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Pride of Jennico

[319] <h2 class="p4">CHAPTER VI</h2> I shall carry to the grave, as one of the sweetest of my life, the memory of that night journey. Coming as it did between the fierce emotions and dangers of our meeting and flight, and the perilous and furious episode that yet awaited us, it seems doubly impregnated with an exquisite serenity of happiness. Full of brief moments, that brought me then a poignant joy, it brings to my heart as I look back on it now a tenderness as of smiles and tears together. After a little while the flakes had ceased falling, and, in the faint snowlight, beneath a clear sky, we gazed forth together from our ambulant nest, here upon mysterious stretches of plain-land, there upon ghosts of serried trees, trees that marched as it were past us back towards Budissin. I remember how in a clear space of sky a star shone out upon us at last, and how it seemed a good omen, and how we kissed in the darkness. Then there was our meal, with Anna’s lantern to illumine the feast. I was so lost in watching my beloved bite her black bread contentedly with[320] small white teeth, and toast me with loving eyes over the thin wine, that I could scarce fall to, myself. Yet when I did so it was with right good appetite, for I was hungered, and I never tasted better fare. Then János got out of the waggon to sit in front by the driver and smoke. My great-uncle had been such a confirmed tobacco-man that János had acquired the habit in attendance upon him, and it did not behove me to interfere with an indulgence fostered by thirty years’ service. Anyhow, on that night the stray whiffs of his strong tobacco mingled not unpleasantly with the keen cold scents of the night; and the sound of the two men’s talk, with the monotonous jingle and rumble of harness and cart, made a comfortable human accompaniment to our passage in the midst of the great silence. Anna went to sleep and snored after her good day’s work, waking now and again with a start and a groan, and thence to oblivion once more. And then we too, oblivious of the world, fell into a long dream, hand in hand—a great wide-eyed dream filling our silence with soaring music, our darkness with all the warm colour of life. And thus we reached the first halting-place in the itinerary planned by János and myself on the[321] Imperial Chaussée. The place whence we would best defy our enemies, and therefore our ultimate destination, was of course my own Castle of Tollendhal, recent experience having sufficiently demonstrated that in England we should be ill-protected from the machinations of Budissin. This first stage was Löbau. Never did town look so thoroughly asleep under its snow-laden eaves, behind its black shutters, thought I, as our tired horses, steaming and stumbling, dragged our cart up the main street. A watchman had just sung out his cry: “The twelfth hour of the night, and a clear heaven,” when we turned into the market-place, from the middle of which he chanted his informing ditty to those Löbauers who might chance to be awake to hear and thereby be comforted. Spear in one hand and lantern in the other, the fellow approached to inquire into such an unusual event as the passage of midnight travellers. We heard János, in brief tones, tell a plausible tale of his lordship’s travelling coach having broken down (on its way from Görlitz, said he, who never missed a chance of falsifying a scent!), and of his lordship, who happened to be in a special haste to proceed, having availed himself of a passing country cart to pursue his journey to the next posting[322] town, and so forth, all the main points of this story being corroborated by an affirmative growl from our Jehu. Whereupon the watchman, honest fellow, nothing loath doubtless to vary the perennial monotony of his avocation, undertook to awaken for our benefit the inmates of the post-house, the best house of entertainment, he asseverated, in the town. It will be long, I take it, before the worthy burghers of Löbau, and especially mine host of the “Cross Keys,” forget the mysterious passage at dead of night of the great unknown magnate and his hooded lady, of the tire-woman with the forbidding countenance, and of the ugly body-servant, whose combined peremptoriness and lavish generosity produced such wonders,—even had subsequent events not sufficed to fix it upon their minds as a tragic epoch in the history of their country. A few minutes of obstinate hammering and bell-ringing by János and by the deeply impressed watchman, awoke the hostelry from the depths of its slumbers. The bark of dogs responded first to the clangour; lights appeared at various corners; windows, and then doors, were thrown open. At last János threw back the leather curtain of our conveyance, and hat in hand, with his[323] greatest air of bonne maison assisted my lord in his cloak, my lady in the furs (both much ornamented with wisps of hay), to alight from their cart. My lady, veiled and silent, retired for an hour’s rest, and so away from the peering curiosity of the assembling servants. And my lord paced the common-room, feverishly waiting for the coming of the new conveyance which János, after one of his brief requisitioning interviews (pandour style), had announced would be forthcoming with brief delay. The common-room was dank and cold enough, but my lord’s