Ottilie, my wife, was Ottilie the Princess after all! I had felt the

truth before it had been told me. But whilst they removed an agonising

supposition, these struck me nevertheless as strange unhomely tidings

which opened fresh difficulties in my path—difficulties the full

import of which were every second more strongly borne upon me. Ottilie

the Princess!... Everything was changed, and the relentless attitude

of the Princess bore a very different aspect to the mere resentment of

the injured wife. When my letters had been flung back in my face, when

I had been kidnapped and expelled the country, it had been then by her

orders. She had sent to demand the divorce. Who had set the bravo on

my track? By whose wish had my life been so basely, so persistently,

attempted? By hers—Ottilie, the Princess? A Princess who had repented

of her freak, whose pride, whose reputation, had suffered from the

stigma of an unequal match.

The man whose sword had twice passed through my body had called out,

“Ha! Ottilie!” Who dare call on a Princess thus save her kinsman

or—her lover?

I felt the blood surge through me again, but this time in my anger it

brought a sense of courage and strength. I interrupted Madam Lothner

as, with a joyful exclamation that I was now quite restored, she was

about to issue an order for the summary fetching of a hired coach.

“Let your maid go,” said I authoritatively, “but not for a coach. I

have yet much to say to you.”

I was without pity for the distress this demand occasioned, deaf to the

hurried whisper:

“For pity’s sake, go now that you can. You are in danger here. Think of

yourself, if you will not think of me!”

“I can think of but one person,” said I harshly. “I have come a

thousand miles to learn things which I know you can tell me, and here

I remain until I have heard them. Any delay on your side will only

prolong the danger, since danger there be.”

She looked up in tearful pleading, met my obstinate gaze, and instantly

submitted—a woman born to be ruled.

“Go, Trude,” she said faintly, “and warn me if you see your master

coming. What will she think of me?” sighed the poor lady as the door

closed upon an awe-struck but evidently suspicious Trude. “But no

matter, better that just now than the truth. Now, sir, for God’s sake,

what is it you would have of me?”

“Let me go back,” said I, “to the beginning. When I married ... my

wife at Tollendhal, she was then, for a freak as you say, acting the

lady-in-waiting, while you assumed her rôle of Princess?”

“It is so,” said Madam Lothner, “but I never knew till the deed was

accomplished to what length her Highness had chosen to push her folly.

I could not then attempt to interfere or advise, still less could I be

the person to send tidings to the Court.”

“So?” said I, as she paused.

“So,” said she, “in great fear and trembling, I deemed it best to

obey her Highness’s strict command, and await events at the Castle of

Schreckendorf, still in my assumed part.”

“But when my wife returned to you,” I said, and my voice shook,

“returned to you in a peasant’s cart,—oh, I know all about it, Madam,

I know that I drove her forth through the most insensate pride that

ever lost soul its paradise,—when she returned, the truth must have

already been known?”

“Ach, yes,” murmured the sentimental Saxon, her eyes watering with very

sympathy at the sight of my bitter self-reproach. “Yes, it was because

of rumours which had already reached the residence (from your friends

in England, I believe), that his Serene Highness the Duke sent in

such haste to recall us. He would not come himself for fear of giving

weight to the scandal. But it was her Highness who chose to confirm the

report.”

“How?” cried I eagerly.

“Why, sir,” answered the doctor’s lady, flowing on not unwillingly in

her soft guttural, though visibly perturbed nevertheless, and now and

again anxiously alive to any sound without—“why, sir, her Highness

having returned to Schreckendorf before the arrival of the ladies

and gentlemen from Lausitz, and being, it seemed, determined”—here

she hesitated and glanced at me timidly—“determined not to return

to Tollendhal ever again, her Highness might easily, had she wished,

have denied the whole story. And indeed,” continued the speaker with a

shrewdness I would not have given her credit for, “had she so behaved

it would have best pleased her relations. But she was not so made.”

“Ah, no indeed,” said I, “her pride would not stoop to that.”

“You are right,” said Madam Lothner, with a sigh, “she is very proud.

She was calm and seemed to have quite made up her mind. ’I will give no

explanation to any one,’ she said to me, ’and I recognise in no one the

right to question me. But my father shall know that I am married, and

that I am separated from my husband for ever. I am not the first woman

of my rank on whom such a fate has fallen.’ That was her attitude.”

And here the good creature broke forth as if in spite of herself with

passionate expostulation.

“Ah, M. de Jennico, but she suffered! Oh, if you would atone, leave

her now, leave her at least in peace! You have brought enough sorrow

already into her life. Ach! I do not know how it has been between you;

but now that she thinks you dead, for God’s sake let it be!”

“By Heaven, Madam,” cried I, half mad, I believe, between pain,

remorse, and fury, “these are strange counsels! Do you forget that

we are man and wife, and this by her own doing? But truly I need not

be surprised, for you do not hesitate before crime at the Court of

Lausitz, and if murder be so lightly condoned, sure it is that bigamy

must seem a very peccadillo.”

Madam Lothner stared at me with startled eyes and dropping jaw.

“Murder,” she whispered, “M. de Jennico! what terrible thing do you

say?”

Then she put her hand to her head, ejaculating: “True, it was the

Margrave himself who brought us news of your death on his return from

England. It was in the English papers. I feared I know not what, but

this—this—God save us!”

I looked at her in fresh bewilderment. She was as one seized by

overwhelming terror. I felt that her emotion had its origin in causes

still unknown to me.

“And who is the Margrave?” I cried quickly.

She lowered her voice to the barest breath of sound, and glanced

fearfully over her shoulder as if afraid of eavesdroppers even in this

retired room.

“Prince Eugen, as they call him,” she said, “one of her Highness’s

cousins. He has, I do not quite know how, hopes of sovereignty in

Poland, and they were to have been married: it was her father’s wish,

and it is so still.”

I sprang up with an imprecation, but the lady almost flung herself upon

me, and clapped her hand over my mouth.

“In the name of God,” she said, “be still, or you will ruin us! My

husband is his most devoted adherent. In this house he rules, and we

bow to the earth before him.”

I sank back into my seat, docile, in spite of myself, impressed by the

strength of her fear. New trains of revelations crowded upon me. Eugen

of Liegnitz-Rothenburg—Rothenburg—Ville-Rouge—I saw it all!

She went on, bringing her mouth close to my ear:

“The Princess hated him, and indeed he has grown into a strange and

terrifying man, so oddly impulsive, cruel, wilful, vindictive. He

always professed to love the Princess, but I cannot but think that

it was the love of taming—he would dearly love to break her, just

as he loves to break the proudest-spirited horse. His grey eye makes

me grow cold. As I said, from a child she hated him, and it was for

that—having seen one whom she thought she could love....” Here she

paused, and glanced at me, and hesitated.

It was for that. I remembered. She had told me of the unhappy fate that

threatened “the Princess” that evening when we met under the fir-trees

to decide upon my crazy match, and when, as I had deemed, she had

fooled me to the top of my bent. She had spoken in tones of scathing

contempt and hatred of some cavalier. And now? Suddenly gripped by the

old devil of doubt and jealousy, I cried out, “And now, after all, the

fate of being wedded to an obscure gentleman seems to her more dreadful

than that of sharing her place with her cousin, and the peculiar

qualities of the hated relative have been very usefully employed in

ridding her of the inconvenient husband? Oh, Madam, of course you

know your Court of Lausitz, and I think I begin to see your drift:

you think, in your amiability, that it would be preferable to see

your mistress bigamously united, than that she should legitimise her

position by yet another and more successful attempt at assassination.”

“I fail to understand you, sir,” drawing back from me, nevertheless,

with a glance of mistrust and indignation.

“I will be plain,” said I: “when the Princess, who is my wife, left

me,—I will own I bear some blame, but then I had been strangely

played with,—she had doubtless already begun to repent what you call

her freak. When I followed her and implored her forgiveness,—you

yourself know all about it, Madam, for you must have acted under

her orders,—she flung back my letters, through your agency, with a

contemptuous denial of any knowledge of such a person as M. de Jennico.

When I wrote to her, her whom I believed to bear your name, a pleading,

abject letter, for I was still but a poor loving fool, her only answer

was to have me seized and driven from the country like a criminal.

Later on, when I refused to be a party to her petition for divorce,

she thought, no doubt, she had given me chances enough, and this time

she deputed the noble bully, her cousin, to manage the matter in his

own fashion. My life was attempted five times, Madam. And when it all

failed,—your Prince Eugen, you tell me, he was in England, and there

was a certain great bulky Chevalier de Ville-Rouge, who particularly

sought my acquaintance—’tis he, is it not?—your Prince Eugen honoured

me by seeking a duello, and by running his august sword through my

common body, and that more often, be it said, than custom sanctions in

honourable encounters. I was given for dead. No wonder! It seems to be

the sport of hell to keep me alive. I can scarce think it is the will

of Heaven.”

