She lay for a little while in a muse. The mention of Bernstorff had set her thoughts upon another aspect of her problem. Somehow this marriage must be brought about. By whatever shifts and tricks, the little Sophia Dorothea and her fortune must be trapped and boxed in a nice tight cage in Hanover.
“I think the real danger is not Duchess Sophia,” she said, “but the d’Olbreuse in Celle. She cannot but know what the Duchess says of her. She is a harlot, she is of the canaille, but has a sickly French stomach which turns sour at the sight of an honest German meal. Eleonore d’Olbreuse cannot enjoy such sayings or forget them. Also, she favours young Wolfenbüttel.”
“Bernstorff must see to it,” said Platen.
“Yes, and on second thoughts,” added Clara, “it will be as well if that rare opportunity is not seized by our good friend until he has seen to it.”
She struck her gong again.
“My bath,” she ordered of her maid.
It was a bath of hot milk, very good for the skin and very good for the poor of Hanover. Clara Platen was the soul of generosity, and the milk was distributed to the poor as soon as this new and tawdry Venus had risen from its creamy waves. Clara Platen was thirty-four years old and the pink and white which had ravished the experienced heart of Ernst Augustus had lost its native brilliancy. Late nights, intrigues too laborious and gallantries too casual, had told their tale where it is most easily written. In the clear March sunlight, her skin was sallow, her cheeks fallen. They would be pinker and whiter and plumper than they ever had been when she rose from her toilet table armoured for the day. But time was needed for the metamorphosis, and the Council was dismissed.
Catherine Marie was the last to leave the room. She was the stupid one of the three. She had sat silent through the discussion, knowing that she was stupid.
“No doubt I am wrong,” she said to herself. “No doubt if I had interrupted, a single word would have shown me to be a fool. But I do think something was forgotten.”
The something forgotten was Sophia Dorothea, the girl waking into womanhood, the creature of flesh and blood, presumably with a heart, and perhaps with a will. Would she come to Hanover? And if she came to Hanover, would she stay quiet in her cage there? Catherine Marie was not easy in her mind. “I know that I am stupid, and I’ve no doubt, of course, that I am wrong. But I really to think something was forgotten.”
XIII. DUCHESS SOPHIA AND THE FORLORN HOPE
GOTTLIEB BERNSTORFF ALMOST mislaid his tobacco factory on the banks of the Aller; it was touch and go. He had been Chancellor of the Duchy for two years this summer and had certainly confirmed his position since that evening when he had been so nearly discharged from his office. There had been one crumpled roseleaf in Duke William’s comfortable bed which he had smoothed of its creases. The Guilds with their monopolies of corn and beer and cloth had begun to set up a patrician authority in the Duchy which threatened to conflict with the Duke’s own power. This authority Bernstorff had destroyed under the excuses that it was corrupt and oppressive to the people. He had gathered control completely into the hands of the Castle officials. He had reorganised the army, so that it was now a strong, well-drilled fighting force, and therefore the more saleable to the Emperor Leopold or to any other monarch who bid high enough. But he could not persuade George William to make up his mind about the marriage of his daughter.
“The Princess is too young to be troubled with such matters,” the Duke would say.
“Her Highness will be sixteen years old on September the fifteenth,” answered Bernstorff.
“I don’t need to be told that, since I’m her father,” said Duke George William testily. Then with a little spurt of anger: “And I’ll pray you not to forget that Duke Anthony Ulrich of Wolfenbüttel is one of my most cherished friends.”
Bernstorff bowed his head.
“And Providence, Your Highness, seldom struck a blow more difficult for us to understand than when it directed the cannon ball which laid his elder son low at the siege of Phillipsburg.”
George William grunted and turned to other subjects. Once or twice Bernstorff dangled before his eyes the prospect of an Electoral Hat and did arrest the Duke’s attention.
“So clear a proof that the two Duchies will be united would certainly give the Emperor grounds for very serious consideration,” he said. “And to whom should the honour come but to the elder of the two brothers?”
