Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (82 page)

‘Well, your Highness,’ resumed the soldier of fortune, ‘I must congratulate you upon my loss.  You have been cut out by beauty, and I am left lamenting.  The Doctor still remains to me:
probus
,
doctus
,
lepidus
,
jucundus
: a man of books.’

‘Ay, there is nothing about poor Gotthold,’ said the Prince.

‘The Governor’s consolation?  Would you leave him bare?’ asked von Rosen.

‘And, your Highness,’ resumed Gordon, ‘may I trust that in the course of this temporary obscuration, you have found me discharge my part with suitable respect and, I may add, tact?  I adopted purposely a cheerfulness of manner; mirth, it appeared to me, and a good glass of wine, were the fit alleviations.’

‘Colonel,’ said Otto, holding out his hand, ‘your society was of itself enough.  I do not merely thank you for your pleasant spirits; I have to thank you, besides, for some philosophy, of which I stood in need.  I trust I do not see you for the last time; and in the meanwhile, as a memento of our strange acquaintance, let me offer you these verses on which I was but now engaged.  I am so little of a poet, and was so ill inspired by prison bars, that they have some claim to be at least a curiosity.’

The Colonel’s countenance lighted as he took the paper; the silver spectacles were hurriedly replaced.  ‘Ha!’ he said, ‘Alexandrines, the tragic metre.  I shall cherish this, your Highness, like a relic; no more suitable offering, although I say it, could be made. “
Dieux de l’immense plaine et des vastes forêts
.”  Very good,’ he said, ‘very good indeed!  “
Et du geôlier lui-même apprendre des leçons
.”  Most handsome, begad!’

‘Come, Governor,’ cried the Countess, ‘you can read his poetry when we are gone.  Open your grudging portals.’

‘I ask your pardon,’ said the Colonel.  ‘To a man of my character and tastes, these verses, this handsome reference — most moving, I assure you.  Can I offer you an escort?’

‘No, no,’ replied the Countess.  ‘We go incogniti, as we arrived.  We ride together; the Prince will take my servant’s horse.  Hurry and privacy, Herr Oberst, that is all we seek.’ And she began impatiently to lead the way.

But Otto had still to bid farewell to Dr. Gotthold; and the Governor following, with his spectacles in one hand and the paper in the other, had still to communicate his treasured verses, piece by piece, as he succeeded in deciphering the manuscript, to all he came across; and still his enthusiasm mounted.  ‘I declare,’ he cried at last, with the air of one who has at length divined a mystery, ‘they remind me of Robbie Burns!’

But there is an end to all things; and at length Otto was walking by the side of Madame von Rosen, along that mountain wall, her servant following with both the horses, and all about them sunlight, and breeze, and flying bird, and the vast regions of the air, and the capacious prospect: wildwood and climbing pinnacle, and the sound and voice of mountain torrents, at their hand: and far below them, green melting into sapphire on the plains.

They walked at first in silence; for Otto’s mind was full of the delight of liberty and nature, and still, betweenwhiles, he was preparing his interview with Gondremark.  But when the first rough promontory of the rock was turned, and the Felsenburg concealed behind its bulk, the lady paused.

‘Here,’ she said, ‘I will dismount poor Karl, and you and I must ply our spurs.  I love a wild ride with a good companion.’

As she spoke, a carriage came into sight round the corner next below them in the order of the road.  It came heavily creaking, and a little ahead of it a traveller was soberly walking, note-book in hand.

‘It is Sir John,’ cried Otto, and he hailed him.

The Baronet pocketed his note-book, stared through an eye-glass, and then waved his stick; and he on his side, and the Countess and the Prince on theirs, advanced with somewhat quicker steps.  They met at the re-entrant angle, where a thin stream sprayed across a boulder and was scattered in rain among the brush; and the Baronet saluted the Prince with much punctilio.  To the Countess, on the other hand, he bowed with a kind of sneering wonder.

‘Is it possible, madam, that you have not heard the news?’ he asked.

‘What news?’ she cried.

‘News of the first order,’ returned Sir John: ‘a revolution in the State, a Republic declared, the palace burned to the ground, the Princess in flight, Gondremark wounded — ’

‘Heinrich wounded?’ she screamed.

