Complete Works of a E W Mason

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Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 718

by A. E. W. Mason


  He bent down to her and their lips met.

  “You are silent, my Tercis,” she said using the name with which his letters were signed.

  “What else should I be?” he said slowly. “With your love a miracle and a wonder? Let me tell you something that is the very truth of me!”

  “Yes, tell me,” she said eagerly.

  It was not only that she had the lover’s yearning to know every little detail of the loved one’s life. There had been a note of remorse in the sound of his words which alarmed her.

  “Blame no one, sweetheart, neither yourself nor me,” she whispered passionately. “Every night I prayed for you upon my knees. I was listened to. Have no doubt of it! For after the long months of danger you are safe and mine.”

  Was Philip on the point of blurting out the whole story of his pursuit of her? It was oppressing him and clamouring for utterance. But tonight, this first time when they were really alone together since the vanished days when they had sat side by side and fashioned a golden world of dreams in the Castle Chapel — tonight with her dark eyes looking up to his, her tender lips within a hand’s breadth of his he could not utter it. Yet just a little he did say.

  “As I crossed the river and came through the French garden and up the slope, I was back again as a page in Celle. I remembered the terror and the ignominy of my last night here and how it remained in my mind a nightmare, something that made me horrible to myself. I behaved like a coward on that night. Then another nightmare, another ignominy was added to the first, the flight from England. All the years since then I have lived, turning upon myself like a wounded snake, stinging myself. Well, tonight, as I saw your loved face at the window, all that horror dropped from me and forever.”

  “I am glad,” she breathed.

  “It seems to me amazing that I should have so suffered. I who have been lifted out of the ruck of men by you.”

  He clipped her close to him.

  “For you do love me?” he demanded passionately.

  Sophia lifted her hand and stroked his face tenderly.

  “My dear, you may find others more lovable but never one more loving.”

  Her voice dropped so that he had a fancy that her words were just her heart-beats made audible. “You are loved to idolatry.”

  They were standing close by the table on which the lamp was set. Philip reached forward and slowly turned it out; and this time Sophia did not stay his hand.

  XXVII. ANTHONY TELLS

  ANTHONY CRASTON WOKE up the next morning a sick mean man. Sick in spite of himself but quite deliberately mean. His head was a hot heavy leaden bullet, his eyes streamed and his nose barred him from the society of his fellow-men. These unhappy symptoms he could not help. People who undertake long vigils in cold parks must expect them. But whilst he dressed in the raw of the morning, he brooded over what he had seen, a woman signalling with a lamp and a man climbing in at a window. He hated the man with all the bitter envy of the second-best; and his thoughts did not spare the lady. He did not of course put the case to himself in that simple truthful way. He was moved, he asserted to himself, by public considerations. A respectful recognition that great Princes may have mistresses but that their wives must not have lovers was the first law of stability. Without it thrones tottered and decorum became a byword and a scoff. All credit, therefore, to the man who by a little useful word slipped in on an appropriate occasion secured the punishment of the wrong-doer, the male one of course, and left the other of the pair to the reproaches of her conscience — and the consolations of her more honest friends.

  At this branch-chancery in Celle, however, Craston found matter to distract his thoughts. He was a conscientious worker and the new business to which he must put his hand was at once delicate and responsible. The campaign in Flanders during the past year had been on the whole bloodless and without consequence. There had been no great battle; no town had fallen; the armies had marched and counter-marched and retired to winter quarters. But now a new danger for the smaller fry of the Grand Alliance was beginning to show its head. There had been hostility for a long time between Denmark and Celle. The great fortress of Ratzeburg stood on the very edge of Denmark and as a perpetual menace to that country. The King had again and again called for the demolition of its walls and its reduction to the status of an open town, and no less often Duke George William had refused. But now Sweden had added its remonstrances and the King of Denmark emboldened by the support of his new friend had quite changed his note. If George William would not do the proper friendly thing and pull down the bastions of Ratzeburg, he would pull them down himself. The King of Denmark was in a peremptory mood and had excellent reasons to justify him. The troops of Celle were famous for their fighting qualities. They had been hired out year after year to this or that potentate. They were hard practised soldiers and in the ordinary way the King of Denmark would have thought more often than twice before he engaged them, even with the support of Sweden at his back.