Madam Lothner had followed my tirade with what appeared the most

conflicting sentiments: blank astonishment, horror, indignation. It was

the last, however, that predominated. Her countenance became suffused

with crimson; her blue eyes flashed a fire I had not deemed them

capable of harbouring; she forgot the precautions she herself had so

strenuously enjoined.

“And do you dare, sir,” cried she, “accuse my mistress of these

things—you, whom she loved? You knew her as your wife for four weeks,

and yet you know her so little as to believe her plotting your death!

Those letters, sir, you speak of, she never received, nor did I, nor

did she nor I ever hear of your presence in this land. ’Tis true

that after you had left,—for _you_ left her first, remember,—after

well-nigh a year without tidings of you, she did herself send to you

to request the annulment of the marriage. It was _to free you_ because

she believed you repented of it, and she felt she had entrapped you

into it. And when, sir, you refused, she had hope again in her heart,

for she loved you. And she suffered persecution on your account, and

was kept and watched like a state prisoner—she that had always lived

for the free air, and for her own way. They were cruel to her, and

put dreadful pressure upon her that she should make her appeal alone

to the Pope. But she held firm, and bore it all in silence, and lived

surrounded by spies, her old friends and old servants banished from her

sight, until the news came that you were dead. Then ... ah, then, she

mourned as never a woman mourned yet for her first and only love! As

to marriage—what dreadful things have you been saying? Her Highness

will never marry again. She will be faithful as long as she lives to

you, whom she believes dead. And God forbid it should be otherwise,

for Prince Eugen would wed her from no love, I believe, but solely to

punish her for resisting him so long, to break her to his will at last,

and triumph over her. Oh, no, she would never wed again! You must

believe me, for I have been with her through it all, and though she

would mock me and laugh at me once, she turned to me afterwards as to

her only friend——Get up, M. de Jennico, get up! Ach Gott! what a coil

this is! My good sir, get up; think if the doctor were to come in! Ach

Gott! what is that you say? Nay, I have been a fool, and this is the

worst of all. My poor friend, there is no room for happiness here!”

For I had fallen at her feet again, and was covering her hand with

kisses, blessing her with tears, I believe, for the happiness of this

moment.

She ended, good soul, by weeping with me, or rather, over the pity of

the joy that was doomed, as she thought, to such brief duration.

“Oh, you are mad, you are mad!” she said, as I poured forth I know

not what extravagant plans. Ottilie loved me, cried I in the depths

of my exultant soul: what could be difficult now? “You are mad! Have

you not yet learned your lesson? Do you not understand that they will

never, _never_ let you have her? Go back to your home, sir, and if you

love her never let her know you are still alive, for if they heard it

here, God knows what she would be put to bear; and if she knew they had

tried to murder you, it would kill her. I tell you, sir, a Court is a

dreadful place, and Prince Eugen, you know what he is, and his Serene

Highness himself, he is hard as the stones of the street. You have seen

what they have done—no law can reach them! They will not fail again.

And if a second scandal——” she paused, hesitated, shuddered, then

bending over to me she whispered, half inarticulately, “if a second

scandal came to pass, who knows what forfeit she might not have to pay!”

But I rose, clasped her two hands, and looked into her eyes with all

the bold joy that filled my heart.

“My kind friend,” I said, “you cannot frighten me now. Keep you but our

secret, and you will yet see your mistress happy.” I wrung her hands,

and hurried to the door, as eager now to be gone as I had been to

enter. I must act, and act at once, and there was much to do.

She followed me, lamenting and entreating, to the steps, where stood

faithful Trude, with garments blown about in the cold wind. But, as I

turned to take a last farewell, my hostess caught me by the sleeve.

“Keep close,” she said, “keep close; and if you are hurt, if you are

ill——” she hesitated a second, then leaned forward and breathed into

my ear, “do not send for the Court doctor.”

CHAPTER IV

I RUSHED out into the street, treading as if on air, my cloak floating

behind me, my head thrown back, all warnings unheeded in the first

overpowering tide of this joy which had come upon me at the darkest

hour of all.

I had told myself that I must act, and act at once. But till I had had

a moment’s breathing time to realise the extraordinary revelations by

which the whole face of the past and of the future was changed to me, I

could form no coherent thought, much less could I form plans.

I wanted space for this—space and solitude. And so I hurried along as

I have described, looking neither to the right nor to the left, when I

was seized upon from behind, and by no means gentle hands brought me

first to a standstill, and next threw the folds of my cloak around me

in such a fashion as once more to cover my face.

“Are you mad?” said János, with a fiercer display of anger than I had

ever known him show to me, though he had marshalled me pretty rigidly

through my illness. “I have been following you these five minutes,

and all the town stares at your honour. ’Tis lucky you took a side

turning just now or you would have been straight into the great place,

perhaps into the main guard. If you want to look for death, you can go

to the wars like my old master, but ’tis an ill thing to find it in the

assassin’s blade, as I thought you had learned by now. Do you forget,”

continued János, scolding more vehemently, “that they are all leagued

against you in this country? Do you forget how they packed you out of

the land last year, and warned you never to return? ’Tis very well to

risk one’s life, but ’tis ill to throw it away.”

“Oh, János, true soul,” said I, as soon as I could get air to speak

with, for his grasp upon the folds of my cloak was like an iron clamp,

“all is changed, all is explained. You saw me last the most miserable

of men: you see me now the happiest!”

We had paused in a deserted alley leading into the gardens on the

ramparts. As I looked round I saw that the sky had grown darkly

overcast, and by János’s pinched face, as well as by the bowing and

bending of the trees, that the wind had risen strong and cold. To me it

might have been the softest breeze of spring. I drew the man over to a

bench all frosted already by tiny flakes which fell persistently, yet

sparsely, and there I told him my tale of joy. He listened, blinking

and grinning. At length when it was duly borne in upon him that the

wife I was seeking was really and actually the Princess of the land, he

clasped his hands and cried with a certain savage enthusiasm:

“Oh, that my old master had lived to see the day!” But the next instant

the bristling difficulties of the situation began to oppress his aged

heart. He pondered with a falling face.

“Then your honour is in even greater danger than I had thought,” said

he, “and every second he passes in this town of cut-throats adds to the

risk.”

“Even so,” said I, clapping him on the shoulders, my spirits rising

higher, it seemed, with every fresh attempt to depress them,—“Even so,

my good fellow; and therefore since my wife I mean to have, and since I

mean to live to be happy with her, what say you to our carrying her off

this very night?”

He made no outcry: he knew the breed (he himself had said it) too well.

As you may see a dog watch his master’s signal to dash after the prey,

wagging his tail faintly the while, so the fellow turned and fixed me.

“And how will your honour do it?” said he without a protest.

“How?” said I, and laughed aloud; “by my soul I know not! I know

nothing yet, but we will home to the inn and deliberate. There is

nought so difficult but love will find the way, and Romeos will scale

walls to reach their Juliets so long as this old world lasts.”

I rose as I spoke, and so did János, shaking the snow from his bent

shoulders.

“I know nothing of the gentlemen your honour speaks of, nor of the

ladies, but my old master, your honour’s uncle, did things in his

days.... God forgive me that I should remember them against a holy

soul in heaven! There was a time when he kept a whole siege (it was

before Reichenberg in ’59)—a whole siege waiting, ordered a cessation

of fire for a night, that he might visit some lady in the town. He was

the general of the besieging army, and he could order as he pleased.

By Saint Stephen, he got into the town somehow ... and I with him ...

and next morning we got out again! No one knew where we had been but

himself, and myself, and herself—he, he!—and before midday we had

that town.”

“Fie, fie, János,” said I, “these are sad tales of a field-marshal; let

us hope my good aunt never heard them.”

“Her Excellency,” said János, and crossed himself, “would have gloried

in the deed. But, your honour, we have the heavens against us to-night;

I have not seen a sky look blacker, even in England, since the great

storm at Tollendhal.... Ah, your honour remembers when.”

“All the better,” said I, as we turned the corner; “a stormy night is

the best of nights for a bold deed.”

And I thought within myself: “I lost her in the storm; in the storm

shall I find her again.” Thus does a glad heart frame his own omen.

