Читать книгу Bagatelle and Some Other Diversions - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 4

Table of Contents

A Collection of Chinese Rarities in the possession of Karl August Graf von Aspremont Reckheim at the Château Halstadt in the Archbishopric of Salzburg. [THE EMPIRE, 18th Century.]

The covered waggon, with faded blue hangings drawn closely at the sides, halted at last, after a long journey, at the gates of Château Halstadt, one of the finest mansions in the Archbishopric of Salzburg. Captain Engel van Dollart dismounted from beside the driver's seat, gave a thick grunt of relief, took off his shabby hat and scrub wig to wipe a bald, glistening head while he gazed stolidly, unimpressed but satisfied, at the handsome stone piers and rich scroll work of the gates that bore, in every possible space, the arms of Aspremont Reckheim and Zringi.

The Dutchman then eyed the waggon with alert suspicion, as if he feared that some one behind the curtains would draw these and look out; but the rough canvas was not disturbed; the two stout horses stood patient, sweating in the sun; the German coachman and the German grooms on horseback waited with stupid indifference for the Captain's commands.

This personage called up his Dutch servant, a heavy fellow with a waddling gait.

"This is the place, Cornelis. A fine estate, hey? A very wealthy patron, hey?"

Master and man smiled at each other slowly; Cornelis replied with a placid grin:

"You were sure of that, Captain, before you took so much trouble. It has been a very tedious journey."

"A very tedious journey," repeated Van Dollart. "Now I get the reward for it, hein? While I am inside you guard the waggon—careful, Cornelis, careful and prudent to the last. One never knows."

The gate-keeper had now opened to the modest cortége; the covered waggon turned and was driven up the long avenue that emphasized the correct splendour of the mansion. Captain van Dollart followed on foot; it was an August day, clear azure gold, a few snow-white cloudlets floating above the tall trees; on the double-winged staircase of the château, Warriors and Virtues in stone guarded the pretentious entrance; above the tympanum a flag curled on a pole; a glitter of gold threads outlined the arms of Aspremont Reckheim and Zringi.

Van Dollart despised and detested all this display; he was in love with his misty native flats, his trim house of neat dull pink brick with the precise step-gable in the Prinzengracht at Amsterdam, his quiet, heavy wife with the double chin and starched linen hood and collar. Van Dollart was a dour Churchman, a good citizen and, as a man, had only one fault—this was, perhaps, sufficient—he would have done anything for money.

Giving a jealous glance at the covered waggon he ascended the wide stone steps, entered, sombrely and rudely, the grand open doors and asked the waiting lackeys for their master.

The valet stared at the large uncouth man with his clothes of a seaman's cut, his formidable pistols, his resolute, ugly, leather-skinned face, and listened to his broken German.

"Tell your master that I have brought—what he asked for—Captain van Dollart of the 'Water Dog,'" said the Dutchman firmly and cautiously. "It is outside in the covered waggon—what he asked me to get."

While the message was being taken to the master of the château, Van Dollart waited indifferently among the fine marbles, sparkling lustres and silken tapestries of the vestibule. From the window he kept his eye cocked at the covered waggon on the gravelled space beyond the steps, with Cornelis hulking in front of the blue curtains, and beasts and men waiting patiently in the sun.

In a few moments he was conducted into the presence of Graf Aspremont Reckheim, whom he greeted with an odd surly lack of respect.

The noble owner of Halstadt had finished his early repast and was sitting in complete idleness over a stale copy of the "Gazette de France." He was a man more fortunate than Van Dollart (who despised him), believed any man had a right to be; his descent was partly Hungarian; his father's mother was a relation of that Emeric Tekéli who had fought with the Turks against the Emperor Leopold, and his own mother had been a sister of the elegant Zringi who had been executed in Vienna, but who was better remembered for the long, high-waisted coat he had made fashionable in Paris. The Aspremont Reckheims, very loyal subjects of His Imperial Majesty, had inherited the two immense fortunes of these rebel Hungarian Princes, and their present sole representative had received the rank of General Commandant of Hungary, which post gave him, a good Catholic, fine opportunities of keeping in order the Protestants his ancestors had died to assist. Nor had he neglected these chances and was, in consequence, so keenly hated by the Magyars that he sometimes found it agreeable to leave his famous palace at Vesprim (which rivalled that at Kassel for magnificence) for the more sober splendours of Halstadt. Van Dollart, grim Protestant, loathed this ruthless persecutor of the faith, Van Dollart, honest, sober citizen, quiet family man, detested this costly libertine of whom he had never heard anything save what he considered evil, but he continued to serve him, for Aspremont Reckheim paid with lavish prodigality.

