Chapter XXI At the Mock Versailles
“You are just a porcelain trifle, Belle Marquise!
Just a thing of puffs and patches,
Made for madrigals and catches,
Not for heart-wounds, but for scratches...”
AUSTIN DOBSON.
Viennese Betty was in Cassel; and if ever the right person was in the right place, it was Betty in Cassel, the Frenchified Cassel at least of King Jerome. She breathed in its irresponsible, exciting, immoral atmosphere with rapture. Its tinfoil splendour was utterly satisfying to her eyes; its jests provoked her charmed laughter; its aims measured her utmost ambitions. To shine among these doubtful stars; to take the lead in frivolities, without fear of losing caste—nay, with every prospect of being lifted upon giddy triumph as the newest and most influential “pompadourette”—even in her dreams Betty had never devised for herself a more enchanting prospect! To make the thing complete, her Bluebeard was tame, absolutely at her mercy... and held relentlessly at a distance.
At the first sight of a scowl, at the first rumple of that brow that used to strike terror, at the first threat of breaking through her imposed barriers, Betty had but to prattle airily of “oubliettes” (strangely inappropriate term for dark doings that never could be forgotten), or yet to fall into alarming pamoisons, into fits of shuddering, artistically simulated, accompanied by apparently wandering yet exceedingly suggestive speech—and the Burgrave was forthwith reduced to a jelly.
The Burgrave was indeed an altered being, went moodily, found his cup bitter and his food savourless, while the Burgravine, tasting all the delights of freedom, fluttered through her first week in Cassel like a butterfly through a flower garden under full sunshine. A butterfly she was, upon one side of her nature; but, upon another, capable of determination and deep-seated resentments. True, she had other and, to her mind, better quarry to pursue now than Beau Cousin Kielmansegg—a mere rich young nobleman; yet it added not a little to the fulness of her gratification to know that she had successfully parted him from Sidonia.
The evening after her visit to Napoleonshöhe found her in the most delicate of rose-powdered wrappers, seated at her writing-table in the window of her boudoir, so prodigiously content with herself and existence that little snatches of song, little trills of laughter, escaped her, as she pondered over her correspondence.
It was towards the hour of seven, and the gardens beneath her windows (so satisfying to Betty’s taste) with their mock Versailles elaboration, were bathed in mellow light. The statues took golden hues and flung a long fantastic shadow. The fountains flashed and tinkled. Some one was practising French airs on the clarinet in a room below. A gust of mingled flower-scents rose up to her nostrils: the pungency of clove pink, the coarser incense of white lilies, and the nearer breath of the climbing rose-tree that aspired towards her window.
Betty was the last person in the world to be consciously grateful for any offering of nature; she was merely aware of a general flattering of the senses which added to her content.
A few days ago, at Napoleonshöhe, she had met Jerome of Westphalia for the first time. And what a truly charming man! Not a hint of the plebeian Corsican about him. No—they maligned who said so. What manners, what courtesy and dash combined! What a delightful smile! What an eye! It was rumoured that strong men shivered under the glance of his great imperial brother. If you had asked her, Betty would have told you that, from all accounts, Napoleon seemed to her a distinctly overrated individual—a boor, who would chuck a lady under the chin or take her by the ear, as though she were a grenadier. Bah!—Nay, give her the agreeable thrill of coming beneath Jerome’s meaning gaze. A delicious recurrence of the sensation crept through her frame as, with closed eyes, she recalled the moment... Jerome’s first sight of her, his start, his stare, his flickering smile.
On the table lay the very rose he had presented to her with such a curve of slender olive fingers; with so happy a phrase, so graceful an inclination. Betty had handled the flower a good deal since, had sniffed and caressed it a vast number of times; the pretty leaves were blighted, but never did flower excite such admiration in the Burgravine’s regard.
