Duchess Eleonore stifled a laugh — a laugh which condoned the treason and was rather inclined to admit the pronouncement.
“Sh! Sophia, my angel. German is the language of philosophy. It is the language of sentiment. It is the language of romance. Fourthly and lastly, as our dear rector says in the pulpit, it is the language of your father. Continue to translate.”
“Mother, I can’t do it,” and suddenly the girl threw back her head and began to recite her lines in French. It was while she recited that Eleonore began to wonder whether she had been wise. Sophia Dorothea was fourteen years old and a lovely child. A mass of black burnished hair, with here and there the dark blue tint of a wild-duck’s wing, rippled in curls about a face delicate in its features and joyous in its expression. She was a creature of flame, alert in a world of delight and responsive on the instant to every flicker of sunlight, to the perfume of every flower. An Ariel with a sense of fun. A spirit with a ripple of laughter.
But now she recited:
“Partez; à vos honneurs j’apporte trop d’obstacles.
Vous-même dégagez la foi de vos oracles
Signalez ce héros à la Grèce promis;
Tournez votre douleur contre ses ennemis.
Déjà Priam pálit; déjà Troie en alarmes
Redoute mon bûcher, et frémit de vos larmes.
Allez; et, dans ces murs vides de citoyens,
Faites pleurer ma mort aux veuves des Troyens.
Je meurs, dans cet espir, satisfaite et tranquille.
Si je n’ai pas vécu la compagne d’Achille,
J’espère que du moins un heureux avenir
A vos faits immortels joindra mon souvenir;
Et qu’un jour mon trépas, source de votre gloire,
Ouvrira le récit d’une si belle histoire.”
As the child’s fresh voice died away leaving its music lingering for a moment in the air, her dark eyes rested upon a very troubled face. Sophia Dorothea was not asking for applause, nor did she ask why her mother was so moved. For though she could not put it into words, she understood. And for the first time that she could remember, there had risen an embarrassment between them which held them both speechless. The embarrassment deepened when the mother dropped her face in her hands and a little dry sob burst from her lips. Eleonore had expected something rhythmical, a piece of elocution, a just emphasis; and she had heard the hard glitter of Racine softened, its rhetoric made human and touched with tenderness and sorrow. Iphigenia facing death that her father might not be ruined and shamed. Iphigenia bidding farewell to her lover and praying for his triumph, and whispering her longing that, though she were dead, her name might be linked eternally with his — Iphigenia was here, in this little room above the park and the French garden of Celle Castle. Eleonore was shocked as she listened. It was not only Sophia Dorothea’s voice which tore at the strings of her heart. It was the quiver of her face and the look of submission in her great dark eyes, as of one who had dropped her plummet into life and found it salt with tears.
“My darling,” she said, and she was answered by a smile, wistful and tremulous.
For a moment Eleonore dreamed that a changeling had taken the place of that daughter whose every thought she had shared — Sophia Dorothea of the light heart and the light foot, for whom the world was a playground — what had she to do with this — stranger, with passion in the mystery of her eyes, and immolation throbbing desolately in the clear notes of her young voice?
“Sophia, you mustn’t take the play as real,” she said, stretching out her arm until her hand rested on the girl’s. “It’s only a fable you know. A fable of old times.”
But Sophia Dorothea did not answer the pressure of her mother’s hand. Nor did she return it. She sat quite still, the wistful smile touching her lips to tenderness, and vanishing and shining again.
“But it has lived for a thousand years, my mother,” she said gently.
“No doubt. Pretty fables do,” said the mother unhappily; and now the daughter really smiled. Eleonore had a picture of someone almost drowning and now climbing back on to dry land.
“And after a thousand years Monsieur Racine has made a play of it?”
“Yes,” said Eleonore. “And a play which all the world admires.”
“Then I think—” Sophia Dorothea did not so much break off as just cease to speak; and seeing the strange look begin to creep back again into her daughter’s eyes, Eleonore cried urgently.
“But, darling, what do you think?”
“That since the fable has persisted so long, there must be truth in it.”
