A German Pompadour Part 37

'Madame, give yourself up peaceably, or I shall force my way in,' Roeder called to her; but she had gone from the window, and the house was shuttered, and with closed doors.

Then began the work of breaking into the manor of Freudenthal. Twenty soldiers hacked in the doors with axes, while the rest stood sentry keeping the Jews at bay, for the members of the Jewish settlement gathered round, eager to protect their friend; but they were unarmed, and the inherited submission of their oppressed race made them poor protectors. The soldiers poured into the house. Roeder was received before the Gravenitz's door by Madame de Sittmann. She implored him to spare her sister, who, she a.s.sured him, was really ill. The door leading from the Gravenitz's apartment was bolted from within. He knocked loudly, but there being no response, he summoned the soldiers to break it in.

With a crash the door yielded, falling inwards. And then he saw his quarry. She stood in the middle of the room, erect, vigorous, a very flame of hatred burning in her eyes. She was clad in the golden gown which she had donned in honour of joy's return; on her breast was the order of St. Hubertus, and the jewels of Wirtemberg gleamed on her neck and in her hair. Never had she looked more beautiful, more magnificent than in this hour of her defeat, and even Roeder stood silent and abashed before her.

'Well, Monsieur le Baron de Roeder,' she said, 'so you have defied me again? See here, I curse you; you have called me a witch, and you are cursed by me. It will not bring you happiness.'

'It is my duty, Madame,' he replied steadily. Her face changed.

'You are right, man; I grow petty in my old age. See, I forgive you.

Alas! my hour has struck.' She held out her hands towards him. 'Do not bind my wrists, I will come. It is useless to fight Fate. Ah, Roeder!

Roeder! whither are you dragging me?' Her potent charm was alive in every word. After all, it was a greater weapon than curses; she knew that, and used it now.

'I thank your Excellency for aiding me in my terrible task,' said Roeder huskily. 'Is there anything in which I may serve you before we start?'

'No, Monsieur, I am ready; only permit my maid Maria to accompany me, and to bring such things as are necessary for my comfort,' she said quietly.

'It is against his Highness's orders, Excellency,' he began; but she smiled at him, la grande charmeuse, and as usual she conquered.

Sadly the cortege left Freudenthal. Only once did the Gravenitz break down. As she pa.s.sed the orchard gate where Eberhard Ludwig had so often stood on summer evenings calling 'Philomele beloved,' she bent her head, and, sobbing bitterly, murmured: 'Change is Death.'

The fortress of Hohenasperg stands about half a league from Ludwigsburg.

In the midst of rich orchards this gaunt rock rises abruptly from the plain like some huge fist of a heathen G.o.d, threatening the peace of the fruitful land with sombre menace. From heathen days it was named Asperg, after the Aasen or Germanic G.o.ds, whose sacred mountain it was. Round this stronghold men fought for centuries: naked barbarians against Roman legions; rebellious knights of old against Imperial troops; Protestant generals against the armies of the Holy Roman Empire; later, Wirtembergers against the invading Frenchmen. Asperg, impregnable in war time, was a prison in times of peace; from its dark walls and giant ramparts escape was impossible for the prisoner. The very name of Asperg was a terror, its shape was awe-inspiring. And hither they brought Wilhelmine von Gravenitz on that smiling October afternoon. Slowly her coach rumbled up to the grim gate over which a sinister lion's head frowns down at those who enter this stern prison. The arms of Wirtemberg are emblazoned on each side of the lion's head, surmounted by that ducal crown for which the Gravenitz had made so audacious a struggle.

Her coach drew up before this gate and Roeder bade her descend. Here his charge ended, he had conveyed the Land-despoiler to durance vile. The governor of the prison met his prisoner at the gate. A bluff-mannered Wirtemberger, short of stature, red of visage, and with fiery little twinkling eyes beneath heavy, bristling eyebrows. A fierce bull-dog man he looked, but his appearance belied him; for he was a tender-hearted gentleman, and received his prisoner with a courteous consideration which many a polished courtier would not have offered to the fallen tyrant. Up the steep, dark, well-like road to the inner courtyard he led the Gravenitz, followed by Maria, who wept bitterly.

'I have orders to lodge you safely, Excellency. Safe you will be here, and I do not purpose to restrict your liberty greatly,' he said as he ushered her into a small chamber with a door leading on to the ramparts.

Two sentries stood on either side of the entrance to her apartment, but for the rest the room was clean and pleasant, and commanded a fair view of the plain beneath.

'I thank you, Monsieur, for your kindness,' she said, approaching the barred window. Then she gave a little cry, like to the moan of one wounded when a fresh agony is inflicted.

'Give me a cell, Monsieur--a dungeon; only not that--not that--if you have mercy in your heart!' she pointed tragically through the window. In the dying sunlight lay the great palace of Ludwigsburg, the rounded roofs, the terraces, and the Chateau Joyeux of La Favorite in the midst of flowering parterres.

