Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (77 page)

‘And you can put these troubles of the state,’ the Countess cried, ‘to weigh with a man’s love?’

‘Madame von Rosen, these troubles are affairs of life and death to many; to the Prince, and perhaps even to yourself, among the number,’ replied the Princess, with dignity.  ‘I have learned, madam, although still so young, in a hard school, that my own feelings must everywhere come last.’

‘O callow innocence!’ exclaimed the other.  ‘Is it possible you do not know, or do not suspect, the intrigue in which you move?  I find it in my heart to pity you!  We are both women after all — poor girl, poor girl! — and who is born a woman is born a fool.  And though I hate all women — come, for the common folly, I forgive you.  Your Highness’ — she dropped a deep stage curtsey and resumed her fan — ’I am going to insult you, to betray one who is called my lover, and if it pleases you to use the power I now put unreservedly into your hands, to ruin my dear self.  O what a French comedy!  You betray, I betray, they betray.  It is now my cue.  The letter, yes.  Behold the letter, madam, its seal unbroken as I found it by my bed this morning; for I was out of humour, and I get many, too many, of these favours.  For your own sake, for the sake of my Prince Charming, for the sake of this great principality that sits so heavy on your conscience, open it and read!’

‘Am I to understand,’ inquired the Princess, ‘that this letter in any way regards me?’

‘You see I have not opened it,’ replied von Rosen; ‘but ‘tis mine, and I beg you to experiment.’

‘I cannot look at it till you have,’ returned Seraphina, very seriously.  ‘There may be matter there not meant for me to see; it is a private letter.’

The Countess tore it open, glanced it through, and tossed it back; and the Princess, taking up the sheet, recognised the hand of Gondremark, and read with a sickening shock the following lines: —

‘Dearest Anna, come at once.  Ratafia has done the deed, her husband is to be packed to prison.  This puts the minx entirely in my power;
le tour est joué
; she will now go steady in harness, or I will know the reason why.  Come.

Heinrich.’

‘Command yourself, madam,’ said the Countess, watching with some alarm the white face of Seraphina.  ‘It is in vain for you to fight with Gondremark; he has more strings than mere court favour, and could bring you down to-morrow with a word.  I would not have betrayed him otherwise; but Heinrich is a man, and plays with all of you like marionnettes.  And now at least you see for what you sacrificed my Prince.  Madam, will you take some wine?  I have been cruel.’

‘Not cruel, madam — salutary,’ said Seraphina, with a phantom smile.  ‘No, I thank you, I require no attentions.  The first surprise affected me: will you give me time a little?  I must think.’

She took her head between her hands, and contemplated for a while the hurricane confusion of her thoughts.

‘This information reaches me,’ she said, ‘when I have need of it.  I would not do as you have done, but yet I thank you.  I have been much deceived in Baron Gondremark.’

‘O, madam, leave Gondremark, and think upon the Prince!’ cried von Rosen.

‘You speak once more as a private person,’ said the Princess; ‘nor do I blame you.  But my own thoughts are more distracted.  However, as I believe you are truly a friend to my — to the — as I believe,’ she said, ‘you are a friend to Otto, I shall put the order for his release into your hands this moment.  Give me the ink-dish.  There!’  And she wrote hastily, steadying her arm upon the table, for she trembled like a reed.  ‘Remember; madam,’ she resumed, handing her the order, ‘this must not be used nor spoken of at present; till I have seen the Baron, any hurried step — I lose myself in thinking.  The suddenness has shaken me.’

‘I promise you I will not use it,’ said the Countess, ‘till you give me leave, although I wish the Prince could be informed of it, to comfort his poor heart.  And O, I had forgotten, he has left a letter.  Suffer me, madam, I will bring it you.  This is the door, I think?’  And she sought to open it.

‘The bolt is pushed,’ said Seraphina, flushing.

‘O!  O!’ cried the Countess.

A silence fell between them.

‘I will get it for myself,’ said Seraphina; ‘and in the meanwhile I beg you to leave me.  I thank you, I am sure, but I shall be obliged if you will leave me.’

The Countess deeply curtseyed, and withdrew.

