‘But how can the Marguerite answer you, Monsieur Maurice?’ I exclaimed.
‘You shall see—but I must tell you first that the flower is not used to pronounce upon such serious matters. She is the oracle of the village lads and lasses—not of grave prisoners like myself.’
And with this, half sadly, half playfully, he began stripping the leaves off one by one, and repeating over and over again:
‘Tell me, sweet Marguerite, shall I be free? Soon . . . in time . . . perhaps . . . never! Soon . . . in time . . . perhaps . . . never! Soon . . . in time . . . perhaps——’
It was the last leaf.
‘Pshaw!’ he said, tossing away the stalk with an impatient laugh. ‘You could have given me as good an answer as that, little Gretchen. Let us go in.’
Chapter VIII
The Attempted Escape
It was about a week after this when I was startled out of my deepest midnight sleep by a rush of many feet, and a fierce and sudden knocking at my father’s bedroom door—the door opposite my own.
I sat up, trembling. A bright blaze gleamed along the threshold, and high above the clamour of tongues outside, I recognised my father’s voice, quick, sharp, imperative. Then a door was opened and banged. Then came the rush of feet again—then silence.
It was a strange, wild hubbub; and it had all come, and gone, and was over in less than a minute. But what was it?
Seeing that fiery line along the threshold, I had thought for a moment that the château was on fire; but the light vanished with those who brought it, and all was darkness again.
‘Bertha!’ I cried tremulously. ‘Bertha!’
Now Bertha was my Rhenish handmaiden, and she slept in a closet opening off my room. But Bertha was as deaf to my voice as one of the Seven Sleepers.
Suddenly a shrill trumpet-call rang out in the courtyard.
I sprang out of bed, flew to Bertha, and shook her with all my strength till she woke.
‘Bertha! Bertha!’ I cried. ‘Wake up—strike a light—dress me quickly! I must know what is the matter!’
In vain Bertha yawns, rubs her eyes, protests that I have had a bad dream, and that nothing is the matter. Get up she must; dress herself and me in the twinkling of an eye; and go upon whatsoever dance I choose to lead her.
My father is gone, and his door stands wide open. We turn to the stairs, and a cold wind rushes up in our faces. We go down, and find the side-door which leads to the courtyard unfastened and ajar. There is not a soul in the courtyard. There is not the faintest glimmer of light from the guard-house windows. The sentry who walks perpetually to and fro in front of the gate is not at his post; and the gate is wide open!
Even Bertha sees that by this time something strange is afoot, and stares at me with a face of foolish wonder.
‘Ach, Herr Gott!’ she cries, clapping her hands together, ‘what’s that?’
It is very faint, very distant; but quite audible in the dead silence of the night. In an instant I know what it is that has happened!
‘It is the report of a musket!’ I exclaim, seizing her by the hand, and dragging her across the courtyard. ‘Quick! quick! Oh, Monsieur Maurice! Monsieur Maurice!’
The night is very dark. There is no moon, and the stars, glimmering through a veil of haze, give little light. But we run as recklessly as if it were bright day, past the barracks, past the parade-ground, and round to the great gates on the garden side of the château. These, however, are closed, and the sentry, standing watchful and motionless, with his musket made ready, refuses to let us through.
In vain I remind him that I am privileged, and that none of these gates are ever closed against me. The man is inexorable.
‘No, Fräulein Gretchen,’ he says, ‘I dare not. This is not a fit hour for you to be out. Pray go home.’
‘But Gaspar, good Gaspar,’ I plead, clinging to the gate with both hands, ‘tell me if he has escaped! Hark; oh, hark! there it is again!’
And another, and another shot rings through the still night-air.
The sentry almost stamps with impatience.
‘Go home, dear little Fräulein! Go home at once,’ he says. ‘There is danger abroad tonight. I cannot leave my post, or I would take you home myself—— Holy Saint Christopher! they are coming this way! Go—go—what would his Excellency the Governor say, if he found you here?’
I see quick gleams of wandering lights among the trees—I hear a distant shout! Then, seized by a sudden panic, I turn and fly, with Bertha at my heels—fly back the way I came, never pausing till I find myself once more at the courtyard gate. Here—breathless, trembling, panting—I stop to listen and look back. All is silent—as silent as before.
