THE night before my wedding-day—it was natural enough—there was a
restlessness upon me which would not let me sleep, or think of sleep.
When supper was over I bade my servants retire. They had thought
me cracked, and with reason, I believe, for the way in which I had
wandered about the house all day, moving and shifting and preparing,
and giving orders to no seeming purpose. I sat down in my uncle’s room,
and, drawing the chair he had died in opposite his portrait, I held a
strange conclave with (as I believed then) his ghost. I know now that
if any spirit communed with me that night it was my own evil angel.
I had had the light set where it best illuminated the well-known
countenance. At my elbow was a goodly bottle of his famous red wine.
“Na, old one,” said I aloud, leaning back in my chair in luxurious
self-satisfaction and proud complacency, “am I doing well for the
old name? Who knows if one day thou countest not kings among thy
descendants!”
Methought the old man grinned back at me, his hideous tusked grin.
“‘Tis well, Kerlchen,” he said.
I unrolled the pedigree. That cursed parchment, what a part it has
played in my life!—as evil a part, as fatal as the apple by which our
first parents fell. It is pride that damns us all! And I read aloud the
entries I had made: they sounded very well, and so my uncle thought—or
seemed to—for I swear he winked at me and said:
“Write it in ink, lad; that must stand clear, for das klingt schön.”
And then, though I was very comfortable, I had to get up and find the
ink and engross the noble record of my marriage, filling in the date
with care, for my uncle, dead or alive, was not one to disobey.
“‘Tis good,” then again said my uncle, “and thou dost well. But
remember, without I had done so well, lad, thou hadst not risen thus.
And what,” added my uncle, sniggering, “will the Brüderl say when he
hears the news—hey, nephew Basil?”
I had thought of that myself: it was another glorious pull over the
renegade!
Whereupon my uncle—it was surely the proud fiend himself bent upon my
destruction—fell to telling me I must write to my family at once,
that the letter might be despatched in the morning.
I protested. I was bound to secrecy, I told him. But he scowled,
and would have it that I must remember my duty to my mother, and he
further made me a very long sermon upon the curses that will befall a
bad child. And thus egged on—and what could I do?—I indited a very
flaming document indeed, and under the seal of the strictest confidence
made my poor mother acquainted with all the greatness her son was
bringing into his family, and bade her rejoice with him.
The night was well worn when I had finished, and the bottle of potent
Burgundy was nearly out too. Then, meaning to rise and withdraw, I fell
asleep in my chair. It was grey dawn before I awoke, and I was cold as
I stretched myself and staggered to my feet. In the weird thin light
my uncle’s face now shone out drawn and austere, with something of the
look I remembered it to have borne in death.
But it was the dawn of my wedding-day, and I went to my bed—stumbling
over old János, who sat, the faithful dog! asleep on the threshold—to
dream of my wedding ... a wedding with royal pomp, to the blare of
trumpets and the acclamations of a multitude:
“Jennico hoch—hoch dem edlen Jennico!”
The village of Wilhelmsdhal is quite an hour’s drive (even at the pace
of my good horses) along the downhill road which leads from my uplifted
mansion into the valley land; it takes two hours for the return way.
For safety’s sake I made the announcement of my approaching marriage
to the household as late in the day as possible, and, though sorely
tempted to betray the exalted rank of the future mistress to the
astonished major-domo, to whom János, with his usual imperturbability,
interpreted my commands, I refrained, with a sense that the impression
created would only after all be heightened if the disclosure were
withheld till the actual apparition of the newly-made wife.
But in the vain arrogance of my delight I ordered every detail of the
reception which was to greet us, and which I was determined should be
magnificent enough to make up for the enforced hole-and-corner secrecy
of the marriage ceremony.
Schultz the factor, my chief huntsman, and the highest among my people
were to head torch-light processions of their particular subordinates
at stated places along the avenue that led upwards to the house.
There was to be feasting and music in the courtyard. Flowers were to
be strewn from the very threshold of her new home to the door of my
Princess’s bridal chamber.
God knows all the extravagance I planned! It makes me sick now to think
back on it!
And the wedding! Ah! that was a wedding to be proud of!
It was a dull and cloudy evening, with a high, moist wind that came
in wild gusts, sweeping over the plains and tearing the leaves from
the forest trees, bringing with it now a swift moonlit clearing upon
the lowering face of heaven, now only thicker darkness and torrents of
rain. It was all but night already in the forest roads when I started,
and quite night as I emerged from out of the shelter of the mountains
into the flat country. János sat on the box and my chasseurs hung on
behind, and my four horses kept up a splendid pace upon the level
ground. I had dressed very fine, as became a bridegroom; but fortunate
it was that I had brought a dark cloak with me, for a fearful burst
of storm-rain came down upon me as I jumped out from the carriage at
the church door. And indeed, despite that protection, my fine white
satin clothes were splashed with mud, my carefully powdered queue sadly
disarranged in the few steps I had to take before reaching shelter, for
the wind blew a very hurricane, and the rain came down like the rain
of the deluge.
The church porch was lit only by an ill-trimmed wick floating in a
saucer of oil; but by the flickering light, envious and frail as it
was, I discerned at once the figure of Mademoiselle Ottilie’s nurse
awaiting us. Without a word she beckoned to me to follow her into the
church.
The place struck cold and damp with a death-like closeness after the
warm blustering air I had just left. It was even darker than the porch
outside, its sole illumination proceeding from the faint glow of the
little sanctuary lamp and the sullen yellow flame of two or three
tallow candles stuck on spikes before a rough wooden statue on a pillar
at one side. I, flanked by János and his two satellites, followed the
gaunt figure to the very altar rails, where, with an imperious gesture,
she signed to me to take my place.
