LVI
The Marshal, having plumped out with golden blood the depleted veins of Hector’s account at Rothschild’s, exacted his pound of flesh in the matter of the Claim of Succession. Köhler and von Steyregg, those birds of ill omen, shortly presented themselves at the Rue du Bac, bearing the elder Dunoisse’s letter of introduction, addressed to “His Serene Highness the Hereditary Prince of Widinitz,” and bearing three immense splashes of scarlet sealing-wax, impressed with the writer’s own pretentious coat of arms....
Two such men, these agents, capacious vessels of clay, into which the Marshal’s gold was continually ladled....
Köhler styled himself an Attorney and Commissioner of Oaths of Prague. One felt sure wherever his offices were, that the business of the money-lenders flowed across the threshold. You saw him as a small, pale, scrupulously-attired, flaxen-haired man, with sharp, shallow brown eyes. Three or four bristling yellow hairs at the outer angles of the upper lip served him as a mustache—one thought of a white rat when one looked at him. Von Steyregg was a vast, pachydermatous personality, whose body was up-borne on short legs, shaped like balusters, and clad in the tightest of checked pantaloons. His venerable black frock-coat had grown green through long service—the copperof the buttons peeped through the frayed cloth. His swag-belly rolled under an immense nankeen waistcoat—over the voluminous folds of a soiled muslin cravat depended his triple row of saddlebag chins, his moist, sagging mouth betokened a love of good cheer, the hue of his nose—an organ of the squashed-strawberry type one so seldom meets with at this era—testified to its owner’s appreciation of potent liquors. Huge shapeless ears, pale purple-and-brown speckled, jutted like jug-handles from his high-peaked head, whose bald and shiny summit rose, lonely as an Alp, from a forest of flaming red hair. His little gray eyes were latticed with red veins. From one of them distilled a perpetual tear, destined to become a haunting bugbear to his employer’s son.
Von Steyregg, who swore in a dozen languages with equal facility and incorrectness, claimed to be a Magyar of noble family. His dog’s eared visiting card dubbed him Baron. On occasions of ceremony, an extraordinary star in tarnished metal, suspended from a soiled watered-silk ribbon of red, green, and an indistinguishable shade, which may once have been white, dignified his vast expanse of snuff-stained shirt-front. Though its owner declared this ornament to be the Order ofSt.Emmerich, bestowed by that saintly Prince upon a paternal ancestor, the reader may suspect it to have been originally a stage-property. Steyregg having failed in theatrical management at Vienna, Pesth, and elsewhere; and being, when full of wine—and it took an immense quantity of that liquor to fill him—prodigal of reminiscences of thecoulisses, pungent and racy; related with the Rabelaisian garniture of nods, winks, leers, and oaths of the most picturesque and highly-flavored kind.
Both men invariably addressed Dunoisse as “Highness” or “Your Serene Highness.” They maintained a scrupulous parade of deference and respect in their dealings with their victim—they retreated backwards from his presence—to Madame de Roux they almost prostrated themselves—kotowing profoundly as the Ministers of the Fifteenth Louis, before the dainty jeweled shoe-buckles of the Pompadour....
Of the mad tarantula-dance through which this precious pair of showmen presently jerked their puppet,—of the kennel of obloquy and shame through which they draggedhim with his companion,—the writer, confessing to some degree of parental tenderness for the hero of the story, designs to tell as briefly as may be.
According to Köhler and von Steyregg, the Regent Luitpold, having obtained from the King of Bavaria permission, confirmed by the approval of the Bund, to secularize several wealthy monasteries within the principality of Widinitz, was in worse odor with his Catholic subjects than ever before. Not only had several large communities of religious been reduced to penury and rendered homeless; but certain influential farmers, tenants of these, had been ejected from their homesteads, and divers peasants, having espoused the cause of the monks with less worldly wisdom than goodwill, had been turned out of their cottages, or had them pulled down over their heads. Disaffection was spreading, discontent prevailed. The iron was hot, said von Steyregg and Köhler, for the striking of a blow in the interests of the son of Princess Marie-Bathilde.
