But Eleonore was not concerned with his profits and his treacheries. She hardly heard his protests. She was neither accusing nor reproaching him. She was seeking to avert from her beloved daughter embarrassments and humiliations which would hurt her more sharply that the cut of a knife into her flesh and might provoke her to perilous reprisals.
“Her Highness the Duchess Sophia made me a promise,” she resumed. “It was the one small concession made to all my wishes and prayers. Prince George Louis has Madame Busche for his mistress,” and as Bernstorff made a movement to indicate his surprise, Eleonore raised a hand. “It is so well known that I should not like to believe that our Chancellor, whilst negotiating this marriage on our behalf, was ignorant of it.”
Bernstorff flushed and bit his lip. If he insisted on asserting his ignorance, he proclaimed himself either a liar or a fool. He tried to slip away upon an easier objection.
“Your Highness used the word negotiating, I think,” he said as though offended.
Eleonore looked at him with surprise.
“Well, Baron? The marriage was after all a matter of commerce.”
“A matter of State, Your Highness.”
Duchess Eleonore shrugged her shoulders. Her voice lost its smoothness. She answered with a flash of spirit.
“With Duke Ernst Augustus, matters of State usually become matters of commerce, and, as in this instance, greatly to his profit.”
Bernstorff had gained nothing by his evasion. He was on even more delicate ground than that which he had been treading before.
“But, as Your Highness yourself said, what is done is done. The Princess and George Louis are married. Bride and bridegroom are together at Brockhausen.”
“And tomorrow they go to Hanover,” Duchess Eleonore added quickly.
“They are to drive in state to their home where they are expected at noon.”
“But I pray you, Baron, to note this difference. Hanover will be my daughter’s home. It is already the Prince’s. There he has his associations — his friends, and amongst those friends one who, as Duchess Sophia promised, is to be his friend no more.”
“Madame Busche?”
“Madame Busche.”
“Well then!”
Bernstorff spread out his hands. His face expanded in a smile of immense relief.
“Your Highness, this is the best of news,” he cried. “I will not deny that I had heard something of the Prince’s attachment to — to this woman. I will admit that I was distressed by it — grievously distressed. But since the Duchess Sophia” — he spoke her name with such reverence that she might have been a goddess holding in her hands the very reins of destiny— “the Duchess Sophia promises that the Prince will be troubled by her no more, we can be sure that the promise will be fulfilled.”
“Can we?” Eleonore asked suddenly. “Duchess Sophia promised — yes. But to her it was a promise made about a matter of very little importance. Even when making it her mind was upon other things. I admit that I don’t understand Her Highness. I need not remind you, Baron, that Madame von Platen is her Mistress of the Wardrobe as well as the mistress of the Duke. To Duchess Sophia that duplication of — shall I say? — services is apparently a matter of small moment. She can no doubt cite the example of most of the Courts of Europe; and frankly I have had, ever since she made me the promise, a fear that she may have forgotten it. It was in her eyes so trivial a thing.”
Bernstorff secretly agreed that nothing was more likely. To him too it was a trivial thing. What, Duchess Sophia, the Queen of England and the Queen of France and the Electress of Saxony — to quote only a few in the like case — put up with, surely the daughter of a morganatic marriage in the little Duchy of Celle could endure without making a pother.
“We must hope that she has not forgotten it,” he said, and he half rose from his chair with a prayer that he might be allowed to go.
“We must do more than that,” said Eleonore quietly, and he resumed his seat. There was alarm in the strained look of her eyes, in the very quietude of her voice which he could not belittle.
“That promise, Baron von Bernstorff, must be kept,” she added. “If it is not, the marriage is doomed, and, for all we can do, may end miserably in some appalling scandal.”
