Chapter VIII: Part 8

That night at the feast one of his madnesses came upon the Emperor; the dæmons got hold of him and he fought them off, howling; then he and Basil and Basiliskian gave commands that the bodies of the Ikonoclast Emperors be taken from their tombs, for they were the dæmons who haunted us. And this was wonderful, for by the light of torches of pine the body of Constantine, fifth of that name, was dragged from his sarcophagus and thrown out on to the sand of the circus; and there was he, ninety years dead, white as shredded ivory, clad in cerecloths of tarnished gold and heavy violet that gave out a thick, sweet scent of spices; and there was John the Grammarian beside him, with a little crown on his head and hair falling into dust across his eye-sockets–aha! we beat them with rods in the vile quarter of the Amaskianon where the dæmons gather and the people were glad because they were image worshippers: these two Emperors could not see, for they were blind, as I am now. Then we burnt them where the common thiefs were executed, and the tomb of Constantine Copronymus was split into fragments to decorate a church the Emperor built at Pharos.

It was all of green Thessalian marble, here clear as water, there thick as sap, carved with grapes, genii, cupids and goats, and in the middle Christ raised on the Cross with a gilt halo; it was so rich and finely carved I think God forgave Michael much to get it back in His church. Look for it when you go to Pharos–green marble, a hand’s length thick.

Behold now I ramble on and come not to what I would say about that evening in the palace of Anthimos on the coast–the Empress Theodora’s house where she had bid us all … Eudocia Ingerina, Basil, Basiliskian, Thekla and all the court.

Listen to me, I was faithful to Michael, therefore am I blinded.… I can tell you everything.

The three Emperors had been hunting that day, and afterwards there was a mighty feast; Eudocia sat by Basil at the table and often whispered to him.

I was one of those who carried Michael senseless with wine to his chamber and laid him on his bed with the vermilion cushions. As I came out I saw the bolts of the door were broken, but I thought nothing of it, as it was Theodora’s house. On a low couch with silver and amber legs lay Basiliskian, with his red hair and his yellow robes tumbled about him; I lay in the outer chamber.

Beautiful were those two rooms, tiled with blue, patterned with carnations and curtained with silks stiff with fruits and flowers of gold; above the couch were saints with long eyes and raised hands, the elders praying all in white on the daisied floor of Heaven, this in mosaic, glittering, and a lamp with square-cut green stones round the base, hanging before.

Flat on his back lay Michael, with his head slipping from the pillows and the roses slipping from his black hair; his white silk robe flowed open on his coat of silver and the clusters of topaz shone in the crossings of his gilt sandals.

The window was wide on the night; there was a moon above the tamarisk trees and a nightingale singing fitfully.

It was very silent after all the noise and riot, and I was half asleep when the door was pushed open and some men entered. There was the third Emperor Basil, a head above them all, the Persian Apelates, Bardas the father of Basil, his brother Marinos, a cousin of his, all peasants these, Peter of Bulgaria and John of Chaldia.

Now I rose up softly and got before them and stood in front of the bedchamber door; for I saw they were all sober.

Basil put out his great hand and gripped my shoulder.

“Basil or Michael?” he asked, and drew his scimitar.

“Michael,” I answered him, for I hated him–the Greek groom!

With that he lifted me out of the way, but I gave a great shout and beat my hand upon the bronze images and cast them against the tiles so that they cracked.

Then they pulled me back, and I heard the nightingale grow louder, and I laughed with rage, for one struck me with a dagger.

I turned round and saw the Emperor Michael staggering in the carved wood doorway, the roses still clinging to his disordered hair. Seeing them, his wits cleared.

“Basil!” he shrieked. “I made you Emperor!”

They left me and turned on him, driving him back into the bedroom, and I lay along the floor with a dagger through my wrist, listening to his shrieks that hushed the nightingale.

Dragging myself to the door, I beheld Basiliskian struggling with the Persian, and saw him fall back across the couch with his scarlet-shod feet up and his mouth open, while the blood gurgled out and hid the wine-stains on his yellow robes.

I did not care for this, but looked for Michael and called loudly, so that they rushed out, drawing the curtains behind them and fled into the corridor.

Now none came, for tumults were such common things, and after a little Basil came back and looked about him; and after him followed Eudocia Ingerina in a green mantle with a lamp of bright enamel in her hand.

“Have you done it?” she asked, and I knew she had set Basil on, though the Emperor Michael had loved her. “Quick! Have you done it?”

“Yes,” he said, and the others came back.

“What if he is not dead?” said John of Chaldia, and shifted his ivory and silver sabre in his grasp.

Then she, flashing emerald colours in her robe, turned on them, and I saw there is more in a woman than her beauty.

“You are not sure?” she cried, and held up the thousand coloured lamp.

“Basiliskian is dead,” answered Apelates.

“Is Michael dead?” she gave back.

As she stepped towards the door I heard the soft sound her cambric garments made on the floor, and saw her eyes fixed before her with an expression of expectancy and pleasure–eyes like the black jade they prize in China. But Basil held her back with his swarthy hand on the edge of her mantle.

On the smooth walls of opal-tinted tiles moonlight flushed into lamplight that fell tinted with trembling colour; I saw the dark trees through the window and the great space of clear sky. I pulled at the dagger in my wrist, and I heard the Emperor Michael lamenting within.

