‘Since it is the king’s pleasure to make a gaoler of me,’ said he, ‘I’ll try to give my poor devil of a prisoner all the comforts I can. Come with me, my little Gretchen, and let’s see what chairs and tables we can find up in the garrets.’
Now I had been longing to explore the top rooms ever since I came to live at Brühl—those top rooms under the roof, of which the shutters were always closed, and the doors always locked, and where not even the housemaids were admitted oftener than twice a year. So at this welcome invitation I sprang up, joyfully enough, and ran before my father all the way. But when he unlocked the first door, and all beyond was dark, and the air that met us on the threshold had a faint and dead odour, like the atmosphere of a tomb, I shrank back trembling, and dared not venture in. Nor did my courage altogether come back when the shutters were thrown open, and the wintry sunlight streamed in upon dusty floors, and cobwebbed ceilings, and piles of mysterious objects covered in a ghostly way with large white sheets, looking like heaps of slain upon a funeral pyre.
The slain, however, turned out to be the very things of which we were in search; old-fashioned furniture in all kinds of incongruous styles, and of all epochs—Louis Quatorze cabinets in cracked tortoise-shell and blackened buhl—antique carved chairs emblazoned elaborately with coats of arms, as old as the time of Albert Dürer—slender-legged tables in battered marqueterie—time-pieces in lack-lustre ormolu, still pointing to the hour at which they had stopped, who could tell how many years ago?—bundles of moth-eaten tapestries and faded silken hangings—exquisite oval mirrors framed in chipped wreaths of delicate Dresden china—mouldering old portraits of dead-and-gone court beauties in powder and patches, warriors in wigs, and prelates in point-lace—whole suites of furniture in old stamped leather and worm-eaten Utrecht velvet; broken toilette services in pink and blue Sèvres; screens, wardrobes, cornices—in short, all kinds of luxurious lumber going fast to dust, like those who once upon a time enjoyed and owned it.
And now, going from room to room, we chose a chair here, a table there, and so on, till we had enough to furnish a bedroom and sitting-room.
‘He must have a writing-table,’ said my father, thoughtfully, ‘and a bookcase.’
Saying which, he stopped in front of a rickety-looking gilded cabinet with empty red velvet shelves, and tapped it with his cane.
‘But supposing he has no books!’ suggested I, with the precocious wisdom of nine years of age.
‘Then we must beg some, or borrow some, my little Mädchen,’ replied my father, gravely; ‘for books are the main solace of the captive, and he who hath them not lies in a twofold prison.’
‘He shall have my picture-book of Hartz legends!’ said I, in a sudden impulse of compassion. Whereupon my father took me up in his arms, kissed me on both cheeks, and bade me choose some knicknacks for the prisoner’s sitting-room.
‘For though we have gotten together all the necessaries for comfort, we have taken nothing for adornment,’ said he, ‘and ’twere pity the prison were duller than it need be. Choose thou a pretty face or two from among these old pictures, my little Gretchen, and an ornament for his mantel-shelf. Young as thou art, thou has the woman’s wit in thee.’
So I picked out a couple of Sèvres candlesticks; a painted Chinese screen, all pagodas and parrots; two portraits of patched and powdered beauties in the Watteau style; and a queer old clock surmounted by a gilt Cupid in a chariot drawn by doves. If these failed to make him happy, thought I, he must indeed be hard to please.
That afternoon, the things having been well dusted, and the rooms thoroughly cleaned, we set to work to arrange the furniture, and so quickly was this done that before we sat down to supper the place was ready for occupation, even to the logs upon the hearth and the oil-lamp upon the table.
All night my dreams were of the prisoner. I was seeking him in the gloom of the upper rooms, or amid the dusky mazes of the leafless plantations—always seeing him afar off, never overtaking him, and trying in vain to catch a glimpse of his features. But his face was always turned from me.
My first words on waking were to ask if he had come yet. All day long I was waiting, and watching, and listening for him, starting up at every sound, and continually running to the window. Would he be young and handsome? Or would he be old, and white-haired, and world-forgotten, like some of those Bastille prisoners I had heard my father speak of? Would his chains rattle when he walked about? I asked myself these questions, and answered them as my childish imagination prompted, a hundred times a day; and still he came not.
