Читать книгу The Knot Garden: Some Old Fancies Reset - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 5

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"WHEN I was a child," said the Princess Sophia Magdalena thoughtfully, "I used to dream of escaping into the woods and of living there for ever. I thought that I could exist on wild strawberries, that the moss would make a very pleasant bed at night, that the dew, caught in the cups of the lily leaves, would make a delicious drink. You perceive that I imagined that it would be always summer. Such was my plan to escape from the world."

"But now," smiled her friend uneasily, "you know that you cannot evade your responsibilities and that the world from which you would escape needs you."

The Princess Sophia Magdalena was too courteous to remark on this obvious flattery. She smiled civilly, and leaning over the elaborate ironwork of the balcony, glanced down the sunny street.

"How gay the city looks to-day," she remarked. "All those flags! How bright their colours are and how brilliantly the sun gleams on all the spires and weathercocks."

"It is my son's birthday," smiled the Princess Hedwig, with a slight emphasis of her uneasiness. "He is very popular, more for his vices, I fear, than for his virtues. Between you and me, my dear, he is a rather thoughtless, worthless fellow."

Sophia Magdalena knew that her friend and hostess did not mean this deprecation of her son to be taken seriously, but she appreciated the spirit in which it was made, for Prince Chlodwig had everything that she, Sophia Magdalena, had not and the contrast, even in the eyes of this shining young hero's mother, must have been a painful one.

As she continued to gaze down the long, brightly-lit street where the little figures of citizens in their best clothes moved busily to and fro setting up garlands, pennants and loyal mottoes above their doors and in front of their windows, the Princess Sophia Magdalena said sincerely:

"If I had known—I mean, if I had remembered, that this was your son's birthday festival I should not have paused here on my way to Gandersheim."

"But how absurd!" exclaimed the Princess Hedwig in hasty kindliness. "We rejoice to have you, my dear child. I only hope that these rather tiresome ceremonies will not seem to you childish and tedious."

"It is not that," replied the other gently, "but you know, Madame, that I am not made for festivals."

She said this without either reproach or sadness, but the Princess Hedwig was silent; she did not know in what manner to comfort and console one whose destiny indeed permitted of neither comfort nor consolation.

The Princess Sophia Magdalena was the sixth daughter of a Prince-Bishop who was extremely poor and extremely proud. To be thus placed was, in itself; no great good fortune, but, to add bitterness to this dubious destiny the Princess Sophia Magdalena was the plainest high-born lady within the Empire. Indeed, some had said, within the frontiers of Europe.

She was good, she was accomplished, she had plenty of common sense, she had early learned resignation, but her portrait had been in vain hawked round all the Courts of Germany. Envoys, tactful and insinuating, had endeavoured to put forward her claims anywhere where there was a prince, however stupid, plain, poor or ill-tempered, desiring a wife. But always in vain. Painters might flatter and make a passable miniature of those pinched features, those thin lips, that large nose, that thin neck and bony shoulders, but rumour spoke truer than the artist's pencil—the lady's fame always preceded her, and it had been impossible to dispose of the ugly princess even among princes uglier than she was and infinitely her inferior in every other respect. Even if she had had a large dowry it would have been difficult to find her a husband, but as she was penniless the task had become hopeless and her father and his ministers had thrown up their hands in despair and, when she was twenty-seven years old, had secured for her, by extraordinary good luck and from the compassion of an Emperor who knew her patience and her good temper, the envied post of Abbess of the old Abbey of Gandersheim.

She was on her way to take up this position and had made, in her slow and stately travel, a pause at the Court of the Princess Hedwig, who was a distant relation of her mother.

The Princess Hedwig had been everything that was kind and considerate, but her guest would rather have proceeded on her way than have remained to partake at the festivals of that spoilt darling of the Fortune, the goddess who had never smiled on her. The Prince Chlodwig was not, she considered, even for her distant contemplation.

