“Oh, Monsieur Maurice!” I cried, “are you in earnest?”
For in truth it seemed almost too good to be true. But Monsieur Maurice was
in earnest, and we went--closely followed by the sentry.
It was a beautiful, sunny April day. We went down the terraces and slopes;
and in and out of the flower-beds, now gaudy with Spring flowers; and on to
the great central point whence the three avenues diverged. Here we rested
on a bench under a lime-tree, not far from the huge stone basin where the
fountain played every Sunday throughout the Summer, and the sleepy
water-lilies rocked to and fro in the sunshine.
All was very quiet. A gardener went by now and then, with his wheelbarrow,
or a gamekeeper followed by his dogs; a blackbird whistled low in the
bushes; a cow-bell tinkled in the far distance; the wood-pigeons murmured
softly in the plantations. Other passers-by, other sounds there were
none--save when a noisy party of flaxen-haired, bare-footed children came
whooping and racing along, but turned suddenly shy and silent at sight of
Monsieur Maurice sitting under the lime-tree.
The sentry, meanwhile, took up his position against the pedestal of a
mutilated statue close by, and leaned upon his musket.
Monsieur Maurice was at first very silent. Once or twice he closed his
eyes, as if listening to the gentle sounds upon the air--once or twice he
cast an uneasy glance in the direction of the sentry; but for a long time
he scarcely moved or spoke.
At length, as if following up a train of previous thought, he said
suddenly:--
“There is no liberty. There are comparative degrees of captivity, and
comparative degrees of slavery; but of liberty, our social system knows
nothing but the name. That sentry, if you asked him, would tell you that
he is free. He pities me, perhaps, for being a prisoner. Yet he is even
less free than myself. He is the slave of discipline. He must walk, hold up
his head, wear his hair, dress, eat, and sleep according to the will of his
superiors. If he disobeys, he is flogged. If he runs away, he is shot. At
the present moment, he dares not lose sight of me for his life. I have
done him no wrong; yet if I try to escape, it is his duty to shoot me.
What is there in my captivity to equal the slavery of his condition? I
cannot, it is true, go where I please; but, at least, I am not obliged to
walk up and down a certain corridor, or in front of a certain sentry-box,
for so many hours a day; and no power on earth could compel me to kill an
innocent man who had never harmed me in his life.”
In an instant I had the whole scene before my eyes--Monsieur Maurice
flying--pursued--shot down--brought back to die!
“But--but you won't try to run away, Monsieur Maurice!” I cried, terrified
at the picture my own fancy had drawn.
He darted a scrutinising glance at me, and said, after a moment's
hesitation:--
“If I intended to do so, petite, I should hardly tell Colonel Bernhard's
little daughter beforehand. Besides, why should I care now for liberty?
What should I do with it? Have I not lost all that made it worth
possessing--the Hero I worshipped, the Cause I honoured, the home I loved,
the woman I adored? What better place for me than a prison ... unless the
grave?”
He roused himself. He had been thinking aloud, unconscious of my presence;
but seeing my startled eyes fixed full upon his face, he smiled, and said
with a sudden change of voice and manner:--
“Go pluck me that namesake of yours over yonder--the big white Marguerite
on the edge of the grass plat. Thanks, petite. Now I'll be sworn you guess
what I am going to do with it! No? Well, I am going to question these
little sibylline leaves, and make the Marguerite tell me whether I am
destined to a prison all the days of my life. What! you never heard of the
old flower sortilége? Why, Gretchen, I thought every little German maiden
learned it in the cradle with her mother tongue!”
“But how can the Marguerite answer you, Monsieur Maurice?” I exclaimed.
“You shall see--but I must tell you first that the flower is not used to
pronounce upon such serious matters. She is the oracle of village lads and
lasses--not of grave prisoners like myself.”
And with this, half sadly, half playfully, he began stripping the leaves
off one by one, and repeating over and over again:--
“Tell me, sweet Marguerite, shall I be free?
Soon--in time--perhaps--never! Soon--in time--perhaps--never!
Soon--in time--perhaps--”
It was the last leaf.
“Pshaw!” he said, tossing away the stalk with an impatient laugh. “You
could have given me as good an answer as that, little Gretchen. Let us go
in.”
8
It was about a week after this when I was startled out of my deepest
midnight sleep by a rush of many feet, and a fierce and sudden knocking at
my father's bed-room door--the door opposite my own.
I sat up, trembling. A bright blaze gleamed along the threshold, and high
above the clamour of tongues outside, I recognised my father's voice,
quick, sharp, imperative. Then a door was opened and banged. Then came the
rush of feet again--then silence.