For years the Dutchman had brought rarities and curiosities from the East and sold them to the purchaser who never haggled over increased prices; every voyage "The Water Dog" took from Amsterdam there were commissions from General Graf Aspremont Reckheim; each time something more uncommon, more difficult was required, for the soldier was one of the most considerable collectors of his age. Van Dollart was always very clever in nosing after these treasures, very adroit and unscrupulous in obtaining them, very greedy in asking more and more of those orders which, slipped across the tables of an Amsterdam bank, were so readily changed into good golden florins.

In this very room lined with pale green brocade were vases of celadon, clair de lune, and Imperial Yellow, adorned with prunus and magnolia blossom, which Van Dollart had obtained by not the most fastidious means and sold at not the most reasonable figure, while the Ching-Té bowl with fishes in copper-red (three hundred years old, at least) which now held the sugar for the chocolate, had cost the blood of some obscure heathen.

"I expected you before," remarked the nobleman pleasantly; he never asked the Dutchman to sit, but his courtesy was otherwise perfect.

Van Dollart replied without any title of respect.

"What you asked was not easy. I doubted I should do it at all. The return voyage was delayed. And," added the Dutchman grimly, "it was a rough overland journey from Amsterdam. And I had to come myself, there being no one I could trust with a matter like that."

"So I suppose. I believe you always earn your money."

"Amsterdam, Cologne, Coblenz, Frankfurt, Würzburg," recited the Dutchman, checking the stages of his travels on his coarse fingers, "it has been very expensive."

"You want more than I promised—the five thousand rix dollars?"

"Yes. There would not be much profit on that."

"I'll pay more. If the merchandise is worth it—"

"Eight thousand rix dollars?"

"Yes." Graf Aspremont Reckheim agreed easily; he would win half that by the bet with Culembach—besides, this particular rarity was worth it; he smiled in a way that made the Dutchman frown, though most people would have thought the nobleman very agreeable to look at. His notorious face and figure had the dark, swift, impatient Magyar grace and beauty; his name of Karl August suited him very ill, for he had nothing of the Teuton. As the Dutchman pouched the bankers' order he would (without scruple had it been safe to do so) have strangled his customer for a base, dangerous, subtle beast from the East—like the cruel black panther or the sly, slim snake...a persecuting Papist too.

Almost Van Dollart was tempted not to trade with him again...almost—but the money?

Karl August looked at the Dutchman as if he understood those slow thoughts of hate, and continued to smile. He had good cause; he had always obtained what he wanted, and till now, at thirty years of age, he had contrived to escape both conscience and satiety. He had no complaint to make about fortune, and fortune by her continued gifts seemed to show that she had no complaint to make about him; he certainly graced his destiny and embellished all the favours he received from an immoral providence.

"Is she beautiful?" he asked; then added, "You would be no judge."

"Eh, who?"

"The Chinese woman."

"I never thought about it—she is Chinese."

"Young?"

"Young indeed."

"You have her here?"

"Yes, in the covered waggon."

"Is she sad, afraid, angry?" smiled Karl August.

"I don't know. She has never said anything—how should she? She speaks only Chinese."

"You have really been very clever to get her—how did you?"

"A tale better not told. We went inland as far as Chuchow. We had to kill several heathen and one of my men got an ugly cut. Never mind. She is the daughter of what they call a Mandarin—a Princess to them. I can tell you, eight thousand rix dollars is low."

"If she is really beautiful I will give you more. You know I have never cheapened my pleasures." It had always been his pride not to do so; he had always led every fashion, exploited it in the most costly and extravagant way, and never bargained the price; at Vesprim he had a hermitage, a classic ruin in marble, a village of dwarfs, a pyramid, and a temple above a cascade; at Halstadt he had kept his Chinese curiosities; a pagoda, a pavilion, a garden, and, in the house, the rarest collection of famille rose, overglaze of Wan-Li and Chia-Ching, T'ang and Sung ware.

And an exquisite assortment of women's clothes and ornaments.

It was these which had first made him want a Chinese woman to complete his rarities; as he looked at the lines, lustres and lights of the translucent porcelain, this want had become a desire; when Culembach had bet him four thousand rix dollars that he could never gratify so fantastic a wish, the desire had become a longing; while skilfully and cruelly repressing a rebellion in Transylvania his secret thoughts had been of little else than the Chinese woman.

He went to the window, gazed beyond the curtains of peach-bloom velvet made to match the vases Captain van Dollart called "liver-coloured"...there was the small covered waggon, the horses patiently waiting...a Chinese woman inside...Culembach would be furious, not only because of the money, but out of jealousy; neither he nor any other man of Karl August's acquaintance, however much they might boast of their experiences, had ever possessed a Chinese woman.