CHAPTER XIV — RELATES THE CAUSE AND OUTBREAK OF THE REVOLUTION

Brave as she was, and brave by intellect, the Princess, when first she was alone, clung to the table for support.  The four corners of her universe had fallen.  She had never liked nor trusted Gondremark completely; she had still held it possible to find him false to friendship; but from that to finding him devoid of all those public virtues for which she had honoured him, a mere commonplace intriguer, using her for his own ends, the step was wide and the descent giddy.  Light and darkness succeeded each other in her brain; now she believed, and now she could not.  She turned, blindly groping for the note.  But von Rosen, who had not forgotten to take the warrant from the Prince, had remembered to recover her note from the Princess: von Rosen was an old campaigner, whose most violent emotion aroused rather than clouded the vigour of her reason.

The thought recalled to Seraphina the remembrance of the other letter — Otto’s.  She rose and went speedily, her brain still wheeling, and burst into the Prince’s armoury.  The old chamberlain was there in waiting; and the sight of another face, prying (or so she felt) on her distress, struck Seraphina into childish anger.

‘Go!’ she cried; and then, when the old man was already half-way to the door, ‘Stay!’ she added.  ‘As soon as Baron Gondremark arrives, let him attend me here.’

‘It shall be so directed,’ said the chamberlain.

‘There was a letter . . . ‘ she began, and paused.

‘Her Highness,’ said the chamberlain, ‘will, find a letter on the table.  I had received no orders, or her Highness had been spared this trouble.’

‘No, no, no,’ she cried.  ‘I thank you.  I desire to be alone.’

And then, when he was gone, she leaped upon the letter.  Her mind was still obscured; like the moon upon a night of clouds and wind, her reason shone and was darkened, and she read the words by flashes.

‘Seraphina,’ the Prince wrote, ‘I will write no syllable of reproach.  I have seen your order, and I go.  What else is left me?  I have wasted my love, and have no more.  To say that I forgive you is not needful; at least, we are now separate for ever; by your own act, you free me from my willing bondage: I go free to prison.  This is the last that you will hear of me in love or anger.  I have gone out of your life; you may breathe easy; you have now rid yourself of the husband who allowed you to desert him, of the Prince who gave you his rights, and of the married lover who made it his pride to defend you in your absence.  How you have requited him, your own heart more loudly tells you than my words.  There is a day coming when your vain dreams will roll away like clouds, and you will find yourself alone.  Then you will remember

Otto.’

She read with a great horror on her mind; that day, of which he wrote, was come.  She was alone; she had been false, she had been cruel; remorse rolled in upon her; and then with a more piercing note, vanity bounded on the stage of consciousness.  She a dupe! she helpless! she to have betrayed herself in seeking to betray her husband! she to have lived these years upon flattery, grossly swallowing the bolus, like a clown with sharpers! she — Seraphina!  Her swift mind drank the consequences; she foresaw the coming fall, her public shame; she saw the odium, disgrace, and folly of her story flaunt through Europe.  She recalled the scandal she had so royally braved; and alas! she had now no courage to confront it with.  To be thought the mistress of that man: perhaps for that. . . . She closed her eyes on agonising vistas.  Swift as thought she had snatched a bright dagger from the weapons that shone along the wall.  Ay, she would escape.  From that world-wide theatre of nodding heads and buzzing whisperers, in which she now beheld herself unpitiably martyred, one door stood open.  At any cost, through any stress of suffering, that greasy laughter should be stifled.  She closed her eyes, breathed a wordless prayer, and pressed the weapon to her bosom.

At the astonishing sharpness of the prick, she gave a cry and awoke to a sense of undeserved escape.  A little ruby spot of blood was the reward of that great act of desperation; but the pain had braced her like a tonic, and her whole design of suicide had passed away.

At the same instant regular feet drew near along the gallery, and she knew the tread of the big Baron, so often gladly welcome, and even now rallying her spirits like a call to battle.  She concealed the dagger in the folds of her skirt; and drawing her stature up, she stood firm-footed, radiant with anger, waiting for the foe.

The Baron was announced, and entered.  To him, Seraphina was a hated task: like the schoolboy with his Virgil, he had neither will nor leisure to remark her beauties; but when he now beheld her standing illuminated by her passion, new feelings flashed upon him, a frank admiration, a brief sparkle of desire.  He noted both with joy; they were means.  ‘If I have to play the lover,’ thought he, for that was his constant preoccupation, ‘I believe I can put soul into it.’  Meanwhile, with his usual ponderous grace, he bent before the lady.

‘I propose,’ she said in a strange voice, not known to her till then, ‘that we release the Prince and do not prosecute the war.’

