CHAPTER III

“When things go smoothly it is well to be a woman, when they go ill I would give my soul to be a man,” said Aurora von Königsmarck.

She was in her beautiful chamber in the Palace at Dresden, seated on a low couch piled with cushions of shimmering brocade, holding in her long fair hand a letter from the Elector.

“I think,” replied her companion, “you would not, under any inducement, be other than what you are.”

Aurora looked up sharply.

“Would you?” she demanded.

The court favorite smiled as she spoke and flung herself farther back into the soft cushions, crushing the stiff violet ribbons and frills of silver lace on her magnificent gown.

“No,” said the other lady; she was fair and pale, and seated on a stool of red lacquer was helping a tiny negro page to feed with sugar a parrot that swung in an ebony ring.

“Why?” asked Aurora.

“Because I am betrothed to General Patkul,” replied the lady, without looking round.

“Romantic love--in this age!” smiled the Countess.

Mdle. D’Einsiedel daintily placed the morsel of sugar in the bird’s huge polished beak; he as daintily accepted it, and twisted round in his ring sweeping his long green tail feathers into the face of the page.

“Tell me about it,” coaxed Aurora, leaning forward so that her beautiful head peered over the gilt edge of the settee. “Tell me what it is like to be in love--in love!--in that way?”

“I am sorry for you that you do not know. Countess,” smiled Hélène D’Einsiedel, still amusing herself with the bird and not looking round.

Aurora von Königsmarck studied her with a curiosity that was not entirely without malice and envy.

The young girl (she was hardly more than seventeen) made a beautiful picture in her full rose-colored dress, seated on rose-colored cushions, with rainbow-hued silk ribbons at her slender waist, and in her loosely dressed pale hair, silk flowers; forget-me-nots and roses were amid the fine laces on her open bosom, pearls in her ears and round her throat; her delicate features shone fair with youth and health, grace and breed; she was wealthy, noble, nurtured in a corrupt and brilliant court, and she had consented to bestow her hand on a man who was no more than a political adventurer; native of a country supposed half-savage and with no particular attractions of person or manner, John Rheinhold Patkul had never been popular with the courtiers of Augustus, but he had inspired this girl with an intense devotion that no opposition could shake.

She continued with undisturbed grace to feed the parrot; behind her was a tapestry of a woodland scene, gray-green in color, which formed the background to her pale beauty which was in piquant contrast to the negro with his scarlet suit and sky-blue turban and the harsh colors of the bird.

“Well, child,” said Aurora at length, “if you will not talk----! You will marry your Livonian, and go to live in his wild country and forget about me.”

The girl looked at the sugar lying in her pink palm; Aurora had always been her friend, to some extent her patroness, but she did not care to talk to her of General Patkul.

“Obstinate!” continued the Countess. “You will not even distract me from my bad news. Augustus is sick. And the fight by Riga goes ill for us.”

“Ah!” Mdle. D’Einsiedel turned her brown eyes now.

“I thought I should move you,” remarked Aurora maliciously. “Have you not heard, then, from your idol?”

Patkul, with Courlande and Steinau, was disputing the sandy reaches of the Dwina against the advancing troops of Karl XII; it was the first shock of the opening of the young conqueror’s second campaign.

“I have not heard for several days,” replied the girl in a low voice, “but why should I grieve or trouble? The cause is a sacred one, and I feel sure that God will protect it.”

Aurora smiled at these trite words which betrayed the touching confidence of youth in the continuance of happiness; she saw that the girl was so wrapt in the splendor of a first and noble passion that she could not think of misfortune as a possible thing. The Countess sighed and pulled at her waist ribbons with restless fingers; all romance had long left her life; her outlook was that of the brilliant adventuress concerned only to keep the splendid position she had attained by talent and beauty.

By now she had forgotten if she ever had loved Augustus, the handsome, generous, good-humored Prince whose favor had made her great; he was simply her world, the thing by which she must stand or fall; his ruin would be her ruin, utterly; she was grateful enough and loyal enough to scorn the thought of leaving him if he was defeated and brought to disaster, but she could not view with calm the prospect of losing her position as mistress of the second most brilliant court in Europe, and all the pleasures and honors she now enjoyed as a famous beauty and a clever and powerful woman. She was of a noble Swedish family with a wild and tragic history; the names of her two brothers had long held a horrid renown; Philip von Königsmarck had been the lover of Dorothea of Zell, the Elector of Hanover’s wife, and, betrayed by a woman’s jealousy, had been caught and horribly murdered as he left the Electress; the other brother had been concerned in the brutal assassination of a wealthy Englishman whose wife the young adventurer hoped to marry; his accomplices were taken and hanged and he had fled, to perish miserably and obscurely in battle.

