THE PHANTOM COACH: Collected Ghost Stories (48 page)

‘And it was for this! for this!’ he said fiercely. ‘A bribe! God of Heaven! He offered me Königsberg as a bribe! Oh, that I should have lived to be treated as an assassin!’

His voice broke into hoarse sobs. He dropped into a chair—he covered his face with his hands.

He had forgotten that I was in the next room, and now I dared not remind him of my presence. His emotion terrified me. It was the first time I had seen a man shed tears; and this alone, let the man be whom he might, would have seemed terrible to me at any time. How much more terrible when those tears were tears of outraged honour, and when the man who shed them was my father!

I trembled from head to foot. I had an instinctive feeling that I ought not to look upon his agony. I shrank back—closed the door—held my breath, and waited.

Presently the sound of sobbing ceased. Then he sighed heavily twice or thrice—got up abruptly—threw a couple of logs on the fire, and left the room. The next moment I heard him unlock the door under the stairs, and go into the cellar. I seized the opportunity to escape, and stole up to my own room as rapidly and noiselessly as my trembling knees would carry me.

I had my supper with Bertha that evening, and the count ate at my father’s table; but I afterwards learned that, though the Governor of Brühl himself waited ceremoniously upon his guest and served him the best, he neither broke bread nor drank wine with him.

I saw that unwelcome guest no more. I heard his voice under the window, and the clatter of his horse’s hoofs as he rode away in the early morning; but that was long enough before Bertha came to call me.

Chapter X

Herr Ludwig Hartmann

Weeks went by. Spring warmed, and ripened, and blossomed into summer. Gardens and terraces were ablaze once more with many-coloured flowers; fountains played and sparkled in the sunshine; and travellers bound for Cologne or Bonn put up again at Brühl in the midst of the day’s journey, to bait their horses and see the château on their way.

For in these years just following the Peace of Paris, the Continent was over-run by travellers, two thirds of whom were English. The diligence—the great, top-heavy, lumbering diligence of fifty years ago—used then to come lurching and thundering down the main street five times a week throughout the summer season; and as many as three and four travelling carriages a day would pass through in fine weather. The landlord of The Lion d’Or kept fifty horses in his stables in those days, and drove a thriving trade.

So the summer came, and brought the stir of outer life into the precincts of our sleepy château; but brought no better change in the fortunes of Monsieur Maurice. Ever since that fatal night, the terms of his imprisonment had been more rigorous than ever. Till then, he might, if he would, walk twice a week in the grounds with a solider at his heels; but now he was placed in strict confinement in his own two rooms, with one sentry always pacing the corridor outside his door, and another under his windows. And across each of those windows might now be seen a couple of bright new iron bars, thick as a man’s wrist, forged and fixed there by the village blacksmith.

I have no words to tell how the sight of those bars revolted me. If instead of being a little helpless girl, I had been a man like my father, and a servant of the state, I think they would have made a rebel of me.

Worse, however, than iron bars, locked doors, and guarded corridors, was Hartmann—Herr Ludwig Hartmann, as he was styled in the despatch that announced his coming—a pale, slight, silent man, with colourless grey eyes and white eye-lashes, who came direct from Berlin about a month later, to act as Monsieur Maurice’s ‘personal attendant’. Stealthy, watchful, secret, civil, he established himself in a room adjoining the prisoner’s apartment, and was as much at home in the course of a couple of hours as if he had been settled there from the first.

He brought with him a paper of instructions, and, having on his arrival submitted these instructions to my father, he at once took up a certain routine of duties that never varied. He brushed Monsieur Maurice’s clothes, waited upon him at table, attended him in his bedroom, was always within hearing, always on the alert, and haunted the prisoner like his shadow. Not even a housemaid could go in to sweep but he was present. Now the man’s perpetual presence was intolerable to Monsieur Maurice. He had borne all else with patience, but this last tyranny was more than he could endure without murmuring. He appealed to my father; but my father, though Governor of Brühl, was powerless to help him. Hartmann had presented his instructions as a minister presents his credentials, and those instructions emanated from Berlin. So the new comer, valet, gaoler, spy as he was, became an established fact, and was detested throughout the château—by no one more heartily than myself.

I still, however, saw Monsieur Maurice now and then. My father often took me with him in his rounds, and always when he visited his prisoner. Sometimes, too, he would leave me for an hour with my friend, and call for me again on his way back; so that we were not wholly parted even now. But Hartmann took care never to leave us alone. Before my father’s footsteps were out of hearing he would be in the room; silent, unobtrusive, perfectly civil, but watchful as a lynx. We could not talk before him freely. Nothing was as it used to be. It was better than total banishment; it was better than never hearing his voice; but the constraint was hard to bear, and the pain of these meetings was almost greater than the pleasure.

And now, as I approach that part of my narrative which possesses the deepest interest for myself, I hesitate—hesitate and draw back before the great mystery in which it is involved. I ask myself what interpretation the world will put upon facts for which I can vouch; upon events which I myself witnessed? I cannot prove those events. They happened over fifty years ago; but they are as vividly present to my memory as if they had taken place yesterday. I can only relate them in their order, knowing them to be true, and leaving each reader to judge of them according to his convictions. It was about the middle of the second week in June. Hartmann had been about six weeks at Brühl, and all was going on in the usual dull routine, when that routine was suddenly broken by the arrival of three mounted dragoons—an officer and two privates—whose errand, whatever it might be, had the effect of throwing the whole establishment into sudden and unwonted confusion.