It was all very fine to talk of carrying off my wife in such fashion;

but when, seated together near the fire in my room, talking in whispers

so that not even the great stove door could catch the meaning of our

conclave, János and I discussed our plans, we found that everything

fell before the insuperable difficulty of our ignorance of the

topography of the palace. There seemed nothing for it but to endeavour

to interview Anna once more, dangerous as the process might be. And we

were already discussing in what character János should present himself,

when Fortune—that jade that had long turned so cold a shoulder upon

me—came to the rescue in the person of the good woman herself. There

was a hard knock at the door, which made us both, conspirators as we

were, jump apart, and I involuntarily felt for the pistol in my coat

skirts, whilst János stalked to open.

And there stood the lank black figure which had once seemed to cast a

sort of shadow on my young delight, but which now I greeted as that of

an angel of deliverance. She loved her mistress, her mistress loved

me—what could she do me then but good?

I sprang forward and drew her in by both hands. She threw back the

folds of her hood and looked round upon us, and her grim anxious

countenance relaxed into something like a smile. Then she dropped me a

stiff curtsey, and coming close to my ear:

“I gave my mistress the gracious master’s letter,” she said, and

paused. I seized upon her hand again.

“Oh, Anna, dear Anna, how is she? How did she take it? Was she much

concerned? Was she ...” I hesitated, “was she glad to learn I am not

dead?”

The woman’s eyes looked as if they would fain speak volumes, but her

taciturn tongue gave utterance to few words.

“My mistress,” she said, “wept much, and thanked God.” That was all,

but I was satisfied.

“She is in much fear for you,” the messenger went on after a pause.

“She bade me say she dared not write because of the danger to you; she

bade me say that the danger is greater than you know of; that your

enemies are other than you think. Now they believe you dead, but you

may be recognised. And you were out to-day again!” said Anna, suddenly

dropping the sing-song whisper of her recitation and turning upon me

sternly with uplifted finger. “Out, in spite of my warning! I know, for

I came to the inn to find you. All this is foolish.”

“And this is the end of your message?” said I, who had been drinking

in every word my wife’s sweet lips had so sweetly spoken for me. “Was

there nothing else?” said I again, for my soul hungered for a further

sign of love.

“There was one thing more,” said Anna in her stolid way: “she bade me

say she would contrive to see you somehow soon, but that as you love

her you must keep hidden.”

I shut my eyes for a second to taste in the secret of my heart the

honeyed savour of that little phrase that meant so much: “_as you love

me!_” for there rang the unmistakable appeal of love to love! And I

smiled to think that she still reserved the telling of her secret. I

guessed it was because she was pleased that I should want her for

herself, and not for the vain pride that had been our undoing.

And then, with my bold resolve a thousandfold strengthened, I caught

Anna by the arm.

“Now listen,” said I, and stooped to bring my lips to her ear. “When

I went out this afternoon it was to good purpose. I have seen Frau

Lothner.... I know all.”

“Lord God!” cried Anna, and snatched her hand from mine and threw her

arms to heaven, her long brown face overspread with pallor; “and she

has seen you, has recognised you—the Court doctor’s wife! Then God

help us all! If the secret is not out to-day it will be to-morrow.

Oh, my poor child, my poor child!” She rocked herself to and fro in a

paroxysm of indignant grief.

“But,” said I, trying to soothe her that she might listen to my

plan, “Madam Lothner is an old friend of mine, she is devoted to the

Princess, she has a kind heart, she has promised me discretion.”

“She!” said Anna, and paused to throw me a look of unutterable scorn.

“She, the sheep-head! in the hands of such an one as the Court doctor!

My lord, I give you but to midnight to escape! for as it happens—and

God is merciful that it happens so—the Margrave has sent for the

doctor at his camp of Liegnitz, and he will not return until after

supper.”

“So be it,” said I gaily; “escape I shall, Anna, but not alone.”

The woman’s sallow face grew paler yet. The depth of the love for the

child she had nursed at her breast gave her perspicacity. Her eye

sought mine with fearful anticipation.

I drew her to the furthest end of the room and rapidly expounded my

project, which developed itself in my mind even as I spoke. Outside

the snow was falling fast. All good citizens were within doors; there

was as yet no suspicion of my presence in the town; the palace was

quiet and my bitterest enemy was absent; to delay would be to lose

our only chance. The passion of my arguments, none the less forcible,

perhaps, because of the stress of circumstances which kept my voice at

whisper pitch, bore down Anna’s protests, her peasant’s fears. I had,

I believe, a powerful auxiliary in the woman’s knowledge of all that

her beloved mistress might be made to suffer upon the discovery of my

reappearance. She felt the convincing truth of my statement, that if

the attempt was to be made at all it must be made this very night, and

she saw too that I said true when I told her I would only give up such

attempt with my life.

Moreover (joy as yet hardly realised!) she knew that my wife’s

happiness lay in me alone; and so she agreed, with unexpected

heartiness, to every detail of my scheme.

She was to meet me at the end of the palace garden lane before the

stroke of eight, two hours hence, and admit me through a side postern

into the garden itself. We were obliged to fix so early an hour to

avoid the necessity of running twice past sentries, who, it seemed,

were doubled around the palace after eight o’clock. The Princess’s

apartments were upon the first floor on the garden side, and from the

terrace below it was quite possible, it appeared, for an active man

to climb up to her balcony. I would bring a rope-ladder—János should

make it, for he had no doubt some knowledge of that scaling implement.

As soon as she had shown me the way, Anna was to endeavour to prepare

her mistress for my coming. János in his turn was to be waiting with

my carriage and post-horses as near the garden gate as he dared. The

Princess, the nurse told me, was wont to retire about nine, it might be

a little earlier or later, and liked then to be left in solitude, Anna

herself being the only person admitted to her chamber.

Among the many risks there was one inevitable, the danger of being

discovered by my wife lurking on her balcony before Anna had had time

to carry her message: for it was impossible, the woman warned me, that

she should now see her mistress before the latter descended to meet

the Duke at supper. I was, however, gaily prepared to face this risk,

and even, foolhardy as it may seem, desired in my inmost soul that

there should be no intermediary on this occasion, and that my lips

only should woo her back to me; that this first meeting after our hard

parting should be sacred to ourselves alone.

I reckoned besides upon the fact that since Ottilie knew I was in the

town, she would not be surprised at my boldness, however desperate;

that she would ascertain with her own eyes who it was who dared climb

so high, before she called for help.

At length, when everything was clear,—and the woman showed after all a

wonderful mother wit,—Anna departed in the storm, and I and János were

left to our own plans and preparations. As for me, my heart had never

ridden so high; never for a second did I pause or hesitate. In a few

minutes we had devised half a dozen alternate schemes of flight, all

equally good—all equally precarious.

“Will your honour leave it to me,” said the old campaigner at last,

as he sat beginning to plait and knot various lengths of our luggage

ropes into an escape ladder,—“the settlement of the inn account, the

post-horses, and the choice of the road?”

With this I was content.

The wind had abated a little, but the snow was still falling steadily

when I set forth at length. The streets were, as I expected, very

empty, and the few wayfarers whom I chanced to meet were so enveloped

and so plastered with white, the chief thought of every one was so

obviously how best to keep himself warm, how soonest to get within

shelter, that I hugged myself again upon my luck. There was a glow

within me which defied the elements.

At the corner of the garden lane, at the appointed place, even as the

tower clock began the quarter chimes, I saw a woman’s figure rapidly

approaching the trysting spot from the opposite direction. I hesitated

for a moment, uncertain as to its identity, but it made straight for

me, and I saw it was Anna. As we turned into the lane itself she

suddenly whispered:

“Put your arm round my waist,” and the next instant, from the very

midst of my amazement, I realised her meaning: we had to pass close by

a sentry-box. Woman’s wits are ever sharper than man’s. The sentry was

stamping to and fro, beating his breast with his disengaged hand, but

ceased his bear dance to stare at us, as we came within the light of

the postern lamp, and launched at the dim couple so lovingly embraced

some rude witticism in his peasant tongue, accompanied by a grunt of

good-natured laughter. My supposed sweetheart pulled her hood further

over her face, answered back tartly with a couple of words in the

country dialect; and, followed by an ironical blessing from the churl,

we were free to pursue our way unchallenged.

This was the only obstacle we encountered; the lane was quite deserted.

We stopped before a little postern door half buried in ivy, which Anna,

producing a key from her pocket, unlocked after some difficulty. At

last it rolled back on its rusty hinges with what sounded in my ears

as an exultant creak. An ancient bird’s nest fell upon my head as we

passed through into the garden. Anna carefully pushed the door to once

more, but without locking it, and we hastened towards the distant

gleaming front of the palace, stumbling as we went, for the soft snow

concealed the irregularities of the path. Without hesitation, however,

my guide led me between two fantastically carved hedges of box and yew

till we came to a statue, rearing a blurred outline, ghostly white in

the faint snowlight. Here she stood still and pointing to the south

wing:

“There,” she said, while all the blood in my body leaped, “there are my

mistress’s apartments; see you those three windows above the terrace?

