They passed between high gates of wrought iron and descended some steps into a green amphitheatre with white statues glimmering on either side. In front of them was a raised terrace of grass over which the boughs of great trees met, making the place a theatre, though with a depth of stage no indoor theatre ever had. For the terrace within the avenue ran far back into the darkness, and from the end of it the splash of falling water came faintly to their ears as though it was the echo of the cascade which they had left behind.
On both sides of this dark stage big white statues made the pillars of the proscenium and by the side of the one upon the left something white fluttered as though the statue had shaken at their approach. Eleonore fell back. Philip ran across the centre of the amphitheatre.
“Philip!”
It was no more than a whisper and then she was within his arms, her face hidden against his breast, her arms about his neck, and her breath coming in great sobs. The game had become real. There was no longer amusement or laughter in it. The secret had become a fetter.
“Philip, you won’t go.”
“Dearest, I must.”
Her hands linked themselves more tightly behind his neck as though they would keep him there, and hold him so through the night till the morning dawned.
“I lose both my friends then and all my heart.”
He took her hands away from his shoulders and drew him into the shadow of the trees.
“Oh, you must go! I know it. But when? Not yet! Oh, not yet!”
“Sophy!”
“It will be soon then?”
“Very soon.”
She held him away from her. By the light of the stars he could see her face upturned and very pale, and her dark eyes glistening with her tears.
“Philip, listen! We have only a moment. You will write to me?”
“Whenever a post goes.”
“You must send your letters to Eleonore.”
“I will.”
“You must call me by a false name. Oh, my love! My love,” and she wrung her hands together in anguish, “If we were back in Celle!”
Philip smiled bitterly.
“No, I should be hiding in the chapel!” and her hands dropped to her sides. Yes, in Celle as here, there had been secrecies, precautions, fears. Sophia Dorothea shivered and he drew her close to him and took her within his cloak. In the tree above them a blackbird suddenly poured out upon the night its clear sweet melody. Sophia Dorothea lifted her head with a start. For a moment they stood with his arms about her, listening in a rapture to the liquid notes. Then he bent and kissed her lips.
“Sweetheart, before I go,” he began in a low voice, but she interrupted him eagerly.
“Yes, before you go, I must come once to your house,” she whispered. “I have thought of it for so long. If it is only for a minute. I must see the room in which you sit. I must touch and hold the little things you use,” and she uttered a small tremulous laugh. “I shall steal one Philip when you’re not looking, so that I may have something of you whilst you are away!”
The thought of his absence caught at her heart again, and behind the thought was the dreadful knowledge that where he was going his brother had fallen; and the dreadful fear that where his brother had fallen, he might fall too.
“Oh come back, come back,” she implored. “You are going, my dear, when most I need you. You must come back—”
A low whistle reached them from the darkness towards the house and her words were cut off sharply as though the shears had closed about her throat.
“I am asked for,” she cried on a note of fear. “I must go! Philip! Oh Philip!”
For a second she clung to him passionately and then her white figure flitted across the grass as noiselessly as a phantom and she was gone. Fear was at her heels. From that night in the garden of Herrenhausen fear was to keep her company.
Philip Königsmark remained for awhile hidden in the shadow of the trees. For this night he had planned and schemed. Victory was to free him from the bondage of his obsessions and victory was at his door. But the obsessions were now dragged out into the light and shown trivial and beneath contempt. Because he dreamed of himself flying on and on before a mob which never slackened its pursuit nor lessened the fury of its cries — down narrow alleys, along broad streets, and always, always towards the lighted windows of a house before which an impassable throng stood absolutely silent, absolutely still; because he must start back with a cry at the sight of Heinrich Muller or flinch at a sudden word from the Chancellor of Celle; to spare himself these paltry terrors he must put this one who so loved him to a torment of pain and fear.
Philip walked back to the little gate. His coach was waiting under the trees. He bade the coachman light the lamps again and drive on. In a few minutes the lighted windows of Monplaisir blazed out upon the night. He had proposed to himself to halt there on his return. Now more than ever prudence counselled it. To keep Clara von Platen from guessing his secret — her secret — was there anything now more necessary than that?
“But I can’t do it,” he said to himself. “The look on my face would warn her of a change. Besides it would be a sacrilege,” and he bade his coachman drive straight on to Hanover.
Sophia Dorothea might well take flight across the lawns and between the horn-beam hedges in fear. The chief protection of their secret was thrown down by Philip Königsmark that night.
XXIV. A DANGEROUS HOUR
THE CAMP WAS pitched five miles away from Hanover; and on the night before the march to the South began, everything being ready to the buckles on the last knapsack, Philip mounted his charger and rode in to Hanover. He left his charger at his stables, and after ordering his head groom to have the animal saddled by five o’clock in the morning, he walked to his house which had its wide front upon a narrow street and a great garden behind it stretching down to the Leine River. He rapped upon the door and was admitted by an old servant who had served his father before him. It was then ten o’clock of the night.
Philip stood for a moment in the hall.
“All the baggage has gone forward, Johann?” he asked.
