Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  “Were we, Philip?” she asked gently. “I have forgotten its name.” She added after a moment, in a whisper which was a prayer,

  “And so have you.”

  Philip bowed his head.

  “Thank you!” she said in the same low voice, and then with a change of note she hurried him into an account of his life during the long interval.

  “I have heard of you, of course. Oh, I never doubted that I should.”

  “I was driven out of England, as I was driven out of Celle,” he said bitterly with flush of anger on his face.

  “But the years afterwards made up for those defeats,” she went on. “You had the fine ladies of Paris at your feet. You fought in Greece, in Hungary,” and for a moment her eyes clouded. “I only breathed when I heard that you were safe. When your brother died, I was sure that it was you — so sure that I saw your phantom, with blood upon your face and clothes, coming silently along these corridors in the dead of night to tell me.”

  She had begun lightly with an easy raillery on his good fortunes with the frail ladies of Versailles, but when she spoke of his campaigns her voice faltered and when she spoke of his ghost flying from the battlefield at once to her, a sense of deep shame pierced his heart, shame for the high account in which she held him, shame too for the plan he had been so long nursing in his breast. For his ghost to have come speeding from the field where his dead body lay, she must have been living crowned in his heart, breathing in every pulse of his blood. No ghost of his had troubled her in the dark of the night. If it had been more than a thought of hers taking shape and a semblance of life — it had been his brother hastening to warn her of Philip’s treachery.

  “If I had died,” he said slowly, “I would have tried not to trouble you.”

  “I should not have been grateful,” said the Princess with a smile.

  She had heard of him in Venice afterwards. “You and your friend from Saxony!” She recovered her light touch again. “The Duke took me there for a season after my boy was born,” and she looked at him quickly and away again. “So I could picture you. The steps of some Palace on the Grand Canal, the lanterns swinging on the poles, and a gondola as black as night gliding up and you, with a dark cloak hardly hiding the gleam of your dress, stepping out as if the world belonged to you.”

  Philip Königsmark listened uneasily to her laughing chatter about his life in Venice. There was that graceless story of a nun whom he had wooed to her ruin and left behind. But the Princess had not heard of it, and he drew a breath of relief.

  “And whilst you were there, I was here,” she cried suddenly and her arms fell to her sides and a poignant sense of her desolation again touched him to the quick.

  “Sophia!” he said and he took a step towards her. But she held up her hands to ward him off and cried: “I was here with my two children. You must see them, Philip, before you go back to Dresden.”

  “But I am not going back to Dresden,” said Philip quietly.

  Sophia Dorothea stared at him. No suspicion of the place which he was next to fill dawned upon her. She was sympathetic. He had held a high command in Saxony. There had been trouble. He had lost it.

  “You quarrelled with your friend,” she said regretfully.

  “No.”

  “Some new adventure then?”

  “Yes.”

  The Princess was puzzled. She drew her brows together in a frown and tapped upon the window pane and pursed her lips. Finally her face cleared and she cried out joyously like a child who has found the answer to a riddle.

  “I have it.”

  “Let me hear!” said Philip.

  “You have been offered a command at home.”

  Philip nodded his head with a smile.

  “You have guessed it.”

  And a moment afterwards a look of fear came into her face. She was sunlight and blue sky one moment, and cloudy as a day of storms the next.

  “But if Sweden joins with France against us, you’ll be an enemy,” she said in consternation. An enemy! Impossible word! Philip shook his head. The smile had not left his face, but it was now a smile of amusement.

  “Nothing can make me your enemy.”

  They were boastful words uttered then merely to cajole her, but they were to mean what they said in the end and, meaning it, to cost him first his great fortune and afterwards his life.

  Some glimmer of what he intended broke upon her disquiet, like a ray of light from behind a cloud.

  “A command and at home,” she repeated dwelling upon the last two words as though she were pressing their substance out of them. She turned to him with the colour flooding up over her neck and face.

  “Here?”

