.. -*- encoding: utf-8 -*-

.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 44286
   :PG.Title: If Youth but Knew!
   :PG.Released: 2013-11-25
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Agnes Castle
   :DC.Creator: Egerton Castle
   :MARCREL.ill: Lancelot Speed
   :DC.Title: If Youth but Knew!
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1906
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

====================
"IF YOUTH BUT KNEW!"
====================

.. clearpage::

.. pgheader::

.. container:: coverpage

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. figure:: images/img-cover.jpg
      :align: center
      :alt: Cover art

      Cover art

   .. vspace:: 4

.. container:: frontispiece

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. _`Her child eyes were still upon him and seemed to ask for something yet.  And, at this, he bent and kissed her gently, as he would have kissed a child`:

.. figure:: images/img-front.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Her child eyes were still upon him and seemed to ask for something yet.  And, at this, he bent and kissed her gently, as he would have kissed a child, and did not guess that, at the touch of his lips, Sidonia's woman's soul was born.

   *Her child eyes were still upon him and seemed to ask for something yet.  And, at this, he bent and kissed her gently, as he would have kissed a child, and did not guess that, at the touch of his lips, Sidonia's woman's soul was born*. (See page `196`_.)

.. vspace:: 4

.. container:: titlepage white-space-pre-line

   .. class:: x-large center

      "IF YOUTH BUT KNEW!"

   .. vspace:: 2

   .. class:: medium center

      BY

   .. class:: large center

      AGNES & EGERTON CASTLE

   .. class:: small center

      AUTHORS OF
      "ROSE OF THE WORLD," "FRENCH NAN,"
      ETC., ETC.

   .. vspace:: 3

   ..

      |  "*Si jeunesse savait...*
      |  *Si vieillesse pouvait!*"
      |            (*Old French Song*)

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. class:: small center

      WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY LANCELOT SPEED

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. class:: medium center

      New York
      THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
      1906

   .. class:: small center

      *All rights reserved*

   .. vspace:: 4

.. container:: verso center white-space-pre-line

   .. class:: small

      COPYRIGHT, 1906,
      BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

   .. class:: small

      Set up and electrotyped.  Published April, 1906.

   .. vspace:: 3

   .. class:: small

      Norwood Press
      J. S. Cushing & Co.—Berwick & Smith Co.
      Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   CONTENTS

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent small

   CHAPTER

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

I.  `The Vagabond`_
II.  `The Forest House`_
III.  `Green Adventure`_
IV.  `Parting of the Ways`_
V.  `The Invitation of the Road`_
VI.  `The Burg`_
VII.  `Guests of Chance`_
VIII.  `Roses of Trianon`_
IX.  `Home-Coming`_
X.  `The Burgrave's Welcome`_
XI.  `Tangled Tales`_
XII.  `The Burgrave's Farewell`_
XIII.  `The *Oubliette*`_
XIV.  `Love among the Ruins`_
XV.  `*Furens quid Femina Possit*`_
XVI.  `'Twixt Cup and Lip`_
XVII.  `The Skirt of War`_
XVIII.  `The Raid`_
XIX.  `The Melody in the Violets`_
XX.  `The True Reading of a Letter`_
XXI.  `At the Mock Versailles`_
XXII.  `The *Cabinet Noir*`_
XXIII.  `The King's Mail`_
XXIV.  `Portents`_
XXV.  `The Perverseness of Words`_
XXVI.  `The Ways of Little Courts`_
XXVII.  `The Song of the Woods`_
XXVIII.  `A Treacherous Haven`_
XXIX.  `The Homing Bird`_
XXX.  `Dawn Music`_

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

.. vspace:: 2

`Her child eyes were still upon him and seemed to ask
for something yet.  And, at this, he bent and kissed
her gently, as he would have kissed a child`_ . . . *Frontispiece*

.. vspace:: 1

`"The something that lived on, the miserable carcass,
the old man—call it myself, if you will"`_

.. vspace:: 1

`But, as the oncomer drew nearer, the glimmer of hope
died in the discontented gentleman's heart`_

.. vspace:: 1

`As she bent, offering him the green goblet of wine, her
heavy plait fell against his shoulder`_

.. vspace:: 1

`Wellenshausen`_

.. vspace:: 1

`"Look, look, do you see? ... There are two men
coming up the road with a pack-horse!"`_

.. vspace:: 1

`"The high-born, my mistress, had not expected you
before to-morrow," said the butler with a deep bow`_

.. vspace:: 1

`Meanwhile, up in his chamber, the Burgrave sat in
sodden brooding`_

.. vspace:: 1

`Steven almost called aloud, as he heard their heavy plunge
into the ambushed waters`_

.. vspace:: 1

`Sidonia stood, shaking and pruning herself like a bird,
her hair glinting in the light`_

.. vspace:: 1

`"Spread your dark wings, obscene birds! ... the scent
of Death is in the air.  In a little while you may
gorge! ... caw—caw!"`_

.. vspace:: 1

`"Hurl down the Guard, and the field is ours! ... Hurl
down the Guard, aha!"`_

.. vspace:: 1

`"She always loved violets. These have no scent,
... but hers—oh, they were sweet!"`_

.. vspace:: 1

`They spread him beside the Jurist in the moonlight—with
a certain effect of symmetry`_

.. vspace:: 1

`... the great bag on his back, undiminished, save
for two warrants and one private missive`_

.. vspace:: 1

`What she was saying was sufficiently remarkable: "Your
Majesty mistakes"`_

.. vspace:: 1

`"Positively, a bird from the tyrant's aviary," he cried.  "A
foreign, French bird!"`_

.. vspace:: 1

`His child-wife! ...  The watchman was chanting the tale of the first
morning hour`_

.. vspace:: 1

`The End`_

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center medium white-space-pre-line

   TO
   "MARIE-LOUISE"

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   FOREWORD

.. vspace:: 2

*"Is it not," remarks Fiddler Hans the wanderer, somewhere
in these pages, "instructive to see how the ruler of
Westphalia passes his time while the best manhood of his
country is warring for the Empire—burnt in Spain,
frozen in Russia?"*

*Few people have cared, it would seem, to study that
little chapter of history, the rule of Jerome in Westphalia;
yet it is curious enough—as a record of human folly,
if for no other reason.*

*That incredible Westphalia of Napoleon's making!
Harlequin's coat contrived out of Hesse, Brunswick, and
a score of smaller principalities, hemmed with a shred or
two of Prussian province; incongruous rag torn from
the map of the old Germanic Empire and flung by the
conqueror, between two victories, to his "little brother
Jerome"!*

*A strangely pusillanimous character was the amiable
Jerome.  His annals include, in the days of his youth,
flight from his ship, within sight of an English blockading
squadron (not through cowardice, be it said: there
was pluck enough in the little man, but because of his
thirst for the pleasures of land), and, in more mature
years, desertion from the Grand Army at a crucial
moment, upon the mere impulse of wounded vanity.  How
so grotesque a potentate was allowed, for seven years, to
lord over, to plunder and demoralize, some three millions
of sturdy Germans, to discredit the name of Bonaparte and
weaken the fabric of the new Empire, remains one of the
enigmas of history.*

*But, then, the new Emperor must ever be a maker of
kings; carve new kingdoms out of old.  For his "Beau
Sabreur," Murat, there is Naples and the Two Sicilies;
for his infant son, nothing less than Rome; for his younger
brothers, Holland, Spain, ... Westphalia!  What is
there to restrain great Cæsar?  Hark to his mighty insolence:*

*"The Emperor of the French"* (*so M. Walckenaer, in
his official work,* La Géographic Moderne, *brings to a
conclusion the chapter on* la France allemande),
"*\possesses likewise in Germany the principality of Erfurth
and the county of Katzenellenbogen:* mais Sa Majesté
n'a pas encore décidé sur leur sort."

*His Majesty has not yet decided upon their fate!*

*About the fate of Westphalia there had been no indecision.
From one day to another, "little brother Jerome"
acknowledged failure in every other career, naval, civil,
or military, found himself seated upon a German throne.
And thus we have him, inconceivable fop, strutting and
ogling, upon the scene.—A king whose life energies,
when the cracking of his brother's empire may be heard
on every side, are divided between the devising of new
costumes, the planning of revels, and the discovery of fresh
favourites.  A scamp, fascinating enough, but incapable
of a single strong or noble thought.  A cynic and a
libertine; withal a gull, in his way.  A man who could
repudiate without a pang of regret the fair young Virginian
wife of his youth, to marry without love a "suitable German
princess."  A man who flaunted his debauchery and his
barefaced improbity, yet could be scared to distraction by
the imaginary threat of a little haunting tune; the tune
which, with its twang of mockery and warning, was as
ill an omen to his superstitious fancy as the shadow of
"the little red man," or the date of Christmas, to his great
Imperial brother.*

*And under him, that hasty patchwork of old German
lands: his incongruous kingdom.  His people, grave
religious dwellers of the mountain and of the wood,
unconvinced subjects of the godless Welsch, dumbly chafing
under his insensate taxation.  His new-fangled court,
aping the vanished Versailles of Louis XV., yet combining
with the reckless frivolity of the Old Order all the
ill-breeding of revolutionary* parvenus.  *Over all, a government
so incompetent, so corrupt, as to stupefy or demoralize
all that had dealings with it—friend or foe, high or low,
French official or German landowner; the magistrates,
the very students; the old rulers of the soil themselves,
nervously awaiting the inevitable* débâcle, *stretching, the
while, both hands towards the plunder.*

*In these topsy-turvy days no man rightly knows whether
he belong to ancient Teutonic duchy or to French*
département; *whether the accepted rule be* code Napoléon *or
hoary feudal law.  And thus, up in his ancestral* Burg,
*an old lord of the land (such an one as the Burgrave of
Wellenshausen) may well assume that he still holds the
right of "high and low justice" on his own territory;
whereas, down at Cassel, the mock Versailles, this same
out-of-date character would naturally fall in with the new
views of marriage and divorce, or "annulment by decree,"
brought so conclusively into fashion by the Bonapartes,
royal or Imperial.*

*Above all this confusion, the cloud of war, gathering
heavier and heavier.  And from the mines of the Harz,
from the deeps of the Thuringian forests, from the lanes
of the old town, up into the very anterooms of the palace,
conspiracy busy at work: conspiracy in the barracks,
conspiracy in the universities, exploding on all sides, futile
squibs as yet, but ominous.  The King closes his eyes,
seals his ears to all but sights and sounds of pleasure.
So dancing, the harlequin kingdom goes to its death.*

*And it is through the mazes of this carnival, unique in
the lenten gravity of nations, that wander the footsteps of
the singer of youth, and of the lovers of this story.*

.. vspace:: 4

..

   |  O hear me sing:—If youth but knew
   |    The glory of his April day,
   |    Would he not cast the year away
   |  For one more dawn of dream and dew?
   |
   |  Would he the fevered moons pursue,
   |    Not rather with the spring delay,
   |    Crowned with its leaf?  If youth but knew
   |  The glory of his April day!
   |
   |  For what shall unto age accrue,
   |    If youth from joyance turn and stray?
   |    Autumn is but the Spring grown grey,
   |  Its harvest roses mixed with rue....
   |
   |  If youth but knew—if youth but knew!
   |
   |  (*The Singer of Youth*)
   |
   |  ELINOR SWEETMAN

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`"The something that lived on, the miserable carcass, the old man—call it myself, if you will"`:

.. figure:: images/img-001.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "The something that lived on, the miserable carcass, the old man—call it myself, if you will—it took the violets and began to walk away.... And it has walked ever since!"

   "*The something that lived on, the miserable carcass, the old man—call it myself, if you will—it took the violets and began to walk away.... And it has walked ever since!*"

.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE VAGABOND`:

.. class:: center x-large bold

   IF YOUTH BUT KNEW

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

CHAPTER I

.. class:: center medium bold

THE VAGABOND

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,*
   |    *Nor a friend to know me;*
   |  *All I seek, the heaven above*
   |    *And the road below me.*"
   |            R. L. STEVENSON.

.. vspace:: 2

The traveller sat upon the milestone just where
the road, skirting the brow of the hill, branched
off into the forest.  At his feet lay the detached
wheel; further away, in pathetic attitude, the
remainder of the chaise itself.  A stout bay,
seemingly unconscious of as handsome a pair of broken
knees as ever horse displayed, was tethered to a
stump of tree, browsing such tender grass or leafage
as grew within his reach.  The situation spoke for
itself; and the young traveller's face spoke for the
situation as eloquently as Nature (who had
bestowed upon him a markedly disdainful and
somewhat impassive set of features) would permit.

Behind him rose the cool gloom of the forest.
Below lay the plain, gold-powdered by the level rays
of a sinking sun.  Between the edge of the road and
the forest margin ran a stream.  A robin sang to
the glowing west from the topmost branch of a fir
tree.  But he on the milestone was blind to the gold
of the valley, deaf to the gold of the song.  "Now,
here's a pretty kettle of fish!" was the burden of his
thoughts.

To have been stuck a whole hour upon a stone,
while a postilion ranged the country on horseback
in one direction, and a valet a-foot in the other, and
no help as yet forthcoming; not to have had himself
within hail, all those weary minutes, one single human
being—between intervals of drowsiness he cursed
the peaceful valley land, with its fair fields and
orchards, as the most God-forsaken of countries!

Presently his moody eye quickened.  On the
road below a moving object was approaching.
Only a pedestrian, alas!  Nevertheless, he might
prove of use for succour or advice.

But, as the oncomer drew nearer and began to foot
the ascent, the glimmer of hope died in the
discontented gentleman's heart.  Here was no sturdy
native, likely guide to smithy or village inn.  'Twas
a mere ambulant musician, as strange, doubtless,
to the country as himself: the sun-rays were even
now glinting back, roseate, from the varnish of a
fiddle.—The traveller relapsed into moodiness.

.. _`But, as the oncomer drew nearer, the glimmer of hope died in the discontented gentleman's heart`:

.. figure:: images/img-012.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: *But, as the oncomer drew nearer, the glimmer of hope died in the discontented gentleman's heart.*

   *But, as the oncomer drew nearer, the glimmer of hope died in the discontented gentleman's heart.*

At the steep curve of the hillside, man and fiddle
vanished from view.  Nevertheless, that he was still
climbing, the advance (in interrupted measure) of
a singular little tune, half sourdine, half pizzicato,
soon proclaimed.  It seemed at first so woven in
with the babble of the brook, the deep choiring of
the forest and the song of the robin, that the youth
on the milestone hardly realized its separate existence.
But, as it hovered ever closer, he was forced to listen
and even to follow.  It seemed the very song of the
rover; of the rover on foot, humble and yet proud;
without a penny, without a bond; glad of the free
water to drink and the hunk of bread by the roadside—a
song of the nodding grass and the bird in the
hedge, of the dancing leaf, the darting swallow, the
wide kindly skies.  Oh, the road is full of gay things,
and tender things, of sweetness and refreshment, of
wholesome fatigue and glorious sleep, for those that
know its secrets!

"Good evening to you, young sir."

The little tune had stopped.  A man's figure,
exaggeratedly thin, black against the sunset, had
emerged over the knuckle of the hill and, with a wide
sweep of the arm, was saluting.

The gesture of the black silhouette seemed so
courtly, the voice that came from it so refined, that
the young gentleman almost rose to return the
salutation: but, in time, he caught sight of the violin
curves....  Pooh, it was the fiddling vagabond!
Ashamed of his impulse, he drew forth a florin and
flung it.

The musician skipped nimbly on one side; the
coin fell, flashing in the red sun-shafts.  He looked
from it to the imperious donor, whose face he
scanned keenly for a moment, then smiled; and his
teeth shone as white as a wolf's in the deep tan of his
face.  Then off went his battered hat again and out
was stretched a sinewy leg in dusty blue stocking,
to accompany a bow such as twenty years ago
might have roused the envy of your finest Versailles
marquis.

"I greet you!  I salute you, my young lord!"  The
fiddler rose from his inclination and burst out
laughing.  "Oh, cease fondling those pistols in your
pocket, worthy sir," cried he, "for by Calliope,
daughter of Jove and Mnemosyne, 'tis not your
money-bags I covet just now, but, oh! your golden youth!"

"The fellow has a wild eye," thought the gentleman.
Now, it is a question whether even a highway
robber were not more agreeable to encounter on a
lonely road than a madman.

"If it be madness to honour in you such a gift of
the gods," said the singular vagrant, reading the
thought, "why then, yes, I am mad, sir—stark,
staring."

He fell back on one foot and bent the advanced
knee, tucked his instrument under his chin, where
it settled like a bird to its nest, and drew his bow
across the strings with a long plaint.

"O youth!" he intoned between two sighs of the
catgut.  "O spring!  O wings of the soul!  O
virginity of the heart, expectation, unknown mysteries
of life!  O wealth of strength and yearning!—See,
now, how you sit," he cried, dropping into speech
again, "on the fringe of the forest, in a strange land,
with the sunset valley at your feet, and the stream
running you know not where beside you, and the
bird over your head singing the desires of your soul.
Why, by Apollo, young man, here are you in your
youth, in the spring of your world, in the very middle
of an adventure, and——"

Again limber fingers moved along the strings;
and, with a sense of wonder, the traveller felt within
his being some answering outcry.  But he stiffened
himself against it.

"Harkee, my man," said he, trying to frown,
"I am in no mood for fooling.  Take up your florin,
and begone.—Or, stay, earn another by telling me,
if you can, where I am, and how far lies the nearest
village?"

"Sir," replied the other, urbanely, "fellow-travellers
should assist each other without any sordid
consideration.  (Ah, had you offered me of your
youth, now!)  You are, an it please you, just between
the border of that old, steady-going principality
of Schwarzburg and the new-fangled, patchwork
kingdom which appertaineth to his Majesty King
Jerome—himself one of the crowning products
of the Great Revolution!"

"Faugh!" said the gentleman.

The fiddler's restless eye lighted.

"My lord is an Englishman?  In verity
and beyond doubt, none but an Englishman
could wear so lofty a front.  I need scarce have
asked."

The young man stared haughtily.  The other
considered him awhile in silence with a sort of grave
mockery, and pursued then reflectively—

"This English aloofness, 'tis an excellent
prescription for pride and disdain and such-like high
essences.  Only be careful, my brother-wayfarer,
that you be not above your own fair youth, and
contemn not its splendid opportunities.

   |  'Singula de nobis annipraedantur euntes'

O young man! ...

   |  'Eripuere jocos, Venerem, convivia, ludum'

think of it!"

So saying, he shouldered his instrument, and with
a valedictory wave of his bow seemed about to take
his departure; but, as if upon a second thought,
stood still, and once again observed the young man.

Now it struck the stranded traveller that there
was a dignity in the vagrant's gaze, a refinement
about his person, which scarce accorded with the
gipsy appearance, the shabby clothes; that it was
not usual for beggars to quote Horace with delicate
accents of culture; that his salutation had been
a pattern of courtliness; above all, that he was not
the least impressed by a young nobleman's most
noble demeanour.  And he, on his milestone, began
to feel slightly foolish—an ingenuous blush, indeed,
crept to his cheeks.

The player hitched round his fiddle till it lay across
his breast, and pinched a couple of strings as a man
might pinch the cheek of the wench he loved.

"Pardi," he said, speaking into its curved ear,
"that flag of crimson would proclaim that there's
hope for the youth yet.—Sir," proceeded he then,
gaily, "I think I can be of use to you.  I place
myself at your service.  May I crave to know whom
I have the honour of addressing?"

"You address," responded the other, "Steven
Lee, Graf zu Waldorff-Kielmansegg, an Austrian
gentleman (if you must know) travelling towards
his estate in the south."  He had an irrepressible
satisfaction in the recital.

"Austrian?" echoed the listener, with a cock of
one of his expressive eyebrows.  "'Tis a safer
nationality to proclaim than the English, for
travellers in great Cæsar's dominions nowadays.  Oh,
you are right, quite right!  'Twould be the height
of rashness to proclaim even a drop of English blood,
these days, where Monsieur Buonaparte rules!"

The taunt struck home.  Red mantled again
on the gentleman's smooth cheek.

"Despite an Austrian father, I have by my
dead mother enough English blood in these veins,"
cried he, hotly, "to hate the usurper and despite
his upstart brothers—if that is what you mean;
and I care not who knows it!"

The fiddler's smile grew broader.  "Youth,"
whispered he to his violin, "may pretend to abjure
itself, but it will out.  The stripling has spirit,
though it be but the spirit of scorn.—But the
ceremony is not complete," pursued he.  "I have now
to return your compliment.  Above all things, let
us be polite.  Here, then, comrade, you see before
you an individual known all over the country as
the crazy musician, sometimes more tersely as
Geiger-Hans—what in your English you might
call Fiddle-John.  Some call me the Scholar
Vagabond, and some, the children (bless them), Onkel.
Like your own, my nationality is a matter of
indecision.  Some say I am French, some German,
some from over the Alps—take your choice; your
choice, too, of my title: Geiger-Hans, Fiddle-John,
or Geiger-Onkel.  Or you may dub me, if you
please, the Singer of Youth."

But by this time, Steven Lee, Count Kielmansegg,
was disgusted with himself for having betrayed so
much of his feelings to a beggar vagrant.

"Doubtless," remarked he, with infinite
arrogance, "it may prove more convenient for you, at
times, to hide your name, good fellow.  Reassure
yourself, I have no curiosity to learn it."

Whereupon Geiger-Hans gathered his brows into
so deep a frown that the whole hillside seemed to
grow black.  He struck the strings of his
instrument, and they called out as with anger.

"My name," he said under his breath, "my
name, boy, is dead—as dead as my youth."  Then
he grew calm as suddenly as he had stormed.  "Some
happy ones there are who die and whose names
live: I live, and my name is dead.  Let that suffice
to you.  Why, see," he cried next, with another
swift change of tone, while Count Steven stared at
him, his slow Austrian blood, his deliberate
English wits, unable to keep pace with such vivacity
of mood, "it is getting dark ... the sun has dropped
behind the valley line ... the forest is full of night
already!  Do not the lights of unknown shelter
beckon you—the chimney-corner, the strange
hospitality?  Why, Heaven knows what sweet hostess
may not greet your youthship to-night!  And if
your soul cries not out for fair adventure in forest
depth, there, at least, is a poor dumb thing that
craves stable and corn."  As he spoke, he stepped
nimbly to the injured horse and unhitched the reins
from the tree.  "Might you not have bathed those
cut knees?" he exclaimed, shooting a look of rebuke
over the animal's meek head.  "And the kindly
brook running charity at your elbow!"

He led the creature to the stream; and the deed
of compassion accomplished, again turned to his
companion with a smile, which seemed to show
knowledge of all the latter's vacillating thoughts of
vexation and shame.

"Lend me a hand with the wheel, comrade, and
let us see if we cannot improvise a linchpin.  And
then, if you push behind, this forgiving beast will
do his best to draw your goods into safety."

But it was the musician who mended the wheel,
while the traveller watched in wonder the work of
the brown hands.  And then, in the falling dusk,
they set upon their slow way: Steven Lee, Graf zu
Waldorff-Kielmansegg, pushing behind even as
bid, the fiddler marching ahead with the reins slung
over his arm and humming a hunting song under his breath.

Leaving the stones and dust of the high-road, he
led the way along a wide path that seemed to cut the
forest in two and run downhill into the horizon.
Beneath their feet was now an elastic carpet of
pine-needles.  On each side of them the serried ranks
of trees held the night already in a thousand arms
and murmured to it with a voice as of the sea.
Before them, at the end of the nave, and set like a
cathedral window, shone a span of sky, primrose
and green, with one faint star.  And presently
Steven saw, to one side far ahead, an orange square
of light, and knew it for the unknown forest shelter
beckoning to him.

"But what," cried he, struck by a sudden thought,
"of my postilion and my valet?"

Geiger-Hans looked back at him over his shoulder
and grinned.  He slid the reins above his elbow
and grasped his violin.

"To the devil," it sang mockingly, through the
glade, "to the devil with postilions and valets!  to
the devil with prudence and forethought!  O youth,
enjoy your youth!  O youth, be young!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE FOREST HOUSE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER II


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE FOREST HOUSE

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "Diesen liebenswürd'gen Jüngling
   |  Kann man nicht genug verehren..."
   |                              HEINE.

.. vspace:: 2

"Heaven knows," had said the musician, "what
sweet hostess may not greet your youthship to-night."

To their knock the door was opened by a slip of
a peasant girl.  The light from within shone on
her long yellow plaits of hair and her small brown
face.

Steven was conscious of a distinct shock of
disappointment.  What folly had this fantastic chance
companion fiddled into his mind that he should
have found himself expecting something meet for
his high-born fancy in this lonely forest house?

"Geiger-Onkel!" cried the girl, in surprise.

And "Geiger-Onkel!" was echoed joyfully
indoors.  An old peasant woman came waddling
forward, hands outstretched.

"Be kind to my comrade, Forest-mother," said
the player, "while I see to this brother beast."

He led the horse towards the back yard.  And
Steven stepped into the great kitchen, glad at least of
its prosaic aroma of pot-herbs, since romance had
fallen silent with the fiddle.

It was a long room, panelled with age-polished
oak which reflected the light of the hanging brass
lamp and of the ruddy hearth as jonquil flamelets
and poppy glow.  A black oaken table, running
nearly from end to end, was covered half-way with
a snowy cloth, red-hemmed and flowered.  There
were presses, laden with crockery and pewter.
There was a tall clock, with a merry painted face
and a solemn tick.  There were stags' horns and
grinning boars' heads above the presses.  Not that
Steven had any interest to bestow on these things:
he was glad that the place was clean.  He thought
the oaken chair hard sitting for his noble person,
but it was better than the milestone.  The
Forest-mother seemed a decent sort of body; with a due
sense, too, of the quality of her guest.  As for the
peasant child, he did not notice her at all—not even
the pretty foot in buckled shoe and scarlet stocking,
of which the short peasant skirt gave such a generous
display.

Yet it was to her that Geiger-Hans made his
courtly bow as he entered in his turn.

"Mamzell Sidonia!" said he, his old hat clapped
over his heart.

She gave him a smile, half tender, half mischievous.
And her teeth were as white as his own in her
sunburnt face.  There was a whole host of dimples, too,
which a young man might have remarked.  But
what mattered the dimples of a peasant girl?

Then the fiddler took the old woman round the
neck and kissed her plump, wholesome cheek with
a smack.

"Supper, supper!" cried he.  "And if it's good,
you shall have such music that your hearts shall sing."

The girl laughed out loud, and ran to the hearth,
where she seized a pot.

"In Heaven's name," cried the woman, "leave
that, child!  'Tis not fit for you."

"Oh, please," urged Sidonia of the yellow plaits,
"please, little foster-mother!"

Forest-mother to the fiddler, foster-mother to the
girl.  Steven had supposed her grandmother.  Bah!
As if, indeed, it were worth a thought!

"Get the wine, then," said the matron, with a jolly,
unctuous chuckle.

And while, swinging long tails of hair and scarlet
ankles flashing, the girl darted round the table,
what must this fantastic fellow Geiger-Hans do but
introduce guest and hostess with one of his absurd
flourishes.

"Here, dear comrade, is Dame Friedel, mother
of the great King Jerome's own Head Forester.
And here, mother, is a most noble Austrian count,
whom the accidents of travel have forced to
condescend to the shelter of your humble roof this
evening."

Deep curtsied Dame Friedel.  Steven inclined
his head; and, feeling the fiddler mock him behind
his back, grew red and angry.

"A glass in welcome, gracious sir!" tittered
Sidonia, at his elbow.

She was so close to him that his cheek was fanned
by her breath of clover and the fragrance of a little
bunch of violets in her white kerchief rose to his
nostrils.  As she bent, offering him the green goblet
of wine, her heavy plait fell against his shoulder.
He drew back haughtily.

.. _`As she bent, offering him the green goblet of wine, her heavy plait fell against his shoulder`:

.. figure:: images/img-028.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: As she bent, offering him the green goblet of wine, her heavy plait fell against his shoulder.  He drew back haughtily.

   *As she bent, offering him the green goblet of wine, her heavy plait fell against his shoulder.  He drew back haughtily.*

"*Peste!*" cried Geiger-Hans, "how my fingers
itch for the strings.  But never mind, you shall lose
nothing by waiting.  *Tarteifel!* mother, as I live,
venison stew!  What feasts you good people make
in your forest house!"

"My son is hungry when he comes home of
nights, and so are his lads.—My little love, will you
sit and entertain the gentlemen?"

Sidonia, pouting, drew her chair with great clatter
round by that of Geiger-Hans and turned a shoulder
on the count, who thus remained isolated, as became
his rank.  The fiddler drank to her and she filled
his glass again.  And, as she stretched across him
to do so, the violets at her breast fell upon his hand.

"Violets!" cried he, and sat as if turned to stone.
His brown face grew ashen.  Then he pushed his
plate away, took up the flowers and pressed them
against his lips, inhaling the scent of them with
long deep breaths.  Presently the tears ran down
his cheeks; his slow-drawn sighs were cut short by
a kind of sob.  The girl started to the old woman's
side and stood, flushed and downcast, while the
Forest-mother beat her omelet with a grave
countenance.  Neither of them looked at the fiddler.
Steven, who had stared, suddenly dropped his glance,
too, ashamed and uncomfortable.  Geiger-Hans got
up from his seat.

"I can eat no more to-night," he said, in a broken
voice.  He walked over to the bench where he had
left his fiddle, and, hugging it, went out into the
forest.

"Have you ever seen him like that before?"
whispered Sidonia of mother Friedel.

"Once," said she, "and it was over the violet-bed
in the garden.  I doubt he has seen trouble,
poor soul!  Who has not?"

Sidonia returned to her seat, propped her chin
on her hands and fixed the young count absently.
Her eyes were not black as he had thought: they
were grey and green, green and golden brown, like
the waters of the brook in the shadow of the trees.

"Heavens, sir, how you stare!" she said after
a while, pettishly.

The young aristocrat, whose thoughts had been
all engrossed by this new eccentricity of his road
acquaintance, raised his disdainful eyebrows.  He
stare at a country wench?  Then into their sullen
silence mother Friedel exclaimed joyfully.

"Hark!" cried she, "here comes my son!"

From far away stole the faint blast of hunting-horns;
a dog bayed answer from the kennels, then
the call of the horns arose again in the whispering
forest depths, closer and louder.

"Yes, yes, it's the 'return home' they're winding,"
said the old woman, bending her ear.

Without, there now rose a fine clamour: barking
and yelping of hounds, tramping of horses, blasting
of horns, cheerful shouting of men.  The head
forester shot half his stalwart figure in at the door and
nodded with some mystery to his mother.  What
could be seen of his green uniform was very grand
indeed, with vast display of gilt buttons and royal
crowns, frogs and braid.  His square, freckled
face, made for jollity, was puckered into anxious
lines; his eyes roamed uneasily from Sidonia to the
stranger.  He strode to his mother's side and
whispered in her ear.

"Be good to us!" she ejaculated, clapping her
hands, all dismay.

"Hush, mother!" warned the forester, finger
on lip, and turned towards the door.

Count Steven had finished his plate of venison
stew, and was condescending to enjoy a crust of
bread with a glass of the tart wine.  The sense of
expectation about him made him now likewise turn
round in his chair—languidly, for the high-born
are never openly curious.

Outside, in the night, against a background of
flickering leaves and under the glare of a couple of
torches, he saw a picturesque group of hounds and
huntsmen; two of these last laden each with a
murdered roebuck, whose pretty, innocent head hung
trailing on the ground.  Suddenly the scene dissolved.
A man came from the midst of the foresters into the
kitchen.  The rest disappeared with their booty;
hounds and horses were led away towards the distant
kennel premises; the woodland glade resumed its
peace.

As the new-comer passed him, the head forester
made a spasmodic movement, arrested midway,
of hand to forehead.  His mother swept a dignified
curtsey.  The peasant girl, her hands clasped at
the back of her neck, stared with frank curiosity,
her mouth open so that all who cared to look might
wonder upon the doubled splendour of her young
teeth.

He stood and glanced round upon them all: a
slight young man of somewhat low stature and
dark, fine-cut face, with hair cropped short at back
and side to come down in a curly wave in the middle
of his forehead.  He had large eyes under thick,
straight eyebrows; and his forester's uniform,
though ostensibly of the same cut as Friedel's, was
of finer cloth and obviously brand new.  The collar
of the coat rose very high on each side of his chin,
which in the centre rested on folds of delicate cambric.

"Positively," thought Steven Lee, Count
Waldorff-Kielmansegg, etc., "a gentleman like myself!"

But the hunter's first word dispelled the illusion.

"My friend," said the new-comer to the old dame—he
spoke German with a strong foreign accent—"my
fellow-forester there, Friedel, has assured me
that you would give his brother woodsman
hospitality to-night."

Now, as he smiled, his handsome face assumed
a trivial, almost inane, expression, which destroyed
its look of breeding and caused Count Steven to
return to his bread and wine with a mental shrug.

"Any friend of my son is welcome here," said the
old lady, smiling doubtfully.

Friedel himself grew suddenly scarlet, gulped,
blinked and looked as uncomfortable as any fish
out of water.

"I see I must introduce myself," cried the little
man, laughing heartily and clapping him on the
shoulder.  "I am Mr. Forester—ahem!—Meyer,
at your service, madame."

"I wish," said Steven, "that you would shut the
door behind my back, good people."

"Hey la!" said Mr. Forester Meyer, with a sudden
imperious note in his voice, "whom have we here?"

"A guest, sir, like yourself," said the hostess
somewhat dryly, hieing to her pans; while the young
nobleman in question turned his heavy chair round
again to supplement her inadequate description.

"An Austrian gentleman, my man, if it imports
you to know," said he.  "You are yourself, perhaps,"
he went on with more friendliness, struck by an
obvious explanation of certain signs about the
new-comer that had puzzled him, "the inspector
of these forests on your rounds.  I notice you speak
with authority, and your accent is not of the
country—a countryman of this King Jerome?"

Mr. Forester Meyer broke again into loud laughter.

"Hey! what perspicacity has the gentleman!"
cried he, jovially.  "(Friend Friedel, shut the door!)
Nay, truly, sir, you are perfectly right.  I see it
would be quite hopeless to maintain an *incognito*
before you.  It is true, sir, I do inspect for this King
Jerome occasionally.  Ha, ha!"

"Ha, ha!" echoed Sidonia, catching the infection
of mirth, as a child will, without reason.

"Hey la!  And whom have we there?"

Mr. Forest-Inspector repeated the phrase in very
different tones.  There came a curious flicker into his
eye as he ran it up and down the girl's figure, from
crown of yellow head to scarlet ankle and back again,
with appreciative pauses on the way.

"Eh, eh!" said he, meaningly.  He took her
chin between his finger and thumb, and chuckled
as he raised the crimsoning face to the light.

"We do not hold with French ways here," said
Dame Friedel, rebukingly, over her pan.

Steven, catching the gesture of warning which
her son instantly addressed to her, felt a vast
contempt for the fellow's slavish fear of his little
superior.

The wine, thin and fragrant, must have gone
somewhat fantastically to the young nobleman's brain.
He began to feel defiant, in a humorous sort of way,
and to wish the fiddler back with his music.  With
his violin to accompany the song of the amber
drink, it seemed as if that youthship of his (on which
yonder fantastic rogue laid such stress) might find
some zest in a quarrel with Master Forester Meyer,
whose eyes danced so unpleasantly as they looked
at this peasant child; who had so irritating a French
shrug and so mean a smile.

Now, if he had an eye to a pretty girl, the inspector
seemed to have also an ear for a poacher.  The
distant crack of shots, reverberating from the forest,
now made him start and listen acutely.  Yet as
Friedel, with a frowning countenance, made a lurch
for his gun in the corner, Mr. Meyer smiled and
restrained him.  Then he himself went to the door,
set it ajar and hearkened.  His smile widened as
he closed it again and returned to the table.

"Doubtless he has plans of his own for trapping
the trespassers," thought Steven.  It was the obvious
explanation.  And yet he felt a kind of mystery
brooding around him, almost as if that adventure
which the fiddler's music had boded were about to
take place.  And, in the long silence which succeeded,
the impression deepened.  The Frenchman seemed
overcome by an uncontrollable restlessness.  He
paced the room from end to end, compared the
merry-faced clock with his watch, stared out of the
window and drummed on the pane.  He was
evidently keenly on the alert for something: and, as
Steven vainly cudgelled his not very quick wits to
conjecture, behold, it was at hand!

Shouts without, steps ... a tremendous rat-tat
at the door!...

"'Tis not possible," cried mother Friedel, with some
distress, "that Heaven has sent us more guests?"

This was, in truth, precisely what Heaven was
doing, if, indeed, it were fair to hold Heaven
responsible.  Two new visitors walked into the forest
home without so much as a word of parley.  A
hulking man, also in forester's uniform ("By Saint
Hubert," said Steven Lee to himself, "his
Westphalian Majesty's rangers seem thick as leaves
hereabouts!"), and a lady clinging to his arm....
Yes, a lady, and a fair!  Steven rose to his feet.

The inspector and the burly new-comer interchanged
a rapid glance.  Then, cracking the whip
he held in his hand, the latter burst into the most
execrable German, interspersed by volleys of French
oaths.  It was evident that King Jerome held to
servants of his own nationality.

*Morbleu!* quoth he, it was a mercy to see decent
shelter!  Devil take all, he had thought that he and
the lady would have had to spend the night in the
forest!

Here the lady, in spite of very pink cheeks and
bright eyes, became so faint that she had to be assisted
to a chair by mother Friedel and her foster-child.
Steven darted to present a glass of water, but was
arrogantly forestalled by Mr. Meyer.

"Such a scandal on his Majesty's high-road!"
went on he of the whip: "this lady's coach attacked
by ruffians!"

"His Majesty will be exceedingly displeased,"
said Mr. Meyer, gravely, sitting down by the side
of the distressed one and stripping off her glove
to consult a delicate wrist.

"Her escort shot at——  By all the devils!"

"Monstrous," quoth the inspector, in quiet
indignation.  "A little wine, madam?"

"The escort—sacred swine, confound them!—took
flight and basely abandoned their charge."

"Shocking—shocking!" said Mr. Meyer, relinquishing
one pretty hand to receive the empty
glass from the other.

"If I had not happened to hear the shots and rush
to the spot, what might not have happened?"

"It makes me shiver to contemplate it," asserted
the inspector.

"My brave deliverer," murmured the lady, in
a dulcet voice.  "Single-handed, he——"

She suddenly buried her face in her hands and
quivered from head to foot.

The inspector looked up at mother Friedel with
an air of grave compassion.

"Hysterical," said he; "ah, no wonder!"

Dame Friedel began to loosen the lady's handsome
claret-coloured travelling-mantle, whilst Sidonia drew
a velvet, white-plumed hat from the loveliest dark
head in all the world.

"Well ... ah!—Schmidt," said Inspector
Meyer, "his Majesty will hear of your conduct."

"Thank you, Mr.—ah!—Meyer," rejoined the
burly Schmidt, with an unaccountably waggish grin.

"Ah, ha, ha!" cried the lady.  She flung back
her head and flung down her hands; the tears were
streaming upon her uncovered cheeks.  It might
be hysterics, but Steven thought it was the most
becoming combination of emotions he had ever beheld.

She wiped her eyes and sprang up as lightly as
a bird.  Emerging from the folds of her cloak, she
displayed a clinging robe of pale blue, fastened
under the bust by a belt of amethysts set in gold.
She had an exquisite roundness of form; an open,
smiling mouth.  Her eyes were innocent and dark
and deep.  She was (Steven felt) a revelation.  And
withal, what a great lady!  What an air of breeding!
What elegance!  An Austrian gentleman knows
the value of jewels.  Heavens, what rings on her
fingers!  What pearls in her ears!

"*Ah, Dio mio!*" she cried, "but I am hungry!"

Italian, then.  There was a strange medley of
nationalities in this German forest corner.

The fixity of the young man's gaze suddenly
drew the lady's attention.  She looked at him:
surprise, interest, then an adorable smile appeared on
her countenance.  It was almost an invitation.
Besides, was it not meet that the only gentleman of
the party should entertain the only lady?  With
his heart beating in his throat, he took two steps
forward.  The three foresters had drawn apart and
were whispering together with furtive glances in his
direction; but he was not likely to notice this when
such lovely eyes were upon him.  She dropped her
handkerchief.  He rushed to pick it up.  As she
took it from his fingers, he gave them ever so slight
a pressure.

(Oh, Geiger-Hans, Singer of Youth, hadst thou
foreseen this rapturous moment?)

"A thousand graces," murmured she.  The graces! they
were all her own.

"Permit me to introduce myself," he stammered.

But the inspector cut him short with a strident voice.

"The gentleman must be fatigued," he cried.

Steven started angrily.  To one side of him stood
Forester Schmidt, to the other, Forester Friedel.

"I will show the gracious gentleman the way to
his repose," said the latter in his ear, with subdued,
yet warning tone.

"And I will give you my help to the door, *tonnerre
de Brest!*" exclaimed the other, and caught the
Count's arm under his with a grip of iron.

Steven wrenched himself free.  Yet a man has
not sober English blood in him for nothing.
Humiliating as was the position, a moment's reflection
convinced him that resistance and futile struggle would
but render him ridiculous.  Ridiculous, in the light
of those dark eyes!

"Lead, then, fellow," said he to Friedel; and, after
bowing low to the lady, followed his escort with what
dignity he could muster towards the door opening
on the forest.

There was such a seething of rage in his brain,
such an itching in his palm to feel it against yonder
insolent Schmidt's full cheek, that it was not till he
found himself on the threshold of a dimly lighted
wooden building, gazing blankly in upon heaps of
straw, that he realized that a barn was considered
good enough for the night's lodging of a Count
Waldorff-Kielmansegg.

"May you rest you sweetly, sir," said Friedel,
and tramped away.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`GREEN ADVENTURE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER III


.. class:: center medium bold

   GREEN ADVENTURE

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*Non ego hoc ferrem, calidus juventa,*
   |            *Consule Planco.*"
   |                          HORACE.

.. vspace:: 2

"Comrades again!"

Turning round with a start, Steven beheld the
crazy musician at his elbow.

"Comrades on the straw—eh!  What a bed for
his lordship.  *Misérables!* they have no conception
of the importance of rank, these benighted forest
folk.  Yet give me the clean, yellow straw, smelling
in the dark of sunshine and whispering of the fields,
rather than your stuffy German mountains of
feathers."

"Geiger-Onkel!  Geiger-Onkel!" came a shrill
cry into the night.

The fiddler turned with a bound and ran into the
middle of the moonlit yard, staring up at the house
that stood outlined against the pale sky.  From
some distant regions, where Friedel's underlings
kennelled near their hounds, rose shouts of boorish
laughter and the chorus of a drinking song.

A yellow tongue of flame appeared in a wooden
balcony, hanging under the roof.  Sidonia bent
over, shielding her candle from the forest airs.

"Are you there, Geiger-Onkel?"

"Yes, child."

"Oh, I am glad....  Geiger-Onkel"—she
leaned over still further; her tresses hung down, one
shone ruddy with the candle-gleam and one silver
in the moonlight; her voice was broken with angry
tremors—"he tried to kiss me!"

"*Mort de ma vie*—who?"

"The big man with the whip.  He caught me by
the waist.  I had nothing to hit him with but my
plaits.  I lashed him in the face.  They caught him
across the eyes——"

"Caught him across the eyes," cried the fiddler,
clapping his hands.  "Ah, brava, little mamzell!"

"They whistled like a rope"—the girl was
laughing and crying together—"I think I have
half-blinded him.  Mayn't I come down to you,
Onkel?  I want to talk ... and I want music."

