Read Ebook: The Pride of Jennico: Being a Memoir of Captain Basil Jennico by Castle Agnes Castle Egerton

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It was in full summer weather that, as I have written, already tried by the first stage of my career of wealth, I came to take possession of my landed estates. The beauty and wildness of the scenery, the strangeness of the life in the well-nigh princely position to which this sudden turn of fortune's wheel had elevated me, the intoxicating sensation of holding sway, as feudal lord of these wide tracts of hill and plain, over so many hundreds of lives--above all, the wholesome reaction brought about by solitude and communion with nature after the turmoil of the last months--in short, everything around me and in me made me less inclined than ever to begin ridding myself of so fair a possession.

And do I wish I had not thus delayed in obeying the injunction that accompanied the bequest? Odds my life! I am a miserable dog this day through my disobedience; and yet, would I now undo the past if I could? A thousand times no! I hate my folly, but hug it, ever closer, ever dearer. The bitter savour of that incomprehensible yearning clings to the place: I would not exchange it for the tameness of peace. Weakling that I am, I would not obliterate, if I could, the memory of those brief, brief days of which I failed to know the price, until the perversity of fate cut their thread for ever--ay, perhaps for ever, after all! And yet, if so, it were wiser to quit these haunted walls for ever also. But, God! how meagre and livid looks wisdom, the ghost, by the side of love's warm and living line!

And now, on! Since I have put my hand to the task, undertaken to set forth and make clear the actual condition of that vacillating puppet, the new-fledged Lord of Tollendhal, I will not draw it back, cost me what pain it may.

No doubt it was this haunting pride of wealth, waxing every day stronger, even as the pride of birth which my great-uncle had fostered to such good purpose, the overweening conceit which they bred within me, that fogged my better judgment and brought me to this pass. And no doubt, likewise, it is a princely estate that these lords of Tollendhal of old carved for themselves, and rounded ever wider and nurtured--all that it should some day, passing through the distaff, come to swell the pride of Suffolk Jennicos!

I promised myself many a rare day's sport so soon as the time waxed ripe. Meanwhile, my days were spent in rambles over the land, under pretence of making acquaintance with the farms and the villages, and the population living on the soil and working out its wealth for my use, but in reality for the enjoyment of delicious sylvan and rustic idleness through which the memory of recent Viennese dissipations was like that of a fevered dream.

The spirit of my country-keeping ancestors lived again within me and was satisfied. Yet there were times, too, when this freedom of fancy became loneliness--when my eyes tired of green trees, and my ears hungered for the voice of some human being whom I could meet as an equal, with whom I could consort, soul and wit. Then I would resolve that, come the autumn, I would fill the frowning stronghouse with a rousing throng of gallant hunters and fair women such as it had never seen before. Ay, and they should come over, even from old England, to taste of the Jennico hospitality!

It was in one of these glorious moods that, upon a September day, sultry as summer, although there was a touch of autumn decay in the air as well as in the tints around me, I sallied forth, after noon, to tramp on foot an as yet unexplored quarter of my domain. I had donned, according to my wont , the dress of the Moravian peasant--I gather that it pleases the people's heart to see their seigneur grace their national garb on occasions. There was a goodly store of such costumes among the cupboards full of hereditary habiliments and furs preserved at Tollendhal, after the fashion of the country, with the care that English housewives bestow upon their stores of linen. My peasant suit was, of course, fine of cloth and natty of cut, and the symmetry of the handsome figure I saw in my glass reminded me more of the pastoral disguises that were the courtly fashion of some years back than of our half-savage ill-smelling boors. Thus it was pleasant as well as comfortable to wear, and at that time even so trifling a sensation of gratified vanity had its price. But, although thus freed of the incumbrance of a gentleman's attire, I could not shake off the watchful tyranny of J?nos, the solemn heiduck who never allowed me to stir abroad at all without his escort, nor, indeed , without the further retinue of two j?gers, twin brothers, and faithful beyond a doubt. These, carbine on shoulder, and hanger on thigh, had their orders to follow their lord through thick and thin, and keep within sight and sound of whistle.

Ah me, how eternally and lovingly I thought of my proud and brilliant self then!...

"Na, Kerlchen," he was saying to me, "thou hast luck! Her Imperial and Royal Highness has chosen the young Jennico to dance with ... as the old one is too old."

