The Pride of Jennico 7

The Pride of Jennico 7

As we neared the coach, a tall woman all in black, with a black shawl

over her black hair, jet-black eyes, staring blankly out of a swarthy

face, descended from it. She looked altogether so dark and forbidding

a vision that I gave a start when I saw her thus unexpectedly. She

seemed a sort of blot on the whole smiling, sunny landscape. But as

Mademoiselle Ottilie drew near, the woman turned to her, her whole face

breaking pleasantly into a very eloquence of silent, eager love.

 

Of course I guessed at once that this was the nurse to whom the saucy

maiden had already referred. I heard them whisper to each other (and

it seemed to me as if the woman were remonstrating with her mistress)

while I installed the Princess on her cushions. Then both rejoined us

to enter the carriage likewise. Before she jumped in, Mademoiselle

Ottilie tapped her nurse on the shoulder with the sort of indifferent,

kind little pat one would bestow on a dog. The woman caught the

careless hand and kissed it, and her eyes as she looked after the

girl’s figure were absolutely adoring; but her whole countenance again

clouded over strangely when her glance fell upon us. At length they all

three were seated, and my graceful retirement was clearly expected. But

still I lingered.

 

“The vintage had begun in my vineyards,” quoth I hesitatingly; “if her

Highness would honour me by coming again upon my lands, the sight might

interest her.”

 

The Princess hesitated, and then, evidently doubtful as to the

propriety of the step, threw a questioning glance at her companion.

 

“But certainly,” said the latter instantly, “why not accept? Your

Highness has been advised to keep in the open air as much as possible,

and your Highness has likewise been recommended innocent diversion:

nothing could be better. When shall we say?”

 

“If to-morrow would suit,” I suggested boldly, “I could ride over after

noon, if her Highness would permit me to be her escort. And perhaps she

will also further honour me by accepting some slight refreshment at my

castle. It is worth seeing,” I said, for I saw no reason why I should

be bashful in pushing my advantages, “if your Highness is not afraid

to enter Le Château des Fous?” I ventured to look deep into her eyes

as I spoke, and I remember how those eyes wavered shyly from my gaze,

and how the white lids fell over them. And I remember, too, with what a

sudden mad exultation leaped my heart.

 

But, as before, it was the lady-in-waiting who answered.

 

“Afraid! who is afraid? Your Highness, will you not comfort the poor

young man and tell him you are not afraid?”

 

“If your Highness would deign,” said I, pleadingly, and leaning forward

into the carriage.

 

And then she looked at me, and said to me in the sweetest guttural in

all the world, “No, I am not afraid.”

 

We were speaking French. I bowed low, fearing to spoil it all by

another word. The Princess stretched out her hand and I kissed the

back of her glove, and then I had the privilege of also kissing Miss

Ottilie’s sunburnt, scratched, and rather grimy bare little paw, which

she, with affected dignity, thrust forward for my salute.

 

The carriage drove away, and as it went I mind me how the nurse looked

after me with a darkling anxiety, and also how as I stalked homewards

through the evening glow, with my body-guard tramping steadily behind

me, I kept recalling the sound of the four gracious words with which

the Princess had consented to accept of my hospitality.

 

She had said, it is true, “_Che n’ai bas beur_,” but none the less was

the memory a delicate delight to my heart the whole night through.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER IV

 

 

I HAD questioned János on our homeward way concerning my new

acquaintances; but the fellow was so ill-disposed by nature to external

gossip, so wholly occupied with the minute fulfilment of his daily

task, which was to watch over the well-being and safety of his master,

that he had gathered no acquaintance with affairs outside his province.

With the head factor, however, whom I sent for immediately after

supper, I was more fortunate. This man, Karl Schultz, is Saxon-born,

and consequently one of the few of my numerous dependants with whom I

can hold converse here. It was but natural that among the peasantry

the advent of strangers, evidently of wealth and distinction, should

have created some stir, and it is Schultz’s business, among many other

things, to know what the peasantry talk about; although in this more

contented part of the world this sort of knowledge is not of such

importance as among our neighbours the Poles. Schultz, therefore, was

aware of the arrival of the ladies, likewise of the rumour of smallpox,

which had, so he informed me, not only driven all the servants out of

the Castle of Schreckendorf, but spread something like a panic over the

country-side. Tidings had also come to his ears that two gentlemen—one

of them suffering from the dreadful malady (doubtless the poor

Chamberlain)—had been abandoned in their carriage by their postillions

and servants at the small village of Kittlitz, some forty miles from

here, just over the Lusatian border. He corroborated, in fact, greatly

to my joy, all that I had been told; for I had had an uneasy fear

upon me, now and again, as I marched home in the evening chill, that

I had been too ready to lend credence to a romantic and improbable

story. But, better than all, Schultz, having felt a special curiosity

concerning visitors from his own country, had, despite the attempt to

keep the matter secret, contrived to satisfy himself to the full as to

their identity. And thus did I, to my no small triumph, from the first

day easily penetrate the ill-guarded incognita.

