Chapter 4

It was in my father's disposition to be both strict and indulgent--that is to say, as a father he was all tenderness, and as a soldier all discipline. His men both loved and feared him; but I, who never had cause to fear him in my life, loved him with all my heart, and never thought of him except as the fondest of parents. Chiefly, perhaps, for my sake, he had up to this time been extremely indulgent in all that regarded Monsieur Maurice. Now, however, he conceived that it was his duty to be indulgent no longer. He was responsible for the person of Monsieur Maurice, and Monsieur Maurice had attempted to escape; from this moment, therefore, Monsieur Maurice must be guarded, hedged in, isolated, like any other prisoner under similar circumstances--at all events until further instructions should arrive from Berlin. So my father, as it was his duty to do, wrote straightway to the Minister of War, doubled all previous precautions, and forbade me to go near the prisoner's rooms on any pretext whatever.

I neither coaxed nor pleaded. I had an instinctive feeling that the thing was inevitable, and that I had nothing to do but to suffer and obey. And I did suffer bitterly. Day after day, I hung about the terraces under his windows, watching for the glimpse that hardly ever came. Night after night I sobbed till I was tired, and fell asleep with his name upon my lips. It was a childish grief; but not therefore the less poignant. It was a childish love, too; necessarily transient and irrational, as such childish passions are; but not therefore the less real. The dull web of my later life has not been without its one golden thread of romance (alas! how long since tarnished!), but not even that dream has left a deeper scar upon my memory than did the hero-worship of my first youth. It was something more than love; it was adoration. To be with him was measureless content--to be banished from him was something akin to despair.

So Monsieur Maurice and his little Gretchen were parted. No more happy French lessons--no more walks--no more stories told by the firelight in the gloaming! All was over; all was blank. But for how long? Surely not for ever!

“Perhaps the king will think fit to hand him over to some other gaoler,” said my father one day; “and, by Heaven! I'd thank him more heartily for that boon than for the order of the Red Eagle!”

My heart sank at the thought. Many and many a time had I pictured to myself what it would be if he were set at liberty, and with what mingled joy and grief I should bid him good-bye; but it had never occurred to me as a possibility that he might be transferred to another prison-house.

Thus a week--ten days--a fortnight went by, and still there came nothing from Berlin. I began to hope at last that nothing would come, and that matters would settle down in time, and be as they were before. But of such vain hopes I was speedily and roughly disabused; and in this wise.

It was a gloomy afternoon--one of those dun-coloured afternoons that seem all the more dismal for coming in the midst of Spring. I had been out of the way somewhere (wandering to and fro, I believe, like a dreary little ghost, among the grim galleries of the state apartments), and was going home at dusk to be in readiness for my father, who always came in after the afternoon parade. Coming up the passage out of which our rooms opened, I heard voices--my father's and another. Concluding that he had Corporal Fritz with him, I went in unhesitatingly. To my surprise, I found the lamp lighted, and a strange officer sitting face to face with my father at the table.

The stranger was in the act of speaking; my father listening, with a grave, intent look upon his face.

... “and if he had been shot, Colonel Bernhard, the State would have been well rid of a troublesome burden.”

My father saw me in the doorway, put up his hand with a warning gesture, and said hastily:--

“You here, Gretchen! Go into the dining-room, my child, till I send for you.”

The dining-room, as I have said elsewhere, opened out of the sitting-room which also served for my father's bureau. I had therefore to cross the room, and so caught a full view of the stranger's face. He was a sallow, dark man, with iron grey hair cut close to his head, a hard mouth, a cold grey eye, and a deep furrow between his brows. He wore a blue military frock buttoned to the chin; and a plain cocked hat lay beside his gloves upon the table.

I went into the dining-room and closed the door. It was half-door, half-window, the upper panels being made of ground glass, so as to let in a borrowed light; for the little room was at all times somewhat of the darkest. Such as it was, this borrowed light was now all I had; for the dining-room fire had gone out hours ago, and though there were candles on the chimney-piece, I had no means of lighting them. So I groped my way to the first chair I could find, and waited my father's summons.

