CHAPTER III

Aurora von Königsmarck, accompanied by a few servants and a small escort of Saxon cavalry, traveled secretly to the Swedish camp in Lithuania.

Karl was advancing on Grodno, and the affairs of Augustus looked daily more unfortunate; at the last moment he had wished to stop this journey of the Countess, and to send a formal embassy in his own name and that of the Polish Republic to ask the conqueror’s peace terms.

But Aurora was resolute that this depth of humiliation should not be reached, and confident that Karl could be persuaded to private means of agreement with Augustus.

In any case she was determined to try her influence on a man so singular and so famous.

“It has certainly never seen a woman like me,” she repeated to herself, not with vanity but as the calm statement of a fact.

She had no difficulty in obtaining an audience of Count Piper.

The minister was cynically interested in her mission; he was now no longer in the confidence of his master (if indeed he had ever been so), and performed his duties as a servant, not as a friend; perhaps he faintly disliked the King; in any case he was grimly amused at the idea of exposing Karl to the fascinations of a woman like Aurora von Königsmarck and facing the fair Countess with a man like the King.

He offered her little hope.

“The King is bent on conquest,” he said. “He has no idea of a tame peace, but intends to dethrone all his enemies.”

“The dreams of a boy,” replied Aurora.

Count Piper shrugged.

“A boy who will carry out his dreams or perish, Madame.”

“So obstinate?” she smiled, “and has he no weaknesses, this hero?” she added, with an inflection of light scorn.

The minister smiled; he saw her superb confidence in her radiant beauty and brilliant intelligence, in her experience and charm; he thought that her perfections would be wasted on the man who had received without a change of color the news of the death of the only woman in whom he had ever been interested.

“I do not say that I do not wish you good fortune, Madame,” he said, “for myself there are other things besides war. And I should be glad of a peace. As for the King, I know little of him, for all that I have watched him since a child--or else there is little to know. He has no friends, and no favorites, and since the war began I have not known him influenced.”

“He is so young,” remarked Aurora, “do you think this military austerity will last all his life?”

“’Tis a hard race,” replied the Count, “but as you say--he is young.”

“Let me see him,” urged Aurora, “my mission can but move and alter him--if he would play Alexander he must be prepared for the family of Darius.”

“I will do my utmost,” said Count Piper, and with sincerity; but he was soon piqued by finding that he had promised too easily; Karl absolutely refused to see Aurora von Königsmarck.

“Why should I talk to a woman on this business?” he said. “If Augustus wants peace let him send a man to ask for it.” Without the least emotion he resisted the Count’s efforts to persuade and induce him to see the fair ambassadress.

“She will think you are afraid of her,” remarked the Count, with some malice.

“I have no doubt a woman’s vanity would go that length,” replied the King calmly. “Tell her I am afraid of her,” he gave his ugly smile, “if that will content her.”

“Nothing will content her but an interview with your Majesty.”

“Then she must leave dissatisfied,” said Karl, with an indifference more hopeless to combat than open anger.

The minister reported his ill-success to the Countess; she had not expected that the King would refuse even to see her, and angry disappointment nerved her with yet greater determination to gain her object.

“I will achieve my end by other means,” she said, and thanked Count Piper for his useless services.

Though she had been a week near the camp, lodging, most inconveniently, in one of the little village houses, she had not yet seen the King, save once when he had swept by with a number of his guards, and she had not been able to distinguish his person.

But she soon ascertained that it was his custom to ride abroad unattended in the early morning and the afternoon, and she resolved to encounter him on one of these occasions, and one day stationed herself in her little light carriage on the road the King took most frequently.

As soon as her servant pointed out a solitary horseman coming towards them, saying, “The King of Sweden!” Aurora descended into the road still covered with frozen snow, and put herself in the middle of the way, holding her black fur mantle up from the road, and looking steadily up under the broad brim of her beaver hat.

The King approached, and, as soon as he saw her, sharply reined up his iron-gray charger, sending the scattered snow over the lady.

“Sire,” said Aurora, “I have never been a supplicant before; will you not make it a little easy for a beggar and--a woman?”

It was not quite what she had intended to say, and her voice faltered more than she had meant it to, for she was taken aback by the magnificent appearance and curious personality of the man to whom she spoke.

