Hélène sat silent on the rose-colored cushions; the parrot swung idly in the ring above her head; the page had wandered to the window and was flattening his face against the pane; a monkey in a crimson coat that had been sleeping in a basket lined with white satin, now came climbing over the furniture, turning its wizened face from one to the other of the two silent, beautiful women and chattering at both of them. This was the only movement in the gorgeous little room, now filled with the spring sunshine that streamed softly through the long curtains of straw-colored silk. Aurora had dropped her arms, and with her hands clasped before her continued to gaze at her resplendent image.
Her thoughts were entirely personal; she cared very little for politics though she had an intelligent understanding of them; she had watched Augustus undertake this war light-heartedly enough, knowing that it was only an excuse to keep a large standing army with which to overawe Poland, but the quality of Karl XII having surprised them all into disaster, Aurora became angry with the war and those who had suggested it, and impatient with the enthusiastic Patkul, and gradually her attention had become fixed on the figure of the King of Sweden, rendered more arresting by every success, more terrible in the eyes of men and more attractive in the eyes of women.
Aurora knew something of what the Court of Sweden was like.
“He has never met a woman like me,” she thought, and there was a glow, as of coming triumph, at her heart.
The other woman’s reflections had traveled far from herself! they were with a fair, rather ordinary-looking soldier, with short-sighted, anxious eyes, and a blunt-featured face that had a certain pathos in its open sincerity and goodness, who was now probably riding to and fro in the confusion of battle, steadying the Saxon troops against the victorious ranks of Sweden.
She loved him so utterly, so ardently believed in his cause and his life-work that he seemed to her like a being charmed whom no actual danger could touch, yet she yearned over him, child as she was, with a yearning that was near tears; and this, though her whole being was pervaded by the supreme happiness of her love which kept her in a serene and beautiful aloofness from all that was painful or terrifying.
The monkey clambered to the end of the couch, dropped into Hélène’s lap, and began stealing the sugar scattered over the cushions.
Aurora moved slowly from the mirror and told the page to bring her writing materials; when they were given her she began to write, not an answer to her lover’s neglected letter but a paper of French verses to Karl XII.
Hélène, wrapt in her dreams, heeded her no more than she did the monkey crunching sweetmeats on her lap.
CHAPTER IV
IN July of that year Karl XII totally defeated the Saxon troops and forced the passage of the Dwina, near Riga, at a point where the river was nearly a mile wide, making use of specially built boats for the passage of his troops, and taking advantage of the direction of the wind to create a smoke-screen that concealed his crossing from the Saxons.
The battle was long and bloody, Courlande, Steinau, and Patkul fought with desperate bravery and considerable skill, but the victory of the great captain was complete; he passed on through Livonia, took Mitau, capital of Courland, and one after another all the towns of that duchy surrendered; the whole of Lithuania submitted.
At Birsen, where his enemies had so shortly before drawn up the league that they hoped was to be his ruin, he paused in his triumphal progress, taking his residence in the house occupied by Peter and Augustus.
He was now in an extraordinary position of greatness; he had been but little more than a year from Sweden and he had completely subdued his enemies, crushed the revolt in Livonia, consolidated his hold on the disputed provinces, and preserved his army in good health and perfect discipline with very little loss of life.
His fame had spread all over Europe, and Sweden occupied a sudden position of importance in the eyes of the West; the Czar’s glory was eclipsed, and it was not believed likely that he would ever recover from Narva sufficiently to again face the King of Sweden.
What the next actions of this hero, as yet not twenty and in a position so unique, were likely to be, neither his friends nor his enemies could guess.
He affected a deep reserve, and there was no one who could boast of being entirely in his confidence, not even his brother-in-law, the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp, whom he had restored to his dominions and regarded with a certain affection, nor Count Piper, whom he kept near his person and trusted implicitly in political matters relating to the government of Sweden.
This latter, however, did not intend to remain so quietly in ignorance of his master’s designs; he viewed Karl very differently since he had observed his military genius and his obstinate pride and perfect self-control, but he had not yet entirely relinquished all hopes of guiding this strange character into the paths trod by Karl XI.
Sweden was ever uppermost in Count Piper’s thoughts; he believed that she occupied but a small place in those of the King; to the minister all the objects of the war had been now attained, and there remained but to make an honorable, durable, and glorious peace which should strengthen Sweden in position, commerce, and prestige.
And Count Piper felt that this was the moment, when Karl had the Baltic provinces under his feet and his enemies disordered and confused, to propose a set of terms, that however advantageous to Sweden, they would be in no position to refuse or even to dispute. As the King’s haughty and glacial reserve allowed no indication of his future plans to escape him, Count Piper resolved to directly approach him, and endeavor to discover if he did not himself consider this a favorable moment for triumphantly concluding the war.
He found occasion to approach Karl one day after his dinner; this meal, of the greatest simplicity, the King always took with his officers; he was seldom more than half an hour at table; he drank only water and ate the plainest of food, never had he faltered an instant in his rigid self-discipline; his life could not have been more hard, stern, and barren of all but duty; his one occasional amusement was to have portions of the old Scandinavian sagas read to him, but even of this he seemed slightly ashamed.
Count Piper found him now with his secretary in the room where Marpha had served Augustus and Peter with wine, and Mentchikoff had sung drunken chants for the amusement of the Saxon nobles.
Karl had had everything removed from the chamber but a table and a couple of chairs; on the walls were maps of Lithuania, Livonia, and Esthonia, and a large model of the globe in a black frame and roughly painted in bright colors, stood beneath. The King sat beneath one of the windows dictating to the secretary, a young Swedish officer, who sat at the table which was covered with neatly arranged papers.
Karl wore the costume he had not altered since he left Sweden; the dark blue cloth coat, the black satin cravat, the high boots, and buffle gloves which he held now across his knee; his fair hair had been cut short and he wore no peruke.
He was bare-headed and the summer sunshine was full on his face, inscrutable in expression, showing superb health and hardihood in line and color.
As Count Piper entered he was sitting silent, like one wrapt in dreams, and the secretary was waiting, in respectful silence, for him to continue the correspondence.
As soon as he observed the minister he roused himself from his reverie, and with a gesture dismissed the secretary who rose and offered his chair, the only one in the room, to Count Piper.
The King looked at the older man with the blue eyes that seemed to express nothing but a steady strength and an adamant courage, and spoke pleasantly.
