Amalia Magdalena was devout, a strict mistress of her household and a fanatical believer in the curative virtue of discipline. Whether the Duke confided the truth to his friend, or invented another and more unpleasant reason for the banishment of his page, Philip would have got but a sour welcome from his mother. Why God punished her by giving her such a brood as Karl John, Philip and Aurora the beautiful light-o’-love of Augustus the Strong, must have perplexed the poor lady to her dying day. Philip, aged fifteen, could look forward to nothing but a grim lean youth of penitence, had the Duke been of a less indulgent mind. There would have been no escape from it, inasmuch as his private fortune at that time was worth about as much as his silver shoe-buckles. It was in a very sincere voice that he faltered out his thanks.
Duke George William sealed his letter again and gave it back to Philip.
“There it is,” he said with a nod of his head, “God be with you, Philip, but not in Celle!” and Philip took it and went away to his room in the pages’ quarters, where his riding-dress and his supper awaited him.
V. BERNSTORFF RETAINS HIS POSITION AND PHILIP LOSES HIS
IN THE LIBRARY Chancellor Gottlieb Bernstorff stood first on one foot and then on the other, and would have liked, had he dared, to dry the wet palms of his hands. The startling master-stroke which was to prove on this his first day of office his indispensability to the State had sputtered out like a squib in the rain. He could blame no one but himself. He had lost his bearings in a fog of wishes. He had mistaken Celle for the Hanover he wished it to be — all splendour and glitter and great dishes of sauerkraut, and the swift shuttles of intrigue and the sacred laws of etiquette which you break at your peril. There would have been none of this molly-coddling of young Königsmark in Hanover. None of this “Untie his hands!” or of “Poor boy, your legs are bleeding!” Now Königsmark would have vanished, with his beauty and his elegance, his slow sweet smile and his passionate eyes. He would have gone to cool his hot heart in some quiet dark prison-house until such time as a grey beard had made him tasteless to the ladies. And he himself, Bernstorff, would have earned a word of thinks from the Duke and, very likely, a new batch of acres of land to go with it.
“As it is,” Bernstorff conjectured. “I shall get the same sentence as young Königsmark. God be with you, but not in Celle.”
Duke George William, however, did not repeat himself that night.
“I’ll see you tomorrow when I am back from hunting,” he said shortly without a glance at his Chancellor and Bernstorff bowed and got himself out of the room. Since Hugo was getting young Königsmark his supper there was now no usher on the door.
Bernstorff drew to it, but did not latch it. He left a tiny little slit open and stood by it with one eye on the corridor behind him. He was not greatly to blame. For his career was in the balance, and it was dawning upon him that, even if the scales tipped on his side, he had a good deal still to learn of the ways of Princes and their wives.
The wife was the first to speak within the room. Bernstorff heard the quick rustle of her dress as she crossed the room from her seat by the fire.
“I am” — she searched for a word— “uncomfortable, George.”
“My dear!”
George was solicitous. No one hated discomfort more than he.
“At Breda, before we married, we made some promises to one another,” she continued.
“Darling, that is not unusual,” said George William, patting her hand.
“But we have kept them, and that is,” replied Eleonore. “You have had no Madame Platen throning it openly in Celle, and I have not had to seek my consolation among the philosophers.”
Thus she compared the relations of Ernest Augustus and Duchess Sophia at Hanover.
“In other words,” said George William contentedly, “we have been happy.”
He held up his goblet of Steinberger to Eleonore’s lips and she dutifully took a sip of it.
“I think, indeed,” she said with a pleasant laugh, “that I hear a good deal of jealousy in that poor woman’s abuse of me.”
Outside the door Chancellor Bernstorff was scandalised. The Duchess Sophia, daughter of the King of Bohemia and granddaughter of a King of England, “a poor woman!” What blasphemy was he next to hear? Almost he forgot his own anxieties. Eleonore went on with her argument.
“We want our Sophy to enjoy a life as delightful and happy as ours has been, don’t we?”
