Lovers in Paradise

Chapter One ~ 1892-1

Chapter One ~ 1892Count Viktor van Haan looked sullenly at the glistening rice fields, the forest-crowned mountain peaks and the feathery coconut palms shimmering in the sunshine.

Everything was green everywhere, the lush green rice fields, the trees, the valleys. Even the frangipani and tjempake blossoms seemed somehow to lose their delicate white beauty in the green that surrounded them.

The Count had thought as he stepped from the Steamship, which seemed to him to have taken an unconscionable time to reach Bali, that exile, however beautiful, was oppressive.

Although it might perhaps be for only a short time including the months of travel for less than a year, it was in fact exile in a way undeniably humiliating to his self-esteem.

When the Queen Dowager of Holland had sent for the Count to come to The Palace in Amsterdam, he had expected it to be the usual request to attend a Court function or to receive on her behalf some distinguished visitor to Holland.

Such requests she had often made to him in the past, knowing that his charm, Diplomacy and knowledge of the world were very useful when there was no King of the Netherlands to perform such functions.

He told himself, however, that the Queen Dowager had utilised quite enough of his time in the last few months and he had no intention of being pressurised into doing anything that was not of particular interest to him.

Too often he had found himself saddled with extremely boring and pompous Statesmen and had found the endless and long-drawn-out banquets and interminable conferences almost unendurable.

It was understandable that the Count, who was spoken of as the most attractive man in Holland and was a distant cousin of the Queen Dowager, should be in great demand.

On the death of William III in 1890 Princess Wilhelmina had become Queen at the age of ten. Her mother had been appointed Queen Regent and now two years later the little Queen Wilhelmina was, of course, still in the schoolroom.

The Count had always been very fond of his cousin and quite prepared to offer her his loyalty and his respect.

Also when it suited him he was willing to wait attendance on her and perform the many duties she required of him so long as they did not come too often into conflict with his own plans.

It was not surprising then that by the time he was thirty he had become selfish and very conscious of his own prestige.

He was not only extremely handsome but he had a vibrant personality which impressed all those who visited the dull and conventional Dutch Court.

This was due perhaps to the fact that the Count was himself only half-Dutch.

His father had been the Head of one of the most respected and honoured families in the whole country.

The history of the van Haans was also the history of the Netherlands and it was difficult to speak of any great event in which the Dutch had taken part without finding that a van Haan was present.

But the Count’s mother had been French, the daughter of the Duc de Briac.

She had not only been beautiful but acclaimed for her intelligence and sparkling gaiety and was persona grata in the intellectual salons, which were patronised in Paris by everyone of consequence.

Everyone predicted that an alliance between Count Hendrik van Haan and Madeleine de Briac was bound to result in their progeny being exceptional.

Their son, Viktor, had measured up to all their expectations and now that his father was dead he found himself the owner of vast possessions that could only be rivalled by the Crown itself.

As he passed through the over-ornamented rooms of The Palace to the Queen Dowager’s apartments he thought, as he had thought so often before, that they needed redecorating and re-arranging.

There were treasures and paintings of inestimable value, but they were badly displayed.

The Count’s good taste was continually irritated by the fact that the Queen Dowager and those who served her were complacently pleased with their surroundings and had no intention of countenancing any change.

A footman in the resplendent Royal livery opened the doors of the Queen Dowager’s private drawing room and the Count then walked in to find, as he had expected, that she was alone.

He bowed conventionally over her hand and was not surprised to see an unmistakable glint of admiration in her eyes.

It was an expression that the Count was accustomed to seeing when any woman, old or young, looked at him and, if it had not been there, he would certainly have questioned why it was missing.

The admiration in the Queen Dowager’s eyes was, however, quickly replaced by one of anxiety.

“I sent for you, Viktor,” she began in her quiet voice, “to inform you that something very serious has happened and I wished you to learn of it from me rather than from anybody else.”

“What can have occurred?” the Count enquired.

He wondered as he spoke if the Queen Dowager had learnt of a rather regrettable party he had given two nights ago.

He thought while it was taking place that his guests’ behaviour would undoubtedly cause a scandal if anybody talked the next day.

But people, even the Dutch themselves, accepted some looseness of behaviour in those who belonged to the theatrical world, especially when they were French.

He thought it most unlikely that the Queen Dowager should have been told of certain regrettable incidents, although one could never be sure who would whisper spitefully in her ear and what tales she would find it expedient to remember.

“What has upset you?” he enquired. “If it concerns me, I can only express my deepest regrets. ma’am, that you should have been troubled.”

He always addressed the Queen Dowager formally and he knew that she liked the way he did not presume on their relationship.

“I am indeed upset,” she replied, “and I am afraid, Viktor, you are involved.”

The Count raised his eyebrows and waited.

