“Your honour is tired?” said the landlady.
“I reached Minden too late last night, and left it too early this morning,” said the youth, with a yawn. “By the way, I passed a large house on the right-hand side of the road.”
“That was Herrenhausen, one of the Duke’s palaces,” said the landlady with pride.
“Ah! I have heard of it,” said the young man in a voice which conveyed that Herrenhausen might justifiably be proud that he had heard of it. The landlady, for all her good humour, was a trifle nettled by his indifference.
“The gardens of Herrenhausen have a fountain which throws a jet of water fifty yards high,” she declared. “There is nothing like it in Europe.”
“I must certainly see that fountain,” the stranger answered politely.
The landlady was appeased.
“It is said,” she added smiling, “that Versailles itself is jealous of it.”
“But, being wise, it doesn’t mention it,” said the youth. He continued carelessly: “Hanover appears to be on holiday.”
The landlady nodded her head vigorously, her face one broad and glistening beam of pleasure.
“Indeed, sir, it may well be.”
“How so? Remember I reached Minden late and left it early.”
“His Highness the Prince George Louis brings home this morning to the Alte Palace his bride, the Princess Sophia Dorothea of Celle.”
“What’s that?”
The young man, who had been tilting his chair back with his hands behind his head, brought the front legs of the chair to the ground with a bang.
The landlady repeated her information, rolling the lordly names over and over on her tongue.
“The Princess Sophia Dorothea of Celle,” the youth said, and he sat for a moment or two silent. “Now, that is very interesting to me. Where is the Alte Palace?”
The landlady went to the window.
“You see the big church with the high red tower? Turn to the right when you pass it, and a little further on to the right again. But I doubt if you’ll get near enough to see anything but the heads of the people.”
The young traveller, however, was not to be dissuaded. So phlegmatic before, he was all in a fever now to force his way to the Alte Palace and watch the home-coming of the bride and her groom. He brushed his clothes and his hat and hurried down the stairs. To the porter at the door, he said: “My name is Anthony Craston. Someone from the English Ambassador may ask for me. If anyone does, will you reply that I shall wait upon him this afternoon” And Mr Anthony Craston plunged into the street.
It was by chance that he had come to Hanover on this of all days, although afterwards it seemed to him that he had been brought there by a fatality. After the trial of Karl John Königsmark, he had taken a disgust of all the fine plans over which he and Philip had dreamed together. He had urged upon his Governors that a tour through Europe would be a more helpful prelude to his career than a few years at Oxford; and in the spring of that year he said good-bye to Monsieur Faubert and set out for Paris. In that age every Court was open to a man of polite address and reasonable credentials. He was all the more welcome if he was young; and Anthony, in the swift changes of his environment, soon lost the bitter taste of disillusionment which his broken friendship with Königsmark had left with him. The luxury of the entertainments at Versailles and Marly dazzled the unaccustomed eyes of the youthful squire from Essex. He shook hands with great statesmen like Colbert and great soldiers like Vauban. He saw the miracle of Venice on a blue night of summer and floated in a black gondola between high palaces with no sound to break the silence except the patter of drops from the blade of the oar or the murmur of some girl’s caresses in his ear. He passed on to Vienna, and from Vienna to Dresden, where he was captivated by absurd and charming Masques and no one was serious. Great parties of ladies and cavaliers would ride out in gaily- caparisoned companies to be greeted by no less than the nine Muses. These, chosen for their youth and loveliness, issued to the soft music of violins from grottoes in the hillside and, crested with ostrich feathers and spangled with diamonds, they invited their visitors to an alfresco banquet. At every corner some fresh opportunity of pleasure offered its allurement to the amazed visitor, some glittering diversion ravished him with its beauty. It was a domain where Phantasy was king and Prodigality his minister. No one was allowed to be just himself. At one time Craston dined as a Mameluke and was waited upon by veiled odalisques in turned-up slippers. At another he must dance with the best nimbleness he could muster as a shepherd piping upon Ida; until he began to wonder what it would feel like to walk in his own clothes in a sober world. As winter drew on he travelled northwards to Brandenburg, and so came at last of Hanover, thinking to round off his tour with the spectacle of its famous Carnival. He was surprised by the sudden marriage of the young Princess of Celle, whose beauty and slender grace had lived so vividly in the memories of Philip.
It was curiosity which had drawn him out of his inn the moment after he had arrived at it. So he assured himself, and certainly there was no more substantial reason that he could discern. But he thought it odd afterwards that he should be at the pains to argue the point even when he was making his way across the open space by the church.
“I have been for so many months passing from one distraction to another, like a man through a succession of rooms in a Palace, that I must find a few one every day, and a different one. That’s why I am hurrying along to see the Princess Sophia Dorothea arrive at the Alte Palace with her bridegroom. It’s absurd. I don’t know her. The chances are a thousand to one that I never shall. I am sure that I have seen girls more exquisite and lovely in Paris and Dresden and Venice. I would be much happier if I were hunting today in England. Yet here I am in a twitter lest I should not get near enough or early enough to see her step down from her carriage and disappear through a doorway. Curiosity is a very censurable fault. It leads to gossiping and malice and a sorry waste of time and — that’s the Alte Palace, for a thousand pounds, with the two painted women hanging out from the first floor window,” and he proceeded to twist and jostle his way through the crowd, as if fatality or destiny had nothing whatever to do with his impatience.
