Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (78 page)

‘Nothing,’ replied Seraphina ‘I desire to speak with you.  Send off the rest.’  She panted between each phrase; but her mind was clear.  She let the looped curtain down upon both sides before she drew the bolt; and, thus secure from any sudden eyeshot from without, admitted the obsequious Chancellor, and again made fast the door.

Greisengesang clumsily revolved among the wings of the curtain, so that she was clear of it as soon as he.

‘My God!’ he cried ‘The Baron!’

‘I have killed him,’ she said.  ‘O, killed him!’

‘Dear me,’ said the old gentleman, ‘this is most unprecedented.  Lovers’ quarrels,’ he added ruefully, ‘redintegratio — ’ and then paused.  ‘But, my dear madam,’ he broke out again, ‘in the name of all that is practical, what are we to do?  This is exceedingly grave; morally, madam, it is appalling.  I take the liberty, your Highness, for one moment, of addressing you as a daughter, a loved although respected daughter; and I must say that I cannot conceal from you that this is morally most questionable.  And, O dear me, we have a dead body!’

She had watched him closely; hope fell to contempt; she drew away her skirts from his weakness, and, in the act, her own strength returned to her.

‘See if he be dead,’ she said; not one word of explanation or defence; she had scorned to justify herself before so poor a creature: ‘See if he be dead’ was all.

With the greatest compunction, the Chancellor drew near; and as he did so the wounded Baron rolled his eyes.

‘He lives,’ cried the old courtier, turning effusively to Seraphina.  ‘Madam, he still lives.’

‘Help him, then,’ returned the Princess, standing fixed.  ‘Bind up his wound.’

‘Madam, I have no means,’ protested the Chancellor.

‘Can you not take your handkerchief, your neck-cloth, anything?’ she cried; and at the same moment, from her light muslin gown she rent off a flounce and tossed it on the floor.  ‘Take that,’ she said, and for the first time directly faced Greisengesang.

But the Chancellor held up his hands and turned away his head in agony.  The grasp of the falling Baron had torn down the dainty fabric of the bodice; and — ’O Highness!’ cried Greisengesang, appalled, ‘the terrible disorder of your toilette!’

‘Take up that flounce,’ she said; ‘the man may die.’

Greisengesang turned in a flutter to the Baron, and attempted some innocent and bungling measures.  ‘He still breathes,’ he kept saying.  ‘All is not yet over; he is not yet gone.’

‘And now,’ said she ‘if that is all you can do, begone and get some porters; he must instantly go home.’

‘Madam,’ cried the Chancellor, ‘if this most melancholy sight were seen in town — O dear, the State would fall!’ he piped.

‘There is a litter in the Palace,’ she replied.  ‘It is your part to see him safe.  I lay commands upon you.  On your life it stands.’

‘I see it, dear Highness,’ he jerked.  ‘Clearly I see it.  But how? what men?  The Prince’s servants — yes.  They had a personal affection.  They will be true, if any.’

‘O, not them!’ she cried.  ‘Take Sabra, my own man.’

‘Sabra!  The grand-mason?’ returned the Chancellor, aghast.  ‘If he but saw this, he would sound the tocsin — we should all be butchered.’

She measured the depth of her abasement steadily.  ‘Take whom you must,’ she said, ‘and bring the litter here.’

Once she was alone she ran to the Baron, and with a sickening heart sought to allay the flux of blood.  The touch of the skin of that great charlatan revolted her to the toes; the wound, in her ignorant eyes, looked deathly; yet she contended with her shuddering, and, with more skill at least than the Chancellor’s, staunched the welling injury.  An eye unprejudiced with hate would have admired the Baron in his swoon; he looked so great and shapely; it was so powerful a machine that lay arrested; and his features, cleared for the moment both of temper and dissimulation, were seen to be so purely modelled.  But it was not thus with Seraphina.  Her victim, as he lay outspread, twitching a little, his big chest unbared, fixed her with his ugliness; and her mind flitted for a glimpse to Otto.

Rumours began to sound about the Palace of feet running and of voices raised; the echoes of the great arched staircase were voluble of some confusion; and then the gallery jarred with a quick and heavy tramp.  It was the Chancellor, followed by four of Otto’s valets and a litter.  The servants, when they were admitted, stared at the dishevelled Princess and the wounded man; speech was denied them, but their thoughts were riddled with profanity.  Gondremark was bundled in; the curtains of the litter were lowered; the bearers carried it forth, and the Chancellor followed behind with a white face.

