Chapter XXVIII A Treacherous Haven
“While some, whose souls the old serpent long had drawn
Down... hissed each at other’s ear
What shall not be recorded—women they,
Women, or what had been those gracious things....”
(Geraint and Enid).
She ran headlong down the passage, and struck against the burly figure of the Burgrave himself. The omen of trunks had not yet met him. He was in high good humour. Indeed, he was of those that have no scent for omens. His kinglet, but now, had promised him, for no special reason that appeared yet, territorial honour and rich regard, and he had no doubt of the royal power.
“Whither so fast, my maid?” he inquired, holding her not unkindly.
She clung to him with passion: “O, Uncle Ludo, take me away from this place! Take me away to-night, this hour, at once! Let us go back to the dear old Burg!”
“Why, what is this?” He pushed her from him, good-humoured, bantering, fuddled with the royal Sillery. His sovereign and he had pledged a bumper to the heiress of Wellenshausen’s altered prospects. “Na, na,” said the Burgrave, and wagged his head jocosely. “Somebody would not be in such a hurry to run away if somebody knew what her old uncle had planned for her. Ha, my dear, that hasty marriage was never more to my liking than to yours; and now we have a new husband for you. Aye, and a place at court! Hey, little Sidonia! Such a fine husband, such a fine position!”
The girl raised her eyes and desperately scanned his empurpled countenance. Again the Burgrave archly shook his head, and laughter rumbled in his huge body.—Aye, aye, it was the way of women to feign coyness, but men knew what was good for them. One must humour them from time to time, but never yield.—She read something implacable in the stupidity of his eye. She thought of the old wild boars in the forest: as well might she try to appeal to one of those!
He clutched her hands in his hot grasp; a faintness came over her.
“Aunt Betty is packing,” she cried wildly, inspired by woman’s wit. “Don’t you know?... She is going back to Austria.”
“What?” roared the Burgrave. He released her and cantered sidelong down the passage to Betty’s room.
It was blow upon blow. Sidonia stood, trying to collect her scattered thoughts. Suddenly Eliza came upon her, tripping from the outer door upon gay sandalled foot. She flung her shawl from her head at sight of Sidonia, and her eyes danced under dishevelled curls.
“We are going to Vienna, mademoiselle,” she announced breathlessly, “and no later than to-night. I have just ordered the post-chaise for madame. One cannot trust that Kurtz. It is a great secret. Will not mademoiselle come with us? One is so happy at Vienna! And mademoiselle will probably meet the young count quite easily there—or somebody else just as handsome,” added Eliza. Her eyes rollicked.
Sidonia looked at the gleeful, unscrupulous, excited face and recoiled. Wine flowed as freely in the menials’ hall, on fête nights, at the Palace of Bellevue as in the salons. And Eliza was one who would profit of the occasion. But now the Burgrave’s voice rose from the inner room with sudden clangour. The maid, suddenly sobered, caught Sidonia’s wrist.
“Ah, ciel,” she cried, “what is passing within there? And we, who thought monsieur safe away, in attendance of the King!... Why, mademoiselle, how white you are, and how you tremble!” Immoral she might be, like her mistress; but, unlike her, she was kind. “Ah, he was not there, then, to-night,” she proceeded with rapid intuition. “Listen, Mademoiselle Sidonia, since he won’t come, if I were you I should just go to him.... And quick, quick, before he signs. He can’t turn you away... even if he wanted it. Sapristi, but you are still his wife.”
A fresh outburst of wrangling voices in Betty’s rooms here drew her curiosity in another direction.
“I must go and be with poor madame,” she exclaimed; the twinkle in her eye, over the delight of witnessing the marital scene, contrasted oddly with the pious devotion of her tone.
“Tu verras que cela va rater encore cette fois,” she was telling herself philosophically, as she hurried away.
“If you want help,” had said the soft-voiced old lady, “ask for la Grande Maréchale de la Cour.” If ever a poor daughter of Eve wanted help, it was surely Sidonia, standing between the Scylla of nameless evil and the Charybdis of dire humiliation.
A refuge for the night, the loan of a small sum, to enable her to gain the Forest House—for Sidonia was still kept like a child and had no purse of her own—surely, it was small assistance that she required. She paused but to catch up a travelling cloak in her room; then, seeking the outer corridor again, bade the first valet on her way guide her to the apartment of Madame la Grande Maréchale. She would wait, she planned, for the great lady’s return from festivity. There must be safety where such gentle old age presided; and good counsel; perchance even an escort, forthcoming on the morrow for her journey back to the Thuringian forest.