"Better not," said fiddler Hans, after a moment's
reflection; and then from the shadow Steven stepped
out beside him.  (It was terrible to think of the
dark-eyed lady in the company of such ruffians!)
Sidonia, with a cry, drew back at sight of the new
shadow.

"Nay, never be afraid of him.  It is my comrade.
As for the others—why, go in, child; bolt your
door," said the fiddler.  "Go to bed and sleep in
peace.  I shall watch."

"But you will play for me?" she asked over her
shoulder.

"Presently, I may," said he; "such a tune, little
mamzell, that will make some people dance!  But
to you it shall give sweet sleep."

As the girl disappeared, Geiger-Hans turned upon
Steven.  He laughed as he addressed the young man,
but his eyes were fierce as some wild beast's in the
dim light.

"Did you hear?" said he.  "The maid struck
him; but you—oh you—you let yourself be turned
out!  Oh, to see you trot away like a lamb.  Steven
Lee, Graf zu Waldorff-Kielmansegg, turned out of
doors by two low-bred foresters!  What, then, runs
in your veins?  What, turnip-juice instead of blood?
The fellow, Schmidt so-called, laid hands on you,
did he not?  And you a youth!  By the blood of
my fathers, had the creature touched me, old man as
I am, he had felt the weight of his own whip!  But
the fellow has muscles.  Nay, you were right, sir,
right.  Let us be prudent, by all means.  Only
that mask of yours lies, that smooth cheek, that crisp
curl—all lies.  Young, yes.  Only your heart is
not young.  'Tis like the kernel of a blind nut—dry
dust.  While I—there is more of God's youth
left in my worn and waning body——"

"Confusion!" interrupted Steven, trembling in
every limb, hurt to the marrow of his pride; "it
was before the lady."

"Oh, the lady...!" echoed the other, with a
mocking trail of laughter.

During the vehemence of his speech the musician
had advanced on the lad, who had unconsciously
drawn back until he stood against the wall of the
house.  Now a window close to him was unlatched;
and the sound of a sigh, rather than a voice, was
breathed forth into the night.

"*Ah, Dio!*"

"Your cue!" mocked the fiddler into his ear, and
melted away into the darkness.

The window was that of a room on the ground
floor; the lady leaned out, her elbows on the sill;
her face caught a slanting ray of moonlight.
Was it possible for anything mortal to be so
beautiful?

"Madam!" cried Steven, and that heart of his
which was supposed to be but dry dust began to
thump in hitherto unknown fashion.

"Hush, hush!" she whispered, a taper finger on
her lip.  "Ah, is it you, sir?"

He advanced into the ray that held her.  He was
not aware that he also looked goodly and romantic.
Somewhere, in the darkness close by, the fiddler's
bow crept over the strings.  It was a sound so
attenuated that it seemed to have no more substance than
the light of the moon itself; it stole upon their ears
so gently that it was as if they heard it not.  His hand
met her warm fingers—the fragrance from her curls
mounted to his nostrils; she looked up at him and
her eyes glistened.

.. vspace:: 2

Oh, fiddler, what bewitching music is this?  What
sweetness does it insinuate, what mysterious audacity
counsel?  There were those parted lips of hers, with
white teeth gleaming through, and here was this
youth who had never touched a woman's lips in
love.  Such a little way between his bent head and
her upturned face...!

A door crashed behind her.  She started from
his timid hand.  The thread of the music was
broken like a floating gossamer.

Steven thought that the fiddler laughed.  There
was a faint exclamation.  Heavens! did she
also laugh?  He saw—yes, he saw the inspector's
hated outline over hers.  She was drawn from the
window by the shoulders, the shutters were clapped
to in his face and bolted noisily.  The yard billowed
under his feet.  All went red before his eyes.  That
was her room, and the man had followed her to it!
Had he no youth in him, no blood in his veins? ... Why,
he could taste it on his tongue!  He pivoted
round upon himself, made a blind rush for the
entrance door, and dashed headlong against Ranger
Schmidt's broad chest.

A French oath rang out.  Then broken German:
"Can the kerl not see where he is going?"  Then, in
the dark, the fiddler laughed again.  Or was it his
music? or were there lurking devils taunting,
jeering, inciting?  The young man never knew exactly
what happened till a crack like a pistol-shot sprang
upon the night, and he realized that his hand had
found the broad, insolent face at last.  The sound of
that slap cleared the confusion in his own brain as
a puff of wind clears a hanging mist.  Schmidt
gave a roar like a furious bull, but Steven met the
onslaught of the uplifted whip with the science learned
in London of Gentleman Jackson and there was a
grip on either side which began for him in glorious
defiance and ended in a struggle of life and death.

The fiddler worked his bow like one possessed.
It was a fierce song of fight that now rose, ever
shriller, louder, and faster, up towards the placid
sky.  The air was thick with the curses, blue with
the profanity, of Forester Schmidt.  But Steven
fought like a gentleman, in silence.  To his dying
day he maintained that he was getting the better of
the hulking bully, when his heel caught in an
upstanding root, and he fell with a crash, his opponent
over him.  There was a moment's agony of suffocation,
then the gleam before his eyes of a bared blade,
gilt-blue in the moonlight, two echoing shouts, a
woman's scream.  And then Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg
lost consciousness, his wits marching away
at double-quick time to the lilt of an extraordinarily
joyous vulgar little tune.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



"Oh, Geiger-Onkel, is he dead?"

The girl with the yellow plaits stood in the light
of the lantern; her wide eyes seemed to devour
her face, white even in that uncertain glimmer;
her parted lips quivered.  From the forest house
came the sound of loud wrangling voices, dominated
presently by rhythmic feminine screams.  In the
kennels the dogs were barking furiously: it was a
distracting clamour.

Yet the stillness of the young man's comely figure,
relaxed at its length on the straw, the pallor of his
head, thrown back like a sleeping child's against
the fiddler's knee, seemed to make its own circle
of silence.

"Dead?" echoed the vagrant.  "Dead for a
crack on the skull!"  His tone was contemptuous.
Yet his lean hands shook as they busied themselves
in loosening Count Steven's very fine stock; and
there was concern in his attitude as he bent over the
youth's face, cruelly beautiful in its white
unconsciousness.

Now Sidonia, the forest-mother's foster-child,
remembered Geiger-Hans as far back as she could
remember anything, and knew every shade of that
sardonic visage.  Dark she had often seen it, with
a far-away melancholy—a melancholy, it seemed,
beyond anything that life could touch.  She had
known it alight with mockery, softened into a
wonderful tenderness that was for her alone, of all human
beings, and for all sick or helpless animals.  But
moved to anxiousness as now, never before.  She
clasped her hands across the fluttering of her heart.
Geiger-Hans glanced at her again and laughed
gently.  The traveller's befrogged coat was loose at
last, the column of his young throat bare, and the
musician had slipped a hand between the folds of
a shirt finer than the girl's own snowy bodice.

"Why, little Sidonia," said he, as if she was once
again the child, "you look as scared as a rabbit in
a trap.  Dead, this lad?  Nay, his English mother,
whoever she was, has built him too well for that.
Why, here's a heart for you!  With decent luck, it
should make him swing into his nineties as steadily
as the drums of the Old Guard."

As he spoke, he shifted the burden of the languid
head to a convenient pile of straw, sprang to his
feet and stood laughing again.

"Our wits are not the strongest part of us," he
mocked.  "They're always like to be the first things
we lose."  His lips twisted as he glanced downward.
"A knock on our pate, and it is all away with them."

"For shame, Geiger-Onkel!" cried the girl.
The colour flamed into her face: upon the reaction
of her relief, she was glad to find anger, else she
must have burst into tears.  She knelt down by
her ungracious guest, and, on a nearer view,
misgiving once more crept upon her.  Her little hands
hovered.  "Oh, Onkel," she cried, "yet he looks
like death!"

"Nay, satisfy yourself, then," said the fiddler,
encouragingly; "women are all cousins, even to
Mamzell Sidonia."

His tone seemed scornful, but there was something
genial, something almost of hope and pleasure,
in his eyes as he watched the maid bend over the
comely youth, watched her lay a timid touch over
his heart.

"It beats," said Sidonia, in a whisper, "it beats."  She
spoke as of a wonderful thing.  A smile came
like a dream across her face.  Her touch lingered.
"How strong!" she said.

"The heart of a young man should be strong,"
quoth the fiddler.

"And how steady," went on the girl.

And the fiddler answered: "Strength is waste
without steadiness."

She crouched, looking up at him, the smile of
wonder on her lips.  Then she looked down again
at the pale face.

"His heart beats beautifully, but when will he
wake again?"

"It is to be hoped, not till to-morrow morning.
And," added the other more gravely, "he must not
be awaked.  Nature knows what she is about, and
she is rocking her young friend to the tune of her
own remedy.  Nay, never fear, little mamzell, the
lad is but stunned.  He will sleep till morning,
and wake scarce the worse.  Leave him, child, he
lies well enough."

"He lies very ill," flashed she.  "You were
kinder to the old white horse.  A pillow he shall
have," she scolded, and was gone on her light foot.

The wrangling sounds were now stilled within
and without the forest house.  The cries of the
hounds had fallen into silence.  As for the rhythmic
hysterics of the travelling lady, they had given place
to soft gurgles of laughter.  These punctuated the
more continuous rumble of a bass undertone; her
window was evidently once more open to the night.
The musician gazed down at the youth's upturned face.

"What dreams you could have had, you dog, had
your foolish wits not taken leave of absence," he
murmured.  With an unconscious gesture he reached
for his fiddle, as if to clothe the thought in its own
tune.  But he paused before touching a string.
"No, sweet friend," he muttered, "thou must be
put to baser uses before dawn.  And till then thy
fancies and mine must sleep."

A twig cracked sharply.  With heavy tread, yet
noiselessly, in her list slippers, the forest-mother
waddled into the barn.  There was the gleam of a
white basin in her hand, whence arose a sour pungency.

"The good God and His holy mother preserve us
this night!" she ejaculated in a creaking whisper.
"I have brought a compress for the poor young
gentleman's head.  Eh, but the gracious one was
haughty, and pride will have a fall!  But there, my
heart goes out to lads, be they high or low.  Hey,
jeminy," she clacked her tongue, "it's enough to
give one a turn to see him lying there!"

Though the words were rueful the tone was almost
cheery.  She had been witness of many hard knocks
in her day; and she knew—none better—the
stuff of which solid Kerls are made.

"Keep your vinegar for little gherkins, mother,"
said the musician, gaily.  "We want no more pickle
here to-night."

Further gibing was silenced on his lips, for
Sidonia came back upon them like a small whirlwind,
clasping her pillow by the middle, heedless that one
corner of it should knock off the fiddler's hat, the
other all but upset the vinegar lotion.  But her
impetuosity gave place to fairy gentleness as she
knelt beside Steven and drew his head into her lap,
spreading meanwhile the pillow into its proper place.

"Save us and bless us!" exclaimed the
forest-mother.  "Sidonia!  Here, Geiger-Onkel, take the
vinegar!"  And, quite flustered, she thrust her
basin upon him.

"Foster-mother," said Sidonia, looking up
rebukingly, "he must not be awakened."  She laid
her hand protectingly upon the crisp brown curls.

"But, child," groaned the forest-mother, "this
is no work for a—no work for you.  *Himmel!* the
strange gentleman's head on your lap; and
you—what you are!  It is not fitting.  It is not
maidenly!"

"Tscha!" said the fiddler, testily, and forced back
the bowl upon the irate old woman.  "Good
mother, leave the child alone.  See, she has laid
the young gentleman's head quite prettily on the
pillow, and now she is going straight to bed.  It is
late, for good children."

Sidonia had leaped to her feet.  She came slowly
towards the two who were watching her, tossing her
head.  But, with all her pride, she could not conceal
that she was blushing to tears.  Suddenly she
darted past them into the night, and her feet could
be heard pattering up the outside wooden stairs
that led to her gable room.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`PARTING OF THE WAYS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IV


.. class:: center medium bold

   PARTING OF THE WAYS

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*Come like shadows, so depart.*"
   |                          {*Macbeth*}.

.. vspace:: 2

"Forest-mother," said the fiddler, dryly, "you
know a great deal about sturdy forest lads, and you
make the best pickles in the country: but you know
nothing at all about little maids."

And, as the honest woman stared at him open-mouthed,
he took her genially by the shoulders and
turned her towards the door.

"Everything the child has done to-night has been
right and becoming," he went on, half regretfully,
half smilingly, "even because she was a child.  But,
mark me, from to-night she is child no longer.
And all that her heart prompts her to do now will
be wrong.  Go to bed, mother," he added in a
different tone; "and if you hear my fiddle speaking
by-and-by and a rumble of carriage-wheels thereafter,
why, turn you over on the other ear and think
you have dreamed a strange dream."

On her limp slippers the forest-mother trotted
a few steps forward, obediently; then she halted,
hesitated, and turned back.  Her shrewd, kindly
face was all puckered in the moonlight.

"Geiger-Hans," she called solemnly.  Her tone
was so full of mystery and import that he came to
her in two steps.  She jerked her thumb over her
shoulder in the direction of the open window, whence
the voice and the soft laughter still crept out upon
the forest stillness.  "Yonder—in there"—she
whispered—"him!"

He interrupted her.  "I know: I saw him come,
little mother; and I have spoken with Friedel."

"He looked at her a great deal," she insisted.

"At whom?  At little Sidonia?"

"Ay; and he took her by the chin."

"Did he so?" said Geiger-Hans.  His low voice
had a tremor of anger.  Then he was silent; and
the forest-mother stood waiting, her eyes confidently
on him.  A fantastic figure in the moonshine, yet
this solid peasant woman seemed to leave her
anxieties with confidence in his hands.

"I can rid you of your unexpected honours for
to-night," said the vagrant musician at last.  "But
who can guard the fawn in the forest from the
cunning hunter?  Fritz must take back Mamzell
Sidonia home before he goes his rounds to-morrow."

"And she only just come, and so happy, poor lamb!"

But she made no further protest, and went with
her vinegar softly back to the house.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The fiddler returned to the barn, and cast once
more a look at him who slept so deeply.  Thence
his light, long, striding step brought him to the shed
where the patched coach stood.  From its recesses
he took the traveller's cloak, and, returning, cast
it over the inanimate figure.  And, having shifted
the shade of the lantern, his restlessness took him
back into the night.  He was nursing his fiddle as
he went.

"What things," he said, addressing it as the
court fool of old his bauble (after that singular
fashion which led people to call him crazy)—"what
things, beloved, could we not converse upon
to-night, were we not constrained by sinners?  What
a song of the call of the spring to last year's
fawn—of the dream that comes to the dreamer but once in
his life's day, and that before the dawn!  Chaste
and still as the night, and yet tremulous; shadows,
mere shadows, and yet afire—voiceless, formless,
impalpable, and yet something more lovely than all
the sunshine can show, than all the beauty arms can
hold hereafter, than all the music ears shall hear.
A prescience not yet a presence, a yearning not yet
a desire....  O youth!  O love!" sighed the
fiddler, and drew from his fiddle a long echo to the
sigh.  "But when we deal with rascals we must
play rascally tunes."

The rapscallion air, to which poor Steven's wits
had danced away from him, broke shrilly, almost
indecently, upon the beautiful calmness of the
midnight hour.

Big Mr. Forester Schmidt, seated comfortably
in mother Friedel's elbow-chair, his feet upon the
table and a long glass of the straw-coloured wine at
his elbow, was aroused from an agreeable somnolence
by the sudden screech.  Friedel, frankly
asleep in a corner, woke with a start, and muttered
a not ill-natured curse on the mad fiddler.

At the same time the door leading from the kitchen
to the lady's parlour was quickly opened, and the
head of Herr Inspector Meyer was thrust through
the aperture.  This gentleman's good-looking
countenance seemed sadly discomfited, his airs of
blatant importance shaken.

"*Diavolo*! ... Do you hear that?" he cried to
his burly friend.  "There it is again!  I tell you it
means something.  It always means something!
Remember Brest ... and remember Smolensk!"

"It means that I'll go and throttle him with his
own catgut," cried Schmidt, letting his heavy-booted
feet fall upon the floor with a stamp.  "Look
here, you fellow, you Friedel, here, with your gun,
and let us see how you Germans can shoot!  Down
with that caterwauler ... and his Majesty will
make you a present of the hide."

Friedel had gathered his sleepy carcase together
upon the appearance of the inspector.  He now
stood very respectfully at attention.  But there was
nothing respectful in the small, fierce blue eyes he
fixed upon Mr. Schmidt.

"May it please your Excellency," he began.
But Mr. Meyer, interrupting him irritably, came
down into the room, snapping his fingers,
stamping his little feet.

"Hark, hark!  Do you hear that?" he cried,
and seized Schmidt by the arm.  "I tell you, man,
you are a fool.  Will you say now that this is no
warning, no menace?  Hark!"

He flung up his head, and his own intentness of
listening, something also of his mysterious agitation,
seemed to communicate itself to his irate lieutenant.
They stood holding their breath; and bewildered
Friedel hearkened too.

The fiddler's mocking tune had merged into
another theme.  The night was vibrating to a deeper
sonority, a more noble rhythm.  Friedel thought he
must be still dreaming, for he seemed suddenly to
see serried ranks of soldiers marching down a dusty
road, tall fellows, with hollow, tanned cheeks and
towering bearskins, their long white legs swinging
by him as they tramped.  It was not the thin sound
of strings that was in his ears, but the bugle's call
and the rattle of drums.

"Thunder!  It is the chaunt of the Old Guard!"  He
was scarce aware he had spoken aloud, until the
inspector caught up his words in a high key of
excitement.

"There," he cried, turning with a sort of feminine
frenzy upon his friend, "even that blockhead
hears it!  I tell you, General, we must out of this.
And the woman must go too.  'Tis his will, the
big tyrant."

He paused for a moment; and then resumed,
well-nigh dancing in his exasperation:

"The carriage, the carriage at once!  D'Albignac!
Leave that gun alone!" he shrieked.  "I
won't have the fellow touched.  Last time, last
time——" he paused again and shook his head.

"I dare not," he said in a low voice.  "It is not
wholesome!"

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Steven opened heavy eyes and stared vacantly at
the creeping light, indigo between the wisps of
yellow straw; at the large square of shimmering
mists and flickering leaves where the barn door
stood open to the dawn.  He turned his head and
found that it lay on a fragrant linen pillow, and also
that it ached vaguely in spite of this luxury.

A vulgar, absurd tune was still dancing in his
brain.  Then he caught within his range of vision
the figure of a man sitting cross-legged, putting a
fresh string to a fiddle.  And memory came back slowly.

"It was the fault of the music, you know," he said.

Geiger-Hans shot a look at him from under his
quizzical eyebrows.

"You never got that kiss in after all."

"Ah, but I got in my slap!"

The young man sat up, quite inspirited by the
recollection, and discovered that, with the
exception of some dizziness and stiffness, there was
nothing much amiss with him.

"But some one very nearly got his hunting-knife
into you," said Geiger-Hans, dryly, "and there
would have been an end of your learning to be
young.  Nevertheless, you have capabilities—yes,
some capabilities."  He wound up his string,
twanged it, and nodded over it.

A cock crew in the forest farmyard.  A robin was
singing somewhere amid a babel of chirping birds.
The breeze, balm-scented, flew straight in from the
pines and fanned Stephen's head and throat.  He
lifted his hand to his open shirt and looked
inquiringly at the musician, who nodded again.

"You were stunned by the fall," said Geiger-Hans,
"with that brute on the top of you.  Fortunate
for you that I caught his hand at the right
moment!  And thereupon the little man, the Herr
Inspector, you know, ran out screaming, 'No
bloodshed, d'Albignac!' ... It is his one good point:
he is merciful of life."

"The little man? ... D'Albignac?" Steven
echoed the words in wonder.

"You measured his cheek charmingly—I mean
d'Albignac's," said the fiddler.  "We two might do
great things together yet.  Ay, that was the d'Albignac.
I dare say you have heard the name, in Cassel.
Chouan once, then renegade, now Grand-Veneur
(and Great Pandar) to his Majesty of Westphalia.
Such is d'Albignac."

"Majesty? ... King Jerome?"

"Did you think," said Geiger-Hans, compassionately,
"that Meyer and Schmidt were usual
names for Frenchmen?  Why, the precious
*incognito* would not have deceived a cat."

The dawn was growing softly outside, but there
was sudden vivid light in Steven's brain.

"Then—then," he stammered, struggling to
his feet—"the lady——"

"The lady, my poor young friend, is naught but
a dancing girl from Genoa, whom that wise and
powerful man, the Emperor Napoleon, sent two
emissaries to remove—it is not the first time he
has had to attend to such matters—from her
charming apartments in 'Napoleonshöhe,' where her
presence conduced neither to the King's dignity,
nor to the Queen's.  The great Napoleon is mighty
particular about her Westphalian Majesty's dignity.
Our ardent little sovereign, however, determined to
snatch a last meeting; hence the romantic attack
and rescue—the casual meeting!"

"O Lord!" said Steven, and passed his hand
across his mouth, as if the shadow of the
yearned-for kiss polluted it.

"And so that Meyer fellow is——"

"Our brother Jerome—yes."

The fiddler lifted a sweet, worn voice, while his
bow danced lightly on the strings and chanted to
the absurd lilt—

   |  "*Nous allons chercher un royaume*
   |  *Pour not' p'tit frère Jérome.*"
   |

"'Twas the song of the soldiers before Jena," he
explained.  "*Pardi!* a taking ragamuffin tune!
When our friends last night heard it, comrade,
they took to their heels."

And as Steven stared with ever-increasing
wonder, Geiger-Hans proceeded, in his mocking voice:

"'The wicked flee when none pursueth!'  If
there is one person the kinglet here is afraid of,
'tis of the great Emperor.  Many a merry prank
have I played on King Jerome's nerves!  He holds
to his high gilt throne, and knows that the mighty
hand that placed him on it can pick him off it
again.  Big brother, on his side, knows how to
punish too, when little brother passes the bounds.
And the small man thinks the big man has spies
on him at every corner.  He has his own way of
knowing things, has Cæsar ... if not the ways
yonder gingerbread monarch fancies."

"And he thought you were the Emperor's spy?"
hazarded Steven, and looked with some doubt at
his companion.  A mystery the man certainly was!

"Many things have I been, comrade," said the
fiddler, answering the look, "but never in any man's
pay, be assured of that.  Nevertheless, the
Kingmaker keeps an eye on his puppets from the midst
of victory—many eyes on him, indeed.  And
Jerome has taken into his head that your humble
servant is the most cunning of Napoleon's eyes.
The mistake is amusing enough, and I make it
serve my own use at times.  I had but to play such
a simple air, you see, and his Majesty of
Westphalia—his choice circle——"  He made a wide gesture
and a sound mimicking a flutter of wings: "Phew!
Gone, scared like frightened sparrows!"

"Gone?" echoed Steven; and though she was
but a dancing-girl from Genoa, and a baggage at
that, his heart sank.

"Gone," said the fiddler—"gone before the
dawn.  So is Sidonia!  Aha, Sir Count, short
skirts, it seems to you, make the peasant, and fine
jewels, no doubt, the great lady!  Ha, ha! to see
your lordship draw away from the touch of her
tresses!  She brought you her own pillow last
night, and wept over you and thought you were
dead—till I bid her put her hand over your heart
and feel its solid beating.  'Tis a noble child—and
a greater race you will never meet in your travels.
Why, 'tis the heiress of the country.  Oh, there
were no lies about her!  The girl visits her
foster-mother for a holiday and a treat now and then.
You never looked at her foot or her delicate
eyebrow: she was but a peasant girl, *pardi*!  Jerome
has a keener eye——"

"Jerome!" echoed Steven, and, he knew not
why, the fiercest spasm of anger he had yet felt
seized him then.

"Jerome pinched her chin, as you saw," said the
fiddler, "and, therefore, back we packed her,
Friedel and I, to her own castle, for safety....
Meanwhile you slept.  Come, come, never look so
downcast," he went on with sudden change of
tone.  "Is it not instructive to know how the ruler
of Westphalia passes his time while all the best
manhood of his country is warring for the
Empire—burnt in Spain, frozen in Russia?  And, at any
rate, have you not had a night you will remember
out of all your dull, regulated youth?  Come forth
and I will show you something I warrant me you
have never seen before—sunrise in the forest."

The yard seemed very silent and empty.  They
were all gone—gone like a dream!

"Come," said the musician, "look up.  Have
you ever seen so limpid a blue?  Look at the trees
enveloped in mystery; see the silver shine of the
dew over every blade; hark to it as it drips from
leaf to leaf.  'Tis every day a new creation!  Oh,
I could make you Dawn-music, if there were not
such music already for you to hear!  Hark to the
whispering, the lisping, the murmurs!  Do you
mark the birds—that is your last night's robin at
the top of the larch tree; he is singing under his
breath now, watching the horizon; he will pipe
when the sun leaps up.  Do you hear the humming
of the bees?  There is thyme in mother Friedel's
garden; and that is the sharp tinkle of the brook
over the stones.  Eh, my soul, what a symphony!
The breath of the forest—do you feel it?—cool
and living; the savour of the crushed, dew-drenched
moss under your feet—do you taste it?  And the
smell of the beech leaves and the incense of the
pines?  And now watch.  Behold how the forest is
lit up as with some inner fire!  Dark and colourless
stand the trees nearest to us.  Look within, how
the flame grows, how it spreads—live gold, live
emerald!  And see there—oh, the scarlet on those
fir trunks!  The sun has risen!..."

The fiddler stopped speaking.  Looking back
upon it, Steven afterwards wondered if he had
spoken at all, or had only made his thoughts felt.
But here his strange companion came to a standstill
in their slow wandering and took off his
battered old hat and waved it.

"Farewell!" said he.  "Mother Friedel will give
you breakfast, and son Friedel is already on the
look-out for your lost retinue.  Farewell, noble
Count ... remember to be young!"

"Shall I never meet you again?" cried Steven,
suddenly.  His heart sank unaccountably, and he
added with hesitation: "Comrade?"

Geiger-Hans, moving away into the forest with
light, fantastic step, paused and smiled mysteriously.

"Who knows?" said he, over his shoulder.  "If
you know how to seek—why—who knows?"

He plunged down an opening in the trees, where
the sun made a golden path before him through
the yellowing oak trees; and the larches on either
side were on fire with green flame.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE INVITATION OF THE ROAD`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER V


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE INVITATION OF THE ROAD

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*A vagrant's morning wide and blue,*
   |  *In early fall, when the wind walks, too;*
   |  *A lengthening highway, cool and brown,*
   |  *Alluring up and enticing down....*"
   |                              BLISS CARMAN.

.. vspace:: 2

There never yet had been question of a maiden
in the life of Steven Lee, up to this September day.
With his Austrian tradition, Austrian pride of race
and estate, he had some very clear notions of the
noble blood and the territorial importance that
would have to be hers who should be honoured
some day as the choice of Waldorff-Kielmansegg.

Yet your young patrician, as a rule, is not chary
of granting himself that interlude of amusement,
dissipation—experience of life before marriage—commonly
known as "sowing his wild oats."  It
was, perhaps, because of his English education,
hearty, wholesome, sporting; by reason too, no
doubt, of the English deliberation inherited from his
mother, joined to his own fastidious self-sufficiency,
that he had never felt the want of a woman's share
in his life.  The pretty chin of a peasant girl had
never tempted his fingers.  Little Sidonia of the
forest house, had she been ten times more beautiful,
had never needed to wield her plaits as flails
to beat down his enterprise.  Had not the fiddler's
music got into his veins, that strange night; had
not the insidious white wine mounted to his head,
he had surely never succumbed so rapidly to the
fascination of the young Italian.  Yet her chief
attraction, in his eyes, had been, not the parted,
dewy lips, not the violet gaze of her eyes, but the
false attribution to her of birth and breeding, born
of his own imagination.  The moonlight kiss he
had suddenly yearned for was to have been snatched
from a great lady—faugh! not from a *ballerina*!
Here had, indeed, been a lesson, a humiliation—all
the more deep-felt because the punishment
seemed disproportionate to the single lapse.  His
mind went back to it sullenly, once and again.
There were men, he knew, to whom the true character
of the fair traveller would have been an
additional allurement.  He was not of them.

His fastidiousness revolted, almost as a woman's
might, no less from the thought of any inferiority
of status, than from the knowledge that where he
condescended to favour, others had already carried
their easy victories.

Yet, although the image of the dancer lingered
no more pleasantly in his fancy than did that of
the little patrician—disdainfully unnoticed in her
peasant garb—that night of adventure in the
forest had left a deep stamp upon the young man;
but the chief memory for him, the one personality
towards which his thoughts constantly reverted,
was that of the grey-haired roadside fiddler.  He
had met a king yonder night, but it was the vagrant
he longed to see again.  He had fought for his life
with one of the most notorious rufflers in Europe,
but the scenes he re-lived, with the fond dalliance
of a slow-thinking youth, was the meeting on the
road in the rosy sunset and the parting in the green
forest dawn.  He was haunted by the man's smile,
by his voice, by the way of his hands—above all,
his music.

The taunting music, with its yearning, its
suggestion, ever alluring and ever elusive, played to
him by night and day.  It seemed as if he should
come to his old self again, could he but encounter
that strange companion once more and test the
emptiness of his fascination, the folly and
absurdity of it!  At least, this was what he told
himself, to excuse his own inconceivable action.  For
here was he actually ranging the country, in search
of what?  A sort of fiddling vagabond.  A fellow,
moreover, who had rated his nobility at such insolent
cheapness; had slighted him; had mocked, chided;
had treated him as no one, since childhood, had
presumed to treat the important young nobleman.

But it was an obsession: idle to try and reason
it away.  No, he would never rest till his desire was
accomplished.

So he wandered along the Thuringian ways,
making stealthy inquiries here and there; fruitlessly,
but always lured on from village to village,
round and about the great forest district, where, he
was credibly informed, the fiddler was wont to roam
about this time of year; constantly met with the
tidings that, but the day before, but last night, but
two hours ago, the wanderer had been seen to pass
along that very road.  The gracious gentleman
would surely catch him on the highway to
Helmstadt; at the farmhouse of Grönfeld, where he
always lingered; at the fair in the next hamlet, where
he was absolutely promised!  Sometimes it seemed
as if the very trail of his music hung in the air;
there was something fantastic in the constant
presence, always escaping him.

Steven, fully conscious of the absurdity of the
situation, set his teeth in still more dogged
determination, as the days went by.  And the pursuit,
started at first half idly, now became a thing of
earnestness, a chase almost passionate.

"I told Geiger-Hans about the fine young nobleman
that was always looking for him," called out a
sunburnt girl one morning, as he passed for the
second time through her green-embowered village.

Steven halted.  He was on foot, after his fashion,
tired with his fruitless tramp, out of temper.

"That was very kind of you," retorted he,
sarcastically.  "And what said the fellow?"

The girl's teeth flashed in her tanned face.  She
poised her bucket on the rim of the well, and
shrugged her shoulder archly.

"Geiger-Hans said to me," she giggled: "'If
one wants to be followed, one must first
retire—remember that, Mädel,' he said.  He said that to
me," she went on, "because of the lad I'm after."

Steven turned away with a "pish!" of scorn for
such low dallying, and an uneasy sense of doubt
that the fiddler's avoidance of him was deliberate.
As he swung away from her, the girl called after
him good-naturedly:

"If the gracious gentleman will go to
Wellenshausen, he will surely find Geiger-Hans sooner or
later.  He is never far from the Burg, this time of
year."

"Pah!" thought Steven, "shall I waste more
time in running down this beggar?  The folk
here-abouts must think me as crazy as himself!  They
are all in league to make me tramp.  I vow this is
some trick of the vagabond.  I think I see myself
squatting at a wretched village, humbly waiting
Master Fiddler's pleasure."

And yet, to Wellenshausen, he next day found his way.

.. vspace:: 2

Thus Steven Lee, Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg,
a young man of usually epicurean tastes, chose to
linger in God-forsaken, out-of-the-way corners of
Westphalia, this September in the year of wars, 1813.

In the eyes of his valet this was incomprehensible;
seriously annoying; indeed, a matter for
much head-shaking.  Instead of making for the gay
capital of King Jerome and enjoying himself "like
a gentleman," he hung about the outskirts of the
Thuringian Forest and haunted the inns of
half-deserted townships, of poverty-stricken villages on
the high imperial road.  While the postilions and
the above-mentioned valet cursed the thin wine and
the gross fare, while the horses of the travelling-chaise
fretted the hours away in unworthy stables,
their lord and master took solitary rambles on foot,
as if in search of no one knew what, only to return,
haughty as usual, weary and discontented.

When a halt was ordered for the night in the
hamlet of Wellenshausen, instead of pushing on to
the decent town of Halberstadt, as he had expected,
valet Franz felt the situation more than his lively
Viennese spirit could endure and vowed he would
resign.  He tapped his forehead significantly as his
master strolled out of the vine-grown guest-house,
looking up and down the street in his singular,
expectant fashion.

"There's question of a maiden," said postilion
Peter, grimacing over his mug, "or else the devil's
in it."

Further than this their diagnosis of the master's
state of mind could not go.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Albeit on the skirt of the low lands, the village of
Wellenshausen was yet still of the mountain.  It
rode, so to speak, a bold buttress of the distant
wooded range, and was sheltered to the north by
an imposing crag, that rose, pinnacle-like, so
detached and huge that it would have seemed
inaccessible but for the testimony of the castle perched
on its summit—the far-famed Burg of Wellenshausen.
From the flank of this mount, a torrent
of black waters, strangely cold at all times, born in
some mysterious and dreaded cavern of the rocks,
rushed, foaming brown; and, on its way to the
plain, cut the village in two.

Steven Lee gazed upwards at the old Burg, frowning
of aspect at most times, but just now, as it caught
on its narrow windows the rays of a sinking sun,
shining rosily upon the valleys.  His fancy was
wafted up for a moment to the height on a wing of
airy romance, when a clamour of children's voices
turned his attention in a new direction.  A string of
ragged urchins was rushing in the direction of the
torrent.  Over the bridge a man's figure was
approaching at a swinging pace.  It stopped for a
moment on the summit of the rough stone arch;
and the notes of a fiddle, in lively measure, rose
above the children's shouts and the roar of the waters.
Dancing, singing, leaping, catching at his
coattails, they surrounded the musician and followed
him.  He advanced like the magic piper of the legend.

Steven stood still in the middle of the way; a
gleam in his eye, the sunset radiance on his smiling
face.  The player came up to him and greeted him
with a bow, his fiddle still at his chin the while he
finished his stave.

"Good evening, my lord Count.  We have met
before," said he.  His tone was placidly courteous,
if his glance mocked.

"And I well-nigh despaired of our meeting again,"
returned the young man, with some show of
emotion.  "Your music has been running in my
head—implacably—all these days.  I think you must
have bewitched me!"

There was a note almost of reproach in his voice;
and yet he blushed as he spoke, ashamed of his own
eagerness in such a quarter.

"Why," said the other, cruelly, "I fear you're
but a dull lad.  Great Apollo, could we change
places, I would need no old man's company!—Nay,
now, children, let a gentleman speak to a
gentleman."  He paused in a moment's meditation,
looked through the inn gateway, then glanced up
swiftly at the distant towering strong house.  "Is
it possible your lordship has chosen this barren
village for a stage?  I see your attendants
supping—right sadly—in the arbour yonder.  Will you
bid me to supper also, comrade?"

He looped his threadbare sleeve into Steven's fine
broadcloth.  The urchins shouted with laughter.

The young aristocrat frowned, started; then, with
sudden sweetness, submitted, and presently found
himself sitting in front of his guest in the darkening
bin room, to the respectful astonishment of mine
host of "The Three Storks."  Had the grinding
struggle for existence, in such precarious war times,
left a spark of imagination in the few plain wits with
which Nature had gifted this honest man, he might
have found something beyond mere amazement in
the contrast between his two patrons—something
of the old romance of which the German roads had
once been full, before the cruel realities of foreign
subjection, the flat prose of poverty, had driven
legend and fancy from the land.

The fiddler's attire had more pretensions to
neatness than on that other sunset hour when Steven had
first met him, bare-breasted to the evening airs and
powdered with the dust of the long way.  His garments
were distinctive enough, for all their poverty,
and set off the fine line, the close muscle, of a figure
lean to emaciation yet a model of alert strength.
Breeches of home-spun clung to thigh and knee;
thick knitted hose and brass-buckled shoes of
country make could not conceal the elegance of leg and
foot.  The shirt-collar carelessly open, the abundant
grey hair, quaintly tied up in the cue of twenty
years bygone, emphasized a symmetry of head and
throat which, in a higher walk of life, would
doubtless have been termed noble.  The tan of the
clear-cut, ascetic face was singular against the silver of
the hair.  The whole personality was indeed made
of anomalies:—the wild fire of the eyes under
brows melancholy and philosophic; the air at once
of recklessness and of self-command, of indifference
and fierceness; the geniality and the illimitable
scorn; the weariness of all things, the utter worn
distaste which was written in every line of his
countenance and might have belonged to the pitiless
disillusion of old age; the swift energy of the
delicate impulsive hands, the quick turn of the head
and the flashing glance which made him half as
young again at times than that middle-age which
yet was unmistakably his.  Here was a creature
who seemed to know too much and to despise
everything; who read the yet unspoken thought, and did
not hide his scorn of it; who yet drew confidence as
a woman might, and could lay his touch on the
sources of tears and laughter.  If angels or demons
walked in human guise, this Geiger-Hans might
have passed for one or the other, according to the
mood of his company or according, rather, to the
candour of their souls.

Against so strange a being the personality of his
young entertainer stood clear as light of day.  No
mystery there!  Four words could sum it up: pride,
youth, strength, and comeliness.

The innocence of his youth looked out through
his full grey eyes; the pride of his birth sat on his
eyebrow, drooped in his eyelid, quivered in his
nostrils; the joy of his untried strength smiled
unconsciously in his red lips; there was life in the very
wave of his brown hair.  The healthy pallor of the
cheek only emphasized how generous was the quick
blood, and how ingenuous the nature that sent it
rushing with every passing emotion.  Scarcely
conscious yet of the value of the power he wielded,
the young man nevertheless gave his orders in
careless tones, as one to whom wealth had always been
an attribute of existence.  The sober richness of
his garb, the sable of the travelling cloak that hung
over his chair, became his youthful nobility.  And
there he sat and pressed the vagrant musician to
sour wine and harsh fare with the airs of a magnate
at his own luxurious table.

The fiddler was unwontedly silent.  He had
assumed, in his sardonic way, an attitude of
exceeding propriety.  He addressed mine host and his
unkempt daughter mincingly; so that, between
laughter, wonder, and a little fear, their service
became complicated.  And Steven, feeling himself
subtly mocked, felt the scarlet burn in his cheeks,
but became only the grander and the more high-born,
because of his own embarrassment.

Yet, now and again, the musician's gaze would
rest upon his entertainer not unkindly.  Nay, more,
there was pleasure, almost caress, in the look with
which the bright eyes would sweep from Count
Steven's blushing face down the long limbs that still
held the grace and something of the delicacy of
adolescence in spite of their unmistakable vigour.

The slattern girl put a dish of hard green pears
between the two, with a slam.  The fiddler raised
melancholy orbs upon Steven:

"Well, sir," he said, "I cannot congratulate you.
The bread is sour.  Sour is not the word for the
wine.  It is scarcely of such stuff that our Ovid
sang in his 'Art of Love'—

   |  "'Vina parant animos, faciuntque caloribus aptos.'

I have good teeth, but truly this sausage baffled
them.  I am unappeased."  He struck his lean
middle.  "I shall have no spirit to play another
note to-night.  (Keep your curses for better uses,
friend; they will not sweeten the cup.)  Now,"
said he, luxuriously stretching out his legs and gazing
at them with a musing air, "I could have done with
a capon, methinks, and a beaker of ripe old
Burgundy.  What say you?  Have *you* supped?  Nay?
Neither have I.  Come, Sir Count, I invite your
High Seriousness to an entertainment where nothing
short of the best cellar and the fairest lady of the
countryside will satisfy us."  Then, regarding
Steven's bewildered face for a while in silence, he
went on with sudden earnestness.  "The highborn
English lady and the estimable Austrian nobleman,
who are jointly responsible (as I understand) for
your existence, have spoilt the dish for want of a
little spice.  Heavens, sir! have you never a smile
in you, never a spark for the humorous side of
things?  Why, youth should itself be the laughter
of life.  Come with me—you have much to learn."

And leaving the pears further unheeded, he took
the young man by the arm and led him to the door.
The village was now steeped in grey shadow, but
the strong house on the height still glowed like a
ruby.  Pointing to it:

"I brought you once," said the vagrant, "into
somewhat low company.  That was the story of
our first meeting.  To-night, if you will, I shall
bring you into high."

"O Jemine!" exclaimed the landlord, who had
been hanging open-mouthed, ready for the roar at
Geiger-Hans' humour.  "Yonder, where the Lord
Burgrave locks up his lady?"

"Even so," said the hungry fiddler, imperturbably.
"And you must lend your donkey and little
Georgi, and see that this gentleman's valise is safely
conveyed upwards.  For yonder we spend the night."

Yonder, where the sullen lord of the district reigned
in traditional terror, even in absence; where (it
was whispered) he had immured a six-months'
bride—jealous as any Bluebeard.  Yonder in the old
Burg, where ancient horrible legends of fierce dogs
to devour unwelcome guests, of bottomless oubliettes,
of rayless dungeons, of torture chambers (no
doubt based on truth enough in bygone centuries),
still lived in significance with tenants and vassals.
Nay, was it not well known that none were allowed
ingress or egress to the castle but the Baroness
Sidonia, the Burgrave's niece, who had lived all her
life with him and, being of his own blood, and little
better than a child, could not be said to count?  The
innkeeper looked doubtfully at Geiger-Hans,
compassionately at his guest.  Vague memories flitted
through his mind of some fantastic tale, heard to
the murmurous accompaniment of his mother's
spinning wheel, wherein the devil met ingenuous
youths on their wanderings and tempted them to their
doom.

All knew, of course, that the musician was a man
of humour; still, the freak seemed beyond a joke.
And yet, on an imperial gesture, the host of "The
Three Storks" withdrew without further parley to
carry out the crazy vagrant's order.

"Don't make a fool of me," whispered Steven, in
his singular adviser's ear.

"Why, it is the wisdom of youth to be foolish
and it is its privilege to be foolish with grace.—O,
could you but learn that!" interrupted the other,
impatiently.  "No, not to-night, dear children, but
to-morrow ... to-morrow you shalt dance your
feet off.  I am a great person to-night: I am
supping in the old Burg."

"Oh!" said the children, who had gathered like
sparrows on their fiddler's reappearance.  "Oh!"  And
awestruck they scattered.

"That Geiger-Hans...!" said the landlord,
as by-and-by he watched his guests depart.  "He
bewitches all, great and small.  But this is a strong
one....  There they go.  Maybe they'll never
come back!"  He had to the utmost the village
terror of the menace of the Burg, inherited through
centuries of high and low justice dispensed by
Burgraves of Wellenshausen.  "Dungeons, up there,
and trapdoors, and none ever the wiser.  *Herr Jemine*!"


.. _`Wellenshausen`:

.. figure:: images/img-073.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Wellenshausen

   Wellenshausen





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE BURG`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VI


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE BURG

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*I will be master of what is my own;*
   |  *She is my goods, my chattels, she is my house;*
   |  *And here she stands, touch her whoever dare!*"
   |                            (*Taming of the Shrew*).