At the sound of it all save the woman drew back.

“I struck his hands off,” said John of Chaldia, “and he fell on the ground.”

Eudocia Ingerina looked at Basil.

“Will you be Emperor or no?” she asked. “If that man in there is not dead–what are _you_?”

His flushed blue eyes rolled towards her; she twitched her robe from his grasp and lifted the thin silk curtains from the carved door.

I, forgotten, caught hold of the ribbings of scented sandal wood and looked in … you may believe what I saw, what I was blinded for seeing.

The Emperor Michael, Lord of the East, Vice-regent of God, the last of the Amorian Cæsars, sat on the floor by the gilt and glorious brocades of his bed.

His hands were smitten off and his garments trailed with sticky blood; his head was bowed on his chest and he uttered bitter complaints. In his black hair some crimson roses still hung; the great rubies and topaz glittered on his breast. Behind him in the rich murk light I could see the other Emperor, a huddled heap of red and yellow, and in the middle of the marble floor (green as the tomb of Copronymus) the two hands of Michael, twisted into a clutching shape, with huge and wonderful rings on the fingers.

With a soft movement like the dappled Persian deer Eudocia Ingerina stole into the chamber; Basil and John of Chaldia were behind her; she stopped before Michael; her lamp showed his creeping blood.

“Well,” she said. “Well, shall I not be an Empress after all?”

And she touched him with her foot that was covered with a shoe of green and violet leather, so that he looked up from his incoherent lamentations.

He tried to rise at that, could not, but gave a shudder and raised his arms.

“Eudocia,” he said, very loudly, and she stepped back a little, for he was a hideous sight.

“Come kill this man,” she cried; and then to Michael: “Who will say masses for you?” and “I would Theodora was here.”

Basil drew a little sword with a snake for a handle and Michael shrieked, whereon the woman caught him by his long hair and held him so while the Macedonian plunged the weapon past the topaz Gorgon into his heart; then they both cast him down and struck at him with their feet, even while his breast heaved and his eyes moved, and fled together into the outer chamber.

“To Constantinople,” said Basil, and he embraced Eudocia and kissed her, after which she veiled her face with violet and left them. The blood on her feet was almost the last thing I saw.

For Basil found me crawling by the wall; and they took me out and blinded me and sent me here.…

Michael is buried in Chrysopolis, and his soul is in Hell; and Eudocia was an Empress and mother of the Leo who rules now, and no one but I knows that she was there that night … therefore set these things down, for I, who am an old blind monk, shall soon be in Paradise clad warmly in starred brocade and cambric fine enough to go through a reed-joint, lying on a couch covered with soft-coloured woollens, and under my feet a carpet like was woven in the Peloponnesus to cover the mosaic in the church Basil built to assuage God’s wrath at the murder of Michael. Did you ever hear of it?

It was one great peacock with a spread tail.… I spoke to a man who had seen it.…

So I in Paradise, near, as I said to the gate (stately as the Adrianople Gate with the church of St. Diomed near by), shall peep down and see the Emperors, Leos, Constantines, Michaels, howling in Hell, and in the midst Basil and the woman Eudocia, while fiends swing before them censers of dull earth filled with sulphurs.…

* * * * *

So on Christmas Eve I take this down from an ancient monk who was chamberlain once at the court of Michael III. and sometimes wanders in his mind.

Now he is fallen asleep, and the chants are over, and I will write no more.

God guard us all from evil. Amen.

Signed by Theophilus, a little scribe in the Monastery of St. John, Armenia, Christmas Eve, 899.

THE PRISONER

SOPHIA DOROTHEA OF ZELL

“George I. was married to his cousin, Sophia Dorothea, daughter
of the Duke of Zell; accused of an intrigue with a Swedish
adventurer, she was repudiated by her husband and imprisoned in
a castle in Hanover for thirty-two years previous to her death
in 1729.”–_History of England._

December darkened over the dark flats outside Schloss Ahlden; the sluggish gray river, the barren gray road stretched into the bitter mist; above the stunted alders and broken reeds the plovers circled mournfully.

It was the saddest season of the year; but all seasons were sad at Schloss Ahlden. Spring and summer brought little change, save that the monotony of damp cold was changed for the monotony of dusty heat. The Schloss had gloomy towers and careless unadorned rooms; the scanty furniture was old and worn; the servants were old, too, and had a repressed silent air. There were not many of these servants; there were a great number of guards, changed frequently; they were always glad to go–six months seemed a long time at Schloss Ahlden.

The nearest town was Osnabrück, and that was many miles away. There was nothing beautiful nor interesting in all the melancholy country. It seemed strange that any one should have built a castle in a spot so barren and dreary; it seemed as if he who built must have done so knowing that one day it would be used as a prison.

A woman had been confined here for thirty-two years; her husband was a King, her son would be a King, she was by her own birth a Princess and by right Queen of England, a country she had never seen.

For thirty-two years she had seen nothing but the cold, dull rooms, the barren Hayden road, the flats, the river, the alders and the plovers.

For thirty-two years she had driven three miles forth, three miles back along that empty road, stopping always at the turnpike, setting forth and returning at the same hour.

When she had been brought to Schloss Ahlden she was gorgeous–a brilliant woman, very young, vivacious, sparkling, beautiful, full of wit and spirit, of courage and daring.