You may imagine how eloquently the Marshal’s agents dwelt upon the enormities of Luitpold; you can conceive how they advanced their plan, and pressed its various points upon the passive victim. Wreaths of verbal blossoms covered up its spotted ugliness. Was it not a beautiful and edifying notion, asked von Steyregg, that the Heir-aspirant to the feudal throne of Widinitz should take part in the great annual festival of mid-August, the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin—at which season the Lutheran Regent—loathing the smell of incense and the chanting of Litanies as another personage is reputed to abominate holy water—yet not daring to provoke his Catholic liegemen to the point of open rebellion by prohibiting the procession—invariably absented himself from his capital, or shut himself up in the Schloss. The suggestion of so open a bid for popularity Dunoisse at first scouted. But the whole plan had a spice of adventure that charmed and excited Madame.... Paris would be intolerable in August—a delicious month to travel in. Henriette had never seen Bavaria—she longed to breathe the air of its romantic pine-forests, and gaze upon its sunset-flushed snow-peaks. For two pins she would make one of the expedition, she vowed.
And Dunoisse, being keenly aware that, although no suppers would be given at the Elysée during the red-hotmonths of autumn, there would befêtesat the Tuileries and atSt.Cloud, and shooting parties at Compiègne and Fontainebleau, was extremely willing to gratify the desire of his fair friend....
Indeed, when von Steyregg and Köhler hinted that the Marshal would not welcome the addition of a petticoat to the party, the Colonel manifested for the first time in their experience, energy and decision.
“My father may please or not please,” he said to them. “I do not go without Madame de Roux!”
The Marshal received the information with a fearful outburst of profanity.
“He is not to be moved, Monseigneur!” said Köhler.
“Excellency,” put in von Steyregg, “the Prince, your son, is a chip of the old block. Without the petticoat he will not budge, I pledge you the word of a Magyar nobleman!” He shook his bald and flaming head, and shook off the tear that as usual hung pendulous from the weeping eyelid, as he added:
“And the lady is a highly attractive person!”
“We shall split on the rock of her attractive person!” said the Marshal with a detonating oath. And so it ultimately proved.
Neither then, nor long afterwards, when the scar of the appalling fiasco had partially healed, could Dunoisse rid himself of the impression that the expedition had been of the type of adventure that is wrought of the stuff of dreams.
In the highlands of South Bavaria, sheltered by the skirts of the Alps, lay the Principality of Widinitz, a mountainous district cloaked with beech-woods and pine-forests, jeweled by turquoise lakes, and valleys like hollowed emeralds, kept green in the fiercest heats by the mountain-torrents and glacier-rivers and streams of melted snow....
That August journey was one of unclouded pleasure. The handsome officer and the lovely lady in the luxurious dark green traveling-chariot, that was lined with pale green satin and drawn by three powerful grays, were taken by the hosts and hostesses of the picturesque, vine-draped and rose-covered posting-inns where they slept, or halted to change horses, to be a honeymooning couple. One may imagine how the princely coronet that gleamed above the coat-of-arms emblazoned on the door-panels of the greenchariot (a touch of von Steyregg’s) and engraved upon the silver plating of the harness (a happy inspiration of Köhler’s) swelled the totals of the bills. As for the Marshal’s agents, sharing with the Colonel’s valet and Madame’s maid the big brown landau that lumbered at the heels of four stout beasts in the wheel-tracks of the green chariot, they were supposed to be the major-domo and the chaplain of the distinguished pair.
Köhler traveled light in the matter of baggage. A battered hat-box and a venerable portmanteau contained his indispensable necessaries of the road. An old campaigner in the field of fortune, von Steyregg’s coat-tails invariably did duty as his carpet-bags and valises. Upturned, these well-stuffed receptacles served as cushions, upon which the Baron lolled magnificently, patronizing the subservient valet and the blushing maid who secretly admired large, overbearing men with flamboyant hair. True, von Steyregg’s hyacinthine locks left off long before they reached the summit of his cranium, but you cannot have everything, thought the maid.
