Читать книгу The Pride of Jennico: Being a Memoir of Captain Basil Jennico - Castle Egerton - Страница 4

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Basil Jennico’s Memoir continued

My great-uncle’s will, forcible, concise, indisputable as it was, had been (so the man of law informed me) drawn out in a great hurry, dictated, indeed, between spasms of agony and rage. (The poor old man died of gout in his stomach.) Doubtless, had he felt sure of more time, he would have burdened the inheritance with many directions and conditions.

From his broken utterances, however, and from what I had known of him in life, I gathered a fair idea of what his wishes were. His fifty years of foreign service had filled him, old pandour that he seemed to have become, with but increased contempt for the people that surrounded him, their ways and customs, while his pride as an Englishman was only equalled by his pride as a Jennico.

“Sell and settle....”

The meaning of the words was clear in the light of the man as I knew him. I was to sell the great property, carry to England the vast hoard of foreign wealth, marry as befitted one of the race, and raise a new and splendid line of Jennicos, to the utter mortification, and everlasting confusion, of the degenerate head of the house.

Now, though I knew it to be in me, and felt it, indeed, not otherwise possible, to live my life as true a Jennico as even my uncle could desire, I by no means deemed it incumbent upon me to set to work and carry out his plans without first employing my liberty and wealth as the humour prompted me. Nor was the old country an overpoweringly attractive place for a young man of my creed and kidney. In Vienna I was, perhaps, for the moment, the most noted figure—the guest most sought after that year. In England, at daggers drawn with my brother, I could only play an everyday part in an unpopular social minority.

It was in full summer weather that, as I have written, already tried by the first stage of my career of wealth, I came to take possession of my landed estates. The beauty and wildness of the scenery, the strangeness of the life in the well-nigh princely position to which this sudden turn of fortune’s wheel had elevated me, the intoxicating sensation of holding sway, as feudal lord of these wide tracts of hill and plain, over so many hundreds of lives—above all, the wholesome reaction brought about by solitude and communion with nature after the turmoil of the last months—in short, everything around me and in me made me less inclined than ever to begin ridding myself of so fair a possession.

And do I wish I had not thus delayed in obeying the injunction that accompanied the bequest? Odds my life! I am a miserable dog this day through my disobedience; and yet, would I now undo the past if I could? A thousand times no! I hate my folly, but hug it, ever closer, ever dearer. The bitter savour of that incomprehensible yearning clings to the place: I would not exchange it for the tameness of peace. Weakling that I am, I would not obliterate, if I could, the memory of those brief, brief days of which I failed to know the price, until the perversity of fate cut their thread for ever—ay, perhaps for ever, after all! And yet, if so, it were wiser to quit these haunted walls for ever also. But, God! how meagre and livid looks wisdom, the ghost, by the side of love’s warm and living line!

And now, on! Since I have put my hand to the task, undertaken to set forth and make clear the actual condition of that vacillating puppet, the new-fledged Lord of Tollendhal, I will not draw it back, cost me what pain it may.

No doubt it was this haunting pride of wealth, waxing every day stronger, even as the pride of birth which my great-uncle had fostered to such good purpose, the overweening conceit which they bred within me, that fogged my better judgment and brought me to this pass. And no doubt, likewise, it is a princely estate that these lords of Tollendhal of old carved for themselves, and rounded ever wider and nurtured—all that it should some day, passing through the distaff, come to swell the pride of Suffolk Jennicos!

My castle rises boldly on the northernmost spur of the Glatzer Mounts, and defiantly overlooks the marches of three kingdoms. Its lands and dependencies, though chiefly Moravian, extend over the Bohemian border as well as into that Silesia they now are able to call Prussian. North and west it is flanked by woods that grow wilder, denser, as they spread inwards towards the Giant Mountains. On the southern slopes are my vineyards, growths of note, as I hear. My territories reach, on the one hand, farther than can be seen under the blue horizon, into the Eastern plains, flat and rich, that stretch with curious suddenness immediately at the foot of the high district; upon the other hand, on the Moravian side, I doubt whether even my head steward himself knows exactly how much of the timber-laden hill-ranges can be claimed as appertaining to the estate. All the peaks I can descry in a fine day from these casements are mine, I believe; on their flanks are forests as rich in game—boar and buck, wolf and bear, not to speak of lesser quarry—as are the plains below in corn and maize and cattle—que sais-je? A goodly heritage indeed!