‘But, liebe Gretchen,’ says Bertha, as breathless as myself, ‘what is to do tonight?’
There is a coming murmur on the air. There is a red glow reflected on the barrack windows—they are coming! I turn suddenly cold and giddy.
‘Hush, Bertha!’ I whisper, ‘we must not stay here. Papa will be angry! Let us go up to the corridor window.’
So we go back into the house, upstairs the way we came, and station ourselves at the corridor window, which looks into the courtyard.
Slowly the glow broadens; slowly the sound resolves itself into an irregular tramp of many feet and a murmur of many voices.
Then suddenly the courtyard is filled with soldiers and lighted torches, and—and I clasp my hands over my eyes in an agony of terror, lest the picture I drew a few days since should be coming true.
‘What do you see, Bertha?’ I falter. ‘Do you—do you see Monsieur Maurice?’
‘No, but I see Gottlieb Kolb, and Corporal Fritz, and—yes—here is Monsieur Maurice between two soldiers, and his Excellency the Colonel walking beside them!’
I looked up, and my heart gave a leap of gladness. He was not dead—he was not even wounded! He had been pursued and captured; but at least he was safe!
They stopped just under the corridor window. The torchlight fell full upon their faces. Monsieur Maurice looked pale and composed; perhaps just a shade haughtier than usual. My father had his drawn sword in his hand.
‘Corporal Fritz,’ he said, turning to a soldier near him, ‘conduct the prisoner to his room, and post two sentries at his door, and one under his windows.’ Then turning to Monsieur Maurice, ‘I thank God, Sir,’ he said gravely, ‘that you have not paid for your imprudence with your life. I have the honour to wish you goodnight.’
Monsieur Maurice ceremoniously took off his hat.
‘Goodnight, Colonel Bernhard,’ he said. ‘I beg you, however, to remember that I had withdrawn my parole.’
‘I remember it, Monsieur Maurice,’ replied my father, drawing himself up, and returning the salutation.
Monsieur Maurice then crossed the courtyard with his guards, and entered the château by the door leading to the state apartments. My father, after standing for a moment as if lost in thought, turned away and went over to the guard-house.
The soldiers then dispersed, or gathered into little knots of twos and threes, and talked in low voices of the events of the night.
‘Accomplices!’ said one, just close against the window where Bertha and I still lingered. ‘Liebe Mutter! I’ll take my oath he had one! Why, it was I who first caught sight of the prisoner gliding through the trees—I saw him as plainly as I see you now—I covered him with my musket—I wouldn’t have given a copper pfennig for his life, when paff! at the very moment I pulled the trigger, out steps a fellow from behind my shoulder, knocks up my musket, and disappears like a flash of lightning—Heaven only knows where, for I never laid eyes on him again!’
‘What was he like?’ asks another soldier, incredulously.
‘Like? How should I know? It was as dark as pitch. I just caught a glimpse of him in the flash of the powder—an ugly, brown-looking devil he seemed! but he was gone in a breath, and I had no time to look for him.’
The soldiers round about burst out laughing.
‘
Hold, Karl!’ says one, slapping him boisterously on the shoulder. ‘You are a good shot, but you missed aim for once. No need to conjure up a brown devil to account for that, old comrade!’
Karl, finding his story discredited, retorted angrily; and a quarrel was fast brewing, when the sergeant on guard came up and ordered the men to their several quarters.
‘Holy Saint Bridget!’ said Bertha, shivering, ‘how cold it is!—and there, I declare, is the convent clock striking half after one! Liebe Gretchen, you really must go to bed—what would your father say?’
So we both crept back to bed. Bertha was asleep again almost before she had laid her head upon her pillow; but I lay awake till dawn of day.
Chapter IX
A Horrible Proposal
It was in my father’s disposition to both be strict and indulgent—that is to say, as a father he was all tenderness, and as a solider 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 or 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 goodbye; 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, 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 newcomer? 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 closing 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!—bec
ause, 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.’
THE PHANTOM COACH: Collected Ghost Stories Page 36
