Brave as she was, and brave by intellect, the Princess, when first she
was alone, clung to the table for support. The four corners of her
universe had fallen. She had never liked nor trusted Gondremark
completely; she had still held it possible to find him false to
friendship; but from that to finding him devoid of all those public
virtues for which she had honoured him, a mere commonplace intriguer,
using her for his own ends, the step was wide and the descent giddy.
Light and darkness succeeded each other in her brain; now she believed,
and now she could not. She turned, blindly groping for the note. But
von Rosen, who had not forgotten to take the warrant from the Prince, had
remembered to recover her note from the Princess: von Rosen was an old
campaigner, whose most violent emotion aroused rather than clouded the
vigour of her reason.
The thought recalled to Seraphina the remembrance of the other
letter—Otto’s. She rose and went speedily, her brain still wheeling, and
burst into the Prince’s armoury. The old chamberlain was there in
waiting; and the sight of another face, prying (or so she felt) on her
distress, struck Seraphina into childish anger.
‘Go!’ she cried; and then, when the old man was already half-way to the
door, ‘Stay!’ she added. ‘As soon as Baron Gondremark arrives, let him
attend me here.’
‘It shall be so directed,’ said the chamberlain.
‘There was a letter . . . ’ she began, and paused.
‘Her Highness,’ said the chamberlain, ‘will, find a letter on the table.
I had received no orders, or her Highness had been spared this trouble.’
‘No, no, no,’ she cried. ‘I thank you. I desire to be alone.’
And then, when he was gone, she leaped upon the letter. Her mind was
still obscured; like the moon upon a night of clouds and wind, her reason
shone and was darkened, and she read the words by flashes.
‘Seraphina,’ the Prince wrote, ‘I will write no syllable of reproach.
I have seen your order, and I go. What else is left me? I have
wasted my love, and have no more. To say that I forgive you is not
needful; at least, we are now separate for ever; by your own act, you
free me from my willing bondage: I go free to prison. This is the
last that you will hear of me in love or anger. I have gone out of
your life; you may breathe easy; you have now rid yourself of the
husband who allowed you to desert him, of the Prince who gave you his
rights, and of the married lover who made it his pride to defend you
in your absence. How you have requited him, your own heart more
loudly tells you than my words. There is a day coming when your vain
dreams will roll away like clouds, and you will find yourself alone.
Then you will remember
OTTO.’
She read with a great horror on her mind; that day, of which he wrote,
was come. She was alone; she had been false, she had been cruel; remorse
rolled in upon her; and then with a more piercing note, vanity bounded on
the stage of consciousness. She a dupe! she helpless! she to have
betrayed herself in seeking to betray her husband! she to have lived
these years upon flattery, grossly swallowing the bolus, like a clown
with sharpers! she—Seraphina! Her swift mind drank the consequences; she
foresaw the coming fall, her public shame; she saw the odium, disgrace,
and folly of her story flaunt through Europe. She recalled the scandal
she had so royally braved; and alas! she had now no courage to confront
it with. To be thought the mistress of that man: perhaps for that. . . .
She closed her eyes on agonising vistas. Swift as thought she had
snatched a bright dagger from the weapons that shone along the wall. Ay,
she would escape. From that world-wide theatre of nodding heads and
buzzing whisperers, in which she now beheld herself unpitiably martyred,
one door stood open. At any cost, through any stress of suffering, that
greasy laughter should be stifled. She closed her eyes, breathed a
wordless prayer, and pressed the weapon to her bosom.
At the astonishing sharpness of the prick, she gave a cry and awoke to a
sense of undeserved escape. A little ruby spot of blood was the reward
of that great act of desperation; but the pain had braced her like a
tonic, and her whole design of suicide had passed away.
At the same instant regular feet drew near along the gallery, and she
knew the tread of the big Baron, so often gladly welcome, and even now
rallying her spirits like a call to battle. She concealed the dagger in
the folds of her skirt; and drawing her stature up, she stood
firm-footed, radiant with anger, waiting for the foe.
The Baron was announced, and entered. To him, Seraphina was a hated
task: like the schoolboy with his Virgil, he had neither will nor leisure
to remark her beauties; but when he now beheld her standing illuminated
by her passion, new feelings flashed upon him, a frank admiration, a
brief sparkle of desire. He noted both with joy; they were means. ‘If I
have to play the lover,’ thought he, for that was his constant
preoccupation, ‘I believe I can put soul into it.’ Meanwhile, with his
usual ponderous grace, he bent before the lady.
‘I propose,’ she said in a strange voice, not known to her till then,
‘that we release the Prince and do not prosecute the war.’
‘Ah, madam,’ he replied, ‘’tis as I knew it would be! Your heart, I
knew, would wound you when we came to this distasteful but most necessary
step. Ah, madam, believe me, I am not unworthy to be your ally; I know
you have qualities to which I am a stranger, and count them the best
weapons in the armoury of our alliance:—the girl in the queen—pity, love,
tenderness, laughter; the smile that can reward. I can only command; I
am the frowner. But you! And you have the fortitude to command these
comely weaknesses, to tread them down at the call of reason. How often
have I not admired it even to yourself! Ay, even to yourself,’ he added
tenderly, dwelling, it seemed, in memory on hours of more private
admiration. ‘But now, madam—’
‘But now, Herr von Gondremark, the time for these declarations has gone
by,’ she cried. ‘Are you true to me? are you false? Look in your heart
and answer: it is your heart I want to know.’
‘It has come,’ thought Gondremark. ‘You, madam!’ he cried, starting
back—with fear, you would have said, and yet a timid joy. ‘You!
yourself, you bid me look into my heart?’
‘Do you suppose I fear?’ she cried, and looked at him with such a
heightened colour, such bright eyes, and a smile of so abstruse a
meaning, that the Baron discarded his last doubt.
‘Ah, madam!’ he cried, plumping on his knees. ‘Seraphina! Do you permit
me? have you divined my secret? It is true—I put my life with joy into
your power—I love you, love with ardour, as an equal, as a mistress, as a
brother-in-arms, as an adored, desired, sweet-hearted woman. O Bride!’
he cried, waxing dithyrambic, ‘bride of my reason and my senses, have
pity, have pity on my love!’
She heard him with wonder, rage, and then contempt. His words offended
her to sickness; his appearance, as he grovelled bulkily upon the floor,
moved her to such laughter as we laugh in nightmares.
‘O shame!’ she cried. ‘Absurd and odious! What would the Countess say?’
That great Baron Gondremark, the excellent politician, remained for some
little time upon his knees in a frame of mind which perhaps we are
allowed to pity. His vanity, within his iron bosom, bled and raved. If
he could have blotted all, if he could have withdrawn part, if he had not
called her bride—with a roaring in his ears, he thus regretfully reviewed
his declaration. He got to his feet tottering; and then, in that first
moment when a dumb agony finds a vent in words, and the tongue betrays
the inmost and worst of a man, he permitted himself a retort which, for
six weeks to follow, he was to repent at leisure.
‘Ah,’ said he, ‘the Countess? Now I perceive the reason of your
Highness’s disorder.’
The lackey-like insolence of the words was driven home by a more insolent
manner. There fell upon Seraphina one of those storm-clouds which had
already blackened upon her reason; she heard herself cry out; and when
the cloud dispersed, flung the blood-stained dagger on the floor, and saw
Gondremark reeling back with open mouth and clapping his hand upon the
wound. The next moment, with oaths that she had never heard, he leaped
at her in savage passion; clutched her as she recoiled; and in the very
act, stumbled and drooped. She had scarce time to fear his murderous
onslaught ere he fell before her feet.
He rose upon one elbow; she still staring upon him, white with horror.
‘Anna!’ he cried, ‘Anna! Help!’
And then his utterance failed him, and he fell back, to all appearance
dead.
Seraphina ran to and fro in the room; she wrung her hands and cried
aloud; within she was all one uproar of terror, and conscious of no
articulate wish but to awake.
There came a knocking at the door; and she sprang to it and held it,
panting like a beast, and with the strength of madness in her arms, till
she had pushed the bolt. At this success a certain calm fell upon her
reason. She went back and looked upon her victim, the knocking growing
louder. O yes, he was dead. She had killed him. He had called upon von
Rosen with his latest breath; ah! who would call on Seraphina? She had
killed him. She, whose irresolute hand could scarce prick blood from her
own bosom, had found strength to cast down that great colossus at a blow.
All this while the knocking was growing more uproarious and more unlike
the staid career of life in such a palace. Scandal was at the door, with
what a fatal following she dreaded to conceive; and at the same time
among the voices that now began to summon her by name, she recognised the
Chancellor’s. He or another, somebody must be the first.
‘Is Herr von Greisengesang without?’ she called.
‘Your Highness—yes!’ the old gentleman answered. ‘We have heard cries, a
fall. Is anything amiss?’
‘Nothing,’ replied Seraphina ‘I desire to speak with you. Send off the
rest.’ She panted between each phrase; but her mind was clear. She let
the looped curtain down upon both sides before she drew the bolt; and,
thus secure from any sudden eyeshot from without, admitted the obsequious
Chancellor, and again made fast the door.
Greisengesang clumsily revolved among the wings of the curtain, so that
she was clear of it as soon as he.
‘My God!’ he cried ‘The Baron!’
‘I have killed him,’ she said. ‘O, killed him!’
‘Dear me,’ said the old gentleman, ‘this is most unprecedented. Lovers’
quarrels,’ he added ruefully, ‘redintegratio—’ and then paused. ‘But, my
dear madam,’ he broke out again, ‘in the name of all that is practical,
what are we to do? This is exceedingly grave; morally, madam, it is
appalling. I take the liberty, your Highness, for one moment, of
addressing you as a daughter, a loved although respected daughter; and I
must say that I cannot conceal from you that this is morally most
questionable. And, O dear me, we have a dead body!’
She had watched him closely; hope fell to contempt; she drew away her
skirts from his weakness, and, in the act, her own strength returned to
her.
‘See if he be dead,’ she said; not one word of explanation or defence;
she had scorned to justify herself before so poor a creature: ‘See if he
be dead’ was all.
With the greatest compunction, the Chancellor drew near; and as he did so
the wounded Baron rolled his eyes.
‘He lives,’ cried the old courtier, turning effusively to Seraphina.
‘Madam, he still lives.’
