A German Pompadour Part 7

'Sing me a s.n.a.t.c.h of some song, Mademoiselle,' said Eberhard Ludwig.

'There is no one near; sing to me once, to _me alone_--to the silly poet-fellow!'

'Nay, Monseigneur,' she answered tremulously, 'I cannot sing--my heart is beating in my throat somehow.'

He looked at her in the moonlight.

'Mademoiselle de Gravenitz,' he said, 'I have never been so happy, yet so unutterably sad, as at this moment. I--I--Mademoiselle----' and his voice broke. He took her hand in his and, raising it to his lips, kissed it once, twice, then in a husky voice he said, 'We must go back.' He rose from the seat, offering her his arm. He led her up the dark garden-path and into the glitter of lights in the ante-hall of the l.u.s.thaus, where Madame de Stafforth stood ready to depart, waiting for Wilhelmine. The Duke sent Stafforth for Mademoiselle's cloak, and when he brought it, his Highness himself wrapped it round her. As he did so, his hand involuntarily touched the soft skin of her shoulder, and Eberhard Ludwig flushed to the edge of his white curled peruke as he murmured: 'Au revoir, Philomele!' and Wilhelmine daringly whispered back: 'Au revoir, gentil poete.'

CHAPTER VI

LOVE'S SPRINGTIDE

'A queenly rose of sound, with tune for scent; A pause of shadow in a day of heat; A voice to make G.o.d weak as man, And at its pleadings take away the ban 'Neath which so long our spirits have been bent-- A voice to make death tender and life sweet!'

PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON.

THE Hofmarshall's house stood in the 'Graben,' a broad road which ran proudly past the old town ending at the ducal gardens on the west, while to the east began the fields and vineyards leading up to the royal hunting forest, the Rothwald. Stafforth's house was a fine stone building decorated with rococo masks. To the back lay a beautiful garden laid out on a plan of M. Lenotre's, from whose book of _Jardins Mignons_ Stafforth had selected it. On the morning after the theatricals Wilhelmine was seated on one of the garden benches, and though her eyes were fixed on the pages of a French translation of Barclay's satirical novel _Argenis_, her thoughts were busy with the events of the previous evening. Her reverie was interrupted by Madame de Ruth who arrived, as usual, in a cloud of her own words. She embraced Wilhelmine affectionately, exclaiming: 'Never was there so great a victory! One battle and the country is ours! The hero at your feet, my dear! Did I not say that you had a great future before you? Ah! the Geyling! Ha! ha! ha! what a face she made when his Highness led you out on to the balcony, and I asked her if she thought it convenable for you! Ha! ha! ha! she looked sour indeed, and she screeched at me in her peahen voice: "Mademoiselle de Gravenitz seems to be a lady of experience; she can guard her own young virtue, I suppose!" "'Tis not her virtue, Madame," I said, with a surprised look and the prim manner of a Pietist, "I know _that_ is safe with so devoted a husband as Serenissimus, but I fear for her reputation! Ah! Madame, the evil tongues of older women! and already no one here to-night can speak of ought save Mademoiselle. But I a.s.sure you the theatricals are not even mentioned, Madame! They can remember nothing save the Envoi and its singer." O Wilhelmine! if you could have seen her face! I suffer, I expire with laughter, when I think of it.' And Madame de Ruth laughed till she really was almost suffocated, and was obliged to hold her hands over her heaving sides.

Wilhelmine leaned her head on her hands. 'Poor Madame de Geyling!' she said in a musing tone.

Madame de Ruth ceased laughing and looked at her piercingly. 'Poor Madame de Geyling?' she exclaimed. 'But, my child! Ah!' and she caught Wilhelmine by the wrist; 'you pity her? because she has lost the Duke's affection? Why?' She paused a moment--reflected. 'Girl! you have fallen in love with Serenissimus,' she whispered.

Wilhelmine sprang up--her cheeks aflame. It was true, and she knew it herself then for the first time. She was angry, and yet there was an immense gladness in her heart. Her eyes were wet, and she felt the pulses throbbing in her temples. She was ashamed and yet gloriously proud.

Madame de Ruth watched her; at first, with smiling curiosity, then the old woman's face softened, she took Wilhelmine's hand and said gently: 'G.o.d give you joy, my child. There, there--I am a foolish old woman--you make me weep.--Lord G.o.d! but hearts are the great intriguers, not brains!'

Wilhelmine turned to her and, bending, kissed the old courtesan on the brow.

'Madame,' she said, 'Madame, be my friend; I shall need one in the days to come.'

Madame de Ruth drew the girl down beside her on the bench, her face had grown suddenly old and infinitely sad. 'Yes,' she answered, 'I will be your friend. Do you know that I had a little girl twenty years ago? She would have been just your age now, had she lived, and perhaps I should have been a different woman. Well, well--no sentiment, my dear; it is so unsuitable, isn't it? but I will be your friend.'