  But they were not part of the army of the Grand Alliance. They were brigaded under the command of George Louis in Flanders. Duke George William had applied to his cousin Ulrich of Wolfenbüttel. But “the monkey” had not forgotten George William’s cavalier treatment of himself and his son. Even if he had been willing to help, he hardly could, so many of his soldiers had perished with Prince Charles in the Morea. Duke George William was, in consequence, leaning more and more to the idea of recalling his army to the defence of his Duchy, and it was to dissuade him from this momentous step that Anthony was now charged.

  “I must see Bernstorff,” Anthony reasoned after a fit of sneezing; and he sent a messenger to the Castle asking the Chancellor to receive him that morning.

  Meanwhile he re-read his instructions. There was an argument which he could use. Denmark would surely hold its hand until it saw to which side fortune was inclining in Flanders. Let the Grand Alliance make a successful campaign of it and the threats of Denmark would become courtesies as smooth as honey.

  Anthony followed his messenger and was received with smiles in that fine room overlooking the drawbridge and the lime-tree avenue where old homely Schultz had once discoursed to his successor on the wisdom of keeping clear of Hanover. There were more papers now on the big table, more secretaries bustling in and out of the room than Schultz had ever needed in the course of a twelvemonth, but Bernstorff was happiest in a great swirl and turmoil of affairs, whether they were of consequence or not. He received Craston with both hands extended and a beaming face.

  “My master, the Ambassador, is detained at Hanover, Your Excellency, and has deputed me to make an appeal to you,” said Anthony.

  “I am honoured,” replied Bernstorff drawing Anthony towards the fireplace where a great fire of logs was burning. “The wishes of England must always command the highest consideration in Celle. But you have a cold, young sir. I beg you to draw close to the fire.”

  He swept his papers away into a heap with a flourish of contempt. “Little domestic matters which can wait their moment.” He dismissed his secretaries as cavalierly. “We must not be interrupted.” He drew up a chair when they were alone.

  “The English Ambassador,” he continued “is no doubt a trifle anxious because there are French influences at this Court. That, as we all know, is so. But you can assure His Excellency that they do not affect the policy of the State. There was a time when they did. But I am happy to say that time has gone. His Highness has learnt that a warm heart is but a poor statesman,” and Baron von Bernstorff ended with a smirk which left Anthony in no doubt as to who the teacher was. “You have an appeal to make. I am listening.”

  Anthony sneezed three times and described the anxieties of his Ambassador.

  “Ratzeburg,” said Bernstorff nodding his head gravely. “To be sure, there is a problem which has caused us all the gravest anxiety. His Highness especially was in a great disquiet. But for the moment the danger is warded off. Hanover is with our agreement sending a mission to arrange a treaty
with Sweden, and Denmark will not move whilst these negotiations are in progress.”

  “Our Ambassador has no knowledge of that mission,” Anthony retorted.

  “It was only decided upon within the last few days,” said Bernstorff.

  Anthony got up from his chair. “This will be good news. I thank you for it Baron von Bernstorff,” he exclaimed. He was a little elated. He could send back to his chief information of value. He would have earned good marks.

  “A mission to Sweden?” he repeated. His face lit up; a slow smile separated his swollen lips. Here was a chance of obtaining some compensation for his dreadful vigil in the Park of Celle. “Then a Swede of course will be sent upon that mission?”

  “A Swede?” exclaimed Bernstorff. He was completely at a loss. “There is no Swede in Hanover who could be entrusted with so difficult a negotiation.”

  Anthony Craston nodded his head.

  “Your Excellency knows more than I do of Hanover. I was counting names.”

