Complete works of a e w.., p.696
Complete Works of a E W Mason, page 696
“I must give him time,” he argued. “An interval between the first arrival and the second is part of the plan. I must find him in his secret place.”
In a little while he went to his door. Two soldiers of the Duke’s guard were waiting outside it.
“Ludwig Holtz,” said Bernstorff.
“Here, Excellency.”
“Heinrich Muller.”
“Here, Excellency.”
Bernstorff looked them over and was satisfied. Both men were middle-aged, strong, loyal, stupid.
“What you see and what you hear tonight, you must have forgotten tomorrow. You must never speak a word of it to your wives nor to your children,” he said.
“It is understood,” both men replied.
“Good! Now follow me quietly.”
He led them by corridors round the Court to that passage from which his green bird had flitted.
“Now quickly and quietly,” he said and a moment afterwards they were within the chapel door, the three of them. Bernstorff closed the door with his own hands. There was not the whine of a hinge, not a rattle of the latch. He whispered to Ludwig Holtz:
“Stand on guard here! Let no one enter or go out, whosoever it may be. On your life be it!”
Straight in front of him a flight of steps rose to a narrow gallery behind the Duke’s private pew. To his right an arch led on to the floor of the chapel.
Bernstorff with a gesture ordered Muller to wait where he stood and crept on tiptoe under the arch. He was looking now into a small sanctuary as exquisite as a gem chiselled by a Cellini. Its vaulted roof was starred with gold, and the artists of the Netherlands in the meridian of their splendour had decorated its walls. Imaginary portraits at half-length of the Saviour and his Disciples, the Apostles and the Prophets were carved in stone under the galleries and, separating each portrait from its neighbour, were angels playing upon different instruments of music. Below them again were pictures painted upon wood in glowing colours of green and grey, blue and gold, of scenes from the Testaments, the Flood, the struggle of the church to live, the Sins and Virtues, the Last Judgment.
Over the communion table — the doctrine of Celle was Lutheran — hung a great triptych by Merten de Vos representing the Crucifixion in the centre piece, and Duke William the Younger with Celle as the background in one panel and his wife Dorothea of Denmark with the Castle of Copenhagen behind her in the other. Placed high up in the left hand corner so as not to break the symmetry of the building was the organ and on the right-hand side in a diagonal line with Bernstorff stood the pulpit, a work of the early Renaissance, all of it from the scroll work of leaves about the rostrum to the Renaissance Masks on its single pillar carved out of one block of white stone. It was in this pulpit that Bernstorff had suffered so dismally from the cramp in his legs when he was listening to the ingenuous dreams of the young lovers.
There was no sign, however, of either of them in the chapel this evening. But Bernstorff only smiled. The Duke’s private pew was to the left above his head — a great opera box rather than a pew, shut apart by a row of small latticed casements from the rest of the chapel. Two or three of these casements stood open, but no one at that vantage could see the arch under which Bernstorff stood, without leaning out, and no one was leaning out.
But he had his green bird safe in his net. There was not a mesh which would let him through again, until the fowler so willed it. He crept back to the main door where the narrow staircase mounted to a corridor behind the Duke’s box. Beckoning Muller to follow him, Bernstorff went up the stairs as silently as a cat. He stationed Muller at the head of the staircase and stole along by himself to the door. He opened it quickly but without violence, and tasted at once a keen new pleasure.
Philip Königsmark started forward, his lips parted, his heart in his eyes, his hands stretched eagerly out. But at the sight of Bernstorff he stopped with a gasp. The joy died out of him, and then slowly there spread over his face a look of terror, and his knees shook. Never in his life before had Bernstorff seen anyone afraid of him. His pleasure was sharp, and all the sharper because the one afraid was this gay young spark with the fine clothes and the great name and the delicate breeding.
Bernstorff passed his tongue over his lips.
“I am not the friend whom Count Königsmark expected,” he said smoothly, but the boy had recovered his poise.