'I regret, Madame, believe me. I regret infinitely, but I have not another apartment to offer you. Do not look from the window overmuch, Madame.' The old man's voice broke and he put out his strong rough hand to draw her away from the beautiful, peaceful view. But how inconsistent is the human heart! She waved him away, and stood as though rooted to the spot, her eyes fixed upon the scene of her pa.s.sed happiness.

At first the tumult in her heart shut out the peace which was silently waiting for admittance; the peace of seclusion bringing those calm thoughts which wait upon the fevered soul of man in Nature's vast aloofness. Gradually the beauty of the fruitful plain with its cornfields and rich orchards, the mystery of the far-off hills on the horizon, the poetry of the distant, dark-blue line of the forests, the song of the wind murmuring through those few trees which had sprung up on the fortress terraces and ramparts unabashed by warfare; gradually this peace came to the Gravenitz, and she grew calm. True, she agonised when her eyes fell upon Ludwigsburg, and she raged when the prison governor told her of the march of events in Stuttgart; but still she knew a greater peace, a more equable inner life than had been hers in the day of her power.

A commission waited upon her, demanding the rest.i.tution of the jewels of Wirtemberg. Some she had carried with her to Hohenasperg, some had been already found at Freudenthal. It cost her a pang to part with the jewels.

Had not Eberhard Ludwig given each one to her with a lover's vow, a pa.s.sionate word?

They demanded also that she should give up certain locks of his Highness's hair which she had unlawfully retained for purposes of detestable magic. She made answer that she had but one strand of his hair in a diamond locket. She said that she had worn this on her heart for twenty years. 'Is that magic, Messieurs?' she asked. Had they known it, they had indeed touched upon one of her sorceress secrets--the charm of a woman who can love a man with undying poetry and romance. They told her that she must give up this pathetic lock of hair, that she retained it to brew love potions and such abominations. They took it from her, leaving her the empty crystal locket with its encircling diamonds.

'How you fear me, Messieurs!' she said with a flash of her old defiance.

Then they left her with her empty locket and her empty life.

Yet her atonement was only beginning; 'the wages of sin is death,' and worse than death a long-drawn agony of humiliation and loneliness.

Abas.e.m.e.nt, shame, defeat, fear, inaction, loneliness, yearning--all these she had drunk in her cup of suffering, but in the dregs there remained one more drop of gall--jealousy.

Now, in the spring before she left Ludwigsburg, she had been annoyed by a rumour which had caused much commotion among the Wirtemberg peasants, and even the courtiers had been infected with a wave of superst.i.tious interest. In the house of Wirtemberg there is a legend which tells how Count Eberhard the Bearded, in humility and repentance of his youthful sins, made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem accompanied by twenty-four n.o.ble youths bound by sacred vows to purity and G.o.dly life. When Count Eberhard was praying before the Holy Sepulchre, of a sudden a withered whitethorn-tree quickened and blossomed in token of G.o.d's grace, and a priest in Eberhard's following prophesied that so long as the world lasted, this thorn-tree should flower whenever the n.o.ble race of Wirtemberg should bloom anew. Piously the pilgrims bore the thorn-tree back to their native land, and set it in a fair and sheltered spot near to the abode of a venerable hermit. Here Count Eberhard inst.i.tuted an order of prayerful monks, garbed in fair blue habits, and for many generations these holy men tended the thorn-tree, building giant supports beneath its spreading roots and vigorous branches. In Protestant days the poor thorn-tree was forgotten, save by the peasants who clung to their old legends and vowed that, whenever an heir was born to the house of Wirtemberg, the aged thorn put forth a flowering branch.

It happened that, shortly before the Gravenitz was banished from Ludwigsburg, Eberhard Ludwig, in the course of his wood wanderings, came to Einsiedel where stood the ruined monastery and the fateful thorn-tree.

An old peasant woman, who was gathering sticks for her fire in the deserted monastery garden, told him of the legend, and, pointing to the whitethorn, exclaimed: 'You who are a traveller, go to the palace and tell the Duke that the thorn has blossomed. Tell him to leave the wanton Land-despoiler, and go back to his true wife. G.o.d has caused the thorn to bloom anew in token of pardon, and there will be an heir born to Wirtemberg to take the place of the dying Erbprinz.' Now the Erbprinz was not dying when the old crone spoke these words, but Eberhard Ludwig, always feverishly anxious for his son's welfare, hurried back to Ludwigsburg in an agony of fear and related the peasant woman's prophecy, and the strange fact of that ancient thorn-tree putting forth a spray of white blossom. Her Excellency the Landhofmeisterin had been much offended by the story, and had mocked Serenissimus for his credulity.