soul was in warm consorting: it was still exalted by the last look that my lady had thrown back at him, raising her hood for one instant as, ascending the stairs, she had left him for the first separation. In less than an hour the tinkling of collar-bells and the sound of horses’ hoofs, clattering with a vigour of the best augury, were heard approaching. Even as János entered to confirm by word the success of his quest, my beloved appeared with a readiness which to me was sweeter than any words: she too had been watching the moments which would speed us onwards together once more. Through a pretty concourse of dependants, all of whom had now got wind of the rain of gratuities[324] with which the great traveller’s servant eased the wheels of difficulty, we entered our new chariot. I can hardly mind now what sort of a vehicle this was. I believe in its days it had been a decent enough travelling chaise: at any rate it moved fast. Once more we rolled through the silent street, on the hillside roads, up hill and down dale, my bride warmly nestled in my arms, and both of us telling over again the tangled tale of the year that had been wasted for us. And thus, in the idle iteration of lovers’ talk, with the framing of plans for the future, changeable and bright as the clouds of a summer’s day, did we fill the rapid hours which brought us to Zittau in the early morning. But Zittau was still within the dominions of the eloping Princess’s father; and at Zittau, therefore, much the same procedure was hastily adopted as at the previous stage: another hour or so of separation, another chaise and fresh horses, and once more a flight along the mountain roads, as the dawn was spreading grey and chill over the first spurs of the Lusatian hills. This time we spoke but little to each other. The fatigue of a great reaction was upon us. Anna was already snoring in her corner, her head completely enveloped in her shawl, when, as I gazed[325] down tenderly at my wife’s face, I saw the sweet lids close in the very middle of a smile, and the placidity of sleep fall upon her. I have had, since the Budissin events, many joys; but there is none the savour of which dwells with so subtle, so delicate, a perfume in my memory as that of my drive in the first dawn with my wife asleep in my arms. It was not yet twelve hours since I had found her; and during those twelve hours I had only seen her in the turmoil of emotion, or under stress of anxiety, or by some flitting lamplight. Her image dwelt in my mind as I had first beheld it through the glass of the palace window, lovely in the first bloom of graceful womanhood, stately amid the natural surroundings of her rank. Now, wrapped in confident slumber, swathed in her great robes of fur, the only thing visible of her young body being the little head resting in the hollow of my arm, the fair skin flushing faintly in the repose of sleep, fresh even in the searching cruelty of the growing light, like the petal of a tea rose, the rhythmic pulse of her bosom faintly beating against my heart, she was once more, for a little while, to me the Ottilie I had held in my castle at Tollendhal. And as, for fear of disturbing her, I restrained my passionate longing to kiss[326] those parted lips, those closed lids with the soft long eyelashes, I could not tell which I yearned for most: the Princess, the ripe woman I had found again ... or the wayward mistress playing at wife I had schooled myself to banish in the wasted days of my overweening vanity. But why thus linger over the first stage of that happy journey? Joy can only be told by contrast to misery. We can explain sorrow in a hundred pages, but if delight cannot be told in one, it cannot be told at all. It is too elusive to be kept within the meshes of many words. Sorrows we forget,—by a merciful dispensation,—and it may be wholesome to keep their remembrance in books. Joys ever cling to the phials of memory like a scent which nought can obliterate. And since I have undertaken to record the reconquest of Jennico’s happiness, there remains yet to tell the manner in which it all but foundered in the haven. For this heartwhole ecstasy of mine could not last in its entirety beyond a few brief moments. As I thus grasped my happiness, with a mind free at last from the confusing vapours of haste and excitement, even as the fair world around us emerged sharp and bright from amid the shadows of dawn, all the precariousness of our situation became likewise defined. Between[327] me and the woman I loved, though now I held her locked in my arms, arose the everlasting menace of separation. How long would we be left together? Where could I fly with her to keep her safe? I hoped that amid the feudal state of my castle I could defy persecution, but what could such a life be at best? Thus, in the very first sweetness of our reunion, was felt the bitterness of that hidden suspense that must eventually poison all. Now as I look back, nothing seems more dreamlike than the way in which my boding thought suddenly assumed the reality of actual event. “In a little while” (I was saying to myself, as I watched the shadows shorten, and the beams of sunlight grow broader upon the snow), “in a little while the hounds will be started in pursuit, the old persecution will be resumed, more devilish than ever.” And at the thought, against my will, a contraction shook the arm