Читать книгу The Knot Garden: Some Old Fancies Reset - Bowen Marjorie - Страница 6

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PRINCESS MAGDALENA SYBILLA of Marienburg lay in bed late on the day following the ball.

"It will be difficult," she thought, "after the events of last night, to begin life again. It will never be quite, of course, on the old footing."

She had been far too excited to sleep and through the short hours between her retirement to her room and her ancient maid bringing in her chocolate she had reviewed again and again the circumstances of the ball.

She was gratified by the recollection of the part she had played under conditions which might have been, but had not been, disastrous. It had been an occasion to reveal good breeding and she had revealed it; it had been an occasion to display courage and nerve, and she had shown that she had possessed both these admirable qualities. What had inspired her had been an intense pity both for the young man, who was, she was sure, honest and honourable when sober, and for his mother who had tried all along to be so kind to her, the Princess Magdalena Sybilla of Marienburg, to whom it was not so easy to be kind.

This pity for them had made her forget herself Instead of running from the room and bursting into tears, of pointing the catastrophe by some collapse on her own part, she had ignored the insult of the drunken youth and the silence that had followed. She had laughed quite gaily over the episode of the broken violin and the musician sprawling after it along the beeswaxed floor.

"It was curious," she reflected, sitting up in bed and drawing about her shoulders her old-fashioned tippet of white wool, "that no one else among all those sophisticated well-trained people could think of anything to cause a diversion—not one of them, they all stood dumbfounded until that poor player, a plain fellow like myself, I remember, must do something ludicrous like that—throwing down his violin and then himself!"

She had laughed in genuine amusement. There had been something so forlorn about the action, something so desperate in the musician's face as he had looked up at her, a glance, she flattered herself, of real devotion, as if he had said: "A little thing, but all I could do."

After that everything had been a confusion, but not a disagreeable chaos. Everyone had moved about together. She had seen the young Prince's face with an expression on it which was, she thought, like that of a drowning man who, before he sinks, suddenly realises his end is near—such an expression of emphatic horror and incredulity had been on the fair young countenance of Prince Chlodwig of Luneburg Hohenheim as his friends had closed round him and led him away. Rozsika, the ugly Princess had noticed, was not in that protecting, friendly group. After her thin and insolent laugh, which had maliciously pointed the discomfiture of the other woman, she was left rather alone. The Princess Hedwig had deliberately turned her back on her as she had drawn the lean arm of Magdalena Sybilla round her own plump waist.

Rozsika had pouted, frowned, then laughed again and raised her brows. One or two flatterers had fluttered near her, then hesitated and fluttered away. She had, of course, received a good deal of homage of late but on this occasion her sycophants seemed to find other objects of admiration. It was the ugly Princess who had been the centre of all attention. The Graf von Böhmlau had suggested showing her the fireworks; Baron Baps, bowing still lower, had talked of a visit to the aviary so sweetly lit by coloured fairy lamps. One charming lady, with a tenderness not to be mistaken for mockery, had admired the regal cut of the green gown and the elegant festooning of the tarnished silver lace, the victim was so sorry for all of them that she had taken their tributes in good part. She had laughed and jested, done her utmost to set them all at their ease, to show that she did not remember, that she had not been offended, that nothing ugly had happened. In her heart, she took all the blame on herself.

"I should not have been here, I was like a challenge. He is spoilt, fortune's coxcomb, and was very intoxicated. When he is sober some fool, or more likely some malicious woman—Rozsika, no doubt—will tell him what he said and then he will suffer horribly."

Thinking of what Prince Chlodwig must suffer, the ugly Princess had suffered also and so became more easy and gay and animated. She had talked with this one and jested with that one, made dry and amusing remarks, until the glances of admiration turned in her direction became no longer feigned but genuine. These people discovered that she was a real wit, that she had humour and charm and a gracious pleasant way. For their own sakes they tried to make themselves worthy of her intelligence and her graciousness.

When she had been escorted through the formal grounds of the Residentzschloss from one aspect of the spectacle to another, she returned to the ballroom.

The Prince was no longer there; he had tacitly withdrawn from his own feast and no one mentioned him.

The ugly Princess, remarking his absence, cried in her tender heart: "How long it will be before he regains his reputation as a gallant man! Indeed, I fear that socially he is ruined. What can he do to redeem himself?"

Rozsika also had disappeared. Her father, seeing her in a petulant isolation, had tactfully borne her away.

"Alas!" thought Magdalena Sybilla sorrowfully, "have I, by my inopportune ugliness ruined a sweet and tender romance? If she laughed she could not help it, it was not meant in unkindness. No, it was mere nervous hysteria. Or perhaps she did it to cover up his disgrace!"