Seraphina ran to the window.  Pressing her face upon the pane, she could see the terrace, where the lights contended; thence, the avenue of lamps that joined the Palace and town; and overhead the hollow night and the larger stars.  Presently the small procession issued from the Palace, crossed the parade, and began to thread the glittering alley: the swinging couch with its four porters, the much-pondering Chancellor behind.  She watched them dwindle with strange thoughts: her eyes fixed upon the scene, her mind still glancing right and left on the overthrow of her life and hopes.  There was no one left in whom she might confide; none whose hand was friendly, or on whom she dared to reckon for the barest loyalty.  With the fall of Gondremark, her party, her brief popularity, had fallen.  So she sat crouched upon the window-seat, her brow to the cool pane; her dress in tatters, barely shielding her; her mind revolving bitter thoughts.

Meanwhile, consequences were fast mounting; and in the deceptive quiet of the night, downfall and red revolt were brewing.  The litter had passed forth between the iron gates and entered on the streets of the town.  By what flying panic, by what thrill of air communicated, who shall say? but the passing bustle in the Palace had already reached and re-echoed in the region of the burghers.  Rumour, with her loud whisper, hissed about the town; men left their homes without knowing why; knots formed along the boulevard; under the rare lamps and the great limes the crowd grew blacker.

And now through the midst of that expectant company, the unusual sight of a closed litter was observed approaching, and trotting hard behind it that great dignitary Cancellarius Greisengesang.  Silence looked on as it went by; and as soon as it was passed, the whispering seethed over like a boiling pot.  The knots were sundered; and gradually, one following another, the whole mob began to form into a procession and escort the curtained litter.  Soon spokesmen, a little bolder than their mates, began to ply the Chancellor with questions.  Never had he more need of that great art of falsehood, by whose exercise he had so richly lived.  And yet now he stumbled, the master passion, fear, betraying him.  He was pressed; he became incoherent; and then from the jolting litter came a groan.  In the instant hubbub and the gathering of the crowd as to a natural signal, the clear-eyed quavering Chancellor heard the catch of the clock before it strikes the hour of doom; and for ten seconds he forgot himself.  This shall atone for many sins.  He plucked a bearer by the sleeve.  ‘Bid the Princess flee.  All is lost,’ he whispered.  And the next moment he was babbling for his life among the multitude.

Five minutes later the wild-eyed servant burst into the armoury.  ‘All is lost!’ he cried.  ‘The Chancellor bids you flee.’  And at the same time, looking through the window, Seraphina saw the black rush of the populace begin to invade the lamplit avenue.

‘Thank you, Georg,’ she said.  ‘I thank you.  Go.’  And as the man still lingered, ‘I bid you go,’ she added.  ‘Save yourself.’

Down by the private passage, and just some two hours later, Amalia Seraphina, the last Princess, followed Otto Johann Friedrich, the last Prince of Grünewald.

BOOK III — FORTUNATE MISFORTUNE

CHAPTER I — PRINCESS CINDERELLA

The porter, drawn by the growing turmoil, had vanished from the postern, and the door stood open on the darkness of the night.  As Seraphina fled up the terraces, the cries and loud footing of the mob drew nearer the doomed palace; the rush was like the rush of cavalry; the sound of shattering lamps tingled above the rest; and, overtowering all, she heard her own name bandied among the shouters.  A bugle sounded at the door of the guard-room; one gun was fired; and then with the yell of hundreds, MittwaldenPalace was carried at a rush.

Sped by these dire sounds and voices, the Princess scaled the long garden, skimming like a bird the starlit stairways; crossed the Park, which was in that place narrow; and plunged upon the farther side into the rude shelter of the forest.  So, at a bound, she left the discretion and the cheerful lamps of Palace evenings; ceased utterly to be a sovereign lady; and, falling from the whole height of civilisation, ran forth into the woods, a ragged Cinderella.

She went direct before her through an open tract of the forest, full of brush and birches, and where the starlight guided her; and, beyond that again, must thread the columned blackness of a pine grove joining overhead the thatch of its long branches.  At that hour the place was breathless; a horror of night like a presence occupied that dungeon of the wood; and she went groping, knocking against the boles — her ear, betweenwhiles, strained to aching and yet unrewarded.

