“Halt!” The voice of an officer rang out in the heavy twilight, and
with a sudden scream of brakes and jangle of harness the cavalcade
came to a stand.
“Tell the Herr von Gastein his Majesty desires to speak with him.” The
name ran up the long line, quick and sharp, like a rattle of musketry,
and passed out of hearing of him who had uttered it. “Tell the Herr
Captain to come at once.”
The Herr Captain was already, on the word, spurring back from the head
of the cortège, which was of royal extent. It stood upon a flat road
in a flat country, covering more ground than and including almost as
many human souls as a modern mail-train. There was the King’s coach
for principal item--a veritable little room slung on straps and drawn
by eight horses; and there were carriages--seven or eight, and each
holding as many people--for his retinue, and baggage-wagons, and a
troop of fifty sabres to escort the whole. It took so much, or more,
to carry this little corpulent apoplectic on his annual visit to
Herrenhausen, whither he had already travelled to within a league or
so of Osnabrück and a much-needed night’s rest.
The Captain von Gastein, having dismounted and thrown his reins to a
groom, stood at stiff attention by the coach door. He was a patient,
somewhat exhausted-looking man of fifty, spare-bodied, and with
stone-blue eyes which rather matched the dusty Hanoverian blue of his
uniform. His expression at the moment was one of a quiet fatality, as
if the summons had not been altogether unforeseen by him.
A preternatural silence seemed to have succeeded the tumult of hoofs
and wheels. There was a soundless blink of lightning in the sky, and a
windmill on the flat roadside blackened and paled alternately in its
flicker, as if it palpitated. It was late June, and the air seemed to
have come out of a limekiln. The dust rolled up into it began to
settle down sluggishly.
The door of the great travelling-coach opened, and a little bewigged
gentleman, who had been peering from behind the glass, descended. His
manner was dry, self-important, professional; he was the King’s
English physician.
“His Majesty, my dear Captain,” he whispered, “is in a strange mood.
You are commanded to ascend and converse with him--you may guess why.
The affair of last year--you understand? Old associations are
re-awakened, old injuries re-exposed--you were intimately acquainted
with their subject. Bear in mind that this sad event has interposed
itself between his last departure from and his present revisit to his
paternal dominions, and venture upon nothing in the nature of a
reminder. If you find him fanciful, excited----”
A querulous voice, breaking from the interior of the carriage,
interrupted him:
“Der Herr Jesus! What is all this chatter? Tell the man to enter.”
The physician, placing a warning finger on his lips, skipped to one of
the supplementary coaches; the Captain von Gastein climbed into the
royal vehicle. A postillion put up the steps; the door was closed, the
word given, and the cavalcade lurched on. “Sit,” motioned the King;
and the Herr Captain, with what steadiness he could command, settled
himself on the edge of the broad seat backing upon the horses, and
awaited, rigid and upright.
He was quite alone with his Majesty, and there was plenty of room for
them both. The interior of the coach was like a cabinet, and
luxuriously upholstered. There were accommodations for writing,
card-playing, shaving, coffee-making, and other conveniences. The pace
was leisurely, the motion restful; the great wheels turned outside the
windows with little apparent sound. The King of England lay in his
padded corner opposite, a very weary, moodish little old man. His
cheeks bagged, his eyes goggled, strained, and anxious; the silk
travelling-cloak in which he was wrapped only partly concealed his
immense corpulence, and his thick legs and stumpy feet dangled short
of the floor. His head was unwigged, and enveloped in a close cap with
a fur border which came down over his eyes.