“And if he had been shot, Colonel Bernhard, the State would have been well rid of a troublesome burden.”

It was all I had heard; but it was enough to set me thinking. “If he had been shot”.... If who had been shot? My fears answered that question but too readily. Who, then, was this new-comer? Was he from Berlin? And if from Berlin, what orders did he bring? A vague terror of coming evil fell upon me. I trembled--I held my breath. I tried to hear what was being said, but in vain. The voices in the next room went on in a low incessant murmur; but of that murmur I could not distinguish a word.

Then the sounds swelled a little, as if the speakers were becoming more earnest. And then, forgetting all I had ever heard or been taught about the heinousness of eavesdropping, I got up very softly and crept close against the door.

“That is to say, you dislike the responsibility, Colonel Bernhard.”

These were the first words I heard.

“I dislike the office,” said my father, bluntly. “I'd almost as soon be a hangman as a gaoler.”

The stranger here said something that my ear failed to catch. Then my father spoke again.

“To tell you the truth, Herr Count, I only wish it would please His Excellency to transfer him elsewhere.”

The stranger paused a moment, and then said in a low but very distinct voice:--

“Supposing, Colonel Bernhard, that you were yourself transferred--shall we say to Königsberg? Would you prefer it to Brühl?”

“Königsberg!” exclaimed my father in a tone of profound amazement.

“The appointment, I believe, is worth six hundred thalers a year more than Brühl,” said the stranger.

“But it has never been offered to me,” said my father, in his simple straightforward way. “Of course I should prefer it--but what of that? And what has Königsberg to do with Monsieur Maurice?”

“Ah, true--Monsieur Maurice! Well, to return then to Monsieur Maurice--how would it be, do you think, somewhat to relax the present vigilance?”

“To relax it?”

“To leave a door or a window unguarded now and then, for instance. In short, to--to provide certain facilities ... you understand?”

“Facilities?” exclaimed my father, incredulously. “Facilities for escape?”

“Well--yes; if you think fit to put it so plainly,” replied the other, with a short little cough, followed by a snap like the opening and shutting of a snuff-box.

“But--but in the name of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, why wait for the man to run away? Why not give him his liberty, and get rid of him pleasantly?”

“Because--ahem!--because, you see, Colonel Bernhard, it would not then be possible to pursue him,” said the stranger, drily.

“To pursue him?”

“Just so--and to shoot him.”

I heard the sound of a chair pushed violently back; and my father's shadow, vague and menacing, started up with him, and fell across the door.

“What?” he shouted, in a terrible voice. “Are you taking me at my word? Are you offering me the hangman's office?”

Then, with a sudden change of tone and manner, he added:--

“But--I must have misunderstood you. It is impossible.”

“We have both altogether misunderstood each other, Colonel Bernhard,” said the stranger, stiffly. “I had supposed you would be willing to serve the State, even at the cost of some violence to your prejudices.”

“Great God! then you did mean it!” said my father, with a strange horror in his voice.

“I meant--to serve the King. I also hoped to advance the interests of Colonel Bernhard,” replied the other, haughtily.

“My sword is the King's--my blood is the King's, to the last drop,” said my father in great agitation; “but my honour--my honour is my own!”

“Enough, Colonel Bernhard; enough. We will drop the subject.”

And again I heard the little dry cough, and the snap of the snuff-box.

A long silence followed, my father walking to and fro with a quick, heavy step; the stranger, apparently, still sitting in his place at the table.

“Should you, on reflection, see cause to take a different view of your duty, Colonel Bernhard,” he said at last, “you have but to say so before....”

“I can never take a different view of it, Herr Count!” interrupted my father, vehemently.

“--before I take my departure in the morning,” continued the other, with studied composure; “in the meanwhile, be pleased to remember that you are answerable for the person of your prisoner. Either he must not escape, or he must not escape with life.”

My father's shadow bent its head.

“And now, with your permission, I will go to my room.”

My father rang the bell, and when Bertha came, bade her light the Count von Rettel to his chamber.