Van Dollart grinned at him, showing tobacco-stained teeth.

"Will you please come and take her? I want to be on my way."

Karl August preceded the Dutchman into the summer sun; he was considering the sumptuous, exquisite effects he would achieve with his new possession, how delicately she would be lodged in the pagoda of peacock blue tiles, in the pavilion of green and yellow lacquer, and how tastefully he would adorn her from his store of jade, rock crystal, onyx, malachite, rose quartz, enamelled gold and filigree silver.

As they descended the steps the Dutchman said with dull malice:

"She is not alone."

"She has a servant? I told you to provide that."

"No. There is some one I had to bring with her from China."

Karl August paused on the step and looked up; with his hand on his hip, his black hair yet undressed, curling on his shoulders, and his air of swift action impetuously arrested, he seemed like the model for one of the heroic gaudy statues behind him, who flaunted stone plumes into the rich air.

"Who have you brought?" he demanded. "I thought I could trust you, Van Dollart."

"The person who is with her," replied the slow Dutchman, "is better able to look after her than anyone I could have supplied. As a Papist, you will agree."

"As a Papist?" The stare of Aspremont Reckheim was contemptuous for the insolent heretic.

"It is a nun."

"A Christian nun?"

Van Dollart grinned with delight at the impasse before the detested customer.

"Truly a Papish nun. There is a missionary station at Chuchow. They try to convert the heathen. I don't grudge them the name of good women."

The Dutchman licked over his words, considering with relish the dark face turned on him with such angry expectancy.

"One of them was abroad on her errands when she saw us taking the Chinese lady away. And followed. She marched after us to Hangchow. She tried to rescue the Chinese lady. I prevented that, but I couldn't make her leave, she stayed with her day and night."

"And you allowed it?" asked Karl August fiercely.

"My men would not interfere, they thought they had done enough. There was a manner of superstition about it, though one was a heathen and the other a Papist."

"But I thought you had more resource?"

"Resource? I should have had to kill one of them to get them apart. You can do that yourself."

Karl August was not so exasperated as the Dutchman had hoped to see him; his flash of wrath passed; as violence (unchecked, unpunished) was always in his power, he had not yet met a situation with which he could not deal. He descended the stone stairs, leaving the heavy Dutchman behind, and stood before the covered waggon. Cornelis eyed him with stolid curiosity, the Germans were all humility, one drew the blue curtains. Karl August was so eager to see the Chinese woman that he scarcely concerned himself about the nun; but, as they were seated side by side, he could not observe one without observing the other.

The Chinese woman was very beautiful, exactly like those ladies in lacquer, porcelain, rice-paper painting, carved stone and ivory already in his possession; she was pale, pallid gold in complexion, with ebony eyes and hair and a smooth small vermilion mouth, her robe was dead-leaf brown and flecked with those broken lines used by Chinese artists to represent cracking ice; two pins of lapis lazuli were in her glossy locks; the nun wore the garb (rather soiled) of the Ursulines; Karl August saw at once that she was French and well-bred.

"Is it possible?" she asked, "that you are General Aspremont Reckheim, the instigator of this heartless outrage?"

"I am indeed. Captain Van Dollart has, no doubt, informed you."

"Everything." The nun spoke more in compassion than indignation. "You have actually spent a fortune to abduct this unhappy creature from her home and country, and for what purpose?"

"Merely to complete my collection of Chinese rarities."

The nun gave him a challenging look; he had the impression that she was a woman of some experience, and might if a bigot, prove difficult, but he did not greatly concern himself about her because he was so enraptured with the Chinese woman who, for her part, neither spoke nor moved.

He begged them to alight and they obeyed, the Chinese woman responding to a touch from the nun; the covered waggon with the curtains now drawn moved away, the Dutchman staring back with a sombre curiosity and a sulky vindictiveness.

Never had Karl August viewed any dearly-bought treasure with such satisfaction (and he had had his moments of delicious achievement) as he now felt on gazing at the Chinese woman; he was even grateful to the nun for giving her company and protection; nothing, he began to consider, more suitable could have been devised, and he would be willing to return the zealous missionary to China at his own cost.

He conducted them to the Chinese pavilion which he called after the fashion of the day, Bagatelle, and there suggested that the nun should take refuge in one of the convents at Salzburg until she felt inclined to journey back to Chuchow.

The nun declined to leave her charge.

"She is neither a slave nor a toy, monseigneur."

"I happen to have bought her, madame."