“We are not real,” Henriette would say to her lover. “We are two sweethearts out of some fairy-tale of M. Anthony de Hamilton or Madame d’Aulnoy.... That old woman in the red cloak is not a wood-gathering peasant, but a witch; that black face peeping at us through the bushes does not belong to a charcoal-burner or a lignite-miner, but to some spiteful gnome or kobold.... You are the Prince of the Enchanted City in the Sleeping Forest. And I am your Princess, my dear!”
Dunoisse sighed, knowing that whether he were a Prince or not would depend upon the disposition of the liegemen of Widinitz; upon the goodwill of His Majesty the King of Bavaria; upon the approval of the Diet of the Germanic Confederation, and the clinching decision of the Special Tribunal known as the Austrägal Court. And that, even if these powers were unanimous in confirming the claim of Succession made by the son of Marie-Bathilde, the question of Henriette’s ever becoming the legal partner of the throne, which in that event would be his, opened up another vista of possibilities, amongst which Divorce loomed large ... whilst Death, his black robe discreetly draped about his grisly anatomy, hovered unobtrusively in the background.
Nom d’un petit bonhomme!If de Roux should die, that regrettable loss to the Army of France would be, it seemed to Dunoisse, the way out of the tangled labyrinth of difficulties and anxieties.
His eyes avoided Henriette’s, lest she should read his thought in them. But hers were raised to the rosy snow-peaks that lifted above the dark, shaggy green of the pine-forests, her sensitive nostrils quivered, her lips were parted as she drank the fragrant air.
How crystal-pure she seemed.... And yet it was but seeming.... A picture, shown upon the background of a murky Paris street-corner, by the flare of a smoky lamp, rose up in Dunoisse’s memory; and the ugly, haunting laugh of the tall, sardonic workman who had chatted with a comrade on that unforgettable night of the return from London, sounded in his ears. And when Henriette asked, turning to him with the tenderest solicitude in her lovely face:
“Why do you shiver, dearest? Are you cold?” her lover answered, with forced gayety:
“A footstep must have passed over the place where my grave is to be made. You know the old saying?”
“Quite well,” she told him, adding with an exquisite inflection of tenderness. “But it would be ‘our’ grave, Hector.... For I could not live without you, you know that very well! Dearest, why do you start?”
For the muscles of the shoulder against which she leaned, had given a sudden jerk, and the man’s head had pivoted from her abruptly, as though pulled by a wire.
“Did I start?” he asked, looking back at her rather vaguely. “If so, it was because I fancied—not for the first time—that I heard someone laugh in there!...”
He pointed to the covert of pine-scrub, larch, yellow-berried mountain-ash, and tall brake-fern that edged the forest road, and went climbing with them still when the slower oaks and beeches were outstripped and left behind. It was Henriette’s turn to shiver now. Hector was so strange—so very strange—she told herself, at times!...
Another man, much less handsome, not half so sweet-tempered, amiable, devoted, and clever, would have made a pleasanter companion upon these wild, rugged mountain-roads.... His blue eyes would have had a provoking challenge always, for those of his friend.... Cynicaljests, sharp witticisms, would have alternated with daring compliments, bold hints, and subtle allusions, upon his projecting, fleshy lips. Yet de Moulny, a year or so back, had been a submissive, humble lover. In those days he had yielded to and been ruled by the will of Henriette. In these days, delicacy and shyness no longer characterized his wooing. He demanded, exacted, extorted favors that others had obtained by service and suit, and sighs.... She said to herself, as a mysterious smile hovered about the exquisite lips, and the long, dark lashes swept the cheeks that no sun, however ardent, might kiss to russet, that Alain was no fool! He had found out that what women liked best in a man was hardihood, and assurance touched with brutality. He had learned the secret of success with the sex.
Now, Hector....
When a Henriette begins to compare her lover, to his disadvantage, with other men, she has already wearied of him. His day is over and past.
Thenceafter, nearer and ever nearer, draws the fatal crisis. No fresh turning in the beaten road they travel together, but may lead to a definite parting of the ways.