“The last of it, my Lord, was sent to the camp this afternoon.”
“And the servants?”
“They have gone back to their homes.”
“Then except for you and me the house is empty?”
“Yes.”
Philip stood for a moment listening. Now and then a tread of the stairs cracked. Now and then a distant foot knocked upon the cobles of a street. Unconsciously he subdued his voice.
“You can put out the lamp here, Johann.”
A great lantern hung on a chain from the roof of the hall. Johann lowered it and blew the candles out.
“That will do, old friend. I must be up betimes tomorrow. Will you knock upon my door at four in the morning and knock until I answer you?”
“I will. Is that all?”
“All,” said Philip. A door was open upon the first floor and a yellow light streamed from it and flung a bright panel on the floor and wall of the corridor. “I shall be writing letters until late Johann and I don’t wish to be disturbed.”
“Very well, my Lord.”
The old man walked slowly up the stairs. When he reached the landing he turned.
“I beg your Lordship to remember that you are the last of the Königsmarks. If your Lordship were to fall, a famous race is gone, beloved of many but by none more than its servants. I shall pray to God night and morning to keep you safe.”
“I thank you, Johann,” said Philip very gently. “Good night!”
He waited in the darkness of the hall until Johann’s footsteps died away. Then he unlocked the door into the street and setting it an inch or two ajar went up to the lighted room. It was the room he generally used and it was furnished in a light French style with couches upholstered in pale silk, glass candelabra ornamented with gold in which wax candles burned, and tables of satin wood. Curtains of lavender satin draped the windows and a bi
g writing table with an armchair faced the fireplace. A silver lamp burned on the writing table and on a side table a bottle of Rhine wine stood with a set of drinking glasses; a case of Dresden china stood against a wall enamelled in white and here and there a gilt-framed mirror hung. On the mantelshelf a clock, the work of Gille Martinot, shone like a jewel and chimed the hours, and the white carpet was soft underfoot as moss. Philip set light to a small wood fire upon the hearth, and then carefully put out all the candles against the wall, leaving only the lamp upon the table burning in the room. He passed into his dressing-room beyond and changed from his uniform into an easier dress. When he came back into the room, he noticed a small package which lay upon the great table. He seized it eagerly and tore it open. Within was a shagreen case and unfastening the clasp, he saw a miniature of himself most delicately painted on ivory. He laid it down with a smile of relief. Then he sat down at his desk and drawing a paper from his pocket began to copy it. It was a paper with a column of names and figures on the one side and a column of names only corresponding to the first column over against it.
Thus, on the left hand, he wrote “Leonisse,” and against it “The Princess Sophia Dorothea.” Then again on the left hand “Tercis” and on the right hand “Philip Königsmark.” A number followed “100” and opposite to that he put “Duke Ernst Augustus.” It was a cipher which he was copying and although he had invented it himself, he was not trusting in so important a matter to his memory. He copied it slowly, his eyes glancing from sheet to sheet; and since the list was long and he wrote in a large schoolboyish hand with a good deal of puffing and heavy breathing over his task, he took a long time to complete it. At times the names were apt enough. For instance Duchess Sophia became “La Romaine,” and Duke Ernst Augustus, since he was perpetually hoodwinked by Clara von Platen, “L’Innocent.” Clara herself only deserved and got a number like a convict. She became “202.” Eleonore von Knesebeck was admirably connoted by the title of “La Sentinelle,” with “La Confidente” for a variation; and his own sister the famous Aurora figured appropriately as “L’Aventurière.” Some of the names however were merely picked out by chance from the last romance of the day; and by an unhappy accident which was afterwards to do the Princess an infinity of harm, he had applied to her father Duke George William the displeasing pseudonym of “Le Grondeur.”
However the copy was finished before the clock struck eleven. Philip counted the clashing stroke of the church clock in a fear that midnight had caught him before he was ready. He sat listening intently for a sound in the street or the slight jar as a door was closed. But the town was asleep now and nothing broke the stillness of the room but the fall of a burning log upon the hearth and the ticking of the clock.
He folded the copy of the cipher into four and fitted in with the miniature of him into the shagreen case. That done, he set it by his side and wrote to his sister Aurora then staying upon an estate of his at Hamburg. This letter was midsummer madness, even for lovers in much less peril than these. The letters which were to pass between them were to be sent to Aurora — oh after they had been laughed over and wetted with tears and kisses and re-read a hundred times. They were to reach Aurora in the end and she was to keep them as the most sacred trust.
“I adjure you, my dear sister, that not one of them be lost. Each page will be a drop of heart’s blood which in after years we shall gather up again. Reading them we shall revisit old scenes and refresh our lives with yesterdays.”
At this point he made a short flight into dithyrambics and brought the letter to an end. He had hardly sealed it when without a sound the door was opened as by some breath of wind. Philip sprang up and ran to it. Leaning against the wall of the corridor with her hand pressed against her heart was Sophia Dorothea.
“You are alone?” she whispered.
For answer Philip drew her into the room and gently lifted her hood back from her face. He shut the door.
