“I thank you.”
At this point the Prince’s voice began to tremble with rage.
“Who wore this glove, Count Philip von Königsmark?”
“I cannot tell Your Highness.”
“But the wearer was with you?”
“I think that most unlikely.”
“Why?”
“I should have picked it up and returned it. That glove may have lain here for an hour or more.”
“You have an answer for every question.”
“I trust that I may never have any more difficult to answer.”
George Louis’ voice grew rougher with each question that he asked. Philip replied on a calm level of politeness and respect, which increased the Prince’s exasperation.
“I’ll give you one,” he cried now in a fury. “Stand to it! Who was with you? Who ran away when we approached?”
If Philip answered “Clara von Platen,” Franz von Platen would know it to be the truth, but George Louis would believe it to be the least ingenious of lies. He replied.
“I have already had the honour to inform Your Highness that the lady was masked.”
“Very well.”
George Louis turned to von Platen.
“Will you find the Princess of Brunswick-Luneburg,” he ordered, giving his wife her official title, “and bring her here to me?”
Count von Platen set the lantern down upon the small table in the pavilion and with a little smile of malice for Philip, went off as eagerly upon his new errand as he had gone to fetch the lantern.
Philip’s heart sank within him. Sophia had not been with him, that was sure. But she was to be taken unawares, confused, in some way made to look guilty.
“Her Highness, sir?” he cried. “How can Her Highness be concerned?” Philip asked incredulously.
“How indeed?” George Louis answered with a sneer. “Yet this pretty glove is embroidered with Her Highness’s initials and Her Highness’s coronet and is one of a pair which I sent to her from Ghent.”
In the distance there rose a sound of voices, and a few seconds afterwards the flare of a torch. Oh, Count Franz von Platen had known very well where he could lay his hands on the Princess. She was coming along the path now, asking questions as she came. Why did her husband need her and so instantly. Von Platen waved his torch. His Highness himself would explain. A third voice joined in, a voice shrill and hysterical, the voice of Prince Maximilian. Philip Königsmark’s face went white as he heard it. Maximilian and Clara von Platen had buried their enmity in a common hatred of Sophia. They were always together — they were working out some plan to ruin her. Here and now it was to be put to the touch.
The Princess entered the pavilion her head erect and a bright spot of colour in each cheek. She wore a gown of white satin. George Louis looked at it with a sneer. In the darkness it might well have been mistaken for the white domino which he had seen flitting hurriedly along the path. Just outside the little building Count von Platen held high the torch and at his elbow Maximilian stood with a mischievous grin upon his face.
“You wished to see me, sir?” said the Princess. She at all events was not alarmed. “I am here.”
George Louis had been holding the glove behind his back. He suddenly held it out to her.
“You can tell me where you lost this, Madam,” he cried in a brutal, harsh, triumphant voice.
Sophia Dorothea did not answer. She looked at her husband in sheer perplexity. Then she turned her eyes sharply upon von Platen and held them there until he shifted his feet and hemmed a little and ha’aed a little with every appearance of discomfort. Then she look the glove in her hands and turned it over, and “This is a very astonishing and ill-natured thing,” she said with a quiet show of indignation. “Will Your Highness tell me who amongst my friends brought the glove to you and what lying tale he told?”
As she spoke she tossed the glove contemptuously on to the table. But George Louis had heard and seen enough. With an oath he strode past Sophia and out of the pavilion. He thrust von Platen and Maximilian roughly aside and went his way along the path. Sophia Dorothea was wearing a pair of white gloves embroidered in gold thread with her initials and her coronet, and in every detail the counterparts of the third glove tossed upon the table.
“Perhaps Your Excellency can explain the mystery?” she asked turning her eyes again upon von Platen.
But His Excellency was standing with his mouth agape and such an expression of bitter disappointment upon his face as brought a smile to her lips.
“Or Your Highness, perhaps!” she continued turning to where Maximilian had stood. But Maximilian had chosen the better part of valour. He had fled.