"When one is about to leave the world," she remarked, leaning awkwardly on the balcony ('Everything she does is awkward,' thought the Princess Hedwig miserably), "the less one sees of it the better. And do you know, Madame, though I have so well learnt resignation, I still long for my summer woods, my diet of strawberries, my drink of lily dew."

"But you are going into a great position," said the other woman eagerly and with real admiration. "Do not forget your accomplishments—how well you know Greek and Latin, how excellently you can make verses, how delicate a hand you have with a needle, yes, and even with the engraver's burin! You will have a position of great power, everybody will admire you and applaud your prudence and piety and good behaviour! Think, my dear, what it is to have reached your age and never to have had anyone say an unkind word about you, not to have a single blemish on your character!"

This compliment was, perhaps, unfortunately phrased. The Princess Sophia Magdalena Sybilla smiled over her shoulder and said gently:

"No blemish on my character perhaps, but is not that because there are several blemishes in my person? If I had been beautiful I might have been as wanton as—" She paused, for she did not know the names of many careless, beautiful ladies, and was too kind to have named them if she had had so much knowledge, but the Princess Hedwig supplied, with a sigh, the end of the sentence:

"As Roszianka, perhaps," she said, "as Rozsika."

"Who is she?" asked Magdalena Sybilla without much interest, for her attention was strangely attracted by the movements in the sunny street below.

She had lived much secluded in her desolate, gaunt palace, which was all that her father could afford as a residence for his daughter. She had read a great deal, but experienced very little and all along her journey—she had to cross the Empire to reach Gandersheim—she had been aware of an increasing sense of intoxication produced by the strange sights and sounds around her, by all the evidences of a busy, active life in which she had never had, and now never could have, any part. And this sense of excitement, of anticipation, of a poignant longing, had been intensified since she had been in the elegant city where sumptuous preparations for the festival of a beloved prince were being made.

"Rozsika," sighed the Princess Hedwig, with a gesture and glance of dismay, "means, I think, to marry my son, and a marriage with her! That would be in every way a dreadful thing to occur! Of course, it would only be a morganatic affair—she is not of royal birth, but it would be quite sufficient to prevent him from making the match which is in view elsewhere."

"I suppose," sighed the Princess Magdalena Sybilla slowly, "she is very lovely."

"My son thinks so," sighed the elder woman shortly. "She uses every possible device to entrap him, she assumes virtue, and her father, who is a cunning old rogue, watches her diligently. What is the use of speaking of them?" The Princess Hedwig shrugged her plump shoulders. "I, of course, can do nothing. The truth is, Rozsika is behaving very badly."

"Well, perhaps if I were pretty I also might behave badly. I rather wish I had missed your festival. You see, Madame, I have never seen anything of this kind before, we are as poor as church mice, there have been times when we have hardly had a party dress between us."

"I ought to have asked you and your sisters here before," confessed the other lady uncomfortably, "but somehow—somehow—"

"Of course, Madame," interrupted Magdalena Sybilla pleasantly, "you would never think of such a thing, and why should you? With all the women there are in the world why should you trouble yourself with the plainest and most ungainly of their sex? Besides," she added with a sigh, "it would have been of no use."

Princess Hedwig, looking at her with deep sympathy, thought so too.

"The poor creature certainly deserves her title of 'The Ugly Princess.' What maid, however skilful, could do anything with those irregular features, with that yellow complexion, with those small eyes and that long nose, with the harsh dark hair? What dressmaker, however cunning, could do anything with that angular figure, those clumsy movements, with those large hands and feet?"

She had fine white teeth and a most agreeable voice, her smile was ready and humorous. One could well believe that there was no evil in her; nay, that she had never had as much as an unworthy thought. But this was all, and it was not very much, to be said in favour of "The Ugly Princess."

"Let us go into the palace," said the Princess Hedwig hastily, "the sun is really much too hot here."