So another twenty-four hours went by, and my impatience was almost beginning to wear itself out, when at last, about five o’clock in the afternoon of the third day, it being already quite dark, there came a sudden clanging of the gates, followed by a rattle of wheels in the courtyard, and a hurrying to and fro of feet upon the stairs.
Then, listening with a beating heart, but seeing nothing, I knew that he was come.
I had to sleep that night with my curiosity ungratified; for my father had hurried away at the first sounds from without, nor came back till long after I had been carried off to bed by my Rhenish handmaiden.
Chapter III
I Make Friends with the Prisoner
He was neither old nor white-haired. He was, as well as I, in my childish way, could judge, about thirty-five years of age, pale, slight, dark-eyed, delicate-looking. His chains did not rattle as he walked, for the simple reason that, being a prisoner on parole, he suffered no kind of restraint, but was as free as myself of the château and grounds. He wore his hair long, tied behind with a narrow black ribbon, and very slightly powdered; and he dressed always in deep mourning—black, all black, from head to foot, even to his shoe-buckles. He was a Frenchman, and he went by the name of Monsieur Maurice.
I cannot tell how I knew that this was only his Christian name; but so it was, and I knew him by no other, neither did my father. I have, indeed, evidence among our private papers to show that neither by those in authority at Berlin, nor by the prisoner himself, was he at any time informed either of the family name of Monsieur Maurice, or of the nature of the offence, whether military or political, for which that gentleman was consigned to his keeping at Brühl.
‘Of one thing at least I am certain,’ said my father, holding out his pipe for me to fill it. ‘He is a soldier.’
It was just after dinner, the second day following our prisoner’s arrival, and I was sitting on my father’s knee before the fire, as was our pleasant custom of an afternoon.
‘I see it in his eye,’ my father went on to say. ‘I see it in his walk. I see it in the way he arranges his papers on the table. Everything in order. Everything put away into the smallest possible compass. All this bespeaketh the camp.’
‘I don’t believe he is a soldier, for all that,’ said I, thoughtfully. ‘He is too gentle.’
‘The bravest soldiers, my little Gretchen, are oft-times the gentlest,’ replied my father. ‘The great French hero, Bayard, and the great English hero, Sir Philip Sidney, about whom thou were reading ’tother day, were both as tender and gentle as women.’
‘But he neither smokes, nor swears, nor talks loud,’ said I, persisting in my opinion.
My father smiled, and pinched my ear.
‘Nay, little one,’ said he, ‘Monsieur Maurice is not like thy father—a rough German dragoon risen from he ranks. He is a gentleman, and a Frenchman; and he hath all the polish of what the Frenchman calls the vielle école. And there again he puzzles me with his court-manners and his powdered hair! He’s no Bonapartist, I’ll be sworn—yet if he be o’ the king’s side, what doth he here, with the usurper at Saint Helena, and Louis the Eighteenth come to his own again?’
‘But he is a Bonapartist, father,’ said I, ‘for he carries the emperor’s portrait on his snuff-box.’
My father laid down his pipe, and drew a long breath expressive of astonishment.
‘He showed thee his snuff-box!’ exclaimed he.
> ‘Ay—and he told me it was the emperor’s own gift.’
‘Thunder and Mars! And when was this, my little Gretchen?’
‘Yesterday morning, on the terrace. And he asked my name; and told me I should go up some day to his room and see his sketches; and he kissed me when he said goodbye; and—and I like Monsieur Maurice very much, father, and I’m sure it’s very wicked of the king to keep him here in prison!’
My father looked at me, shook his head, and twirled his long grey mustache.
‘Bonapartist or Legitimist, again I say what doth he here?’ muttered he presently, more to himself than to me. ‘If Legitimist—why not with his king? If Bonapartist—then he is his king’s prisoner; not ours. It passeth my comprehension how we should hold him at Brühl.’
‘Let him run away, father dear, and don’t run after him!’ whispered I, putting my arms coaxingly about his neck.
