My lady, veiled and silent, retired for an hour’s rest, and so away from the peering curiosity of the assembling servants. And my lord paced the common-room, feverishly waiting for the coming of the new conveyance which János, after one of his brief requisitioning interviews (pandour style), had announced would be forthcoming with brief delay.
The common-room was dank and cold enough, but my lord’s soul was in warm consorting: it was still exalted by the last look that my lady had thrown back at him, raising her hood for one instant as, ascending the stairs, she had left him for the first separation.
In less than an hour the tinkling of collar-bells and the sound of horses’ hoofs, clattering with a vigour of the best augury, were heard approaching. Even as János entered to confirm by word the success of his quest, my beloved appeared with a readiness which to me was sweeter than any words: she too had been watching the moments which would speed us onwards together once more.
Through a pretty concourse of dependants, all of whom had now got wind of the rain of gratuities with which the great traveller’s servant eased the wheels of difficulty, we entered our new chariot. I can hardly mind now what sort of a vehicle this was. I believe in its days it had been a decent enough travelling chaise: at any rate it moved fast. Once more we rolled through the silent street, on the hillside roads, up hill and down dale, my bride warmly nestled in my arms, and both of us telling over again the tangled tale of the year that had been wasted for us.
And thus, in the idle iteration of lovers’ talk, with the framing of plans for the future, changeable and bright as the clouds of a summer’s day, did we fill the rapid hours which brought us to Zittau in the early morning.
But Zittau was still within the dominions of the eloping Princess’s father; and at Zittau, therefore, much the same procedure was hastily adopted as at the previous stage: another hour or so of separation, another chaise and fresh horses, and once more a flight along the mountain roads, as the dawn was spreading grey and chill over the first spurs of the Lusatian hills.
This time we spoke but little to each other. The fatigue of a great reaction was upon us. Anna was already snoring in her corner, her head completely enveloped in her shawl, when, as I gazed down tenderly at my wife’s face, I saw the sweet lids close in the very middle of a smile, and the placidity of sleep fall upon her.
I have had, since the Budissin events, many joys; but there is none the savour of which dwells with so subtle, so delicate, a perfume in my memory as that of my drive in the first dawn with my wife asleep in my arms.
It was not yet twelve hours since I had found her; and during those twelve hours I had only seen her in the turmoil of emotion, or under stress of anxiety, or by some flitting lamplight. Her image dwelt in my mind as I had first beheld it through the glass of the palace window, lovely in the first bloom of graceful womanhood, stately amid the natural surroundings of her rank. Now, wrapped in confident slumber, swathed in her great robes of fur, the only thing visible of her young body being the little head resting in the hollow of my arm, the fair skin flushing faintly in the repose of sleep, fresh even in the searching cruelty of the growing light, like the petal of a tea rose, the rhythmic pulse of her bosom faintly beating against my heart, she was once more, for a little while, to me the Ottilie I had held in my castle at Tollendhal. And as, for fear of disturbing her, I restrained my passionate longing to kiss those parted lips, those closed lids with the soft long eyelashes, I could not tell which I yearned for most: the Princess, the ripe woman I had found again ... or the wayward mistress playing at wife I had schooled myself to banish in the wasted days of my overweening vanity.
But why thus linger over the first stage of that happy journey? Joy can only be told by contrast to misery. We can explain sorrow in a hundred pages, but if delight cannot be told in one, it cannot be told at all. It is too elusive to be kept within the meshes of many words. Sorrows we forget,—by a merciful dispensation,—and it may be wholesome to keep their remembrance in books. Joys ever cling to the phials of memory like a scent which nought can obliterate.