A German Pompadour Part 25

When the courtiers' steps ceased to echo in the corridor, Wilhelmine drew a little golden key from her bosom and, approaching a panel in the antechamber wall on the first floor, fitted it into a keyhole which was artfully hidden in the intricacies of the inlaid design. She turned the lock and a small door flew open. She stepped through and found herself in the corridor of statues. Directly facing the hidden panel door she found another similar lock masked beneath the outstretched hand of one of the many plaster Amorini. Here again a small door sprang open beneath her touch, and she entered the Duke's sitting-room. Her entry, however, was further hidden by an arras of Gobelin tapestry fitted on a wooden part.i.tion running down one side of his Highness's room. At the end nearest the entrance to his sleeping-chamber, a small portion of this part.i.tion flew back upon touching a spring, and revealed a narrow doorway. Little wonder that both Eberhard Ludwig and Wilhelmine smiled when the Italian conducted them down and up the staircases and through innumerable rooms ere they reached the apartments of the Landhofmeisterin!

Serenissimus was standing at the window of his writing-room overlooking the courtyard. In his hand was a closely written page, and his face wore a look of distress and perplexity. He turned sharply when he heard Wilhelmine's step, and, flushing deeply, he crushed the paper into the breast of his coat. She was quick to note the movement, and the Duke's evident embarra.s.sment.

'A letter, Monseigneur, which you would hide from me?' she said. Like most women in illegitimate positions she was easily suspicious, and all letters, pet.i.tions, every sc.r.a.p of paper destined for her lover, were carried for inspection to the omnipotent Landhofmeisterin ere they were permitted to reach their destination.

'Yes, Madame, a letter from a private friend,' returned the Duke, his embarra.s.sment turning to anger.

'Ah! something not intended for me? I crave your Highness's forgiveness.

I came to say a word of my great happiness in being indeed installed in our House of Harmony,' she sneered bitterly, and turning, would have hurried back to her apartments; but Serenissimus followed her, and laying his hand on her arm drew her towards him.

'There are things in each life which can never be told. Beloved, there is a seal on my lips which honour has impressed with her fair image. I cannot tell you what is in this letter. Believe me, it is no pleasant thing that I hide from you; it would not make you happy to read these lines. Also, they are unimportant, for I do not heed them.'

She prayed him to tell her. How could she rest if she knew he had a thought apart from her? It gave her anxiety, she said, that it was something disagreeable. She used all her arts of attraction, of seduction, but he remained obdurate. Then she flamed into anger and left him with a bitter word.

To celebrate his Highness's entry into Ludwigsburg, a masked ball had been commanded to take place on the evening following the arrival of the court. The Duke and his mistress met at supper after the episode of the letter, but the Landhofmeisterin avoided his Highness's eye and seemed absorbed in conversation with Zollern. During the evening she played faro at her own table, and early took her leave, pleading that she was fatigued. On the morning of the masked ball his Highness attended a stag-hunt, and thus it fell out that he and Wilhelmine did not meet to discuss the vexed question of the letter.

The beautiful ballroom at Ludwigsburg was brilliantly illuminated by a thousand waxen tapers which burned in the huge crystal chandeliers. The Landhofmeisterin's own musicians discoursed rhythmical strains from the gallery, and a gay motley crowd moved on the inlaid polished floor. There were dominoes of every colour, bizarre, fantastic shapes; and somehow this masked a.s.semblage had a strangely sinister appearance, a mysterious lurking menace seemed to emanate from it.

The Landhofmeisterin was easily recognisable from her great height. For a moment she had contemplated dressing in man's clothes, but Serenissimus had dissuaded her. The Duke's domino was of 'Gravenitz yellow' of the same hue as that of the Landhofmeisterin. Madame de Ruth had refused to go masked.

'My old face is mask enough,' she said; and Zollern, delighted to escape the ordeal of a travesty, had declared he would keep his old friend company. So the two sat together and made merry over the grotesque appearance of the other guests.

