BASIL JENNICO’S MEMOIR CONTINUED
MY great-uncle’s will, forcible, concise, indisputable as it was,
had been (so the man of law informed me) drawn out in a great hurry,
dictated, indeed, between spasms of agony and rage. (The poor old man
died of gout in his stomach.) Doubtless, had he felt sure of more
time, he would have burdened the inheritance with many directions and
conditions.
From his broken utterances, however, and from what I had known of him
in life, I gathered a fair idea of what his wishes were. His fifty
years of foreign service had filled him, old pandour that he seemed to
have become, with but increased contempt for the people that surrounded
him, their ways and customs, while his pride as an Englishman was only
equalled by his pride as a Jennico.
“Sell and settle....”
The meaning of the words was clear in the light of the man as I knew
him. I was to sell the great property, carry to England the vast hoard
of foreign wealth, marry as befitted one of the race, and raise a
new and splendid line of Jennicos, to the utter mortification, and
everlasting confusion, of the degenerate head of the house.
Now, though I knew it to be in me, and felt it, indeed, not otherwise
possible, to live my life as true a Jennico as even my uncle could
desire, I by no means deemed it incumbent upon me to set to work and
carry out his plans without first employing my liberty and wealth as
the humour prompted me. Nor was the old country an overpoweringly
attractive place for a young man of my creed and kidney. In Vienna I
was, perhaps, for the moment, the most noted figure—the guest most
sought after that year. In England, at daggers drawn with my brother, I
could only play an everyday part in an unpopular social minority.
It was in full summer weather that, as I have written, already tried by
the first stage of my career of wealth, I came to take possession of my
landed estates. The beauty and wildness of the scenery, the strangeness
of the life in the well-nigh princely position to which this sudden
turn of fortune’s wheel had elevated me, the intoxicating sensation of
holding sway, as feudal lord of these wide tracts of hill and plain,
over so many hundreds of lives—above all, the wholesome reaction
brought about by solitude and communion with nature after the turmoil
of the last months—in short, everything around me and in me made me
less inclined than ever to begin ridding myself of so fair a possession.
And do I wish I had not thus delayed in obeying the injunction that
accompanied the bequest? Odds my life! I am a miserable dog this day
through my disobedience; and yet, would I now undo the past if I could?
A thousand times no! I hate my folly, but hug it, ever closer, ever
dearer. The bitter savour of that incomprehensible yearning clings to
the place: I would not exchange it for the tameness of peace. Weakling
that I am, I would not obliterate, if I could, the memory of those
brief, brief days of which I failed to know the price, until the
perversity of fate cut their thread for ever—ay, perhaps for ever,
after all! And yet, if so, it were wiser to quit these haunted walls
for ever also. But, God! how meagre and livid looks wisdom, the ghost,
by the side of love’s warm and living line!
And now, on! Since I have put my hand to the task, undertaken to set
forth and make clear the actual condition of that vacillating puppet,
the new-fledged Lord of Tollendhal, I will not draw it back, cost me
what pain it may.
No doubt it was this haunting pride of wealth, waxing every day
stronger, even as the pride of birth which my great-uncle had fostered
to such good purpose, the overweening conceit which they bred within
me, that fogged my better judgment and brought me to this pass. And no
doubt, likewise, it is a princely estate that these lords of Tollendhal
of old carved for themselves, and rounded ever wider and nurtured—all
that it should some day, passing through the distaff, come to swell the
pride of Suffolk Jennicos!
My castle rises boldly on the northernmost spur of the Glatzer Mounts,
and defiantly overlooks the marches of three kingdoms. Its lands and
dependencies, though chiefly Moravian, extend over the Bohemian border
as well as into that Silesia they now are able to call Prussian. North
and west it is flanked by woods that grow wilder, denser, as they
spread inwards towards the Giant Mountains. On the southern slopes are
my vineyards, growths of note, as I hear. My territories reach, on the
one hand, farther than can be seen under the blue horizon, into the
Eastern plains, flat and rich, that stretch with curious suddenness
immediately at the foot of the high district; upon the other hand, on
the Moravian side, I doubt whether even my head steward himself knows
exactly how much of the timber-laden hill-ranges can be claimed as
appertaining to the estate. All the peaks I can descry in a fine day
from these casements are mine, I believe; on their flanks are forests
as rich in game—boar and buck, wolf and bear, not to speak of lesser
quarry—as are the plains below in corn and maize and cattle—_que
sais-je?_ A goodly heritage indeed!
