Part 17
This worthy, therefore, sped the stranger towards the Royal Palace with far greater urbanity than he had displayed on his arrival, and stood staring after him with some curiosity:--unattended, upon a bony old horse, and airs of a prince withal ... a sable cloak than which the King himself wore no better ... and we want, if you please, a travelling carriage and four of the best horses obtainable. We don't mind buying if they are not to be hired.... _Oho, ei, ei!_
"The town is turned into a citadel." The words recurred to Steven as he swung down the ill-paved street. The very air throbbed to military rhythm. In the fields, without the walls and on the new ramparts, everywhere, levies were being exercised, to judge by the tramp of feet, the calls and counter calls of bugles, the distant blare of marching bands, the beat of drums, cries of command, rattle of sham fire. The little brown town itself was filled with the most heterogeneous throng--Hanoverian and Westphalian hangers-on of the Court; French and Corsican adventurers; soldiers of as varied nationalities as were the uniforms of Jerome's fretful fancy; grenadiers, late of his brother, briefly royal of Holland, in their red coatees; wonderful blue hussars (French most of them) very gallant, with a wealth of jangle, whether ahorse or afoot--these same wonderful blue hussars, some of whom Steven had seen driven by the sheep-skin Cossacks like wrack before the storm; _dragons d'Espagne_, in green and orange, stern, lean and war-worn (unscrupulously intercepted, these, on their way to rejoin their imperial leader, and here disdainful of pinchbeck king and petty service); stolid Westphalian recruits lounging along the cobbles with the slouch of discontent; astounding diplomats driving about, clad in astounding embroideries; academicians, too, with the green palm on coat-tail and cuff, for "Little Brother Jerome" played at being as like big brother Napoleon as might be.
Market boors plodded by, blue-stockinged, crimson-waistcoated and wide-hatted; shapeless country wenches tramped, and fair ladies, reclining in coaches, flashed past Steven; and quite a swarm of lackeys, postilions, chasseurs, with all the insolence of the servants of dissolute masters, elbowed him aside, or appraised him with open comment. Had he not been so absorbed in his private anxiety, he might have noted, in spite of the air of gaiety, the bustle and the extravagance, certain ominous signs of impending cataclysm around him--the swift passage here and there of an urgent courier; the grave countenances of some officials; the little groups, whispering together in by-streets, dissolving at the first hint of approaching police; the singing defiance of the students; the sullenness of the poorer burghers; and, above all, the febrile, over-strained note in the very merriment of the ruling class itself. There was a tinkling of madcap-bells at the Palace of Jerome that rang into the town; no one within those walls had a mind to hearken to the reverberating echoes of Berlin and Hamburg and Dresden.
Heartily as he despised the sovereign and his army; careless as he was, in the absorption of his own vexed affairs, of the dire threat that hung upon the land, Steven could not but find something inspiriting in the martial sounds and sights. Unconsciously his step fell to the measure of some distant drums. He had a valiant sense of marching upon victory as he turned into the palace courtyard. On the strength of his splendid air, the sentries saluted him without challenging. A huge green-uniformed Swiss porter bowed before him.
The first check--and it was a slight one--was that no such person as the _Graefin_ Waldorff-Kielmansegg was known at the Palace. She had to be explained as the niece of Chancellor Wellenshausen, as the young Baroness Sidonia, before her identity could be established. Then, once more, all was smiles and bows. Nothing could be easier than to see the gracious _Fraeulein_. He was passed from Swiss porter to royal French lackey; conducted by the royal French lackey through several corridors and up a flight of stairs, then delivered to no less a person than dapper Kurtz, the Burgrave's own Jaeger. This latter gave him first a stare, then a sharp, meaning look, but, nevertheless, introduced him without demur to a kind of ante-room. Here Steven was left; and here he had to wait a length of time, which seemed to him first ill-omened, then positively insulting.
