uttered; the ladies took up their candles, curtsied and waited for the
Princess to precede them upstairs.
She, as always, went up to her cold, unadorned room, was undressed
and dismissed the ladies, then stood by the great bed with the blue
tapestry curtains and sent for Madame von Arlestein.
To-night she did not get into bed; she put on a blue bed-gown and went
to the fire that blazed, log on log, in the open hearth, but could not
do more than warm a portion of the huge draughty room.
This bedroom had been hers ever since she had been at Schloss Ahlden,
and nothing in it had been altered.
The bed stood out into the room facing the fireplace, shrouded with
heavy curtains and heavy draperies; either side was a sconce of silver
holding five candles against the wooden walls, at the foot was a long
casket for clothes and either side of that a leather chair with a
fringe round the seat.
The door was to the right of the bed, the mullioned windows to the
left; they were hung with dark curtains and before each of them were
two more of the formal chairs.
In the corner beyond the windows was a plain dressing-table holding a
few toilet articles, and behind it hung a mirror in a tortoiseshell
frame.
Before the fireplace were a chair with arms in which Sophia Dorothea
now sat and a stool.
Beyond the fireplace were a desk and an upright press for clothes.
On the polished floor lay a worn carpet; the ceiling hung low and dark;
above the mantelshelf stood another mirror, and four candles and a
clock were reflected in its murky depths.
Firelight and candlelight together caught the shadow of the woman in
the chair and flung it large and leaping over wall and ceiling.
At her usual time, neither a minute early nor a minute late, Madame von
Arlestein entered.
Her head was swathed in black lace and her shoulders in a black shawl;
her black skirts were wide and stiff and rustling. She held a length of
fine white muslin that she had been embroidering for twenty years.
As always, she seated herself on the stool, and the delicate needle,
guided by her wrinkled hands, flew in and out the embroidery that was
beginning to be yellow with age.
Sophia Dorothea sat erect in her chair, the black hair, streaked with
white as with powder, hung, still thick in the ruins of its beauty,
about her shoulders. The firelight softened and warmed the sharp lines
of her face and gave a sparkle to her still glorious eyes.
“Annette,” she said, “I have been thinking of Philip von Königsmarck
to-night.”
The old woman looked up from her eternal sewing.
“Oh, Madame,” she answered, “you have not spoken that name for many,
many years.”
“Not for thirty-two years,” said the Princess. “I know exactly.”
“Why now?” asked Annette von Arlestein.
“Have you forgotten him?” counter-questioned Sophia Dorothea.
“No.”
“You remember it all?”
“All!”
“It seems very near to-night,” said the Princess.
“Yes, I thought so too.”
The old woman broke her invariable custom and laid her sewing down in
her lap and looked at her mistress.
“Perhaps death is coming to one of us,” added Sophia Dorothea. “We are
both old. My death would be a relief to a great many. Even you would
not be sorry, Annette.”
She spoke knowing that Annette von Arlestein had not shared her
imprisonment from any love or duty, but from necessity. She was as much
a prisoner as her mistress. It had been decreed that she who had shared
the shame should share the punishment.
“It is too late,” said the Countess. “Twenty years ago I might have
wished you would die. Twenty years ago I might have cursed you.”
The quenchless dark eyes gleamed across at her.
“You would not have stayed if you could have gone. No one else did.”
Annette von Arlestein gave a toothless smile.
“No, I should have gone–when I was younger. Life is dull here.”
Sophia gave her a ghastly look.
“Yes, it is dull.”
A storm was blowing without. The wind cast the rain in gouts on the
window; it dripped from the leads and splashed down the wide chimney in
heavy drops that hissed on the logs.
“Why do you not finish your sewing?” asked the Princess. “I have never
seen you sit idle before.”
“Why did you mention Count von Königsmarck?” replied Madame von
Arlestein. “I have never heard you speak of him before.”
“Every night lately I have been thinking of him. You know that.”
“Yes, I know that.”
Like an angry stranger demanding admission, the rain surged at the
window and the faded curtains rose and fell in the wind.
“Annette,” said Sophia Dorothea, “why have we lived, you and I? We
could have died, you know. There was the moat, or a table-knife–or a
bed-cord. But we lived.”
“I suppose,” answered the old woman, “we hoped.”
“_Mein Gott!_ We hoped!”
The Countess looked across at her with dim eyes that seemed to glimmer
with malice. “But now–if _he_ died to-morrow, it would be too late.
There is no more enjoyment for you in this world.”