She sipped the froth on her chocolate. She decided to be on her way to Gandersheim that morning; she could do no more to help these people. For herself she no longer suffered, she had the reward of courage. Last night she had endured and triumphed. She believed that a great many people knew her a little better, liked, and possibly even admired her, and this was a pleasant sensation.

"I may even," she thought with a glow, "be admired and beloved in Gandersheim."

She told the maid to bid her lackey get ready her modest baggage. She could not, she was sure, endure to see Prince Chlodwig again, and though she must, perforce, see his mother, she hoped to make her interview as brief and formal as possible. It would be intolerable if she had to endure the unfortunate lady's apologies, tears, and lamentations.

So she got from bed with great energy and began to busily put on her clothes. She had always attended to her own service; it mattered so little what she wore or how it was put on. When she had laced herself into her habit of serviceable grey Kersey, she ran to the window and pulled wide the pink damask curtains which were so much finer than any curtains she had ever had before, and looked out into the garden.

It was a lovely day and her spirits rose just because of that. The pure sunshine, the glistening leaves and the opening flowers, the smooth green in the parterres and the flight of two pink doves in the sky, who seemed to be tumbling in the heavens in a sheer ecstasy of joy, all these things raised the spirits of the ugly Princess.

But she was almost immediately sad and even humbled again, for the Princess Hedwig entered her room and began what Magdalena Sybilla had so dreaded—trembling apologies and bitter regrets for the hideous circumstance of the ball the night before.

Her guest besought her earnestly to be silent.

"Madame, I heard nothing...and if I did hear something it was only the truth. I am ugly, and it is a disaster, and let it go. Do you know, I enjoyed myself tremendously last night! Everyone was so kind, and, not only because they were sorry for me, but because even they liked me a little. I felt that."

The Princess Hedwig said:

"My dear child, you are too generous," then could say no more for tears.

While she sobbed into her handkerchief, Magdalena Sybilla patted her on the shoulder and added in a voice that was almost gay:

"It was good for me, too, Madame, I have been too sheltered. Everything has been too shielded from me, my life has been very strange and very dull. Last night! why, it was like a glass of wine! I learnt, too, that I can do things, that I can be, perhaps, courageous and well-mannered under difficulties."

"I make no excuses," sobbed the Princess Hedwig. "Do me that justice to observe that I make no excuses. There is nothing to be said for him—nothing at all."

"No," replied the other lady gravely and reflectively, "I will not do you that injustice to suppose that you would come here to make excuses, but I, I may do so. I may say that he is very young, that it was his twenty-first birthday, that he had been with his wild companions, that he had drunk so much wine that he had forgotten it was your house and did not remember who I was."

"We must not talk any more of it!" exclaimed the Princess Hedwig. Suddenly she stifled her sobs and drew herself up with a resolute air. "He will make amends. He has thought himself of how to do this."

The other Princess frowned, though there was a smile on her lips.

"Oh dear, are we never to have the end of this bad business? I am going away this morning and I do not want to see him again. I do not say that in unkindness, you know, but I do not think that I could endure him to come and apologise."

"You must not think him so base as that," murmured Prince Chlodwig's mother, "he would not wish to inflict on you an apology. It is an offence he feels can only be effaced one way—"

Magdalena Sybilla interrupted with an impatient little wave of her hand.

"Oh, Madame, what a pity this has to be referred to! Who told him? He would never by himself have remembered."

"There were not lacking those who told him, and if there had been none I myself should have done so."

Princess Magdalena Sybilla was now a little curious. She was still immensely sorry for these people; she wondered how they were ever going to put themselves right with themselves. She thought: "Perhaps still something more is required of me. Perhaps I ought not to run away but stay and face him and help them."

"Madame, have you seen your son this morning already, early as it is."

"I have not left him all night. As soon as the ball was over I went to his rooms. He and I—we have been together."

Still curious, still compassionate, the other Princess said delicately:

"I hope that Prince Chlodwig is not angry with Rozsika?"

"He never wishes to see her again. When he recalls that he was ever attracted by such a creature he loathes himself."

Magdalena Sybilla raised her sensitive brows.

"He could not then have been fond of her," she murmured, "or he would have passed her faults."

"He knows her now as she really is, that laugh can never be pardoned. I have sent to her father already and advised him to take his daughter away from the Court—away, if possible, from Luneburg Hohenheim."

"A pity!" murmured the ugly Princess with a sigh. "They made such an exquisite couple."

The Princess Hedwig caressed her pomaded locks which had become somewhat dishevelled during her night's vigil. She looked fatigued but not downcast as in a firm voice she said:

"There is now only one woman in the world whom my son can marry—only one woman whom he wishes to marry."

The other Princess rather wondered what this had to do with herself and with the incidents of last night, but she said politely:

"Who is she? Have I seen her? Was she at the ball last night?"

