Then he remembered that soon he was to see the first elephant and camel in the King’s menagerie, and felt more cheerful. They were released from it to take part in an allegorical procession of the Centuries and Seasons, dancing fauns, bacchantes, shepherds and shepherdesses and lastly the god Pan, represented by an actor called Molière, who after the pageant acted with his troupe of comedians in pieces of his own composition.
The lady who had danced in a Hungarian dress in Ned’s first ballet was the English Princess, Madame Henriette. She was King Charles II’s youngest sister and had married Monsieur, King Louis’s little brother. Little he would always remain, an absurd creature balanced on high heels, stuck all over with ribbons, rosettes and jewels, as vain of his complexion as an elderly beauty, and jealous of his wife, not as a possession but a rival to his own charms. He once succeeded in tricking the Prince de Condé into a position where he could not avoid, as next in rank, the service of handing him his shirt, and thus established his superiority to the greatest soldier of the age.
She loved King Louis, who loved her, but too late. The two Queen Mothers had desired their match in their childhood, but he had married the Infanta of Spain, for State reasons only, in a splendid palace on an island reared specially and solely for that occasion. Only then did he begin to observe how Henriette had grown in gaiety and assurance, how her face, which like all her family had been thought too long and melancholy in shape, was now piquantly lovely between her fashionable pouffes of hair, frizzed up to her ears. The poor relation who had been dependent on his charity was now fitted to do even him credit.
“How marriage has improved that dull little girl,” said the married women.
She had become the bright centre of every ball, masque and fête. King Louis went for long rides with her in the forest of Saint Germains at night. Both the Queen Mothers were scandalized, and she of England said it was all because Monsieur had refused to leave his young wife in his mother’s care. Monsieur raged and fretted, then grew so silent that he only spoke about as much as two or three women.
“We must be more careful,” said the culprits.
“Honour and duty,” said the Princess from England.
“Circumspection,” said the King of France; and they rode again in the forest to discuss how cautious they must be.
Ned heard the gossip and wished he were a man such as Madame could love. He had grown very tall since coming to the French Court, and had already fallen in love with a kind and jolly chambermaid and with a lively child who had to enter a convent at the age of twelve because she had no dot.
One evening he supped with a hunting party in a grove in the forest. The King and the Princess had not joined them but nobody was so indiscreet as to mention it. The Court musician, Lulli, conducted a small band hidden among the bushes, an Italian boy sang a love song to a guitar. Some couple that had been sitting near Ned, the gallant comparing the lady to each known goddess, the lady parrying each compliment with a disclaimer, fell silent, rose, and wandered away into the forest.
When the party began to go home, Ned did not wish to accompany them; he lagged behind and presently let his pony come to a standstill over a particularly good patch of grass. He let the reins lie idle, watching the leaves that stood quite still in small black silhouettes against the pearl-coloured sky. He knew that he was waiting for something to happen.
It was said that the King had once seen a phantom in this forest, but would never tell what exactly he had seen.
And once when a company of gentlemen had allowed Ned to go with them on a hawking expedition, they had got lost and wandered for miles through the dark confused shapes of the trees until at last they saw a light and came to a fine house, though near no road, and closely surrounded by the forest. So that they were surprised when in answer to their knocking the door was opened by servants in elegant livery, and a man of noble appearance came forward and greeted them as welcome guests for the night.
They introduced themselves to him but he did not mention his name. He entertained them with excellent food and wines and the best company of all, which is that of audience, for he delighted in hearing all they could tell him of the gossip of the Court. When they asked why he himself did not attend it, he replied that it was not at present convenient. A gay and impulsive young man called Vervins exclaimed that they would tell the King of his magnificent hospitality and that the result would certainly mean a summons to the Palace.
“If you would do me a service,” replied his host, “you will none of you mention me, or that you have rested in my poor house this night.”
They promised with that degree of embarrassment naturally conferred by any mystery, and their host, rising, took a flambeau from the wall and lighted them to their rooms, where there were sufficient beds to accommodate them all though in no case did more than two share a bed. Ned had been too much excited and impressed to sleep; he heard the trees whispering and sighing all round the house. When at last he fell asleep his companion woke him for he said he was groaning and muttering. Ned was glad that he was not yet old enough to have a mistress lest he should babble in her arms while asleep of this night’s adventure.
“Which of us will be the one to tell?” he asked himself, for by now his troubled fancy had convinced him that this would happen.
It was Vervins, who told his mistress, not in his sleep but to defend himself against her jealous questions as to his disappearance that night. She swore secrecy, and the story soon reached the King, who looked thoughtful and displeased. It was discovered that the man was Fargues, who had formerly worked against the Court and Mazarin, and had long retired from public life in consequence. The King was irritated that his former opponent should all this time have been living so near him and in such prosperity; the charge of an old murder was trumped up against him, and all the efforts of his grateful guests could not save him from being executed.
“That was an expensive dinner,” said one of them. “At least let us thank God it was put down on the wrong bill.”