She had defied them all, defied even the perpetual imprisonment to which she was condemned. Something would happen, she said.

Nothing had happened.

She sat now, a woman older than age, a woman who had never bloomed and faded, who had been frozen in her immature loveliness, chilled by creeping monotony in face and heart, and looked out at the light fading from the road and from the river Aller. The road was dead; never had it responded to her passionate watching; no help had ever come along its dusty length; no messenger spurring to say, “Your husband repents; he bids you come back,” or “Your husband is a King now; his people insist that you share his throne,” or “Your husband is dead, and your son sets you free!”

Nothing ever happened.

With unbroken regularity her guard was changed. Such servants as could not endure the life left; others came.

These were all the sole incidents in the life at Schloss Ahlden.

There were no letters, no messages, no visitors.

Once her son, after a fierce quarrel with his father, made a desperate attempt to get to her, but she never knew of it, and soon the Prince was reconciled with the King and made no effort to come again.

It was astonishing how strong hope was, how it lived and flourished with nothing to feed on; but it died at last, as the black locks faded to gray, as the robust young body became feeble and thin, as the glowing cheek sunk and the brilliant eyes grew dim, hope sickened and died at last.

She watched the white road from habit; she ceased to think of it as a highway to deliverance. As the world had forgotten her, so she began to forget the world. Great wars tore Europe, and the man who was her husband and Elector of Hanover played a big part in them, though through the chance of birth and from no great merit; she never heard of these events.

When he became King of England she did hear of it, but it made no difference to her situation.

Her name was never spoken outside the walls of Schloss Ahlden; she was as remote from the minds of men, even from the minds of her children, as if she had been long dead.

A mere memory–Sophia Dorothea of Zell, repudiated by her husband and a prisoner at Ahlden–as one might say–Sophia Dorothea of Zell who died thirty-two years ago and is forgotten.

Her case had caused no sensation; no party espoused her cause; she had no followers, no adherents, no one planned her escape or pitied her, or prayed for her; she was merely forgotten.

Yet she was a living, breathing woman, with power to feel, to endure, to remember–worst of all, that remembering.

The dark crept closer round her as she sat looking out of the window.

The road, the river, the alders, the flats had come to be like the paintings on prison walls; they meant nothing, they did not represent the world, they circled her as surely as walls and moat, they changed as little, they were as cruel in their hard barrenness.

She had been very worldly, very gay, not in the least of a cloistered temperament, not given to caring for things spiritual; she had enjoyed life, she had had a great capacity for living fully and splendidly, a great aptitude for happiness. She remembered now how she had enjoyed life once; it made her feel very, very old.

The world had closed on her early; she was not fifteen when her vivacious, mischievous immature beauty had been wedded to her awkward, slow, selfish young cousin, Georg Ludwig, son of the Electress of Hanover, who was remotely connected with the royal Stewarts of England.

He had never loved her.

And she had laughed at him, even pitied him, not realising the power he possessed over her. Even at twenty-two he had been prosaic, sullen, ungracious, self-important, a Prince without culture, or chivalry, or sensibility, a hard, obstinate man, narrow in heart and brain.

Even her raw ignorance had seen what he lacked. His unlovely person, short and stout, his dull blonde face with the pale prominent eyes, his rude manners and gross self-indulgencies roused aversion in her; his good qualities were not those that made life any easier for her; he was brave in every way, he had much good sense, he was honourable after his fashion. Some women might have been happy with him, not the woman he had married, her bright, impetuous, fastidious nature, avid of enjoyment, was hideously ill-matched with the plodding, dull, coarse character of her husband.

Even their children did not bring them together. When she had been married six years the Revolution hurled the last Stewart from the throne of England and put a Prince of the German Empire in his place. Soon after a law was passed to secure the Protestant succession, and this made the Electress of Hanover heiress to the Throne of England.

For a while Sophia Dorothea had exulted in the prospect of one day being Queen of the second nation in the world.

She bloomed gloriously; her husband was openly unfaithful to her. The little court was coarse and sordid and scandalous, but she had the power of extracting pleasure from her life, of throwing the glamour of youth and health over everything. She was frivolous, bold–never sufficiently moved to be indiscreet, though she sailed near to danger many times.

Then, when she had been married thirteen years, she met Philip, Count von Königsmarck.

After that her life had ended as regarded all those things that made it pleasant, even endurable.

Schloss Ahlden had closed on her youth, her beauty, her high spirits, her courage. Her hot passions had flared and wasted and waned without a vent for thirty-two years, and now she was an old woman, almost passive.

Almost, not quite. At times her servants were afraid of her; at times she was like a tigress enraged.

Even after a lifetime of imprisonment, the passionate spirit at times still ranged and surged against its bonds.

Once she had had a desperate desire to pass, if only once, the turnpike on the Hayden road that marked the limit of her drive.

She would drive the cabriolet herself, drive furiously as if endeavouring to outstrip the guards who always galloped alongside. But no matter how she drove, always at the turnpike she must turn back. Of late she had not been out at all; she spent her days glooming at the window. Her women had been recently changed; only one remained, who had been with her all the time, and she was very old now and sour with long exile from her kind.

She, Madame von Arlestein, had been the confidant of the Princess in the old, old days.

The other attendants who came and went, and the changing officers of the gloomy little garrison, said that this austere, bitter old woman really knew if the Princess was innocent or guilty. Guilty the world had called her before it had forgotten her. Those few who still knew her as a living woman were not so sure.

