Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  “Yes,” continued Philip, and he was persuaded by the grotesque appearance of the Chancellor to offer himself to the most obvious and tingling retort. “Yes, His Highness has given me today the command of his Regiment of Guards.”

  Chancellor Bernstorff gaped. Then a recollection of a boy pleading at his feet in an agony of fear came swiftly back to him; and on the top of that another recollection of a spick-and- span young exquisite who only five minutes back had flinched like a coward at the mere sight of him. And the boy on his knees and the young exquisite in the satin coat was now the Colonel of His Highness’s Household troops!

  Chancellor Bernstorff sniggered. The snigger grew into a broad smile. The broad smile expanded into a laugh.

  “Count Philip,” he said with a low bow, “no one can fear now for His Highness’s safety. The great Generals of France will hurl themselves in vain against the frontiers of Hanover.”

  Philip’s cheeks flamed. He tried to remember that he had played his part on the battlefields of Greece and Hungary. But he had flinched tonight from this little pettifogging statesman — just as at four o’clock this morning he had flinched — and with a cry which had been heard — from Bernstorff’s man-at-arms Heinrich Muller. Was he never to get rid of the two obsessions which turned him into a babbling child — his banishment from Celle and his flight from England? He threw back his head in a gesture of despair, and he caught the troubled and inquiring glance of Sophia Dorothea as she took her seat at the Bassette table.

  Chancellor Bernstorff, his crude raillery apart, was a clever man, but he could not understand the look of peace and the tranquil smile which suddenly transfigured Philips’ face. The man whose weak point he had found stood armoured before him.

  Philip strolled over to the Bassette table and stood for a moment or two behind Sophia Dorothea’s chair. She was aware of him, she played a false card and lost fifty pistols by her error. Prince Charles pounced joyously upon her stake.

  “Philip,” he cried, “I was down to my last thaler. You have brought me luck.”

  “And I meant to bring it to the Princess,” said Philip ruefully.

  For a moment her eyes rested upon his. “You have,” they said to him. She threw down her cards and turned to Field-Marshall Podevils, who was standing near to her.

  “I beg you to take my hand, Monsieur le Maréchal. I hold the best of cards and make the worst of them. You, however, can snatch a victory with all the odds against you.”

  The old Marshall had a passion for cards. It had survived the love of women. It competed with the love of war.

  “If you will, gracious Princess,” he said and he put on his spectacles as he took Sophia Dorothea’s seat.

  “I find the room hot,” she said to Philip. “I place myself under the care of His Highness’s troops.”

  The doors of this big room stood open, and from a pair of them set in the middle of the wall a short flight of shallow steps led down to a winter garden. On their way to it a little crowd was gathered about a table where George Louis was playing with Ermengarde von Schulenberg for a partner. Fortune was against them. The milk-white placidity of Mademoiselle was ruffled and George Louis was openly scowling.

  “They are the devil — these cards,” he cried. “We will have a new pack,” and, looking up, he saw his wife looking on from the opposite side of the table. He leaned back in his chair.

  “No, it is not the cards,” he said loudly with a sneer upon his face. “The cards will do very well. They are good German cards. I must look for my ill-fortune elsewhere.”

  He was staring straight at Sophia Dorothea without any recognition of her in his eyes. His face was red and swollen with overeating, his hands were thrust deep in the pockets of his waistcoat. On both sides of Sophia Dorothea the bystanders shrank a little distance away, so that she stood alone in a little empty space. Her face was pale, but he held her small dark head high and a smile was on her lips.

  “And it shall pass from Your Highness, when Your Highness wills,” she said in a quiet, clear voice.

  There was a little movement in the group like a breath of wind across a field of corn. There were few there who were unaware that Sophia Dorothea had pleaded for permission to retire to her parents with her children and that the great income which her dowry brought every year to the Duchy forbade the granting of her request. Then everyone stood motionless — except Sophia Dorothea. Since no answer came from her husband, lounging uncouthly in his chair, she sank before him in a slow curtsey of an exquisite grace and, rising again, moved away. As she moved, the little crowd, now twice its size, broke into voice again. Amazement that etiquette should be so flaunted. Had respect fled from the world! Were Princes of the Blood to be bearded by their wives in public, their words taken up and mocked? Above these shocked voices rose the gross laughter of George Louis.