I was out in the grounds when they arrived, and came back at mid-day to find no dinner on the table, no cook in the kitchen; but a full-dress parade going on in the courtyard, and all the interior of the château in a state of wild commotion. Here were peasants bringing in wood, gardeners laden with vegetables and flowers, women running to and fro with baskets full of linen, and all to the accompaniment of such a hammering, bell-ringing, and clattering of tongues as I had never heard before.

I stood bewildered, not knowing what to do, or where to go.

‘What is the matter? What has happened? What are you doing?’ I asked, first of one and then of another; but they were all too busy to answer.

‘
Ach, lieber Gott!
’ said one, ‘I’ve no time for talking!’

‘Don’t ask me, little
Fräulein
,’ said another. ‘I have eight windows to clean up yonder, and only one pair of hands to do them with!’

‘If you want to know what is to do,’ said a third impatiently, ‘you had better come and see.’

The head-gardener’s son came by with two pots of magnificent geraniums, one under each arm.

‘Where are you going with those flowers, Wilhelm?’ I asked, running after him.

‘They are for the state salon, Fräulein Gretchen,’ he replied, and hurried on.

For the state salon! I ran round to the side of the grand entrance. There were soldiers putting up banners in the hall; others helping to carry furniture upstairs; carpenters with ladders; women with brooms and brushes; and Corporal Fritz bustling hither and thither, giving orders, and seeing after everything.

‘But, Corporal Fritz!’ I exclaimed, ‘what are all these people about?’

‘We are preparing the state apartments, dear little
Fräulein
,’ replied Corporal Fritz, rubbing his hands with an air of great enjoyment.

‘But why? For whom?’

‘For whom? Why, for the king, to be sure;’ and Corporal Fritz clapped his hand to the side of his hat like a loyal soldier. ‘Don’t you know, dear little
Fräulein
, that His Majesty sleeps here tonight, on his way to Ehrenbreitstein?’

This was news indeed! I ran upstairs—I was all excitement—I got in everybody’s way—I tormented everybody with questions. I saw the table being laid in the grand salon where the king was to sup, and the bedstead being put up in the little salon where he was to sleep, and the ante-room being prepared for his officers. All was being made ready as rapidly, and decorated as tastefully, as the scanty resources of the château would permit. I recognised much of the furniture from the attics above, and this, faded though it was, being helped out with flowers, flags, and greenery, made the great echoing rooms look gay and habitable.

By-and-by my father came round to see how the work was going on, and finding me in the midst of it, took me by the hand and led me away.

‘You are not wanted here, my little Gretchen,’ he said; ‘and, indeed, all the world is so busy today that I scarcely know what to do with thee.’

‘Take me to Monsieur Maurice!’ I said, coaxingly.

‘Ay—so I will,’ said my father; ‘with him at all events, you will be out of the way.’

So he took me round to Monsieur Maurice’s rooms, and told me as we went along that the king had only given him six hours’ notice, and that in order to furnish His Majesty’s bed and His Majesty’s supper, he had bought up all the poultry and eggs, and borrowed well-nigh all the silver, glass, and linen in the town.

By this time we were almost at Monsieur Maurice’s door. A sudden thought flashed upon me. I pulled him back, out of the sentry’s hearing.

‘Oh, father!’ I cried eagerly, ‘will you not ask the king to let Monsieur Maurice free?’

My father shook his head.

‘Nay,’ he said, ‘I must no do that, my little
Mädchen
. And look you—not a word that the king is coming here tonight. It would only make the prisoner restless, and could avail nothing. Promise me to be silent.’

So I promised, and he left me at the door without going in.

I spent all the afternoon with Monsieur Maurice. He divided his luncheon with me; he gave me a French lesson; he told me stories. I had not had such a happy day for months. Hartmann, it is true, was constantly in and out of the room, but even Hartmann was less in the way than usual. He seemed absent and pre-occupied, and was therefore not so watchful as at other times. In the meanwhile I could still hear, though faintly, the noises in the rooms below, but all became quiet about five o’clock in the evening, and Monsieur Maurice, who had been told they were only cleaning the state apartments, asked no questions.

Meanwhile the afternoon waned, and the sun bent westward, and still no one came to fetch me away. My father knew where I was; Bertha was probably too busy to think about me; and I was only too glad to stay as long as Monsieur Maurice was willing to keep me. By-and-by, about half-past six o’clock, the sky became overclouded, and we heard a loud muttering of very distant thunder. At seven it rained heavily.

Now it was Monsieur Maurice’s custom to dine late, and ours to dine early; but then, as his luncheon hour corresponded with our dinner-hour, and his dinner fell only a little later than our supper, it came to much the same thing, and did not therefore seem strange. So it happened that just as the storm came up, Hartmann began to prepare the table. Then, in the midst of the rain and the wind, my quick ear caught a sound of drums and bugles, and I knew the king was come. Monsieur Maurice evidently heard nothing; but I could see by Hartmann’s face (he was laying the cloth and making a noise with the glasses) that he knew all, and was listening.

After this I heard no more. The wind raved; the rain pattered; the gloom thickened; and at half-past seven, when the soup was brought to table, it was so dark that Monsieur Maurice called for lights. He would not, however, allow the curtains to be drawn. He liked, he said, to sit and watch the storm.