I promised myself many a rare day’s sport so soon as the time waxed
ripe. Meanwhile, my days were spent in rambles over the land, under
pretence of making acquaintance with the farms and the villages, and
the population living on the soil and working out its wealth for my
use, but in reality for the enjoyment of delicious sylvan and rustic
idleness through which the memory of recent Viennese dissipations was
like that of a fevered dream.
The spirit of my country-keeping ancestors lived again within me and
was satisfied. Yet there were times, too, when this freedom of fancy
became loneliness—when my eyes tired of green trees, and my ears
hungered for the voice of some human being whom I could meet as an
equal, with whom I could consort, soul and wit. Then I would resolve
that, come the autumn, I would fill the frowning stronghouse with a
rousing throng of gallant hunters and fair women such as it had never
seen before. Ay, and they should come over, even from old England, to
taste of the Jennico hospitality!
It was in one of these glorious moods that, upon a September day,
sultry as summer, although there was a touch of autumn decay in the
air as well as in the tints around me, I sallied forth, after noon,
to tramp on foot an as yet unexplored quarter of my domain. I had
donned, according to my wont (as being more suitable to the roughness
of the paths than the smallclothes, skirted coats, high heels and
cocked hat of Viennese fashion), the dress of the Moravian peasant—I
gather that it pleases the people’s heart to see their seigneur grace
their national garb on occasions. There was a goodly store of such
costumes among the cupboards full of hereditary habiliments and furs
preserved at Tollendhal, after the fashion of the country, with the
care that English housewives bestow upon their stores of linen. My
peasant suit was, of course, fine of cloth and natty of cut, and the
symmetry of the handsome figure I saw in my glass reminded me more of
the pastoral disguises that were the courtly fashion of some years
back than of our half-savage ill-smelling boors. Thus it was pleasant
as well as comfortable to wear, and at that time even so trifling a
sensation of gratified vanity had its price. But, although thus freed
of the incumbrance of a gentleman’s attire, I could not shake off the
watchful tyranny of János, the solemn heiduck who never allowed me to
stir abroad at all without his escort, nor, indeed (if my whim took me
far afield), without the further retinue of two jägers, twin brothers,
and faithful beyond a doubt. These, carbine on shoulder, and hanger on
thigh, had their orders to follow their lord through thick and thin,
and keep within sight and sound of whistle.
In such odd style of state, on this day, destined to begin for me
a new chapter in life, I took my course; and for a long hour or so
walked along the rocky cornice that overhangs the plains. The land
looked bare and wide and solitary, the fields lay in sallow leanness
bereft of waving crops, but I knew that all my golden grain was stacked
safely in the heart of the earth, where these folk hoard its fruits
for safety from fire. The air was so empty of human sounds, save the
monotonous tramp of my escort behind me, that all the murmurs of wind
and foliage struck with singular loudness upon my ear. Over night,
there had, by my leave, been songs and dancing in the courtyard of
Tollendhal, and the odd tunes, the capricious rhythm of the gipsy
musicians, came back upon me as I walked in the midst of my thoughts.
These melodies are fitful and plaintive as the sounds of nature itself,
they come hurrying and slackening, rising and falling, with as true a
harmony and as unmeasured a measure,—now in a very passion of haste,
and now with a dreamy long-drawn sigh. I was thinking on this, and on
the love of the Empress for that music (my Empress that had been when
I wore her uniform, ay, and my Empress still so long as I retain these
noble lands), when I came to a field, sloping from the crag towards
the plain, where an aftermath of grass had been left to dry. There
was a little belt of trees, which threw a grateful shade; and feeling
something weary I flung me down on the scented hay. It was on the
Silesian portion of my land. Against the horizon, the white and brown
of some townlet, clustering round the ace-of-club-shaped roof of its
church-tower, rose glittering above the blue haze. A little beyond the
field ran a white road. So I reclined, looking vaguely into the unknown
but inviting distance, musing on the extent of those possessions so
wide-spread that I had not as yet been able to ride all their marches,
ever and anon recognising vaguely in the voice of the breeze through
the foliage an echo of the music that had been haunting my thoughts
all day. Everything conspired to bring me pleasant fancies. I began
to dream of past scenes and future fortunes, smiling at the thought
of what my dashing friends would say if they saw _le beau Jennico_ in
this bucolic attitude, wondering if any of my Court acquaintances would
recognise him in his peasant garb.
Ah me, how eternally and lovingly I thought of my proud and brilliant
self then!...