It was a quaint room, painted with impossible nosegays of flowers and cornucopias running over with gargantuan fruit. It gave, as did the whole apartment, on the Bellevue Gardens; and, through the yellowing trees, he could see distant gleams of the Fulda, blue under a blue sky. A merry party was playing bowls on the _boulingrin_; and, though it was screened from sight by sundry formal clipped hedges, Steven could hear the interchange of voices, ladies' laughter, the banter of men.
As the minutes passed and there came to him no sound from within the apartment, the tinkling, irresponsible gaiety without grew to be a personal irritation. The very sunshine that had cheered him on his way was now a mockery; the distant tunefulness of trumpets, a boding. More than once he lifted his hands impatiently towards the bell-rope, but each time refrained: so much hung in the balance, he must be patient. Patient! He ground his teeth as he paced the bright, absurd room.
* * * * *
Kurtz brought the message intended for Sidonia straight to the Burgravine. He was an astute young man, and knew the most likely quarter for promotion. Betty was at the moment engaged with the contents of a milliner's box, choosing a hat to wear with a certain new green redingote at the review to be held that afternoon. Something it must have of the military cock, without offending the feminine graces. It was matter of the deepest moment. But Betty, it has been hinted, had a capable mind--a facility for grasping several issues at the same time. She rose promptly to the new situation.
"Bid Baroness Sidonia come to me," she ordered. Then, tartly recalling her maid, who was edging towards the door: "Eliza, where are you going?" she cried.
"_Mon Dieu_," said Eliza, innocently, "but to inform _mademoiselle_ that some one is waiting for her. And, indeed," she added, seeing by the flash of her lady's eye that her good-natured intention was frustrated--"indeed, madam, it is strange what a foolish habit we have all got into of calling madam's niece _Mademoiselle_. It is the young countess, I should say."
She clasped her hands, and was about to wax eloquent on the subject of her pleasure at M. le Comte Kielmansegg's reappearance and of her rooted conviction that they were _un bien gentil couple_, divinely destined for each other, when her mistress peremptorily reduced her to silence. Kurtz thereupon vanished in his brisk soldier way.
Betty selected another hat and set it on her curly head. It had an adorably impudent tilt and a bunch of orange cock-feathers.
"That, madame," said the French milliner, her thin elbows akimbo, her bright, familiar eyes fixed admiringly on her client--"that, madame, we call the _Shako a la Saxonne_--it is everything that is new--an inspiration after the battle of Luetzen. And there is not another lady in Cassel will have anything like it."
Betty twisted her figure from side to side, and surveyed herself in the long mirror. She had donned the long narrow _redingote_ to be sure of her effect, and the rich dark green of the velvet threw her face into charming relief. The orange note of the feather was the perfecting touch.
"I really think--I really think I will have it." She spoke lingeringly: these things do not decide themselves without reflection.
Sidonia came in slowly. Betty ran a keen eye over the girl; the fair hair was rough, and that was a dreadful little garment of Wellenshausen manufacture ... pale face, heavy eyes! Betty broke into a laugh. Life was really very amusing at times.
"You sent for me, aunt?"
"Yes, my dear. Somebody has called to see you, it seems."
"To see me?" Sidonia drew her breath quickly. Crimson rushed to her face.
"Dear child," said the Burgravine, in her most cooing voice, "do not agitate yourself; you need not see him unless you wish. Yes, my love, it is that tiresome man again--my wretched cousin Kielmansegg."
Sidonia swayed a little, but caught herself up, fiercely erect; then the blood began to ebb from her cheeks.
"I will go to him," she said under her voice. "Where is he?"
"Perhaps it would be just as well," said the Burgravine, carelessly. "You can hurry matters on about the annulment. Truly, it is fortunate," she laughed, "that we shall not now have to hunt for him God knows where, in order to free you, my poor little Sidonia, from this absurd business."
"Aunt!" cried the girl, indignantly, with a glance at the milliner.--How could Aunt Betty laugh so heartlessly, how dared she discuss these most intimate affairs, before a stranger!
