Queen in Waiting - Plaidy Jean. Страница 22

But that was the old life—a new adventure lay before her. In a short time now she would face the unknown.

"You are sorry for me," she said to those about her bed. "Why? I have always wanted to satisfy my curiosity about life after death. My friends ... even Leibniz ... could not explain that to me. Now I am going to find out. There is nothing to weep for."

'We have sent word to the King of Prussia," said George Lewis.

She tried to smile. "He will give me a splendid funeral," she

said. "And although it will not matter to me, it will please him for he loves pomp and ceremony."

She saw her nephew and niece by her bedside—George Augustus and pretty young Sophia Dorothea named after her ill-fated mother.

**I hope you will be happy," she said and held out a hand to the girl. Sophia Dorothea, so pretty and so like her mother, came forward, took it and kissed it.

"Bless you, my dear child," said Sophia Charlotte. "I wish you a happy life. And you too, George Augustus. May you find a good wife and live as happily as is possible on this earth."

Marie von Pollnitz had brought a chaplain into the room. And Sophia Charlotte asked him what he wanted.

He said that he had come to pray with her.

"Let me die without quarrelling with you," she said. "For years I have studied religious questions. You can tell me nothing that I don't know already. And I die in peace."

"Your Highness in the sight of God, Kings and Queens are mortally equal with all men," said the chaplain.

"I know it well," she answered.

Then she closed her eyes.

She was smiling serenely as she passed into the unknown.

Caroline saw the riders coming into Ansbach. She ran down to greet them for she believed they would have letters from Sophia Charlotte.

She stood impatiently in the hall of the Ansbach Palace under the Glorification of Karl the Wild as the messengers approached, and wondered why they looked so sombre.

"Your Serene Highness," said one, "there is bad news from Hanover."

"What news?" she demanded.

"The Queen of Prussia has died on a visit to her mother "

"Dead! " She heard the word but was not sure who had said it. She was aware of a rushing in her eyes, a sudden dizziness. This was not true. This was a nightmare. There was not such misery possible in the whole of the world.

She gripped the statue of the Margrave to steady herself. And she said again in a voice of utter desolation: "Dead! " There was nothing more to say. Her world was shattered; there was no reason for making decisions, for caring what became of her; there was nothing more in life to live for.

The Courtship of Caroline

When the greatest catastrophe imaginable struck, one did not sit down and weep senseless tears, at least not if one were the Electress Sophia of Hanover. There was only one way of living and that was to become busily occupied in some new project.

There must be an attempt to fill the emptiness left by the irreplaceable. One must look for substitutes.

The Princess Caroline, herself emotionally crippled, could help Sophia bear a grief which they shared. That they would have in common and so much more.

Finding no comfort in prayer—either, as Sophia said, reproaching, or pleading for better treatment from, a Divine Being—she tried to set in motion a plan which, if it materialized, would at least make life tolerable.

If she could bring Caroline to Hanover, she would soothe her grief, give herself a new interest in life, and so continue living for the years which were left to her.

Poor Caroline! No one now would plan for her happiness as Sophia Charlotte had done. She was not a weak young fool, but she was without powerful friends.

The sooner I can marry her to George Augustus the better, thought the Electress Sophia; and set herself to work out a scheme for doing this.

It was exasperating to think that she had first to get George Lewis's permission. In fact it was the same in everything. He was the master now; and what a different place he had made of the court at Hanover since his father's death! He had all his father's lechery and none of his wit; although of course during the lifetime of Ernest Augustus she had had to endure the reign of the notorious Clara von Platen who had been his maitresse en litre for so many years.

George Lewis at least had had the wisdom or the luck to choose stupid women for his mistresses. They would never interfere in politics as Clara von Platen had done. George Lewis was like a lumbering great ox; he had no finesses such as his father had; he was without sensitivity; but he kept his women in order, and when he beckoned to one she immediately rose and followed him; and the others dared not protest. He made it clear that women for him were of use in one place only and that was the bedchamber.

Sophia had risen from her sick bed feeling weak and exhausted, not perhaps ready to do battle with her son; and yet she felt the need for speedy action. Who could say, now that Sophia Charlotte was dead perhaps Caroline would try to forget her misery by embarking on a new life as wife to the Archduke Charles.

She went to her beloved Herrenhausen to try to recover her health and decide what should be done but even Herrenhausen which, during her husband's lifetime, she had considered hers, was not the same. For one thing George Lewis had refused to let her have the place to herself. She must be contented with one wing, he said. Herrenhausen like the Alte Palais and the Leine Schloss belonged to him and he would have her remember it.

Dear Herrenhausen with so many memories of the past, with its avenue of limes and its park which was really too grand for the rather unpretentious house which without its grounds would indeed look merely like a gentleman's house and not a Palace! One hundred and twenty acres laid out, naturally, in

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the manner of Versailles, with the inevitable statues and fountains; the terraces, the parterres.

Here she had walked with dear Sophia Charlotte before her marriage. How unhappy the girl had been and how it had hurt Sophia to part with her—more so she believed than it had hurt Sophia Charlotte to go. But the marriage had been a good one for she had become Queen of Prussia and the King had been indulgent to her. If their son could marry young Sophia Dorothea the family would be kept intact. Would his father agree?

In the meantime there was Caroline—the immediate problem. She must throw herself into this for the sake of Caroline, for the sake of Sophia Charlotte's memory and because when you were old there was nothing left except living through the young.

She sent a message to the Leine Schloss requesting George Lewis to come to Herrenhausen to see her since she was not well enough to go to him.

He sent an ungracious message back that he was detained that day but would, if his business permitted, visit her the next.

"He has the manners of a stable boy," she grumbled. Unfortunately it was this stable boy who ruled them all at Hanover.

In a grudging mood, George Lewis set out for Herrenhausen which was about two miles from Hanover.

What was his mother after now? he wondered. He had been disturbed enough by the foolish action of his sister in coming to her old home to die. Since she must have known how ill she was, why hadn't she stayed at home to die decently. He hated sentimental scenes and had no intention of indulging in them.

Not that his mother was fond of them either.

No, it was more likely that she had some proposition to put to him and believed his sister's death might have put him in a mood to grant it. She was making a big mistake if she did—and his mother was not one to make mistakes.