“You had something serious to say to me, Count?” he asked.
The minister had not seated himself but remained standing, leaning against the back of the plain wooden chair; in his rather rich civilian attire, with his full peruke and fine appointments, he was in contrast to the camp-like simplicity of the room and the austere figure of the youthful soldier.
“I have come to ask your Majesty what you intend to do,” said the Count; he knew that it was useless to try diplomacy or even tact with the King who was offended with all but the bluntest of speeches.
“You have been wishing to ask me that for some while, have you not?” smiled Karl, he was no longer brooding or thoughtful, but alert and keen.
“I think that this is a decisive moment in your career, sire, therefore in that of the history of Europe.”
This was the kind of bold compliment that pleased the King.
“I believe so,” he said calmly.
“You have, sire, achieved more than anyone could have believed possible—there only remains for you to bless your country with a lasting peace.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Karl shortly, with his disagreeable laugh.
Count Piper faced him calmly.
“Is not that your Majesty’s intention?”
“My intention,” said Karl, with his stare of blank fortitude, “is to dethrone Augustus and Peter.”
The minister caught his breath; this was more than he had anticipated, even from the headstrong obstinacy of a youthful hero flushed with success.
“Did you imagine, Count,” asked the King, “that I should return to Sweden?”
“I hoped so,” said the minister gravely.
“Why?” demanded the King.
“Because I am anxious for the honor and safety of our country. Sire, Sweden will be better served by moderation than extremes—she does not need conquests but good government.”
“And you think that I should return home to govern?”
“Yes, sire.”
“Not yet,” replied Karl.
“What else does your Majesty propose to do?” asked the minister.
“I have told you.”
“But, sire—to conquer Poland, Saxony, and Russia——”
“Do you not think,” interrupted Karl, “that I am capable of executing this design?”
Count Piper was silent in sheer bewilderment; judging from the King’s recent actions he was capable of anything; on the other hand, the conquest proposed was so vast, the means so comparatively small that common sense refused to be convinced even by the genius of this extraordinary young man.
“Well?” said Karl.
The minister fastened on the aspect that was always nearest his heart—how his country would be affected.
“Sweden will never stand the strain!” he exclaimed.
Karl shrugged his shoulders.
“It can be done,” he said.
“Before God, sire, I do not think that it can.”
The King’s obstinate blue eyes did not falter; his lips were curved in a smile too indifferent for disdain but more freezing than contempt.
“Think, sire,” continued Count Piper energetically, “of the size and resources of these three countries—Saxony will have all the German States behind him—Russia is a continent.”
Karl’s face now betrayed where his principal hate lay.
“Peter is a savage commanding savages,” he replied; “the whip and not the sword is necessary to disperse his hordes.”
“You think of Narva,” said Count Piper, “but he will learn. He will train his men.”
“And if he does?” demanded Karl coldly, “what of the passage of the Dwina? Am I not able to resist veteran troops?”
The minister could not deny the truth of this; to all appearance Karl was invincible, yet the Count’s heart utterly misgave him at thought of the gigantic enterprise to which the King appeared to have pledged himself.
“It is purposeless, sire, and useless,” he said with vigor. “Sweden could never hold these conquests if she made them; Europe would not permit it, nor her own strength. You have made her secure and powerful, respected and feared; have the strength, sire, to stop. This is not the age for sheer conquest. War bars the progress of mankind. Sweden requires your Majesty’s genius for her internal reforms; you do not know yet your own country—your father, sire, knew it from end to end.”
If the King considered this speech too much of a reproof he did not say so nor show his resentment by the slightest sign.
“You think I should return to Stockholm, Count?” he asked.
“After you have secured a victorious peace—a peace that will leave the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp restored to his estate, you master of the Baltic Provinces, Denmark silenced, Saxony and Russia punished. Sire,” added the minister with a smile, “I think no young prince could desire greater glory than this.”
This hurt the secret pride of the King, which hid itself under such an aspect of stern modesty.
“I do not fight for glory,” he said haughtily, “but to dethrone these villains.”
Count Piper was silenced; in these words he read the wild dreams of unpractical youth, the mad schemes of a man who believed war the only profession for a prince, the only occupation worthy of a gentleman, and who would consider nothing beside his ambition.
“Sweden does not need this war,” he said, “nor can she afford it.”
But this argument was entirely lost on the King, who loved to achieve the impossible; the difficulty and magnitude of the enterprise were what gave it, in his eyes, its great attraction.
And Count Piper now began to experience the force of the King’s extraordinary qualities, his hard obstinacy, his blind fortitude.
The King rose, and crushed his gloves in his strong white hands.
“I would as soon,” he said, with as much violence and impatience as he ever showed, “be in my coffin as in Stockholm. I should feel as confined in one as in the other.”
“Does your Majesty never intend to see your capital again?” asked Count Piper sorrowfully.
The King stared at him; the good of Sweden or any interest in her was far from the mind that was full of dreams of the conquest of Russia and the subjugation of Poland and Saxony.
Karl had completely abandoned the government of his country to the Council of Regency; he hardly troubled to acquaint himself with their proceedings, and often left unread the home dispatches.
Patriotism did not touch his dreams of the cold greatness he had conceived for himself. “I told my people,” he said, looking, not at his minister, but out of the window at the summer sunshine on the dusty road, “that I would never make an unjust war nor abandon a just one, without the punishment of the offenders.”
“Are not these same offenders already sufficiently punished?” demanded Piper quickly.
“No,” replied the King, and now his strange eyes showed a faint but fierce fire like those of a noble animal roused from slumber to anger. “Not unless they are dethroned.”
“Is it your Majesty’s ambition to wear these crowns?”
The King laughed shortly.
“I want nothing but to punish my enemies,” he replied. “What are crowns to me?”
Boastful as the words sounded, Count Piper believed they were sincere; he had already seen how, in the defeat of Denmark, Karl had astonished the world by demanding nothing for himself, and he could credit that Karl was capable of exhausting his country and spending himself in the effort to gain countries only to give them away when he had conquered them; he did not want Russia, only the pleasure of dethroning the Czar; he had no desire to reign over Poland, only the wish to seize that country from Saxony.
“I think your Majesty is wrong,” said the minister. “As one who was your father’s friend and is the friend of Sweden, forgive me if I say so, sire, if you stop now you are safe and glorious, if you go on, it may be to disaster.”