"Calm yourself," said the elder lady, "she does not understand one word of our savage language--too true a Frenchwoman for that, my dear! Now, about this traitor. (There you go white and red, you silly thing.) ... Everything can be settled by Yes or No! Either he wants to carry off his heiress, or he is content with your decision. He has, of course, received your letter. Heavens, my dear, did we not discuss it all before? And, anyhow, it is not a matter for heroics. Lord knows, I don't want to interfere; it is entirely for you to decide whether you are on or off with the bargain. For I will lay forty wagers he is here to protest. Ah, I know my young Viennese gentlemen; they cannot have too much gold at their back.--Decidedly, Madame Athenais, I keep this hat."
It was too adorable to be taken off her head even for a moment.
Sidonia stood, clasping and unclasping her hands. Every word her aunt spoke, dropped apparently with such heedlessness, but in reality with such subtle intent, stabbed her to her sore heart.
"Approach, my dear," said Betty, maternally, "and let me, for heaven's sake, run a comb through your hair. Mercy on us, child, what a gown! Had you not better change it?"
"No," said Sidonia, sullenly. She went, on leaden foot, to her aunt's toilet table and gave an unseeing touch to her hair.
Betty looked over her shoulder; the two faces were reflected side by side. Sidonia's reflection in the glass looked positively ugly--in her own eyes. In Betty's, too, apparently, for she cried, with an air of great generosity and wisdom:
"I would offer to go with you, to support you, my angel; but after what has passed--I think it were wiser he should not see me. After all, who knows? You may patch it up. But, Sidonia, you really ought to make yourself a little tidy."
Madame Athenais, who, if she had that ignorance of the German language attributed to her ultra-Parisian nature, had contrived nevertheless to follow the dialogue pretty closely, here interposed with the unctuous familiarity of her kind:
"Oh, if the young lady is going to have an interview of importance, it is certain she should make some toilet. See, if _mademoiselle_ permits, I will show her a hat that is the very thing for the occasion. Something young, young, quite virginal, yet, coquet, alluring!--something no gentleman of taste could resist on _mademoiselle's_ head!"
Sidonia--she was but seventeen, after all--stamped her foot.
"Leave me in peace, all of you!" she cried, and made for the door.
The keenest of all Betty's stabs she carried away in her heart; that was the vision of Betty herself, so fair, so distracting in her plumed hat, beside Sidonia, plain, awkward, ill-dressed--poor Sidonia whom Steven had married ... without love! Betty's words: "It were wiser he should not see me," sang in her ears to the fierce accompaniment of her own jealous blood. She recalled the smile and the glance at her own reflection in the mirror, with which Betty had pointed her concession to wisdom. Hot-tempered by nature, Sidonia had yet never even suspected the existence of such passion as now rent her.
*CHAPTER XXV*
*THE PERVERSENESS OF WORDS*
"Berriet mein blasses Angesicht Dir nicht mein Liebeswehe? Und willst du, dass der stolze Mund Das Bettelwort gestehe?" HEINE.
Steven, stretching a determined hand at last to the bell, was arrested in the act by the sound of the opening door. He turned to see Sidonia standing in the entrance.
It seemed as if, after all, these two were as yet unripe for love's fulfilment. The pride of each, unchastened, the quick susceptibilities, the unreasonable expectations and demands of the crudely young, built frowning barriers between them.
Steven, who but last night had burned with ardour for his lost bride; who, but this morning, had set out to win her back, tender, conquering, almost joyous, felt the fretful impatience of his ten minutes of waiting leap into positive anger under the accusing glance of Sidonia's eyes. Their looks met--one might almost say, struck--like steel blades, each quick to feel and resent the other's attitude.
"Ah, no, he does not love!" cried the girl, in her heart. And--
"She never loved me," said the man in his pride. "I have been a triple fool!"
But did she think that a Waldorff-Kielmansegg was thus to be played with, made the sport of heaven knew what ignoble feminine intrigue, a marriage of convenience, quickly repented of, and then, farewell? No, he had his rights as a man, his honour to defend, and things could not end here.
"What brings you?" asked Sidonia. Being the woman, she was the first to speak.