‘Help him, then,’ returned the Princess, standing fixed. ‘Bind up his
wound.’
‘Madam, I have no means,’ protested the Chancellor.
‘Can you not take your handkerchief, your neck-cloth, anything?’ she
cried; and at the same moment, from her light muslin gown she rent off a
flounce and tossed it on the floor. ‘Take that,’ she said, and for the
first time directly faced Greisengesang.
But the Chancellor held up his hands and turned away his head in agony.
The grasp of the falling Baron had torn down the dainty fabric of the
bodice; and—‘O Highness!’ cried Greisengesang, appalled, ‘the terrible
disorder of your toilette!’
‘Take up that flounce,’ she said; ‘the man may die.’
Greisengesang turned in a flutter to the Baron, and attempted some
innocent and bungling measures. ‘He still breathes,’ he kept saying.
‘All is not yet over; he is not yet gone.’
‘And now,’ said she ‘if that is all you can do, begone and get some
porters; he must instantly go home.’
‘Madam,’ cried the Chancellor, ‘if this most melancholy sight were seen
in town—O dear, the State would fall!’ he piped.
‘There is a litter in the Palace,’ she replied. ‘It is your part to see
him safe. I lay commands upon you. On your life it stands.’
‘I see it, dear Highness,’ he jerked. ‘Clearly I see it. But how? what
men? The Prince’s servants—yes. They had a personal affection. They
will be true, if any.’
‘O, not them!’ she cried. ‘Take Sabra, my own man.’
‘Sabra! The grand-mason?’ returned the Chancellor, aghast. ‘If he but
saw this, he would sound the tocsin—we should all be butchered.’
She measured the depth of her abasement steadily. ‘Take whom you must,’
she said, ‘and bring the litter here.’
Once she was alone she ran to the Baron, and with a sickening heart
sought to allay the flux of blood. The touch of the skin of that great
charlatan revolted her to the toes; the wound, in her ignorant eyes,
looked deathly; yet she contended with her shuddering, and, with more
skill at least than the Chancellor’s, staunched the welling injury. An
eye unprejudiced with hate would have admired the Baron in his swoon; he
looked so great and shapely; it was so powerful a machine that lay
arrested; and his features, cleared for the moment both of temper and
dissimulation, were seen to be so purely modelled. But it was not thus
with Seraphina. Her victim, as he lay outspread, twitching a little, his
big chest unbared, fixed her with his ugliness; and her mind flitted for
a glimpse to Otto.
Rumours began to sound about the Palace of feet running and of voices
raised; the echoes of the great arched staircase were voluble of some
confusion; and then the gallery jarred with a quick and heavy tramp. It
was the Chancellor, followed by four of Otto’s valets and a litter. The
servants, when they were admitted, stared at the dishevelled Princess and
the wounded man; speech was denied them, but their thoughts were riddled
with profanity. Gondremark was bundled in; the curtains of the litter
were lowered; the bearers carried it forth, and the Chancellor followed
behind with a white face.
Seraphina ran to the window. Pressing her face upon the pane, she could
see the terrace, where the lights contended; thence, the avenue of lamps
that joined the Palace and town; and overhead the hollow night and the
larger stars. Presently the small procession issued from the Palace,
crossed the parade, and began to thread the glittering alley: the
swinging couch with its four porters, the much-pondering Chancellor
behind. She watched them dwindle with strange thoughts: her eyes fixed
upon the scene, her mind still glancing right and left on the overthrow
of her life and hopes. There was no one left in whom she might confide;
none whose hand was friendly, or on whom she dared to reckon for the
barest loyalty. With the fall of Gondremark, her party, her brief
popularity, had fallen. So she sat crouched upon the window-seat, her
brow to the cool pane; her dress in tatters, barely shielding her; her
mind revolving bitter thoughts.
Meanwhile, consequences were fast mounting; and in the deceptive quiet of
the night, downfall and red revolt were brewing. The litter had passed
forth between the iron gates and entered on the streets of the town. By
what flying panic, by what thrill of air communicated, who shall say? but
the passing bustle in the Palace had already reached and re-echoed in the
region of the burghers. Rumour, with her loud whisper, hissed about the
town; men left their homes without knowing why; knots formed along the
boulevard; under the rare lamps and the great limes the crowd grew
blacker.
And now through the midst of that expectant company, the unusual sight of
a closed litter was observed approaching, and trotting hard behind it
that great dignitary Cancellarius Greisengesang. Silence looked on as it
went by; and as soon as it was passed, the whispering seethed over like a
boiling pot. The knots were sundered; and gradually, one following
another, the whole mob began to form into a procession and escort the
curtained litter. Soon spokesmen, a little bolder than their mates,
began to ply the Chancellor with questions. Never had he more need of
that great art of falsehood, by whose exercise he had so richly lived.
And yet now he stumbled, the master passion, fear, betraying him. He was
pressed; he became incoherent; and then from the jolting litter came a
groan. In the instant hubbub and the gathering of the crowd as to a
natural signal, the clear-eyed quavering Chancellor heard the catch of
the clock before it strikes the hour of doom; and for ten seconds he
forgot himself. This shall atone for many sins. He plucked a bearer by
the sleeve. ‘Bid the Princess flee. All is lost,’ he whispered. And
the next moment he was babbling for his life among the multitude.
Five minutes later the wild-eyed servant burst into the armoury. ‘All is
lost!’ he cried. ‘The Chancellor bids you flee.’ And at the same time,
looking through the window, Seraphina saw the black rush of the populace
begin to invade the lamplit avenue.
‘Thank you, Georg,’ she said. ‘I thank you. Go.’ And as the man still
lingered, ‘I bid you go,’ she added. ‘Save yourself.’
Down by the private passage, and just some two hours later, Amalia
Seraphina, the last Princess, followed Otto Johann Friedrich, the last
Prince of Grünewald.
BOOK III—FORTUNATE MISFORTUNE
CHAPTER I—PRINCESS CINDERELLA
The porter, drawn by the growing turmoil, had vanished from the postern,
and the door stood open on the darkness of the night. As Seraphina fled
up the terraces, the cries and loud footing of the mob drew nearer the
doomed palace; the rush was like the rush of cavalry; the sound of
shattering lamps tingled above the rest; and, overtowering all, she heard
her own name bandied among the shouters. A bugle sounded at the door of
the guard-room; one gun was fired; and then with the yell of hundreds,
Mittwalden Palace was carried at a rush.
Sped by these dire sounds and voices, the Princess scaled the long
garden, skimming like a bird the starlit stairways; crossed the Park,
which was in that place narrow; and plunged upon the farther side into
the rude shelter of the forest. So, at a bound, she left the discretion
and the cheerful lamps of Palace evenings; ceased utterly to be a
sovereign lady; and, falling from the whole height of civilisation, ran
forth into the woods, a ragged Cinderella.
She went direct before her through an open tract of the forest, full of
brush and birches, and where the starlight guided her; and, beyond that
again, must thread the columned blackness of a pine grove joining
overhead the thatch of its long branches. At that hour the place was
breathless; a horror of night like a presence occupied that dungeon of
the wood; and she went groping, knocking against the boles—her ear,
betweenwhiles, strained to aching and yet unrewarded.
But the slope of the ground was upward, and encouraged her; and presently
she issued on a rocky hill that stood forth above the sea of forest. All
around were other hill-tops, big and little; sable vales of forest
between; overhead the open heaven and the brilliancy of countless stars;
and along the western sky the dim forms of mountains. The glory of the
great night laid hold upon her; her eyes shone with stars; she dipped her
sight into the coolness and brightness of the sky, as she might have
dipped her wrist into a spring; and her heart, at that ethereal shock,
began to move more soberly. The sun that sails overhead, ploughing into
gold the fields of daylight azure and uttering the signal to man’s
myriads, has no word apart for man the individual; and the moon, like a
violin, only praises and laments our private destiny. The stars alone,
cheerful whisperers, confer quietly with each of us like friends; they
give ear to our sorrows smilingly, like wise old men, rich in tolerance;
and by their double scale, so small to the eye, so vast to the
imagination, they keep before the mind the double character of man’s
nature and fate.
There sat the Princess, beautifully looking upon beauty, in council with
these glad advisers. Bright like pictures, clear like a voice in the
porches of her ear, memory re-enacted the tumult of the evening: the
Countess and the dancing fan, the big Baron on his knees, the blood on
the polished floor, the knocking, the swing of the litter down the avenue
of lamps, the messenger, the cries of the charging mob; and yet all were
far away and phantasmal, and she was still healingly conscious of the
peace and glory of the night. She looked towards Mittwalden; and above
the hill-top, which already hid it from her view, a throbbing redness
hinted of fire. Better so: better so, that she should fall with tragic
greatness, lit by a blazing palace! She felt not a trace of pity for
Gondremark or of concern for Grünewald: that period of her life was
closed for ever, a wrench of wounded vanity alone surviving. She had but
one clear idea: to flee;—and another, obscure and half-rejected, although
still obeyed: to flee in the direction of the Felsenburg. She had a duty
to perform, she must free Otto—so her mind said, very coldly; but her
heart embraced the notion of that duty even with ardour, and her hands
began to yearn for the grasp of kindness.
She rose, with a start of recollection, and plunged down the slope into
the covert. The woods received and closed upon her. Once more, she
wandered and hasted in a blot, uncheered, unpiloted. Here and there,
indeed, through rents in the wood-roof, a glimmer attracted her; here and
there a tree stood out among its neighbours by some force of outline;
here and there a brushing among the leaves, a notable blackness, a dim
shine, relieved, only to exaggerate, the solid oppression of the night
and silence. And betweenwhiles, the unfeatured darkness would redouble
and the whole ear of night appear to be gloating on her steps. Now she
would stand still, and the silence, would grow and grow, till it weighed
upon her breathing; and then she would address herself again to run,
stumbling, falling, and still hurrying the more. And presently the whole
wood rocked and began to run along with her. The noise of her own mad
passage through the silence spread and echoed, and filled the night with
terror. Panic hunted her: Panic from the trees reached forth with
clutching branches; the darkness was lit up and peopled with strange
forms and faces. She strangled and fled before her fears. And yet in
the last fortress, reason, blown upon by these gusts of terror, still
shone with a troubled light. She knew, yet could not act upon her
knowledge; she knew that she must stop, and yet she still ran.