“Want!” cried George William confidently. “By God, we’re going to see that she does.”
“Well then! At Breda I was far below you in rank.”
“The pertinacity of our good Schultz has made us equal,” said George William.
Eleonore was not to be diverted from her theme.
“I was further below you than Philip Königsmark is below Sophy.”
“Darling, the analogy is not complete,” replied George William. “I was thirty years old when I fell in love with you at Breda and I am ungallant enough to remember that you were twenty- six. We knew our own minds. Moreover it is easier for a lowly wife to rise to her husband’s rank than for a lowly husband to rise to his wife’s.”
Behind the door Bernstorff nodded his head vigorously. Eleonore within the room grasped no less eagerly at her husband’s reply. For a moment she had been debating whether after all a marriage with Philip would not in the end make for Sophy’s happiness.
“I am sure that that’s right,” she said in a tone of relief. “I did so earnestly not want to make a mistake which might wreck Sophy’s life. Now we can think, can’t we, of Augustus William?”
Chancellor Bernstorff laid his ear yet closer to the chink of the door. If by any good chance he could retain his office, here was matter which touched his most cherished schemes. He rejoiced to note that the Duke answered without enthusiasm.
“Wolfenbüttel’s son?”
“He is a charming youth.”
“No doubt. But we must give Sophy time.” George William was seeking excuses. He was even ready to make more than he believed to be true of Königsmark’s boy-and-girl affair. “Yes! Sophy may be a little troubled. We must give her time to forget.”
Eleonore however persisted.
“But Augustus William might come to us on a visit. Sophy has already met the boy and she liked him. Oh, it would be the perfect marriage!”
“Sophy’s too young, my dear.”
“Your cousin Ulrich’s our best friend, and I know he looks forward to a marriage of his son and Sophy. I don’t plead that we should press it on too sharply. But we ought to do more than keep it in mind.
“Perhaps,” said George William. “Of course Ulrich’s very dear to us, and Sophy, Duchess of Wolfenbüttel — to be sure. Two families which have been linked in the greatest amity would be joined by even a stronger bond.” And with an explosion his real objection broke from him. “I am told I am superstitious. I am not. There’s no one more free from credulity. But we did let Ulrich have his way before. We did betroth Sophy and Ulrich’s elder boy when Sophy was ten, and the boy died of wounds within the year. I think it’s unlucky to press on a second betrothal with the second son. Let us wait, my dear wife, for a year or two.”
Gottlieb Bernstorff softly rubbed the palms of his hands together. He would have liked to have given Duke George William a hearty round of applause. Two years would make an excellent interval. He could make a good use of two years. But in the midst of his exultation he was thrown down once more into doubt and despondency by one little sentence.
“Schultz urged it,” said Eleonore; and Duke George William’s thoughts took just that turn which Bernstorff dreaded.
“Schultz! Yes, that is true, my dear, Our good Schultz. We have missed him today. There would have been more dignity and less cruelty. What had to be done would have been done in a more decent way. This young man Bernstorff now!”
Duchess Eleonore shook her head.
“I think that he is sly and ambitious,” she said. “I dislike him and
I am afraid of him.”
In these words Bernstorff heard his dismissal. His face was convulsed with rage and disappointment. He had but one hope and that the faintest — a hope in George William’s indolence.
“Yet Schultz urged him upon us,” said the Duke. “Bernstorff was the only head on the Council with the brains. If we gave him time as well as Sophy.”
Bernstorff’s heart climbed up again into its proper place. To give time was the Duke’s favourite phrase and favourite process. By giving time he was spared from the necessity of coming to an immediate decision and, as often as not, from the necessity of coming to any decision at all. Eleonore had unwittingly, and at a cost which she was only to appreciate in after years, saved Bernstorff that night. The Duke was in the mode to write with his own hand the order for the Chancellor’s dismissal when he sent him from the room. But the Duchess had broken in with her talk of Sophy’s marriage and the indignation of the Duke had had time to cool. The immediate dismissal of Bernstorff meant a search for another Chancellor, an examination of claims, a balancing of merits, and the initiation of the servant chosen into the affairs and policy of the Duchy; and all these duties meant in their turn, a whole big heat of tedious long mornings at a desk, whilst his horses stamped in their stables, and his dogs howled in the kennel.