‘Wounded and suffering acutely,’ said Sir John.  ‘His groans — ’

There fell from the lady’s lips an oath so potent that, in smoother hours, it would have made her hearers jump.  She ran to her horse, scrambled to the saddle, and, yet half seated, dashed down the road at full gallop.  The groom, after a pause of wonder, followed her.  The rush of her impetuous passage almost scared the carriage horses over the verge of the steep hill; and still she clattered further, and the crags echoed to her flight, and still the groom flogged vainly in pursuit of her.  At the fourth corner, a woman trailing slowly up leaped back with a cry and escaped death by a hand’s-breadth.  But the Countess wasted neither glance nor thought upon the incident.  Out and in, about the bluffs of the mountain wall, she fled, loose-reined, and still the groom toiled in her pursuit.

‘A most impulsive lady!’ said Sir John.  ‘Who would have thought she cared for him?’  And before the words were uttered, he was struggling in the Prince’s grasp.

‘My wife! the Princess?  What of her?’

‘She is down the road,’ he gasped.  ‘I left her twenty minutes back.’

And next moment, the choked author stood alone, and the Prince on foot was racing down the hill behind the Countess.

CHAPTER IV — BABES IN THE WOOD

While the feet of the Prince continued to run swiftly, his heart, which had at first by far outstripped his running, soon began to linger and hang back.  Not that he ceased to pity the misfortune or to yearn for the sight of Seraphina; but the memory of her obdurate coldness awoke within him, and woke in turn his own habitual diffidence of self.  Had Sir John been given time to tell him all, had he even known that she was speeding to the Felsenburg, he would have gone to her with ardour.  As it was, he began to see himself once more intruding, profiting, perhaps, by her misfortune, and now that she was fallen, proffering unloved caresses to the wife who had spurned him in prosperity.  The sore spots upon his vanity began to burn; once more, his anger assumed the carriage of a hostile generosity; he would utterly forgive indeed; he would help, save, and comfort his unloving wife; but all with distant self-denial, imposing silence on his heart, respecting Seraphina’s disaffection as he would the innocence of a child.  So, when at length he turned a corner and beheld the Princess, it was his first thought to reassure her of the purity of his respect, and he at once ceased running and stood still.  She, upon her part, began to run to him with a little cry; then, seeing him pause, she paused also, smitten with remorse; and at length, with the most guilty timidity, walked nearly up to where he stood.

‘Otto,’ she said, ‘I have ruined all!’

‘Seraphina!’ he cried with a sob, but did not move, partly withheld by his resolutions, partly struck stupid at the sight of her weariness and disorder.  Had she stood silent, they had soon been locked in an embrace.  But she too had prepared herself against the interview, and must spoil the golden hour with protestations.

‘All!’ she went on, ‘I have ruined all!  But, Otto, in kindness you must hear me — not justify, but own, my faults.  I have been taught so cruelly; I have had such time for thought, and see the world so changed.  I have been blind, stone-blind; I have let all true good go by me, and lived on shadows.  But when this dream fell, and I had betrayed you, and thought I had killed — ’  She paused.  ‘I thought I had killed Gondremark,’ she said with a deep flush, ‘and I found myself alone, as you said.’

The mention of the name of Gondremark pricked the Princes generosity like a spur.  ‘Well,’ he cried, ‘and whose fault was it but mine?  It was my duty to be beside you, loved or not.  But I was a skulker in the grain, and found it easier to desert than to oppose you.  I could never learn that better part of love, to fight love’s battles.  But yet the love was there.  And now when this toy kingdom of ours has fallen, first of all by my demerits, and next by your inexperience, and we are here alone together, as poor as Job and merely a man and a woman — let me conjure you to forgive the weakness and to repose in the love.  Do not mistake me!’ he cried, seeing her about to speak, and imposing silence with uplifted hand.  ‘My love is changed; it is purged of any conjugal pretension; it does not ask, does not hope, does not wish for a return in kind.  You may forget for ever that part in which you found me so distasteful, and accept without embarrassment the affection of a brother.’

‘You are too generous, Otto,’ she said.  ‘I know that I have forfeited your love.  I cannot take this sacrifice.  You had far better leave me.  O, go away, and leave me to my fate!’

‘O no!’ said Otto; ‘we must first of all escape out of this hornet’s nest, to which I led you.  My honour is engaged.  I said but now we were as poor as Job; and behold! not many miles from here I have a house of my own to which I will conduct you.  Otto the Prince being down, we must try what luck remains to Otto the Hunter.  Come, Seraphina; show that you forgive me, and let us set about this business of escape in the best spirits possible.  You used to say, my dear, that, except as a husband and a prince, I was a pleasant fellow.  I am neither now, and you may like my company without remorse.  Come, then; it were idle to be captured.  Can you still walk?  Forth, then,’ said he, and he began to lead the way.

