The Pride of Jennico 10
“That is the right spirit,” said Mademoiselle Ottilie, nodding her
head approvingly. “What you say has not got a grain of common sense,
but that is all as it should be. And next,” she continued, drawing
closer to me, for there was a twilight dimness about us, and standing
on tiptoe in the endeavour to bring her gaze on a level with mine, “her
Highness wishes to know”—she dropped her voice a little—“if you love
her very much?”
As if the gaze of those yellow hazel eyes of hers had cast a sudden
revealing light upon my soul, I stood abashed and dumb, self-convicted
by my silence. Love! Did I love her whom I would make my wife? Taken
up with schemes of vainglory and ambition, what room had I in my heart
for love? In all my triumph at having won her, was there one qualifying
thread of tenderness? Would I, in fine, have sought the woman,
beautiful though she was, were she not the Princess?
In a sort of turmoil I asked myself these things under the compelling
earnestness of Mademoiselle Ottilie’s eyes, and everything in myself
looked strange and hideous to myself, as beneath a vivid lightning
flash the most familiar scene assumes a singular and appalling aspect.
In another moment she moved away and turned aside from me; and then,
even as after the lightning flash all things resume their normal
aspect, I wondered at my own weak folly, and my blood rose hotly
against the impertinence that had evoked it.
“By what right,” said I, “Mademoiselle, do you ask me such a question?
If it be indeed by order of her Highness, pray tell her that when she
will put it to me herself I will answer it to herself.”
The maid of honour wheeled round with her arch, inscrutable smile.
“Oh!” she said, “believe me, you have answered me very well. I was
already convinced of the sincerity and ardour of your attachment to
... her Highness—so convinced, indeed, that I am here to-night for
the sole purpose of helping both you and her to your most insane of
marriages. The Princess is accustomed to rely upon me for everything,
and upon me, therefore, falls the whole burden of preparation and
responsibility. Whether the end of all this will be a dungeon for the
lady-in-waiting, if indeed the Duke does not have her executed for
high treason, is naturally a contingency which neither of you will
consider worth a moment’s thought. It is quite certain, however, that
without me you would both do something inconceivably stupid, and ruin
all. But, voyons, Monsieur de Jennico,” she went on with sudden gravity
of demeanour, “this is no time for pleasantry. It is a very serious
matter. You are wasting precious moments in a singularly light-hearted
fashion, it seems to me.”
The reproach came well from her! But she left me no time to protest.
“I am here,” she said, “as you know, to tell you what the Princess has
decided, and how we must act if the whole thing is not to fail. First
of all, the arrival of some important person from the Court of Lausitz
may take place any day, and then—’Bonjour!’” She blew an airy kiss and
waved her hand, while with a cold thrill I realised the irrefutable
truth of her words.
“If it is to be,” she went on, unconsciously repeating almost the exact
text of her mistress’s letter to me, “it must be at once and in secret.
Mind, not a word to a soul till all is accomplished! On your honour I
lay it! And she, her Highness, enjoins it upon you not to betray her to
any single human being before you have acquired the right to protect
her. It is surely not too much to ask!”
She spoke with deep solemnity, and yet characteristically cut short my
asseverations.
“And, that being settled, and you being willing to take this lady for
your wife,—probably without a stiver, and certainly with her father’s
curse” (I smiled proudly in the arrogance of my heart: all Duke as he
was I did not doubt, once the first storm over, but that my exalted
father-in-law would find very extenuating circumstances for his wilful
daughter’s choice).—“that being settled,” continued Miss Ottilie, “it
only remains to know—are you prepared to enter the marriage state two
nights hence?”
“I wish,” said I, and could not keep the note of exultation from my
voice at having the rare prize thus actually within my reach—“I wish
you would ask me for some harder proof of my complete devotion to her
Highness.”