The King, with his plain uniform, black satin stock, remarkable face of immobile, almost displeasing beauty, was totally different to her preconceived notions of Karl.

He had himself so well in hand that he did not even change color at her address; he touched his hat in a stiff military salute, turned his horse, deftly, and rode back the way he had come.

It was a long while since the angry blood had rushed into Aurora’s face as it did now, coloring her fair skin from throat to forehead.

“So that is the King of Sweden!” she murmured. She shivered in her heavy furs and mounted her carriage, gazing after the figure of the departing horseman, clear against the pale tints of a sky colored with the first blue of a Northern spring.

She could do nothing but leave the scene of her defeat, but she did not accept her discomfiture as final; at least now she knew his person and could judge him, perhaps manage him better in consequence.

He was her own countryman, yet this type of the pure Scandinavian was fresh to her, after the many years she had lived abroad, and the fairness, hardness, and strength of this man repelled her; he was as powerful as Augustus and far more healthy; he sat his horse like a creature of steel and iron, at one with the magnificent creature he rode in power and purpose.

No passions had ever marked his face, which expressed nothing but an unfeeling calm and complete courage.

It would be impossible to believe that that countenance could ever look on the thing it feared.

Aurora sighed; in her heart she admitted that she had never dealt yet with a man of that quality; it would be the greater triumph to make him swerve, if only for a second, from his inhuman fortitude.

The next time the King of Sweden went abroad he found himself some miles from the village, and in a narrow road face to face with a horse-woman who took off her traveling mask and revealed the lovely features of Aurora von Königsmarck. “Now will you speak to me, sire?” she asked gravely, almost coldly.

At least he looked at her; she directly barred his path and he could not have turned, as he had done before, without glancing at her; his steady blue eyes stared at her with calm repugnance.

She was wrapped in a heavy white horseman’s cloak, with gray fur gauntlets and a black beaver hat; her bright curls fell into the heavy folds of the cloth, and her face looked pale and delicate as a snowdrop above her winter attire; she rode a fine black horse, and her saddle and harness were ornamented, in the Polish fashion, with brilliant colors of red, yellow, and blue.

“I am Aurora von Königsmarck,” she added, in the same tone; her soft eyes were steady as those that gazed at her so coldly.

“Madame, I recognized you--there is no other lady would trouble to set herself in my path,” replied the King.

“Your Majesty is greatly to be feared and greatly to be admired,” said Aurora. “Do you not wonder at my courage in venturing to address you, sire?”

“You consider yourself invincible, Countess,” he replied, “therefore your courage is only a sense of security.”

She was studying him eagerly under the broad lids that drooped so indifferently over her brilliant eyes; her purpose had gone into the background of her mind; she was not thinking of him as the King of Sweden who held the fate of her master in his hand, but as a man who might or might not be won, and she noted his size, his fairness, the severity of his dress, his curious face, his colorless voice with a growing sense of antipathy and hopelessness.

“I only ask for the charity of a few words speech,” she said in French, and then she recalled that though he was acquainted with that language he obstinately refused to speak it, and she added hastily in Swedish, “Will you not hear me, sire, a few moments?”

He checked his horse that pawed the ground impatient to proceed, and gave Aurora a chilling look.

“On what subject should you have to speak to me?” he demanded.

The Countess flushed, for all her self-command; she would liked to have given him a glance as freezing as his own, and have ridden away before he did so; she hated him for the disadvantage she was at--obliged to conduct this interview on horseback, muffled in a heavy mantle, in the open air and keen cold, half her graces concealed, half her charms useless.

“Has your Majesty’s success and glory taught you only to be cruel to the unfortunate?” she asked, with a quiver in her voice.

“On what matter could you have to speak to me?” repeated the King; he gave a short unexpected laugh, and she was startled to see how it spoilt and rendered unpleasant his handsome face. Aurora’s hand was forced.

“I come from the King of Poland,” she said, with dignity.

“You could not come on a more hopeless errand, then,” he replied. “I discuss no politics with women, Countess.”

“I am more in the King of Poland’s confidence than any of his ministers,” she declared boldly.

“That,” he said curtly, “is well known.”

Aurora controlled herself, but her hands shook on the reins; never had she been treated so boorishly by any man.

“I come on a mission so delicate there was no one else could have been trusted with it,” she answered. “You, sire, are not rendering my task pleasant to me.”