The officer, observant of everything, for all the respectful rigidity
of his vision, could not but be conscious of a certain feeling of
repulsion in this his first close contact with the prince to whose
unwelcome service, in one most tragic direction, he had devoted the
best twenty-five years of his life. Twenty-five years it was since he
had been ordered, a young impecunious captain, to the lonely castle of
Ahlden on the Aller, where lived, already seven years incarcerated,
the beautiful young wife of the then electoral Prince George--Sophia
Dorothea, accused, rightly or wrongly, of misconduct with a Swedish
adventurer. She was fair; unhappy; her husband had not loved her; the
cold cruelty of his temperament had been confessed in this his
consignment of her to a living grave. Had she not lain in his arms,
borne him children? Gastein had needed no more to inflame his
chivalry. Thenceforth he had given himself to the service of this
lady, to ameliorate, to the best of his power, her bitter fate. His
partiality, his sympathy, being, no doubt, reported, had kept him poor
and unpromoted. For a quarter of a century he had shared his
princess’s exile, and had only returned to the world when death had
ended that, less than a twelvemonth ago. After thirty-two years! And
this was the unlovely Rhadamanthus who had condemned her, this little
wheezy, potbellied old frog of a man, who had become Elector of
Hanover and King of England in the interval! The Captain had been
educated to the right divine succession; but something monstrous in
the picture struck him. His convictions and his emotions hurt one
another in their efforts at a reconciliation. It was somehow not right
that tragic beauty should lie at the mercy of this commonplace. He sat
as stiff as a ramrod.
It is one of the most grotesque privileges of royalty to command
silence. No one must address it unless addressed. Then, at its word,
its gesture, the empty brass pot ceases to tinkle or the golden vessel
overflows. This seems an unnatural impost, like taxing a man’s
daylight or his drinking-water. It gives an uncanny self-possession to
the mortal who levies it. The little swollen tub of a creature,
glowering in his corner, mutely discussed the figure opposite for as
long as it pleased him, with no more concern, probably less, than he
would have shown in regarding a black-beetle; and when he spoke at
last it was even with some grudging in his cold, guttural voice.
“You are of the escort, then, mein Herr?”
The Captain, stiffening yet a trifle, saluted. “As your Majesty
commanded,” he said.
The other shrugged fretfully.
“I am glad,” he said, “to find something surviving to your sense of
duty.”
Von Gastein made no answer. He ought not; he could not, indeed. That
sense of warring emotions hurt him like a violent indigestion.
The King, for some minutes, condescended to speak no more, but sat
looking out of the window upon the darkening flats and the white
ribbon of the road reeling under him. What was in his mind? He had
always declared, for some reason, that he would not long survive his
wife; and she had died six months ago. Had he somehow cheated Fate--or
might he have cheated it had he remained in England? This was his
first visit to his patrimony since her death. Her death, her released
spirit--turn the coach!
No, his beloved Herrenhausen! The stout little Guelph was no coward
for all his love of life and good-living. A murrain on this old wives’
trash of spectres and premonitions! He glanced at the figure
opposite--it sat up rigid and grey like a signpost--and, with a scowl,
looked out of the window again.
Thirty-two years--a woman of sixty, and she had been a fresh, blooming
young wife of twenty-eight when he had consigned her to her living
death! Much water, as they said in England, had flowed under London
Bridge during that interval--the highways of life had been paved and
repaved. Thirty-two years! The Schloss was a dead, dreary place,
situated in a dead, dreary country--a mere lonely manor-house in the
wilds, good enough for a month’s stay; but--thirty-two years! Gott in
Himmel! And she had been vivacious, worldly, sparkling with the glory
of being and doing when he had last seen her!
A vision of the castle, as he had known it once or twice in the old,
far-off days, rose before him. He saw again the leagues of flat
marshland which surrounded it, the reedy river crawling by its walls,
the grey alders shivering in the wind, and the wheeling of lonely
plovers. He saw the sad towers, the cold, undecorated rooms, the
windows looking out upon the lifeless waste of road. The road! the
livid unfruitful highway, upon which, for hours at a time, it had been
said, dry burning eyes had been set, despairing for the mercy, the
deliverance, which never came! For thirty-two years! God in heaven!
while the frost of age slowly settled on the beautiful eyes, the deep
black hair, the breaking heart! With a writhe, as of physical
suffering, the old man turned from his window.
“The life was dull at Schloss Ahlden?” he said.
“Dull, sire.”