“I expected no friend, Your Excellency,” he said in a quiet grave voice.
“Indeed?” cried Bernstorff ironically. “I interrupt your devotions, then? So much piety in so pretty a youth — admirable — admirable.” He paused, but no reply came, no, not so much as a look of disdain for the clumsiness of his pleasantry.
“At the same time, modesty should go with worship. You choose for your orisons that part of the church which is reserved for His Highness and His Highness’s family. What have you to say to that, my young gentleman?”
Again the sarcasm broke in fragments against the wall of the boy’s quiet gravity.
“I have no right to be here, sir,” Philip Königsmark agreed.
Bernstorff was making no progress in this style of attack. Even to himself the banter sounded crude, unworthy of his office and quite unhelpful into the bargain. He was all the more wrathful with the boy who withstood him.
“Let us have done with this quibbling,” he cried in a rage, though who was quibbling except himself, not his greatest sycophant could have discovered. “Every night you come secretly to this chapel at six o’clock. Every night you wait hidden in this little room for half an hour—”
Did he see the boy flinch? The shadows were gathering in the shrine of grey and green and gold beyond the casements. Within the casements twilight had already fallen.
“And after half an hour—” Bernstorff continued only to be interrupted by a loud passionate cry.
“No! No!”
“And after half an hour, another step falls ever so lightly on the stone floor below, and the tryst is kept,” the Chancellor insisted.
Königsmark’s hands fell to his side. He had been watched, then! These secret meetings, so treasured, so sacred, which made a long summer’s day no more than an attribute of one wondrous hour, had been spied upon, talked of! He had a feeling that some very precious and delicate thing had been soiled by a touch from which it would never get clean.
“Whatever blame there is, is mine alone—” Philip began, and Bernstorff broke in upon him, savagely: “Whatever blame!”
For a moment there was silence, and then Philip resumed.
“I do not wish to make light of it. I only claim that from beginning to end it is mine.”
Philip Königsmark spoke quite simply, meaning each word. He was a year older than Sophia Dorothea. If he could not stifle the passion which the sight of her, the sound of her lovely voice, the chance touch of her hand, the mockery of her high spirits and quick wit awakened in him, he should at all events have been able to conceal it. He reasoned like the boy he was, but very solemnly and seriously. He was by a year the elder of the two, and the year condemned him. But in truth neither of the two could have fixed on the moment when the barriers fell down. Neither could have told who spoke the first trembling word, and who the second. A miracle happened. The world turned gold. They fell into step upon a magic path.
“The crime is treason,” said Bernstorff bluntly; and in spite of his efforts to hold himself with dignity, the boy in front of him shivered.
“Treason?” he asked, with a quick indraw of his breath.
“Of course,” said Bernstorff, with a testy impatience that anyone could be so stupid as to doubt a fact so evident. The blood of reigning Dukes was sacred, a fountain to be guarded like the spring of Egeria with rites and punishments. Treason it was for any youth of lesser rank to profane it; and the penalties of treason were savage and secret.
“You will not be seen again in Celle,” Bernstorff continued. “When the Castle is all asleep you will be — removed. Until then you will remain a prisoner here.”
What did they mean to do with him? They were sinister and alarming words which the Chancellor had used. He, Philip Christopher Königsmark, was not to be seen again in Celle. Or — anywhere else? He asked himself. He was to be removed in the dead of night. To a prison? Philip saw his life dragging hopelessly along in some dark cell until his name was forgotten even by his gaolers. But he managed to answer, though his lips were dry and his voice quavered as he answered: “I shall not try to escape.”
Gottlieb Bernstorff laughed harshly and suddenly.
“I prefer to make sure of that.”
Philip had been standing before the Chancellor with his eyes upon the floor of the gallery. But the utter contempt with which the words were spoken stung him to anger. His cheeks flamed. He looked up with a passionate reply upon his lips. But the reply was not delivered. As his eyes rested on Bernstorff’s hand, he stood for a moment paralysed and dumb. Then he gave a cry of utter terror and his hand flew up to his throat.
