Skilfully, craftily, then, he played the enamoured countess so long as her fondness for him might be useful, her hostility detrimental. But once the Colonelcy of the Electoral Guards was firmly in his grasp, and an intimate friendship had ripened between himself and Prince Charles — the Elector’s younger son — sufficiently to ensure his future, he plucked off the mask and allied himself with Sophia in her hostility towards Madame von Platen. He did worse. Some little time thereafter, whilst on a visit to the court of Poland, he made one night in his cups a droll story of the amorous persecution which he had suffered at Madame von Platen’s hands.
It was a tale that set the profligate company in a roar. But there was one present who afterwards sent a report of it to the Countess, and you conceive the nature of the emotions it aroused in her. Her rage was the greater for being stifled. It was obviously impossible for her to appeal to her lover, the Elector, to avenge her. From the Elector, above all others, must the matter be kept concealed. But not on that account would she forgo the vengeance due. She would present a reckoning in full ere all was done, and bitterly should the presumptuous young adventurer who had flouted her be made to pay.
The opportunity was very soon to be afforded her. It arose more or less directly out of an act in which she indulged her spite against Sophia. This lay in throwing Melusina Schulemberg into the arms of the Electoral Prince. Melusina, who was years afterwards to be created Duchess of Kendal, had not yet attained to that completeness of lank, bony hideousness that was later to distinguish her in England. But even in youth she could boast of little attraction. Prince George, however, was easily attracted. A dull, undignified libertine, addicted to over-eating, heavy drinking, and low conversation, he found in Melusina von Schulemberg an ideal mate. Her installation as maîtresse en-titre took place publicly at a ball given by Prince George at Herrenhausen, a ball at which the Princess Sophia was present.
Accustomed, inured, as she was to the coarse profligacy of her dullard husband, and indifferent to his philandering as her contempt of him now left her, yet in the affront thus publicly offered her, she felt that the limit of endurance had been reached. Next day it was found that she had disappeared from Herrenhausen. She had fled to her father’s court at Zell.
But her father received her coldly; lectured her upon the freedom and levity of her manners, which he condemned as unbecoming the dignity of her rank; recommended her to use in future greater prudence, and a proper, wifely submission; and, the homily delivered, packed her back to her husband at Herrenhausen.
George’s reception of her on her return was bitterly hostile. She had been guilty of a more than usual, of an unpardonable want of respect for him. She must learn what was due to her station, and to her husband. He would thank her to instruct herself in these matters against his return from Berlin, whither he was about to journey, and he warned her that he would suffer no more tantrums of that kind.
Thus he delivered himself, with cold hate in his white, flabby, frog-face and in the very poise of his squat, ungainly figure.
Thereafter he departed for Berlin, bearing hate of her with him, and leaving hate and despair behind.
It was then, in this despair, that Sophia looked about her for a true friend to lend her the aid she so urgently required; to rescue her from her intolerable, soul-destroying fate. And at her elbow, against this dreadful need, Destiny had placed her sometime playmate, her most devoted friend — as she accounted him, and as, indeed, he was — the elegant, reckless Königsmark, with his beautiful face, his golden mane, and his unfathomable blue eyes.
Walking with him one summer day between clipped hedges in the formal gardens of Herrenhausen — that palace as squat and ungraceful as those who had built and who inhabited it — she opened her heart to him very fully, allowed him, in her overwhelming need of sympathy, to see things which for very shame she had hitherto veiled from all other eyes. She kept nothing back; she dwelt upon her unhappiness with her boorish husband, told him of slights and indignities innumerable, whose pain she had hitherto so bravely dissembled, confessed, even, that he had beaten her upon occasion.
Königsmark went red and white by turns, with the violent surge of his emotions, and the deep sapphire eyes blazed with wrath when she came at last to the culminating horror of blows endured.
“It is enough, madame,” he cried. “I swear to you, as Heaven hears me, that he shall be punished.”
“Punished?” she echoed, checking in her stride, and looked at him with a smile of sad incredulity. “It is not his punishment I seek, my friend, but my own salvation.”