  She spoke the word as though she hardly dared and waited with parted lips for his answer.

  “The Duke has appointed me Colonel of his Regiment of Guards.”

  That the Duke should make such a choice was nothing to marvel at. Adventurers passed from Court to Court offering their swords or their statesmanship. The doors were easy to force. A good address, a fine appearance and some pretension to noble birth had a ready market. Philip Königsmark was only twenty-two years in age. But he had come out of the Turkish war with a small laurel or two. He already commanded a regiment in Saxony. Moreover he was known for his wealth and his good looks as much as for his soldiering. He had descended upon Hanover with a great pomp of carriages and servants, horses and fine clothes. He was the very man whom a little Court would like to net with the lure of a high office and a paltry salary to go with it. The extraordinary circumstance to Anthony Craston in the affair had been that Philip Königsmark should have accepted his appointment. It was only not extraordinary to the Princess because he had made his reason plain to her. It was on her account, to be near her, that he had sought the small opportunity and the narrow life. She held out her hand to him in gratitude and, as he bent over it, she cried with a joyous laugh.

  “I shall have two friends now in Hanover. I am rich.”

  Duke Ernst Augustus was kind and would not listen to slanders upon her even from Clara von Platen. But she saw him hardly at all. Duchess Sophia was tolerant to her, but held her at arm’s length. Prince Charles was a friend and now she had another — one even dearer, one who made sacrifices so that he might be close to her.

  Philip broke in upon her thoughts.

  “You will hear from others no later than today something which I should hate you to misunderstand,” he said gravely.

  Sophia Dorothea laughed.

  “No doubt I shall have a budget of lies to listen to.”

  “But this will be the truth.”

  A shadow spoilt for a moment this hour of sunlight. Philip was looking at her with eyes so serious, a face so anxious. She did not want to listen. There would be days enough for solemnities. But his eyes insisted.

  “I will hear it then,” she said with the pretty petulance of a child.

  “Last night I went to the public ball.”

  “Well. It’s the custom on the second night of the Carnival in Hanover.”

  “I danced with Mademoiselle von Schulenberg.”

  She drew back. Her hand went to her breast.

  “You, my friend?” she asked reproachfully.

  “Towards the end of the dancing,” he continued steadily, “I went with a party of other people to Monplaisir.”

  And now it seemed that he had struck her with a whip across the face. So this friend, lost long since and an hour ago recovered, was lost to her again. And he himself must tell her so. She turned abruptly from him, for her mortification had sent the tears stinging into her eyes.

  “Your first night in Hanover!” she said in a low voice “Oh, sir, it was well employed!”

  Philip did not flinch from the bitterness of her voice.

  “I meant it so to be,” he said quietly, and then in a moment he was upon his knees before her. “I wanted everyone to think that I was her courtier. I wanted everyone to see me pay my homage to Mademoiselle von Schu
lenberg. I wanted no one to guess that I came to Hanover for the sake of you. I had heard in Dresden of those two women, of their sharp tongues and their bitter hatred because you outshone them when you cared to and turned your back on them when you were tired. Let them think that the newcomer had fallen at once at their feet, as I am heart and soul at yours! The more freedom for you and me! If I had met them with indifference and then sought you, I set their tongues wagging on the instant. Your friend? My dear, I could do you no worse service. If I turned my back at once upon Monplaisir, and at night our eyes met, or we talked together such words as we once talked, and shared such dreams as we once cherished, however carelessly our lips moved, should we escape their slanders? Every curious eye would follow us, every bitter tongue would spit its poison. Clara von Platen, Ermengarde von Schulenberg,” and whilst his eyes were set anxiously on the face of the Princess, he muttered the names with so keen a ridicule that they had the very stamp of truth. “Their vanity is our shield! Let them prattle! You know, my Princess, on whom my heart waits,” and then, with a cunning evocation of old days when they rehearsed a play they were never to act together, he poured out two lines of Racine as though his memory had always kept them fresh.