.. vspace:: 2

"Sidonia," said the lady up in the turret-room,
"I will not endure it!"

As this remark was made at least five times a day,
the hearer was less impressed than the desperate
air of the speaker demanded.

"I will throw myself from the window," continued
the Burgravine, carefully propping her plump
elbows on the stone sill to gaze down with safety.

"If you'd only come out sometimes, and walk
with me!" said little Sidonia, smiling.

"Walk, child?  Your uncle knew well what he
was doing when he stuck me up on this diabolic
crag.  I have not a pair of shoes that would last
me half-way down.  And merely to look at the road
that leads to this place!  Oh!"—she covered her
eyes with her hand and shuddered—"it makes me
reel with giddiness!"

"It was very lovely in the forest," said Sidonia.
"The wild raspberries are nearly ripe, and——"

"Raspberries!  Alas! is that what you ought
to think of at your age?  You, too—'tis monstrous
cruelty!"

"The fawns are growing and are so sweet——"

"Fawns!  Fawns?  'Tis a lover should be sweet
to you.  As for me—oh woe!"

Sidonia, slight, slim, and sun-kissed as a young
woodland thing herself, grew crimson behind her
aunt's dejected head.

"Why—why, then, does Uncle Ludovic keep
us here?" she queried.

Uncle Ludovic's lady flounced round in her
chair, her eyes darting flames, a flood of words
rising to her cherry lips—

"Why?  Because, my love, the creature is a
*Barbe-Bleue*.  And to be a Bluebeard, child, means
that if a wretched woman has been fool enough to
trust you, you think you have a right to chop her
head off if she disobeys; and meanwhile to shut her
up to prevent her having so much as a chance."

"I wonder why you married Uncle Ludo?"
mused the girl.  Her eyes were dreaming, across
the fair plain-land, into the distance.  To give your
life to some one quite old and quite stout, with a
grizzled double chin and veins that swell on a red
forehead (ran the fleeting thought), when, about the
ways of the forest, a young knight might be met
wandering ... a knight with hair that crisped
back from forehead of ivory, with eyes that were
scornful and full of fire!

"Why did I marry him?" returned the Burgravine,
sharply.  "Ah, he was very different then,
my dear!  The monster! how he deceived me!
Do you think I should ever have consented if I had
not known that he was King Jerome's minister;
if he had not promised me that we should live at
Cassel; if I had not been told that one was more
gay at Cassel now than at Paris itself?  And
honourably I was served, was I not?  Ten days at
Cassel, while there was scarce a cat stirring, the
King called away by the Emperor, then snatched
off to this place, this bald, hateful eagle's crag, at
the first hint of any gaiety.  Men talk of their
honour, my love—a big word behind which they can
play any trick upon us poor women their humour
may prompt."  Her voice broke shrilly.  Then she
added, with sudden calmness: "And if I had had a
silver groschen to my name, you may imagine 'tis
not old Wellenshausen's second wife that I should
be—but some fine young man's first one.  Sidonia,
how unfair is fate!"  She looked enviously at the
girl.  "There are you, with all your money, who will
never have a suitable notion of what to do with it,
while I—I——"  She snapped two taper fingers
together sharply and twisted a dear little plump
shoulder well-nigh free of the fashionable Viennese
robe, which looked so oddly out of place in the
mediæval severity of the tower room.

There was silence, while Sidonia reflected.  The
Burgravine had a way of opening strange perspectives
before the young mind that had hitherto known
but the simplest and straightest outlook on life.
Wonderful customs had the new mistress brought to
the old Burg—odd fads of fashion, new hours of
meals, new liveries and unknown demands on the
servants' attention.  A prisoner, she assumed
supreme authority within the limits of her prison.  It
sometimes seemed as if the very stones in the old
wall were echoing surprise.  Sidonia, who had run
wild within them, near seventeen years of happy
unexacting childhood, found herself frequently
marvelling at a code of morality so startling in its novelty
as to range beyond her judgment.  She felt that she
could as little fit herself to this new aunt's view of
existence, as her modest country limbs to one of those
outrageous garments of Viennese mode, over which
the Burgravine could sigh a whole morning through
in rapture and regret—lamenting, with the voluble
aid of Mademoiselle Eliza, her French maid, the
opportunities lost in this God-forsaken corner of
the world.

"And pray," said Bluebeard's wife, after a pause
(never a very long one with her, for, if Sidonia had
the gift of silence which belongs to all creatures who
have lived much with nature, her Aunt Betty possessed
it not at all), "and pray, how many days is it
since your uncle took the road for Cassel, a-bursting
with hypocritical sighs of farewell?"

"I don't know," said Sidonia, starting from her
dream.  "Ten days?"

"Ten days!"  The words were echoed in a high
pitch of indignation.

"Three weeks, then," amended the girl, hastily.
"I really don't know; time goes so fast."

"Time goes so fast!  Oh, you—you...!"  Cherry
lips of scorn babbled vainly in search of
fitting epithet.  "You—you're his own niece!"

Yet as life would have been distinctly duller were
she to quarrel outright with Sidonia, the Burgravine
quickly turned the batteries of her wrath to the old
direction.

"Little did I think on that day, when my father,
away in our dear Austrian home, bade me hasten
to the great salon and pour out coffee for the
gentleman from Hanover who had come to buy our
horses—little did I think what lay in store for me!  'You
must smile on him, child,' said my mother; 'he is
an old nobleman, very rich; and if your father sells
well, it may mean a month in Vienna for you!'  Ach,
heavens!" said the Burgravine, "think of me, my
Sidonia, smiling, in my innocence, on him—on him!
And who was bought and sold?  It was poor Betty!"

"I think it is very wrong of Uncle Ludo," asserted
Sidonia, severely, a flush rising to her sunburnt
cheek.  "Why, since he has married you, will he
not trust you?"

"Why?  Because, having spent most of his life
studying our sex, the man now flatters himself upon
a wide experience of our frailties.  Because, having
so often proved how easy it is to break the marriage
vow, he can put no confidence in another's keeping
it.  Because," and her bosom heaved with indignation,
"Cassel is the most amusing spot at this moment
in the whole of Europe—they say it is gayer than
Paris itself—and no husband who respects himself
can take his pleasure with any comfort, if he does not
feel that his wife is correspondingly bored."

"But uncle has his Chancellor's duty," resumed
Sidonia, after pondering upon these enlightening
remarks.

"Chancellor's duties!"  The lady drummed on
the diamond panes.  "Oh, yes, my love, King
Jerome requires onerous duties of his ministers,
and I've no doubt that Ludovic performs his *con
amore*.—How soon will you be eighteen?" she
cried suddenly.

"In four months," said Sidonia.

"Four months—an eternity!  Alas, my love,
long before that I shall have been laid in that hateful
chapel of yours; in that very vault, no doubt, where
lies my predecessor—that fool of a woman who
resisted such a life as this for twenty years, and yet
had the inconceivable want of tact to die at the very
moment when I was ripe to fall a prey to the monster."

"Poor Aunt Hedwige!" said Sidonia, reflectively;
"she was very fat and never unkind, and I don't
think she was unhappy."

"Ha!" muttered the Burgravine, vindictively,
"I'll warrant he might have brought her to Cassel
with impunity."

"He didn't, though," said Sidonia.

"No, child," pursued the other, with much rancour,
"woman's place is at home, you see, while the
man is abroad—aha!"  She set her teeth and
growled behind them like an angry Persian kitten.
Then she snapped at her niece: "And you haven't
even the intelligence to be eighteen yet, and be of
some use for once in your life!  Yes, never look so
astonished; you're not a fool, child; you know that
when you are eighteen, you will be free, and the
richest woman in Thuringia—owner of half the
wretched little province; free, girl, free to do as you
like, to live where you like, to have your own
establishment, to spend your own money—and then
there'd be a chance for me!  Ah, but you would not
give it to me.  You would let dear uncle manage as
he's always managed, and dole you out a thaler here
and a louis there, and let him choose you a nice
husband ... who would not look too much into
the accounts, I'll warrant."

"Aunt Betty!" panted Sidonia.  The Burgravine
stopped, slightly abashed by the fire that flashed in
the child's glance.  "If you can't forgive Uncle
Ludo for being your husband, don't forget that he
is a man of honour...."

"Oh, patatata!" said the lady, with a shrug,
"here's mighty fine talk!  Manage your own affairs,
my dear.  I'll say no more."

She leaned her plump arms on the window-sill
again and turned her back on her niece with an air
of determined sullenness.

Sidonia was very angry.  She sat down on the
high-backed chair and set the ancient spinning
wheel whirring with a hand that trembled.

"One thing is certain," she resumed in a choked
voice, "if I ever do marry, Aunt Betty, I shall choose
my own husband."

"Of course, among the crowds that besiege the
gay Burg of Wellenshausen, up in the clouds, my
sweet creature," said the Burgravine, without turning
her head, "you will have only *l'embarras du choix*
and then——"  But here she interrupted herself
with a sharp ejaculation.  Her fingers ceased their
angry tune.  She swung back the window a trifle
wider and leaned out further than she had ventured
upon her threat of suicide.  "Look, look!" she cried
in altered tones.  "Do you see?  There are two
men coming up the road with a pack-horse.  No,
'tis a donkey!"

.. _`"Look, look, do you see? ... There are two men coming up the road with a pack-horse!"`:

.. figure:: images/img-082.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Look, look, do you see? ... There are two men coming up the road with a pack-horse.  No, 'tis a donkey."

   "*Look, look, do you see? ... There are two men coming up the road with a pack-horse.  No, 'tis a donkey.*"

Sidonia sprang up and leaned out eagerly across
her aunt's shoulder.  They were but a pair of
children of different ages, when all was said and done.

"It can only be the miller's boy and the gardener
... or the shepherd," opined she.

"Oh, yes, the very outline of humpback John and
the swing of bandy Peperl!" (This was sarcastic.)
"To the hangman with these evening mists!  Now,
now, see! a gentleman, or I'm a goose-girl ... a
young man, or I'm a grandmother!  Poor things,
how they toil!"

"Why, 'tis Geiger-Hans!" exclaimed the lady's
niece, in amazement.  But it was not, surely, the
sight of Geiger-Hans which brought such crimson
to her cheek.

"And who may Geiger-Hans be?" cried the Burgravine.

"My dear friend, everybody's friend, Geiger-Hans
the roadside player," said the girl.  "Why,
you have heard me speak of him many a time.  If
he were young and wore a plume and a dagger,
people would call him a minnesinger.  And his
music—ah! it moves the heart like——"

"Why, the creature's a beggar, child!" interrupted
the lady, peering down.  "But the other——"

She drew back from the window in great fluster.
"It's quite clear that you and I have company at
last.  Oh, for once I will be mistress here!  They
shall be admitted, *maugré* my ogre!  Call Eliza!
Get you into a decent gown, for Heaven's sake!
My rose taffeta—it shall be my rose taffeta.  And
you?—Wear anything but white at your peril!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`GUESTS OF CHANCE`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VII


.. class:: center medium bold

   GUESTS OF CHANCE

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*'Twould be a wildish destiny*
   |  *If we, who thus together roam*
   |  *In a strange land and far from home,*
   |  *Were in this place the Guests of Chance!*
   |  *Yet who would stop or fear to advance...?*"
   |                                    WORDSWORTH.

.. vspace:: 2

"The Lord Burgrave is not at the castle.  The
gracious Lady Burgravine never receives visitors."—Thus
Martin the gatekeeper, thrusting his ugly
head out of the *vasistas* of the great nail-studded
door.

The last of the sunlight had faded.  Grey and
sheer rose the Burg walls and turrets above the
visitors' heads; sheer and grey fell the
mountainside away at their feet.

"Mark now, comrade, for here are we back in
the Middle Ages," whispered Geiger-Hans to his
companion.  Aloud he cried to the porter, who was
slowly withdrawing his countenance: "Half a
minute, friend, and let us examine your statement.
That the Lord Burgrave is away, I am aware; but
that your lady does not receive has still to be proved.
How if we two come upon the invitation of His
Excellency himself?  Consider me that."

Through the gathering gloom Steven peered at
the musician's mocking features.  Martin the
doorward stared in silence for a moment; then, with a
great groaning of bars and grinding of keys, set the
heavy door ajar—not to admit them, indeed, but
that he might stare the closer.

"Martin," pursued the fiddler, gravely, "your
name had better have been Thomas: you were born
an unbeliever."

"My orders are," said Martin, in surly tones,
"to admit no one."

"Fellow," said the fiddler, "a servant's orders,
I take it, are not like the Ten Commandments, but
subject to variations according to another's pleasure.
What if I tell you that, knowing your master——"

"You?  Know my master!"  The doorward's
teeth showed like an old dog's in a grin, half scorn,
half doubt.

"Aye, we have but recently parted.  By the same
token, friend, he is now at Halberstadt and may be
here to-morrow.  Meanwhile, as it is damp and
night falls, admit us to your stone hall and let us
sit, for you will be wise to gaze at us a while longer
before you take upon yourself to drive off the lord
Burgrave's friend and the lady Burgravine's
kinsman from doors to which they have been invited.
Look at that gentleman.  There is a gentleman for
you, from the crown of his noble head to the sole of
his high-born foot!  And look at me!  Ah, you
know me!  Geiger-Hans, am I not?  Beware,
Martin, great people have their disguises."

Martin showed signs of agitation and yielding.
Geiger-Hans, keeping him under the raillery of his
glance, pursued his argumentative advantage:

"Now, cease scratching that grey stubble, and I
will tell thee what to do to save thee from a false
step.  Go thou to the gracious lady, and ask her
if her lord has not advised her of the probable visit
of two travellers, and request of her whether (these
two gentlemen having presented themselves) it is not
her wish, in obedience to her lord, that they should
be admitted.  Meanwhile, we shall sit on this bench,
and I shall beguile my noble companion's weariness
with a little air of music."

The porter withdrew slowly, without another
word, but not without casting backward glances of
doubt upon the new-comers.

"How do you dare?" asked Steven, fixing almost
awestruck eyes upon Geiger-Hans, who, nursing
his instrument upon one knee, was coolly winding
up the strings.

"Dare, I?"  He twanged the cord, shook his head,
and fell to screwing again.  "Why should I not dare?
What have I to fear?  What have I to lose?  We are
sure of a welcome, I tell you—of a supper, and of a
good joke."

"Your magnificent audacity!" said Steven, sitting
gingerly down at the end of the bench, and looking
at the other's lean figure as if it had been that of
the Prince of Lies himself.  "Positively, I myself
could hardly believe you were not speaking the
truth."

"And so I was," said the other, composedly.
"Not one word but was solemn verity."

"Oh, but stay!  How come I to be kinsman to
the Burgravine?"

"You are Austrian," quoth the musician.  "So
is she, as I happen to know.  Both the finest flower
of the Empire's aristocracy.  If you're not related
somewhere ... I'll eat my fiddle."

"Upon my word!" ejaculated Steven, opening
his eyes very wide.  "I suppose it is on the same
kind of plea that you have your acquaintance with
the Burgrave.  An intimate acquaintance?"

"Intimate.  I have said so.  The Burgrave of
Wellenshausen is a type that is true to itself."

"And he has invited us to visit the Burg?"  Steven's
tones broke into mirth.

"Indubitably."  The player raised his fiddle and
drew a long note from it that was a musical mockery
of the young man's high key.  "The husband who
locks up a light-hearted wife alone in a solitary
tower invites in terms most positive every gentleman
of heart and spirit in the country to come and console
her.  M. de Wellenshausen is at Halberstadt, on
the King's business—I was playing at the Crown
Hotel.  He will be here to-morrow.  And he said
to me: 'Friend'—mark you, *friend* (the Burgrave
had dined satisfactorily; the wine is excellent at
the Crown), 'you must come and play that tune at
my castle.'  He's fond of music, you see.  'Twas a
promise.  And the only person who will lie in the
whole matter to-day is the noble lady Burgravine.
She is dying by inches of *ennui*, and she will—be
quite certain of it!—she will assure the porter that
our visit has indeed been announced to her.  'Tis to
be regretted, but such is the way of women who eat
their hearts away in lonely strong houses."

He caught his fiddle to his breast: liquid melody
flowed out into the empty hall, and went echoing
down long passages and up into vaulted roofs.  Like
rabbits from a warren, now a scullion popped a
head out of some dark corner, now a rosy wench
half opened a side door and peeped, smiling.  There
awoke all about the sleepy castle a sound of skirmishing
and tittering; now a patter of bare feet; now
the tramp of boots that no precautions could hush.
At length the majestic form of the major-domo
himself appeared before the vagrants, magnificent
in his silver chain and silk stockings and buckle
shoes.  Geiger-Hans hushed his music and leaned
over to Steven to whisper in his ear:

"See, he has been putting on his grand garb of
ceremony to deliver his lady's little lie."

"The high-born, my mistress, had not expected
you before to-morrow," said the butler, with a deep
bow to Steven.  He cast a fish-like eye of astonishment
upon the fiddler, but, nevertheless, pursued:
"Will your honour follow me to your apartment?"  Again
he stared at the musician, who nimbly rose and bowed.

.. _`"The high-born, my mistress, had not expected you before to-morrow," said the butler with a deep bow`:

.. figure:: images/img-090.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "The high-born, my mistress, had not expected you before to-morrow," said the butler, with a deep bow to Steven.*

   "*The high-born, my mistress, had not expected you before to-morrow,*" *said the butler, with a deep bow to Steven.*

"My honour will also follow," he said blandly.
"Our valise is on the donkey's back, at the door;
see to it, my man."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



If Geiger-Hans were surprised at his own success,
it was only the humorous twitch of his eyebrows
that betrayed the fact.  He was of those, apparently,
whose talent for seizing opportunities generally
evoke the belief that they have created them.

"Comrades should share and share alike," said
he presently, laying down Steven's brush, which he
had been wielding dexterously on his own locks—"lend
me a black ribbon for my queue—it is out
of mode, but I am of the old stock.  I have been
shaved *à velours* to-day—'twas an inspiration!  A
cloud of powder would complete me, but you
new-century bucks know not of these refinements.  Nay,
but here is a pot of the finest Parma, as I live!  For
the chin and cheek of *milord* after the razor, no doubt?
Now shall you see how it became the countenance
of a better-looking generation.—I think that black
suit of yours so neatly folded in the corner of our
valise is, perhaps, what would best grace my gravity.
Yes.  And a ruffle shirt....  Thank you.  Ah! ... And
those violet silk stockings."

Steven stood hypnotized.

"Your eyes will positively drop out," said the
fiddler, "if you stare any more."  He drew a
snuff-box from his discarded coat, and tapped it with his
finger.  "A pinch is but a poor thing, if a man has
not a frill to his wrist," he said.  And he was
apparently not ill-pleased to see how Steven marvelled
at the grace with which he swung his borrowed laces,
the air with which he flipped an invisible atom from
his cuff.  He took a step, as though his legs had never
known but silk.  Steven's suit, if a little large, hung
on his figure with a notable fitness.

"As I live!" cried Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg,
with a loud laugh of discovery, "a gentleman, after all!"

Geiger-Hans drew his black brows together with
his swift frown.

"Your equal, you mean, doubtless?" said he, dryly.
"You do me too great honour."  Then his eyes
softened again, as in his turn he surveyed his
companion.  "Come," said he, "I would give all my
superior years for some of your youthful disabilities.
I cherish no illusions as to which of us the fair
Burgravine will deem the better worth her notice."

And, indeed, when the two were ushered into the
long, dim, tapestry-hung saloon, the bright eyes of
the lady of the castle merely swept Geiger-Hans,
amazingly distinguished as he was in his borrowed
plumes, to rest with complacency on the youth who
followed him.

Steven held his head high, after the fashion of your
shy, self-conscious fellow.  But his head being one
upon which Nature had set a noble stamp, this
became it well.  If there was pride in the arch of his
eyebrow and the curl of his lip, there was, likewise,
race to justify it.  Betty, the Burgravine, could note
as much between two flickers of her long eyelashes;
note, too, that (thank goodness!) he wore none of
those new, odious Cossack trousers, but kept to the
fashion which made it worth while for a man to have
a good line to his limb; note, furthermore, that
plum-colour frac, maize waistcoat, and dove-grey
kerseymeres make excellent harmony with rose taffeta.
The lady had been created for courts, and even now,
perched like a humming bird in the eyrie of a
mountain eagle, moved in a gay, trifling atmosphere of
her own.  And, as he returned her gaze, Count
Steven, who had also been constructed for the high
places of life, felt that he was in his element once
more.

"The—the gentlemen!" announced Niklaus,
with a nervous giggle.  He knew Geiger-Hans—as
who did not that belonged to the country-side?
But familiarity had not so far bred contempt, and
neither he nor his compeers would have ventured to
question anything the mysterious being chose to do.
Had the fiddler desired himself to be announced as
the Archangel Michael, or Prince Lucifer, or the
Emperor Napoleon, or the Wandering Jew,
Niklaus would scarcely have been surprised.

The rose-red lady advanced a sweet little sandal
and made a profound curtsey.  Her classic top-knot
of curls was richly dark, and so was the olive
velvet of her cheek; but as she looked up slowly from
her inclination, Steven was quite startled to find that
her eyes opened blue as forget-me-nots.

"Gentlemen!" ejaculated she, translating
Niklaus' clumsy Saxon German into tripping French—it
being the tone of German Courts to speak French.
The blue flowers of her eyes widened in surprise
upon Geiger-Hans.  She had not known there were
two *gentlemen* when she looked forth from the
window; only the goodly youth and his roadside guide.
But this elderly person was a gentleman, no doubt
about that, and a fine one, too....  Only, so old!

And now he took the lead, as became his years.

"Madame la Comtesse," responded he; and even
Steven, in spite of his Anglo-Austrian ear, could note
the exquisite purity of his Gallic accent, "permit
two travellers to express their gratitude for the
generous alacrity with which you have granted them
hospitality.  We had lost our way——"

"Lost your way!" interrupted the lady; and an
irrepressible smile curved her lips upwards.

"Yes, madam," pursued the other, imperturbably;
"and, with the night coming on, in this wild
and mountainous district, Heaven knows what
might not have happened to us!"

"I know not what your destination may be, sir,"
answered she, drawing back with a faint air of
haughtiness, "but surely yours is a strange itinerary
that took an isolated crag on the road."

"Madame," said he, "we gave ourselves infinite
pains to attain this height."

The glance towards herself, the touch at his heart,
the bow, made of these words a delicate compliment.
The line of her mouth began once more to waver.

"To have gone down again, madam, would have
been impossible.  Our itinerary, as you say, is
perhaps difficult to explain.  If I were to tell you that
we took a wrong turning, my friend here would
correct me, for he is convinced, madam, it was the
right turning, since it brought him to your feet."

Here Steven could do nothing but bow in his turn.
This he did, however, with such youthful grace and
so ardent a look, that his hostess melted outright
into smiles.

"Sir—!" said she, coyly; and the young man felt
he had been eloquent indeed.

"Count Steven Lee zu Waldorff-Kielmansegg,"
introduced Geiger-Hans, with a wave of his arm.

"Lee? ... Waldorff?" quoth she, surprised.

"Steven Lee in England, Waldorff-Kielmansegg
in Austria," said the fiddler, blandly.

"*O du mein lieber Oesterreich!*" she exclaimed,
singing; and the forget-me-not eyes became
suffused with the tear of sensibility.

"Waldorff-Kielmansegg of Waldeck," enumerated
the master of ceremonies; while Steven stood
in dignity, conscious of his honours.

"Then we are cousins!"  She clapped her soft
palms; the rising emotion was forgotten in laughter.
"Positively we are cousins.  I am
Schwartzenberg—Betty von Schwartzenberg—and my mother's
second cousin, Rezy Lützow, married Tony
Kielmansegg.  You are welcome, my cousin."

She held out her hand.  He kissed it ceremoniously;
and she, bending forward, sketched a butterfly
salute on his forehead.  It was the custom in
his father's country; but he had lived long enough
in England for it to have grown unfamiliar.  His
heart contracted with a delicious spasm, and the
blood sang in his ears.  Before he knew what he was
doing, he found himself holding the taper fingers
close, found his lips upon them again.

Perhaps the lady was displeased; but, if so, she
cloaked the fact with a very pretty blush, and, as
they drew apart, there could be no doubt but that
the young visitor's position was established.  She
now looked expectantly towards the elder of her
guests.

He stood watching them with quizzical gaze,
tapping his snuff-box, one leg becomingly advanced.
She waited to hear a no less fine-sounding introduction.
But as the waiting was prolonged to almost
a hint of awkwardness:

"Will you not," said she, "Cousin Kielmansegg,
return Monsieur's good offices?"

It was Count Steven's turn to blush.

"My friend," said the fiddler, after enjoying the
poor youth's agony with a relentless eye for a second
or two, "has been content to accept my companionship
as entertaining and useful to himself without
inquiring into my ancestry.  But such indulgence,
my gracious hostess, I cannot claim of you.
Through all the noble blood that flows in your veins,
there mingles, of course, still a drop of Mother
Eve's.  Permit me to make myself known to you as
Jean, Seigneur de la Viole, Marquis de Grand-Chemin....
I lay but a couple of my poor titles
at your feet."

She pondered awhile, nibbling her little finger,
her delicate eyebrows wrought as if in effort of
memory.  Then she said with gravity:

"Your name, sir, has an ancient sound."

"Madam," he responded, "I would not boast,
but there is none more ancient in our world."

Over again she pondered, looking down at the
tip of her sandal.  The blue eyes took stock afresh,
and, thereupon, sunshine chased the gathering cloud
from her face.  With the air of one making up her
mind to be amused without questioning:

"You are welcome, too," she said, "Monsieur My Guest."

"Ah, madam," responded he, "pity that this,
the fairest of my titles, must needs be the most fleeting!"

Tying a blue riband into a hasty knot as she came,
entered Sidonia, almost at a run.  All this time she
had been striving to turn her heavy fair tresses into
the fashionable top-knot, as demonstrated by
Countess Betty—with what result her aunt's first glance
of pity told her but too clearly.  She halted in her
rapid advance, and stood, blushing like a
school-girl, unable to lift her eyes.

"Child," said the Burgravine, "here is my cousin,
Count Kielmansegg, who could not pass by his
kinswoman in exile without personally inquiring
after her well-being."  When Sidonia ventured a
stealthy look, it was to find—oh, bitter moment!—that
she was unrecognized.  "And this gentleman——"
pursued her aunt, with a small, sarcastic smile.

The girl, bewildered, had begun her second
curtsey, when she stopped herself with a cry of utter
amazement—

"Thou, Geiger-Onkel!"

"Madam," intervened the fiddler, gravely,
addressing the Burgravine, "that is yet another of my
honours—to young people who love my music,
I am the Geiger-Onkel."

"We are decidedly *en famille* to-night," said the
Burgravine, with a trace of acidity.  "But here,
child," she proceeded in a meaning tone, "your
friend had better be known as Monsieur de la Viole."

"Marquis de Grand-Chemin," insistently added
the vagrant, with his courtly bow.

"Marquis de Grand-Chemin," admitted the lady.
Nevertheless, it was the arm of her cousin, the mere
Count, that she took to conduct her to the dining
apartment.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`ROSES OF TRIANON`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER VIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   ROSES OF TRIANON

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*As for the girl, she turned to her new being—*
   |  *Loved, if you will: she never named it so:*
   |  *Love comes unseen—we only see it go.*"
   |                                  AUSTIN DOBSON.

.. vspace:: 2

The servants had retired: Master Geiger-Hans'
promised supper-party was over.  It had been to
the full as succulent and as elegant as he had
foretold.  And now, holding the stem of a long
cut-glass beaker between his second and third fingers,
he was gazing abstractedly at the noble wine.
Where were his thoughts, and why was he so dull all
at once, with flower and silver before him, crystal
and fine porcelain?  With the ruby waiting in his
cup, too—the ruby of that noble "Clos Vougeot"
before which Bonaparte, the republican, on his way
to Italy, had made his soldiers halt and present
arms as to the prince of vintages!  Geiger-Hans,
who could sing over a hard crust by the dusty
roadside and give thanks for the water of the
mountain stream, had he had his violin in his hand now,
its music would have been of tears.

His eye moved.  It rested first on the fresh briar-rose
face of the girl with a strange look of tenderness;
then it fell upon the Burgravine.  Her plump, olive
shoulders half out of her gown, her exquisite little
doll face thrust forward—the whole of her an altar
to admiration—she was offering herself in
eagerness, in ecstasy, to the fire that was beginning to
kindle in the hitherto decorous countenance of the
youth opposite to her.  And as the musician noted
this, he frowned and his lips curled into contempt.
Then his gaze sought Steven.  He saw the flush
upon the boy's cheek and the light in his eye; and
his frown grew deeper.  This trivial flame was none
of his kindling.

He turned in his chair and looked again keenly
at the silent girl.  There was something austere
in the mantle of pride and shyness in which she
had wrapped herself.

"Little Mamzell Sidonia!" said he, softly.  She
flashed a glance at him and her eyes filled.  "Shall
I make you some music?"  His face relaxed into
tenderness again as he spoke.

She nodded.  The corners of her mouth quivered;
if she had said a word, she must have burst into sobs.

"She but put a pillow under his head," thought
the fiddler, "and that was enough to make the
flower of love blossom!  Ah, youth!  Poor heart!"  Once
more he regarded the other pair, who were
now whispering.

"After the feast, the dance.  What say you?"
he cried.

"Oh, the dance, the dance!" exclaimed the
Burgravine, leaping to her feet.—What a woman,
what a puppet!

"Then I will play to you," went on Geiger-Hans.
And grinning Niklaus was despatched for his violin.

"It shall be a minuet," said the player after a pause,
on the echo of a sigh.

Then the Marquis de Grand-Chemin waved his
bow with a flourish.  The ruffles at his wrists flew,
he took a step with a grace: it was as if a fragrance
from dead Trianon roses were wafted in between
the barbarous Gothic tapestries of the Burg.

"It is the dance of great ladies and fine gentlemen,"
he said, beginning a melody of bygone days,
mingled with archness and subtle melancholy.  And
playing, he went on, his words winding themselves
with a kind of lilt of their own into the garland of
sounds: "You, sir, bow with your hand on your
heart.  You take her hand and you look into her
eyes.  'Ah!' say you, eloquent though silent, 'to
hold those delicate finger-tips, madam, through
life ... to have the rapture of your sweet company
... then, indeed, would every step be music!'  'Oh,
sir' (says she in the same language), 'you
overpower me!'  And with this she sinks from you
into a curtsey that is all dignity, all grace.  Again
you bow—'of a verity you did not deserve her!'  But
what is this?  Her hand is in yours again.
Oh, this time you draw closer to her ... you hold
her little hand aloft!  The satin of her gown
whispers to your damask—her shoulder for one instant
touches yours—you lead her from right to left—with
what pride, heavens! what respect!  You
turn her lovely form, by the merest hint of your
adoring fingers, from that side to this, that all may
see, and see again, the prize that has fallen to your
lot...."

"We do not dance the minuet in our days,"
interrupted Steven, with bashful resentment.

John of the Viol's delicate measures, that had
rung half humorous, half pathetic, wholly sweet,
as memories of past delights must ever be, ceased
abruptly.  He gave the young man a dark look
as he held his bow aloft.

"No," said he, "you are right.  The minuet has
gone to the guillotine.  France has brought new
dances into fashion: *Ça ira, Ça ira ... Dansons
la carmagnole*!"  His face grew terrible as he struck
the notes of the blood-stained gutter-song into his
strings.  "New dances for France, that she may
dance to her death!..."

"Fie, the ugly tune!" said Countess Betty.  No
shadow of the musician's tragic passion was reflected
upon her face.  "Monsieur le Marquis, play us
a valse!"  She caught joyfully at her own suggestion
as a child its ball.  "A valse, a valse!  Beau
Cousin of Kielmansegg, they tell me 'tis the rage.
A pin for your old minuets!"

"A valse be it!" said Geiger-Hans.  Anger was
upon him, and he made his violin chant it, setting
it and the brutal irony of the "*Ça ira*" to the rhythm
of a fantastic valse.  "Twirl, vapid heart and empty
head!  Hold her, prance round with her, feel your
goat's legs growing, you who might have lifted your
head with the gods and known the matchless rapture
of the heights!  Is it for this that you are young?"

Faster and faster went the music, fevered, with
mad, shrill skirl; and faster the whirling.  Beau
Cousin began to pant.  He held Belle Cousine so
close to him that she, too, scarce could breathe.
Loose flew her hair—one little sleeve almost broke
across the heaving shoulder.  Sidonia could look
no longer; she turned to the window and leaned
her hot cheek against the pane, staring at the stars
with burning eyes.  Something clutched at her heart
and throat with a fierce grip.

Without warning, Geiger-Hans brought his bow
across his strings with a tearing sound, and, as if
a sharp sword had fallen between them, the dancers
fell apart, astonished and not a little confused.

Steven staggered and caught at the chair behind
him.  The Burgrave's lady put a hand to her
dishevelled tresses, then to the laces at her bosom and
grew scarlet: brow and cheek, throat and shoulder.

"You no longer dance the minuet?" said Geiger-Hans,
with a little laugh, picking at his now placid
strings; and Steven thought that the man had the
laugh of a devil and that it was echoed by his
instrument.  "Oh, you have a thousand reasons,
sir, and so has madame, for the valse is a fuller
measure.  Gracious lady, you are out of breath.
May I sit beside you awhile?  And you, sir, will
you not expound the first principles of this—this
graceful and elegant pastime to mademoiselle yonder,
whose youth has yet to learn the new fashion?  Is
it not right, Burgravine, that these young things,
after all, should foregather, while you and I look
on—you, the staid, married woman; I, the old man?"

She answered him not, save by a look of wondering
offence.

"Ah, madam," he went on, as he sat down beside
her, "and you are angry with your lord and master
because he shuts you up in this strong-house?
But, good heavens, it is the proof of his loving
appreciation of your value."

"Oh, ay!" she answered in high contempt, "it
is a sign of strong affection, doubtless."

"Madam, he lays his treasure where thieves
cannot attain it.  At least, poor man, so he fondly
trusts!"

"And therefore the unhappy treasure is to be
consumed by moth and rust," retorted the lady.

"Madam," said the fiddler, in a low voice, "I
imagine that the owner of the treasure had reason
to fear a more indelible stain——"

"How dare you!" she flashed upon him.

But he was picking his violin with a pensive
air.  Then he suddenly looked up at her and smiled.

"Ah!  most gracious one, if I were the happy
possessor of a bird of such brilliant plumage as
yourself, I would——"  He paused.

"You would what?  Pray proceed."  She was
waiting for her triumph.

"I would open wide all the doors and bid it fly."

And then she called to him again, "How dare
you!"  And so insulted was she that there came
a sob into her throat.

"You see," said he, drawing an accompaniment
of whispering notes to his words, "that, after all,
it is monsieur your husband's point of view that you
think the more complimentary."

"He should trust me," she whimpered.

"Madam, who knows?" he responded; "stranger
things have come to pass.  Some day, perhaps, the
bird will not crave for flight; it may cling to the nest."

His fingers moved delicately; the bow swung
with the gentle pliancy of some green bough of
spring—it was a measure of engaging rhythm and
playfulness; yet soft, soft as, under the eaves, the
swallow's note at dawn.

Fascinated, she cried, under her breath: "What is it?"

He answered her, "A cradle song——" and stopped.

His own face had altered indescribably.  His
restless eye had grown fixed and wistful.  Little
Madame de Wellenshausen hung her head,
and—wonderful indeed—a tear gathered and fell!

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Whilst Geiger-Hans thus engaged his hostess,
Steven Lee, with slow steps, had gone across the
room to the girlish figure by the window.  He had
grown to believe that the wanderer had some uncanny
power by which he enforced his will, after the
fashion of that Mesmer of whom one had heard
so much.  Sidonia turned upon him, with a sudden
jerk of her chin, a flash of her eye, as he halted beside
her.  Upon which he exclaimed in amazement:

"Why, great heavens, you are the girl of the
forest house!"

"You have not, I think, sir," she answered him,
"eyes that see quick or far; it is, no doubt, your
town breeding."

The colour was slowly fading from her cheeks.
She held herself very stiff and proud.  But he was
still all eager over his discovery.

"Geiger-Hans told me how you brought me your
pillow," said he, "when I lay hurt in the forest."

"I would have done the same to a sick dog," said she.

"You cried over me when you thought I was dead,
he said," exclaimed Steven, stung by her contempt.

"Had I known you better, sir——"

Her eyes were bright and hard, her lip was a curve
of scorn and her chin a tilted defiance.  But all at
once he saw that, under the close-clinging fabric
of her short-waisted gown, her heart was beating
like a madly frightened bird in the fowler's net.
The knot of blue ribands upon her bosom danced
with its fluttering.  And there came upon him a
desire, at once tender and cruel, to feel that beating
heart beneath his hand.  He gave a short laugh.

"Shall I teach you the valse?" he said, leaning
forward.  "It is quite easy—just my arm about
you, and the music does the rest."

She shrank back with a look that would have
blasted him.

"Do not dare to touch me!"  Though her heart
palpitated into her very voice, she held her head
high as the hind in the forest and went on: "I might
have danced that minuet, as Geiger-Onkel put it
into music.  But I don't like your manner of dancing,
sir—nor your English manners at all.  It would
be best if people stayed in their own country."  And
then, while he stood, as if her childish hand had
struck him, she passed from him, paused for a
moment before her aunt and the fiddler, who were
still sitting together in silence: "I am going to sleep,"
she said, and went proudly out of the room.

.. vspace:: 2

Geiger-Hans had shaken off his musing fit.  He
laughed out loud.

"What, comrade, won't mademoiselle learn the
valse from you, after so pretty a display?"

Madame gazed down at her feet, as they peeped
side by side from the hem of her garment, looking,
the little humbugs, the pink of innocent propriety.
She was subdued, even frightened, and her small
heart was unwontedly stirred within her.

"Our evening is finished," said the Marquis
de Grand-Chemin, rising with his great air.
"Madam, this gentleman and I must march out with
the dawn.  Permit us now to offer you our very
respectful gratitude, and to retire."

She held out her hand, and he took the tips of
her fingers, bowing low.  She curtseyed.  They might
have been in his minuet now, but it was with the
music left out.

"Good-bye, my cousin," she said timidly.  And
"Good-bye" said he.  They stood stiffly before
each other, like two children found at fault.  She
was longing to tell him that it must not be "good-bye"
between her and him.  But the fiddler's eye was
upon them.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Steven felt the world very flat, even on a mountain
strong-house, as he sat down in the state bedroom
and began with a yawn to unwind the folds of his
stock.  Next door Geiger-Hans had locked himself
in.  He had not spoken to his companion since they
had entered their apartment.  Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg
felt that he was in disgrace with the
roadside fiddler, and the sensation was curiously
uncomfortable.  Suddenly the door was opened and
his companion walked in.  He was clad once more
in his own shabby suit, and across his arms carried
the borrowed garments.

One by one he laid them down neatly in the
valise, rolling up the violet silk stockings at the
last.

"Continue," said he, "my friend, to develop the
growth of those goat legs of yours; it will save you
in hosiery.—*Pulchrum ornatum, turpes mores*....
Need I quote further?"

"Upon my soul!" cried the young man, "I don't
understand what you mean!"  But his cheek crimsoned.

"You disgraced me to-night," said Geiger-Hans.
"What, sir!  I have the kindness to bring you up
here that you may snatch a delicate, courtlike
comedy from a lost century, and you turn it into a
gross latter-day romp.  I bring you from an alehouse
into a castle, but you must needs drag up your
Teniers with you and spoil my Watteau!  I play
you a minuet, but what appeals to you is to clutch
and to gambade and——"

"You made the music, man," interrupted Steven,
sulky as a schoolboy.  "And it was she who asked
for a valse."

"*Mon Dieu!*" went on the fiddler, passionately;
"it may be that we were no better as to morals, in
my youth, than you are nowadays, but at least we
took our pleasure like gentlemen.  If we plucked
a rose, we did it with a grace—between two fingers;
we did not tear it with the fist.  We did not seize
a lady round the body and prance with her like hind
and milkmaid; what favours we took we bent the
knee to receive.  Oh, sir, how little fragrance
remains in the flower you mangle thus in your grasp!
Three things there are, young man, that he who
understands life must touch with fingers of gossamer—a
subtle pleasantry, a lady's discretion, the
illusions of a maiden's heart.  You have laid brute
hands on all three to-night.—Fie! you have spoiled
my evening."

The contrast between the man in his humble
clothes and the arrogant culture of his speech
suddenly struck Steven to such a degree that he forgot
to be angry in his eagerness to catch further
self-betrayal from the fantastic enigma.  Become aware
of his eye and smile, the fiddler broke off abruptly
and, for the first time in their acquaintance, looked
disconcerted.  Then he gave a good-humoured
laugh, and his brow cleared.

"Blind, blind!" he resumed.  "Why, was she
not worthy of one look, the child in her virginal
grace?  When I came across you again to-day,
under the shadow of the Burg, my heart leaped like
a little hare.  'Here is one now,' I told myself,
'who is learning worthily the value of his youth.
He shall yet learn of a better than I: for youth must
to youth—the creatures of spring to each other.'  I
resolved, God willing, that the fair romance that
fortune had brought across your path in the forest
should not, after all, close at the first page.  It was
but cloud-building; it was but a spring fancy in
an autumn dream—fancy of an old fool!  Why,
you did not even recognize her!  Yet she held your
head on her knees, when you were hurt.  You were
a knight to her, all gallant—and now!"

"She seems an ill-mannered child," said Steven,
sullenly.

"She is as lovely as the woods at dawn—young,
reluctant, mysterious, chill.  When I approach her,
it is with my hat in my hand.  If I were young like
you, I should kneel to her.  The set of her head,
the line of her little throat——"  His voice grew
suddenly husky.  "Her little throat——" he repeated.

And Steven, he knew not why, had an impression
of a sadness so piercing that he dropped his eyes
and dared not look at Geiger-Hans again.

After a while, with a change of voice: "I will
wake you at sunrise," said the musician.  "I have
promised the children to play for them before school.
Besides, I must see you safely to the foot of the hill,
ere we part, Count Comrade, having brought you
up so high, else heaven knows what fall might not
be in store for you!"

And on this he left the room once more.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The crescent moon, very delicate and soul-satisfying,
hung in a wreath of watery mist, high in the sky;
far down, the plain was wrapt away in white vapour.
The rugged walls of the Burg, even its rocky
foundations, seemed poised between heaven and earth amid
these floating wreaths of immateriality.  It was
a strange sight.  The fiddler sat on the sill of the
deep window embrasure, his knees drawn towards
his chin, for it was but a narrow space, and his eyes
wandered out through the open casement over the
unsubstantial world.  He looked forth.  Downward
the gleaming rock emerged into stern reality,
out of a dream of vapour.  He looked up: the
shredded mists were scudding over a faint sky,
carrying the moon along, it seemed, with incredible
swiftness.

The wanderer sighed.  Sorrow went with him
in all his ways, though he held so mocking a front
to life.  It was luxury now and then in the hour of
solitude to fall into that deep embrace, and give
his very soul to those bitter lips.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Very unwilling was Steven Lee to rise after a poor
night.  And very ill-humoured was he as they set
out at last, with their donkey, breakfastless, together.
There was no joy or mystery in the morn; it granted
them but white mists that wet like rain and clung
close as they descended.

The fiddler was silent, absorbed in his own
thought, and paid small heed to his companion's
moodiness.

As they crossed the bridge, a travelling-chaise,
escorted by three dragoons, came through the haze
towards them, passed them at full thunder, and
drew up with a clatter some hundred yards beyond.
Geiger-Hans smiled sardonically.