The middle window with the balcony is that of her Highness’s bedroom.

You cannot mistake it. The ivy is as thick as a man’s arm, and you may

climb by it in safety. Now that I have done what you bade me I will go

to the palace. God see us through this mad night’s work!”

With these words she left me. I ventured to the foot of the terrace

wall, and creeping alongside soon found the terrace steps, which I

ascended with a tread as noiseless as the fall of the thick snowflakes

all around me. I stood under her balcony. I groped for the ivy-stems,

and found them indeed as thick as cables. It was a plant of centenarian

growth, and it clasped the old palace walls with a hundred arms, as

close as welded iron: as strong and commodious a ladder as my purpose

required. I swung myself up (I tremble now to think how recklessly,

when one false step might have ended the life that had grown so dear),

and next I found myself upon the balcony—Ottilie’s balcony!—and

through the parted curtains could peer into her lighted room.

Then for the first time I paused, hesitating to pry upon her retirement

like a thief in the night. For a moment I knelt upon the snow and cried

in my heart for pardon to her. Then, drawing cautiously aside from the

shaft of light, I looked in. It was a large lofty apartment with much

gilding, tarnished it seemed by time, and with faded paintings and

medallions on the walls. In an alcove curtained off I divined in the

shadow a great carved bed, whose gilt curves caught now and again a

gleam of ruby light from the open door of an immense rose china stove.

My eyes lingered tenderly over every detail of the sanctuary sacred to

my lady. Outside upon the balcony, all in the darkness, the cold, and

the snow, my whole being began to swim in a dreamy warmth of love. It

is like enough that had not something come to rouse me, I might have

been found next morning, stiff, frozen upon my perch, with a smile

upon my lips—a very sweet and easy death! But from this dangerous

dreaminess I was presently aroused to vivid watchfulness and energy.

My wandering gaze had been for a little while uncomprehendingly fixed

upon a shining wing of flowered satin stuff that trailed on one side of

a great armchair, the back of which was turned towards me. This wing

of brocade caught the full illumination of the candles on the wall and

showed hues of pink and green as dainty as the monthly roses in the

garden of my old home in England. Now as I gazed the roses began to

move as if a breeze had shaken them, and lo! the next moment, a little

hand as white as milk fluttered down like a dove upon them and drew

them out of sight. For a second my heart stood still, and then beat

against my breast like a frantic wild thing of the woods against the

bars of its cage. She was there, there already, my beloved! What kept

me from breaking in upon her, I cannot say—a sort of fear of looking

upon her face again in the midst of my great longing—or maybe my good

angel! Anyhow I paused, and pausing was saved. For in a second more

a door opposite to me opened, and an elderly lady, followed by two

servants carrying a table spread for a repast, entered the room. The

lady came towards the armchair and curtsied. I saw her lips move and

caught the murmur of her voice, and listened next in vain for the music

of those tones for which my ear had hungered so many days and nights.

I saw the white hand cleave the air again as if with an impatient

gesture. The lady curtsied, the lackeys deposited the table near the

chair, and all three withdrew.

I had trusted to fate to be kind to me this night, but I had not dared

expect from fate more than neutrality; and now it was clear that it was

taking sides for me, and that my wife had been strangely well inspired

to sup in her chamber alone, instead of in public with her father, as I

had been told was her wont.

No sooner had the attendants retired than I beheld her light figure

spring up with the old bounding impetuosity I had loved and laughed

at, fling herself against the door, and I heard the snap of the key.

Now was my opportunity! And yet again I hesitated and watched. My face

was pressed against the glass in the full glare of the light, without

a thought of caution, forgetting that, were she to look up and see me,

the woman alone might well scream at the wild, eager face watching her

with burning eyes from out of the black night. But she did not look up.

Wheeling round at the door itself as if she could not even wait to

get back to her chair, Ottilie—my Ottilie—drew from beneath the

lace folds that crossed upon her young bosom a folded letter, which I

recognized, by the coarse grey paper, as that which my own hand had

scored in the little provision shop a few hours ago.

An extraordinary mixture of emotions seized upon my soul: a sort

of shame of myself again for spying upon her private life, and an

unutterable rapture. I could have knelt once more in the snow as before

a sacred shrine, and I could have broken down a fortress to get to her.

From the very strength of the conflict I was motionless, with all my

life still in my eyes.

When she had finished reading she lifted her face for a moment, and

then for the first time I saw it. Oh, dear face, paled with many tears

and dark thoughts, but beautiful, beyond even my heated fancy, with a

new beauty, rarer and more exquisite than it is given me to describe!

The same, yet not the same! The wife I had left had been a wilful and

wayward child, a mocking sprite—the wife I here found again was a

gracious, a ripe and tender woman, upon whose lips and eyes sat the

seal of a noble, sorrowful endurance.

She lifted the letter to her lips and kissed it, looked up again,

and then our eyes met! Then I hardly remember what I did. I was

unconscious of any deliberate thought; I only knew that there was my

wife, and that not another second should pass before I had her in my

arms.

I suppose I must have hurled myself against the casement; the lock

yielded, and the window flew open. Enveloped in a whirl of floating

snow I leaped into the warm room. With dilated, fixed eyes, with parted

lips, she stood, terror-stricken, at first, yet erect and undaunted.

I had counted all along on her courage, and it did not fail me! But

before I had even time to speak, such a change came over her as is like

the first upspring of sunlight upon the colourless world of dawn. As

you may see a wave gather itself aloft to break upon the shore, so she

drew herself up and flung herself, melting into tears, body and soul,

as it were, upon my heart. And the next moment her lips sought mine.

Never before had she so come to me—never before had life held for me

such a moment! Oh, my God! it was worth the suffering!

CHAPTER V

A KNOCK without aroused us. With a stifled cry of alarm, the woman

who had made no sound on the violent entry of an armed man upon her

unprotected solitude, now fell into deadly anguish. She sprang to the

door, and I could see the lace on her bosom flutter with the fear of

her heart as she bent her ear to listen. The knock was repeated.

“Who is it?” cried Ottilie, in a strangled voice. “I had said I would

be alone.”

“‘Tis I, child,” came the answer in the well-known deep note; “it is

Anna, alone.”

I thrust my sword back into its scabbard; my wife drew a long breath of

relief, and glanced at me with her hand pressed to her heart.

“Anna, thank God! We can admit her: Anna is safe,” she said, and turned

the key.

Anna opened the door, stood an instant on the threshold, contemplating

us in silence; a faint smile hovered about her hard mouth. Then,

without wasting words on futile warnings, she made fast the lock,

deposited on the floor a dark lantern she had concealed under her

apron, walked to the window, which she closed as best she could, and

drew the curtains securely. Indeed, her precaution was not idle:

through the silence of the outside world of night, muffled by the snow,

but yet unmistakable, the tread of the first patrolling round now grew

even more distinctly upon our ear, passed under the terrace, emphasised

by an occasional click of steel, and died away round the corner. With

the vanishing sound melted the new anxiety which had clutched me, and

I blessed the falling snow which must have hidden again, as soon as

registered, the tell-tale traces of my footsteps below.

Anna had listened with frowning brow; when all was still once more,

she turned to the Princess, and briefly, but in that softened voice I

remembered of old:

“I have told your ladies that you had bidden me attend to you this

night, and that you must not be disturbed in the morning,” and then

turned to me: “All is ready, sir; we have till noon before being

discovered. And now, child,” she continued, as Ottilie, still closely

clinging to my side, looked up inquiringly, “no time to lose; there is

death in this for thy gracious lord, if not for us all as well.”

“What does she mean?” asked Ottilie, and seemed brought from a far

sphere of bliss face to face with cold reality. “Oh, Basil, Basil, to

leave me again!”

“Leave you! I will never leave you,” cried I, touched to the quick at

the change which had come upon the proud spirit of my beloved; “but if

you will not come with me, with your husband, if you fear the perils

of flight, the hardships of the road, or even,” said I, though it was

only to try her and taste once again the exquisite joy of loving,

humble words from her lips, “if you cannot make up your mind to give up

your high state here, to live as the wife of a simple gentleman, I am

content to die at your side. But leave you, never again! Ah! my God,

once was too much.”

She looked at me for a second with tender reproach in her tear-dimmed

eyes and upon her trembling lips; then she answered with a simplicity

that rebuked my mock humility:

“I am content to go with you, Basil, were it to the end of the world.”

At this I could not, in spite of Anna’s presence, but take her to my

heart again, and the nurse, after watching us with a curious look of

mingled pleasure and jealousy in her hollow eyes, suddenly and somewhat

harshly bade us remember once more that time was short.