With that pity which, with her, took the place of scorn the nun informed him that a human being could not be traded, and that the Chinese woman was a princess, a person of education and culture, that her family would be in grief and desperate mourning for her, and that she herself, during the tiresome voyage by land and sea and land again, had endured every possible discomfort and alarm, "Consoled only by my company, monseigneur."

Karl August, with folded arms, leaning inside the pavilion door, listened while the nun pleaded the cause of the Chinese lady who showed no concern, but stood meekly, her hands in her sleeves.

"The least that you can do, monseigneur, is to return her to her home. I am willing to accompany her to Chuchow."

"Why," he asked, "do you take such a considerable interest in a heathen, a creature held to be of less account than the heretics who are slaughtered like rats in Hungary?"

"She is a woman," replied the nun, "and for your deeds of violence of which you boast, may God forgive you!"

"You try my patience," said Karl August, "the Chinese woman is mine and I shall do as I please with her. I intend you no harm, but do not provoke me. I command much power."

"But I more," the nun defied him, "God, the Pope, and the Emperor are behind me."

Karl August was slightly uneasy at this; he reflected that the three personages she had mentioned were all bigots, and that he owed his own high fortunes to the fact that he had assumed bigotry; no slight to the Church was ever tolerated in the Empire.

"If you attempt any harm to this noble maiden," added the nun gently, "you will bring on yourself the retribution for all your crimes."

Karl August considered this amusing, but tiresome; he asked the nun if she understood Chinese: "if so, demand of the woman if she cannot be content here."

"I speak very little Chinese, but I can assure you that she will die of a broken heart and home-sickness."

Karl August returned to the château, considering how he should, with some decorum, be rid of the nun. The situation was almost stupid, almost touched him with ridicule...he cursed Van Dollart...the man was either a fool or malicious...the nun must go before Culembach knew of her presence...the Chinese woman must appear at the supper where and when he claimed his bet. Meanwhile he sent down to the pavilion a palanquin containing all the Chinese garments and ornaments that he had been for years collecting and gave instructions for the Chinese woman to be elegantly maintained. So occupied was he with these affairs and with thinking of his new acquisition that he forgot his rendezvous at the chase until the hunt swept up to his door, Culembach calling out to him for a laggard, and the horns blowing in jolly fashion of reproach.

Culembach's sister, Hedwig Sophia, rode up and down the gravelled space where the covered waggon had rested. Karl August came out on to the winged staircase to answer her greeting; he was to marry her in six weeks' time and since Van Dollart's visit he had forgotten it; warm-coloured, yellow-haired, voluptuous, Hedwig Sophia smiled under her cockaded hat, waved her whip—had he not recalled the rendezvous of the chase? She loved him and this showed in her looks and gestures, she cared nothing for his reputation nor his wealth. She was infatuated with the man himself; she was a widow and had learnt toleration of male failings; she was very jealous but even more prudent; rather than weary her lover she had resolved to endure his infidelities.

Hastily he joined the chase, excusing himself with Van Dollart's visit—"some new fangles from the East."

"Anything for me?" smiled Hedwig Sophia.

"Everything for you," he lied agreeably. They rode fast, side by side, down the wide allée; he wanted to marry his companion but he was thinking of the Chinese woman and considering that he might delay his marriage so as to have more leisure with his new mistress...perhaps he would take her to Vesprim and enthrone her in the ice grottoes or amid the village of dwarfs—or even build her another pavilion there and a grove of silver birch trees. At the first courteous opportunity he outrode Hedwig Sophia and came up with her brother who was leading the chase through the park of beech and chestnut; he told him that Van Dollart had brought the Chinese woman safe as a pearl shut in an oyster from Chuchow to Halstadt, trust the sly, grim Puritan Dutchman, eh?

Culembach was chagrined; though a reigning prince he was not rich and the wager was high; he laughed and tried to undervalue the prize—a small, yellow, shrunken creature, he knew...such a one had been found abandoned in the Turkish camp outside Buda...Hesse Darmstadt had been infatuate with her, but for his part, he preferred to have his monstrosities in porcelain. "And, look you, Reckheim, I'll see her before I pay."

"She is beautiful," asserted Karl August, with a confidence odious to the other. "And most rare, different from any other woman you ever saw. I would not take for her twice what I paid. Chinese, not African or Turk, like the egg-shell paste of Te-Hua, where the pink is fused from gold. To-morrow evening you shall see her, she is no more than seventeen and, in her own country, a princess."