“Ha!” said the Duke, looking up quickly. Ambition was not altogether dead in him; and “H’m,” he said in a lively voice. “Elector! Elector of Celle!” He turned the phrase over on his tongue and found it not unpleasant.
But by the beginning of September, Bernstorff was no further advanced. During the first week he multiplied his arguments. During the second he remarked that the Duke avoided him; and two days before the birthday of Sophia Dorothea he went despairingly along the corridors to the private apartments of the Duchess, with a programme for the illumination of the Castle and the town. As he passed he saw the rooms reserved for the more important guests being opened and cleaned and aired. He stopped and asked of a servant superintending the arrangements: “There are to be guests then at the Castle? I understood that the celebration was to be private.”
“Your Excellency, Her Highness was only this morning given her orders.”
“And who, then, is coming?”
“Your Excellency, we have not yet been informed.”
Bernstorff passed on to the Duchess’s parlour, where he was received very graciously. He submitted his programme and the Duchess ran her eyes over it.
“You have been at more pains than was needed, Bernstorff,” she said with a smile. “We shall be merely a family party for my daughter’s birthday.”
Bernstorff drew a step backwards. From the first he had set himself to undermine the Duke’s devotion for his wife. It was to be Bernstorff and not Eleonore d’Olbreuse who was to direct the policy of Celle and sway the easy, indolent disposition of its master. He was her enemy as she was his; and in the smile with which she answered him now, he read something of amusement and still more of triumph.
“Yet, Your Highness,” he objected, with a little stammer of fear, “as I came to you from the Chancellery, it seemed to me that guest-rooms were being got ready for a large company.”
Duchess Eleonore shook her head.
“Duke Anthony Ulrich will, as he usually does when he comes to visit us, bring some of his household.” She said.
Bernstorff’s face grew pale. For a moment or two his very breathing was suspended.
“The Duke of Wolfenbüttel is to be here for the Princess’s birthday?” he managed to ask.
“To be sure,” said Duchess d’Olbreuse.
“I did not know,” answered Bernstorff. There was a black look upon his face, and a harsh accent in his voice which declared plainly as words that he had been deceived.
“But, my dear Chancellor, why should we have troubled the Minister upon whom the grave burdens of the State are laid, with the work of the housekeeper?”
Was she laughing at him? The blood rushed into his face. Whether she was laughing at him or no, there was a question as yet unuttered, to which he must have an answer. But he was too angry to wrap it up.
“Does the Duke of Wolfenbüttel come with or without his family?” he demanded.
But so harsh was his tone that the words carried a menace rather than a demand. Bernstorff still trembled with rage when he thought himself disparaged, and forgot Stechinelli.
“Since when, Monsieur le Chancelier, have you gained the right to question me?” Eleonore asked with nothing but amusement in her eyes, nothing but gentleness in her voice. Undoubtedly, she was enjoying herself. She was paying herself for the slights and enmities of two years. Unwise she was, no doubt, and she was to suffer dearly for these few moments of enjoyment. But she felt sure of her victory now and must flaunt it in the face of her antagonist.
Bernstorff was stifling with anger.
“I
beg pardon of Your Highness,” he stammered, “I claim no such right. If I seemed to, I pray you to attribute my — zeal to a fear lest some proper consideration for your guests should be lacking on the part of His Highness’s servants like myself, upon their reception.”
It was awkward as an excuse, and pompous enough to justify the incredulous little laugh with which Eleonore received it. But she was not content. She should have kept her secret for another day and spared herself an old age of misery and humiliation. But the sight of Bernstorff, pale, his face disordered, the whole man abject with fear, drove her on.
“You need have no anxiety, Monsieur,” she said pleasantly. “It is a private visit of old friends without ceremony. His Highness the Duke of Wolfenbüttel will bring his son Augustus William with him. The young Prince and my daughter are of a suitable age — and I am inclined to think — of a suitable affection.”