  “And at what name did you stop?” Bernstorff asked. He was still quite perplexed.

  “At the name of Count Philip von Königsmark.”

  Bernstorff stared for a moment at Anthony; it seemed to him that his young colleague was an idiot. He laughed contemptuously.

  “Philip von Königsmark! My dear sir! But some years ago he passed through my hands. Even now he does me the honour of trembling when I come face to face with him.”

  The mere notion that this boy who had pleaded on his knees for his life in the Castle Chapel could have grown into a man fit for such delicate and important work, sent the Baron into a paroxysm of laughter.

  “Philip von Königsmark! Oh my dear sir! That pretty piece of frippery?”

  “He brought back a name for courage from the Morea,” said Anthony.

  “And left his friend, Prince Charles, behind him,” added the Baron, smiling unpleasantly. “Oh no, we can leave Philip to decorate the boudoirs, and lose his money at the gambling tables.”

  Anthony bowed.

  “No doubt Your Excellency is right,” he said. “I made a foolish guess. I was misled by a glimpse of Count Philip yesterday.”

  “Yesterday?” cried Bernstorff. “Nay, you were in Celle yesterday.”

  “So was Count Philip.”

  For a second the Chancellor was puzzled. He was supplied each day with a very complete list of who in Celle moved out of it and what strangers came to it. There was no Count Philip on the list. He looked at Anthony and laughed jovially.

  “It’s that cold of yours, my young friend. Nothing so blurs the vision as a rheum. It’s seeing the world on the other side of a fountain. The little Philip” — he used a phrase from Clara von Platen’s first letters— “was more likely to be sighing and fondling in the salon of Monplaisir.”

  “It may be — nay it must be if Your Excellency is so informed,” Anthony replied with submission. “Yet — I could have sworn I saw him. If it was not he, it was his very likeness. I wondered what he was doing in Celle. If there had not been something secret in — I hardly know what — his dress or his manner, I should have accosted him.”

  “Something secret?” Bernstorff repeated sharply. He walked away to the window.

  Anthony Craston was trying to give him information whilst escaping the reproach of a tale-bearer. It was clumsy work. Craston was not a man with any subtlety in the manipulation of words. But the intention was obvious. He conjoined too elaborate an indifference with too determined a persistence for Bernstorff to entertain a doubt.

  “Philip Königsmark!” the Chancellor went on with a curious dwelling on the name. “Secretly in Celle! Ha!”

  Bernstorff had a difficulty in taking Philip into his consideration seriously. He had enjoyed his first rapturous sensation of power in the Castle Chapel with Philip as his victim and the taste of it was still fresh in his mouth, the picture of it still vivid in his mind. Speak Philip von Königsmark’s name and at once Bernstorff saw a boy crouched at his feet in his smart page’s dress, his head bent, his hands bound with a cord and the sobs bursting from his throat in an agony of fear. Bernstorff stood at the window, striving to disembarrass himself of this vision. The boy was a Colonel of the Hanoverian Guards, he had fought as bravely as any of his name, he had such fame as a lover that women had lied away their good reputation so that their names might without truth be linked with his. Yes, and there was that old story of his first love, the stolen meetings in the chapel, the rehearsals — Bernstorff turned back into the room. He was now startled.

  “When was it that you thought you saw Philip Königsmark?”

  “Last night,” Anthony replied. “I had been working late. I wanted to clear my head. I took a walk.”

  “In the town?”

  “No.”

  Anthony was conscious of a most ignoble meanness. He had once despised Philip because he foreswore himself to save his brother from the hangman. How much lower had he now fallen? He was devoured by shame but the greater his shame, the more he persisted in it.

  “It was near here. Along the river bank. Opposite to the French garden.”

  For a moment or two Bernstorff stood with his eyes intently fixed on Craston’s face, and Craston began to shuffle his feet. Bernstorff smiled and passed his arm under the young man’s.