She was already near madness, when she broke suddenly into a narrow
clearing. At the same time the din grew louder, and she became conscious
of vague forms and fields of whiteness. And with that the earth gave
way; she fell and found her feet again with an incredible shock to her
senses, and her mind was swallowed up.
When she came again to herself, she was standing to the mid-leg in an icy
eddy of a brook, and leaning with one hand on the rock from which it
poured. The spray had wet her hair. She saw the white cascade, the
stars wavering in the shaken pool, foam flitting, and high overhead the
tall pines on either hand serenely drinking starshine; and in the sudden
quiet of her spirit she heard with joy the firm plunge of the cataract in
the pool. She scrambled forth dripping. In the face of her proved
weakness, to adventure again upon the horror of blackness in the groves
were a suicide of life or reason. But here, in the alley of the brook,
with the kind stars above her, and the moon presently swimming into
sight, she could await the coming of day without alarm.
This lane of pine-trees ran very rapidly down-hill and wound among the
woods; but it was a wider thoroughfare than the brook needed, and here
and there were little dimpling lawns and coves of the forest, where the
starshine slumbered. Such a lawn she paced, taking patience bravely; and
now she looked up the hill and saw the brook coming down to her in a
series of cascades; and now approached the margin, where it welled among
the rushes silently; and now gazed at the great company of heaven with an
enduring wonder. The early evening had fallen chill, but the night was
now temperate; out of the recesses of the wood there came mild airs as
from a deep and peaceful breathing; and the dew was heavy on the grass
and the tight-shut daisies. This was the girl’s first night under the
naked heaven; and now that her fears were overpast, she was touched to
the soul by its serene amenity and peace. Kindly the host of heaven
blinked down upon that wandering Princess; and the honest brook had no
words but to encourage her.
At last she began to be aware of a wonderful revolution, compared to
which the fire of Mittwalden Palace was but the crack and flash of a
percussion-cap. The countenance with which the pines regarded her began
insensibly to change; the grass too, short as it was, and the whole
winding staircase of the brook’s course, began to wear a solemn freshness
of appearance. And this slow transfiguration reached her heart, and
played upon it, and transpierced it with a serious thrill. She looked
all about; the whole face of nature looked back, brimful of meaning,
finger on lip, leaking its glad secret. She looked up. Heaven was
almost emptied of stars. Such as still lingered shone with a changed and
waning brightness, and began to faint in their stations. And the colour
of the sky itself was the most wonderful; for the rich blue of the night
had now melted and softened and brightened; and there had succeeded in
its place a hue that has no name, and that is never seen but as the
herald of morning. ‘O!’ she cried, joy catching at her voice, ‘O! it is
the dawn!’
In a breath she passed over the brook, and looped up her skirts and
fairly ran in the dim alleys. As she ran, her ears were aware of many
pipings, more beautiful than music; in the small dish-shaped houses in
the fork of giant arms, where they had lain all night, lover by lover,
warmly pressed, the bright-eyed, big-hearted singers began to awaken for
the day. Her heart melted and flowed forth to them in kindness. And
they, from their small and high perches in the clerestories of the wood
cathedral, peered down sidelong at the ragged Princess as she flitted
below them on the carpet of the moss and tassel.
Soon she had struggled to a certain hill-top, and saw far before her the
silent inflooding of the day. Out of the East it welled and whitened;
the darkness trembled into light; and the stars were extinguished like
the street-lamps of a human city. The whiteness brightened into silver,
the silver warmed into gold, the gold kindled into pure and living fire;
and the face of the East was barred with elemental scarlet. The day drew
its first long breath, steady and chill; and for leagues around the woods
sighed and shivered. And then, at one bound, the sun had floated up; and
her startled eyes received day’s first arrow, and quailed under the
buffet. On every side, the shadows leaped from their ambush and fell
prone. The day was come, plain and garish; and up the steep and solitary
eastern heaven, the sun, victorious over his competitors, continued
slowly and royally to mount.
Seraphina drooped for a little, leaning on a pine, the shrill joy of the
woodlands mocking her. The shelter of the night, the thrilling and
joyous changes of the dawn, were over; and now, in the hot eye of the
day, she turned uneasily and looked sighingly about her. Some way off
among the lower woods, a pillar of smoke was mounting and melting in the
gold and blue. There, surely enough, were human folk, the
hearth-surrounders. Man’s fingers had laid the twigs; it was man’s
breath that had quickened and encouraged the baby flames; and now, as the
fire caught, it would be playing ruddily on the face of its creator. At
the thought, she felt a-cold and little and lost in that great
out-of-doors. The electric shock of the young sun-beams and the unhuman
beauty of the woods began to irk and daunt her. The covert of the house,
the decent privacy of rooms, the swept and regulated fire, all that
denotes or beautifies the home life of man, began to draw her as with
cords. The pillar of smoke was now risen into some stream of moving air;
it began to lean out sideways in a pennon; and thereupon, as though the
change had been a summons, Seraphina plunged once more into the labyrinth
of the wood.
She left day upon the high ground. In the lower groves there still
lingered the blue early twilight and the seizing freshness of the dew.
But here and there, above this field of shadow, the head of a great
outspread pine was already glorious with day; and here and there, through
the breaches of the hills, the sun-beams made a great and luminous entry.
Here Seraphina hastened along forest paths. She had lost sight of the
pilot smoke, which blew another way, and conducted herself in that great
wilderness by the direction of the sun. But presently fresh signs
bespoke the neighbourhood of man; felled trunks, white slivers from the
axe, bundles of green boughs, and stacks of firewood. These guided her
forward; until she came forth at last upon the clearing whence the smoke
arose. A hut stood in the clear shadow, hard by a brook which made a
series of inconsiderable falls; and on the threshold the Princess saw a
sun-burnt and hard-featured woodman, standing with his hands behind his
back and gazing skyward.
She went to him directly: a beautiful, bright-eyed, and haggard vision;
splendidly arrayed and pitifully tattered; the diamond ear-drops still
glittering in her ears; and with the movement of her coming, one small
breast showing and hiding among the ragged covert of the laces. At that
ambiguous hour, and coming as she did from the great silence of the
forest, the man drew back from the Princess as from something elfin.
‘I am cold,’ she said, ‘and weary. Let me rest beside your fire.’
The woodman was visibly commoved, but answered nothing.
‘I will pay,’ she said, and then repented of the words, catching perhaps
a spark of terror from his frightened eyes. But, as usual, her courage
rekindled brighter for the check. She put him from the door and entered;
and he followed her in superstitious wonder.
Within, the hut was rough and dark; but on the stone that served as
hearth, twigs and a few dry branches burned with the brisk sounds and all
the variable beauty of fire. The very sight of it composed her; she
crouched hard by on the earth floor and shivered in the glow, and looked
upon the eating blaze with admiration. The woodman was still staring at
his guest: at the wreck of the rich dress, the bare arms, the bedraggled
laces and the gems. He found no word to utter.
‘Give me food,’ said she,—‘here, by the fire.’
He set down a pitcher of coarse wine, bread, a piece of cheese, and a
handful of raw onions. The bread was hard and sour, the cheese like
leather; even the onion, which ranks with the truffle and the nectarine
in the chief place of honour of earth’s fruits, is not perhaps a dish for
princesses when raw. But she ate, if not with appetite, with courage;
and when she had eaten, did not disdain the pitcher. In all her life
before, she had not tasted of gross food nor drunk after another; but a
brave woman far more readily accepts a change of circumstances than the
bravest man. All that while, the woodman continued to observe her
furtively, many low thoughts of fear and greed contending in his eyes.
She read them clearly, and she knew she must begone.
Presently she arose and offered him a florin.
‘Will that repay you?’ she asked.
But here the man found his tongue. ‘I must have more than that,’ said
he.
‘It is all I have to give you,’ she returned, and passed him by serenely.
Yet her heart trembled, for she saw his hand stretched forth as if to
arrest her, and his unsteady eyes wandering to his axe. A beaten path
led westward from the clearing, and she swiftly followed it. She did not
glance behind her. But as soon as the least turning of the path had
concealed her from the woodman’s eyes, she slipped among the trees and
ran till she deemed herself in safety.
By this time the strong sunshine pierced in a thousand places the
pine-thatch of the forest, fired the red boles, irradiated the cool
aisles of shadow, and burned in jewels on the grass. The gum of these
trees was dearer to the senses than the gums of Araby; each pine, in the
lusty morning sunlight, burned its own wood-incense; and now and then a
breeze would rise and toss these rooted censers, and send shade and
sun-gem flitting, swift as swallows, thick as bees; and wake a brushing
bustle of sounds that murmured and went by.
On she passed, and up and down, in sun and shadow; now aloft on the bare
ridge among the rocks and birches, with the lizards and the snakes; and
anon in the deep grove among sunless pillars. Now she followed wandering
wood-paths, in the maze of valleys; and again, from a hill-top, beheld
the distant mountains and the great birds circling under the sky. She
would see afar off a nestling hamlet, and go round to avoid it. Below,
she traced the course of the foam of mountain torrents. Nearer hand, she
saw where the tender springs welled up in silence, or oozed in green
moss; or in the more favoured hollows a whole family of infant rivers
would combine, and tinkle in the stones, and lie in pools to be a
bathing-place for sparrows, or fall from the sheer rock in rods of
crystal. Upon all these things, as she still sped along in the bright
air, she looked with a rapture of surprise and a joyful fainting of the
heart; they seemed so novel, they touched so strangely home, they were so
hued and scented, they were so beset and canopied by the dome of the blue
air of heaven.
At length, when she was well weary, she came upon a wide and shallow
pool. Stones stood in it, like islands; bulrushes fringed the coast; the
floor was paved with the pine needles; and the pines themselves, whose
roots made promontories, looked down silently on their green images. She
crept to the margin and beheld herself with wonder, a hollow and
bright-eyed phantom, in the ruins of her palace robe. The breeze now
shook her image; now it would be marred with flies; and at that she
smiled; and from the fading circles, her counterpart smiled back to her
and looked kind. She sat long in the warm sun, and pitied her bare arms
that were all bruised and marred with falling, and marvelled to see that
she was dirty, and could not grow to believe that she had gone so long in
such a strange disorder.