“No more for me of anything,” said her mistress calmly. “Königsmarck is
dead and youth is dead.”
“Why are we talking of this?” asked the old woman peevishly, “when we
have been silent so long?”
“I do not know. Get on with your embroidery.”
“_Der Herr Jesus!_ Why should I finish this work? Who will wear it?”
“Talk, then, talk,” said Sophia Dorothea. “Something is different
to-night.”
“It is the rain,” nodded the old woman. Her monstrous shadow wavered
behind her like a giant impotently threatening.
“It is memory,” answered the Princess. She relaxed in her chair. Her
arms, still lovely but colourless as the limbs of the dead, showed
where the wide sleeves of dull blue fell apart, and her hands, almost
inhumanly slender, clasped the polished knobs of the chair-arms. “Was I
beautiful–that night?” she said. “I scarcely knew it.”
Annette von Arlestein looked at the ruined face, pale beneath the grey
locks, the thin bare throat, the sunk dark eyes, the lined mouth. “I
can hardly recall what you were,” she muttered; “I can hardly think you
are the same.”
A veil seemed to drop over her eyes; she too was remembering.
“Annette,” said the Princess, “do you think _he_ has been just to me?”
“It is so long ago,” whispered the Countess.
“_He_ has enjoyed these thirty-two years,” replied Sophia Dorothea. “He
is an old man now; he cannot be very far off answering to judgment. I
wonder what God will think of what he has done to me.”
The Countess chuckled. Neither of these women had drawn nearer
Heaven themselves during their captivity, no thoughts of spiritual
consolations had sweetened the bitterness of their earthly punishment
and no repentance had softened their hearts.
“There has always been one prick in his side,” said Annette von
Arlestein. “He was never _sure_–he had no _proof_. There has been a
doubt with him all his life. He will never know.”
“No one knows but you and I,” answered the Princess. She leant forward
and looked into the fire. “How I hate him!” she said slowly. “What is
he doing at this moment–the King of England–that cold, hideous man?”
“If curses could have blighted him,” mumbled the old Countess angrily,
“mine had done it long ago. When he sent me here I still had blood in
my veins; I enjoyed the world–I had my plans, and schemes, my pleasant
seasons—”
The Princess rose; her figure was yet erect and graceful; the warm
lights and shades touched it to youthful curves.
“Was there anything in the marriage service,” she said, “to say that he
should take his pleasures and his loves where he would and that I must
never look beyond my wedding ring?”
She held out her left hand and looked at the mocking symbol on her
finger placed there forty-six years ago by the man who held her captive
now.
“You might have had more of life,” said the Countess. “The punishment
could not have been greater if you had changed your fancies as he
changed his!” She laughed silently, as if it pleased her to think how
her mistress had been cheated.
There was a pause of silence, broken only by the gusty descent of the
rain on the window and the splashing of the drops on the glowing logs.
Sophia Dorothea closed her eyes.
“Do you remember,” she murmured, and her expression was greedy as
the expression of one glimpsing the food he is famishing for, “that
night–how _young_ I was?”
“Do I remember? It was the last thing that ever happened to me,”
answered Annette von Arlestein.
Before the mental vision of both the tragedy that had been lying
silently in their hearts so long loomed suddenly clear and distinct,
as if it had happened yesterday. There was silence.
They saw the scene before them as if they had not been actors in it.
A luxurious bedroom, a white and gilt imitation of Versailles, filled
with elegant furniture, fashionable toilet articles and splendid
clothes, a bed of white satin and many mirrors–this was what they both
saw.
All was brilliant, pretty and cheerful.
At the foot of the bed stood a beautiful woman, Sophia Dorothea,
opulent in charms and happiness; her black hair rolled in curls between
a braid of pearls and fell on her soft shoulders. White and crimson
mingled ravishingly in her face and her dark eyes were soft, yet
sparkling.
She wore a gown of white brocade, cut low on the bosom and laced across
the muslin shift with a pink cord; the skirt was embroidered with
little wreaths of blue roses; the petticoat glimmered with gold thread.
The candles were lit.
Near her stood a handsome creature, Annette von Arlestein, full of
sparkle and daring, in a violet gown; she held a blue quilted cloak. On
the peach-coloured lining the candle light flickered up and down.
They were both listening … waiting.…
“Then you put the cloak on me,” said the Princess, “and we thought we
were so safe–_he_ being away–and I went downstairs.”
