I shook my head. All I wanted for the moment was to cling to him. Later we could talk.
“I can only think of one thing. You’re here, with me.”
“We’re together. You’re alive . . . My darling Lenchen . . . alive and here. Never leave me again.”
“I . . . leave you.” I laughed. I hadn’t laughed like that for years—abandoned, gay, in love with life.
And for the moment there was nothing for us both but the joy of this blissful reunion. We were together, his arms were about me, his kisses on my lips, our bodies calling for each other. A hundred memories were back with me—they had never really left me but before I had never dared look back at this perfect joy because to know that it had gone, to have that lingering doubt that it had ever existed, would have been unbearable.
But there was the mystery between us.
“Where have you been?” he was demanding.
“What happened on the Night of the Seventh Moon?” I had to know.
We sat side by side on the couch—before us was the open window; the smell of burning bonfires was on the air; we could hear the shouts of the people far away in the town.
I said: “We must start from the beginning. I must know everything. Can you imagine what it is like to believe there is a possibility that you have lost six days of your life and three of them the happiest you have ever known? Oh, Maximilian, what happened to us? Start at the beginning. We met in the mist. You took me to your hunting lodge and I stayed a night there and you tried to come to my room but the door was locked and Hildegarde was there to protect me. That was real enough, I know. It is the next part. My cousin Ilse and her husband Ernst came to Oxford and brought me back to the Lokenwald.”
“She was not your cousin, Lenchen. Ernst was in my service. He had been an ambassador to the court of Klarenbock, the home of the Princess.”
“She whom they say is your wife. How can she be? I am your wife.”
“My Lenchen,” he cried fervently, “you are my wife. You, and you only.”
“We were married, were we not? It’s true. It must be true.”
He took my hands and looked at me earnestly. “Yes,” he said, “it’s true. The people around me thought I was repeating the practices of my ancestors, which are sometimes carried out now, I fear. But it was not so in our case, Lenchen. We were truly married. You are indeed my wife. I am your husband.”
“I knew it was true. I would not believe otherwise. But tell me, my dearest husband. Tell me everything.”
“You came to the lodge and in the morning Hildegarde took you back to the Damenstift and that was the end of our little adventure—so I thought. It did not turn out as I intended for I saw that you were so young, a schoolgirl merely. It was not only Hildegarde who looked after you that night. But you had done something to me, aroused feelings I had not experienced before. And after you’d gone I continued to think of you and I wanted to see you again. Try to understand how things have been. Perhaps I have been over indulged, not refused often enough. You became an obsession with me. I thought of you constantly. I could not stop thinking of you. I talked of you to Ernst. As an older man of rich worldly experience he wagered that if my affair with you had progressed as so many had before, I should have forgotten it in a few weeks. So we planned to bring you out here that you and I might meet again.”
“And Ilse . . .”
“She had married Ernst when he was ambassador to Klarenbock. She is the sister of the Princess—but a natural sister so that marriage with our ambassador was a good one for her. Ernst was ill; he needed medical advice and the best to be found was in London. He wagered me that he and Ilse would bring you back. And so they went to Oxford; they told this story of the relationship between Ilse and your mother and they brought you out here.”
“A plot!” I cried.
He nodded. “A not very original one.”
“I did not see through it.”
“Why should you? It was made easy by the fact that your mother was born here. But that, I suppose, is the pivot on which everything turns. You had our forests and mountains in your blood. That I sensed from the moment we met. It drew us together. It was simple for Ilse to assume a relationship. She could talk of the home life she had alleged she shared with your mother. Homes of the sort from which your mother would have come are very much alike. That part was easy. So you came and then on the Night of the Seventh Moon . . .”
“You were there waiting when she brought me into the square and that was her cue to disappear?”
“I was there. My intention was to take you to the lodge and to stay there with you until such a time as one of us should wish to leave. I even had plans for keeping you there altogether. That was really how I hoped it would turn out.”
“But it was different.”
“Yes, it was different. Nothing like it had ever happened to me before. As soon as I saw you again I knew how different. I didn’t care for anything. I knew that whatever happened afterward we were meant for each other and that I would face anything rather than lose you. There would be immense difficulties, I knew, because of my position—but I didn’t care. I could think of only one thing that mattered to me. I was going to make you my wife.”
“And you did! It’s true that you did. They lied to me—Ilse, Ernst, and the doctor. They said . . . oh, it was shameful . . . that I was carried off into the forest by a criminal and that I returned to the house in such a state that they had to put me under sedation to save my reason.”
“But they knew what had happened.”
“Then why . . . oh why . . . ?”
“Because they feared the consequences of what I had done. But how could they? Like the rest of my staff they believed that our marriage was no true marriage. They did not believe it possibly could be. How could I, my father’s heir, marry except for state reasons? But I could, Lenchen, and I did because I loved you so much that I could contemplate nothing else. I could not deceive you, my darling. How could I deceive my own true love? I knew—and they knew—that my cousin had on one occasion deluded a girl into thinking that he was marrying her and that the man who performed the ceremony was no true priest, thus making that ceremony without meaning. A mock marriage. That was what they thought ours was. But I loved you, Lenchen. I couldn’t do that.”