‘But ’tis some cursed mess of politics at bottom, depend on’t!’ continued my father, still talking to himself. ‘Ah, you don’t know what politics are, my little Gretchen!—so much the better for you!’
‘I do know what politics are,’ replied I, with great dignity. ‘They are the chef-d’oeuvre of Satan. I heard you say so the other day.’
My father burst into a Titanic roar of laughter.
‘Said I so?’ shouted he. ‘Thunder and Mars! I did not remember that I had ever said anything half so epigrammatic!’
Now from this it will be seen that the prisoner and I were already acquainted. We had, indeed, taken to each other from the first, and our mutual liking ripened so rapidly that before a week was gone by we had become the fastest friends in the world.
Our first meeting, as I have already said, took place upon the terrace. Our second, which befell on the afternoon of the same day when my father and I had held the conversation just recorded, happened on the stairs. Monsieur Maurice was coming up with his hat on; and I was running down. He stopped, and held out both his hands.
‘Bonjour, petite,’ he said, smiling. ‘Whither away so fast?’
The hoar frost was clinging to his coat, where he had brushed against the trees in his walk, and he looked pale and tired.
‘I am going home,’ I replied.
‘Home? Did you not tell me you lived in the château?’
‘So I do, Monsieur; but at the other side, up the other staircase. This is the side of the state apartments.’
Then, seeing in his face a look half of surprise, half of curiosity, I added:
‘I often go there in the afternoon, when it is too cold, or too late for out-of-doors. They are such beautiful rooms, and full of such beautiful pictures! Would you like to see them?’
He smiled, and shook his head.
‘Thanks, petite,’ he said, ‘I am too cold now, and too tired; but you shall show them to me some other day. Meanwhile, suppose you come up and pay me that promised visit?’
I assented joyfully, and slipping my hand into his with the ready confidence of childhood, turned back at once and went with him to his rooms on the second floor.
Here, finding the fire in the salon nearly out, we went down upon our knees and blew the embers with our breath, and laughed so merrily over our work that by the time the new logs had caught, I was as much at home as if I had known Monsieur Maurice all my life.
‘Tiens!’ he said, taking me presently upon his knee and brushing the specks of white ash from my clothes and hair, ‘what a little Cinderella I have made of my guest! This must not happen again, Gretchen. Did you not tell me yesterday that your name was Gretchen?’
‘Yes, but Gretchen, you know, is not my real name,’ said I, ‘my real name is Marguerite. Gretchen is only my pet name.’
‘Then you will always be Gretchen for me,’ said Monsieur Maurice, with the sweetest smile in the world.
There were books upon the table; there was a thing like a telescope on a brass stand in the window; there was a guitar lying on the couch. The fire, too, was burning brightly now, and the room altogether wore a cheerful air of habitation.
‘It looks more like a lady’s boudoir than a prison,’ said Monsieur Maurice, reading my thoughts. ‘I wonder whose rooms they were before I came here!’
‘They were nobody’s rooms,’ said I. ‘They were quite empty.’
And then I told him where we had found the furniture, and how the ornamental part thereof had been of my choosing.
‘I don’t know who the ladies are,’ I said, referring to the portraits. ‘I only chose them for their pretty faces.’
‘Their lovers probably did the same, petite, a hundred years ago,’ replied Monsieur Maurice. ‘And the clock—did you choose that also?’
‘Yes; but the clock doesn’t go.’
‘So much the better. I would that time might stand still also—till I am free! till I am free!’
The tears rushed to my eyes. It was the tone more than the words that touched my heart. He stooped and kissed me on the forehead.
‘Come to the window, little one,’ said he, ‘and I will show you something very beautiful. Do you know what this is?’
‘A telescope!’
‘No; a solar microscope. Now look down into this tube, and tell me what you see. A piece of Persian carpet? No—a butterfly’s wing magnified hundreds and hundreds of times. And this which looks like an aigrette of jewels? Will you believe that it is just the tiny plume which waves on the head of every little gnat that buzzes round you on a summer’s evening?’