The crowd was in its best humour, as well as in its best clothes. Craston was obviously English. He had but to say “Bitte,” and all within hearing were aware of it; and he naturally expected that everyone would make way for him. Everyone did. Where the crowd was thickest, by signs which were assuredly as intelligible as his words, he intimated that he had an urgent message. Finally, hot, his cravat awry, and his coat almost torn from his back, he reached a barrier of halberdiers, and there must stop. But he was now in the best position to satisfy his curiosity. On his left across the street was a long and stately building with a garden of big trees at one end and a huge railed- in courtyard at the other. This, he learned afterwards, was the Leineschloss, where Duke Ernst Augustus and his wife lived in Hanover. Between the shoulders of the halberdiers in front of him, he could look straight down the road towards the lime-tree avenue and Herrenhausen. This road had been cleared of people and kept clear by lines of the Duke’s Foot Guards. On Craston’s right, and quite close to him, was the Alte Palace, no more than a large house of three storeys with high, flat windows, closed in at each end by other houses. There was no portico to the door, and a broad strip of crimson cloth stretched from the doorway across the pavement the kerb.
“Whatever there is to see, I shall see,” said Anthony to himself, “and the women at the window will warn me when to expect it.”
There was, none the less, something odd in the occupation of the window by those two ladies. They were ceremoniously dressed, both past the freshness of their youth, and both rouged and enamelled beyond the ordinary. Ladies-in-waiting on the young Princess? Anthony doubted it. On the other hand, they caused no surprise amongst the bystanders. Familiar faces evidently then...! Anthony had been astonished by so many marvellous exhibitions during the last few months that he
was well equipped to accept a new one without questioning.
“The Princess is probably to be welcomed into her new home by some little masque, and those two ladies are water-nymphs or Muses or Spirits of the Heath. When her carriage approaches, they will draw in their heads and take their places on their proper perches.”
But they did nothing of the kind. A great cry went up “They are coming! They are coming!” Children were lifted on to shoulders. In a moment every ledge of stone was occupied by some adventurous climber. Handkerchiefs streamed out in the air, hats were waved, eager inquiries were shouted from the ground to those who were raised aloft. “Do you see them, Paul?” “Jakob, why don’t you tell us?” and the two ladies leaned forward from the window until they seemed likely to fall out.
Far away between the shoulders of the halberdiers, Anthony Craston saw the procession approach, grow from the size of midgets to the size of ponies, and from the size of ponies to men mounted upon horses. First came a troop of the Duke’s Horse, which wheeled into a line with its back to the Leineschloss, then a dozen pages on foot in coats of cloth of gold, and then, drawn by six cream-coloured horses, with the ducal coat-of-arms glistening on the panels, the carriage of the bride and bridegroom.
The carriage stopped at the door and a footman sprang from the boot and let down the step. A stream of flunkeys in the blue livery of Hanover issued from the doorway and stood bareheaded upon either side. Prince George Louis descended, and all the magnificence of his dress could not hide the clumsiness of his figure. He turned to the carriage door and bowed, and forth from it danced — or so it seemed to Anthony — with a step as light as Ariel’s, the most exquisite and delicate being which it had ever been his good fortune to see. She was hardly of the middle height, but the slenderness of her figure gave her the look of it. A wealth of blue-black hair crowned her small head and the excitement of the moment had lent a colour to her cheeks and a sparkle to her dark eyes which set the crowd cheering with the pleasure of the sight of her. Her forehead, her nose and her mouth were pure as though cut by a Cellini out of alabaster, and as she turned towards the crowd of this new people amongst which she had come to live, she stretched out her slim hands with a wistful smile of appeal, as though she prayed them to bear her in their hearts and be compassionate when she failed.
Anthony Craston raised his hat with the rest, but he did not cheer with them. There was a lump in his throat which hindered him and for no reason which he could have given, the tears rose into his eyes and ran down his cheeks. This was no nymph, no shepherdess, no Muse from a grotto, but a girl in a shimmering white dress for whom it would be a glory to die, yet who besought you to condone her youth and bear with her for her trespasses.
Thus for a moment she stood, then she gave her hand to her husband and took a step forward to the doorway, looking upwards at the Old Palace as she did. Suddenly she stopped. The colour faded out of her cheeks, she stepped back with her eyes still upon that open window on the first floor in which the two women were framed.
Just as suddenly the clamour dropped. Something was amiss, and, by the telegraphic sympathy of people massed together, the knowledge ran backwards and forwards without a word spoken. In the hush Craston heard distinctly George Louis whisper a harsh order.
“Come you in! You’re making a scandal.”