She kissed the young woman, and, rising hastily, took her way towards the house.

The days dragged slowly on in Stuttgart for Wilhelmine, and there came no message from his Highness, who had gone to Urach, they told her, to hunt.

Though the court remained nominally in Stuttgart while her Highness Johanna Elizabetha resided at the castle, most of the courtiers had retired to the country and Stuttgart was more than usually dull.

Stafforth had accompanied the Duke to Urach, so Wilhelmine remained alone with Madame de Stafforth. The heat was terrible in the town, which lay encircled by the vine-clad hills, as in a great caldron. The Stuttgarters told her that such heat was unusual at that time of year, but there was little consolation for her in that.

To some natures dullness becomes an insupportable suffering. Loneliness, all you will, they can bear, for they draw occupation and joy from the depth of their own souls; but that dreariness, which has been called dullness, is an almost tangible presence at moments, and seems to blight the beauty of all things. This Wilhelmine felt in those stifling days at Stuttgart. Madame de Stafforth's moth-like personality wearied her.

Madame de Ruth, who had returned to Rottenburg, wrote constantly imploring her friend to visit her; yet something seemed to hold the girl, some mysterious sentiment, that if she left Stuttgart she would turn her back on her life.

Once or twice Wilhelmine accompanied Madame de Stafforth to the castle.

The d.u.c.h.ess received her with amiable indifference, and the young woman stood silently by while the two dull women discussed their habitual uninteresting topics.

It was perfectly unreasonable, but she felt a hatred growing in her heart for the wife of Eberhard Ludwig.

One morning towards the end of June, Wilhelmine awoke to find the grey dawn creeping in at her window; she rose and opened the cas.e.m.e.nt and leaned out. Her room looked on the formal garden. There was a solemn hush in the air, and she realised that even the birds were asleep. Far in the east, over the top of the one beech-tree which still stood in the garden in spite of M. Lenotre, the rising sun was tingeing the horizon with a delicate rosy glow. A bird stirred--twittered--finally a clear note of welcome to the day rang out, and the world was awake. The radiance in the east grew brighter, long streaks of glorious colour invaded the soft grey of dawn. From the distant field roads came the rumble of a peasant's cart. Wilhelmine dressed herself hurriedly and tiptoed down the dark stair to the house door. The broad street, the Graben, was deserted and silent, save for an occasional rattle in the direction of the market-place, where the peasants were arriving from the country with their carts heaped up with fresh fruit and vegetables. She walked up the street, delighting in the coolness and the scent of the morning air after the long days of oppressive heat which she had endured. A fancy took her to wander in the Rothwald, and she walked briskly along, up the dusty country path which led to the wood on the hill. The sun had risen, and even at that early hour the heat was so great that once or twice Wilhelmine almost turned homewards; however, the thought of the cool shade of the beech-trees in the forest drew her, and she pressed onward.

At length she reached the edge of the wood, and, turning, she contemplated the steep hill which she had climbed from the town. The rough country road wound like some white riband through the green vineyards which lay between Stuttgart and the Rothwald. A light breeze sprang up and stirred the long, lush gra.s.s of the field which bordered the shadow of the trees. There is no part of a forest more beautiful than the line where wood begins and meadow ends; it is as the lip of the forest breathing forth in a fragrant kiss of poesy some mystery of silent dells and fairy's haunts, which it hints of but does not quite betray.

Wilhelmine mused on this; she was gifted with a delicate appreciation of each beauty-forming detail, and the accurate observation without which the enjoyment of beauty is a mere sensuous mood. She paused a while, drinking in the freshness and revelling in the solitude; then she entered the wood and walked onward, her feet sinking deep into the rich moss. She inhaled the delicious smell of the beech-trees, that light odour of the northern forest which is almost imperceptible, and yet so fresh, so pungent. It is made up of the smell of earth, of moss, of fern, of gra.s.s and leaves, and the resinous health of young pine. As Wilhelmine walked, she whispered a melody half in greeting to the trees, half mechanically. She found a shallow bank, and, seating herself on the ground, she supported her shoulders against the slope. She leaned her head back and gazed up into Spring's wonderful tracery in the myriad beech-leaves, and the cool green fell like balsam on her eyes. A breeze stirred the tree-tops, and for a moment they swayed and leaned together whisperingly, then, like little children playing at some gentle teasing game, they drew back as the breeze pa.s.sed.