  “A vous persécuteurs opposons cet asile

  Qu’ils viennent vous chercher sous les tentes d’Achile.”

  There is no victory without attack. Philip the soldier knew it and Philip the lover shared his knowledge. The distress which had shadowed Sophia Dorothea’s face lightened and softened into a smile of tenderness. The mere rhythm of the lines made pinions of them to lift her back into the loveliness of untroubled days which never dawned soon enough and closed before their glow had changed to grey. Sophia Dorothea was not slow of wit. She would have found something too flamboyant for sincerity in Philip’s ardour; she would have recognised that the years had not after all left him unscathed, that the hard rebuffs and the easy victories which followed upon them had stripped him of his eager generosity; but she was too glad of his return, she was too conscious of the alleviation of the slights under which she writhed, too grateful for the balm which his presence brought, to watch him carefully or to analyse his words.

  But all his fine talk of the shield behind which they could live a private life of their own was the beginning of a conspiracy of two with its own secret language of glances and the touch of hands which must grow in peril with every move. Already the conspiracy was on foot. For as they heard the voice of Prince Charles in the ante-room, they drew apart, they became indifferent the one to the other.

  “We thought that you were never coming back,” Sophia Dorothea said as he entered the room.

  Charles looked at Philip with a whimsical disappointment.

  “And I who looked to do you both a service!” he cried. “There’s a young man making talk with Knesebeck in the next room who shall show you a proper gallantry. Come Philip.”

  In the ante-room Anthony Craston was with difficulty sustaining a conversation with Eleonore von Knesebeck. He sprang to his feet as Prince Charles entered it with Philip close behind him.

  “I am afraid that the Princess has kept you waiting longer than she would have wished to do,” said Charles politely. “I too am afraid,” Philip continued, “that some of Mr Craston’s news has already been told,” and with the backward jerk of the head and the challenging grin which Anthony had now learnt so well to know, he followed his friend into the corridor.

  XII. AND HOW IT WORKED

  THE CONSPIRACY WAS put into practice that night. During the Carnival Duke Ernst Augustus kept open house. There were ten great tables set out for supper in the dining hall of the Leine Palace — Marquises and Marquesas from Italy, Counts and Countesses from Germany, Ministers of State, travellers making the Grand Tour — all were sorted out according to their rank and placed in their appropriate seats; and here and there some were especially favoured by an invitation to the Duke’s own table. Tonight Philip von Königsmark was bidden to take his place there. A few chairs away, Field-Marshal von Podevils gave him a warm welcome from the Hanoverian army. The Duke, now a corpulent and ageing man, had upon one side of him the fair-haired and lovely Duchess of Eisenach, on the other the shining beauty of the Princess of East Frisia. Sophia Dorothea was almost opposite to Philip. She had dressed herself with a care for her own distinction rather than the mode of the Court. Though her jewels were as splendid as her neighbours’, they were of a lighter setting. They were a ripple of fire instead of a blaze and the soft folds of her gown gave to her a quality of daintiness which the stiff magnificence of the brocades about her could never achieve. There was a tender colour in her cheeks, her lips smiled and the little rivulet of diamonds twisted cunningly in and out of her ebony curls could not outsparkle the glances of her eyes.

  Ernst Augustus liked to have pretty women about him. He thanked her with a kindly nod.

  “When I was young we went to Venice for beauty. Now, my dear, we need not travel beyond Hanover.”

  Sophia Dorothea bowed with a smile of pleasure which quite transfigured her. But her eyes travelled round the table until they rested for the fraction of a second upon Königsmark’s.

  “Did you hear that?” they asked. “It was for you I spent two hours before my mirror.”

  The smile of pleasure too had been for him.

  Madame von Platen and her husband were at the third table, and since Duchess Sophia preferred the quiet of Herrenhausen to the gaieties of Hanover, the Duke sent for Clara as soon as the company had risen from the meal. They played at the same table of Bassette in the big drawing-room next door, with Marshal Podevils and the Princess of East Frisia. Sophia Dorothea was carried away by Prince Charles just after Königsmark had paid his compliment to her upon the nice adjustment of her beauty and her dress.