The Maréchale’s apartments were on the ground floor, and Sidonia thought fortune favoured her when the porter informed her that “Her Excellency” herself had that instant entered. Still more at ease felt she when the pretty old lady received her with open arms and cooing words of welcome:
“Ma belle enfant, this is well! I had presentiments. I expected you. That great bear of a Chancellor, your uncle, and the little minx of a wife he has... (linnet-head, wasp-temper, ferret-heart—I know the kind! One look at her, ma chère, it was enough): that was no place for you. Nay, you wanted a friend, and it is well you came to me, very well.” She nodded; and the bird-of-paradise plume in her gauzy turban quivered over her white curls.
Sidonia had to struggle with rising tears; but they were tears of gratitude, of relief. Madame la Maréchale patted her on the shoulder, stooped to embrace her; there was about her a delicate atmosphere of Parma powder and amber-scented laces.
“It is good, my child,” she murmured, “to have a friend at court—some one who knows the ways of it. Ma petite, you and I, we’ll do great things together! Nay, but we will talk no more now. A little supper would not come amiss. Hey, what have you eaten to-day?”
She rang a silver bell, and a smart soubrette appeared, who stared with bold, black eyes at the visitor.
“Bettine, my good girl,” said the suave lady, “take... mademoiselle into my chamber, and arrange me her coiffure before supper.—We must be beautiful,” she added, turning pleasantly again to Sidonia, “for we may have a guest.”
“This way, mademoiselle,” said Bettine, briefly.
As she led Sidonia across the threshold of a violet-scented, violet-hued bower, the lady’s dulcet tones called after her—
“And then, Bettine, return to me here. I have to speed thee with a little note.”
“It is well, madame,” answered the French girl. (There was no “fashion” in Westphalia without Gallic handmaids.)
Sidonia looked around, and then at the girl’s hard face as she closed the door. It seemed to her as if a bog quivered under her feet where she had thought to find firm footing. Her ears had been first disagreeably struck by the word “mademoiselle,” and the emphasis that the old lady had placed on it. Mademoiselle!—to her who had so clearly introduced herself as the wife of Count Kielmansegg. The reference to an expected visitor next filled her with inchoate suspicion, which the order concerning a note intensified. She now read an insolent meaning in Bettine’s eyes as they appraised her.
“Whom does your mistress expect to supper?” she asked, with sharpness.
The girl shrugged her shoulders. “Madame la Maréchale’s supper-parties are very amusing,” she replied familiarly in her fluent but strangely accented German. “Little suppers—very amusing, very discreet. Mademoiselle will amuse herself to-night... oh, she may be sure she will amuse herself royally!” She paused on the word with an odious smile, then pursued familiarly: “The great thing is that mademoiselle should be beautiful. Voyons, we must off with this cloak. Will mademoiselle sit down? Oh, how lovely is mademoiselle’s figure! but her hair—mademoiselle forgives?—her hair done in despite of all sense!”
Sidonia had felt it before she had the certainty into what a trap she had walked. Now she knew; and with the clearness of her conviction, she also knew what she had to do. She sat down silently, as bidden; and, while the distasteful touch of the Maréchale’s maid played in her hair, made a steady inventory of the room. There was no door but the one leading back into the boudoir; great windows were curtained away behind the dressing-table.
“Oh, how much better is mademoiselle like this!” cried Bettine, falling back to admire her work.
Sidonia gave her own reflection an anxious scrutiny. One word, one look, one sign of weakness, and her hastily formed plan might be frustrated.... Beyond that possibility was the horror upon which she could not look,... upon which she would never look! For, at the worst, there was still a refuge. The fiddler’s words—“The release of a clean, proud soul—that is joy!” came to her ever and again as upon a strain of his own music, and ever with fresh strength and comfort.
“Oh, how beautiful is mademoiselle!” cried Bettine again, this time with genuine enthusiasm. “Positively, it is flames she has in her glance, and no rouge could beat me the colour of those cheeks.”
“Bettine...!” rose the Maréchale’s silver voice from the next room; and Sidonia, flinging herself into her part with the instinct of the defenceless, smiled gaily on the girl as she bade her go.
“Mademoiselle will not forget ’tis I who has adorned her—when she is in power?” insinuated the Maréchale’s maid.
“I shall not forget,” said Sidonia between her teeth. She seized the handle of the door as it closed between them: fortunately the Maréchale liked discreet hinges, and Sidonia was able, noiselessly, to draw it the necessary fraction of an inch apart that she might listen. There was not a tremor in her hands; she held her breath lest a rustle of silk should betray her. The strong spirit rises to the great situation.
