“Yes.”
Philip did not look at her. He spoke to the wall over against him.
“I must be honest with you whilst there’s still time for you to draw back.”
Sophia Dorothea shook her head resolutely.
“That time has past.”
“Wait,” said Philip; and he began to speak to her, so tuning his voice that it should be neither cold nor passionate but a simple, clear machine for her better knowledge: and using the plainest undecorated phrases to describe unmistakably the stages through which his spirit had passed.
“When I came to Hanover six years ago, I came deliberately to win your love — more than that — to make you my mistress. It was not for love of you. I had a boy’s first love for you at Celle, the awakening sharp, brief passion. But what I really carried away from Celle was a deep and abiding shame. I had grovelled at the feet of a man I despised — Bernstorff. I had whined for my life to be spared. I had held out my hands for him to tie. I had suffered — willingly — to my everlasting disgrace every indignity. That’s what I carried away with me from Celle — and what I lived with for a year afterwards, I, a Königsmark, in the house of the Königsmarks. I used to lie in bed sick with shame at my cowardice, shivering at it like a boy in an ague. I used to see my grandfather John William and my father Conrad Christopher and my uncle Otto William standing round my bed and nodding to each other and saying: ‘He’s a changeling.’ I used to see my brother Karl John, the Knight of Malta, join the group. I used to hear him say: ‘No, sirs, Philip’s a Königsmark but he’s soft and cowardly and I must see to it that he wears a gown instead of a cuirass and writes with a pen instead of cuts with a sword.’
“All through that year — I was very lonely at Breda — I lived, brooding myself down and down into the depths where men skulked in corners and lived mean frightened lives and wore out their knees rather than the soles of their boots. In a frenzy I appealed to Karl John, my brother, ‘Take me with you on your next campaign — to the Morea, to Tangier, against the Turk, against the Moor — anywhere so that I may cease to be ashamed.’ But Karl John looked at me with a friendly and smiling refusal. ‘Leave rough work, Philip, to rough fellows. The gentle life for you!’ he said and he took me to Monsieur Faubert’s Academy in London.”
“There I made a friend,” Philip continued. “You know him.”
“I?”
“Anthony Craston,” Philip mentioned the name with a smile. “He thought better of me in those days than he thinks now. But because he thought well of me and admired the things which I could do and he couldn’t such as riding the Great Horse, I began to climb out of the pit of shame and self-distrust. I no longer said ‘I am a pariah.’ I said ‘I have a friend and he sets me high.’ I held my head up on those days for a year — yes, for a whole year.”
“And then?” Sophia Dorothea asked as he paused.
Her face had gone very white. She was terribly hurt but her surprise was even greater than her pain. In the estimation of her world, Philip von Königsmark had been up to the last six months or so, the most enviable of men. His beauty, the grace of his movements and the urbanity of his address had given distinction and even excitement to any assembly where he was present. He bore a great name and was worthy of it; he had a great fortune and spent it magnificently; he was courted by a host of friends; he had every attribute which made for serenity of mind and contentment; she herself had been a little dazzled and more than a little flattered by his favour at the beginning of their renewed acquaintanceship. It was difficult for her to identify him with this picture of a lad tortured by a sense of defeat and scorning himself for his inferiority to his fellows. She must hear the last word of this confession and that she might hear it, she attuned her voice to his, smoothing out of it every intonation which could betray resentment or distress.
“And then?” she asked.
Philip told her of the trial at the Old Bailey and the lie by which he had saved his brother from the hangman.
“I lost my friend by that lie,” he continued. “He passed me as if I was a stranger after I had told it. And I was hounded out of the country with a rabble at my heels.”
“Your brother too,” said Sophia Dorothea shrewdly.