The Princess Hedwig gave her a glance which seemed to comment on her innocence.

"It is yourself, my dear Magdalena Sybilla. My son can marry no one but yourself."

A deep flush stained the sallow cheeks of the Princess Magdalena Sybilla. She sank down into the high-backed chair by the window and said nothing. The sunlight fell on her crooked features and her hands worked nervously in her lap. The Princess Hedwig continued to speak eagerly with infinite energy.

"Do not you see this is the only possible action for him to take? He suggested it and I agreed at once. You will marry him, won't you, Magdalena? He can offer you a better position than that of Abbess of Gandersheim. I am very, very fond of you already and I do believe you like me a little. You are brilliant, clever, so intelligent! Everybody remarked on it last night. I daresay you will be his salvation. Underneath his gallant exterior he really is a young fool. You will be able to save him by your tact, wit and kindness from a hundred disasters." She glanced sideways at the other Princess who did not speak or move. "Think what services you have done him already! You have set him free from a woman like Rozsika, you have made him ashamed of himself for the first time in his life—and consider how good that is for him—you have humbled his pride and his self-confidence, you have made him take a vow never to touch a drop of wine again—and think what a rarity that is in a gentleman and how much it will be to his advantage in dealing with others! And now," she hurried on nervously after another glance at the immobile young woman by the window, "you will do him yet another service if you accept his hand which he offers so humbly to you.

"You will restore him his sense of self-respect, you will have allowed him to do the only thing that is possible to save him from his self-disdain, from his profound humiliation."

A little smile hovered at the corners of the pale lips of the ugly Princess.

"All this for him," she thought, "but what of me? What is any of it going to mean to me? But I must not forget that it is his mother who speaks."

"Madame, you offer me a very brilliant destiny." She inclined her head.

"Oh, no nothing beyond your birth and your merit. You will be very popular, everyone will love you." And the Princess Hedwig continued, in her mellow, pleasant and anxious voice, to dilate on the advantages to Prince Chlodwig and to Luneburg Hohenheim on seeing this Princess on the throne. How her tact would soothe away difficulties for the headstrong young man, how her kindness would win him popularity, how her wisdom would guide his policies, how her penetration would choose his friends!

"But I," thought the other wistfully, "might be happier in Gandersheim."

Aloud she said, rising and dropping a low curtsey, so that her plain grey dress billowed gracefully around her ungraceful limbs:

"Madame, you do me a very great honour. The amends you propose to make for the unfortunate incidents of last night are fantastic, extravagant, not to be thought of! I perceive that you have a very delicate sense of honour with which you have taught to your son and that neither of you can be at ease, until, by undertaking the most frightful penitence you can think of, you have put yourselves right in your own estimation." She paused, then added in another and shorter tone: "But for me it is a worse than loveless marriage."

"Had you been wed in the ordinary way," the Princess Hedwig reminded her gently, "it had been to some man whom you had never seen."

"He would have known nothing of me save a flattering portrait, and your son has seen me, and—your pardon, Madame, but he spoke what was in his heart when he said 'What a disaster.'"

"If you refuse him," cried the Princess Hedwig in despair, "he will never hold up his head again! I do not know what I should do with him. He considers himself lost, ruined, dishonoured."

The younger Princess sighed and smiled together.

"They still must think of themselves," she thought, of their honour, their disgrace, their disaster! "They are doing this through their own pride and neither of them think of me."

Yet she felt sorry for them. They were generous, honest people, both of them. She thought of her father, of her mother and sisters, of the good friends she had at home. They would regard this fantastic chance as a piece of astonishing good luck, her father would look happier than he had looked for years when he heard of her betrothal to the most brilliant prince in the Empire—she could see the kindly face alight with triumph!

One of her sisters could have the Abbey of Gandersheim—poor Louisa Maria perhaps, who was only two years younger than she was and nearly as plain. What rejoicings there would be in Marienburg, everyone would feel that they had been personally complimented by the splendid marriage of their Princess!

This was a prospect hardly to be foregone, a temptation hardly to be resisted. While, for herself, could she deny it would be like an enchantment to be betrothed to Prince Chlodwig? Could she refuse to admit in her secret heart that it would be like entering again into that realm of dreams on which she had long since closed the door? It could not last, of course, it would be but a fairy interlude, a masque on a summer lawn, or a snatch of music heard as a procession passed. Might it not be, however, even for a transient space, enjoyed? He would be tender, he would be courteous, even grateful to her for the chance she gave him to re-establish himself in his dignity, through her he would again be a hero in his own eyes.

Should she deny him this supreme satisfaction and go away peevishly, petulantly to her Abbey?

Her smile deepened to a laugh.

"Oh, Madame, tell your son that I will receive his addresses."