At first, many had approached the undominoed couple and, under cover of carnival licence, some had ventured to say sharp things to the old courtesan, but each in turn retired discomfited before the sting of Madame de Ruth's quick wit. The Landhofmeisterin stood near to her friend. She felt strangely lonely in this disguised crowd, and Serenissimus held aloof from her. She saw him exchanging compliments with a light blue domino, from whose supple movements Wilhelmine guessed to be a young and graceful woman.

A sudden wave of jealous fear invaded the Landhofmeisterin's heart. And leaving her safe place behind Madame de Ruth and Zollern, she walked out into the crowd of revellers. Instantly several masks left the dancing, laughing, whirling main stream and approached the newcomer. 'Fair mask, come tread a measure!' 'Do you seek love or amus.e.m.e.nt here?' and many other meaningless absurdities were squeaked into her ear by some unwary ones who had not recognised the much-feared Landhofmeisterin in the tall yellow-clad figure. She shot a glance of contempt at her interlocutors and pushed past them. Of a sudden she was surrounded by a circle of red-garbed gnomes who danced round her. 'Let me pa.s.s, good people,' she said; and when they would not, she broke through the chain of their arms and hurried on. They would have followed, but a black mask caught the ringleader and whispered in his ear, and the laughing gnomes fell back murmuring together.

The Duke was still dallying with the blue domino; Wilhelmine saw him lead her to one of the windows which opened out on to the terraces. She followed swiftly, hardly hearing the comments and whispers of the revellers who took this occasion to convey insulting words to the hated woman. As she reached the window in whose balcony she knew her lover to be, she felt a hand on her arm. She turned angrily.

'What do you want? how dare you hinder me?' she said. It was a tall, thin domino who accosted her, entirely black, and with a skull and crossbones embroidered in white upon the breast. A startling figure, and to Wilhelmine's overwrought nerves it seemed to be the figure of Death come to s.n.a.t.c.h her life's glory and happiness from her in this her triumph of the completion of the palace.

'What do you want of me?' she said again, conquering her superst.i.tious fear.

'I would speak to you, Madame; I have a warning to give you.' The voice was deep and low, and after the squeaky tones which the revellers affected in order to disguise their natural voices, this man's ba.s.s notes sounded hollow and funereal.

'Speak then here,' she answered.

'No; my warning must be given to you where none can hear,' he responded; and once more laying his black-gloved hand on her arm, he drew her away from the window towards a door which led down a short flight of steps into the moonlit garden. Did the man mean murder? It flashed across Wilhelmine that she was going blindly into danger. She paused on the topmost step of the flight.

'I will go no further; speak now, or I leave you here.' Her voice was calm, though her hands were trembling a little.

'I am sent to tell you that your hour has come; that your ill-gotten power, your evil triumphs, are waning.' His voice was deep, sonorous, impressive.

'Who sends you?' she asked. Coming from the brilliantly lit rooms and the stir and noise of the ball, this sudden interlude in the still, moonlit garden, with the strange, sinister, black-robed figure, seemed to her like a dream.

'I am sent by one you have ruined, in the name of the many you have injured! and yet, in mercy, I bid you fly while there is time!' the stranger answered.

'Ah! Mercy? This is some absurd fiction; no one has mercy upon me,' she said bitterly.

'Yes, I have. I came to deliver my message, and yesterday I saw your entry into Ludwigsburg. I saw the peasants cruelly driven back by the soldiers' swords. I saw the great monument you have raised here to your shame, this mad, mock court of yours, and I hated you! but then I saw your youth, your beauty, and I vowed I would warn you, that you might carry this, your true wealth, to some atonement for your sins. I bid you fly; the Duke has information against you which must spell ruin for you--ruin and death.'

'You are mad,' she said quietly.

'No; I am not mad, unless compa.s.sion is madness.'

She drew off her mask, and, in the clear white moonlight, turned her face upon him--that strange, haunting face of hers, which Eberhard Ludwig said no man could forget.