It was a strange, wild hubbub; and it had all come, and gone, and was over
in less than a minute. But what was it?
Seeing that fiery line along the threshold, I had thought for a moment
that the Château was on fire; but the light vanished with those who
brought it, and all was darkness again.
“Bertha!” I cried tremulously. “Bertha!”
Now Bertha was my Rhenish hand-maiden, and she slept in a closet opening
off my room; but Bertha was as deaf to my voice as one of the Seven
Sleepers.
Suddenly a shrill trumpet-call rang out in the courtyard.
I sprang out of bed, flew to Bertha, and shook her with all my strength
till she woke.
“Bertha! Bertha!” I cried. “Wake up--strike a light--dress me quickly! I
must know what is the matter!”
In vain Bertha yawns, rubs her eyes, protests that I have had a bad dream,
and that nothing is the matter. Get up she must; dress herself and me in
the twinkling of an eye; and go upon whatsoever dance I choose to lead her.
My father is gone, and his door stands wide open. We turn to the stairs,
and a cold wind rushes up in our faces. We go down, and find the side-door
that leads to the courtyard unfastened and ajar. There is not a soul in
the courtyard. There is not the faintest glimmer of light from the
guard-house windows. The sentry who walks perpetually to and fro in front
of the gate is not at his post; and the gate is wide open!
Even Bertha sees by this time that something strange is afoot, and stares
at me with a face of foolish wonder.
“Ach, Herr Gott!” she cries, clapping her hands together, “what's that?”
It is very faint, very distant; but quite audible in the dead silence of
the night. In an instant I know what it is that has happened!
“It is the report of a musket!” I exclaim, seizing her by the hand, and
dragging her across the courtyard. “Quick! quick! Oh, Monsieur Maurice!
Monsieur Maurice!”
The night is very dark. There is no moon, and the stars, glimmering through
a veil of haze, give little light. But we run as recklessly as if it were
bright day, past the barracks, past the parade-ground, and round to the
great gates on the garden side of the Château. These, however, are closed,
and the sentry, standing watchful and motionless, with his musket made
ready, refuses to let us through.
In vain I remind him that I am privileged, and that none of these gates are
ever closed against me. The man is inexorable.
“No, Fräulein Gretchen,” he says, “I dare not. This is not a fit hour for
you to be out. Pray go home.”
“But Gaspar, good Gaspar,” I plead, clinging to the gate with both hands,
“tell me if he has escaped! Hark; oh, hark! there it is again!”
And another, and another shot rings through the still night-air.
The sentry almost stamps with impatience.
“Go home, dear little Fräulein! Go home at once,” he says. “There is danger
abroad to-night. I cannot leave my post, or I would take you home
myself.... Holy Saint Christopher! they are coming this way! Go--go--what
would his Excellency the Governor say, if he found you here?”
I see quick gleams of wandering lights among the trees--I hear a distant
shout! Then, seized by a sudden panic, I turn and fly, with Bertha at my
heels--fly back the way I came, never pausing till I find myself once more
at the courtyard gate. Here--breathless, trembling, panting--I stop to
listen and look back. All is silent;--as silent as before.
“But, liebe Gretchen,” says Bertha, as breathless as myself, “what is to do
to-night?”
There is a coming murmur on the air. There is a red glow reflected on the
barrack windows ... they are coming! I turn suddenly cold and giddy.
“Hush, Bertha!” I whisper, “we must not stay here. Papa will be angry! Let
us go up to the corridor window.”
So we go back into the house, upstairs the way we came, and station
ourselves at the corridor window, which looks into the courtyard.
Slowly the glow broadens; slowly the sound resolves itself into an
irregular tramp of many feet and a murmur of many voices.
Then suddenly the courtyard is filled with soldiers and lighted torches,
and ... and I clasp my hands over my eyes in an agony of terror, lest the
picture I drew a few days since should be coming true.
“What do you see, Bertha?” I falter. “Do you--do you see Monsieur Maurice?”
“No, but I see Gottlieb Kolb, and Corporal Fritz, and ... yes--here is
Monsieur Maurice between two soldiers, and his Excellency the Colonel
walking beside them!”
I looked up, and my heart gave a leap of gladness. He was not dead--he was
not even wounded! He had been pursued and captured; but at least he was
safe!
They stopped just under the corridor window. The torchlight fell full upon
their faces. Monsieur Maurice looked pale and composed; perhaps just a
shade haughtier than usual. My father had his drawn sword in his hand.
