The driver, half risen from his seat, still clutching one rein, seemed struck into an imbecility of terror; the horses, now quieted, stretching their necks luxuriously against the loosened bits, were sniffing at the snow, as if in the hope of lighting upon a blade of grass. Anna sat on the steps, her face blanched to a sort of grey.
“Up with you!” said János, and pushed her with his knee. “Do you not see your lady is faint?” The words aroused her, and they roused me. In truth, Ottilie seemed scarcely able to sustain herself; it was time I carried her away from such scenes.
After closing the doors, János handed me the musketoon and the cartouche-box, with the brief remark: “His lordship had better load again, the while I drive, for this coachman of ours is out of his wits with fright.” And thus we started once more; and in the crash and rattle of the speed to which János mercilessly put the horses, the stumbling paces of the approaching pursuers were lost to our hearing. The draught of air across her face revived Ottilie, who now sat up with courage, and tried to smile at me, though her face was still set in a curious hardness, whilst I, with the best ability of a sprained wrist, reloaded and reprimed. Events (as I have oft thought since) had proved how happy a thought it had been of mine (some two weeks before, when we made our preparations to leave London, to gratify my good János’s desire for one of those admirable double-barrels I had seen him so appreciatively and so covetously handle at Fargus and Manton’s, in Soho.)
When we reached the neck of the valley, I leaned out again and looked back. The scene of that crisis in my eventful life lay already some hundred yards below us. The second of our pursuers—a dragoon of Liegnitz, as I now could see by his white coat, dirty yellow against the snow—was in the act of dismounting from his exhausted steed. I watched him bend over the prostrate figure of his chief for an instant or two; then straighten himself to gaze up at our retreating coach; then, with his arms behind him and his legs apart, in what, even at that distance, I could see was an attitude of philosophical indifference, turn towards the approaching figure of his comrade, who, some hundred yards further down, now made his appearance on the road, crawling onwards on an obviously foundered horse. It was evident that whatever admiration the Margrave may have commanded during his lifetime, his death did not inspire his followers with any burning desire to avenge it.
I leant out further and handed back the loaded musketoon to János.
“You may spare our horses now,” said I; “there is no fear of further pursuit to-day.”
“Ay, my lord, so I see,” responded the heiduck, with a cheerful jerk of the head in our rear. “And, moreover, in a quarter of an hour we shall be across the border.”
| * | * | * | * | * | * |
Now of our story there is little more to tell. And well for us that it is so; for one may, as I have said, chronicle strange adventures and perils of life and limb, and one may pour out on paper the sorrows of an aching heart, the frenzy of despair; but the sweet intimate details of happiness must be kept secret and sacred, not only from the pen but from the tongue. It will not, however, come amiss that, to complete my narrative—in which, one day, if Heaven will, my children shall learn the romance of their parents’ wooing and marriage—I should set down how it came about that the Margrave contrived (to his own undoing) to track us so speedily; how, with his death, came the dispelling of the shadows upon both our lives.
Shortly after our return to Tollendhal, a letter reached my wife from the other Ottilie. It was evidently written in the greatest distraction of mind, upon the very morning after our escape from Budissin. Although conversation may not have been a strong point with Madam Lothner, she seemed to wield a very fluent pen. She took two large sheets to inform us how, upon her husband’s return on the previous night, his suspicions being by some unaccountable means awakened, he had forced from her the confession of all that had passed between us in the afternoon. I cannot here take up my space and time with the record of her excuses, her anguish, her points of exclamation, her appeals to Heaven to witness the innocence of her intentions. But when I read her missive I understood Anna’s contemptuous prophecy: “She keep a secret? the sheep-head!” I understood also my wife’s attitude of tolerant affection, and I blushed when I remembered the time when, blinded by conceit, I had sought this great mock-pearl, when the real jewel lay at my hand.... But to proceed.