Madame von Arlestein saw it–the lovely figure muffled in the dark
cloak, creeping down the wide, dark stairs, while she stood at the head
with a candle, ready to put her hand over it at the slightest sound.
“Then you followed, Annette, to keep watch. I was a fool to go, but he
had to leave soon, and I was mad to see him.”
“And the Elector was coming home the next day,” added the old woman.
Another scene rose before them: the vast dark kitchens beneath the
dining-hall that opened on to the back entrance to the palace.
This room was underground, but was lit by the perpetual fire that burnt
in the huge grate.
And then, to the memory of both, came the most tragic figure in the
tragedy. In the glow of the great fire stood a young man, Philip von
Königsmarck, one of a wild and unfortunate family; his brother Charles
and his sister Aurora were sadly known to fame, but neither had a fate
so dark as his.… Wind and rain increased in violence and swept and
howled round the towers of Schloss Ahlden and beat in at the draughty
window of the Princess’s bedroom.
She put her hands over her eyes; memory was becoming so strong that she
felt herself back in that moment she had not talked of for thirty-two
years.
“The kitchen was very large,” she said, “and he stood waiting for me.
Do you remember him, Annette?”
“_Herr Jesus!_” muttered the old woman. “He had on a great
coat–light–and black satins under it and high soft boots and a little
useless sword with a steel tassle–and a steinkirk cravat. They were
fashionable that year, pulled through the buttonhole of the waistcoat—”
The Princess did not move her hand from her eyes; she saw all these
details. She saw more; she saw the young Swede’s passionate face, his
deep blue eyes, the cluster of his blonde hair on his brow.
“You stood at the door,” she said, “and we both forgot you, and then—”
Annette remembered.
The bright young beauty had gone straight to her lover’s arms, and
without a word they had kissed.
Then he had drawn her to the settle, and she had sat beside him,
loosening her cloak, and on her throat, her shoulders, her arms he had
kissed her again.
And presently he had gone on his knees and kissed her gown and her
cloak and her hands.
The while they never spoke a word, and the Countess von Arlestein
watched by the big door.
“You did not hear them come,” said the Princess, dropping her hand from
her eyes.
“No,” answered the old woman. “The first I knew of them was when the
door opened—”
They could both see that too, in their memory–the door opening on
Prince Georg, whose pale eyes saw the Electress in the arms of Philip
von Königsmarck while his lips rested on her brow.
A woman had betrayed them: a jealous woman enamoured of the young Count
had brought the Elector back a day before he was due and sent him here
to the kitchens, which the spy had discovered was the meeting-place.
Sophia Dorothea remembered how she had lifted her head from her lover’s
shoulder to see her husband standing within the door, four officers
behind him and a fifth holding Madame von Arlestein.
“I am glad I kissed him again,” she muttered.
“The firelight was full in the room–like this,” said the old woman. Her
blurred eyes gleamed madly; she seemed inspired by her memories. She
got to her feet, and the embroideries fell to the hearth. “He fought
for you–with his silly little court sword–but he was one to four, all
well armed—”
“The Elector held my wrists,” said the Princess, “and I had never known
he was so strong.… I struggled; _Mein Gott_, how fiercely! but I could
not shake his hands.”
“They had me against the wall with a bare blade at my breast, and I
never moved,” added the Countess. “They had him down–then _she_ came
in, the spy, the traitress. ‘Eh, Königsmarck,’ she said (how she had
always hated you!), and she set her heel on his mouth as he writhed—”
“And I cursed her,” whispered Sophia Dorothea, “and I cursed him and
the children I had borne him—”
“Ay, you cursed; but they picked him up and—”
“Stop!” shrieked the Princess. “Have I not lived with that all these
years? He was dead.”
“I hope he was dead,” said the Countess; “but the Elector hoped he was
alive when the oven door was shut. What did _she_ say? ‘This is not
the couch my lord looked for to-night. Your oven takes dainty meat,
Serenity!’”
“I bit his thumb to the bone,” answered the Princess, clutching the
edge of the mantelshelf. “Oh, Jesus, Jesus!”
“Why should the High God hear you?” sneered the old woman.
“I have lain awake at night remembering that I hurt him. He cried out
under his breath, and there was blood on his lace—”
“And he struck you in the face as the others stepped back from the fire
and gave you a vile name—”
“It was the last word he ever spoke to me.”
“Aye,” muttered the Countess, “we were dragged upstairs and cast into a
coach, and no one there ever saw us again nor spoke our names.”
“They drove us through the night to Schloss Ahlden … thirty-two years
ago.”