“Innocent” or “guilty” were two arbitrary words with which to divide her conduct. She had herself always maintained her innocency of putting another man in her husband’s place, as firmly as that husband had believed in, and acted upon, the contrary.

But that she had been guilty of loving Philip von Königsmarck was beyond denial. Whether he had ever had more of her than the kiss she had given him when they were discovered together only Sophia Dorothea and the Countess von Arlestein knew. For Count Philip had died, horribly, before the dawn following that fatal night. No one cared much now, even those who waited on her, whether she had kept her marriage vows before God.

Unconsciously they thought of her as pure; they could not think one a wanton who had lived in this awful chastity and renunciation for thirty-two years.

The Captain of the Guard was a young man, born while she was in prison.

Thinking of what he had already crowded into his life, he shuddered when he saw the proud, grievous woman entering the austere little chapel on Sunday, and reflected that during his infancy, his childhood, his youth, his young manhood, she had been doing the same without rest or change, while the beauty withered on her face and hope withered in her heart.

As he rode through the courtyard to-night he looked up at her window, reluctantly but irresistibly.

There was the peaked white blur of her face, the dark, restless eyes fixed on the twilight landscape, the long white hand supporting the sharp chin.

“Herr Jesus!” he muttered. “Why does she not die?”

Sophia Dorothea was thinking the same; she wondered what had kept her alive, what had actually sustained her to grow _old_–yes, to come to that horror, to lead this existence to _old age_.

Why had she not flung away a life so miserable and died at least in the triumph of youth?

She envied Philip von Königsmarck in that he had not lived to grow old.

Hope had upheld her a certain time, but hope was dead. She could recall almost the actual moment when it had finally died, when she had stood at the window watching the road, and known at last that no help would come ever along it to her–known that her husband would not die and release her; but still she had lived and grown old.

The dark gathered, descended and settled.

She leant back in the threadbare velvet chair, and her tired eyes remained fixed on the dusk.

She thought of her husband; he was an old man now, but she pictured him as she had last seen him in the full lustiness of his youth. Her children were grown to middle life, but she saw them still in petticoats. Though both were married and had children of their own, the news had come to her through her women.

She had once had great hopes in her son; she believed that he would have some desire to see his mother.

She divined rightly. Though his attempt to swim the Aller and storm the moat had never been told her, for a long while she had clung to the hope that he had some of the chivalry his father lacked; but he was a man of forty-five now, and she was still a prisoner; that hope had died with the others. Her daughter was a Queen, and that was all Sophia Dorothea knew of her.

She soon ceased to think of them. She rose and went in to her dinner, which was served in the same room, at the same hour, always, always.

Madame von Arlestein was not there; she had the whimsies of old age; they said she was failing fast.

The other ladies were cowed and quiet; they had not been long with their mistress, and two of them had already petitioned to go home.

Sophia Dorothea (Princess of Ahlden she was called, in ghastly compromise between the titles that were hers by right and the nonentity which she really was) was an object of terror to these ladies, by reason of her history, her punishment, her usual silence and her occasional passionate lashes of speech.

Her appearance added to this horror she inspired; she still wore the fashions that were the mode when Mary Stewart set them in England and Madame de Maintenon in France, and this, added to her arrested beauty, more terrible than old age, made her like a creature resurrected from a dusty grave.

When her clothes were renewed, which was seldom, they had been cut on the same pattern, but many of the garments she now wore were those that she had brought with her when she had first come to Schloss Ahlden.

She wore now a gown of faded, crackling red silk, with a short petticoat of frilled blue sarcenet; her hair was piled up with the fan-shaped decoration of stiff lace that had been out of fashion a quarter of a century; her face had a curious bleached look: she was not wrinkled, but her fine features were as faded as her gown; she seemed bloodless, waxen, only in her eyes was that awful look of restlessness in terrible contrast with the lifelessness of her appearance.

The ladies, each with her own warm life of human interest as a background for her thoughts, pitied her and shuddered at her, and in their hearts they counted the days until they should be relieved of their posts at Schloss Ahlden.

For an hour, as always, they read and sewed after dinner, and, as always, the Princess sat rigid, looking into the fire. In summer she would look into the empty hearth in the same way; she had a great attraction for the fire or the fireplace.

She was never long in a room before she would turn to it and sit in front of it, staring into the flames or the grate ready for them.

The ladies, when alone, would sometimes dare to breathe the rumour that accounted for this; it was almost too horrid for utterance. It had to do with the manner in which Philip von Königsmarck had died.

At the usual time the chaplain came, the unalterable prayer was uttered; the ladies took up their candles, curtsied and waited for the Princess to precede them upstairs.

She, as always, went up to her cold, unadorned room, was undressed and dismissed the ladies, then stood by the great bed with the blue tapestry curtains and sent for Madame von Arlestein.

To-night she did not get into bed; she put on a blue bed-gown and went to the fire that blazed, log on log, in the open hearth, but could not do more than warm a portion of the huge draughty room.

This bedroom had been hers ever since she had been at Schloss Ahlden, and nothing in it had been altered.

The bed stood out into the room facing the fireplace, shrouded with heavy curtains and heavy draperies; either side was a sconce of silver holding five candles against the wooden walls, at the foot was a long casket for clothes and either side of that a leather chair with a fringe round the seat.

