'Ah! a charming invitation!' he said loudly, so that the lackey who stood waiting could not fail to hear. 'I should advise you to accept. A most entertaining fete. Order your carosse, dear Madame.'

Calmly the Landhofmeisterin gave the necessary commands for her coach and outriders, and summoning Maria she bade her collect some few objects of value and various papers. Then she took leave of Zollern.

'Au revoir, Monseigneur,' she said.

'Adieu, Madame; this is the last act of the comedy called the Great Intrigue,' he answered.

Yet she tarried till the last moment at La Favorite. It was a terrible leave-taking. She wandered round her pretty rooms, looking her last at the graceful devices, the slender traceries on wall and ceiling, at the things she had loved--the beautiful porcelains, the delicate, brocaded hangings. Then she pa.s.sed out on to the terrace. What a wondrous summer evening it was! The sun was sinking low in the west--when the last ray had vanished the soldiers would come to drag her away. It was time, she must hasten--and yet she lingered. She leaned on the bal.u.s.trade and contemplated the palace. Her thoughts travelled back to the days when Ludwigsburg was still a-building, and she and Eberhard Ludwig had planned the gardens together.

'Here should be a parterre of roses,' she had said.

'Nay, jasmine and heliotrope here; the roses must be beneath your window to sigh out their souls before your shrine,' he had answered.

Could it be ended? The habit of years was too strong, she could not realise. She listened to the summer sounds in the garden: the rustle of the gentle breeze in the chestnut-trees, the chirping of the gra.s.shoppers, the bees droning over the flowers. Spring was past, it was summer. 'Ah! winter for me; winter and sadness for ever now,' she moaned.

The sun was sinking--she must fly. 'Farewell happiness!' she murmured, and with bent head she pa.s.sed down the terrace steps and entered her coach.

As she drove down the avenue she heard a bugle ring out from the Ludwigsburg casern.

'Ride faster, hasten to Freudenthal!' she called to her postillions, and at a gallop the Landhofmeisterin's coach thundered away westwards to the distant line of hills where lay Freudenthal. Once she turned as she pa.s.sed through the Ludwigsburg gates. She turned and saw the great roofs of the palace which had been reared for her, and whence she was henceforward banished for ever.

CHAPTER XXI

THE DOWNFALL

'Life is but a vision--what I see Of all which lives alone is life to me, And being so--the absent are the dead, Who haunt us from tranquillity, and spread A dreary shroud around us, and invest With sad remembrances our hours of rest.

The absent are the dead--for they are cold.'

BYRON.

FREUDENTHAL was full of ghosts for the Gravenitz: Madame de Ruth, her dead friend; Zollern, who had bade her farewell for ever; and Eberhard Ludwig, the unfaithful lover of her vanished youth. She walked in the gardens, listening involuntarily for the voice which had so often called 'Philomele beloved' from the orchard gate. There was no consolation on earth for her, she knew that; all she had loved, all she had achieved, her power, her great honours, were dead things. The forced inaction of her future tortured her. How would she pa.s.s the long dreary hours of the rest of her life? True, the Jewish community of Freudenthal had greeted her with enthusiasm; they were faithful, these despised Israelites. For a moment it had warmed her heart back to a little interest in living. She busied herself with the affairs of the village, but she was used to a press of work, of governing, of vital interests; how could these minor matters occupy her for long?

She tried to read, but though her eyes followed the lines her thoughts flashed away to Ludwigsburg. She struck a few chords on the spinet; unconsciously her fingers glided into a melody Eberhard Ludwig had loved, and only a sob broke from her lips when she would have sung. Ghosts at Freudenthal? She was the ghost herself; she was the shadow of bygone days--the poor, yearning, broken-hearted ghost.

They came and told her that Serenissimus had returned from Berlin, and that he had been greeted by the news of the Erbprinz's serious illness.

Prince Friedrich had fallen ill of a nervous fever, they said. Ah, yes!

she told herself she had caused it; in her morbid sadness she took the blame of every untoward occurrence upon her shoulders. She had caused Friedrich Ludwig to fall ill, for great emotions must perforce shatter so frail a being as he was, and she had tortured him, tempted him.

One day two travelling coaches rolled into Freudenthal--the Sittmann tribe arrived. It was but ill received by the Gravenitz. Why had they come? she asked. Her sister informed her that Serenissimus had broken up the court of Ludwigsburg; he was to reside henceforth at Stuttgart. Had she not heard? Oh, yes! His Highness was reconciled with the d.u.c.h.ess, and it was disagreeable for former members of the Ludwigsburg court nowadays.

This latter was said in a whiny tone of reproach.

'Get you gone to your own apartments, my sister and my sister's brats! If stay you must at Freudenthal, then stay, but leave me now,' the Gravenitz said; and though she was no longer the all-powerful Landhofmeisterin, still there was that about her which made the parasites shrink back. But they had done enough, had they not? in telling her thus roughly that the woman she had loathed and despised with all jealousy's venom during twenty years, had triumphed over her at last.