The King winced at the sound of that word which no one had ever dared to utter to him before.
“When I have humbled these two kings and punished one other we may talk of peace,” he said curtly. “I speak of John Rheinhold Patkul.”
His fair face, so beautiful in line, but so devoid of expression as to lack all attraction, hardened into an aspect of sheer cruelty new to Count Piper; the King whose first act had been to abolish judicial torture from his statute books had hitherto been considered as of a merciful disposition, nor had his campaigns been stained even by the usual excesses of war; yet his look as he spoke of the Livonian was one of fierce hate and cruelty.
“Before I return to Stockholm,” he added, “Patkul must——”
He paused abruptly; it was evident that his cold magnanimity did not extend to the man whom he regarded as a rebel and a traitor.
“Both Peter and Augustus are pledged to defend Patkul,” said Piper; “it is not likely that he will be taken by your Majesty—he is too wary and skilful.”
“I will force Augustus to deliver him to me,” said Karl, still with that ugly look on his face.
“Your Majesty would make that one of the terms of peace?” asked Count Piper in a curious voice.
“The first condition. And, Count, it is useless for us to converse further. I have never liked talking. And my mind is made up about the future. And I was always tolerably resolute in my decisions nor likely to be moved in any way from my resolves.”
It was the end between King and minister; these words were as a dismissal to Count Piper; he saw that Karl was set upon a path entirely different to that followed by his father; his aim was the pursuit of fantastic dreams of purposeless and costly conquest—he would make war neither for the defense nor the aggrandizement of his country, but merely to suit his own ideas of kingly occupation, his own secret ideals of ambition and glory; he would probably ruin his country and might do considerable harm to mankind, but he could not be stopped from the mad use of the power which he held in his hands; at that moment Piper disliked him; he was alienated by this cold obstinacy and by the look and manner of Karl when he had spoken of Patkul; the minister would almost rather have served Peter whose aims were progressive, not obstructive, and whose madnesses were never without an object, and whose cruelties were never cold-blooded but the result of inflamed passions.
He turned away and took a brief leave.
“An extraordinary man,” he said to himself, as he left the King’s presence, “but there is no true greatness in him.”
Karl, on his part, was equally disgusted with Count Piper.
“I want no politicians about my camp,” he told his brother-in-law that evening. “We are soldiers with soldiers’ work to do,” and he began to discuss his plans for an advance on Cracovia and Varsovia.
BOOK IV
AURORA VON KÖNIGSMARCK
“Sylve paludes, aggeres, hostes, victi.”—Medal of Karl XII.
CHAPTER I
“I THINK you have no idea of the confusion of my affairs—nor of their apparent hopelessness. I speak of them to you because you are the only person whom I can trust.”
Thus Augustus to Aurora, and in these words she read his confession of utter defeat; she was deeply vexed; for some time past she had displayed ill-humor at the growing discomforts and perils of her situation; she was now at Varsovia, a barbaric place that she disliked, where Augustus had come to attend the Polish Diet that he had been forced to convoke. It was midwinter, and she sat over the fire in the huge stone chamber that was so difficult to warm, her great coat of lemon-colored velvet lined with white fur, thrown open on her lace gown, and the leaping glow of the firelight all over her bright beauty.
She knew that perhaps her principal hold on Augustus was her good temper, and seldom was she betrayed into anger; but now her disappointment made her answer sharp.
“Why do you not abandon Poland and return to Saxony?” she asked.
The King-Elector looked at her reproachfully.
“Is that your comfort?” he asked.
“I think that it is very good advice,” she replied, controlling herself not to speak bitterly.
Augustus, who looked tired and haggard (he was indeed more fitted to be the head of a brilliant court, the patron of arts and letters, than to confront these troublous times), flushed with rising annoyance.
“It is useless to discuss with you, Madame,” he said, “what you are too flippant to understand——”
“Oh,” interrupted Aurora, “do I not understand that I am at Varsovia in midwinter, cold and dull? That you are always ill-humored and absorbed in affairs, and that I have no company beyond Hélène who is love-sick, a parrot, and a monkey?”
Augustus rose from his seat by the great oak table.
“Very well,” he said quietly, “you had better return to Dresden, Madame. It is true that here I can give you no comfort. It is also true that I must remain—my crown, all my fortunes and perhaps my life, depend on these events.”
Aurora bit her lip in vexation at her own peevishness; she scorned fretful women, and she was moved by her lover’s gentle response.
She got up impulsively and held out her hands; a gorgeous creature in her rich clothes and vivid loveliness, illuminated by the tawny light of the flaming pine knots.
“Forgive me,” she said quickly. “I am ashamed of myself. I have been idle and frivolous, tell me how I can help.”
He kissed her hands in instant gratitude; he had always found her his best friend; she was more intelligent, perhaps more courageous than he, but she had managed never to offend him with her superiority, and she always soothed him with her firmness and encouraged him with her high spirits.
She smiled now with a certain tenderness at this magnificent-looking prince who was so downcast and so almost helpless; in her wild heart she perhaps a little despised him; certainly he was not her ideal hero, for all his strength and handsomeness and charm, but both out of kindness and interest she was his ally.
“Come,” she said, “forget, sire, that I am a woman, and talk to me as if I was your minister.”
She took the seat at the table he had just left and drew her coat round her, leaning back and looking at Augustus, who remained standing by the fire.
“My dear,” he answered, “I do not know if affairs could be much worse.”
“This Diet is not going to help you?”
“Would to God I had never had to summon it!” exclaimed the King-Elector. “The King of Sweden has as much influence there as I!”
“Ah!” murmured Aurora, “they are not loyal to you, these Polish princes?”
“There is not one man in Poland loyal to me,” replied Augustus bitterly; “this cursed war has alienated all of them.”
The Countess knew that good statecraft would have foreseen this; Poland, afraid of Sweden and jealous of its Saxon King, was fiercely resentful of a war bound to end in her subjugation either at the hands of Karl XII or at those of her own elected monarch; the remnants of the Saxon troops who had survived the battle of Riga Augustus had had to send back to Saxony to quiet the Poles, and for the same reason he had been obliged to call a Diet when he wished to raise an army.
Aurora, remembering the time and money spent on acquiring the crown of Poland, wondered if the bargain had been a good one for Augustus, who, used to being an absolute ruler in his own hereditary dominions, found himself little more than head of a Republic in Poland.
