Read Ebook: The Book of the Bush Containing Many Truthful Sketches of the Early Colonial Life of Squatters Whalers Convicts Diggers and Others Who Left Their Native Land and Never Returned by Dunderdale George Macfarlane J Illustrator

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HISTORICAL VIGNETTES

GEORGE I

"Halt!" The voice of an officer rang out in the heavy twilight, and with a sudden scream of brakes and jangle of harness the cavalcade came to a stand.

"Tell the Herr von Gastein his Majesty desires to speak with him." The name ran up the long line, quick and sharp, like a rattle of musketry, and passed out of hearing of him who had uttered it. "Tell the Herr Captain to come at once."

The Herr Captain was already, on the word, spurring back from the head of the cort?ge, which was of royal extent. It stood upon a flat road in a flat country, covering more ground than and including almost as many human souls as a modern mail-train. There was the King's coach for principal item--a veritable little room slung on straps and drawn by eight horses; and there were carriages--seven or eight, and each holding as many people--for his retinue, and baggage-wagons, and a troop of fifty sabres to escort the whole. It took so much, or more, to carry this little corpulent apoplectic on his annual visit to Herrenhausen, whither he had already travelled to within a league or so of Osnabr?ck and a much-needed night's rest.

The Captain von Gastein, having dismounted and thrown his reins to a groom, stood at stiff attention by the coach door. He was a patient, somewhat exhausted-looking man of fifty, spare-bodied, and with stone-blue eyes which rather matched the dusty Hanoverian blue of his uniform. His expression at the moment was one of a quiet fatality, as if the summons had not been altogether unforeseen by him.

A preternatural silence seemed to have succeeded the tumult of hoofs and wheels. There was a soundless blink of lightning in the sky, and a windmill on the flat roadside blackened and paled alternately in its flicker, as if it palpitated. It was late June, and the air seemed to have come out of a limekiln. The dust rolled up into it began to settle down sluggishly.

The door of the great travelling-coach opened, and a little bewigged gentleman, who had been peering from behind the glass, descended. His manner was dry, self-important, professional; he was the King's English physician.

A querulous voice, breaking from the interior of the carriage, interrupted him:

"Der Herr Jesus! What is all this chatter? Tell the man to enter."

The physician, placing a warning finger on his lips, skipped to one of the supplementary coaches; the Captain von Gastein climbed into the royal vehicle. A postillion put up the steps; the door was closed, the word given, and the cavalcade lurched on. "Sit," motioned the King; and the Herr Captain, with what steadiness he could command, settled himself on the edge of the broad seat backing upon the horses, and awaited, rigid and upright.

He was quite alone with his Majesty, and there was plenty of room for them both. The interior of the coach was like a cabinet, and luxuriously upholstered. There were accommodations for writing, card-playing, shaving, coffee-making, and other conveniences. The pace was leisurely, the motion restful; the great wheels turned outside the windows with little apparent sound. The King of England lay in his padded corner opposite, a very weary, moodish little old man. His cheeks bagged, his eyes goggled, strained, and anxious; the silk travelling-cloak in which he was wrapped only partly concealed his immense corpulence, and his thick legs and stumpy feet dangled short of the floor. His head was unwigged, and enveloped in a close cap with a fur border which came down over his eyes.

The officer, observant of everything, for all the respectful rigidity of his vision, could not but be conscious of a certain feeling of repulsion in this his first close contact with the prince to whose unwelcome service, in one most tragic direction, he had devoted the best twenty-five years of his life. Twenty-five years it was since he had been ordered, a young impecunious captain, to the lonely castle of Ahlden on the Aller, where lived, already seven years incarcerated, the beautiful young wife of the then electoral Prince George--Sophia Dorothea, accused, rightly or wrongly, of misconduct with a Swedish adventurer. She was fair; unhappy; her husband had not loved her; the cold cruelty of his temperament had been confessed in this his consignment of her to a living grave. Had she not lain in his arms, borne him children? Gastein had needed no more to inflame his chivalry. Thenceforth he had given himself to the service of this lady, to ameliorate, to the best of his power, her bitter fate. His partiality, his sympathy, being, no doubt, reported, had kept him poor and unpromoted. For a quarter of a century he had shared his princess's exile, and had only returned to the world when death had ended that, less than a twelvemonth ago. After thirty-two years! And this was the unlovely Rhadamanthus who had condemned her, this little wheezy, potbellied old frog of a man, who had become Elector of Hanover and King of England in the interval! The Captain had been educated to the right divine succession; but something monstrous in the picture struck him. His convictions and his emotions hurt one another in their efforts at a reconciliation. It was somehow not right that tragic beauty should lie at the mercy of this commonplace. He sat as stiff as a ramrod.

It is one of the most grotesque privileges of royalty to command silence. No one must address it unless addressed. Then, at its word, its gesture, the empty brass pot ceases to tinkle or the golden vessel overflows. This seems an unnatural impost, like taxing a man's daylight or his drinking-water. It gives an uncanny self-possession to the mortal who levies it. The little swollen tub of a creature, glowering in his corner, mutely discussed the figure opposite for as long as it pleased him, with no more concern, probably less, than he would have shown in regarding a black-beetle; and when he spoke at last it was even with some grudging in his cold, guttural voice.

"You are of the escort, then, mein Herr?"

The Captain, stiffening yet a trifle, saluted. "As your Majesty commanded," he said.

