A German Pompadour. Hon. Marie Hay
I wrote to thee, I have left my Lord of Marlborough's army, being invited to visit the court of my honoured brother in arms, Monseigneur le Duc de Wirtemberg. This happened six months since; meanwhile I have married Mademoiselle Marie von Stuben, a lady of Rottenburg (a small town on the borders of my Lord Duke's territory). I have been appointed Kammerjunker at court, and shall not be returning to Güstrow for some time. I write this news so that thou mayst break it gently to our mother, who, I fear, may be disappointed in that I do not return immediately to visit her. But assure her that I will ride North to see her whenever I can, and that shortly I hope to be in a position to offer her hospitality in Stuttgart.
'I am convinced that it would be to thine advantage, dear sister, if thou camest immediately to visit us. Tell our mother that I know many rich noblemen here, and that I will endeavour to arrange a marriage for thee, more fitting than the alliance of our sister Sittmann. The great thing is that thou shouldst set forth soon, for there will be court festivities in the spring. After which, there is usually little gaiety until the late autumn.
'A good friend of mine, Madame de Ruth of Oberhausen, is willing to receive thee, and will arrange that thou shouldst take part in these court gaieties. A thousand greetings to our mother, and beg her, for my sake, to permit thee to travel southward without too much delay.—Thy brother,
'Freidrich Wilhelm von Grävenitz.
'Neuhaus, Oberhausen,
près Rottenburg sur le Neckar.
Wirtemberg.
Ce 29 Nov. 1705.
'I hope thy friend Monsieur Gabriel has really taught thee fine French, for no one speaks German here at court; it is considered as peasants' speech! As thou wilt see, I do not even write to thee in German! French talk, French manners, in spite of French battles!'
Wilhelmine sat motionless for a few moments after she had perused this effusion. In her mind she saw a succession of pictures of courtly splendour and graceful adventure—and in each she herself was the central figure. She looked around her bare room; the bulging walls, the rude furniture. Her eyes narrowed into that strange look of hers which the people of Güstrow declared was like a serpent's gaze, and could hold animals powerless as long as it was directed upon them. She was thinking deeply—swiftly—and perhaps it was at this moment that Wilhelmine von Grävenitz vowed her soul to worldly success; her indomitable will directed to the goal of worldly power at all costs and at all hazards. She rose shivering. It was cheerless and cold in her room; the momentary gleam of the winter sun had died away, and the sky was grey and heavy with coming snow. She unhooked her cloak from the peg, fastened it round her, and with her letter hidden away in the folds she stepped softly out and down the stair, throwing a quick backward glance to see if her mother followed or observed her. Noiselessly she lifted the latch of the house door and took her way up the narrow street.
She passed the old Rathaus with the quaint fourteenth-century belfry, and the clock whence sprang out the brightly painted leaden figure of a knight, to smite the chime with his sword at each hour. In the market-place beneath, the weekly market was being held.
Many small booths had been erected, and the venders were expostulating with the citizens, who drove hard bargains with them. It was a picturesque scene enough, had Wilhelmine paused to watch—much colour in the peasants' dress, much variety in the women's headgear, and over all the wonderful old building, which would have delighted a painter's soul. That morning Wilhelmine noted nothing of all this, though on another occasion she would have taken pleasure in it, for like most sensuous natures she had a keen feeling for colour, and the grouping of a peasant crowd appealed to her artistic eye; but that day she was so absorbed in her own dreams that she did not even observe her mother walking towards her, an expression of annoyance on her sharp features. Wilhelmine started when Frau von Grävenitz, laying an ungentle hand on her shoulder, said close to her ear: 'And where may my fine daughter be going at so early an hour? Generally Miss Lie-abed is still reposing at nine of the clock!'