on which my love was resting. She stirred and awoke, at first bewildered, then smiling at me. I let down the glass of the coach, that the brisk morning air might blow in upon us and freshen our tired limbs. We were then advancing but slowly, being midway up the slope of a great wide dale; the horses toiled and steamed. And then as we tasted keenly the vigorous freshness of the morning air, and[328] looked forth, speechless, upon the beauty of the waking hour of nature—that incomparable hour so few of us wot of—there came into the great silence, broken only by the straining of harness and the faint thud of our horses’ hoofs in the snow, another noise: a curious, faint, little, far-off noise like to no sound of nature. Ottilie glanced at me, and I saw the pupil of her eye dilate. She uttered no word, neither did I. But, all at once, we knew that there was some one galloping behind us. I thrust my head out. János was already on the alert: standing with his back to the horses, leaning upon the top of the coach, he was looking earnestly down the valley. I can see his face still, all wrinkled and puckered together in the effort of peering against the first level rays of the sun. Now, as I leaned out also, and the horse’s gallop grew nearer and nearer upon my ear, I caught, as I thought, a faint accompaniment of other hoofs, still more distant. I looked at János, who brought down his eyes to mine. “But three altogether, my lord,” he said. And, reaching as he spoke for his musketoon, he laid it on top of the coach. “And, thank God,” he added, “one can see a long way down this slope.” He bade the driver draw up on one side of the[329] road, and I was able myself to look straight into the valley. A flying figure, that grew every second larger and blacker against the white expanse beneath us, was rushing up towards us with almost incredible swiftness. In the absolute stillness of the world locked in snow, the rhythm of the hoofs, the squelching of the saddle, the laboured snorting of the over-driven horse, were already audible. There were not many seconds to spare—and action followed thought as prompt as flash and sound. There was only time, in fact, to place the bewildered Anna, just awakened, by my wife’s side at the back of the coach, to pull up the shutter of both windows, and to leap out. I was hatless. I grasped my still sheathed sword in one hand, and with the other fumbled for my pistols in my coat skirts, whilst with a thrust of my shoulder I clapped the coach door to. There was not time even to exchange a word with Ottilie, but her deathly pallor struck me to the heart and fired me to the most murderous resolve. And now all happened quicker than words can follow. No sooner had I touched the ground, than out of space as it were, roaring and reeking, hugely black against the sunshine, the horse and[330] his rider were upon me. I had failed to draw my pistol, but I had shaken the scabbard off my sword. There seemed scarce a blade’s length between me and the flying onslaught. Suddenly, however, the great animal swerved upon one side, and was pulled up, almost crouching on its haunches, by the force of an iron hand. The rider’s face, outlined against the horse’s steaming neck, bent towards me: Prince Eugen’s—great indeed would have been my surprise had it been any other—ensanguined, distorted with fury, glowing with vindictive triumph, as once before I had seen it thus thrust into mine. “Thou dog, Jennico ... ill-slaughtered interloper ... at last I have got thee! Out of my way thou goest this time!...” As it spat these words, incoherently, the red face became blocked from my view by a fist outstretched, and I found myself looking down the black mouth of a pistol barrel. I cut at it with my sword, even as the yellow flame leaped out: my blade was shattered and flew, burring, overhead. But the ball passed me. At the same instant there came a shout from above; the Prince looked up and, quick as thought, wrenched at his horse; the noble beast rose, beating the air with his forefeet, just as János fired, over my head.[331] For a second all was confusion. The air seemed full of plunging hoofs and blinding smoke. Our own horses, taking fright, dragged the carriage some yards away, where it stuck in a snowheap. Then things became clear again. I saw,—I know not how,—but all in the same flash, I saw a few paces beyond me, János now standing in the road, my wife in her dishevelled furs behind him; and in front, free from the bulk of his dying horse, my enemy on foot, pistol in hand, and once more covering me with the most determined deliberation of aim. With my bladeless sword hilt hanging bracelet-like on my sprained wrist, defenceless, I stood, dizzily, facing my doom. Then for a third time the air rang with a shattering explosion. The Prince flung both arms up, and I saw his great body founder headforemost, a mere mass of clay, almost at my feet. I turned again, and there was my János, with the smoking musketoon still to his cheek, and there also my wife with the face of an avenging angel, one hand upon his shoulder, and the other, with unerring gesture of command, still pointing at the space beyond me where but a second before stood the enemy who had held my life on the play of his forefinger. <hr class="chap" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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