The other shrugged fretfully.

"I am glad," he said, "to find something surviving to your sense of duty."

Von Gastein made no answer. He ought not; he could not, indeed. That sense of warring emotions hurt him like a violent indigestion.

The King, for some minutes, condescended to speak no more, but sat looking out of the window upon the darkening flats and the white ribbon of the road reeling under him. What was in his mind? He had always declared, for some reason, that he would not long survive his wife; and she had died six months ago. Had he somehow cheated Fate--or might he have cheated it had he remained in England? This was his first visit to his patrimony since her death. Her death, her released spirit--turn the coach!

No, his beloved Herrenhausen! The stout little Guelph was no coward for all his love of life and good-living. A murrain on this old wives' trash of spectres and premonitions! He glanced at the figure opposite--it sat up rigid and grey like a signpost--and, with a scowl, looked out of the window again.

Thirty-two years--a woman of sixty, and she had been a fresh, blooming young wife of twenty-eight when he had consigned her to her living death! Much water, as they said in England, had flowed under London Bridge during that interval--the highways of life had been paved and repaved. Thirty-two years! The Schloss was a dead, dreary place, situated in a dead, dreary country--a mere lonely manor-house in the wilds, good enough for a month's stay; but--thirty-two years! Gott in Himmel! And she had been vivacious, worldly, sparkling with the glory of being and doing when he had last seen her!

A vision of the castle, as he had known it once or twice in the old, far-off days, rose before him. He saw again the leagues of flat marshland which surrounded it, the reedy river crawling by its walls, the grey alders shivering in the wind, and the wheeling of lonely plovers. He saw the sad towers, the cold, undecorated rooms, the windows looking out upon the lifeless waste of road. The road! the livid unfruitful highway, upon which, for hours at a time, it had been said, dry burning eyes had been set, despairing for the mercy, the deliverance, which never came! For thirty-two years! God in heaven! while the frost of age slowly settled on the beautiful eyes, the deep black hair, the breaking heart! With a writhe, as of physical suffering, the old man turned from his window.

"The life was dull at Schloss Ahlden?" he said.

"Dull, sire."

The correct, impassive attitude of the Captain maddened while it half cowed him. For a minute he held his breath--only to release it in a sudden question, unexpected, astounding:

Von Gastein started under the shock--and recovered himself.

"During the twenty-five years, sire, I had the privilege of attending on her the Princess of Ahlden did not fail weekly to take the Sacrament, and on each occasion to avow her innocence before the altar."

The King stared, then mumbled from loud to low.

"They will avow it," he began, and broke off quickly. Some words reported to him, as having been uttered by her to one seeking to bring about a reconciliation before his enthronement, recurred to his mind: "If I am guilty, I am not worthy to be your Queen; if I am innocent, your King is not worthy to be my husband."

A casuistry, feminine, non-committing--hedging, in the true sporting sense. He hardened. This fate had not after all seemed so merciless to one so guilty.

"She had liberty," he said, as if appealing to his own conscience.

The Captain made a frigid reverence, acquiescing in the enormous lie.

"I say, she had liberty," repeated the King--"permission to drive abroad."

"For six miles, sire, back and forth," answered the soldier, as if he accounted himself addressed: "for six miles west, to the old stone bridge on the Hayden road. So much and no more. At the bridge the escort turned her. On fine days she would drive herself--fast and faster, till the stones spun from the wheels. She would seem to madden for freedom, to outstrip her misery. Many times she would traverse the distance, the lady-in-waiting sitting, the troop spurring at her side; and at the stone bridge it would be always the same. 'No further?' 'No further, madam.' 'Ah! but death will release me!'"

He stopped, conscious of his own emotion. He had served the lovely sorrow so long, that its tragedy had become part of himself.

"I crave your Majesty's forgiveness," he muttered in a broken voice.

The King spoke up harshly:

"She was limited to that road by necessity."

"During life, sire."

The response came swift and involuntary. The soldier gasped, having made it.

"You will stop the coach, and return to your duty," said the King, blue in the face.

Much agitated, von Gastein remounted his horse, and spurred on to his place in the front. He did more; he drove ahead of all, and took the lead on the solitary road making for Osnabr?ck. The lights of the city were already faintly starring the distance, when a sound coming from in front startled and then thrilled him. Swift wheels, and the hoofs of a tearing horse! There was nothing uncommon in that; and yet his heart went cold to hear it. "God have mercy on me!" he muttered: "I am a fool!"

Nearer and nearer came the sound--it was close--it was upon him--and there rushed past the shadow of a cabriolet, with a wild woman on the seat flogging a wild black horse. The night of her hair streamed behind like a thin cloud dusted with diamonds, and there was a frenzy of triumph in her eyes, and on her lips a smile. And so she passed and was gone.

The Captain turned his horse's head, and drove back upon the van.

"Stop her!" he yelled. "In God's name stop her Highness before too late!"

They were jogging on leisurely, and thought him drunk or demented.

"What Highness, Captain?" they said. "There has been none passed this way."

And on the word there came a loud cry from the rear, and for the third time the cavalcade halted. But von Gastein had sped by like the wind, and reached to where the royal carriage was stopped amid a little cloud of equerries; and a dismayed, small figure stood upon the step by the open door.

"His Majesty," said the physician, gasping over his words, "has had a stroke, and is dead!"

FOUQUIER-TINVILLE

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