  “Show me at the window,” he said in a quiet and even voice. But there was a spark of excitement in his eyes and the hand he laid on Craston’s arm shook with his eagerness.

  From the window they looked along the façade of the Castle to the bank with the beech trees where Craston had kept his vigil. Beyond the trees the ground fell to the French garden which was hidden. But beyond the garden there was within their view a glimmer of bronze where the sun struck the Aller River.

  “There!” said Craston pointing. He hesitated for a second. “There was a boat moored to the bank. The man I mistook for Philip was bending over it when I first saw him. There was no moon but I could see that he rose up very quickly when he heard my footsteps and moved back from the path. That’s what I meant when I said there was something secret in his manner.

  Bernstorff stood stock still at young Craston’s side. Not by a gesture nor a word did he interrupt. But his very immobility spoke for him.

  “You have not finished your story,” he said, “continue! Every word of it!” and Craston continued.

  “He had the movements of Philip, the swiftness and the ease of them, as though each muscle obeyed upon the instant the message of his brain. But I couldn’t distinguish his features. I was obviously misled” — and here Craston’s jealousy sprang out into the open and his voice grated— “by his dancing-master’s elegance. I could not, had the moon been up, have distinguished his features. For he held a muffled close to his face. For that reason, too, I thought that his visit was secret.”

  “And you walked on, of course?” said Bernstorff.

  Anthony detected or imagined that he detected a hint of irony in the question. His face grew red, he drew himself up stiffly.

  “No, Your Excellency, I turned back at that point.”

  “And heard no more,” said Bernstorff.

  He turned back into the room, speaking the words no longer with a question mark at the end of them, but as though they rounded off the story.

  “No,” Anthony Craston replied slowly. “I did hear something more as I walked back. I heard the splash of oars.”

  Bernstorff swung quickly round.

  “The drip of water from the paddles and the drive of them through the water,” Craston continued; and then he threw back his head with a laugh.

  “Of course I should have known at once that I was mistaken. It was some belated servant, some truant page finding his way home to the Castle after hours.”

  “That, to be sure, is the explanation,” said Bernstorff.

  But he sat for a long while after Craston had taken his leave with no thought for his morning’s work. A smile was on his lips, a pleasant sense of amusement in his mind.
Some of Craston’s story was false, no doubt, was invented to harm Königsmark. But some of it was true — the drip of water from the paddles, the drive of the oars through the water, the recognition of Philip and — yes — and the place which he sought and where he was received. Bernstorff had always hated Eleonore d’Olbreuse and her daughter. They had been his enemies from the first moment, they had striven to hinder his ascendancy over George William. They were for France, not Hanover. If they had had their way, there would have been no handsome presents from Duke Ernst Augustus, no Gradow estate, no flourishing tobacco factory, not even a Barony. But if this hinted story were the truth, the proven truth, he had mother and daughter at his feet.

  He walked home at the dinner hour scattering the friendliest smiles. As he sat at his table, he sent for Heinrich Muller and, leaning back in his chair with his glass of burgundy to his lips, he spoke jovially as one who had caught a good servant napping.

  “Heinrich, the best watchdogs sleep with their nostrils quivering.”

  “Even so, Excellency, at times someone will have the wind of them,” said Heinrich Muller.

  “The worse watchdogs they! Last night a secret visitor came back after many years to Celle!”

  “Count Philip von Königsmark,” Muller replied stolidly, and Bernstorff brought the feet of his chair down upon the floor with a bang.

  “You knew!” he cried, and now the reproach was stern.

  “I learnt it this morning when I came face to face with him. I made some enquiries,” Muller replied, and he added in an angry bewilderment: “Excellency, I do not understand that man.”

  “How so?”

  “He came to Celle after dark without a servant and he put up at a mean little inn, ‘The Golden Lantern’ in the Schwarzer Weg, under the name of the Count Tercis. He had his supper and went out again on foot, and returned as the dawn was breaking.”

  “Where was he meanwhile?”

 

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