I promised myself many a rare day’s sport so soon as the time waxed ripe. Meanwhile, my days were spent in rambles over the land, under pretence of making acquaintance with the farms and the villages, and the population living on the soil and working out its wealth for my use, but in reality for the enjoyment of delicious sylvan and rustic idleness through which the memory of recent Viennese dissipations was like that of a fevered dream.

The spirit of my country-keeping ancestors lived again within me and was satisfied. Yet there were times, too, when this freedom of fancy became loneliness—when my eyes tired of green trees, and my ears hungered for the voice of some human being whom I could meet as an equal, with whom I could consort, soul and wit. Then I would resolve that, come the autumn, I would fill the frowning stronghouse with a rousing throng of gallant hunters and fair women such as it had never seen before. Ay, and they should come over, even from old England, to taste of the Jennico hospitality!

It was in one of these glorious moods that, upon a September day, sultry as summer, although there was a touch of autumn decay in the air as well as in the tints around me, I sallied forth, after noon, to tramp on foot an as yet unexplored quarter of my domain. I had donned, according to my wont (as being more suitable to the roughness of the paths than the smallclothes, skirted coats, high heels and cocked hat of Viennese fashion), the dress of the Moravian peasant—I gather that it pleases the people’s heart to see their seigneur grace their national garb on occasions. There was a goodly store of such costumes among the cupboards full of hereditary habiliments and furs preserved at Tollendhal, after the fashion of the country, with the care that English housewives bestow upon their stores of linen. My peasant suit was, of course, fine of cloth and natty of cut, and the symmetry of the handsome figure I saw in my glass reminded me more of the pastoral disguises that were the courtly fashion of some years back than of our half-savage ill-smelling boors. Thus it was pleasant as well as comfortable to wear, and at that time even so trifling a sensation of gratified vanity had its price. But, although thus freed of the incumbrance of a gentleman’s attire, I could not shake off the watchful tyranny of János, the solemn heiduck who never allowed me to stir abroad at all without his escort, nor, indeed (if my whim took me far afield), without the further retinue of two jägers, twin brothers, and faithful beyond a doubt. These, carbine on shoulder, and hanger on thigh, had their orders to follow their lord through thick and thin, and keep within sight and sound of whistle.

In such odd style of state, on this day, destined to begin for me a new chapter in life, I took my course; and for a long hour or so walked along the rocky cornice that overhangs the plains. The land looked bare and wide and solitary, the fields lay in sallow leanness bereft of waving crops, but I knew that all my golden grain was stacked safely in the heart of the earth, where these folk hoard its fruits for safety from fire. The air was so empty of human sounds, save the monotonous tramp of my escort behind me, that all the murmurs of wind and foliage struck with singular loudness upon my ear. Over night, there had, by my leave, been songs and dancing in the courtyard of Tollendhal, and the odd tunes, the capricious rhythm of the gipsy musicians, came back upon me as I walked in the midst of my thoughts. These melodies are fitful and plaintive as the sounds of nature itself, they come hurrying and slackening, rising and falling, with as true a harmony and as unmeasured a measure,—now in a very passion of haste, and now with a dreamy long-drawn sigh. I was thinking on this, and on the love of the Empress for that music (my Empress that had been when I wore her uniform, ay, and my Empress still so long as I retain these noble lands), when I came to a field, sloping from the crag towards the plain, where an aftermath of grass had been left to dry. There was a little belt of trees, which threw a grateful shade; and feeling something weary I flung me down on the scented hay. It was on the Silesian portion of my land. Against the horizon, the white and brown of some townlet, clustering round the ace-of-club-shaped roof of its church-tower, rose glittering above the blue haze. A little beyond the field ran a white road. So I reclined, looking vaguely into the unknown but inviting distance, musing on the extent of those possessions so wide-spread that I had not as yet been able to ride all their marches, ever and anon recognising vaguely in the voice of the breeze through the foliage an echo of the music that had been haunting my thoughts all day. Everything conspired to bring me pleasant fancies. I began to dream of past scenes and future fortunes, smiling at the thought of what my dashing friends would say if they saw le beau Jennico in this bucolic attitude, wondering if any of my Court acquaintances would recognise him in his peasant garb.

Ah me, how eternally and lovingly I thought of my proud and brilliant self then!...