“Who are your enemies in the Diet?” she asked gently.
“Leczinski, of course, the Lubomirski, and the Sobieski—these and their followers are all secretly with the King of Sweden, and, naturally,” added Augustus, with, for him, considerable heat, “Cardinal Radziekowski is playing his own game which is not mine.”
“In brief,” said Aurora, “these Poles are seizing this moment for their own intrigues; they consider you as more dangerous than Karl, and would as willingly see you overthrown.”
This plain view of the case slightly startled Augustus, but he had to admit that it was true.
“And there is the revolt in Lithuania,” he added gloomily. “The Sapieha and the Oginski at each other’s throats—my troops in fugitive parties living on rapine because I have not the money to pay them——”
“You cannot summon the Polish nobles to raise their followers on your behalf?”
“I dare not—for it would be to risk a refusal.”
Aurora bit her lip.
“But you have the Polish army.”
“There are only 18,000 men—not paid, not armed—and their generals uncertain whether to fight for me or Sweden!”
“And every one knows this?”
“I fear that my weakness is but too apparent—see how they have forced my hand in the matter of the Diet!”
“And you dare not bring back the Saxon troops?”
“It would be the excuse and the signal for a general revolt in Poland,” replied the King-Elector.
Aurora von Königsmarck mentally cursed Poland; she had been perfectly content in Dresden before ambition had urged Augustus into this troublesome glory.
“What will the Diet do?” she asked, suppressing her irritation and speaking with gentleness.
Augustus began pacing up and down the room.
“Who can tell?” he replied wearily, “intrigues and counter-intrigues—all irresolute, all crying out for freedom and justice and none knowing where to look for it! Meanwhile everything goes to ruin while they are talking, and the King of Sweden advances daily deeper into the country.”
Aurora frowned; hitherto, with a woman’s evasiveness, she had refused to glance at the state of matters in Poland; now she forced herself to face them, and to apply all her intelligence to helping her lover in what seemed indeed a desperate pass.
“And the Czar?” she asked.
“The Czar needs assistance himself,” said Augustus grimly.
“But the Muscovites? Did you not tell me that he was sending some men into Lithuania?”
The King-Elector became angry at the thought of this, the sole fruit of the secret treaty of Birsen.
“He has sent some villains who are doing more damage than the Swedes,” he replied hotly. “They have turned freebooters, and are utterly deaf to discipline and orders—’tis but so many marauders the more in the wretched kingdom, and yet further inflames the Poles.”
Aurora could not forbear a smile.
“There are the troops you were to train?” she asked.
“Yes, God help me, and now they are here I have not a single Saxon officer available—not that a corps of Turenne’s veterans could train these savages!”
Aurora knew, though she forbore to mention it, that Augustus had failed to fulfil his side of the bargain, and had not been able to raise a single regiment of the German troops promised to Peter, nor to pay him anything for the maintenance of the Muscovites sent into Lithuania.
“So you see,” added the Elector, with rather a bitter smile, “that my position is desperate on all sides.”
“Come here,” smiled Aurora.
He crossed to her chair; she took his hand and pressed her soft cheek against his rings and ruffles.
“My poor dear,” she said caressingly. “I wonder if I can help you now, to return a little all the joy you have given me?”
She would have kissed his hand, but he prevented her, eagerly lifted her face and kissed her lips.
“What have I done for you!” he cried. “Why, you have gilded all my life!”
“You have been very good to me,” she said, a little wistfully. “Men can be so cruel. I think you hardly know how grateful women are for kindness.”
He smiled tenderly; his handsome face lightened of half its care as he looked at her.
“Not women like you, Aurora!”
“Yes, women like me,” she replied. “Why—you might get tired of me.” She caught her breath a little. “I might fade—I am not as pretty as I was—but you——”
“Aurora—I adore you.”
“Thank you,” said the Countess unsteadily. “Thank you for loving me. That is why I want to help you—you have made life wonderful to me by your love——”
He dropped his hands to her shoulders and she looked up at him.
“And you—have you not loved me, Aurora?” he asked.
“Oh, a woman’s love does not count!”
Augustus did not understand her mood, he was not a man to nicely read a woman’s complexities; and the next second Aurora did not understand it herself, and was lifting her shoulders with a laugh both for her words and his bewilderment.
“I am a silly creature,” she said lightly, “but I only seek to please you.”
She gently drew herself away, rose and went to the fire; the yellow coat, the gleaming hair, dressed in long, smooth curls slightly disordered and falling over the smooth white fur; the proud air and bearing of her, the piquant, gay face, made a fair picture in the brilliant glow that shone on her from head to foot and threw her figure, a thing of light against the gloomy background of the room, darkening in the fading light of the winter afternoon.
“Now—my advice,” she said. “I wonder—will you take it?”
Augustus smiled at her; his handsome face was no longer troubled as he gazed at this brilliant, darling companion of his; his distresses that sat lightly enough on him anyhow were almost forgotten as he contemplated her courage and her gaiety.
“Tell me,” he answered gently.
There was something of challenge, almost of defiance in her beautiful eyes as she replied, but she spoke very sweetly.
“You must make peace with Karl.”
Augustus did not speak.
“Of course you will have to take his terms, but it seems to be his rôle to be generous,” continued the Countess. “And better be at his mercy than at that of the Poles, your own subjects.”
Augustus thought so too; it was not very pleasant to contemplate humbling himself before the boy King whom he had hoped to conquer so easily, but his pride was not very deep-seated, and he bore no rancor against anyone, not even against the man who had defeated him; if he could purchase ease and safety by submitting to Karl he was ready to do so without any bitterness, and, as Aurora suggested, it was easier to accept terms from a fellow-monarch than from his own subjects.
“You must open negotiations at once before you lose everything,” continued the Countess quickly.
“But he will not listen—why should he?” returned Augustus doubtfully.
“If the ambassador is well chosen he will listen.”
“But it is no object to him to make peace,” said the King-Elector uneasily. “Doubtless he will prefer the glory of overrunning Poland and possibly Saxony.”
Aurora did not yet mention what made her feel sure that the King of Sweden might be brought to reason; she was sure that her project would be distasteful to Augustus, and she was waiting her moment to broach it; twisting one of her long ringlets round the slender fingers of her left hand that sparkled with some of the Saxon jewels, she frowned into the flames.