'And so you had compa.s.sion because you saw me?' she laughed. 'Your mission is absurd, but I forgive you because some generous thought was yours even for the Gravenitzin.' She was all woman at that moment; the hard, cruel oppressor, the ruling Landhofmeisterin, was banished from her being, she was fascination incarnate.

'How beautiful you are--how beautiful----!' the black mask whispered.

'Tell me who you are,' she said, and smiled at him.

'An enemy who would turn friend, and more--if he looked too long at you,'

he answered slowly.

'Tell me your name,' she asked once more.

'No; my name you will never know, only I have warned you.'

'I thank you,' she said gravely, and gave him her hand. He bent and kissed it, and vanished into the shadow of the garden. She stood a moment looking after her unknown visitor. Ruin and death, he had said. She pondered on why this stranger should have warned her. Evidently an enemy with an evil plan against her, turned aside by some man's whim, some sudden mood caused by the sight of her beauty. Flight, he counselled, flight for her! No! she would battle to the last, but she would not neglect the unknown's warning. In a flash it came to her that this man was connected with the letter which the Duke had refused to communicate to her. She replaced her mask and returned to the ballroom. Still the same monotonous whirling crowd, the pattering feet of the dancers, the din of the music.

She searched for Serenissimus. He was standing with a group of masks at the lower end of the hall, and did not observe her. She made her way slowly through the crowd to the other side of the room, and slipped through the door into the ante-hall. Immediately two lackeys sprang forward to inquire her Excellency's pleasure. She waved them away and pa.s.sed onward, out to the terrace, and towards her pavilion. The sentry at her door saluted her, but she gained her own ante-hall without meeting any of her waiting men, even Maria was gaping in the crowd in the courtyard probably.

Wilhelmine paused a moment in her antechamber on the first floor. She listened attentively, and called Maria under her breath, but no answer came. Then she drew out the little key, approached the door leading to the statue gallery and opened it gently. The gallery was in darkness, save where a faint white radiance was reflected from the moonlit garden without, but that side of the palace lay in deep shadow. She crept on and groped for the lock beneath the plaster Amorino's hand. At first she could not find it, but after some moments she felt the tiny keyhole, and, fitting the key, she turned it and the door swung open. She glided in behind the arras, and found the spring which opened the part.i.tion. She listened; there was no sound from the room within. She pressed the spring, the tapestry door opened silently beneath her touch, and she pa.s.sed into the Duke's writing-closet. Here the moon shone full in, white and ghostly. Wilhelmine's mind flew back to that far-off night at Gustrow, when in the moonlight she had stolen the key from under her mother's pillow. How she had trembled! She had been a child in experience then, a very different being from the strong, self-confident woman she knew herself to be nowadays. And yet she trembled in the moonlit room as she had trembled then. What was that? The moonlight falling in sheeny silver through the window, seemed to her to take the shape of a tall, white woman's figure. She remembered the grim old legend of that Countess of Orlamunde, murderess of little children, who haunted all the palaces of her descendants. In the castle at Stuttgart, they said, the White Lady walked, her pale trailing garments streaked with blood. Could she wander here too in new, gorgeous Ludwigsburg? Almost Wilhelmine turned and fled, but the remembrance of her dire peril came to her. She looked bravely at the moonlight--there was no ghost there; it was only the Lady Moon, witch of the night, throwing her cold, false smiles through the cas.e.m.e.nt.

Wilhelmine went forward boldly. She must find the letter at any cost; its contents threatened her, and she must know.

The Duke's bureau was locked. She pressed the secret spring in vain. Was she doomed to be baffled, after all? She remembered that her own bureau was identical with his Highness's. Resolutely, with that patience which is born of hazardous undertakings, she glided away through the arras door, through the black gallery, and regained her apartments. She heard a movement in her sleeping-room, and Maria came to her.

'Your Excellency, pray forgive that I was not here.'

Even Maria must not know why she had left the ballroom, she thought.