He was not really apprehensive as to what might be disclosed. He knew only too well how any titbit of gossip could be mouthed over and exaggerated in Court circles and it was inevitable that he would always be suspected of the worst.

The Queen Dowager drew in a deep breath as if to sustain herself and then she started,

“Luise van Heydberg killed herself last night!”

She spoke without any emotion and yet it seemed as if the monotonous tone of her voice echoed and re-echoed around the room.

The Count stared at her incredulously.

“I ‒ don’t believe ‒ it!” he managed to stammer at last.

“It is true. She took enough laudanum to kill two strong men and, when her maid found her this morning, she must have been dead for eight or ten hours.”

“Good God!”

The Count expostulated the words. Then, forgetting all ceremony, he walked across the room to stand at the window gazing out onto the barren garden under a bleak November sky.

“I will do everything in my power to keep your name out of this,” the Queen Dowager added after a moment, “and to prevent there being a huge scandal.”

“Why should I get involved?” the Count asked her truculently.

“Because Luise had quarrelled with Willem over you.”

“Over me?”

“She had written a letter to you, an extremely indiscreet epistle, I understand, which any husband would resent.”

“How did Willem come to see it?”

“Luise was writing it in her private sitting room. He entered unexpectedly and, because she looked so guilty and tried to cover up the letter, he took it from her by force,”

“It is the kind of thing Willem would do!” the Count commented harshly.

The Queen Dowager sighed.

“You know just as well as I do how insanely jealous he is and, of course, where you are concerned he has had every justification.”

“It was all over two months – no, nearly three months ago.”

“Perhaps it was from your point of view,” the Queen Dowager said, “but Luise was still in love with you and behaved, I must admit, in an exceedingly hysterical manner.”

The Queen Dowager paused for a moment and then she added,

“So she died.”

The Count stared blindly out at the formal gardens. He was wishing, as he had wished so many times before, that he had never become involved with the Baroness van Heydberg, who had been the only attractive woman in attendance upon the Queen Dowager.

The other Ladies-in-Waiting were fat, middle-aged and dumpy and even to look at them made the Count think of suet puddings and dumplings that he had always disliked as a child.

In contrast Luise van Heydberg had been like a breath of spring on a winter’s day.

She had been beautiful, slim and very young for the post she occupied by right because her husband was of such high standing at Court.

The Baron’s second wife, Luise, was young enough to be his daughter and, as the Count quickly discovered, was not in the least in love with the man she had married.

Since she came from a family of no social importance, it had been for her a brilliant marriage accepted ecstatically by her parents who could hardly believe their good fortune.

It had not mattered to them that the Baron was now over fifty years of age or that his obsession for Luise from the moment he had seen her was likely at first to frighten and then revolt a very young girl.

All that mattered was that, as Baroness van Heydberg, she would become a hereditary Lady-in-Waiting to the Queen Dowager and have a position at Court which they had never imagined possible.

To the Count it had been just another of his light and amusing flirtations, which made the path of duty easier than it might have been otherwise.

He had no intention of embarking on anything serious with the wife of another man, nor did he intend, if he could help it, to add to the gossip writers’ store of incidents, which they repeated and re-repeated always to his disadvantage.

He had found Luise’s instantaneous response to his very first overtures intriguing and definitely flattering.

She had made it very clear that he embodied everything that she had dreamt about in her adolescent dreams and was the hero to whom she had been romantically inclined since she was a child.

“I worship you,” she had said to him once. “You are like Apollo. You bring a light to the darkness of my life.”

Satiated as he was with beautiful women and with affaires de coeur, which had occupied a great deal of his time since he was adolescent, the Count had been touched and at times moved by Luise’s passion for him.

Then about three months ago he had realised that it was getting out of hand.

She found it impossible, loving him as she did, to disguise her feelings even when they were surrounded by the stern disapproving eyes of those to whom protocol was a religion.

She began to plead with him to see her more than it was possible for him to do.

She wanted to take dangerous risks so that they could be together and for him to make love to her even when her husband was in the same building or only a room away.

The Count began to be afraid.

He felt like a man who had made a small hole in the dyke and now the whole sea was rushing in and threatening to overwhelm him and everyone else.

With an expertise that came from long practice, he began to disentangle himself both metaphorically as well as physically from the clinging arms of Luise, from her lips, hungry for his kisses, and from her insistent demands upon him.

She sensed, as a woman always can, what was happening.

So she bombarded him with letters and messages and, when they were alone, begged him to love her with an abandonment that made him uneasy.

Too late he realised that her nature was hysterical to the point where she could easily become unbalanced.

Too late he realised that he had started an avalanche that was now out of control.

“Listen, Luise, you are a married woman,” he said to her over and over again. “You have a duty to your husband. If you behave like this, he will take you away to the country and we shall never see each other again.”