Monsieur Maurice Part 9

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 G.o.d! 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."

My father's shadow bent its head.

"And now, with your permission, I will go to my room."

My father rang the bell, and when Bertha came, bade her light the Count von Rettel to his chamber.

Hearing them leave the room, I opened the door very softly and hesitatingly, scarce knowing whether to come out or not. I saw my father standing with his back towards me and his face still turned in the direction by which they had gone out. I saw him throw up his clenched hands, and shake them wildly above his head.

"And it was for this!--for this!" he said fiercely. "A bribe! G.o.d of Heaven! He offered me Konigsberg as a bribe! Oh, that I should have lived to be treated as an a.s.sa.s.sin!"

His voice broke into hoa.r.s.e sobs. He dropped into a chair--he covered his face with his hands.

He had forgotten that I was in the next room, and now I dared not remind him of my presence. His emotion terrified me. It was the first time I had seen a man shed tears; and this alone, let the man be whom he might, would have seemed terrible to me at any time. How much more terrible when those tears were tears of outraged honour, and when the man who shed them was my father!

I trembled from head to foot. I had an instinctive feeling that I ought not to look upon his agony. I shrank back--closed the door--held my breath, and waited.

Presently the sound of sobbing ceased. Then he sighed heavily twice or thrice--got up abruptly--threw a couple of logs on the fire, and left the room. The next moment I heard him unlock the door under the stairs, and go into the cellar. I seized the opportunity to escape, and stole up to my own room as rapidly and noiselessly as my trembling knees would carry me.

I had my supper with Bertha that evening, and the Count ate at my father's table; but I afterwards learned that, though the Governor of Bruhl himself waited ceremoniously upon his guest and served him with his best, he neither broke bread nor drank wine with him.

I saw that unwelcome guest no more. I heard his voice under the window, and the clatter of his horse's hoofs as he rode away in the early morning; but that was long enough before Bertha came to call me.

10

Weeks went by. Spring warmed, and ripened, and blossomed into Summer.

Gardens and terraces were ablaze once more with many-coloured flowers; fountains played and sparkled in the sunshine; and travellers bound for Cologne or Bonn put up again at Bruhl in the midst of the day's journey, to bait their horses and see the Chateau on their way.

For in these years just following the Peace of Paris, the Continent was overrun by travellers, two thirds of whom were English. The diligence--the great, top-heavy, lumbering diligence of fifty years ago--used then to come lurching and thundering down the main street five times a week throughout the Summer season; and as many as three and four travelling carriages a day would pa.s.s through in fine weather. The landlord of the "Lion d'Or" kept fifty horses in his stables in those days, and drove a thriving trade.

So the Summer came, and brought the stir of outer life into the precincts of our sleepy Chateau; but brought no better change in the fortunes of Monsieur Maurice. Ever since that fatal night, the terms of his imprisonment had been more rigorous than ever. Till then, he might, if he would, walk twice a week in the grounds with a soldier at his heels; but now he was placed in strict confinement in his own two rooms, with one sentry always pacing the corridor outside his door, and another under his windows. And across each of those windows might now be seen a couple of bright new iron bars, thick as a man's wrist, forged and fixed there by the village blacksmith.

I have no words to tell how the sight of those bars revolted me. If instead of being a little helpless girl, I had been a man like my father, and a servant of the State, I think they would have made a rebel of me.

Worse, however, than iron bars, locked doors, and guarded corridors, was Hartmann--Herr Ludwig Hartmann, as he was styled in the despatch that announced his coming--a pale, slight, silent man, with colourless grey eyes and white eyelashes, who came direct from Berlin about a month later, to act as Monsieur Maurice's "personal attendant." Stealthy, watchful, secret, civil, he established himself in a room adjoining the prisoner's apartment, and was as much at home in the course of a couple of hours as if he had been settled there from the first.

He brought with him a paper of instructions, and, having on his arrival submitted these instructions to my father, he at once took up a certain routine of duties that never varied. He brushed Monsieur Maurice's clothes, waited upon him at table, attended him in his bed-room, was always within hearing, always on the alert, and haunted the prisoner like his shadow. Not even a housemaid could go in to sweep but he was present. Now the man's perpetual presence was intolerable to Monsieur Maurice. He had borne all else with patience, but this last tyranny was more than he could endure without murmuring. He appealed to my father; but my father, though Governor of Bruhl, was powerless to help him. Hartmann had presented his instructions as a minister presents his credentials, and those instructions emanated from Berlin. So the new-comer, valet, gaoler, spy as he was, became an established fact, and was detested throughout the Chateau--by no one more heartily than myself.

I still, however, saw Monsieur Maurice now and then. My father often took me with him in his rounds, and always when he visited his prisoner.

Sometimes, too, he would leave me for an hour with my friend, and call for me again on his way back; so that we were not wholly parted even now. But Hartmann took care never to leave us alone. Before my father's footsteps were out of hearing, he would be in the room; silent, un.o.btrusive, perfectly civil, but watchful as a lynx. We could not talk before him freely. Nothing was as it used to be. It was better than total banishments; it was better than never hearing his voice; but the constraint was hard to bear, and the pain of these meetings was almost greater than the pleasure.

And now, as I approach that part of my narrative which possesses the deepest interest for myself, I hesitate--hesitate and draw back before the great mystery in which it is involved. I ask myself what interpretation the world will put upon facts for which I can vouch; upon events which I myself witnessed? I cannot prove those events. They happened over fifty years ago; but they are as vividly present to my memory as if they had taken place yesterday. I can only relate them in their order, knowing them to be true, and leaving each reader to judge of them according to his convictions.

It was about the middle of the second week in June. Hartmann had been about six weeks at Bruhl, and all was going on in the usual dull routine, when that routine was suddenly broken by the arrival of three mounted dragoons--an officer and two privates--whose errand, whatever it might be, had the effect of throwing the whole establishment into sudden and unwonted confusion.

I was out in the grounds when they arrived, and came back at midday to find no dinner on the table, no cook in the kitchen; but a full-dress parade going on in the courtyard, and all the interior of the Chateau in a state of wild commotion. Here were peasants bringing in wood, gardeners laden with vegetables and flowers, women running to and fro with baskets full of linen, and all to the accompaniment of such a hammering, bell-ringing, and clattering of tongues as I had never heard before.

I stood bewildered, not knowing what to do, or where to go.

"What is the matter? What has happened? What are you doing?" I asked, first of one and then of another; but they were all too busy to answer.

"Ach, lieber Gott!" said one, "I've no time for talking!"

"Don't ask me, little Fraulein," said another. "I have eight windows to clean up yonder, and only one pair of hands to do them with!"

"If you want to know what is to do," said a third impatiently, "you had better come and see."

The head-gardener's son came by with two pots of magnificent geraniums, one under each arm.

"Where are you going with those flowers, Wilhelm?" I asked, running after him.

"They are for the state salon, Fraulein Gretchen," he replied, and hurried on.

For the state salon! I ran round to the side of the grand entrance. There were soldiers putting up banners in the hall; others helping to carry furniture up stairs; carpenters with ladders; women with brooms and brushes; and Corporal Fritz bustling hither and thither, giving orders, and seeing after everything.

"But Corporal Fritz!" I exclaimed, "what are all these people about?"

"We are preparing the state apartments, dear little Fraulein," replied Corporal Fritz, rubbing his hands with an air of great enjoyment.