"There goes the lord of Wellenshausen to surprise
his fond little wife!  He is a trifle earlier on
the road than I expected.  Did I not do well to hurry
your toilet?  Who knows, you might have been
hurried in still more disagreeable fashion....
Well, the episode is over; and though you have
much disappointed me, young sir——"

"But what will she tell him about our visit?"
interrupted Steven, with some anxiety.

Geiger-Hans remained silent for a few paces.

"That," he answered at last, "is a matter for
illimitable fancy."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`HOME-COMING`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER IX


.. class:: center medium bold

   HOME-COMING

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*And then he thought, 'In spite of all my care,*
   |  *For all my pains, poor man, for all my pains,*
   |  *She is not faithful to me....'*"
   |                        (*The Marriage of Geraint*).

.. vspace:: 2

"The visitors are but just gone," said Martin,
the doorward.

He stood, his hand still on the fallen bolt, with
expressionless gaze fixed upon the Burgrave, not
without secret dismay and misgivings.  In truth
he had but half believed the fiddler's announcement,
had scarce expected his master at all that
day—certainly not so early.  But, now, one would know
whether that mad fellow Geiger-Hans had spoken
truth about the invitation to Wellenshausen.  If
he had not, why, honest Martin might well suffer
for his credulity.  For Martin knew his lord.  It
were idle to try and hide from him the blatant
fact that there had been visitors at the Burg: idle
indeed in a house full of silly servants; idle, above
all, with a prying fellow like Kurtz, the Jäger, who
had his nose into every pot and his ear at every door.

That he, the door-keeper, had admitted a beggar-man
to his lord's castle was, however, an exaggeration
of the offence which old Martin thought might
safely be withheld.  Ambrosius, the butler, Niklaus,
the valet, and the rest were equally incriminated
by having attended upon him, having served him
at their master's very table.  They would be glad
enough to hold their peace on the subject for their
own sakes.  At the worst, they could all plead ignorance
of the visitors' identity.  For the rest, had not
the Gracious Lady herself given her orders?  If the
thunderbolt of wrath was to fall on the castle of
Wellenshausen, it would fall first and heaviest in
the upper chambers.

So Martin had settled his treatment of the
situation with a certain dogged philosophy; and his
first greeting was the blurting forth of the truth.

"Your Graciousness has just missed the visitors."

The Burgrave, rolling past, still puffing from
the arduousness of the mount—for though a
vigorous man, he was of heavy build—turned with a
grunt of astonishment as the words fell upon his
ear.  He flung back his military cloak—even a
chancellor was military at the Court of
Jerome—dashed his lace travelling cap from his head and
took two steps upon old Martin.  His large unshorn
chin shone with myriad grey bristles, which had
caught the mist in tiny points of moisture.  The
grizzled, bushy eyebrows, that nearly met across
the large fleshy nose (jealous eyebrows), were
similarly beaded.  Now they were drawn together in
a portentous frown.

A fine-looking man enough in an elderly, hulking
way, but scarcely, even in his best moments, an
amiable-looking man.  Certainly not at his best now,
after a night of hard travelling.  And as for
amiability, that thunder cloud upon his brow was enough
to wilt the very conception of it from the thought
of man.

Yet it was no unamiable passion that had spurred
him along the interminable night-road and up the
impossible crags in the wet morn.  He was but
a six months' husband to his Betty, and he loved
her very dearly—after his own Teutonic and
rather mediæval fashion.

"Visitors!" repeated the Burgrave.  His voice
rang out, echoing and reverberating.

Martin's little eyes blinked: that rogue of a
Geiger-Hans had lied!  So, then, had the noble
lady Burgravine herself.

"Two gentlemen, yes.  The Gracious Lady
bade me admit them.  She said that it was by your
Excellency's orders;" here the door-keeper risked
a sly glance at his master and had, perhaps, an
inward chuckle at the sight of his discomposure.

"Scamp, had you not my orders?" roared the Burgrave.

"The Gracious Lady bade me admit them,"
reasseverated Martin; "the young gentleman being
the Gracious Lady's cousin——"

"The young gentleman!  The——"

The echoes called out the words again and died
into silence.  The Burgrave reeled, then steadied
himself.  Martin saw the empurpled countenance
turn to an unwholesome grey.

"The young gentleman," repeated the husband
to himself, in a sort of whisper.  Then he wheeled
round and, without another word, went, ponderous
and slow, up the stone steps, his shoulders bent
like those of an old man.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Betty was seated before her toilet table, in a very
ill humour: the while her woman twisted glossy
black ringlets to the tune of familiar lamentations,
enlivened by spirits of a petulance unwontedly
shrewish.

Betty had dragged her pretty person from the
billows of quilt and feather-bed at an astonishingly
early hour, in the hope of carelessly intercepting a
farewell from her charming young guest.  Mademoiselle
Eliza, justly irritated at being aroused
from those dreams which, she vowed, were now
the only tolerable portion of her existence in this
dungeon, had purposely withheld from her mistress,
until the psychological moment when she could
watch her countenance in the mirror, the news of
the departure of the guest.  And then she had
delivered it with all the gusto of the self-respecting
servant who has unpleasant information to impart.

"Madame has a very sensitive head this morning;
it is doubtless the fatigue of last night.
Madame is so unaccustomed now to the least excitement.
It is hardly worth while to put madame to
the pains of much of a coiffure this morning, since
there is no one to see her—but the crows.  If,
indeed, the young gentleman could have remained:
strange how anxious he was to leave!  Up and away
before the dawn!  And slinking out of the castle,
one might say.  Ho, have I hurt madame again?
Did Madame la Comtesse say that he was truly her
cousin?  A singular story, not even a valet with
him—nothing but that old beggar tramp, who
dined with madame, also, dressed up in the
gentleman's clothes——"

"Hold your tongue!" cried the exasperated lady.
She whisked round in her seat, blindly menacing
with a brush caught up at haphazard.

At this moment the gate bell clanged; the stone
hollows of the castle growled to a loud knocking;
and then came the groaning of the great bar.

"Merciful heavens, more visitors!" exclaimed
the mistress of Wellenshausen, a lovely geranium
flushed into her cheek.  Last night's guests back
again, perchance.  Beau Cousin was too gallant
a gentleman, after all, to leave her hospitality in
this abrupt fashion....  Perhaps he was wishing
to see her again, as much as she was wishing to see
him.  The little hand with the brush dropped to
her side.  "Quick, Eliza, who is it?"

Even as she spoke the rich cheek faded; her bright
eyes grew round in horror.  To one man only in
the world could belong the raucous tones that granite
wall and roof now gave back in pulsating vibration,
rolling up even to the turret room.

"The Burgrave!" she gasped.

Eliza's black eyes glinted joyfully: the Burgrave!
Not only fresh discomfiture for the mistress; but,
for the maid, unexpected comfort: Kurtz the Jäger
was quite a smart young man.

"Heavens, the Burgrave!" cried Betty again;
and she began to tremble.  Her husband, upon the
very stroke of her escapade!  What to do, now,
what to say?—What indeed!

"Eliza," she cried breathlessly—she snatched
a gold brooch from her wrapper as she spoke, and
thrust it into the girl's hand—"you knew I was
expecting my cousin's visit ... by news brought
by the last courier from Vienna ... you heard
me mention the fact ... you heard me regret
my husband's absence from Wellenshausen."

There was no time to lose.  The Burgrave's
step, weighty and ominous as fate itself, was already
on the stairs.

"*Bien, Madame la Comtesse,*" returned Eliza,
calmly, even as the latch clicked under her master's
hand.

.. vspace:: 2

Betty von Wellenshausen was a woman of too
clever instincts to receive, in this dilemma, her
elderly lord and master with exuberant expression
of delight.  She was not of those who fall into the
vulgar error of protesting too much.  She settled
herself in her chair again and became deeply absorbed
in the exact position of a curl.  He stood glowering
on the threshold.  He had to call out in his great
voice, before she would condescend to notice him
at all.  And then it was but a glance over her shoulder.

"*Tiens*, it is you?  Eliza, decidedly this is not
successful."

Eliza, deeply enjoying the situation, full of
professional admiration for her mistress's handling
of the same, was also all solicitude over the
rebellious lock.

"Ten thousand devils, madam!" at last exploded
the Burgrave.  "I would point out to you that I am
returned from a journey."

"So I see," said the lady, with another fugitive
glance.  "And so I hear, too, my friend!  Heavens,
you make noise enough!"

It was such a wonderfully pretty face, of which
the husband was given this glimpse; his reception
was so cool, so unexpected, that the Burgrave's
first murderous rage began to give way to a
perplexity not unmixed in some strange way with softer
feelings.  He closed the door behind him, and
then stood, hesitating.

"It is a pity," said the Burgravine, boldly, "that
you do not consider it worth your while, comte,
to keep me informed of your movements.  Had
I but known that we were to have the rapture of
your company to-day, I would have kept my cousin
Kielmansegg to make your acquaintance."

The Burgrave eyed her between rage and amazement.

"Your cousin!" he echoed huskily.  Then his
fury, on a sudden gust of jealousy, got the upper
hand.  "Pray, madam," he thundered, "when did
you communicate to me the interesting fact of your
relative's proposed visit?  And when did I authorize
you to receive him?"

It was the lady's turn to be astonished; for a
moment her quick wits failed to follow his drift.

"When?" she queried, raising a delicate eyebrow.
"This is sheer delirium!  And if you must
rave, my friend, need you shout?  I begin to think
that my never-sufficiently-to-be-regretted predecessor
must have suffered from deafness in addition to the
other trials of her existence."

The pupils of the Burgrave's pale eyes contracted
to pins' points.  He fixed his disobedient spouse
with a scarcely human glare.

"Martin is not wandering in his mind, I take it,
when he tells me that you bade him admit your
friends in my name!  By my wish, madam—by
my wish!"

The bellow with which, in spite of his Betty's
protest, he had begun this indictment, died into a
sort of strangled whisper.  He struck his palm with
his hairy fist.  The Burgravine was unpleasantly
enlightened.

"Oh, sir," she exclaimed with biting scorn, and
shrugged her shoulders, "how well you are served;
I make you my compliments!"  Underneath her
impertinent airs there was fluttering terror.  But,
like a bird, she would peck to the last.  "And did
Martin indeed tell you that I bade him admit my
kinsman and his companion in your name?" she
pursued, drawing a long breath.  Then superbly,
"It is true, M. de Wellenshausen.  Do you mean
me to understand that you would have wished me
to refuse the hospitality of your house?"

The wave of wrath was again ebbing from the
Burgrave's huge frame.  He stared blankly at the
little creature.  Her words had a singular plausibility.
She saw her advantage and flew to it.

"My cousin, Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg, is
travelling through this country," said she.  "My
dear mother announced his arrival in her last letter."

"The courier came on Wednesday," interpolated
Eliza, pinning the brooch in a slightly less
conspicuous position amid the folds of her kerchief.

"She is most anxious to have personal news of
my health ... knowing the delicacy of my chest,
and how much I am likely to suffer in these harsh
airs where it is your pleasure to immure me."

The Burgravine wheeled her chair round to face
her lord.

"It is perhaps dull of me," she went on more
boldly still, "not to have understood that I am not
the mistress of these barren walls, but rather their
prisoner.  When I heard that my cousin was
below, I had no hesitation in ordering him to be
admitted.  Yes, sir, I even said that it would be
your wish.—Ach, Eliza, what a stupid mistress you
have!  You heard me actually lament, I believe,
your master's absence on the occasion!"

"*Madame la Comtesse*, indeed, made the remark
to me," quoth Eliza, "that it was of the last
annoyance that Monsieur le Comte should be absent that
evening.  It was so trying for Madame la Comtesse
to have to receive alone!"

"And indeed, my poor girl," said the lady,
picking up the thread herself, "I could regret that we
should thus innocently have infringed the rules of
the castle of—I should say the prison of
Wellenshausen—for it was to very poor results.  Yes, we
should have allowed M. de Wellenshausen's
doorkeeper—turnkey, I mean—to send the
gentlemen down the hill again.  My people would have
wondered.  But, *mon Dieu*, will they wonder less
when my kinsman tells them of these dismal walls,
these rude surroundings, this savage solitude?
Poor young man!  in spite of his affection for me he
could not bring himself to face another day of
it.—Eliza, my shoe!"

"Indeed, madame," commented the maid, pursuing
the theme from where she knelt to fit each
little foot, "the gentlemen would not even tarry for
breakfast, so hurried were they to be gone!"

The Burgrave listened, was half convinced, then
a fresh spasm of suspicious misgiving came over him.

"Yet, doubtless," he sneered, "not without a
satisfying farewell from the hostess!  You are
strangely early this morning, madame."

The Burgravine raised her blue eyes from the
contemplation of her foot.

"You mistake," she said innocently; "our adieux
took place last night, shortly after supper.  You see,
I am not even dressed.  And, as to early rising,
*mon Dieu*, my friend, the nights are of such lengths
here, that there are times when I think it cannot
soon enough be day."

"And *ma foi*," put in the maid pertly, "then it
is the days that are so long, up here in the clouds,
that it cannot soon enough be night."

The two women laughed.  He stood between
them, a miserable clumsy man; conscious of their
subtler wits and quicker tongues, a prey to dark
doubts and slowly shaping his own resolve.

Betty now jumped to her feet and shook her
loose silks and laces about her as a bird shakes its
plumage.

"Eliza, inform the Baroness Sidonia of the Herr
Graf's return," she bade in an off-hand tone.

The Burgrave thought to catch a meaning glance
between mistress and maid.  No doubt Sidonia
would lie with the other—all women were jades
alike.  Well! he knew what he had to do; meanwhile
Betty was distractingly alluring with all those
fal-lals of ribbons and lace, and it was three weeks
since he had kissed her.  The door had scarcely
closed on Mademoiselle Eliza before the Burgrave
caught his wife in his arms.

"Ah, *mon Dieu*," cried she, pettishly, "and pray,
sir, when have you shaved last?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE BURGRAVE'S WELCOME`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER X


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE BURGRAVE'S WELCOME

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*I tempted his blood and his flesh,*
   |  *Hid in roses my mesh,*
   |  *Choicest cates and the flagon's best spilth....*"
   |                              ROBERT BROWNING.

.. vspace:: 2

"So you have had visitors, Sidonia, my dove?
Eh?" said the Burgrave.

His tone was good-humoured, but the glance he
fixed upon the girl was cold.  He had very pale
grey eyes that could stare by the minute together
without blinking, a power somewhat disconcerting
(he flattered himself) to those who thought to keep
secrets from him.  Sidonia had just entered the
room and was hastening to greet her uncle, for
whom she had a certain placid affection.  But
instinctively she drew back, affronted, upon meeting
that gaze.  The words of welcome died on her lips.

"Yes, we've had visitors," she answered defiantly,
tilting back her head.—Did Uncle Ludo think to
frighten her?

"That was delightful," said the Burgrave, his
unwinking stare upon her.

"It was delightful," said Betty.  She stood
behind her husband's chair, ministering to him after
the right Germanic fashion he loved; and small
scornful remarks on the number of rummers she
was called upon to fill with the yellow wine, on the
size of the slices of smoked ham he dealt himself,
she did not spare him.  Nevertheless she watched
his appetite with satisfaction.  Surely so large a
meal and much jealousy could scarce find room in
the same frame.  "It was delightful, for me at
least," said Betty, glibly.  "I, who had not seen
my cousin, my favourite cousin, for so long."

Her blue eyes rolled warningly at Sidonia, over
the top of the Burgrave's stubble head.  The girl
gave her aunt a quick look, then walked up to the table.

"Good morning, uncle.  I hope you are well,"
she said, demurely now, and laid a light kiss on his
temple.

The Burgrave burst into a roar of laughter.

"Come, come, one kisses one's uncle better than
that, I hope!"

He caught her by the lobe of her pretty ear,
stretched out the other hand and drew his spouse
forward by the waist.

"So, here I am, once more, with both my little
doves.  Aha, what a happy man!—This fine young
cousin now, your aunt's old play-fellow ... you'd
heard of him before, eh, Sidonia?"

"Yes, I had," said the child, sturdily.  "I knew
he was in the country.  And you need not pinch my
ear like that, Uncle Ludo, I don't like it."

"But it was such a little visit," said the Burgrave.
"That was the pity of it.  And to think of my having
missed the pleasure of so agreeable an acquaintance!
Your favourite cousin it was, that's understood, my
Betty.  And his companion, the old gentleman, who
might he be?"

"His companion?  Oh, he seemed to be a kind
of tutor," returned Betty, with a charming sense of
satisfaction to be able to say something at last
approaching to the truth.

"Well, my darlings," said the Burgrave, still
more jovially—he had slipped his great arm round
Sidonia's waist now and held them both embraced—"it
is early in the morning yet, and I am sure
you will be charmed to hear that there is every
chance of my letter finding the distinguished travellers
still in the village."  Each little figure in the
Burgrave's grasp started.  "Quite a surprise for
you, eh?  Come, this gaoler (aha, Betty!) is not
such a bear after all!  Not so inhospitable as to
allow his wife's dear relations to leave the district
without discharging his duties of politeness.  Yes,
I have sent Kurtz, hot foot, hot foot, with an
invitation to your cousin, my love, to return, with his
companion, to the hospitality of Wellenshausen....
What, not a word of joy from either of you?  My
little doves, one would think you were displeased.
Have I not interpreted your wishes, sweetest Betty?
I would fain do so, for you who are so clever in
interpreting mine."

"Let me go," cried the little lady, of a sudden
goaded to fury.  "You are squeezing me to death.
Please to remember that, if I am married to a bear,
it does not follow that I enjoy his hug!"

The Burgrave released his victims and looked
searchingly from one to the other.  Both were pale.

"What a festive time we are going to have in
the old Burg!" cried he then, with an ugly laugh,
and fell to upon the ham and ryebread with fresh
gusto.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



It was a great folded sheet, and bore, on a huge
seal, a spreading coat-of-arms.  It was addressed
as follows: "To the High-born Graf zu
Waldorff-Kielmansegg, at the Silver Stork Inn,
Wellenshausen," and contained a brief but courteous
message:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent

"HONOURED SIR,

.. vspace:; 1

"I have just returned to my house and
hear, with desolation, that I have missed the amiable
visit which you have vouchsafed to it.  Hoping that
you and your tutor may not yet have left the
neighbourhood, I send this in haste.  Will you not both
retrace your steps—if you think our poor
hospitality still worth acceptance—and give me the
exceeding gratification of calling myself your host
for at least a week?

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

"CHARLES LUDOVIC,
    "Burgrave of Wellenshausen."

.. vspace:: 2

The young traveller, who, warmed into better
spirits by his early walk, had been looking back on
his stolen visit to the castle on the peak, and his
evening with the ladies sheltered behind its
forbidding walls, as an adventure of some spice (though,
in its integrity, harmless enough) was seized with
disappointment.  So much for latter-day romance; so
much for the Bluebeard of Wellenshausen; for the
husband so ferociously jealous, report said, that he
must shut up his Fatima in a tower as tight as
St. Barbara's!  Why, so far from striking off Fatima's
head, he sends in haste to recall the audacious
visitor, and craves to be allowed to expend upon
him the treasures of an amiable disposition.

"Ah, fiddler, my friend," thought Count Steven,
sagely, "you and your music have discoursed much
wild nonsense anent the surprises of life, anent the
golden rose of youth; ... but the world is a
workaday place, drab and dull of hue; and the dreams
with which your words have filled my thoughts are
but the children of my own fantasy and your own
fiddle-bow."

He looked across the inn-yard, through a screen
of vine leaves, to where the fiddler was seated on
a bench, playing away with a will, eyes beaming
upon a ring of dancing children.  The heaviness of
the morning was clearing; shafts of sunlight pierced
the mists.  Steven hesitated.  The messenger from
the castle, a smart Jäger in a green-and-mulberry
uniform, stood on one side with the decorous
indifference of his condition, his lips pursed for a
voiceless whistle to the tune that made gay the poor
inn-yard.  A little further away, the young
nobleman's travelling-chaise was even now being packed,
under the supervision of his lordship's body-servant....
The Burgrave's invitation was banality
itself, almost trivial; yet was not the programme for
the day's journey more everyday still?

A phrase in the letter, that had escaped notice on
his first surprised perusal, now brought an angry
flush to his cheek.

"His tutor——"  And he, full twenty-three and
practically his own master these many years!  Was
it possible that he could have made no stronger
impression upon the Burgravine than that of a kind
of schoolboy?  As for Sidonia, since she knew the
musician so well, she must also have known that he
was but a chance acquaintance!  Yes, it was
evident that he had placed himself in an awkward
position by this consorting with a person of inferior
degree.

This decided the matter.  He owed it to his own
dignity, to that of his family.  Was not the pretty
mistress of yon castle, by her own showing, a
kinswoman?  He would go back and redress the
ridiculous misapprehension.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



A bell began to jangle, ugly and persistent.  The
fiddler drew a long last note, whereat the children
raised a shout of protest.

"Schooltime!" cried the musician.  He got up
and nodded across to Steven.  "Has my Lord of
the Burg invited you back upon his height?—Don't go."

The man's intuition was positively diabolic.

"How did you know?" gasped Steven.

"Know?  Do I not know the candid countenance
of my lord Burgrave's Jäger?  Did I not see
him accost you?  Do you not hold a letter in your
hand?  O, I thank my Maker that, crazy as my
brains are, they can still add one and two and make
it three.  And, had I not the simple figures before
me, the Burgrave's course would still lie plain."

He came near to the young man, and dropping
his voice:

"The poor Burgrave," he went on, "must be
slightly befogged in the mist of his lady's diaphanous
explanations.  He must sorely want to see for
himself what there is between you."

"Between us!"  Steven stared and then blushed.
"Good heavens, what can he think?" he asked.

"Certainly not the truth," answered the fiddler;
"it would be too innocent."

He twanged a string, and it seemed to mock.
Too innocent...!  His smile, too, was mocking,
Steven thought.  Innocence savoured unpleasantly
of that state of tutelage which no mature man of
three and twenty could endure to admit.  And yet,
last night, had he not been rated for something
approaching to an immoral tendency?  Confound the
fellow, there was no pleasing him!  Now and again,
like the peasant folk, Steven could almost think the
vagrant was possessed.

"Don't go," repeated the fiddler, gravely.  "Leave
the Burgrave and his lady in their fog."

"You advise me not to go!" cried the young
man, pettishly.  This sober counsel, certes, was
quite the last thing he had expected from lips that
hitherto had suggested the out-of-the-way step, the
fantastic resolve; urged them passionately, in the
name of Youth and Opportunity.

"Write a pretty note," continued the other,
unmoved.  "Send it back by our friend yonder, and
make your servants happy by taking the road for
Cassel.—Cassel is full of Betties and you can
prance there in good company."

He looked familiarly over Steven's shoulder as
he spoke, and gave a mirthful ejaculation—

"*Sarpejeu*!  I am invited also, I see."

Kurtz, the dapper Jäger, who had swaggered up
for a critical inspection of the traveller's horses, here
flung a quick glance at the speaker.  Furtive as it
was, the musician caught it, and smiled back:

"What," said he, raising his voice and addressing
the count, "your tutor, my young friend?
Heavens forbid!  The counsellor of your
youthship, for a brief occasion, I grant it; but for the
rest I trust I have more grateful work in the world."

"I do not press you to accompany me.  I can
quite well go alone," said Steven.  "You need not
return with me—unless you wish it."

The other made an ironical bow, and the young
man dropped his eyelid under the gaze that read
his thought as in a written page.  Certainly, keen
as he had been but the day before for the fiddler's
company, it was the last thing he now desired.

"Oh," retorted Geiger-Hans, "never fear, our
ways now diverge.  Yours is too lofty for me,
comrade.  You are for the peak, I am for leveller
roads.  Beware how you fall."  He was shaken
with laughter—laughter that somehow left Steven
more uncomfortable than angry.

Then the wanderer cocked his instrument and
set up a wild skirling air, to the rhythm of which he
turned and marched out of the courtyard.  Ill at
ease, Steven watched him go, go.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Count Kielmansegg drove in state to the foot of
the crag; and, while his box and valise were loaded
upon the mule that was again to climb the rocky
path to the feudal nest of granite, he paused to look
down at the waters that rushed past the road, so
swift and dark, so cruelly cold, from unexplored
caverns on the flanks of the mount.  As he stood
the travelling fiddler overtook him and swung by
on the highway.

"We shall meet soon again, I trust, friend,"
Steven cried after him as he himself turned to ascend
the path.

"Who knows?" said the fiddler over his shoulder,
even as on their first parting by the edge of the
forest, but this time in a grave voice.

The young man glanced up at his destination,
black and grim against a pale sky, and a chill came
upon him like a sudden shadow.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`TANGLED TALES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XI


.. class:: center medium bold

   TANGLED TALES

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*One lie needs seven to wait upon it.*"
   |                    (*Wisdom of Nations*).

.. vspace:: 2

Steven was scarcely observant by nature: your
important, self-centred youth is rarely like to prove
so.  Yet the Burgrave's welcome at Wellenshausen,
cordial to effusion as it was, left upon him a further
impression of discomfort.

Jerome's Chancellor had very fine manners, when
he chose, and was altogether a finer personality
than, somehow, Steven had expected.  His joviality
was certainly hard to reconcile with that character
of tyrant that seemed to be universally ascribed to
him.  Moreover, Steven had no more reasonable
ground of complaint as to the quality of the hospitality
proffered to him than as to that of the wines
served during the heavy midday meal, for which
they soon assembled.  His irritable self-esteem,
ruffled by the thought of having passed for a young
gentleman under control, ought to have been
thoroughly soothed by the attentions, the deference,
the honours that the Burgrave lavished upon him.
And yet——

When he was once more left alone in the great
apartments that he had shared with the fiddler on
the previous evening, he found himself heartily
wishing again for his singular comrade—nay,
wishing that he had followed the latter's advice and
were still hobnobbing with him, along the wide
valley roads or in some vine-hung inn arbour, in
safety and independence.

He went discontentedly to the window and flung
it wide; it was sunk in some eight feet of solid
masonry, and, high as the castle stood, the honest
airs of heaven seemed to have no free access into
the chamber.

How was it that the vault-like oppression of the
place had not struck him yesterday?  He stood,
pondering, for a while; then gathered himself into
the window recess, even as Geiger-Hans had done
during last night's watches.

The evening shades were rising apace.  Night
birds were beginning to circle round the lonely
towers; distant lights to twinkle in the village
below.  How far off lay those comfortable glimmers
yonder; how sheer the depth that separated him
from them!  An owl hooted, and the chill of the
stone pressing about him seemed to creep into his
marrow.  He heard a great clang somewhere
beneath and the grinding of iron-bolts.  "Pah—the
place is like a prison-house!" he cried to himself
angrily and scrambled back into the gloomy room.

Then his valet entered with candles.  The
fellow's face bore a smirk; he, at least, found the
Burg (with the fascination of Mademoiselle Eliza)
an incomparably more agreeable spot than the
Silver Stork.

After him came a rosy-cheeked, bare-footed girl,
with a huge faggot in her arms—and presently
the great gaping hearth was filled with a roaring
blaze.  And Steven, in a wadded dressing gown,
stretching his limbs to the warmth, began to feel
able to review the events of the day with a more
settled spirit.

... No doubt there had been several instances
at dinner, when he had felt himself in an outrageously
false position—allowing (he thought severely)
to that mist of lies with which the Burgravine had
undoubtedly filled the atmosphere.  Triumphantly
as her beauty had stood the morning light,
exquisitely as her elegance, her fashion, her youth,
might have struck any impartial observer by
contrast with the gloom of the mediæval castle, Steven,
on the second meeting, had found himself cold to
her, ashamed in the recesses of his heart of his
previous surrender.  He wished women would not
think it necessary to deceive....  Why, in the
name of common sense, could not the creature have
told the simple truth?  His visit had been a mere
freak—an intrinsically harmless one.  She must
needs give it an aspect of guilt by an unnecessarily
complicated farrago of explanation.  It had taken
him all his time indeed (and no wonder he could
not look back upon that endless repast without a
shudder) to parry the Burgrave's point-blank
questions concerning people of whose very existence he
had no knowledge, and to respond airily to the
Burgravine's feverish hints, finding himself, meanwhile,
further and further involved in myths and
inventions.  And, throughout, the Burgrave—what a
deuced uncomfortable way of staring was his!—had
an eye and a laugh that matched each other
very ill....  And the child, Sidonia, with now
that look of scorn, now that air of grave rebuke,
under which his already irate feelings in regard to
her almost merged into active dislike....

Cross-purposes had in truth begun on the very
threshold.

"Welcome, Herr Graf," had cried the
Burgrave—"welcome both as my wife's kinsman and as a
distinguished traveller in my own country!"  He had
been clasped by two genial hands.  So far so good!

"But—your companion, your worthy tutor,
where is he?"  (His tutor!  The man meant
Geiger-Hans.  This was awkward.)

Steven had no answer ready, nothing but a foolish
obvious statement:

"He has not come."

How lame it sounded!  The Burgrave had
instantly dropped the subject.

Now that he came to think of it, Steven realized
that it was here his discomfort took birth.  Why
had his host dropped the subject?  It was a
procedure that harmonized neither with the relentless
scrutiny of his eyes, nor the ultra-joviality of his
manner.  And all through the dinner it had been
simply variations on the same *motif*.  A straight
question, an unsatisfactory answer, the complication
of the Burgravine's embroidery and over-clever
suggestion—and the subject dropped.  Thereupon
an access of hilarity on the part of his
entertainer ... such loud laughter, such unmirthful
eyes!

As Steven, staring unseeingly into the fire, repassed
the little scenes in his mind, his cheeks flushed.

"Your tutor, Count—by the way, what is his name?"

"Well, he's hardly my tutor, you see."

Here cries from the Burgravine: "A French
gentleman!—so charming a person!  Nay, Cousin
Kielmansegg, I flatter myself I have a good memory,
especially for anything French.  M. de la Viole,
wasn't it?"

"Yes," from Steven, grunting uneasily, "something
of that sort."

"Quite an elderly man," hastens to add the
Burgravine, with a quick look at her husband.

"Try this Burgundy, Clos-Vougeot, the Emperor's
favourite," says the Burgrave, and laughs.

He drinks a good deal of Burgundy himself, does
the Chancellor; and gets a fiery countenance: but
not a sparkle into the little grey eyes.

"How long may it be since you left Austria, my
dear young friend?"

"Oh—years," blurts Steven.

Of course he ought to have looked to the
Burgravine for his cue.  But, the devil fly away with it,
he does not take kindly to these deceits!  The
Burgrave's gaze shifts suddenly to his wife.  The glass
trembles in her little hand.  She is obliged to lay it
down; but her voice does not falter, she is quite ready:
"Years?  Is it possible?  Nay, cousin, have we
both grown so old since last we met?  But no
doubt, in that cold, dull England, the time hung
mighty heavy with you.  It seems years to you,
but—then we corresponded—at least, when I
say we, I mean my mother, who loves you as a son."

And, "Oh yes—yes!" says Steven, in miserable
acquiescence.

... What will the Burgrave ask next?  The
merest insistence on his side, and the whole
despicable scaffolding of taradiddles must fall to the
ground.  And then——?  Then—no man in his
senses would believe the truth.  But the Burgrave
presses nothing.  The stone roof echoes to his huge
"Ha-ha's."  'Tis as if the thought of the love of his
mother-in-law for his guest was quite a remarkable
jest!...

The sweat of shame and anger broke on Steven's
forehead as he sat before the fire, immersed in this
review of the day's doings.

.. vspace:: 2

Two days went by, the heaviest Steven had ever
passed in his life.  He would have given a year of
his life to be able to invent some fitting excuse to
take a decent leave.  But his tongue, forced to so
much petty falseness, could frame here no tale that
carried conviction.  He had gone so far as to send
his servant down into the village, with orders to
bring back an imaginary courier.  But, at the first
hint of intended flight, the Burgrave broke into
protestations; his voice was so loud and his gimlet eye
so boring, that the plea of urgency withered away
from the guest's speech, and he found himself
wretchedly concurring in his host's hearty
announcement that Wellenshausen had him and Wellenshausen
would hold him at least for the allotted week.

He had the further misery of noting that here
joy flashed at him from the blue depths of the
Burgravine's eyes, and anger from the brown limpidity
of Sidonia's.  Indeed, he, the least fatuous of youths,
had begun to find something disconcerting in the
persistence with which the blue eyes were given to
seeking him: now in veiled languor, now with a
meaning that seemed to claim complicity.  Glib in
speech and airily indifferent to him in the
Burgrave's presence, in the moments when they were
alone together—and these were rare, for Steven
avoided them; though it would almost seem as if
the Burgrave himself fostered the occasions—she
was prodigal of sighs, of interrupted sentences
capable of strange endings, of little fluttering movements
towards him, all of which added supremely to his
discomposure; all of which, also after the fashion
of man, he felt almost as much ashamed to admit
as significant as to repel.

On the morning of the third day, Steven, invited
to inspect the view from the battlements in an
exceptionally clear light, found himself alone with
Burgravine Betty on the topmost turret of the Burg.
The Burgrave had sent them forward; his laugh
was echoing up to them from the inner recesses of
the winding stairs.

"O heavens!" said the lady, suddenly.

Steven turned.  The cry was tragic; and it
answered acutely to his own sensations.  The
Burgravine's eyes were dry, but there was real terror on
her pretty face.

"Why did you come?" she whispered.  "In the
name of mercy! was it not evident that it was a
trap?"

"A trap!" he stammered.

"Yes, yes!  Oh, do you not feel it?  He is watching
us like a cat, a cat going to spring; and I am
the wretched mouse waiting—waiting.  O, I can
stand it no longer!  I shall go mad.  If only you
had not come!  What did I tell him?  There was
nothing to tell, say you; we had done no harm.
That is just it!  I told him a lie, of course, and he
found out it was a lie—that is of course, too.  A
man who has spies all about his place!  And now
we are doing nothing but lie, you and I.  He knows
we are lying, and he is waiting to pounce on us in
his own time.  O, sir, you might have known!  A
man who shuts up his wife for jealousy is not seized
with such effusive hospitality towards a
handsome young stranger without reasons of his own."

The warm olive crept back to her cheek as she
spoke.  Her eyes beamed.  She seemed to sway
towards him.

"Then, madam," he cried, quickly stepping back—if
there were indeed danger for him between the
Burgrave and the Burgravine, he would rather
choose to battle with the man—"you are right, I
ought not to be here.  I will go now.  To-day
... this hour!"

"Go?" she echoed in scorn.  "Aye, go if you
can," she proceeded with a change of tone.  "He
has got you well in his meshes; you are clogged,
sir, and bound.  And if you think he will let you
go before he has carried out his purpose with us,
you little know the Burgrave."

Carried out his purpose with us!—The very
vagueness of the suggestion added to its unpleasantness.
Steven jerked his head indignantly.

"And what may that be, pray?" he asked.

She glanced at him a second, uplifting lip and
eyebrow.  To a lady who had graduated in the
Court of Vienna, this big young man, with his
English stolid simplicity, was a trifle irritating.

"*Mon Dieu!*" she said then, turning aside with
a shrug of her shoulder, "how embarrassing you
are!  Do you know your poets?  Well, then, he
would like to find us playing at Paolo and Francesca,
if you please, that he might play the Malatesta!"

"Great heavens!" cried the horrified youth.
He watched the lady hang her head and droop
a modest eyelid—it was Scylla and Charybdis!
Beyond any doubt, he must walk out of these
mad-house precincts at the very earliest opportunity.

They were perched high up in the blue; and,
down below, the country lay spread like a green
cloth on which a child has set its toys.  Yonder
white ribbon wandering so far below—there ran
his road.  Would he were on it!  He turned to her,
took her soft hand, bent and kissed it.

"Madam," said he, "it is best it should be
'good-bye'—for both of us, it is best."

He spoke very truly, poor young man, but into
the touch of his lips and the pathos of his speech her
vanity read another meaning.

"Cousin!" she cried suddenly, and clutched at
his hands with both of hers.  "O, take me with
you!  Take me back to my own people!  If I stay
here, he will kill me, or I shall kill myself!"

And, as his troubled face and involuntarily
repelling fingers were far from giving her the response
they craved, she rushed across and bent over the
crumbling parapet.

"Refuse your help," she cried desperately, "and
I throw myself down!"

(Had little Sidonia but been at hand, to tell him
how well accustomed she was to such threats!)

Steven was quite pale as he caught her back
against his shoulders.

"Mercy!" he shivered, thinking of those giddy
deeps.  She clung to him, her scented head against
his shoulders.

"Surely, surely, it is not much I ask!" she
murmured faintly.  "See how I trust you, kinsman!
Only your protection, your escort back to our own
people.  It is not much to ask!"

It meant his whole life, and he knew it.  But
what can a young man do with a woman's arms
about him and a woman's whisper pleading in his ears?

"Ha-ha-ha!" came the Burgrave's laugh from
below.  Countess Betty slid out of "Beau Cousin's"
arms.  She lifted a warning finger.  "I will
arrange," she whispered, nodding.  "Now we must
be seen no more alone together."

Sidonia's voice also rang up towards them.  "I
will write," whispered Betty again, finger on lip.

O heavens! how could she look arch and smile
at such a moment?

"My friend, I have been showing our cousin how
far your estate extends," said the lady, gaily,
tripping across to take the Burgrave's arm with more ease
than she had yet displayed with him since his return.

"I trust our cousin has profited by your
instruction, and that he realizes the boundaries of my
property," said the Burgrave of Wellenshausen, with
his genial smile and his icy eye.

Steven's heavy conscience read a hateful significance
in the remark.  As he turned, his glance
fell upon the Baroness Sidonia's pure child face and
he felt miserable and ashamed to the core.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The Burgrave's jaunty Jäger stood and saluted
in military fashion.  The Burgrave wheeled round
in his chair and bent his brows.  It was dark in the
great stone room but for the single shaded lamp on
the writing-table, which flung a pallid circle of
light upon his intent countenance.  So might some
ancestor of his have looked, four hundred years
before, as he planned with his henchmen the
treachery that should rid him of an enemy.

"I have to report, my lord," said the fellow,
"that the Count Kielmansegg's travelling carriage
is ordered to be in readiness at the foot of the hill
to-night."

"So!"  The exclamation was almost triumph.

Kurtz pulled a slip of paper from the breast of
his tunic and held it out.

"Will your lordship open it with care?" he
remarked imperturbably, as the Burgrave's eye shot
flames and he stretched out an eager hand.  "The
gracious lady has not yet seen it.  And I have
promised Eliza that it should not be crushed."

The Burgrave held the note to the light.  It was
in French, and very terse:

"All is arranged.  I will wait for you at the
entrance of the east tower at nine o'clock."

The Burgrave stared at the words for an
appreciable time.  An apoplectic wave of blood rushed
to his forehead, and the veins thereon swelled like
cords.  Then he folded the paper again with minute
precaution and handed it back.

"Return it to the wench, and bid her deliver it,"
he said briefly.  "Well, what now?"

"I beg pardon, my lord, but this has cost me my
watch-chain to-day.  And I took upon myself to
promise her further two gold pieces."

"Fool!" said the Burgrave, harshly.  "Could
you not have done as much by love-making and
never cost me a kreutzer?  Young men like you
are scarce in these parts."

The Jäger shrugged his shoulders.  "She took
the kisses as well," he said cynically.  "What would
his lordship have?  Women are like that!"

The other flung the coins across the table with
an oath.  Those were better days, of old, when a
man could have his bidding done in his own castle
without any such bargainings.  But, as the servant
wheeled and swung towards the door, his master
recalled him.

"You have left my orders in the village?  If
that fiddling beggar dares present himself near
my doors again, I shall have him flogged till the
skin hangs in strips, and then ... and then set
the dogs upon him.  The miserable rapscallion;
the impudent cur, to dare to play his tricks as high
as my very table, to dare to break bread with my wife!"

The Burgrave struck the table so that the rummer
of Burgundy at his elbow splashed red upon his
hand; the Jäger glanced at the empty bottle and
then at his lord's inflamed countenance, and gave
his soldierly response:

"*Zu Befehl.*"  Then he added, the insolence of
the servant who feels superior to his employer in
coolness and clear-headedness piercing through
his well-drilled air of subordination: "May it please
your Excellency, the folk about here believe the
fiddler to be some great person in disguise."

The Burgrave's eyes were bloodshot this evening;
the Jäger was minded of the glare of an old boar
at bay.

"It is quite likely," he proceeded jauntily, "that
the gentleman was similarly deceived."

"The gentleman—the gentleman?  What gentleman,
you rascal?"

"The gracious young gentleman, the cousin of
her Excellency."

The Burgrave gave a savage growl:

"Out of my sight!"

With some additional briskness of gait, Kurtz
drew the solid oak door between himself and the
Chancellor.

Alone, Betty's husband yielded himself to a
convulsion of rage.  Again he beat the table with his
hands, anon tore at his bristling hair; suffocating,
he wrenched the stock from his throat; broken
words, curses, threats, ejaculations of self-pity
escaped him.  When at length he recovered his
senses in some fashion, he was shaking as if from
an ague.  He caught up the last glassful of wine
and drained it at a draught.  Then he subsided
heavily into his chair, and drawing unmeaning
signs with his fingers through the spilt wine upon
the polished oak, began slowly to repeat, half aloud,
the words of the letter Kurtz had brought him.

"The entrance of the east tower, at nine o'clock."

Suddenly a shout of laughter escaped him.

"The entrance of the east tower.  You have
chosen well, my turtle doves!"

He let his head drop between his hands and sat
in sodden brooding.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE BURGRAVE'S FAREWELL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE BURGRAVE'S FAREWELL

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*—What means this, my lord?*
   |  *—Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief.*"
   |                                            (*Hamlet*).

.. vspace:: 2

Countess Betty had the megrims and declined
to appear at supper.  For a sufferer, however,
she had a bright eye, and she moved about her room
with the alacrity of a busy bird.  She was alone,
some belated notion of prudence having bade her
dismiss her handmaiden during the final preparation.
Her eyes were taking in wistfully the dimensions
of the small travelling-bag (which was all
that, in conscience, she could allow herself, since
Cousin Kielmansegg would have to carry it himself
down the precipitous roads) and the numberless
objects which, at the last moment, seemed to her
indispensable, when there came a tap at her window.
She started—and only the sense of unacknowledged
guilt weighing on her soul kept her from screaming
aloud for help—when she perceived, pressed against
the uncurtained pane, a man's face.  The next
instant, however, she had recognized the
wandering fiddler.  She hurried towards him.

"A message?" she cried eagerly, as she opened
the casement.

The man swung himself in and sat on the deep
window-seat.  His face was wet with rain.  He
gazed upon her for a second, quizzically, and when
he spoke it was not in reply.

"Here I come," said he, "by the ivy, at the risk
of my neck, I, whom your worthy lord and master
threatened to have flogged and thrown to the dogs,
if he caught me up here again!  What a foolish
plight should I be in, had I counted upon your tender
heart sparing a tremor for my perils!  It is enough
to make a man desire to walk in by the door for
the rest of his life!"

"But, in heaven's name," she exclaimed, having
but a matter-of-fact spirit, in spite of its dainty
envelope, "you did climb up all the way to tell me
something.  Was it not a message?"

He bowed.

"From him?"

He laid his hand on his heart.  "From myself,"
he answered.

She glanced at him and then at her bolted door
in renewed alarm.  He read her thought.