It was necessary in Bernstorff’s interests that the union which he had done so much to bring about should at all events have a fair outward seeming. In both Duchies it had been welcomed with an eager enthusiasm. It would give a fillip to trade. It would mean a greater importance in the councils of the Emperor. It would end the long estrangement of neighbouring principalities. Afterwards — well, it would follow the usual procedure of such affairs. Monsieur would find his diversions elsewhere, Madame would console herself with good works or the arts or philosophy, or one of the hundred ways in which she could occupy her leisure or deceive her pride. But at the first there must be agreement, there must be children. Bernstorff was as concerned in the success of the marriage almost as deeply as Duchess Eleonore herself.
Unconsciously he hitched his chair forward.
“Then the Princess Sophia Dorothea knows of George Louis’” — he could find no better word than the one which Eleonore had used— “of George Louis’ attachment?’
“My daughter, Baron, is not an idiot. She knows very well, but she is dutiful to her father. She will forget her knowledge so long as the promise is kept. But she has been brought up, as you know, in this quiet place with examples of a purer kind before her eyes.”
There was no boasting, nothing of arrogance in the unhappy woman’s manner. She yearned for the felicity and contentment of Sophia beyond all else in the world. She hardly waited for the little bow with which Bernstorff accepted her claim.
“I ask you to remember that she has a spirit of her own, that as she is gentle in the face of kindness, so she is quick to resent an outrage. She will take her own way with it, and it would need a very wise person to predict or forestall that way. But it would be direct, outspoken, very possibly startling.”
And leaving those words to sink with all their meaning into the Chancellor’s mind, Duchess Eleonore rose from her chair to put an end to an interview which had already overtaxed her endurance. “Therefore I recommend to you, Baron, with the greatest earnestness, that since you have friends in Hanover, you should see to it that from tomorrow Her Highness’s promise is kept.”
And this time Bernstorff did not protest that he was without influence in Hanover. He went away from the Duchess’s apartments with slow steps and a very troubled mind. It certainly would not do for this loudly-heralded marriage to disrupt as loudly and through the fault of George Louis. Yet — yet it was possible. Bernstorff recollected a few uncomfortable moments to which he had once been put by Sophia Dorothea. It was over the ridiculous affair of Philip Königsmark, a couple of years ago — when she was a child. But she had been direct, outspoken, and certainly startling. He had felt like a small boy before a schoolmaster. He had been very angry, he remembered — yes, but angry because he had cut so mean a figure. It began to look as if the good Heinrich Muller would have to spend yet another night on the Hanover road. Well, at any rate, Bernstorff reflected grimly, Heinrich Muller must be able to locate every morass and every hole which he would find in his way.
Bernstorff, however, was unwilling to send him off upon this errand. For one thing the letter which he would have to carry to Clara von Platen would be a delicate one to write. She might very well consider that his fears were exaggerated and that the sooner Sophia Dorothea learned the place she was to occupy in Hanover the better. Moreover, Celle was still excited by the unwonted pageantry of the last few days. The streets were still beflagged and the citizens still paraded in noisy hilarious groups until long past their bed-time. Muller would be noticed as he rode out of the town.
“Someone has spied upon me. That’s sure,” he said to himself. “Someone has known of Muller’s comings and goings. For the d’Olbreuse knew. Well, he must start later and ride the
quicker, that’s all.”
Muller, in consequence, certainly started later.
XVI. ANTHONY CRASTON TAKES A FALL IN HANOVER
IT WAS A night of misfortunes for Muller. At one o’clock in the morning he was waked in his attic by someone shaking his shoulder and, sitting up in his bed, saw his master at his bedside, fully dressed and holding a candle in his hand.
“Up with you, Heinrich, and quietly,” said Bernstorff; and then minutes afterwards, carrying his boots in his hand, Muller crept down to Bernstorff’s study. Bernstorff gave to him a letter for Madame von Platen.
“This is of the gravest urgency,” he said.
Heinrich Muller went to the stables, saddled his horse and rode away. The streets were now empty and only here and there a lamp shone in a window. The church clock struck two when he had left the last of the houses behind him. And if no mishap befell him, he should draw rein at Monplaisir between eight and nine of the morning.
