from what
quarter they proceeded.

Suspicion fell on a poaching gang, on a dishonest groom, on a
discharged bailiff. At length, seeing my mother like to fall ill of the
anxiety, I consented to return to London, although the country life
and the wholesome excitement of sport had afforded me a relief from my
restlessness which existence in the town was far from providing.

No sooner, however, was I fully installed in my London chambers, than
the persecution began afresh. I had fallen into an idle habit of going
night after night to White’s, there to bet and gamble with my modish
acquaintances. ’Twas not that the dice had any special attraction for
me, but that my nights were so long.

On my way thither one mid-October foggy evening, my life was once more
attempted, and this time with a deliberation and ferocity which might
well have proved successful at last.

As it was, however, I again providentially escaped, and was able to
proceed to the club, where I had an appointment with a poor youth—our
Norfolk neighbour, Sir John Beddoes—who had already lost a great deal
of money to me, and would not be content until he had lost a great deal
more: I had the most insupportable good luck.

I little knew that I should find awaiting me there the greatest danger
I had yet to run; that the head which had directed all these blows in
the dark was, de guerre lasse, preparing to attack me in the open, and
push its malice to a certain climax. A foreign gentleman—one Chevalier
de Ville-Rouge, as I knew him then—had sedulously sought first my
acquaintance, and thereupon my company, for some weeks past. And though
I had not found him very entertaining—I was not in the mood to be
entertained by any one—I had no reason to deny him either the one or
the other.

But this night, after first addressing me with looks and tones which
began to strike me as unwarrantable, he sat a round of hazard with me,
for the sole and determined purpose, as I even then saw, of grossly
insulting me. As a reply, I struck him across the face, for, however
transparent was the trap laid for me, the provocation before witnesses
was of a kind I could not pass over. And, ’fore Heaven, I believe I was
in my heart glad of the diversion!

The meeting was fixed for the next morning. Neither of us would consent
to delay, and indeed the German’s whole demeanour, once he had given
a loose rein to his fury, was more that of a wild beast thirsting for
blood than of a being endowed with reason.

Both Sir John Beddoes and Mr. Carew, who had formed our party,
indignant at the coarseness of the foreigner’s behaviour, volunteered
on the spot to be my seconds, and Carew, who has a subtle knowledge of
the etiquette of honour, arranged the details of our meeting. It was to
take place in Chelsea Gardens half an hour after sunrise. The weapons
chosen by M. de Ville-Rouge were swords, for although the quarrel had
been of his own seeking, my blow had given him the right of choice.

It was two o’clock before I found myself again alone in my rooms that
night, my friends having conducted me home, and seeming somewhat loath
to retire. I was longing for a couple of hours’ solitude before the
dawn of the day which might be my last. I felt that my career had
reached its turning-point, that this was an event otherwise serious
than any of the quarrels in which I had been hitherto embroiled, and
that the conduct of affairs was not in my hands.

Carew was anxious about me—he had never yet seen a duellist of my
kidney, I believe—and my very quietness puzzled him.

“Make that nutcracker attendant of yours prepare you a hot drink, man,”
cried he, as at last, with honest Beddoes, he withdrew, “and get to
bed. Nothing will steady your hand like a spell of sleep.”

But there was no sleep for me. Besides that the pain of the slight
wound which I had received in the night’s guet-apens was stiffening to
great soreness, there was an excitement in my brain—partially due to
the fever incident on the hurt—which would not permit the thought of
rest.

I had but little business to transact. In view of the present
uncertainty of my life, I had recently drawn up a will in which, after
certain fitting legacies, I left my great fortune to my wife. Now I
merely gathered together the whole of this accumulated narrative of
mine into a weighty packet, and after addressing it, deposited it in
János’s hands with the strict injunction, in the event of my demise, to
deliver it personally to Ottilie.

No farewell message would be so eloquent as these pages in which I had
laid bare the innermost thoughts of my soul since I first knew her. She
should receive no other message from me. I next tore up poor Beddoes’s
litter of I O U’s, and making a parcel of the fragments directed it to
him. János received my instructions with his usual taciturn docility,
yet if anything could have roused me from the curious state of apathy
in which I found myself, it would have been the sight of the dumb
concern on the faithful fellow’s countenance.

Having thus put all my worldly affairs in order, I sat me down in
my armchair, awaiting the dawn, and viewed the past as one who has
done with life. I had a strong presentiment upon me that I should not
survive the meeting.

At times, the vision of my wife sleeping, at that very moment, as I
had so often watched her sleep, lightly and easily as a child, little
wotting, little caring, perhaps, if she had wotted, of her husband’s
solemn vigil, would rise up before me with a vividness so cruel as
well-nigh to rouse me. But the new calmness of my soul defied these
assaults; an unknown philosophy had succeeded to the violence of my
emotions.

When my seconds called for me in the first greyness of the morning
they found me ready for them. They themselves were shivering from the
raw cold, with arms thrust to the elbows into the depths of their
muffs; Carew, all yellow and shrivelled,—an old man of a sudden,—and
Beddoes, blue and purple, the sleep still in his swollen eyes, hardly
able to keep his teeth from chattering—a very schoolboy! They could
scarce conceal their amazement at my placidity. It was not, indeed,
that I found myself bodily fit for the contest, for the whole of my
left side was stiff, and I could hardly move that arm without pain; yet
placid I was, I scarcely now know why.

Thus we set forth in Sir John Beddoes’s coach, János on the box, and
a civil, shy young man on the back seat beside Beddoes: this was, the
latter informed me, the best surgeon he had been able to secure at such
short notice.

The fog disappeared, and when the mists evaporated it promised to be a
fine, bright, frosty morning.

Now, it may be after all that I was a little light-headed with the heat
of the wound in my blood, for I have no very clear recollections of
that morning. It remains in my mind rather as a bright-coloured fantasy
than a series of events I have actually lived through.

I remember, as a man may remember a scene in a play, a garden running
down to the river-side, very bare and desolate, and the figure and
face of my bulky antagonist as he conferred excitedly with two
outlandish-looking men, his seconds. These had fierce moustaches, and
reminded me vaguely of the cravat captains I had known in the Empire.
Then the scene shifts: we stand facing each other. I am glad of the
chill of the air, with nothing between it and my fevered breast but the
thinness of my shirt. But my opponent stamps like a menacing bull, as
if furious at the benumbing blasts. Now I am fighting—fighting for my
life—as never in battle or in single combat have I had need to fight
before. This is no courteous duel between gentlemen, no honourable
meeting, but the struggle of a man with his murderer. Physically at a
disadvantage from my hurt, I am moreover conscious that against this
brute fury all my skill at arms is of no avail and my strength is
rapidly failing. Then, as he drives me by the sheer weight of his mass,
I see his face thrust forward into mine, distorted with such a frenzy
that I wonder in a sort of unformed way why this man should thus thirst
to kill me. The next moment, with an extraordinary sense of universal
failure and disorganisation which is yet not pain, I realise that I am
hit—badly hit.

Upon that instant I find my brain cleared to a lucidity I have never
felt before. I see my opponent’s sword flash ruby red with my own blood
in the sun rays; I see him smile, a smile of glorious triumph, which
cuts a deep dimple beside his lip; I hear him pant at me the strange
words, “Ha! Ottilie!” and then I am again seared, rent once more, and
to the sound of a howl of many voices my world falls into chaos and
exists no more.

       *       *       *       *       *

It is sometimes but a short and easy way up to the gates of death, but
a long and weary journey back to life. It was a long and weary journey
to me.

I was like to a man who travels in the dead of night over rough ways,
and now and again slumbers uneasily with troubled dreams, and now
looks out upon a glimmer of light in some house or village, and now on
nothing but the pitchy darkness; and yet he is always travelling on
and on till he is weary with madness of fatigue. And then, as the dawn
breaks upon the wanderer, and he sees a strange land around him, so the
dawn of what seemed a new existence began to break for me, and I looked
upon life anew with wondering eyes.

At first I looked as the traveller may, with eyes so tired and drowsy
as scarce to care to notice. But in yet a little while I warmed and
quickened to the sun of returning health. I began to be something more
than a mere tortured mass of humanity; each breath was no longer misery
to draw; the mind was able to re-assert authority over the flesh. That
dark, watchful figure that seemed to have been sitting at the foot of
my bed for centuries, that was János! Poor old fellow! I could not
yet speak to him, but I could smile. My next thought was amaze that
I should be in a strange room; it had a very teasing tapestry; its
figures had worried me long before I could notice them. In a little
while I began to understand that I was not in my own chambers, and to
feel such irritation at the liberty which had been taken with me that I
should have demanded instant explanation had my strength been equal to
the task.

But I come of too vigorous stock, the blood that runs in my veins is
too sweet—because I have not, like so many young fools of my day,
poisoned it with endless potations and dissoluteness—for me, when once
on the broad high road to recovery (to continue my travelling simile),
to dally over the ground.

Moreover I was too well nursed. János, it seems, after the first couple
of visits, in each of which I was wisely bled of the diminished store
the Chevalier’s sword had left in my veins—János had had a great
quarrel with the surgeon, vowing he would not see his master’s murder
completed before his eyes and never a chance of hanging the murderer.

It had ended in the old soldier taking the law into his own hands,
dismissing the man of medicine, and treating me after his own lights.
He had had a fairly good apprenticeship, having attended my uncle
through all his campaigns. As far as I am concerned I am convinced that
in this, as well as in another matter which I am about to relate, he
saved my life.

The other matter has reference to the very change of quarters which
had excited my ire, the true explanation of which, however, I did not
receive until I was strong enough to entertain visitors. János would
give me little or no satisfaction.

“I thought in myself it would be more wholesome for your honour
than your other house,” was the utmost I could extract. Indeed, he
strenuously discouraged all conversation. But the day when this
stern guardian first consented to admit Carew and Beddoes to my
presence,—and that was not till I could sit up in bed and converse
freely,—all that I had been curious about was made clear to me.

Carew, indeed, had the virtue of being an excellent gossip. I had at
one time deemed it his only quality, but I learned better then. Both
the gentlemen, each in his own fashion, displayed a certain emotion at
seeing me again, in which pleasure at the fact of my being still in
the land of the living, and likely to remain so, was qualified by the
painful impression produced by my altered appearance.

Sir John, the boy, sat himself down on the edge of my bed and squeezed
my hand in silence, with something like tears in his eyes. Carew, the
roué, was very deliberate in his choice of a chair, took snuff with a
vast deal of elegant gesture, and fired off, with it might be an excess
of merriment, such jocularities as he had gathered ready against the
occasion. Both of them seemed to deem it incumbent upon them to avoid
any reference to the duel. I, however, very promptly brought up the
subject.

“Now, for God’s sake,” I said, “let a poor man who has been kept
like a child with a cross nurse—take your pap, go to sleep, ask no
questions—learn at last a little about himself. In the first place,
where am I? In the second, what has become of the red devil who brought
me to this pass?”

“In the first place, Jennico,” said Carew, “you are at the house
of Lady Beddoes, mother to our friend here, a very pleasing little
residence situate on Richmond Hill. Secondly, that red devil, as you
call him, that most damnable villain, has fled the country, as well he
might, for if ever a knave deserved stringing up as high as Haman—but
of that anon. There is a good deal to tell you if you think you can
bear the excitement.

“Well,” he pursued, upon my somewhat pettish asseveration, “I myself
think a little pleasant conversation will do you more good than harm.
To begin with, you are doubtless not aware that you are a dead man.”

“How?” cried I, a little startled, for my nerve was yet none of the
strongest.

“Nay, nay, dash you, Carew,” interposed Sir John, “don’t ye make those
jokes. Gruesome, I call ’em: it makes me creep! No, Basil, lad, thou
art alive, and wilt live to set that Chevalier, whoever he may be,
swinging for it yet.” And here in his eager partisanship he broke into
a volley of execrations which would have run my poor great-uncle’s
performances pretty close.

“Why,” said I impatiently, “‘tis enigma to me still why I am here; why
I am dead; why the Chevalier should hang. I think you have all sworn to
drive me mad among you.”

I was so evidently exasperated that Beddoes, all of a tremble, besought
Carew to explain the situation.

“He’ll do himself a mischief,” he cried pathetically; “do you tell him,
Carew,—you know what a fool I am!”

Carew was nothing loath to set about what was indeed the chief pleasure
of his life, the retailing of scandal; and it seems that the Jennico
duel was a very pretty scandal indeed.

“I will take your last question first,” said he, settling himself to
his task with gusto. “Why the Chevalier should hang? Who he really is,
where he comes from, why he hates you with such deadly hatred, Jennico,
are all mysteries which I confess myself unable to fathom—doubtless
you can furnish us with the clue by-and-by.”

As he spoke his pale eye kindled with a most devouring curiosity.
Nevertheless as I showed no desire to interrupt him by any little
confidence, he proceeded glibly:

“But why the Chevalier should hang is another matter. Gadzooks, I’d run
him down myself were it but for his impudence in getting gentlemen like
myself to come and see foul play. Why, Jennico, man, don’t you know
that after charging you like a bull, and running you once through the
body, the scoundrel stabbed you again as you were sinking down and the
sword had dropped from your hand. I doubt me he would have spitted you
a third time to make quite sure, had not Beddoes and I fallen upon him.”

“I’d have run him through,” here interposed Sir John excitedly; “I had
drawn for it, had I not, Dick?—and I’d have run him through, but that
the surgeon called out that you were dead; and dash me, between the
turn I got and the way those queer seconds of his hustled him away,
I lost the chance! And the three of them ran, they ran like rats, to
the river. Gad, I’d have left my mark on them even then, but Carew, be
hanged to him, held on by my coat-tails.”

“‘Tis just as Jack told you,” said Carew. “No sooner had they heard you
were dead, my friend, than they ran for it, and it is quite true that I
restrained Jack here from sticking them in the back as they skedaddled.
A pretty affair of honour, indeed!”