Then, with a sigh, she addressed herself to make a toilette by that
forest mirror, washed herself pure from all the stains of her adventure,
took off her jewels and wrapped them in her handkerchief, re-arranged the
tatters of her dress, and took down the folds of her hair. She shook it
round her face, and the pool repeated her thus veiled. Her hair had
smelt like violets, she remembered Otto saying; and so now she tried to
smell it, and then shook her head, and laughed a little, sadly, to
herself.
The laugh was returned upon her in a childish echo.
She looked up; and lo! two children looking on,—a small girl and a yet
smaller boy, standing, like playthings, by the pool, below a spreading
pine. Seraphina was not fond of children, and now she was startled to
the heart.
‘Who are you?’ she cried hoarsely.
The mites huddled together and drew back; and Seraphina’s heart
reproached her that she should have frightened things so quaint and
little, and yet alive with senses. She thought upon the birds and looked
again at her two visitors; so little larger and so far more innocent. On
their clear faces, as in a pool, she saw the reflection of their fears.
With gracious purpose she arose.
‘Come,’ she said, ‘do not be afraid of me,’ and took a step towards them.
But alas! at the first moment, the two poor babes in the wood turned and
ran helter-skelter from the Princess.
The most desolate pang was struck into the girl’s heart. Here she was,
twenty-two—soon twenty-three—and not a creature loved her; none but Otto;
and would even he forgive? If she began weeping in these woods alone, it
would mean death or madness. Hastily she trod the thoughts out like a
burning paper; hastily rolled up her locks, and with terror dogging her,
and her whole bosom sick with grief, resumed her journey.
Past ten in the forenoon, she struck a high-road, marching in that place
uphill between two stately groves, a river of sunlight; and here, dead
weary, careless of consequences, and taking some courage from the human
and civilised neighbourhood of the road, she stretched herself on the
green margin in the shadow of a tree. Sleep closed on her, at first with
a horror of fainting, but when she ceased to struggle, kindly embracing
her. So she was taken home for a little, from all her toils and sorrows,
to her Father’s arms. And there in the meanwhile her body lay exposed by
the highwayside, in tattered finery; and on either hand from the woods
the birds came flying by and calling upon others, and debated in their
own tongue this strange appearance.
The sun pursued his journey; the shadow flitted from her feet, shrank
higher and higher, and was upon the point of leaving her altogether, when
the rumble of a coach was signalled to and fro by the birds. The road in
that part was very steep; the rumble drew near with great deliberation;
and ten minutes passed before a gentleman appeared, walking with a sober
elderly gait upon the grassy margin of the highway, and looking
pleasantly around him as he walked. From time to time he paused, took
out his note-book and made an entry with a pencil; and any spy who had
been near enough would have heard him mumbling words as though he were a
poet testing verses. The voice of the wheels was still faint, and it was
plain the traveller had far outstripped his carriage.
He had drawn very near to where the Princess lay asleep, before his eye
alighted on her; but when it did he started, pocketed his note-book, and
approached. There was a milestone close to where she lay; and he sat
down on that and coolly studied her. She lay upon one side, all curled
and sunken, her brow on one bare arm, the other stretched out, limp and
dimpled. Her young body, like a thing thrown down, had scarce a mark of
life. Her breathing stirred her not. The deadliest fatigue was thus
confessed in every language of the sleeping flesh. The traveller smiled
grimly. As though he had looked upon a statue, he made a grudging
inventory of her charms: the figure in that touching freedom of
forgetfulness surprised him; the flush of slumber became her like a
flower.
‘Upon my word,’ he thought, ‘I did not think the girl could be so pretty.
And to think,’ he added, ‘that I am under obligation not to use one word
of this!’ He put forth his stick and touched her; and at that she awoke,
sat up with a cry, and looked upon him wildly.
‘I trust your Highness has slept well,’ he said, nodding.
But she only uttered sounds.
‘Compose yourself,’ said he, giving her certainly a brave example in his
own demeanour. ‘My chaise is close at hand; and I shall have, I trust,
the singular entertainment of abducting a sovereign Princess.’
‘Sir John!’ she said, at last.
‘At your Highness’s disposal,’ he replied.
She sprang to her feet. ‘O!’ she cried, ‘have you come from Mittwalden?’
‘This morning,’ he returned, ‘I left it; and if there is any one less
likely to return to it than yourself, behold him!’
‘The Baron—’ she began, and paused.
‘Madam,’ he answered, ‘it was well meant, and you are quite a Judith; but
after the hours that have elapsed, you will probably be relieved to hear
that he is fairly well. I took his news this morning ere I left. Doing
fairly well, they said, but suffering acutely. Hey?—acutely. They could
hear his groans in the next room.’
‘And the Prince,’ she asked, ‘is anything known of him?’
‘It is reported,’ replied Sir John, with the same pleasurable
deliberation, ‘that upon that point your Highness is the best authority.’
‘Sir John,’ she said eagerly, ‘you were generous enough to speak about
your carriage. Will you, I beseech you, will you take me to the
Felsenburg? I have business there of an extreme importance.’
‘I can refuse you nothing,’ replied the old gentleman, gravely and
seriously enough. ‘Whatever, madam, it is in my power to do for you,
that shall be done with pleasure. As soon as my chaise shall overtake
us, it is yours to carry you where you will. But,’ added he, reverting
to his former manner, ‘I observe you ask me nothing of the Palace.’
‘I do not care,’ she said. ‘I thought I saw it burning.’
‘Prodigious!’ said the Baronet. ‘You thought? And can the loss of forty
toilettes leave you cold? Well, madam, I admire your fortitude. And the
state, too? As I left, the government was sitting,—the new government,
of which at least two members must be known to you by name: Sabra, who
had, I believe, the benefit of being formed in your employment—a footman,
am I right?—and our old friend the Chancellor, in something of a
subaltern position. But in these convulsions the last shall be first,
and the first last.’
‘Sir John,’ she said, with an air of perfect honesty, ‘I am sure you mean
most kindly, but these matters have no interest for me.’
The Baronet was so utterly discountenanced that he hailed the appearance
of his chaise with welcome, and, by way of saying something, proposed
that they should walk back to meet it. So it was done; and he helped her
in with courtesy, mounted to her side, and from various receptacles (for
the chaise was most completely fitted out) produced fruits and truffled
liver, beautiful white bread, and a bottle of delicate wine. With these
he served her like a father, coaxing and praising her to fresh exertions;
and during all that time, as though silenced by the laws of hospitality,
he was not guilty of the shadow of a sneer. Indeed his kindness seemed
so genuine that Seraphina was moved to gratitude.
‘Sir John,’ she said, ‘you hate me in your heart; why are you so kind to
me?’
‘Ah, my good lady,’ said he, with no disclaimer of the accusation, ‘I
have the honour to be much your husband’s friend, and somewhat his
admirer.’
‘You!’ she cried. ‘They told me you wrote cruelly of both of us.’
‘Such was the strange path by which we grew acquainted,’ said Sir John.
‘I had written, madam, with particular cruelty (since that shall be the
phrase) of your fair self. Your husband set me at liberty, gave me a
passport, ordered a carriage, and then, with the most boyish spirit,
challenged me to fight. Knowing the nature of his married life, I
thought the dash and loyalty he showed delightful. “Do not be afraid,”
says he; “if I am killed, there is nobody to miss me.” It appears you
subsequently thought of that yourself. But I digress. I explained to
him it was impossible that I could fight! “Not if I strike you?” says
he. Very droll; I wish I could have put it in my book. However, I was
conquered, took the young gentleman to my high favour, and tore up my
bits of scandal on the spot. That is one of the little favours, madam,
that you owe your husband.’
Seraphina sat for some while in silence. She could bear to be misjudged
without a pang by those whom she contemned; she had none of Otto’s
eagerness to be approved, but went her own way straight and head in air.
To Sir John, however, after what he had said, and as her husband’s
friend, she was prepared to stoop.
‘What do you think of me?’ she asked abruptly.
‘I have told you already,’ said Sir John: ‘I think you want another glass
of my good wine.’
‘Come,’ she said, ‘this is unlike you. You are not wont to be afraid.
You say that you admire my husband: in his name, be honest.’
‘I admire your courage,’ said the Baronet. ‘Beyond that, as you have
guessed, and indeed said, our natures are not sympathetic.’
‘You spoke of scandal,’ pursued Seraphina. ‘Was the scandal great?’
‘It was considerable,’ said Sir John.
‘And you believed it?’ she demanded.
‘O, madam,’ said Sir John, ‘the question!’
‘Thank you for that answer!’ cried Seraphina. ‘And now here, I will tell
you, upon my honour, upon my soul, in spite of all the scandal in this
world, I am as true a wife as ever stood.’
‘We should probably not agree upon a definition,’ observed Sir John.
‘O!’ she cried, ‘I have abominably used him—I know that; it is not that I
mean. But if you admire my husband, I insist that you shall understand
me: I can look him in the face without a blush.’
‘It may be, madam,’ said Sir John; ‘nor have I presumed to think the
contrary.’
‘You will not believe me?’ she cried. ‘You think I am a guilty wife?
You think he was my lover?’
‘Madam,’ returned the Baronet, ‘when I tore up my papers, I promised your
good husband to concern myself no more with your affairs; and I assure
you for the last time that I have no desire to judge you.’
‘But you will not acquit me! Ah!’ she cried, ‘_he_ will—he knows me
better!’
Sir John smiled.
‘You smile at my distress?’ asked Seraphina.
‘At your woman’s coolness,’ said Sir John. ‘A man would scarce have had
the courage of that cry, which was, for all that, very natural, and I
make no doubt quite true. But remark, madam—since you do me the honour
to consult me gravely—I have no pity for what you call your distresses.
You have been completely selfish, and now reap the consequence. Had you
once thought of your husband, instead of singly thinking of yourself, you
would not now have been alone, a fugitive, with blood upon your hands,
and hearing from a morose old Englishman truth more bitter than scandal.’
‘I thank you,’ she said, quivering. ‘This is very true. Will you stop
the carriage?’
‘No, child,’ said Sir John, ‘not until I see you mistress of yourself.’
There was a long pause, during which the carriage rolled by rock and
woodland.
‘And now,’ she resumed, with perfect steadiness, ‘will you consider me
composed? I request you, as a gentleman, to let me out.’
‘I think you do unwisely,’ he replied. ‘Continue, if you please, to use
my carriage.’