Sophia Dorothea opened the door of the lantern, held the glove to the flame and then dropped it on to the metal. She stood watching it burn and blacken and writhe and crumple up like a living thing in torture.
“Would that, Your Excellency, be too severe a punishment for who so planned this evil trick?” she asked, but now Count von Platen had gone, torch and all in pursuit of Maximilian. Sophia Dorothea turned for the first time to Philip.
“Will you give me your hand, Count Philip, back to the house?” she said in a loud clear voice. But the hand was trembling and clung desperately to his.
“Dearest, you were wonderful,” he exclaimed in a low tone. Sophia shook her head and as they walked along the path where none could steal upon them, she answered.
“I was prepared. I lost my glove the night I came to your house. In the early morning you had gone. I was alarmed. I sent by the courier to Ghent and had another made. When I heard that Clara von Platen and Maximilian were reconciled and plotting something against me, I wondered whether he had found my lost glove. But I felt as if we were under the outspread hand of Death.”
Up till this evening Sophia Dorothea had repelled Philip’s dreams of flight, of a free and open life in a foreign and friendly country. The thought of the two children whom she must leave behind, her solace and comfort through these years of loneliness and humiliation, had checked her, if for a moment she yearned to share his dreams. But under the stress of this night’s danger her spirit wavered.
“One day we shall make the irreparable mistake,” she said. “Philip I can’t lose you... I am yours up to the throne of God. Yet — yet—” but she dared not think of the hard choice which one day she must make. The violins were throbbing in the ballroom, and the money clattering on the card tables and all the lights ablaze. She must set her best foot forward and tune her lips to their liveliest smile.
XXX. A COTTAGE IN ARCADIA
THE CAMPAIGN OF that summer was disastrous for the armies of the Grand Alliance; and it needed the naval victory of the English Admiral Russell at La Hague to save it from disruption. Namur after a siege of eight days was captured by the French and at Steinkirk an attempted surprise by the Allies was, owing to the incapacity of the Dutch General who commended the English troops, converted into a defeat. The Hanoverian army was held back in support and took no part in that engagement. But Philip volunteered and was lent to the Prince of Wurtemburg and fought in the very hottest of the fray; for which unnecessary valour he was bitterly reproached in a litter from his mistress in Hanover.
“My plight is pitiful,” she wrote. “It seems to me that every gun is pointed at you... Grand Dieu if any hurt were to happen to you, what would become of me? I could not conceal my grief nor be mistress of my emotion.”
That was the trouble with both of them. They wrote foolish passionate letters, now full of jealous reproaches, nor imploring pardon. If a post came and brought them nothing, at once they were sure they were forgotten and must write off in a fever to explain that they wished they were dead. When an assurance arrived that a letter had been mislaid in the post, then they jumped to the conviction that it had been seized by their enemies and that their secret had been discovered. As a fact, some letters were from time to time stolen and louder and louder grew the whispers gossiping of their intrigue. N
either of them was naturally discreet; both of them were quick of temper; and through three months of danger and separation they were living upon their jangled nerves.
When the troops went into winter quarters, Philip was refused leave to return to Hanover. He could have leave for the Hague, for Brussels, for Hamburg, for wherever in reason he wished to go, but not for Hanover, Philip poured out imprecations upon von Platen.
“Everybody plots against me, men and demons, and even old women who are worse than demons.”
Sophia Dorothea could only assure him of her unalterable love. Letter writing had become difficult, for Aurora Königsmark who so often fulfilled the function of a post bag was away with her sister in Hamburg. Neither of the lovers had the patience to understand the true meaning of that circumscription of Königsmark’s leave. Up till this autumn Duke Ernst Augustus had refused to take seriously Clara von Platen’s accusations. He had a soft corner in his capacious heart for his beautiful young daughter-in-law. Philip with his rare good looks, his great fortune and the splendour of his establishment was an ornament to the Court and a fine soldier besides. But now Ernst Augustus was listening, now he was taking notice.