“Karl John,” Philip exclaimed with a laugh of admiration. “Karl John was different from me. He strutted out of England with his nose in the air. He had flourish — what’s the word? — panache. I slunk out with recollections of a great crowd silent and menacing — terribly menacing — in front of Faubert’s school, and of another — this time filthy and murderous, which besieged the miserable lodging in which I had taken refuge. I was flung back again into terrors. Oh, I wore my mask cleverly enough perhaps, but I never knew when it might slip, and the real Philip Königsmark be exposed, the craven blubbering for mercy to a Bernstorff, the fugitive running like a rabbit through the alleys of London. And one day it would slip! I was sure of it, and the longer I was sure of it, the longer I brooded over it, the surer I became. Then at Dresden I heard of you and your unhappiness.”
His voice had, in spite of his intention, taken on a gentler note and Sophia Dorothea moved sharply. But her voice was level when she spoke.
“Yes? Go on,”
He was mad, he told himself, ever to have begun. She would never forgive him. No woman would. But he owed it to her that there should be the truth between them and not a lie.
“I got an idea that if I could win you for myself, all that had happened between the time when we were together at Celle and the day when I won you would be wiped out of my experience. I should find myself confident again, master of my fears, scornful of them, proud. The idea grew into a conviction. I came to Hanover and set myself to cozen you. It was easy enough at first,” he explained with a bitter laugh, “to deceive Clara von Platen. I was pretending to you. I had all my wits at my disposal to hoodwink her. I was playing very carefully a game, and the prize if I won was — what? Not you, dearest, but my own selfish salvation — a salvation worse than damnable for it was to be gained by cheating you.”
Sophia sat by his side without a movement, without a word. Was there one touch to be added which would make him less odious and yet be true, he wondered? Perhaps one.
“But the plan didn’t remain unchanged,” he continued. “For I was changing. I couldn’t be with you and not change. There was a night when His Highness George Louis was at cards when you bore yourself with so fine a pride that myself and my trumpery obsessions became of no account. There was an evening when I bade you farewell in the garden of Herrenhausen. I was no longer pretending. As I drove back to Hanover I passed the lighted windows of Monplaisir. I was expected. I drove on. I could not sully those few stolen minutes by the white statues under the trees. The memory of those minutes was a wonder, a glory all through my campaign in the Morea. I could not have endured but for it, but for the promise it held out... And on a night in Celle a spark was struck, a flame was kindled, a soul was born in me.”
“That night?” his mistress whispered.
“Yes. Before that night it was all yearning and adoration. I lived in moonshine. Afterwards it was knowledge that without you I was a log of wood on a stream, that however we might quarrel,” and he laughed a little at memories of jibing letters which they had exchanged, “we must be together. I won my own miserable little victory — I had proof of it the next day as I rode out of Celle — but I won something more, a soul. Earth to earth, my dear, flesh and blood beating with flesh and blood, and a soul sprang to life. And the first fruits of it were on the tree the next morning — the sure conviction that I must make to you my confession as I have been doing tonight.”
With a sudden movement he dropped upon his knees in front of her and laid his head down upon her lap.
“Forgive me!” he pleaded. “Shrive me!”
After a little while he felt the touch of her hand upon his hair. She stooped over him. In a voice between laughter and tears she said, “Philip,” in a low voice, and then; �
��Since that night is there one thing men honour which you have not given up for me?”
Ambition, wealth, ease of mind, the world’s regard — all indeed had gone. There was but one thing more which he had to give and he gave it before the night was out.
XXXIV. THE NIGHT OF JULY 1ST:
THE HALL OF THE KNIGHTS
THE ANTE-ROOM WAS in darkness, for Eleonore von Knesebeck had betaken herself to her bed. Sophia took a lighted candle in her hand and led Philip to the outer door.
“Tomorrow then,” she said smiling.
But as she unlatched the door the smile vanished from her face. The corridor was as black as a cellar. She laid a hand upon Philip’s arm to detain him and peered out holding the candle high. Usually a few lamps burned at intervals throughout the Palace until morning. Tonight, whether she looked to right or to left, there were none. She turned back to Philip with a shiver of dismay.
“All the lights are out,” she said in a whisper.