"God forbid!" quoth he, smiling with an air that
put him, in his poor raiment, at an extraordinary
distance above her.  "I should not so presume,
madam.—Are you aware," he pursued in another
tone, "that your husband's confidential Jäger was
in intimate conversation with Count Kielmansegg's
postilion in the village to-day?"

"Mercy!" she cried, reading the portent.

"After which, my dear madam, he climbed the
hill in a company that lightened the way for him,
having, in fact, his arm round the trim waist of your
own handmaiden."

Countess Betty sank on a couch, white to her lips.

"Your trusted handmaiden," repeated the fiddler,
emphatically.

"Alas! if I had hesitated," said the lady, piously
turning up her eyes to the vaulted ceiling, "this
would decide it; I dare not risk another night in
this castle."

"Taking risk for risk," said the musician, carelessly,
"if I were timid, I should prefer the waiting
hazard."

"You mean?" she panted, round-eyed, in quick
apprehension.

"I mean," said he, "that it is raining exceedingly
hard, and that between this and the foot of the
crag you will get wet, madam; so wet as to
extinguish for ever the most ardent flame."

The Burgravine rose with dignity.  "I will have
you know, sir, that I am merely accepting Count
Kielmansegg's protection back to my own family,
because I know I can trust to his honour."

"Quite so," said Geiger-Hans, in a soothing
voice.  "And it is, of course, infinitely preferable
to set forth by night in secret, with a handsome
young man, than to summon any more aged or
nearer relative to your help!  A father, maybe—or
a brother?  But it is raining, as I say, madam,
very hard.  So much for the start.  And I am afraid
when you arrive in Austria your noble family may
consider your journey ill-managed."

Her bosom heaved.

"It is very unjust," she moaned, "that you men
can do everything, whereas we poor women——"  She
paused on the brink of tears.

"Ah!" he retorted, "you women are the crystal
cups that hold the honour of the house!  That is
why we must set you in a shrine, madam.  To-night
it is still sanctuary in your presence, and I
can still kneel before you.  To-morrow——?"

The colour rushed into her face.  She tried to
speak with haughtiness, but her voice faltered.

"To-morrow—what then?"

"It is inconceivable how much wiser it would be
for you to remain under a husband's roof on such
a night!"

There came a knock at the door.  With squirrel
nimbleness the fiddler twisted round and vanished.
The Burgravine took a rapid survey of the room,
whisked the bag into a cupboard, the jewel-cases
on the top of it, and went to the window to
close it.

"One moment, one moment!" she called, as the
knocking was discreetly repeated, and paused with
her hand on the casement.  Certainly it was most
uncomfortable weather!  Then she opened the
door.  Sidonia entered.

"Little aunt, is your head better?"

"Yes, child, yes.  You have supped?  Is it so
late?"  Before the girl could answer, the bell of
the castle clock began to boom nine strokes.  "Nine
o'clock!" shrieked the Burgravine.  "What's to
be done?"  She struck her forehead with a distraught
air.  "I dare not trust that false Eliza,"
she murmured in her mind.  Then her eye met
Sidonia's candid gaze, and she caught her hand.
"Listen, child; you shall do something for me.
Count Kielmansegg is going away to-night."

The girl's pupils widened, her face grew paler,
but she did not speak.

"'Twas I bade him leave.  Your uncle's
causeless jealousy ..."

The girl nodded.  The Burgrave, in truth, had
been no pleasant companion that night.  He had
drunk heavily, and alternated between glowering
spells of silence and loud and almost offensive
pleasantries aimed at his guest, both of which had, not
unnaturally, considerably embarrassed Count Kielmansegg.

"'Twas my duty!" (Oh, how virtuous felt the
Burgravine of Wellenshausen!) "I had promised
him (poor youth, he is my cousin!) that I would
bid him 'Good-bye.'  But now"—(positively
Countess Betty thought her niece must perceive the
halo growing round her head)—"now it has struck
me that if your uncle heard of it, he might
misconstrue——  My dear, you must go and tell Count
Steven from me——"

"I?" cried Sidonia, and started.

"You must," insisted the lady, harshly.  "He
is waiting in the east tower.  Tell him this: 'My
aunt has sent me to say "Good-bye" for her; it
is better so....  It is better so.'  Do not forget
to say that.  What are you waiting for, girl?  Go!
Perhaps you are afraid of the rain!" cried the
Burgravine, scornfully, and seized the travelling-cloak
that was lying ready on the bed.  "Here, put this
on; wrap the hood over your head.  Now run, there
is not a moment to be lost."

There was, perhaps, more urgency, more fear,
in her voice and manner than she had been aware
of, for Sidonia, after a quick look at her, gathered
the folds of the cloak about her and fled upon her
errand.  The Burgravine drew a long sigh of relief,
then rang her hand-bell sharply.

"Eliza," said she to the responsive damsel, and,
on the spot, froze her with a glance for the impertinent
air of confederacy with which she had entered,
"light up a fire and serve supper to me.  My head
is better.  Trim the candles and give me '*La
Nouvelle Héloise*?  How you stare, wench!  Have
you fallen in love, perhaps, that you do your work
so ill to-day?"

.. vspace:: 2

Steven's reflections, as he waited in the
best-sheltered corner of the deserted tower, listening to
the beat and gurgle of the rain, were of an unsatisfactory
description.  The folly of weakness is the
worst of follies, the realization of it the most galling.
He was about—no use in trying to blink the
fact—he was about to ruin his own life; to take upon
himself an intolerable burden; to commit, technically
at least, a crime against hospitality; to put a stain
upon his ancient name; and all without receiving
in return the slightest gratification or being able to
proffer, even to himself, the exoneration of any
approach to passion.  The mere thought of the long,
intimate drive was a bore; the prospect of a possible
life-long companionship with the Burgravine intolerable.

Geiger-Hans, mysterious wretch that he was,
had much to answer for.  And yet, had Steven
followed his advice (he had, in honesty, to admit
this) things would not be at this pass.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



She came in upon him with a rapid step and a
rustle of wet garments, stopped at the mouth of the
passage, and said in a loud whisper:

"Are you there, *Herr Graf*?"

As he went forward, she clutched his wrist with
a cold hand.

"Hush," she cried, "I think I heard steps behind me!"

Both listened, not daring to breathe.  Oh, what
a situation for a youth whose pride it had been to
hold his head high in the world!

Nothing was heard, however, save the wild,
dismal murmur of the rain over the land, and the
nearer drip and patter.

"No, there is nothing," he said, and reluctantly
passed a limp arm round her shoulders.  To his
surprise, they were jerked from his touch with
resentment.  The next moment, however, by a mutual
movement, they caught at each other; for there came
an unaccountable grinding about their ears, and
almost immediately the solid ground gave way under
their feet.

"Gracious Powers! is the tower falling?" cried he.

Even as he clasped the figure beside him, with
the instinctive, protecting action of man for woman,
he was aware that the slender thing in his arms
could not be the Burgravine.  But at the same instant
they were sliding; and before he could do aught
but throw himself backwards to avoid crushing her,
they were shot with giddy swiftness down a steep
incline.  With a shock, his feet struck level
ground; he lay dazed and breathless, her weight
across his breast.  Stars danced before his eyes.
Vaguely, as from a great distance, he heard
overhead the echo of a laugh; then a thud, and once
more the grinding sound, as of heavy, rusty bars.
It was the laugh that brought him to his senses;
too often, lately, had that laugh rung in his ears!

She raised herself in his arms.

"Are you hurt?" he cried as he lay.

"No," she answered quickly.  "Don't get up!"
He knew by the sudden change in her voice that she
had flung the muffling hood from her head.  "Don't
get up! don't stir!  I must find out where we are."

He recognized now the young, clear tones.  It
was Sidonia, but he was past surprise.  One thing
alone stood clear out of his confusion: whatever
it might be that had brought this about, he was glad,
to the heart of him he was glad, it was not Countess
Betty.

He felt the girl struggle to her feet, heard her
grope with her hands above his head.  There came
a moment of great stillness: he knew she was
listening.  Unconsciously he hearkened too, and then
there grew upon them, out of the solid darkness,
the cry of waters, rising up with a sort of cavernous
echo as from a great depth.  And, with a flash,
his mind leaped back to that fearsome race of brown
river that swirled so strangely from the foot of the
Burg-crag, just above the village bridge.  He felt
his hair bristle.  But when she spoke again, the sound
of her voice, with its extraordinary accent of decision,
roused him like a stimulant.

"We are safe if we but keep where we are," she
said.  "You may sit up if you like, but do not
attempt to stand."  And then she added: "You do
not know the place; I do."

She sat down beside him, and in the dark he felt
her close presence once more with gladness.

"What is this place, then?" he asked,
unconsciously whispering.

She answered him with a simplicity which almost
made him laugh:

"It is the old *oubliette*."

Vague cruel memories of mediæval romance awoke
in his brain.  *Oubliette*!  The word itself was
suggestive, and not agreeably so.

"An *oubliette* is——?" he asked.

"The secret trap by which the castellan of old
quietly got rid of enemies or of inconvenient
prisoners.  You see," she proceeded, with her astounding
composure, "through this tower, in former days,
was the sally-port—there used to be no other way;
and were any one whose existence interfered with
the views of the Lord of Wellenshausen, passing
out or in, it was easy to set the machinery in motion,
with the result——"  She broke off.

"Of landing him in our enviable situation,"
he finished pettishly.

"Not at all," retorted she.  "It is the mercy of
heaven for us that time and storm have been at work
in these forgotten regions and provided us with so
opportune a ledge——"

"What would have happened else?" he asked
in a tone that strove to emulate her coolness.

"Sit quietly and listen."

He felt her reach for a stone, felt the tension of
her vigorous young body as she flung it.  He heard
the missile strike the rock sharply, rebound and then
rebound again.  Then, after a silence, rose a faint
sound, the ghost of a splash, the gulp of greedy,
far-off waters, infinitely sinister.  He shuddered.

"No one knows how deep it is," said she, "nor
what lies hidden there.  I can tell you, when I first
discovered this pit, it terrified me.  Old Martin
had told me of its legends, but I had laughed at
him.  One day, some months ago, I scrambled in
from the outside, for the old tower is falling in ruin,
and explored the place.  But I had no notion the
old trap-stone in the sally-port still worked.  Now
I remember," she cried with sudden sharpness,
"seeing Uncle Ludo wandering about the place
this evening——"  She stopped suddenly, struck
by a new thought.

"But," exclaimed the young man, "in heaven's
name, what have I done, to...?"  And then
his uneasy conscience whipped him silent.

"It is a horrible trick," resumed the girl, now with
a passionate ring in her voice, "you, his guest——"

An indignant sob caught her in the throat.  "You
his guest!" she repeated.  "Oh, whatever he thought
of you, he should have remembered that!  I can
never forgive him."

The guest who had meditated, however unwillingly,
the betrayal of his host, blushed painfully
under the cloak of blackness.  He heard her swallow
her tears and knew that she clenched her hands.
After a while she went on more quietly:

"How wise it was of Aunt Betty to tell you to go
away!  And, oh, how glad I am that she sent me
instead of coming herself to bid you 'Good-bye.'"

Steven opened his mouth, and then closed it again
dumbly.

"You would both have been killed," she went
on, sinking her voice.  "Uncle Ludovic must be
mad—mad with his ridiculous jealousy ... and
he's been drinking overmuch.  Ah, dear Lord!
If I had not been with you——"

She gave a shudder.  He, on his side, had no
words.  He was silent in shame before the exquisite
innocence; silent in admiration before the
self-forgetting courage of this slip of a creature, who
thought nothing of her own danger.  "Here, indeed,
is good blood—here is the spirit of race!" he
thought, touched in his most sensitive chord.

Presently, however, the humour of the grim
situation struck him, and he laughed.  There
was Thistledown Betty, incapable even of acting
up to her own unfaithfulness, snug in her bower,
doubtless; and there was the outraged husband,
gloating over his mediæval vengeance: Steven
wished he could be present at their next conjugal
meeting!  Sidonia, childlike, echoed his laugh
softly beside him in the dark.  It struck him serious
on the instant.  The morrow seemed a terribly
long way off.

"And now," said he, "what are we to do?"

"Hey, good sir!" said she, "nothing but wait.
We shall not die this time, Herr von Kielmansegg;
for my poor uncle"—she laughed in scorn and
triumph—"he does not know, I warrant, that
there is a way out of this old death-trap, since there
is a way in.  A way other than by the hidden lake
and the barque of ancient Charon.  But, till the
daylight comes, sir——"

"Daylight!" he exclaimed, and knew not whether
he were glad or sorry at the whole night's prospect.

"Till daylight comes, we must take patience here.
For one false step would send our bodies to join the
bones of the forgotten enemies of Wellenshausen."

"So, then——"

"Then, I should say, the best thing we can do
is ... to go to sleep."

Again he was mute, pierced to the innermost
fibre of his manliness.  It was as if her child-heart
had been suddenly revealed to him—its trustfulness,
its simplicity, its courage.

"If you move a little to the right, carefully,"
she said, after a pause, "you will find it softer, I
think.  The earth has grown up there, and there
are, I remember, ferns.  You will really not be too
uncomfortable."

The girl was positively doing the honours of
the family *oubliette*!  There came a tender smile
to his lips, and almost a mist of tenderness to his eyes.

"But you," said he, "good fairy, guardian angel,
do you never think of yourself?—Will you lean
against me?" he went on, timidly.

He gathered her to him.  What a slight, warm
thing she was!  She trembled as he passed his
arms round her, and he instantly desisted.  "Would
you rather not?"

"I don't know," she whispered.  He thought
there was a quaver as of tears catching her breath.

All the chivalry in him leaped to her service.  He
drew back.  With some difficulty he unwound his
heavy cloak from himself.  He was stiff and bruised,
and the uncertainty of his balance in the blackness
gave him an eerie sensation as of precipices yawning
for him on every side.

"What are you doing?" she cried severely.

"Let me put this over you," he pleaded.  "And
then you can roll up your own mantle and make
a pillow of it—against me, thus."

"But you—but you——"

She struggled against his covering hands so
impetuously that he caught her with a grip of alarm.
And the sound of the rock crumbling away and
leaping into the gulf gave its significant warning.

"You must keep quiet," said he, for the first
time asserting the leadership.  "And you must
let me hold you and cover you.  It is my duty to
serve you, Mademoiselle Sidonia, my right to
protect you.  Sleep if you can.  You will be safe, for
I shall watch."

She remained motionless a minute and then
submitted without a word.  He placed his arm
about her; her head drooped to his shoulder;
there fell silence.  In time he felt her rigidity relax,
heard her quick breath grow calm and regular.

"You are afraid no more," he said gently.

"I don't think I was afraid," she answered him.
Her voice had grown lazy; and, subtly, by the tone
of it, he knew that she smiled.  He felt ineffably
proud of her confidence, ineffably protective towards her.

.. _`Meanwhile, up in his chamber, the Burgrave sat in sodden brooding`:

.. figure:: images/img-173.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Meanwhile, up in his chamber, the Burgrave sat in sodden brooding.

   *Meanwhile, up in his chamber, the Burgrave sat in sodden brooding.*





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE *OUBLIETTE*`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE OUBLIETTE

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "Furcht bich nicht, du liebes Kindchen,
   |  Bor der bösen Geister Macht!
   |  Tag und Nacht, du liebes Kindchen,
   |  Halten Englein bei dir Wacht!"
   |                                HEINE.

.. vspace:: 2

The minutes dropped slowly into the hour.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Something raised a blood-curdling screech that
went sobbing and echoing through the cavern.
If he had not held her, he would have started in
frank alarm.  She only gave a drowsy laugh.

"'Tis Barbarossa, the old owl," said she.

And again fell the silence, filled for him with
whirling thoughts.

How right had this Geiger-Hans been in his
warning!  How merciful had Fate been to save
him from his own folly!  Were he now rolling along
the wet Imperial road with the Burgrave's wife,
he would have had, doubtless, to clasp her much
as he clasped Sidonia.  Precarious as it was, his
present situation was infinitely preferable.  He
felt like a father, holding his pretty child, all warm
with tenderness; not like a dishonest, cold lover
with the woman he cannot love.

Sidonia's light breathing grew fainter and more
rhythmic.  She was asleep.  He had longed, but
hardly dared to hope, that she could sleep.  In his
heart he went down on his knees to her and thanked
her, stirred by the eternal parent instinct, perhaps,
but also by another emotion, tenderer still and
more vital—a reverent bending of his whole
manhood before the purity and trustfulness that lay in
his embrace.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The night progressed with lengthening hours.
He had begun to make out some kind of bearings
for himself in the dark; to find, by the cold
airs that occasionally blew in upon him from one
direction, by the guidance of the sounds that grew
in the night's stillness—the gusty increases, the
placid subsidence of the rain, the rustle of leaves
and twigs—in which quarter of their prison lay
that opening to the outer world by which they should
escape.

Sometimes his mind wandered far away.  Now
and again he almost lost himself in a vague dream;
but ever he came back with a shock to the present
peril and his responsibility.

And the child still slept!

He began to grow weary and cold.  His arm
became stiff, then numb.  The burden that had
seemed so light upon it grew almost intolerable.
Sometimes drowsiness pressed upon him, he thought
himself in a nightmare, from which he must wake
to find himself huddled in a corner of his travelling
chaise.  But he would have died sooner than
disturb the sleeper.

Then, at the moment when the tension of
enforced immobility brought such a feeling of
exasperation and oppression that he almost felt as if
his wits were leaving him, he turned his head
instinctively in the direction of the air current, and
relief came.  The rain was over.  The clouds had
cleared away and a patch of sapphire sky looked in
upon him, framed by jagged rocks: it held two or
three faint stars.  He could see a branch outlined
dimly against the translucence, and leaves trembling
in outer freedom.

Nothing more than this, and yet it was balm.
The torture that gripped him subsided.  He gazed
and forgot the cramping of his limbs.  The first
stars passed slowly and vanished; others swam
into his vision and formed new shapes in the peep
of sky.  Some were brighter, some more dim;
some twinkled, one burned with a steady glow.
They varied in colour, too.  He had had no idea
that, even through such a miserable hole, the heavens
had a pageant to offer of such absorbing interest.
And the passing of this pageant gave him a
comforting sense of the flow of night towards morn.

Once Sidonia woke with a start and a cry.

"I am here," he quickly said.

She reared herself from his arm.  It was numbed
to uselessness; he caught her with the other fiercely.
That pit, gaping so close by in the night, had come,
during the long hours, to be to him as an unknown
monster, watching, waiting for its prey.  She, but
half awake, gropingly passed her soft hands over
his face and breast.  "I dreamed you had fallen,"
she murmured.  And then, so secure in his hold,
stretched herself like a weary child, and slid a little
further from him so that her head rested on his knee.

His eyes had grown more accustomed to the
darkness; or, perhaps, there was already a raising
of the deepest veils of night, for he could almost
distinguish her form as she lay.  He bent over her.
She was speaking dreamily: "When you were hurt
in the forest, this was how your head rested on
my lap."  In another moment she was asleep again.
His arms were free—the sense of constraint
was gone.  And now the time went by almost as
quickly as before it had lagged.  He saw with
surprise that the stars were extinguished, that his
patch of sky had grown pearl-grey.  Rapid stirrings
in the leafage without spoke of an awakening world.
A bird piped.  The walls of their prison began to
take shape....  He saw the white glimmer of
her hand in the folds of the cloak....  And then
he must, after all, have slept at his post; for the next
thing he knew was coming to himself, with a great
spasm and seeing, in a shaft of yellow sunlight,
grey rock, brown earth, and Sidonia's golden head
upon his knee.  And, but a yard from her little
sandalled foot, the horrible black chasm.  Oh,
shame! he had slept, and death lurking for her!
The sweat started on his forehead.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



A sigh of music was blown into the cavern.  Sidonia
turned her head and gazed up in his face with
wide, bewildered eyes.

"It is Geiger-Hans," she murmured, and rubbed
her eyes, as though she thought she were still
dreaming.  Then she sat up, looked round, and memory
leaped back.  She smiled, yawned, and drew
herself together.  "Well," she said, with a sidelong
glance at the pit-mouth, "we have had luck, you
and I!  Don't you want to get out of this, Herr
von Kielmansegg?" she asked briskly, as he sat
wondering at her.  "Or do you think it would be
a nice place to turn hermit in?  See, this is the way,"
said she, and pointed to a narrow and most insecure
ledge skirting the deep; "we shall have to crawl
on hands and knees.  And, sir, I think our cloaks
must be sacrificed."

As she spoke, she gathered them together and
pushed them from her.  They rolled down, and
Steven almost called aloud as he heard their heavy
plunge into the ambushed waters: it sounded as
if some living thing had gone to its death.

.. _`Steven almost called aloud, as he heard their heavy plunge into the ambushed waters`:

.. figure:: images/img-180.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Steven almost called aloud as he heard their heavy plunge into the ambushed waters: it sounded as if some living thing had gone to its death.

   *Steven almost called aloud as he heard their heavy plunge into the ambushed waters: it sounded as if some living thing had gone to its death.*

"I will lead," said she.

Sunshine, sky, grass, wide airs!  Till that moment
Steven had never known what these things could
mean to man.  He sat on a sun-warmed rock by
the side of the precipitous, all but obliterated
pathway that led zigzag upwards to the broken rampart.
Sidonia stood shaking and pruning herself like a
bird, her hair glinting in the light.  By tacit consent
both paused upon this moment of physical relief
before considering their next course.  From above,
the plaintive strain they had heard within their
prison was again borne down towards them on the
breeze.  Sidonia's fingers, busy in her tresses,
stopped.  She bent her ear.

.. _`Sidonia stood, shaking and pruning herself like a bird, her hair glinting in the light`:

.. figure:: images/img-192.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Sidonia stood, shaking and pruning herself like a bird, her hair glinting in the light.

   *Sidonia stood, shaking and pruning herself like a bird, her hair glinting in the light.*

"It is Geiger-Hans.  And that is my tune.  He
is seeking me!"

She curved her hands round her mouth and gave
a long mountain cry.  It rang clear and sweet,
cleaving the pure morning air like the call of a bird.
Instantly the restless melody stopped; and, as they
stood looking up in expectation, they saw the figure
of Geiger-Hans emerge on the rocks over their
heads.  Holding his fiddle high in the air, he came
clambering down to them with the agility of a goat.

"Thank God!" he exclaimed, as, breathless,
he drew near.  "Cruel children, what a fright you
have given me!"

His cheek was pale under its bronze.  Yet,
in spite of its severity, his haggard eye was quick
to note that these two were torn and dishevelled,
that their smiles had the pallor which has faced
death.

"What has happened?" cried he, in changed accents.

Sidonia broke into passionate complaint.  A
great lassitude was upon Steven; he did not wish to
stir or speak; he listened in silence, as she poured
forth the story tersely, yet with the vividness of her
passion.

"And it was Uncle Ludo did it!" she ended,
with a fresh gust of anger.  "We heard him laugh
as we fell.  And Count Kielmansegg his guest!"  Her
pride could not stomach the thought; it was
less to her, evidently, that her relative should have
endeavoured to compass the death of wife as well
as guest, for her anger dropped into mere shuddering
pity as she added: "Poor Aunt Betty!  Just
think, if she had not sent me!"

Many expressions passed over Geiger-Hans'
countenance as the drama unrolled itself before his quick
mental vision.  Thunder of anger, clouds of fear
and doubt, tender admiration.  He shot one
lightning glance of inquiry at Steven; his brow cleared
before the frank answering look.

As the girl finished, the two men sought silent
intercourse with each other.  The eyes of both had
grown soft.  For herself, the little fearless creature
still had no thought, far less words.

"Well, friends," said the fiddler at last, sitting
down on the slope and wiping his forehead with
his sleeve, "you may flatter yourselves that you've
given me no better night than your own.  First,
Sir Count, having a word to say to you, I made so
bold as to take a seat in your carriage, as it waited
down yonder.  A moist time I had of it, in
company with your lordship's horses and postilion.
(By the way, this same postilion hath a varied
choice of oaths.)  Towards the small hours our
relations became strained, and we parted; he back
to the Silver Stork, and I—I will not conceal
it—to wandering once more in the purlieus of this
hospitable strong-house.  For, although nothing was
more natural than that a guest should have altered
his intention of departing at the last moment, my
mind misgave me."

"Poor Geiger-Onkel!" said Sidonia.  "How wet
you must be!"

"Nay, the night had turned fine then; it was the
least of my hardships.  But at dawn this restless
spirit of mine set me to rousing the castle—and a
fine time of it I have given them!  His Excellency,
however, was found dead drunk in his hall, so that
I could get little out of him.  The lady is convinced
that you, comrade, have eloped with her niece, by
some devious road——"

"Devious enough," said Steven, with a short laugh.

But Sidonia had become grave.  "I am glad, at
least, that he was drunk," she said, with judicial air.

"I left my Lady Burgravine planning hysterics.
But I have given orders in the household, as if I
were master of all.  No flogging of Geiger-Hans
now, nor setting of dogs upon him!  'Tis I
command this morning.  I have marshalled his
Excellency's servants: there are some half-dozen fellows
searching the rocks already.  And here, by the way,
comes one bright youth.  Observe how he looks
under the brambles and the bushes.  He will not
leave a mouse-hole unprodded for your corpses."

"Shall we not bid him get breakfast for us all?"
cried Sidonia, gaily.  "'Tis the least Wellenshausen
can do for you this morning, Herr Graf!"

She sprang upwards lightly, her small face, wan
with fatigue, laughing back at them over her
shoulder.  The fiddler and Steven stood side by
side watching her.

"Well," said the former, after a pause, "are you
inclined to go and break bread again in the house
whose stones plotted your death?  Or will you take
the safe way down the mountain to the cushions of
your berline, and cry: 'Drive on, postilion'?"

Steven regarded the speaker a moment or two
before replying.  It seemed to the young man as if
that long, black night had cut him off from his own
purblind youth.  He felt himself years older,
weighted with life.

"I am going back to the Burg," he said, and set
off climbing.

"Hey, comrade, hey, what haste?" panted the
other at his ear.  "What is your purpose up there?
You've been there once too often."  There was a
certain anxiety under the speaker's mocking air.

"My purpose——" began Steven, coldly.  He
was about to add, "concerns you not," but on
second thought he wheeled round, and all that had
been gathering in his heart this night escaped in
words of fire.  "Why do you ask?" he cried.
"You know!  What! are you the man to whom
the souls of others lie bare?  Are you a man like
myself, and do you think I can leave that child
now?  With her little hand she held me from death.
She lay in my arms and slept and trusted me.  Do
you think I could endure myself if I thought I had
left her unprotected here?  If I give my whole life
to the mere guardianship of her, shall I do more
than my duty?  Man!" cried Steven, catching the
fiddler's sunburnt wrist and shaking him, "I tell you,
the child lay in my arms all night."

"She is indeed a child," said the musician, quietly.

"And it is even for that!" exclaimed Steven.
"Oh, I thought you would have understood!"

"Let us go up to the heights, then," said the fiddler.

"What, no music?" cried Sidonia, gaily, as she
watched them coming, from the doorstep.  "I
expected to hear your fiddle chanting the song of
delivery!"

"I have enough music in my soul this morning,"
replied the wanderer.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The Burgrave was a sorry spectacle.  A man
may play the mediæval avenger overnight, but in
the morning he belongs to his own age and the
sense of proportion reasserts itself.  The Burgrave's
awakening to sobriety, his realization of his own
deed, were depressing to the direst degree.  Paradoxically,
no less terrible was the discovery that his
suspicions had been unfounded; that his wife was
both virtuous and still of the living; that it was an
innocent niece and an innocent guest whom he had
precipitated to an awful doom.  He almost betrayed
himself on meeting the Burgravine.

"It was Sidonia, then—it was not you, the youth
was after, all the time!" he exclaimed, bewildered.

"Me?  After me?" cried the lady, in a virtuous
fury.  "How dared you think such a thing!"

She paused, panting, to measure the whole
humiliation of her position.

Sidonia was gone—gone with the pretty Austrian
boy whom she, Betty, had so determinedly marked
as her own.  It was an infamous trick, and for
Sidonia to play it ... Sidonia!  Bah!  She, who
knew herself so well, should not have placed faith
in any woman.

"The minx was in love with him all the time,"
she babbled, "and he—he, oh, he well knew, no
doubt, that no richer heiress would ever pass his
way!  I trust, Herr von Wellenshausen, that you
have sent widely in pursuit."  Her mind was
working at a tremendous rate.  "You have not let
yourself be taken in by this cunning wretch's
story—Geiger-Hans, or whatever his name is?  Oh, I can
tell you something of him, sir.  There's an intriguer
for you, and in Kielmansegg's confidence from the
beginning!  God alone knows what infamous bargains
they may have made together!  It has all been a plot."

The Burgrave stood looking at her, an abject
mass of bilious misery.

"I am afraid there may have been an accident,"
he murmured, moistening his dry lips.

"Accident?" screamed she, and withered him.
"You fool!"  Then she turned on him, snarling
like an angry little cat.  "It is all your fault!  Why
did you ask him back here, to spy and pry?  Yes,
if the girl has disgraced us, it is your fault—the
fault of your evil mind!  You drove them to elope,
old jealous fool!"

The Burgrave clenched his hands and shook them
above his head, fell into a chair, and wept aloud.
Elope?  If she but knew!  Alack, poor Sidonia!
Poor little Sidonia!  He had always loved the child.

"I trust you will come to soberness presently,"
said Betty, with a disgusted look at the row of
empty bottles.

And it was at this moment that shouts from the
courtyard proclaimed the return of the lost ones.

The Burgrave's ecstasy of relief, when he heard
that his *oubliette*, had miscarried, could only be
measured by his previous state of misery.  He
could have leaped and sung.  He caught his wife
to his breast with fresh tears.  Repulsed with
scorn, he tottered forth to the great hall, still reeling
in his joy, to meet the two so miraculously preserved
and restored.

The girl faced him, severe as a young Daniel,
with pointed finger and flashing eye.

"You weep now, uncle: you laughed last night!
That was your farewell to us; you laughed as you
tumbled us down the *oubliette*!"

The Burgrave had stepped back, dismayed afresh.
She knew, then, that no mere accident had betrayed
them!  The wretched lord of the castle flung a look
around; met the eyes of Steven, scornful—he
knew!  Met the fiddler's eyes, horribly mocking—he
knew!  Met his Betty's gaze, deeply suspicious.
In a moment she, too, would know!

Out rang Sidonia's clarion tongue.  And then
the Burgravine did know.

Promptly he was delivered into her hands.  She
threatened him with King and Emperor, with
family and justice, prison, madhouse, duel.  The
Emperor had put divorce in fashion, she reminded
her lord.  She would divorce him, resoundingly!
The last taunt was—since, after all, he loved her
in his own fashion—the blow that hit him hardest.

Natheless, even under the shock of the discovery
that her own precious life had been in danger, and
her husband (Bluebeard too well named!) had been
her would-be murderer, her wits did not desert her.

She intercepted the gaze wherewith Steven
followed Sidonia, and was quick to feel that for
herself he had now scarce a thought; nay, that she
but represented to him three days of intense
discomfort and a disagreeable episode ending in
death-peril.  She must not act in a hurry.  She must
play what cards she had left in her hand to best
purpose.  She had a vision of a tamed Bluebeard—and
compensation; her turn yet to come in gay Cassel.

"*Herr Graf*," said the Burgrave, not without
some kind of dignity, though tears still swam in
the pale, swollen eyes, and his great hands trembled,
a pathetic spectacle, "I stand at your mercy.  I have
absolutely no excuse to offer you."

"Nay, sir," said Steven, "what misfortune
Wellenshausen brought on me, Wellenshausen has
repaired.  Whenever I think," he added, and raised
Sidonia's hand to kiss it, "of the night when you
planned, and well-nigh encompassed, my death, I
will also remember that to the courage of a daughter
of this same house I owe my life.  Before I take
leave of your hospitable door" (he was too young
to refrain from the gibe), "may I crave a few words
in private?"

The Chancellor bowed.  Steven pressed Sidonia's
hand and followed his host as he shambled across
the hall.

Had any one told the young man on the previous
day that he would be willing—nay, anxious—to
bind himself for all the years of his life to the little
sunburnt Sidonia, he would have thought the
absurdity scarce worth a laugh.  And yet, here he
was, a suitor for her hand.  Her guardian dared
not refuse her to him, even if a Count
Waldorff-Kielmansegg had not been a match such as hardly
could be found for her twice in a lifetime.  He was
bent on his purpose with all the obstinacy of a
nature somewhat slow to move, but firmly set once
a resolution taken.  It was perhaps hardly love so
much that urged him as a kind of passionate chivalry.
He had expressed the state of affairs very accurately
to Geiger-Hans.  He had guarded her in his arms a
whole night; now he felt driven by all his manliness
to guard her for the rest of her life.  Yet, with
all this sentimental fervour, there was mixed a
shrewd common-sense.  In race she was his equal.
She had good blood in her veins; and, by heaven,
the little creature had shown it!  Her courage and
pride appealed to his innermost fastidiousness of
breeding.  And, child as she was, wild creature,
free of the wood, sisterly with the people of the soil,
he had the intuition that she would bear her new
honours not only loyally, but royally.  To her
fortune he actually gave not a thought.  Once or
twice, in his hearing, she had been mentioned as
a great heiress, but the statement had made no
impression.  With all his faults, Steven was nothing
so little as mercenary—rare enough a virtue with
the rich man, even in youth.

With his blood-red stare fixed upon him, the
Burgrave was uncomfortably and confusedly revolving
certain questions connected with his ward's
fortune.  He had his own reasons for preferring to
keep Sidonia unmarried for some years to come.
But circumstances had passed out of his control.
He could have but one answer for the curt, haughty,
well-nigh insolent demand:

"Wellenshausen was honoured—they were
honoured, honoured——"

"With the briefest possible delay!" supplemented
the lordly youth.

And again the Burgrave bowed acquiescence; for
there was a threat in Steven's eye, merciless to any
hesitation.

"Of course," cried Wellenshausen, suddenly
catching at a straw, "this is subject to my niece's
consent."

A faint smile came to Steven's lips; not fatuous,
but mightily confident.

"That, your Excellency, is a matter between her
and me," he said.

The other glowered.  This smacked of England,
and he disliked English customs.  But, again, his
helplessness overcame him.  With a turn of the
head, scarcely a bow, Steven then withdrew.  His
host, lately so arrogant, looked after him, gnashing
his teeth, helpless and furious in his humiliation.
The wooer had not approached the subject of the
girl's portion, even when he had mentioned his own
lordly rentals; an omission so strange that it but
added to the Burgrave's general sense of discomfiture.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`LOVE AMONG THE RUINS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*Well—if I bide, lo!  This wild flower for me!*"
   |                                (*Lancelot and Elaine*).

.. vspace:: 2

It was a glorious day, after a night of rain; and
a blazing sun poured its rays down upon the rocks.
Some instinct led Steven (he was perhaps already
more of a lover than he believed) to the place where
Sidonia sat, a ledge on the steep grassy slope which
lay just outside the bramble-hidden opening of the
cave—the cave that had yielded them back, in the
dawn, to a new life.

She was alone, seated under the wall, in a child-like
attitude, her chin in her hand, wrapt, it seemed,
in profound cogitation.  The sunshine brought a
golden fire about her uncovered hair.  Steven flung
himself beside her.  She did not move her head,
merely turned her grave eyes upon him; and, for
a while, there was silence between them.

The air was full of the humming of busy insects,
sweet with the spices of the thousand thymy herbs
that flourished in the dry, rocky soil.  Above them
the ruinous wing of the castle towered into the
nebulous blue.  Below, far away, the brown roofs
of the village lay in shadow.  Faint cries rose up
from it; and from some unseen pasture, the tinkle
of cow-bells—dim little sound, homely, yet so
strangely in harmony with the solitudes of nature.
The calls of the mountain birds came fitfully; and
underlying all was the distant roar of the torrent
seeking its issue far away from the secret well.
Sidonia spoke at last.

"You have finished with them all, up there?"
she asked.

"With them all, up there; yes," he answered
her; and a joyousness was upon him, for which he
could have given no reasons.  It was born,
perhaps, of his sudden entrance into the power of
manhood—for protection, for conquest, for
ownership.  She, however, saw nothing of the flash in
his eye, of the eager trembling of his lip.

"You could have Uncle Ludo put in prison, of
course, but you will not do that.  And that is the
worst punishment of all.  You leave him just with
contempt.—It is a great humiliation for
Wellenshausen!" she said.

For some moments he made no answer.  He was
considering with pleasure the delicate ear under the
waving sweep of hair, the colour, weight and length
of the plaits that, divided, hung on either side of
her neck and tipped the ground.  He was noticing
the shape of the nails in the slight brown hands,
the shadow of the eyelashes on the cheek, the arch
of the foot, the slender beauty of which even the
country shoe could not conceal.  How blind he had
been on their first meeting!  Geiger-Hans had,
indeed, been justified in chiding him....  "She? a
peasant girl!  Then you never looked at her feet,
nor at her delicate eyebrow.  It is a noble child!"

Those eyes of hers that he had, even at their first
meeting, compared to a mountain stream in their
depth, their varying colour, were still fixed with
gravity upon him.

"You looked for me to say good-bye?" she said simply.

"No," said Steven.

He drew himself a little closer to her, as he lay
his length on the ground.  The scent of the crushed
weeds, the small aromatic nameless growths
beneath him, sprang to his nostrils.  He propped
himself on his elbows and leaned his chin on his clasped
hands, returning her gaze masterfully.

"Mademoiselle Sidonia, it is true that I am going
soon, but I do not mean to go away alone.  I have
told your uncle how unfit I consider him to be your
guardian.  He cannot dispute the point with me,
and he has owned that you ought to have another.
Will you trust me to take care of you?"  The
eyes fixed upon him widened, questioning, innocent,
yet profound.  "I should call you my wife," he went
on in a low voice, all astonished himself that his
heart should suddenly beat so fast.  Her glance
never wavered, but he could see the scarlet dye her
cheek.  "Sidonia, will you come with me?" he
cried.  And now he was on his knees, quite close
to her.

"I will go with you," she replied.

.. _`196`:

Her child eyes were still upon him and seemed
to ask for something yet.  And at this, he bent and
kissed her, gently, as he would have kissed a child,
and did not guess that, at the touch of his lips,
Sidonia's woman's soul was born.

.. vspace:: 2

The autumn month was kind to the short,
bewildering time of Steven and Sidonia's betrothal,
and gave them, day after day, a fair sky and joyous
sunshine.

It was something of a strange business.  Steven
ascended the crag at least twice in the twelve hours
to meet his little bride, up in the blue, among the
rocks or the ruins.  He had decided not to break
bread again with the Burgrave, not even to enter
the Burg until the wedding morning; and Sidonia
approved this stern decision.  And so their wooing
had for its setting the barren crags, the scanty
verdure, the keen airs of Wellenshausen heights;
its only witnesses the great ravens, and occasionally
some soaring hawk, cruising watchful and keen,
pirate of the high seas of blue.  Thus Sidonia
became associated in Steven's mind with the pungent
scents of all mountain herbs, the briskness of all
mountain breezes.  He could have sworn that about
her small person itself there was a myrtle fragrance.

Her presence became as grateful as the wild
nature about him, and made as few demands upon
him.  Of love-making, in the accepted sense, there
was none between them.  He touched her still as
reverently as he had touched the sleeper in the
*oubliette*.  He could not disabuse himself of the
feeling that she was under his protection; that he
must guard her, innocent, confident, maiden, sprite,
child; guard her even from himself, from his man's
knowledge, his man's power.  It was instinct, not
calculation, that kept him within such idyllic bounds.
But, as it was, he felt mightily pleased with himself
and consequently with her.  Through some vein of
idealism—richest treasure of youth as yet
unrealized—his whole nature was flattered with the
sense of his own chivalry, with the delicacy of the
poem.  Never for an instant did he repent his
impulsive bargain.

So long as there was such content in his eyes,
there was content deep and full in Sidonia's heart.
Her confidence in him was unlimited.  He had
asked her to be his wife: therefore he loved her,
and his way of love was perfect in her mind.  His
parting and meeting kiss—often enough laid fugitively
upon her eyelids—was to her the utmost and
happiest expression of tenderness.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



So passed these odd, quiet, yet all-important hours
of courtship.  And then the day came, eve of the
morrow when they were to be united up in yonder
bare stone chapel of the Burg, that was never used
save for the baptism, the burial, or the wedding of
a Wellenshausen.

Again Sidonia sat among the rocks and the wild
herbs, but alone: Steven was engaged in conclave
with the ruddy-faced pastor of the hamlet, who
was to ride up on his mule in the morning and
conduct the ceremony.  She smiled happily, as
she pictured the interview in her mind.  Presently
she became aware that she was no longer by
herself.  From the black shadow of the rock, across
the patch of sward opposite to her, eyes were
watching her from a lean, sharp-featured face.  She gave
a small, low laugh.

"I see you," she said.

And Geiger-Hans came forward with a kind of
leap from the rocky gloom.  He sat cross-legged in
the full sunshine before her, his arms folded.  His
fiddle was slung at his back; his garments were
powdered with dust; he looked tired and travel-worn,
as if he had come from a long distance.  But
he was smiling at her.

"Truly, it is a curious thing," he said, as if taking
up the thread of some interrupted conversation,
"that the first time we ever met, little Mamzell
Sidonia, you addressed me in just these very words."

"That must have been very long ago, Onkel,"
said Sidonia, "for I always remember you."

"Nay, it was an epoch to me.  You see, mamzell,
I was not then Geiger-Onkel to the country-side,
the Geiger-Onkel whom the children run up to,
whom the silly maids and youths consult, and the
old wives like to gossip with—the old, crazy fellow,
who makes merry music and does nobody any harm.
I had black misery in my heart in those days, and
black misery on my face.  And I can well believe,"
said the fiddler, after a pause, "that I seemed to
shed a black curse about me as I passed.  I was a
restless mortal, and went about, hither, thither, at a
terrible pace.  The people took me for a wandering
devil!  And, upon my soul, I don't blame
them."  He gave a laugh, and the sound of it hurt
Sidonia.  She had always known, of course, that it
was some fearful sorrow that had driven her old
friend to his life of wandering.

"Oh, poor Geiger-Onkel!" she cried; the caress
of her eyes was infinitely soft.

"Yes, the women crossed themselves when they
saw me!"  He laughed again.  "The men jeered—the
children ran screaming from my path....
That day when I saw you first, mamzell, I was tired
and angry.  A stone had been flung at me and
caught me on the ankle, and I went lame.  The day
was very hot; I had been a long way; I could go
no further, and I was hungry.  I sat outside the
forest-house, waiting to ask for a crust.  I had heard
you laughing and calling behind the garden hedges,
and I was afraid of frightening you....  Aye,
it was weary work, going through the world making
the children cry!  I knew that, when the sun sank,
somebody would put you to bed.  'And then I
shall knock,' I said to myself....  But, all at once,
little Mamzell Sidonia, as I sat, oh, so glum, so
black-hearted, so forlorn a wretch, I heard you call
me.  You had popped your head out of the garden
gate, and were peeping at me, gurgling with laughter.
'I see you,' you said."  His voice broke.  He
twisted himself and lay out-stretched, supporting
himself on one arm, his face turned towards the
ground, idly picking at the small herbs.  "Your
little head was all over golden curls ... some one
I had known had hair of that colour ... and you
looked at me, it seemed, with eyes I had known also.
You were not in the least frightened; you thought,
I believe, that I was a very good game.  But to me,
to me, Mamzell Sidonia—you see I was even madder
then than I am now—you were a something sent
to me from one I loved once."