I uttered exclamation after exclamation of delight. Every fresh object seemed more wonderful and beautiful than the last, and I felt as if I could go on looking down that magic tube for ever. Meanwhile Monsieur Maurice, whose good-nature was at least as inexhaustible as my curiosity, went on changing the slides till we had gone through a whole boxful.
By this time it was getting rapidly dusk, and I could see no longer.
‘You will show me some more another day?’ said I, giving up reluctantly.
‘That I will, petite, I have at least a dozen more boxes full of slides.’
‘And—and you said I should see your sketches, Monsieur Maurice.’
‘All in good time, little Gretchen,’ he said, smiling. ‘All in good time. See—those are the sketches, in yonder folio; that mahogany case under the couch contains a collection of gems in glass and paste; those red books in the bookcase are full of pictures. You shall see them all by degrees; but only by degrees. For if I did not keep something back to tempt my little guest, she would not care to visit the solitary prisoner.’
I felt myself colour crimson.
‘But—but indeed I would care to come, Monsieur Maurice, if you had nothing at all to show me,’ I said, half hurt, half angry.
He gave me a strange look that I could not understand, and stroked my hair caressingly.
‘Come often, then, little one,’ he said. ‘Come very often; and when we are tired of pictures and microscopes, we will sit upon the floor, and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings.’
Then, seeing me look puzzled, he laughed, and added:
‘’Tis a great English poet says that, Gretchen, in one of his plays.’
Here a shrill trumpet-call in the courtyard, followed by the prolonged roll of many drums, warned me that evening parade was called, and that as soon as it was over my father would be home and looking for me. So I started up, and put out my hand to say goodbye.
Monsieur Maurice took it between both his own.
‘I don’t like parting from you so soon, little Mädchen,’ he said. ‘Will you come again tomorrow?’
‘Every day, if you like!’ I replied eagerly.
‘Then every day it shall be; and—let me see—you shall improve my bad German, and I will teach you French.’
I could have clapped my hands for joy. I was longing to learn French, and I knew how much it would also please my father; so I thanked Monsieur Maurice again and again, and ran home with a light heart to tell of all the wonders I had seen.
Chapter IV
Reminiscences
From this time forth, I saw him always once, and sometimes twice a day—in the afternoons, when he regularly gave me the promised French lesson; and occasionally in the mornings, provided the weather was neither too cold nor too damp for him to join me in the grounds. For Monsieur Maurice was not strong. He could not with impunity face snow, and rain, and our keen Rhenish north-east winds; and it was only when the wintry sun shone out at noon and the air came tempered from the south, that he dared venture from his own fireside. When, however, there shone a sunny day, with what delight I used to summon him for a walk, take him to my favourite points of view, and show him the woodland nooks that had been my chosen haunts in summer! Then, too, the unwonted colour would come back to his pale cheek, and the smile to his lips, and while the ramble and the sunshine lasted he would be all jest and gaiety, pelting me with dead leaves, chasing me in and out of the plantations, and telling me strange stories, half pathetic, half grotesque, of Dryads, and Fauns, and Satyrs—of Bacchus, and Pan, and Polyphemus—of nymphs who became trees, and shepherds who were transformed to fountains, and all kinds of beautiful wild myths of antique Greece—far more beautiful and far more wild than all the tales of gnomes and witches in my book of Hartz legends.
At other times, when the weather was cold or rainy, he would take down his Musee Napoléon, a noble work, in eight or ten volumes, and show me engravings after pictures by great masters in the Louvre, explaining them to me as we went along, painting in words the glow and glory of the absent colour, and steeping my childish imagination in golden dreams of Raphael and Titian, and Paulo Veronese.
And sometimes, too, as the dusk came on and the firelight brightened in the gathering gloom, he would take up his guitar, and to the accompaniment of a few slight chords sing me a quaint old French chanson of the feudal times; or an Arab chant picked up in the tent or the Nile boat; or a Spanish ballad, half love-song, half litany, learned from the lips of a muleteer on the Pyrenean border.
THE PHANTOM COACH: Collected Ghost Stories Page 33