But she spoke too late and the Princess Sophia Magdalena had lingered on the balcony a little too long. Around the corner of the street came the Prince Chlodwig, returning from the hunt with his retinue. He flashed unexpectedly on to the brilliant scene. This was no formal entry nor ceremonial occasion but the townsfolk, though taken by surprise, cheered him lustily, standing, with their flags and garlands in their hands, to shout for one who had never increased taxes, who spent a great deal of money, who continually provided amusement and scandal and was, in addition, most agreeable to look at, and always had a good- humoured smile on his face and a pleasant word on his lips.

He raised his white-plumed hat in gay return of these loyal salutations; the July sun shone on his hair which was as gold and as pale and gleaming as his mother's wedding ring.

"Is that your son?" asked the Princess Magdalena Sybilla, and the other lady said "Yes," almost as if she were ashamed, and she made a nervous and perhaps cowardly movement to draw the ugly Princess away from the balcony. But Princess Magdalena Sybilla lingered and he looked up and she saw on the handsomest face that she had yet beheld the expression that she had seen on too many other faces—surprise, incredulity, quickly controlled pity. Ah, well she knew that look! No man, especially no young man, expected a woman, especially a young woman, to look like she looked. But his mother was quickly beside her, masking her, protecting her, and he bowed low in the saddle in an exaggeration of courtesy.

But she had seen the glance. She was, however, a philosopher—how would the unhappy and the unfortunate exist without philosophy? She said to herself: "I was certain to meet him, sooner or later, therefore I was certain to see such a glance." Aloud she said:

"I think, after all, I did stand too long in the sun. I have a little headache, I will go and lie down until dinner-time, if you please, Madame. I have, besides, some letters to write home."

And as she went on with her courteous excuses, which were very sensibly and even prettily given, the Princess Hedwig, who was very good-natured, was thinking most unhappily:

"It was very stupid for her to come here just now. It ought to have been arranged differently. It would seem so inhospitable to send her away, but I wish I could think of some excuse for her to avoid the festival. What a figure, poor child, will she cut at the supper and the ball and the carnival masquerade! She has no clothes, either, and no jewels and even were I to find the courage to offer to lend her any and she were to accept, why, finery would only make her look grotesque."

In the very handsome chamber that was assigned to her in the Residentzschloss the ugly Princess communed with her own soul. She, also, wished she had not come to the gay city in this time of festival. Her father had arranged the matter with the best intentions, but thought-lessly. She did not blame him nor the Princess Hedwig. "It is I," she said to herself, "who am wrong. I have no right to be ugly. People cannot be always remembering it and making allowances and wondering how they can avoid hurting my feelings. It will be a good thing for me and for everyone else when I am safely in the Abbey of Gandersheim."

So she tried to fix her thoughts on that, on what her future life would be in the Abbey, that large building with a small town around it where she would be mistress, nay, almost queen. It was a Protestant establishment in name, but one modelled on pre- Reformation lines. It was very old—there had been an abbey at Gandersheim even in the time of legends, of silver knights, black dragons and blonde princesses. Sophia Magdalena had heard of white cloisters, of ancient lime trees, of grass plots, of vines growing in the open air (for Gandersheim was far south), and she had pictured, in her sad mind, a place of peace and solitude where she might be, if not happy, at least free to indulge her favourite virtue of resignation.

She had thought that such a life might not be wholly distasteful. It would have some power, some dignity, some scope for those qualities which she knew she possessed. She would be an Abbess, she would rule a community, she would not be one of six plain women whom no one wanted. There had been moments at her father's poverty-stricken Court when she had longed for Gandersheim and had implored him to hurry on the negotiations which would secure for her the post of Abbess. But all of this had been before she had seen the Prince Chlodwig, before she had travelled the broad highways, seen the children playing, the maidens working in the fields, the students with hood and gown, and schoolchildren with satchels, pretty women with their cavaliers, middle-aged and old women comfortable with their families around them, all the busy bustling life, all the eager coming and going of the public highways.

For several days during her slow progress she had marked these things. She had seen much at the inn where they had been put up with ceremony and received with respect. Although her apartments had always been separated from those of the common people, she had had glimpses of inn yards, she had seen men and women on the stairs, in the public parlour and dining-room, and she had realised that she had missed much more than she had ever known before.