I cannot recall how soon this musing became deep sleep, but sleep
I did and dream—a singular, vivid dream, which was in a manner a
continuation of my waking thoughts. I seemed to be at a great _fête_ at
the Imperial Palace, one of the countless throng of guests. The lights
were brilliant, blinding, but I saw many faces I knew, and we all were
waiting most eagerly for some wonderful event. No one was speaking, and
the only sounds were the rustling and brushing of the ladies’ brocades
and the jingle of the officers’ spurs, with over and above the wail
of the czimbalom. All at once I knew, as we do in dreams, what we
were expecting, and why this splendid feast had been prepared. Marie
Antoinette, the fair young Dauphine of France, the memory of whose
grace still hangs about the Court, had come back to visit her own
country. The crowd grew closer and closer. The crowd about me surged
forward to catch a glimpse of her as she passed, and I with the rest,
when suddenly my great-uncle stood before me, immensely bestarred and
beribboned in his field-marshal’s uniform, and with the black patch on
his eye so black that it quite dazzled me.
“Na, Kerlchen,” he was saying to me, “thou hast luck! Her Imperial and
Royal Highness has chosen the young Jennico to dance with ... as the
old one is too old.”
Now I, in common with the young men about me, have grown to cherish
since my coming to this land a strange enthusiasm for the most womanly
and beautiful of all the Empress’s daughters, and therefore, even in my
dream, my heart began to beat very fast, and I scarce knew which way
to turn. I was much troubled too by the music, which went on always
louder and quicker above my head, somewhere in the air, for I knew
that no such things as country dances are danced at Court, and that I
myself would make but a poor figure in such; yet a peasant dance it
undoubtedly was. Next, my uncle was gone, and though I could not see
her, I knew the Princess was coming by the swish of her skirt as she
walked. I heard her voice as clear as a silver bell. “_Où est-il?_”
it said, and I felt she was looking for me. I struggled in vain to
answer or turn to her, and the voice cried again: “_Où est-il?_” upon
which another voice with a quaver in its tones made reply: “_Par ici,
Altesse!_”
The sound must have been very close to me, for it startled me from my
deep sleep into, as it were, an outer court of dreams. And between
slumber and consciousness I became aware that I was lying somewhere
very hot and comfortable; that, while some irresistible power kept
my eyes closed, my ears were not so, and I could hear the two voices
talking together; and, in my wandering brain believed them still to
belong to the Princess Marie Antoinette and her attendant.
“It is a peasant,” said the first voice: that was the Princess of
course. There was something of scorn in the tone, and I became acutely
and unpleasantly conscious of my red embroidered shirt. But the other
made answer: “He is handsome,” and then: “His hands are not those of a
peasant,” and, “_Regardez ma chère_; peasants do not wear such jewelled
watches!” A sudden shadow fell over me and was gone in an instant.
There was a flicker of laughter and I sat up.
During my sleep the shade of the sun had shifted and I lay in the full
glare, and so, as I opened my eyes, I could see nothing.
I heard the laughter of my dream again, and I knew that the mocking cry
of “_Prenez garde, Altesse!_” that still rang in the air did not belong
to my sleep. But as I rubbed my eyes and looked out once again, I
caught first a glimpse of a slender creature bending over me, outlined
it seemed in fire and shimmering between black and gold. My next glance
filled me with a woeful disappointment, for I declare, what with my
dream and my odd awakening, I expected to find before me a beauty no
less bewitching than that of her Royal Highness herself. What I beheld
was but a slim slip of a creature who, from the tip of her somewhat
battered shepherdess hat to the hem of her loosely hanging skirts, gave
me an impression of being all yellow, save for the dark cloud of her
hair. Her skin seemed golden yellow like old ivory, her eyes seemed to
shoot yellow sparks, her gown was yellow as any primrose. As she bent
to watch me, her lip was arched into a smile; it had a deep dimple on
the left side. Thus I saw her in a sort of flash and scrambled to my
feet still half drunk with drowsiness, crying out like a fool:
“_Où est son Altesse? Où est son Altesse?_”
She clapped her hands and turned with a crow of laughter to some one
behind me. And then I became aware that, as in the dream, there were
two. I also turned.
My eyes were in their normal state again, but for a moment I thought
myself still wandering. Here was her Highness. A Princess, indeed, as
beautiful as any vision and yet most exquisitely embodied in the flesh;
a Princess in this wilderness! It seemed a thing impossible, and yet my
eyes now only corroborated the evidence of my ears.
I marked, almost without knowing, the rope of pearls that bound her
throat (I had become a judge of jewels by being the possessor of
so many). I marked her garments, garments, for all their intended
simplicity, rich, and bearing to my not untutored observation the
latest stamp of fashion. But above all I marked her air of race, her
countenance, young with the first bloom of youth, mantled with blushes
yet set with a royal dignity.