The door was to the right of the bed, the mullioned windows to the left; they were hung with dark curtains and before each of them were two more of the formal chairs.

In the corner beyond the windows was a plain dressing-table holding a few toilet articles, and behind it hung a mirror in a tortoiseshell frame.

Before the fireplace were a chair with arms in which Sophia Dorothea now sat and a stool.

Beyond the fireplace were a desk and an upright press for clothes.

On the polished floor lay a worn carpet; the ceiling hung low and dark; above the mantelshelf stood another mirror, and four candles and a clock were reflected in its murky depths.

Firelight and candlelight together caught the shadow of the woman in the chair and flung it large and leaping over wall and ceiling.

At her usual time, neither a minute early nor a minute late, Madame von Arlestein entered.

Her head was swathed in black lace and her shoulders in a black shawl; her black skirts were wide and stiff and rustling. She held a length of fine white muslin that she had been embroidering for twenty years.

As always, she seated herself on the stool, and the delicate needle, guided by her wrinkled hands, flew in and out the embroidery that was beginning to be yellow with age.

Sophia Dorothea sat erect in her chair, the black hair, streaked with white as with powder, hung, still thick in the ruins of its beauty, about her shoulders. The firelight softened and warmed the sharp lines of her face and gave a sparkle to her still glorious eyes.

“Annette,” she said, “I have been thinking of Philip von Königsmarck to-night.”

The old woman looked up from her eternal sewing.

“Oh, Madame,” she answered, “you have not spoken that name for many, many years.”

“Not for thirty-two years,” said the Princess. “I know exactly.”

“Why now?” asked Annette von Arlestein.

“Have you forgotten him?” counter-questioned Sophia Dorothea.

“No.”

“You remember it all?”

“All!”

“It seems very near to-night,” said the Princess.

“Yes, I thought so too.”

The old woman broke her invariable custom and laid her sewing down in her lap and looked at her mistress.

“Perhaps death is coming to one of us,” added Sophia Dorothea. “We are both old. My death would be a relief to a great many. Even you would not be sorry, Annette.”

She spoke knowing that Annette von Arlestein had not shared her imprisonment from any love or duty, but from necessity. She was as much a prisoner as her mistress. It had been decreed that she who had shared the shame should share the punishment.

“It is too late,” said the Countess. “Twenty years ago I might have wished you would die. Twenty years ago I might have cursed you.”

The quenchless dark eyes gleamed across at her.

“You would not have stayed if you could have gone. No one else did.”

Annette von Arlestein gave a toothless smile.

“No, I should have gone–when I was younger. Life is dull here.”

Sophia gave her a ghastly look.

“Yes, it is dull.”

A storm was blowing without. The wind cast the rain in gouts on the window; it dripped from the leads and splashed down the wide chimney in heavy drops that hissed on the logs.

“Why do you not finish your sewing?” asked the Princess. “I have never seen you sit idle before.”

“Why did you mention Count von Königsmarck?” replied Madame von Arlestein. “I have never heard you speak of him before.”

“Every night lately I have been thinking of him. You know that.”

“Yes, I know that.”

Like an angry stranger demanding admission, the rain surged at the window and the faded curtains rose and fell in the wind.

“Annette,” said Sophia Dorothea, “why have we lived, you and I? We could have died, you know. There was the moat, or a table-knife–or a bed-cord. But we lived.”

“I suppose,” answered the old woman, “we hoped.”

“_Mein Gott!_ We hoped!”

The Countess looked across at her with dim eyes that seemed to glimmer with malice. “But now–if _he_ died to-morrow, it would be too late. There is no more enjoyment for you in this world.”

“No more for me of anything,” said her mistress calmly. “Königsmarck is dead and youth is dead.”

“Why are we talking of this?” asked the old woman peevishly, “when we have been silent so long?”

“I do not know. Get on with your embroidery.”

“_Der Herr Jesus!_ Why should I finish this work? Who will wear it?”

“Talk, then, talk,” said Sophia Dorothea. “Something is different to-night.”

“It is the rain,” nodded the old woman. Her monstrous shadow wavered behind her like a giant impotently threatening.

“It is memory,” answered the Princess. She relaxed in her chair. Her arms, still lovely but colourless as the limbs of the dead, showed where the wide sleeves of dull blue fell apart, and her hands, almost inhumanly slender, clasped the polished knobs of the chair-arms. “Was I beautiful–that night?” she said. “I scarcely knew it.”

Annette von Arlestein looked at the ruined face, pale beneath the grey locks, the thin bare throat, the sunk dark eyes, the lined mouth. “I can hardly recall what you were,” she muttered; “I can hardly think you are the same.”

A veil seemed to drop over her eyes; she too was remembering.

“Annette,” said the Princess, “do you think _he_ has been just to me?”

“It is so long ago,” whispered the Countess.

“_He_ has enjoyed these thirty-two years,” replied Sophia Dorothea. “He is an old man now; he cannot be very far off answering to judgment. I wonder what God will think of what he has done to me.”

The Countess chuckled. Neither of these women had drawn nearer Heaven themselves during their captivity, no thoughts of spiritual consolations had sweetened the bitterness of their earthly punishment and no repentance had softened their hearts.

“There has always been one prick in his side,” said Annette von Arlestein. “He was never _sure_–he had no _proof_. There has been a doubt with him all his life. He will never know.”