The Gravenitz stood before one of the most galling of life's lessons, she had to bow to the inexorable commonplace. Her whole being was agonised; she was breasting the dark waters of despair, she was living a tragedy, but everyday life had to go on as usual: the necessary routine of it, the dressing, the eating, the lying down to rest at night. She heard the village children singing on their way home from school, and the harvesters driving merrily to the fields. Sometimes she would cry out in protest against Nature, against the unalterable, indifferent working of the universe: the smiling sun, the peace of summer evenings. All things went their way heedless of her tragedy.

Summer blossomed gloriously; then the long, weary days grew shorter, and autumn brought endless nights to the stricken woman. Once, twice she had written to Serenissimus, but no answer came to her.

The Erbprinz still battled with death. Eberhard Ludwig and Johanna Elizabetha watched together at his bedside, and the Erbprincessin sat stonily silent in the darkened room whose gloom seemed deepened by the poor girl's overshadowed mind.

Then in October came the news that Death had conquered; the Erbprinz had pa.s.sed away, and the Erbprincessin, half-mad already, had fallen into such despair that her clouded soul grew utterly black, and she raved in hopeless insanity. Truly G.o.d's hand was heavy upon Wirtemberg.

A few days after this terrible news the Gravenitz, wandering moodily in the Freudenthal garden, heard the rattle of an approaching troop of horse. He was coming to fetch her, of course--her lover, her trusted one.

She had known he must come! And she hurried away to her tiring-room to don her finest raiment. She would meet him like a bride. Was it not fitting that she should be gorgeously attired on this great day of triumph--this renascence of joy in her life?

The gown of golden cloth lay spread out for her; she always kept it ready, for she knew he would come.

'Quick, Maria,' she called, as with trembling hands she began her toilet; 'quick! His Highness comes!' She seemed young again, with flushed cheeks and shining eyes. Then her sister Sittmann burst into the room.

'Wilhelmine, I hardly know how to tell you--it is----' she said, but the Gravenitz interrupted her.

'You need not--for I know--I always knew.' She stood before the mirror fastening a diamond ornament into her hair, and her glowing eyes met her sister's reflected in the gla.s.s.

'Good lack, sister! what ails you?' she cried, for the Sittmann's face was ashen, and she gazed at the Gravenitz in terrified bewilderment.

'Who do you think has come, then? Wilhelmine, you are mad! It is a troop of horse, headed by Roeder, with a warrant for your arrest.'

The diamonds slipped from the Gravenitz's fingers, and fell unheeded on the floor, while all the glow and youth faded from her face.

'What are you saying? It is you who are mad--I know--it is his Highness,'

she stammered hoa.r.s.ely, seemingly incapable of comprehending the meaning of her sister's words. Suddenly her vigour returned, her courage, and that perfect grip of startling events which had stood her in good stead for many years.

'Where are they? Maria, bolt all the doors--quick, girl! In the court, you say? Tell them I am in the garden, send them round, then shut and bar each window.' She gave her orders clearly and calmly, like some general, the practised commander in a hundred sieges. By this time all the inmates of Freudenthal had gathered at the door of her apartment: Baron Sittmann and his sons, the brothers Pfau, a horde of serving men and women. Once more the Gravenitz seemed to be the great Landhofmeisterin whose lightest word was law, and they did her bidding without question or comment.

'Back, all of you, I will speak with Baron Roeder.' She moved to her bedchamber window which looked upon the garden. Below, on the terrace, stood Roeder and another officer consulting together in low tones, while through the garden tramped the soldiers, seeking her whom they had treated with royal honours for twenty years. She flung open the window and stood before the two officers.

'Monsieur le Baron Roeder,' she said slowly, 'to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit? I am rejoiced to see you; but kindly desire your men to spare my garden--they are ruining my flowers.'

Roeder looked dumbfounded.

'Certainly, your Excellency,' he stammered, 'but I must crave a word with you immediately.'

'I regret, Monsieur, that illness confines me to my room. I cannot receive you. Tell me your business from where you are.' She spoke mockingly, looking down at the man below.

'Impossible! Madame, I must speak with you face to face,' he said angrily; and indeed it was an absurd situation.

'We are face to face, Monsieur de Roeder, and I pray you tell me your mission without delay. I am fatigued with standing so long. Come, I am not in the habit of waiting, Monsieur.'

'Then, Madame, I arrest you in the Duke's name. You are my prisoner, and if you will not come quietly, I shall be obliged to use force,'--this with a gesture towards the soldiers, who had formed into line behind him.

'I am Countess of the Empire, Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg, and none but my superior can arrest me, Monsieur. Also, this house of mine is on free territory, subject only to the authority of the Emperor. I refuse to be arrested, I refuse to give you admittance, and I command you to withdraw.' She spoke perfectly calmly, with the tone given by the habit of command, which she had wielded for nigh upon a quarter of a century.

Roeder hesitated; what she said might be true, and he greatly feared her, but he had his orders from the Duke. He recalled his Highness's words when he had intrusted him with the Gravenitz's arrest: 'I have not done enough. G.o.d's vengeance is not fulfilled. The witch-woman, the Land-despoiler is still at large in my country, and G.o.d has taken my only son from me. I must purge my land of this sinner--punish her--break her in atonement,' his Highness had said. The Duke was firmly persuaded that so long as the Gravenitz remained free, G.o.d's wrath would be on Wirtemberg, and the notion was fostered by her enemies. No one spoke of her now save as the 'Land-despoiler,' that name which the peasantry had called her in secret for many years.