And so the Duke George William and his huntsmen trampled lustily into the great space before the Castle and the blare of his horns was tossed about the walls. No sound was ever more welcome to Duchess Eleonore. Old heads on young shoulders she distrusted and disliked and pitied; and it was her continuous prayer that this pair of young shoulders in front of her should feel no extra load a moment before the inevitable time. Sophia Dorothea shook back her curls, as she heard the horns, and forgot all her problems.
“Papa!” she cried. She clapped her hands. She was her fourteen years again. “Well, my papa, at all events, won’t want to cut my heart out on an altar to make himself more glorious like Agamemnon. I’m sure of that.”
It was their custom to join the cavalcade at the Castle door, and to go with Duke George William into his library. There he drank a big stoup of Rhenish wine, before he went off to change his clothes, whilst Sophia Dorothea perched on the arm of his chair: and in the intervals of drinking he described to his enthralled audience the behaviour of his dogs, the line which the quarry had taken, and the special incidents of the morning. Thus half an hour was passed, on which all three of them had come to count.
Eleonore was surprised therefore, on reaching the great door, to find that the Duke had already dismounted and disappeared.
“Is he hurt?” she asked anxiously of a huntsman.
“No, Your Highness. The Chancellor—” but Eleonore did not wait to hear more. She hurried with Sophia Dorothea up the great stone staircase to the first floor and along a corridor to the library. She broke into the room and saw Schultz and Bernstorff standing side by side with grave faces, and the Duke, a little way off, leaning with his elbow on the mantelshelf, and slapping his boot discontentedly with his hunting crop. His lower lip was thrust forward and his red good-humoured face, now growing a little heavy, was dark with annoyance. For a second or two he looked at the newcomers without speaking. Then he crossed the room and took his daughter by the hand.
“Sophia, my dear, there’s a stupid piece of business you needn’t be bothered with. I’ll tell you at dinner about the boar we killed.” And he led her out of the room and shut the door. He turned back to his wife.
“Eleonore, Bernstorff, you know, is succeeding our very good Schultz today, and he begins his duties with an awkward little silly occurrence which wants careful handling...”
The Duke was an easy-going soul who loathed any interference with the order of his day. It should run smoothly from its beginning to its close according to its plan. And if any unexpected anxiety dislocated it, he was accustomed like many another man to resent, even more than the anxiety itself, the man who brought it to his attention. But at all events he was not going to be done out of his long drink of Rhenish wine. He struck a bell and only when his goblet was on the table at his side, with the yellow wine sparkling to the rim of it, would he allow the subject to be pursued.
“If only people would be sensible,” he grumbled, flinging himself pettishly into his chair. “It’s young Königsmark, my dear, and our little Sophia.”
“Oh!” cried Eleonore with her hand at her heart. Was this the explanation of the change in her daughter? She could hear that young voice now with its ring of passion and its despairing patience. “Philip and our Sophia?”
“So Bernstorff says. Come, out with your story, Bernstorff.”
The new Chancellor told it again
, and Eleonore listened with paling cheeks, torn between anger against young Königsmark and sorrow for her girl.
She crossed over to her husband’s chair when the story was finished and stood beside it, her hands trembling and the tears drowning her eyes. Duke William patted her hand.
“We mustn’t make too much of it. Children playing at grown- ups! But it’s got to stop of course. Sophia, with the wealth that we’ve piled up for her, can nowadays look as high as she likes for a husband. And anyway we have other views for her when her time comes.”
Eleonore, with the picture of Sophia’s rapt face before her eyes, could not take this mischief as lightly as her husband took it. Yes, it had got to be stopped, but Sophia Dorothea was going to suffer, and with much more than a child’s sharp short suffering. Philip was a traitor. He had been welcome as much for the sweetness of his temper as for his good looks. They had treated him as one of their own family, supervised his instruction as much, and for a reward he had opened the gates of pain for their darling to pass through.