“The one can be accomplished with the other,” he answered hotly, and struck the cut-steel hilt of his sword. “You shall be rid of this lout as soon as ever I can come to him. I go after him to Berlin to-night.”
The colour all faded from her cheeks, her sensitive lips fell apart, as she looked at him aghast.
“Why, what would you do? What do you mean?” she asked him.
“I will send him the length of my sword, and so make a widow of you, madame.”
She shook her head. “Princes do not fight,” she said, on a note of contempt.
“I shall so shame him that he will have no alternative — unless, indeed, he is shameless. I will choose my occasion shrewdly, put an affront on him one evening in his cups, when drink shall have made him valiant enough to commit himself to a meeting. If even that will not answer, and he still shields himself behind his rank — why, there are other ways to serve him.” He was thinking, perhaps, of Mr. Thynne.
The heat of so much reckless, romantic fury on her behalf warmed the poor lady, who had so long been chilled for want of sympathy, and starved of love. Impulsively she caught his hand in hers.
“My friend, my friend!” she cried, on a note that quivered and broke. “You are mad — wonderfully beautifully mad, but mad. What would become of you if you did this?”
He swept the consideration aside by a contemptuous, almost angry gesture. “Does that matter? I am concerned with what is to become of you. I was born for your service, my princess, and the service being rendered...” He shrugged and smiled, threw out his hands and let them fall again to his sides in an eloquent gesture. He was the complete courtier, the knight-errant, the romantic preux-chevalier all in one.
She drew closer to him, took the blue lapels of his military coat in her white hands, and looked pathetically up into his beautiful face. If ever she wanted to kiss a man, she surely wanted to kiss Königsmark in that moment, but as she might have kissed a loving brother, in token of her deep gratitude for his devotion to her who had known so little true devotion.
“If you knew,” she said, “what balsam this proof of your friendship has poured upon the wounds of my soul, you would understand my utter lack of words in which to thank you. You dumbfound me, my friend; I can find no expression for my gratitude.”
“I ask no gratitude,” quoth he. “I am all gratitude myself that you should have come to me in the hour of your need. I but ask your leave to serve you in my own way.”
She shook her head. She saw his blue eyes grow troubled.
He was about to speak, to protest, but she hurried on. “Serve me if you will — God knows I need the service of a loyal friend — but serve me as I shall myself decide — no other way.”
“But what alternative service can exist?” he asked, almost impatiently.
“I have it in mind to escape from this horrible place — to quit Hanover, never to return.”
“But to go whither?”
“Does it matter? Anywhere away from this hateful court, and this hateful life; anywhere, since my father will not let me find shelter at Zell, as I had hoped. Had it not been for the thought of my children, I should have fled long ago. For the sake of those two little ones I have suffered patiently through all these years. But the limit of endurance has been reached and passed. Take me away. Königsmark!” She was clutching his lapels again. “If you would really serve me, help me to escape.”
/> His hands descended upon hers, and held them prisoned against his breast. A flush crept into his fair cheeks, there was a sudden kindling of the eyes that looked down into her own piteous ones. These sensitive, romantic natures are quickly stirred to passion, ever ready to yield to the adventure of it.
“My princess,” he said, “you may count upon your Königsmark while he has life.” Disengaging her hands from his lapels, but still holding them, he bowed low over them, so low that his heavy golden mane tumbled forward on either side of his handsome head to form a screen under cover of which he pressed his lips upon her fingers.
She let him have his will with her hands. It was little enough reward for so much devotion.
“I thank you again,” she breathed. “And now I must think — I must consider where I can count upon finding refuge.”
That cooled his ardour a little. His own high romantic notion was, no doubt, to fling her there and then upon the withers of his horse, and so ride out into the wide world to carve a kingdom for her with his sword. Her sober words dispelled the dream, revealed to him that it was not quite intended he should hereafter be her custodian. And there for the moment the matter was suspended.
