But it appeared that Sophia Dorothea’s smile was not one of pleasure, nor did her cheeks flush out of pride. For as he bowed with his fingers upon the handle of the door she said quietly: “Your Excellency.”
Bernstorff stopped.
“Princess?” he said.
“Where is Philip?”
From the ease and quietude of her voice, Sophia Dorothea seemed to be asking the simplest and most natural question in the world. But her mother looked up with a gasp and the Chancellor jumped as if someone had struck him across the fact.
“Princess, I... I don’t understand,” he stammered.
“Yet a minute ago Your Excellency was congratulating me upon my admirable pronunciation,” replied Sophia. “I asked: where is Philip?”
“You mean Philip Christopher, Count Königsmark?” he replied, still not quite sure whether he was on his head or on his heels.
“I do.”
Bernstorff in circumstances however engrossing and important was never quite unaware of the figure he was cutting. He recognised with a natural exasperation that of the three people present two looked like schoolchildren on the carpet and that the real child was not one of the two. Duchess Eleonore was watching her daughter with startled eyes and a heaving bosom. He himself was havering and stuttering like an oaf. Sophia Dorothea sat behind her table, with her lesson books spread out on it, her eyes bent steadily upon him, betraying nothing of her thoughts, and holding him to her question.
“Doubtless Philip Königsmark is at Breda,” he said.
Sophia Dorothea leaned forward.
“He is at home?”
“He should be at home.”
The girl never took her eyes from Bernstorff’s face. But she had now some difficulty in shaping with her lips the tormenting question in her mind.
“Your Excellency can assure me then,” she said in a lower voice than she had used and with a little sharp intake of her breath. “That Philip is not still at Celle in a prison?”
A cry broke from Duchess Eleonore.
“My darling!”
All through this week, then, Sophia Dorothea had been tortured by this fear — that her playmate, her friend — oh, her lover if you will — stripped of light and sun and air had been hidden away in some secret gaol. And she had given not the least tiniest sign of her fear!
Bernstorff did his best to look quite stupefied by the question. But had he had his own way a prison is precisely where the boy would have been lying, with a pair of fetters on his ankles to make doubly sure that he didn’t get away.
“I can assure you, Princess, that Philip Königsmark is not in Celle. A summons came for him. By the consent of Their Highnesses he was released from his service. He left that night for Breda.”
“It is the truth, Sophy,” said Duchess Eleonore.
Such a wave of relief swept over the girl, sapping her strength that for a moment it seemed that she would faint. She lay back in her chair with her eyes closed and her face like chalk. The Chancellor bowed again and escaped from the room.
The girl’s mother rose and moved towards her. But before she could reach her, Sophia Dorothea opened her eyes. She turned towards her mother and something in the look of her, in the haunted depths of her eyes, held the elder of them still and silent. Sophia Dorothea threw back her head and recited with a quiet sadness which Eleonore was long afterwards to recall:
“Triste destin des Rois. Esclaves que nous sommes
Et des rigueurs du sort et des discours des homes!
Nous nous voyons sans cesse assiégés de témoins,
Et les plus malheureux osent pleurer le moins.”
And for a second time Duchess Eleonore bitterly regretted that she had made her daughter acquainted with the sonorous verses of Monsieur Racine.
VIII. TAKES PLACE IN ENGLAND
THE BIG HOUSE at the top of the Haymarket was occupied by Monsieur Faubert, a Frenchman of considerable note. The curious may still read his name on the wall of a passage on the eastern side of Regent Street. For it was to the less noticeable quarter of Faubert’s Place, as the passage is now called, that he withdrew after certain events had dislodged him from his house in the town’s eye. But at this time — eighteen months had passed since Madame Platen and Bernstorff the Chancellor had concluded their unholy alliance — Monsieur Faubert’s reputation was untarnished. He kept the most modish Academy in England for the education of youths. Knightly accomplishments were his especial care. He taught the three languages which a gentleman should know, French, German and Italian, the mastery of the Great Horse, dancing, fencing, the laws of venery and good manners. Under his tuition hobbledehoys learned to turn out their toes. He was the French polisher, par excellence. He rubbed the asperities off young gentlemen and sent them forth glossily equipped for Court and the polite professions.