Hearing them leave the room, I opened the door very softly and hesitatingly, scarce knowing whether to come out or not. I saw my father standing with his back towards me and his face still turned in the direction by which they had gone out. I saw him throw up his clenched hands, and shake them wildly above his head.

“And it was for this!--for this!” he said fiercely. “A bribe! God of Heaven! He offered me Königsberg as a bribe! Oh, that I should have lived to be treated as an assassin!”

His voice broke into hoarse sobs. He dropped into a chair--he covered his face with his hands.

He had forgotten that I was in the next room, and now I dared not remind him of my presence. His emotion terrified me. It was the first time I had seen a man shed tears; and this alone, let the man be whom he might, would have seemed terrible to me at any time. How much more terrible when those tears were tears of outraged honour, and when the man who shed them was my father!

I trembled from head to foot. I had an instinctive feeling that I ought not to look upon his agony. I shrank back--closed the door--held my breath, and waited.

Presently the sound of sobbing ceased. Then he sighed heavily twice or thrice--got up abruptly--threw a couple of logs on the fire, and left the room. The next moment I heard him unlock the door under the stairs, and go into the cellar. I seized the opportunity to escape, and stole up to my own room as rapidly and noiselessly as my trembling knees would carry me.

I had my supper with Bertha that evening, and the Count ate at my father's table; but I afterwards learned that, though the Governor of Brühl himself waited ceremoniously upon his guest and served him with his best, he neither broke bread nor drank wine with him.

I saw that unwelcome guest no more. I heard his voice under the window, and the clatter of his horse's hoofs as he rode away in the early morning; but that was long enough before Bertha came to call me.

10

Weeks went by. Spring warmed, and ripened, and blossomed into Summer. Gardens and terraces were ablaze once more with many-coloured flowers; fountains played and sparkled in the sunshine; and travellers bound for Cologne or Bonn put up again at Brühl in the midst of the day's journey, to bait their horses and see the Château on their way.

For in these years just following the Peace of Paris, the Continent was overrun by travellers, two thirds of whom were English. The diligence--the great, top-heavy, lumbering diligence of fifty years ago--used then to come lurching and thundering down the main street five times a week throughout the Summer season; and as many as three and four travelling carriages a day would pass through in fine weather. The landlord of the “Lion d'Or” kept fifty horses in his stables in those days, and drove a thriving trade.

So the Summer came, and brought the stir of outer life into the precincts of our sleepy Château; but brought no better change in the fortunes of Monsieur Maurice. Ever since that fatal night, the terms of his imprisonment had been more rigorous than ever. Till then, he might, if he would, walk twice a week in the grounds with a soldier at his heels; but now he was placed in strict confinement in his own two rooms, with one sentry always pacing the corridor outside his door, and another under his windows. And across each of those windows might now be seen a couple of bright new iron bars, thick as a man's wrist, forged and fixed there by the village blacksmith.

I have no words to tell how the sight of those bars revolted me. If instead of being a little helpless girl, I had been a man like my father, and a servant of the State, I think they would have made a rebel of me.

Worse, however, than iron bars, locked doors, and guarded corridors, was Hartmann--Herr Ludwig Hartmann, as he was styled in the despatch that announced his coming--a pale, slight, silent man, with colourless grey eyes and white eyelashes, who came direct from Berlin about a month later, to act as Monsieur Maurice's “personal attendant.” Stealthy, watchful, secret, civil, he established himself in a room adjoining the prisoner's apartment, and was as much at home in the course of a couple of hours as if he had been settled there from the first.

He brought with him a paper of instructions, and, having on his arrival submitted these instructions to my father, he at once took up a certain routine of duties that never varied. He brushed Monsieur Maurice's clothes, waited upon him at table, attended him in his bed-room, was always within hearing, always on the alert, and haunted the prisoner like his shadow. Not even a housemaid could go in to sweep but he was present. Now the man's perpetual presence was intolerable to Monsieur Maurice. He had borne all else with patience, but this last tyranny was more than he could endure without murmuring. He appealed to my father; but my father, though Governor of Brühl, was powerless to help him. Hartmann had presented his instructions as a minister presents his credentials, and those instructions emanated from Berlin. So the new-comer, valet, gaoler, spy as he was, became an established fact, and was detested throughout the Château--by no one more heartily than myself.