“You can’t mean that!” he whispered. “His Highness has never ordered it. Take me to him! It can’t be.”
As if to answer him, the door was thrown open and the soldier Muller strode into the room.
“I am wanted?” he asked.
Bernstorff did not for a second take his eyes from Philip Königsmark. “Wait!” he said, and the soldier stood at attention by the doorway, mute, the most frightening thing in the world, a living machine, stupid, powerful, and ready without a question to obey.
Bernstorff, with a smile upon his lips, was holding in his hands a thin strong cord with a slipknot at one end of it. Whilst he watched Philip, he passed the one end through the knot at the other end and, holding it up, but not too obviously and rather as though he sought to assure himself that the loop would easily slip down, and the circle of cord tighten and contract about a slim young neck, he let the slipknot fall down the cord. Bernstorff was not as yet very clever as a master of irony. His sarcasm was crude as yet — uncouth, he admitted it. But he could at all events frighten a boy. And tomorrow he would learn to frighten a man. And from that fear would spring authority, power and, at the end of it, land — acres of it, great possessions, and titles to match. Meanwhile here was the frightened boy to be still more frightened. Amusing!
He saw Philip Königsmark’s eyes following the downward slip of the looped end and the contraction of the cord. Oh yes, the old secret punishment learnt from the seraglios of Constantinople — not at all unknown in the prisons of Europe when importunate offenders must be suppressed. Bernstorff let the loop slide very slowly down. Philip might clutch at his throat and feel the blood of his arteries pulsing there strongly, but his eyes followed the descending loop, full of terror, full of horror. He might try to comfort himself with the feel of the great bow of his cravat. But through cambric and lace, the cord would bite, the eyes would start from the head, the tongue, bitten through in agony, would project beyond the lips, the face would lose its beauty, would become black, ugly, horrible. Bernstorff had this much sense of power, at the moment. He knew that the boy before him was not only watching with staring eyes the contraction of the cord. He was feeling just what Bernstorff was projecting into his mind. He was taking into his consciousness the pictures of sheer physical pain which Bernstorff was imagining. Philip was being strangled, all alone here, helpless as a child — and suddenly Philip’s legs gave way beneath him and he fell forward on his knees.
Sheer weakness? Or a boy’s cowardice? An equal share of both perhaps, but Philip winced ever afterwards to remember the degradation of that moment. He tried to pretend that he had come to his knees through a mere slip or stumble and that once upon them the very subservience of his position had somehow outwitted him into accepting it, so that he remained on his knees. But in that attitude he had pleaded — oh most humbly — for his life, in words which were broken with sobs and the taste of them was years afterwards bitter in his mouth. The recollection of them would come back to him at odd moments when he waked in the night or sat idly by his fire. He heard them, he saw himself in his fine dress and ignoble pose and writhed in shame and raged against the world. But the words were spoken in a stumbling haste.
“I am too young!... I’ve hardly lived... I have done nothing which death should punish... A few foolish pledges made, a few foolish dreams exchanged... A few half hours side by side, here, in this quiet chapel... The string about the throat for that... You can’t be so cruel.”
It was all heady wine to Bernstorff, the unconsidered Councillor of yesterday. No one had ever been afraid of him. He had wielded no authority. What had he been? A clerk — at the best for a few hours a deputy. He felt his heart warm and his blood flow dancing through his veins. He could have listened for an hour, but all joys must end, and there was still work to do that night. As Philip stretched out his hands in a despairing appeal, he slipped the noose over them. The boy recoiled as though a snake had stung him, and Bernstorff’s voice rang out above his head.
“Keep still!”
And Philip Königsmark dared not move again. Bernstorff turned back with a delicate slow deliberation the lace ruffles which edged the sleeves of the green coat and, drawing the loop tight till the thin cord sank into the flesh of Philip’s wrists, he bound the hands palm to palm so that they were the hands of a Saint in prayer.
