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Pride of Jennico

[332] <h2 class="p4">CHAPTER VII</h2> For the space of a few seconds we three stood motionless. The awful stillness of the shadow of death was upon our souls. Then, approaching from the distance came again to our ears the sound of hoofs, the stumbling trot of a tired horse; and the quick wits of János were awakened to action. “Into the carriage, my lady,” said he, “and you, my lord! We have loosed enough shots for one day, and so it is best we should move on again and avoid these other gentlemen.” He smiled as he spoke, a grim, triumphant smile. As for me, it was certes nothing less than triumph I felt in my heart. I would have had Prince Eugen dead, indeed, but not so, not so! “Let us, at least,” I cried a little wildly, “see if he still breathes!” “No need, my lord;” and János caught me by the wrist. “I am not so old yet,” he added, eyeing his weapon with a delighted look, “but what I can still aim straight. Did I not know him to be as truly carrion now as his good horse itself, poor beast, I would surely enough despatch him[333] as he lies there biting the mud. But no need, my lord. Right in the heart! The man was dead before he touched the ground.” And as he spoke János dragged us towards the coach. The driver, half risen from his seat, still clutching one rein, seemed struck into an imbecility of terror; the horses, now quieted, stretching their necks luxuriously against the loosened bits, were sniffing at the snow, as if in the hope of lighting upon a blade of grass. Anna sat on the steps, her face blanched to a sort of grey. “Up with you!” said János, and pushed her with his knee. “Do you not see your lady is faint?” The words aroused her, and they roused me. In truth, Ottilie seemed scarcely able to sustain herself; it was time I carried her away from such scenes. After closing the doors, János handed me the musketoon and the cartouche-box, with the brief remark: “His lordship had better load again, the while I drive, for this coachman of ours is out of his wits with fright.” And thus we started once more; and in the crash and rattle of the speed to which János mercilessly put the horses, the stumbling paces of the approaching pursuers were lost to our hearing. The draught of air across her face revived Ottilie, who now sat up with courage,[334] and tried to smile at me, though her face was still set in a curious hardness, whilst I, with the best ability of a sprained wrist, reloaded and reprimed. Events (as I have oft thought since) had proved how happy a thought it had been of mine (some two weeks before, when we made our preparations to leave London, to gratify my good János’s desire for one of those admirable double-barrels I had seen him so appreciatively and so covetously handle at Fargus and Manton’s, in Soho.) When we reached the neck of the valley, I leaned out again and looked back. The scene of that crisis in my eventful life lay already some hundred yards below us. The second of our pursuers—a dragoon of Liegnitz, as I now could see by his white coat, dirty yellow against the snow—was in the act of dismounting from his exhausted steed. I watched him bend over the prostrate figure of his chief for an instant or two; then straighten himself to gaze up at our retreating coach; then, with his arms behind him and his legs apart, in what, even at that distance, I could see was an attitude of philosophical indifference, turn towards the approaching figure of his comrade, who, some hundred yards further down, now made his appearance on the road, crawling onwards on an obviously foundered horse. It[335] was evident that whatever admiration the Margrave may have commanded during his lifetime, his death did not inspire his followers with any burning desire to avenge it. I leant out further and handed back the loaded musketoon to János. “You may spare our horses now,” said I; “there is no fear of further pursuit to-day.” “Ay, my lord, so I see,” responded the heiduck, with a cheerful jerk of the head in our rear. “And, moreover, in a quarter of an hour we shall be across the border.” <table id="ttb3" summary="tb3"> <tr> <td class="tdc">*</td> <td class="tdc">*</td> <td class="tdc">*</td> <td class="tdc">*</td> <td class="tdc">*</td> <td class="tdc">*</td> </tr> </table> Now of our story there is little more to tell. And well for us that it is so; for one may, as I have said, chronicle strange adventures and perils of life and limb, and one may pour out on paper the sorrows of an aching heart, the frenzy of despair; but the sweet intimate details of happiness must be kept secret and sacred, not only from the pen but from the tongue. It will not, however, come amiss that, to complete my narrative—in which, one day, if Heaven will, my children shall learn the romance of their parents’ wooing and marriage—I should set down how it came about that the Margrave contrived (to his own undoing) to track us so speedily; how, with his death,[336] came the dispelling of the shadows upon both our lives. Shortly after our return to Tollendhal, a letter reached my wife from the other Ottilie. It was evidently written in the greatest distraction of mind, upon the very morning after our escape from Budissin. Although conversation may not have been a strong point with Madam Lothner, she seemed to wield a very fluent pen. She took two large sheets to inform us how, upon her husband’s return on the previous night, his suspicions being by some unaccountable means awakened, he had forced from her the confession of all that had passed between us in the afternoon. I cannot here take up my space and time with the record of her excuses, her anguish, her points of exclamation, her appeals to Heaven to witness the innocence of her intentions. But when I read her missive I understood Anna’s contemptuous prophecy: “She keep a secret? the sheep-head!” I understood also my wife’s attitude of tolerant affection, and I blushed when I remembered the time when, blinded by conceit, I had sought this great mock-pearl, when the real jewel lay at my hand.... But to proceed. The doctor had instantly given the alarm at the palace, with the result that the Princess’s flight[337] was discovered within two hours after it had taken place. Now the uproar in the Ducal household was, it seems, beyond description. Two detachments of dragoons were at once sent in pursuit of the two carriages which were known to have left the town that night. (How we blessed Anna’s shrewder scheme!) When they returned, empty-handed of course, the nature of the trick was perceived. Prince Eugen—whose fury, it appears, was something quite appalling to behold, not only because of the reassertion of the Princess’s independence, but because the man whom he had taken so much trouble to obliterate had presumed to be alive after all!