I lay back on my pillows awhile, musing. I had had time to reflect on
many things these days, and—God knows—there were enigmas enough in my
life to give me food for reflection. What I had just heard caused me no
surprise, tallying as it did with conclusions I had previously reached.

After a moment Carew cleared his throat, edged his chair a foot nearer,
and queried confidentially: “Did it never strike you that the Chevalier
must have been part and parcel, if not the moving spirit, of those
attacks upon your life which you told us of that night at the club? You
did not appear to have a notion of it then. Yet there was not a man of
us there who did not see but the quarrel was deliberately got up.”

“And d’ye mind,” cried Sir John, “how he bet me you would not live a
month?”

“Ay,” said Carew, “and Jennico knows best himself if in his gay youth,
in foreign parts, he has not given good cause for this mortal enmity,
though to be sure the mystery thickens when we remember how friendly
you were with each other. Jennico is such a close dog; he keeps such a
dashed tight counsel!”

I smiled. Jennico would keep his counsel still. I meant these good
fellows should expound my riddles for me, not I theirs.

“But since I am dead,” said I, “I fear, Jack, thou hast lost on me
again.”

“The gentleman did not leave his address,” said Sir John with a grin;
and he furtively squeezed my hand to express his secret sense of the
little transaction of the I O U’s.

“We made some clamour at the Embassy, I promise you,” interposed Carew;
“we were anxious to pay him all his due, you may be sure. But devil a
bit of satisfaction could we get, save indeed that the Ambassador took
to his bed with a fit of gout, and you being dead, Jennico,—you are
dead still, remember,—to bury you was the best thing your friends
could do for you, till you were able to take fit measures to protect
yourself. And indeed it was that queer old Tartar of yours, your János,
or whatever you call him, who loudly insisted upon your demise, when we
found the first alarm was unfounded and that you still breathed. Gad, I
believe you have as many lives as a cat! This fellow then says to us in
his queer jargon: ’My master lives, but he must all the same be thought
dead.’ And faith he besought us with such urgency, that, what with
seeing you lying there, and knowing what we knew of the foul play that
had been practised upon you, we were ready enough to fall in with his
desires. Sir John bethought him of his mother’s house at Richmond, and
offered to accompany you there,—or rather your body: you were little
less just then. Next the surgeon swore the journey would kill you, and
your servant swore you should not be harboured in the town. The fellow
knew you: ’Good breed,’ he said, ’not easily killed!’ And so he won
the day, and Miles the surgeon gave in; but indeed he told me apart,
’twas waste of time disputing, for anyhow you could not see the noon.
But here you are at my Lady Beddoes’s house at Richmond, alive and like
to live, though you have ceased to exist for most men. There was a
charming, really a most touching, obituary notice in the Gazettes; you
have been duly lamented at the clubs—and forgotten within the usual
nine days. Rumours will soon begin to get about of course, but nobody
knows anything positive. The secret is still kept. János, I believe,
has contrived to assuage the anxiety of your relatives.”

Here the speaker took so copious a pinch to refresh himself after his
long speech that he set me off sneezing, whereupon my special Cerberus
promptly made his appearance and bundled the visitors forth without
more ado.

       *       *       *       *       *

I have said that my friend’s belief in the Chevalier’s implication in
the divers murderous onsets that had been made upon me, previous to his
own, did not surprise me. The memory of M. de Ville-Rouge’s cry, as he
dealt me what he believed my death stroke,—a cry in which it would
be hard to say whether savage triumph or sheer vindictiveness most
predominated,—had come back on me, as soon as I could think at all,
with most revealing force.

His arrival in England had coincided with the beginning of the
persecution. The look on his face as I had last seen it, that smile and
that dimple, had haunted me during long hours of delirium with a most
maddening, grotesque, and horrible likeness to the face of her I had
so loved. Coupling these things in later sanity of mind with the other
evidence, I could not doubt but that here had been some relative of
Ottilie, who had interest to put an end to her husband’s existence. Had
not her pock-marked Mercury at the close of our interview uttered words
of earnest warning? ay, I minded them now:

“The matter will not end here.... Have a care, young man....”

As I thought of all this, as the whole meaning of what had seemed so
mysterious now lay clear before me, I would be seized with a sort of
deadly anguish, compared to which all my previous sufferings, whether
of body or mind, had been but trivial. Could she, could Ottilie, have
_known_ of this work? Could she—have _inspired_ it?

The sweat that would break out upon me at such a thought was more
than all my fever had wrung from my body, and my faithful leech would
wonder to find me faint and reeking, and would puzzle his poor brains
in vain upon the cause, and decoct me new teas of dreadful compounds,
febrifuges which he vowed had never failed.

But then at other times the vision of my wife would rise before me and
shame me. I would see again her noble brow, her clear eye, her arched
and innocent lip, and in my weakness and the passion of my longing I
would turn and weep upon my pillow to think that, having to my sorrow
lost her, I should come now to lose even my faith in her, and yet
should love her still with such mad love.

Now there must be, as János would have it, something remarkably tough
in the breed of Jennico for me to recover from such wounds both bodily
and mental. Recover I did, however, in spite of all odds; and a resolve
I made with returning strength did a good deal to ease my mind, tossed
between such torturing fluctuations.

This resolve was no less than to leave the country some fine morning,
in secret, so soon as I could undertake the journey with any likelihood
of being able to persevere in it, to speed to Budissin, and discover
for myself the real attitude of Ottilie towards me. I was determined
that, according as I found her,—either what my heart would still deem
her, or yet so base a thing as the fiend whispered,—that I would try
to win her back, were I to die in the attempt, or thrust her from my
life for ever.

Thus when I heard that my enemy and the world believed me dead, when I
realised that she too must probably share in the delusion, I was glad,
for not only would it materially facilitate my re-entering the Duchy,
but it would afford me an excellent opportunity of judging her real
feelings. I had no doubt but that, if I set to work in a proper manner
and duly preserved my incognito, I should be able, now that all pretext
for quarantine had disappeared, to secure an interview without too much
difficulty.

So all my desires hastening towards that goal, I set myself to become
a whole man again with so much energy that even János was surprised at
the rapidity of my progress.




CHAPTER II


IT was towards the middle of December that we started upon the
journey—a little sooner indeed than my surgeon and mentor approved of,
but his power over me dwindled as my own strength returned.

Being chiefly anxious to preserve my incognito, I hesitated some time
before permitting János to accompany me, his personal appearance
unfortunately being of a kind unlikely to be forgotten when once seen.
But, besides the fact that I could not find it in me to inflict such
pain upon that excellent fellow, there was an undoubted advantage to
myself in the presence of one upon whose fidelity and courage I could
so absolutely reckon in an expedition likely to prove of extreme
difficulty and perhaps of peril. Moreover, the man would have followed
me in spite of me. I insisted, however, upon his shaving off his great
pandour moustaches—a process which though it altered did not improve
his appearance; his aspect, indeed, being now so fantastically ugly as
to drive me, despite my preoccupation, into inextinguishable paroxysms
of laughter every time I unexpectedly got a glimpse of his visage,
until habit wore away the impression.

As to myself, my long illness had, as I thought, sufficiently changed
me. Besides, the news of my resurrection was too recently and too
vaguely rumoured in London to have reached, or to be likely to reach,
the Continent for many a long day.

Under the humble style, therefore, of a Munich gentleman returning
from his travels,—one Theodor Desberger, with his attendant (now
dubbed Johann), a character which my Austrian-German fitly enabled me
to sustain,—I set sail from London to Hamburg, and after a favourable
sea-passage, which did much to invigorate me, we landed in the free
city and proceeded towards Budissin by easy stages; for, despite
the ardour of my impatience, I felt the importance of husbanding my
newly-acquired strength. At Budissin we put up of course at a different
hostelry from that chosen upon our first venture—one much farther away
from the palace.

The little town presented now a very different aspect. Indeed, its
gay and cheery bustle, and the crisp frosty weather which greeted
us there, might have raised inspiriting thoughts. But it was with a
heart very full of anxiety, with the determination rather to face ill
fortune bravely than the hope of good, that I passed the night. I got
but little sleep, for, having reached my goal, I scarcely knew how to
begin. Nor in the morning had I arrived at any definite conclusion.

The risk of presenting myself in person at the palace after my former
fashion was too great to be entertained for a moment. I had therefore
to content myself with despatching János to make cautious inquiries
as to one Fräulein Pahlen and her relatives, not forgetting a bulky
gentleman he knew of, recently returned from England.

I myself, in my plainest suit, and with my cloak disposed as a muffler,
partly concealing my face, set forth upon my side to gather what crumbs
of information I might.

At the very outset I had a most singular meeting. Traversing the little
town in the brisk morning air under a dome of palest blue, I naturally
directed my steps towards the castle, seated on its terrace and
towering above the citizens’ brown roofs.

I had taken a somewhat circuitous route to avoid passing in front of
the main guard, and found myself presently in a quiet street, one side
of which was bound by the castle garden walls, and the other—that
upon which I walked—by a row of private houses seemingly of some
importance. Now, as I walked, engaged in gazing upwards at the long
row of escutcheoned windows which I could just see above the wall, and
foolishly wondering through which of them my cruel little wife might be
wont to look forth into the outer world, I nearly collided with a woman
who was hurrying out of one of the houses.

As I drew back to recover myself, and to apologise, something in the
dark figure struck me with poignant reminiscence. The next instant, as
she would have passed me, I caught her by the shoulder.

“Anna!” I cried wildly, “God be thanked, Anna!” For upon this very
first morning of my quest Heaven had brought me face to face with no
less a person than Ottilie’s old nurse.

The recognition on her side was almost simultaneous. No sooner had the
muffling cloak fallen from my mouth, than the dull and rather surly
countenance that she had turned upon me became convulsed by the most
extraordinary emotion. She gave a stifled cry. Then she clapped her
hands together, pressed them clasped against her cheek, and stared at
me with piercing intensity, crying again and again:

“God in heaven—you! God in heaven—you!” The black eyes were as hard
to read as those of a shepherd’s dog, who fixes with the same earnest
look the master he loves or the enemy he suspects. And as we stood
thus, the space of a few seconds, my mind misgave me as to whether
I had not already jeopardised all my prospects by this impulsive
disclosure. It was evident that the woman had heard the story of my
death, which in this hostile place was my chief security. But the
die was cast, and the chance of information was too precious not
to be seized even at greater risks. I laid hold of her cloak, then
passionately grasped her hands. “Oh, Anna!” I cried again, and the bare
thought that I was once more so near the beloved of my heart brought in
my weakness the heat of tears to my eyes. “Where is she? Where is my
wife? What does she? Anna, I must see her. My life is in danger in this
place; they have tried to kill me because I love her, but I had rather
risk death again a thousand times than give her up. Take me to her,
Anna!”

The woman had never ceased regarding me with the same enigmatic
earnestness; all at once her eyes lightened, she looked from side to
side with the cautiousness of some animal conscious of danger, then
wrenched her hands out of mine:

“Follow me, sir,” she said in a whisper, so urgent in its apprehension
as to strike a colder chill into my veins than the wildest scream
could have done. Without another glance at me she started off in front,
and I as hastily followed, almost mechanically flinging my cloak once
more across my mouth as I moved on.

Whither was she leading me? Into the hands of my enemies, whoever they
were?—she had always, I had thought, hated me—or into the arms of my
wife?

She turned away from the palace, down a bye-street, and then took
another turn which brought us into a poor alley where the houses became
almost cottages, and where the gutters ran among the cobbles with
liquid filth.

My wild hope gave place to sinister foreboding; and as I plodded
carefully after her unwavering figure, I loosened the hilt of my sword
in its scabbard, and settled the folds of my cloak around my left arm
so that at a pinch I might doff it and use it for defence.

Suddenly my guide halted for a second, looked at me over her shoulder,
and disappeared down some steps into the open door of a mean little
shop. I entered after her, at once disappointed in all my expectations
and reassured by the humble vulgarity of the place. Anna, as I had ever
known her, was chary of speech. Even, as stooping I made my way into
the low, gloomy, and evil-smelling narrow room, I saw her imperiously
motion an ugly sallow young woman out of her presence; and, still in
silence, I watched her, wondering, as she made fast the doors and bent
her dark face to listen if all were still. Then she produced from a
counter, paper, ink, and pen, and spreading them out turned to me with
a single word: “Write.”

So small was the result of all these preliminaries.

“You mean,” said I, “that if I write to your mistress, you will convey
the letter? Alas! I have written before and she would not even receive
my writing. Oh! can you not get me speech of her? I conjure you by the
love you bear her, let me see her but for a few minutes.”

The woman fixed me for a second with a startled wondering eye, opened
her mouth as if to speak, but immediately clapped her hand to it as if
to restrain the words. Then, with a passion of entreaty that it was
impossible to withstand, she pointed to the paper and cried once more,
“Write.”

And so I seemed ever destined to communicate with my wife from strange
places and by strange messengers.

With a trembling hand and a brain in a whirl I wrote—I hardly know
what: a wild, passionate, reproachful appeal, setting forth in
incoherent words all I had done and suffered, all my desire, all my
faithful love. When I looked up at length I found the black eyes still
watching me with the same inscrutable fierceness. I was going to trust
my life and its hopes to this woman, and for a moment I hesitated.
But at the same instant there was some noise without, and snatching
the letter unfinished from before me, she thrust it into her bosom,
folded her cloak across it, and stooping close to me demanded in her
breathless undertone:

“Where do you live?”

Mechanically I told her, adding: “Ask for M. Desberger.”

She nodded with swift comprehension, unbolted the barred front door of
the little shop, and drew me hastily out by the back, along a close,
flagged passage, leaving an irate customer hammering and clamouring for
admittance.