The Princess paced up and down the hearth.
“I have thought of so many things–if he would have been different, if
he had ever loved me–it was the hate of fourteen years vented then–if
Philip von Königsmarck cursed me when he saw he was trapped.”
She drew a deep breath and put her pallid fingers to her pallid face.
“I kissed him again,” she said, “when all was over—”
With a fumbling gesture Madame von Arlestein groped for her sewing.
“Why do we rip up this?” she asked.
“I have never been kissed since,” added Sophia Dorothea, unheeding.
The Countess pointed a skinny finger at the clock.
“We have never been so late before. Get to your bed, Highness.”
“Not to-night–never since by man, woman nor child–stay with me
to-night.”
“Why should I stay? I want my sleep.”
“Who could sleep to-night? Hark at the rain.”
She moved to the upright press in the corner and opened the doors,
showing a gulf of shadow.
As she stood there with one hand on either wing of the door, she looked
like one peering with calmly curious eyes beyond the portals of the
tomb.
“Why did we recall it all to-night?” whimpered Madame von Arlestein. “I
have lost my needle and the thread is entangled.”
She pulled discontentedly at her sewing.
Sophia Dorothea stepped into the press and sought among the clothes.
“What are you doing?” asked Madame von Arlestein peevishly.
The Princess stepped out of the press with a dress across her arm.
A dress of faded white brocade embroidered with wreaths of blue roses
and a petticoat gleaming dully with tarnished gold thread.
“_Der Herr Jesus!_” cried the Countess.
The Princess closed the press; then she threw off her gown and stood a
wraith-like figure in her white shift.
With a ghastly look she put on the brocade, which rustled drearily as
if it groaned at being drawn from its tomb. She laced it across the
bosom with the pink cord, she spread out the skirts, she shook the
yellow lace into place.
With a steady step she crossed the room to the bed.
“In the firelight, in the firelight, like this, eh, Annette?”
“What has happened to you?” quavered the old woman.
“I do not know,” answered the Princess. “I feel strange to-night,
almost as if hope had come once more; almost as if I should never see
the flats and the road and the Aller again; almost as if I should never
count the plovers again nor drive three miles forth, three miles back
along the Hayden road; almost as if Philip von Königsmarck were near.”
“It is the wind,” said the Countess.
The storm wailed and shuddered without, and splash, splash fell the
rain from the leads.
“It brings the ghosts,” she added. She peered at the clock. “_Mein
Gott!_ It is–_twenty minutes after one_. You should be in bed,” she
added.
“Do you think I have ever slept at the hour of one to two any night of
all the long nights here?” answered Sophia Dorothea. “But this is the
first time I have passed it in this dress–in the firelight.”
“There was a great clock in the corner,” said Madame von Arlestein in
her indistinct, failing voice, “and when they shut him in it was just
striking two.”
“Do you think,” asked the Princess violently, “that I did not hear it?”
She came again to the hearth, moving with the rigidity of age; the
brocade hung loosely on her hollowed form, showing how the soft flesh
that had once filled it out had shrunk and withered.
“What a life mine has been,” she said, standing as if she listened to
the wind; “that one night and thirty-two years to think over it. For I
have never been able to think of anything else, Annette.”
“_Twenty minutes after one_,” mumbled the Countess; “that was the time
you opened the door and stepped into the kitchen—”
The Princess put her hand to her bosom.
“Annette, Annette, are there no spells to conjure him back? But if he
came he would not know us–two old women!”
“Get to bed,” answered the Countess von Arlestein. “I am tired.”
“Go then–leave me,” said her mistress.
The old woman took one of the candles from the mantelpiece; her hand
shook so that the wax ran down the stick and over her fingers.
“One word,” the Princess turned commanding eyes on her. “If I should
die first, Annette, you will never let them know the truth.”
“I have forgotten the truth,” returned the other with something of a
sneer.
“No–you _know_ it–you and I only. Guilty, they say; but some say,
perhaps my son says, innocent. Let it remain unsolved.”
“Whatever I said would not be believed now, and I am older than you; I
shall die first. Oh, content you, Serenity, I shall not speak.”
She moved slowly, a bunchy black figure, towards the door, which she
pulled open on the black corridor.
Holding aloft her candle, she peered into this darkness.
“It is so late; the lights are out,” she quavered, “and I am afraid of
the ghosts in the passages.”