She had met the King but a day or two ago; they had exchanged but a glance, a word, a courtesy—and behold! Betty’s morning courier had brought her a letter from the monarch. A love letter, if you please, neither more nor less. A request, a demand, for a rendezvous. Peste! he lost no time, the little King! But were there not royal privileges? Had he not the same blood as the Conqueror in his veins? Moreover, was not this very haste the best compliment that could be paid a woman? Not, indeed, that Betty had any notion of allowing herself to go too cheaply. Perhaps, indeed, she had no very clear idea of letting herself go at all; but to dally with an exciting situation, to tantalize, to reign, to fire, and then dash cold water.... Stay, such coarse expressions ill applied to the Burgravine’s delicate methods: to spray, very gently, with cold rose-water; not sufficiently to drown the lover’s ardour, but just enough to produce a little fizz and splutter—to reign, in fact, chief of the many sultanas by reason, perhaps, of her very refusal to qualify for the post! And only to yield at last when... But here Betty was glad to allow the prospect to be veiled in a kind of luminous mist. The immediate programme was quite sufficiently absorbing.
No wonder she nibbled the feathers of her pen. Her answer to the kingly missive must be a work of art. The “rendezvous” itself must not be denied, whatever else it might deny. Betty had the instinct of her species, the born coquette. Too much virtue, at the beginning, is fatal. Many twigs are required for the lighting of a proper fire.
It stood complete at last, a most dainty little note, indited on pink paper, duly folded and enclosed in a French envelope, wafered with mauve—Betty was of the last mode, these days, even to her writing paper.
The congenial task concluded, she had another to perform. The courier from Heiligenstadt, whither the King had repaired on a tour of military inspection, had brought her a second letter—also a love cry, or it might better be described as a love-bellow. The Burgrave, away on duty with his sovereign, appealed from a distance to his obdurate wife.
He was filled with amorous longing, jealousy, despair. How long was he to be exiled from her favour? The situation was past endurance! He implored, groaned, rebelled, threatened, and was abject again—all in a few frenzied lines. The gist of the whole was in the last phrase: “When am I to be forgiven? Am I not your husband?”
The answer to this effusion required but a flourish of the pen. Yet, as the lady planted a green wafer upon the second envelope, there was a triumphant smile upon her lip, a vindictive gleam of pleasure in her eye. The despatching of her morning budget had been altogether pleasurable.
Close by, in the little chamber allotted to her, Sidonia, behind locked doors, was engaged upon a similar task; for to her the courier had also brought a letter demanding instant acknowledgment. It was a very short one, and by no means so loverlike as either of Betty’s billets.
“I have been slightly indisposed” (wrote Steven) “and unable to travel for a few days; but I trust to be in Cassel within the week, and shall seek you in the Palace. It must be clear to you that you owe me at least an explanation. It is impossible that we can part for ever thus.
“STEVEN.”
Not a word of love! Not a hint of despair! Not even reproach! It was all cold, cruel business. As Sidonia wrote her reply, the tears dripped so quickly that she could scarce see the paper.
Eliza, very brisk and tripping, who had the charge of posting the three letters, studied the superscriptions very carefully before committing them to the royal mail. Her eyes grew round at sight of the pink-wafered note. Diable! If the mistress had such correspondence, it might become a question whether Jäger Kurtz would continue to be good enough for the maid. She smiled vindictively at sight of the green wafer. If she knew her lady, the Chancellor was far from being fully paid out yet. “And serve him right,” said she, who would herself be long before she forgave Burg-Wellenshausen for the horrors of its tedium.
The old-fashioned sheet that bore Sidonia’s childish scrawl she weighed awhile reflectively in her hand. Madame la Burgravine would doubtless give something to see the contents of that letter.... Then, with a shrug of her shoulders, she sent it on its voyage with the rest. The service of her lady had its advantages; and Eliza, pining in the Burg, had stuck to it with unerring prescience of better days. But it did not follow that she held no opinions of her own. And she had even a kind of good-nature that did quite as well as a conscience, as far as her neighbours were concerned, and was far more agreeable for herself.
“I am not hard-hearted like madame, look you,” said the maid to herself. “The child is a nice child, as young ladies go, and she should have her chance.”
The spirits of spring and autumn are akin, although the one journeys towards the fulness of life, and the other to the cold sleep, death. Across the dividing months they seem to meet each other, to serve you smiles and tears, skies of a tenderness unknown to summer, gales of wind, soft as milk, mighty as love. These come chanting with the voices of the ocean, the mountain and the forest, great songs of glory; seize you by the way in resistless arms, tell you wondrous things, and set your blood leaping as they pass. They set, if autumn it be, the yellow leaves awhirl in a death dance; or, if spring, every baby bud rocking on its sappy spray.