“You must not lose your sleep for that,” Philip answered lightly. “The Palace is empty but for His Highness and yourself. A servant has been too officious, or too careless.”
He was thinking: “Fear is too often the unwanted third with us. It is always at our elbow spoiling our lives. Thank God we take leave of it tomorrow.”
He added aloud.
“I could find my way, dearest, blindfolded.”
But Sophia was not content.
“I’ll light you to the stair,” she said.
“Quickly then,” Philip answered.
They passed along the corridor to the stair head.
“So,” he said and she held the candle out over the balustrade as he went down the steps. As the bend he looked up.
“Go back, darling.”
For a moment she stood looking down upon her lover, the heavy coils of her hair tumbled about her face, her dark eyes shining, her rose-red mouth smiling tenderly. Then she turned and went back to her rooms. Königsmark waited until the light quite died away and he heard her door gently closed. Then feeling for the treads with his feet he descended in the darkness. The little door upon the river faced the foot of the stairs. A few steps and his hands touched the panels. He found the handle and turned it, but the door did not open. He pulled upon it harder and it still remained shut. The same patrol which had extinguished the lamps had locked the door and taken away the key.
Philip was annoyed rather than alarmed. His skiff was moored to the steps just outside that door and his cloak was in it. The moment he reached his house he must row down in another boat and tow the skiff back. It was tiresome.
He climbed the stairs again and felt his way along the corridor, treading very lightly. If he disturbed his mistress and she came to the door, he would see her lovely face once more grow haggard and dim as fear rushed into it. He must pass it without a sound. In a little while he knocked against the door which closed in the corridor and his door opened at his touch. But beyond it was still pitch dark. Philip closed the door behind him quietly and stood still whilst he counted up the long rooms he must cross, the arrangement of the furniture and the positions of the doors. First came the Concert Hall, next the Red Room, beyond that the Gold Room, so called from the heavy decoration of its ceiling. A smaller ladies’ drawing-room, the Light Blue Room joined that and led to the Thistle Room, which got its name from the inlay of thistles in the parquet flooring. Farther on the great Throne Room stretched to the dancing hall and once there, he was almost at the end of his itinerary. A turn at a right angle leftwards and he reached the vestibule of the Knights’ Hall. Halfway down the vestibule there was a great chimney on the left hand and facing the chimney the door of the Knights’ Hall. Inside that door he must turn sharply to the right and walk the whole length of the hall. But just beyond a circular staircase wound down to a porch giving on to the garden. Once in the garden he had but to choose his moment and climb the wall into the Leine street and so to his house. If he met anyone on the way, no doubt his appearance would seem odd. It was not usual for so well dressed a gentleman to be seen tramping the streets in the middle of the night without a hat for his head or a cloak to cover his finery. But he must take his chance of that.
He advanced cautiously. Heavy curtains shrouded the windows. The moon had set. There was nowhere a glimmer of light. But for the closeness of the air, he might have been wandering in some illimitable desert. He reached the Thistle Room without misadventure, but when he was halfway across it he bruised his leg against a heavy chair and stumbled on his knee. The noise of his fall sounded in his ears loud as the crack of thunder. He stayed on his knee, his heart hammering at his breast. He expected a clamour of torches, the gleam of swords in the red light. The noise must have roused the sentries at the Elector’s door, nay the Elector himself in his bed. But the seconds passed. It had roused no one.
Philip got on to his feet again and now he used even a greater care than he had used before. He crossed the ballroom and at last away upon his left a light glimmered. He turned towards it and stopped. In front of him was the lobby of the Rittersaal. Its high doors stood open but the light was not burning there. It was burning in the big Rittersaal at the side, an unearthly, bluish, flickering light like nothing that he had seen — like the soul of a man at the point of death. As that strange image crept into Philip’s thoughts, he shivered and felt the hair stir upon his scalp.