—Prince Eugen, according to his wont, took matters into his own hands. He sallied forth with his henchman the doctor, to make inquiries for himself in the town. The result of these was the discovery of the passage of one Hans Meyerhofer’s cart out by the South Gate after closing hours. This man was known to the doctor (whose stables he supplied with fodder) as being Anna’s cousin, and the connection of the Princess’s nurse with the scheme of escape was well demonstrated by her own disappearance. This discovery was sufficient for the Margrave, and (very much, it would appear, against the real wishes of the Duke, whose most earnest desire[338] was to proceed with as little scandal as possible) he with half a dozen troopers instantly set forth in pursuit on the road to Prague. Of these troopers, as we had seen, most had broken down on the way, and none had been able to keep up with the higher mettled mount of their leader—fortunately for us. It was after his departure that Madam Lothner wrote. She was convinced, as she characteristically remarked, that the Prince would be successful, and that the most dire misfortunes were about to fall upon everybody—all through the obstinacy of M. de Jennico, who really could not say he had not been warned. Nevertheless, on the chance of their having escaped, either to England or to Tollendhal (and she addressed her letter to Tollendhal, trusting that it would be forwarded), she could not refrain from pouring forth her soul into her beloved Princess’s bosom—and so forth and so on. In fact, the good woman had wanted a confidant, and had found it on paper. Our next information regarding the Court of Lausitz came from a very different source, and was of a totally different description. It was the announcement in the Vienna News-Sheet of the death of Eugen, Margrave of Liegnitz-Rothenburg, through a fall from his horse upon a hunting[339] expedition. It was also stated that, yielding at last to her repeated requests, the Duke had consented to the retirement into a convent of his only daughter, Princess Marie Ottilie, such having been (it was stated) her ardent desire for more than a year. The name of the convent was not given. <table id="ttb4" summary="tb4"> <tr> <td class="tdc">*</td> <td class="tdc">*</td> <td class="tdc">*</td> <td class="tdc">*</td> <td class="tdc">*</td> <td class="tdc">*</td> </tr> </table> Here this memoir, begun in such storm and stress, within and without, continued in such different moods and for such varied motives, ends with the mantle of peace upon us, with the song of birds in our ears. Tollendhal, that I knew beautiful in the autumn; Tollendhal, the shrine of our young foolish love, is now beautiful with the budding green all round it under a dappled sky. But never had the old stronghouse looked to me so noble as when I brought my bride back to it in the snow. As the carriage at last entered upon the valley road and we saw it rise before us, high against the sky, white-roofed and black-walled, stern, strong, and frowning, while the winter sun flashed back a warm, red welcome to the returning masters, from some high window here and there, I felt my heart stir. And as I looked at Ottilie I saw in her eyes the reflection of the same fire. [340] Our people had been prepared for our coming by messengers from Prague. The court of honour was thronged, and we entered amid acclamations such as would have satisfied the heart of a king coming to his own again. We had broken the bread and tasted the salt; we had drunk of the wine on the threshold; we had been conducted in state; and at last, at last we found ourselves alone in the old room where my great-uncle’s portrait kept its silent watch! János, who, his work of trust done, had fallen back into his place of heiduck as simply as the faithful blade falls back into the scabbard, had retired to his station outside the door. Without rang the wild music of the gipsies to the feasting people, and the tremors of the czimbalom found an answer in the very fibres of my soul—to such music she had first come to me in my dreams! The walls of the room were all ruddy with the reflection of the bonfire in the courtyard: the very air was filled with joy and colour. And there was my great-uncle’s portrait—he was simpering with ineffable complacency; and there the rolled-up parchment; and there the table where we had quarrelled, and where, since then, I had poured forth such mad regrets. Oh! my God! what memories!... and there was my wife! [341] Since the events which had first divided and then reunited us for ever, I had not yet been able to find in the sweet, silent, docile woman I had snatched back to my heart, the wilful Ottilie of old. Her spirits seemed to have been sobered; her gaiety, her petulance, to have been lost in the still current of the almost fearful happiness bought at the price of blood; and at times, in my inmost heart, I had mourned for my lost sprite. But now, as we stood together, she all illumined with the rosy radiance from the fire, she looked of a sudden from the picture on the wall to me, and I saw a spark of the old mockery leap into her eyes. “And so, sir,” she said, “the forward person who married you against your will is mistress here again, after all!... but you will always remember, I trust, that it is the privilege of a princess to choose her partner.” And then she added, coming a step nearer me: “To-morrow we must fill in the pedigree again—what say you, M. Jean Nigaud de la Faridondaine?” Now, as she spoke, her lips arched into the well-remembered smile, and beside it danced the dimple. And I know not what came upon me, for there are joys so subtle that they unman even as sorrows, but I fell at her feet with tears. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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