His tone was harsh as he made answer: "Because it is time this folly should cease. Because you are my wife. Because you bear my name. Because your honour is mine, and I will not have you running about the world--under no better guard than that of Burgravine Betty."
The contempt of his accents, the doubt, stung her beyond bearing.
"By all accounts," she cried--and there was almost a sneer upon her sweet lips--"you had been willing enough, not so long ago, to trust her with your own honour."
So the fiddler had been right. Betty had made mischief! The thought danced a moment through Steven's brain; but in the confusion of anger he failed to seize its real import.
Sidonia went on, vainly endeavouring to steady her voice as it throbbed to the beating of her heart:
"You talk of honour! Is it honourable to speak of her like this--is it generous?"
"Generous?" he echoed. "Will you teach me generosity, you who drove me away, without explanation--without giving me a chance to explain? You, the bride of an hour!"
"Come, then, I am listening now. Explain." Her accent, her air, were passionately peremptory. Her fingers sought hastily in the reticule at her side--the tangible evidence of her misfortune was hidden there. She laid the note before him on the table, spreading it and smoothing it out for him, even as Betty had done for her on the wedding day, in the turret at Wellenshausen. "Explain this," she said.
Steven cast a quick glance at the incriminating document, opened his mouth upon scorn and denial, then checked himself with a bitter laugh and a shrug of the shoulders.
"Tell her the naked truth!" It was the fiddler's advice. To tell her upon what a petty rock their barque was foundering ... it ought to have been an easy thing! Yet the man stood, contemptuous, smiling, silent. Every instinct of his being revolted against the girl's haughty command. His pride alone would have kept him mute, but there was something yet stronger, more intimate, to restrain him. "Tell her the naked truth!" Naked enough was the truth, ugly enough, sordid enough, to be convincing if he could have brought himself to speak it! The truth? Why, here it would have been: "Your Aunt Betty offered herself to me, threw herself upon my protection. I did not love her, I did not want her. She gave me no choice; and this is her woman's revenge!"
Aye, it is all very well to say: "You are an honest lad." But if a gentleman has behind him long generations of gentlemen, each of whom has planned his life upon the conventional code of honour among gentlemen, he cannot easily bring his lips to form the words that will betray a woman in relation to himself--least of all, perhaps, where he has been loved and has not loved in return.
So his lips were silent upon that smile of scorn. And Sidonia's last hope--how strong it had been, how dear, she never knew till this moment--agonized within her. That he should mock her for jealousy: that was the supreme insult.
As in a flash of unbearable illumination she saw herself in his eyes, heavy-lidded, unkempt; saw the figure that had provoked just now even Betty's pity; saw beside her, Betty, rich in loveliness, velvet clad ... it was no wonder that Beau Cousin Kielmansegg should fix her with this smile, this contempt.
And Steven, in his _morgue_, who would have perished rather than condescend to explain--could he but have known (Ah, if youth but knew!) that no explanation was really needed of him, that no words are ever needed in the great crises of life! Words are our enemies. The inability to express the subtleties of wounded feeling, the false witness that our tongues bear against us, have divided more lovers secretly yearning for each other than ever did most adverse circumstances. One touch of his hand on hers, one kiss upon her lips, and Sidonia would have felt the truth, would have understood that he loved her, and that, to him who loves, the beloved is queen. Angry Steven, Steven the lover, had never even noticed the dishevelment of her bright hair. Her face was pale?--it was a pearl in his eyes. Her attire was shabby?--it might have been a garment of state. Had Betty broken in on them then, in all her glory, he would have drawn no comparison, save to the superlative advantage of the woman who was his choice.
Alas! if youth but knew!
From the bowling green without came a gust of laughter; then a light voice broke into a stave of popular song. They had, in happier moments, heard that lilt upon the fiddle of wandering Hans; it struck them poignantly. Wounded love flamed into intemperate resentment.
"After all, Aunt Betty but told me the truth, if a little late--you have nothing to say," said Sidonia, between teeth clenched upon a sob.
"Only this," replied Steven, arrogantly, from the height of his disdain, "that I command you, as your husband, to come with me now."