She took out her Bible, her prayer-book and the volume which contained the History of Gandersheim and the rules for the Abbess of the Sisters. She tried to fix her mind again on this placid, tranquil future which lay before her, the prospect which had seemed not uninviting when viewed from the arid poverty of her father's house, was now marred by a thousand memories—the incidents of the last few days, and, most of all, by the thought of Prince Chlodwig whom she had just seen riding round the corner of the street on his fine bay horse with all his gold and scarlet trappings, the sun bright on his pale uncovered head.

She looked at herself steadily in the mirror which hung above the large dressing-table. She had never shrunk before from gazing at herself in a mirror, she had never used any formula of reproach towards any destiny or providence that might be responsible for her misfortune, but now she did murmur "Cruel!" as she looked at those crooked features, at that sallow complexion, at that thin dark hair, at that lean figure which no garment of festival could disguise.

"I should not have come here. There is to be a ball to-night and I have nothing to wear. I should need to blaze with jewels to disguise how ugly I am. But then, that would be no use, either. They would merely say 'Poor creature, how hopeless it is!' And yet if I go in my green velvet, which is all I have, with the tarnished braid, they will say 'She looks like a goblin and spoils the feast.'"

So, staring at herself in the mirror the ugly Princess resolved that she would not attend the ball. She was quite sure that the kind Princess Hedwig would understand her when she pleaded a headache, a sudden indisposition from the sun. Yes, she was quite sure that that understanding woman would allow her to remain in peace in her handsome suite of apartments and depart quietly in two or three days' time, perhaps early in the morning before anyone was astir, when all the festival, if not over, was at least, in abeyance.

But, even as she stared at her unhappy reflection her courage rose. She was well-bred and had been finely trained.

"I must not be a coward. I am about to take up a position which will require a certain force of character, I must not allow myself to be despised. What does it matter to me whether these people find me ugly, whether they scorn me or pity me. I do not belong to them or their world, I am merely passing through to another sphere where I shall, at least, be at peace, where I shall, at least, reign, where it will not matter that my features are crooked and my skin yellow, where I shall be respected for my integrity, for my purity of purpose, for my piety and resignation. Let me then, keep this dignity which is going to be so necessary to me in the future. If I am cowardly now I shall lose so much in my own estimation that perhaps I shall never be able to hold up my head again."

So it came about that on the evening of the great ball to celebrate the twenty-first birthday of Prince Chlodwig in the Residentzschloss, the ugly Princess was there in the green velvet gown with the slightly tarnished silver braid which had belonged to her mother, with a string of garnets round her throat and about her shoulders, to disguise their ungainly slope, a little cape of rubbed fox-skin.

The Princess Hedwig showed her much kind attention, but, tactfully, not sufficient to make her conspicuous. She was treated as an honoured guest whose precedence is taken for granted and seated, by her own wish, near the orchestra, on a gilt stool in a corner where the light was not too strong, where there were no flowers to flaunt their frail loveliness, and where a dark tapestry of sombre blues and greens could not shame her modest attire.

It was a very splendid ball, excellently arranged, and after quite a little while the ugly Princess forgot her personal discomforts and disappointments and began, as a spectator, to enjoy the lively scene.

Never before had she seen such dresses, such jewellery, such elegant men and charming women. She admired everything as wholeheartedly as if she had been at a play, and when Baron Hagemann, the Chancellor, spoke to her out of compassion and duty combined, he was quite enchanted by her ingenuous and unenvious delight in a spectacle in which she had no part.

A pool had been made in the middle of the room and from this rose a fountain. On the top of the jet of water shone tiny balls of coloured glass. The ugly Princess thought she had never seen anything so exquisite in her life—she could hardly take her eyes away from the incessant rise and fall of the water, from the endless dance of the coloured balls.

Then—the music!