Wilhelmine's thoughts wandered to Eberhard Ludwig; of a truth they knew the way, for how often had they sought his memory since that night in the castle garden? She pondered how she had been told his Highness loved to sleep in the forest. 'Ridiculous poet-fellow' he had called himself. She drew a deep breath. 'Au revoir, Philomele,' he had said. Ah! but he had forgotten her! Madame de Ruth had been mistaken! The campaign was not won. Wilhelmine's cheeks glowed suddenly, she crushed a leaf of an overhanging beech-branch; it was intolerable. All those people would ridicule her! Leaning her head in her hand, she pressed her fingers against her eyes to shut out the sunlight, but it lingered in her eyeb.a.l.l.s, and against the blackness she saw dancing rays of blinding light. A feeling of delightful drowsiness was coming over her--a far-away feeling. Presently she raised her head from her hands, and once more contemplated the peaceful wood. What did she care for those people who would mock her? She would return their malevolent stares with her evil look, which she knew would be eminently disagreeable to them. Her thoughts turned back to Gustrow now--Gustrow and Monsieur Gabriel. Almost unconsciously, as she thought of her old friend, she found herself humming an air. At first she but whispered it under her breath, then she was gradually carried away by the physical enjoyment of letting forth her powerful voice, and she burst into full song:

'Bois epais redouble ton ombre, Tu ne saurais etre a.s.sez sombre.

Tu ne peux trop cacher Mon malheureux amour!

Je sens un desespoir, Dont l'horreur est extreme.

Je ne dois plus voir Ce que j'aime-- Je ne veux plus souffrir le jour!'

She sang the old French melody out into the trees, and the great notes thrilled and echoed through the wood till it was as though they had become an integrant part of the forest. Her voice was truly a woman's voice in the ineffable tenderness and the grand pa.s.sion of it, but there lay in its tones a depth of strong uncompromising n.o.bility which lives in an organ's notes or in the rich low chords of a violoncello. Truly, as Monsieur Gabriel had said, her voice belonged by right to the shadowy cathedrals, for each note seemed a sacred thing, a homage to G.o.d, and itself deserving to be wors.h.i.+pped in reverent devotion. During the song Wilhelmine had not heard the sound of approaching footsteps, nor did she observe how a hand pushed aside some branches not far from where she sat, and a man's head and shoulders appeared. She leaned back on the moss for a moment's rest, and then springing up recommenced to sing. She stood very straight and tall, her hands locked together behind her, like a schoolgirl reciting a lesson; somehow this childlike att.i.tude added by its simplicity to the woman's dignity. Her head was held a little back, chin tilted upwards, and the eyes looked far away as though they beheld a whole world of dreams and lovely melody beyond all save the singer's ken.

As she sang the colour mounted slowly to her cheeks, flooding her face with a divine flush; perhaps her very heart's blood rushed to adore the tones which fell from her lips. The man watching held his breath. She finished her song on a clear high note, and as she gave it forth, she flung back her head in an impulsive gesture, glorying in an ecstasy of sound, a magnificence of accomplishment.

When the echo of the last ringing note faded, the man sprang forward, and, throwing himself impetuously on his knees before Wilhelmine, he raised the hem of her gown to his lips in a pa.s.sionate gesture, though with the adoring reverence that all poets give to great singers.

'Philomele!' he murmured. 'Ah! Philomele! Beloved!'

She looked down at him. How strangely natural, necessary, unsurprising it seemed to her that he should be kneeling there, and yet she thought herself in some oft-remembered dream.

'Gentil poete,' she whispered back, and her hand fell on his shoulder.

His hand sought hers, he caught it and kissed it with a sort of piety.

'I love you.' He spoke the words like a prayer. She drew away from him.

'Monseigneur,' she said, 'I thought you had forgotten me!' He started at her gesture of repulsion and at the formal word.

'You are a woman no man can forget,' he answered. Then he told her how that evening in the castle garden he had known he loved her; how he had dreaded giving himself up to a pa.s.sion which he divined would prove so absorbing as to turn him from his cherished military ambition. He poured out to her his life's history, all his dreams of brilliant feats of arms, the raising of his duchy to a kingdom; he told her of his bitter disappointment when he found these ambitions were incomprehensible to the d.u.c.h.ess Johanna Elizabetha; of how, gradually, he had awakened to the fact that he was tied to a woman who utterly lacked in sympathy, and thus wearied him and drove him to seek consolation and amus.e.m.e.nt in the light loves and fancies of court gallantry, and then how each lady's charms had palled inevitably.

'And now,' he paused, 'now I feel that all my life began when first I heard your voice! I have been fighting with my thoughts ever since.

Beloved! I have nothing to offer you--you are too pure to take the only position I could give you--and I love you too well to ask you.'

She looked at him, and a smile touched her lips and vanished almost before it was born.

'Mon poete,' she whispered, and stretched out both hands to him; he took them in his, and drew her towards him. One thick curl of hair had fallen forward on her neck, he lifted it and buried his face in it, kissing it wildly, breathing in its fragrance.

'I love you,' he said again, and drew her, unresisting, into his arms.

'Philomele! Ah!' and his lips met hers.

Overhead a bird burst forth into a rhapsody of song.

CHAPTER VII

THE FULFILMENT