Both had behaved quite recklessly. Each should have remembered that an Electoral Princess is not wise to grant a protracted interview, accompanied by lapel-holding, hand-holding, and hand-kissings, within sight of the windows of a palace. And, as it happened, behind one of those windows lurked the Countess von Platen, watching them jealously, and without any disposition to construe the meeting innocently. Was she not the deadly enemy of both? Had not the Princess whetted satire upon her, and had not Königsmark scorned the love she proffered him, and then unpardonably published it in a ribald story to excite the mirth of profligates?
That evening the Countess purposefully sought her lover, the Elector.
“Your son is away in Prussia,” quoth she. “Who guards his honour in his absence?”
“George’s honour?” quoth the Elector, bulging eyes staring at the Countess. He did not laugh, as might have been expected at the notion of guarding something whose existence was not easily discerned. He had no sense of humour, as his appearance suggested. He was a short, fat man with a face shaped like a pear — narrow in the brow and heavy in the jowl. “What the devil do you mean?” he asked.
“I mean that this foreign adventurer, Königsmark, and Sophia grow too intimate.”
“Sophia!” Thick eyebrows were raised until they almost met the line of his ponderous peruke. His face broke into malevolent creases expressive of contempt.
“That white-faced ninny! Bah!” Her very virtue was matter for his scorn.
“It is these white-faced ninnies can be most sly,” replied the Countess, out of her worldly wisdom. “Listen a moment now.” And she related, with interest rather than discount, you may be sure, what she had witnessed that afternoon.
The malevolence deepened in his face. He had never loved Sophia, and he felt none the kinder towards her for her recent trip to Zell. Then, too, being a libertine, and the father of a libertine, it logically followed that unchastity in his women-folk was in his eyes the unpardonable sin.
He heaved himself out of his deep chair. “How far has this gone?” he demanded.
Prudence restrained the Countess from any over-statement that might afterwards be disproved. Besides, there was not the need, if she could trust her senses. Patience and vigilance would presently afford her all the evidence required to damn the pair. She said as much, and promised the Elector that she would exercise herself the latter quality in his son’s service. Again the Elector did not find it grotesque that his mistress should appoint herself the guardian of his son’s honour.
The Countess went about that congenial task with zeal — though George’s honour was the least thing that concerned her. What concerned her was the dishonour of Sophia, and the ruin of Königsmark. So she watched assiduously, and set others, too, to watch for her and to report. And almost daily now she had for the Elector a tale of whisperings and hand-pressings, and secret stolen meetings between the guilty twain. The Elector enraged, and would have taken action, but that the guileful Countess curbed him. All this was not enough. An accusation that could not be substantiated would ruin all chance of punishing the offenders, might recoil, indeed, upon the accusers by bringing the Duke of Zell to his daughter’s aid. So they must wait yet awhile until they held more absolute proof of this intrigue.
And then at last one day the Countess sped in haste to the Elector with word that Königsmark and the Princess had shut themselves up together in the garden pavilion. Let him come at once, and he should so discover them for himself, and thus at last be able to take action. The Countess was flushed with triumph. Be that meeting never so innocent — and Madame von Platen could not, being what she was, and having seen what she had seen, conceive it innocent — it was in an Electoral Princess an unforgivable indiscretion, to take the most charitable view, which none would dream of taking. So the Elector, fiercely red in the face, hurried off to the pavilion with Madame von Platen following. He came too late, despite the diligence of his spy.
Sophia had been there, but her interview with the Count had been a brief one. She had to tell him that at last she was resolved in all particulars. She would seek a refuge at the court of her cousin, the Duke of Wolfenbuttel, who, she was sure — for the sake of what once had lain between them — would not now refuse to shelter and protect her. Of Königsmark she desired that he should act as her escort to her cousin’s court.
Königsmark was ready, eager. In Hanover he would leave nothing that he regretted. At Wolfenbuttel, having served Sophia faithfully, his ever-growing, romantic passion for her might find expression. She would make all dispositions, and advise him when she was ready to set out. But they must use caution, for they were being spied upon. Madame von Platen’s over-eagerness had in part betrayed her. It was, indeed, their consciousness of espionage which had led to this dangerous meeting in the seclusion of the pavilion, and which urged him to linger after Sophia had left him. They were not to be seen to emerge together.