“Philip must go home, of course, at once,” cried the Duke. “But he must be sent off quietly. There mustn’t be talk. I don’t want my stiff-backed sister-in-law in Hanover to get her venomous tongue round this story. A fine piece of embroidery she’d make of it. She’d write to the King of England and to her tittle-tattling niece, the Duchess of Orleans, and in a month they’d know all about it with additions from Constantinople to the Hague. There’s work for you, Bernstorff” — and Bernstorff started violently at the abrupt address. A look of real fear flashed over his face.
“But of course, Your Highness, I am the first to agree. There must be silence the most complete.”
“That’s what I’m saying,” replied the Duke easily enough. “You must see to it that there’s silence.”
Bernstorff drew a quiet breath of relief. He had no doubt that he could see to it, and without causing the least inconvenience to His Highness’s comfort.
“If Her Highness will keep the Princess at her side for the rest of the day,” he said “and the life of the Castle goes on as usual, the affair will be closed by tomorrow morning.”
Duke George William was very content to leave the troublesome business to his Chancellor, but Eleonore was a little disturbed. She was indignant with Philip Christopher Königsmark, righteously and justly indignant. He had been disloyal and false. But after all he was only a boy, and boy without malice or unkindness. There was a note in Bernstorff’s voice which alarmed her. It was too sinister. It was inhuman. With all their outward sheen, these Duchies were cruel places; and though Celle, under Duke George William and herself held cruelty in horror, was Bernstorff of the same mind she asked herself? He had a kinsman in office in Saxony. Eleonore looked at him closely, and did not like his ferrety sharp face. She moved her eyes to her very good friend Schultz.
“Do you approve?” he asked urgently.
She did not notice Bernstorff pinching his thin lips tightly together, nor the gleam of stark fury in his eyes. But with that one indiscreet question she set alight in him that personal enmity which, marching in a step so exact with his policy, was to destroy her happiness and the work of her life.
Schultz bowed to her with a trifle more of formality than he ordinarily used.
“I have no doubt, Your Highness, of my successor’s efficiency.”
Of what Bernstorff planned to do, Schultz had no idea, but he had listened to him in the Chancellor’s office and for a second time in His Serene Highness’s library, and he did not doubt that that subtle man had some scheme worked out to the last detail which would at once solve this difficult little problem and hide it away for good. For himself he had finished. He would dine once more at His Highness’s high table in the feudal homely style of Celle and then he would betake himself to the small house which he had prepared on a bank of the Aller, at the edge of the town. A little music, a little reading, a little gossip with old friends in the cafés of the town, and then a quiet passage to whatever Valhalla of the second class was reserved for faithful servants.
But ex-Chancellor Schultz dined at the high table of Duke George William and, much to his confusion, had to listen to a speech made by the Duke extolling his high services during his twenty-five years of office. He had to sit quiet whilst his health was drunk and could not but remark the lofty condescension with which Chancellor Bernstorff raised his glass to his predecessor.
“I really must tell that man about Stechinelli,” he said to himself.
Worse still, he had to make a reply without too much pride and too much emotion, and commend his successor to the high consideration of Their Highnesses.
Yet the chief recollection which he retained of that dinner was not of the speech which the Duke delivered, nor of the reply which he himself made, nor of the friendliness of everyone except Bernstorff, nor of Bernstorff’s disdain. It was of the boy of fifteen who stood behind the Duke’s chair in the Duke’s livery. Philip Christopher, Count Königsmark, was for this week on duty during the hour of dinner: and no hint had been given to him that this was his last day of service. No doubt Schultz had seen the lad before. But immersed in his State work, with his dinner eaten often enough from a tray at his elbow in his office, he had not once regarded him. He made up for that lack now, and setting in his thoughts Sophia Dorothea by the side of the boy, he could not but say to himself ruefully: “But for my twenty-five years’ work, never were a couple so matched by nature since the Garden of Eden closed its gates.”