I cannot recall how soon this musing became deep sleep, but sleep I did and dream—a singular, vivid dream, which was in a manner a continuation of my waking thoughts. I seemed to be at a great fête at the Imperial Palace, one of the countless throng of guests. The lights were brilliant, blinding, but I saw many faces I knew, and we all were waiting most eagerly for some wonderful event. No one was speaking, and the only sounds were the rustling and brushing of the ladies’ brocades and the jingle of the officers’ spurs, with over and above the wail of the czimbalom. All at once I knew, as we do in dreams, what we were expecting, and why this splendid feast had been prepared. Marie Antoinette, the fair young Dauphine of France, the memory of whose grace still hangs about the Court, had come back to visit her own country. The crowd grew closer and closer. The crowd about me surged forward to catch a glimpse of her as she passed, and I with the rest, when suddenly my great-uncle stood before me, immensely bestarred and beribboned in his field-marshal’s uniform, and with the black patch on his eye so black that it quite dazzled me.

“Na, Kerlchen,” he was saying to me, “thou hast luck! Her Imperial and Royal Highness has chosen the young Jennico to dance with ... as the old one is too old.”

Now I, in common with the young men about me, have grown to cherish since my coming to this land a strange enthusiasm for the most womanly and beautiful of all the Empress’s daughters, and therefore, even in my dream, my heart began to beat very fast, and I scarce knew which way to turn. I was much troubled too by the music, which went on always louder and quicker above my head, somewhere in the air, for I knew that no such things as country dances are danced at Court, and that I myself would make but a poor figure in such; yet a peasant dance it undoubtedly was. Next, my uncle was gone, and though I could not see her, I knew the Princess was coming by the swish of her skirt as she walked. I heard her voice as clear as a silver bell. “Où est-il?” it said, and I felt she was looking for me. I struggled in vain to answer or turn to her, and the voice cried again: “Où est-il?” upon which another voice with a quaver in its tones made reply: “Par ici, Altesse!”

The sound must have been very close to me, for it startled me from my deep sleep into, as it were, an outer court of dreams. And between slumber and consciousness I became aware that I was lying somewhere very hot and comfortable; that, while some irresistible power kept my eyes closed, my ears were not so, and I could hear the two voices talking together; and, in my wandering brain believed them still to belong to the Princess Marie Antoinette and her attendant.

“It is a peasant,” said the first voice: that was the Princess of course. There was something of scorn in the tone, and I became acutely and unpleasantly conscious of my red embroidered shirt. But the other made answer: “He is handsome,” and then: “His hands are not those of a peasant,” and, “Regardez ma chère; peasants do not wear such jewelled watches!” A sudden shadow fell over me and was gone in an instant. There was a flicker of laughter and I sat up.

During my sleep the shade of the sun had shifted and I lay in the full glare, and so, as I opened my eyes, I could see nothing.

I heard the laughter of my dream again, and I knew that the mocking cry of “Prenez garde, Altesse!” that still rang in the air did not belong to my sleep. But as I rubbed my eyes and looked out once again, I caught first a glimpse of a slender creature bending over me, outlined it seemed in fire and shimmering between black and gold. My next glance filled me with a woeful disappointment, for I declare, what with my dream and my odd awakening, I expected to find before me a beauty no less bewitching than that of her Royal Highness herself. What I beheld was but a slim slip of a creature who, from the tip of her somewhat battered shepherdess hat to the hem of her loosely hanging skirts, gave me an impression of being all yellow, save for the dark cloud of her hair. Her skin seemed golden yellow like old ivory, her eyes seemed to shoot yellow sparks, her gown was yellow as any primrose. As she bent to watch me, her lip was arched into a smile; it had a deep dimple on the left side. Thus I saw her in a sort of flash and scrambled to my feet still half drunk with drowsiness, crying out like a fool:

“Où est son Altesse? Où est son Altesse?”

She clapped her hands and turned with a crow of laughter to some one behind me. And then I became aware that, as in the dream, there were two. I also turned.

My eyes were in their normal state again, but for a moment I thought myself still wandering. Here was her Highness. A Princess, indeed, as beautiful as any vision and yet most exquisitely embodied in the flesh; a Princess in this wilderness! It seemed a thing impossible, and yet my eyes now only corroborated the evidence of my ears.

I marked, almost without knowing, the rope of pearls that bound her throat (I had become a judge of jewels by being the possessor of so many). I marked her garments, garments, for all their intended simplicity, rich, and bearing to my not untutored observation the latest stamp of fashion. But above all I marked her air of race, her countenance, young with the first bloom of youth, mantled with blushes yet set with a royal dignity.