  “Gentlemen! Ladies! Now that the ballad is ended, we can go on with the play.”

  Sophia Dorothea walked down the steps into the winter garden, with Philip close behind her. It was his cue to keep silent. Had he taken her part, he lost her. Had his fingers touched the hilt of his sword, as they had tingled to do, he would have been dry- drummed out of Hanover in the morning. And she would have lost him. He had held his tongue, but a new recognition of her high spirit and courage had made reticence almost unbearable. But it wasn’t new. He understood that, as he followed her down the steps, watching the proud carriage of her head and the easy lightness of her step. It was remembered; and a sense of shame at his forgetfulness made him now hot, now cold. Shame at his forgetfulness? Philip during these few minutes, so near to this fine revelation of her imprudent soul was trying to be honest with himself. “Shame at my scheming! That’s the truth, isn’t it? Shame at my pursuit of her, just to get rid of a few obsessions, a sense of inferiority, a mortification — just to make the mask I wear my real face!”

  There were others of the company seeking a refuge from the noise and heat of the reception room in the quiet of the winter garden. They rose as Sophia Dorothea came down the steps, but with a gesture and a shake of the head she asked them to be seated. She crossed the room towards the window and, drawing the curtain aside, raised a small white-gloved hand to the side of her face as if to shut out the glare of light behind her, and peered out across the Leine River. Königsmark stepped up to her side. Both seemed to be gazing at something dimly seen in the darkness beneath them.

  When by her strategy she had set him in a natural position at her side and in a sort of privacy, she said in a low voice: “Bernstorff was harassing you?”

  Königsmark drew in a breath of surprise. He had expected some bitter word of her husband’s effort to humiliate her. She was giving her thoughts to his small troubles. She was glancing at him with an anxious care as though they quite outweighed her own. He answered her lightly.

  “The story of an old wound.”

  Sophia Dorothea shook her head.

  “I was watching you, Philip.”

  “When our eyes met, I felt the sting no more.”

  A little smile of pleasure made her lips tender.

  “A pretty compliment?”

  The truth.”

  And it was true. Philip recognised it with joy. He forgot the remorse which had troubled him a minute since as he descended the steps. The queer conviction which he had nursed for so many years that with Sophia won he would be free of his obsessions rushed over his again. What would that night in the Castle Chapel, its indignity, its pain, its fear, mean to him? What power would the shame of his flight from England have to sting him? He had the answer. The mere meeting of her troubled eyes had been enough to arm him against all Bernstorff’s clumsy banter.

  “We should go back,” she said regretfully — and lingered where she was.

  “I leave my heart with you,” said Philip.

  “Ask for it back and I have lost it,” she answered softly.

  They mounted the steps again. The card tables were still full. The great room with i
ts statues of shining gold, its hangings of scarlet velvet and its throng of gorgeously-apparelled guests took them and blended them with the company. Sophia Dorothea held out her hand with a formal dignity.

  “Count Philip, I am much beholden to you for your conversation.”

  “Madame,” said he, no less formally, “would it had been more worthy of your ears.”

  But as he bent his head over her hand, she almost spoilt the fine show of her condescension and his respect. For she began to laugh, with a joyous ripple of music in her voice which no one yet had heard in Hanover.