“You,” she went on to her lady, peremptorily, as if conscious of being

herself the true mistress of the situation, “drink you of that broth

and break some bread, and drink of that wine, for you have not eaten

to-day. And you,” she added, turning to me, “make ready with your

ladder.”

Impatiently and sternly she stood by us until we prepared to obey her

orders.

We owe a very great debt of gratitude to this woman!

My wife sat down like a child, watching me, sweet heart! over every

mouthful of soup as one who fears the vision may fade. As for me,

appreciating all the importance of immediate action, I threw from

me the perilous temptation of letting myself go to the delight of

the moment—a delight enhanced, perhaps, by the very knowledge of

environing danger. Opening my cloak, I unwound the length of rope from

my waist, cautiously slipped out again on the balcony and fastened one

end to the iron rail. Remembering the precious burden it was to bear, I

could not be satisfied without testing every knot, and finally trying

its strength with my own weight by descending to the terrace. It worked

satisfactorily, and the distance, fortunately, was not excessive. Then

leaving it dangling, in three leaps I was up again and once more in

the warm room, just in time to see an exquisite gleam of silk stocking

disappear into the depths of the fur boot which Anna was fastening with

all the dexterity of a nurse dressing a child.

And, indeed, my sweet love submitted to be turned and bustled and

manipulated with an uncomplaining docility as if she was again back in

her babyhood—although in truth I have reason to believe, from what I

know of her and have heard since, that not even then had she ever been

remarkable for docility.

Grimly smiling, Anna completed her labour by submerging the dainty head

in a deep hood; the sable-lined cloak and the muff she handed over to

me with the abrupt command: “Throw them out! Auswerfen!” Anna should

have been a grenadier sergeant; nevertheless, the thought was good, and

I promptly obeyed. Next she gave me the lantern—she had thought of

everything!—and commenced extinguishing the lights in the room. I took

Ottilie by the hand, the little warm hand, ungloved, that it might the

tighter feel the rope.

“Will you trust yourself, love?” said I. She gave me no answer but a

shaft of one of her old fearless looks and yielded her waist to my

arm, and thus we stepped forth into the snow and the night. I guided

her to the rope and showed her where to hold, and where to place her

feet, and then, climbing over the balcony, supporting myself by the

projecting stones and the knotted ivy, I was able to guide the slender

body down each swinging rung: for when the blood is hot and the heart

on fire one can do things that would otherwise appear well-nigh

impossible.

Safely we reached the ground. I enveloped her in the cloak which Anna’s

forethought had provided, and after granting myself the luxury of

another embrace I was preparing to ascend the blessed rope again for

the purpose of assisting Anna, when I discovered that incomparable

woman solidly and stolidly planted by our side in the snow.

“All is right, gracious sir,” she said in a hoarse whisper; “but it

would be as well to take away that rope, since you can go up and down

so easily without it.”

Recognising in an instant the wisdom of the suggestion—it was well

some one had a waking brain that night!—I clambered up once more, and

in a few seconds had flung down the tell-tale ladder, and descended

again.

Anna took up the lantern, which she hid under her cloak, and, all

three clinging together, we hastened to the postern as noiselessly as

shadows. The snow fell, but the wind had all subsided, and the air was

now so still that the cold struck no chill.

Outside the postern, seeing no one in sight, we paused.

“I have told János to be at the bottom of the lane,” said I to Anna, as

she pocketed the key after turning the lock. And then to my wife, who

hung close and silent to my arm: “It is but a little way, and then you

shall rest.”

Even as I spoke I turned to lead her, but Anna arrested me:

“I have thought better,” she said. “To leave the town in a carriage is

dangerous. I have arranged otherwise.”

I was about, I believe, to protest, or at least discuss, when Ottilie,

who had hitherto permitted herself to be led whither I would, like one

in a dream, suddenly cried to me in an urgent undertone to let Anna

have her way: “Believe me,” she said, “you will not repent it.” I would

have gone anywhere at the command of that voice.

“It shall be so,” said I; “but there is János, and we cannot leave him

in the lurch.”

“No, we must have János with us,” said Anna; “but that is easy. Follow

me, children.” And uncovering her lantern, with her skirts well kilted

up, she preceded us with fearless strides to the secluded turn at the

bottom of the lane, where, true to his promise, I found the heiduck and

his conveyance.

For the greater security the lamps of the carriage had not been lit,

but we could see its bulk rise in denser black against the gloom

before us, and feel the warmth of the horses steam out upon us, with a

pleasant stable odour, into the purity of the air.

There was a rapid colloquy between our two old servants. János, the

cunning fox! at once and appreciatively agreed to Anna’s superior plan

of action, and indeed his old campaigner’s wits promptly went one

better than the peasant’s shrewdness: instead of merely dismissing the

carriage as she suggested, he bade the coachman drive out by the East

Gate of the town and, halting at Gleiwitz, await at the main hostelry

there the party that would come on the morrow. And in the dark I could

see him emphasise the order by the transfer of some pieces, that

clicked knowingly in the night silence. The point of the manœuvre,

however, was only manifest to me when, turning to follow Anna’s lead

again down a side alley, the fellow breathed into my ear with a

chuckle:

“While your honour was away I took upon myself to despatch his carriage

with our luggage, to meet us, I said, at Dresden. That will be two

false scents for them—and we, it seems, take the south road to Prague!

We shall puzzle Budissin yet.”

On we tramped through the deserted bye-streets. It was only when we

were stopped at last, in that self-same poor little mean lane, before

the self-same poor little mean shop, faintly lit inside by a dull

oil lamp, that I recognised the scene of my morning’s interview with

Anna—that interview which seemed already to have passed into the far

regions of my memory, so much had I lived through since.

We met but few folk upon our way, who paid little attention to us. As

we entered into the evil-smelling room, stepping down into it from

the street, and as Anna shot back the slide of the lantern and turned

upon us a triumphant smiling face, I felt that our chief peril was

over. The shop was empty, but she was not disposed to allow us even a

little halt: she marshalled us through the dank narrow passages with

which I had already made acquaintance, across the courtyard into the

back street. There stood a country waggon with a leathern tent. By the

flash of the lantern I saw that to it were harnessed a pair of great

raw-boned chestnuts that hung their heads patiently beneath the snow,

yet seemed to have known better service in their days—no doubt at one

time had felt the trooper’s spurs.

Beside them stood a squat man, enveloped to the ears in sheepskin, with

a limp felt hat drawn over his brow till only some three-quarters of a

shrewd, empurpled, not unkindly visage was left visible. The waggoner

was evidently expecting us, for he came forward, withdrew his pipe,

touched his hat, and made a leg.

“My cousin,” said Anna to us, and added briefly and significantly: “He

asks no questions.”

Then in a severe tone of command she proceeded to address several to

him. Had he placed fresh hay in the waggon according to her orders? Had

he received from her sister the ham, and the wine and the blankets? Had

the horses been well fed? On receiving affirmative grunts in answer,

she bade him then immediately produce the chair, that the lady and the

gentleman might get in.

Between the closed borders of her hood I caught a glimpse of Ottilie’s

faint smile, as lighted by the lantern rays she mounted upon the

wooden stool and disappeared into the dark recesses of the waggon,

stirring up a warm dust as she went, and a far-away fragrance of hay

and faded clover.

“Now you, sir,” said Anna, and jogged my elbow.

I believe at that moment we were to her but a pair of babes and

nurslings for whom she was responsible, and that she would have as

readily combed our hair and washed our faces as if we were still of a

size to be lifted on her knee.

I obeyed. And truly, as I crawled forward in the dark, amid the warm

straw, groping my way to the further end till I laid my hand on

Ottilie’s soft young arm extended towards me, when I heard her laugh

a little laugh to herself as we snuggled in the nest together, I felt

a happiness that was like that of a child, all innocent of past and

improvident of future. Nevertheless at one and the same time my whole

being was stirred to its depths with a tenderness my manhood had not

yet known.

In those foolish bygone days I had loved her, the sweet soul, with the

unworthy, mad passion of a lover for his mistress. When she left me I

had mourned her as a man mourns for his wife, flesh of his flesh, bone

of his bone. Now, however, we seemed to be lad and maid together;

our love, after all the sorrow and the agony we had passed through,

seemed to wear the unspeakable freshness of a first courtship. It

was written that good measure was to be paid me to compensate for

past anguish—good measure, heaped up, flowing over! I took it with a

thankful heart.

The cart swayed and creaked as János and Anna mounted and settled

themselves at our feet, drawing the hay high over themselves. Then came

another creaking and swaying in the forward end, we heard a jingle of

bells, a crack of the whip and a hoarse shout: the cart groaned and

strained to the effort of the horses, then yielded. And at a grave pace

we rumbled over the cobble-stones, turning hither and thither through

street after street which we could not see. And in the midst of our hay

we felt a sense of comfortable irresponsibility and delicious mystery.