“I must get Schultz to tell Bernstorff about Stechinelli,” said the Duke, and he rose from his chair at the table. “Two o’clock in the morning! Even Hanover is going to bed,” he said with a laugh.
Bernstorff was reprieved. Who was this mysterious Stechinelli who had now been twice commended to his thoughts? He would get the answer to that question on the morrow. For tonight he was content to know that he had rounded his dangerous corner. He stole away from the door on the tips of his toes. Bernstorff lived in a modest lodging by the side of the market-place. He picked up his hat and his cane in his new office and descended the stone staircase. There was a light in the guard-room at the bottom of the stairs and the great doors of the Castle stood open. He was still a few yards from them when the light quick footsteps of someone booted and spurred rang on the stone slabs behind him. The sound startled him out of his pleasant dreams and he swung sharply round. As he swung round the sound stopped as sharply. He saw, in the shadows of the great porch, the slight figure of a boy in a riding-dress; and the boy flinched. The Chancellor laughed softly, but there was much pleasure in the laugh. It was not dignified. The Chancellor recognised that Her Highness Eleonore would have found in his laughter a justification of her indictment of him. But he was too new in his office not to relish a movement of fear.
The boy heard the laugh too. He straightened his shoulders and he marched straight past the Chancellor, his chin in the air and his three-cornered hat upon his head, as if there were no one in the porch but himself. Bernstorff followed him out into the open space before the Castle. A sentry at his elbow saluted him. The moon was in its third quarter and held the stretch of gravel, the glistening moat, the broad lime-tree walk, and the sleeping town beyond in the spell of a lovely silver light. Bernstorff had only eyes for a little group assembled to the left of the door — the porter of the gate with a great lantern in his hand, a soldier on a horse with his saddle bags stuffed full and a portmanteau strapped to the back of his saddle and Philip Königsmark, then in the act of swinging himself on to the back of a second horse. Not a word was spoken by anyone. Not by a look for a gesture did Philip betray his knowledge that Bernstorff was watching his departure. The planks of the drawbridge sounded hollow beneath the hooves of the two horses. On the chequered path of the lime-walk, now a stirrup gleaned and now was lost. Philip Christopher rode out from Celle on the first stage of his banishment to distant Breda. His disgrace was heavy upon his spirit. Heavier still was his sense of inferiority and incompetence. The shame of the long hours in the Castle Chapel, the poor showing which he had made, his submission, the helplessness and pain and terror which were the consequences of his submission branded him with ignominy. He grew hot and cold as he thought of it. But heavier than his shame was the knowledge that he left behind him a finer spirit than his, and a heart as desolate.
Outside the town the land sloped northwards up to the moorlands and, at the top of a rise, Philip reined in his horse and looked backwards. He saw below him the Castle of Celle sleeping in its park. There was not a light in any window. Yet behind one of them Sophia Dorothea was lying, her face perhaps pressed into a pillow to stifle the sound of her weeping. He was a boy and he suffered that night the overwhelming sorrows of a boy. Sophia Dorothea and he were never again to meet. They would carry their lonely hearts through dreary interminable years. This was his last view of Celle. He would never see its Castle again.
It would have been infinitely better for both Sophia Dorothea and himself if his expectations at that moment had proved to be true.
“Come!” said his guard impatiently.
Philip turned the head of his horse and rode forward over the brow of the hill.
