CHAPTER II

Aurora von Königsmarck left the King-Elector’s presence more elated than she had been since the Polish troubles began.

Augustus had promised to allow her to conduct secret negotiations with Karl; she was to travel as soon as possible to his camp, and through the influence of Count Piper, an ancient friend of her family, she was to obtain a private interview with Karl.

The King-Elector was to offer to withdraw all claims to the Baltic provinces and to renounce all alliances against Sweden, also, if need be, to surrender Patkul, but this, Augustus stipulated, was to be done in such a manner that Patkul should be enabled to escape to Russia.

Aurora gave her promise; she was not greatly concerned for Patkul, she thought that if she was able to influence Karl at all she could influence him to be generous to the Livonian; but the thing weighed on the mind of Augustus; his weakness, torn between honor and prudence, caused him the acutest suffering his easy temperament had ever known.

He went to attend one of the bitter stormy sittings of the Diet, sad and sullen, unlike the gracious prince who had charmed Poland as much by his gaiety and good-nature as by his gold and his soldiery.

He was humiliated by the position in which he found himself, irritated that Aurora had won his consent to expedients that he despised, and tortured by inner doubts as to whether all concessions might not be in vain, and Karl remain adamant even before the potent charms of Aurora.

No such misgivings troubled Aurora von Königsmarck; neither the honor nor the utility of what she had undertaken disturbed her, for she did not perceive anything contemptible in what she did, and she felt assured of her success.

But as she turned up the narrow dark stairs to go to her own apartment, she was startled by a slight figure leaning in an angle of the wall, and a swift sensation, as of shame, touched her heart; the girl before her was Hélène D’Einsiedel. Aurora had completely forgotten her, but now she felt abashed before this child, her own favorite, to whom she had always been a kind protector and patroness.

“Come upstairs,” she said hastily, glad of the dark that concealed her face. “You will get cold here; what a silly child it is.”

The girl did not reply, she wore a dark pelisse over a dark dress, a great hat that shaded her face and was but dimly seen in the shadow.

“Come with me,” continued Aurora, her momentary uneasiness passing. “Why have you been out this bitter day?”

But even as she spoke she knew full well; General Patkul had been at Varsovia to consult with Augustus, and was due to return to the theater of war; Hélène had been to say good-bye.

“You should have made him come to you--you are too fond of this man.”

She took Hélène gently by the shoulder and led her upstairs.

“He did come, he has been with me a long time,” said Hélène, in a muffled voice. “And then I went with him a little way--it was good-bye.”

“La, la,” replied the Countess, “one would think it was forever by your voice!”

They entered her apartments that clever French maids and valets had arranged in tolerable imitation of the gorgeous chambers at Dresden. Silk and wool tapestries covered the walls, delicate carpets the floors, the graceful furniture, cushions, mirrors, and ornaments, without which Aurora never traveled, were elegantly disposed, and a perfumed fire burnt on the wide, old-fashioned hearth.

A maid was just lighting the candles in their tall sticks of tortoise-shell and gold, another was drawing the curtains of sapphire-blue velvet across the windows, so shutting out the mournful prospect of the winter evening.

Hélène stood stupidly in the middle of the room looking at the fire; she had neither gloves nor muff, and her little hands hung red and cold at her side.

Her face was pale and distressed, the black beaver hat falling carelessly over her tangled curls, her pelisse was roughly dragged together with a silver clasp fastened crookedly, and she wore her thin house shoes which were slightly stained with dirty snow.

“Come, child,” said Aurora kindly. “This grief and agitation are useless. Nothing has happened.”

“Things are terrible,” replied Hélène in a low, hurried voice. “You know yourself that all goes as if to disaster. The armies broken, the country in a turmoil--and he is leaving me.”

On these childish words a sob broke her voice, and tears filled her eyes already reddened with weeping.

She seemed indifferent to the presence of the Countess and the two chamber women, and continued to stare into the fire, raising her clasped trembling hands to her quivering lips while the tears fell on to her knuckles.

Aurora wanted to say “Patkul is safe,” but the words stuck in her throat, even though she quieted her conscience by the resolve that by some underhand means the Livonian must be saved.

She shivered a little in her warm coat, and spread out her fair hands to the fire.

“It is hard for all of us,” she said evenly. “Do you think, dear, that I like Varsovia? And as for the Elector he is more ill-natured than I have ever known him; I wish he would go to the war and rid me of his moods. These wretched Poles are giving a great deal of trouble, and there is no denying that for the moment the King of Sweden has the advantage.”

“Patkul thinks there is no hope at all for Livonia,” murmured Hélène. “He saw in the battle of the Dwina what these Swedes are.”