All in the inner darkness we were dimly conscious of the snowy pageant

outside: the ghost-like houses and the twinkling lights. Ottilie lay

against my shoulder, and I felt her light breath upon my cheek.

After a while—it would be hard to say how long—there was a halt;

there came a shout from our driver, and an answering shout beyond. I

knew we had come to the Town Gates. That was a palpitating moment of

anxiety as the two voices exchanged parley, which the heavy beating

of the pulses in my ears would not allow me to follow. Next the rough

cadence of a jovial laugh fell loud upon the air, and then—sweeter

music I have seldom heard!—the clank of the gate’s bar. Once more we

felt ourselves rumbling on slowly till we had passed the bridge and

exchanged the cobbles of the town for the surface of the great Imperial

road, more lenient for all its ruts. The cousin cracked his whip again

and bellowed to his cattle; after infinite persuasion they broke into a

heavy jog-trot.

“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,”

said Anna suddenly from her dark corner, in a loud vibrating voice,

“give thanks to God, you children!” She leant forward as she spoke, and

pulled aside the leathern curtains that hung across the back of the

cart.

With the rush of snowy air came to us framed by the aperture a

retreating vision of Budissin, studded here and there with rare gleams

of light.

Thus did my wife, the young Princess of Lusatia, leave her father’s

dominions, her prospects of a throne, for the love of a simple English

gentleman!

CHAPTER VI

I SHALL carry to the grave, as one of the sweetest of my life, the

memory of that night journey. Coming as it did between the fierce

emotions and dangers of our meeting and flight, and the perilous and

furious episode that yet awaited us, it seems doubly impregnated with

an exquisite serenity of happiness. Full of brief moments, that brought

me then a poignant joy, it brings to my heart as I look back on it now

a tenderness as of smiles and tears together.

After a little while the flakes had ceased falling, and, in the faint

snowlight, beneath a clear sky, we gazed forth together from our

ambulant nest, here upon mysterious stretches of plain-land, there upon

ghosts of serried trees, trees that marched as it were past us back

towards Budissin. I remember how in a clear space of sky a star shone

out upon us at last, and how it seemed a good omen, and how we kissed

in the darkness.

Then there was our meal, with Anna’s lantern to illumine the feast. I

was so lost in watching my beloved bite her black bread contentedly

with small white teeth, and toast me with loving eyes over the thin

wine, that I could scarce fall to, myself. Yet when I did so it was

with right good appetite, for I was hungered, and I never tasted better

fare.

Then János got out of the waggon to sit in front by the driver and

smoke. My great-uncle had been such a confirmed tobacco-man that János

had acquired the habit in attendance upon him, and it did not behove me

to interfere with an indulgence fostered by thirty years’ service.

Anyhow, on that night the stray whiffs of his strong tobacco mingled

not unpleasantly with the keen cold scents of the night; and the sound

of the two men’s talk, with the monotonous jingle and rumble of harness

and cart, made a comfortable human accompaniment to our passage in the

midst of the great silence. Anna went to sleep and snored after her

good day’s work, waking now and again with a start and a groan, and

thence to oblivion once more. And then we too, oblivious of the world,

fell into a long dream, hand in hand—a great wide-eyed dream filling

our silence with soaring music, our darkness with all the warm colour

of life.

And thus we reached the first halting-place in the itinerary planned

by János and myself on the Imperial Chaussée. The place whence we

would best defy our enemies, and therefore our ultimate destination,

was of course my own Castle of Tollendhal, recent experience having

sufficiently demonstrated that in England we should be ill-protected

from the machinations of Budissin. This first stage was Löbau.

Never did town look so thoroughly asleep under its snow-laden eaves,

behind its black shutters, thought I, as our tired horses, steaming and

stumbling, dragged our cart up the main street.

A watchman had just sung out his cry: “The twelfth hour of the night,

and a clear heaven,” when we turned into the market-place, from the

middle of which he chanted his informing ditty to those Löbauers who

might chance to be awake to hear and thereby be comforted.

Spear in one hand and lantern in the other, the fellow approached

to inquire into such an unusual event as the passage of midnight

travellers. We heard János, in brief tones, tell a plausible tale of

his lordship’s travelling coach having broken down (on its way from

Görlitz, said he, who never missed a chance of falsifying a scent!),

and of his lordship, who happened to be in a special haste to proceed,

having availed himself of a passing country cart to pursue his journey

to the next posting town, and so forth, all the main points of this

story being corroborated by an affirmative growl from our Jehu.

Whereupon the watchman, honest fellow, nothing loath doubtless to vary

the perennial monotony of his avocation, undertook to awaken for our

benefit the inmates of the post-house, the best house of entertainment,

he asseverated, in the town.

It will be long, I take it, before the worthy burghers of Löbau,

and especially mine host of the “Cross Keys,” forget the mysterious

passage at dead of night of the great unknown magnate and his hooded

lady, of the tire-woman with the forbidding countenance, and of the

ugly body-servant, whose combined peremptoriness and lavish generosity

produced such wonders,—even had subsequent events not sufficed to fix

it upon their minds as a tragic epoch in the history of their country.

A few minutes of obstinate hammering and bell-ringing by János and by

the deeply impressed watchman, awoke the hostelry from the depths of

its slumbers. The bark of dogs responded first to the clangour; lights

appeared at various corners; windows, and then doors, were thrown open.

At last János threw back the leather curtain of our conveyance, and hat

in hand, with his greatest air of bonne maison assisted my lord in his

cloak, my lady in the furs (both much ornamented with wisps of hay), to

alight from their cart.

My lady, veiled and silent, retired for an hour’s rest, and so away

from the peering curiosity of the assembling servants. And my lord

paced the common-room, feverishly waiting for the coming of the

new conveyance which János, after one of his brief requisitioning

interviews (pandour style), had announced would be forthcoming with

brief delay.

The common-room was dank and cold enough, but my lord’s soul was in

warm consorting: it was still exalted by the last look that my lady had

thrown back at him, raising her hood for one instant as, ascending the

stairs, she had left him for the first separation.

In less than an hour the tinkling of collar-bells and the sound of

horses’ hoofs, clattering with a vigour of the best augury, were heard

approaching. Even as János entered to confirm by word the success of

his quest, my beloved appeared with a readiness which to me was sweeter

than any words: she too had been watching the moments which would speed

us onwards together once more.

Through a pretty concourse of dependants, all of whom had now got wind

of the rain of gratuities with which the great traveller’s servant

eased the wheels of difficulty, we entered our new chariot. I can

hardly mind now what sort of a vehicle this was. I believe in its days

it had been a decent enough travelling chaise: at any rate it moved

fast. Once more we rolled through the silent street, on the hillside

roads, up hill and down dale, my bride warmly nestled in my arms, and

both of us telling over again the tangled tale of the year that had

been wasted for us.

And thus, in the idle iteration of lovers’ talk, with the framing of

plans for the future, changeable and bright as the clouds of a summer’s

day, did we fill the rapid hours which brought us to Zittau in the

early morning.

But Zittau was still within the dominions of the eloping Princess’s

father; and at Zittau, therefore, much the same procedure was hastily

adopted as at the previous stage: another hour or so of separation,

another chaise and fresh horses, and once more a flight along the

mountain roads, as the dawn was spreading grey and chill over the first

spurs of the Lusatian hills.

This time we spoke but little to each other. The fatigue of a great

reaction was upon us. Anna was already snoring in her corner, her head

completely enveloped in her shawl, when, as I gazed down tenderly at

my wife’s face, I saw the sweet lids close in the very middle of a

smile, and the placidity of sleep fall upon her.

I have had, since the Budissin events, many joys; but there is none the

savour of which dwells with so subtle, so delicate, a perfume in my

memory as that of my drive in the first dawn with my wife asleep in my

arms.

It was not yet twelve hours since I had found her; and during those

twelve hours I had only seen her in the turmoil of emotion, or under

stress of anxiety, or by some flitting lamplight. Her image dwelt in my

mind as I had first beheld it through the glass of the palace window,

lovely in the first bloom of graceful womanhood, stately amid the

natural surroundings of her rank. Now, wrapped in confident slumber,

swathed in her great robes of fur, the only thing visible of her

young body being the little head resting in the hollow of my arm, the

fair skin flushing faintly in the repose of sleep, fresh even in the

searching cruelty of the growing light, like the petal of a tea rose,

the rhythmic pulse of her bosom faintly beating against my heart, she

was once more, for a little while, to me the Ottilie I had held in my

castle at Tollendhal. And as, for fear of disturbing her, I restrained

my passionate longing to kiss those parted lips, those closed lids

with the soft long eyelashes, I could not tell which I yearned for

most: the Princess, the ripe woman I had found again ... or the wayward

mistress playing at wife I had schooled myself to banish in the wasted

days of my overweening vanity.