I still, however, saw Monsieur Maurice now and then. My father often took me with him in his rounds, and always when he visited his prisoner. Sometimes, too, he would leave me for an hour with my friend, and call for me again on his way back; so that we were not wholly parted even now. But Hartmann took care never to leave us alone. Before my father's footsteps were out of hearing, he would be in the room; silent, unobtrusive, perfectly civil, but watchful as a lynx. We could not talk before him freely. Nothing was as it used to be. It was better than total banishments; it was better than never hearing his voice; but the constraint was hard to bear, and the pain of these meetings was almost greater than the pleasure.

And now, as I approach that part of my narrative which possesses the deepest interest for myself, I hesitate--hesitate and draw back before the great mystery in which it is involved. I ask myself what interpretation the world will put upon facts for which I can vouch; upon events which I myself witnessed? I cannot prove those events. They happened over fifty years ago; but they are as vividly present to my memory as if they had taken place yesterday. I can only relate them in their order, knowing them to be true, and leaving each reader to judge of them according to his convictions.

It was about the middle of the second week in June. Hartmann had been about six weeks at Brühl, and all was going on in the usual dull routine, when that routine was suddenly broken by the arrival of three mounted dragoons--an officer and two privates--whose errand, whatever it might be, had the effect of throwing the whole establishment into sudden and unwonted confusion.

I was out in the grounds when they arrived, and came back at midday to find no dinner on the table, no cook in the kitchen; but a full-dress parade going on in the courtyard, and all the interior of the Château in a state of wild commotion. Here were peasants bringing in wood, gardeners laden with vegetables and flowers, women running to and fro with baskets full of linen, and all to the accompaniment of such a hammering, bell-ringing, and clattering of tongues as I had never heard before.

I stood bewildered, not knowing what to do, or where to go.

“What is the matter? What has happened? What are you doing?” I asked, first of one and then of another; but they were all too busy to answer.

“Ach, lieber Gott!” said one, “I've no time for talking!”

“Don't ask me, little Fräulein,” said another. “I have eight windows to clean up yonder, and only one pair of hands to do them with!”

“If you want to know what is to do,” said a third impatiently, “you had better come and see.”

The head-gardener's son came by with two pots of magnificent geraniums, one under each arm.

“Where are you going with those flowers, Wilhelm?” I asked, running after him.

“They are for the state salon, Fräulein Gretchen,” he replied, and hurried on.

For the state salon! I ran round to the side of the grand entrance. There were soldiers putting up banners in the hall; others helping to carry furniture up stairs; carpenters with ladders; women with brooms and brushes; and Corporal Fritz bustling hither and thither, giving orders, and seeing after everything.

“But Corporal Fritz!” I exclaimed, “what are all these people about?”

“We are preparing the state apartments, dear little Fräulein,” replied Corporal Fritz, rubbing his hands with an air of great enjoyment.

“But why? For whom?”

“For whom? Why, for the King, to be sure”; and Corporal Fritz clapped his hand to the side of his hat like a loyal soldier. “Don't you know, dear little Fräulein, that His Majesty sleeps here to-night, on his way to Ehrenbreitstein?”

This was news indeed! I ran up stairs--I was all excitement--I got in everybody's way--I tormented everybody with questions. I saw the table being laid in the grand salon where the King was to sup, and the bedstead being put up in the little salon where he was to sleep, and the ante-room being prepared for his officers. All was being made ready as rapidly, and decorated as tastefully, as the scanty resources of the Château would permit. I recognised much of the furniture from the attics above, and this, faded though it was, being helped out with flowers, flags, and greenery, made the great echoing rooms look gay and habitable.

By and by, my father came round to see how the work was going on, and finding me in the midst of it, took me by the hand and led me away.