 

The beautiful wandering Princess was the only daughter of the old

reigning house of Lausitz-Rothenburg; and it was from Georgenbrunn,

where she had been on a visit to her aunt the Dowager Duchess of

Saxony, that the second outbreak of the epidemic had driven her to

take refuge with the Countess Schreckendorf in our neighbourhood.

 

Vastly satisfied with my discovery, and not a little fluttered by the

impending honour, I made elaborate preparations the next day against

the coming of such guests. We rifled the gardens, the greenhouses, and

the storerooms, and contrived a collation the elegance of which taxed

our resources to the uttermost.

 

Not in peasant garb did I start at noon upon my romantic quest, but

in my finest riding suit of mulberry cloth embroidered with green and

silver, (of what good auguries did I not think when I remembered that

green and white were actually the colours of the Maison de Lusace, and

that in this discreet manner I could wear on my sleeve the mark of a

delicate homage?), ruffles of finest Mechlin fluttered on my throat and

wrists, and a hat of the very latest cock was disposed jauntily at the

exact angle prescribed by the Vienna mode.

 

With my trim fellows behind me, and with as perfect a piece of

horseflesh between my knees as the Emperor himself could ever hope to

bestride, I set out in high delight and anticipation.

 

Now, on this freezing winter’s night, when I look back upon those

days and the days that followed, it seems to me as though it were all

a dream. The past events are wrapped to memory in a kind of haze,

out of which certain hours marked above the rest stand out alone in

clearness.—That particular day stands forth perhaps the clearest of

all.

 

I remember that the Princess Ottilie looked even more queenly to my

mind than at first, with her fair hair powdered and a patch upon the

satin whiteness of her chin. In the complacency of my young man’s

vanity, I was exceedingly elated that she should have considered

it worth while to adorn herself for me. I remember, too, that the

lady-in-waiting examined me critically, and cast a look of approval

upon my altered appearance; that she spoke less and that her mistress

spoke more than upon our first meeting; that even the presence, mute,

dark, and scowling, of their female attendant could not spoil the

pleasure of our intercourse.

 

In the vineyards, it is true, an incident occurred which for a moment

threatened to mar my perfect satisfaction. The peasant girls—it is the

custom of the country on the appearance of strangers in the midst of

their work—gathered round each lady, surrounding her in wild dancing

bands, threatening in song to load her shoulders with a heavy hodful

of grapes unless she paid a ransom. It was of course most unseemly,

considering the quality of the company I was entertaining, and I had

not foreseen the possibility of such a breach of respect. Never before,

it was evident, in the delicately nurtured life of the Princess, had

such rough amusement been allowed to approach her. This being the

case, it was not astonishing that the admirable composure of her usual

attitude should break down—her dignity give way to the emotion of

fear. She called—nay, she screamed—to me for help. The while her

pert lady-in-waiting, no whit abashed, laughed back at her circle of

grinning sunburnt prancers, threw mocking good-humoured gibes at them

in German, and finally was sharp enough to draw her purse and pay

for her footing, crying out to her mistress to do the same. But the

latter was in no state to listen to advice, and, alas! I found myself

powerless to deliver the distressed lady. In my ignorance of their

language I could do nothing short of use brute force to control my

savages, who were after all (it seems) but acting in good faith upon an

old-established privilege. So I was fain, in my turn, to summon Schultz

to the rescue from a distant part of the ground. He, practical fellow,

made no bones about the matter; with a bellow and a knowing whirl of

his cane every stroke of which told with a dull thwack, he promptly

dispersed the indiscreet merrymakers.

 

I suppose it is my English blood that rises within me at the sight of

a woman struck. Upon the impulse of the first moment I had well-nigh

wrenched the staff from his hands and laid it about his shoulders;

but fortunately, on second thought, I had wisdom enough to refrain

from an act which would have been so fatal to all future discipline.

Nevertheless, as I stood by, a passive spectator of it, the blood

mounted, for very shame, to my cheek, and I felt myself degraded to the