But by a natural reaction the mere knowledge that he shivered restored his courage. Terror, then, was as close to his elbow, as it was to Sophia’s? It leaped at them from every obscure corner. Together they could meet and defeat it. Alone each one was its prey. A dark corridor assured his mistress of disaster, a wavering pale flame set him quaking in his shoes. Then the sooner his coach was carrying them side by side down the road to Brunswick, the better for them both. But to fetch that desirable moment he must cross the Rittersaal, where no doubt some torch had been left forgotten to gutter down to its socket on the wall, or some expiring lamp in a broken glass was fluttering in a draught. For however intently he listened he could not hear a sound.
He walked forward noiselessly, but as he approached the lobby the light colour of his dress began to gleam. He came out from the darkness, first a mere patch of whiteness against the black, then the wraith of a man, the wraith which he was so soon to be, and finally the man himself, splendid and young. On the threshold of the lobby he stopped again. He had a fancy that quite close to him there were people breathing very quietly. But he knew that if a man stands in the dark, even in the emptiest space of earth, long enough he will hear not merely a sound of breathing but voices, faint as sighs, whispering at his ears. Philip took two quick silent steps into the lobby and learned that tonight he was wrong. For behind his shoulder he caught the unmistakable flash of steel. The dark corridors — the locked door — the flickering blue light, a will o’ the wisp to lure him on! He had fallen into a trap.
He turned with the swiftness of a snake and his sword was already in his hand. He was as cold as ice now. Illusions of darkness, forebodings — they had gone like smoke. He had two men between him and the lobby doorway. Well, he was not going back that way. They had heavy serviceable broadswords, he only his dress-rapier, a pretty, slender toy with a jewelled hilt. His only chance lay in the speed of his attack. He sprang to one side, avoided a thrust and lunged. The point of his rapier pierced an arm just below the shoulder. He heard a cry of pain and out of the great swords clattered on the floor. He parried a cut by the second of his assailants and sprang forward aiming at his throat. But the soldier whose arm he had pierced lurched against him and his thrust rang against a corselet. At the same moment he saw two others rush out from the angle of the chimney. They were behind him and as he turned towards them, one of them beat down his guard, and the blade of his rapier snapped close in his hand. With a cry of rage he tried to dash the hilt into the man’s face, but his companion caught him from behind by the arms and drew him back, whilst the second of the two at the lobby door drove his
sword deep into his chest.
All through the few seconds of the attack, Philip had been aware of a woman shouting from somewhere near in a hard shrill voice.
“Strike, you cowards! Strike hard! Down with the traitor! On the ground with him! Bind his arms and legs!”
Philip staggered. He was flung down upon the floor, the hilt of his rapier was wrenched from his grasp. He lay for a moment stunned, with the blood welling from his chest, whilst two of the soldiers stooped over him busy with their cords; and all the while this woman kept up her frenzied cries.
“Don’t let him escape! On your lives! He’s the lowest of criminals. Twist the cords tighter round those arms.”
As Königsmark felt the bite of the cords, he struggled and writhed and lifted himself on to one knee. But he was flung down again with a violence which forced a groan of torture from his lips.
“Now in here with him! Be quick! I never saw such clumsy fools.”
Philip was dragged across the floor into the Hall of the Knights and tossed down at Clara von Platen’s feet, as if he had been a bundle of draperies for her inspection. He was dazed and each breath that he drew hurt him like the stab of a knife. He saw a woman — or a witch — darkly robed, holding a lighted candle above her head and stooping down over him. She was watching with an atrocious glee the blood bubbling out through the velvet and lace at his breast and dripping into a little red pool upon the floor. Fredegonda! The name floated into Philip’s confused mind. Fredegonda the Cruel — yes! Once he had seen Fredegonda. And yet how could he, since she had died centuries ago? If only that heavy sword hadn’t cut so damnably, so agonisingly deep! It was very important that he should solve this problem of Fredegonda — although he was in such outrageous pain that he was inclined to wonder whether that or anything else were worth the trouble of trying to think. Fredegonda in an arbour? Of all the strange places... and then suddenly the whirl of his brain ceased and he saw with clear eyes.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 725