As Ned now waited in the forest, he thought that the apparition that the King had seen must have been that of Fargues’s stately ghost.
A sound no more than a sigh broke the suspense. “Ah,” he thought, “here it comes.” It came nearer, the quick thudding of horse’s hoofs, the swish of leaves, sudden irregular sounds as though the rider had lost control of his mount and were crashing at random through the undergrowth. A lady on a white pony came through the bushes into the clearing. Ned had sprung from the saddle and now caught at her bridle, steadying the startled horse. Not till he had done this did he see that it was Madame Henriette. She looked down on him and said a little breathlessly, “Something frightened him, I don’t know what.”
He could think of nothing to say. He felt his face growing crimson. He said to himself, “Speak, you fool, can’t you? What does it matter what you say? She won’t remember it for more than a minute.”
He said, “They say the forest is haunted. Perhaps that was why.”
He need not have troubled as to what he said, for she did not even hear him. Her eyes were startled and distressed. She said, “I shall wait here a moment.”
He helped her dismount; she sat on the grass, took off her hat and puffed up her hair which had fallen loose. He hung the ponies’ bridles on two branches.
“You may sit,” she said with a quick, desperate laugh, “there is no order as to stools in the forest.”
He knelt in the grass before her, sitting back on his heels. In the deeper dusk under the trees her face made him think of the moon. It seemed to have been severed from her fashionable riding-habit, for that was of dark green and had sunk into the background of leaves and grass except where here and there a jewel on it glittered at him like a detached and winking eye. Last night he had seen her dancing in a dress of white, black and carnation taffetas; hundreds of candles had shone on her, hundreds of eyes had gazed at her. Her behaviour had been as brilliant a piece of artifice as her dress; she had spa
rkled, shown interest, been respectful but a shade mocking, light-hearted and grave all in due turn.
Her now serene and moon-like face had nothing to do with all this. It was severed from herself as from her dress, an apparition of this enchanted forest that would haunt his memory always.
She did not turn her head, and her eyes were shadows in the half-darkness, but he knew that she was now looking at him. When she spoke, her voice was no longer agitated.
“What do you think of as you kneel there? You stand so still and watch us all,—what do you see?”
Now again he had to speak and knew that his thoughts would not help him. He could not say, “I shall remember you all my life,” or “You have noticed me among all the rest.” It was the price he had to pay for his early training in compliments that now when he meant them he could not say them. He said what he was not thinking of and did not believe, for it was inconceivable that anyone should harm her: “It is dangerous, Madame, for you to ride alone in the forest.”
Her face suddenly became part of her again. It flashed into life together with her outflung hands and hurried voice. “But I was not alone. I was with King Louis and we quarrelled. Do you think he would sacrifice his dignity so far as to ride after me? He would rather let me be robbed, raped, murdered. Oh, I am miserable and whoever I tell will scold me, or laugh at me which is worse. I will tell Molière the actor so that he may make a comedy out of it and then everyone will laugh, even myself.”
“No. Tell me, Madame.”
“Why. Will you make a comedy of it?”
“Or a tragedy.”
“It is more difficult for a tragic poet to have good manners. Monsieur Racine is of good family and has none of the air of a poet, but Louis complains that he is sometimes absentminded. Will you really write a tragedy for me, little poet? But there is no material for it. It is true my father was beheaded, but I have always had an amusing life, even when I had to wait on the good nuns at Chaillot. They used to flutter round me like pigeons when my mother dressed me for a Court ball. Do you know what King Louis said then when his mother told him to dance with me? He said, “Madame, I do not like little girls.”
“Of course I was a fright. I had to wear other people’s dresses and I was as shy as an owl in daylight, and so thin that the King mocked his brother for marrying the bones of the Innocents. But how I have teased him with it since!”
She had taken an exquisite pleasure in reminding the infatuated King how he had once scorned her. “But now it is no longer funny,” she sighed, for the King was no longer infatuated.
And plucking the long grasses round her very fast and throwing them away as fast as she plucked them, she told Ned how she and King Louis had agreed that as their respective mothers were so tiresome, so ridiculously old-fashioned, so unaware how utterly all manners and customs and above all the young people themselves had changed since their day; that she and King Louis—that she and King Louis—well, they had agreed that though there was no reason nor sense in these maternal suspicions and objections, yet it might be as well to throw them off the scent by arranging that King Louis should pay court to one of her maids of honour, purely as a blind to his cousinly admiration for herself.
And now the farce had become reality, and it was Madame who found Louis was using his cousinly admiration as a blind for his passion for that tender, timid creature, her maid of honour, Louise de la Vallière.
“And I who begged him not to choose her, lest she should be hurt, when all the time it was I who was to be hurt.”
“She too will be hurt, Madame.”