“No,” added Augustus gloomily. “I see no hope—’tis a youthful captain, intoxicated with success, inured and implacable by nature. I believe he fights for glory, and nothing, to him, would be greater glory than the conquest of Poland—by arms and by intrigues. He thinks to dethrone me by means of factions—look how he has armed the Sapieha against me and torn Lithuania with civil war——”
“I know,” interrupted Aurora, curbing some impatience; it seemed to her that Augustus went round and round the same points, in a confused manner, which was irritating to her own clear mind that looked ahead to ultimate issues. “But the trial might be made.”
“It would have to be secret,” said the King-Elector, “and kept very carefully from the ears of Patkul and the Czar.”
“Naturally,” replied the Countess drily. “The Czar will be easily hoodwinked; as for Patkul, it is he who is the cause of all this trouble, if need be he must be sacrificed.”
Augustus turned a startled face.
“Patkul?”
“Yes, Patkul, this adventurer who has embroiled us all!”
“You mean that I should surrender him to Karl?”
“If Karl demanded it.”
“God forbid!” cried the King-Elector hastily.
“Oh, Sweden would be merciful,” said Aurora impatiently, “as I told you, it is his rôle.”
“He would not be merciful to Patkul,” replied Augustus, “who, besides, is Peter’s envoy, and sacred.”
“Oh, bah!” exclaimed Aurora, with a flash of her gorgeous eyes. “What is the Czar to you, or what has he done for you that he should be considered?”
“My honor and the law of nations——” began Augustus.
The Countess speedily demolished this masculine defense.
“Where,” she asked acutely, “was either, when you attacked the King of Sweden?”
As this action had been contrary to both, the King-Elector had nothing to reply; rather pale, he stared at the ground.
“You see,” added Aurora, anxious to soothe now that she had silenced, “it is not, and never has been, any question of any law or any honor, but simply of each man for himself in a desperate game.”
Augustus sighed.
“We need not raise the question of Patkul,” he said, with the evasion of weakness.
“We must,” replied the Countess. “For I believe it will be the first thing the King of Sweden will demand, and we must know how to answer him.”
Augustus did not speak; he did not think it possible that he could ever come so low as to deliver the man who trusted him to his enemy, but he thought that Karl might be pacified with some apparent submission and Patkul saved nevertheless.
“As you said yourself,” continued Aurora, “matters are desperate, and we cannot pause for niceties.”
She cared nothing herself for anyone but the man who, at once her master and her slave, was essential to her power and therefore to her happiness; the terrors of war, the miseries of the peasantry, the sufferings of the civilian populace, the bloodshed, the families ruined, the lands laid desolate, did not touch Aurora von Königsmarck; her gay and volatile nature did not even glance at the dark side of life.
Already, in this bitter crisis, her spirits were rising at the thought of the new exciting and brilliant part she intended to play with so much success.
Patkul was to her but a pawn in an elaborate and delicate game, and she had completely forgotten Hélène D’Einsiedel.
She went up to Augustus and laid her proud head against the laces on his breast; tall as she was she hardly reached to his heart.
Clasping him tightly in her lovely arms, and looking up at him, all soft and smiling, she whispered: “I will be your envoy to Karl of Sweden!”
Augustus remembered Peter’s words at Birsen, and caught hold of her hands and held her away from him with a movement almost of anger.
Aurora only laughed; she had foreseen this opposition and knew that in the end, as always, she would have her own will.
CHAPTER II
AURORA VON KÖNIGSMARCK left the King-Elector’s presence more elated than she had been since the Polish troubles began.
Augustus had promised to allow her to conduct secret negotiations with Karl; she was to travel as soon as possible to his camp, and through the influence of Count Piper, an ancient friend of her family, she was to obtain a private interview with Karl.
The King-Elector was to offer to withdraw all claims to the Baltic provinces and to renounce all alliances against Sweden, also, if need be, to surrender Patkul, but this, Augustus stipulated, was to be done in such a manner that Patkul should be enabled to escape to Russia.
Aurora gave her promise; she was not greatly concerned for Patkul, she thought that if she was able to influence Karl at all she could influence him to be generous to the Livonian; but the thing weighed on the mind of Augustus; his weakness, torn between honor and prudence, caused him the acutest suffering his easy temperament had ever known.
He went to attend one of the bitter stormy sittings of the Diet, sad and sullen, unlike the gracious prince who had charmed Poland as much by his gaiety and good-nature as by his gold and his soldiery.
He was humiliated by the position in which he found himself, irritated that Aurora had won his consent to expedients that he despised, and tortured by inner doubts as to whether all concessions might not be in vain, and Karl remain adamant even before the potent charms of Aurora.
No such misgivings troubled Aurora von Königsmarck; neither the honor nor the utility of what she had undertaken disturbed her, for she did not perceive anything contemptible in what she did, and she felt assured of her success.
But as she turned up the narrow dark stairs to go to her own apartment, she was startled by a slight figure leaning in an angle of the wall, and a swift sensation, as of shame, touched her heart; the girl before her was Hélène D’Einsiedel. Aurora had completely forgotten her, but now she felt abashed before this child, her own favorite, to whom she had always been a kind protector and patroness.
“Come upstairs,” she said hastily, glad of the dark that concealed her face. “You will get cold here; what a silly child it is.”
The girl did not reply, she wore a dark pelisse over a dark dress, a great hat that shaded her face and was but dimly seen in the shadow.
“Come with me,” continued Aurora, her momentary uneasiness passing. “Why have you been out this bitter day?”
But even as she spoke she knew full well; General Patkul had been at Varsovia to consult with Augustus, and was due to return to the theater of war; Hélène had been to say good-bye.
“You should have made him come to you—you are too fond of this man.”
She took Hélène gently by the shoulder and led her upstairs.
“He did come, he has been with me a long time,” said Hélène, in a muffled voice. “And then I went with him a little way—it was good-bye.”
“La, la,” replied the Countess, “one would think it was forever by your voice!”
They entered her apartments that clever French maids and valets had arranged in tolerable imitation of the gorgeous chambers at Dresden. Silk and wool tapestries covered the walls, delicate carpets the floors, the graceful furniture, cushions, mirrors, and ornaments, without which Aurora never traveled, were elegantly disposed, and a perfumed fire burnt on the wide, old-fashioned hearth.