'O mother!' she answered, 'I am going to Monsieur Gabriel for my singing lesson. God knows, you cannot grudge me that, for he teaches me without payment.' Her quick wit told her that to draw her mother's attention to this fruitful source of complaint, her poverty, would ensure an escape unquestioned. She reflected that she could tell of Friedrich's letter, pretending she had received it on her way home. Or, if her mother discovered the earlier delivery of the post, she would say the angry attack in the market-place had made her forget to mention it. This plan met with success, and Frau von Grävenitz remained in the pleasurable throes of a talkative woman with a grievance, holding forth to an appreciative audience composed of several of her gossips, who had gathered round as soon as they heard her shrill excited tones. A market-woman or two joined the group and stood with hands on hips, listening with open amusement, for the garrulous dame was a well-known character in the country town.
As Wilhelmine gained the shelter of the dark street which ran from the Marktplatz to the cathedral, she saw Pastor Müller's fat form added to her mother's assemblage. How she hated that stout person, his pompous condescension to her, and his greasy face!
The Klosterstrasse seemed deliciously quiet after the noise of the Marktplatz, and before her, at the end of the street, she could see one tall buttress of the cathedral, and a corner of the graveyard. She walked up the pathway between the tombs and pushed open the heavy church door. The cathedral nave was dark. Wilhelmine peered about and, thinking there was no one in the church, turned to go, when from the organ, far away near the high altar (or where the high altar had been before Protestant fury had torn it down), came a whisper like the awakening of the cathedral's soul; a long-drawn note which grew stronger and fuller, filling the whole building with a pulse of sound.
Wilhelmine paused, then, turning silently to one of the oaken pews, sat down. A wondrous melody crept through the air, strong, noble, uncomplicated; then followed chords growing each moment more the expression of a soul on fire. They rose stronger, they swelled and strove and implored, they wailed with the passion of finite hearts that yearn infinitely; then suddenly sank back into the solemn major key whence they started. And it was as the renunciation of some terrible striving, as though the organ chanted the litany of some perfect calm reached through an agony of endeavour and suffering. Wilhelmine's eyes were wet, while she leaned her head against the back of the oaken pew. To her music was the only form of prayer, and it never failed to move her to a vague aspiration, she herself knew hardly what. Her dreams of the world faded, and she was only cognisant of the dim church and the inspired improvisation of her beloved Monsieur Gabriel. This was his answer to her as yet unasked question. She had come to him for guidance, to beg his counsel concerning her brother's letter, and he had told her in his music all that he knew of the world. He had shown her the cruel agony of the worldly life, the unrest, the bootless seeking, the satiety of realised ambition, and the calmness, the peace of the renunciation of these things.
The organ was silent for a moment, and then through the stillness of the shadowy aisle floated the first notes of an 'Ave Maria,' which Wilhelmine knew well and had often sung when no disturbing element of disapproving Protestant burgherdom was near. Instinctively she came in at the appointed bar for the voice's commencement. 'Ave Maria gratia plena,' she sang, and her powerful notes echoed through the cathedral with all the sombre glory which lay in her great contralto voice. The player at the organ immediately softened his music to a mere accompanying whisper, which yet supported the voice, greeting it with the newly awakened soul of the organ. 'Ora pro nobis, peccatoribus,' she sang, and surely the Mother of God must have listened to so wonderful a tone prayer? 'Nunc et in hora mortis nostrae, Amen.' And the organ wandered on repeating the 'Amen' again and again in a solemn, dreamy deepening of chords, which the beautiful voice followed and answered with that certainty and ease which belong to a few of the world's singers when they sing to the accompaniment of one with whom they are in perfect musical and sympathetic understanding. The music came to an end and the church seemed doubly silent, with the painful stillness one sometimes feels when a song is ended; it is almost the same sudden forlorn feeling as when a beloved friend goes away, that sense of the departure of a beautiful presence, or it may be that our souls have returned to earth after soaring towards some beauteous mystic region. Wilhelmine passed up the nave, through a small door in the side of the carven wooden