‘Sir John,’ she said, ‘if death were sitting on that pile of stones, I
would alight! I do not blame, I thank you; I now know how I appear to
others; but sooner than draw breath beside a man who can so think of me,
I would—O!’ she cried, and was silent.
Sir John pulled the string, alighted, and offered her his hand; but she
refused the help.
The road had now issued from the valleys in which it had been winding,
and come to that part of its course where it runs, like a cornice, along
the brow of the steep northward face of Grünewald. The place where they
had alighted was at a salient angle; a bold rock and some wind-tortured
pine-trees overhung it from above; far below the blue plains lay forth
and melted into heaven; and before them the road, by a succession of bold
zigzags, was seen mounting to where a tower upon a tall cliff closed the
view.
‘There,’ said the Baronet, pointing to the tower, ‘you see the
Felsenburg, your goal. I wish you a good journey, and regret I cannot be
of more assistance.’
He mounted to his place and gave a signal, and the carriage rolled away.
Seraphina stood by the wayside, gazing before her with blind eyes. Sir
John she had dismissed already from her mind: she hated him, that was
enough; for whatever Seraphina hated or contemned fell instantly to
Lilliputian smallness, and was thenceforward steadily ignored in thought.
And now she had matter for concern indeed. Her interview with Otto,
which she had never yet forgiven him, began to appear before her in a
very different light. He had come to her, still thrilling under recent
insult, and not yet breathed from fighting her own cause; and how that
knowledge changed the value of his words! Yes, he must have loved her!
this was a brave feeling—it was no mere weakness of the will. And she,
was she incapable of love? It would appear so; and she swallowed her
tears, and yearned to see Otto, to explain all, to ask pity upon her
knees for her transgressions, and, if all else were now beyond the reach
of reparation, to restore at least the liberty of which she had deprived
him.
Swiftly she sped along the highway, and, as the road wound out and in
about the bluffs and gullies of the mountain, saw and lost by glimpses
the tall tower that stood before and above her, purpled by the mountain
air.
CHAPTER II—TREATS OF A CHRISTIAN VIRTUE
When Otto mounted to his rolling prison he found another occupant in a
corner of the front seat; but as this person hung his head and the
brightness of the carriage lamps shone outward, the Prince could only see
it was a man. The Colonel followed his prisoner and clapped-to the door;
and at that the four horses broke immediately into a swinging trot.
‘Gentlemen,’ said the Colonel, after some little while had passed, ‘if we
are to travel in silence, we might as well be at home. I appear, of
course, in an invidious character; but I am a man of taste, fond of books
and solidly informing talk, and unfortunately condemned for life to the
guard-room. Gentlemen, this is my chance: don’t spoil it for me. I have
here the pick of the whole court, barring lovely woman; I have a great
author in the person of the Doctor—’
‘Gotthold!’ cried Otto.
‘It appears,’ said the Doctor bitterly, ‘that we must go together. Your
Highness had not calculated upon that.’
‘What do you infer?’ cried Otto; ‘that I had you arrested?’
‘The inference is simple,’ said the Doctor.
‘Colonel Gordon,’ said the Prince, ‘oblige me so far, and set me right
with Herr von Hohenstockwitz.’
‘Gentlemen,’ said the Colonel, ‘you are both arrested on the same warrant
in the name of the Princess Seraphina, acting regent, countersigned by
Prime Minister Freiherr von Gondremark, and dated the day before
yesterday, the twelfth. I reveal to you the secrets of the
prison-house,’ he added.
‘Otto,’ said Gotthold, ‘I ask you to pardon my suspicions.’
‘Gotthold,’ said the Prince, ‘I am not certain I can grant you that.’
‘Your Highness is, I am sure, far too magnanimous to hesitate,’ said the
Colonel. ‘But allow me: we speak at home in my religion of the means of
grace: and I now propose to offer them.’ So saying, the Colonel lighted
a bright lamp which he attached to one side of the carriage, and from
below the front seat produced a goodly basket adorned with the long necks
of bottles. ‘_Tu spem reducis_—how does it go, Doctor?’ he asked gaily.
‘I am, in a sense, your host; and I am sure you are both far too
considerate of my embarrassing position to refuse to do me honour.
Gentlemen, I drink to the Prince!’
‘Colonel,’ said Otto, ‘we have a jovial entertainer. I drink to Colonel
Gordon.’
Thereupon all three took their wine very pleasantly; and even as they did
so, the carriage with a lurch turned into the high-road and began to make
better speed.
All was bright within; the wine had coloured Gotthold’s cheek; dim forms
of forest trees, dwindling and spiring, scarves of the starry sky, now
wide and now narrow, raced past the windows, through one that was left
open the air of the woods came in with a nocturnal raciness; and the roll
of wheels and the tune of the trotting horses sounded merrily on the ear.
Toast followed toast; glass after glass was bowed across and emptied by
the trio; and presently there began to fall upon them a luxurious spell,
under the influence of which little but the sound of quiet and
confidential laughter interrupted the long intervals of meditative
silence.
‘Otto,’ said Gotthold, after one of these seasons of quiet, ‘I do not ask
you to forgive me. Were the parts reversed, I could not forgive you.’
‘Well,’ said Otto, ‘it is a phrase we use. I do forgive you, but your
words and your suspicions rankle; and not yours alone. It is idle,
Colonel Gordon, in view of the order you are carrying out, to conceal
from you the dissensions of my family; they have gone so far that they
are now public property. Well, gentlemen, can I forgive my wife? I can,
of course, and do; but in what sense? I would certainly not stoop to any
revenge; as certainly I could not think of her but as one changed beyond
my recognition.’
‘Allow me,’ returned the Colonel. ‘You will permit me to hope that I am
addressing Christians? We are all conscious, I trust, that we are
miserable sinners.’
‘I disown the consciousness,’ said Gotthold. ‘Warmed with this good
fluid, I deny your thesis.’
‘How, sir? You never did anything wrong? and I heard you asking pardon
but this moment, not of your God, sir, but of a common fellow-worm!’ the
Colonel cried.
‘I own you have me; you are expert in argument, Herr Oberst,’ said the
Doctor.
‘Begad, sir, I am proud to hear you say so,’ said the Colonel. ‘I was
well grounded indeed at Aberdeen. And as for this matter of forgiveness,
it comes, sir, of loose views and (what is if anything more dangerous) a
regular life. A sound creed and a bad morality, that’s the root of
wisdom. You two gentlemen are too good to be forgiving.’
‘The paradox is somewhat forced,’ said Gotthold.
‘Pardon me, Colonel,’ said the Prince; ‘I readily acquit you of any
design of offence, but your words bite like satire. Is this a time, do
you think, when I can wish to hear myself called good, now that I am
paying the penalty (and am willing like yourself to think it just) of my
prolonged misconduct?’
‘O, pardon me!’ cried the Colonel. ‘You have never been expelled from
the divinity hall; you have never been broke. I was: broke for a neglect
of military duty. To tell you the open truth, your Highness, I was the
worse of drink; it’s a thing I never do now,’ he added, taking out his
glass. ‘But a man, you see, who has really tasted the defects of his own
character, as I have, and has come to regard himself as a kind of blind
teetotum knocking about life, begins to learn a very different view about
forgiveness. I will talk of not forgiving others, sir, when I have made
out to forgive myself, and not before; and the date is like to be a long
one. My father, the Reverend Alexander Gordon, was a good man, and
damned hard upon others. I am what they call a bad one, and that is just
the difference. The man who cannot forgive any mortal thing is a green
hand in life.’
‘And yet I have heard of you, Colonel, as a duellist,’ said Gotthold.
‘A different thing, sir,’ replied the soldier. ‘Professional etiquette.
And I trust without unchristian feeling.’
Presently after the Colonel fell into a deep sleep and his companions
looked upon each other, smiling.
‘An odd fish,’ said Gotthold.
‘And a strange guardian,’ said the Prince. ‘Yet what he said was true.’
‘Rightly looked upon,’ mused Gotthold, ‘it is ourselves that we cannot
forgive, when we refuse forgiveness to our friend. Some strand of our
own misdoing is involved in every quarrel.’
‘Are there not offences that disgrace the pardoner?’ asked Otto. ‘Are
there not bounds of self-respect?’
‘Otto,’ said Gotthold, ‘does any man respect himself? To this poor waif
of a soldier of fortune we may seem respectable gentlemen; but to
ourselves, what are we unless a pasteboard portico and a deliquium of
deadly weaknesses within?’
‘I? yes,’ said Otto; ‘but you, Gotthold—you, with your interminable
industry, your keen mind, your books—serving mankind, scorning pleasures
and temptations! You do not know how I envy you.’
‘Otto,’ said the Doctor, ‘in one word, and a bitter one to say: I am a
secret tippler. Yes, I drink too much. The habit has robbed these very
books, to which you praise my devotion, of the merits that they should
have had. It has spoiled my temper. When I spoke to you the other day,
how much of my warmth was in the cause of virtue? how much was the fever
of last night’s wine? Ay, as my poor fellow-sot there said, and as I
vaingloriously denied, we are all miserable sinners, put here for a
moment, knowing the good, choosing the evil, standing naked and ashamed
in the eye of God.’
‘Is it so?’ said Otto. ‘Why, then, what are we? Are the very best—’
‘There is no best in man,’ said Gotthold. ‘I am not better, it is likely
I am not worse, than you or that poor sleeper. I was a sham, and now you
know me: that is all.’
‘And yet it has not changed my love,’ returned Otto softly. ‘Our
misdeeds do not change us. Gotthold, fill your glass. Let us drink to
what is good in this bad business; let us drink to our old affection;
and, when we have done so, forgive your too just grounds of offence, and
drink with me to my wife, whom I have so misused, who has so misused me,
and whom I have left, I fear, I greatly fear, in danger. What matters it
how bad we are, if others can still love us, and we can still love
others?’
‘Ay!’ replied the Doctor. ‘It is very well said. It is the true answer
to the pessimist, and the standing miracle of mankind. So you still love
me? and so you can forgive your wife? Why, then, we may bid conscience
“Down, dog,” like an ill-trained puppy yapping at shadows.’
The pair fell into silence, the Doctor tapping on his empty glass.