Bernstorff bowed. How he escaped from the room, with what a dejected air, with how heavy a step, he could not have told. Once outside the door, he leaned against the wall of the corridor, despair at his heart. What would they think of him in Hanover? A braggard who had misled them? A fool played like a fish on a hoof by the Frenchwoman? He stumbled back to his room with its wide prospect over the moat and the lime-tree avenue. But he had no eyes now for the scene which two years before had so gratified his ambitions. He said with his elbows on the big table and his face buried in his hands. Augustus William and Sophia Dorothea! He might set the names apart one on this side, one on the other, but they would not stay apart. They flew together in his brain, even as the two who bore them would fly together — on the morning of the second day.
All his purposes and dreams had gathered about the marriage of George Louis and Sophia Dorothea; Hanover with its pageantry and Celle with its trade and saved wealth indissolubly united; himself the richly-rewarded statesman who had brought the union about. And now all the dreams were in the dust and himself the Frog of the man who wrote the Fables — a Frenchman, too. May the Good God damn him eternally with the Grand Monarque and all Frenchmen!
Bernstorff could have no doubt of the meaning of Eleonore’s last words. Of a suitable age and a suitable affection! He understood now why George William, the weakling, had avoided him through the last week. The uxorious red-faced huntsman had been overruled by his crafty wife. Wolfenbüttel and his son had been invited secretly. He, Bernstorff, must know nothing of the invitation until it was too late for him to move a finger.
He looked at the clock. It was close upon noon. He had less than forty-eight hours in which to defeat a woman, reverse a policy and change and fix a weak man’s rambling mind which fluctuated with the tides.
Bernstorff sprang up from his chair; he would make a last desperate appeal to his master. But with his feet already turned towards the door, he stopped. His Highness was still out upon the moor, hollaing on his hounds after some miserable stag with his antlers half an inch longer than the next one’s. He had less than forty-eight hours! If anything could be done, it must be done in Hanover. There was one last desperate hope. In his disillusionment he could not believe that it would ever be acted on. It was madness to think of it. Yet there were the minutes running away. If it was known that he had suggested so impracticable an expedient and the expedient was dismissed as absurd, or was tried and failed — he was ruined, he was flung from his place into those gutters where vanity and incompetence lie side by side. But was he not ruined if the Duchess Eleonore had her way?
He looked again at the clock. It was half-past twelve. He had wasted thirty priceless minutes. He took his hat and his stick and hurried past the sentries — for how much longer would they salute him? — over the drawbridge and down the avenue to his fine house in the Schuhstrasse — for how much longer would he possess it? He called for Heinrich Muller and bade him saddle a horse; and sat himself down at his writing table in the window, as soon as he had given the order.
This was not the usual hour at which Heinrich Muller was accustomed to be sent upon his missions, but he obeyed his instinct of blind obedience and walked towards the door. Heinrich Muller walked slowly though he rode fast. Heinrich Muller had also, being a good servant, imitated unconsciously the ways of his master. He had begun to think. Thus halfway across the room to the door he reflected.
“Excellency is writing a letter in a great hurry. I am to carry it to I know where. Good!”
But a step or two further on he reflected again: “But it is the middle of the day. I shall arrive in the dark, but I shall start in the light. It is not my business. Good!”
He went to the door, but at the door he stopped with his fingers on the handle.
“But it is not at all good,” he reflected a third time, “and it is my business.”
He turned his body and not the handle.
“Excellency!”
“Well, animal?” replied His Excellency impatiently.
“I am wearing your livery.”
Bernstorff had his servants nowadays dressed in a noticeable livery the colour of cream with gilt buttons. Bernstorff looked up from his writing and nodded his appreciation.
“Change it, my good Heinrich!”
Muller saluted and went out of the room. Bernstorff was already deep in the composition of his letter.