I have, since that eventful day, passed through so many phases of
feeling, sweet and violent, my present sentiments are so fantastically
disturbed, that I must try to the last of this writing and see matters
still as I saw them at the time. Yes, beyond doubt what I noticed
most, what appealed to me most deeply then, was the great air of race
blended and softened by womanly candour and grace. She looked at me
gravely, with wide brown eyes, and I stumbled into my best courtly bow.
“He wants to know,” said the damsel of the yellow skirts, this time in
German, the clear, clean utterance of which had nothing of the broad
Austrian sounds I was accustomed to hear—“he wants to know ’where is
the Highness?’ But he seems to have guessed where she stands, without
the telling. Truly ’tis a pity the Lord Chamberlain is not at his post
to make a presentation in due form!”
The lady thus addressed took a step towards her companion, with what
seemed a protest on her lip. But the latter, her small face quivering
with mischief and eagerness, whispered something in her ear, and the
beautiful brown eyes fixed themselves once again smilingly on me.
“Know, sir,” continued the speaker then, “since you are so indiscreet
as to wake at the wrong moment, and surprise an incognito, the
mysteries of which were certainly not meant for such as you, that
Altesse she is. _Son Altesse Sérénissime la Princesse Marie Ottilie._
Marie is her Highness’s first name, and Ottilie is her Highness’s last
name. And between the two and after those two, being as I said an
Altesse Sérénissime, she has of course a dozen other names; but more
than this it does not suit her Highness that you should know. Now if
you will do me, a humble attendant that I am, the courtesy to state
who you are, who, in a Silesian boor’s attire, speak French and wear
diamond watches to your belt, I can proceed with the introduction, even
in the absence of the Lord Chamberlain.”
The minx had an easy assurance of manner which could only have been
bred at Court. Her mistress listened to her with what seemed a tolerant
affection.
Looking round, bewildered and awkwardly conscious of my peasant dress,
I beheld my two chasseurs, standing stolidly sentinel on the exact spot
where I had last seen them before dropping asleep. Old János, from a
nearer distance, watched us suspiciously. As I thus looked round I
became aware of a new feature in the landscape—a ponderous coach also
attended by two chasseurs in unknown uniforms waiting some hundred
paces off, down the road.
To keep myself something in countenance despite my incongruous garb
(and also perchance for the little meanness that I was not displeased
to show this Princess that I too kept a state of my own), I lifted my
hand and beckoned to my retinue, which instantly advanced and halted in
a rank with rigid precision five paces behind me.
“Gracious madam,” said I in German, bowing to her who had dubbed
herself the lady-in-waiting, with a touch, I flattered myself, of
her own light mockery of tone, “I shall indeed feel honoured if her
Serene Highness will deign to permit the presentation of so unimportant
a person as myself—in other words of Basil Jennico of Farringdon
Dane, in the county of Suffolk, in the Kingdom of Great Britain,
lately a captain in his Royal Imperial Majesty’s Moravian Regiment of
Chevau-Legers, now master of the Castle of Tollendhal, not far distant,
and lord of its domain.” Here, led by János, my three retainers saluted.
I thought I saw in the Princess’s eyes that I had created a certain
impression, but my consequent complacency did not escape the notice of
the irrepressible lady-in-waiting. She promptly did her best to mar the
situation.
“Fi donc,” she cried, in French, “we are at Court, Monsieur, and at the
Court of—at the Court of her Highness we are not such savages as to
perform introductions in German.”
Then, drawing up her slight figure and composing her face into
preternatural gravity, she took two steps forward and another
sideways, accompanied by as many bows, and resting her hand at arm’s
length on the china head of her stick, with the most ridiculous
assumption of finikin importance and with a quavering voice which,
although I have never known him, I recognised instantly as the
Chamberlain’s, she announced:
“Monsieur Basile Jean Nigaud de la Faridondaine, dans le comté où l’on
Suffoque, ... d’importance, au royaume de la Grande Bretagne, maître du
Castel des Fous, ici proche, et seigneur des alentours,—ahem!”
Inwardly cursing the young woman’s buffoonery and the incredible
facility with which she had so instantly burlesqued an undoubtedly
impressive recital, I had no choice but to make my three bows with
what good grace I could muster. Whereupon, the Princess, still smiling
but with a somewhat puzzled air, made me a curtsey. As for the
lady-in-waiting, nothing abashed, she took an imaginary pinch of most
excellent snuff with a pretence of high satisfaction; then laughed
aloud and long, till my ears burned and her own dimple literally rioted.