We proceeded through a small yard into another alley, and here she
halted a second, still detaining me by my cloak.

“Go home,” she said then; “keep close. There is danger—danger. You
will hear.”

She suddenly caught my hand, kissed it, and was gone. I stood awhile
bewildered, astonished, staring, hardly able to grasp the meaning
of what had passed, for this last scene in the drama of my life had
been acted hurriedly and was full of mysterious significance. Then,
unobtrusively, I sought the shelter of my own inn, resolving to obey
to the letter the injunctions laid upon me; but fate had willed it
otherwise.

Determined not to interfere with the course of fortune by any least
indocility, I retired into the seclusion of my chambers, and pretexting
a slight indisposition, to rouse no undue suspicion by an air of
mystery, gave orders for my dinner to be served there.

A stout red-cheeked wench with rough bare arms had just, grinning,
clattered the first greasy dish before me, when I heard János’s foot
upon the stairs. I had learnt to know the sound of his step pretty well
in my recent weeks of sickness, but I had not been wont to hear it come
so laggingly, and the fact that it halted altogether outside the door
for a second or two, as if its owner hesitated to enter, filled me with
such a furious impatience that I got up and flung it open to wrest his
news from him. Not even when he had held up my poor great-uncle in his
arms to let him draw his last breath on earth, had I seen the fellow
wear a countenance of such discomposure.

“In Heaven’s name, János,” cried I, and the sturdy house-wench turned
and stared at him more agoggle and agrin than before.

“Get out of that, you ——” cried my servitor, snapping at her with
such sourness, and so forgetful of the decorum he usually displayed in
my presence, that it was clear he was mightily moved.

She fled as if some savage old watch-dog had nipped at her heel, and we
were alone.

I had returned from my own exploration full of hope, and at the same
time of wonder, so that I was at once ill and well prepared for any
tidings, however extraordinary. But János’s tidings seemed difficult of
telling.

“Let us go home, honoured sir” he stammered again and again, surveying
me with a compassion and an anxiety he had not vouchsafed upon me at
the worst of my illness. I had to drag the words from him piecemeal, as
the torturer forces out the unwilling confession.

Yes, he had news—bad news. This was no place for me. It was not
wholesome for us here. Let us return to Tollendhal, or Vienna, or even
England. Let us start before further mischief overtook us.

I believe I fell upon him at last and shook him. What had he heard.
What had he heard of her? I vowed he was driving me mad, vowed that
if he did not instantly tell me all I would throw caution to the wind
and go to the palace and demand my wife in person, were it of the Duke
himself. This threat extorted at length the terrible thing that even
the rough old soldier feared to utter.

“The lady,” he stammered, “the lady can no longer be spoken of as your
honour’s wife. She is married.”

“Married!” I cried. “What do you mean, you scoundrel? No longer my
wife! Married! You are raving—this is stark lunacy.”

He shook his grey head under the shower of my fury.

“Married. Does your honour forget that they think here that they have
at last succeeded in killing you?”

I looked at him aghast, unwilling to admit the awful illumination that
flashed upon my mind. He, believing me still incredulous, proceeded:

“Married she is. Fräulein Pahlen, the lady-in-waiting,—Fräulein
Pahlen, as your honour bade me call her, and as it seems she called
herself until ...” and then with a significant emphasis, “until six
weeks ago.”

“And who is the man?” said I. The words sounded in my ears as if some
one else had spoken, but I believe I was astoundingly calm.

Misled no doubt by this appearance of composure, János seemed to take
more confidence, and continued in easier tones, while I held myself
still to listen.

“It is the Court physician, one privy counsellor Lothner. I was shown
his house, a big one in the Schloss Graben, number ten, opposite the
palace walls. Ay, yes, they were married six weeks ago, and the Duke
was present at the marriage ... and the Princess too! They say it was
made up by their wishes. Oh! honoured sir, let us hence. You are well
quit of it all; this is a bad place!”

Yet I stood without moving. Chasm after chasm, horror after horror,
seemed to be opening before my mind; chasms so black that I scarce
ventured to look into their depths; horrors so unspeakable that I could
put no word-shape to them. After Ottilie’s messenger had failed to
induce me to give up my rights, had come the attempts upon my life,
then the duel. The mysterious stranger who had sought to slay me with
such rancorous hate, and had called “_Ottilie_” into my dying ears, had
returned to claim his bride, and they had wedded in their blood-guilt.
Well might the nurse cry and repeat the cry of “God in heaven! God in
heaven!”

What new ambush would they now contrive?

“Your honour——” said János, and he put his hand respectfully upon my
sleeve. I caught sight of his frightened face and burst into a fit of
rasping laughter.

“Look at your master, János, and see the greatest fool in Christendom!
The fool of the play, that is tricked and mocked and beaten from one
act to another. Tricked into marrying a serving-maid instead of a
princess; tricked into loving her when he should have repudiated her
with scorn; abandoned by her when he could no longer live without her;
mocked when he sought his wife; driven away by lackeys; stabbed by a
murdering hound, a skulking thief in the night!... But the last act is
only about to begin—every one has had his laugh at the fool, but we
shall see, János, we shall see! He laughs best who laughs last, they
say. Ten, Schloss Graben, did you say?”

I caught my cloak. I think the faithful fellow actually laid hands upon
me to arrest me, but I broke from him as if his clasp had been a straw.

“I’ll drive my sword,” I remember saying, “into the first man who
dares come between me and my purpose.”

And indeed as I fled along the street, scarce knowing what way I took,
yet going as straight as a die to my goal, I had no other thought but
how clean I would run my blade through the clumsy lumbering brute who
deemed he had so well widowed my wife. I had the strength of ten men in
me.




CHAPTER III


WHEN I reached the Schloss Graben I stood a moment to reconnoitre, and
found myself in the same still, cobble-paved road where I had met Anna
a few hours before. On my left rose the high garden-walls overtopped
by a web of bare interlacing branches, and over that again the palace
windows and its mansard roof; on my right the row of silent brown or
red stone houses, well-to-do and snugly private, with beaten iron bars
to the low windows and great scallop shells over the doors. This was
the house down the stone steps of which my wife’s servant had come
this morning, and this was number ten. Of course! How clear it was all
becoming to me! I dashed the sweat from my brow, for I had come like
a lamplighter. Then I tramped up the three steps and again halted a
second. How quiet the house was!

But I should soon put some bustle into it, I said to myself, and
smiled. I plied the knocker till the sleeping echoes awoke, and I hung
on the iron rope of the bell till the shrill protest of the jingling
peal rang out into the street. There came other sounds from within as
of a flutter in a dovecot. Doors were opened and shut precipitately.
A window was thrown back above my head; there was a vision of a
white-capped face thrust forward and withdrawn; and, indeed, like
rabbits from a warren, most, I believe, of the idle servants in the
street were popping out to see whence could proceed such unholy
clangour.

The door before me was at length cautiously and slowly opened, and
through the aperture the frightened, rose-red face of a maid looked out
at me.

I saw that I had been incautious, and therefore addressed her with a
suave mock courtesy. Indeed, now that the actual moment had come I felt
stealing over me a very deadly calm.

“Forgive me,” said I, “my wench, for disturbing you thus rudely. I see
I have alarmed you. These are, however, but old soldiers’ ways, which
I trust your good mistress will pardon to an old friend. Your mistress
is, if I mistake not, now the doctor’s lady. But when I knew her she
was Fräulein Ottilie Pahlen.”

The girl’s mouth had, during this long speech, which in my new mood
came glibly enough to my lips, become broadened into a grin. There are
very few girls in the Empire, I have been told, that will not feel
mollified towards a soldier.

“Is your mistress within?” I pursued.

She dropped a curtsey, and after a comprehensive glance over my person
threw open the door. Would the gentleman walk in? She brought me
through a brick-paved hall into a long low oak-panelled room, all dark
and yet all shining with polish. It was very hot from a high china
stove.

“What visitor shall I announce to the gracious lady?” she asked,
sidling towards me, and thrusting her apple face as forward as she
dared.

“I am so old a friend, in fact, I may say so near a connection, that I
should like to give your gracious lady a pleasant surprise,” said I; “I
will not therefore give my name.” As a propitiatory after-thought, I
pinched the hard red cheek and dropped a coin into her apron pocket. I
tried to make my smile very sweet, but it felt stiff upon my lips. She,
however, saw nought amiss, and pattered out well content.

Then followed a few minutes’ waiting; all had grown still again around
me. Through the deep recessed windows I looked forth into a little
courtyard with one bare tree. This, then, was the home Ottilie had
chosen instead of an English estate, instead of Tollendhal, instead of
all I could offer her in courtly Vienna or great London! How she must
love this man! Or was it only the plebeian instinct reasserting itself
in spite of all?... The Court doctor’s lady!

I heard a footfall on the bare-boarded stair, and with a smile that was
this time the natural expression of the complicated bitterness of my
soul, I moved a few steps so as to place myself in the best light.

My wife was, perhaps, still in ignorance of my escape from death.
Anna had not yet carried her grievous news of the failure of their
endeavours. Indeed, this was evident from the general placidity of the
household, as well as the staid regularity of the approaching steps. To
witness her joy at the discovery was sufficient revenge for the moment.
After that the reckoning would be with—well, with my successor.

Such was the state of my thoughts at the crucial moment of my strange
story.

I have said that I was calm, but during the little pause that took
place between the cessation of the footsteps and the turning of the
lock I could hear the beating of my own heart like the measured roar of
a drum in battle.

Then was the door opened, and before me stood—-not Ottilie, who had
been my Ottilie, but the other Ottilie, the Princess! She was advancing
upon me with the old well-remembered gracious smile, when all at once
she halted with much the same terror-stricken look with which Anna
earlier in the day had recognised me, and clasped her hands, crying:

“God be merciful to us, M. de Jennico!” and seemed the next instant
ready to burst into tears.

In the first confusion of my thoughts, in the rage created by this
eternal _quid pro quo_—that I should ever find the lady-in-waiting
when I wanted the Princess, and the Princess when I wanted the
lady-in-waiting,—I might have been inclined to think that Anna had
after all spread her tidings, and that my wife’s former mistress
had come to her aid at this awkward moment; but the surprise and
consternation on this woman’s countenance were too genuine to have been
counterfeit.

Whatever reason brought the Princess here I was in no humour to inquire.

“I came to see my wife, Madam,” said I, “and not to presume upon your
Highness’s condescension. I am determined to see my wife,” I insisted;
“that Ottilie Pahlen, who was your maid of honour, and lived with me
as my wife for a month, as your Highness well knows, and who was in
such haste to wed this Court doctor of yours at the first rumour of her
husband’s death.”

I spoke in a very uncourtier-like rage. But she whom I addressed
showed neither anger nor astonishment, but sank into the nearest
chair, a mere heap of soft distressed womanhood, wringing her plump
dimpled hands, while tears of extraordinary size suffused her eyes and
overflowed upon her cheeks.

At sight of this my heat fell away; I threw myself on my knees beside
her, and, all forgetful of the distance between us, took one of her
hands in mine and poured forth an appeal.

“You were always kind to me; be kind now. I must see my wife. I have
been cruelly treated; I am surrounded with enemies; be you my friend!”

She leant forward and looked at me earnestly with swimming eyes.

“Is it possible,” she exclaimed—“is it possible, M. de Jennico, that
you have not found out yet?... that you do not suspect?...”

Even as she spoke, and while I knelt looking up at her, the scales fell
from my eyes. I needed no further word. I knew. How was it possible,
indeed, that I should not have known before? I saw as in a flash that
this comely burgher woman was not, had never been, never could have
been, the Princess. I saw that the hand I still unconsciously held
bore marks of household toil, that on the third finger glittered a new
wedding ring. Then a thousand memories rushed into my mind, a thousand
confirmatory details. Oh, blind—blind—blind that I had been—fool,
and worse than fool! The mystery of my wife’s mocking smile; the secret
that had so often hung unspoken on her lips; her careless pretty ways;
the depth of her injured pride; and then the manner in which she
had been guarded from me, the force employed against me, the secret
diplomatic attempts to free her, followed, on their failure, by the
relentless determination to do away with me altogether! Before my
reeling brain it all rose into towering conviction—a joy, a sorrow,
both too keen for humanity to bear, seized upon my weakened frame. I
heard as if in the far distance the words the woman near me was saying:

“It all began by a freak of her Highness, ...” and with the echo of
them whirling as it were in a mad dance through my brain to the sound
of thundering cataracts, a whirlpool of flame spreading before my eyes,
I fell with a crash, as it seemed, into a yawning black abyss.

When I again came to myself the cold air was blowing in upon me through
the open casement, and I was stretched full length on a hard floor, in
what seemed a perfect deluge of the very strongest vinegar I have ever
smelt. At one side of me knelt my hostess, her healthy face blanched
almost beyond recognition. On the other, between my wandering gaze
and the window, swam the visage of the maid, eyes and mouth as round
as horror could make them, but with cheeks the ruddiness of which, it
seemed, no emotion could mitigate.

Both my kind attendants gave a cry as I opened my eyes.

“He is recovering, Trude,” said Madam Lothner (to call her now by her
proper name).

“Ah! gracious lady,” answered the wench in an unctuous tone of
importance; “his face is still as red as the beet I was pickling when I
heard you scream—would God the master were here to bleed him. Shall I
send into the town to seek him?”

“God forbid!” cried her mistress, in a hasty and peremptory tone. “No,
I tell you, Trude, he is recovering, and I have not been a doctor’s
wife these six weeks for nothing. The flush is fading even as I look at
him. See thee here, fetch me some of the cordial water.”

I do not know how far her six weeks’ association with the medical
luminary, her husband, had profited Madam Lothner. I have since been
told that her administration of cordial, immediately upon such a blood
stroke to the head as mine, ought really to have finished me off. But
as it happened it did me a vast deal of good, and I was soon able to
shake off the giddiness, the sickness, and the general confusion of my
system.