These tragedies had not been without their effect on Aurora; she found the echo of them in her own wild heart; she had wept with passionate indignation for Philip and scorned the other for a fool.

As for herself she meant to be neither the victim of passion nor of folly, but in every way to avoid disaster; her impetuous spirit was governed by a cool brain; she was intelligent in large matters, clever in small ones, intensely conscious of being an extraordinary woman, not vain of her beauty nor her wit nor her charm, but aware of the value of these things, how men could be led by them, and the power they might purchase.

She had no evil qualities; her most sincere emotion was her passionate love for her beautiful little son, Maurice; perhaps a sense of stifled discontent lay deep hidden in her heart, mingled with the adventurer’s secret longing for haven and security; this she never admitted even to herself, but sometimes it colored her behavior, as now when she was inclined to be spiteful with the young and rather silly girl absorbed in the magic of a great love.

“She really would leave everything for him,” thought the Countess; she wondered what it must be to feel like that; the creature was so shy and reserved about it too.

Aurora had herself, purely as a matter of course, tried to bring Patkul to her feet when he had first come to the Dresden Court; neither her fidelity to Augustus nor the native coldness of her disposition prevented her from endeavoring to subjugate every notable man who crossed her path; that the Livonian had been ice to her and flame to Hélène D’Einsiedel did not add to the good-humor with which she viewed this romantic, old-fashioned love affair.

Vanity apart, her good sense condemned the type of man who could prefer a stupid girl, endowed only with the passing prettiness of youth, to a woman like herself.

She was extremely lovely, vivid in coloring for the North, bright brown eyes, soft brown hair, graceful from crown to heel, every movement charming, every look and gesture radiant with beauty.

“Why are you angry with me, Countess?” asked the girl suddenly, tossing down the sugar on to the rose-colored cushions.

“How did you know I was angry?”

“Oh, la, you look as if you would like to beat me!”

Aurora suddenly moved and clasped her long hands round her knees.

“I suppose I envied you,” she said, in one of her careless generous impulses. “You have something I have never had.”

Hélène did not quite understand.

“Little silly!” laughed Aurora. “Do you not know that I am incapable of loving any man as you love your Patkul?”

“You pretend very well,” said Hélène, with a demureness that might have hid a touch of malice.

Aurora was silent; yes, she could pretend very well, she had often marveled at that herself, often been genuinely amazed at the strength and sincerity of the emotion she could raise in others and her own lack of response; she would have liked to have felt, if only for half an hour, any adoration for any man equal to that this girl felt for General Patkul; she knew that such an emotion would have been entirely in opposition with all her plans and schemes, but in her avid desire for life and knowledge, she would have given much for the curiosity of the experience.

However, she put the thought out of her mind, moved quickly, and glanced again at the letter from Augustus.

She was vexed that he was too ill to take the command of his armies in person, the more so as she guessed this illness to be consequent on his debauches with the Czar at Birsen; Peter to her was a monster, she could not forgive in Augustus the weakness that made him the companion of his ally’s vulgar orgies.

“Yes, ’twere better to be a man now, free on horseback,” she said. “This waiting amid one’s toys is an ugly part of a woman’s life”--she paused, then added quickly, “it must be hateful to belong to a man who is defeated.”

Hélène gazed at her with startled eyes.

“You do not think that Saxony will be defeated, Countess?”

“He has been defeated already,” replied Aurora. “And do you think he has very much chance? The savage Muscovite is no use--every battle will be a Narva for him. Denmark is silenced--and the King of Sweden is great.”

Mdle. D’Einsiedel forgot her negro and her parrot.

“He is a cruel tyrant--a bitter oppressor!” she exclaimed; her pale little face looked sharp with anger, “he fights for the lust of conquest--a heartless, fierce man.”

“So speaks the betrothed of Patkul,” answered Aurora. “You are too bitter against this man to judge him. He is a hero. And young and splendid, a Viking, child.”

“This is not the age for Vikings,” said Hélène coldly, “he is like his father. Patkul has told me of them--hard and cruel--how I _loathe_ cruelty.”

Tears shone in her soft eyes and her lips quivered; she was thinking that it was just possible Patkul might one day be in the power of this same cruelty.

“Nay, he is just and even generous; you heard how, after Narva, he gave all the Russian officers their liberty, detaining only M. de Croy, to whom he paid full honor--and the modesty of his dispatches! ’Tis said that with his own hand he struck out his praises and put in those of the Czar.”