“I’m so happy,” I cried. “So happy!” Then: “Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”
“I had to keep it secret, even from you, until I had made my arrangements. I alone must explain this to my father for I knew that there were going to be all kinds of difficulties. He had been urging me to marry for some time—for state reasons. It was not the moment to tell him that I had married without his consent and that of his council. There was too much trouble in the dukedom. My uncle Ludwig was seeking an opportunity to overthrow my father and could well seize on what he would call a mésalliance as a reason for deposing him and setting up my cousin as heir. I could not tell my father then . . . and when I could have done so, I believed you to be dead.”
“I must tell you what happened, because I can see that you have no idea. Ilse and Ernst came and took me away from the lodge after you had gone.”
“And told me that you were there when the place was blown up.”
“We must follow it bit by bit as it happened, for it all seems so incredible. After you went Ilse and Ernst took me back to the house they had rented in the town. The next morning I awoke in a dazed condition and they told me I had been unconscious for six days after I had been criminally assaulted in the forest.”
“Impossible!”
“This is what they told me. They had a doctor there. He said he had kept me under sedation to save my reason, and that the days which I believed I had spent with you had actually been passed in my bed.”
“But how could they hope that you would believe that?”
“I didn’t but they had the doctor there. And when I went back to the lodge it was gone.”
“The lodge was blown up on the day
I left. Hildegarde and Hans had gone into the town for provisions. It happened while they were away. I believed it was a plot to kill me. There have been such plots before and my uncle Ludwig was at the bottom of them. It is not the first time that I and members of my family have escaped death by a very small margin. Ernst came to tell me that the lodge had been blown up and you were in it at the time.”
“I went there to look for it,” I said, “and found it was a shell. So it had only just been demolished. Oh you see how I have been deceived.”
“Poor, poor Lenchen. How you must have suffered. How we both have! There must have been times when you wished we had never met in the forest that day.”
“Oh no, no,” I said fiercely. “I never felt that. Not even in the most wretched and desperate moments.”
He took my hands and kissed them.
I went on: “So I stayed with them and they looked after me, and when the child was born . . .”
“The child!” he cried.
“Oh yes, we had a child. She died at birth. I think I was never so unhappy as when they told me. At least, I thought, I shall have her, and I thought I would take a post at the Damenstift and I planned our future together . . . hers and mine.”
“So we had a child,” he repeated. “Oh Lenchen, my poor sweet Lenchen. And Ilse and Ernst, why did they do this? Why should they have done this? I must discover what this means.”
“Where are they now?”
“Ernst is dead. He was ill, you know, very ill. Ilse went back to Klarenbock. I heard she married again. But why should they tell me you were dead? What motive was there in this? I shall find Ilse. I must have the truth from her. I will send someone to Klarenbock to bring her here. I want to know from her what this means.”
“She must have had a reason.”
“We’ll find it,” he said.
Then he turned once more to me; he touched my hair and my face as though trying to convince himself that I was really there.
I was so happy to be with him, I could think of nothing beyond the glorious fact that we were together. I was bewildered—still groping in the dark but Maximilian was with me and that for the moment was enough. And I had learned the truth of what happened on the Night of the Seventh Moon; I had taken back those six days of my life; they belonged to me and I had been wantonly deceived.
What could have been the motive of Ilse, Ernst, and the doctor? Why should they have deceived me so utterly that they had almost made me doubt my own reason in order that events might appear in the light they wished them to.
Why?
But Maximilian was there, and as happened long ago, I could think of nothing else. So while the moon shone its light into the turret room I was happy as I had not been since the days of my honeymoon.
There was a light tap on the door and Frau Graben came in carrying a tray on which was a squat lighted candle, wine and glasses with a dish of her favorite spiced cakes.
She said, her eyes gleaming with delight: “I’ve brought you these. I thought you’d be hungry. Well, Master Lightning,” she went on. “You can’t say you’re not old Graben’s favorite now, can you?”
“I never did,” he replied.
She set the tray on the table. She said: “Oh, Miss Trant, I knew how he was fretting for you. I could tell. He was never the same again. He used to be so gay, and then suddenly he changed. It’s a woman, I said. Then poor old Hildegarde Lichen told me. She turned to me. We’d worked at the Schloss together in the nursery. She was my under nurse. She thought the world of the boys and in particular Lightning here. And she told me all—about how the little English girl came to the lodge one night and how he was never the same since. It was such a romantic story and how they blew up the lodge so that it would look as though she had died there.”
“Hildegarde told you that?” cried Maximilian. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you?”
“It was a secret, Hildegarde insisted. She told me with her dying breath. And she said, ‘Tell no one unless it’s necessary to his happiness for it is better that he should think her gone.’ ”
“You were always an old meddler,” said Maximilian. “But how dared you keep this from me?”