‘Ah, madam,’ he replied, ‘‘tis as I knew it would be!  Your heart, I knew, would wound you when we came to this distasteful but most necessary step.  Ah, madam, believe me, I am not unworthy to be your ally; I know you have qualities to which I am a stranger, and count them the best weapons in the armoury of our alliance: — the girl in the queen — pity, love, tenderness, laughter; the smile that can reward.  I can only command; I am the frowner.  But you!  And you have the fortitude to command these comely weaknesses, to tread them down at the call of reason.  How often have I not admired it even to yourself!  Ay, even to yourself,’ he added tenderly, dwelling, it seemed, in memory on hours of more private admiration.  ‘But now, madam — ’

‘But now, Herr von Gondremark, the time for these declarations has gone by,’ she cried.  ‘Are you true to me? are you false?  Look in your heart and answer: it is your heart I want to know.’

‘It has come,’ thought Gondremark.  ‘You, madam!’ he cried, starting back — with fear, you would have said, and yet a timid joy.  ‘You! yourself, you bid me look into my heart?’

‘Do you suppose I fear?’ she cried, and looked at him with such a heightened colour, such bright eyes, and a smile of so abstruse a meaning, that the Baron discarded his last doubt.

‘Ah, madam!’ he cried, plumping on his knees.  ‘Seraphina!  Do you permit me? have you divined my secret?  It is true — I put my life with joy into your power — I love you, love with ardour, as an equal, as a mistress, as a brother-in-arms, as an adored, desired, sweet-hearted woman.  O Bride!’ he cried, waxing dithyrambic, ‘bride of my reason and my senses, have pity, have pity on my love!’

She heard him with wonder, rage, and then contempt.  His words offended her to sickness; his appearance, as he grovelled bulkily upon the floor, moved her to such laughter as we laugh in nightmares.

‘O shame!’ she cried.  ‘Absurd and odious!  What would the Countess say?’

That great Baron Gondremark, the excellent politician, remained for some little time upon his knees in a frame of mind which perhaps we are allowed to pity.  His vanity, within his iron bosom, bled and raved.  If he could have blotted all, if he could have withdrawn part, if he had not called her bride — with a roaring in his ears, he thus regretfully reviewed his declaration.  He got to his feet tottering; and then, in that first moment when a dumb agony finds a vent in words, and the tongue betrays the inmost and worst of a man, he permitted himself a retort which, for six weeks to follow, he was to repent at leisure.

‘Ah,’ said he, ‘the Countess?  Now I perceive the reason of your Highness’s disorder.’

The lackey-like insolence of the words was driven home by a more insolent manner.  There fell upon Seraphina one of those storm-clouds which had already blackened upon her reason; she heard herself cry out; and when the cloud dispersed, flung the blood-stained dagger on the floor, and saw Gondremark reeling back with open mouth and clapping his hand upon the wound.  The next moment, with oaths that she had never heard, he leaped at her in savage passion; clutched her as she recoiled; and in the very act, stumbled and drooped.  She had scarce time to fear his murderous onslaught ere he fell before her feet.

He rose upon one elbow; she still staring upon him, white with horror.

‘Anna!’ he cried, ‘Anna!  Help!’

And then his utterance failed him, and he fell back, to all appearance dead.

Seraphina ran to and fro in the room; she wrung her hands and cried aloud; within she was all one uproar of terror, and conscious of no articulate wish but to awake.

There came a knocking at the door; and she sprang to it and held it, panting like a beast, and with the strength of madness in her arms, till she had pushed the bolt.  At this success a certain calm fell upon her reason.  She went back and looked upon her victim, the knocking growing louder.  O yes, he was dead.  She had killed him.  He had called upon von Rosen with his latest breath; ah! who would call on Seraphina?  She had killed him.  She, whose irresolute hand could scarce prick blood from her own bosom, had found strength to cast down that great colossus at a blow.

All this while the knocking was growing more uproarious and more unlike the staid career of life in such a palace.  Scandal was at the door, with what a fatal following she dreaded to conceive; and at the same time among the voices that now began to summon her by name, she recognised the Chancellor’s.  He or another, somebody must be the first.

‘Is Herr von Greisengesang without?’ she called.

‘Your Highness — yes!’ the old gentleman answered.  ‘We have heard cries, a fall.  Is anything amiss?’