“’Tis his vanity,” said Hélène scornfully, “he wishes to impress the world--see if he is kind to his peasants--to his women-folk--see if he has ever thought of the justice of Livonia’s wish for liberty--he blindly continues his father’s tyrannies.”

Aurora checked her with a light laugh.

“That is none of it women’s business. Augustus is the best-natured person in the world, but I doubt if he knows much of his peasantry in either Saxony or Poland!” and she laughed again at the thought.

“He would be a better prince if he did,” said Hélène, with a sternness strange in one of her youth and frivolous appearance. “Patkul says the day will surely come when all the peoples will rise up and cast down their rulers.”

“Patkul is a fanatic and a visionary--a rebel also. Karl is his King. I am a Swede. Hélène, I have no sympathy with these revolting Livonians.”

Hélène glanced at the vivid lovely face of the Countess and her eyes narrowed.

“The Elector would not care to hear you speak so of Sweden,” she remarked.

“The Elector expects no hypocrisy from me,” replied Aurora haughtily. “I am not his wife. He knows that a man like Karl would attract a woman like me--I have told him I should like to meet him.”

She had, in truth, heard of the austere life and cold manners of the young conqueror whose name was now so famous in Europe, and she had imagined herself subduing him with her charm; she could not resist picturing herself as the Cleopatra to this immaculate Cæsar; Augustus had been amazed with anger at the Czar’s crude suggestion that the famous beauty should be used to beguile their enemy, but the woman herself had long toyed with the idea; it would be a wonderful triumph and, she believed in her heart, an easy one. Karl was only a boy, after all, and had probably never been tempted; it was impossible that he intended to be absorbed for ever in schemes of military aggrandizement and glory; and she had never failed yet. “Perhaps I could do more in half an hour than your Patkul has done in a lifetime,” she said suddenly.

“Oh, would you speak for Livonia?” asked Hélène, then quickly and with a blush, “but no, Patkul would not like that.”

“Let him rely on his sword and his virtue,” said Aurora haughtily. “Saxony may require my services.”

“He would not wish that you should sue to Sweden for him!” exclaimed Hélène.

Aurora rose.

“Wait till King Karl has overrun Poland and is at the gates of Dresden.”

She clasped her hands behind her head, shaking down her bright hair that was undressed, and gazing fixedly at her reflection in a circular mirror framed with gilt balls that hung above the couch.

Hélène sat silent on the rose-colored cushions; the parrot swung idly in the ring above her head; the page had wandered to the window and was flattening his face against the pane; a monkey in a crimson coat that had been sleeping in a basket lined with white satin, now came climbing over the furniture, turning its wizened face from one to the other of the two silent, beautiful women and chattering at both of them. This was the only movement in the gorgeous little room, now filled with the spring sunshine that streamed softly through the long curtains of straw-colored silk. Aurora had dropped her arms, and with her hands clasped before her continued to gaze at her resplendent image.

Her thoughts were entirely personal; she cared very little for politics though she had an intelligent understanding of them; she had watched Augustus undertake this war light-heartedly enough, knowing that it was only an excuse to keep a large standing army with which to overawe Poland, but the quality of Karl XII having surprised them all into disaster, Aurora became angry with the war and those who had suggested it, and impatient with the enthusiastic Patkul, and gradually her attention had become fixed on the figure of the King of Sweden, rendered more arresting by every success, more terrible in the eyes of men and more attractive in the eyes of women.

Aurora knew something of what the Court of Sweden was like.

“He has never met a woman like me,” she thought, and there was a glow, as of coming triumph, at her heart.

The other woman’s reflections had traveled far from herself! they were with a fair, rather ordinary-looking soldier, with short-sighted, anxious eyes, and a blunt-featured face that had a certain pathos in its open sincerity and goodness, who was now probably riding to and fro in the confusion of battle, steadying the Saxon troops against the victorious ranks of Sweden.

She loved him so utterly, so ardently believed in his cause and his life-work that he seemed to her like a being charmed whom no actual danger could touch, yet she yearned over him, child as she was, with a yearning that was near tears; and this, though her whole being was pervaded by the supreme happiness of her love which kept her in a serene and beautiful aloofness from all that was painful or terrifying.

The monkey clambered to the end of the couch, dropped into Hélène’s lap, and began stealing the sugar scattered over the cushions.

Aurora moved slowly from the mirror and told the page to bring her writing materials; when they were given her she began to write, not an answer to her lover’s neglected letter but a paper of French verses to Karl XII.

Hélène, wrapt in her dreams, heeded her no more than she did the monkey crunching sweetmeats on her lap.