A common-room extended across the front of the house with windows opening upon the Haymarket. But on this raw evening of February 12th, the curtains were drawn; and Monsieur Faubert, a smallish dapper man with a quick eye and a neat precision of gesture, was sitting at his ease in front of a bright coal-fire. His pupils were for the most part at their homes, but one of them was finishing an exercise at a table behind Monsieur Faubert’s back. He was a lad of seventeen years, dressed in a brown Camelot suit, fair-haired and pleasant to look upon though easy to forget. He was in a hurry to have done with his thesis, glancing now at his schoolmaster and now at the door, as though he feared that the one would depart, or the other open before he had said his say. He did finish it, however, without any interruption. He sanded it and folded it and then crossed the room to the fireplace where he stood with his back to the fire.
“Monsieur Faubert,” he said, frowning. “I am uneasy.”
“You will practise yourself in the French tongue, if you please,” replied Monsieur Faubert.
“Alors,” said the boy with an honest English accent, “je souffre d’un grand malaise.”
“Sans doute,” Monsieur Faubert answered. “Mais consolez-vous, Monsieur Craston! On n’apprend pas à maîtriser le Grand Cheval sans de petites catastrophes.”
Anthony Craston laughed ruefully.
“Why, it’s true, I took a toss in Hyde Park yesterday, and I am as full of twinges as an old buffer with the gout. But it is something quite different which is troubling me, and since I wish to be exact I must use the language I know.”
Monsieur Faubert sat up straight. He now looked at the door but with a hope that someone would open it. But since no one did, he said guardedly.
“Speak then! I am listening.”
“It’s about Philip,” said Anthony Craston.
“To be sure! It would be,” Monsieur Faubert exclaimed impatiently. “It always is Philip. A year ago Karl John Königsmark brought his young brother to London and gave him into my charge. He said to me: ‘Look you, young Philip wishes to follow my example — to fight here and fight there and between whiles to have much pleasure with ladies. But he cannot do what I do and live. He can only try to do it and die. He was not cast in brass which makes a great rattle and resists great thumps. Philip is of a more special and delicate mould. I cannot see him rushing up to a golden Virgin in a captured church and crying: “Darling how sweet of you to have waited for me,” and taking her away and melting her down! My grandfather did it, I might do it, but Philip, no! He has scruples, he broods till everything is twice its proper size, he feels shame. Therefore I beg you to take him under your care and teach him, so that he may go up to Oxford and take a degree by his wits instead of by his sword arm as the rest of my family has done.’
“In this way,” Monsieur Faubert declared, “Count Karl John pleaded. I took the boy, and ever since he came here with his slow smile and his pretty melancholy and his kind speeches, it has been nothing but ‘How will this touch Philip?’ and ‘Has Philip got a headache?’ and ‘The best horse, if you please, for Philip,’ as if he were a girl.”
Monsieur Faubert fumed and fretted and fidgeted
in a quite extravagant heat. He meant to ride off by the way of derision from a dangerous topic. All the more young Craston was unwilling to let him go.
“Sir, I should in nature hate Philip with a great jealousy, so easily he exceeds us all in our tasks,” he said sturdily “But I love him more than anyone in the world and I am sure that some very grave disaster is threatening him.”
“Disaster! Here’s a terrible big word!” cried Monsieur Faubert. “Define, Mr Craston!”
Again there was derision in the schoolmaster’s voice, but none at all in his face. His eyes were wary and his face twitching with anxiety.
“To the particular, my young gentleman. Of what kind is this disaster?”
“A fortnight ago,” said Craston, “a huge man smelling of rum came to this house.”
Monsieur Faubert sat very still.
“He asked for Mr Hanson, Philip’s tutor.”
Again there was no comment.
“He gave his name. Captain Vratz.”
“How do you know?”
“I was in the hall when he came to the door.”
“Continue!”
“A few minutes afterwards, Captain Vratz, Mr Hanson and Philip left the house together. Philip had his face muffled in his cloak...”
“Again how do you know?”
“I was watching from the window of this room.”
“You are curious then, Mr Craston,” said Faubert with a sniff of disdain.
“When Philip is threatened, very curious,” Anthony Craston answered softly.