A maid was just lighting the candles in their tall sticks of tortoise-shell and gold, another was drawing the curtains of sapphire-blue velvet across the windows, so shutting out the mournful prospect of the winter evening.
Hélène stood stupidly in the middle of the room looking at the fire; she had neither gloves nor muff, and her little hands hung red and cold at her side.
Her face was pale and distressed, the black beaver hat falling carelessly over her tangled curls, her pelisse was roughly dragged together with a silver clasp fastened crookedly, and she wore her thin house shoes which were slightly stained with dirty snow.
“Come, child,” said Aurora kindly. “This grief and agitation are useless. Nothing has happened.”
“Things are terrible,” replied Hélène in a low, hurried voice. “You know yourself that all goes as if to disaster. The armies broken, the country in a turmoil—and he is leaving me.”
On these childish words a sob broke her voice, and tears filled her eyes already reddened with weeping.
She seemed indifferent to the presence of the Countess and the two chamber women, and continued to stare into the fire, raising her clasped trembling hands to her quivering lips while the tears fell on to her knuckles.
Aurora wanted to say “Patkul is safe,” but the words stuck in her throat, even though she quieted her conscience by the resolve that by some underhand means the Livonian must be saved.
She shivered a little in her warm coat, and spread out her fair hands to the fire.
“It is hard for all of us,” she said evenly. “Do you think, dear, that I like Varsovia? And as for the Elector he is more ill-natured than I have ever known him; I wish he would go to the war and rid me of his moods. These wretched Poles are giving a great deal of trouble, and there is no denying that for the moment the King of Sweden has the advantage.”
“Patkul thinks there is no hope at all for Livonia,” murmured Hélène. “He saw in the battle of the Dwina what these Swedes are.”
“I think my countrymen are tolerably good soldiers,” said the Countess.
The Saxon girl disliked her for this remark, and turned away abruptly; the beautiful, comfortable room seemed to her hateful; she ran to the door, pulled it open, and fled down the dark stairs; she heard the Countess’s voice half-laughing, half-angry, raised in protest, but she took no heed; nothing mattered to her now in the world but the fact that she must see her lover again before a separation that, some dreadful premonition told her, would be long if not eternal.
She could not explain to herself why she was so terrified and overwrought; this love of hers, born amid the tumults of wars and factions, had known many bitter partings and long absences, but youthful hope and joy had hitherto kept her immune from the terrors that assailed her to-night. She must see him again; it was as if her body moved without motion, so strong was the force of the spirit within, as if the cold night air carried her, a disembodied creature, to his side.
It was now nearly dark, the town full of soldiery and discontented civilians; Hélène did not notice these things nor yet the bitter cold; she hastened along the frozen roads, the dried snow flying from beneath her feet, the fresh snow, beginning to drift in flakes from the leaden sky, falling on her dark clothes and chilled face and hands.
She found the house where he lodged; it was not far from the residence of the King-Elector. At the sight of the light in the windows the blood seemed to stir in her body again; he was still there; she would see him again, nothing seemed to matter but that the whole future narrowed to this moment of their meeting.
A Polish soldier was just leaving the house. Hélène brushed by him, stepped into the dim-lit hall, and asked the Livonian servant standing there for his master.
Before the man had time to reply General Patkul appeared in the doorway of a room immediately inside the entrance.
They advanced towards each other, and he seized her in his arms and almost carried her into the room.
It was a small rough chamber, lit by an oil lamp and a log fire; some half-packed valises lay on the floor and the table was strewn with papers, portfolios, and maps.
He expressed no surprise at thus seeing her again so soon after their farewell, but, caressing her, led her to the great chair with arms by the fire, threw back her damp coat, and chafed her cold hands.
“I had to come,” she murmured, looking up at him in speechless joy. “You know that, do you not?”
“I have been thinking of you so it seems as if you had never left me,” he answered; his whole face and neck had flushed, and his narrowed short-sighted eyes had darkened till they looked black as he gazed at her. “You come between me and everything, Hélène, even my unfortunate country.”
“You must not go,” she said, with sudden energy, “it is quite impossible—do you hear?”
“Darling—I leave to-morrow morning. Presently I will take you home in a sledge and you will dream of me, knowing that I am happy in the thought of you, and in that I am doing my plain duty.”
As he spoke, with great tenderness and the gravity of an ardent enthusiast, he went on his knees, and taking her little cold slippered feet in his hands, rubbed them and held them nearer to the fire.
“What do I know of duty?” asked Hélène desperately. “I want to be happy.”
“You have never spoken like this before, my dearest.”
“I have never been so frightened before.”
“Frightened?”
He lifted his honest gray eyes, so shining with noble love to the frail face bending towards him; she touched the curls of his blond peruke that hung on his breast.
“Yes, frightened, John.”
“Why?”
“That I could not tell. But you do not think these things are foolish, do you? When I had left you just now I felt that I could not bear it—it was like someone tearing my limbs from me—as if I had to follow you or die—as—as if—I might never see you again——”
Her words stumbled over one another. She grasped the lapels of his soldier’s coat; her pleading eyes were fixed on his face with an expression of passionate entreaty.
“Oh, you will stay—you will not leave me!”
“My dear, my dear!” he cried deeply moved, “this must not be—you will unman me.”
He rose and raised her to his breast, clasping her tightly; he dared not voice the agony in his heart, how he entirely longed to keep her now that she had flown back to him—how wrong and wicked all further parting seemed, and how utterly paltry all his schemes and duties seemed beside the fact that they were together, and the wish that they should be forever together.
For he loved her as stern men, engrossed in affairs and indifferent to feminine influence, will sometimes love one woman—with complete trust and devotion.
He had never known what life could mean until he met her; she made his former pleasures appear pale, his former work dry and purposeless; she infused into his whole life color and joy and beauty.
He looked ahead into the future and saw it dark and uncertain, and wished that he did not enjoy such perilous greatness, and that his lot had been cast in times less fierce and turbulent.
Now that he held her, trembling, but content against his own wildly-beating heart, the task he had undertaken seemed so difficult as to be impossible; Livonia was in a worse plight than she had been when he undertook her liberation; the huge conspiracy against Karl XII which had cost so much toil and pains had only succeeded in rousing a captain who made North Europe tremble, and in settling the Swedish yoke more firmly on the necks of the wretched people of the Baltic Provinces.