But why thus linger over the first stage of that happy journey? Joy can

only be told by contrast to misery. We can explain sorrow in a hundred

pages, but if delight cannot be told in one, it cannot be told at all.

It is too elusive to be kept within the meshes of many words. Sorrows

we forget,—by a merciful dispensation,—and it may be wholesome to

keep their remembrance in books. Joys ever cling to the phials of

memory like a scent which nought can obliterate.

And since I have undertaken to record the reconquest of Jennico’s

happiness, there remains yet to tell the manner in which it all but

foundered in the haven. For this heartwhole ecstasy of mine could not

last in its entirety beyond a few brief moments. As I thus grasped

my happiness, with a mind free at last from the confusing vapours of

haste and excitement, even as the fair world around us emerged sharp

and bright from amid the shadows of dawn, all the precariousness of

our situation became likewise defined. Between me and the woman I

loved, though now I held her locked in my arms, arose the everlasting

menace of separation. How long would we be left together? Where could

I fly with her to keep her safe? I hoped that amid the feudal state of

my castle I could defy persecution, but what could such a life be at

best? Thus, in the very first sweetness of our reunion, was felt the

bitterness of that hidden suspense that must eventually poison all.

Now as I look back, nothing seems more dreamlike than the way in which

my boding thought suddenly assumed the reality of actual event.

“In a little while” (I was saying to myself, as I watched the shadows

shorten, and the beams of sunlight grow broader upon the snow), “in a

little while the hounds will be started in pursuit, the old persecution

will be resumed, more devilish than ever.” And at the thought, against

my will, a contraction shook the arm on which my love was resting. She

stirred and awoke, at first bewildered, then smiling at me. I let down

the glass of the coach, that the brisk morning air might blow in upon

us and freshen our tired limbs.

We were then advancing but slowly, being midway up the slope of

a great wide dale; the horses toiled and steamed. And then as we

tasted keenly the vigorous freshness of the morning air, and looked

forth, speechless, upon the beauty of the waking hour of nature—that

incomparable hour so few of us wot of—there came into the great

silence, broken only by the straining of harness and the faint thud of

our horses’ hoofs in the snow, another noise: a curious, faint, little,

far-off noise like to no sound of nature. Ottilie glanced at me, and I

saw the pupil of her eye dilate. She uttered no word, neither did I.

But, all at once, we knew that there was some one galloping behind us.

I thrust my head out. János was already on the alert: standing with his

back to the horses, leaning upon the top of the coach, he was looking

earnestly down the valley. I can see his face still, all wrinkled and

puckered together in the effort of peering against the first level

rays of the sun. Now, as I leaned out also, and the horse’s gallop

grew nearer and nearer upon my ear, I caught, as I thought, a faint

accompaniment of other hoofs, still more distant. I looked at János,

who brought down his eyes to mine.

“But three altogether, my lord,” he said. And, reaching as he spoke

for his musketoon, he laid it on top of the coach. “And, thank God,”

he added, “one can see a long way down this slope.” He bade the driver

draw up on one side of the road, and I was able myself to look

straight into the valley.

A flying figure, that grew every second larger and blacker against

the white expanse beneath us, was rushing up towards us with almost

incredible swiftness. In the absolute stillness of the world locked

in snow, the rhythm of the hoofs, the squelching of the saddle, the

laboured snorting of the over-driven horse, were already audible.

There were not many seconds to spare—and action followed thought as

prompt as flash and sound. There was only time, in fact, to place the

bewildered Anna, just awakened, by my wife’s side at the back of the

coach, to pull up the shutter of both windows, and to leap out.

I was hatless. I grasped my still sheathed sword in one hand, and with

the other fumbled for my pistols in my coat skirts, whilst with a

thrust of my shoulder I clapped the coach door to. There was not time

even to exchange a word with Ottilie, but her deathly pallor struck me

to the heart and fired me to the most murderous resolve.

And now all happened quicker than words can follow. No sooner had I

touched the ground, than out of space as it were, roaring and reeking,

hugely black against the sunshine, the horse and his rider were upon

me. I had failed to draw my pistol, but I had shaken the scabbard off

my sword. There seemed scarce a blade’s length between me and the

flying onslaught. Suddenly, however, the great animal swerved upon

one side, and was pulled up, almost crouching on its haunches, by the

force of an iron hand. The rider’s face, outlined against the horse’s

steaming neck, bent towards me: Prince Eugen’s—great indeed would have

been my surprise had it been any other—ensanguined, distorted with

fury, glowing with vindictive triumph, as once before I had seen it

thus thrust into mine.

“Thou dog, Jennico ... ill-slaughtered interloper ... at last I have

got thee! Out of my way thou goest this time!...”

As it spat these words, incoherently, the red face became blocked from

my view by a fist outstretched, and I found myself looking down the

black mouth of a pistol barrel. I cut at it with my sword, even as the

yellow flame leaped out: my blade was shattered and flew, burring,

overhead. But the ball passed me. At the same instant there came a

shout from above; the Prince looked up and, quick as thought, wrenched

at his horse; the noble beast rose, beating the air with his forefeet,

just as János fired, over my head. For a second all was confusion. The

air seemed full of plunging hoofs and blinding smoke. Our own horses,

taking fright, dragged the carriage some yards away, where it stuck

in a snowheap. Then things became clear again. I saw,—I know not

how,—but all in the same flash, I saw a few paces beyond me, János

now standing in the road, my wife in her dishevelled furs behind him;

and in front, free from the bulk of his dying horse, my enemy on foot,

pistol in hand, and once more covering me with the most determined

deliberation of aim. With my bladeless sword hilt hanging bracelet-like

on my sprained wrist, defenceless, I stood, dizzily, facing my doom.

Then for a third time the air rang with a shattering explosion.

The Prince flung both arms up, and I saw his great body founder

headforemost, a mere mass of clay, almost at my feet. I turned again,

and there was my János, with the smoking musketoon still to his cheek,

and there also my wife with the face of an avenging angel, one hand

upon his shoulder, and the other, with unerring gesture of command,

still pointing at the space beyond me where but a second before stood

the enemy who had held my life on the play of his forefinger.

CHAPTER VII

FOR the space of a few seconds we three stood motionless. The awful

stillness of the shadow of death was upon our souls. Then, approaching

from the distance came again to our ears the sound of hoofs, the

stumbling trot of a tired horse; and the quick wits of János were

awakened to action.

“Into the carriage, my lady,” said he, “and you, my lord! We have

loosed enough shots for one day, and so it is best we should move on

again and avoid these other gentlemen.”

He smiled as he spoke, a grim, triumphant smile. As for me, it was

certes nothing less than triumph I felt in my heart. I would have had

Prince Eugen dead, indeed, but not so, not so!

“Let us, at least,” I cried a little wildly, “see if he still breathes!”

“No need, my lord;” and János caught me by the wrist. “I am not so old

yet,” he added, eyeing his weapon with a delighted look, “but what I

can still aim straight. Did I not know him to be as truly carrion now

as his good horse itself, poor beast, I would surely enough despatch

him as he lies there biting the mud. But no need, my lord. Right in

the heart! The man was dead before he touched the ground.” And as he

spoke János dragged us towards the coach.

The driver, half risen from his seat, still clutching one rein,

seemed struck into an imbecility of terror; the horses, now quieted,

stretching their necks luxuriously against the loosened bits, were

sniffing at the snow, as if in the hope of lighting upon a blade of

grass. Anna sat on the steps, her face blanched to a sort of grey.

“Up with you!” said János, and pushed her with his knee. “Do you not

see your lady is faint?” The words aroused her, and they roused me. In

truth, Ottilie seemed scarcely able to sustain herself; it was time I

carried her away from such scenes.

After closing the doors, János handed me the musketoon and the

cartouche-box, with the brief remark: “His lordship had better load

again, the while I drive, for this coachman of ours is out of his wits

with fright.” And thus we started once more; and in the crash and

rattle of the speed to which János mercilessly put the horses, the

stumbling paces of the approaching pursuers were lost to our hearing.

The draught of air across her face revived Ottilie, who now sat up with

courage, and tried to smile at me, though her face was still set in a

curious hardness, whilst I, with the best ability of a sprained wrist,

reloaded and reprimed. Events (as I have oft thought since) had proved

how happy a thought it had been of mine (some two weeks before, when

we made our preparations to leave London, to gratify my good János’s

desire for one of those admirable double-barrels I had seen him so

appreciatively and so covetously handle at Fargus and Manton’s, in

Soho.)