“Corporal Fritz,” he said, turning to a soldier near him, “conduct the
prisoner to his room, and post two sentries at his door, and one under his
windows.” Then turning to Monsieur Maurice, “I thank God, Sir,” he said
gravely, “that you have not paid for your imprudence with your life. I
have the honour to wish you good night.”
Monsieur Maurice ceremoniously took off his hat.
“Good night, Colonel Bernhard,” he said. “I beg you, however, to remember
that I had withdrawn my parole.”
“I remember it, Monsieur Maurice,” replied my father, drawing himself up,
and returning the salutation.
Monsieur Maurice then crossed the courtyard with his guards, and entered
the Château by the door leading to the state apartments. My father, after
standing for a moment as if lost in thought, turned away and went over to
the guard-house.
The soldiers then dispersed, or gathered into little knots of twos and
threes, and talked in low voices of the events of the night.
“Accomplices!” said one, just close against the window where Bertha and I
still lingered. “Liebe Mutter! I'll take my oath he had one! Why, it was I
who first caught sight of the prisoner gliding through the trees--I saw
him as plainly as I see you now--I covered him with my musket--I wouldn't
have given a copper pfennig for his life, when paff! at the very moment I
pulled the trigger, out steps a fellow from behind my shoulder, knocks up
my musket, and disappears like a flash of lightning--Heaven only knows
where, for I never laid eyes on him again!”
“What was he like?” asks another soldier, incredulously.
“Like? How should I know? It was as dark as pitch. I just caught a glimpse
of him in the flash of the powder--an ugly, brown-looking devil he seemed!
but he was gone in a breath, and I had no time to look for him.”
The soldiers round about burst out laughing.
“Hold, Karl!” says one, slapping him boisterously on the shoulder. “You are
a good shot, but you missed aim for once. No need to conjure up a brown
devil to account for that, old comrade!”
Karl, finding his story discredited, retorted angrily; and a quarrel was
fast brewing, when the sergeant on guard came up and ordered the men to
their several quarters.
“Holy Saint Bridget!” said Bertha, shivering, “how cold it is! and there, I
declare, is the Convent clock striking half after one! Liebe Gretchen, you
really must go to bed--what would your father say?”
So we both crept back to bed. Bertha was asleep again almost before she had
laid her head upon her pillow; but I lay awake till dawn of day.
9
It was in my father's disposition to be both strict and indulgent--that is
to say, as a father he was all tenderness, and as a soldier all discipline.
His men both loved and feared him; but I, who never had cause to fear him
in my life, loved him with all my heart, and never thought of him except as
the fondest of parents. Chiefly, perhaps, for my sake, he had up to this
time been extremely indulgent in all that regarded Monsieur Maurice. Now,
however, he conceived that it was his duty to be indulgent no longer. He
was responsible for the person of Monsieur Maurice, and Monsieur Maurice
had attempted to escape; from this moment, therefore, Monsieur Maurice must
be guarded, hedged in, isolated, like any other prisoner under similar
circumstances--at all events until further instructions should arrive from
Berlin. So my father, as it was his duty to do, wrote straightway to the
Minister of War, doubled all previous precautions, and forbade me to go
near the prisoner's rooms on any pretext whatever.
I neither coaxed nor pleaded. I had an instinctive feeling that the thing
was inevitable, and that I had nothing to do but to suffer and obey. And I
did suffer bitterly. Day after day, I hung about the terraces under his
windows, watching for the glimpse that hardly ever came. Night after night
I sobbed till I was tired, and fell asleep with his name upon my lips. It
was a childish grief; but not therefore the less poignant. It was a
childish love, too; necessarily transient and irrational, as such childish
passions are; but not therefore the less real. The dull web of my later
life has not been without its one golden thread of romance (alas! how long
since tarnished!), but not even that dream has left a deeper scar upon my
memory than did the hero-worship of my first youth. It was something more
than love; it was adoration. To be with him was measureless content--to be
banished from him was something akin to despair.
So Monsieur Maurice and his little Gretchen were parted. No more happy
French lessons--no more walks--no more stories told by the firelight in the
gloaming! All was over; all was blank. But for how long? Surely not for
ever!
“Perhaps the king will think fit to hand him over to some other gaoler,”
said my father one day; “and, by Heaven! I'd thank him more heartily for
that boon than for the order of the Red Eagle!”
My heart sank at the thought. Many and many a time had I pictured to myself
what it would be if he were set at liberty, and with what mingled joy and
grief I should bid him good-bye; but it had never occurred to me as a
possibility that he might be transferred to another prison-house.