“You are not wanted here, my little Gretchen,” he said; “and, indeed, all the world is so busy to-day that I scarcely know what to do with thee.”

“Take me to Monsieur Maurice!” I said, coaxingly.

“Ay--so I will,” said my father; “with him, at all events, you will be out of the way.”

So he took me round to Monsieur Maurice's rooms, and told me as we went along that the King had only given him six hours' notice, and that in order to furnish his Majesty's bed and his Majesty's supper, he had bought up all the poultry and eggs, and borrowed well-nigh all the silver, glass, and linen in the town.

By this time we were almost at Monsieur Maurice's door. A sudden thought flashed upon me. I pulled him back, out of the sentry's hearing.

“Oh, father!” I cried eagerly, “will you not ask the King to let Monsieur Maurice free?”

My father shook his head.

“Nay,” he said, “I must not do that, my little Mädchen. And look you--not a word that the King is coming here to-night. It would only make the prisoner restless, and could avail nothing. Promise me to be silent.”

So I promised, and he left me at the door without going in.

I spent all the afternoon with Monsieur Maurice. He divided his luncheon with me; he gave me a French lesson, he told me stories. I had not had such a happy day for months. Hartmann, it is true, was constantly in and out of the room, but even Hartmann was less in the way than usual. He seemed absent and preoccupied, and was therefore not so watchful as at other times. In the meanwhile I could still hear, though faintly, the noises in the rooms below; but all became quiet about five o'clock in the evening, and Monsieur Maurice, who had been told they were only cleaning the state apartments, asked no questions.

Meanwhile the afternoon waned, and the sun bent westward, and still no one came to fetch me away. My father knew where I was; Bertha was probably too busy to think about me; and I was only too glad to stay as long as Monsieur Maurice was willing to keep me. By and by, about half-past six o'clock, the sky became overclouded, and we heard a low muttering of very distant thunder. At seven, it rained heavily.

Now it was Monsieur Maurice's custom to dine late, and ours to dine early; but then, as his luncheon hour corresponded with our dinner-hour, and his dinner fell only a little later than our supper, it came to much the same thing, and did not therefore seem strange. So it happened that just as the storm came up, Hartmann began to prepare the table. Then, in the midst of the rain and the wind, my quick ear caught a sound of drums and bugles, and I knew the King was come. Monsieur Maurice evidently heard nothing; but I could see by Hartmann's face (he was laying the cloth and making a noise with the glasses) that he knew all, and was listening.

After this I heard no more. The wind raved; the rain pattered; the gloom thickened; and at half-past seven, when the soup was brought to table, it was so dark that Monsieur Maurice called for lights. He would not, however, allow the curtains to be drawn. He liked, he said, to sit and watch the storm.

A cover was laid for me at his right hand; but my supper hour was past, and what with the storm without, the heaviness in the air, and the excitement of the day, I was no longer hungry. So, having eaten a little soup and sipped some wine from Monsieur Maurice's glass, I went and curled myself up in an easy chair close to the window, and watched the driving mists as they swept across the park, and the tossing of the treetops against the sky.

It was a wild evening, lit by lurid gleams and openings in the clouds; and it seemed all the wilder by contrast with the quiet room and the dim radiance of the wax lights on the table. There was a soft halo round each little flame, and a dreamy haze in the atmosphere, from the midst of which Monsieur Maurice's pale face stood out against the shadowy background, like a head in a Dutch painting.

We were both very silent; partly because Hartmann was waiting, and partly, perhaps, because we had been talking all the afternoon. Monsieur Maurice ate slowly, and there were long intervals between the courses, during which he leaned his elbow on the table and his chin on his hand, looking across towards the window and the storm. Hartmann, meanwhile, seemed to be always listening. I could see that he was holding his breath, and trying to catch every faint echo from below.

It was a long, long dinner, and probably seemed all the longer to me because I did not partake of it. As for Monsieur Maurice, he tasted some dishes, and sent more away untouched.

“I think it is getting lighter,” he said by and by. “Does it still rain?”