  “You run away Philip and find someone as rich as yourself to win money from,” he said. “You can’t play with beggars like me who have to go off to Herrenhausen and take a dose of English history if they lose a hundred pistoles. If you don’t want to play, there’s someone behind you, you can talk to.”

  Philip turned around with a laugh, but the laugh died on his lips — and in a fury with himself he realised that he had flinched. For the man in front of him was Bernstorff and Bernstorff was smiling. Bernstorff with his sharp little eyes had noticed that irrepressible movement of fear. He looked Philip over from head to foot. His jewelled green bird had been transformed into this most modish of young sparks, the page’s livery had been exchanged for the adornments of a gallant, the silver buckles had become diamonds. But diamond buckles were just as afraid of Chancellor Bernstorff today as silver buckles had been six years ago.

  “Count Philip von Königsmark!” he cried, his heart or whatever took its place quite warm towards the younger man. He had been sitting at the same table as the Platens and all through the meal had been consumed with a bitter jealousy of the greater people seated above him. He had not noticed Philip in the glittering company at the Duke’s table because Philip’s back was turned to him and he would certainly not have looked for him there. He saw with relief an opportunity to salve the pain of his jealousy with the pleasure of baiting a youth who had not outgrown a fear of him.

  “It is some years since I had the honour of your company, Count Philip — let me see now!” and he screwed his brows together and pursed up his lips in a semblance of deep thought.

  “Chancellors cannot be expected to remember pages, Monsieur Bernstorff,” Philip replied.

  The semblance of deep thought became in an instant a glare of real annoyance.

  “Baron,” he corrected sharply. “Baron von Bernstorff.”

  Philip bowed.

  “You must pardon a wanderer. I had not heard,” he said politely, and was for turning away. But the Baron was in no mind to forego his minute or two of amusement.

  “It comes back to me,” he said quickly. “It was in a darker place than this — yes — and you, I think, had not the gay and sprightly look you wear
today.”

  “On the other hand,” Philip replied, “Your Excellency’s raillery is just the same blunt weapon that it was.”

  “Alas!” Bernstorff agreed, though his face darkened. “Raillery, Count Philip, should be as biting as a cord.” He dwelt upon his comparison with a smirk. “I have not the knack of it, and between the two must choose the cord.”

  Again Philip tried to break away from this tormentor, but the tormentor had seen the blood rush into his victim’s face. He took Philip by the arm and was amused to feel it shiver.

  “May we hope to see you again in Celle” he asked. “I remember that His Highness was disinclined to offer you a second welcome. But there is no longer a reason of any kind to hinder you. And there is much in Celle to interest even one who has been there before. Our chapel, for instance, though, to be sure, you have spent some quiet hours there...”

  But Philip had had enough of the clumsy banter.

  “This is very heavy work, Your Excellency,” he said, “I cannot put you to the strain of it. It is unlikely that I shall be able to revisit Celle. My duties will keep me here.”

  “Duties?” cried the Baron, stopping in his walk.

  “Duties,” Philip answered. “Your Excellency did not remark, I think, that I had the honour tonight of dining at His Highness’s table.”

  The Baron was bewildered. He was also annoyed.

  “I did not,” he answered shortly.

  “And, indeed, from the position which you occupied it was hardly likely that you should,” Philip continued suavely.

  And there he should have stopped. He had Bernstorff blinking at him. The little page whom he had turned out of Celle in disgrace, dining cheek-by-jowl with the greatest ladies of Europe at the table of the August Personage who was the fountain source of his own prosperity? Incredible! Confounding! What was the world coming to? Bernstorff stood, oblivious to the little reminder of his position in the hierarchy of the banquet, with his mouth open and his throat uttering the queerest spluttering sounds.