The young Dane sat alone on the window-seat, his chin in his hands, his eyes dreamy, a faint smile on his shapely lips, when Ernest Augustus burst furiously in, the Countess von Platen lingering just beyond the threshold. The Elector’s face was apoplectically purple from rage and haste, his breath came in wheezing gasps. His bulging eyes swept round the chamber, and fastened finally, glaring, upon the startled Königsmark.
“Where is the Princess?” he blurted out.
The Count espied Madame von Platen in the back ground, and had the scent of mischief very strong. But he preserved an air of innocent mystification. He rose and answered with courteous ease:
“Your Highness is seeking her? Shall I ascertain for you?”
At a loss, Ernest Augustus stared a moment, then flung a glance over his shoulder at the Countess.
“I was told that her Highness was here,” he said.
“Plainly,” said Königsmark, with perfect calm, “you have been misinformed.” And his quiet glance and gesture invited the Elector to look round for himself.
“How long have you been here yourself?” Feeling at a disadvantage, the Elector avoided the direct question that was in his mind.
“Half an hour at least.”
“And in that time you have not seen the Princess?”
“Seen the Princess?” Königsmark’s brows were knit perplexedly. “I scarcely understand your Highness.”
The Elector moved a step and trod on a soft substance. He looked down, then stooped, and rose again, holding in his hand a woman’s glove.
“What’s this?” quoth he. “Whose glove is this?”
If Königsmark’s heart missed a beat — as well it may have done — he did not betray it outwardly. He smiled; indeed he almost laughed.
“Your Highness is amusing himself at my expense by asking me questions that only a seer could answer.”
T
he Elector was still considering him with his ponderously suspicious glance, when quick steps approached. A serving-maid, one of Sophia’s women, appeared in the doorway of the pavilion.
“What do you want?” the Elector snapped at her.
“A glove her Highness lately dropped here,” was the timid answer, innocently precipitating the very discovery which the woman had been too hastily dispatched to avert.
The Elector flung the glove at her, and there was a creak of evil laughter from him. When she had departed’ he turned again to Königsmark.
“You fence skilfully,” said he, sneering, “too skilfully for an honest man. Will you now tell me without any more of this, precisely what the Princess Sophia was doing here with you?”
Königsmark drew himself stiffly up, looking squarely into the furnace of the Elector’s face.
“Your Highness assumes that the Princess was here with me, and a prince is not to be contradicted, even when he insults a lady whose spotless purity is beyond his understanding. But your Highness can hardly expect me to become in never so slight a degree a party to that insult by vouchsafing any answer to your question.”
“That is your last word, sir?” The Elector shook with suppressed anger.
“Your Highness cannot think that words are necessary?”
The bulging eyes grew narrow, the heavy nether lip was thrust forth in scorn and menace.
“You are relieved, sir, of your duties in the Electoral Guard, and as that is the only tie binding you to Hanover, we see no reason why your sojourn here should be protracted.”
Königsmark bowed stiffly, formally. “It shall end, your Highness, as soon as I can make the necessary arrangements for my departure — in a week at most.”
“You are accorded three days, sir.” The Elector turned, and waddled out, leaving Königsmark to breathe freely again. The three days should suffice for the Princess also. It was very well.
The Elector, too, thought that it was very well. He had given this troublesome fellow his dismissal, averted a scandal, and placed his daughter-in-law out of the reach of harm. Madame von Platen was the only one concerned who thought that it was not well at all, the consummation being far from that which she had desired. She had dreamt of a flaming scandal, that should utterly consume her two enemies, Sophia and Königsmark. Instead, she saw them both escaping, and the fact that she was — as she may have supposed — effectively separating two loving hearts could be no sort of adequate satisfaction for such bitter spite as hers. Therefore she plied her wicked wits to force an issue more germane to her desires.
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 708