Before turning to go she stood still a second looking at me, and
methought—or it may have been a fancy born of the dismal place and
the dismal gloom—that I had never seen a human countenance express so
much hatred as did that woman’s in the mysterious gleam of the lamp. My
heart contracted with an omen of forthcoming ill.
Then I heard her feet go down the aisle, the door open and close,
and we were left alone. In the silence of the church—the most
poverty-stricken and desolate, the most miserable, the most ruined to
be yet used as the House of God, I think I had ever entered—at the
foot of the altar of my faith, a sudden misgiving seized upon me. How
would all this end? I was going to bind myself for life with the most
solemn vows. Would all the honour and glory of the alliance compensate
me for the loss of my liberty?
I was only twenty-six, and I knew of her who was henceforth to be my
second self no more, rather less, than I knew of any of the barefooted
maids that slipped grinning about the passages of Tollendhal. To be
frank with myself, the glamour of gratified vanity once stripped from
before the eye of my inmost soul, what was the naked, hideous truth?
I had no more love for her—man for woman—than for rosy Kathi or
black-browed Sarolta!
Here my reflections were broken in upon by that very patter of naked
soles that had been in my thoughts, and a little ragged boy, in a
dilapidated surplice, ran round the sanctuary from some back door,
and fell to lighting a pair of candles on the altar, a proceeding
which only seemed once more to heighten the darkness. Presently, in a
surplice and cassock as tattered as his acolyte’s, with long white hair
lying unkempt upon his shoulders, an old priest—in sooth, the oldest
man I have ever seen alive, I believe—came forth with tottering steps;
before him the tattered urchin, behind him a sacristan well-nigh as
antique as himself, and as utterly pauperised.
These were to be the ministers of my grand marriage!
But almost immediately a fresh clamour of opening doors, and a light,
sedate footfall, struck my ear, and all doubt and dismay disappeared
like magic. Closely enveloped in the folds of a voluminous dark velvet
cloak, with its hood drawn forward over her head, and beneath this
shade her face muffled in the gathers of a white lace veil, I knew the
stately height of my bride as she advanced towards me—and the sight
of her, the sound of her brave step, set my heart dancing with the old
triumph.
She stood beside me, and as the words were spoken I thought no more of
the mean surroundings, of the evil omens, of the responsibilities and
consequences of my act. It was nothing to me now that the old priest
who wedded us, and his companion who ministered to him, should look
more like mouldering corpses than living men—that the nurse’s burning
eyes should still seek my face with evil look. I had no thought to
spare for the position of my bride herself—her filial disobedience,
her loneliness—no feeling of tenderness for the touching character
of her confidence in me—no doubt as to her future happiness as my
wife, nor as to my capacity for compensating her for the sacrifice of
so much. I did not wonder at, nay, notice even, the absence of the
lady-in-waiting—that moving spirit of our courtship. My whole soul was
possessed with triumph. I was self-centred on my own success. The words
were spoken; my voice rang out boldly, but hers was the barest breath
of speech behind her muffling drapery. I slipped the ring (it had been
my aunt’s), with a passing wonder that it should prove so much too
large, upon the slender finger, that hardly protruded from a fall of
enveloping lace.
We were drenched with a perfect shower of holy water out of a tin
bucket; and then, man and wife, we went to the sacristy to sign our
names by the light of one smoking tallow candle.
I dashed mine forth with splendid flourish—the good old name of
Jennico of Farringdon Dane and Tollendhal, all my qualifications,
territorial, military, and inherited. And she penned hers in the
flowing handwriting I already knew, Marie Ottilie: the lofty, simple
signature, as I thought with swelling heart, of sovereigns!
I pressed into the old priest’s cold fingers, as he peered at us
from the book, right and left, with dull, bewildered eyes, in which
I thought to see the dawn of a vague misgiving, a purse bulging with
notes to the value of double the sum promised; and then, with her hand
upon my arm, I led her to my carriage.
The rain had begun again and the wind was storming when we drove
off, my wife and I. And for a little while—a long time it seemed to
me—there was silence between us, broken only by the beating of the
drops against the panes of the carriage, and the steady tramp of my
horses’ hoofs on the wet road. Now that I had accomplished my wish,
a strange embarrassment fell upon me. I had no desire to speak of
love to the woman I had won. I had won her, I had triumphed—that was
sufficient. I would not have undone my deed for the world; but none the
less the man who finds himself the husband and has never been the lover
is placed in a singular position.
I looked at the veiled figure beside me and wondered at its stillness.
The light of the little lantern inside the carriage flickered upon the
crimson of the velvet cloak and the white folds of the veil that hid
her face from me. Then I awoke to the consciousness of the sorry figure
I must present in her eyes, and, drawing from my pocket a ring,—the
richest I had been able to find among my aunt’s rich store,—I took the
hand that lay half hidden and passive beside me, meaning to slip the
jewel over the plain gold circlet I had already placed upon it. Now,
as I took the hand into my own, I was struck with its smallness, its
slenderness, its lightness; I remembered that even in the dark church,
and with but the tips of the fingers resting in my own, a similar
impression had vaguely struck me. I lifted it, spread out the little,
long, thin fingers—too often had I kissed the dimpled firm hand of her
Serene Highness not to know the difference! This was my wife’s hand;
there was my ring. But who was my wife?
I felt like a man in a bad dream. I do not know if I spoke or not; but
every fibre of me was crying out aloud, as it were, in a frenzy. I
suppose I turned, or looked; at any rate my companion, as if in answer
to a question, said composedly:
“Yes, sir, it is so.” At the same moment, putting up her veil with
her right hand, she disclosed to me the features of Ottilie, the
lady-in-waiting.