I have, since that eventful day, passed through so many phases of feeling, sweet and violent, my present sentiments are so fantastically disturbed, that I must try to the last of this writing and see matters still as I saw them at the time. Yes, beyond doubt what I noticed most, what appealed to me most deeply then, was the great air of race blended and softened by womanly candour and grace. She looked at me gravely, with wide brown eyes, and I stumbled into my best courtly bow.

“He wants to know,” said the damsel of the yellow skirts, this time in German, the clear, clean utterance of which had nothing of the broad Austrian sounds I was accustomed to hear—“he wants to know ’where is the Highness?’ But he seems to have guessed where she stands, without the telling. Truly ’tis a pity the Lord Chamberlain is not at his post to make a presentation in due form!”

The lady thus addressed took a step towards her companion, with what seemed a protest on her lip. But the latter, her small face quivering with mischief and eagerness, whispered something in her ear, and the beautiful brown eyes fixed themselves once again smilingly on me.

“Know, sir,” continued the speaker then, “since you are so indiscreet as to wake at the wrong moment, and surprise an incognito, the mysteries of which were certainly not meant for such as you, that Altesse she is. Son Altesse Sérénissime la Princesse Marie Ottilie. Marie is her Highness’s first name, and Ottilie is her Highness’s last name. And between the two and after those two, being as I said an Altesse Sérénissime, she has of course a dozen other names; but more than this it does not suit her Highness that you should know. Now if you will do me, a humble attendant that I am, the courtesy to state who you are, who, in a Silesian boor’s attire, speak French and wear diamond watches to your belt, I can proceed with the introduction, even in the absence of the Lord Chamberlain.”

The minx had an easy assurance of manner which could only have been bred at Court. Her mistress listened to her with what seemed a tolerant affection.

Looking round, bewildered and awkwardly conscious of my peasant dress, I beheld my two chasseurs, standing stolidly sentinel on the exact spot where I had last seen them before dropping asleep. Old János, from a nearer distance, watched us suspiciously. As I thus looked round I became aware of a new feature in the landscape—a ponderous coach also attended by two chasseurs in unknown uniforms waiting some hundred paces off, down the road.

To keep myself something in countenance despite my incongruous garb (and also perchance for the little meanness that I was not displeased to show this Princess that I too kept a state of my own), I lifted my hand and beckoned to my retinue, which instantly advanced and halted in a rank with rigid precision five paces behind me.

“Gracious madam,” said I in German, bowing to her who had dubbed herself the lady-in-waiting, with a touch, I flattered myself, of her own light mockery of tone, “I shall indeed feel honoured if her Serene Highness will deign to permit the presentation of so unimportant a person as myself—in other words of Basil Jennico of Farringdon Dane, in the county of Suffolk, in the Kingdom of Great Britain, lately a captain in his Royal Imperial Majesty’s Moravian Regiment of Chevau-Legers, now master of the Castle of Tollendhal, not far distant, and lord of its domain.” Here, led by János, my three retainers saluted.

I thought I saw in the Princess’s eyes that I had created a certain impression, but my consequent complacency did not escape the notice of the irrepressible lady-in-waiting. She promptly did her best to mar the situation.

“Fi donc,” she cried, in French, “we are at Court, Monsieur, and at the Court of—at the Court of her Highness we are not such savages as to perform introductions in German.”

Then, drawing up her slight figure and composing her face into preternatural gravity, she took two steps forward and another sideways, accompanied by as many bows, and resting her hand at arm’s length on the china head of her stick, with the most ridiculous assumption of finikin importance and with a quavering voice which, although I have never known him, I recognised instantly as the Chamberlain’s, she announced:

“Monsieur Basile Jean Nigaud de la Faridondaine, dans le comté où l’on Suffoque, ... d’importance, au royaume de la Grande Bretagne, maître du Castel des Fous, ici proche, et seigneur des alentours,—ahem!”

Inwardly cursing the young woman’s buffoonery and the incredible facility with which she had so instantly burlesqued an undoubtedly impressive recital, I had no choice but to make my three bows with what good grace I could muster. Whereupon, the Princess, still smiling but with a somewhat puzzled air, made me a curtsey. As for the lady-in-waiting, nothing abashed, she took an imaginary pinch of most excellent snuff with a pretence of high satisfaction; then laughed aloud and long, till my ears burned and her own dimple literally rioted.

