Читать книгу The Pride of Jennico: Being a Memoir of Captain Basil Jennico - Castle Egerton - Страница 6

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I had questioned János on our homeward way concerning my new acquaintances; but the fellow was so ill-disposed by nature to external gossip, so wholly occupied with the minute fulfilment of his daily task, which was to watch over the well-being and safety of his master, that he had gathered no acquaintance with affairs outside his province. With the head factor, however, whom I sent for immediately after supper, I was more fortunate. This man, Karl Schultz, is Saxon-born, and consequently one of the few of my numerous dependants with whom I can hold converse here. It was but natural that among the peasantry the advent of strangers, evidently of wealth and distinction, should have created some stir, and it is Schultz’s business, among many other things, to know what the peasantry talk about; although in this more contented part of the world this sort of knowledge is not of such importance as among our neighbours the Poles. Schultz, therefore, was aware of the arrival of the ladies, likewise of the rumour of smallpox, which had, so he informed me, not only driven all the servants out of the Castle of Schreckendorf, but spread something like a panic over the country-side. Tidings had also come to his ears that two gentlemen—one of them suffering from the dreadful malady (doubtless the poor Chamberlain)—had been abandoned in their carriage by their postillions and servants at the small village of Kittlitz, some forty miles from here, just over the Lusatian border. He corroborated, in fact, greatly to my joy, all that I had been told; for I had had an uneasy fear upon me, now and again, as I marched home in the evening chill, that I had been too ready to lend credence to a romantic and improbable story. But, better than all, Schultz, having felt a special curiosity concerning visitors from his own country, had, despite the attempt to keep the matter secret, contrived to satisfy himself to the full as to their identity. And thus did I, to my no small triumph, from the first day easily penetrate the ill-guarded incognita.

The beautiful wandering Princess was the only daughter of the old reigning house of Lausitz-Rothenburg; and it was from Georgenbrunn, where she had been on a visit to her aunt the Dowager Duchess of Saxony, that the second outbreak of the epidemic had driven her to take refuge with the Countess Schreckendorf in our neighbourhood.

Vastly satisfied with my discovery, and not a little fluttered by the impending honour, I made elaborate preparations the next day against the coming of such guests. We rifled the gardens, the greenhouses, and the storerooms, and contrived a collation the elegance of which taxed our resources to the uttermost.

Not in peasant garb did I start at noon upon my romantic quest, but in my finest riding suit of mulberry cloth embroidered with green and silver, (of what good auguries did I not think when I remembered that green and white were actually the colours of the Maison de Lusace, and that in this discreet manner I could wear on my sleeve the mark of a delicate homage?), ruffles of finest Mechlin fluttered on my throat and wrists, and a hat of the very latest cock was disposed jauntily at the exact angle prescribed by the Vienna mode.

With my trim fellows behind me, and with as perfect a piece of horseflesh between my knees as the Emperor himself could ever hope to bestride, I set out in high delight and anticipation.

Now, on this freezing winter’s night, when I look back upon those days and the days that followed, it seems to me as though it were all a dream. The past events are wrapped to memory in a kind of haze, out of which certain hours marked above the rest stand out alone in clearness.—That particular day stands forth perhaps the clearest of all.

I remember that the Princess Ottilie looked even more queenly to my mind than at first, with her fair hair powdered and a patch upon the satin whiteness of her chin. In the complacency of my young man’s vanity, I was exceedingly elated that she should have considered it worth while to adorn herself for me. I remember, too, that the lady-in-waiting examined me critically, and cast a look of approval upon my altered appearance; that she spoke less and that her mistress spoke more than upon our first meeting; that even the presence, mute, dark, and scowling, of their female attendant could not spoil the pleasure of our intercourse.