But he was heavy with sleep and, as he rode, he began to nod and lurch forward and catch himself back just as he was falling. On such occasions he remonstrated with his horse.
“Hold up now! What are you doing? Going to sleep? What next?”
The horse, knowing exactly where the blame lay, hitched him up with its shoulder, gave a warning grunt, “You’ll be off in a minute, Heinrich,” and plodded along. It was the horse, nevertheless, which made the mistake. The night was dark. Heinrich lurched and recovered with more than his usual jerk upon the reins. The horse swung its head round to see what new stupidity was taking place upon its back, put its foot into a hole, came down and popped Heinrich Muller over its head as neatly as if he had been a tumbler in a circus. Heinrich lay still. The horse continued to show its sense by discovering some grass by the road-side and setting to work to crop as much of it as its bridle allowed him to do, before its master woke up.
Some minutes elapsed before Muller became aware that he was lying upon his back on as hard and knotty a bed as he had ever met with in the roughest of his campaigns, and watching innumerable planets flashing across the blackness of the night. It grew obvious to him that the world was coming to an end. He was a Calvinist by religion and, since his fate was settled before he was born, he could do nothing about it. He might just as well lie where he was until the sky became a brazier and see what happened. He realised next that what happened was not going to be pleasant for him. For he became conscious of pain — great throbs of pain at the back of his head which shot down his neck, and a duller continuous pain in his shoulders. There was a great deal of roaring noise, too, in his ears.
Quite suddenly he understood that he was alive. He could not remember falling, but he remembered a horse. The horse, having eaten enough grass now, bent its great neck over his body and nuzzled him with its nose. So he couldn’t be dead. The horse would be a mile away by now galloping in a panic if he had been. Heinrich Muller, after some cogitation, determined to get up; which he did, and thereupon was violently sick. That helped him. He recollected that he was out upon some urgent business. There was a letter — yes, he had it in his pocket — and he must deliver it in the morning to the painted lady in the big house.
He would walk a few yards before he mounted, since he was still a teetotum in a whirling universe. But he had hardly taken the reins in his hand before he knew that he would have to walk a great many yards. For the horse had wrenched a shoulder and one of its forelegs was, for the purpose of riding, out of action. It could hobble slowly, and Heinrich could only walk slowly. For each beat of his heel upon the road shot a pang of agony up to the top of his head and threatened to make him sick again. Moreover, his heavy riding-boots were not conducive to fast walking; and though his pains became lighter his feet became worse. He blistered his heels, and after he had walked for an hour he was limping as badly as his horse.
It was now five o’clock in the morning and he had still thirteen miles to go; and no help anywhere. Here and there along the road, to be sure, there was to be found the cottage of a farmer. But none of them would have a horse to lend him, or would lend it if he had. For he must not say who his master was or whither he was bound.
Brockhausen, the Duke’s country house, should be no more than a mile or two away, lost in the woods upon his right hand. But this was the last place where he must look for help, since not one man in the Princess’s retinue but would recognise him as the Chancellor’s servant. There was nothing for it but go on as best he could.
Every now and then he sat on a bank and rested, whilst the horse stood patiently by or rubbed its nose against his shoulder, as though it took all the blame for the misadventure upon itself and begged him not to be angry. Every now and then he shuffled and hopped and limped for a mile. The sky lightened, the morning dawned, the intolerable night had ended, but he was still six miles from Herrenhausen and seven miles from Monplaisir. Those last miles were the most difficult for man and beast. Heinrich, with his feet burning as if they walked in flames, took off his boots and slung them about his neck, and so trod blithely for five minutes. But the stones cut his stockings to pieces and tore his feet; and when he tried to draw on his boots again, they wouldn’t go on. He was in a worse case than ever; and it was close upon eleven o’clock when he caught his first glimpse of the coach-house and stables of Herrenhausen, a mile ahead of him.