The sound must have been very close to me, for it startled me from my deep sleep into, as it were, an outer court of dreams. And between slumber and consciousness I became aware that I was lying somewhere very hot and comfortable; that, while some irresistible power kept my eyes closed, my ears were not so, and I could hear the two voices talking together; and, in my wandering brain believed them still to belong to the Princess Marie Antoinette and her attendant.

During my sleep the shade of the sun had shifted and I lay in the full glare, and so, as I opened my eyes, I could see nothing.

She clapped her hands and turned with a crow of laughter to some one behind me. And then I became aware that, as in the dream, there were two. I also turned.

My eyes were in their normal state again, but for a moment I thought myself still wandering. Here was her Highness. A Princess, indeed, as beautiful as any vision and yet most exquisitely embodied in the flesh; a Princess in this wilderness! It seemed a thing impossible, and yet my eyes now only corroborated the evidence of my ears.

I marked, almost without knowing, the rope of pearls that bound her throat . I marked her garments, garments, for all their intended simplicity, rich, and bearing to my not untutored observation the latest stamp of fashion. But above all I marked her air of race, her countenance, young with the first bloom of youth, mantled with blushes yet set with a royal dignity.

I have, since that eventful day, passed through so many phases of feeling, sweet and violent, my present sentiments are so fantastically disturbed, that I must try to the last of this writing and see matters still as I saw them at the time. Yes, beyond doubt what I noticed most, what appealed to me most deeply then, was the great air of race blended and softened by womanly candour and grace. She looked at me gravely, with wide brown eyes, and I stumbled into my best courtly bow.

"He wants to know," said the damsel of the yellow skirts, this time in German, the clear, clean utterance of which had nothing of the broad Austrian sounds I was accustomed to hear--"he wants to know 'where is the Highness?' But he seems to have guessed where she stands, without the telling. Truly 'tis a pity the Lord Chamberlain is not at his post to make a presentation in due form!"

The lady thus addressed took a step towards her companion, with what seemed a protest on her lip. But the latter, her small face quivering with mischief and eagerness, whispered something in her ear, and the beautiful brown eyes fixed themselves once again smilingly on me.

The minx had an easy assurance of manner which could only have been bred at Court. Her mistress listened to her with what seemed a tolerant affection.

Looking round, bewildered and awkwardly conscious of my peasant dress, I beheld my two chasseurs, standing stolidly sentinel on the exact spot where I had last seen them before dropping asleep. Old J?nos, from a nearer distance, watched us suspiciously. As I thus looked round I became aware of a new feature in the landscape--a ponderous coach also attended by two chasseurs in unknown uniforms waiting some hundred paces off, down the road.

To keep myself something in countenance despite my incongruous garb , I lifted my hand and beckoned to my retinue, which instantly advanced and halted in a rank with rigid precision five paces behind me.

"Gracious madam," said I in German, bowing to her who had dubbed herself the lady-in-waiting, with a touch, I flattered myself, of her own light mockery of tone, "I shall indeed feel honoured if her Serene Highness will deign to permit the presentation of so unimportant a person as myself--in other words of Basil Jennico of Farringdon Dane, in the county of Suffolk, in the Kingdom of Great Britain, lately a captain in his Royal Imperial Majesty's Moravian Regiment of Chevau-Legers, now master of the Castle of Tollendhal, not far distant, and lord of its domain." Here, led by J?nos, my three retainers saluted.

I thought I saw in the Princess's eyes that I had created a certain impression, but my consequent complacency did not escape the notice of the irrepressible lady-in-waiting. She promptly did her best to mar the situation.

"Fi donc," she cried, in French, "we are at Court, Monsieur, and at the Court of--at the Court of her Highness we are not such savages as to perform introductions in German."

Then, drawing up her slight figure and composing her face into preternatural gravity, she took two steps forward and another sideways, accompanied by as many bows, and resting her hand at arm's length on the china head of her stick, with the most ridiculous assumption of finikin importance and with a quavering voice which, although I have never known him, I recognised instantly as the Chamberlain's, she announced:

"Monsieur Basile Jean Nigaud de la Faridondaine, dans le comt? o? l'on Suffoque, ... d'importance, au royaume de la Grande Bretagne, ma?tre du Castel des Fous, ici proche, et seigneur des alentours,--ahem!"