“No one knows but you and I,” answered the Princess. She leant forward and looked into the fire. “How I hate him!” she said slowly. “What is he doing at this moment–the King of England–that cold, hideous man?”

“If curses could have blighted him,” mumbled the old Countess angrily, “mine had done it long ago. When he sent me here I still had blood in my veins; I enjoyed the world–I had my plans, and schemes, my pleasant seasons—”

The Princess rose; her figure was yet erect and graceful; the warm lights and shades touched it to youthful curves.

“Was there anything in the marriage service,” she said, “to say that he should take his pleasures and his loves where he would and that I must never look beyond my wedding ring?”

She held out her left hand and looked at the mocking symbol on her finger placed there forty-six years ago by the man who held her captive now.

“You might have had more of life,” said the Countess. “The punishment could not have been greater if you had changed your fancies as he changed his!” She laughed silently, as if it pleased her to think how her mistress had been cheated.

There was a pause of silence, broken only by the gusty descent of the rain on the window and the splashing of the drops on the glowing logs.

Sophia Dorothea closed her eyes.

“Do you remember,” she murmured, and her expression was greedy as the expression of one glimpsing the food he is famishing for, “that night–how _young_ I was?”

“Do I remember? It was the last thing that ever happened to me,” answered Annette von Arlestein.

Before the mental vision of both the tragedy that had been lying silently in their hearts so long loomed suddenly clear and distinct, as if it had happened yesterday. There was silence.

They saw the scene before them as if they had not been actors in it.

A luxurious bedroom, a white and gilt imitation of Versailles, filled with elegant furniture, fashionable toilet articles and splendid clothes, a bed of white satin and many mirrors–this was what they both saw.

All was brilliant, pretty and cheerful.

At the foot of the bed stood a beautiful woman, Sophia Dorothea, opulent in charms and happiness; her black hair rolled in curls between a braid of pearls and fell on her soft shoulders. White and crimson mingled ravishingly in her face and her dark eyes were soft, yet sparkling.

She wore a gown of white brocade, cut low on the bosom and laced across the muslin shift with a pink cord; the skirt was embroidered with little wreaths of blue roses; the petticoat glimmered with gold thread.

The candles were lit.

Near her stood a handsome creature, Annette von Arlestein, full of sparkle and daring, in a violet gown; she held a blue quilted cloak. On the peach-coloured lining the candle light flickered up and down.

They were both listening … waiting.…

“Then you put the cloak on me,” said the Princess, “and we thought we were so safe–_he_ being away–and I went downstairs.”

Madame von Arlestein saw it–the lovely figure muffled in the dark cloak, creeping down the wide, dark stairs, while she stood at the head with a candle, ready to put her hand over it at the slightest sound.

“Then you followed, Annette, to keep watch. I was a fool to go, but he had to leave soon, and I was mad to see him.”

“And the Elector was coming home the next day,” added the old woman.

Another scene rose before them: the vast dark kitchens beneath the dining-hall that opened on to the back entrance to the palace.

This room was underground, but was lit by the perpetual fire that burnt in the huge grate.

And then, to the memory of both, came the most tragic figure in the tragedy. In the glow of the great fire stood a young man, Philip von Königsmarck, one of a wild and unfortunate family; his brother Charles and his sister Aurora were sadly known to fame, but neither had a fate so dark as his.… Wind and rain increased in violence and swept and howled round the towers of Schloss Ahlden and beat in at the draughty window of the Princess’s bedroom.

She put her hands over her eyes; memory was becoming so strong that she felt herself back in that moment she had not talked of for thirty-two years.

“The kitchen was very large,” she said, “and he stood waiting for me. Do you remember him, Annette?”

“_Herr Jesus!_” muttered the old woman. “He had on a great coat–light–and black satins under it and high soft boots and a little useless sword with a steel tassle–and a steinkirk cravat. They were fashionable that year, pulled through the buttonhole of the waistcoat—”

The Princess did not move her hand from her eyes; she saw all these details. She saw more; she saw the young Swede’s passionate face, his deep blue eyes, the cluster of his blonde hair on his brow.

“You stood at the door,” she said, “and we both forgot you, and then—”

Annette remembered.

The bright young beauty had gone straight to her lover’s arms, and without a word they had kissed.

Then he had drawn her to the settle, and she had sat beside him, loosening her cloak, and on her throat, her shoulders, her arms he had kissed her again.

And presently he had gone on his knees and kissed her gown and her cloak and her hands.

The while they never spoke a word, and the Countess von Arlestein watched by the big door.

“You did not hear them come,” said the Princess, dropping her hand from her eyes.

“No,” answered the old woman. “The first I knew of them was when the door opened—”

They could both see that too, in their memory–the door opening on Prince Georg, whose pale eyes saw the Electress in the arms of Philip von Königsmarck while his lips rested on her brow.

A woman had betrayed them: a jealous woman enamoured of the young Count had brought the Elector back a day before he was due and sent him here to the kitchens, which the spy had discovered was the meeting-place.

Sophia Dorothea remembered how she had lifted her head from her lover’s shoulder to see her husband standing within the door, four officers behind him and a fifth holding Madame von Arlestein.

“I am glad I kissed him again,” she muttered.

