THE PHANTOM COACH: Collected Ghost Stories (45 page)

My father shook his head. ‘Not today, my child,’ he said, ‘not today. I have business with Monsieur Maurice this afternoon. Stay here till I come back.’

And with this he got up, took his hat, and went quickly out of the room.

So I waited and waited—as it seemed to me for hours. The waning daylight faded and became dusk; the dusk thickened into dark; the fire burned red and dull; and still I crouched there in the chimney-corner. I had no heart to read, work, or fan the logs into a blaze. I just watched the clock, and waited. When the room became so dark that I could see the hands no longer, I counted the strokes of the pendulum, and told the quarters off upon my fingers.

When at length my father came back, it was past five o’clock, and dark as midnight.

‘Quick, quick, little Gretchen,’ he said, pulling off his hat and gloves, and unbuckling his sword. ‘A glass of kirsch, and more logs on the fire! I am cold through and through, and wet into the bargain.’

‘But—but, father, have you not been with Monsieur Maurice?’ I said, anxiously.

‘Yes, of course; but that was an hour ago, and more. I have been over to Kierberg since then, in the rain.’

He had left Monsieur Maurice an hour ago—a whole, wretched, dismal hour, during which I might have been so happy!

‘You told me to stay here till you came back,’ I said, scarce able to keep down the tears that started to my eyes.

‘Well, my little
Mädchen?
’

‘And—and I might have gone up to Monsieur Maurice, after all?’

My father looked at me gravely—poured out a second glass of kirsch—drew his chair to the front of the fire, and said:

‘I don’t know about that, Gretchen.’

I had felt all along that there was something wrong, and now I was certain of it.

‘What do you mean, father?’ I said, my heart beating so that I could scarcely speak. ‘What is the matter?’

‘May the devil make broth of my bones, if I know!’ said my father, tugging savagely at his mustache.

‘But there is something!’

He nodded grimly.

‘Monsieur Maurice, it seems, is not to have so much liberty,’ he said, after a moment. ‘He is not to walk in the grounds oftener than twice a week; and then only with a solider at his heels. And he is not to go beyond half a mile from the château in any direction. And he is to hold no communication whatever with any person, or persons, either in-doors or out-of-doors, except such as are in direct charge of his rooms or his person. And—and heaven knows what other confounded regulations besides! I wish the Baron von Bulow had been in Sptizbergen before he put it into the king’s head to send him here at all!’

‘But—but he is not to be locked up?’ I faltered, almost in a whisper.

‘Well, no—not exactly that; but I am to post a sentry in the corridor, outside his door.’

‘Then the king is afraid that Monsieur Maurice will run away?’

‘I don’t know—I suppose so,’ groaned my father.

I sat silent for a moment, and then burst into a flood of tears.

‘Poor Monsieur Maurice!’ I cried. ‘He has coughed so all the winter, and he was longing for the spring! We were to have gathered primroses in the woods when the warm days came back again—and—and—and I suppose the king doesn’t mean that I am not to speak to him any more!’

My sobs choked me, and I could say no more.

My father took me on his knee, and tried to comfort me.

‘Don’t cry, my little Gretchen,’ he said tenderly; ‘don’t cry! Tears can help neither the prisoner nor thee.’

‘But I may go to him all the same, father?’ I pleaded.

‘By my sword, I don’t know,’ stammered my father. ‘If it were a breach of orders . . . and yet for a baby like thee . . . thou’rt no more than a mouse about the room, after all!’

‘I have read of a poor prisoner who broke his heart because the gaoler killed a spider he loved,’ said I, through my tears.

My father’s features relaxed into a smile.

‘But do you flatter yourself that Monsieur Maurice loves my little
Mädchen
as much as that poor prisoner loved his spider?’ he said, taking me by the ear.

‘Of course he does—and a hundred thousand times better!’ I exclaimed, not without a touch of indignation.

My father laughed outright.

‘Thunder and Mars!’ said he, ‘is the case so serious? Then Monsieur Maurice, I suppose, must be allowed sometimes to see his little pet spider.’

He took me up himself next morning to the prisoner’s room, and then for the first time I found a sentry in occupation of the corridor. He grounded his musket and saluted as we passed.

‘I bring you a visitor, Monsieur Maurice,’ said my father.

He was leaning over the fire in a moody attitude when we went in, with his arms on the chimney-piece, but turned at the first sound of my father’s voice.

‘Colonel Bernhard,’ he said, with a look of glad surprise, ‘this is kind, I—I had scarcely dared to hope——’

He said no more, but took me by both hands, and kissed me on the forehead.

‘I trust I’m not doing wrong,’ said my father gruffly. ‘I hope it’s not a breach of orders.’

‘I am sure it is not,’ replied Monsieur Maurice, still holding my hands. ‘Were your instructions twice as strict, they could not be supposed to apply to this little maiden.’

‘They are strict enough, Monsieur Maurice,’ said my father, drily.

A faint flush rose to the prisoner’s cheek.

‘I know it,’ he said. ‘And they are as unnecessary as they are strict. I had given you my parole, Colonel Bernhard.’