'Go to Madame de Ruth's apartments. A black silk domino lies in the wardrobe; go, bring it to me. I would change my colour and play a merry jest upon some friends.' The maid departed. Now all was clear for some time, for Madame de Ruth's apartment lay at the far end of the east wing.

Swiftly she sought the key of her bureau; it was hidden in a secret drawer beneath the writing-desk. She took it, and pa.s.sed through the little door again. Once more she listened behind the arras; it seemed to her as if something moved. She paused, then gently reopened the tapestry door and peered in. The room lay silent, deserted, white and ghostly as before. She pa.s.sed in, and fitted her key into the bureau. The lock yielded and the bureau flew open. Letters, doc.u.ments, drawings, plans for hunting excursions--all the usual occupants of Eberhard Ludwig's bureau.

She could see enough in the moonlight. Ah! here a creased paper. She caught it up and examined it. Yes; this must be the thing she feared--four large pages filled with cramped characters. She looked more closely. Forstner's writing! She almost laughed. This, then, was what his Highness had hidden so scrupulously from her! Thanks to the unknown's warning, she had come on the track of her most deadly enemy. Had the black mask not spoken, she might have forgotten the letter. She closed the bureau carefully and stepped behind the arras, shutting the tapestry door carefully. She was now in perfect darkness. She groped along the wall to find the lock of the gallery door. Great G.o.d! what was that? A movement near her, an icy touch on her hand. The White Lady's death-grip!

and yet better that, she thought, than any human being's presence; better that than for any mortal to have seen her rifling the Duke's bureau. She sought wildly for the lock. At last she found it and slipped in the key.

As the door sprang open something pushed past her--a huge, black shape.

'Melac!' she called in a strained voice, and the powerful beast came to her and rubbed his cold nose upon her hand. Only the wolf-hound, then, who had been sleeping in the darkness behind the arras. She laughed when she remembered her ghastly fear of the White Lady's death-grip!

She regained her own room. Maria had not returned from Madame de Ruth's apartment. She kindled a light from her steel tinder-casket and set a waxen taper aglow. Then she began to read Forstner's letter.

'Monseigneur, my Prince, and once my friend! Though it has been your pleasure to discredit me, I cannot rest until I have let you know the truth. You are being grossly abused, your n.o.ble trust and love made mock of by a creature too vile for human words to describe. A woman, who to her other lovers holds you up to scorn and ridicule! yes, ridicule of your pa.s.sion, making mock, betraying the secrets of your bed. Besides, it is she who has the gulden which you accused me of purloining; she to whom half your revenues are carried, and you are doled out a paltry sum which, after all, you spend again upon this creature. You are weary of her, too; all your Dukedom knows that right well--weary of her, and you dare not dismiss her! The people laugh: your subjects, your friends, strangers, other princes, all Europe laughs. See her! observe her hideous faults, her foul blemishes of mind and body, her filthy actions!' Then followed the names of his rival lovers, and a list of the vast sums she had filched from the ducal treasury. All this set forth so cleverly, with such apparent proof, that she trembled as she read. There were official business transactions accurately quoted and put in such a light as to seem to be robberies. It was a dangerous letter for her--half truth, half falsehood, difficult to unravel, impossible to deny entirely. 'Honour binds you, you say,' the epistle continued. 'Ah! my Prince! you have a toy which has turned to a viper in your hand! Throw it from you! Other princes have done so, and the world has applauded. Take a fair and n.o.ble mistress, one younger, less rapacious. Consider this woman: already she grows gross; in a few years' time she will be a mountain of flesh; her eyes are dimming, her lips are paler, her teeth less white than they were when she came from her obscure home.'

Wilhelmine, in all the magnificence of her beauty, of her maturity, read thus far quietly; then, raging, she sprang to her feet.

'I could have forgiven you some of your insults, Forstner, but this is too much! By G.o.d! by G.o.d! you shall suffer! I swear it by my salvation!'