H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ Had I but known, those first violets in the forest of Sénart held in their beauty all the future splendour and beauty of the New France.
In my life I have seen many a wonderful thing, but my memory carries with it nothing more miraculous than those flowers of promise seen as I saw them in the forest of Despair.
[Pg 297]
ENVOI
I am writing these lines in the rose garden of Saluce, ghostly, even on this warm June day, with the memories and the pictures and the perfumes of the past. How good summer is to the old! And how much kinder even than summer is love. ”

“ He declared that the idea of love for Eloise had never come to him of itself; he was far too humble to worship her, except as one worships the sun. It was his music that said to him: "She loves you, and you love her. Listen to me: Am I not beautiful? I am the child of your soul and hers; divine love has brought you together so that you might create me. I will exist for ever, for I am the child of two immortal souls."
"Then, my friend," said Franzius, "I knew what love was—it is the birth of music in the heart, it is the music itself, the little birds try to tell us this. ”

“ The water lilies blossomed there in summer; all the length of a summer's day the darting dragon-flies cast their blue-gauze reflections upon the water; Amy Féraud and Francine Volnay might cast their laughter and cigarette-ends for ever on its surface, leaning over the bridge-rail and seeing nothing. It was left for the heart of a child to question its secret and divine its treason.
The path from the Pavilion cut through the trees and opened on the carriage-drive to the château. When we reached the drive, Eloise, terrified by the dark and the unaccustomed trees, was afraid to return alone. ”

“ Terrified as an animal which suddenly finds itself trapped in a gin; shocked as a man who sees a ghost.
All the nameless excitement and soul-terror that had filled me for a moment as a child when Gretel, in the gallery of the Schloss, had held the light to the portrait of Margaret von Lichtenberg, were mine now again, for the face I had just seen was hers. The Baron Carl von Lichtenberg was little Carl. ”

“ We walked from Evry to Etiolles under the bright May morning, under the sparkling blue, along the delightful white dusty roads, the larks singing lustily, and the wind blowing the vanishing hawthorn-blossoms upon the dust like snow.
Then, at the drawbridge over the moat, Eloise was waiting for us, and we followed her into the Pavilion, Franzius with his hat crushed to his heart, bowing, the violin under his arm forgotten, his whole simple soul worshipping, very evidently, the beautiful and gracious goddess who had received us. ”

“ Eloise was radiant; Franzius as brown as a berry.
"Eloise!" I cried, as I kissed her and wrung both her hands, "do you remember little Carl? Do you remember saying to me: 'Toto, little Carl is a girl'? She is here; she is waiting to meet you. Come."
"Where?" asked Eloise.
I turned, laughing, to point out the figure of my companion. The drive was empty. The songs of the birds, the shadows of the trees, the golden swathes of light, were there, but of Margaret von Lichtenberg there was no trace.
"She has hidden herself amidst the trees," I cried. "Come." ”

“ Franzius had orders to telegraph to my club and to the Place Vendôme should any news reach the Pavilion, and the club porter grew weary of the inquiry: "Any telegram for me?"
Men began to avoid me as they do the stricken, the leprous, and the mad. I must have seemed mad, indeed, for ever wandering hither and thither, searching the crowded streets with eager eyes, scarcely answering if spoken to, careless and untidy in my dress, a phantom of myself. Like Poe's man of the crowd, I drifted about Paris, ever in the thick of the throng, seeking the most populous streets. ”

“ The Countess Wagner de Pons answered the question. This old lady, whose eccentricity and love of gossip had made her wait with her charge in the ante-room, instead of having her name announced to the Duchess de Morny, as any other lady of rank would have done, was deep in conversation with a tall, dignified gentleman, deep in scandal, no doubt; for, when she saw me she got rid of me at once by introducing me to the little Comte de Coigny. "And now," said she, as if echoing my father's words, "run off and play, both of you, in the garden." ”

“ Poor Franzius! Simple soul, poet and peasant, child of a woodcutter in Hartz, condemned to live by the gift that God had given him, just as one might imagine some child condemned to live by the sale of some lovely toy, the present of an Emperor—what a fate his was, forever surrounded by the flare of gas, the clatter of beer-mugs, and the fœtid life of music-hall and café-chantant! ”

“ The coincidence of Winter and War, the leafless trees, the eternal roaring of Paris like a tiger at bay, the darkness and death in my heart, all these are in my life away back there, forming a picture or rather a dark mirror, reflecting the forms of Despair, Apathy and Ruin, just as the dark water of the moat reflects the fern fronds of the bank and the dark green plumage of those pine-trees.
Nothing could ever come right in the world again. ”

“ I believe she had fallen really in love with me, unconscious of the fact that if I cared for any woman in the world it was for the lovely Countess Feliciani, her mother, and that I had no eyes at all for a thing of my own age in frilled pantalettes, no matter how pretty she might be.
Before Eloise could reply to my unintentionally brutal remark, a figure came out from amidst the trees and towards us. It was one of the jägers. A man past middle age, bent and warped like a tree that has stood the tempest for years. ”

“ Toward one of these ladies, more beautiful in my eyes than the dawn, Eloise led me.
"Maman," said she, "this is Toto."
The Countess Feliciani, for that was the name of the mother of Eloise, smiled upon us. I dare say we made a quaint and pretty enough pair. She was perhaps, thirty—the Countess Feliciana, a woman of Genoa, blue-eyed and golden-haired, and beautiful—Ah! when a blonde is beautiful, her beauty transcends the beauty of all brunettes.
I bowed, she spoke to me, I stammered. She put my awkwardness down to bashfulness, no doubt, but it was not bashfulness. ”