“I think my countrymen are tolerably good soldiers,” said the Countess.

The Saxon girl disliked her for this remark, and turned away abruptly; the beautiful, comfortable room seemed to her hateful; she ran to the door, pulled it open, and fled down the dark stairs; she heard the Countess’s voice half-laughing, half-angry, raised in protest, but she took no heed; nothing mattered to her now in the world but the fact that she must see her lover again before a separation that, some dreadful premonition told her, would be long if not eternal.

She could not explain to herself why she was so terrified and overwrought; this love of hers, born amid the tumults of wars and factions, had known many bitter partings and long absences, but youthful hope and joy had hitherto kept her immune from the terrors that assailed her to-night. She must see him again; it was as if her body moved without motion, so strong was the force of the spirit within, as if the cold night air carried her, a disembodied creature, to his side.

It was now nearly dark, the town full of soldiery and discontented civilians; Hélène did not notice these things nor yet the bitter cold; she hastened along the frozen roads, the dried snow flying from beneath her feet, the fresh snow, beginning to drift in flakes from the leaden sky, falling on her dark clothes and chilled face and hands.

She found the house where he lodged; it was not far from the residence of the King-Elector. At the sight of the light in the windows the blood seemed to stir in her body again; he was still there; she would see him again, nothing seemed to matter but that the whole future narrowed to this moment of their meeting.

A Polish soldier was just leaving the house. Hélène brushed by him, stepped into the dim-lit hall, and asked the Livonian servant standing there for his master.

Before the man had time to reply General Patkul appeared in the doorway of a room immediately inside the entrance.

They advanced towards each other, and he seized her in his arms and almost carried her into the room.

It was a small rough chamber, lit by an oil lamp and a log fire; some half-packed valises lay on the floor and the table was strewn with papers, portfolios, and maps.

He expressed no surprise at thus seeing her again so soon after their farewell, but, caressing her, led her to the great chair with arms by the fire, threw back her damp coat, and chafed her cold hands.

“I had to come,” she murmured, looking up at him in speechless joy. “You know that, do you not?”

“I have been thinking of you so it seems as if you had never left me,” he answered; his whole face and neck had flushed, and his narrowed short-sighted eyes had darkened till they looked black as he gazed at her. “You come between me and everything, Hélène, even my unfortunate country.”

“You must not go,” she said, with sudden energy, “it is quite impossible--do you hear?”

“Darling--I leave to-morrow morning. Presently I will take you home in a sledge and you will dream of me, knowing that I am happy in the thought of you, and in that I am doing my plain duty.”

As he spoke, with great tenderness and the gravity of an ardent enthusiast, he went on his knees, and taking her little cold slippered feet in his hands, rubbed them and held them nearer to the fire.

“What do I know of duty?” asked Hélène desperately. “I want to be happy.”

“You have never spoken like this before, my dearest.”

“I have never been so frightened before.”

“Frightened?”

He lifted his honest gray eyes, so shining with noble love to the frail face bending towards him; she touched the curls of his blond peruke that hung on his breast.

“Yes, frightened, John.”

“Why?”

“That I could not tell. But you do not think these things are foolish, do you? When I had left you just now I felt that I could not bear it--it was like someone tearing my limbs from me--as if I had to follow you or die--as--as if--I might never see you again----”

Her words stumbled over one another. She grasped the lapels of his soldier’s coat; her pleading eyes were fixed on his face with an expression of passionate entreaty.

“Oh, you will stay--you will not leave me!”

“My dear, my dear!” he cried deeply moved, “this must not be--you will unman me.”

He rose and raised her to his breast, clasping her tightly; he dared not voice the agony in his heart, how he entirely longed to keep her now that she had flown back to him--how wrong and wicked all further parting seemed, and how utterly paltry all his schemes and duties seemed beside the fact that they were together, and the wish that they should be forever together.

For he loved her as stern men, engrossed in affairs and indifferent to feminine influence, will sometimes love one woman--with complete trust and devotion.

He had never known what life could mean until he met her; she made his former pleasures appear pale, his former work dry and purposeless; she infused into his whole life color and joy and beauty.

And she must be foregone.

He looked ahead into the future and saw it dark and uncertain, and wished that he did not enjoy such perilous greatness, and that his lot had been cast in times less fierce and turbulent.

Now that he held her, trembling, but content against his own wildly-beating heart, the task he had undertaken seemed so difficult as to be impossible; Livonia was in a worse plight than she had been when he undertook her liberation; the huge conspiracy against Karl XII which had cost so much toil and pains had only succeeded in rousing a captain who made North Europe tremble, and in settling the Swedish yoke more firmly on the necks of the wretched people of the Baltic Provinces.