“You are so young you can still be wise. Wait till you are in love yourself, then you will believe that love lasts for ever. I wish it did not last so long. I wish I could love someone else. I wonder if I really love Louis or only the Apollo I see in the ballets. You know, I think he begins to believe he really is the Sun God. He is so proud. He hates the common people because they marched through his bedroom when he was a child. They had gone mad as the Parisians do, they were storming at the Palace gates, swearing that Mazarin had smuggled him away. Then the Queen Mother made one of her gestures.
“‘The Kings of France,’ she said, ‘have nothing to fear from the people of Paris. Let them enter and see for themselves that the King is sleeping peacefully without thought of escape.’ So for hours the filthy stinking rabble filed through his bedroom while he had to lie quite still, pretending to be asleep. He lay there hating them, and all the time he vowed that he would build great palaces away from Paris and the mob, that he would make islands rise out of a lake, and hills from a plain, and waters flow in a dry desert.
“He is arrogant, he is often cruel—Monsieur has told me of the fights they had as boys and even when it was a pillow fight, for fun, it would end in blows and scratches—but it is true there is something god-like in his pride, at least I have always thought so, but tonight I did not. I wish I could always think so. Why can we not remain the same for ever?”
At last she had stopped her nervous plucking of the grasses; she looked up and at him, and presently she said in quite a different voice, calm and even happy, “I remember now when it was that I spoke to you before. You stood with your hands full of sugar-plums and did not eat them. How tall you have grown, and it was such a little time ago.”
“No, Madame, so long ago.”
But she would never think of him except as a child with sweetmeats. It was not fair.
He planned to go away, to come back full grown and in disguise to make love to her in a forest grove. She would wonder where they had met before, but he would never tell her, he would tease her with stories from the scholars of their meetings in past ages or in Plato’s heaven. So well assured and experienced he would be by then that he would seem the older. “I am older than her now,” he thought as he watched the flickering expressions that passed across her face, and in a sudden bold determination he spoke his thought aloud.
She stared a second, then said lightly, “But if you were older still, you would realize that it takes years of practice to be as young as I.”
He felt that she had drawn back from him, that she might be as indiscreet and wild as she would, but that he must not swerve by a hair’s breadth from his impersonal reserve. For an instant he felt the injustice of it, then recognized that it was by virtue of his youth and apparent imperturbability that she permitted herself such freedom. She would not talk so to Molière, for all the lively sympathy expressed in that charming countenance, if she sketched him her own story for a play.
Suddenly he longed to make that play himself; he alone had the right to do it, for to him alone had she talked like this; he alone knew her and therefore alone loved her truly. He no longer heeded her words, for she had begun to chatter merely as she would to a thousand others, of other people, and in pursuit of that trivial and unimportant subject, age. “Look at our darling de Sevigné,” she was saying, “she is a thousand times more childish and impulsive than her daughter. And she too loves the forests. Do you not love them? When I hear a horn sound in the forest it is as though it were a summons to me alone. Do you fancy that too?”
He heard her now. She was speaking to him again. He answered at random out of his wandering thoughts. “You ride a white horse.”
“And so does death. Is that what you mean? That that will be the summons?”
“Madame, indeed I did not. I do not know why I said it. Oh, Madame, death could not touch you.”
His voice trembled and broke. He bowed his head to hide his face. For an instant they were both still. Then she leaned forward and kissed his cheek. He felt that she had laid a spell on him.
After that he knew why it was he watched people, why the things they said stuck in his mind. He had often found he was repeating to himself casual phrases he had heard or thought of, such as “a tall old witch who walks like an ostrich,” or “Cardinals are eminent criminals,” or “What we can do to repent is to make our servants fast.”
He knew now that wha
t he wanted to do with all the words and scenes and faces that crowded his mind was to write a play for Madame, not a Court comedy, but a ballet and opera in one that should make his mistress a figure of more than mortal beauty. Its characters included Death and the Devil, the soul of a long dead Pope, and a statue who should come to life in the last act. He wrote one or two songs for it and a few speeches some twenty to thirty lines in length. Then he found that though he could speak French fluently he could not write it sufficiently correctly for the strict canons of French verse. For the first eight years of his life he had talked English only, and had learned to write it with his father.
With that he discovered also that though people liked him and confided in him, he often felt very lonely here, and that he had not spoken with Madame since their meeting in the forest. If he were to go away and become a man fit to serve her, whom she would no longer recognize as a child, he must do so quickly.
It was at last arranged that he should go to London, and through Madame’s influence. It seemed odd to him that when at last he spoke with her it was to ask her to help him leave her, and not tell her why. But she commended him for wishing to see his own country and declared that some small post could easily be found for him at Court, for her brother Charles would refuse her nothing.
“He writes me the most enchanting letters,” she said, “it is a thousand pities that Monsieur does not love him better. But what can you expect? No man under five feet will love a man above two yards high.”
With a predetermined impulsiveness and candour she hid her real thoughts from him, and he could catch no glimpse of the face that he had once seen floating detached and dreamlike in the forest.
None So Pretty Page 12