“Perhaps I had better have left it all alone—perhaps I was not born to do my country this service!” he exclaimed.
Hélène looked up at him, pressing her flushed face closer to the braidings on his uniform.
“You must not go, you are safe here,” she answered, as if reassuring him.
He laughed tenderly at her feminine point of view; he had not been thinking of his personal safety, but of the fierce disappointment of his apparent failure.
“I am in no danger,” he said, to comfort her; and he believed what he said; not only was he the Czar’s envoy but he trusted, without question, the protection of Augustus, nor did he even imagine for a moment that the King-Elector would enter into secret peace negotiations with Karl.
Hélène also had faith in the people who had always been her friends and protectors; it would have been impossible for her to suspect Aurora von Königsmarck of treachery; yet she felt this tremendous though vague uneasiness as to her lover’s safety.
He saw the trouble in her sweet eyes which were wide and bewildered like those of a child in pain.
“Do you not think that I shall be as safe in Dresden as in Varsovia?” he asked.
“You are going to Dresden?”
“Eventually, dear. I return to the army in Saxony with messages from Augustus. Then I wish to see the Czar. My greatest hope is in him——”
“God preserve him,” said Hélène simply. “What will he do for you?”
“More than Augustus, I think. He is a man of genius. A tyrant, of course—no more a lover of liberty than Karl—but he serves our ends. Give him time and he will beat Sweden.”
“How happy you will be that day!” smiled the girl.
“If it means the freedom of Livonia,” he replied, looking at her earnestly.
Neither were paying much attention to what they were speaking of; they were thinking only of each other, of the wonder of these few moments and the long dark separation ahead of them; each in their heart was crying out against this parting; clinging to each other they spoke quietly to steady themselves and prolong these last farewells.
But now she could talk no more of politics, not even of those with which her lover’s life and happiness were bound up.
“When shall I see you again?” she stammered.
In silence he gazed at her; his short-sighted eyes narrowed as he dwelt on every lineament of the beloved face.
“What is the need of this?” whispered Hélène. “Why should one suffer?”
“Love, we part to meet again—if it was forever you might weep——”
“Supposing it was forever?” the dreadful thought transfixed her; she drew herself away from his embrace, her face sharp and pale, “but, of course, I should die,” she added, with a little sigh of relief.
He could not trust himself to answer her; taking his hands from her shoulders he turned abruptly away across the plain dismal room.
The fire was burning low and the air was becoming cold; the outside night showed in the black squares in the uncurtained windows; now and then the red reflection of a passing torch or lantern glimmered across the shadowed room.
Patkul stared at the fine frost flowers hardening on the glass; he had his back to Hélène; she took off her hat which had fallen back on to her tangled hair, mechanically arranged her curls, and replaced the hat; then with stiff fingers she fastened the pelisse.
She was too young and simple to lament against destiny or to endeavor to alter her fate with violent hands; her court training and the society of Aurora von Königsmarck had not altered the direct outlook and conventional point of view of her young girl’s heart and mind.
She had been taken out of herself, inasmuch as she had come to him now spurred by the awful desolation, the unexplainable sense of disaster that had torn her soul; now she could do no more; she did not know how to deal with the moment, but stood stupidly arranging her hat and buttoning her pelisse in dumb wretchedness.
He thought wildly of taking her with him, of marrying her without delay or ceremony; his heart contracted as he imagined her always with him—as Marpha was with Peter—or Aurora with Augustus—his companion, his consolation, and his hope in all his adventures. Sweetening even ultimate defeat, if it must be, or glorifying ultimate victory into a happiness more than mortal.
He looked at her, strode over to her, took her by the shoulders and turned her round, forcing her to look at him; slender and frail she quivered under his grasp.
The agony of question in his gaze met no response from hers which was full of nothing but blank, sad love.
He knew that if he asked her she would come—he knew that he could not ask her; “when the war is over I will marry her,” he thought, and stilled his heart with that.
Very gently he kissed her cold face.
“I must take you home,” he said.
“I will try to be brave,” replied Hélène.
They went together to the door; the darkness was thick with snow; he sent his servant for the sledge and they had another moment alone; but neither spoke.
Hélène felt suddenly very tired, almost drowsy; she was exhausted by her strong emotion to the point of apathy.
When the sledge came she stepped in obediently; there was a brief ride through the cold and the dark; his chilled lips on her chilled cheek, some stammering words and they had parted. She could hear the jingling of his sledge-bells as she returned to her room; she seemed to be in a world empty of everything but that one sound.
Aurora von Königsmarck looked from the door of her brilliantly lit room; she had gay words on her lips, but after glancing at the girl’s face she went back silently to her place by the perfumed fire.
CHAPTER III
AURORA VON KÖNIGSMARCK, accompanied by a few servants and a small escort of Saxon cavalry, traveled secretly to the Swedish camp in Lithuania.
Karl was advancing on Grodno, and the affairs of Augustus looked daily more unfortunate; at the last moment he had wished to stop this journey of the Countess, and to send a formal embassy in his own name and that of the Polish Republic to ask the conqueror’s peace terms.
But Aurora was resolute that this depth of humiliation should not be reached, and confident that Karl could be persuaded to private means of agreement with Augustus.
In any case she was determined to try her influence on a man so singular and so famous.
“It has certainly never seen a woman like me,” she repeated to herself, not with vanity but as the calm statement of a fact.
She had no difficulty in obtaining an audience of Count Piper.
The minister was cynically interested in her mission; he was now no longer in the confidence of his master (if indeed he had ever been so), and performed his duties as a servant, not as a friend; perhaps he faintly disliked the King; in any case he was grimly amused at the idea of exposing Karl to the fascinations of a woman like Aurora von Königsmarck and facing the fair Countess with a man like the King.
He offered her little hope.
“The King is bent on conquest,” he said. “He has no idea of a tame peace, but intends to dethrone all his enemies.”
“The dreams of a boy,” replied Aurora.
Count Piper shrugged.
“A boy who will carry out his dreams or perish, Madame.”
“So obstinate?” she smiled, “and has he no weaknesses, this hero?” she added, with an inflection of light scorn.
The minister smiled; he saw her superb confidence in her radiant beauty and brilliant intelligence, in her experience and charm; he thought that her perfections would be wasted on the man who had received without a change of color the news of the death of the only woman in whom he had ever been interested.