In the vineyards, it is true, an incident occurred which for a moment threatened to mar my perfect satisfaction. The peasant girls—it is the custom of the country on the appearance of strangers in the midst of their work—gathered round each lady, surrounding her in wild dancing bands, threatening in song to load her shoulders with a heavy hodful of grapes unless she paid a ransom. It was of course most unseemly, considering the quality of the company I was entertaining, and I had not foreseen the possibility of such a breach of respect. Never before, it was evident, in the delicately nurtured life of the Princess, had such rough amusement been allowed to approach her. This being the case, it was not astonishing that the admirable composure of her usual attitude should break down—her dignity give way to the emotion of fear. She called—nay, she screamed—to me for help. The while her pert lady-in-waiting, no whit abashed, laughed back at her circle of grinning sunburnt prancers, threw mocking good-humoured gibes at them in German, and finally was sharp enough to draw her purse and pay for her footing, crying out to her mistress to do the same. But the latter was in no state to listen to advice, and, alas! I found myself powerless to deliver the distressed lady. In my ignorance of their language I could do nothing short of use brute force to control my savages, who were after all (it seems) but acting in good faith upon an old-established privilege. So I was fain, in my turn, to summon Schultz to the rescue from a distant part of the ground. He, practical fellow, made no bones about the matter; with a bellow and a knowing whirl of his cane every stroke of which told with a dull thwack, he promptly dispersed the indiscreet merrymakers.

I suppose it is my English blood that rises within me at the sight of a woman struck. Upon the impulse of the first moment I had well-nigh wrenched the staff from his hands and laid it about his shoulders; but fortunately, on second thought, I had wisdom enough to refrain from an act which would have been so fatal to all future discipline. Nevertheless, as I stood by, a passive spectator of it, the blood mounted, for very shame, to my cheek, and I felt myself degraded to the level of my administrator’s brutality.

The poor fools fell apart, screaming between laughter and pain. One handsome wench I marked, indeed, who withdrew to the side of a sullen gipsy-looking fellow, her husband or lover apparently; and as she muttered low in his ear they both cast looks charged with such murderous import, not only at the uncompromising justiciary, but also at me, and the man’s hand stole instinctively to his back with so significant a gesture, that I realised for the first time quite fully that there might be good reasons for János’s precautions anent the lord’s precious person when the lord took his walks abroad.

Another girl passed me close by, sobbing aloud, as she returned to her labour. She rubbed her shoulder sorely, and the tears hopped off the rim of her fat cheeks, contorted like those of a blubbering child. In half-ashamed and sneaking fashion, yet unable to resist the urging of my heart, I followed her behind the next row of vines and touched her on the arm.

She recognised me with a start, and I, all fearful of being noticed by the others, in haste and without a word—as what word could I find in which to communicate with a Slovack?—hastily dropped a consolatory coin, the first that met my touch, into her palm.

It was a poor plain creature with dull eyes, coarse lips, and matted hair, and she gazed at me a moment stupidly bewildered. But the next instant, reading I know not what of sympathy and benevolence in my face, as a dog may read in his master’s eyes, she fell at my feet, letting the gold slip out of her grasp that she might the better seize my hand in hers and cover it with kisses, pouring forth the while a litany of gratitude, as unintelligible to me as if she had been indeed a dog whining at my feet.

To put an end to the absurd situation, distasteful to my British free-born pride for all my foreign training, I pushed her from me and turned away, to find the lady-in-waiting at my elbow.

Instead, however, of making my weakness a mark for her wit, this latter, to my great relief, and likewise to my astonishment, looked wistfully from the ugly besmeared face to the coin lying on the black soil, then at my countenance, which at that moment was, I felt, that of a detected schoolboy. And then, without a word, she followed me back to her mistress’s side.

My august visitor had not yet regained her wonted serenity. Still fluttered, she showed me something of a pouting visage. I thought to discern in her not only satisfaction at the punishment she had seen administered, but some resentment at my passive attitude. And this, I confess, surprised me in her, who seemed so gentle and womanly. But I told myself then that it was but natural in one born as she was to a throne.

On the other hand, while I confounded myself in excuses and explanations, blaming myself for having (through my inexperience of this country) neglected to prevent the possibility of so untoward an incident, I heard behind me the voice of the young Court lady, rating Schultz in most explicit German for the heaviness of his hand upon my folk. And, as the Princess gradually became mollified towards me and showed me once again her own smiling graciousness, I contrasted her little show of haughtiness with the unreserve of her companion, and convinced myself that it did but become her (being what she was). The while I watched Mademoiselle Ottilie, mingling with peasants as if she had been born among them, with an ever renewed wonder that she should have been chosen for the high position she occupied.