A little below where they stood, a good-sized brook passed below the road, which overleapt it in a single arch.  On one bank of that loquacious water a foot-path descended a green dell.  Here it was rocky and stony, and lay on the steep scarps of the ravine; here it was choked with brambles; and there, in fairy haughs, it lay for a few paces evenly on the green turf.  Like a sponge, the hillside oozed with well-water.  The burn kept growing both in force and volume; at every leap it fell with heavier plunges and span more widely in the pool.  Great had been the labours of that stream, and great and agreeable the changes it had wrought.  It had cut through dykes of stubborn rock, and now, like a blowing dolphin, spouted through the orifice; along all its humble coasts, it had undermined and rafted-down the goodlier timber of the forest; and on these rough clearings it now set and tended primrose gardens, and planted woods of willow, and made a favourite of the silver birch.  Through all these friendly features the path, its human acolyte, conducted our two wanderers downward, — Otto before, still pausing at the more difficult passages to lend assistance; the Princess following.  From time to time, when he turned to help her, her face would lighten upon his — her eyes, half desperately, woo him.  He saw, but dared not understand.  ‘She does not love me,’ he told himself, with magnanimity.  ‘This is remorse or gratitude; I were no gentleman, no, nor yet a man, if I presumed upon these pitiful concessions.’

Some way down the glen, the stream, already grown to a good bulk of water, was rudely dammed across, and about a third of it abducted in a wooden trough.  Gaily the pure water, air’s first cousin, fleeted along the rude aqueduct, whose sides and floor it had made green with grasses.  The path, bearing it close company, threaded a wilderness of briar and wild-rose.  And presently, a little in front, the brown top of a mill and the tall mill-wheel, spraying diamonds, arose in the narrows of the glen; at the same time the snoring music of the saws broke the silence.

The miller, hearing steps, came forth to his door, and both he and Otto started.

‘Good-morning, miller,’ said the Prince.  ‘You were right, it seems, and I was wrong.  I give you the news, and bid you to Mittwalden.  My throne has fallen — great was the fall of it! — and your good friends of the Phoenix bear the rule.’

The red-faced miller looked supreme astonishment.  ‘And your Highness?’ he gasped.

‘My Highness is running away,’ replied Otto, ‘straight for the frontier.’

‘Leaving Grünewald?’ cried the man.  ‘Your father’s son?  It’s not to be permitted!’

‘Do you arrest us, friend?’ asked Otto, smiling.

‘Arrest you?  I?’ exclaimed the man.  ‘For what does your Highness take me?  Why, sir, I make sure there is not a man in Grünewald would lay hands upon you.’

‘O, many, many,’ said the Prince; ‘but from you, who were bold with me in my greatness, I should even look for aid in my distress.’

The miller became the colour of beetroot.  ‘You may say so indeed,’ said he.  ‘And meanwhile, will you and your lady step into my house.’

‘We have not time for that,’ replied the Prince; ‘but if you would oblige us with a cup of wine without here, you will give a pleasure and a service, both in one.’

The miller once more coloured to the nape.  He hastened to bring forth wine in a pitcher and three bright crystal tumblers.  ‘Your Highness must not suppose,’ he said, as he filled them, ‘that I am an habitual drinker.  The time when I had the misfortune to encounter you, I was a trifle overtaken, I allow; but a more sober man than I am in my ordinary, I do not know where you are to look for; and even this glass that I drink to you (and to the lady) is quite an unusual recreation.’

The wine was drunk with due rustic courtesies; and then, refusing further hospitality, Otto and Seraphina once more proceeded to descend the glen, which now began to open and to be invaded by the taller trees.

‘I owed that man a reparation,’ said the Prince; ‘for when we met I was in the wrong and put a sore affront upon him.  I judge by myself, perhaps; but I begin to think that no one is the better for a humiliation.’

‘But some have to be taught so,’ she replied.

‘Well, well,’ he said, with a painful embarrassment.  ‘Well, well.  But let us think of safety.  My miller is all very good, but I do not pin my faith to him.  To follow down this stream will bring us, but after innumerable windings, to my house.  Here, up this glade, there lies a cross-cut — the world’s end for solitude — the very deer scarce visit it.  Are you too tired, or could you pass that way?’