Sidonia pointed to the door.
"_Herr Graf von Kielmansegg_, my uncle expects to hear from the judges to-day anent the annulment of that ill-considered ceremony which made me nominally your wife. His lawyers will call upon you in due course."
"Madam," answered the count, bowing, "I intend to take up my abode in Cassel--at the _Aigle Imperial_. Therefore there will be no difficulty about my address. But let me remark that annulments are not easily concluded without the consent of both parties."
He closed the door between them upon these words.
"He does not love me--he never loved me!" said Sidonia to her bursting heart. "It was all pride!"
The other unworthy suspicions, which Betty had so subtly instilled, could not live in her soul after having come again under the glance of Steven's eye. But she had pride too, her woman's pride, and it showed her what she had to do, even though it killed her.
"O Geiger-Onkel," cried the poor child, "what have you brought me to! Even you have abandoned me!"
Betty's arrows, shot at spiteful random, occasionally hit a truer mark than she herself suspected. When, in her tower prison, she had petulantly averred that the Burgrave would certainly keep in his own hands the choosing of Sidonia's husband (and for very good reasons!) she had unconsciously struck the gold. The heiress's guardian did not intend, if it could be helped, to have his accounts examined. Hence, apart from the humiliating pressure put upon him, against which his elementary violence rebelled, the young Austrian was the last person the Burgrave would have desired as nephew-in-law. There was a relentlessness in the young man's eye and a clear penetration, which, whenever the Burgrave remembered them, sent uncomfortable chills through his frame. True, Count Kielmansegg had never breathed one syllable on the subject of his bride's fortune; but this very silence struck the Chancellor as the more ominous.
"I shall have his lawyers on top of me before I know where I am," he had many a time growled in those sullen days that followed Sidonia's betrothal, chiefly at those hours of conscience's activity, the dull hours before the dawn, when the night's potations had ceased to stimulate.
It was not that Wellenshausen had ever been consciously dishonest. In his fine masculine, Germanic way, when he had put large sums of his ward's money to his own uses, he had felt himself almost in the right. Was it not against nature that mere females should have advantages over the male? Indeed, he had scarcely taken the trouble to make memoranda of the expenditure: in Jerome's kingdom, especially in financial matters, it was never customary to waste time upon details, and the sense of impending catastrophe, more particularly of late, had increased the sense of the value of the fleeting moment.
Since his second marriage the Burgrave had certainly taken both hands to Sidonia's treasure. There was the loan to his Royal Master; a matter of high diplomacy! It was well to have a lien over so slippery a patron. And, besides, it would be all to the child's advantage, no doubt, later on. Practically an investment! There were Betty's pearls.... Well, in these uncertain times, might not jewels also be looked upon as an investment? none the worse for having gleamed so charmingly on Betty's shoulders!
And there was this, and there was that.... In the small hours above mentioned, memory became inconveniently active. Once or twice the Burgrave had sat up in his feather-bed to wipe a clammy forehead; in truth, he did not know how much the heiress of Wellenshausen, apart from the lands, was heiress to. But there was a certain document of his late brother's, referring, in very precise terms, to the _Fideicommission_, to the trust.
It was no wonder, then, that when Sidonia had come to him, on the day of the wedding, where he sat glowering over his wine-cup and the remains of the feast, and had told him how she and her new husband had parted for ever, the relief should have been so unexpected and so great as completely to sober him.
In a spasm of paternal affection he had assured her that such a ceremony could not count, and that it would be the easiest thing in the world to release her, since she wished it.
She had looked at him stonily over her bridal white. Was that indeed the case? she had asked. She had thought marriages were for ever.
And he had laughed at her joyously. "Na, na, little dove--a marriage of this kind, if one wishes it, was as good as no marriage at all!"
"Then see to it, please," she had said steadily, avoiding his embrace.
There was horror in the look she cast upon him as she turned to leave the room; but he was too completely absorbed in his joy to see anything but the deliverance before him. He never even paused to wonder, to inquire the reason of the breach--and this, doubtless, had been well for Betty.