But the slope of the ground was upward, and encouraged her; and presently she issued on a rocky hill that stood forth above the sea of forest.  All around were other hill-tops, big and little; sable vales of forest between; overhead the open heaven and the brilliancy of countless stars; and along the western sky the dim forms of mountains.  The glory of the great night laid hold upon her; her eyes shone with stars; she dipped her sight into the coolness and brightness of the sky, as she might have dipped her wrist into a spring; and her heart, at that ethereal shock, began to move more soberly.  The sun that sails overhead, ploughing into gold the fields of daylight azure and uttering the signal to man’s myriads, has no word apart for man the individual; and the moon, like a violin, only praises and laments our private destiny.  The stars alone, cheerful whisperers, confer quietly with each of us like friends; they give ear to our sorrows smilingly, like wise old men, rich in tolerance; and by their double scale, so small to the eye, so vast to the imagination, they keep before the mind the double character of man’s nature and fate.

There sat the Princess, beautifully looking upon beauty, in council with these glad advisers.  Bright like pictures, clear like a voice in the porches of her ear, memory re-enacted the tumult of the evening: the Countess and the dancing fan, the big Baron on his knees, the blood on the polished floor, the knocking, the swing of the litter down the avenue of lamps, the messenger, the cries of the charging mob; and yet all were far away and phantasmal, and she was still healingly conscious of the peace and glory of the night.  She looked towards Mittwalden; and above the hill-top, which already hid it from her view, a throbbing redness hinted of fire.  Better so: better so, that she should fall with tragic greatness, lit by a blazing palace!  She felt not a trace of pity for Gondremark or of concern for Grünewald: that period of her life was closed for ever, a wrench of wounded vanity alone surviving.  She had but one clear idea: to flee; — and another, obscure and half-rejected, although still obeyed: to flee in the direction of the Felsenburg.  She had a duty to perform, she must free Otto — so her mind said, very coldly; but her heart embraced the notion of that duty even with ardour, and her hands began to yearn for the grasp of kindness.

She rose, with a start of recollection, and plunged down the slope into the covert.  The woods received and closed upon her.  Once more, she wandered and hasted in a blot, uncheered, unpiloted.  Here and there, indeed, through rents in the wood-roof, a glimmer attracted her; here and there a tree stood out among its neighbours by some force of outline; here and there a brushing among the leaves, a notable blackness, a dim shine, relieved, only to exaggerate, the solid oppression of the night and silence.  And betweenwhiles, the unfeatured darkness would redouble and the whole ear of night appear to be gloating on her steps.  Now she would stand still, and the silence, would grow and grow, till it weighed upon her breathing; and then she would address herself again to run, stumbling, falling, and still hurrying the more.  And presently the whole wood rocked and began to run along with her.  The noise of her own mad passage through the silence spread and echoed, and filled the night with terror.  Panic hunted her: Panic from the trees reached forth with clutching branches; the darkness was lit up and peopled with strange forms and faces.  She strangled and fled before her fears.  And yet in the last fortress, reason, blown upon by these gusts of terror, still shone with a troubled light.  She knew, yet could not act upon her knowledge; she knew that she must stop, and yet she still ran.

She was already near madness, when she broke suddenly into a narrow clearing.  At the same time the din grew louder, and she became conscious of vague forms and fields of whiteness.  And with that the earth gave way; she fell and found her feet again with an incredible shock to her senses, and her mind was swallowed up.

When she came again to herself, she was standing to the mid-leg in an icy eddy of a brook, and leaning with one hand on the rock from which it poured.  The spray had wet her hair.  She saw the white cascade, the stars wavering in the shaken pool, foam flitting, and high overhead the tall pines on either hand serenely drinking starshine; and in the sudden quiet of her spirit she heard with joy the firm plunge of the cataract in the pool.  She scrambled forth dripping.  In the face of her proved weakness, to adventure again upon the horror of blackness in the groves were a suicide of life or reason.  But here, in the alley of the brook, with the kind stars above her, and the moon presently swimming into sight, she could await the coming of day without alarm.

This lane of pine-trees ran very rapidly down-hill and wound among the woods; but it was a wider thoroughfare than the brook needed, and here and there were little dimpling lawns and coves of the forest, where the starshine slumbered.  Such a lawn she paced, taking patience bravely; and now she looked up the hill and saw the brook coming down to her in a series of cascades; and now approached the margin, where it welled among the rushes silently; and now gazed at the great company of heaven with an enduring wonder.  The early evening had fallen chill, but the night was now temperate; out of the recesses of the wood there came mild airs as from a deep and peaceful breathing; and the dew was heavy on the grass and the tight-shut daisies.  This was the girl’s first night under the naked heaven; and now that her fears were overpast, she was touched to the soul by its serene amenity and peace.  Kindly the host of heaven blinked down upon that wandering Princess; and the honest brook had no words but to encourage her.