Of course when, shortly after this event, Eberhard Ludwig repudiated his mistress and returned to his neglected d.u.c.h.ess, popular report immediately had it that the whitethorn had prophesied the happy occurrence, and that her Highness Johanna Elizabetha was to become a mother. This the Gravenitz had heard during her sojourn at Freudenthal, but it was in November at Asperg that she heard the d.u.c.h.ess was indeed with child. At first she vowed she did not believe it; it was an absurd story started by the believers in that ridiculous thorn-tree; but when the fact of her Highness's pregnancy could be doubted no longer, the Gravenitz fell into an agony of jealousy. She paced her small room like some tortured tigress; she cursed all men; she sobbed in a pa.s.sion of anger. Waking or sleeping the thought never left her. Her dreams were for ever of Eberhard Ludwig and the woman she hated. G.o.d, how she despised her! How she shuddered at the thought of her motherhood. She told herself that it was disgust, and even as she formulated the thought she knew that it was envy--cruel, aching envy which tortured her. She was jealous, then? She? The very supposition was an abas.e.m.e.nt. Could she be jealous of that dull, heavy woman, with her reddened eyes? But she would be the mother of his child. . . .

They told her that prayers for her Highness's safe delivery were offered up in all the churches in Wirtemberg, and that there was immense rejoicing in the land. There was no doubt then, and the Gravenitz's dreams were unending of the d.u.c.h.ess holding out a beautiful man-child to Eberhard Ludwig, who smiled in happiness and peace.

At length one day in December Maria told her that there were exciting rumours in the village which nestles at the base of the fortress rock of Hohenasperg. The d.u.c.h.ess was sick unto death, they said, and the doctors were entirely puzzled. Into the Gravenitz's heart there crept a ray of hope. G.o.d forgive her! she prayed for death to visit Stuttgart's castle.

Daily she sent Maria to the village to learn the news. One day the governor came to her and told her he had a terrible thing to communicate.

Good, honest man, he often spent an hour with his prisoner telling her news of the outer world.

'The d.u.c.h.ess has suffered a cruel disappointment, Madame,' he said; 'all Wirtemberg will condole with her. Her hopes are ended, the doctors have been mistaken, there will be no heir to the Dukedom. Her Highness suffers from dropsy. Great heavens! what ails you?' he cried, for the Gravenitz had flung herself back into her chair, convulsed in a horrible paroxysm of mirthless laughter.

The plain below Hohenasperg was white with snow--a light fall, which lay thinly on the even ground but had failed to whiten the fortress rock, where only patches clung, emphasising the sombre colour of the stone hill. The sky was leaden, lowering, sinister, pregnant with unborn snow.

A company of hors.e.m.e.n took its way up the steep road leading from the village of Asperg to the fortress. Following this cavalcade was a coach drawn by four horses. The Gravenitz, standing on the west terrace, watched the hors.e.m.e.n approach. She wondered idly if another State prisoner was being conveyed to Hohenasperg. She saw the leader of the troop parleying with the sentry. He showed a doc.u.ment to the man; then the outer gate swung back and the cavalcade was hidden from her sight between the gloomy walls of the steep, dark lane leading up to the second or inner gate. She turned away; after all, these things were of no account to her. That was one of her agonies; she to whom all things had mattered, the much occupied, the ruler, the indefatigable administrator--she was forced into lethargic quiescence. Every hour was empty for her. She turned away listlessly. The afternoon was drawing to a close. It would be a white world to-morrow, she reflected, for those swollen clouds could not hold the snow longer.

The prison governor was coming along the terrace towards her. She greeted him in friendly fas.h.i.+on; but at first he spoke no word, only took both her hands in his.

'I have bad news, Madame,' he said, after a pause.

'Ah! tell me; I am used to sadness now. What is it? O G.o.d! but it is not some accident to Serenissimus?' she said. The old man shook his head.

'No, Madame, but you are to be removed from my care. And I fear----' he began.

'Death? Would he dare? After all, perhaps, it were better,' she said calmly.

'No, not that; you are to be moved to Hohen-Urach. . . . Madame, they will try you for your life. Alas! his Highness believes you have cast a spell upon the d.u.c.h.ess and caused her misfortune. Asperg is too close to Stuttgart.'

She smiled at him. 'It does not signify, dear friend. One prison is like another, I suppose; but I shall miss my jailor! Let me thank you, Monsieur, for your great courtesy to the fallen Land-despoiler.' She spoke almost gaily, and the governor turned away his head.

'I would help you, Excellency; pray G.o.d I may be able to serve you one day,' he said huskily.

'Tell them I shall start to-morrow, when the snowstorm is over. I shall be prepared.'

'I regret--Excellency--In truth, I scarce know how to tell you--It is ordered that you shall travel to-day--immediately,' he said.

'A prisoner has no choice, Monsieur,' she answered bitterly.