Inwardly cursing the young woman's buffoonery and the incredible facility with which she had so instantly burlesqued an undoubtedly impressive recital, I had no choice but to make my three bows with what good grace I could muster. Whereupon, the Princess, still smiling but with a somewhat puzzled air, made me a curtsey. As for the lady-in-waiting, nothing abashed, she took an imaginary pinch of most excellent snuff with a pretence of high satisfaction; then laughed aloud and long, till my ears burned and her own dimple literally rioted.

"And now, to complete the ceremony," said she, as soon as she could speak at all, "let me introduce the Court, represented to-day by myself. Mademoiselle Marie Ottilie. Two Ottilies as you will perceive, but easily explained, thus: Feu the Highest her S?r?nissime's gracious ducal grandmother being an Ottilie and godmother to us both--Mademoiselle Ottilie: the rest concerns you not. Well, Monsieur de la Faridondaine, Capitaine et Seigneur, etc., etc.,--charmed to have made your acquaintance. So far, so good. But ... these gentlemen? Surely also nobles in disguise. Will you not continue the ceremony?"

She waved a little sunburnt hand towards my immovable body-guard, and the full absurdity of my position struck me with the keenest sense of mortification.

I looked back at the three, biting my lips, and miserably uncertain how to conduct myself so as to save some shred of dignity. My ancient J?nos had seen too many strange things during his forty years' attendance on my great-uncle to betray the smallest surprise at the present singular situation; but out of both their handsome faces, set like bronze,--they had better not have moved a muscle otherwise or J?nos would have known the reason why,--the eyes of my twin attendants roamed from me to the ladies, and from the ladies to me, with the most devouring curiosity. I tartly dismissed them all again to a distance, and then, turning to the mysterious Princess I begged to know, in my most courtlike manner if I might presume to lay my services at her feet for the time of her sojourn in this, my land.

With the same adorable yet dignified bashfulness that I had already noted in her, the lovely woman looked hesitatingly at her lady-in-waiting, which lively wench, not being troubled with timidity , promptly took upon herself to answer me. But this time she so delightfully fell in with my own wishes that I was fain to forgive her all that had gone before.

This last piece of impudence might have proved even too much for my desire to cultivate an acquaintance so extraordinarily attractive to one of my turn of mind and so alluring by its mysteriousness, but that I happened to catch a glance from her Highness's eyes even as the speaker finished her tirade, which glance, deprecating and at the same time full of a kindly and gentle interest, set my heart to beat in a curious fashion between pleasure and pain. I hastened therefore to obey the younger lady's behests, and began to gather together enough of the sweet-smelling hay to form a throne for so noble and fair an occupant.

Whereupon the little creature herself--she seemed little by reason of her slenderness and childishness, but in truth she was as tall as her tall and beautiful mistress--fell to helping me with such right good-will, flashing upon me, as she flitted hither and thither, such altogether innocently mocking looks from her yellow-hazel eyes, that I should have been born with a deeper vanity, and a sourer temper, to have kept a grudge against her.

Once seated in our fragrant court, in the order laid down for us, the attendant, so soon as she had recovered breath sufficient, began to ply me with questions so multiplied, so searching, and so pointed, that she very soon extracted from me every detail she wished to know about myself, past and present.

But although, as from a chartered and privileged advocate, the sharp cross-questioning came from the Mademoiselle Marie Ottilie, it was to the soft dumb inquiry I read in the Princess Marie Ottilie's eyes that were addressed my answers. And then those eyes and the listening beauty of that gracious face, made it hard for me to realise, as later reflection proved, that their owner did not utter a single word during the whole time we sat there together.

I MIND me that when she had drawn from me all she had wanted to know, the little lady's pert tongue became still for a while, and that she stretched her long young limbs and lay back upon her mound of hay with the most absolute unconcern either of my presence or of the Princess's, gazing skyward with a sudden gravity in her look. As for me, I was content to sit in silence too, glad of the quiet, because it gave me leisure to taste the full zest of this fortunate and singular meeting. I thought I had never seen a human being whom silence became so well as the Princess Ottilie. Contrasted with the recklessness and chatter of her companion her attitude struck me as the most perfectly dignified it had ever been my lot to observe.

Presently the nymph in yellow roused herself from her reverie, and sat up, with her battered hat completely on one side and broken bits of grass sticking in the tangled mass of her brown hair. She arched her lip at me with her malicious smile, and addressed her companion.