Immediately he returned from the chase Karl August, refusing the invitation of Hedwig Sophia to ride home with her, hastened to the pavilion called Bagatelle, in the Chinese garden. Lamps of porcelain and lacquer had been lit in the lattice windows; their thin, fine light made long elegant shadows from the delicate leaves of young bamboo and yellow maple; the twilight was hushed and luscious. Karl August peered through the curtains, the Chinese woman was within, she had arrayed herself in one of the robes, coral red, orange-yellow; she had made herself tea in one of his services of Wu Ts'ai or five-colour ware with ruby-backed plates, she had set a branch of pearl-colour maple in one of his bronze vases, and appeared at home and happy; her hands, moving in the wide blue satin sleeves, were like flowers drifting on water, opening and closing in a kind breeze; they were the hue of pale clover honey; where the shadow stole over her throat it was the warm tint of amber; dark gold appeared in her eyes and hair where the light burnished the black lustre; her mouth had the fresh, dewy redness of a petal plucked as it unfolds in early summer from the bud. Karl August did not enter the pavilion; the nun was seated inside the door; her habit appeared grotesque among those Eastern trifles, her face appeared old, ugly, sad, compared with the face of the Chinese woman; as Karl August left Bagatelle he noticed that a wooden crucifix had been fastened over the curved horns hung with bells, at the entrance. He began to be more uneasy, disturbed by sensations new to him; it was remarkable that he, who had committed so many lawless acts of violence, could not now commit another; it would really be easy to force away the nun; he was not, he assured himself, superstitious, and he did not believe in God—scandal could be avoided; why, then, this detestable hesitation?

He passed a disagreeable night; his mind dwelt most curiously on the Chinese woman; he believed she could give new variety to an emotion he had almost staled, she was more than beautiful, she had some magic...

When a flying post brought news from Vesprim of a revolt among the heretics, Karl August was an angry man; he declared that the Emperor's business could wait until he had finished his own and sent orders to his lieutenant to burn and slay without pause or mercy. To punish himself for his cowardice he kept away from the pavilion; but he sent an order to the nun that the Chinese woman must be sent up to the château that evening to sit beside him at his supper-table. The nun's reply was submissive, "But if she is not returned by eight o'clock I shall come to fetch her."

Karl August raged because he could not have the insolent woman removed; sulky and violent he meditated a revenge that would be the sterner for being deferred; he knew himself capable of complete cruelty; his uneasiness increased.

There were six gentlemen at the supper, companions in arms and pleasures. The windows were open on to the monstrous moon, the melody of caged nightingales, on the voices of Siennese boys singing to zithers, and on the steady, recurrent splash of a fountain that was as monotonous as a heart-beat.

The decoration of the room was Chinese. White satin on walls, and chairs with tiny figures of mandarins, a plum-coloured carpet with blue dragons petalled like chrysanthemums, a table of cinnabar lacquer the work of two generations, a hanging lamp of inlaid ivory and shell, services of egg-shell porcelain, sang-de-boeuf, Lang-Yao, and flambé or red copper glaze; some of the priceless curiosities "The Water Dog" had brought, packed among the coffee, tea, pepper and spices in her hold, to Amsterdam. An aromatic odour still clung to these delicate objects; the air was perfumed with cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and attar of roses; in contrast to this exotic elegance the six guests showed robust and hearty, with their fair, red faces, their curled, powdered hair, their bright coloured velvet and satin coats, their Paris paste and steel appointments cut to a diamond glitter.

The Chinese woman entered, carried in her palanquin; she could not stand for more than a moment on her tiny feet in the slippers stitched with sequins; she was placed carefully, as if she had been a doll, beside Aspremont Reckheim; the gentlemen all gazed eagerly at this curiosity; they were really not sure that she was alive. Her quilted outer robe of sea-green silk being removed by Karl August showed her dress of festival gold, a massed design of webs and blossoms in bullion threads, her sash of azure satin, stiffened with silver wires, her necklets of white jade, of smoked crystal, of scarlet cords with beads of rose quartz, tourmaline and chrysolite; above the smooth black billows of her hair quivered metallic flowers of silver, copper and gold, which appeared finer than nature in filaments, pistils and petals that stirred with the least movement. All of the guests had travelled and each possessed a closet of curiosities, but none of them had ever seen any rarity like this wonder.

She bowed, and then spoke.

A little cascade of meaningless sound soft, mellow as drowsy notes from the soft-plumed throat of a bird, fell from her vermilion lips; she bowed again, folded her hands into her sleeves, was silent.

They murmured surprise, admiration, envy; Culembach had his rix dollars bond ready; he slipped it along the table. Karl August pocketed it without satisfaction; he was tormented by the desire to know what the Chinese woman thought and felt, to possess her mind and soul as well as her person; never had he heard anything so tantalizing as that soft incomprehensible speech; he had never failed, one way or another with a woman before, but now he was baffled; he glowered where he should have been triumphant. And before the Lang-Yao clock struck eight he sent her away because of the intolerable nun, who would, he was sure, keep her word.