“And now, to complete the ceremony,” said she, as soon as she could speak at all, “let me introduce the Court, represented to-day by myself. Mademoiselle Marie Ottilie. Two Ottilies as you will perceive, but easily explained, thus: Feu the Highest her Sérénissime’s gracious ducal grandmother being an Ottilie and godmother to us both—Mademoiselle Ottilie: the rest concerns you not. Well, Monsieur de la Faridondaine, Capitaine et Seigneur, etc., etc.,—charmed to have made your acquaintance. So far, so good. But ... these gentlemen? Surely also nobles in disguise. Will you not continue the ceremony?”

She waved a little sunburnt hand towards my immovable body-guard, and the full absurdity of my position struck me with the keenest sense of mortification.

I looked back at the three, biting my lips, and miserably uncertain how to conduct myself so as to save some shred of dignity. My ancient János had seen too many strange things during his forty years’ attendance on my great-uncle to betray the smallest surprise at the present singular situation; but out of both their handsome faces, set like bronze,—they had better not have moved a muscle otherwise or János would have known the reason why,—the eyes of my twin attendants roamed from me to the ladies, and from the ladies to me, with the most devouring curiosity. I tartly dismissed them all again to a distance, and then, turning to the mysterious Princess I begged to know, in my most courtlike manner if I might presume to lay my services at her feet for the time of her sojourn in this, my land.

With the same adorable yet dignified bashfulness that I had already noted in her, the lovely woman looked hesitatingly at her lady-in-waiting, which lively wench, not being troubled with timidity (as she had already sufficiently demonstrated), promptly took upon herself to answer me. But this time she so delightfully fell in with my own wishes that I was fain to forgive her all that had gone before.

“But certainly,” she exclaimed, “her Serene Highness will condescend to accept the services of M. de Jean Nigaud. It is not every day that brings forth such romantic encounters. Know, sir, that we are two damozels that have by the most extraordinary succession of fortunate accidents escaped from school. You wonder? By school, I mean the insupportable tedium, etiquette, and dulness of the Court of his most gracious and worshipful Serenity the father of her Highness. We came out this noon to make hay, and hay we will make. Or rather we shall sit on the hay, and you shall make a throne for the Princess, and a little tabouret for me, and then you may sit you down and entertain us ... but on the ground, and at a respectful distance, that none may say we do not observe proper forms and conventions, for all that we are holiday-making. And you shall explain to us how you, an Englishman, came to be master of Château des Fous, and masquerading in peasant’s attire. Is masquerading a condition of tenure? After which, her Serene Highness having only one fault, that being her angelic softness of heart, which is pushed to the degree of absolute weakness, she will permit me to narrate to you (as much as is good for you to know) how we came to be here at such a distance from our own country, and in such curious freedom—for her Highness quite sees that you are rapidly becoming ill with suppressed curiosity, and fears that you may otherwise burst with it on your way home to your great castle, or at least that the pressure on the brain may seriously affect its delicate balance—if indeed,” with a peal of her reckless childish laughter, “you are not already a lunatic, and those your keepers!”

This last piece of impudence might have proved even too much for my desire to cultivate an acquaintance so extraordinarily attractive to one of my turn of mind and so alluring by its mysteriousness, but that I happened to catch a glance from her Highness’s eyes even as the speaker finished her tirade, which glance, deprecating and at the same time full of a kindly and gentle interest, set my heart to beat in a curious fashion between pleasure and pain. I hastened therefore to obey the younger lady’s behests, and began to gather together enough of the sweet-smelling hay to form a throne for so noble and fair an occupant.

Whereupon the little creature herself—she seemed little by reason of her slenderness and childishness, but in truth she was as tall as her tall and beautiful mistress—fell to helping me with such right good-will, flashing upon me, as she flitted hither and thither, such altogether innocently mocking looks from her yellow-hazel eyes, that I should have been born with a deeper vanity, and a sourer temper, to have kept a grudge against her.

Once seated in our fragrant court, in the order laid down for us, the attendant, so soon as she had recovered breath sufficient, began to ply me with questions so multiplied, so searching, and so pointed, that she very soon extracted from me every detail she wished to know about myself, past and present.

But although, as from a chartered and privileged advocate, the sharp cross-questioning came from the Mademoiselle Marie Ottilie, it was to the soft dumb inquiry I read in the Princess Marie Ottilie’s eyes that were addressed my answers. And then those eyes and the listening beauty of that gracious face, made it hard for me to realise, as later reflection proved, that their owner did not utter a single word during the whole time we sat there together.