Later on my guest, according to her promise, condescended to rest and refresh herself in the castle. This was the culminating moment of a golden afternoon. I felt the full pride of possession when I led her in through the old halls that bore the mark of so many centuries of noble masters; although indeed, as a Jennico, I had no inherited right to peacock in the glories of the House of Tollendhal. But, at each portrait before which she was gracious enough to halt, I took care to speak of some notable contemporary among the men and women of my own old line, in that distant enchanted island of the North, where the men are so brave and strong and the women so fair. And, without stretching any point, I am sure the line of Jennico lost nothing in the comparison.

She was, I saw, beyond mistake impressed. I rejoiced to note that I was rapidly becoming a person of importance in her eyes. Even the lady-in-waiting continued to measure me with an altered and thoughtful look.

Between the eating of our meal together—which, as I said, was quite a delicate little feast, and did honour to my barefooted kitchen retinue—and the departure of my visitors, I took them through many of the chambers, and showed them some of the treasures, quaint antiquities, and relics that my great-uncle had inherited or himself collected. On a little table under his picture—yonder on that wall it hangs before me—I had spread forth in a glass case, with a sort of tender and pious memory of the rigid old hero, his own personal decorations and honours, from the first cross he had won in comparative youth to the last blazing order that a royal hand had pinned over the shrunken chest of the field-marshal. In this portrait, painted some five years before his death, my uncle had insisted on appearing full face, with a fine scorn of any palliation of the black patch or the broken jaw. It is a grim enough presentment in consequence,—the artist having evidently rather relished his task,—and sometimes, indeed, when I am alone here in this great room at night, and it seems as if the candle-light does but serve to heighten the gloom of the shadows, I find my uncle’s one eye following me with so living a sternness that I can scarce endure it.

But that day of which I am writing, I thought there was benignity in the fierce orb as it surveyed such honourable company, and even an actual touch of geniality in the set of the black patch.

As I opened the case, both the ladies fell, women-like, to fingering the rich jewels. There was a snuff-box set around with diamonds, upon the lid of which was painted a portrait of the Dauphine. This, Maria Theresa had herself given to my uncle on the occasion of her daughter’s marriage, to which it was deemed my uncle’s firm attitude in council over the Franco-Austrian difficulty had not a little contributed.

With a cry of admiration, the Princess took it up. “Ach, what diamonds!” she said. I looked from the exquisite face on the ivory to the no less exquisite countenance bending above it, and I was struck by the resemblance which had no doubt unconsciously been haunting me ever since I first met her. The arch of the dark eyebrow, the supercilious droop of the eyelid, the curve of the short upper lip, and the pout of the full under one, even the high poise of the head on the long throat, were curiously similar. I exclaimed upon the coincidence, while the Princess flushed with a sort of mingled pleasure and bashfulness.

Mademoiselle Ottilie took up the miniature in her turn, and, after gravely comparing it with her own elfish, sunburnt visage in the glass, gazed at her mistress; then, heaving a lugubrious sigh, she assented to my remarks, adding, however, that there was no ground for surprise, as the Princess Marie Ottilie was actually cousin to her Royal Highness the Dauphine.

The Princess blushed again, and lifted up her hand as if to warn her companion. But the latter, with her almost uncanny perspicacity, continued, turning to me:

“Of course, M. de Jennico” (she had at last mastered my name)—“of course, M. de Jennico has found out all about us by this time, and is perfectly aware of her Highness’s identity.”

Then she added, and her eyes danced:

“Since M. de Jennico is so fond of genealogy” (among the curiosities of the place I had naturally shown them my uncle’s monumental pedigree), “he can amuse himself in tracing the connection and relationships—no doubt he has the ’Almanach de Gotha’—between the houses of Hapsburg and the Catholic house of Lausitz-Rothenburg.”

And indeed, although she meant this in sarcasm, when, after I had escorted them home, I returned, through the mists and shades of twilight, to my solitude (now peopled for me with delightful present, and God knows what fantastic future, visions), I did produce that excellent new book, the “Almanach de Gotha,” and found great interest in tracing the blood-relation between the Dauphine and the fairest of princesses. And afterwards, moved by some spirit of vainglory, I amused myself by comparing on the map the relative sizes of the Duchy of Lausitz and the lands of Tollendhal.

And next I was moved to unroll once again my uncle’s pedigree, and to study the fine chain of noble links of which I stand the last worthy Jennico, when something that had been lying unformed in my mind during these last hours of strange excitement suddenly took audacious and definite shape.