Culembach lingered after the others had gone; Karl August scowled at the continued intrusion; he wanted to go down to the pavilion which would be glittering in the moonshine...he had other treasures to give her, a bracelet of yellow jade, a bowl of alabaster so fine as to be transparent, a box of vermilion orange lacquer...perhaps, if he put these before her she would speak again in that meaningless and enchanting language.

The Margraf of Culembach began to praise the Chinese lady...he offered to buy her...

"As a dilettante?" asked Karl August.

"As a man," said Culembach.

Karl August refused to consider any offer; Culembach said that he would give more than money; his Arab-Polish horse called "La Folie," who was the most perfectly trained animal in the Empire, his pair of bleu de roi Sèvres vases which had taken three years to paint. As Karl August remained contemptuous Culembach offered his summer palace in the mountains that the other had often envied. On receiving an abrupt refusal the Margraf, a short-tempered man, purpled in the face; the two parted in dislike of each other; this was the first time that Karl August had quarrelled with the brother of Hedwig Sophia. The Margraf's offers had put the final value on the Chinese woman; she was indeed priceless; her owner could think of nothing for which he would surrender her. Yet he allowed the days to pass without disturbing her, because of the nun, because of some sacred magic which enclosed her, because of something in himself? Was he being drawn into a new unimagined world? He did not know; he became melancholy, moody, yet excited and violent; if only he could discover what the Chinese woman was thinking, if she was happy, if he could make her happy, what she was saying when she bowed and spoke sweetly, rapidly. Every day he visited her and sat, brooding, on a divan, while he watched her; the nun was always present and he had ceased to resent this; he gave the Chinese woman a little zither and she played on it thin melodies of heartbreaking sadness. The greatest pleasure of Karl August was, however, to watch her unperceived, to linger hidden among the maples and bamboos while she walked by the pond or sang at her window, or drank tea, or played with a white cat.

Culembach rode over frequently and tried to bargain for what he called this bibelot de prix. He also seemed fascinated by the Chinese woman whom, however, he had only seen once; the two men began to detest each other; the Margraf pointed out that General Aspremont Reckheim's post was in Hungary—what leave had he to linger in Salzburg, while there was a revolt in his command?

Hedwig Sophia came too frequently to Halstadt; Karl August suspected her brother of making trouble; the lady longed too often to be taken to the pavilion, the pagoda, and on excuse or refusal became too sweetly submissive. She knew, of course, from her brother, about the Chinese woman and she was sick with terror lest she should lose her lover; she was afraid of his abstracted air, his gloomy indifference to her caresses, his dark, sullen face; she wished to marry him and go to Hungary to quell the rebellion, to please him she would have witnessed the slaughter of hundreds of heretics, but Karl August suspended all his affairs.

He gradually made a confidante of the nun; she was of his own world and intelligent; she appeared to like him, she was at least very tolerant; he endeavoured to discover from her every scrap of information about the Chinese woman...her mind, her nature, her habits, what she believed, or wished, or feared...

The nun knew very little; she could not, save for a word or two, understand her companion's speech, but she always declared that she was very home-sick; at night she would weep and pray to a little crystal image which to Aspremont Reckheim was a toy, but to her a god.

Always the nun ended:

"You must assuredly send her home, monseigneur, it is your only chance to palliate a great wrong. No doubt you acted more in wantonness than malice, but now you understand that you have not bought a carving or a jewel, but a human creature."

"Give me some credit," Karl August would reply bitterly, "that I have not molested her."

The nun had a smile for that.

"You cannot. You do not dare."

The haughty, violent man raged. He stared at himself in many mirrors; he had always disliked his person, inherited from a defeated people he had betrayed; no powder could efface that black hair, no art alter those straight fine features, no imperial uniform make him appear of the conquering race. A Magyar, one with those he crushed and slew...he had burnt a church once with a hundred worshippers within, and watched while his troopers thrust the wretches back into the flames...every face shrieking to death had been like his face...detestable, and giving him the air of a renegade. He passionately wished he was like Culembach, the dominant Northern stock...who did he appear to the Chinese woman?

She remained unchanged; patiently she waited through the luscious autumn days. The lilies on the pond withered, the bamboos and maples shed their leaves, the sunshine took a mellower tinge; in meek resignation the Chinese woman waited; only her songs became more plaintive, her music the melody of an exile, and her slanting eyes glittered with tears as she prayed to her crystal god.

"Send her home before the winter," said the nun.