Philip, half mad with anger and love, betook himself to Brussels, where he drank, and railed against the von Platens, and gambled, losing great sums of money one night and winning great sums the next, which were as often as not never paid. Thus at one sitting he won thirty-two thousand crowns from his old friend Frederick Augustus of Saxony and Frederick Augustus went back to Dresden the next morning with the debt undischarged.
In Hanover Monsieur Balati was busy with King Louis’ money. The von Platens and Bernstorff at Celle shared in the largess and Ernst Augustus used the opportunity to make sure of his Electoral Hat. He and George Louis paid a visit to Duke George William at Celle to obtain his support and in a moment of madness Sophia Dorothea wrote to her lover to come to her during their absence, whatever the risk. Königsmark left the camp at Dist without leave and in disguise. He travelled all day and half the night for a week. He arrived in Hanover an hour before midnight and, still dressed as a common sailor with all the dust of his journey upon him, he made his way through the private garden and up the circular staircase to his mistress’s apartment in the opposite end of the Palace.
For an hour or so their troubles, their small jealousies and quarrels were forgotten, but when their raptures were allowed a pause, each had only a melancholy story to tell. Sophia Dorothea was surrounded by spies. She could trust no one but the faithful Knesebeck; and she lived in terror lest each post should bring her news of her lover’s death. Ernst Augustus was cold, and her one consolation was that George Louis was still so infatuated with Ermengarde von Schulenberg and so doted on the little daughter he had by her, that he had not a second to spare for even a sneer at his wife.
“When Aurora comes back to Hanover,” she said smiling, “I shall at all events have someone to talk with about you.”
But Philip fell back in extreme discouragement.
“Aurora’s never coming back,” he answered.
“She has married?” cried Sophia.
“No. She was in Hamburg seven weeks ago, and Marshall Podevils called upon her. He had a message for her from the Duke. The Duke had the highest regard for her but she and all her house had seen their last Carnival in Hanover.”
“She and all her house,” Sophia repeated, catching her breath. “That can’t mean — Oh no!”
“It can’t mean me?” Philip added the word which her lips refused to speak. He was giving a natural little illustration of a difference between them. Sophia Dorothea was inclined to play hide and seek with her own troubles. Philip, on the other hand, had learned to formulate his difficulties and perils as the first step towards defeating them.
“I shall know tomorrow,” he continued.
“How? Philip, how will you know?” she asked, plucking anxiously at his sleeve.
“The first thing tomorrow morning,” he answered, “I shall put on my best uniform and report myself to Field-Marshall Podevils.”
“Philip!”
Sophia caught her breath. This was putting their fortunes to the touch too audaciously for her liking.
“I must. I am in Hanover without leave. Podevils is the good friend,” Philip explained, using the phrase by which they named him in their letters. “If he has no definite orders from the Duke, he will find an excuse for me if he can.”
“And if he has?”
“If he has,” said Philip slowly. “Let us face it, mea amina! It will be either arrest and imprisonment—”
“No!” and Sophia wrung her hands in her distress.
“Or dismissal from the Duke’s service and banishment to Hamburg.”
“Even so I lose you,” she cried, and then with a bitter self- reproach. “And, my dear, I sent for you! It would be my doing. Imprisonment! You? Oh, I would never forgive myself!”
Philip caught her to his breast and closed her lips with his hand.
“Hush! Never say it! Clara von Platen was never so glad to receive a bribe as I was to get your summons. Sweetheart, I was hungry and thirsty for the sound of your voice, the touch of your hand, the tender pressure of your lips. Oh, if we could be together always.”
And they fell to painting once more the walls of their cottage in the fragrant Arcadia of their dreams. There would be no inhabitants but themselves. There would be flowers and the freshness of dew and the moonbeams’ silver. There would be no outbursts of jealousy, never would she have to drench her pillow with tears because he charged her harshly with her coquetries, never would he have to run off and get drunk because she accused him of inconstancy. No one would open their letters, for they never would write any. And never would he wake up with an ache at his heart and the sound of a bugle in his ears, nor she with the tears running down her cheeks and her children calling from the garden beneath her window.