With recovered wits it gradually became apparent to me that while Madam
Lothner continued to ply me with every assistance she could think
of, regarding me with eyes in which shone most kindly and womanly
benevolence, her chief anxiety nevertheless was to get rid of me with
all possible despatch.

But I was not likely to give up such an opportunity. The chaos in my
mind consequent upon the unexpected revelation, and its disastrous
physical effect, was such as to render me no very coherent inquisitor.
Nevertheless, the determination to learn all that this woman could tell
me about my wife rose predominant above the seething of my thoughts.

Ottilie, my wife, was Ottilie the Princess after all! I had felt the
truth before it had been told me. But whilst they removed an agonising
supposition, these struck me nevertheless as strange unhomely tidings
which opened fresh difficulties in my path—difficulties the full
import of which were every second more strongly borne upon me. Ottilie
the Princess!... Everything was changed, and the relentless attitude
of the Princess bore a very different aspect to the mere resentment of
the injured wife. When my letters had been flung back in my face, when
I had been kidnapped and expelled the country, it had been then by her
orders. She had sent to demand the divorce. Who had set the bravo on
my track? By whose wish had my life been so basely, so persistently,
attempted? By hers—Ottilie, the Princess? A Princess who had repented
of her freak, whose pride, whose reputation, had suffered from the
stigma of an unequal match.

The man whose sword had twice passed through my body had called out,
“Ha! Ottilie!” Who dare call on a Princess thus save her kinsman
or—her lover?

I felt the blood surge through me again, but this time in my anger it
brought a sense of courage and strength. I interrupted Madam Lothner
as, with a joyful exclamation that I was now quite restored, she was
about to issue an order for the summary fetching of a hired coach.

“Let your maid go,” said I authoritatively, “but not for a coach. I
have yet much to say to you.”

I was without pity for the distress this demand occasioned, deaf to the
hurried whisper:

“For pity’s sake, go now that you can. You are in danger here. Think of
yourself, if you will not think of me!”

“I can think of but one person,” said I harshly. “I have come a
thousand miles to learn things which I know you can tell me, and here
I remain until I have heard them. Any delay on your side will only
prolong the danger, since danger there be.”

She looked up in tearful pleading, met my obstinate gaze, and instantly
submitted—a woman born to be ruled.

“Go, Trude,” she said faintly, “and warn me if you see your master
coming. What will she think of me?” sighed the poor lady as the door
closed upon an awe-struck but evidently suspicious Trude. “But no
matter, better that just now than the truth. Now, sir, for God’s sake,
what is it you would have of me?”

“Let me go back,” said I, “to the beginning. When I married ... my
wife at Tollendhal, she was then, for a freak as you say, acting the
lady-in-waiting, while you assumed her rôle of Princess?”

“It is so,” said Madam Lothner, “but I never knew till the deed was
accomplished to what length her Highness had chosen to push her folly.
I could not then attempt to interfere or advise, still less could I be
the person to send tidings to the Court.”

“So?” said I, as she paused.

“So,” said she, “in great fear and trembling, I deemed it best to
obey her Highness’s strict command, and await events at the Castle of
Schreckendorf, still in my assumed part.”

“But when my wife returned to you,” I said, and my voice shook,
“returned to you in a peasant’s cart,—oh, I know all about it, Madam,
I know that I drove her forth through the most insensate pride that
ever lost soul its paradise,—when she returned, the truth must have
already been known?”

“Ach, yes,” murmured the sentimental Saxon, her eyes watering with very
sympathy at the sight of my bitter self-reproach. “Yes, it was because
of rumours which had already reached the residence (from your friends
in England, I believe), that his Serene Highness the Duke sent in
such haste to recall us. He would not come himself for fear of giving
weight to the scandal. But it was her Highness who chose to confirm the
report.”

“How?” cried I eagerly.

“Why, sir,” answered the doctor’s lady, flowing on not unwillingly in
her soft guttural, though visibly perturbed nevertheless, and now and
again anxiously alive to any sound without—“why, sir, her Highness
having returned to Schreckendorf before the arrival of the ladies
and gentlemen from Lausitz, and being, it seemed, determined”—here
she hesitated and glanced at me timidly—“determined not to return
to Tollendhal ever again, her Highness might easily, had she wished,
have denied the whole story. And indeed,” continued the speaker with a
shrewdness I would not have given her credit for, “had she so behaved
it would have best pleased her relations. But she was not so made.”

“Ah, no indeed,” said I, “her pride would not stoop to that.”

“You are right,” said Madam Lothner, with a sigh, “she is very proud.
She was calm and seemed to have quite made up her mind. ’I will give no
explanation to any one,’ she said to me, ’and I recognise in no one the
right to question me. But my father shall know that I am married, and
that I am separated from my husband for ever. I am not the first woman
of my rank on whom such a fate has fallen.’ That was her attitude.”

And here the good creature broke forth as if in spite of herself with
passionate expostulation.

“Ah, M. de Jennico, but she suffered! Oh, if you would atone, leave
her now, leave her at least in peace! You have brought enough sorrow
already into her life. Ach! I do not know how it has been between you;
but now that she thinks you dead, for God’s sake let it be!”

“By Heaven, Madam,” cried I, half mad, I believe, between pain,
remorse, and fury, “these are strange counsels! Do you forget that
we are man and wife, and this by her own doing? But truly I need not
be surprised, for you do not hesitate before crime at the Court of
Lausitz, and if murder be so lightly condoned, sure it is that bigamy
must seem a very peccadillo.”

Madam Lothner stared at me with startled eyes and dropping jaw.

“Murder,” she whispered, “M. de Jennico! what terrible thing do you
say?”

Then she put her hand to her head, ejaculating: “True, it was the
Margrave himself who brought us news of your death on his return from
England. It was in the English papers. I feared I know not what, but
this—this—God save us!”

I looked at her in fresh bewilderment. She was as one seized by
overwhelming terror. I felt that her emotion had its origin in causes
still unknown to me.

“And who is the Margrave?” I cried quickly.

She lowered her voice to the barest breath of sound, and glanced
fearfully over her shoulder as if afraid of eavesdroppers even in this
retired room.

“Prince Eugen, as they call him,” she said, “one of her Highness’s
cousins. He has, I do not quite know how, hopes of sovereignty in
Poland, and they were to have been married: it was her father’s wish,
and it is so still.”

I sprang up with an imprecation, but the lady almost flung herself upon
me, and clapped her hand over my mouth.

“In the name of God,” she said, “be still, or you will ruin us! My
husband is his most devoted adherent. In this house he rules, and we
bow to the earth before him.”

I sank back into my seat, docile, in spite of myself, impressed by the
strength of her fear. New trains of revelations crowded upon me. Eugen
of Liegnitz-Rothenburg—Rothenburg—Ville-Rouge—I saw it all!

She went on, bringing her mouth close to my ear:

“The Princess hated him, and indeed he has grown into a strange and
terrifying man, so oddly impulsive, cruel, wilful, vindictive. He
always professed to love the Princess, but I cannot but think that
it was the love of taming—he would dearly love to break her, just
as he loves to break the proudest-spirited horse. His grey eye makes
me grow cold. As I said, from a child she hated him, and it was for
that—having seen one whom she thought she could love....” Here she
paused, and glanced at me, and hesitated.

It was for that. I remembered. She had told me of the unhappy fate that
threatened “the Princess” that evening when we met under the fir-trees
to decide upon my crazy match, and when, as I had deemed, she had
fooled me to the top of my bent. She had spoken in tones of scathing
contempt and hatred of some cavalier. And now? Suddenly gripped by the
old devil of doubt and jealousy, I cried out, “And now, after all, the
fate of being wedded to an obscure gentleman seems to her more dreadful
than that of sharing her place with her cousin, and the peculiar
qualities of the hated relative have been very usefully employed in
ridding her of the inconvenient husband? Oh, Madam, of course you
know your Court of Lausitz, and I think I begin to see your drift:
you think, in your amiability, that it would be preferable to see
your mistress bigamously united, than that she should legitimise her
position by yet another and more successful attempt at assassination.”

“I fail to understand you, sir,” drawing back from me, nevertheless,
with a glance of mistrust and indignation.

“I will be plain,” said I: “when the Princess, who is my wife, left
me,—I will own I bear some blame, but then I had been strangely
played with,—she had doubtless already begun to repent what you call
her freak. When I followed her and implored her forgiveness,—you
yourself know all about it, Madam, for you must have acted under
her orders,—she flung back my letters, through your agency, with a
contemptuous denial of any knowledge of such a person as M. de Jennico.
When I wrote to her, her whom I believed to bear your name, a pleading,
abject letter, for I was still but a poor loving fool, her only answer
was to have me seized and driven from the country like a criminal.
Later on, when I refused to be a party to her petition for divorce,
she thought, no doubt, she had given me chances enough, and this time
she deputed the noble bully, her cousin, to manage the matter in his
own fashion. My life was attempted five times, Madam. And when it all
failed,—your Prince Eugen, you tell me, he was in England, and there
was a certain great bulky Chevalier de Ville-Rouge, who particularly
sought my acquaintance—’tis he, is it not?—your Prince Eugen honoured
me by seeking a duello, and by running his august sword through my
common body, and that more often, be it said, than custom sanctions in
honourable encounters. I was given for dead. No wonder! It seems to be
the sport of hell to keep me alive. I can scarce think it is the will
of Heaven.”

Madam Lothner had followed my tirade with what appeared the most
conflicting sentiments: blank astonishment, horror, indignation. It was
the last, however, that predominated. Her countenance became suffused
with crimson; her blue eyes flashed a fire I had not deemed them
capable of harbouring; she forgot the precautions she herself had so
strenuously enjoined.

“And do you dare, sir,” cried she, “accuse my mistress of these
things—you, whom she loved? You knew her as your wife for four weeks,
and yet you know her so little as to believe her plotting your death!
Those letters, sir, you speak of, she never received, nor did I, nor
did she nor I ever hear of your presence in this land. ’Tis true
that after you had left,—for _you_ left her first, remember,—after
well-nigh a year without tidings of you, she did herself send to you
to request the annulment of the marriage. It was _to free you_ because
she believed you repented of it, and she felt she had entrapped you
into it. And when, sir, you refused, she had hope again in her heart,
for she loved you. And she suffered persecution on your account, and
was kept and watched like a state prisoner—she that had always lived
for the free air, and for her own way. They were cruel to her, and
put dreadful pressure upon her that she should make her appeal alone
to the Pope. But she held firm, and bore it all in silence, and lived
surrounded by spies, her old friends and old servants banished from her
sight, until the news came that you were dead. Then ... ah, then, she
mourned as never a woman mourned yet for her first and only love! As
to marriage—what dreadful things have you been saying? Her Highness
will never marry again. She will be faithful as long as she lives to
you, whom she believes dead. And God forbid it should be otherwise,
for Prince Eugen would wed her from no love, I believe, but solely to
punish her for resisting him so long, to break her to his will at last,
and triumph over her. Oh, no, she would never wed again! You must
believe me, for I have been with her through it all, and though she
would mock me and laugh at me once, she turned to me afterwards as to
her only friend——Get up, M. de Jennico, get up! Ach Gott! what a coil
this is! My good sir, get up; think if the doctor were to come in! Ach
Gott! what is that you say? Nay, I have been a fool, and this is the
worst of all. My poor friend, there is no room for happiness here!”

For I had fallen at her feet again, and was covering her hand with
kisses, blessing her with tears, I believe, for the happiness of this
moment.

She ended, good soul, by weeping with me, or rather, over the pity of
the joy that was doomed, as she thought, to such brief duration.

“Oh, you are mad, you are mad!” she said, as I poured forth I know
not what extravagant plans. Ottilie loved me, cried I in the depths
of my exultant soul: what could be difficult now? “You are mad! Have
you not yet learned your lesson? Do you not understand that they will
never, _never_ let you have her? Go back to your home, sir, and if you
love her never let her know you are still alive, for if they heard it
here, God knows what she would be put to bear; and if she knew they had
tried to murder you, it would kill her. I tell you, sir, a Court is a
dreadful place, and Prince Eugen, you know what he is, and his Serene
Highness himself, he is hard as the stones of the street. You have seen
what they have done—no law can reach them! They will not fail again.
And if a second scandal——” she paused, hesitated, shuddered, then
bending over to me she whispered, half inarticulately, “if a second
scandal came to pass, who knows what forfeit she might not have to pay!”

But I rose, clasped her two hands, and looked into her eyes with all
the bold joy that filled my heart.

“My kind friend,” I said, “you cannot frighten me now. Keep you but our
secret, and you will yet see your mistress happy.” I wrung her hands,
and hurried to the door, as eager now to be gone as I had been to
enter. I must act, and act at once, and there was much to do.

She followed me, lamenting and entreating, to the steps, where stood
faithful Trude, with garments blown about in the cold wind. But, as I
turned to take a last farewell, my hostess caught me by the sleeve.

“Keep close,” she said, “keep close; and if you are hurt, if you are
ill——” she hesitated a second, then leaned forward and breathed into
my ear, “do not send for the Court doctor.”




CHAPTER IV


I RUSHED out into the street, treading as if on air, my cloak floating
behind me, my head thrown back, all warnings unheeded in the first
overpowering tide of this joy which had come upon me at the darkest
hour of all.

I had told myself that I must act, and act at once. But till I had had
a moment’s breathing time to realise the extraordinary revelations by
which the whole face of the past and of the future was changed to me, I
could form no coherent thought, much less could I form plans.

I wanted space for this—space and solitude. And so I hurried along as
I have described, looking neither to the right nor to the left, when I
was seized upon from behind, and by no means gentle hands brought me
first to a standstill, and next threw the folds of my cloak around me
in such a fashion as once more to cover my face.