“The firelight was full in the room–like this,” said the old woman. Her blurred eyes gleamed madly; she seemed inspired by her memories. She got to her feet, and the embroideries fell to the hearth. “He fought for you–with his silly little court sword–but he was one to four, all well armed—”

“The Elector held my wrists,” said the Princess, “and I had never known he was so strong.… I struggled; _Mein Gott_, how fiercely! but I could not shake his hands.”

“They had me against the wall with a bare blade at my breast, and I never moved,” added the Countess. “They had him down–then _she_ came in, the spy, the traitress. ‘Eh, Königsmarck,’ she said (how she had always hated you!), and she set her heel on his mouth as he writhed—”

“And I cursed her,” whispered Sophia Dorothea, “and I cursed him and the children I had borne him—”

“Ay, you cursed; but they picked him up and—”

“Stop!” shrieked the Princess. “Have I not lived with that all these years? He was dead.”

“I hope he was dead,” said the Countess; “but the Elector hoped he was alive when the oven door was shut. What did _she_ say? ‘This is not the couch my lord looked for to-night. Your oven takes dainty meat, Serenity!’”

“I bit his thumb to the bone,” answered the Princess, clutching the edge of the mantelshelf. “Oh, Jesus, Jesus!”

“Why should the High God hear you?” sneered the old woman.

“I have lain awake at night remembering that I hurt him. He cried out under his breath, and there was blood on his lace—”

“And he struck you in the face as the others stepped back from the fire and gave you a vile name—”

“It was the last word he ever spoke to me.”

“Aye,” muttered the Countess, “we were dragged upstairs and cast into a coach, and no one there ever saw us again nor spoke our names.”

“They drove us through the night to Schloss Ahlden … thirty-two years ago.”

The Princess paced up and down the hearth.

“I have thought of so many things–if he would have been different, if he had ever loved me–it was the hate of fourteen years vented then–if Philip von Königsmarck cursed me when he saw he was trapped.”

She drew a deep breath and put her pallid fingers to her pallid face.

“I kissed him again,” she said, “when all was over—”

With a fumbling gesture Madame von Arlestein groped for her sewing. “Why do we rip up this?” she asked.

“I have never been kissed since,” added Sophia Dorothea, unheeding.

The Countess pointed a skinny finger at the clock.

“We have never been so late before. Get to your bed, Highness.”

“Not to-night–never since by man, woman nor child–stay with me to-night.”

“Why should I stay? I want my sleep.”

“Who could sleep to-night? Hark at the rain.”

She moved to the upright press in the corner and opened the doors, showing a gulf of shadow.

As she stood there with one hand on either wing of the door, she looked like one peering with calmly curious eyes beyond the portals of the tomb.

“Why did we recall it all to-night?” whimpered Madame von Arlestein. “I have lost my needle and the thread is entangled.”

She pulled discontentedly at her sewing.

Sophia Dorothea stepped into the press and sought among the clothes.

“What are you doing?” asked Madame von Arlestein peevishly.

The Princess stepped out of the press with a dress across her arm.

A dress of faded white brocade embroidered with wreaths of blue roses and a petticoat gleaming dully with tarnished gold thread.

“_Der Herr Jesus!_” cried the Countess.

The Princess closed the press; then she threw off her gown and stood a wraith-like figure in her white shift.

With a ghastly look she put on the brocade, which rustled drearily as if it groaned at being drawn from its tomb. She laced it across the bosom with the pink cord, she spread out the skirts, she shook the yellow lace into place.

With a steady step she crossed the room to the bed.

“In the firelight, in the firelight, like this, eh, Annette?”

“What has happened to you?” quavered the old woman.

“I do not know,” answered the Princess. “I feel strange to-night, almost as if hope had come once more; almost as if I should never see the flats and the road and the Aller again; almost as if I should never count the plovers again nor drive three miles forth, three miles back along the Hayden road; almost as if Philip von Königsmarck were near.”

“It is the wind,” said the Countess.

The storm wailed and shuddered without, and splash, splash fell the rain from the leads.

“It brings the ghosts,” she added. She peered at the clock. “_Mein Gott!_ It is–_twenty minutes after one_. You should be in bed,” she added.

“Do you think I have ever slept at the hour of one to two any night of all the long nights here?” answered Sophia Dorothea. “But this is the first time I have passed it in this dress–in the firelight.”

“There was a great clock in the corner,” said Madame von Arlestein in her indistinct, failing voice, “and when they shut him in it was just striking two.”

“Do you think,” asked the Princess violently, “that I did not hear it?”

She came again to the hearth, moving with the rigidity of age; the brocade hung loosely on her hollowed form, showing how the soft flesh that had once filled it out had shrunk and withered.

“What a life mine has been,” she said, standing as if she listened to the wind; “that one night and thirty-two years to think over it. For I have never been able to think of anything else, Annette.”

“_Twenty minutes after one_,” mumbled the Countess; “that was the time you opened the door and stepped into the kitchen—”

The Princess put her hand to her bosom.

“Annette, Annette, are there no spells to conjure him back? But if he came he would not know us–two old women!”

“Get to bed,” answered the Countess von Arlestein. “I am tired.”

“Go then–leave me,” said her mistress.

The old woman took one of the candles from the mantelpiece; her hand shook so that the wax ran down the stick and over her fingers.

“One word,” the Princess turned commanding eyes on her. “If I should die first, Annette, you will never let them know the truth.”