Sidonia held her breath.  She did not dare
speak.  This was not the Geiger-Onkel she had
known.  His very voice was changed utterly.
She could not see his face as he lay, but instinctively
she turned her eyes away from the prone figure.

"If we had had a child," said the fiddler, in a
sort of whisper, "she would have looked like you
... she would have looked like you!"

It seemed to Sidonia that the lean figure was
shaken, and she had a terror lest he should be
weeping.  But, all at once, with those singular, quick
movements of his, so startling to those who did not
know him, he was sitting once more cross-legged;
and the eyes that fixed her were dry and wildly
brilliant.

"Now, if only the Burgrave was here, and could
have heard me," he cried, mocking, "would he not
be justified in calling for those whips and dogs with
which I have been threatened?  The Baroness
Sidonia von Wellenshausen compared with the
brat of a crazy beggarman!"

Sidonia exclaimed indignantly: "Whips and
dogs!  He would never dare!"

"Well, hardly just now," said the other, whimsically.
"His Excellency will dare very little for
some time to come.  Hey, what a game have the
Fates played with him; aye, and with us all,
mamzell, even with me, who thought to guide them!
But they played my game in the end," he added,
edging a little closer to her.  "Well, little sleeping
beauty with the golden hair, did I not do well to
bring you to your forest bower this gallant young
prince?  You had to be awakened, *Princesse
Sidonie au bois dormant*; for the end of the spell
was near at hand.  And if you had been awakened
by the wrong knight?  Heaven preserve us, what a
catastrophe!"

"Oh, Geiger-Onkel, I am not a child any more
to be talked to in fairy tales.  I am going to be
married to-morrow!"  Then, with a sudden change
of tone, the girl cried inconsequently, "It is true,
you did bring him to me.  Perhaps you're a kind
of wizard uncle, after all!"

"Why—and have you ever doubted it?" said
he, menacing her with his finger.  "Have I not
watched you all these years?  When you wanted
me for anything—for the white doe that was lost,
or for Liserl in the village, when she had no news of
her lad, or when Aunt Hedwige kept you too
close—had not you but to wish for me?"

"It is true," she pondered, and looked at him
doubtfully, unable to make out if he were in jest
or in earnest.

"And so, when I met this fine young Prince
Errant on the roadway, I knew he was meant for you."

But suddenly she accused him, shaking her little
finger in mimicry of his own gesture.

"But you vanished very quickly, the other morning,
after you played us out of the *oubliette*,
Geiger-Onkel.  And my prince had to face the wicked
guardian all by himself, and you were not even there
to tell the princess what she was to say.  You have
not been near us all these days."

"But, did you want me?" cried the fiddler, and
gave a screech of laughter.  It rang harshly.  "Did
you want me?  That is the question."

She found nothing to answer.  Truthfully, she
had, these days, forgotten his very existence.  He
chuckled to himself, and hitched his violin round.

"Listen," said he, and began to play a dainty
measure—so exquisitely tender-gay a measure
that it made Sidonia, all in her young happiness,
feel quite sad.  "Listen; this is the first tune you
ever danced to, little mamzell.  That was how your
steps went, and how you clapped your hands....
Oh, I have something better for you still to play to
you....  But you must wait for it.  It is the
song of your bridal morning!"

The sun fell full on his face as he played.  How
weary he looked, how aged, how haunted, and yet
how gentle—poor Geiger-Hans!





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`*FURENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT*`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XV


.. class:: center medium bold

   FURENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*Et, dans leurs jalousies, vous trouverez toujours*
   |  *Leurs vanités blessées plutôt que leurs amours.*"
   |                                      DESTOUCHES.

.. vspace:: 2

The mind of Burgravine Betty was a weather-vane,
gilt and fantastically wrought, that veered
in ever contrary directions, as blew the wind of her
mood.  Of constant purposes she knew but one,
that of her own pleasure.  But what course of action
would best minister to this was a matter of perpetual
indecision.  She had amused herself with rare
gusto, after months of enraging dulness, with the
handsome stranger who had so impertinently sought
the hospitality of Wellenshausen.  And though a
sermon from that crazy person the fiddler—no
doubt a gentleman in masquerade, or Betty was no
judge of such point—had left her momentarily
abashed, sentimental over rocking cradles and
wifely duty and such-like unprofitable conventions,
the next morning the little shining vane was setting
straight for the soft west of dalliance, and she fully
meant to cheat her Bluebeard by as complete an
*affaire de coeur* as circumstances would permit.
Nay, while apparently taking virtuous farewell over
night of the unexpected kinsman, she had already
planned heaven knows what secret assignations,
palpitating meetings in the shadow of the ruins,
descents into the forest-land and green picnics in
discreet glades, yea, even excursions into the deepest
of the woods.  But the secret departure of the
degenerate Kielmansegg and the unwelcome appearance
of a tactless husband had shattered these agreeable
projects.  And Betty's vane had flown to north
again: cold virtue in an injured wife, most
wrongfully suspected.  Next, by her husband's odious
tricks of suspicion, thrown once again into the
company of good looks and young manhood, what a
succession of small hot and cold breezes kept the
weather-cock shifting east, south-east and south,
back to west again!  Positively driven to elope, by
sheer dread of the fate of Desdemona under her
own cushions, what better choice could be made
than this Steven von Waldorff-Kielmansegg—rich,
high-born, and so vastly personable?  And in
Vienna, these times, people scarcely could look
askance at a *divorcée*.

Yet, a rainy night, and some more of that ubiquitous
fantastic musician's nonsense, and hey for a
new quarter of the compass again!  She could
scarcely, however, regret the chill wind of reason
that had shifted her purpose at the last hour—a
night in the *oubliette*, even with a charming
companion, coincided by no means with Betty's ideas of
enjoyment.  And then, not having the knowledge
of the murderous locality acquired by that climbing
kid Sidonia, she and Count Steven might well be
swirling, this sunny moment, in undesired
comradeship under the black waters of the pit.  Betty
shuddered in every fibre of her ease-loving body.

Now, during these days of Sidonia's brief betrothal,
the Burgravine was in a more than usually undecided
and dissatisfied frame of mind.  Nevertheless, her
mood pointed steadily for Cassel.  As a Bluebeard,
there could be no doubt of it, the Burgrave's
occupation was gone.  He was abject under his Betty's
sandal.  And Betty's foot, for so little a one, could
stamp curiously hard.  Henceforth the husband
who would have compassed her murder had (the
Burgravine fondly believed) no choice but to be his
wife's slave.  Dared he but thwart the smallest of
her wishes, she knew well now how to reduce him
to obedience.  Cassel it was to be.  Cassel, so soon
as this absurd wedding was over.

A very sulky shoulder did the Burgravine turn
upon the whole ridiculous affair.  An errant squire
of dames, dull, undiscriminating, ill-mannered
youth, who, when a Betty was within the same
horizon, could have the poor taste even to look at a
Sidonia; to take up a hoyden, sun-burnt as a
peasant child, and with as much idea of the refinements
of life as the village chits with whom she was
wont to make so free!  A pretty show would she
make of herself in Vienna!

.. vspace:: 2

The Burgravine had a curious glitter in those
eyes of hers, that generally astonished the stranger
by their flower-blue in her olive face; yet, withal,
she was full of smiles.  Was it not the wedding-day
of the Baroness Sidonia, her husband's niece?

Never had the Burg, on its dominating height,
seen a bride go forth from its "honour gate" to
the ancestral chapel with so little ceremony.  Great
carouse had there been at the castle on similar
occasion, loud ringing of joy bells, and belching of
powder smoke from the ramparts, wide flaunting
of the old blue and yellow banner over the belfry.
High folk, thickly gathered in Wellenshausen's
Burg, had drunk deep on the height; low folk in
Wellenshausen Dorf, on the plain, had vied successfully
with their betters.  The glories of the weddings
at Wellenshausen had been retailed from father to
son.  Yet this last bride of the house, heiress as she
was to most of its honours, slipped from her chamber
to the altar-steps with scarce the tinkling of the
chapel-bell to mark her passage, and only the cries
of one or two village children, hot from their scramble
up the crag, to acclaim her, the smiles, tearful,
motherly and portentous, of the forest-mother to
brace her for the great plunge into the unknown.
Such was the haste and privacy with which the
compact was carried out.  The imperious bridegroom
had willed it so.  Nevertheless, if ungraced by pomp
and unwitnessed by honoured guests, the ceremony
was impressive enough in the simplicity and
earnestness of the two chiefly concerned.

So thought the musician, who knelt hidden, all
in the dust, between the tomb of the greatest of
the old Wellenshausens and the chapel wall.  He had
refused the post of honoured guest, the prominent
seat prepared by Sidonia herself, the proffer of
Steven's dark suit and purple stockings.

"I shall be with you all the same, my children,"
he had promised them.  And from his place of
concealment nothing escaped his watchful anxiety.
It did his heart good to catch a glimpse of the
bridegroom's face as it was turned upon the bride.  Never,
it seemed to him, had Sidonia looked more completely
the child.  She went through the ordeal with a blithe
serenity; he knew that the music he had made for
her that morning, at the misty dawn, was singing
in her heart.

At the sight of her golden head under the bridal
veil, the vagabond closed his restless eyes for a
minute.  An inner vision of poignant tenderness
rose upon him.  "O Love, O Death, how the wheel
turns with us!"

To the bowing snuff-coloured notary from
Helmstadt, the Burgrave in his glittering Chancellor's
uniform was a very awe-inspiring person: he quailed
under the unblinking gaze of His Excellency,
beneath the jealous eyebrows.  Far indeed was he
from suspecting that the merest glint of the
Burgravine's blue orbs—so youthful, so affable an
apparition to the dusty man of law—sufficed to make
Wellenshausen, the terrible, quail in his tall boots.

Kurtz the Jäger whistled between his teeth, with
an impudent eye on the wedding procession, as, in
company with Mademoiselle Eliza, he beheld it
pass out.

"It is your mistress whose little game has fallen
through," said he, tauntingly, to the French girl.

"Ah, no, *par exemple*," retorted she.  "It is
your master, *mon bel oiseau*, who wears the fool's
cap this time.  Oh!"—she clapped her sallow
hands together—"how we shall amuse ourselves
at Cassel!"

It could hardly be said that the wedding repast
was a convivial event.  Steven took upon himself
a great air of condescension over this first breaking
of bread at the table of his would-be executioner.
His politeness was something quite overpowering.
The Burgrave, after a bumper of Sillery to the health
of the happy pair, essayed to carry matters with a
high-handed joviality; the effect of it, against Steven's
glacial indulgence, was ghastly.  But, when bridegroom
and bride conferred together, were it upon
the merest trifle, the irresponsible youth and joy of
them was not to be hidden.  And Burgravine Betty
watched with a glance that grew ever more steely.

She had sat down to the board in a fairly good
humour, for her amber gown was becoming, and the
water gardens, the statued alleys of Cassel Palace,
were growing into nearer perspective.  But Cousin
Kielmansegg positively treated her in much the same
high-horse manner as he treated his host.  The most
alluring twists of her shoulder, the most killing
ogles, were received with odious civility; nay—and
her vanity was pierced to the core—she actually
caught in him a look of boredom, when he had
perforce to turn and give his attention to a delicate
whisper, reminiscent innuendo, sigh for the
might-have-been.

Fury rose in her, sudden as a mountain
whirlwind.  She gripped her wineglass: the sweetness
turned acid on her lips.  Loud rang her laugh;
and the Burgrave, glancing at her, felt a satisfaction
in the ever-doubtful growling depth of his heart that
his Betty should be so merry at her Beau Cousin's
wedding.  But Sidonia flung her aunt a startled look.
The Burgravine sprang to her feet with a peremptory
gesture:

"Come with me," she said.

She was in a prodigious hurry, all at once, to get
the new Countess Kielmansegg away from the table
into the privacy of her own turret apartment,
ostensibly to robe her for the journey.  The bridegroom
followed his bride with a long glance; noting which,
the Burgravine tossed her head.

"You must have a little patience," she cried to
him insolently.  "She will be ready in an hour."

Once alone with the girl, she whisked the bridal veil
from her head with such feverish and ungentle hands
that Sidonia turned round to look upon her in
amazement, only to meet a positive glare.

"Why, Aunt Betty!"

"Why, Sidonia!—forgive, I should say: Most
High Lady Countess!"

"What is the matter with you?" cried Sidonia.

She was never one to take hostility in meekness.
The colour sprang to her cheek.

"Why do you look at me like that?  What has
vexed you?" she insisted.

"Vexed?—I?" quoth the lady.  Here they were
interrupted by Eliza, all flounce and bounce and
smile, with pink bows to her apron and a jaunty new
cap.  Her mistress turned upon her fiercely.  "Get
out of this!  When you are wanted you shall be
called," she cried.  Then: "Nay, my love," she
proceeded, once more addressing her niece, now in a
biting tone of sweetness (a diabolic inspiration had
come to her: if Satan can never unmake, he can at
least mar) "nay, wherefore should I be vexed?  I
may be ashamed for my sex; I am still, I must
confess, under the shock of the recent scandal,
which has rendered necessary this humiliating
marriage, but——"

Sidonia went white to the lips.  "I don't
understand——" she cried boldly; but there was horror
gathering in her eyes.

"Do you need to be told, then," asked the other,
clapping her plump hands together in exasperation,
"that if a young girl spends a night in a cave alone
with a young man, her reputation is not worth a silver
groat?"

The blood raced back to the bride's cheeks.
"Do you taunt me for having saved your life, Aunt
Betty?  What say I?—saved *your* reputation....
But what does it matter; how does this concern me
now?  My husband loves me; he has my faith."

The Burgravine broke into shrill laughter.  Then,
with a sudden change of tactics, she folded her niece
to her heart with hysterical tenderness.

"Nay, my poor lamb, I am wrong!  Go, go in
your touching confidence; I will say no further
word.  It would be cruel to enlighten you a day
sooner than necessary, and——"

"I think you're mad," interrupted the bride.
"I cannot imagine what you mean."  With steady
fingers she removed the myrtle wreath from her head,
then approached her aunt with a countenance
singularly altered.  "You must explain yourself,
Aunt Betty," she said.

The Burgravine rushed again into passion.
"Were you the innocent you pretend to be," retorted
she, panting, "it would be no kindness to let you
depart in ignorance of the true state of your affairs.
But, for all your baby pose, you cannot make me
believe, my love, that you are blind to the fact that
this poor, chivalrous young man has only wedded
you, all said and done, to save your name, your
honour.  A—ah, he has vowed, and you believe
him, that he loves you?"  (It is well to lash oneself
into blind anger when it is difficult to strike in cold
blood.)  "Ten days ago, on that very turret platform,"
she dramatically pointed through the window
to the silhouette of the east tower, "only ten days
ago he held me to his heart—this devoted lover of
yours—and consecrated his life to me!"

"I do not believe you," said Sidonia, again.  But
her soft, young face seemed suddenly turned to
marble.  "If he loves you, what does he want with
me?"  The girl spoke slowly.  She had been
shaken, but she was not convinced.  "I don't
believe it, Aunt Betty," she resumed.  "Nobody
would have said any harm of me.  Every one knows
me here!  Wellenshausen," cried the child, in
angry common-sense, "is not Vienna, nor yet Cassel!"

Betty, who possessed the faculty of changing
her mind with ease, had no bashfulness at all in
eating her own words when occasion offered.
Indeed, so accommodating was her disposition that
she was quite ready to believe her own hasty
concoctions, however contradictory, at a moment's notice.
Shrewish blew the gusts of the jealous temper.

"Well, *mon coeur*, is it not better to think him an
excellent chivalrous person than to try and seek for
less noble motives?  'Tis granted, isn't it, that since
he loved me at nine o'clock in the evening, loved me
to the point of elopement, he could hardly be ready to
love you very devotedly at eight the next morning?
We will not think that my Bluebeard dropped him a
hint of your money bags....  The situation was
delicate, you see, and if the Burgrave, who is fond
of you after all, my dear, and who, no doubt, wanted
to repair the damage he had wrought, failed to
move the young gentleman by one plea, he may
have succeeded in another.  There are compensations
about you: that is a fact.  It was after their
private conversation, remember, my little angel, that
Beau Cousin proposed...."

Sidonia set her teeth in her trembling lip.  Every
word was a dagger wound to pride and love and
maidenliness.  Then all her loyalty revolted.  Her
knight of the forest, so base?  Never!  And if the
Burgravine was false in the one instance, why not in all?

"Aunt Betty," she said deliberately, "this is all a lie."

"Fool," snapped Betty.  She ran from the room
like a fury, to return with incredible quickness.  She
shook a crumpled note before the bride's eyes, then
spread it with frenzied fingers upon the table.

"See here!  Read! read what he writes to me—to
me!  Ah, you know his handwriting by this time!
Read, read!  He asks me to meet him among the
ruins.  'All will be ready!'  What does that mean,
think you?  Why, that his coach was waiting ready
for us at the foot of the hill, to whirl us two to our
own land, to safety, to happiness!"

The girl reeled and pressed her hands to her eyes.

"Why, my dear," cried the other, pursuing her
advantage mercilessly, "did he ever blink at you,
I ask, before that disgraceful night in the dark?
And indeed, how could fine young men such as he,
I should like to know, find anything to fall in love
with in you, you poor little country, weather-beaten
thing?  No, my poor child, no, you had best take it
that he's just doing the recognized high-born,
gentlemanly thing by you; but it will do you no harm to
remember that it was me, me, that he wanted to
take away from Wellenshausen, not you!"

"Then why did you not go—why did you send
me to him, with your good-bye?" asked Sidonia at
last, almost voiceless.

"Because I was a fool," exploded the Burgravine,
in all the inconsequence of her envy.

At this particular moment it seemed to her that
in her virtuous decision she had indeed missed the
opportunity of her life.  And she set her teeth upon
such savage accents of truth that, at last, Sidonia
believed.

She took the crumpled bit of paper from the table.
Stunned amid the ruins of her fair edifice of
happiness, she had as yet hardly realized her aunt's
position, even though so shamelessly trumpeted.
Now, with this proof of Steven's real feelings in her
hand, Betty's guilt suddenly leaped, hideous, into
shape before her....  The Burgravine von
Wellenshausen, a married woman, ready to break her
marriage vows, listening to words of love from the
guest under her husband's roof!  The bride was
very innocent, but innocence is perhaps the severest
judge of all.  She turned eyes of horror upon her
uncle's wife.

"It is well," she said, after a pause.  "Leave
me; I must think out what I have to do."

As she spoke she thrust the note into the bosom of
her bridal frock.

To be thoroughly successful in revenge is always
slightly alarming.  So thought the Burgravine as
she closed the door upon this unknown, this strange
Sidonia.  But, having gone too far to retreat, spite
now resolved to reap the final gratification.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`'TWIXT CUP AND LIP`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   'TWIXT CUP AND LIP

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "Warum sind benn die Rosen so blass?
   |     *     *     *     *     *
   |  Mein liebes Liebchen, sprich,
   |  D sprich, mein herzallerliebstes Lieb,
   |  Warum verliessert du mich?"
   |                            HEINE.

.. vspace:: 2

Steven and his host sat opposite each other,
equally mute.  After his spurt of hilarity, the
Burgrave had gradually fallen into a moodiness fostered
by draughts of an alarming variety of wines.  Sunk
into himself, his heavy chin upon his chest, he glared
straight before him with suffused eyes,
blood-injected—a sodden mass of helpless resentment.

Fastidious Steven, ever more wrapt in disdain and
aloofness, had perforce to avert his gaze from the
degraded spectacle.  How came such a flower as
his Sidonia grafted upon so coarse a stock?  He
rejoiced, with a glow of intimate self-approbation,
that he was carrying her away to fitter surroundings.
To whom might they not have wedded her?  To
some sproutling, no doubt, chosen by the Burgrave—by
yonder sot!  Into what brutal arms might they
not have cast her—the pure child of the cave
night?

Something called him from his musings: it was
the measure of an odd little tune, played half-sourdine,
half-pizzicato.  Suddenly the image of a rosy
mountain-side, a gold-dusted plain spreading away
towards sunset, the gloom of a forest background,
sprang before his mind.  He saw in the midst of
that scene a gloomy youth seated on a milestone,
a disabled chaise, a grey horse ... and up the hill,
advancing towards him, the vagabond fiddler.  A
broken sun ray flashed back from the yellow varnish
of his instrument ... a robin sang ... the white
horse cropped the leaves of young grass, with
contented munching sound.  The stream ran tinkling
like secret laughter.  Oh, what strange things had
been brought into this traveller's life through the
breaking of a linchpin on the Thuringian highway!
He sprang to his feet.  Surely Geiger-Hans was
calling him!—The Burgrave never even shifted
his eyes to watch his new nephew go.

Steven found the fiddler at the head of the
downward path; and though he was seated, there was an
air of travel about him.  He was alone.  The charm
of his music had no power that day at Wellenshausen;
fleshpots and drinking cans filled the household mind.
The young man's heart contracted; he had learned
to feel strange attachment for his strange comrade.

"I knew you were playing a good-bye," he cried.
"Will you not wait and see us go?"

The fiddler's eyes flung his glance, uneasily, to
where the white road cleared the shadowy green of
the fields below and dipped into the dark bluish
lap of the forest.

"No, no; I must go!" he answered, wildly, Steven thought.

"Without seeing Sidonia again?" exclaimed the young man.

The fiddler laughed inconsequently.  He was now
playing a kind of jig, almost on one string, a restless
hopping measure which suddenly made Steven long
to be gone likewise.

"Two fine mules are waiting for you," said the
musician, with a quick look.  "They have hung
Sidonia's with flower-wreaths.  And you have red
trappings on yours.  Hark! you can hear them jingle
their bells.  They are impatient, they are waiting
for you.  Hey, bridegroom, why do you delay?
You should have been gone as soon as you had made
her yours."

"She is dressing for the journey," said Steven.

"Look," said Geiger-Hans, pointing with his
bow, "yonder, by the torrent bridge stands your
carriage.  You can see the sun gleam on the harness.
If you had my ears, you would hear your horses
stamp.  They, too, are impatient.  But the bride
will cling to the old stones at the last ... and, fie,
who would hurry a lady?  I shall be far, far away
before you two set out.  Nay, keep me not back, I
am more impatient for the road than even your horses
down there, fiery with the week's oats ... than
even you, comrade, on your wedding day!"

"Certainly," thought Steven, uneasily, "if ever I
doubted it before, the poor fellow is not as other men.
How his eyes burn in their deep sockets—I fear
our Geiger-Hans is mad."

At this the other nodded to him, with his fantastic
intuition.

"You are right, I am mad," he said, "and I
thank God—for it is a dull world for wise fools.
And your sanity and wisdom and dulness, Sir Count,
have learned something worth the learning of my
madness.  Aye, and received something better than
knowledge too: you will grant that."  And as
Steven stared, half-offended, half-startled, the fiddler,
with his smile upon him and his brilliant eyes, fell
to playing again that tune of the road with which he
had first greeted him.

"Here is a dull lad seated upon a mile-stone,"
he half chanted to the cadence, "and he has nothing
better to do with his youth than to jog along the
plain's highway, the dusty common road that all
may tread ... while behind him runs the green
path of the forest, and dear adventure lies in hidden
glade for him who cares to seek it—so goodly a
youth to waste his golden minutes! ... And here
comes a wandering music-maker, and a crazy one
into the bargain.  And this is his freak: to see if
he cannot knock a spark out of the high-born block.
Within the youth of this goodly body lurks there no
soul to fire?  And, behold, it proves a good scholar—a
very honest lad!  Sparks are struck out of his
block head.  And there is a soul too, and it can burn
with a very brave flame....  And in the forest
glade trembles a Wind-Flower; let him pluck it if
he can and wear it in his breast, for his is a steady
hand and a clean, and it will gather the flower
tenderly."

The fiddler clapped his hand on the strings and
they were mute.

"Farewell, little comrade," he said, changing his
tone, and Steven thought that if the man's eyes had
had tears in them, the sadness of them would have
been less intolerable.  "Haste back to your bride,
impatient heart!" added the musician gravely then.
"A little impatience is good.  But, oh, hear me:—hurry
not her virginal dawn, that the sunrise be full
golden for you both!  If love is to have its exquisite
hour, love must be both patient and fierce."  He slung
his violin over his shoulder, and took a sudden nimble
step on the downward rocky way.

The half-hour struck, echoing from the gateway
clock.  A dreary quarter still to wait, according to
the Burgravine's warning.

"Oh, comrade, stay a little yet!" cried the bridegroom.

The fiddler merely waved his hand.  He was
scrambling down the steep way in crazy haste.

"I have a thousand things to say still," cried
Steven again.  He curled his hand round his mouth
and called: "When shall we meet?"

The fiddler halted suddenly.  He was already
far on his way, for he had gone with incredible
speed.  But he waved his hat above his head with a
fantastic flourish; then he shot behind a big rock
and was lost to sight.

It seemed to Steven that it was an uncompromising
good-bye, and it was with an odd sense of
oppression that he turned his own steps back towards
the gateway.  He would have struck any other
man to the earth who had dared once to insult,
browbeat, or command him as this poor wanderer
had so often done.  Where lay the spell?  He had
power over all that came in contact with him;
and—it was true—what marvellous things had he had
to give!  The young man's heart began to throb
as he thought of his bride, and he quickened his
step....  The Wind-Flower, that was his at last,
his Fair Dawn!

.. vspace:: 2

The bridegroom entered with eager yet reverent
step; but, upon sight of the bride, checked his
advance, startled, amazed.  Sidonia sat on a high-backed
chair as on a judgment-seat, with face coldly
set, yet with eyes blazing reproach.

"I sent for you, *Herr Graf*," she said, with great
distinctness of enunciation, "to tell you that I
decline to go away with you."

The blood rushed to Steven's brain.  "I do not
understand," he said, even as she but a little while
before; and his tone was that of sudden anger.
The revulsion of feeling was too strong, too sudden;
his first emotion was overwhelming wrath.  "What
do you mean?" he demanded.

Steel cannot strike steel but the sparks must
fly.  A fierce pride had they both.  Perhaps Sidonia,
in her child-heart, had looked for consternation on
her bridegroom's face, had pictured him thunderstruck,
protesting, falling at her feet; her wounded
vanity now was reinforced by a host of unknown
feelings which rushed almost for hatred.  Under
this arrogant eye, to this haughty bidding, she would
not stoop to explanation, still less to complaint.

"It is sufficient that you should understand," she
told him, "that now we part.  I do not go with you.
Go you and forget me!"

"Sidonia!" he ejaculated, stupefaction for the
moment sweeping all other feelings away.

Strangely enough, it never dawned upon him
to guess at the truth.  Men, especially young men
who have had practically no dealings with the
opposite sex, are very slow to grasp woman's
spitefulness, woman's deceit.  He had felt shame at his
own weakness of compliance in the matter of the
Burgravine, but no sense of guilt could remain where
he knew all desire to sin to have been so conspicuously
absent.  He stood staring at Sidonia's little
face convulsed with frowns.

"Oh, sir," she cried, with a disdainful laugh,
"you have done all that honour required of you.
It is quite enough.  We need make no fine phrases for
each other's benefit.  The situation is very clear,
and thereupon we may separate!"

At these inconceivable words a horrible suspicion
sprang upon him; he did not pause to measure the
probabilities, to contrast what he knew with what
he did not understand.  Was it possible that this
young creature had but played a part with him?
Had she feigned sweet maiden love and wedded him,
virginally tender, only to save the threatened
honour of her name?  Nay; more monstrous thought
still!  Was the whole business a hideous conspiracy?
He was shaken as by a storm.  Crimson
rushed to his face.  In two strides he was beside
her menacing.

"You are my wife!" he cried.  "You are mine—mine!
You belong to me!  You must do as I
order—as I order!"

His look filled her with terror.  Child-woman,
she shrank instinctively from something to her
nameless, yet infinitely offending.  Clasping her
hands upon her breast to still the throbbing of her
heart, she heard, beneath her fingers, the whisper
of Aunt Betty's billet.

Stung afresh to scorn, she reared her head and
measured him with her glance.  In silence she
stood, trying to reason out the tangled problem for
herself.  With her ignorance of life, her inborn pride,
with her passionate woman's heart and her childish
mind, she was bound to go far and wide astray.

If the marriage on his part was not a mere piece
of chivalrous self-sacrifice, an idea unbearably
insulting in itself, why should he now wish to keep
her against her will, since the conventions were
satisfied?  What gain could she be to him, since he
did not love her?  And how could he love her, he
who was in love with Betty?  As in a vision of red
flame, she recalled how he and Betty had danced
and coquetted together that first night of all; he
had not had even a glance wherewith to recognize
the little Sidonia who had waited on him in the forest
house.  Oh, it was true, he had loved Betty from
the beginning.  And she, Sidonia, who had let
herself be won by a few careless words, was at
the best only a sacrifice to the world's idea of
high-born, gentlemanly decorum.  The memory
of these last days, so exquisite to her, was
blighted.  She had never been anything to him, that
was clear.  He had been kind to her, indulgent, but
he had never once, she remembered now, told her
that he loved her.  And she, fool! had never realized,
even with Betty's example before her, that people
could seek to wed each other without love.  Out
of her own mad abundance she had lent to him.
And the poor little coin he had doled out in return
to her, she had taken for gold.  But now, why should
he look at her with those fierce, greedy eyes?  Why
should this "poor, chivalrous young man," as Betty
called him, claim her as his bargain, and in these
brutal tones?

Once more Betty's voice, with its devilish suggestion,
rang in her ears: *Of course, my love, there are
compensations about you!*

"You can have my money if you will—and I
am very rich, as you know—so that you only go.
Go!" she cried suddenly.

Sidonia shook from head to foot as she spoke at
last.  But her eyes and her voice were indomitable
in their determination.  As if her slender sunburnt
hand had struck him a deadly blow, Steven Lee,
Count Kielmansegg, stepped back a couple of paces,
and the blood, ebbing from his face, left it grey.
He paused for a while, then made a bow, turned on
his heel, and went to the door.  On the threshold
he looked back at her for a second again.  It was a
farewell look, and bore in it a pride as high and
bleeding as her own, a reproach as keen.  She saw
that his lip trembled.  Then the door was closed,
very gently, between them, and she heard his steps
die away down the winding stone stairs.

She glanced at her new wedding-ring and thought
her heart must break, but yet she sat and made no
effort to recall him.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SKIRT OF WAR`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SKIRT OF WAR

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*And there was mounting, in hot haste, the steed.*
   |  *The mustering squadron and the clattering car*
   |  *Went pouring forward with impetuous speed...*"
   |                                        BYRON.

.. vspace:: 2

It was a day of scurrying breezes and dappled
skies.  Long pools reflected blue and white in the
ruts of his Majesty King Jerome of Westphalia's
neglected highway.  Wide and deep ruts they were,
tracks of the "Grand Army" that had been; and
even a village child could have told that great guns
and waggons had passed that way before the
sweeping by of the last spring storm.

But the rider, on his big-boned, iron-grey horse,
splashed through the mud at reckless speed.  He had
no thought for the story of the wounded country
road.  Its tragic significance would have left him
unmoved had he understood.  Such experience as
he had just been through changes the whole world
in a man's eyes: he becomes as one who, a moment
before in perfect health, finds himself shattered by
some disabling accident—nothing in life can ever
look, ever feel the same again.  He had wrenched
himself free of love's snare as the wild thing of the
woods from the teeth of the springe; but at what vital
hurt, how maimed, how bruised, how deeply marked!
What was it to him that the west wind, dashing
against his face, was balmy with the breath of the
black pinewoods on the rising slopes to his right; that
the rank meadows that fell away to the left were
colour alive, gold-green in the sunlight; that shadows
swept across them like spirit messages?  His ears
were deaf to the organ chant of the pines, to the shrill
call of the bird echoing back from the blue vault.
Unmoved, he trotted through the poverty-stricken
villages, by the deserted homesteads, once flourishing,
beside the wasted cornfields.  One whom life
was treating as evilly as himself could not be expected
to bestow even the alms of a pitying thought to the
peasant soldiers, stiff in the snows of Russia, or
plodding, vanquished at last, in Spanish rocky
deserts, nor to the starving families to whom the
breadwinner would never return.  He did not even
care whither he was hurrying, so long as he crossed
the nearest frontier of a country to him accursed.
To this goal all the passions of his mind were pointed.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



With head bent towards the wind, and fiddle slung
on his shoulder, a wandering musician was breasting
the hill, where the high Imperial road skirting the
Thuringian forest bends towards that fertile valley
watered by the Fulda.  The sinews of Steven's
steed faltered before the steepness of the ascent, and
the mounted traveller, curbing his impatience to
suit the way, found himself level with the humble
wayfarer at a pace that made companionship
inevitable.  Yet, on the instant that he had recognized
him, the rider would fain have passed unnoticed.  It
seemed hard, a perversity of fate, that in this wide,
empty country, he should stumble upon the one man
whom he would of all others avoid; the man who
had had so much influence—he now thought for
disaster—upon his life.

Geiger-Hans, the friend, the comrade, had become,
in his eyes, the enemy.  To his meddling he owed
his present misfortune, the humiliation that was
eating into his soul, the disillusion which made even
the soft west wind bitter to his taste.

The wanderer started as he beheld the young face
looking down at him from over the horseman's cloak.

"You!" he exclaimed.

"I!" said Steven.

The man on foot halted.  He on horseback
unconsciously reined in.  The two remained gazing
at each other, and in the eyes of both was hot reproach.

Slowly the blood crept back crimson to the
countenance of Geiger-Hans, which had grown livid under
its tan.

"And whither set you off alone, bridegroom, on
your grey horse?" asked he at length, in that tone of
irony under which he hid most of emotions.

"Anywhere," answered the bridegroom with a
pale smile, "so long as I put space between myself
and my bride."

Geiger-Hans drew his brows together into a dark
frown.  His nostrils dilated, the corners of his mouth
twitched.

*"Peste!*" said he under his voice.  Then: "Is
it not a little premature?  The joy bells can hardly
be silent yet.  Had it been a few months later—but now!"

His tone was cynical, but his eye was stern and
anxious.

"Months?" echoed the rider with a laugh.
"It took her but the measure of minutes to decide
on my worth."

"Her?" commented the musician with inquiring emphasis.

"Did you think," answered Steven—and, though
he strove to be cool, the passion of his wrath wrote
itself on every line of his face and vibrated in his
voice like the first mutterings of thunder—"did
you think I went through the marriage ceremony
for the pure amusement of making a nine days'
scandal and deserting my hour-old wife?  That
would have been a brilliant jest indeed!  No;
if you must know, the situation is of her making.
She took her woman's privilege ... and changed
her mind."

"She was a child yesterday," said Geiger-Hans.

There was pain in Steven's smile as he returned:

"She was no child this morning."

"But, heavens!" cried the other impatiently,
"even so.  Did she play the woman, was it not the
more reason for you to play the man?  You left her,
you left her ... is it possible?  For a few sharp
words, perhaps, some silly misunderstanding!  Why,
she was yours, man; and you should have carried her
with you, were it on the crupper of that high-boned
grey."

"Aye," replied Steven.  "Even so, as you say.
It also dawned upon me, deficient as I am in wits,
that the time had come for me to play the man.  I
actually announced my intention of carrying her
away with me by main force—not on this brute,
but in the coach prepared for our bridal journey.
She reminded me that I took her fortune with her."

"Ah, bah!" said the fiddler, and winced as if he
had been struck.

"It seems she is an heiress," continued the
bridegroom's voice over his head.  "She offered
me half her fortune—her whole fortune—if I
would go without her!  Hey! what answer would
you have a man make to that?"

It seemed as if the fiddler could not say; even his
ready tongue had no reply.

Steven had meant to take a more dignified attitude
with the vagrant; to assume as gentlemanly a mask
of indifference as possible.  The unexpected
meeting (and Steven had no intention but that it should
be the last) should be conducted with a rational
regard to the distance between them.  His heart was
no longer on his sleeve for this wayside jackdaw
to peck at.  But the old power of the fellow's
presence, and also his own youthful pain, were too
strong for him.  Into the silence he dropped a
desperate cry:

"Oh, curse you, Geiger-Hans; why could you
not have passed me by on the road that evening, and
left me to my own life!"

The fiddler looked up at him, still mute; but there
was something in his look that went straight to the
core of Steven's wounded soul, and brought a sense
of comfort and of strength.  And yet—strange! it
actually seemed as if Steven's sorrow were nothing to
the sorrow of Geiger-Hans, this hour.  They were
enemies no more—they were comrades, struck by
the same misfortune.  But Geiger-Hans was brave;
he knew how to bear his share.  Steven felt suddenly
ashamed.

"And so you rode away?" said the musician then,
laying his hand on the horse's shoulder.

It was to Steven as if that lean hand had kindly
touched himself.

"Aye—I got the first nag to be had for money,
and rode away, leaving her my carriage and horses
and servants.  For a Countess Waldorff-Kielmansegg
must have her equipage!  That episode is closed!"

The rider chucked his reins and set the rested
horse to his labour up the hill once more.

Geiger-Hans had remained a second, gazing at
the stones in the road; then he roused himself, and
caught up the rider in a couple of quick strides.
His shoulders were rounded as beneath a burden.
Yet Fate had played him too many scurvy tricks
for him to indulge in the astounded rebellion of youth.
After a while he looked up and spoke again.

"These women," he said, "these children—they
insult a man because they do not understand.
Mischief has been made—mischief is always alert
somewhere when marriage-bells are ringing.  Go
back to her!"

"I!" cried Steven Lee.

"Go back to her!" said the fiddler again, as he
trudged the stony way.  "Be generous——"

Steven laughed out loud; and Geiger-Hans knew
that the wound had gone deeper even than he suspected.

"I am for Vienna," said the bridegroom briefly.
"But I shall make fit settlements upon her, never
fear, and such provisions as may safeguard her
honour ... and my own.  And as——"

"Nay, comrade," interrupted the other, sharply,
"such a union as yours—why, 'twould be the
easiest contract to annul that ever two young fools
repented of."

Steven's hands contracted over the leather.

"Do you think so?" said he, and grew darkly
crimson.  "Oh, of course," he said, and laughed,
"that would be much the best.  Aha!  Annul!
Well, she has only to wish it."

The musician, observing him, showed now a lighter
countenance, and presently smiled to himself.  Then
he shifted his instrument from his back to his breast
and began to twang the strings, as if in deep reflection.

"We shall part at the top of the hill," said the rider.

"Shall we?" said the wayfarer.  "I think not.
Listen, my lord."

The rousing autumn wind brought indeed a
strange distant rumour on its wings, and the fiddler
imposed silence on his restless fingers and stood
still himself, leaning his ear.

Once more Steven arrested his horse.  There is
nothing so infectious as the curiosity of the ear.
The flapping gust fell as they halted; and then the
sounds which it had carried over the crest of the
knoll seemed to be repeated with much greater
distinctness from the vale in their rear.

"What is it?" asked he.

It was a sound like the beat of giant storm-rain
upon forest leaves, only that it was measured at
repeated intervals by rhythmic jingle and clink.
Even as he spoke, Steven heard a crisp drumming
of hoofs separate itself from the confusion; then,
upon the ring of a commanding voice, the thunder-wave
of advance broke itself into silence.  And in
the midst of this silence a succession of cracking shots
suddenly pattered close on one another, as beads
dropping from a string.

"Stand back!" cried the fiddler.  And, suiting
the action to the word, he seized the horse by the bit
and forced it backwards into the ditch that girt the
road on the side of the fields.

"But what is it?" asked Steven once more, as
clamour within the woods rose again: a hideous
medley of human voices wrangling like angry beasts,
of plunging and neighing of horses, crackling of
boughs and thud of iron hoofs.  The fiddler dilated
his nostrils.  He stood leaning against the flank
of the grey, his right hand still firmly on the bit.
A fine blue vapour, pungent of smell, was oozing
between the dark firs.

"Have you never smelt it before, you innocent?"
said he, looking up at the rider, and his sunburnt
face was kindled by stern fires.  "Yet there's scarce
a square rood of Europe, these twelve years, that has
not known the smoke of this holocaust.  It is war, man!"

The words were still on his lips when the placid
front of the forest before them was shaken and
pierced and rent in a hundred places.  Red-coated
hussars, with flying blue dolmans—bareheaded
most, but some with huge shako and plume at a
dishevelled angle—broke covert along the whole
line, crashing through the underwood, leaping, it
seemed, one upon the other, each man inclining in
his saddle and spurring towards the downward
slope at a mad gallop.

Steven's horse shivered under him.  It had, no
doubt, in its youth been a charger: it was now
seized with martial ardour, and flinging up its head
to shake off the fiddler's grip, displayed such a strong
intention to join in the race—which no doubt it
conceived to be a glorious charge—that a less
practised rider would have found it hard to keep
the saddle.

As it was, Steven could gather but a confused
impression of the flying troop as it thundered past—of
a whirl, bucketing, straining, pumping, clanking,
splashing; of men's faces, crimson, distorted,
open-mouthed; of bridles slavered with blood and
foam; of craning horses' necks, and nostrils afire!

Geiger-Hans gave a shrill laugh:

"The most gallant the Hussars of the Guard of
His Majesty Jerome the First (and last!) in full
rout!  And, oh, shadow of Moscow! who are the
pursuers?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE RAID`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE RAID

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*List his discourse of war, and you shall hear*
   |  *A fearful battle rendered you in music.*"
   |                                  (*King Henry V.*).

.. vspace:: 2

The forest was now alive with hoarse, guttural
cries, as if the wooded depths had released some
giant brood of ravens.  And then, helter-skelter,
even as the last belated hussar, blood streaming
from a black gash in his forehead, clattered heavily
rearmost of his comrades, reins loose, clinging to
the saddle—they came!  Squat riders on squat
horses—cattle and man as shaggy and unkempt
one as the other—with long tags of hair bobbing
round wild-bearded faces, pointed fur caps drawn
down to the eyes, sheepskin-clad knees up almost
to the chin, stirruped with rope, brandishing rough
spears; miscellaneous booty—a goose, a sucking-pig,
a frying-pan, maybe a cottage clock—swinging
at the saddle-bow!  They came, shouting their
crow-call, exulting, squealing, grunting!  They
came, filled the road with clamour and clatter, and
stench ... and were gone before Steven could
draw, it seemed to him, the full breath of his amazement!

Like the second gust of the hurricane, they had
gathered, broken past them, and were lost; the
clamour of their tempest way rising loud, then
growing swiftly faint in the distance, as the valley
received them.

"Now," said Geiger-Hans, looking up, "here is
an experience for your English-bred youth.  Fate
has annihilated the centuries; you have beheld the
passage of the Huns!  *Pouah!* what a wild-beast
trail they have left behind them!  To think that
Napoleon should have gone to seek these wolves
and jackals in their steppes, and spread the Cossack
over the face of Europe!"

He sprang out of the ditch; and the grey, much
injured in feeling, snorting and sullenly upheaving
its haunches, was induced to follow.  A roll of
far-off musketry crepitated up to them from the plain.

"Do you hear?" said Geiger-Hans.  "And do
you know what that means?"

"They are fighting on the other side of the hill,"
said Steven, spurring towards the crest.