“The French Madame has tricked us all,” he wrote. “Duke Anthony Ulrich reaches Celle the day after tomorrow. He brings his son Augustus William. The betrothal of the Princess will be announced after his arrival. There is only one possible prevention,” and even when he had got to this point of audacity, he hesitated. But so desperate was the pass to which he had come that he must go on, however flagrant and impossible his proposal.
“If Her Highness the Duchess Sophia could be persuaded to make the journey, laborious as it is, and propose the alliance we so much desire privately to the Duke, before the Wolfenbüttels arrive, even at this last hour, it might be that we should succeed. The Duke holds his sister-in-law in so much awe for her wisdom and learning that any plea of hers must weigh heavily in his mind, and the fact that she, with her great pride, breaks the long estrangement between the two houses by making the first advances cannot but affect a man who is at heart a sentimentalist.”
Muller was in the room, booted and spurred and dressed in inconspicuous brown before the letter was superscribed and sealed.
“When you are out of the town, Muller, ride fast, even if the horse founders. The letter is urgent. If needs be, Madame must be waked.”
It was only a little after one o’clock now. Were the road at its worst, Muller should be knocking on the doors of Monplaisir an hour before midnight; and Madame Platen’s hour for bed was happily as late as the nightingale’s.
Bernstorff had endured two agitated days when, greatly daring, he had sent Muller upon his first treacherous mission to Hanover. But the hours he was now to undergo were even a greater torture. They were at once tedious and full of alarm. The hands loitered round the circle of the clock and yet at each loud noise, the clatter of a horse, a sudden rapping on the panels of his door, or even an unexpected cry, his heart was in his mouth. Muller was thrown from his horse and found dead upon the road with his letter in his satchel. He was sure of it! When the Duke slipped hurriedly away into his library, it was because he had read the letter and was summoning his guards to arrest the traitor. When, after a sleepless night, the morning dawned, it was Duchess Sophia who troubled him. He could see her lip curling at his insolence. She hurry, her coach rocking in the deep furrows of the road like a ship in a gale, in order to smile and court and curtsey to the woman whom she had loaded with a fishwife’s abuse and made the butt of her broadest humours? She was more likely to send a message that the d’Olbreuse woman might marry her little French bastard to the pigstyman for all that she cared. And from that depressing fancy his hopes would rebound. He would look again at the clock’s creeping hands and murmur.
“If she started this morning, she couldn’t be here yet. And there would be debate
s and objections and persuasions and much humbling of pride first. She can’t be here before midnight.”
But Duchess Sophia had not arrived by midnight. Bernstorff stayed in his big room until the clock struck one and the usher outside his door was sleeping on his feet. He dared stay no longer lest if Duchess Sophia did after all arrive, he should be suspected of knowing it beforehand. But when he reached his home there was again no sleep for him. He tossed from side to side in a distress of mind and a fatigue of body which made him actually weep and filled him with so immense a pity for himself that he believed no one in the history of the world can ever have passed through so unhappy and so unmerited an ordeal. In the early morning, whilst it was still dark, he rose and throwing back his shutters gave his fevered head to the cool air. He was still leaning out from the window when he heard very far away the creaking of wheels. It was some trick of the wind, he said to himself, daring no longer to nurse a hope which a few minutes might prove vain. But there was no wind to trick him.
“Then it is a country farmer coming betimes to the market,” he said. But the noise was louder now, heavier than a country cart would make. He leaned farther out, his heart beating in his breast through the prison of his ribs. Then his ears distinguished the clatter of hooves upon the cobbles. Not one horse nor two horses could so wake echoes in the silent town.
“She is coming!” he cried aloud, his hands clinging to the window-sill; and round a corner a great coach with a postillion mounted on one horse and a servant on the box holding a lighted flambeau in his hand lumbered into view. The coach rolled away under his windows towards the Castle; and he saw that the man holding the flambeau wore the blue livery and silver aiguillettes of Hanover.
Duchess Sophia had come to Celle.
Bernstorff flung himself back into his bed and slept until the sun was high.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 706