My father pulled at his mustache, and looked uncomfortable.

‘I’m sure you would have kept it, Monsieur Maurice,’ he said.

Monsieur Maurice bowed.

‘I wish it, however, to be distinctly understood,’ he said, ‘that I withdrew that parole from the moment when a sentry was stationed at my door.’

‘Naturally—naturally.’

‘And, for my papers——’

‘I wish to heaven they had said nothing about them!’ interrupted my father, impatiently.

‘Thanks. ’Tis a petty tyranny; but it cannot be helped. Since, however, you are instructed to seize them, here they are. They contain neither political nor private matter—as you will see.’

‘I shall see nothing of the kind, Monsieur Maurice,’ said my father. ‘I would not read a line of them for a marshal’s bâton. The king must make a gaoler of me, if it so pleases him; but not a spy. I shall seal up the papers and send them to Berlin.’

‘And I shall never see my manuscript again!’ said Monsieur Maurice, with a sigh. ‘Well—it was my first attempt at authorship—perhaps my last—and there is an end to it!’

My father ground some new and tremendous oath between his teeth.

‘I hate to take it, Monsieur Maurice,’ he said. ‘’Tis an odious office.’

‘The office alone is yours, Colonel Bernhard,’ said the prisoner, with all a Frenchman’s grace. ‘The odium rests with those who impose it on you.’

Hereupon they exchanged formal salutations; and my father, having warned me not to be late for our mid-day meal, put the papers in his pocket, and left me to take my daily French lesson.

Chapter VII

The Marguerite’s Answer

The winter lingered long, but the spring came at last in a burst of sunshine. The grey mists were rent away, as if by magic. The cold hues vanished from the landscape. The earth became all freshness; the air all warmth; the sky all light. The hedgerows caught a tint of tender green. The crocuses came up in a single night. The woods which till now had remained bare and brown, flushed suddenly, as if the coming summer were imprisoned in their glowing buds. The birds began to try their little voices here and there. Never once, in all the years that have gone by since then, have I seen so startling a transition. It was as if the prince in the dear old fairy tale had just kissed the Sleeping Beauty, and all that enchanted world had sprung into life at the meeting of their lips.

But the spring, with its sudden beauty and brightness, seems to have no charm for Monsieur Maurice. He has permission to walk in the grounds twice a week—with a sentry at his heels; but of that permission he sternly refuses to take advantage. It was not wonderful that he preferred his fireside and his books, while the sleet and snow, and bitter east winds lasted; but it seems too cruel that he should stay there now, cutting himself off from all the warmth and sweetness of the opening season. In vain I come to him with my hands full of dewy crocuses. In vain I hang about him, pleading for just a turn or two on the terrace where the sunshine falls hottest. He shakes his head, and is immovable.

‘No,
petite
,’ he says. ‘Not today.’

‘That is just what you said yesterday, Monsieur Maurice.’

‘And it is just what I shall say tomorrow, Gretchen, if you ask me again.’

‘But you won’t stay in forever, Monsieur Maurice!’

‘Nay—“forever” is a big word, little Gretchen.’

‘I don’t believe you know how brightly the sun is shining!’ I say coaxingly. ‘Just come to the window and see.’

Unwillingly enough, he lets himself be dragged across the room —unwillingly he looks out upon the glittering slopes and budding avenues beyond.

‘Yes, yes—I see it,’ he replies with an impatient sigh; ‘but the shadow of that fellow in the corridor would hide the brightest sun that ever shone! I am not a galley-slave, that I should walk about with a
garde-chiourme
behind me.’

‘What do you mean, Monsieur Maurice?’ I ask, startled by his unusual vehemence.

‘I mean that I go free,
petite—
or not at all.’

‘Then—then you will fall ill!’ I falter, amid fast-gathering tears.

‘No, no—not I, Gretchen. What can have put that idea into your wise little head?’

‘It was papa, Monsieur Maurice. . . . he said you were——’

Then, thinking suddenly how pale and wasted he had become of late, I hesitated.

‘He said I was—what?’

‘I—I don’t like to tell!’

‘But if I insist on being told? Come, Gretchen, I must know what Colonel Bernhard said.’

‘He said it was wrong to stay in like this week after week, and month after month. He—he said you were killing yourself by inches, Monsieur Maurice.’

Monsieur Maurice laughed a short bitter laugh.

‘Killing myself!’ he repeated. ‘Well, I hope not; for weary as I am of it, I would sooner go on bearing the burden of life than do my enemies the favour of dying out of their way.’

The words, the look, the accent made me tremble. I never forgot them.

How could I forget that Monsieur Maurice had enemies—enemies who longed for his death?

So the first blush of early spring went by; and the crocuses lived their little life and passed away; and the primroses came in their turn, yellowing every shady nook in the scented woods; and the larches put on their crimson tassels, and the laburnum its mantle of golden fringe, and the almond tree burst into a leafless bloom of pink—and still Monsieur Maurice, adhering to his resolve, refused to stir one step beyond the threshold of his rooms.