“Ha! At last!” he said, smacking the neck of his horse with the palm of his hand. He could trust someone of the servants in the stables of Herrenhausen to carry on his letter. He himself could do no more. But as he took the next step forward, he heard the rattle of wheels behind him and, facing about, saw a postchaise turn a corner of the road. He led his horse to the edge, to make room for the traveller to pass him, but he heard a shout and the chaise stopped beside him. Muller noticed that it was piled high with the traveller’s luggage.
A youth leaned out of the window and called to him.
“An accident?”
“Yes, sir. My horse is lamed and my feet in ribbons.”
The traveller looked down at Muller’s legs and uttered a cry of pity.
“You have far to go?”
“A little more than a mile.”
“If you’ll tie your horse up by the road, you can travel that mile on the step of my chaise.”
Muller was cautious. He was near to the Palace of Herrenhausen. On the other hand, the road was empty. He was sceptical of strangers in chaises who offered him a lift. Suppose that he climbed on to the step and the postillion set his horses at a gallop? All that Muller could do would be to hold on. He would be at the mercy of this youth, and so would his letter. He pulled his heavy watch out of his fob and looked at it. The time was by a few minutes short of eleven.
“Well, what are you going to do?” the stranger cried impatiently; and Muller’s eyes travelled quickly over the chaise.
“You are English, sir?” He said eagerly.
If he were English, he would have nothing to do with the politics of either Celle or Hanover. He would be the spy neither of one nor of the other.
“It seems that I speak worse German than I thought,” said the traveller, with his pleasant face in a grimace of chagrin.
Muller was not anxious to ride on the step.
“It is not, sir, the quality of your German but the amount of your baggage which tells me that you are English,” he resumed politely. “I am a servant. I know what is necessary for a journey and what is commodious. The English like their commodities.”
The youth was appeased by this tribute to the magnificence of his travelling.
“Yes, I am an Englishman making the Grand Tour, and my time is not my own,” he said with a flourish. He suggested that all the Kings of Europe were standing on their doorsteps with programmes from the first to the last minute of his visit ready in their hands.
“Tie your horse to a tree and hop up.”
Muller tied his horse by the bridle to a tree, but hopping up was quite beyond his powers. He stepped up very gingerly and clung
on. The chaise rattled past the long front of Herrenhausen. There was a great deal of bustle in the courtyard, men in the Duke’s livery running hither and thither, coaches being drawn up in their order of precedence, and at every window flags were fluttering. It was just as well, Muller reflected, that he was to carry out his mission to the end. There was very little likelihood of his letter reaching Monplaisir that day if he left it to the care of any of those busy retainers at Herrenhausen. The traveller, meanwhile, was watching the scene with the condescending amusement of his race.
“The horses seem to be excellent,” he said.
“We’re in Hanover,” Muller replied.
The traveller leaned back, the chaise jolted on, a wide avenue of lime-trees stretched away on the right hand, a big house on the opposite side of the road came into view.
“Here, sir, my journey ends,” said Muller. “I am very grateful to you.”
The young man pulled upon the check string, Muller descended from the step, swept off his hat with a bow, and with his boots dangling over each shoulder, hobbled across the road.
Muller’s journey was ended, but his errand was not discharged. Clara von Platen, eager to be present at the ceremony of the bride’s arrival and reckless of what the bride might think, had departed with her sister half an hour before. When Muller delivered his letter in the afternoon, the harm which Eleonore d’Olbreuse had foreseen had been done, and Clara’s heart was so filled with rage and hatred that not even Sophia Dorothea on her knees before her could have availed to appease it.
The traveller in the chaise put his head out of the window and bawled to his postillion: “The Inn of the Mitre.”
A mile farther on the town began. It was beflagged like the Palace, which had been left behind two miles away, and was thronged with a great concourse of people. Just before reaching the town the chaise swept away to the left and, passing through streets which in this quarter were deserted, stopped before the Mitre. The traveller descended and stretched his legs. By a fortunate chance, he was told, a fine room on the first floor was empty, and the landlady, a stout, good-humoured woman rustling in starch and ribbons, led him up to it. The young man dropped into a chair and sat there whilst two men carried up his trunks.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 708