  The game of pretence was amusing for its own sake. She had her friend back. And she played a game with him which set the whole day to a lively tune. She could be stately and formal and aloof and all with an intense and secret enjoyment, because at some moment just for a second their hands would touch or their eyes meet. Philip as Colonel of the Guards had the freedom of the Castle. He could choose his moment and wait upon the Princess in her apartments with the romantic Knesebeck to stand watchdog in the ante-room. If there was a quadrille in masquerade and he was Orpheus and she the Spirit of Music, there would be a moment when he would abandon Eurydice for her and she would become the handmaid Prose to wait upon him. It was all in full view with Silenus close at hand making fun upon his ass or a Vizier of Turkey leading in his kettledrums. Or there would be the Opera with a whispered meeting in a dark corridor whilst Borosini or Salvadore held the house in this spell. And nights must be arranged when he must lose his money at Monplaisir. They kept their secret well during these weeks and had their enjoyment out of keeping it. It was as yet a cherished possession and not a galling fetter. They played a game and for them both a dangerous game. For it was one of those games which when passion runs high become desperately real and has death as the penalty of the loser.

  Then, in the spring of the year, Ernst Augustus was privately promised by the Emperor his Electoral Hat. Hanover was ranged upon the side of the Emperor in the Great Alliance against France. There was a beating of drums and a drilling of troops from morning to night on the Parade ground across the Leine River. George Louis was to lead his Brigades to the Rhine and a letter came to Philip von Königsmark from Duchess Sophia bidding him to wait upon her at Herrenhausen.

  XXIII. IN THE GARDEN THEATRE

  PHILIP DROVE OUT in his coach to Herrenhausen.

  It was towards evening in the month of May. The lime-tree avenue was in leaf and the birds jubilant in the darkness of the branches. The earth smelled fresh, the light was warm and golden, and there was a blitheness in the air which told that the world had taken off its overcoat. Philip, in his fine coach, however, had no lift of the heart to match the land’s welcome to the summer. He could not imagine any favourable reason for Duchess Sophia’s summons. He had met her, of course, often enough in the discharge of his duties and had found her always courteous but quite indifferent. Why should she send for him now unless some whisper of the secret which he shared with Sophia Dorothea had reached her ears? If it had, he could expect little forbearance from that proud lady. He was no more than twenty-two years old. The thought of her sharp tongue made him quake, the dread that she would demand his resignation from his command cast him into despair. Was he for a third time to be banished in disgrace, and this time with no possible reparation to plan for and dream of as a solace?

  He was prompt to the hour, and was admitted at once to that long book-lined room with the windows looking down the broad path to the distant fountain where it was her pleasure most to sit. The twilight was stealing into the room, and Duchess Sophia sat very upright and still, with her back to what light there was.

  “Your Grace did me the honour to send for me,” and Philip bowed low.

  For a few moments no answer was made to him. There was no change in the marble stillness of the lady in the high-backed chair.

  Philip’s heart sank into his shoes. It remained there when at last she spoke, for her voice was broken, as though rage strangled her.

  “Count Philip von Königsmark?”

  “At your service, Madame,” said Philip’s voice was no steadier than her own.

  “My boy, Charles—” she began, and broke off and began again. “He’s Blondel to your Richard,” and she stopped again.

  Philip drew no encouragement from those words. She was scoffing at him. He cut a fine figure with his beauty and his French clothes at the Court of Hanover, but he felt a very humble small animal in the presence of Duchess Sophia.

  “Then he oversings my praises,” said Philip timidly.

  The old lady, as in those days she was accounted, though she was only fifty-nine, broke out with the petulant frankness which sooner or later all abut her must expect.

  “Come nearer, sir! God bless me, you are not Daniel and I’m not a lion. Let me see Charles’ friend! Nearer, sir! Here, with me, in the window!”

  And Philip’s heart leapt with a bound into its proper place. He stepped forward to the window with a smile. But the smile died out of his face as she turned towards the light. He understood the broken, strangled voice. For her tears were streaming down her face and she made not the slightest effort to hide or check them.

  No doubt Philip was moved by the sudden revulsion of his feelings. But the frank display of grief in a woman so aloof, so beset by her royal lineage, touched him, too. He sank on his knee in front of her.

  “Madame, how can I serve you?”

  Duchess Sophia leaned forward quickly. She was eager to make sure that the warmth of his voice was matched by the sincerity of his face.

  “By serving with Charles.”