“Are you mad?” said János, with a fiercer display of anger than I had
ever known him show to me, though he had marshalled me pretty rigidly
through my illness. “I have been following you these five minutes,
and all the town stares at your honour. ’Tis lucky you took a side
turning just now or you would have been straight into the great place,
perhaps into the main guard. If you want to look for death, you can go
to the wars like my old master, but ’tis an ill thing to find it in the
assassin’s blade, as I thought you had learned by now. Do you forget,”
continued János, scolding more vehemently, “that they are all leagued
against you in this country? Do you forget how they packed you out of
the land last year, and warned you never to return? ’Tis very well to
risk one’s life, but ’tis ill to throw it away.”

“Oh, János, true soul,” said I, as soon as I could get air to speak
with, for his grasp upon the folds of my cloak was like an iron clamp,
“all is changed, all is explained. You saw me last the most miserable
of men: you see me now the happiest!”

We had paused in a deserted alley leading into the gardens on the
ramparts. As I looked round I saw that the sky had grown darkly
overcast, and by János’s pinched face, as well as by the bowing and
bending of the trees, that the wind had risen strong and cold. To me it
might have been the softest breeze of spring. I drew the man over to a
bench all frosted already by tiny flakes which fell persistently, yet
sparsely, and there I told him my tale of joy. He listened, blinking
and grinning. At length when it was duly borne in upon him that the
wife I was seeking was really and actually the Princess of the land, he
clasped his hands and cried with a certain savage enthusiasm:

“Oh, that my old master had lived to see the day!” But the next instant
the bristling difficulties of the situation began to oppress his aged
heart. He pondered with a falling face.

“Then your honour is in even greater danger than I had thought,” said
he, “and every second he passes in this town of cut-throats adds to the
risk.”

“Even so,” said I, clapping him on the shoulders, my spirits rising
higher, it seemed, with every fresh attempt to depress them,—“Even so,
my good fellow; and therefore since my wife I mean to have, and since I
mean to live to be happy with her, what say you to our carrying her off
this very night?”

He made no outcry: he knew the breed (he himself had said it) too well.
As you may see a dog watch his master’s signal to dash after the prey,
wagging his tail faintly the while, so the fellow turned and fixed me.

“And how will your honour do it?” said he without a protest.

“How?” said I, and laughed aloud; “by my soul I know not! I know
nothing yet, but we will home to the inn and deliberate. There is
nought so difficult but love will find the way, and Romeos will scale
walls to reach their Juliets so long as this old world lasts.”

I rose as I spoke, and so did János, shaking the snow from his bent
shoulders.

“I know nothing of the gentlemen your honour speaks of, nor of the
ladies, but my old master, your honour’s uncle, did things in his
days.... God forgive me that I should remember them against a holy
soul in heaven! There was a time when he kept a whole siege (it was
before Reichenberg in ’59)—a whole siege waiting, ordered a cessation
of fire for a night, that he might visit some lady in the town. He was
the general of the besieging army, and he could order as he pleased.
By Saint Stephen, he got into the town somehow ... and I with him ...
and next morning we got out again! No one knew where we had been but
himself, and myself, and herself—he, he!—and before midday we had
that town.”

“Fie, fie, János,” said I, “these are sad tales of a field-marshal; let
us hope my good aunt never heard them.”

“Her Excellency,” said János, and crossed himself, “would have gloried
in the deed. But, your honour, we have the heavens against us to-night;
I have not seen a sky look blacker, even in England, since the great
storm at Tollendhal.... Ah, your honour remembers when.”

“All the better,” said I, as we turned the corner; “a stormy night is
the best of nights for a bold deed.”

And I thought within myself: “I lost her in the storm; in the storm
shall I find her again.” Thus does a glad heart frame his own omen.

It was all very fine to talk of carrying off my wife in such fashion;
but when, seated together near the fire in my room, talking in whispers
so that not even the great stove door could catch the meaning of our
conclave, János and I discussed our plans, we found that everything
fell before the insuperable difficulty of our ignorance of the
topography of the palace. There seemed nothing for it but to endeavour
to interview Anna once more, dangerous as the process might be. And we
were already discussing in what character János should present himself,
when Fortune—that jade that had long turned so cold a shoulder upon
me—came to the rescue in the person of the good woman herself. There
was a hard knock at the door, which made us both, conspirators as we
were, jump apart, and I involuntarily felt for the pistol in my coat
skirts, whilst János stalked to open.

And there stood the lank black figure which had once seemed to cast a
sort of shadow on my young delight, but which now I greeted as that of
an angel of deliverance. She loved her mistress, her mistress loved
me—what could she do me then but good?

I sprang forward and drew her in by both hands. She threw back the
folds of her hood and looked round upon us, and her grim anxious
countenance relaxed into something like a smile. Then she dropped me a
stiff curtsey, and coming close to my ear:

“I gave my mistress the gracious master’s letter,” she said, and
paused. I seized upon her hand again.

“Oh, Anna, dear Anna, how is she? How did she take it? Was she much
concerned? Was she ...” I hesitated, “was she glad to learn I am not
dead?”

The woman’s eyes looked as if they would fain speak volumes, but her
taciturn tongue gave utterance to few words.

“My mistress,” she said, “wept much, and thanked God.” That was all,
but I was satisfied.

“She is in much fear for you,” the messenger went on after a pause.
“She bade me say she dared not write because of the danger to you; she
bade me say that the danger is greater than you know of; that your
enemies are other than you think. Now they believe you dead, but you
may be recognised. And you were out to-day again!” said Anna, suddenly
dropping the sing-song whisper of her recitation and turning upon me
sternly with uplifted finger. “Out, in spite of my warning! I know, for
I came to the inn to find you. All this is foolish.”

“And this is the end of your message?” said I, who had been drinking
in every word my wife’s sweet lips had so sweetly spoken for me. “Was
there nothing else?” said I again, for my soul hungered for a further
sign of love.

“There was one thing more,” said Anna in her stolid way: “she bade me
say she would contrive to see you somehow soon, but that as you love
her you must keep hidden.”

I shut my eyes for a second to taste in the secret of my heart the
honeyed savour of that little phrase that meant so much: “_as you love
me!_” for there rang the unmistakable appeal of love to love! And I
smiled to think that she still reserved the telling of her secret. I
guessed it was because she was pleased that I should want her for
herself, and not for the vain pride that had been our undoing.

And then, with my bold resolve a thousandfold strengthened, I caught
Anna by the arm.

“Now listen,” said I, and stooped to bring my lips to her ear. “When
I went out this afternoon it was to good purpose. I have seen Frau
Lothner.... I know all.”

“Lord God!” cried Anna, and snatched her hand from mine and threw her
arms to heaven, her long brown face overspread with pallor; “and she
has seen you, has recognised you—the Court doctor’s wife! Then God
help us all! If the secret is not out to-day it will be to-morrow.
Oh, my poor child, my poor child!” She rocked herself to and fro in a
paroxysm of indignant grief.

“But,” said I, trying to soothe her that she might listen to my
plan, “Madam Lothner is an old friend of mine, she is devoted to the
Princess, she has a kind heart, she has promised me discretion.”

“She!” said Anna, and paused to throw me a look of unutterable scorn.
“She, the sheep-head! in the hands of such an one as the Court doctor!
My lord, I give you but to midnight to escape! for as it happens—and
God is merciful that it happens so—the Margrave has sent for the
doctor at his camp of Liegnitz, and he will not return until after
supper.”

“So be it,” said I gaily; “escape I shall, Anna, but not alone.”

The woman’s sallow face grew paler yet. The depth of the love for the
child she had nursed at her breast gave her perspicacity. Her eye
sought mine with fearful anticipation.

I drew her to the furthest end of the room and rapidly expounded my
project, which developed itself in my mind even as I spoke. Outside
the snow was falling fast. All good citizens were within doors; there
was as yet no suspicion of my presence in the town; the palace was
quiet and my bitterest enemy was absent; to delay would be to lose
our only chance. The passion of my arguments, none the less forcible,
perhaps, because of the stress of circumstances which kept my voice at
whisper pitch, bore down Anna’s protests, her peasant’s fears. I had,
I believe, a powerful auxiliary in the woman’s knowledge of all that
her beloved mistress might be made to suffer upon the discovery of my
reappearance. She felt the convincing truth of my statement, that if
the attempt was to be made at all it must be made this very night, and
she saw too that I said true when I told her I would only give up such
attempt with my life.

Moreover (joy as yet hardly realised!) she knew that my wife’s
happiness lay in me alone; and so she agreed, with unexpected
heartiness, to every detail of my scheme.

She was to meet me at the end of the palace garden lane before the
stroke of eight, two hours hence, and admit me through a side postern
into the garden itself. We were obliged to fix so early an hour to
avoid the necessity of running twice past sentries, who, it seemed,
were doubled around the palace after eight o’clock. The Princess’s
apartments were upon the first floor on the garden side, and from the
terrace below it was quite possible, it appeared, for an active man
to climb up to her balcony. I would bring a rope-ladder—János should
make it, for he had no doubt some knowledge of that scaling implement.
As soon as she had shown me the way, Anna was to endeavour to prepare
her mistress for my coming. János in his turn was to be waiting with
my carriage and post-horses as near the garden gate as he dared. The
Princess, the nurse told me, was wont to retire about nine, it might be
a little earlier or later, and liked then to be left in solitude, Anna
herself being the only person admitted to her chamber.

Among the many risks there was one inevitable, the danger of being
discovered by my wife lurking on her balcony before Anna had had time
to carry her message: for it was impossible, the woman warned me, that
she should now see her mistress before the latter descended to meet
the Duke at supper. I was, however, gaily prepared to face this risk,
and even, foolhardy as it may seem, desired in my inmost soul that
there should be no intermediary on this occasion, and that my lips
only should woo her back to me; that this first meeting after our hard
parting should be sacred to ourselves alone.

I reckoned besides upon the fact that since Ottilie knew I was in the
town, she would not be surprised at my boldness, however desperate;
that she would ascertain with her own eyes who it was who dared climb
so high, before she called for help.

At length, when everything was clear,—and the woman showed after all a
wonderful mother wit,—Anna departed in the storm, and I and János were
left to our own plans and preparations. As for me, my heart had never
ridden so high; never for a second did I pause or hesitate. In a few
minutes we had devised half a dozen alternate schemes of flight, all
equally good—all equally precarious.

“Will your honour leave it to me,” said the old campaigner at last,
as he sat beginning to plait and knot various lengths of our luggage
ropes into an escape ladder,—“the settlement of the inn account, the
post-horses, and the choice of the road?”

With this I was content.

The wind had abated a little, but the snow was still falling steadily
when I set forth at length. The streets were, as I expected, very
empty, and the few wayfarers whom I chanced to meet were so enveloped
and so plastered with white, the chief thought of every one was so
obviously how best to keep himself warm, how soonest to get within
shelter, that I hugged myself again upon my luck. There was a glow
within me which defied the elements.

At the corner of the garden lane, at the appointed place, even as the
tower clock began the quarter chimes, I saw a woman’s figure rapidly
approaching the trysting spot from the opposite direction. I hesitated
for a moment, uncertain as to its identity, but it made straight for
me, and I saw it was Anna. As we turned into the lane itself she
suddenly whispered:

“Put your arm round my waist,” and the next instant, from the very
midst of my amazement, I realised her meaning: we had to pass close by
a sentry-box. Woman’s wits are ever sharper than man’s. The sentry was
stamping to and fro, beating his breast with his disengaged hand, but
ceased his bear dance to stare at us, as we came within the light of
the postern lamp, and launched at the dim couple so lovingly embraced
some rude witticism in his peasant tongue, accompanied by a grunt of
good-natured laughter. My supposed sweetheart pulled her hood further
over her face, answered back tartly with a couple of words in the
country dialect; and, followed by an ironical blessing from the churl,
we were free to pursue our way unchallenged.

This was the only obstacle we encountered; the lane was quite deserted.
We stopped before a little postern door half buried in ivy, which Anna,
producing a key from her pocket, unlocked after some difficulty. At
last it rolled back on its rusty hinges with what sounded in my ears
as an exultant creak. An ancient bird’s nest fell upon my head as we
passed through into the garden. Anna carefully pushed the door to once
more, but without locking it, and we hastened towards the distant
gleaming front of the palace, stumbling as we went, for the soft snow
concealed the irregularities of the path. Without hesitation, however,
my guide led me between two fantastically carved hedges of box and yew
till we came to a statue, rearing a blurred outline, ghostly white in
the faint snowlight. Here she stood still and pointing to the south
wing:

“There,” she said, while all the blood in my body leaped, “there are my
mistress’s apartments; see you those three windows above the terrace?
The middle window with the balcony is that of her Highness’s bedroom.
You cannot mistake it. The ivy is as thick as a man’s arm, and you may
climb by it in safety. Now that I have done what you bade me I will go
to the palace. God see us through this mad night’s work!”

With these words she left me. I ventured to the foot of the terrace
wall, and creeping alongside soon found the terrace steps, which I
ascended with a tread as noiseless as the fall of the thick snowflakes
all around me. I stood under her balcony. I groped for the ivy-stems,
and found them indeed as thick as cables. It was a plant of centenarian
growth, and it clasped the old palace walls with a hundred arms, as
close as welded iron: as strong and commodious a ladder as my purpose
required. I swung myself up (I tremble now to think how recklessly,
when one false step might have ended the life that had grown so dear),
and next I found myself upon the balcony—Ottilie’s balcony!—and
through the parted curtains could peer into her lighted room.