“Well, then,” she said hastily, whispering as if the pines could
overhear us, “so be it! I have not been idle to-day, and I have laid
the plot. You know the little church in that wretched village of
Wilhelmsdhal we posted through two days ago? The priest there is very
old and very poor and like a child, because he has always lived among
the peasants; and now indeed he is almost too old to be their priest
any more. I saw him to-day, and told him that two who loved each other
were in great straits because people wanted to wed the maiden to a bad
and cruel man,—that is true, Monsieur de Jennico,—I told him that
these two would die of grief, or lose their souls, perhaps, were they
separated, because of the love they bore each other.... There, sir, I
permitted myself a poetical license! To be brief, I promised him in
your name what seemed a great sum for his poor, a thousand thalers—you
will see to that—and he has promised me to wed you on Wednesday night,
at eight of the clock, secretly, in his poor little church. He is so
old and so simple it was like misleading a child, but nevertheless,
the cause being good, I trust I may be forgiven. Drive straight to the
church, and there you will find one who will direct you. The Princess
will not see you again till she meets you before the altar. You will
bring her home to your castle. A maid will accompany her. And that is
all. Adieu, Monsieur de Jennico.”
She stretched out her hand and her voice trembled.
“You will not see the maid of honour perhaps ever again. Her task is
done,” she added.
I took her hand, touched by her accent of earnestness, and gratefully
awoke to the fact that she alone had made the impossible possible to
my desire. I looked at her face, close to mine in the faint light; and
as she smiled at me, a little sadly, I was struck with the delicate
beauty of the curve of her lip, and the exquisite finishing touch of
the dimple that came and went beside it, and the thought flashed into
my mind—“That little maid may one day blossom into the sort of woman
that drives men mad.”
She slipped her hand from mine as I would have kissed it, and nodded at
me with a return of the cool impudence that had so often vexed me.
“Good-bye, gallant cavalier,” she said mockingly.
She whistled as if for a dog, and I saw the black figure of the nurse
start from the shadow of the trees a few yards away, and, meeting, they
joined in the mist and merged swiftly into it.
Whereupon I mounted the mare, who was sorely tried by her long waiting;
and as we cantered homewards I was haunted, through the extraordinary
blaze of my triumphant thoughts, to my own exasperation and surprise,
oddly and unwillingly, by the arch sweetness of the maid of honour’s
smile.
And once (I blushed all alone in the darkness for the shame of such
a thought in my mind at such a moment) I caught myself picturing the
sweetness a man might find in pressing his lips upon the tantalising
dimple.
CHAPTER VI
THE night before my wedding-day—it was natural enough—there was a
restlessness upon me which would not let me sleep, or think of sleep.
When supper was over I bade my servants retire. They had thought
me cracked, and with reason, I believe, for the way in which I had
wandered about the house all day, moving and shifting and preparing,
and giving orders to no seeming purpose. I sat down in my uncle’s room,
and, drawing the chair he had died in opposite his portrait, I held a
strange conclave with (as I believed then) his ghost. I know now that
if any spirit communed with me that night it was my own evil angel.
I had had the light set where it best illuminated the well-known
countenance. At my elbow was a goodly bottle of his famous red wine.
“Na, old one,” said I aloud, leaning back in my chair in luxurious
self-satisfaction and proud complacency, “am I doing well for the
old name? Who knows if one day thou countest not kings among thy
descendants!”
Methought the old man grinned back at me, his hideous tusked grin.
“‘Tis well, Kerlchen,” he said.
I unrolled the pedigree. That cursed parchment, what a part it has
played in my life!—as evil a part, as fatal as the apple by which our
first parents fell. It is pride that damns us all! And I read aloud the
entries I had made: they sounded very well, and so my uncle thought—or
seemed to—for I swear he winked at me and said:
“Write it in ink, lad; that must stand clear, for das klingt schön.”
And then, though I was very comfortable, I had to get up and find the
ink and engross the noble record of my marriage, filling in the date
with care, for my uncle, dead or alive, was not one to disobey.
“‘Tis good,” then again said my uncle, “and thou dost well. But
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