“I have forgotten the truth,” returned the other with something of a sneer.

“No–you _know_ it–you and I only. Guilty, they say; but some say, perhaps my son says, innocent. Let it remain unsolved.”

“Whatever I said would not be believed now, and I am older than you; I shall die first. Oh, content you, Serenity, I shall not speak.”

She moved slowly, a bunchy black figure, towards the door, which she pulled open on the black corridor.

Holding aloft her candle, she peered into this darkness.

“It is so late; the lights are out,” she quavered, “and I am afraid of the ghosts in the passages.”

“If _he_ thought in his heart that I might be innocent, it would trouble him on the day of his death, I think,” said the Princess. She seated herself in the worn chair. “I feel very cold,” she added.

Madame von Arlestein turned back into the room and let the door swing to behind her.

“My eyes dazzle with the firelight,” said Sophia Dorothea. “Something is going to happen–at last.”

“It was speaking of the past,” answered the Countess. “Why did we when we had been silent so long?”

“I have described a circle,” murmured the Princess, “and I am back again to that night.”

“You are ill. I will call some one—”

“No,” said her mistress in a terrible voice. “Call no one.”

The Countess replaced the candle on the mantelshelf.

“Will you pray?”

“Why should I pray? My prayers were exhausted long ago.”

Her head drooped to one side.

“Get to your bed,” she added. “Leave me here. The fire is falling out, and when it is dead I will go to bed. But now I want to keep watch.”

“Keep watch?”

“I am waiting.”

The storm was subsiding; the casements rattled slightly and mournfully and the rain splashed with a more gentle violence against the panes.

The firelight glimmered along the stiff folds of the white brocade and sparkled in the tarnished gold threads of the petticoat. Sophia Dorothea, gaunt and white, was flushed by this warm glow that was growing fainter and dying as the logs broke and fell into ashes.

For some minutes she sat so; then she looked up at the old woman leaning over her.

“Remember,” she said, “never tell.”

Utter silence again, save for the mutter of the departing wind and the patter of the ceasing rain.

“She is ill,” muttered Madame von Arlestein, and hobbled to the door.

She clapped her hands and cried out for help in a feeble voice that fell uselessly, unheard, into the dark passages of Schloss Ahlden.

Then came a sound that silenced her, the clock striking two.

“_Ach, Gott in Himmel!_” she muttered, cold with fright. “I heard that oven door closing again—”

She hurried back to her mistress, the clear clang of iron still in her ears.

Sophia Dorothea lay back in her chair; her face was tilted upwards; she looked as fresh, as beautiful, as young as on that night thirty-two years ago. There seemed no white in her hair and her limbs filled triumphantly the rich brocade.

“I am getting blind,” said Annette von Arlestein, “and this cursed firelight–but you look as you looked _then_—” She peered closer and gave a cracked scream.

It was a corpse she stared at; Sophia Dorothea had gone.

THE YELLOW INTAGLIO

GIOVANNI PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA

“D. M. C.
Johannes jacet hic Mirandula caetera morut
Et Tagus et Ganges forsan et Antipodes
Ob. an. sal. McLXXXIII, vix. an. XXXII.

Hieronimus Beninienius ne disiunetus post mortem locus orsa
separet quor animas

In vita coniunxit amor hac humo
supposita ponu curarit

Ob. an. M.D.XXXXII. vix. an. lxxxix Mens. vi.”

_Tablet to Giovanni Pico della Mirandola in the Church of St.
Mark, Florence._

Giovanni Pico, Conte della Mirandola, sat at the window of his apartment; the midday glow of a gentle winter sun was on his face; against the straight pink-toned marble front of the Palazzo opposite three dark pines rose and flung their long shadows up the street. The November sky was clear and cold in colour–the blue of chilly water.

Below in the street was silence, and in the chamber with the dull terra-cotta walls and sandstone floor was silence too.

Giovanni Pico was ill of slow fever that had long sucked his strength. He sat in a polished chair with gilt on it, and rested his long white hands on the sides of it; he wore a straight robe of soft red from his ears to his ankles; his sleeves were tight, and of gold net over orange velvet, and fell in embroidered points to his finger tips.

Round the high, close collar of his gown was a fine chain of silver and amber beads, which, passing several times round his throat, fell to his waist.

His hair, which was smooth and thick and fair, was parted in the middle and combed either side of his face; it fell in large curls on his breast and was finely scented. His countenance was sweet and good and lovely, the gray eyes large and gentle, the lips calm and sweetly curved. At present he was very pale, and there was a stillness in his expression and a motionlessness in his attitude that made his head and bust look like a carving in tinted alabaster.

The chamber was simple but beautiful. A low bed covered with silk draperies stood in one corner and near it was a table bearing costly books and a silver lamp.

On a dark cabinet stood a little broken figure of Tanagra, showing a dancing woman with a full robe held out; near her was an elusive glass of blue colour on a milk-white stem, like a bubble trembling to disperse. Above the bed hung a black crucifix and under it a red light burned with a quivering flame.

A scent of sandal-wood, nard and spikenard, was in the chamber; stirred occasionally by the breeze that whispered over Florence and entered the open window, this perfume strengthened and was wafted out into the street.

The sick man never moved as the hours went by; save that his eyes were opened and fixed with an enigmatic look on the quiet street below, he might have been asleep.