Then for the first time I paused, hesitating to pry upon her retirement
like a thief in the night. For a moment I knelt upon the snow and cried
in my heart for pardon to her. Then, drawing cautiously aside from the
shaft of light, I looked in. It was a large lofty apartment with much
gilding, tarnished it seemed by time, and with faded paintings and
medallions on the walls. In an alcove curtained off I divined in the
shadow a great carved bed, whose gilt curves caught now and again a
gleam of ruby light from the open door of an immense rose china stove.
My eyes lingered tenderly over every detail of the sanctuary sacred to
my lady. Outside upon the balcony, all in the darkness, the cold, and
the snow, my whole being began to swim in a dreamy warmth of love. It
is like enough that had not something come to rouse me, I might have
been found next morning, stiff, frozen upon my perch, with a smile
upon my lips—a very sweet and easy death! But from this dangerous
dreaminess I was presently aroused to vivid watchfulness and energy.
My wandering gaze had been for a little while uncomprehendingly fixed
upon a shining wing of flowered satin stuff that trailed on one side of
a great armchair, the back of which was turned towards me. This wing
of brocade caught the full illumination of the candles on the wall and
showed hues of pink and green as dainty as the monthly roses in the
garden of my old home in England. Now as I gazed the roses began to
move as if a breeze had shaken them, and lo! the next moment, a little
hand as white as milk fluttered down like a dove upon them and drew
them out of sight. For a second my heart stood still, and then beat
against my breast like a frantic wild thing of the woods against the
bars of its cage. She was there, there already, my beloved! What kept
me from breaking in upon her, I cannot say—a sort of fear of looking
upon her face again in the midst of my great longing—or maybe my good
angel! Anyhow I paused, and pausing was saved. For in a second more
a door opposite to me opened, and an elderly lady, followed by two
servants carrying a table spread for a repast, entered the room. The
lady came towards the armchair and curtsied. I saw her lips move and
caught the murmur of her voice, and listened next in vain for the music
of those tones for which my ear had hungered so many days and nights.

I saw the white hand cleave the air again as if with an impatient
gesture. The lady curtsied, the lackeys deposited the table near the
chair, and all three withdrew.

I had trusted to fate to be kind to me this night, but I had not dared
expect from fate more than neutrality; and now it was clear that it was
taking sides for me, and that my wife had been strangely well inspired
to sup in her chamber alone, instead of in public with her father, as I
had been told was her wont.

No sooner had the attendants retired than I beheld her light figure
spring up with the old bounding impetuosity I had loved and laughed
at, fling herself against the door, and I heard the snap of the key.
Now was my opportunity! And yet again I hesitated and watched. My face
was pressed against the glass in the full glare of the light, without
a thought of caution, forgetting that, were she to look up and see me,
the woman alone might well scream at the wild, eager face watching her
with burning eyes from out of the black night. But she did not look up.

Wheeling round at the door itself as if she could not even wait to
get back to her chair, Ottilie—my Ottilie—drew from beneath the
lace folds that crossed upon her young bosom a folded letter, which I
recognized, by the coarse grey paper, as that which my own hand had
scored in the little provision shop a few hours ago.

An extraordinary mixture of emotions seized upon my soul: a sort
of shame of myself again for spying upon her private life, and an
unutterable rapture. I could have knelt once more in the snow as before
a sacred shrine, and I could have broken down a fortress to get to her.
From the very strength of the conflict I was motionless, with all my
life still in my eyes.

When she had finished reading she lifted her face for a moment, and
then for the first time I saw it. Oh, dear face, paled with many tears
and dark thoughts, but beautiful, beyond even my heated fancy, with a
new beauty, rarer and more exquisite than it is given me to describe!
The same, yet not the same! The wife I had left had been a wilful and
wayward child, a mocking sprite—the wife I here found again was a
gracious, a ripe and tender woman, upon whose lips and eyes sat the
seal of a noble, sorrowful endurance.

She lifted the letter to her lips and kissed it, looked up again,
and then our eyes met! Then I hardly remember what I did. I was
unconscious of any deliberate thought; I only knew that there was my
wife, and that not another second should pass before I had her in my
arms.

I suppose I must have hurled myself against the casement; the lock
yielded, and the window flew open. Enveloped in a whirl of floating
snow I leaped into the warm room. With dilated, fixed eyes, with parted
lips, she stood, terror-stricken, at first, yet erect and undaunted.
I had counted all along on her courage, and it did not fail me! But
before I had even time to speak, such a change came over her as is like
the first upspring of sunlight upon the colourless world of dawn. As
you may see a wave gather itself aloft to break upon the shore, so she
drew herself up and flung herself, melting into tears, body and soul,
as it were, upon my heart. And the next moment her lips sought mine.

Never before had she so come to me—never before had life held for me
such a moment! Oh, my God! it was worth the suffering!




CHAPTER V


A KNOCK without aroused us. With a stifled cry of alarm, the woman
who had made no sound on the violent entry of an armed man upon her
unprotected solitude, now fell into deadly anguish. She sprang to the
door, and I could see the lace on her bosom flutter with the fear of
her heart as she bent her ear to listen. The knock was repeated.

“Who is it?” cried Ottilie, in a strangled voice. “I had said I would
be alone.”

“‘Tis I, child,” came the answer in the well-known deep note; “it is
Anna, alone.”

I thrust my sword back into its scabbard; my wife drew a long breath of
relief, and glanced at me with her hand pressed to her heart.

“Anna, thank God! We can admit her: Anna is safe,” she said, and turned
the key.

Anna opened the door, stood an instant on the threshold, contemplating
us in silence; a faint smile hovered about her hard mouth. Then,
without wasting words on futile warnings, she made fast the lock,
deposited on the floor a dark lantern she had concealed under her
apron, walked to the window, which she closed as best she could, and
drew the curtains securely. Indeed, her precaution was not idle:
through the silence of the outside world of night, muffled by the snow,
but yet unmistakable, the tread of the first patrolling round now grew
even more distinctly upon our ear, passed under the terrace, emphasised
by an occasional click of steel, and died away round the corner. With
the vanishing sound melted the new anxiety which had clutched me, and
I blessed the falling snow which must have hidden again, as soon as
registered, the tell-tale traces of my footsteps below.

Anna had listened with frowning brow; when all was still once more,
she turned to the Princess, and briefly, but in that softened voice I
remembered of old:

“I have told your ladies that you had bidden me attend to you this
night, and that you must not be disturbed in the morning,” and then
turned to me: “All is ready, sir; we have till noon before being
discovered. And now, child,” she continued, as Ottilie, still closely
clinging to my side, looked up inquiringly, “no time to lose; there is
death in this for thy gracious lord, if not for us all as well.”

“What does she mean?” asked Ottilie, and seemed brought from a far
sphere of bliss face to face with cold reality. “Oh, Basil, Basil, to
leave me again!”

“Leave you! I will never leave you,” cried I, touched to the quick at
the change which had come upon the proud spirit of my beloved; “but if
you will not come with me, with your husband, if you fear the perils
of flight, the hardships of the road, or even,” said I, though it was
only to try her and taste once again the exquisite joy of loving,
humble words from her lips, “if you cannot make up your mind to give up
your high state here, to live as the wife of a simple gentleman, I am
content to die at your side. But leave you, never again! Ah! my God,
once was too much.”

She looked at me for a second with tender reproach in her tear-dimmed
eyes and upon her trembling lips; then she answered with a simplicity
that rebuked my mock humility:

“I am content to go with you, Basil, were it to the end of the world.”

At this I could not, in spite of Anna’s presence, but take her to my
heart again, and the nurse, after watching us with a curious look of
mingled pleasure and jealousy in her hollow eyes, suddenly and somewhat
harshly bade us remember once more that time was short.

“You,” she went on to her lady, peremptorily, as if conscious of being
herself the true mistress of the situation, “drink you of that broth
and break some bread, and drink of that wine, for you have not eaten
to-day. And you,” she added, turning to me, “make ready with your
ladder.”

Impatiently and sternly she stood by us until we prepared to obey her
orders.

We owe a very great debt of gratitude to this woman!

My wife sat down like a child, watching me, sweet heart! over every
mouthful of soup as one who fears the vision may fade. As for me,
appreciating all the importance of immediate action, I threw from
me the perilous temptation of letting myself go to the delight of
the moment—a delight enhanced, perhaps, by the very knowledge of
environing danger. Opening my cloak, I unwound the length of rope from
my waist, cautiously slipped out again on the balcony and fastened one
end to the iron rail. Remembering the precious burden it was to bear, I
could not be satisfied without testing every knot, and finally trying
its strength with my own weight by descending to the terrace. It worked
satisfactorily, and the distance, fortunately, was not excessive. Then
leaving it dangling, in three leaps I was up again and once more in
the warm room, just in time to see an exquisite gleam of silk stocking
disappear into the depths of the fur boot which Anna was fastening with
all the dexterity of a nurse dressing a child.

And, indeed, my sweet love submitted to be turned and bustled and
manipulated with an uncomplaining docility as if she was again back in
her babyhood—although in truth I have reason to believe, from what I
know of her and have heard since, that not even then had she ever been
remarkable for docility.

Grimly smiling, Anna completed her labour by submerging the dainty head
in a deep hood; the sable-lined cloak and the muff she handed over to
me with the abrupt command: “Throw them out! Auswerfen!” Anna should
have been a grenadier sergeant; nevertheless, the thought was good, and
I promptly obeyed. Next she gave me the lantern—she had thought of
everything!—and commenced extinguishing the lights in the room. I took
Ottilie by the hand, the little warm hand, ungloved, that it might the
tighter feel the rope.

“Will you trust yourself, love?” said I. She gave me no answer but a
shaft of one of her old fearless looks and yielded her waist to my
arm, and thus we stepped forth into the snow and the night. I guided
her to the rope and showed her where to hold, and where to place her
feet, and then, climbing over the balcony, supporting myself by the
projecting stones and the knotted ivy, I was able to guide the slender
body down each swinging rung: for when the blood is hot and the heart
on fire one can do things that would otherwise appear well-nigh
impossible.

Safely we reached the ground. I enveloped her in the cloak which Anna’s
forethought had provided, and after granting myself the luxury of
another embrace I was preparing to ascend the blessed rope again for
the purpose of assisting Anna, when I discovered that incomparable
woman solidly and stolidly planted by our side in the snow.

“All is right, gracious sir,” she said in a hoarse whisper; “but it
would be as well to take away that rope, since you can go up and down
so easily without it.”

Recognising in an instant the wisdom of the suggestion—it was well
some one had a waking brain that night!—I clambered up once more, and
in a few seconds had flung down the tell-tale ladder, and descended
again.

Anna took up the lantern, which she hid under her cloak, and, all
three clinging together, we hastened to the postern as noiselessly as
shadows. The snow fell, but the wind had all subsided, and the air was
now so still that the cold struck no chill.

Outside the postern, seeing no one in sight, we paused.

“I have told János to be at the bottom of the lane,” said I to Anna, as
she pocketed the key after turning the lock. And then to my wife, who
hung close and silent to my arm: “It is but a little way, and then you
shall rest.”

Even as I spoke I turned to lead her, but Anna arrested me:

“I have thought better,” she said. “To leave the town in a carriage is
dangerous. I have arranged otherwise.”

I was about, I believe, to protest, or at least discuss, when Ottilie,
who had hitherto permitted herself to be led whither I would, like one
in a dream, suddenly cried to me in an urgent undertone to let Anna
have her way: “Believe me,” she said, “you will not repent it.” I would
have gone anywhere at the command of that voice.

“It shall be so,” said I; “but there is János, and we cannot leave him
in the lurch.”

“No, we must have János with us,” said Anna; “but that is easy. Follow
me, children.” And uncovering her lantern, with her skirts well kilted
up, she preceded us with fearless strides to the secluded turn at the
bottom of the lane, where, true to his promise, I found the heiduck and
his conveyance.

For the greater security the lamps of the carriage had not been lit,
but we could see its bulk rise in denser black against the gloom
before us, and feel the warmth of the horses steam out upon us, with a
pleasant stable odour, into the purity of the air.

There was a rapid colloquy between our two old servants. János, the
cunning fox! at once and appreciatively agreed to Anna’s superior plan
of action, and indeed his old campaigner’s wits promptly went one
better than the peasant’s shrewdness: instead of merely dismissing the
carriage as she suggested, he bade the coachman drive out by the East
Gate of the town and, halting at Gleiwitz, await at the main hostelry
there the party that would come on the morrow. And in the dark I could
see him emphasise the order by the transfer of some pieces, that
clicked knowingly in the night silence. The point of the manœuvre,
however, was only manifest to me when, turning to follow Anna’s lead
again down a side alley, the fellow breathed into my ear with a
chuckle:

“While your honour was away I took upon myself to despatch his carriage
with our luggage, to meet us, I said, at Dresden. That will be two
false scents for them—and we, it seems, take the south road to Prague!
We shall puzzle Budissin yet.”

On we tramped through the deserted bye-streets. It was only when we
were stopped at last, in that self-same poor little mean lane, before
the self-same poor little mean shop, faintly lit inside by a dull
oil lamp, that I recognised the scene of my morning’s interview with
Anna—that interview which seemed already to have passed into the far
regions of my memory, so much had I lived through since.

We met but few folk upon our way, who paid little attention to us. As
we entered into the evil-smelling room, stepping down into it from
the street, and as Anna shot back the slide of the lantern and turned
upon us a triumphant smiling face, I felt that our chief peril was
over. The shop was empty, but she was not disposed to allow us even a
little halt: she marshalled us through the dank narrow passages with
which I had already made acquaintance, across the courtyard into the
back street. There stood a country waggon with a leathern tent. By the
flash of the lantern I saw that to it were harnessed a pair of great
raw-boned chestnuts that hung their heads patiently beneath the snow,
yet seemed to have known better service in their days—no doubt at one
time had felt the trooper’s spurs.

Beside them stood a squat man, enveloped to the ears in sheepskin, with
a limp felt hat drawn over his brow till only some three-quarters of a
shrewd, empurpled, not unkindly visage was left visible. The waggoner
was evidently expecting us, for he came forward, withdrew his pipe,
touched his hat, and made a leg.