"Yes, it is perhaps worth your youthship's attention.
Do not, however, flatter yourself that you are
viewing a battle.  A mere skirmish, *un combat*,
nothing more; one of the hundred or so that takes
place now, week in, week out, on the marches of
the mighty conqueror's lands.  For a small kingdom,
little brother Jerome can flatter himself to have
gathered to it, from without and within, a considerable
collection of enemies—Cossacks hanging like
jackals on the flanks of the great army; Prussians
from the north, Saxons from the east, peasants and
students from his own villages and cities.  This raid
is scarce like to appear in the *Gazette*, but it is enough,
for the combatants!  The dead yonder are as dead
as though they had fallen at Austerlitz or the
Moskowa.  Hark, at the snap of the musket—that is
the sound of the Empire cracking!  'Tis the Empire
cracking," repeated the musician, running alongside,
his hand at the stirrup-leather.  "And the little
House of Westphalia is doomed to fall, as the
cottage falls on the hillside from the earthquake that
has wrecked the city....  A back-wave from
Moscow have we here to-day."

.. vspace:: 2

They had halted on the crest, and their gaze
plunged into the open valley.  A canopy of blue
smoke hung over the fields that spread between
their knoll and a little town, some half-mile distant.
The mist was pierced with slow-moving lines of
bayonets which flashed back the sunshine; it was
traversed with colour.

Geiger-Hans ran a knowing eye over the scene:

"Aha!  What did I tell you?  Those are Prussians,
holding the townlet," said he.  "Contrast
their sober uniform with Jerome's scarlets and greens,
his plumes and gold lace.  There go our runaways!
See them draw up behind yonder crimson platoon—Brother
Jerome's Grenadiers of the Guard, for
he must ape big brother Napoleon....  Look, our
friends the Cossacks roll back together like a swarm
of hornets at the foot of the hill; they find themselves
cut off from their Prussian allies—and if the
Hussars but rally in time, we may see the *rôles* of the
drama reversed in a minute."

He fell abruptly silent: something had flown
between his head and Steven's as the latter bent
towards him from his saddle—something that
droned a strange song as it passed and puffed a
cold breath on their cheeks.

"What was that?" asked Steven, starting.

"That was a stray Death," said the musician,
placidly.  "What say you—shall we seek cover?"

"Let us see the thing out!" cried Steven.

"There will be more lead loose," said Geiger-Hans,
glancing up with an odd expression.  "Death
flies on a capricious wing when this sort of game is
played."

"Why, then," answered the bridegroom, with his
smile of bitterness, "that might be the simplest
solution of all; at least, I should not be deeply
mourned."

"If that be your mind towards bullets," said the
fiddler, with a shadow of sarcasm, "for once your
youth and my age are in harmony.  But what if
you were to tie your horse behind some forest trees?
There is no need of offering him up also to our altar
of despair—and he might be of use to one of us,
when the day is over."

Steven admitted the suggestion without a word.
Presently both men sat upon a high bank, their
legs dangling into space.

"How inspiring!" said the fiddler.  He unslung
his instrument.  "Did you hear that volley?  It
came from troops trained under Bonaparte, I'll
wager my fiddle-bow.  Here the insurgents respond.
See those puffs of white smoke in and out of the line
under the village wall!  Not a gun together.  Loose
shooting ... but good hatred!  I'll back it in the
long run!  Drums! shouts!  The bayonet charge.
What did I tell you? here come our Huns back
again ... what's left of them.  I am inspired!
Hark you, this is the song of the fight....  First
come the Grenadiers, cool and scornful, musket on
breast, arms folded; they march like one man.  '*I
have served, under the Eagle; I have been of the
Guard of the Great Emperor.  To Moscow I have
been ... and back: to-day it is sunshine: it is
child's play, but I would rather be back on the ice
with my Emperor.  To me he is the Little Corporal:
I am one of the old lot.  It is I and mine who put
the crown on his head.  To Jena we went singing:*

   |  "'"We'll go and bring a kingdom home,
   |  To give little brother Jerome."

*He said little brother should have a little kingdom
of his own—well, what is this rabble that would
undo his work? ... It was warm work at Jena,
comrade—oh, and it was cold at Moscow!'...*

"'*Aim at the Old Guards, kerls*' (says the Prussian
to his gunners).  '*Hurl down the Guard, and the
field is ours! ... Hurl down the Guard, aha!*'

"'*I have to come out to fight for the Fatherland*'
(says the peasant lad); '*my mother put a green
sprig in my hat.  I shall put a notch on my musket-stock
for every Frenchman I have killed, and shall
show it to my children when Gretel and I marry.*'
... *Oh, but the Old Guard shoots steady!  Green
sprig is down on the meadow; his comrades jump
over him, one steps on his hand, but he feels nothing.
Poor little Patriot; he has not even struck one blow
for the Fatherland, but his red blood is sinking into
the soil!  How bright will bloom the flower of liberty
in the land thus watered!*"

The fiddler wielded his bow with a kind of frenzy,
and his battle music rose above the clamour of the
distant combat, the scramble and clatter of the
Cossacks up the hills, their defiant calls and grunts.

The remnant of the wild horde had reached the
summit again in mad disorder, seeking the forest
shelter at the first available point.  A flight of
bullets came singing through the air among them:
the company of grenadiers, marking the routed
enemy against the sky-line, had flung a last contemptuous
volley after them.  The savages squealed and
ducked, clinging to their shaggy steeds in fantastic
attitudes; a few were struck; one fell; his nearest
comrade caught up the reins of his mount and, with
exultant yell, led it away with him.  The dead man
was dragged a few yards till his inert foot fell loose
of the hempen stirrup and he lay, a heap of discoloured
rags, among the stones.  Fear was on no man's
face, but grins of defiance undaunted.  Their
war-cry was still of triumph.

Geiger-Hans sprang to his feet on the bank.  He
waved his bow, then drove it across the strings to a
new song, shrill and mocking—a song of scorn
for the fugitive:

"*Spread your dark wings and fly, obscene birds!
Yet exult as you go: the scent of Death is in the air.
In a little while you may gorge—but to-day the
stricken Eagle can still beat back the carrion crows.
Fly, flap your wings—caw—caw!*"

.. _`"Spread your dark wings, obscene birds! ... the scent of Death is in the air.  In a little while you may gorge! ... caw—caw!"`:

.. figure:: images/img-250.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Spread your dark wings, obscene birds! ... the scent of Death is in the air.  In a little while you may gorge! ... Fly, flap your wings—caw—caw!"

   "*Spread your dark wings, obscene birds! ... the scent of Death is in the air.  In a little while you may gorge! ... Fly, flap your wings—caw—caw!*"

Steven stared amazed at his companion, and
listened spellbound.  The musician was like a man
possessed.  His grizzled locks seemed to stand out
from his face, his left hand danced along the strings,
his right arm worked with fury.  If ever catgut and
wood mocked and insulted, that possessed instrument
of Geiger-Hans' did so that day of the combat
of Heiligenstadt, in the teeth of the defeated Kalmuck.
"*Caw, caw!*" it shrieked, catching the very
guttural of the last belated Cossack, who struggled in
rear of his comrades on a wounded horse.  The man
turned back in his sheepskin saddle, fury in his
bloodshot eyes, poised his weapon over his head,
measuring his distance.

"Take care!" cried Steven, leaping from the
bank.  But louder and shriller played Geiger-Hans.
The savage hurled the lance; and Steven, flinging
himself forward, with arms extended, caught the
blow.  He rolled back upon the player and both
came to the ground together.  The music fell mute.
Shouting victory, the Cossack forced his bleeding
nag into the brushwood.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



"If Madame Sidonia were here," said the fiddler,
with emphasis on the married title, "what a hero
you would be to her!"

He had bound Steven's shoulder—the wound
was an ugly gash enough—ministered to him with
the wine of the country from a flask of his own, and
water from the brook.  The contest for the village,
between King Jerome's troops and the raiders, was
yet undecided, and fitful sounds of battle were still
growling in the valley.

The winds blustered in the tree-tops; they had
swept the sky from west to east more blue than there
is colour to describe.  There was a wonderful pulse
of growing things about them.  Every grass-blade
shook in lusty individual life.  The leafage was full
of bright-eyed, feathered broods, planning the autumn
flitting.  The whole forest hummed with the minute
creatures of Nature's fecundity....  In the plain,
openly and with tumult, the masters of earth were
strewing its fair face with Death.

"If Madame Sidonia were here!" repeated the
fiddler, and cast a sly look at the young man's face
over the last knot of his bandage.

Steven frowned and was silent.

"They will go on tearing each other to pieces down
there till night.  What say you?  Shall not grey
steed retrace his steps and carry Master Bridegroom
back where he should be?"

"No!" cried the other, scarlet leaping to his
livid face.  "A thousand times no!  I am not yet
the base thing she deems me."

The musician subdued a sigh.

"What a noble thing is true pride!" quoth he,
picked up his fiddle and began to examine it
carefully.—"Heavens!" he cried, "if you had broken
it!  Can a man fling himself upon another in such
inconsiderate fashion when there's a Stradivarius
between them!"

"Had it not been for my want of consideration,"
said Steven, with some pique, "I think the precious
instrument would hardly have known the touch of
your fingers again."

The fiddler laughed out loud, as if the boyish
outcry had pleased him; then, as suddenly, grew grave.

"My friend," said he, "the steel has not been
tempered, I fear, the lead has not been cast, that
will reach this heart....  Ah, Lord!"

It was an exclamation of uttermost weariness.  He
picked at his strings and tightened them with absent
fingers.  Then he flashed a smile at his companion:

"You are amazed, are you not, at my ingratitude?
What!  Here have I, Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg,
preserved the existence of this wretched tramp at
the risk of my noble, valuable one—here have I
shed my blue blood to save his muddy fluid, and the
creature has not even a 'Thank you'! ... Comrade,"
went on the musician, and his eye dilated,
his countenance assumed a lofty mien, "I would not
shame myself and you by such a word as 'Thanks'!
The creature that would not give himself to save his
fellow-creature when he can is not worth the name
of man."

Steven, abashed that he had indeed thought
himself heroic, blushed again and, looking down, began
idly plucking with his unhurt right hand the
wood-violets that grew in patches on the bank.  The
fiddler followed his movements, then his eye suddenly
grew fixed, his jaw dropped.  Slowly the healthy
colour ebbed from his cheek and left it ashen.
Steven, looking at him, was astonished and alarmed.

"For heaven's sake!" he cried, "are you ill?"

The fiddler stretched out his hand and culled the
posy from the other's grasp.  The touch of his
fingers was as cold as death.

"Violets!" said he, in a sort of whisper.  "There
is blood on them!"  He shuddered from head to foot.

"Perhaps all the mystery is but that he is
a poor mad gentleman," thought Steven,
It was an idea which could not fail to recur to
him in the company of this fantastic being;
but never had it seemed so justified.

.. _`"Hurl down the Guard, and the field is ours! ... Hurl down the Guard, aha!"`:

.. figure:: images/img-254.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Hurl down the Guard, and the field is ours! ... Hurl down the Guard, aha!"

   "*Hurl down the Guard, and the field is ours! ... Hurl down the Guard, aha!*"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE MELODY IN THE VIOLETS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE MELODY IN THE VIOLETS

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*What of the heart without her?  Nay, poor heart,*
   |  *Of thee what word remains ere speech be still?*
   |  *A wayfarer by barren ways and chill*
   |  *Steep ways and weary, without her thou art....*"
   |                                          ROSSETTI.

.. vspace:: 2

Geiger-Hans laid the flowers on his knee and, still
staring at them with the eyes of mingled horror and
grief, gathered his instrument to his embrace and
drew from it a strain the like of which Steven had
never heard.  Low and simple it was, with even a
delicate lilt, as of the shadow-dance of bygone joys,
yet so heart-rending that, after a moment or two, the
listener felt tears rising to his eyes and a catch at
his throat, and cried on his companion to stop.

The musician laid down his fiddle and turned his
drawn countenance upon his companion.

"That is the melody in the violets, the melody that
is never silent in my soul, night or day.  You
cannot hear it?  Why, then, you must listen to the
story.—I was once as youthful as you and had
also a very noble pride—I had nearly as much
reason," said Geiger-Hans, his pale lips writhing
in a smile of scorn; "but, as men differ, their same
passions vary in motive.  It was of little moment
to me that I came of an ancient house.  (Ah! it
pleases you to know so much!  You have always
guessed it, else had you not frequented me.  Let it
pass, friend, lest I should blush for you.)  No, my
pride was the pride of intellect.  I knew a vast
amount!  I learned to lisp English that I might
study Bacon and Locke, and to chew German that
I might wrangle over Kant.  I was the friend of
Helvetius and Diderot, the rival of Holbach.  We
worshipped Voltaire.  Reason was our God!  In short,
I was one of those they called the Encyclopædists; we
dreamed of doing away with old Abuses and
replacing all established things by brand-new
Perfections.  'Humanity and Freedom!' was our
war-cry.  With sweet-oil and rose-water our revolution
was to be accomplished.  You know what we did
for France and the world?  We set the first stone
rolling, a half-century ago, and"—with a tragic
gesture he pointed to the valley—"you can hear
the echo of it still reverberating down yonder!
Freedom we preached: and the whole world is
enslaved as never it was before!  Reason was our
lodestar: and the State was handed over to the
lowest intellects to guide it according to their brute
passions!  Humanity was our watchword: and
France was drenched in blood from end to end, and
her sons have brought blood and fire to every land in
Europe!  The blood of that wretched son of the
steppes blackening yonder on the road, the blood
shed in yonder bullet-riddled village by that very
volley that shakes us as we sit, is all offered to the
honour of that same trinity of our invention:
Freedom, Humanity ... and Reason!  Oh, glorious
was the path we opened!  Had we not just cause
for pride?"

He fell silent a second; and Steven dared not
speak, so corrosive was the bitterness of his every
word, so poignant the emotion written on every
furrow of his countenance.

"Oh, it was a golden time!" he resumed.  "We
philosophized up to the steps of Versailles.  Louis
made beautiful locks; Marie Antoinette tended
snowy sheep; the roses bloomed at Trianon ... and
not the wisest of us ever saw the precipice yawn!
As for me—even the greatest minds are subject
to the everyday passions of humanity—" his lips
parted upon an ironic smile—"I fell in love, neither
more nor less than the most elementary youngster
of the land.  She——"  He hesitated; then,
steadying his voice, proceeded in tones which
betrayed the effort of speech: "she was of an
old-fashioned Breton stock, and her ideas and mine were
as the poles asunder.  But upon one common
ground, and a fair pasture it was to me, we met
and were equal: we loved."

He paused, his breath came quick.  "Heaven!"
he said, and it seemed as if he knew not that he
spoke, "how I loved her!"

He picked up a violet from the heap on his knees,
and passed his fingers over it caressingly; his
countenance softened.  When he began again, it was in
gentler accents than Steven had ever heard him use:

"When two people love each other, young man,
and when each believes the other to be mistaken in
some cardinal point of judgment, the dearest thought
they cherish is to bring the Beloved to the truth.  I
had no doubt but that I could open her mind; she,
but that she would redeem my perverted soul.  I
have told you what a fine pride I had.  So noble it
was that I was proud of my pride.  And being an
apostle of Liberty, the idea that a woman should
resist her husband, that the weaker vessel should not
give way to the stronger, never dawned on my
emancipated mind!  Well, well—we quarrelled!  The
fault was mine.  Could I not have been content to
worship her in her sweet faith!  She had a high
spirit.  I wounded her in a thousand ways.  Women
have susceptibilities that we, thick-hided,
thick-witted, dream not of.  Even when we touch them
to caress, we bruise.  And then, when their pain is
intolerable and they turn and strike at us, our
wound is that of the most innocent, the most injured!
Oh, when my measure was full against her, she
insulted me, if you like—much as your little bride
this morning insulted your Highmindedness.  She
said words that my exquisite pride could not endure.
Of course, you will well understand (being even such
a self-respecting youth as I was then) that I had no
choice but to leave her.  That was right, was it not?"

Steven, under that terrible gaze, ironic even in
its haunting agony, was at a loss how to reply.  He
muttered something of a woman's duty and wifely
submission.  The fiddler caught up the words fiercely.

"Ay," cried he.  "A woman's duty—wifely
submission.  Oh, strange how men prate of chivalry,
in the exercise of their bodily strength, because of
a woman's weakness, and yet never see that, because
also of a woman's sensitiveness of soul, a man should
take shame to parade the superior strength of his
will—that he should spare the delicate spirit as well
as the delicate frame.  Listen:—my strength of
mind was such that it left me no choice but to desert
the woman whom I had vowed to protect, to make
parade of my manhood by leaving her to live her
own life alone, to cast the frail and lovely thing I
had held in my arms away from my love and guardianship.
No doubt, no doubt, I made some very generous
dispositions as regards my fortune—even as
you now propose towards Madame Sidonia, and she
had her people to go to, even as your wife has:
those whom she had given up to come to me.  But when
the day dawned that I had to look into my heart
and read the truth, what did I see?  Look into your
heart now, and learn the baseness of your own
motives.  Why do you leave your bride?  Why did
I leave mine?  For what reason, but that she might
weep and mourn for me; that she might learn how
precious was the jewel she had not appreciated! ... To
be revenged ... revenged on the Beloved!"

He flung himself back against the bole of the fir
that rose behind him and closed his eyes.

"I left her," he went on, "left France, left Europe.
I went to America, the new home of Freedom, the
only country on the face of the earth where the
goddess was worshipped as she should be.  I had vowed
not to return till recalled: I was summoned by a
voice terribly different from hers.  It took three
months before the noise of the storm reached me on
that far-off shore, and I knew that it must take me at
least a month more ere I could reach her.  And she
was in danger! ... I think it was then I began to
go mad—for it is understood that I am mad, is it not?"

He opened his bright eyes and fixed them on
Steven, who became so extremely embarrassed that
the fiddler broke into unmirthful laughter.

"Mad!" he repeated.  His gaze flickered; and,
if truth be told, he looked none too sane.  Then he
sank his head between his hands with a groan.
"If only I were a little madder!" he cried.  "The
story is nearly finished," he went on presently, in
a new, toneless voice.  "When I landed in France,
all the powers of the Hell my superior intellect
denied were let loose in the land—Danton, Marat
and Robespierre represented the trilogy of Liberty,
Reason and Humanity!  The prisons were full, the
guillotine everywhere restless....  Our Golden
Age! ... A fortnight I looked for her.  Have
you ever sought in vain one you had loved, even for
an hour?  Dante never devised a more exquisite
torture for his deepest circle.  My house in Paris
had been confiscated for the nation's soldiers; her
father's castle in Lorraine had been burnt to the
ground.  At my old home at Nancy at last I found
a trace.  She had refused, it seemed, to join in the
flight of her people across the Rhine; but, when
trouble became threatening, had taken up her post
on my estate.  That was like her.  She had been
arrested—so dangerous an enemy of the people!
She was in the infamous prison at Nancy.  She——"  He
flung his battered old hat from his head, dashed
back his hair, loosened the wide collar at his throat.
Breath seemed to fail him.  A dark wave of blood
rushed to his forehead.  "All, all had abandoned
her, save one poor girl—a peasant from our farm,
whose people were of the local patriots....  This
girl was allowed access to the cells.  I met her at
the prison gates, whither my frenzied search brought
me at length.  She knew me, though I was a tramp
already.  At sight of my face, she clapped her
hands and broke into wild sobs.  I was too late!
That morning....  Why do you look at me like
that?  Do you wonder that I am still alive?  That
is where the God I denied has His vengeance of
me, you see.  I cannot die.  Oh, I could kill
myself, of course!  But, mark how deep has the
Encyclopædist fallen....  I dare not, *dare not, lest I lose
my chance of meeting her again!* ... Ah! there
is great pity in your eyes....  Her little delicate
head—she held it like a queen's.  Under the
powder, her hair was gold.  (I have not even one
lock of her hair.)  I used to clasp her slender throat
between both my hands....  The peasant girl
had kept by her to the end.  She had stood at the
foot of the scaffold, that a last friendly glance might
speed that lovely soul.  'She smiled to me,' said the
poor creature, sobbing.  My eyes were dry....
Then she drew from her bosom a bunch of violets,
and said, '*Madame, les avail à son corsage.*'..."

Geiger-Hans gathered up the flowers scattered
on his knees, and crushed them against his face.

"She always loved violets," he murmured.
"These have no scent," he went on dreamily;
"but hers, hers—oh, they were sweet!"

.. _`"She always loved violets. These have no scent, ... but hers—oh, they were sweet!"`:

.. figure:: images/img-264.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "She always loved violets. These have no scent, ... but hers,—oh, they were sweet!"

   "*She always loved violets. These have no scent, ... but hers,—oh, they were sweet!*"

"Ah! friend!" cried Steven, and had no further
word.  Infinite pity indeed was in the look he turned
upon the musician.  It seemed as if the latter
wandered as he spoke again.

"There was blood on the violets," said he,
dropping his hands, "her blood and mine—for the man
that was I died too, then, murdered in his youth,
even as she."  His face had grown ashen again,
his eyes were restless in their orbits.  "The
something that lived on, the miserable carcass, the old
man—call it myself, if you will—this self that is
before you now—it took the violets and began to
walk away....  And it has walked ever since!"  He
gave a laugh, and the sound of it was mad.  "No
place could be home to me again—no land could
be country, France least of all.  But the skies and
the trees are kind; they understand my sorrow, they
take it into themselves.  And sometimes they give
me back peace.  And then there's the music....
I was always a musician.  One, a village priest,
found out by accident that the crazy tramp he had
sheltered played better on his old Strad than he did
himself.  The fiddle was to him as his child, but he
gave it to me, for he had compassion on me....
And so was born Geiger-Hans.  And Fiddler Hans
and his fiddle will walk until one day he can walk
no more.  And then he will lie down on the kind,
brown earth, and turn his face to the skies ... perhaps!"

He thrust the flowers into his breast.  Then he
leaned forward, his elbow on his knees, sheltering
his eyes in his hands: and there was silence.  The
valley below had sunk into stillness.

While Steven had listened to the story of one
man's defeat in life, a combat where the fate of
hundreds had been decided had been fought and
won.  And now they were picking up the dead yonder,
in the evening calm of the plain.  The wind had
fallen with the fall of the day, and only the topmost
branches of the pines swayed and whispered in
scarcely perceptible airs.  The light was growing
golden mellow, the shadows were lengthening.
Steven remembered his wound.

The fiddler turned and spoke.  It was with composure.

"Well," said he, "which way shall it be; back or forward?"

"I do not know," said Steven, in a low voice, and
dropped his eyelids as if ashamed.

The fiddler stretched out his hand and helped
the other to rise, with a vigorous grasp.  As they
stood side by side, he suddenly cast his arm round
the young man's shoulders.

"The child," said he, "Sidonia! ... Oh, I
want her to be happy.  The first day I ever saw her,
I thought that if we had had a child, the woman I
loved and I, it would have been like her.  And, to
my madness, she has gradually become even as
my own.  I have haunted her ways.  However
imperiously the roaming fit may come upon me,
there is always something that draws me back to
watch, to guard, to care.  I gave her to you.  Aye,
Count Steven, it was I gave her to you.  And if
again I have failed with the happiness of what is
dearest to me on earth ... then indeed it is that
I am cursed!"  His voice failed, broken; his eyes
implored.  After a while he went on: "When her
soul looks out of her clear eyes, when she moves her
head with its golden burden ... she has a trick
of speech, a laugh ... Oh, it is like a refrain of old
music to me, a sighing strain from a lost life!  Her
little, slender throat—I could hold it in both my
hands....  Go back to her....  If I knew her
happy, my restless spirit would, I believe, find some
kind of peace.  Ah! you think it will be hard?  I
tell you it will not.  You do not know a woman's
heart.  Forget that your pride is hurt.  Remember
that you are young.  Oh, if you but knew!  Life
has one unsurpassable flower for youth—take it
now, lest a breath from heaven scatter its bloom.
Its scent is for you!  The love of your youth, go,
gather it!  Go back to little Sidonia!"

"I will go back," said Steven, and his lips trembled.

Silently Geiger-Hans loosened the grey horse,
helped the wounded man to mount, and led the way
down the hill.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE TRUE READING OF A LETTER`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XX


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE TRUE READING OF A LETTER

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
   |  Whispers the e'er-fraught heart, and bids it break."
   |                                          (*Macbeth*).

.. vspace:: 2

Steven, in his turn, had a tale to tell; and, as
they retraced their way back towards the Burg
through the gathering shadows, he narrated to the
fiddler, with great simplicity, the episode with the
Burgravine which had led him, first into the
*oubliette*, and ultimately to the quarrel with
Sidonia.

Geiger-Hans made small comment.  The facts
he knew already, the motives he had shrewdly
surmised.  Sometimes he smiled, unseen in the thick,
moist gloom; the bright day had turned to a moody
night, heavy clouded.  The young man's ingenuousness
pleased him; also the manliness that refrained
from any self-righteous assertion of innocence.
But sometimes he sighed; it was a tangled story!

When they reached Wellenshausen village, it
was evident that there could be no question of
making the ascent to the Burg till the next morning.
Rain had begun to fall.  Geiger-Hans might have
faced the break-neck road—doubly hazardous in
the wet and the dark—but he flatly refused to aid
the wounded man in any such mad undertaking,
and Steven's impatience had to submit to the
inevitable.

Steven had thought to have measured ere this
all the possibilities of the Silver Stork in the matter of
discomfort.  But in a house now thoroughly
disorganized by the incursions of a stray detachment of
Jerome's cavalry, the claims, even of a fastidious
traveller, not to speak of an itinerant musician, were
the least of concerns to-night.

In the dismal, rat-haunted attic which he shared
with the bridegroom, Geiger-Hans heard his
comrade groan and toss through the long hours of his
wedding-night.  If sleep fell upon the young man
at all, it was broken by nightmare.  And the fiddler,
lying flat on his back with his hands under his head,
resignedly facing the insomnia which his restless
spirit knew but too familiarly, could foretell almost
to a breath the span of troubled unconsciousness,
the start, the half-groan of awakening.  And he
was as glad, almost, as Steven himself when the
white face of dawn began stealthily to peer through
the dormer window.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Geiger-Hans glanced two or three times sharply
at the youth's face as once again he found himself
trudging beside him.  Steven had submitted almost
sullenly to all the musician's arrangements; in
silence had mounted the mule prepared for him; in
silence had they started on their upward way.  The
vagrant breasted the rugged path with his usual
activity; but his countenance was dark with
concern.  He did not like the glassy stare of Steven's
eyes, the alternate pallor and flush on his cheek,
the blackened, cracked look of the lips.

"Madame Sidonia will have some nursing to do,
I think," he said once.

Steven gave a wan smile, quite a long time after
the words had been spoken.  He was beginning to
lose his original frenzy of intention in this early
morning start; to think only of the rapture of lying
between cool sheets in some dark place, with
Sidonia's flower touch upon his throbbing temples.

After the wet night had broken a gay morning—the
rain-beaten earth was fragrant; fragrant every
tiny sprig of herb and spicy rock-clinging bush.  As
they ascended, the pleasant wood-smoke from the
village hearths gradually gave place to the more
subtle pungencies of the heights.  All this, however,
was wasted upon Steven.  And wasted, too, the
gaunt picturesqueness of their first view of the
castle, with the golden early sunshine upon the
grimness of its walls, caressing the ruin, gleaming back
from the defiant granite of the keep.

The dogs bayed, a flock of rooks rose, beating the
air at their approach; a brown donkey, heavily
saddled, hitched by the bridle to a bar of the open
gate, flapped his ears and turned his patient
countenance, mildly surprised, upon them.

The door to the hall, barred and nail-studded, so
inhospitable as a rule, stood open.  It was a vastly
different scene from that of the evening of their first
visit—when they stood, a pair of adventurers
wrapped in mist, before the castle, seeking admittance
to walls apparently as impenetrable as any in fairy-lore.
Steven was here, now, by his right, to claim
his own, and all lay in the sunshine, strangely
peaceful, the open door seeming to forestall a welcome.
But the fiddler was seized with boding.  There are
grim visages upon which the sight of a smile strikes
misgivings: such was now the face of the Burg.

The voice of a woman singing lustily within some
distant chamber smote his ear, as he lifted a hand
for the bell chain; and he shook his head.  Even
before Martin, the doorman, put in an appearance,
shuffling out of the kind of kennel where he lurked
upon that watch which had been his for thirty years,
Geiger-Hans knew what had occurred.  Martin,
with red waistcoat unbuttoned, a china pipe hanging
from his jeering lip, slippers on his feet, and the
froth of bridal beer running down his chin, stared in
amazement at the sight of the travellers; then welcomed
them with the heartiness of the slightly elevated.

"The noble family have all departed," he cried
quickly; and presently chuckled, leering at the
bridegroom who sat stiffly on the mule, as if he neither
heard nor saw.

Some one came trotting into the hall, softly on
list soles, in a great bustle.  It was the
Forest-Mother.  Her pleasant face wore an unwonted air
of seriousness, and her lips were pursed as upon
solemn thought.  But never had she been to
Geiger-Hans a more comfortable spectacle.

At sight of him her hands were flung up in wonder;
and, at further glimpse of the rider without, they
hovered in mid-air, as if paralyzed.

"Alas, Onkel—too late!  All away, yesterday—and
the child's heart bursting.  Aye, it is all
mighty queer and sad.  I little thought I should be
making for home again this morning, with everything
so criss-cross and wrong and strange!"

Geiger-Hans made a sudden stride out of the hall
back to the side of the mule.

"Down with you, comrade," he said, with that
note of gentleness in his voice which, so far, only
Sidonia had known.  Steven, after a pause for
comprehension, turned towards the speaker with
his feeble smile, and suddenly swayed.

"Nay, mother," the fiddler called out as he
caught the lad in his arms, "you mistake; there
will be no going home for you for some time to come."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



"Ach! the poor young gentleman," sighed the
Forest-Mother, when she had heard the tale.  And
that was not until Steven's fever-dream had been
realized, and he lay between cool sheets in a dark
room; though, indeed, for Sidonia's flower touch
he had to put up with Mrs. Forester's large plump
hand.  Not that it made much difference either
just then, for he was somewhat rambling in his
mind.  "Ach, the poor young gentleman, it is a
real talent he has for coming in the way of blows!"

"He has a talent for mending, too, remember,"
said the fiddler, shortly.  His dry tone concealed
a real anxiety.  Young things, as he knew, took
blows of body and soul hard.  A poisoned wound
is bad enough in itself, without a sore heart and a
mind ill at rest....  He could not leave the lad—that
was clear.  "Where have they taken the child?"
he asked.

"Sidonia?  Ach—she kept her lips close as wax
and never told me a word—not even me, the old
mother!  But that French minx of the Lady
Burgravine did nought but chatter of Cassel."

The word fell like a stone on Geiger-Hans' heart.
It was almost with impatience that he glanced at
the long, helpless figure in the bed.  The young
man ought to be up and doing! ... Cassel,
seething pot of intrigue and low manoeuvre, paradise
of spendthrifts, adventurers, scoundrels, it was the
last place on earth for the guileless fugitive bride—and
Betty the born schemer.  But, if life had taught
this wanderer anything, it was submission to the
inevitable.

For the moment nothing could be done but to
nurse the sick man.  Some vague thought of
sending a message to Sidonia, to tell her of her
bridegroom's pass, flashed into his mind, only to be
dismissed.  The chances of any communication
reaching her were remote.  He could not go himself.
And, could he have done so, some inner conviction
told him that here he had best not interfere.
Between the tree and the bark let none put his finger.
The lovers must win back to each other without any
further meddling.  He was not certain that the
separation, the very anger, misunderstanding and
soreness, might not be working for the best.  They
all had gone too fast, they had made too sure.  Steven
had been an over-confident wooer: little Sidonia too
ready to be won.

.. vspace:: 2

Geiger-Hans and the Forest-Mother made a
tolerable existence for themselves within those sullen
walls that had certainly never before beheld such
free humours as the wanderer's, such cosiness and
comfort as the Frau Ober-Forsterin's.  Truth to
say, from the instant the sick man was put into her
care, the old dame became possessed of excellent
spirits.  Every one has a special ideal of happiness.
Nursing chanced to be hers: nursing of men, be it
understood, preferably young men—no harm if
they were good-looking—and wounds her speciality.
She had salves that would, she was proud to say,
make the bark grow on a lopped tree.  As for
poisoned hurts, had she not, she alone, brought her
Friedel round after he had been gored and trampled
upon by the stag?  And as for febrifuges and herb-teas,
if she had been willing to sell her secrets, she
had not a doubt about it, she now might be a rich woman.

On the fifth morning, a tan-faced boy, with wild
eyes looking from side to side, like a bird's, came
pattering up into the Burg, having defied the crags
with hardened bare feet.  He brought a letter which
had reached the Forest-House the night before,
addressed to its mistress.

The Forest-Mother took it from the fiddler's
hand, with many winks and pointings towards the
great bed whereon her charge lay asleep.  She
betook herself to the window and began to peruse,
with some labour, forming each word with her lips
as she went on.

The fiddler had recognized Sidonia's characteristic
hand, upright and painstaking.  Presently
the good woman, shaking her head, folded the sheet
and, coming over to the fiddler with her noiseless
yet ponderous tread, placed the missive back into
his hand.

The fiddler read:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent

"BELOVED LITTLE FOREST-MOTHER,

.. vspace:: 1

"I promised to write.  I am very well, but I
wish I were back with you in the dear green forest.
Greet good Friedel for me.  Tell him not to forget
to give the white doe a piece of rye bread from me
every day.  And it would be kind of him to take
old Belthazar out with him now and again, if only
for a short round.  I know he is old and stiff; but
the dear old fellow breaks his heart to be left behind
when all the young dogs are taken out.  And, dear
Forest-Mother, when you go by the kennels, will you
give him a pat for me?  And you might just tell
him that he is worth all the silly young things put
together, and that the kennels had never such a fine
dog as he.  I am sure he understands, and it will
hearten him up.  And, when you see Geiger-Onkel,
tell him I think of him, and that his airs keep
playing in my head.  But always the sad ones.  And
tell him, too, that I never was a fairy princess, but
only a silly country girl.  This is a place all streets
and houses, and it is very noisy.  Everybody seems
running about, but I do not know what they do.
I don't like it, but it is better for me to be here than
at the Burg.  Of course we are at the Palace.  Aunt
Betty did not like Uncle Ludo's apartment on the
ground floor, so we have a great suite of rooms to
ourselves in a wing.  It is all gold and silk, and very
grand.  But, oh, I would rather have the old Forest-House
kitchen, with the rafters and the little windows,
and all the wood presses smelling so good of bees-wax!

"Aunt Betty says it is very dull at Cassel just
now, because the king is still away.  Next week,
she says, it will be very different when he returns.
But it seems to me that she is always out at parties.
I have no dresses yet.  I am very glad to be left at
home.  So I am quiet here, but oh, it is not the quiet
of the forest.  Thou Forest-Mother, I wish I could
kiss thee.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent

"SIDONIA.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent

"I hope the old jackdaw is well."

.. vspace:: 2

"Na," said the old lady, who had watched him
reading, her arms folded over her deep bosom,
"what manner of letter is this at all for a bride who
has run away from her man?  That is verily but a
foolish child.  She was too young to be wed, eh,
Geiger-Onkel?"

"That is the letter of a suffering woman," quoth
Geiger-Hans, softly, "and the whole letter, Mother
Friedel, is one cry towards him."

"Jeminy, and where do you see that?" whispered
the dame with a shrug for the poor loony.  "Well,"
she added, in her cheerful undertone, "we've had a
splendid night, our skin is as cool as a little frog's,
and we are healing as quick as a sapling.  I wouldn't
say but that in another couple of weeks we might
be quite able to travel."

Geiger-Hans looked at the bed, at the fine sleeping
face, placidly and wholesomely pale, at the charming
languid hand flung in abandonment on the
purple coverlet.

"Mother Friedel," he said, and his voice was
none the less decided because so low pitched, "three
days must see us on the road again."

Heedless of her scandalized protest he folded the
letter and, thrusting it into his breast, gave himself
up to reflection.  A smile, half-bitter, half-tender,
hovered upon his lips.  The child ... she had
remembered him—after her old hound.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`AT THE MOCK VERSAILLES`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXI


.. class:: center medium bold

   AT THE MOCK VERSAILLES

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*You are just a porcelain trifle, Belle Marquise!*
   |  *Just a thing of puffs and patches,*
   |  *Made for madrigals and catches,*
   |  *Not for heart-wounds, but for scratches...*"
   |                                    AUSTIN DOBSON.

.. vspace:: 2

Viennese Betty was in Cassel; and if ever the
right person was in the right place, it was Betty in
Cassel, the Frenchified Cassel at least of King
Jerome.  She breathed in its irresponsible,
exciting, immoral atmosphere with rapture.  Its
tinfoil splendour was utterly satisfying to her eyes;
its jests provoked her charmed laughter; its aims
measured her utmost ambitions.  To shine among
these doubtful stars; to take the lead in frivolities,
without fear of losing caste—nay, with every
prospect of being lifted upon giddy triumph as the newest
and most influential "*pompadourette*"—even in
her dreams Betty had never devised for herself a
more enchanting prospect!  To make the thing
complete, her Bluebeard was tame, absolutely at
her mercy ... and held relentlessly at a distance.

At the first sight of a scowl, at the first rumple of
that brow that used to strike terror, at the first threat
of breaking through her imposed barriers, Betty
had but to prattle airily of "*oubliettes*" (strangely
inappropriate term for dark doings that never could
be forgotten), or yet to fall into alarming *pamoisons*,
into fits of shuddering, artistically simulated,
accompanied by apparently wandering yet exceedingly
suggestive speech—and the Burgrave was forthwith
reduced to a jelly.

The Burgrave was indeed an altered being, went
moodily, found his cup bitter and his food savourless,
while the Burgravine, tasting all the delights of
freedom, fluttered through her first week in Cassel
like a butterfly through a flower garden under full
sunshine.  A butterfly she was, upon one side of her
nature; but, upon another, capable of determination
and deep-seated resentments.  True, she had other
and, to her mind, better quarry to pursue now than
Beau Cousin Kielmansegg—a mere rich young
nobleman; yet it added not a little to the fulness of
her gratification to know that she had successfully
parted him from Sidonia.

The evening after her visit to Napoleonshöhe
found her in the most delicate of rose-powdered
wrappers, seated at her writing-table in the window
of her boudoir, so prodigiously content with herself
and existence that little snatches of song, little
trills of laughter, escaped her, as she pondered over
her correspondence.

It was towards the hour of seven, and the gardens
beneath her windows (so satisfying to Betty's taste)
with their mock Versailles elaboration, were bathed
in mellow light.  The statues took golden hues and
flung a long fantastic shadow.  The fountains
flashed and tinkled.  Some one was practising
French airs on the clarinet in a room below.  A gust
of mingled flower-scents rose up to her nostrils:
the pungency of clove pink, the coarser incense of
white lilies, and the nearer breath of the climbing
rose-tree that aspired towards her window.

Betty was the last person in the world to be
consciously grateful for any offering of nature; she was
merely aware of a general flattering of the senses
which added to her content.

A few days ago, at Napoleonshöhe, she had met
Jerome of Westphalia for the first time.  And what
a truly charming man!  Not a hint of the plebeian
Corsican about him.  No—they maligned who
said so.  What manners, what courtesy and dash
combined!  What a delightful smile!  What an
eye!  It was rumoured that strong men shivered
under the glance of his great imperial brother.  If
you had asked her, Betty would have told you that,
from all accounts, Napoleon seemed to her a
distinctly overrated individual—a boor, who would
chuck a lady under the chin or take her by the ear,
as though she were a grenadier.  Bah!—Nay, give
her the agreeable thrill of coming beneath Jerome's
meaning gaze.  A delicious recurrence of the
sensation crept through her frame as, with closed eyes,
she recalled the moment ... Jerome's first sight
of her, his start, his stare, his flickering smile.

On the table lay the very rose he had presented
to her with such a curve of slender olive fingers;
with so happy a phrase, so graceful an inclination.
Betty had handled the flower a good deal since, had
sniffed and caressed it a vast number of times; the
pretty leaves were blighted, but never did flower
excite such admiration in the Burgravine's regard.

She had met the King but a day or two ago;
they had exchanged but a glance, a word, a courtesy—and
behold!  Betty's morning courier had brought
her a letter from the monarch.  A love letter, if you
please, neither more nor less.  A request, a demand,
for a rendezvous.  *Peste!* he lost no time, the little
King!  But were there not royal privileges?  Had
he not the same blood as the Conqueror in his veins?
Moreover, was not this very haste the best
compliment that could be paid a woman?  Not, indeed,
that Betty had any notion of allowing herself to go
too cheaply.  Perhaps, indeed, she had no very clear
idea of letting herself go at all; but to dally with an
exciting situation, to tantalize, to reign, to fire, and
then dash cold water....  Stay, such coarse
expressions ill applied to the Burgravine's delicate
methods: to spray, very gently, with cold rose-water;
not sufficiently to drown the lover's ardour, but just
enough to produce a little fizz and splutter—to
reign, in fact, chief of the many sultanas by reason,
perhaps, of her very refusal to qualify for the post!
And only to yield at last when ... But here
Betty was glad to allow the prospect to be veiled in
a kind of luminous mist.  The immediate
programme was quite sufficiently absorbing.

No wonder she nibbled the feathers of her pen.
Her answer to the kingly missive must be a work of
art.  The "*rendezvous*" itself must not be denied,
whatever else it might deny.  Betty had the instinct
of her species, the born coquette.  Too much virtue,
at the beginning, is fatal.  Many twigs are required
for the lighting of a proper fire.

It stood complete at last, a most dainty little note,
indited on pink paper, duly folded and enclosed in
a French envelope, wafered with mauve—Betty was
of the last mode, these days, even to her writing paper.

The congenial task concluded, she had another
to perform.  The courier from Heiligenstadt, whither
the King had repaired on a tour of military inspection,
had brought her a second letter—also a love
cry, or it might better be described as a love-bellow.
The Burgrave, away on duty with his sovereign,
appealed from a distance to his obdurate wife.

He was filled with amorous longing, jealousy,
despair.  How long was he to be exiled from her
favour?  The situation was past endurance!  He
implored, groaned, rebelled, threatened, and was
abject again—all in a few frenzied lines.  The gist
of the whole was in the last phrase: "When am I
to be forgiven?  Am I not your husband?"

The answer to this effusion required but a flourish
of the pen.  Yet, as the lady planted a green wafer
upon the second envelope, there was a triumphant
smile upon her lip, a vindictive gleam of pleasure in
her eye.  The despatching of her morning budget
had been altogether pleasurable.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Close by, in the little chamber allotted to her,
Sidonia, behind locked doors, was engaged upon
a similar task; for to her the courier had also
brought a letter demanding instant acknowledgment.
It was a very short one, and by no means
so loverlike as either of Betty's billets.

.. vspace:: 2

"I have been slightly indisposed" (wrote Steven)
"and unable to travel for a few days; but I trust to
be in Cassel within the week, and shall seek you in
the Palace.  It must be clear to you that you owe
me at least an explanation.  It is impossible that
we can part for ever thus.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent

"STEVEN."

.. vspace:: 2

Not a word of love!  Not a hint of despair!  Not
even reproach!  It was all cold, cruel business.  As
Sidonia wrote her reply, the tears dripped so quickly
that she could scarce see the paper.

Eliza, very brisk and tripping, who had the charge
of posting the three letters, studied the superscriptions
very carefully before committing them to the
royal mail.  Her eyes grew round at sight of the
pink-wafered note.  *Diable!*  If the mistress had
such correspondence, it might become a question
whether Jäger Kurtz would continue to be good
enough for the maid.  She smiled vindictively at
sight of the green wafer.  If she knew her lady, the
Chancellor was far from being fully paid out yet.
"And serve him right," said she, who would herself
be long before she forgave Burg-Wellenshausen
for the horrors of its tedium.