Leonisse told him how one night when she was ill and re- reading a letter of his, Duchess Sophia had come into her bedroom and a page of it had slipped down upon the floor. Philip told her how a batch of her letters in Eleonore von Knesebeck’s handwriting had actually been handed in mistake to her husband, George Louis. What terrible risks they ran!
Wouldn’t it be wise, she asked, if he at all events tried to make friends once more with Clara von Platen? But he would have none of it.
“If I were Lord of creation,” he cried, “I would give that jade of a Platen to the bears to eat. Lions should suck her devil’s blood, tigers tear her cowardly heart out. I would spend night and day seeking new torments to punish her for her black infamy.”
The tirade did not offer any substantial help to them in this crisis of their affairs, but it was a great comfort to Sophia Dorothea.
“Thank you, darling,” she said with a smile; and the dawn almost caught them unawares.
Philip put on his best uniform the next morning and reporting himself at Headquarters, asked for an interview with the Field- Marshall. The old Field-Marshall received him with friendliness.
“You have leave to remain in Hanover for a month,” he said, and Philip was overjoyed. He had a month. Why, the world might end in a month. But the next words of Podevils took all the savour from his enjoyment.
“After the month you must return to your camp at Dist, unless you wish to resign from the Elector’s service.”
“Resign,” Philip cried in consternation.
Podevils nodded his head regretfully.
“It is rumoured that a higher post is reserved for you in your own country.”
“I have already refused it.”
“If you would ask for the offer to be renewed,” Podevils insisted, “His Highness the Elector will put no obstacles in your way.”
“It is too late,” said Königsmark.
The Field-Marshall sat for a few moments in silence. Then he added: “There is no future for you in the army of Hanover.”
Philip was very white but very stubborn.<
br />
“I am not ambitious, sir.”
The old man changed his tone. A note of appeal came into his voice. It was the good friend and not the commandant who spoke.
“You keep a great house, Philip. You play high. You spend a great deal of money. It may be — I have no right to say as much, but my regard for you pushes me — that if you continue your present service you may find yourself in great straits.”
Philip was at a loss. Undoubtedly his old friend would not have spoken so frank a warning without good reason. And perhaps at another time when the charms of his enchantress were less visible and immediate he might have understood more clearly the nature of the warning. But he was a man distraught.
“I have no debts, sir, that I cannot pay,” he said and Podevils threw up his hands.
“That is my last word,” he said, and Philip saluted and withdrew.
The month had not elapsed when Podevils’ monition was justified to the last particular. War was declared by Denmark and Sweden against Celle and Hanover, and Königsmark must leave for the camp at Dist without respite enough for a farewell word with his Leonisse. From Dist he marched with his regiment to the Elbe, whilst the King of Denmark razed the hated fortifications of Ratzeburg to the ground. At the same time Charles of Sweden estreated the great revenues of Königsmark, and the Colonel was left high and dry at the head of his regiment on a bank of the Elbe with his bills rising from the floor of his tent like winter snow in the Alps and nothing but his slender pay wherewith to settle them. For months the two armies watched each other across the river, whilst negotiations for peace were begun and broken off and begun again. There was no fighting. The brigades of Celle had been so cut up at Steinkirk the year before that it was in no condition to fight. But the armies glowered across the river at each other and no man could leave his post. At the age of twenty- six, in prospect as in fortune, Philip was sunk in ruin.
Meanwhile events as disastrous to his mistress took place in Hanover. The Electoral Prince George Louis returned from Flanders and so resounding a quarrel took place between him and his wife that you could hardly have matched it in the old days of Billingsgate Market. Sophia Dorothea reproached him with Ermengarde von Schulenberg and he taunted her with Königsmark. If he was a scandal to the title of Prince, she was a byword as a Princess. As the voices rose there was a commotion in the corridors and in the height of his fury George Louis took her by the throat. In reply to her screams ladies-in-waiting, valets, pages, housemaids, burst into the room and the Electoral Prince flung his wife half-throttled to the ground.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 721