“My cousin,” said Anna to us, and added briefly and significantly: “He
asks no questions.”

Then in a severe tone of command she proceeded to address several to
him. Had he placed fresh hay in the waggon according to her orders? Had
he received from her sister the ham, and the wine and the blankets? Had
the horses been well fed? On receiving affirmative grunts in answer,
she bade him then immediately produce the chair, that the lady and the
gentleman might get in.

Between the closed borders of her hood I caught a glimpse of Ottilie’s
faint smile, as lighted by the lantern rays she mounted upon the
wooden stool and disappeared into the dark recesses of the waggon,
stirring up a warm dust as she went, and a far-away fragrance of hay
and faded clover.

“Now you, sir,” said Anna, and jogged my elbow.

I believe at that moment we were to her but a pair of babes and
nurslings for whom she was responsible, and that she would have as
readily combed our hair and washed our faces as if we were still of a
size to be lifted on her knee.

I obeyed. And truly, as I crawled forward in the dark, amid the warm
straw, groping my way to the further end till I laid my hand on
Ottilie’s soft young arm extended towards me, when I heard her laugh
a little laugh to herself as we snuggled in the nest together, I felt
a happiness that was like that of a child, all innocent of past and
improvident of future. Nevertheless at one and the same time my whole
being was stirred to its depths with a tenderness my manhood had not
yet known.

In those foolish bygone days I had loved her, the sweet soul, with the
unworthy, mad passion of a lover for his mistress. When she left me I
had mourned her as a man mourns for his wife, flesh of his flesh, bone
of his bone. Now, however, we seemed to be lad and maid together;
our love, after all the sorrow and the agony we had passed through,
seemed to wear the unspeakable freshness of a first courtship. It
was written that good measure was to be paid me to compensate for
past anguish—good measure, heaped up, flowing over! I took it with a
thankful heart.

The cart swayed and creaked as János and Anna mounted and settled
themselves at our feet, drawing the hay high over themselves. Then came
another creaking and swaying in the forward end, we heard a jingle of
bells, a crack of the whip and a hoarse shout: the cart groaned and
strained to the effort of the horses, then yielded. And at a grave pace
we rumbled over the cobble-stones, turning hither and thither through
street after street which we could not see. And in the midst of our hay
we felt a sense of comfortable irresponsibility and delicious mystery.
All in the inner darkness we were dimly conscious of the snowy pageant
outside: the ghost-like houses and the twinkling lights. Ottilie lay
against my shoulder, and I felt her light breath upon my cheek.

After a while—it would be hard to say how long—there was a halt;
there came a shout from our driver, and an answering shout beyond. I
knew we had come to the Town Gates. That was a palpitating moment of
anxiety as the two voices exchanged parley, which the heavy beating
of the pulses in my ears would not allow me to follow. Next the rough
cadence of a jovial laugh fell loud upon the air, and then—sweeter
music I have seldom heard!—the clank of the gate’s bar. Once more we
felt ourselves rumbling on slowly till we had passed the bridge and
exchanged the cobbles of the town for the surface of the great Imperial
road, more lenient for all its ruts. The cousin cracked his whip again
and bellowed to his cattle; after infinite persuasion they broke into a
heavy jog-trot.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,”
said Anna suddenly from her dark corner, in a loud vibrating voice,
“give thanks to God, you children!” She leant forward as she spoke, and
pulled aside the leathern curtains that hung across the back of the
cart.

With the rush of snowy air came to us framed by the aperture a
retreating vision of Budissin, studded here and there with rare gleams
of light.

Thus did my wife, the young Princess of Lusatia, leave her father’s
dominions, her prospects of a throne, for the love of a simple English
gentleman!




CHAPTER VI


I SHALL carry to the grave, as one of the sweetest of my life, the
memory of that night journey. Coming as it did between the fierce
emotions and dangers of our meeting and flight, and the perilous and
furious episode that yet awaited us, it seems doubly impregnated with
an exquisite serenity of happiness. Full of brief moments, that brought
me then a poignant joy, it brings to my heart as I look back on it now
a tenderness as of smiles and tears together.

After a little while the flakes had ceased falling, and, in the faint
snowlight, beneath a clear sky, we gazed forth together from our
ambulant nest, here upon mysterious stretches of plain-land, there upon
ghosts of serried trees, trees that marched as it were past us back
towards Budissin. I remember how in a clear space of sky a star shone
out upon us at last, and how it seemed a good omen, and how we kissed
in the darkness.

Then there was our meal, with Anna’s lantern to illumine the feast. I
was so lost in watching my beloved bite her black bread contentedly
with small white teeth, and toast me with loving eyes over the thin
wine, that I could scarce fall to, myself. Yet when I did so it was
with right good appetite, for I was hungered, and I never tasted better
fare.

Then János got out of the waggon to sit in front by the driver and
smoke. My great-uncle had been such a confirmed tobacco-man that János
had acquired the habit in attendance upon him, and it did not behove me
to interfere with an indulgence fostered by thirty years’ service.

Anyhow, on that night the stray whiffs of his strong tobacco mingled
not unpleasantly with the keen cold scents of the night; and the sound
of the two men’s talk, with the monotonous jingle and rumble of harness
and cart, made a comfortable human accompaniment to our passage in the
midst of the great silence. Anna went to sleep and snored after her
good day’s work, waking now and again with a start and a groan, and
thence to oblivion once more. And then we too, oblivious of the world,
fell into a long dream, hand in hand—a great wide-eyed dream filling
our silence with soaring music, our darkness with all the warm colour
of life.

And thus we reached the first halting-place in the itinerary planned
by János and myself on the Imperial Chaussée. The place whence we
would best defy our enemies, and therefore our ultimate destination,
was of course my own Castle of Tollendhal, recent experience having
sufficiently demonstrated that in England we should be ill-protected
from the machinations of Budissin. This first stage was Löbau.

Never did town look so thoroughly asleep under its snow-laden eaves,
behind its black shutters, thought I, as our tired horses, steaming and
stumbling, dragged our cart up the main street.

A watchman had just sung out his cry: “The twelfth hour of the night,
and a clear heaven,” when we turned into the market-place, from the
middle of which he chanted his informing ditty to those Löbauers who
might chance to be awake to hear and thereby be comforted.

Spear in one hand and lantern in the other, the fellow approached
to inquire into such an unusual event as the passage of midnight
travellers. We heard János, in brief tones, tell a plausible tale of
his lordship’s travelling coach having broken down (on its way from
Görlitz, said he, who never missed a chance of falsifying a scent!),
and of his lordship, who happened to be in a special haste to proceed,
having availed himself of a passing country cart to pursue his journey
to the next posting town, and so forth, all the main points of this
story being corroborated by an affirmative growl from our Jehu.
Whereupon the watchman, honest fellow, nothing loath doubtless to vary
the perennial monotony of his avocation, undertook to awaken for our
benefit the inmates of the post-house, the best house of entertainment,
he asseverated, in the town.

It will be long, I take it, before the worthy burghers of Löbau,
and especially mine host of the “Cross Keys,” forget the mysterious
passage at dead of night of the great unknown magnate and his hooded
lady, of the tire-woman with the forbidding countenance, and of the
ugly body-servant, whose combined peremptoriness and lavish generosity
produced such wonders,—even had subsequent events not sufficed to fix
it upon their minds as a tragic epoch in the history of their country.

A few minutes of obstinate hammering and bell-ringing by János and by
the deeply impressed watchman, awoke the hostelry from the depths of
its slumbers. The bark of dogs responded first to the clangour; lights
appeared at various corners; windows, and then doors, were thrown open.
At last János threw back the leather curtain of our conveyance, and hat
in hand, with his greatest air of bonne maison assisted my lord in his
cloak, my lady in the furs (both much ornamented with wisps of hay), to
alight from their cart.

My lady, veiled and silent, retired for an hour’s rest, and so away
from the peering curiosity of the assembling servants. And my lord
paced the common-room, feverishly waiting for the coming of the
new conveyance which János, after one of his brief requisitioning
interviews (pandour style), had announced would be forthcoming with
brief delay.

The common-room was dank and cold enough, but my lord’s soul was in
warm consorting: it was still exalted by the last look that my lady had
thrown back at him, raising her hood for one instant as, ascending the
stairs, she had left him for the first separation.

In less than an hour the tinkling of collar-bells and the sound of
horses’ hoofs, clattering with a vigour of the best augury, were heard
approaching. Even as János entered to confirm by word the success of
his quest, my beloved appeared with a readiness which to me was sweeter
than any words: she too had been watching the moments which would speed
us onwards together once more.

Through a pretty concourse of dependants, all of whom had now got wind
of the rain of gratuities with which the great traveller’s servant
eased the wheels of difficulty, we entered our new chariot. I can
hardly mind now what sort of a vehicle this was. I believe in its days
it had been a decent enough travelling chaise: at any rate it moved
fast. Once more we rolled through the silent street, on the hillside
roads, up hill and down dale, my bride warmly nestled in my arms, and
both of us telling over again the tangled tale of the year that had
been wasted for us.

And thus, in the idle iteration of lovers’ talk, with the framing of
plans for the future, changeable and bright as the clouds of a summer’s
day, did we fill the rapid hours which brought us to Zittau in the
early morning.

But Zittau was still within the dominions of the eloping Princess’s
father; and at Zittau, therefore, much the same procedure was hastily
adopted as at the previous stage: another hour or so of separation,
another chaise and fresh horses, and once more a flight along the
mountain roads, as the dawn was spreading grey and chill over the first
spurs of the Lusatian hills.

This time we spoke but little to each other. The fatigue of a great
reaction was upon us. Anna was already snoring in her corner, her head
completely enveloped in her shawl, when, as I gazed down tenderly at
my wife’s face, I saw the sweet lids close in the very middle of a
smile, and the placidity of sleep fall upon her.

I have had, since the Budissin events, many joys; but there is none the
savour of which dwells with so subtle, so delicate, a perfume in my
memory as that of my drive in the first dawn with my wife asleep in my
arms.

It was not yet twelve hours since I had found her; and during those
twelve hours I had only seen her in the turmoil of emotion, or under
stress of anxiety, or by some flitting lamplight. Her image dwelt in my
mind as I had first beheld it through the glass of the palace window,
lovely in the first bloom of graceful womanhood, stately amid the
natural surroundings of her rank. Now, wrapped in confident slumber,
swathed in her great robes of fur, the only thing visible of her
young body being the little head resting in the hollow of my arm, the
fair skin flushing faintly in the repose of sleep, fresh even in the
searching cruelty of the growing light, like the petal of a tea rose,
the rhythmic pulse of her bosom faintly beating against my heart, she
was once more, for a little while, to me the Ottilie I had held in my
castle at Tollendhal. And as, for fear of disturbing her, I restrained
my passionate longing to kiss those parted lips, those closed lids
with the soft long eyelashes, I could not tell which I yearned for
most: the Princess, the ripe woman I had found again ... or the wayward
mistress playing at wife I had schooled myself to banish in the wasted
days of my overweening vanity.

But why thus linger over the first stage of that happy journey? Joy can
only be told by contrast to misery. We can explain sorrow in a hundred
pages, but if delight cannot be told in one, it cannot be told at all.
It is too elusive to be kept within the meshes of many words. Sorrows
we forget,—by a merciful dispensation,—and it may be wholesome to
keep their remembrance in books. Joys ever cling to the phials of
memory like a scent which nought can obliterate.

And since I have undertaken to record the reconquest of Jennico’s
happiness, there remains yet to tell the manner in which it all but
foundered in the haven. For this heartwhole ecstasy of mine could not
last in its entirety beyond a few brief moments. As I thus grasped
my happiness, with a mind free at last from the confusing vapours of
haste and excitement, even as the fair world around us emerged sharp
and bright from amid the shadows of dawn, all the precariousness of
our situation became likewise defined. Between me and the woman I
loved, though now I held her locked in my arms, arose the everlasting
menace of separation. How long would we be left together? Where could
I fly with her to keep her safe? I hoped that amid the feudal state of
my castle I could defy persecution, but what could such a life be at
best? Thus, in the very first sweetness of our reunion, was felt the
bitterness of that hidden suspense that must eventually poison all.

Now as I look back, nothing seems more dreamlike than the way in which
my boding thought suddenly assumed the reality of actual event.

“In a little while” (I was saying to myself, as I watched the shadows
shorten, and the beams of sunlight grow broader upon the snow), “in a
little while the hounds will be started in pursuit, the old persecution
will be resumed, more devilish than ever.” And at the thought, against
my will, a contraction shook the arm on which my love was resting. She
stirred and awoke, at first bewildered, then smiling at me. I let down
the glass of the coach, that the brisk morning air might blow in upon
us and freshen our tired limbs.

We were then advancing but slowly, being midway up the slope of
a great wide dale; the horses toiled and steamed. And then as we
tasted keenly the vigorous freshness of the morning air, and looked
forth, speechless, upon the beauty of the waking hour of nature—that
incomparable hour so few of us wot of—there came into the great
silence, broken only by the straining of harness and the faint thud of
our horses’ hoofs in the snow, another noise: a curious, faint, little,
far-off noise like to no sound of nature. Ottilie glanced at me, and I
saw the pupil of her eye dilate. She uttered no word, neither did I.
But, all at once, we knew that there was some one galloping behind us.

I thrust my head out. János was already on the alert: standing with his
back to the horses, leaning upon the top of the coach, he was looking
earnestly down the valley. I can see his face still, all wrinkled and
puckered together in the effort of peering against the first level
rays of the sun. Now, as I leaned out also, and the horse’s gallop
grew nearer and nearer upon my ear, I caught, as I thought, a faint
accompaniment of other hoofs, still more distant. I looked at János,
who brought down his eyes to mine.