“Now don’t scold me. I brought her back, didn’t I? I planned it all. I went and found her and played the tourist looking for books and making it all seem so natural. All the time I was thinking, I’ll surprise Master Lightning, and how right it was that he should have his surprise on the Night of the Seventh Moon. I’ll have a glass of wine with you, shall I?”
She did not wait for the invitation; she filled three glasses and sat down, sipping, and nibbling one of her spiced cakes.
She talked of how poor Hildegarde had worried about what had taken place in the hunting lodge. She had made Hildegarde tell her all she knew—and Hildegarde knew a great deal. She had been as interested in everything concerning the Prince as Frau Graben herself. She had kept her eyes open. She knew that the young lady was a pupil in the Damenstift when she first came to the lodge, and that when she returned she had been brought out by Ilse and Ernst and that her father had kept a bookshop in Oxford. She knew her name.
“I noted that,” said Frau Graben. “I liked to know what my boys were up to and this was no ordinary affair. Hildegarde knew that it was different right from the start, she said. That was why she was so upset. She didn’t like it. And that ceremony she didn’t like at all. She said it wasn’t right. The girl was so innocent that she believed it was a true marriage.”
“It was a true marriage,” said Maximilian.
Frau Graben stared at him and then at me. “Mein Gott,” she cried. “It’s not true. It’s one of your larks. I know you, Master Lightning.”
“Dear Graben,” he said solemnly, “I swear to you that I was married to Lenchen in the hunting lodge nine years ago.”
She shook her head and then I saw her lips begin to curl. She had brought me here; she had presented me to him. This was the kind of high drama she liked to provoke. But if we were truly married! I could imagine her delight in the possibilities this was suggesting to her, and for the first time since Maximilian had walked into the room I was fully aware of the complicated situation which confronted us. Until that moment I had thought of little but the fact that Maximilian had come back to me. My reason was vindicated; I had been the victim of a wicked plot but I was not unbalanced. I had imagined nothing and I had regained my husband.
Frau Graben was saying: “It is so then?”
“It is so,” answered Maximilian.
“And Miss Trant is your wife.”
“She is my wife, Graben.”
“And the Princess Wilhelmina?”
A shadow crossed his face. I believed he had forgotten her existence until that moment.
“She cannot be my wife since I have been married to Lenchen for nine years.”
Frau Graben said: “Mein Gott! This will shake the dukedom. What have you done, Maxi? What will happen to us all now?” She chuckled not without a degree of delight. “But you don’t care, do you? You’re bemused, both of you. You don’t see anything but each other. Oh Maxi, you love her, don’t you? It does me good to see you together, that it does. Don’t forget I found her—I brought her to you.”
“You meddling old woman,” he said, “I’ll never forget you brought her back to me.”
“Tomorrow,” she said, her eyes sly, “that’ll be the time to face the music.” She laughed. “Tonight is the Night of the Seventh Moon. We mustn’t forget that, must we? Oh, you’re going to be grateful to me, Maxi . . . and you too, Miss Trant. All these years, fancy! And you two pining for each other. I said to Hildegarde, ‘You tell me about that room in the hunting lodge’ and she told me, for she knew every piece that was in that room. So I said to myself: I’ll make another room here in Klocksburg and tonight we shall put the clock back. We’ll bring the lovers together again. The bridal chamber awaits you, my chicks. You can’t say that old Graben doesn’t look after you.”
“You brought Lenchen here, Graben,” said Maximilian, “and I shall bless you forever for that. But now we want to be alone.”
“Of course you do, and you’re going to be. I’ve got the bridal chamber ready myself.” She grimaced and tiptoed to the door, looking back as though loath to leave us. “We always got on like a house afire, didn’t we Miss Trant. We’ll have some talks . . .”
She shut the door on us and we were in each other’s arms. I knew that he was, as I was, recalling those days in the lodge and the intensity of our need for each other was unendurable.
“Tomorrow we can talk,” he said. “We will make our plans. We have to consider very carefully what we must do. Of one thing I am certain. We shall never be parted again, whatever may come. But that is for tomorrow . . .”
He opened the door. Frau Graben was waiting there with a candle. We followed her down the stairs and she opened a door. The full moon shining through the window showed me the fourposter bed. It was a faithful reproduction of the room we had shared in the hunting lodge during our honeymoon.
And now, after nine long and weary years, we were together again.
The great moon hung heavy in the sky and I was happy as I had never thought to be again.
When the dawn was in the sky we were both awake. I knew that he felt as I did. We did not want a new day to come for we knew that it must bring with it problems. I kept thinking of the cold proud face of the woman who believed herself to be his wife.
But no matter how we wished it, the magic night was over and the day had begun.
“Lenchen,” he said, “I shall have to go back to my father’s Schloss.”
“I know.”
“But tonight I will come here.”
I nodded.
“If I had not allowed them to persuade me to this marriage with Wilhelmina it would have been so much easier. I shall have to tell her.” He frowned. “She will never understand.”
“You can prove it to her,” I said.
“I have our marriage lines. Do you remember. There was one set for you and one for me. I can produce the priest.”
On the Night of the Seventh Moon Page 24