“And perhaps you noticed which way the three went?” Monsieur Faubert in spite of his show of indifference, put this question on a tone of suspense.
“They went into the house next door.”
“The house next door is a shop,” Monsieur Faubert said sharply.
“Above the shop there are lodgings. A stranger has occupied them for the last fortnight. He does not go out. Vratz lodges with him. A German doctor has been to see him. Mr Hanson waits upon him and carried messages backwards and forwards between him and the Swedish Minister.”
Monsieur Faubert made a swift movement. He was on the point of jumping out of his chair. But he caught himself back. “And whence did you get all this gossip of the backstairs?” he asked languidly.
“From the backstairs,” Craston answered sturdily. “A boy names Watts attends upon this stranger for sixpence a day. He is a sharp boy. So he earns ninepence a day.”
Monsieur Faubert nodded his head and laughed not over pleasantly. “You intend, I believe, to serve your country as a Minister abroad. You should have a great success. A very great success.”
Anthony Craston ignored the sarcastic speech altogether.
“The stranger calls himself Carlo Cuski, Monsieur Faubert, not a very probably name, is it? I think that I could give him another nearer to the truth.”
Monsieur Faubert now did spring out of his chair. He began to walk about the room with a fine show of indignation.
“So!” he cried. “Because the exquisite Philip who is studying foreign languages is taken one day by his private tutor to meet a foreign gentleman, Carlo Cuski, and comes back disheartened, poor lad, by his own ignorance, as he has every right to be, there must be all this spying and bribing and fine talk of danger. To me it is all empty nonsense, Mr Craston.”
“Hear then the end of the nonsense, Monsieur Faubert,” said Anthony.
“What?” cried Faubert in the utmost astonishment. “Is there more to it? Certainly let me hear all! Philip who is even now being coddled and spoilt and flattered for his beauty and fine dress by great ladies at the Duke of Richmond’s, has no doubt invented some moving morbid story to secure your attention.”
“Philip has invented nothing. He has not even answered one question and I have put many to him,” Craston replied. “He would not even explain the strange thing which happened yesterday.”
Monsieur Faubert glanced quickly at the boy out of the corner of his eyes.
“Well! Let me hear the end of it, since you’ll never be content until I do.”
“Yesterday morning, Saturday, I was talking to Philip in his study when a dark fellow dressed in rags burst into the room. He was seven weeks late, because his ship met with a great storm and was so nearly sunk that on shore it was given up for lost. He had asked for Count Königsmark, had been sent to Monsieur Faubert’s house, and had the greatest difficulty in forcing his way past the servants. He was still talking when Mr Hanson ran into the room and bustled him out. But not before he had told his name. He was Boroski, a Polander, and as ruffianly a cut-throat as you ever saw in your life.”
Monsieur Faubert ceased any longer to sneer. He listened to his pupil with consternation.
“This rascal forced his way into my house? And I was not told!” he cried.
He looked upon Anthony now with friendlier eyes. Evil was afoot. That he had been sure of ever since the stranger, this Carlo Cuski, had come secretly to the house next door. What sort of evil he could not know, beyond that it would certainly be violent. Very likely it threatened Philip. Very certainly it threatened his school, his good name, his livelihood. Schools do not prosper if they are linked publicly with violent deeds and Monsieur Faubert’s school was his pride and treasure.
Anthony Craston enjoyed the spectacle of Monsieur Faubert’s agitation, as much as he could enjoy anything in this untoward business. There would be no more derision of his friend Philip because he was disturbed. There was another now hopping with both feet through fear.
“There’s a great difference, sir, whether one brushes with the hair or against the hair,” he said rather maliciously. “Now you, Monsieur, find it alarming when Carlo Cuski or — shall we say frankly? — Karl John Königsmark, who a year ago came to England with a train of carriages and walked arm in arm with the King, comes back and lies hidden in a mean lodging above a shop with the rum-drinking Captain Vratz and the out-at-elbows Polander as his only companions.”
“Be quiet!” cried Monsieur Faubert in a panic. For there was someone on the stairs.