But Sophia Dorothea did not move. The blood pulsed again in her face and her eyes were mutinous. At the window on the first floor, the two women held their ground. They could do no less unless they accepted defeat, and they were deliberately on view to assert their authority. But they were afraid. They had underrated the high spirit of their victim. What natural colour they had faded from their faces and left them white masks dabbed with vermilion like the faces of dolls in a shop window. There was a little stir in the crowd. It bent forward as though some fierce wind had blown out of the back of the sky and bowed every head. But still no word was spoken, no cry was raised. Something so strange and unexpected had happened, that something still more strange must follow to resolve it. Anthony Craston held his breath even though he did not share the knowledge of his neighbours. And in that silence of wonder and suspense the voice of Sophia Dorothea struck clear and sweet as a silver bell.
“My Lord we are too soon. I pray you to drive on with me for a mile and we will return when our house is ready.”
A murmur low and full rose from the throng, a murmur not of anger against the women — they were so accepted an element in the life of Hanover — but of awe at this wisp of a girl’s audacity. But it died away as George Louis answered wrathfully: “We can drive no further. The house has been waiting ready for a week.”
He stretched out his hand to seize his wife’s and, with a gesture so rough that no one could doubt he meant to drag her within the doorway. But she had withdrawn her hand to her side and she held it clenched there.
“My Lord,” she said and her eyes met his stare and again her voice was clear even though it shook, “a house is a woman’s camp. There are signs which she can’t misread. She knows that when the housemaids watch the show in the street that the cleaning is not done. I pray you to drive with me,” and turning about with a quick movement which was so neat that it looked leisurely and deliberate, she stepped up again into the coach.
For a moment the crowd stood dumb. No single person probably in all that throng, except Anthony Craston, was unaware that the two women at the window were the mistress of the Duke and the mistress of his heir; or mistook Clara von Platen’s power to avenge an insult. It was stunned by consternation. Then one more courageous than the rest threw his hat in the air.
“Well done, Dorothea,” he cried leaving out that other name by which the Duchess was known, and the cry released all throats. It was as if a signal had been given. A roar of applause beat about the buildings like a hurricane. The girl’s courage plucked from the hearts of young and old alike a welcome loud and ringing as artillery. For a couple of minutes it was tossed from the Alte Palace to the Leineschloss and back again; and then, moved by that swift flame which makes men act together as though one thought inspired them, all faces were turned upwards to the window. There would have been danger then, danger for the Alte Palace, danger for Monplaisir, but the window was empty. The painted women had fled and were even now, with fear and hatred in their breasts, coving their rich dresses in the cloaks of servants. The threatening cries changed into yells of derision.
George Louis turned to the coachman on the box with a face as black as thunder.
“Drive on then, in God’s name! Force your way! Use your whip, fool! The Princess wants to take the air!”
Since their new favourite wanted it, she should have it though bones broke and blood spattered under the weight of her carriage wheels. He sprang into the coach and damning all women heartily to Hell, he slammed the door. The coachman swung his whip, the halberdiers turned and forced back the crowd, by some miracle a way was opened, and the coach lurched forward. But a corner of it struck Anthony on the shoulder and sent him spinning. Someone caught him as he uttered a cry. He saw Sophia Dorothea lean forward from her sea, for a moment her eyes big with distress rested upon his, he answered with a smile and the coach rolled on.
When Craston returned to his inn, he found a letter from the English Envoy to Hanover and Celle, bidding him that night to supper. The company was all agog with the events of the afternoon, and when Anthony described how he had pushed his way into the very front rank and only escaped by the skin of his teeth from being crushed under the wheels of the bridal coach, he became something of a hero.
“So it was you!” exclaimed Sir Henry Cresset, the Envoy. “I had a message this afternoon from the Alte Palace upon the return of the Princess. She had a fear that a young Englishman had been hurt.”
“Ah,” said Anthony preening himself not a little, “she saw that I was of my race.”
“Rather she heard that you were of your race,” Sir Henry returned smiling grimly. “For in falling you used the oat
h which foreigners are accustomed to think we go to bed with on our lips and utter at daybreak as our morning prayer. You said ‘Goddam!’”
“I did?” exclaimed Anthony in dismay amidst the laughter of the table. What he had meant to say was, “Your Highness may roll me over a thousand times if it will take the distress from your eyes and bring a smile to your lips.”
“You did,” said Sir Henry, “and you will have an opportunity to make your apologies for your bad language. For I am asked, if I come upon you, to bring you into her presence so that she may be quite sure that you have not broken your neck.”
“Oh!” said Anthony and for the rest of that evening he sat in a mist of gold, devising the most wonderful tender interview which had ever taken place between a rising young diplomat with a broken head and a Princess who had her whiteness from the lily and her eyes from the dusky velvet of a rose.
XVII. CRASTON MEETS A REDOUBTABLE LADY
THE INTERVIEW IN fact took place in the presence of Sir Henry Cresset and lasted for less than ten minutes. The Princess was anxious to be assured that no harm had come to a young gentleman on his first visit to Hanover. Anthony expressed in respectful terms his obligation that she should ever have given a thought to him. There was no trace of that anxiety or fear which he had seen flash into her face at the carriage window, to be found in her demeanour now. She was friendly, easy, and a little aloof. He was more conscious than he wished to be of the distance in rank between them.
“Mr Craston must visit Celle before he leaves us,” she said to the Envoy, speaking in French. “I will have letters prepared for him.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 709