  Philip rose to his feet with his anxiety dispelled. Was it for no more than to ask this easily-answered question that she had sent for him so urgently? Why, he would serve with Charles with the greatest happiness in the world. Where could he find a more likely companion for a campaign?

  But she held up her hand.

  “You must hear all before you decide,” and she explained to him with a timidity which in so forthright a character made a doubled appeal to him, that the Emperor Leopold had called for a contingent of the disciplined troops of Hanover to strengthen his forces in the East against the Turkish Allies of King Louis.

  “Charles is to go with them,” she said, “a boy of twenty. He will be far away and for a long while. There will be greater hardships than in Flanders or on the Rhine. More dangers, very like. Of all my dear sons, he is the one I love best — shame on me for saying it! My old heart would be easier if I knew that you were at his side, Count Philip.”

  “We are to go — whither?” he asked.

  Duchess Sophia seized eagerly upon that “we.” But again she hesitated.

  “To the Morea,” she said at last, speaking the name on an anxious question. “You have bitter memories of the Morea,” she went on in a rush. “Your regiment will march to the Rhine with George Louis. There will be greater opportunities of distinction. It will be nearer home. You have the right to lead it. Charles would not ask you to give it up and make so great a sacrifice. But mothers may plead where their sons can’t”

  “And Field-Marshal Podevils...?” he began.

  “Consents unwillingly.”

  Duchess Sophia struck a gong and lamps were brought into the room and the curtains drawn over the windows. She meant to be honest with her son’s friend. He was little older in years than Charles but experienced in war, as Charles was not. He must know all that he would lose — the easier progress, the wider field, the opportunity of leave if the troops went into winter quarters, the avoidance of a more barbarous enemy in a savage country of lamentable recollections. She would not trick him into consent.

  Philip heard her out. He must give up, besides, a much greater thing of which Duchess Sophia had not a suspicion, but he did not waver. He had inhibitions, a certain sensitiveness of mind, a delicacy, all things which were strange to the Königsmark family but he was of their stock. It was not in him to turn his back on fighting when it came in his
way, and the more he remembered that his brother had fallen in the Morea, the more passionately he desired there to avenge his death. His spirit was high as he faced Duchess Sophia and a smile of anticipation was on his face.

  “I shall go with the greatest goodwill,” he said, “and what a man may do for his friend’s sake, I will.”

  It was simply and modestly said. “You have taken a burden from my heart,” Her Highness was graciously pleased to reply and Count Philip bent over her hand and kissed it.

  It was quite dark before he left the audience chamber, and when he was halfway along the corridor, Eleonore von Knesebeck slipped out from the door of a room and stopped him.

  “Are you here, Mademoiselle?” he asked in surprise.

  She put a finger to her lips. Between the usher at Duchess Sophia’s door and the footmen in the lobby, the corridor was empty. But Eleonore was a romantic and must imagine spies in every corner.

  “Stop your coach, Count Philip, a little way beyond the gates on the way to Hanover. There is a door in the park fence,” and with frowns and warning gestures and enough mystery in her movements to rouse the suspicions of the village idiot she glided out of sight. Philip got into his coach at the great door and drove straight on out of the gates. He passed the Palace wing and by the light of the lamps saw the little door in the high paling about the gardens on his right hand. He stopped the carriage and got out. It was of dark blue lacquer, but his arms were painted in gold and red upon the panels.

  “Put out the lamps and wait under those trees,” he said to his coachman in a quiet voice, pointing ahead to where a great clump of beeches stretched out their foliage above the fence. The coachman drove on. Philip drawing his blue cloak close over his shining dress of embroidered satin pushed upon the door. It yielded at once. Within Eleonore von Knesebeck was waiting, out of breath with her run from the Palace. She locked the door, and taking his hand led him between the tall horn-beam hedges. There was no moon in the sky but a vast panoply of crowded stars, and when they passed a cascade of water splashing into a stone basin, they could see long wrinkled beams of light, very slender and delicate, plunging down to reach other stars which danced to the cascade’s music. The air was fragrant with the smell of flowers and mellow as a night in June.