The travellers, one riding, the other afoot, went side by side along the road towards Cassel. It was a south-west wind that buffeted them. Even in the heart of the inland it seemed to sing of distant seas; to bear on its pinions airs at once untamable and mild, balmy and salt. The forest trees roared under it as with the voice of waters. It gathered from them drifts of yellowing leaves, even as, leagues behind, it had churned spray from Mediterranean waves. In the young traveller’s heart storm answered to storm; its breath in his nostrils maddened him, for he had fever in his veins, and he was balked in love.
But to the other traveller, whose hair was grey, who tramped along with the even measure of him who has learned to ignore fatigue, the autumn lament was charged with the hopelessness of the grave. It told him how all that is born must die, and how the beautiful die first. In the choiring of the forest he heard the dirge of waning life. In each gust of pungent fragrance he could smell the bitter graves of yesteryear.
The horseman was clothed in fine and fashionable garments. He who trudged was but a vagrant player, who made music for his daily bread and rarely knew in the morning where he would lay his head at night.
They went in silence. Steven’s heart was heavy. Robbed of his bride well-nigh on the altar-steps, he was now seeking her, in an impatience which repeated disappointment had fed to frenzy. And Geiger-Hans was his guide.
At a certain spot the forest began to press closer upon the imperial road. The overarching boughs flung a swaying, premature night upon them; and, as the woodland enfolded them, it seemed to draw them into a great sanctuary. Let the gale rage without, here was protection and an inner stillness all the deeper in contrast to the outer turmoil. Instinctively the travellers drew closer to each other, and their tongues were loosened.
The rider struck his saddle-bow with a passionate hand, at which the plodding grey faintly started.
“To think of her, at Cassel, under the devil flicker of that imperial puppet’s glance! Sidonia, my wife, at the Court of Jerome!”
“A waterlily may defy the ooze,” observed Geiger-Hans, sententiously.
But the simile was hateful to the youth—a water-lily, a flower that flourishes, in atrocious beauty, upon the very slime! Then he cursed his wound for its slow healing, and his blood for its ill-timed fever, and the length of the road, and the perversity of women.
“And the wrong-headedness of young men!” added the musician, drily.
But thereafter, in tones of consolation, for dudgeon reigned on the saddle above him, he pointed to a light far off through the dark flicker of leaf and shadowy march of trees.
“See, yonder shall we sup and sleep, and thence, rested, start in the brisk dawn. And to-morrow——”
“To-morrow!” interrupted the bridegroom, impatiently. “No; I shall be in Cassel to-night.”
“You forget the times we live in, comrade,” came the fiddler’s answer. “Why, here is my nobility afoot; and yours, all wounded, upon a sorry steed, because any less notable progression were to court suspicion, putting aside the fact that your worship’s carriage and horses (Sidonia would have none of them, and if you were not otherwise matched you two would be one by pride, comrade) have been requisitioned for the use of the State. And Frantz fled with his master’s dressing set, his English pistols, and his second portmanteau! Court suits I make no doubt, tut, tut. The fellow was a rogue. I saw it at half a blink. And worthy Peter, our postilion, bitten with the war fever and passed over to the Prussians! Nay, but ’tis a riddance that suits me. And here we go as I love, at our own free will, save, indeed, that we enter not Cassel to-night. Have you already forgotten that we are at war, in Westphalia? Not, I grant you, that it signifies much to our pretty monarch—so long as it does not interfere with his amusements at home. He has thought it wise, nevertheless, to make a little fortress of his capital—breastworks and glacis where lay the orchards and cottage gardens; posterns and corps de garde at all road entrances, and everything closed at the setting of the watch, an hour after sundown!”
Steven the lover had, in his mind’s eye, seen his pilgrimage ended before the fall of the day; seen himself dashed or crowned. Crowned! Upon the vision the surge rose in his heart till it overpowered him well-nigh to swooning.
Geiger-Hans, with his diabolic insight, chose this moment to draw from his fiddle a sudden strain.
“Oh, stop!” panted the young man. “I cannot bear it.”
And the player fell silent, musing upon the ways of men and women and of love. Let a bride but elude her lover’s embrace, what surer road shall she find to a revealing of his ardour?