The carriage swung forth out of the valleys on that open balcony of
high-road that runs along the front of Grünewald, looking down on
Gerolstein. Far below, a white waterfall was shining to the stars from
the falling skirts of forest, and beyond that, the night stood naked
above the plain. On the other hand, the lamp-light skimmed the face of
the precipices, and the dwarf pine-trees twinkled with all their needles,
and were gone again into the wake. The granite roadway thundered under
wheels and hoofs; and at times, by reason of its continual winding, Otto
could see the escort on the other side of a ravine, riding well together
in the night. Presently the Felsenburg came plainly in view, some way
above them, on a bold projection of the mountain, and planting its bulk
against the starry sky.
‘See, Gotthold,’ said the Prince, ‘our destination.’
Gotthold awoke as from a trance.
‘I was thinking,’ said he, ‘if there is any danger, why did you not
resist? I was told you came of your free will; but should you not be
there to help her?’
The colour faded from the Prince’s cheeks.
CHAPTER III—PROVIDENCE VON ROSEN: ACT THE LAST
IN WHICH SHE GALLOPS OFF
When the busy Countess came forth from her interview with Seraphina, it
is not too much to say that she was beginning to be terribly afraid. She
paused in the corridor and reckoned up her doings with an eye to
Gondremark. The fan was in requisition in an instant; but her disquiet
was beyond the reach of fanning. ‘The girl has lost her head,’ she
thought; and then dismally, ‘I have gone too far.’ She instantly decided
on secession. Now the _Mons Sacer_ of the Frau von Rosen was a certain
rustic villa in the forest, called by herself, in a smart attack of
poesy, Tannen Zauber, and by everybody else plain Kleinbrunn.
Thither, upon the thought, she furiously drove, passing Gondremark at the
entrance to the Palace avenue, but feigning not to observe him; and as
Kleinbrunn was seven good miles away, and in the bottom of a narrow dell,
she passed the night without any rumour of the outbreak reaching her; and
the glow of the conflagration was concealed by intervening hills. Frau
von Rosen did not sleep well; she was seriously uneasy as to the results
of her delightful evening, and saw herself condemned to quite a lengthy
sojourn in her deserts and a long defensive correspondence, ere she could
venture to return to Gondremark. On the other hand, she examined, by way
of pastime, the deeds she had received from Otto; and even here saw cause
for disappointment. In these troublous days she had no taste for landed
property, and she was convinced, besides, that Otto had paid dearer than
the farm was worth. Lastly, the order for the Prince’s release fairly
burned her meddling fingers.
All things considered, the next day beheld an elegant and beautiful lady,
in a riding-habit and a flapping hat, draw bridle at the gate of the
Felsenburg, not perhaps with any clear idea of her purpose, but with her
usual experimental views on life. Governor Gordon, summoned to the gate,
welcomed the omnipotent Countess with his most gallant bearing, though it
was wonderful how old he looked in the morning.
‘Ah, Governor,’ she said, ‘we have surprises for you, sir,’ and nodded at
him meaningly.
‘Eh, madam, leave me my prisoners,’ he said; ‘and if you will but join
the band, begad, I’ll be happy for life.’
‘You would spoil me, would you not?’ she asked.
‘I would try, I would try,’ returned the Governor, and he offered her his
arm.
She took it, picked up her skirt, and drew him close to her. ‘I have
come to see the Prince,’ she said. ‘Now, infidel! on business. A
message from that stupid Gondremark, who keeps me running like a courier.
Do I look like one, Herr Gordon?’ And she planted her eyes in him.
‘You look like an angel, ma’am,’ returned the Governor, with a great air
of finished gallantry.
The Countess laughed. ‘An angel on horseback!’ she said. ‘Quick work.’
‘You came, you saw, you conquered,’ flourished Gordon, in high good
humour with his own wit and grace. ‘We toasted you, madam, in the
carriage, in an excellent good glass of wine; toasted you fathom deep;
the finest woman, with, begad, the finest eyes in Grünewald. I never saw
the like of them but once, in my own country, when I was a young fool at
College: Thomasina Haig her name was. I give you my word of honour, she
was as like you as two peas.’
‘And so you were merry in the carriage?’ asked the Countess, gracefully
dissembling a yawn.
‘We were; we had a very pleasant conversation; but we took perhaps a
glass more than that fine fellow of a Prince has been accustomed to,’
said the Governor; ‘and I observe this morning that he seems a little off
his mettle. We’ll get him mellow again ere bedtime. This is his door.’
‘Well,’ she whispered, ‘let me get my breath. No, no; wait. Have the
door ready to open.’ And the Countess, standing like one inspired, shook
out her fine voice in ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’; and when she had reached the
proper point, and lyrically uttered forth her sighings after liberty, the
door, at a sign, was flung wide open, and she swam into the Prince’s
sight, bright-eyed, and with her colour somewhat freshened by the
exercise of singing. It was a great dramatic entrance, and to the
somewhat doleful prisoner within the sight was sunshine.
‘Ah, madam,’ he cried, running to her—‘you here!’
She looked meaningly at Gordon; and as soon as the door was closed she
fell on Otto’s neck. ‘To see you here!’ she moaned and clung to him.
But the Prince stood somewhat stiffly in that enviable situation, and the
Countess instantly recovered from her outburst.
‘Poor child,’ she said, ‘poor child! Sit down beside me here, and tell
me all about it. My heart really bleeds to see you. How does time go?’
‘Madam,’ replied the Prince, sitting down beside her, his gallantry
recovered, ‘the time will now go all too quickly till you leave. But I
must ask you for the news. I have most bitterly condemned myself for my
inertia of last night. You wisely counselled me; it was my duty to
resist. You wisely and nobly counselled me; I have since thought of it
with wonder. You have a noble heart.’
‘Otto,’ she said, ‘spare me. Was it even right, I wonder? I have
duties, too, you poor child; and when I see you they all melt—all my good
resolutions fly away.’
‘And mine still come too late,’ he replied, sighing. ‘O, what would I
not give to have resisted? What would I not give for freedom?’
‘Well, what would you give?’ she asked; and the red fan was spread; only
her eyes, as if from over battlements, brightly surveyed him.
‘I? What do you mean? Madam, you have some news for me,’ he cried.
‘O, O!’ said madam dubiously.
He was at her feet. ‘Do not trifle with my hopes,’ he pleaded. ‘Tell
me, dearest Madame von Rosen, tell me! You cannot be cruel: it is not in
your nature. Give? I can give nothing; I have nothing; I can only plead
in mercy.’
‘Do not,’ she said; ‘it is not fair. Otto, you know my weakness. Spare
me. Be generous.’
‘O, madam,’ he said, ‘it is for you to be generous, to have pity.’ He
took her hand and pressed it; he plied her with caresses and appeals.
The Countess had a most enjoyable sham siege, and then relented. She
sprang to her feet, she tore her dress open, and, all warm from her
bosom, threw the order on the floor.
‘There!’ she cried. ‘I forced it from her. Use it, and I am ruined!’
And she turned away as if to veil the force of her emotions.
Otto sprang upon the paper, read it, and cried out aloud. ‘O, God bless
her!’ he said, ‘God bless her.’ And he kissed the writing.
Von Rosen was a singularly good-natured woman, but her part was now
beyond her. ‘Ingrate!’ she cried; ‘I wrung it from her, I betrayed my
trust to get it, and ’tis she you thank!’
‘Can you blame me?’ said the Prince. ‘I love her.’
‘I see that,’ she said. ‘And I?’
‘You, Madame von Rosen? You are my dearest, my kindest, and most
generous of friends,’ he said, approaching her. ‘You would be a perfect
friend, if you were not so lovely. You have a great sense of humour, you
cannot be unconscious of your charm, and you amuse yourself at times by
playing on my weakness; and at times I can take pleasure in the comedy.
But not to-day: to-day you will be the true, the serious, the manly
friend, and you will suffer me to forget that you are lovely and that I
am weak. Come, dear Countess, let me to-day repose in you entirely.’
He held out his hand, smiling, and she took it frankly. ‘I vow you have
bewitched me,’ she said; and then with a laugh, ‘I break my staff!’ she
added; ‘and I must pay you my best compliment. You made a difficult
speech. You are as adroit, dear Prince, as I am—charming.’ And as she
said the word with a great curtsey, she justified it.
‘You hardly keep the bargain, madam, when you make yourself so
beautiful,’ said the Prince, bowing.
‘It was my last arrow,’ she returned. ‘I am disarmed. Blank cartridge,
_O mon Prince_! And now I tell you, if you choose to leave this prison,
you can, and I am ruined. Choose!’
‘Madame von Rosen,’ replied Otto, ‘I choose, and I will go. My duty
points me, duty still neglected by this Featherhead. But do not fear to
be a loser. I propose instead that you should take me with you, a bear
in chains, to Baron Gondremark. I am become perfectly unscrupulous: to
save my wife I will do all, all he can ask or fancy. He shall be filled;
were he huge as leviathan and greedy as the grave, I will content him.
And you, the fairy of our pantomime, shall have the credit.’
‘Done!’ she cried. ‘Admirable! Prince Charming no longer—Prince
Sorcerer, Prince Solon! Let us go this moment. Stay,’ she cried,
pausing. ‘I beg dear Prince, to give you back these deeds. ’Twas you
who liked the farm—I have not seen it; and it was you who wished to
benefit the peasants. And, besides,’ she added, with a comical change of
tone, ‘I should prefer the ready money.’
Both laughed. ‘Here I am, once more a farmer,’ said Otto, accepting the
papers, ‘but overwhelmed in debt.’
The Countess touched a bell, and the Governor appeared.
‘Governor,’ she said, ‘I am going to elope with his Highness. The result
of our talk has been a thorough understanding, and the _coup d’état_ is
over. Here is the order.’
Colonel Gordon adjusted silver spectacles upon his nose. ‘Yes,’ he said,
‘the Princess: very right. But the warrant, madam, was countersigned.’
‘By Heinrich!’ said von Rosen. ‘Well, and here am I to represent him.’
‘Well, your Highness,’ resumed the soldier of fortune, ‘I must
congratulate you upon my loss. You have been cut out by beauty, and I am
left lamenting. The Doctor still remains to me: _probus_, _doctus_,
_lepidus_, _jucundus_: a man of books.’
‘Ay, there is nothing about poor Gotthold,’ said the Prince.
‘The Governor’s consolation? Would you leave him bare?’ asked von Rosen.