"Sell her to me," insisted Culembach.

"Marry me," implored Hedwig Sophia.

While the Emperor's commands came stern from Vienna:

"Go immediately to Hungary."

Aspremont Reckheim did none of these things. He was entirely, and, for the first time in his life, occupied with his own soul; he ascended to stormy heights and grovelled in murky depths; all his possessions became earthly baubles, the wind in the bare trees at night was of peculiar importance; the sight of the moon touched him to nothingness, and the vapourous sunshine was bitter-sweet to agony; he was in full pursuit of something flying beyond his reach, a chase that would snatch him off the globe into darkness, for what he sought was hidden surely beyond the farthest star.

Culembach one evening penetrated the Chinese garden; he only saw all the lattices of the pavilion flicked down and heard the mournful note of a zither; but Karl August posted a guard of his own regiment round the Oriental pleasance.

With the waning of October came the news of the sacking of his château at Vesprim; the rebels had broken into his costly grounds, smashed the pyramid, lit bonfires in the grottos, kicked to pieces the ice caves, set free the dwarfs in the village. These tiny monsters had frolicked up to the mansion and, mad with liberty, destroyed all they could discover, then drunk themselves to death amid shards of porcelain, tatters of silk and fragments of gilt wood. The rabble had cracked the cedar-wood chapel as if it had been a nut; angels, saints and crucifixes were tumbled out to be trampled into the parterres of the coronary garden. At night the flames of Vesprim appeared to smite the moon; blood, bones, and the value of a million rix dollars were consumed.

Close on this news Hedwig Sophia rode to Halstadt, her mood beyond subterfuge or prudence.

"Why do you linger? See what has befallen. There was no such palace save at Kassel."

"I can build another," he replied sternly, "if I am not too old for playthings."

Golden, rosy, flushed, distracted with emotion, Hedwig Sophia passionately replied:

"Playthings? You think of nothing else. You are a fool for this Chinese woman."

"You know of her, then?"

"Oh, am I imbecile? Theodor, also, is obsessed by her—what is it? I have suffered it long enough...Do you not think of me at all? Do you not think of your duty? You will be ruined, disgraced, if you do not go to Hungary."

Striking her hand with her riding whip Hedwig Sophia trembled in the rich firelight.

"For a Chinese woman!" she cried.

"She is not my mistress," he said dryly. "I cannot even speak to her. I have never touched her."

Amazed and frightened, Hedwig Sophia asked: "Why?"

"I do not know."

"But you keep her there, hidden at Bagatelle? Theodor heard her sing."

"He'll not again. Yes, I keep her there, immaculate. She is like nothing you could imagine, Hedwig. I cannot speak of it."

"But you love me." Hedwig Sophia was hurried into open avowal of her pain. "This is a whim, it can, it must be dispelled. We will go together to Hungary and regain what you have lost."

"I have lost nothing," mused Karl August.

"You have lost me," retorted the passionate woman, "and I was something to you once."

Very little; how women overestimated themselves! He could not tell her that, nor how many fair women, soft, easy, there were in the world, very ready to the hand of a man like himself. Her rank prevented Hedwig Sophia from knowing how ordinary she was; she pleaded with him hopelessly; she really believed the man bewitched, and though she loved him no less for that she endeavoured to sting him with taunts.

"How can you dally here? You must be a scorn at Vienna—nothing will save you if you do not go at once—I could not marry an idler—or, is it a coward?"

"Tell your brother to come and ask that," he suggested, thinking he would relish an opportunity to quarrel violently with Culembach.

"I will, oh, I will!"

She flung away; he thought he could hear her angry sobbing long after she had gone; he was indifferent to her suffering, she was pampered, selfish, cruel, as he had been.

The posts from Buda and an Express from Vesprim waited in his antechambers while he was closeted with the nun; he had sent for her from the pavilion, which he had not visited for several days; a faint blue haze lay over the park; the nun warmed cold fingers at the frost-clear fire.

General Aspremont Reckheim stood with his hands clasped behind him; he wore a careless civilian dress and had neglected to pomade the black locks that he detested.

The nun smiled at him pleasantly; her face was peaked and thin between the folds of linen; she stooped slightly, some small dead leaves clung to the hem of her grey robe.

"You have held out against me a long time," he said.

The nun continued to smile.

"I love the Chinese woman," said Karl August.

"Then you will send her home, of course?"

"No."

"You do not love her, Monseigneur."

"It is terrible how I love her—I cannot endure to see her because my thoughts of her torment me so. I meant the affair for a jest, for a caprice, to win a wager and a little mistress for a while. I have been horribly ensnared."

The nun considered him with pity.