A mass of brown hair, which was to grow darker with the years, clustered about an open fresh face and curled down to his shoulders. Perukes were never in fashion with any of the Königsmarks. His eyes were dark and, between long black eyelashes, looked out with fire upon the world and found it very good. His red lips and white teeth advertised his health and he had the smile and the laugh of frank enjoyment which would win the good will of a curmudgeon. Philip Königsmark was of the middle height, but slender in figure and supple of movements. He had long legs and the slim hands and feet of a girl. And the Court livery which he wore might have been designed to make the best of him. A velvet coat of an almond green colour piped with a gold cord and ornamented with wide cuffs of black velvet fitted his shoulders and waist like a glove and from the waist spread out in a short square skirt. A cravat of muslin and lace was tied in a great bow round his neck. His waistcoat, breeches and stockings were of white silk and his shoes were of fine black leather with scarlet heels and flashing broad-rimmed buckles of silver. He was, Schultz noticed, certainly dressed with the care and precision which befitted a page or — the thought passed through Schultz’s mind — a lover in the presence of his mistress. But as there was nothing of furtiveness or secrecy in his looks, so there was nothing of the petit-maítre nor of the fop in the elegance of his dress. And he was happy. Schultz could not doubt it. Happiness radiated from him like warmth from a fire; and if one or twice in the course of his service, his eyes met those of Sophia Dorothea, there was neither fear nor anxiety in the message they sent.
“However he surely must take his good looks away from Celle,” Schultz concluded and he fell to wondering what lot the future held in its secret casket for his beloved Sophia Dorothea. Had he been able to guess, there would have been a very unhappy man sitting for the last time at the Duke’s table in the Castle of Celle.
“Young Augustus William of Wolfenbüttel no doubt will marry her,” he reflected. “The Duke is a little superstitious, but he will get over his superstition.”
There had been a foolish betrothal between Sophia Dorothea and William’s elder brother Frederick, when Sophia Dorothea was only ten years old. Frederick had been killed while still in his teens at the siege of Phillipsburg.
“Wolfenbüttel and Celle will be an alliance of old friends, and though Celle must belong to Hanover in the end, Wolfenbüttel, with the Princess’s wealth to sustain and develop it, will hold its own.”
Thus ex-Chancellor Schultz prosed away to himself, sit
ting above the salt at His Highness’s table and dinner being over, he betook himself to his books and his music in his little house across the Aller.
III. BERNSTORFF’S FIRST TASTE OF POWER
AT HALF-PAST FIVE on that same afternoon, Bernstorff was seated in his old office, withdrawn a few paces from the window. The great lime-tree, with its wealth of bough and green leaf darkening the room, hid him securely. For the first time he was glad of it. For he could see the mouth of the passage which led into the Court from Their Highnesses’ living quarters as well as the three steps which led up to the chapel door. And yet no one, though his eyes were sharp as a hawk’s, could be aware of the still watchman behind the small diamond window-panes.
It was very quiet at this hour in the inner Court of Celle; so quiet, that the flutter of a pigeon’s wings in the lime-tree was as startling as a rattle of musketry. There were shadows already upon the walls of the Castle. Bernstorff watched them darken from a film of grey into a solid black; and still no footstep rang upon the pavement. He was seized with a panic. Every afternoon, he had declared, the tryst was kept. Suppose that on this afternoon it was broken, that some vague suspicion had crept into the minds of the culprits, that they were now exchanging their dreams between the horn-beam hedges of the French garden! Bernstorff jumped with indignation at the thought that such a thing could be. They had outwitted him — not a doubt of it, that cunning pair. It was long after six o’clock, he was certain. It must be close upon seven. Why, it was as if young Philip Königsmark had broken a definite promise to him, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Celle — a promise to come and be caught, like a bird in a net. Bernstroff was by now in a fume of anger and apprehension. With what face could he meet his master and say, on the first day of his appointment to his office, “I promised Your Highness a proof. I have none?” He would be set down as a slanderer, a rogue ready to blacken even the young Princess, if, by so doing, he could give himself importance. Suddenly his fears died away. So great was his relief that the Court swam for a moment before his eyes, and he doubted their good news. But what he had seen was there, in the same place, still to see — a flash of green and the flame of a silver buckle on a shoe. For a little while they remained, and then assured that the Court was empty, Philip Königsmark flitted into the open, took the steps of the chapel at a leap, and was gone. His bird with its jewelled plumage was in the net. Bernstorff restrained his impatience now.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 695