‘And, your Highness,’ resumed Gordon, ‘may I trust that in the course of
this temporary obscuration, you have found me discharge my part with
suitable respect and, I may add, tact? I adopted purposely a
cheerfulness of manner; mirth, it appeared to me, and a good glass of
wine, were the fit alleviations.’
‘Colonel,’ said Otto, holding out his hand, ‘your society was of itself
enough. I do not merely thank you for your pleasant spirits; I have to
thank you, besides, for some philosophy, of which I stood in need. I
trust I do not see you for the last time; and in the meanwhile, as a
memento of our strange acquaintance, let me offer you these verses on
which I was but now engaged. I am so little of a poet, and was so ill
inspired by prison bars, that they have some claim to be at least a
curiosity.’
The Colonel’s countenance lighted as he took the paper; the silver
spectacles were hurriedly replaced. ‘Ha!’ he said, ‘Alexandrines, the
tragic metre. I shall cherish this, your Highness, like a relic; no more
suitable offering, although I say it, could be made. “_Dieux de l’immense
plaine et des vastes forêts_.” Very good,’ he said, ‘very good indeed!
“_Et du geôlier lui-même apprendre des leçons_.” Most handsome, begad!’
‘Come, Governor,’ cried the Countess, ‘you can read his poetry when we
are gone. Open your grudging portals.’
‘I ask your pardon,’ said the Colonel. ‘To a man of my character and
tastes, these verses, this handsome reference—most moving, I assure you.
Can I offer you an escort?’
‘No, no,’ replied the Countess. ‘We go incogniti, as we arrived. We
ride together; the Prince will take my servant’s horse. Hurry and
privacy, Herr Oberst, that is all we seek.’ And she began impatiently to
lead the way.
But Otto had still to bid farewell to Dr. Gotthold; and the Governor
following, with his spectacles in one hand and the paper in the other,
had still to communicate his treasured verses, piece by piece, as he
succeeded in deciphering the manuscript, to all he came across; and still
his enthusiasm mounted. ‘I declare,’ he cried at last, with the air of
one who has at length divined a mystery, ‘they remind me of Robbie
Burns!’
But there is an end to all things; and at length Otto was walking by the
side of Madame von Rosen, along that mountain wall, her servant following
with both the horses, and all about them sunlight, and breeze, and flying
bird, and the vast regions of the air, and the capacious prospect:
wildwood and climbing pinnacle, and the sound and voice of mountain
torrents, at their hand: and far below them, green melting into sapphire
on the plains.
They walked at first in silence; for Otto’s mind was full of the delight
of liberty and nature, and still, betweenwhiles, he was preparing his
interview with Gondremark. But when the first rough promontory of the
rock was turned, and the Felsenburg concealed behind its bulk, the lady
paused.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘I will dismount poor Karl, and you and I must ply our
spurs. I love a wild ride with a good companion.’
As she spoke, a carriage came into sight round the corner next below them
in the order of the road. It came heavily creaking, and a little ahead
of it a traveller was soberly walking, note-book in hand.
‘It is Sir John,’ cried Otto, and he hailed him.
The Baronet pocketed his note-book, stared through an eye-glass, and then
waved his stick; and he on his side, and the Countess and the Prince on
theirs, advanced with somewhat quicker steps. They met at the re-entrant
angle, where a thin stream sprayed across a boulder and was scattered in
rain among the brush; and the Baronet saluted the Prince with much
punctilio. To the Countess, on the other hand, he bowed with a kind of
sneering wonder.
‘Is it possible, madam, that you have not heard the news?’ he asked.
‘What news?’ she cried.
‘News of the first order,’ returned Sir John: ‘a revolution in the State,
a Republic declared, the palace burned to the ground, the Princess in
flight, Gondremark wounded—’
‘Heinrich wounded?’ she screamed.
‘Wounded and suffering acutely,’ said Sir John. ‘His groans—’
There fell from the lady’s lips an oath so potent that, in smoother
hours, it would have made her hearers jump. She ran to her horse,
scrambled to the saddle, and, yet half seated, dashed down the road at
full gallop. The groom, after a pause of wonder, followed her. The rush
of her impetuous passage almost scared the carriage horses over the verge
of the steep hill; and still she clattered further, and the crags echoed
to her flight, and still the groom flogged vainly in pursuit of her. At
the fourth corner, a woman trailing slowly up leaped back with a cry and
escaped death by a hand’s-breadth. But the Countess wasted neither
glance nor thought upon the incident. Out and in, about the bluffs of
the mountain wall, she fled, loose-reined, and still the groom toiled in
her pursuit.
‘A most impulsive lady!’ said Sir John. ‘Who would have thought she
cared for him?’ And before the words were uttered, he was struggling in
the Prince’s grasp.
‘My wife! the Princess? What of her?’
‘She is down the road,’ he gasped. ‘I left her twenty minutes back.’
And next moment, the choked author stood alone, and the Prince on foot
was racing down the hill behind the Countess.
CHAPTER IV—BABES IN THE WOOD
While the feet of the Prince continued to run swiftly, his heart, which
had at first by far outstripped his running, soon began to linger and
hang back. Not that he ceased to pity the misfortune or to yearn for the
sight of Seraphina; but the memory of her obdurate coldness awoke within
him, and woke in turn his own habitual diffidence of self. Had Sir John
been given time to tell him all, had he even known that she was speeding
to the Felsenburg, he would have gone to her with ardour. As it was, he
began to see himself once more intruding, profiting, perhaps, by her
misfortune, and now that she was fallen, proffering unloved caresses to
the wife who had spurned him in prosperity. The sore spots upon his
vanity began to burn; once more, his anger assumed the carriage of a
hostile generosity; he would utterly forgive indeed; he would help, save,
and comfort his unloving wife; but all with distant self-denial, imposing
silence on his heart, respecting Seraphina’s disaffection as he would the
innocence of a child. So, when at length he turned a corner and beheld
the Princess, it was his first thought to reassure her of the purity of
his respect, and he at once ceased running and stood still. She, upon
her part, began to run to him with a little cry; then, seeing him pause,
she paused also, smitten with remorse; and at length, with the most
guilty timidity, walked nearly up to where he stood.
‘Otto,’ she said, ‘I have ruined all!’
‘Seraphina!’ he cried with a sob, but did not move, partly withheld by
his resolutions, partly struck stupid at the sight of her weariness and
disorder. Had she stood silent, they had soon been locked in an embrace.
But she too had prepared herself against the interview, and must spoil
the golden hour with protestations.
‘All!’ she went on, ‘I have ruined all! But, Otto, in kindness you must
hear me—not justify, but own, my faults. I have been taught so cruelly;
I have had such time for thought, and see the world so changed. I have
been blind, stone-blind; I have let all true good go by me, and lived on
shadows. But when this dream fell, and I had betrayed you, and thought I
had killed—’ She paused. ‘I thought I had killed Gondremark,’ she said
with a deep flush, ‘and I found myself alone, as you said.’
The mention of the name of Gondremark pricked the Princes generosity like
a spur. ‘Well,’ he cried, ‘and whose fault was it but mine? It was my
duty to be beside you, loved or not. But I was a skulker in the grain,
and found it easier to desert than to oppose you. I could never learn
that better part of love, to fight love’s battles. But yet the love was
there. And now when this toy kingdom of ours has fallen, first of all by
my demerits, and next by your inexperience, and we are here alone
together, as poor as Job and merely a man and a woman—let me conjure you
to forgive the weakness and to repose in the love. Do not mistake me!’
he cried, seeing her about to speak, and imposing silence with uplifted
hand. ‘My love is changed; it is purged of any conjugal pretension; it
does not ask, does not hope, does not wish for a return in kind. You may
forget for ever that part in which you found me so distasteful, and
accept without embarrassment the affection of a brother.’
‘You are too generous, Otto,’ she said. ‘I know that I have forfeited
your love. I cannot take this sacrifice. You had far better leave me.
O, go away, and leave me to my fate!’
‘O no!’ said Otto; ‘we must first of all escape out of this hornet’s
nest, to which I led you. My honour is engaged. I said but now we were
as poor as Job; and behold! not many miles from here I have a house of my
own to which I will conduct you. Otto the Prince being down, we must try
what luck remains to Otto the Hunter. Come, Seraphina; show that you
forgive me, and let us set about this business of escape in the best
spirits possible. You used to say, my dear, that, except as a husband
and a prince, I was a pleasant fellow. I am neither now, and you may
like my company without remorse. Come, then; it were idle to be
captured. Can you still walk? Forth, then,’ said he, and he began to
lead the way.
A little below where they stood, a good-sized brook passed below the
road, which overleapt it in a single arch. On one bank of that
loquacious water a foot-path descended a green dell. Here it was rocky
and stony, and lay on the steep scarps of the ravine; here it was choked
with brambles; and there, in fairy haughs, it lay for a few paces evenly
on the green turf. Like a sponge, the hillside oozed with well-water.
The burn kept growing both in force and volume; at every leap it fell
with heavier plunges and span more widely in the pool. Great had been
the labours of that stream, and great and agreeable the changes it had
wrought. It had cut through dykes of stubborn rock, and now, like a
blowing dolphin, spouted through the orifice; along all its humble
coasts, it had undermined and rafted-down the goodlier timber of the
forest; and on these rough clearings it now set and tended primrose
gardens, and planted woods of willow, and made a favourite of the silver
birch. Through all these friendly features the path, its human acolyte,
conducted our two wanderers downward,—Otto before, still pausing at the
more difficult passages to lend assistance; the Princess following. From
time to time, when he turned to help her, her face would lighten upon
his—her eyes, half desperately, woo him. He saw, but dared not
understand. ‘She does not love me,’ he told himself, with magnanimity.
‘This is remorse or gratitude; I were no gentleman, no, nor yet a man, if
I presumed upon these pitiful concessions.’
Some way down the glen, the stream, already grown to a good bulk of
water, was rudely dammed across, and about a third of it abducted in a
wooden trough. Gaily the pure water, air’s first cousin, fleeted along
the rude aqueduct, whose sides and floor it had made green with grasses.
The path, bearing it close company, threaded a wilderness of briar and
wild-rose. And presently, a little in front, the brown top of a mill and
the tall mill-wheel, spraying diamonds, arose in the narrows of the glen;
at the same time the snoring music of the saws broke the silence.
The miller, hearing steps, came forth to his door, and both he and Otto
started.