She was passionately fond of music, though no one had ever written any for her, and her father could not afford to keep an orchestra. She had learnt to play a little on the violin, and she was an adept at the harpsichord, but never had she heard anything like this. The twenty-four musicians in their purple and white livery played such enchanting melodies that the ugly Princess thrilled with rapture. Her cheeks were quite flushed and her eyes quite sparkling for the first time in her life as the Princess Hedwig found a way to her side and endeavoured delicately to deprecate the festival and to say how conventional and noisy and foolish it all was.

"Oh, no, Madame," cried the ugly Princess eagerly, "I think it is very beautiful: I am enjoying it—every moment, the voices, and the music and those dresses and those garlands of flowers from one pillar to another and the wax lights in the crystal chandeliers! Oh, yes, indeed, Madame, it is very beautiful."

She smiled in such touching and such forgetful admiration of pleasures not dedicated to her that the elder woman turned her head aside in a sudden shame.

"Where is Rozsika? Show her to me I implore you, Madame. You said she was lovely and I have been looking for her, but all the ladies here seem so lovely that I cannot understand which is she."

"She is over there," replied the Princess Hedwig, "talking to the man in the saffron-coloured coat. She has a bunch of green ribbons on her shoulders, but you see how insolent she is and how loudly she laughs! She is, I suppose, quite sure of him."

The last bitter words escaped the notice of the ugly Princess who was looking with a wholehearted admiration at the fair Rozsika.

"Why, yes, she is certainly exquisite—it looks as if the whole festival had been planned for her. What grace, what poise! Those diamonds on her hair and her breast, how perfectly they set off her colouring of white and gold!"

"She is talking too loudly," said the Princess Hedwig, "she is not as happy as she looks nor as confident as she would make us think. If you observe her closely you will see that she is really very uneasy and, after all, my dear, I must tell you that this festival is not the success that it seems. My son, in whose honour it is given, has not yet arrived."

"I had not seen him," replied the ugly Princess timidly, "but then, I thought that he was in another part of the room or in one of the ante-chambers or the gallery."

"He has not arrived," repeated the Princess Hedwig sternly. "Three separate messengers have been sent and they cannot find him. I have now ordered the Baron Hagemann to discover him at any cost. If he does not come soon there will be a great many people offended. One cannot afford that nor an open scandal."

"Scandal?" repeated the Princess faintly.

"I suppose," thought the Princess Hedwig, "she already admires him very much, even after that glimpse this morning." Aloud she remarked: "One can never be sure of him. He is impudent and must always have his own way. No doubt I spoilt him when he was a child and now he forgets that he is no longer a boy. Nothing would suit him to-day but that he must go and celebrate his birthday with some students who invited him to a dinner at a Club near the University."

"Surely, it is quite fitting that he should go?"

"It were quite fitting, my dear, he should go if he would return in time. But he delays, he delays! No doubt he is roystering, perhaps taking too much to drink, and who knows but that," added the anxious mother with a sigh, "when he is in his cups he might commit himself to someone far worse even than Rozsika!"

"Look, Madame," whispered Magdalena Sybilla eagerly, "I think that is he entering now. See, Baron Hagemann has him by the elbow, everyone is flocking round him." The Princess Hedwig beat her hand upon her knees.

"Yes, that is he," she said impatiently, "and he has had too much to drink. See, he is quite unsteady in his walk. He has done this just to defy us all because we gave him some good advice. He wants to show that he is without leading-strings and only proves that he is a fool."

She rose and curtly directed the leader of the orchestra to strike up his loudest march with which to cover some possible indiscretion of Prince Chlodwig. Then she resumed her seat in the shadowy corner by Princess Sophia Magdalena.

"I will stay here. If he sees me it will only inflame him. See! he is asking Rozsika to dance. How she has changed!"

"Like a flower opening!" murmured the ugly Princess.

"Yes, yes, he has taken her in his arms, he is looking at her lovingly. Perhaps, before the whole Court, he will ask her to be his wife," and with an angry glance the Princess Hedwig rose. "See, his coarse manner, and I have taken such trouble with him! It is you whom he should ask to dance. You are the woman of the highest rank here, you are his relation and his guest."