VI. A MESSENGER TO HANOVER
THE DISMISSAL OF a page could not upset the routine of a State with as little parade as Celle. There were still five on the establishment and the number was more than sufficient to cover the easy duties required of them. His Highness went out hunting the next morning as he was accustomed to do on five mornings out of the seven. Chancellor Bernstorff walked into his fine new office and began his day’s work with his secretary at the same hour at which Schultz had been wont to begin it. Sophia Dorothea carried her copy of Iphigénie into her mother’s three-cornered boudoir at eleven of the clock as she had done every week day for a month.
There were however changes for the discerning curious to speculate upon. Sophia Dorothea brought a white face and a pair of tired eyes to a lesson up till now joyfully anticipated. Her mother Eleonore was embarrassed and distressed at the opening of an hour which had been the happiest for her of all the twenty- four; and she was engaged upon the reconstruction of the programme for the entertainment upon her birthday. Sophia Dorothea, as she embraced her mother, could not but see the erasure of the scene between Achilles and Iphigenia. Indeed she was meant to see it. The girl, however, asked no question, but took her place at the table, opened her copy-book and waited.
In a confusion, Duchess Eleonore, looking anywhere but at her daughter, spoke hurriedly: “Darling, your father thinks that it would give greater pleasure to our good people if, instead of acting a scene in French, you recited a poem in their own tongue.”
Sophie Dorothea, like all other children, in every age, knew that formula, “your father thinks.” It is the last resource of mothers who have no satisfactory explanation to give. Put it on to father, saddle him with the unpleasant decision, make it a matter of dutiful obedience! At another time Sophia would have laughed joyously and rallied her mother with a dozen questions. Now she merely looked quietly at her and answered: “I shall do what he wishes, mother.”
Eleonore had dreaded a passionate objection. She sprang up in relief and took a book from the window ledge at her side.
“Ah! You have chosen the recitation already,” said Sophia.
“I thought this, darling, would be as suitable as anything. It’s a charming poem by Christoph von Grimmelshausen.”
Eleonore moved round the table and placing the open book in front of Sophia, took up the copy of Racine’s play. Sophia’s hand reached out hurriedly to recover the book, but she drew it back again.
“You won’t want this book again, my dear,” said Eleonore gently and with a great deal of compunction.
“No, mother, I shan’t,” said Sophia. “For I know most of it by heart,” and the last two words she drew out and spoke them with a tiny emphasis.
“Oh, my darling!” Eleonore cried suddenly and she stooped and kissed Sophia’s cheek. Sophia turned quickly and caught her mother’s arm. She held it tight and gazed into her face — steadily. But there was not a question in her eyes, and not even the hint of any trouble in their depth. They were just a
pair of big dark-brown eyes, inscrutable, and, to the mother, alarming. She would have welcomed an appeal, even some sign of pain at the moment. But these were the eyes of a stranger, windows upon an empty room, and of a stranger, older and better schooled than herself to hide whatever torments of sorrow and despair consumed her. It was the second time that Eleonore had been shocked by the revelation that her beloved daughter was not living in a mansion of her own with the blinds drawn and a sentry at the gates. Sophia Dorothea was the first to break the spell which held them. She took her hand from her mother’s arm and only then did the mother realise with how hard a grip she had been held.
“And what am I to recite to the good people of Celle?” she asked and looked down at the open page.
She read the first line and broke into a harsh and strident laugh.
“Come, Solace of the Night, O Nightingale,” she recited, and laughed again. “An ode to a nightingale! Mother, that’s wonderful!” She read on again and again recited with derision:
“Sunset and we, though wrapped in night,
Can sing God’s goodness and His might.”
Could any poem be more suitable for a young girl? So much better than Racine! So much more innocent!” Sophia Dorothea broke off suddenly. She saw that tears were standing in her mother’s eyes. In a passion of remorse, she rushed across the room and flung herself down on the seat beside her.
“Oh, mummy! I wouldn’t hurt you for the world. Would I? Would I?” and she clung to her mother. They were the first natural words which she had spoken since she had come into that room. “Let’s go into the park,” she continued. “I’ll recite the poem. It won’t take me more than an hour to learn it. Come, mother, I’ll race you down to the French garden.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 698