“Perhaps I had better have left it all alone--perhaps I was not born to do my country this service!” he exclaimed.

Hélène looked up at him, pressing her flushed face closer to the braidings on his uniform.

“You must not go, you are safe here,” she answered, as if reassuring him.

He laughed tenderly at her feminine point of view; he had not been thinking of his personal safety, but of the fierce disappointment of his apparent failure.

“I am in no danger,” he said, to comfort her; and he believed what he said; not only was he the Czar’s envoy but he trusted, without question, the protection of Augustus, nor did he even imagine for a moment that the King-Elector would enter into secret peace negotiations with Karl.

Hélène also had faith in the people who had always been her friends and protectors; it would have been impossible for her to suspect Aurora von Königsmarck of treachery; yet she felt this tremendous though vague uneasiness as to her lover’s safety.

He saw the trouble in her sweet eyes which were wide and bewildered like those of a child in pain.

“Do you not think that I shall be as safe in Dresden as in Varsovia?” he asked.

“You are going to Dresden?”

“Eventually, dear. I return to the army in Saxony with messages from Augustus. Then I wish to see the Czar. My greatest hope is in him----”

“God preserve him,” said Hélène simply. “What will he do for you?”

“More than Augustus, I think. He is a man of genius. A tyrant, of course--no more a lover of liberty than Karl--but he serves our ends. Give him time and he will beat Sweden.”

“How happy you will be that day!” smiled the girl.

“If it means the freedom of Livonia,” he replied, looking at her earnestly.

Neither were paying much attention to what they were speaking of; they were thinking only of each other, of the wonder of these few moments and the long dark separation ahead of them; each in their heart was crying out against this parting; clinging to each other they spoke quietly to steady themselves and prolong these last farewells.

But now she could talk no more of politics, not even of those with which her lover’s life and happiness were bound up.

“When shall I see you again?” she stammered.

In silence he gazed at her; his short-sighted eyes narrowed as he dwelt on every lineament of the beloved face.

“What is the need of this?” whispered Hélène. “Why should one suffer?”

“Love, we part to meet again--if it was forever you might weep----”

“Supposing it was forever?” the dreadful thought transfixed her; she drew herself away from his embrace, her face sharp and pale, “but, of course, I should die,” she added, with a little sigh of relief.

He could not trust himself to answer her; taking his hands from her shoulders he turned abruptly away across the plain dismal room.

The fire was burning low and the air was becoming cold; the outside night showed in the black squares in the uncurtained windows; now and then the red reflection of a passing torch or lantern glimmered across the shadowed room.

Patkul stared at the fine frost flowers hardening on the glass; he had his back to Hélène; she took off her hat which had fallen back on to her tangled hair, mechanically arranged her curls, and replaced the hat; then with stiff fingers she fastened the pelisse.

She was too young and simple to lament against destiny or to endeavor to alter her fate with violent hands; her court training and the society of Aurora von Königsmarck had not altered the direct outlook and conventional point of view of her young girl’s heart and mind.

She had been taken out of herself, inasmuch as she had come to him now spurred by the awful desolation, the unexplainable sense of disaster that had torn her soul; now she could do no more; she did not know how to deal with the moment, but stood stupidly arranging her hat and buttoning her pelisse in dumb wretchedness.

He thought wildly of taking her with him, of marrying her without delay or ceremony; his heart contracted as he imagined her always with him--as Marpha was with Peter--or Aurora with Augustus--his companion, his consolation, and his hope in all his adventures. Sweetening even ultimate defeat, if it must be, or glorifying ultimate victory into a happiness more than mortal.

He looked at her, strode over to her, took her by the shoulders and turned her round, forcing her to look at him; slender and frail she quivered under his grasp.

The agony of question in his gaze met no response from hers which was full of nothing but blank, sad love.

He knew that if he asked her she would come--he knew that he could not ask her; “when the war is over I will marry her,” he thought, and stilled his heart with that.

Very gently he kissed her cold face.

“I must take you home,” he said.

“I will try to be brave,” replied Hélène.

They went together to the door; the darkness was thick with snow; he sent his servant for the sledge and they had another moment alone; but neither spoke.

Hélène felt suddenly very tired, almost drowsy; she was exhausted by her strong emotion to the point of apathy.

When the sledge came she stepped in obediently; there was a brief ride through the cold and the dark; his chilled lips on her chilled cheek, some stammering words and they had parted. She could hear the jingling of his sledge-bells as she returned to her room; she seemed to be in a world empty of everything but that one sound.

Aurora von Königsmarck looked from the door of her brilliantly lit room; she had gay words on her lips, but after glancing at the girl’s face she went back silently to her place by the perfumed fire.