“Therefore I would have avoided you, Madame,” said Karl.

“I have been trusted by King Augustus with this mission----”

A look of scorn flashed over the Swede’s impassive face.

“Does Augustus think I shall find you dangerous? Believe me, I do not.”

Aurora quivered under the calm insult; all her weapons seemed powerless before the freezing indifference of this boy; she felt as at a loss as any inexperienced girl might have done.

“Augustus offers peace,” she said desperately, almost choking over the words. “Augustus begs for peace.”

Karl’s proud eyes gleamed for a second, and his full lips curled.

“Madame,” he replied, “I will discuss peace in Varsovia.”

Before this implacable front Aurora shrank; he meant then to take the capital?

She knew that Augustus could not defend Varsovia, and her quick mind foresaw the last misery of a flight to Saxony; she was quite aware that the Poles would probably tolerate Karl at least as peacefully as they did Augustus, and that the latter’s chances of retaining the crown were indeed desperate.

“Nay,” she said faintly, flinging back her head with a womanish gesture, and holding out one little hand, from which she had stripped the heavy glove, in an attitude of appeal. “Can one so great be so hard to the fallen?”

This was not the kind of compliment that flattered the iron pride of Karl; it always irritated him that anyone should believe him capable of being moved by fulsome flattery, and it was his particular weakness to consider himself impervious to the wiles of man or woman.

“Your horse will take cold, Madame,” he said. “I give you good day.”

He saluted and was turning away; Aurora thought of her last card that was to have been played in such a different manner, with so much more of finesse and address.

“I was empowered to treat on the subject of--General Patkul,” she stammered.

At that name Karl did stop and turn his head; he seemed amazed and almost as if about to be betrayed into passionate speech, but he controlled himself.

“Would Augustus surrender Patkul?” he asked, in a curious tone.

Aurora could not answer; she felt as if she had committed an incredible baseness.

“He would, eh?” added Karl, with a look that was like a blow in the face to the proud woman to whom it was directed.

“So that is your errand?” continued the King, still fixing her with a hard and merciless stare that became increasingly contemptuous.

“I have not stated my errand,” replied Aurora; her eyes flashed to meet his and the blood stained her face. “From the manner in which your Majesty treats a woman, I do not think you would be tender with a rebel--need we therefore be so nice in discussing General Patkul?”

“It is not in my nature to be tender,” said the King, with his ugly smile. “I shall not be merciful either with Patkul nor yet with Augustus of Saxony.”

“Your Majesty makes a boast of cruelty, then? I had hoped one of your nobleness would have been satisfied by having your enemy your supplicant.”

Her bosom heaved beneath the rough mantle and her face was beautiful in her sincere indignation, flushed and vivid with feeling and emotion; but she might have been a hag for all the effect she had on Karl of Sweden.

“Peace in Varsovia, Madame,” he repeated sternly, and turned and galloped away down the frosty road, this time without a salutation.

Aurora gazed after the disappearing figure with eyes dimmed by tears of passionate rage; she was cold and trembling, never had she believed herself capable of any passion as strong as the hatred now inspired in her haughty heart by this young man.

“A hero!” she thought, “a boorish boy! a rude churl!”

Slowly she turned back to her lodging; useless to expose herself to further mortification--it would be only to repeat her failure, only to madden herself for nothing.

She must return to Varsovia and tell Augustus of her humiliation.

The future appeared to her desperate; she did not even care to think of it; this adamant and implacable prince clearly meant to conquer both Poland and Saxony.

Aurora saw her whole world tumbling into the dust of chaos; this man would be the master of her fate; and she could do nothing with him; he had looked at her with--first indifference, then contempt, and always as if she had been old and ugly.

In Augustus she had no hope; she knew that he was at the end of his resources, and he had no personal qualities with which to inspire confidence; she foresaw that his bewildered policies would lead to a total overthrow of his fortunes, and that his submission would partake of the nature of panic and thereby further gild the triumph of Karl.

She felt angry with her lover for the failure that had placed her in such a position of unendurable humiliation and insecurity.

In her bitterness, as she rode slowly along the hard lonely road, the cold skies above her and the unawakened landscape barren and still frozen about her, her dominant thought was a regret, almost passionate regret, that she had not attached her fortunes to those of a more successful man than Augustus of Saxony.