“If _he_ thought in his heart that I might be innocent, it would
trouble him on the day of his death, I think,” said the Princess. She
seated herself in the worn chair. “I feel very cold,” she added.
Madame von Arlestein turned back into the room and let the door swing
to behind her.
“My eyes dazzle with the firelight,” said Sophia Dorothea. “Something
is going to happen–at last.”
“It was speaking of the past,” answered the Countess. “Why did we when
we had been silent so long?”
“I have described a circle,” murmured the Princess, “and I am back
again to that night.”
“You are ill. I will call some one—”
“No,” said her mistress in a terrible voice. “Call no one.”
The Countess replaced the candle on the mantelshelf.
“Will you pray?”
“Why should I pray? My prayers were exhausted long ago.”
Her head drooped to one side.
“Get to your bed,” she added. “Leave me here. The fire is falling out,
and when it is dead I will go to bed. But now I want to keep watch.”
“Keep watch?”
“I am waiting.”
The storm was subsiding; the casements rattled slightly and mournfully
and the rain splashed with a more gentle violence against the panes.
The firelight glimmered along the stiff folds of the white brocade
and sparkled in the tarnished gold threads of the petticoat. Sophia
Dorothea, gaunt and white, was flushed by this warm glow that was
growing fainter and dying as the logs broke and fell into ashes.
For some minutes she sat so; then she looked up at the old woman
leaning over her.
“Remember,” she said, “never tell.”
Utter silence again, save for the mutter of the departing wind and the
patter of the ceasing rain.
“She is ill,” muttered Madame von Arlestein, and hobbled to the door.
She clapped her hands and cried out for help in a feeble voice that
fell uselessly, unheard, into the dark passages of Schloss Ahlden.
Then came a sound that silenced her, the clock striking two.
“_Ach, Gott in Himmel!_” she muttered, cold with fright. “I heard that
oven door closing again—”
She hurried back to her mistress, the clear clang of iron still in her
ears.
Sophia Dorothea lay back in her chair; her face was tilted upwards; she
looked as fresh, as beautiful, as young as on that night thirty-two
years ago. There seemed no white in her hair and her limbs filled
triumphantly the rich brocade.
“I am getting blind,” said Annette von Arlestein, “and this cursed
firelight–but you look as you looked _then_—” She peered closer and
gave a cracked scream.
It was a corpse she stared at; Sophia Dorothea had gone.
THE YELLOW INTAGLIO
GIOVANNI PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA
“D. M. C.
Johannes jacet hic Mirandula caetera morut
Et Tagus et Ganges forsan et Antipodes
Ob. an. sal. McLXXXIII, vix. an. XXXII.
Hieronimus Beninienius ne disiunetus post mortem locus orsa
separet quor animas
In vita coniunxit amor hac humo
supposita ponu curarit
Ob. an. M.D.XXXXII. vix. an. lxxxix Mens. vi.”
_Tablet to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in the Church of St.
Mark, Florence._
Giovanni Pico, Conte della Mirandola, sat at the window of his
apartment; the midday glow of a gentle winter sun was on his face;
against the straight pink-toned marble front of the Palazzo opposite
three dark pines rose and flung their long shadows up the street. The
November sky was clear and cold in colour–the blue of chilly water.
Below in the street was silence, and in the chamber with the dull
terra-cotta walls and sandstone floor was silence too.
Giovanni Pico was ill of slow fever that had long sucked his strength.
He sat in a polished chair with gilt on it, and rested his long white
hands on the sides of it; he wore a straight robe of soft red from his
ears to his ankles; his sleeves were tight, and of gold net over orange
velvet, and fell in embroidered points to his finger tips.
Round the high, close collar of his gown was a fine chain of silver and
amber beads, which, passing several times round his throat, fell to his
waist.
His hair, which was smooth and thick and fair, was parted in the
middle and combed either side of his face; it fell in large curls on
his breast and was finely scented. His countenance was sweet and good
and lovely, the gray eyes large and gentle, the lips calm and sweetly
curved. At present he was very pale, and there was a stillness in his
expression and a motionlessness in his attitude that made his head and
bust look like a carving in tinted alabaster.
The chamber was simple but beautiful. A low bed covered with silk
draperies stood in one corner and near it was a table bearing costly
books and a silver lamp.
On a dark cabinet stood a little broken figure of Tanagra, showing
a dancing woman with a full robe held out; near her was an elusive
glass of blue colour on a milk-white stem, like a bubble trembling to
disperse. Above the bed hung a black crucifix and under it a red light
burned with a quivering flame.