Thus a week--ten days--a fortnight went by, and still there came nothing
from Berlin. I began to hope at last that nothing would come, and that
matters would settle down in time, and be as they were before. But of such
vain hopes I was speedily and roughly disabused; and in this wise.
It was a gloomy afternoon--one of those dun-coloured afternoons that seem
all the more dismal for coming in the midst of Spring. I had been out of
the way somewhere (wandering to and fro, I believe, like a dreary little
ghost, among the grim galleries of the state apartments), and was going
home at dusk to be in readiness for my father, who always came in after
the afternoon parade. Coming up the passage out of which our rooms opened,
I heard voices--my father's and another. Concluding that he had Corporal
Fritz with him, I went in unhesitatingly. To my surprise, I found the lamp
lighted, and a strange officer sitting face to face with my father at the
table.
The stranger was in the act of speaking; my father listening, with a grave,
intent look upon his face.
... “and if he had been shot, Colonel Bernhard, the State would have been
well rid of a troublesome burden.”
My father saw me in the doorway, put up his hand with a warning gesture,
and said hastily:--
“You here, Gretchen! Go into the dining-room, my child, till I send for
you.”
The dining-room, as I have said elsewhere, opened out of the sitting-room
which also served for my father's bureau. I had therefore to cross the
room, and so caught a full view of the stranger's face. He was a sallow,
dark man, with iron grey hair cut close to his head, a hard mouth, a cold
grey eye, and a deep furrow between his brows. He wore a blue military
frock buttoned to the chin; and a plain cocked hat lay beside his gloves
upon the table.
I went into the dining-room and closed the door. It was half-door,
half-window, the upper panels being made of ground glass, so as to let in a
borrowed light; for the little room was at all times somewhat of the
darkest. Such as it was, this borrowed light was now all I had; for the
dining-room fire had gone out hours ago, and though there were candles on
the chimney-piece, I had no means of lighting them. So I groped my way to
the first chair I could find, and waited my father's summons.
“And if he had been shot, Colonel Bernhard, the State would have been well
rid of a troublesome burden.”
It was all I had heard; but it was enough to set me thinking. “If he had
been shot”.... If who had been shot? My fears answered that question but
too readily. Who, then, was this new-comer? Was he from Berlin? And if from
Berlin, what orders did he bring? A vague terror of coming evil fell upon
me. I trembled--I held my breath. I tried to hear what was being said, but
in vain. The voices in the next room went on in a low incessant murmur;
but of that murmur I could not distinguish a word.
Then the sounds swelled a little, as if the speakers were becoming more
earnest. And then, forgetting all I had ever heard or been taught about the
heinousness of eavesdropping, I got up very softly and crept close against
the door.
“That is to say, you dislike the responsibility, Colonel Bernhard.”
These were the first words I heard.
“I dislike the office,” said my father, bluntly. “I'd almost as soon be a
hangman as a gaoler.”
The stranger here said something that my ear failed to catch. Then my
father spoke again.
“To tell you the truth, Herr Count, I only wish it would please His
Excellency to transfer him elsewhere.”
The stranger paused a moment, and then said in a low but very distinct
voice:--
“Supposing, Colonel Bernhard, that you were yourself transferred--shall we
say to Königsberg? Would you prefer it to Brühl?”
“Königsberg!” exclaimed my father in a tone of profound amazement.
“The appointment, I believe, is worth six hundred thalers a year more than
Brühl,” said the stranger.
“But it has never been offered to me,” said my father, in his simple
straightforward way. “Of course I should prefer it--but what of that? And
what has Königsberg to do with Monsieur Maurice?”
“Ah, true--Monsieur Maurice! Well, to return then to Monsieur Maurice--how
would it be, do you think, somewhat to relax the present vigilance?”
“To relax it?”
“To leave a door or a window unguarded now and then, for instance. In
short, to--to provide certain facilities ... you understand?”
“Facilities?” exclaimed my father, incredulously. “Facilities for escape?”
“Well--yes; if you think fit to put it so plainly,” replied the other, with
a short little cough, followed by a snap like the opening and shutting of
a snuff-box.
“But--but in the name of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, why wait for the man
to run away? Why not give him his liberty, and get rid of him pleasantly?”
“Because--ahem!--because, you see, Colonel Bernhard, it would not then be
possible to pursue him,” said the stranger, drily.
“To pursue him?”
“Just so--and to shoot him.”
I heard the sound of a chair pushed violently back; and my father's shadow,
vague and menacing, started up with him, and fell across the door.
“What?” he shouted, in a terrible voice. “Are you taking me at my word? Are
you offering me the hangman's office?”