"Oh, no, Madame, I implore you! I do not know how to dance; I would not wish to stand up before all these people. Indeed, leave me as I am."

The Princess Hedwig gave her a steady look.

"One must not shirk one's duty, it is not right for you to sit here. You should lead the dance with my son."

The victim of this etiquette remembered the resolution she had made before the mirror in her chamber—not to be cowardly, not to shirk anything, to consider always what was due to her rank and breeding. So she rose and dropped a very low curtsey to her hostess and said:

"If your son asks me, Madame, I shall be pleased to lead the dance with him."

But though she both despised and disavowed her own cowardice, the truth was that she was in her heart very much afraid. She did not want to dance with the handsome prince before the roomful of strangers, all of them no doubt scornful and hostile; she did not want to go through the movements of the gavotte under the bright jeering eyes of Rozsika. Only his entire tender courtesy would have made such an ordeal tolerable, and of that she fered she would receive none. It was clear that his mother had instructed him to open the ball with her, but that he had forgotten.

He had Rozsika on his arm, he was bending towards her, playing with a flower in her corsage, everyone was looking, raising their eyebrows, even their shoulders, smiling, whispering behind fans. It seemed clear that he was to commit himself openly and for ever to Baron Lubomirsky's daughter and this seemed to the ugly Princess right and fitting. They made such a splendid pair—he, so handsome and so gorgeous, she, so lovely and so elegant, both in their rich festival attire, in love one with the other—she in love with his rank and splendour, he in love with her youth and gaiety!

The ugly Princess would have liked to have fled; she would liked to have gone up to her room where her old servant would be nodding in the candle light waiting to make her a hot posset before she crept into bed, but this cowardly flight could not be contemplated. She must accept the suffering that was ordained for her to endure.

The Princess Hedwig, moving tactfully, easily, with a word here, a smile there, contrived to cross the room to her son's side without appearing to do so. The blood burnt in the ugly Princess' thin cheeks as she saw her hostess speak to her son, as she saw him, still with Rozsika on his arm, move towards her where she sat by the orchestra.

The march had come to an end and it was in silence that Prince Chlodwig approached the guest in her shadowed tapestried corner. The musicians were busy with their music, fixing on the stands the pages on which were written the gavotte that was to open the ball.

He came towards her and she fluttered like a cornered dove at his approach. Rozsika insolently and reluctantly had left his arm but she stood her ground beside the Princess Hedwig.

"How lovely she is!" thought Magdalena Sybilla. "How exquisite is her gown!—all those sequins like icicles, like water! Yes, she is like the fountain rising in the middle of the room, as white, as sparkling, as serene!"

She ventured to look at the young prince; she saw that he was making an effort over himself; his walk, his movements, his speech, his dignity, all was exaggerated, his carriage was that of a boy, drunk for the first time in public. His beauty, his fine clothes, his splendid carriage, his jewels, could not entirely disguise the degradation of his condition.

His mother touched his elbow. He stood in front of the ugly Princess and bowed. The Court, slowly moving, like a flight of swans behind their leader, in the wake of their master, was but a hand's stretch behind him as he bowed before his guest.

She rose, she trembled into a curtsey; her downcast eyes saw the billows of her old green velvet with the tarnished silver braid about her feet. She glanced up at him, pleading for mercy; she saw his flushed gaze staring down into hers, she heard him laugh, she saw him thrust his hand on his hip and exclaim in a loud, unnatural voice:

"The ugly Princess! My God! what a disaster!"

The insult was underlined by the shrill laughter of Rozsika.

They continued to stare at each other and no one had the courage to say anything. The silence seemed as if it would be impossible to break when the first violin dropping his instrument directly at their feet and sprawling clumsily after it caused a diversion—a hubbub, a relief from the excitement, the dismay, the horror. The musician apologised, he was blamed, everyone talked at once and of nothing save the clumsiness of the fellow with the violin.