"Yes, that is how it happens. One does lightly a wicked deed and it closes on one's soul like a vice."

"I have done worse things," he replied, "and never heeded them."

"Perhaps this is the punishment for them all, Monseigneur."

"It is enough," he sighed. "She is so hemmed in that I cannot approach her...hedged about—what with?"

"Innocence, Monseigneur."

"I have overcome that before."

"Alas, Monseigneur!"

"You have laid a spell round her." He tried to smile. "You have conquered. I will marry her."

The nun shook her head.

"She is not a Christian."

"I will have her baptized; I will give her my mother's name."

"She would not understand. She does not care for you. She only longs for her home. If you keep her she will die."

"I would not let her die. I can make women happy and I love her so much—"

"Then, certainly you will return her to Chuchow. Love has only one way, Monseigneur, it serves, it does not think of self; either," added the nun, "you use a word you do not understand, or you know what I mean."

Karl August looked away.

"What should I do when she was gone?"

"Take up your duty. Return to Hungary and endeavour to obtain justice and mercy for the rebels and heretics your kinspeople."

"It is too difficult. I cannot part with her and I'll not tolerate them. You are defeated."

"Not I, but you, General Reckheim."

He dismissed her; with a sweep of his wide cuff and heavy ruffles he knocked over all the stupid trifles on his bureau, splinters of egg-shell porcelain scattered on the carpet; he stamped on them while the posts waited.

For three days he was shut in his rooms; at nights the frosts fell and the dawns were slow and heavy; a despatch from the Emperor awaited his pleasure; another week's delay and he would be superseded in his command; Culembach wrote violently demanding explanation, satisfaction for an insulted sister; all this was chaff in the wind to Aspremont Reckheim. He went down through the still cold, the bare park to the withered winter-bitten Chinese garden where the pavilion showed stark amid the desolation of the trees; the brilliant tiles were rimed with frost which had melted in drops of moisture on the bells above the horned gate, there was no sound of zither or voice.

"How has this come on me who was so sure of myself? I, who did not know of the unattainable, to be overcome by desire I I, who was always resolute, to be thus baffled I I shall never know her heart or her mind, or what she said in her lovely language; she will never lead me into the world where she moves."

He did not cross the confines of her domain, but, returning to the château, sent a letter to the nun:

Take the Chinese woman back, command my means. I leave for Buda.

And he thought: "When they are gone I will have the Chinese gardens, the pavilion and the pagoda demolished—and never again will I trade with Van Dollart."

General Aspremont Reckheim appeared in the full accoutrements that he had so long put aside, and rode at the head of the troop of horse he was leading to the Imperial headquarters near the ruins of Vesprim. The wan day had wasted to the bleached grey of twilight; the dark soldier saw nothing but a mist-bound horizon; his companions rode apart, awed by his grim air of gloom; he had not reached the limits of the estate before he was overtaken by a Heyduck with a bruised face, urging an exhausted horse; his panted news, gasped out as his master drew rein, was brief.

"The Margraf has carried off the Chinese woman."

This was to Karl August as if the scornful hand of God had, out of the menacing sky, struck him one blow...and sufficient.

"They surprised us, five hundred men—the Princess Hedwig Sophia was there—the instant, sir, you had departed."

Karl August turned back at the gallop; by using three relays he arrived at Culembach's château by nightfall.

No one thwarted his entrance; he believed that some catastrophe beyond violence had occurred; he had outridden his company and entered the house alone; room after room was empty and quiet; he would not call her because he did not know her name; in a high ornate chamber he found the nun, very weary, and praying; she saw his face and said:

"You must not kill them. They have been very gentle. Besides, it was too late. She would never have reached home; she was dying."

With her old, tired gait she preceded him to the next room.

The Chinese woman was on a sofa; Culembach and Hedwig gazed at her in silence, holding hands for company in their guilt; Karl August did not see them or their misery; he knelt beside the sofa and said words he had never said before, save falsely.

"Forgive me, for God's sake, forgive me!"

The Chinese woman sat up and looked at him; she bowed, she spoke directly to him, a low murmur of delicate sound. He was sure that she spoke only to him not to the nun; never would he know what she said; she could not speak for long, for she was occupied with the matter of dying. She bowed again and turned to her repose; she seemed to fold herself together, like a flower, furled petal by petal round a dead heart.

Never would his pursuit overtake her, never would she teach him her speech, nor admit him to that world which he now knew of and must ever weary after; never could she relieve his desolation.

Dead, she appeared no more than a toy, Bagatelle, an Eastern puppet on the coquettish sofa. Karl August looked inwards and found detestable company; himself grinning in loneliness.