“But--I must have misunderstood you. It is impossible.”
“We have both altogether misunderstood each other, Colonel Bernhard,” said
the stranger, stiffly. “I had supposed you would be willing to serve the
State, even at the cost of some violence to your prejudices.”
“Great God! then you did mean it!” said my father, with a strange horror in
his voice.
“I meant--to serve the King. I also hoped to advance the interests of
Colonel Bernhard,” replied the other, haughtily.
“My sword is the King's--my blood is the King's, to the last drop,” said my
father in great agitation; “but my honour--my honour is my own!”
“Enough, Colonel Bernhard; enough. We will drop the subject.”
And again I heard the little dry cough, and the snap of the snuff-box.
A long silence followed, my father walking to and fro with a quick, heavy
step; the stranger, apparently, still sitting in his place at the table.
“Should you, on reflection, see cause to take a different view of your
duty, Colonel Bernhard,” he said at last, “you have but to say so
before....”
“I can never take a different view of it, Herr Count!” interrupted my
father, vehemently.
“--before I take my departure in the morning,” continued the other, with
studied composure; “in the meanwhile, be pleased to remember that you are
answerable for the person of your prisoner. Either he must not escape, or
he must not escape with life.”
My father's shadow bent its head.
“And now, with your permission, I will go to my room.”
My father rang the bell, and when Bertha came, bade her light the Count von
Rettel to his chamber.
Hearing them leave the room, I opened the door very softly and
hesitatingly, scarce knowing whether to come out or not. I saw my father
standing with his back towards me and his face still turned in the
direction by which they had gone out. I saw him throw up his clenched
hands, and shake them wildly above his head.
“And it was for this!--for this!” he said fiercely. “A bribe! God of
Heaven! He offered me Königsberg as a bribe! Oh, that I should have lived
to be treated as an assassin!”
His voice broke into hoarse sobs. He dropped into a chair--he covered his
face with his hands.
He had forgotten that I was in the next room, and now I dared not remind
him of my presence. His emotion terrified me. It was the first time I had
seen a man shed tears; and this alone, let the man be whom he might, would
have seemed terrible to me at any time. How much more terrible when those
tears were tears of outraged honour, and when the man who shed them was my
father!
I trembled from head to foot. I had an instinctive feeling that I ought
not to look upon his agony. I shrank back--closed the door--held my
breath, and waited.
Presently the sound of sobbing ceased. Then he sighed heavily twice or
thrice--got up abruptly--threw a couple of logs on the fire, and left the
room. The next moment I heard him unlock the door under the stairs, and go
into the cellar. I seized the opportunity to escape, and stole up to my
own room as rapidly and noiselessly as my trembling knees would carry me.
I had my supper with Bertha that evening, and the Count ate at my father's
table; but I afterwards learned that, though the Governor of Brühl himself
waited ceremoniously upon his guest and served him with his best, he
neither broke bread nor drank wine with him.
I saw that unwelcome guest no more. I heard his voice under the window, and
the clatter of his horse's hoofs as he rode away in the early morning; but
that was long enough before Bertha came to call me.
10
Weeks went by. Spring warmed, and ripened, and blossomed into Summer.
Gardens and terraces were ablaze once more with many-coloured flowers;
fountains played and sparkled in the sunshine; and travellers bound for
Cologne or Bonn put up again at Brühl in the midst of the day's journey,
to bait their horses and see the Château on their way.
For in these years just following the Peace of Paris, the Continent was
overrun by travellers, two thirds of whom were English. The diligence--the
great, top-heavy, lumbering diligence of fifty years ago--used then to
come lurching and thundering down the main street five times a week
throughout the Summer season; and as many as three and four travelling
carriages a day would pass through in fine weather. The landlord of the
“Lion d'Or” kept fifty horses in his stables in those days, and drove a
thriving trade.
So the Summer came, and brought the stir of outer life into the precincts
of our sleepy Château; but brought no better change in the fortunes of
Monsieur Maurice. Ever since that fatal night, the terms of his
imprisonment had been more rigorous than ever. Till then, he might, if he
would, walk twice a week in the grounds with a soldier at his heels; but
now he was placed in strict confinement in his own two rooms, with one
sentry always pacing the corridor outside his door, and another under his
windows. And across each of those windows might now be seen a couple of
bright new iron bars, thick as a man's wrist, forged and fixed there by
the village blacksmith.
I have no words to tell how the sight of those bars revolted me. If instead
of being a little helpless girl, I had been a man like my father, and a
servant of the State, I think they would have made a rebel of me.
Worse, however, than iron bars, locked doors, and guarded corridors, was
Hartmann--Herr Ludwig Hartmann, as he was styled in the despatch that
announced his coming--a pale, slight, silent man, with colourless grey eyes
and white eyelashes, who came direct from Berlin about a month later, to
act as Monsieur Maurice's “personal attendant.” Stealthy, watchful, secret,
civil, he established himself in a room adjoining the prisoner's
apartment, and was as much at home in the course of a couple of hours as
if he had been settled there from the first.
He brought with him a paper of instructions, and, having on his arrival
submitted these instructions to my father, he at once took up a certain
routine of duties that never varied. He brushed Monsieur Maurice's clothes,
waited upon him at table, attended him in his bed-room, was always within
hearing, always on the alert, and haunted the prisoner like his shadow. Not
even a housemaid could go in to sweep but he was present. Now the man's
perpetual presence was intolerable to Monsieur Maurice. He had borne all
else with patience, but this last tyranny was more than he could endure
without murmuring. He appealed to my father; but my father, though
Governor of Brühl, was powerless to help him. Hartmann had presented his
instructions as a minister presents his credentials, and those
instructions emanated from Berlin. So the new-comer, valet, gaoler, spy as
he was, became an established fact, and was detested throughout the
Château--by no one more heartily than myself.
I still, however, saw Monsieur Maurice now and then. My father often took
me with him in his rounds, and always when he visited his prisoner.
Sometimes, too, he would leave me for an hour with my friend, and call for
me again on his way back; so that we were not wholly parted even now. But
Hartmann took care never to leave us alone. Before my father's footsteps
were out of hearing, he would be in the room; silent, unobtrusive,
perfectly civil, but watchful as a lynx. We could not talk before him
freely. Nothing was as it used to be. It was better than total
banishments; it was better than never hearing his voice; but the constraint
was hard to bear, and the pain of these meetings was almost greater than
the pleasure.
And now, as I approach that part of my narrative which possesses the
deepest interest for myself, I hesitate--hesitate and draw back before the
great mystery in which it is involved. I ask myself what interpretation
the world will put upon facts for which I can vouch; upon events which I
myself witnessed? I cannot prove those events. They happened over fifty
years ago; but they are as vividly present to my memory as if they had
taken place yesterday. I can only relate them in their order, knowing them
to be true, and leaving each reader to judge of them according to his
convictions.
It was about the middle of the second week in June. Hartmann had been about
six weeks at Brühl, and all was going on in the usual dull routine, when
that routine was suddenly broken by the arrival of three mounted
dragoons--an officer and two privates--whose errand, whatever it might be,
had the effect of throwing the whole establishment into sudden and unwonted
confusion.
I was out in the grounds when they arrived, and came back at midday to find
no dinner on the table, no cook in the kitchen; but a full-dress parade
going on in the courtyard, and all the interior of the Château in a state
of wild commotion. Here were peasants bringing in wood, gardeners laden
with vegetables and flowers, women running to and fro with baskets full of
linen, and all to the accompaniment of such a hammering, bell-ringing, and
clattering of tongues as I had never heard before.