The correct, impassive attitude of the Captain maddened while it half
cowed him. For a minute he held his breath--only to release it in a
sudden question, unexpected, astounding:
“In your eyes, soldier, _she_ was innocent?”
Von Gastein started under the shock--and recovered himself.
“During the twenty-five years, sire, I had the privilege of attending
on her the Princess of Ahlden did not fail weekly to take the
Sacrament, and on each occasion to avow her innocence before the
altar.”
The King stared, then mumbled from loud to low.
“They will avow it,” he began, and broke off quickly. Some words
reported to him, as having been uttered by her to one seeking to bring
about a reconciliation before his enthronement, recurred to his mind:
“If I am guilty, I am not worthy to be your Queen; if I am innocent,
your King is not worthy to be my husband.”
A casuistry, feminine, non-committing--hedging, in the true sporting
sense. He hardened. This fate had not after all seemed so merciless to
one so guilty.
“She had liberty,” he said, as if appealing to his own conscience.
The Captain made a frigid reverence, acquiescing in the enormous lie.
“I say, she had liberty,” repeated the King--“permission to drive
abroad.”
“For six miles, sire, back and forth,” answered the soldier, as if he
accounted himself addressed: “for six miles west, to the old stone
bridge on the Hayden road. So much and no more. At the bridge the
escort turned her. On fine days she would drive herself--fast and
faster, till the stones spun from the wheels. She would seem to madden
for freedom, to outstrip her misery. Many times she would traverse the
distance, the lady-in-waiting sitting, the troop spurring at her side;
and at the stone bridge it would be always the same. ‘No further?’ ‘No
further, madam.’ ‘Ah! but death will release me!’”
He stopped, conscious of his own emotion. He had served the lovely
sorrow so long, that its tragedy had become part of himself.
“I crave your Majesty’s forgiveness,” he muttered in a broken voice.
The King spoke up harshly:
“She was limited to that road by necessity.”
“During life, sire.”
The response came swift and involuntary. The soldier gasped, having
made it.
“You will stop the coach, and return to your duty,” said the King,
blue in the face.
The former commotion was repeated; the physician returned to his
patient; the cavalcade rolled on. His Majesty spoke not a single word
further, but sat staring from the window. It was deep dusk now
without, and the lightning flickered with a ghastlier brilliancy. But
still the King would give no order to have the lamps lighted. Instead,
he lay with his livid face and protruding eyes addressed to the
heavens, and the horror of a thought incessant in his mind. _The road
was open to her at last, and she was driving to cut him off from
Osnabrück, the city in which he had been born._ She knew that a man
could not die in the room where he was born; and she was coming to
forestall him with the dread summons to appear before his Maker, and
answer for the thing he had done.
* * * * *
Much agitated, von Gastein remounted his horse, and spurred on to his
place in the front. He did more; he drove ahead of all, and took the
lead on the solitary road making for Osnabrück. The lights of the
city were already faintly starring the distance, when a sound coming
from in front startled and then thrilled him. Swift wheels, and the
hoofs of a tearing horse! There was nothing uncommon in that; and yet
his heart went cold to hear it. “God have mercy on me!” he muttered:
“I am a fool!”
Nearer and nearer came the sound--it was close--it was upon him--and
there rushed past the shadow of a cabriolet, with a wild woman on the
seat flogging a wild black horse. The night of her hair streamed
behind like a thin cloud dusted with diamonds, and there was a frenzy
of triumph in her eyes, and on her lips a smile. And so she passed and
was gone.
The Captain turned his horse’s head, and drove back upon the van.
“Stop her!” he yelled. “In God’s name stop her Highness before too
late!”
They were jogging on leisurely, and thought him drunk or demented.
“What Highness, Captain?” they said. “There has been none passed this
way.”
And on the word there came a loud cry from the rear, and for the third
time the cavalcade halted. But von Gastein had sped by like the wind,
and reached to where the royal carriage was stopped amid a little
cloud of equerries; and a dismayed, small figure stood upon the step
by the open door.
“His Majesty,” said the physician, gasping over his words, “has had a
stroke, and is dead!”