"Is it your Highness's pleasure," she asked, "that I should gratify some of this young English nobleman's curiosity concerning the wandering of a Princess in so unprincely a fashion?"

"Ach!" rebuked her Highness, on the wings of a soft sigh. The truth of the girl's assertion that her mistress's kindness of heart amounted to weakness, was very patent; the dependant was undoubtedly indulged to the verge of impertinence, although it is also true that her manner seemed to stop short of any open show of disrespect.

"Now attention, please, Monsieur de la Faridondaine! His Most Absolutely to be Revered and Most Gracious Serenity, father of her Highness, reigns over a certain land, a great many leagues from here," she began, with all the gusto of one who revels in the sound of her own voice. "Her Highness is his only daughter, and this August Person has the condescension to feel for her some of those sentiments of paternal affection which are common even to the lowest peasant. You have been about Courts, Monsieur Jean Nigaud, the fact is patent and indubitable. You can therefore realise the extent of such condescension. A little while ago, moved by these sentiments, my gracious Sovereign believed there was a paleness upon her Highness his daughter's cheek."

Involuntarily I looked at the Princess, to see, with a curious elation, how the rich colour rushed, under my gaze, yet more richly into her face.

Here she paused, and, with a sudden assumption of dolefulness that was certainly comic, proceeded in quite another voice:

"I am a person of no consequence at Court, Monsieur de la Faridondaine. I am merely tolerated because of her Highness's goodness, and also because, you must know, that I have a reputation of being a source of amusement to her Serenity. You may already have noticed that it is fairly well founded that I am talkative and entertaining, as a lady-in-waiting should be, and this is the reason why I have attained a position to which my birth does not entitle me."

A little frown came across the Princess's smooth brow at these words. She shot a look of deprecation at her attendant, but the latter went on, resuming her former manner, in a bubbling of merriment:

The Princess, whose sensitive blood had again risen to a crimson tide, cast a very uneasy look at her companion. I could see how much her affectionate delicacy was wounded by this unnecessary candour.

But little mademoiselle, after returning the glance with one as mischievous and unfeeling as a jackdaw's, continued, hugging her knees with every appearance of enjoyment:

At the very first mention of the smallpox the Princess grew pale, and made the sign of the cross. And indeed it seemed to me, myself, a tempting of Providence to joke thus lightly about a malady so dangerous to life and so fatal to looks. But the girl proceeded coolly:

"Oh, that," said I with conviction, "you need not tell me!"

She seemed vastly tickled by the frankness of this my first observation after such long listening, and had to throw herself back on the hay, and laugh her laugh out, before she could sit up again and continue:

The Princess pushed her hat off her forehead, and turned upon her lady-in-waiting a face that had grown almost livid.

"Pooh!" said the lady-in-waiting; "your Highness is over-nervous; 'tis now a good fortnight since the old gentleman left us, and if you or I were to have had it we should have shown symptoms long ago. Well, sir, to continue: our worthy hostess the Countess was in a fine fume, as you can fancy, between duty and natural affection, terror and anxiety. She was by way of keeping the whole matter a dead secret both from us and from the servants; but the fumigations she set going in the house, the airing, the dosing, together with her own frantic demeanour, would have been enough to enlighten even obtuser wits than ours. With one exception all our servants fled, and all hers. She had to replace them from a distance. The anger, the responsibility, the agitation generally, were too much for her years and constitution; and three days ago--in the act of writing to the Duchess for instructions, for she had expected the Court doctor would have sent on special messengers to the courts of her Highness's relatives, and was in a perfect fever at receiving no news--as I say, in the very act of writing evidently to despatch another post herself, the poor old lady was struck with paralysis, and was carried speechless to bed. Now, Monsieur Jean Nigaud, you English are a practical race. Do you not agree with me that since the Lord, in His wisdom, decreed that it was good for the Countess's soul to have a little physical affliction, it could not have happened at a better moment for us? I know that her Highness disapproves of what she calls my heartlessness, but I cannot but rejoice in our freedom.

"The Countess is recovering, but she won't speak plain for a long time to come. Meanwhile we are free--free as air! Our only personal attendant is my own--my old nurse. You shall see her. She speaks but little, but she adores me. But as we cannot understand a word of the language spoken here, and the resources of this district are few, I will own to you, her Highness has found it a little dull, in spite of her lady-in-waiting's well-known gift of entertainment, up to to-day."

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