“But three altogether, my lord,” he said. And, reaching as he spoke
for his musketoon, he laid it on top of the coach. “And, thank God,”
he added, “one can see a long way down this slope.” He bade the driver
draw up on one side of the road, and I was able myself to look
straight into the valley.

A flying figure, that grew every second larger and blacker against
the white expanse beneath us, was rushing up towards us with almost
incredible swiftness. In the absolute stillness of the world locked
in snow, the rhythm of the hoofs, the squelching of the saddle, the
laboured snorting of the over-driven horse, were already audible.
There were not many seconds to spare—and action followed thought as
prompt as flash and sound. There was only time, in fact, to place the
bewildered Anna, just awakened, by my wife’s side at the back of the
coach, to pull up the shutter of both windows, and to leap out.

I was hatless. I grasped my still sheathed sword in one hand, and with
the other fumbled for my pistols in my coat skirts, whilst with a
thrust of my shoulder I clapped the coach door to. There was not time
even to exchange a word with Ottilie, but her deathly pallor struck me
to the heart and fired me to the most murderous resolve.

And now all happened quicker than words can follow. No sooner had I
touched the ground, than out of space as it were, roaring and reeking,
hugely black against the sunshine, the horse and his rider were upon
me. I had failed to draw my pistol, but I had shaken the scabbard off
my sword. There seemed scarce a blade’s length between me and the
flying onslaught. Suddenly, however, the great animal swerved upon
one side, and was pulled up, almost crouching on its haunches, by the
force of an iron hand. The rider’s face, outlined against the horse’s
steaming neck, bent towards me: Prince Eugen’s—great indeed would have
been my surprise had it been any other—ensanguined, distorted with
fury, glowing with vindictive triumph, as once before I had seen it
thus thrust into mine.

“Thou dog, Jennico ... ill-slaughtered interloper ... at last I have
got thee! Out of my way thou goest this time!...”

As it spat these words, incoherently, the red face became blocked from
my view by a fist outstretched, and I found myself looking down the
black mouth of a pistol barrel. I cut at it with my sword, even as the
yellow flame leaped out: my blade was shattered and flew, burring,
overhead. But the ball passed me. At the same instant there came a
shout from above; the Prince looked up and, quick as thought, wrenched
at his horse; the noble beast rose, beating the air with his forefeet,
just as János fired, over my head. For a second all was confusion. The
air seemed full of plunging hoofs and blinding smoke. Our own horses,
taking fright, dragged the carriage some yards away, where it stuck
in a snowheap. Then things became clear again. I saw,—I know not
how,—but all in the same flash, I saw a few paces beyond me, János
now standing in the road, my wife in her dishevelled furs behind him;
and in front, free from the bulk of his dying horse, my enemy on foot,
pistol in hand, and once more covering me with the most determined
deliberation of aim. With my bladeless sword hilt hanging bracelet-like
on my sprained wrist, defenceless, I stood, dizzily, facing my doom.

Then for a third time the air rang with a shattering explosion.
The Prince flung both arms up, and I saw his great body founder
headforemost, a mere mass of clay, almost at my feet. I turned again,
and there was my János, with the smoking musketoon still to his cheek,
and there also my wife with the face of an avenging angel, one hand
upon his shoulder, and the other, with unerring gesture of command,
still pointing at the space beyond me where but a second before stood
the enemy who had held my life on the play of his forefinger.




CHAPTER VII


FOR the space of a few seconds we three stood motionless. The awful
stillness of the shadow of death was upon our souls. Then, approaching
from the distance came again to our ears the sound of hoofs, the
stumbling trot of a tired horse; and the quick wits of János were
awakened to action.

“Into the carriage, my lady,” said he, “and you, my lord! We have
loosed enough shots for one day, and so it is best we should move on
again and avoid these other gentlemen.”

He smiled as he spoke, a grim, triumphant smile. As for me, it was
certes nothing less than triumph I felt in my heart. I would have had
Prince Eugen dead, indeed, but not so, not so!

“Let us, at least,” I cried a little wildly, “see if he still breathes!”

“No need, my lord;” and János caught me by the wrist. “I am not so old
yet,” he added, eyeing his weapon with a delighted look, “but what I
can still aim straight. Did I not know him to be as truly carrion now
as his good horse itself, poor beast, I would surely enough despatch
him as he lies there biting the mud. But no need, my lord. Right in
the heart! The man was dead before he touched the ground.” And as he
spoke János dragged us towards the coach.

The driver, half risen from his seat, still clutching one rein,
seemed struck into an imbecility of terror; the horses, now quieted,
stretching their necks luxuriously against the loosened bits, were
sniffing at the snow, as if in the hope of lighting upon a blade of
grass. Anna sat on the steps, her face blanched to a sort of grey.

“Up with you!” said János, and pushed her with his knee. “Do you not
see your lady is faint?” The words aroused her, and they roused me. In
truth, Ottilie seemed scarcely able to sustain herself; it was time I
carried her away from such scenes.

After closing the doors, János handed me the musketoon and the
cartouche-box, with the brief remark: “His lordship had better load
again, the while I drive, for this coachman of ours is out of his wits
with fright.” And thus we started once more; and in the crash and
rattle of the speed to which János mercilessly put the horses, the
stumbling paces of the approaching pursuers were lost to our hearing.
The draught of air across her face revived Ottilie, who now sat up with
courage, and tried to smile at me, though her face was still set in a
curious hardness, whilst I, with the best ability of a sprained wrist,
reloaded and reprimed. Events (as I have oft thought since) had proved
how happy a thought it had been of mine (some two weeks before, when
we made our preparations to leave London, to gratify my good János’s
desire for one of those admirable double-barrels I had seen him so
appreciatively and so covetously handle at Fargus and Manton’s, in
Soho.)

When we reached the neck of the valley, I leaned out again and looked
back. The scene of that crisis in my eventful life lay already some
hundred yards below us. The second of our pursuers—a dragoon of
Liegnitz, as I now could see by his white coat, dirty yellow against
the snow—was in the act of dismounting from his exhausted steed.
I watched him bend over the prostrate figure of his chief for an
instant or two; then straighten himself to gaze up at our retreating
coach; then, with his arms behind him and his legs apart, in what,
even at that distance, I could see was an attitude of philosophical
indifference, turn towards the approaching figure of his comrade, who,
some hundred yards further down, now made his appearance on the road,
crawling onwards on an obviously foundered horse. It was evident
that whatever admiration the Margrave may have commanded during his
lifetime, his death did not inspire his followers with any burning
desire to avenge it.

I leant out further and handed back the loaded musketoon to János.

“You may spare our horses now,” said I; “there is no fear of further
pursuit to-day.”

“Ay, my lord, so I see,” responded the heiduck, with a cheerful jerk of
the head in our rear. “And, moreover, in a quarter of an hour we shall
be across the border.”

       *       *       *       *       *

Now of our story there is little more to tell. And well for us that it
is so; for one may, as I have said, chronicle strange adventures and
perils of life and limb, and one may pour out on paper the sorrows of
an aching heart, the frenzy of despair; but the sweet intimate details
of happiness must be kept secret and sacred, not only from the pen but
from the tongue. It will not, however, come amiss that, to complete my
narrative—in which, one day, if Heaven will, my children shall learn
the romance of their parents’ wooing and marriage—I should set down
how it came about that the Margrave contrived (to his own undoing) to
track us so speedily; how, with his death, came the dispelling of the
shadows upon both our lives.

Shortly after our return to Tollendhal, a letter reached my wife from
the other Ottilie. It was evidently written in the greatest distraction
of mind, upon the very morning after our escape from Budissin. Although
conversation may not have been a strong point with Madam Lothner,
she seemed to wield a very fluent pen. She took two large sheets to
inform us how, upon her husband’s return on the previous night, his
suspicions being by some unaccountable means awakened, he had forced
from her the confession of all that had passed between us in the
afternoon. I cannot here take up my space and time with the record of
her excuses, her anguish, her points of exclamation, her appeals to
Heaven to witness the innocence of her intentions. But when I read her
missive I understood Anna’s contemptuous prophecy: “She keep a secret?
the sheep-head!” I understood also my wife’s attitude of tolerant
affection, and I blushed when I remembered the time when, blinded by
conceit, I had sought this great mock-pearl, when the real jewel lay at
my hand.... But to proceed.

The doctor had instantly given the alarm at the palace, with the
result that the Princess’s flight was discovered within two hours
after it had taken place. Now the uproar in the Ducal household was,
it seems, beyond description. Two detachments of dragoons were at
once sent in pursuit of the two carriages which were known to have
left the town that night. (How we blessed Anna’s shrewder scheme!)
When they returned, empty-handed of course, the nature of the trick
was perceived. Prince Eugen—whose fury, it appears, was something
quite appalling to behold, not only because of the reassertion of the
Princess’s independence, but because the man whom he had taken so much
trouble to obliterate had presumed to be alive after all!—Prince
Eugen, according to his wont, took matters into his own hands. He
sallied forth with his henchman the doctor, to make inquiries for
himself in the town. The result of these was the discovery of the
passage of one Hans Meyerhofer’s cart out by the South Gate after
closing hours. This man was known to the doctor (whose stables he
supplied with fodder) as being Anna’s cousin, and the connection of the
Princess’s nurse with the scheme of escape was well demonstrated by her
own disappearance. This discovery was sufficient for the Margrave, and
(very much, it would appear, against the real wishes of the Duke, whose
most earnest desire was to proceed with as little scandal as possible)
he with half a dozen troopers instantly set forth in pursuit on the
road to Prague. Of these troopers, as we had seen, most had broken down
on the way, and none had been able to keep up with the higher mettled
mount of their leader—fortunately for us.

It was after his departure that Madam Lothner wrote. She was convinced,
as she characteristically remarked, that the Prince would be
successful, and that the most dire misfortunes were about to fall upon
everybody—all through the obstinacy of M. de Jennico, who really could
not say he had not been warned. Nevertheless, on the chance of their
having escaped, either to England or to Tollendhal (and she addressed
her letter to Tollendhal, trusting that it would be forwarded),
she could not refrain from pouring forth her soul into her beloved
Princess’s bosom—and so forth and so on. In fact, the good woman had
wanted a confidant, and had found it on paper.

Our next information regarding the Court of Lausitz came from a very
different source, and was of a totally different description. It was
the announcement in the Vienna News-Sheet of the death of Eugen,
Margrave of Liegnitz-Rothenburg, through a fall from his horse upon a
hunting expedition. It was also stated that, yielding at last to her
repeated requests, the Duke had consented to the retirement into a
convent of his only daughter, Princess Marie Ottilie, such having been
(it was stated) her ardent desire for more than a year. The name of the
convent was not given.

       *       *       *       *       *

Here this memoir, begun in such storm and stress, within and without,
continued in such different moods and for such varied motives, ends
with the mantle of peace upon us, with the song of birds in our ears.

Tollendhal, that I knew beautiful in the autumn; Tollendhal, the shrine
of our young foolish love, is now beautiful with the budding green all
round it under a dappled sky. But never had the old stronghouse looked
to me so noble as when I brought my bride back to it in the snow. As
the carriage at last entered upon the valley road and we saw it rise
before us, high against the sky, white-roofed and black-walled, stern,
strong, and frowning, while the winter sun flashed back a warm, red
welcome to the returning masters, from some high window here and there,
I felt my heart stir. And as I looked at Ottilie I saw in her eyes the
reflection of the same fire.

Our people had been prepared for our coming by messengers from Prague.
The court of honour was thronged, and we entered amid acclamations such
as would have satisfied the heart of a king coming to his own again. We
had broken the bread and tasted the salt; we had drunk of the wine on
the threshold; we had been conducted in state; and at last, at last we
found ourselves alone in the old room where my great-uncle’s portrait
kept its silent watch! János, who, his work of trust done, had fallen
back into his place of heiduck as simply as the faithful blade falls
back into the scabbard, had retired to his station outside the door.
Without rang the wild music of the gipsies to the feasting people, and
the tremors of the czimbalom found an answer in the very fibres of my
soul—to such music she had first come to me in my dreams!

The walls of the room were all ruddy with the reflection of the bonfire
in the courtyard: the very air was filled with joy and colour. And
there was my great-uncle’s portrait—he was simpering with ineffable
complacency; and there the rolled-up parchment; and there the table
where we had quarrelled, and where, since then, I had poured forth such
mad regrets. Oh! my God! what memories!... and there was my wife!

Since the events which had first divided and then reunited us for ever,
I had not yet been able to find in the sweet, silent, docile woman I
had snatched back to my heart, the wilful Ottilie of old. Her spirits
seemed to have been sobered; her gaiety, her petulance, to have been
lost in the still current of the almost fearful happiness bought at the
price of blood; and at times, in my inmost heart, I had mourned for my
lost sprite. But now, as we stood together, she all illumined with the
rosy radiance from the fire, she looked of a sudden from the picture on
the wall to me, and I saw a spark of the old mockery leap into her eyes.

“And so, sir,” she said, “the forward person who married you against
your will is mistress here again, after all!... but you will always
remember, I trust, that it is the privilege of a princess to choose
her partner.” And then she added, coming a step nearer me: “To-morrow
we must fill in the pedigree again—what say you, M. Jean Nigaud de la
Faridondaine?”

Now, as she spoke, her lips arched into the well-remembered smile, and
beside it danced the dimple. And I know not what came upon me, for
there are joys so subtle that they unman even as sorrows, but I fell at
her feet with tears.




                         THE CHOIR INVISIBLE.

By JAMES LANE ALLEN,

_Author of “A Summer in Arcady,” “A Kentucky Cardinal,” etc._

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      *      *      *      *      *      *




Transcriber’s note:

—Obvious errors were corrected.

—A Table of Contents was not in the original work; one has been
 produced and added by Transcriber.





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