“Now stand up!”
Philip rose unsteadily and stood swaying. If any thought of resistance had lingered in his mind, it had gone from him now. He was as helpless as a sheep. Bernstorff took the lad by the elbow and led him a few paces to a chair. Philip did not struggle. He was a little dazed. Terror had so numbed him that he was obedient to a touch. Bernstorff pushed him down upon a chair. He took a second cord from his pocket. He stooped, crossed the boy’s ankles and tied them together and then bound them securely back to the cross-bar of the chair.
“So!” he said, panting a little with the violence of his actions, as he straightened his back, “we have our fine young peregrine upon the jess; though upon my word, the peregrine has no more spirit than a pigeon. There and thus you will stay, Philip Christopher, Count Königsmark, until such time as those great ones whom you have wronged have decided on your punishment.”
He knew — none better knew — the plain and simple way which the easy-going George William had chosen to end this embarrassment. But, to his thinking, there was no reason why Philip Christopher should know it before he must. Nay, an extra twinge or two would be no more than he deserved. “I leave you to your devotions,” he added. “You have great need of them. But I warn you. If you raise a cry, no one except ourselves will hear you. But we shall. Come Muller!”
He led the way out of that enclosed and private gallery. He shut the door upon his prisoner and turned the key in the lock. Philip heard the feet of Bernstorff and the soldier trample on the stone steps of the stair. In a moment the clang of the outer door range through the chapel and in that lock too, the great key rattled as it turned. What did it matter, he wondered, whether they locked the door or not? He could not move and no one in all Celle would come to ease his plight. The chapel was a silent as a tomb. The shadows were gathering over the chancel floor like a congregation of ghosts. In the enclosed gallery with its leaded casements it was already night.
IV. A NIGHT OF TERROR
PHILIP SAT IN his chair, his shoulders drooping, his head bowed and the heavy curls of his hair tumbling about his face. He was to vanish from Celle. He was to be disposed of when the Castle was asleep. How? He could hear Bernstorff’s icy voice framing that enigmatic and appalling phrase. Disposed of! One disposed of things — not living people. Dead bodies were things — and Philip shivered.
He had been wrong, of course, in believing that Bernstorff and his man-at-arms were to execute judgment upon him, then and there. “They wouldn’t strangle me in the Castle Chapel,” he whispered to himself. But there was little comfort in that assurance. Terror was still at his elbow. He had only anticipated his punishment, dying twice, in the way of cowards.
“Bernstorff was playing with me, cat and mouse,” he continued. “But the mouse dies in the end — and perhaps more easily than I shall,” and his heart melted within him, and the very spasm of death keeked aloud in his throat. At the sound he raised his head with a jerk.
“I shall kill myself with fear,” he thought, and he called upon his recollections of his strength, his memories of the ardent vitality, which only this morning — was it possible? — throbbed within his young body from his head to his feet.
“It will only be prison — prison for perhaps a little while,” he argued and, while he argued, he girded at the slavish contentment which the argument brought to him. But to such a pass he had come that he could not banish the contentment.
“I want to live,” he said. “I want to go on living — even in prison, if that’s the price of living.” He tried to evoke before his eyes a portrait of the Duke, kindly, easy-going, indulgent — as he had known him through his few months of service. But he couldn’t. His wits were all astray. He could only see a red, gross, swollen face glowering at him, dark with a mortal hurt to his pride of birth. And if he sought hope in an image of Duchess Eleonore, he found it an image of stone with a pair of living eyes in which hatred burned. The very tenderness with which they had dwelt upon her daughter, smiled upon her joys and softened with her sorrows, was a measure to Philip now of the horror and bitter enmity in which she must hold him.
He made a despairing movement and a little cry of sheer pain broke from him. The thin cords round his wrists and ankles so wrenched and tortured him that he almost swooned.