There was whispering within. The ear of the heiress of Wellenshausen had been trained in forest glades, full of the small sounds of lesser lives. She caught a word here, a word there.
“... The note... in his Majesty’s own hands.... Thou hast well understood, my girl?”
“Yes, Excellence.”
Bettine’s whisper carried far. But now the Maréchale made a softer communication, of which the listener could gather no import, but Bettine’s answer again gave the dreadful clue. It was emitted with a laugh. “Oh, no; your Excellency is wrong—we are not so scared as all that, believe me!”
A dulcet titter joined the note of the servant’s mirth.
“At any rate, the little bird is in the cage,” said the Maréchale, as she laughed.
It was more than enough. Sidonia closed the door. She found a bolt which moved willingly under her fingers. Then a frenzy of haste came upon her. The cloak over her pale dress—the hood over Bettine’s fine coiffure! And now the window! People who shut up a little bird in a cage should make sure that the bars are close enough to keep it safe; for the bird has wings, and its heart beats towards freedom, towards the mate, towards the nest! The Maréchale’s apartments were on the rez-de-chaussée; but had they been on the top-most floor, that window would yet have been the way of Sidonia’s flight.
Oh, how deliriously the chill, pure air beat upon her face after that evil hothouse atmosphere! By the stillness and the fragrance, by the soft earth under her feet, she knew she had alighted into the palace garden. It was a murky night, and the rain was falling; the distant lights of the park gates glimmered fitfully.
Sidonia had no idea whither to turn; but the intention of her heart was undeviating as the flight of the homing bird. There was only one refuge for her, only one place for her—her husband’s arms. Her road was clear: she was going to Steven, and, after that, nothing would ever matter again.
She set off running in the direction of the gateway lamps. In a minute her light ball-slippers were soaked with wet, clogged with mud; her narrow skirts clung against her silk stockings; now she brushed against low bushes, now nearly fell. She could run no more; she must grope her way.
But presently her eyes became more accustomed to the dimness. A double row of marble statues, mounting ghostly guard on each side of the great alley, showed white through the trees. She knew her bearings now. Yonder fantastic group of lights in front was the Orangerie, illumined in honour of the royal fête. Fortunately for her, the skies to-night were not such as to tempt guests to al fresco rambling. Further, to the left, twinkled the lamps of the town, reflected through the branches in the waters of the Kleine-Fulda, which ran parallel to the Avenue, as she knew.
From the Friedrichsthor—the great gate of the palace grounds—came distant sounds of voices, laughter and calls. Through that issue she dared hardly venture. Even as she stood, hesitating, the rumble of an approaching carriage grew out of the night. She turned and fled in the opposite direction—there must be minor exits from the park, surely, and, so long as she was within the precincts of the palace, terror would dog her steps.
Her feet once on the firm sand of the alley, she girded up her impeding skirts. The dim stone figures on each side seemed, to her excited fancy, to move their heads and bend over to stare in wonder, to bid her haste away, wise in old knowledge of the guilty secrets of such a court. Somehow, these silent figures were company to her and she missed their presence when she plunged into the first turning which, she trusted, would lead towards the town. Yet, the darkness of the trees closing about her brought a new sense of protection. She was not of those who feel the night-horror of the woods; the trees were her friends from childhood; they knew her and she them. The softness and damp smell of the autumn leaves beneath her tread were grateful to her senses. The sound of the Kleine-Fulda on her stony bed guided her way to a narrow Chinese bridge over the ribbon of water. Soon she had to advance more slowly once again and feel her way: here the ground began to ascend, the trees to give place to shrubs; the path doubled and twisted suddenly. A blank wall sprang at her out of the gloom. She drew a quick breath. An illumined window-pane blinked:—it was the hoped-for gate of her escape, could she now but elude the sentry’s challenge or carry herself with such assurance as to be allowed a passage.
But in Jerome’s kingdom it was the unexpected that usually happened. By the gate stood, indeed, the inevitable sentry-box; but as, with her heart beating in her throat, Sidonia approached tiptoe with endless precautions, behold, it was empty! The gate itself was open. From within the guardian’s lodge, behind that blinking window, came a merry burst of song and laughter. Clearly it was “like master like man.” If Jerome thought that the enjoyment of the hour was the most urgent business of existence, so did his servants, including his park sentries. There was no doubt of the wholeheartedness of the entertainment in the side lodge of the royal garden that night.