“And now, to complete the ceremony,” said she, as soon as she could
speak at all, “let me introduce the Court, represented to-day by
myself. Mademoiselle Marie Ottilie. Two Ottilies as you will perceive,
but easily explained, thus: Feu the Highest her Sérénissime’s
gracious ducal grandmother being an Ottilie and godmother to us
both—Mademoiselle Ottilie: the rest concerns you not. Well, Monsieur
de la Faridondaine, Capitaine et Seigneur, etc., etc.,—charmed to
have made your acquaintance. So far, so good. But ... these gentlemen?
Surely also nobles in disguise. Will you not continue the ceremony?”
She waved a little sunburnt hand towards my immovable body-guard, and
the full absurdity of my position struck me with the keenest sense of
mortification.
I looked back at the three, biting my lips, and miserably uncertain how
to conduct myself so as to save some shred of dignity. My ancient János
had seen too many strange things during his forty years’ attendance on
my great-uncle to betray the smallest surprise at the present singular
situation; but out of both their handsome faces, set like bronze,—they
had better not have moved a muscle otherwise or János would have known
the reason why,—the eyes of my twin attendants roamed from me to the
ladies, and from the ladies to me, with the most devouring curiosity.
I tartly dismissed them all again to a distance, and then, turning to
the mysterious Princess I begged to know, in my most courtlike manner
if I might presume to lay my services at her feet for the time of her
sojourn in this, my land.
With the same adorable yet dignified bashfulness that I had
already noted in her, the lovely woman looked hesitatingly at her
lady-in-waiting, which lively wench, not being troubled with timidity
(as she had already sufficiently demonstrated), promptly took upon
herself to answer me. But this time she so delightfully fell in with my
own wishes that I was fain to forgive her all that had gone before.
“But certainly,” she exclaimed, “her Serene Highness will condescend
to accept the services of M. de Jean Nigaud. It is not every day that
brings forth such romantic encounters. Know, sir, that we are two
damozels that have by the most extraordinary succession of fortunate
accidents escaped from school. You wonder? By school, I mean the
insupportable tedium, etiquette, and dulness of the Court of his most
gracious and worshipful Serenity the father of her Highness. We came
out this noon to make hay, and hay we will make. Or rather we shall sit
on the hay, and you shall make a throne for the Princess, and a little
tabouret for me, and then you may sit you down and entertain us ...
but on the ground, and at a respectful distance, that none may say
we do not observe proper forms and conventions, for all that we are
holiday-making. And you shall explain to us how you, an Englishman,
came to be master of Château des Fous, and masquerading in peasant’s
attire. Is masquerading a condition of tenure? After which, her Serene
Highness having only one fault, that being her angelic softness of
heart, which is pushed to the degree of absolute weakness, she will
permit me to narrate to you (as much as is good for you to know)
how we came to be here at such a distance from our own country, and
in such curious freedom—for her Highness quite sees that you are
rapidly becoming ill with suppressed curiosity, and fears that you may
otherwise burst with it on your way home to your great castle, or at
least that the pressure on the brain may seriously affect its delicate
balance—if indeed,” with a peal of her reckless childish laughter,
“you are not already a lunatic, and those your keepers!”
This last piece of impudence might have proved even too much for my
desire to cultivate an acquaintance so extraordinarily attractive to
one of my turn of mind and so alluring by its mysteriousness, but that
I happened to catch a glance from her Highness’s eyes even as the
speaker finished her tirade, which glance, deprecating and at the same
time full of a kindly and gentle interest, set my heart to beat in a
curious fashion between pleasure and pain. I hastened therefore to obey
the younger lady’s behests, and began to gather together enough of the
sweet-smelling hay to form a throne for so noble and fair an occupant.
Whereupon the little creature herself—she seemed little by reason
of her slenderness and childishness, but in truth she was as tall as
her tall and beautiful mistress—fell to helping me with such right
good-will, flashing upon me, as she flitted hither and thither, such
altogether innocently mocking looks from her yellow-hazel eyes, that
I should have been born with a deeper vanity, and a sourer temper, to
have kept a grudge against her.
Once seated in our fragrant court, in the order laid down for us, the
attendant, so soon as she had recovered breath sufficient, began to ply
me with questions so multiplied, so searching, and so pointed, that
she very soon extracted from me every detail she wished to know about
myself, past and present.
But although, as from a chartered and privileged advocate, the sharp
cross-questioning came from the Mademoiselle Marie Ottilie, it was
to the soft dumb inquiry I read in the Princess Marie Ottilie’s eyes
that were addressed my answers. And then those eyes and the listening
beauty of that gracious face, made it hard for me to realise, as later
reflection proved, that their owner did not utter a single word during
the whole time we sat there together.