When we reached the neck of the valley, I leaned out again and looked

back. The scene of that crisis in my eventful life lay already some

hundred yards below us. The second of our pursuers—a dragoon of

Liegnitz, as I now could see by his white coat, dirty yellow against

the snow—was in the act of dismounting from his exhausted steed.

I watched him bend over the prostrate figure of his chief for an

instant or two; then straighten himself to gaze up at our retreating

coach; then, with his arms behind him and his legs apart, in what,

even at that distance, I could see was an attitude of philosophical

indifference, turn towards the approaching figure of his comrade, who,

some hundred yards further down, now made his appearance on the road,

crawling onwards on an obviously foundered horse. It was evident

that whatever admiration the Margrave may have commanded during his

lifetime, his death did not inspire his followers with any burning

desire to avenge it.

I leant out further and handed back the loaded musketoon to János.

“You may spare our horses now,” said I; “there is no fear of further

pursuit to-day.”

“Ay, my lord, so I see,” responded the heiduck, with a cheerful jerk of

the head in our rear. “And, moreover, in a quarter of an hour we shall

be across the border.”

* * * * *

Now of our story there is little more to tell. And well for us that it

is so; for one may, as I have said, chronicle strange adventures and

perils of life and limb, and one may pour out on paper the sorrows of

an aching heart, the frenzy of despair; but the sweet intimate details

of happiness must be kept secret and sacred, not only from the pen but

from the tongue. It will not, however, come amiss that, to complete my

narrative—in which, one day, if Heaven will, my children shall learn

the romance of their parents’ wooing and marriage—I should set down

how it came about that the Margrave contrived (to his own undoing) to

track us so speedily; how, with his death, came the dispelling of the

shadows upon both our lives.

Shortly after our return to Tollendhal, a letter reached my wife from

the other Ottilie. It was evidently written in the greatest distraction

of mind, upon the very morning after our escape from Budissin. Although

conversation may not have been a strong point with Madam Lothner,

she seemed to wield a very fluent pen. She took two large sheets to

inform us how, upon her husband’s return on the previous night, his

suspicions being by some unaccountable means awakened, he had forced

from her the confession of all that had passed between us in the

afternoon. I cannot here take up my space and time with the record of

her excuses, her anguish, her points of exclamation, her appeals to

Heaven to witness the innocence of her intentions. But when I read her

missive I understood Anna’s contemptuous prophecy: “She keep a secret?

the sheep-head!” I understood also my wife’s attitude of tolerant

affection, and I blushed when I remembered the time when, blinded by

conceit, I had sought this great mock-pearl, when the real jewel lay at

my hand.... But to proceed.

The doctor had instantly given the alarm at the palace, with the

result that the Princess’s flight was discovered within two hours

after it had taken place. Now the uproar in the Ducal household was,

it seems, beyond description. Two detachments of dragoons were at

once sent in pursuit of the two carriages which were known to have

left the town that night. (How we blessed Anna’s shrewder scheme!)

When they returned, empty-handed of course, the nature of the trick

was perceived. Prince Eugen—whose fury, it appears, was something

quite appalling to behold, not only because of the reassertion of the

Princess’s independence, but because the man whom he had taken so much

trouble to obliterate had presumed to be alive after all!—Prince

Eugen, according to his wont, took matters into his own hands. He

sallied forth with his henchman the doctor, to make inquiries for

himself in the town. The result of these was the discovery of the

passage of one Hans Meyerhofer’s cart out by the South Gate after

closing hours. This man was known to the doctor (whose stables he

supplied with fodder) as being Anna’s cousin, and the connection of the

Princess’s nurse with the scheme of escape was well demonstrated by her

own disappearance. This discovery was sufficient for the Margrave, and

(very much, it would appear, against the real wishes of the Duke, whose

most earnest desire was to proceed with as little scandal as possible)

he with half a dozen troopers instantly set forth in pursuit on the

road to Prague. Of these troopers, as we had seen, most had broken down

on the way, and none had been able to keep up with the higher mettled

mount of their leader—fortunately for us.

It was after his departure that Madam Lothner wrote. She was convinced,

as she characteristically remarked, that the Prince would be

successful, and that the most dire misfortunes were about to fall upon

everybody—all through the obstinacy of M. de Jennico, who really could

not say he had not been warned. Nevertheless, on the chance of their

having escaped, either to England or to Tollendhal (and she addressed

her letter to Tollendhal, trusting that it would be forwarded),

she could not refrain from pouring forth her soul into her beloved

Princess’s bosom—and so forth and so on. In fact, the good woman had

wanted a confidant, and had found it on paper.

Our next information regarding the Court of Lausitz came from a very

different source, and was of a totally different description. It was

the announcement in the Vienna News-Sheet of the death of Eugen,

Margrave of Liegnitz-Rothenburg, through a fall from his horse upon a

hunting expedition. It was also stated that, yielding at last to her

repeated requests, the Duke had consented to the retirement into a

convent of his only daughter, Princess Marie Ottilie, such having been

(it was stated) her ardent desire for more than a year. The name of the

convent was not given.

* * * * *

Here this memoir, begun in such storm and stress, within and without,

continued in such different moods and for such varied motives, ends

with the mantle of peace upon us, with the song of birds in our ears.

Tollendhal, that I knew beautiful in the autumn; Tollendhal, the shrine

of our young foolish love, is now beautiful with the budding green all

round it under a dappled sky. But never had the old stronghouse looked

to me so noble as when I brought my bride back to it in the snow. As

the carriage at last entered upon the valley road and we saw it rise

before us, high against the sky, white-roofed and black-walled, stern,

strong, and frowning, while the winter sun flashed back a warm, red

welcome to the returning masters, from some high window here and there,

I felt my heart stir. And as I looked at Ottilie I saw in her eyes the

reflection of the same fire.

Our people had been prepared for our coming by messengers from Prague.

The court of honour was thronged, and we entered amid acclamations such

as would have satisfied the heart of a king coming to his own again. We

had broken the bread and tasted the salt; we had drunk of the wine on

the threshold; we had been conducted in state; and at last, at last we

found ourselves alone in the old room where my great-uncle’s portrait

kept its silent watch! János, who, his work of trust done, had fallen

back into his place of heiduck as simply as the faithful blade falls

back into the scabbard, had retired to his station outside the door.

Without rang the wild music of the gipsies to the feasting people, and

the tremors of the czimbalom found an answer in the very fibres of my

soul—to such music she had first come to me in my dreams!

The walls of the room were all ruddy with the reflection of the bonfire

in the courtyard: the very air was filled with joy and colour. And

there was my great-uncle’s portrait—he was simpering with ineffable

complacency; and there the rolled-up parchment; and there the table

where we had quarrelled, and where, since then, I had poured forth such

mad regrets. Oh! my God! what memories!... and there was my wife!

Since the events which had first divided and then reunited us for ever,

I had not yet been able to find in the sweet, silent, docile woman I

had snatched back to my heart, the wilful Ottilie of old. Her spirits

seemed to have been sobered; her gaiety, her petulance, to have been

lost in the still current of the almost fearful happiness bought at the

price of blood; and at times, in my inmost heart, I had mourned for my

lost sprite. But now, as we stood together, she all illumined with the

rosy radiance from the fire, she looked of a sudden from the picture on

the wall to me, and I saw a spark of the old mockery leap into her eyes.

“And so, sir,” she said, “the forward person who married you against

your will is mistress here again, after all!... but you will always

remember, I trust, that it is the privilege of a princess to choose

her partner.” And then she added, coming a step nearer me: “To-morrow

we must fill in the pedigree again—what say you, M. Jean Nigaud de la

Faridondaine?”

Now, as she spoke, her lips arched into the well-remembered smile, and

beside it danced the dimple. And I know not what came upon me, for

there are joys so subtle that they unman even as sorrows, but I fell at

her feet with tears.

THE CHOIR INVISIBLE.

By JAMES LANE ALLEN,

_Author of “A Summer in Arcady,” “A Kentucky Cardinal,” etc._

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=Katharine Lauderdale.=

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A MEMOIR.

BY

HIS SON.

8vo. Cloth. Two Vols. Price, $10.00, _net_.

These volumes of over 500 pages each contain many letters written or

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THE LETTERS OF ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING.

EDITED WITH BIOGRAPHICAL ADDITIONS

BY

FREDERICK G. KENYON.

With portraits. In two volumes. Crown 8vo. $4.00.

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* * * * * *

Transcriber’s note:

—Obvious errors were corrected.

—A Table of Contents was not in the original work; one has been

produced and added by Transcriber.