“ And is she—is she little Carl?" This I refused; that I would not listen to; this I abhorred, as a whisper from the devil, as a blasphemy against God's goodness and against life.
"I have never done harm to any man!"
"Or woman?" queried the whisperer, whose voice seemed my own voice, just as in that story of Edgar Poe's the voice of William Wilson found an echo in his double.
"Or woman? Ah, yes—Eloise—a moment of passion——"
"A moment of passion murdered Margaret de Saluce."
"But God is good; He does not create to torture; He does not bring the dead back to confront them with their crimes." ”

“ Never seemed so loud the shouting and laughter of the birds, never so beautiful the rambler roses round the porch! The humble things of Nature seemed to have put themselves en fête to welcome back their own.
I did not go to Etiolles for some days after this. A new era of my life had begun.
And now it was that the truth of the Vicomte's philosophy was borne in upon me:
"You are getting yourself into a position from which you cannot escape with honour. You cannot marry Mademoiselle Feliciani, for Paris would not receive her as your wife." ”

“ Dreams we are the forest's breath
Waking to the touch of day;
Recks not 'tis the horn of Death
Dying in the distance grey.
Hound and horn give voice and tongue——
And through it all the horn, now clear and ringing, now caught and dying in the echoes of the forest, now lost in the echoes of the Brocken, the wild notes flying before the phantom of the flying stag; ever the horn threading the gushing music of the violins, the voices of the musicians, and the chorus of the jägers. ”

“ What is the world around me, dull and commonplace and sordid, even under its gold and glitter? I have seen the highest pleasures that life can give men in exchange for gold to-day in the Amber Salon of the Café de Paris. I have seen an Emperor who has attained his ambition, and the futility and weariness of it all in his face. I have lost and left behind the only country where dreams are real and life worth living—childhood. I love the past ”

“ From the forest came the wood-doves' song to the immortal and ever-weeping Susie. We could hear the birds in the château gardens, and a bell from some village church ringing the Angelus—faint, far away, robbed of its harshness by the vast and sunlit silence. She seemed the soul of all that music, all that silence, all that sweetness; and she was mine, entirely and for ever. We were beyond convention and law, as were Adam and Eve.
"And you know," said she, as if reading my thoughts, "I am nobody—I have not even a name. [Pg 267] Yesterday I was Baron Carl von Lichtenberg, with great estates. ”

“ Next morning I sent Joubert to my guardian's apartments with a message craving an interview.
It was nine o'clock, and the old gentleman received me in his dressing-room and in his dressing-gown. Beril had just shaved him, and he was examining his rubicund, jovial face in a hand-mirror. The place smelt of Parma violets and shaving-soap. It was like the dressing-room of a duchess, so elaborate were the fittings and so complex the manicure instruments and toilet arrangements set out on the dressing-table. ”

“ I rose, and we crossed the drawbridge. As she passed over it, she paused and gazed at the water.
"How cool it looks! How dark and deep! Do you remember the pool at Lichtenberg?"
"And how I pushed you in. Do you remember the little drum?"
"And the child with the golden hair—Eloise. She called you Toto. I have always called you Toto since, M. Patrick Mahon."
"Call me it still," I said. "I love anything that reminds me of my past—of our past. Come, let us go into the woods, as we went that day."
She laughed at the recollection of the little Pomeranian grenadier. ”

“ You offer Mademoiselle Feliciani a home, you provide for her, your intentions are absolutely honourable, yet you do not love her. That is all very well, mind you. It is somewhat strange in the eyes of the world, but I understand the position. You are a man of heart and honour, and she is, so to speak, an old friend; but what is to be the end of it?"
"I don't know," replied I.
"Just so. She is not a child. It is the nature of a woman to love, to enter into life. Picking daisies in the woods of Sénart may fill a summer morning, but not a woman's life. ”

“ I had five hundred francs in my pocket, I possessed rooms in the Place Vendôme, a princely fortune lay at my back, I had a guardian, everything that a guardian ought to be from a young man's point of view, I had just shaken hands with the Emperor, I had the entrée of the very best of society in France, yet I doubt if you could have found a more forlorn creature than myself if you had searched the whole of Paris. ”

“ Time has blown away the dust. I do not feel the fatigue now. The vast blue sky of a continental summer, the poplar trees, the fields, the storks' nests, the old-time inns, Carlsruhe and its military bands, Mayence and its drums and marching soldiers, the vivid blue of the Rhine, and the courtyards and pleasaunces of the lordly houses we stopped at, lie before me, a picture made poetical by distance, a picture which stands as the beginning of my life and the beginning of this story of war and love. ”

“ It smelt sweet as lavender, and the spare room was so close to the trees that the pine-branches almost brushed the window.
"It will be lovely for him," said Eloise, when, having settled about terms with Fauchard's wife, we were taking our way back to the Pavilion. "But will he find it dull when he is not writing his music?"
"If he does," said I, "he can come over to the Pavilion and see you. Then he will love Etiolles, where he will, no doubt, find friends; and he has the woods, and Fauchard will take him out with him. Oh, no; he will not find it dull." ”

“ She took the lamp in her hand, and led us from the room down a corridor; then, opening one side of a tall, double door, she led us into an immense picture-gallery.
Portraits of dead-and-gone Lichtenbergs stared at us from the walls. Men in armour, knights dressed for the chase, ladies whose beauty or ugliness wore the veil of the centuries.
"Why, this is the picture-gallery!" cried Eloise.
"It is the shortest way to the playroom," grimly replied Gretel, as she stalked before us with the light. ”