Both master and pupil turned with a frightened expectancy to the door. They were both wrought to so high a pitch that they waited stock still as though upon some convulsion of nature; and when the door opened they looked for Boroski or Vratz, or perhaps the redoubtable Karl John himself. But it was no dreaded intruder who entered. Young Philip Königsmark had come home betimes from the Duke of Richmond’s party at his great house in St. James’s Street. He bowed to Monsieur Faubert, exchanged a warm smile with Anthony Craston and, taking from his shoulders his long, dark cloak, sat down in a chair by the side of the schoolmaster, so that the firelight gleamed on his fine suit of white velvet and gold lace and lit up the dark-brown hair clustering about his shoulders and his pale and beautiful face.
The year spent in Monsieur Faubert’s Academy had released Philip from a good many of his inhibitions. He had gone away from Celle, grieving over his separation from his beloved playmate, distressed for the sorrow caused to her and sick at heart for the ignominy of his expulsion. All through the days and half through the nights, as he rode homeward under the surveillance of the trooper, he exaggerated the distress and the disgrace until they clouded the wide sky and made a black waste of the earth. He lived over again the hours of fear and torment in the Castle Chapel. He waked with a start to shiver over the pitiable figure he had cut as he dropped upon his knees before the upstart Chancellor, to hear the lamentable prayers he had babbled, to suffer again his indignities. Unhappy hours which men put aside, loom black and enormous in the memories of boys. Philip Königsmark convinced himself of worthlessness and cowardice and imagined them branded upon his face. The tedium and strict discipline of his mother’s house offered nothing of interest to distract him from his brooding.
After six months Karl John, who had inherited their father’s fortune, flashed, brilliant as a kingfisher, for a few weeks upon that gloomy house. He charged himself with Philip’s future, and Philip, hi
s spirits leaping to an unexpected rapture, for a little while nursed dreams of wild triumphs in battle and a name to match his brother’s, a name which Sophia Dorothea in quiet Celle would hear with a smile of pride and Bernstorff with a pang of fear. Those high spirits were to drop to lower depths than ever before, when Karl John explained his plans.
“My life’s not for you, Philip.”
It needed a sturdier body, a less sensitive and impressionable mind. Schooling and books for Philip Königsmark. Monsieur Faubert in London and Oxford to follow, and a placid career at the end. And to Philip the whole discourse meant that he was unworthy of the name he bore and must be tucked away in some corner where there would be no opportunity to disgrace it.
At Monsieur Faubert’s Academy, however, his conviction of his insufficiency stung him no longer. He had little to learn from Monsieur Faubert of the management of the Great Horse; and though his wrists were slight as a girl’s, they were supple and strong as steel. There was no one in the school to match him with the foil, and to his surprise he discovered that books were not nearly as irksome as he had conceived them to be. Before the year was ended he could turn an ode of Horace into passable verse and write it out, too, in a round boyish hand to be sure, but with no more mistakes in spelling than a gentleman was entitled to make. But neither the new and busy world in which he lived, nor the astonishing place which he took amongst his companions, affected him chiefly. A passionate friendship sprang and bloomed between Anthony Craston and himself. They were of an age, there was something of hero worship in Anthony and much of gratitude in Philip; the one could not tire of hearing of Breda and Celle, the other of hunting over the dykes and hedges of Essex from the house of his friend, and the long jog homeward afterwards, and the lazy interchange of talk before a roaring fire in the great hall. A day when they were not to meet was a day lost and there were few such days. They were very serious and settled the troubles of the world. They were very gay and set their lives to music. Anthony was one day to be the wisest of Ambassadors. Then why should Philip lag behind? These were laurels to be won in that field as fadeless as in the field of war. The same College should house them at Oxford, they would share the same troubles, the same subjects of study. Meanwhile there was Monsieur Faubert’s Academy and long rambles on the days when they were free, amongst the woods of Highgate and the meadows of Kensington. Never had Philip’s sky been so serene, never a day dawned but he waked to it eagerly and ended it with regret. The world was compounded of music and light, of magic and great dreams. It was Philip’s annus mirabilis, but on this Sunday evening it came to an end. Philip was sitting back with his legs stretched out and his feet crossed, very modish in the new style of breeches fitting closely to the knees, but very primitive in his behaviour, for he was gnawing moodily at the cambric of his lace-edged handkerchief. Monsieur Faubert, however, was for the moment more concerned with his premature return.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 700