“I do not say that I do not wish you good fortune, Madame,” he said, “for myself there are other things besides war. And I should be glad of a peace. As for the King, I know little of him, for all that I have watched him since a child—or else there is little to know. He has no friends, and no favorites, and since the war began I have not known him influenced.”
“He is so young,” remarked Aurora, “do you think this military austerity will last all his life?”
“’Tis a hard race,” replied the Count, “but as you say—he is young.”
“Let me see him,” urged Aurora, “my mission can but move and alter him—if he would play Alexander he must be prepared for the family of Darius.”
“I will do my utmost,” said Count Piper, and with sincerity; but he was soon piqued by finding that he had promised too easily; Karl absolutely refused to see Aurora von Königsmarck.
“Why should I talk to a woman on this business?” he said. “If Augustus wants peace let him send a man to ask for it.” Without the least emotion he resisted the Count’s efforts to persuade and induce him to see the fair ambassadress.
“She will think you are afraid of her,” remarked the Count, with some malice.
“I have no doubt a woman’s vanity would go that length,” replied the King calmly. “Tell her I am afraid of her,” he gave his ugly smile, “if that will content her.”
“Nothing will content her but an interview with your Majesty.”
“Then she must leave dissatisfied,” said Karl, with an indifference more hopeless to combat than open anger.
The minister reported his ill-success to the Countess; she had not expected that the King would refuse even to see her, and angry disappointment nerved her with yet greater determination to gain her object.
“I will achieve my end by other means,” she said, and thanked Count Piper for his useless services.
Though she had been a week near the camp, lodging, most inconveniently, in one of the little village houses, she had not yet seen the King, save once when he had swept by with a number of his guards, and she had not been able to distinguish his person.
But she soon ascertained that it was his custom to ride abroad unattended in the early morning and the afternoon, and she resolved to encounter him on one of these occasions, and one day stationed herself in her little light carriage on the road the King took most frequently.
As soon as her servant pointed out a solitary horseman coming towards them, saying, “The King of Sweden!” Aurora descended into the road still covered with frozen snow, and put herself in the middle of the way, holding her black fur mantle up from the road, and looking steadily up under the broad brim of her beaver hat.
The King approached, and, as soon as he saw her, sharply reined up his iron-gray charger, sending the scattered snow over the lady.
“Sire,” said Aurora, “I have never been a supplicant before; will you not make it a little easy for a beggar and—a woman?”
It was not quite what she had intended to say, and her voice faltered more than she had meant it to, for she was taken aback by the magnificent appearance and curious personality of the man to whom she spoke.
The King, with his plain uniform, black satin stock, remarkable face of immobile, almost displeasing beauty, was totally different to her preconceived notions of Karl.
He had himself so well in hand that he did not even change color at her address; he touched his hat in a stiff military salute, turned his horse, deftly, and rode back the way he had come.
It was a long while since the angry blood had rushed into Aurora’s face as it did now, coloring her fair skin from throat to forehead.
“So that is the King of Sweden!” she murmured. She shivered in her heavy furs and mounted her carriage, gazing after the figure of the departing horseman, clear against the pale tints of a sky colored with the first blue of a Northern spring.
She could do nothing but leave the scene of her defeat, but she did not accept her discomfiture as final; at least now she knew his person and could judge him, perhaps manage him better in consequence.
He was her own countryman, yet this type of the pure Scandinavian was fresh to her, after the many years she had lived abroad, and the fairness, hardness, and strength of this man repelled her; he was as powerful as Augustus and far more healthy; he sat his horse like a creature of steel and iron, at one with the magnificent creature he rode in power and purpose.
No passions had ever marked his face, which expressed nothing but an unfeeling calm and complete courage.
It would be impossible to believe that that countenance could ever look on the thing it feared.
Aurora sighed; in her heart she admitted that she had never dealt yet with a man of that quality; it would be the greater triumph to make him swerve, if only for a second, from his inhuman fortitude.
The next time the King of Sweden went abroad he found himself some miles from the village, and in a narrow road face to face with a horse-woman who took off her traveling mask and revealed the lovely features of Aurora von Königsmarck. “Now will you speak to me, sire?” she asked gravely, almost coldly.
At least he looked at her; she directly barred his path and he could not have turned, as he had done before, without glancing at her; his steady blue eyes stared at her with calm repugnance.
She was wrapped in a heavy white horseman’s cloak, with gray fur gauntlets and a black beaver hat; her bright curls fell into the heavy folds of the cloth, and her face looked pale and delicate as a snowdrop above her winter attire; she rode a fine black horse, and her saddle and harness were ornamented, in the Polish fashion, with brilliant colors of red, yellow, and blue.
“I am Aurora von Königsmarck,” she added, in the same tone; her soft eyes were steady as those that gazed at her so coldly.
“Madame, I recognized you—there is no other lady would trouble to set herself in my path,” replied the King.
“Your Majesty is greatly to be feared and greatly to be admired,” said Aurora. “Do you not wonder at my courage in venturing to address you, sire?”
“You consider yourself invincible, Countess,” he replied, “therefore your courage is only a sense of security.”
She was studying him eagerly under the broad lids that drooped so indifferently over her brilliant eyes; her purpose had gone into the background of her mind; she was not thinking of him as the King of Sweden who held the fate of her master in his hand, but as a man who might or might not be won, and she noted his size, his fairness, the severity of his dress, his curious face, his colorless voice with a growing sense of antipathy and hopelessness.
“I only ask for the charity of a few words speech,” she said in French, and then she recalled that though he was acquainted with that language he obstinately refused to speak it, and she added hastily in Swedish, “Will you not hear me, sire, a few moments?”
He checked his horse that pawed the ground impatient to proceed, and gave Aurora a chilling look.
“On what subject should you have to speak to me?” he demanded.
The Countess flushed, for all her self-command; she would liked to have given him a glance as freezing as his own, and have ridden away before he did so; she hated him for the disadvantage she was at—obliged to conduct this interview on horseback, muffled in a heavy mantle, in the open air and keen cold, half her graces concealed, half her charms useless.
“Has your Majesty’s success and glory taught you only to be cruel to the unfortunate?” she asked, with a quiver in her voice.
“On what matter could you have to speak to me?” repeated the King; he gave a short unexpected laugh, and she was startled to see how it spoilt and rendered unpleasant his handsome face. Aurora’s hand was forced.