‘Good-morning, miller,’ said the Prince. ‘You were right, it seems, and
I was wrong. I give you the news, and bid you to Mittwalden. My throne
has fallen—great was the fall of it!—and your good friends of the Phoenix
bear the rule.’
The red-faced miller looked supreme astonishment. ‘And your Highness?’
he gasped.
‘My Highness is running away,’ replied Otto, ‘straight for the frontier.’
‘Leaving Grünewald?’ cried the man. ‘Your father’s son? It’s not to be
permitted!’
‘Do you arrest us, friend?’ asked Otto, smiling.
‘Arrest you? I?’ exclaimed the man. ‘For what does your Highness take
me? Why, sir, I make sure there is not a man in Grünewald would lay
hands upon you.’
‘O, many, many,’ said the Prince; ‘but from you, who were bold with me in
my greatness, I should even look for aid in my distress.’
The miller became the colour of beetroot. ‘You may say so indeed,’ said
he. ‘And meanwhile, will you and your lady step into my house.’
‘We have not time for that,’ replied the Prince; ‘but if you would oblige
us with a cup of wine without here, you will give a pleasure and a
service, both in one.’
The miller once more coloured to the nape. He hastened to bring forth
wine in a pitcher and three bright crystal tumblers. ‘Your Highness must
not suppose,’ he said, as he filled them, ‘that I am an habitual drinker.
The time when I had the misfortune to encounter you, I was a trifle
overtaken, I allow; but a more sober man than I am in my ordinary, I do
not know where you are to look for; and even this glass that I drink to
you (and to the lady) is quite an unusual recreation.’
The wine was drunk with due rustic courtesies; and then, refusing further
hospitality, Otto and Seraphina once more proceeded to descend the glen,
which now began to open and to be invaded by the taller trees.
‘I owed that man a reparation,’ said the Prince; ‘for when we met I was
in the wrong and put a sore affront upon him. I judge by myself,
perhaps; but I begin to think that no one is the better for a
humiliation.’
‘But some have to be taught so,’ she replied.
‘Well, well,’ he said, with a painful embarrassment. ‘Well, well. But
let us think of safety. My miller is all very good, but I do not pin my
faith to him. To follow down this stream will bring us, but after
innumerable windings, to my house. Here, up this glade, there lies a
cross-cut—the world’s end for solitude—the very deer scarce visit it.
Are you too tired, or could you pass that way?’
‘Choose the path, Otto. I will follow you,’ she said.
‘No,’ he replied, with a singular imbecility of manner and appearance,
‘but I meant the path was rough. It lies, all the way, by glade and
dingle, and the dingles are both deep and thorny.’
‘Lead on,’ she said. ‘Are you not Otto the Hunter?’
They had now burst across a veil of underwood, and were come into a lawn
among the forest, very green and innocent, and solemnly surrounded by
trees. Otto paused on the margin, looking about him with delight; then
his glance returned to Seraphina, as she stood framed in that silvan
pleasantness and looking at her husband with undecipherable eyes. A
weakness both of the body and mind fell on him like the beginnings of
sleep; the cords of his activity were relaxed, his eyes clung to her.
‘Let us rest,’ he said; and he made her sit down, and himself sat down
beside her on the slope of an inconsiderable mound.
She sat with her eyes downcast, her slim hand dabbling in grass, like a
maid waiting for love’s summons. The sound of the wind in the forest
swelled and sank, and drew near them with a running rush, and died away
and away in the distance into fainting whispers. Nearer hand, a bird out
of the deep covert uttered broken and anxious notes. All this seemed but
a halting prelude to speech. To Otto it seemed as if the whole frame of
nature were waiting for his words; and yet his pride kept him silent.
The longer he watched that slender and pale hand plucking at the grasses,
the harder and rougher grew the fight between pride and its kindly
adversary.
‘Seraphina,’ he said at last, ‘it is right you should know one thing: I
never . . .’ He was about to say ‘doubted you,’ but was that true? And,
if true, was it generous to speak of it? Silence succeeded.
‘I pray you, tell it me,’ she said; ‘tell it me, in pity.’
‘I mean only this,’ he resumed, ‘that I understand all, and do not blame
you. I understand how the brave woman must look down on the weak man. I
think you were wrong in some things; but I have tried to understand it,
and I do. I do not need to forget or to forgive, Seraphina, for I have
understood.’
‘I know what I have done,’ she said. ‘I am not so weak that I can be
deceived with kind speeches. I know what I have been—I see myself. I am
not worth your anger, how much less to be forgiven! In all this downfall
and misery, I see only me and you: you, as you have been always; me, as I
was—me, above all! O yes, I see myself: and what can I think?’
‘Ah, then, let us reverse the parts!’ said Otto. ‘It is ourselves we
cannot forgive, when we deny forgiveness to another—so a friend told me
last night. On these terms, Seraphina, you see how generously _I_ have
forgiven myself. But am not I to be forgiven? Come, then, forgive
yourself—and me.’
She did not answer in words, but reached out her hand to him quickly. He
took it; and as the smooth fingers settled and nestled in his, love ran
to and fro between them in tender and transforming currents.
‘Seraphina,’ he cried, ‘O, forget the past! Let me serve and help you;
let me be your servant; it is enough for me to serve you and to be near
you; let me be near you, dear—do not send me away.’ He hurried his
pleading like the speech of a frightened child. ‘It is not love,’ he
went on; ‘I do not ask for love; my love is enough . . .’
‘Otto!’ she said, as if in pain.
He looked up into her face. It was wrung with the very ecstasy of
tenderness and anguish; on her features, and most of all in her changed
eyes, there shone the very light of love.
‘Seraphina?’ he cried aloud, and with a sudden, tuneless voice,
‘Seraphina?’
‘Look round you at this glade,’ she cried, ‘and where the leaves are
coming on young trees, and the flowers begin to blossom. This is where
we meet, meet for the first time; it is so much better to forget and to
be born again. O what a pit there is for sins—God’s mercy, man’s
oblivion!’
‘Seraphina,’ he said, ‘let it be so, indeed; let all that was be merely
the abuse of dreaming; let me begin again, a stranger. I have dreamed,
in a long dream, that I adored a girl unkind and beautiful; in all things
my superior, but still cold, like ice. And again I dreamed, and thought
she changed and melted, glowed and turned to me. And I—who had no merit
but a love, slavish and unerect—lay close, and durst not move for fear of
waking.’
‘Lie close,’ she said, with a deep thrill of speech.
So they spake in the spring woods; and meanwhile, in Mittwalden
Rath-haus, the Republic was declared.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL POSTSCRIPT TO COMPLETE THE STORY
The reader well informed in modern history will not require details as to
the fate of the Republic. The best account is to be found in the memoirs
of Herr Greisengesang (7 Bände: Leipzig), by our passing acquaintance the
licentiate Roederer. Herr Roederer, with too much of an author’s
licence, makes a great figure of his hero—poses him, indeed, to be the
centre-piece and cloud-compeller of the whole. But, with due allowance
for this bias, the book is able and complete.
The reader is of course acquainted with the vigorous and bracing pages of
Sir John (2 vols., London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown). Sir
John, who plays but a tooth-comb in the orchestra of this historical
romance, blows in his own book the big bassoon. His character is there
drawn at large; and the sympathy of Landor has countersigned the
admiration of the public. One point, however, calls for explanation; the
chapter on Grünewald was torn by the hand of the author in the palace
gardens; how comes it, then, to figure at full length among my more
modest pages, the Lion of the caravan? That eminent literatus was a man
of method; ‘Juvenal by double entry,’ he was once profanely called; and
when he tore the sheets in question, it was rather, as he has since
explained, in the search for some dramatic evidence of his sincerity,
than with the thought of practical deletion. At that time, indeed, he
was possessed of two blotted scrolls and a fair copy in double. But the
chapter, as the reader knows, was honestly omitted from the famous
‘Memoirs on the various Courts of Europe.’ It has been mine to give it
to the public.
Bibliography still helps us with a further glimpse of our characters. I
have here before me a small volume (printed for private circulation: no
printer’s name; n.d.), ‘Poésies par Frédéric et Amélie.’ Mine is a
presentation copy, obtained for me by Mr. Bain in the Haymarket; and the
name of the first owner is written on the fly-leaf in the hand of Prince
Otto himself. The modest epigraph—‘Le rime n’est pas riche’—may be
attributed, with a good show of likelihood, to the same collaborator. It
is strikingly appropriate, and I have found the volume very dreary.
Those pieces in which I seem to trace the hand of the Princess are
particularly dull and conscientious. But the booklet had a fair success
with that public for which it was designed; and I have come across some
evidences of a second venture of the same sort, now unprocurable. Here,
at least, we may take leave of Otto and Seraphina—what do I say? of
Frédéric and Amélie—ageing together peaceably at the court of the wife’s
father, jingling French rhymes and correcting joint proofs.
Still following the book-lists, I perceive that Mr. Swinburne has
dedicated a rousing lyric and some vigorous sonnets to the memory of
Gondremark; that name appears twice at least in Victor Hugo’s
trumpet-blasts of patriot enumeration; and I came latterly, when I
supposed my task already ended, on a trace of the fallen politician and
his Countess. It is in the ‘Diary of J. Hogg Cotterill, Esq.’ (that very
interesting work). Mr. Cotterill, being at Naples, is introduced (May
27th) to ‘a Baron and Baroness Gondremark—he a man who once made a
noise—she still beautiful—both witty. She complimented me much upon my
French—should never have known me to be English—had known my uncle, Sir
John, in Germany—recognised in me, as a family trait, some of his _grand
air_ and studious courtesy—asked me to call.’ And again (May 30th),
‘visited the Baronne de Gondremark—much gratified—a most _refined_,
_intelligent_ woman, quite of the old school, now, _hélas_! extinct—had
read my _Remarks on Sicily_—it reminds her of my uncle, but with more of
grace—I feared she thought there was less energy—assured no—a softer
style of presentation, more of the _literary grace_, but the same firm
grasp of circumstance and force of thought—in short, just Buttonhole’s
opinion. Much encouraged. I have a real esteem for this patrician
lady.’ The acquaintance lasted some time; and when Mr. Cotterill left in
the suite of Lord Protocol, and, as he is careful to inform us, in
Admiral Yardarm’s flag-ship, one of his chief causes of regret is to
leave ‘that most _spirituelle_ and sympathetic lady, who already regards
me as a younger brother.’