“It is you,” he said and he gently turned her face up to his, holding her chin in the cup of his hand. “I hardly dared to hope for it.”
He smiled.
“Oh I could bathe your feet with tears of gratitude. I ought to pray that you should forget me. I am too much your friend not to know that I should. But I can’t!” he cried passionately. “If I won the Ottoman Empire I would forego it all for this moment. Did every a woman give a more courageous favour to her lover...?”
“Or a more foolish one?” she answered with a little laugh of tenderness which belied her words.
With his arm about her he led her to the table and picked up the shagreen case.
“Look, sweetheart! You asked in your kindness for this.”
“Your picture!” she cried in delight and she stretched out her hands eagerly towards it. Then with a little shudder she drew them back.
“Wait! Don’t open it, Philip. Let me!”
She was wearing a pair of delicate white gloves fringed at the gauntlets and embroidered with gold. “I picked them up at random,” she said. “But for Eleonore I should have run here without a cloak. I was in so high a fever,” and she began to strip the gloves from her hands as if the touch of them poisoned her. Her fingers trembled.
Philip Königsmark laughed joyously. Extravagances are the natural food of lovers. To him it was just a pretty fancy that she should wish to take his gift in her warm bare hands.
“You’ll tear the gloves and they are beautiful,” he said. “Give me your hands and I’ll unclasp them.”
“No!” she cried with passion and said no more. Philip was not to know that for the last week Ermengarde von Schulenberg had been flaunting a pair of emerald bracelets which George Louis had sent to her from Flanders, and that by the same post he had despatched as a sop to his wife this pair of embroidered gloves. And she was wearing them! She had her hands free of them at last and tossed them on to the table.
“Now,” she said and she took the shagreen case into her palm as carefully as if it was a sacred chalice. She pressed on the spring and the case fell open.
“A letter too,” she cried. It was a double gift he made to her.
“The cipher for a letter,” said Philip, and she gave out a delighted gurgle of laughter. For a moment she was carried back to the first days of their love-making when there was still more of amusement in it than passion, more of a game that children play than a secret intrigue with death and honour in the balance. Then she held the paper aside and her eyes grew dewy and her lips trembled as she gazed at the miniature.
“And just when I need him most, he goes away from me.”
She shut up the case slowly and held it against her breast. “I must teach my heart,” she said woefully, “that it must share you with your love of glory.”
“My dear!” he answered. “Glory? Yes, I want it. I want a great name, won by myself, to make me more fit for you, to justify your condescension.” She was close to him. The fragrance of her hair, the perfume of the flowers entwined in it, was in his nostrils, the folds of her dress touched his legs, he felt through its soft texture her limbs and her body against him. “Were all else equal,” he murmured, “I would rather be a sentinel. For I might be posted below your window. I should see the light flame when you came home and I should know that you were near. And when you went to your bed, I should see the light extinguished — so.”
His voice had sunk to a low deep note of passion. Holding her close with one arm he reached out the other towards the lamp and began to turn the wick down.
“No,” she cried, and then, “Not yet!”
Was it in panic? Was it that at the last moment she must hesitate before the step which could never be retraced? Or did she see in the gathering shadows a grim spectre waiting for their approach? Philip, startled by the sharpness of her cry, stayed his hand.
“There is nothing to fear, sweetheart,” he whispered. “It will be so long after tonight before I again feel your heart beating against mine.”
“I must see your room,” she went on.
“When I look at this portrait, I must know where to put you. I must see you living — where you sit and amongst what colours and graced with what delicate possessions. For a moment, Philip! My dear, only for a moment.”
The Princess was nervous. Yet she was not making an excuse. In the garden theatre at Herrenhausen she had used almost the very words she was using now. She did want to see the place in which he lived.
“For a moment then,” he said with a smile, and he turned up the wick so that the flame burned bright.
But Sophia Dorothea had hardly the time to handle a book that he read or to touch the porcelain comfit box on the table by his chair before a great clatter broke upon the narrow street. There was a sound of people running and a hubbub of uproarious voices.
“Philip,” shouted one descending from a high note to a bass. Sophia shrank back.
“That’s Charles,” whispered Philip, “celebrating his last night in Hanover.”
But above Charles’s voice rose another, less hearty but more piercing.
“There’s a light in the window. He’s there. Let’s have him out,” and he gave a drunken parody of the winding of a hunter’s horn.
“That’s Max,” exclaimed Sophia in terror.
Maximilian was the firebrand of the family. He quarrelled with his father over the primogeniture of George Louis. He made friends with the Catholics. He conspired with Ulrich Wolfenbüttel. He made love to Sophia Dorothea. He was deliberate and malicious. To be found here by Max — she would be at his mercy and mercy he did not know.
“Turn out the lamp.”
It was Sophia who called for that now with her hands clasped and her body shaking. But it was too late.
“Philip! We are coming up,” cried Charles.
“God’s name, but the door’s on the latch,” Philip exclaimed in a low voice. He ran to the window and leaned out. “Wait!” He shouted. If only he could keep them out for a minute! “I’ll come down and let you in.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 716