The old-fashioned sheet that bore Sidonia's
childish scrawl she weighed awhile reflectively in
her hand.  Madame la Burgravine would doubtless
give something to see the contents of *that* letter....
Then, with a shrug of her shoulders, she sent it on
its voyage with the rest.  The service of her lady
had its advantages; and Eliza, pining in the Burg,
had stuck to it with unerring prescience of better
days.  But it did not follow that she held no opinions
of her own.  And she had even a kind of good-nature
that did quite as well as a conscience, as far as her
neighbours were concerned, and was far more
agreeable for herself.

"I am not hard-hearted like madame, look you,"
said the maid to herself.  "The child is a nice child,
as young ladies go, and she should have her chance."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The spirits of spring and autumn are akin,
although the one journeys towards the fulness of
life, and the other to the cold sleep, death.  Across
the dividing months they seem to meet each other,
to serve you smiles and tears, skies of a tenderness
unknown to summer, gales of wind, soft as milk,
mighty as love.  These come chanting with the
voices of the ocean, the mountain and the forest,
great songs of glory; seize you by the way in
resistless arms, tell you wondrous things, and set your
blood leaping as they pass.  They set, if autumn it
be, the yellow leaves awhirl in a death dance; or,
if spring, every baby bud rocking on its sappy spray.

The travellers, one riding, the other afoot, went
side by side along the road towards Cassel.  It was
a south-west wind that buffeted them.  Even in the
heart of the inland it seemed to sing of distant seas;
to bear on its pinions airs at once untamable and
mild, balmy and salt.  The forest trees roared under
it as with the voice of waters.  It gathered from them
drifts of yellowing leaves, even as, leagues behind,
it had churned spray from Mediterranean waves.  In
the young traveller's heart storm answered to storm;
its breath in his nostrils maddened him, for he had
fever in his veins, and he was balked in love.

But to the other traveller, whose hair was grey,
who tramped along with the even measure of him
who has learned to ignore fatigue, the autumn
lament was charged with the hopelessness of the
grave.  It told him how all that is born must die,
and how the beautiful die first.  In the choiring of
the forest he heard the dirge of waning life.  In
each gust of pungent fragrance he could smell the
bitter graves of yesteryear.

The horseman was clothed in fine and fashionable
garments.  He who trudged was but a vagrant
player, who made music for his daily bread and
rarely knew in the morning where he would lay his
head at night.

They went in silence.  Steven's heart was heavy.
Robbed of his bride well-nigh on the altar-steps, he
was now seeking her, in an impatience which
repeated disappointment had fed to frenzy.  And
Geiger-Hans was his guide.

At a certain spot the forest began to press closer
upon the imperial road.  The overarching boughs
flung a swaying, premature night upon them; and,
as the woodland enfolded them, it seemed to draw
them into a great sanctuary.  Let the gale rage
without, here was protection and an inner stillness
all the deeper in contrast to the outer turmoil.
Instinctively the travellers drew closer to each other,
and their tongues were loosened.

The rider struck his saddle-bow with a passionate
hand, at which the plodding grey faintly started.

"To think of her, at Cassel, under the devil flicker
of that imperial puppet's glance!  Sidonia, my wife,
at the Court of Jerome!"

"A waterlily may defy the ooze," observed
Geiger-Hans, sententiously.

But the simile was hateful to the youth—a water-lily,
a flower that flourishes, in atrocious beauty,
upon the very slime!  Then he cursed his wound
for its slow healing, and his blood for its ill-timed
fever, and the length of the road, and the perversity
of women.

"And the wrong-headedness of young men!"
added the musician, drily.

But thereafter, in tones of consolation, for
dudgeon reigned on the saddle above him, he pointed
to a light far off through the dark flicker of leaf and
shadowy march of trees.

"See, yonder shall we sup and sleep, and
thence, rested, start in the brisk dawn.  And
to-morrow——"

"To-morrow!" interrupted the bridegroom,
impatiently.  "No; I shall be in Cassel to-night."

"You forget the times we live in, comrade,"
came the fiddler's answer.  "Why, here is my
nobility afoot; and yours, all wounded, upon a sorry
steed, because any less notable progression were to
court suspicion, putting aside the fact that your
worship's carriage and horses (Sidonia would have
none of them, and if you were not otherwise matched
you two would be one by pride, comrade) have been
requisitioned for the use of the State.  And Frantz
fled with his master's dressing set, his English
pistols, and his second portmanteau!  Court suits
I make no doubt, tut, tut.  The fellow was a rogue.
I saw it at half a blink.  And worthy Peter, our
postilion, bitten with the war fever and passed over
to the Prussians!  Nay, but 'tis a riddance that
suits me.  And here we go as I love, at our own free
will, save, indeed, that we enter not Cassel to-night.
Have you already forgotten that we are at war, in
Westphalia?  Not, I grant you, that it signifies
much to our pretty monarch—so long as it does
not interfere with his amusements at home.  He
has thought it wise, nevertheless, to make a little
fortress of his capital—breastworks and glacis
where lay the orchards and cottage gardens;
posterns and *corps de garde* at all road entrances, and
everything closed at the setting of the watch, an
hour after sundown!"

Steven the lover had, in his mind's eye, seen his
pilgrimage ended before the fall of the day; seen
himself dashed or crowned.  Crowned!  Upon the
vision the surge rose in his heart till it overpowered
him well-nigh to swooning.

Geiger-Hans, with his diabolic insight, chose
this moment to draw from his fiddle a sudden strain.

"Oh, stop!" panted the young man.  "I cannot bear it."

And the player fell silent, musing upon the ways
of men and women and of love.  Let a bride but
elude her lover's embrace, what surer road shall she
find to a revealing of his ardour?





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE *CABINET NOIR*`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE CABINET NOIR

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |        "*Good even, sir,*
   |  *But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?*"
   |                                        (*Hamlet*).

.. vspace:: 2

Night had completely fallen.  A full moon was
forging up the sky, like some superb ship beating
up the wind, all sail spread and defying the
tumultuous seas of cloud, when the comrades emerged
from the woodland and halted before the inn.

"The Three Ways," for a poor roadside house,
held unwontedly merry company to-night, to judge
by the medley of shout and song that rang out from
its upper windows.

The fiddler, mounting the steps that led to the
door, gave a few knocks with special emphasis.  To
this there was no response.  Laughing silently, he
waited awhile, then suddenly betook himself to his
violin, at its highest pitch.  Too much engrossed
with their own music, unhearing, perhaps, through
the rolling of the wind, the first-floor revellers paid
no heed to knocks or notes; but below there was
immediate stirring.  The bolts screeched under a
hasty hand.

"Ach! you, Geiger-Onkel!" cried the hostess,
as she stood revealed on the threshold.  "You
will have your joke! ... We thought it was the
police commissary's rap!  Ah, heavens, what times
these are!  One's heart is in one's throat all day, all
night."

She clasped her hands upon her flat bosom, but
suddenly catching sight of the rider, forgot to pant
that she might the better stare.

"'Tis but a new brother of mine," said the
fiddler, carelessly.  "Send the kerl for his
horse.—So you have some of the boys here?  Well, I
bring news for them.  Come, comrade, you must be
weary."

In the kitchen, amid otherwise pleasing surroundings,
their nostrils were offended by an extraordinary
reek of stale wine, presently traceable, it seemed,
to a postilion in dilapidated uniform, who was
ensconced within the glow of the hearth.

The man's high collar and braided jacket were
open for the freer intercourse of throat and can;
he winked impudently at Geiger-Hans, and had a
truculent roll of the eyes for Steven.

"Interception of the King's mail—*lèse majesté*—crime
of the first category—punishment capital,"
observed he, with some pride, in answer to the
young man's astonished look.

"The punishment includes all accessory to the
act," suggested Geiger-Hans, pleasantly.

"Not the victim of coercion," stated the postilion,
with indifference.

He turned his tankard upside down as a hint to
the hostess.  She, poor thing, seemed to regard
these doings as a hare may the trap that clutches
her pad.

"The gentlemen are upstairs," she said, and
wiped the dampness from her lip with the corner of
her apron.

The gentlemen upstairs continued to make their
presence uproariously patent.

"The Brotherhood are apparently having a little
argument," quoth Geiger-Hans, with a slight smile.

"For heaven's sake, Onkel, go up and quiet
them, if you can!  We shall have the patrol upon
us!" groaned the hostess.

"Now, comrade," said the fiddler to Steven,
one foot upon the narrow stairs, "I will now
introduce you into nobler company than ever!  I have
made you known to one of the newest kings and to
one of the oldest Burgraves in the land.  To-night
you shall become acquainted with the offspring of
a nation in chains—heroes, my little count, no less.
Patriots of the first water!"

Count Kielmansegg was conscious that the corners
of his highborn lips drooped.  The patriotism
of Westphalia—convulsions of a tin kettle on a
mere corner of the vast Napoleonic fire, pot-house
heroes that roared their enthusiasm into the night
to the clink of the can....  Bah!

There was a twinkle in the musician's eye that
mocked his words.  He went nimbly up the stair,
and his companion followed with the heavy foot of
fatigue.

A drunken shout greeted the entrance of Geiger-Hans.
Steven stood on the threshold, his lip curling
into ever more open scorn at the sight which greeted
them: three dishevelled youths, in different humours
of intoxication, extravagantly costumed according
to the taste of the militant *Studiosus*: tunics of
velvet, shabby but much befrogged; jack-boots,
gigantic spurs that had, doubtless, never pressed
horse's sides; poetically open collars; uncut hair;
tobacco-pouch and rapier on belt; china pipes in
hand, six feet long, tasselled with Fatherland colours.
A squat individual, exuberantly bearded, sprawled
at the head of the table and was expostulating with
vehemence.  He had embraced the can of wine and
was defending it with drawn spadroon against
the other two, who—the one with uproarious
laughter, the other with tipsy solemnity—were
making futile attempts to wrest it from his possession.
The table was strewn with letters and papers.

No sooner did this same hirsute *Bursch* perceive
Geiger-Hans than he abandoned both sword and
can and, staggering to his feet, opened wide his arms.

"Welcome, brother—master—friend!" exclaimed
he, dithyrambically.

"*Salve!*" then cried the laughing student,
pounced upon the abandoned can and buried his
impertinent sandy face in its depths.  Whereupon
the melancholy third, whose long black hair fell
about a cadaverous countenance, sank into his chair.

"*Vilis est hominis natura*," lamented he; then
suddenly broke into the vernacular and shook his
fist at the drinker: "Thou rag!"

"*Salve, fratres!*" responded the fiddler, by no
means surprised, it seemed, at his reception, but
neatly avoiding the threatened embrace.  "How
beautiful it is," he went on, "thus to see the saviours
of their country at work upon her interests, even
when the rest of the world sleeps!"  He pointed
to the letters as he spoke.

An inflamed but exceedingly alert eye was here
fixed upon Steven over the rim of the can.

"*Prudentia!*" cried the drinker, flung down the
vessel and ran forward, "a stranger among us!"

With a bellow the bearded one lurched for his
weapon.

"A stranger? ... *Pix intrantibus*!"

The weeper profited of the excitement to seize,
in his turn, upon the abandoned vessel.

"Nay," said Geiger-Hans, arresting the double
onslaught with outstretched arms.  "*Pax
intrantibus* be it: we are friends!"

Steven stood in the doorway, sneering.  He
would have found a pungent satisfaction in laying
flat the drunken couple—and no doubt, with the
science cultivated in Jackson's London rooms,
would, despite his wound, easily have put the
thought into execution.  He made a movement
forward.  But the fiddler held him at arm's length.

"Peace, brother Peter—peace, most learned
doctor *in herbâ*.  I bring a friend, I say, a new
brother, my comrade, a noble Austrian who, by
the way, is half an Englishman, and as bitter a
foe to the tyrant as your most Germanic selves.  I
introduce:—Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg—Herr
Paul Oster, 'Mossy-Head,' *emeritus* swordsman,
Senior of the Great Westphalic conspiracy.
Behold, count, the true German garb, the type of
manly beauty!  Behold this Barbarossa head!
Behold the sword, in short (if I may so express
myself), of a great patriotic movement.  And here,"
turning with a fresh gesture of ceremony, "we have
the brain, the tongue, the acute eye: in other words,
Herr Theophilus Schmeling, legal doctor, jurist,
fresh from all his honours at Goettingen—and the
third...?"  He looked interrogation at the
black-haired student.

The jurist, surprisingly alive to the situation,
answered briskly for his melancholy comrade, who
was still absorbed and absorbing:

"Johannis Stempel, *Sanctæ Theologiæ Studiosus*.
An 'Ancient House,' also a faithful heart—a good
labourer in the vineyard—but," he added chuckling,
"apt to be *weinerisch im Wein*, whiny over the wine."

He perpetrated his atrocious quip with a wink
of little red eyes.

Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg found some pleasure
in bowing three times with ironical ceremony.

But Geiger-Hans took up the tale again with a dry
disregard of any possibility of humour.

"Here we are, I repeat, in the heart of a great
conspiracy ... and not one of us but risks his
neck by so much as merely looking on!  The
Sword, the Law, the Church.  'Tis a conspiracy
well headed!"

As he waved his hand, Steven's eyes were
directed towards the table, and he suddenly realized
that the papers lying in such disorder were the
contents of the mail-bag that hung on the arm of
the theologian's chair.  His thoughts went back to
the dilapidated courier downstairs: "Crime of the
first category," had said that official.

"Bah!" cried the Jurist, "Jerome does not kill;
he but fleeces his little flock, as all the world knows."

"Your pardon, doctor," retorted the fiddler, with
a fine inciseness in his tone.  "The most paternal
government makes an example now and again.  And
the head of one Carl Schill is this moment affixed,
minus its body, on the toll-gate of Helmstadt.  But
reassure yourselves, the odious French invention of
Dr. Guillotin has not yet superseded your old
Germanic square-sword; your heads would be
hacked off in the true heroic style.  'Tis a consolation."

"Augh!" groaned Barbarossa, and sank into his
seat at the head of the table, clasping his middle
as if a sober sickness had fallen upon him.  His
very beard seemed to turn pale.  But presently it
flamed again with a revulsion of anger:

"What the hangman!  How is one to manage
these fools?  They sit, and soak, and sop, and
suck, and enough to snick twenty necks on the
table before them.  I told them so, just now, when
I wished to put the wine away."

"The can is empty," here intoned the theologic
*Studiosus*, after the manner of one giving out a
psalm.  "*Nunc est bibendum—Aut bibe aut abi!*"

From behind his beard the Senior growled like a
dog.  But the Jurist intervened.

"Content ye," he said softly.  "I'll to the letters;
and here's a cool head will help me.  Will you not,
Geiger-Hans—good Geiger-Hans?  And we shall
but crack a bottle between us, just to clear our
brains.  Shall we not, musician of my heart?"

"Yes; *aut bibe aut abi—sauf oder lauf*—drink
or slink," chanted the divine, afresh.

"*Doctorlein*," said the musician, suavely, "I am
with you.  And the devil's own head you must
have," he pursued, looking at the Jurist with a
kind of admiration; "for I'll be sworn you've drunk
as much as the other two put together—but I pray
you, a word first: wherefore the King's mail?"

"Your question is reasonable," responded the
other with renewed verbosity.  "*Providus, homo
sagax*....  The defendant's request is allowable,
worthy Senior....  Are you defendant, by the
way, or pursuer?"

"Accomplice," said the fiddler, sitting down and
gathering a sheaf of letters into his hand.  "To the
point again, brother: why the King's mail?"

"Two warrants, we are informed, are out against
the Brotherhood.  And here"—the student slapped
his greasy tunic—"you behold equity contravening
judgments: legal sagacity tripping up edicts; the
true principle—for if your lawyer is not the
antidote to the law, what is he?  Answer me that!
Ah, here comes the wine!  No more cans, but
bottles!  Our landlady knows how to treat gentlemen.
Nay, nay, *Pastorlein*, get you to sleep again,
and dream of your first sermon.  There is work to
be accomplished here.  Mrs. Hostess, give him
small-beer in the can—he will never know the
difference!"

Geiger-Hans, who had rapidly sorted the letters
in his hand, raised his eyes and cast a look about
him.  The Senior, sunk in a heap upon his chair,
was staring straight before him with a glowering
eye, unmistakably in the first stage of drunken
stupefaction.  The aspirant divine was whimpering
over the strangely inferior taste of his tipple.
Steven, leaning against the whitewashed walls with
folded arms, stood looking upon the scene, weary,
arrogant, detached.

"Hey, Sir Count," said the fiddler then to him
with one of his rare sweet smiles, "what say
you—a glass of wine?  No?  Why, then, what will
your lordship do while we manipulate affairs of
State ... in this *Cabinet Noir*?"

For the life of him, Steven could not display
haughtiness to Geiger-Hans, however dubious might
seem his proceedings.  Too much he knew of him
by this time, yet too little.

"Nay," said he, giving him back a faint smile.
"I see a couch yonder.  I will try a sleep, till the
State of Westphalia is secured, or undone, for I am
woefully tired."

"The couch?  Right," said the fiddler, nodding.
"Yes, go to sleep, comrade, and dream.—Here
with that heap, brother conspirer.  And now,
listen: the wise commit no unnecessary crimes.
We have no business with the private correspondence
of the good folks of Cassel.  But here is a document
with an official seal, addressed to the Commissary
of Police, Goettingen."

He tossed the letter across the table.  There was
a shout of triumph from the Jurist.

.. vspace:: 2

The horsehair couch was hard enough, but Steven
had flung himself on it with a whole-souled desire
to shut out a sordid, unsatisfactory world.  Sleep,
however, the jade, is not to be had for the wooing.
The whines of the Theologian, the stertorous breathing
of Barbarossa, the Jurist's flow of rhetoric, the
crackling of the papers, the fiddler's very mutism,
were all so many goads to drive him into ever more
feverish wakefulness.  Against the rigid bolster his
heart-beats resounded in his brain.  "Sidonia,
Sidonia!" they said, in maddening persistence.  And
then, as in a sort of vision, he would see the paltry
Don Juan, King Jerome, with his flickering eyes,
and start, with a spasm of anger, back to a glaring
consciousness of the mean room, the guttering
lights, the reek of wine and smoke, the insufferable
company.

"Herr Jurist, halt, halt!" came the fiddler's
voice suddenly.  "Leave that alone, if you please.
That is, beyond any doubt, private."

"'Tis addressed to the Arch-Enemy, and no
correspondence with tyrants is private," retorted
the lawyer.  "Besides"—with a grin—"it's one
of those new-fashioned French envelopes, and
everything French is damned and doomed!  See, the
wafer has come unsealed in my very hand.  The
wise man—hic—neglects no hint of Providence.
*Hey da!* what have we here? ... O thou little
son of Venus, what a sweet slip of rosy paper!
What a darling little claw of a hand! ... (The
King has a fine taste in doves, I'll grant him
that!)  Bah, Sardanapalus!  It is enough to turn any man
republican.  I am for the rights of man.  Tyrants
shall have no monopoly of dovecotes.  Hum! neither
date nor place: a cautious dove!  Chirp, chirp!"  The
creature pressed the sheet to his tipsy lips with
disgusting lushness.  "Would I held the pretty
flutterer here!  Hark!  what does she say?  '*Sir*'
(A cold beginning: her feathers seem ruffled), '*I
ought to be very angry with you; but, alas! anger
is not to be commanded any more than love.  How
well it would be for us women were it otherwise!*'
(Pretty dear!  Ambiguous as any lawyer's
statement!)  '*Yet I feel that you must be forgiven, if
but for the sake of duty—for I should be indeed
disloyal to persist in rebellion against one who is my
lawful lord.—Betty!  P.S.*' (Aha! now we shall
come to the true meaning, to the kernel, *medulla,
medululla esculenta*, of the rosy note.)  '*Understand:
I promise nothing.  But understand also:
you may come and receive your pardon—if no more!*'"

The reader's mouth was opened upon fresh
dithyrambics when the fiddler's voice rose
peremptorily: "Pass me that letter!"

There fell a silence between the two.  Geiger-Hans,
his lean jaws propped upon his hands, sat
staring at the pink sheet.  The lawyer fell upon a
new pile of letters with monkey-like mischief and
activity.  The supposed director of the *Cabinet
Noir* was now snoring lustily.  Its religious guide
and philosopher was still pondering over the
perversity of his liquor.

"Ha!" cried the Jurist, with a sudden shout,
"another missive from the pink dove—same hand,
same paper and cover, and addressed to no less a
person than the great Chancellor Wellenshausen!
Also at Heiligenstadt.  Never draw such angry
brows upon me, *Minnesinger* mine.  I tell you, this
woman positively cannot seal a letter!"

Steven lifted his head from the pillow.  He heard
the rustle of the opening sheet in the student's
hands; then came another crow:

"Excellent, upon my *cerevies*, excellent!  Listen,
man.  Whatever your faults are, you can laugh:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

"'*Palais de Bellevue*,
    '"Cassel.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

"'NEVER!
    "'Betty, Burgravine of Wellenshausen.'

.. vspace:: 2

"Thunder!  'Tis his wife!  It is a whole story
*à la Kotzebue*.  Do you hear, Geiger-Hans?  'Tis
his wife.  'Never!' she writes to him.  Oh, the
dove has claws and beak, and she can peck!"

Without betraying any of the exuberant mirth
expected of him, Geiger-Hans leaned over and, with
neat decision, plucked the letter from the other's
hands.  And as the Jurist stared, wavering
confusedly upon offence: "Go on with your work,
friend," said the musician, smiling.  "That second
warrant has not yet been discovered.  The night is
waning.  It may be well to be fairly on your road
to Goettingen before the hue and cry."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE KING'S MAIL`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE KING'S MAIL

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*Ei! Kennt ihr noch das alte Lieb*
   |  *Das einst so wild die Brust burchglüht,*
   |  *Ihr Saiten, dumpf und trübe?*
   |  *Die Engel, die nennen es Himmelsfreud;*
   |  *Die Teufel, die nennen es Höllenleid;*
   |  *Die Menschen, die nennen es—Liebe!*"
   |                                  HEINE.

.. vspace:: 2

Steven, whose mind had become keenly on the
alert at the first mention of Betty's name, turned
on his hard couch with a general relaxation of mind
and body.  The consoling news that it was Betty
who occupied Jerome's attention fell on his jealous
anguish like balm.  His thoughts began to wander,
rocked on the tide of the ebbing tempest.  He
must then have fallen into slumber, for he was
suddenly back in the old Burg of Wellenshausen,
with Sidonia, his little bride.  She was sitting in
the high-backed chair, in all her wedding finery,
even as he had last seen her.  But she was smiling
upon him....  "*I have your letter.  It was all a
mistake, a great mistake*," she was saying to him.
Then, as he sprang forward to take her in his arms,
suddenly, with the fantastic horror of dreams, her
face changed, became red, distorted, even as the face
of the student.  Her voice changed, too; grew
raucous, broken with insupportable laughter.  "*You
never loved me*," it said; "*that is now clear to me.
You meant well with me, I know; but it is not right—such
a union as ours cannot be right, either before
God or man.  Had I understood before, I should
have died rather than consent.  But it is not yet too
late.  Aunt Betty says our marriage is no marriage,
and she knows all about your Austrian law.  Uncle
Ludo has taken advice of lawyers for me; and very
soon we may both be free.  No—I will not see you.
I will never see you again.*"

Steven sat up straight, and even at that moment
there was an uproar.  Geiger-Hans, creeping round
the table like a cat, had fallen silently upon the
student and was paralyzing, with a grasp of steel,
the hand that held the letter.

The Jurist bellowed as if the executioner were
already upon him, and Mossy-Head, waking up,
shouted: "Treachery!" while, as if the clamour
had given the finishing touch to his instability, the
Theologian and the once more empty can fell in a
heap on the floor.  The Senior flung his drunken
bulk blindly against the fiddler.  Steven leaped
from the couch.

Even with one hand (his left arm was still weak),
anything so intoxicated was easily disposed of.  He
picked the "Sword of the conspiracy" off Geiger-Hans,
who thereupon, finding himself free to deal
with "the Brain," possessed himself at once of the
letter.  The musician's thin cheeks were faintly
touched with scarlet, and his nostrils worked with
quick breathing; otherwise he seemed unmoved.
Steven, therefore, was all the more astonished to
hear him exclaim with utmost disgust, utmost scorn
and anger:

"*Palsambleu!* but I am weary of this!  Drunken
swine!  Out with them to some sty!  Roll your
fellow forth, count, and down the stairs.  If your
shoulder smarts, you have sound legs at least
... and riding-boots!"

The wine, which had seemed so long merely to
stimulate him, here suddenly took melting effect
upon the student of law.  He twisted in the fiddler's
grasp, flung both his arms round his neck, and,
embracing him with the ejaculation: "O thou dear,
ancient one!" showed an instant inclination to
slumber on his shoulder.

"Pah!" exclaimed Geiger-Hans, and disengaged
himself with what seemed to Steven surprising
vindictiveness.  He then trundled his man into the
passage.  The door of an empty bedroom, flooded
with moonlight, stood suggestively open; here he
cast the creature from him; threw sword, scabbard
and pipe on top of the grunting body.

Steven, in perfect gravity, followed his friend's
example; but, with more mercy, deposited his
burden on the billows of the feather bed.

"There is yet another," quoth the fiddler, dusting
his hands.  Disgust was upon him.  He was
Geiger-Hans no longer, but a *grand seigneur* with a
vengeance, offended in all his Versailles refinement.
He led Steven back into the room.  "We shall have
to carry the hog.  Take you his feet, while I his
greasy poll."

The Theologian had not even a grunt.  They
spread him beside the Jurist in the moonlight—with
a certain effect of symmetry, like fish on a slab.

.. _`They spread him beside the Jurist in the moonlight—with a certain effect of symmetry`:

.. figure:: images/img-310.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: They spread him beside the Jurist in the moonlight—with a certain effect of symmetry.

   *They spread him beside the Jurist in the moonlight—with a certain effect of symmetry.*

Geiger-Hans locked the door on the outside and
pocketed the key.  A second, then he and Steven
stood together in the darkness of the landing.
Except for the snores from within the room and for
similar sounds rising from the kitchen below, the
inn of The Three Ways was wrapped in stillness.

Outside, the gale, which had long been waning, had
now fallen.

"That is the courier, I take it," said the wanderer.
"Did I not say, my noble friend, that I would bring
you into the company of heroes?  Listen to them!
Thus do we conspire in Westphalia!"

When they re-entered the room, the musician
went instantly to the window and, opening it wide,
stood inhaling in deep draughts the clean airs of
the woods.  It was that most silent, most
mysterious hour of the whole circle—the hour before
dawn.  More silent and more mysterious, this
night, it seemed because of the storm that had
passed.  Nature was exhausted after her passion,
merely shaken by a faint reminiscent sigh that came
stealing with scarce the quiver of a leaf, as from a
tired heart.

The night sky held a strange depth of blue against
the garish yellow lamplight within; the stars were
paling.  With head, thrown back, the wanderer
stood gazing upwards.  There were moods of his
strange comrade that Steven had learned to respect.
He therefore neither spoke nor approached; but,
after completing the purification of the room by
the simple process of turning out all the cans and
bottles, he sat down and waited, absorbed in his
own painful reflections.  At last Geiger-Hans drew
a deep breath, and, leaving the window open, sat
down facing his companion.  The contents of the
rifled mail-bag lay between them.

The musician's face looked pale and severe.  Still
in silence, he began to toss such packets as had
escaped violation back into the bag.

"Will you give me my letter, please?" said
Steven, dully.  Then his youth and hot blood
betrayed him into a cry: "Oh, I am miserable!"

The older man glanced at him from under his
eyebrows.  It was an odd thing—for what was he,
after all, but a poor, half-crazed, broken gentleman? yet
there was a certain smile of this Geiger-Hans
which made the world seem warm to the rich and
highborn Steven.

"O blessed unhappiness of youth!" cried the
musician in his old manner, mocking yet passionate.
"Did you but know it, these pangs, these sighs, will
be sweeter to the memory of your old age than your
youth's most satisfied ecstasies!  Here is your letter,
boy.  Go, weep and rage upon it, if you will, with
all the fury of your checked aspiration....  What,
you open your arms, and she is not ready forthwith
to fall into them?  You condescend to run after
her, and she does not instantly stand still to be
caught!  You thought that to-morrow's sun would
see you with your bride in your embrace, and
behold! you have yet to woo her?  Bewail your hard
fate, you are indeed to be pitied!"

"Would you not like your fiddle?" cried Steven,
as he caught the half-folded sheet that the musician
tossed towards him, "that you may set my folly to
a tune?  When you want to sermonize, I had rather
you did it on the strings, if you don't mind."

For a second Geiger Hans seemed about to
resent the pettish speech as an impertinence.  A
frown gathered; but, with a short laugh, broken by
a deep sigh, he resumed his air of sad serenity.

"Nay," said he, stroking the strings of the
instrument that Steven pushed towards him, and then
laying his hand flat upon them to still their wailing,
"did I make music to-night, it would not be music
for your youth.  Fool!" said Geiger-Hans, fixing
his mad, brilliant eyes upon Steven, "is she not
living, she whom you love? and you prate to
me—to me, of unhappiness!"

Though the words were harsh, his tone was
strangely gentle.  Had Steven dared, he would
have put out his hand to touch the speaker.

The wind was rustling through the trees; there
came a stir and a murmur from the woods; the
purple-blue depth of the sky seemed to quiver with
pallid changes.

"It is the dawn," said the fiddler, in a worn voice.
"Get you to that couch again, for you must sleep,
and we have a day of action before us.  Aye, take
that letter with you and lay it under your cheek.
If it seem cruel, have not her fingers touched it?
Ah, if you but knew from what a wounded heart,
perhaps, sprang those reproachful words!  Why, if
she has pride, man, will she not be the fitter mate
for you?  And if she will have naught of a loveless
marriage, is it not because she would have love?
Poor little Sidonia ... who only yesterday was a
child!  You have awakened a woman's heart in her;
see that you know how to meet that heart's measure."

Steven stood by the couch, palpitating to the
words, to the golden visions they opened before
his fevered eyes....  Sidonia, the child, with her
yellow plaits of hair, with her eyes brown and green,
clear yet deep, like the brook under the trees....
Sidonia, whose lips he had kissed; who had smiled
at him under her bridal veil!

Geiger-Hans had said he would make no music;
but it was the music of the gods his words had
evoked in the dawn.  Presently the older man
looked up from his dreary abstraction: Steven,
stretched on the sofa in all the abandonment of
young fatigue, was sleeping like a child.  The
watcher's features relaxed.

"*O bella Gioventu*...!" he murmured.  Then
he looked down at the scattered sheets before him,
and his lips twisted in bitter mockery.  Here had
been a night's work of petty crime under the
fine-sounding title of patriotism and national conspiracy.
But might not now some good be brought out of
it after all?  How sound the fellow slept!  Not
that he, the wanderer, envied any sleeper but him
that would never wake.—Well, to work!

He took up, with contemptuous fingers, Burgravine
Betty's easy lines of surrender to the royal
Don Juan.  It was clear that she was vastly flattered
at the thought of becoming one of the *mil e tre*.
But Betty had a husband...!  Yes, the butterfly
should be saved, if it were only for the sake of the
pure child who had, as yet, no better shelter than
those fragile gaudy wings.

He re-read the lines destined to the King, and
smiled.  Then he turned over the other sheet with
his forefinger.  The pregnant "Never!" sprang
again at him out of the page, in Betty's flourish.

The fiddler smiled again.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Through the open window a shaft of sunlight
struck the sleeper's forehead.  Geiger-Hans rose to
draw the wooden shutter.  But Steven frowned and
awoke.

Without, the forest was one golden lyric.  It was
an autumn day of sparkle and scurry.  A flock of
migrating birds were calling to each other over the
yellowing tree-tops.  Against the pale, exquisite blue
of a sky such as September alone seems to give, the
rooks were circling in fantastic squadrons.

From the dappled glades came an unseen stir of
soft furred things; things on vibrating wings, busy
or merely merry, snatching the last bright hour
before the end.  Into the middle of a straight
forest clearing, all faint amber with fallen pine
needles, a stag pricked his way with high and dainty
steps; then turned his noble head, caught some
scent of danger and leaped into the bracken, which
closed in waves over him....  The very spirit of
the woods incarnate!

It seemed shame to be sullenly sleepy on such a
morning.  Steven breathed the bright air, and his
ill-humour vanished.

"That is well," said Geiger-Hans, as if the young
man had spoken.  "Nature sets us the example:
what work she has to do, she does happily.  Be
brisk, comrade; we have also a task before us, and
an immediate.  The mail-bag is ready.  We must
now start master courier again on his interrupted
duty.  Heaven knows in what state we shall find
the clown; we shall doubtless have to pump on
him! ... Then, to Cassel!"

Melodious snores were yet intercrossing each
other in the locked bedroom as they passed down
the stairs.  But the postilion was awake.  He lay
full length on the bench, with face upturned to the
rafters, staring stupidly at a bunch of herbs
immediately above him, his eyes totally devoid of
speculation.

Early as it was, the household of that solitary
house was astir.  A fire was crackling in the hearth,
and a fresh sound of water came from an inner
room.  The host of The Three Ways stood in the
wide-open house-door looking into the empty road.
He turned quickly at the sound of their steps and
grinned in greeting as he saw Geiger-Hans.

"Good morning, Mr. Host," said the musician.
"Fine doings have you had here the night!"

"Students' tricks, students' tricks," said the host,
suddenly uncomfortable, and slouching back into
the kitchen as he spoke.  His small eyes blinked
furtively away from the sight of the mail-bags which
Geiger-Hans now heaved on the table.  "Bah!"
pursued he, "I knew nothing!  I busy not my
head over gentry's doings or students' pranks.  I
go to sleep.  They concern me not."  Then he
burst into a chuckle.  "Popped him into a
wine-cask, they did, in the backyard of The Bunch of
Grapes, down at Cassel, where the fellow takes his
nip before going his round.  And they sat on the
cask, the three of them, singing and smoking their
pipes—drove past the French soldiers who looked
on and laughed—out of the town gates, and not a
finger lifted to stop them!  Upon my soul, it was a
fine joke!  The cart is out yonder, and the cask,
too!" he added, and chucked his thumb over his
shoulder in the direction of the sunlit yard, shaking
the while with a laugh that might have struck the
observer as a trifle forced.

"Your jokers are still enjoying the sleep of a
blameless conscience," said Geiger-Hans.  "They
lie in your best bedroom, Mr. Landlord.  I locked
them in, lest your good wine should lead their
innocence and lightheartedness into new jokes
... that might be less excellent."  He took the key
from his pocket and tossed it on the table.
"Release the birds when you think fit," he added.

The landlord took up the key with alacrity.
Geiger-Hans remained awhile musingly fixing the
outstretched form of the postilion; then a faint
laugh shook him in his turn.

"In a wine cask," commented he.  "A right old
German jest, not without its gross humour...!
He did aver they had kidnapped him: the creature
spoke truth!"

Mine host almost perpetrated a wink, but checked
himself and coughed.

"Oh, these students!" he reiterated vaguely.

"No wonder the beast smells like a bottle-brush,"
cried Steven, curling up his nose.  Here, then, was
the explanation of that stench of wine which had
sickened him the night before, and which even now
the sweeping breeze could scarcely conquer.

"The High-Born has perfect reason," cried the
innkeeper, "for the rascal is sopped, within and
without.  If you squeezed him, he would run
vinegar.—Well, so long as I am paid!..." was
the philosophic parenthesis.  "But the wife has
shaken him in vain.  There he lies, and it were
perhaps as wholesome he should jog."  His glance
moved uneasily towards the mail-bag.  "And what
is to be done with that?" it seemed to ask.

"Quite so," said Geiger-Hans, gravely.  "Has
he not his letters to deliver?  They will be one
post late; but in Westphalia, nowadays, we are not
so mighty particular, are we?  He must be freshened
up, I think.  Here, friend, I and my comrade will
bring him to the trough, and you shall do the pumping.
We'd better off with his jacket first.  Never
look so doubtful, Mr. Landlord.  If his Majesty
hears of it, you may be decorated.  Think of that!"

"Saints forbid!" said the host, turning pale.
"If Jerome heard of it, I might be shot."

"Nay," said Geiger-Hans, cheerfully, "you may
take my word for it; the days are counted within
which there will be either decorations or
executions in the name of Jerome.  But, meanwhile, to
our duty!  Never look so disgusted, little comrade.
This is a vile beast, as you said; but in a minute we
shall have him purified."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



It was, indeed, a purified courier, a chastened and
subdued mail-bearer, who trotted his way on through
the forest, astride that self-same horse that had
dragged him forth in his reeking prison the night
before.  He had the great bag on his back
(undiminished save for two warrants and one private
missive—one, indeed, that had already reached its
proper destination), a gold piece in his pocket, and
a plausible tale of violence and rescue to tell, should
it ever be required of him.

.. _`... the great bag on his back, undiminished, save for two warrants and one private missive`:

.. figure:: images/img-320.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: ... the great bag on his back, undiminished, save for two warrants and one private missive....

   *... the great bag on his back, undiminished, save for two warrants and one private missive....*





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`PORTENTS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIV


.. class:: center medium bold

   PORTENTS

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "Hüt bich, mein Freund, vor schwarzen, alten Kasen,
   |  Doch schlimmer sind die weissen, jungen Käschen....!"
   |                                                  HEINE.

.. vspace:: 2

There was brilliant sunshine as Steven rode in
at the gate of Cassel.  The fiddler walked beside
him; but, once within the town, he halted, waved
his hand, and called out:

"Good-bye."

"How?" cried Steven, drawing rein, his heart
sinking at this unexpected parting.

"Ah, little bridegroom!" said Fiddler Hans,
"it is even so.  And a pretty figure," he said,
"should I be, to shadow your lordship's magnificence
in this fashionable city!"

He stepped across the cobbles, laid his hand on
the horse's neck, and looked up at the young man;
all mockery fled out of his eyes.

"You are an honest lad," he said, "and you love
her—go, tell her the naked truth."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



In her pink-hung bed at the Bellevue Palace,
Betty von Wellenshausen opened a sleepy eye upon
her surroundings.  She yawned and stretched
herself.  It was good to wake up in Cassel and feel the
bustle of life about her, the gay and ceaseless
movement, instead of the rarefied loneliness of
Wellenshausen on the crags, where the morning might find
her higher than the clouds themselves, with
perhaps scarce the beat of a bird's wing across the
awful stillness.

Yes, it was *du dernier agréable* in the *Residenz*—Betty's
thoughts ran naturally to French—to be
aroused to the prospect of a day full of the most
new and diverting experience....  Positively,
Jerome was a charming fellow!...

... It was, perhaps, a trifle strong to ask for
a secret rendezvous on the strength of one
meeting; but Betty did not regret her answer.
Without being at all prepared to yield—gracious powers,
was one not to enjoy oneself a little? ... after three
years of Wellenshausen!

In the midst of these gossamer resolves, the door
creaked apart.

The Burgravine rubbed her eyes and thought
she must be still dreaming, for through the aperture
peered the heavy countenance, the bristling head of
her husband—actually of the Burgrave of Wellenshausen
himself!

She sat up, her lace cap awry upon the starting
dark curls, her cherry mouth open, her eyes round,
the very image of astonished indignation.  With
ponderous tip-toe tread, not unlike that of a wild
boar stepping out of covert, the husband entered
the room.  He closed the door behind him and
stood smiling, half timidly, half fatuously.  Betty's
clenched hands flew up in the air and down again
on the sheets.

"How dare you!" she gasped.  "Did I not
forbid you——?"

"Oh, come now, Betty, my little wife, my little
dove, I've frightened you.  You were asleep, angel?
But when I got your letter, last night, I lost not an
instant.  His Majesty gave me leave—urgent
private affair.  Post haste I came from Heiligenstadt.
In Cassel with the dawn—a mouthful of breakfast
to while away the time—a little toilet, and here
I am.  Shaved, my treasure!  Your dear little
letter——"

"My ... my dear little letter?" Betty shrieked,
eyes rounder, curls more startled than ever.  She
sat rigid.  "My dear little letter!" she repeated
under her breath once more.  Then, as she
recalled the missive in question, she was shaken with
an irresistible giggle.  Her face dimpled.  The
Burgrave, gazing on her amorously, thought her
the most ravishing, the most maddening being
ever created for the delight or torment of man.

"Your letter, my Betty, to Heiligenstadt," he
murmured, drew a pink sheet from his breast
pocket, and carried it to his lips.  "What wonder
that, upon receipt of this, I could not delay coming
to my sweet Betty a minute longer!"  He held
the note at arm's length.  "Your wifely, your
dutiful words: '*I should indeed be disloyal to persist
in rebellion against my lawful lord.*'"

Now, at a flash, the situation was laid clear
before her:—by some inconceivable carelessness
she had put her correspondence of two days ago in
the wrong covers! ... A plague on this
new-fangled French invention of envelopes!

She shut her lips with a snap and swallowed
down the cry that rose to them.  Rapidly she tried
to recall that elegant reply to the royal importunities
which had given her so much satisfaction; and then
all other feelings were lost in a gush of gratitude
to the Providence that had suggested those ambiguous
terms which saved the situation—saved Betty,
Burgrave of Wellenshausen, from premature
discovery, irreparable disgrace.

She turned and smiled adorably on the Burgrave.

"Monster," she murmured, "do you deserve forgiveness?"

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Steven halted at the first inn on his way, at the
sign of the *Aigle Impérial*—a new French sign
upon an old and solidly Germanic house.  Here
he put up his horse and engaged a room.

The best he could obtain was on the second floor.
The town was full of officers—a regular military
citadel now, and Cassel, that used to be a
quiet *Residenz*....  Honourable guests could no
longer be entertained as was their due, mine host
informed him with a shrug of the shoulders.  Steven,
however, was indifferent enough; it was not his
purpose to remain an hour longer in Jerome's capital
than he could help.  Indeed, he dropped some words
concerning the equipage he would probably require—it
might be that very evening—which gave the
landlord an insight into a long purse and magnificent
habits of travel.

This worthy, therefore, sped the stranger towards
the Royal Palace with far greater urbanity than
he had displayed on his arrival, and stood staring
after him with some curiosity:—unattended, upon
a bony old horse, and airs of a prince withal
... a sable cloak than which the King himself wore
no better ... and we want, if you please, a travelling
carriage and four of the best horses obtainable.
We don't mind buying if they are not to be hired....
*Oho, ei, ei!*

"The town is turned into a citadel."  The words
recurred to Steven as he swung down the ill-paved
street.  The very air throbbed to military rhythm.
In the fields, without the walls and on the new
ramparts, everywhere, levies were being exercised,
to judge by the tramp of feet, the calls and counter
calls of bugles, the distant blare of marching bands,
the beat of drums, cries of command, rattle of sham
fire.  The little brown town itself was filled with
the most heterogeneous throng—Hanoverian and
Westphalian hangers-on of the Court; French and
Corsican adventurers; soldiers of as varied nationalities
as were the uniforms of Jerome's fretful fancy;
grenadiers, late of his brother, briefly royal of
Holland, in their red coatees; wonderful blue hussars
(French most of them) very gallant, with a wealth
of jangle, whether ahorse or afoot—these same
wonderful blue hussars, some of whom Steven had
seen driven by the sheep-skin Cossacks like wrack
before the storm; *dragons d'Espagne*, in green and
orange, stern, lean and war-worn (unscrupulously
intercepted, these, on their way to rejoin their
imperial leader, and here disdainful of pinchbeck
king and petty service); stolid Westphalian recruits
lounging along the cobbles with the slouch of
discontent; astounding diplomats driving about, clad
in astounding embroideries; academicians, too,
with the green palm on coat-tail and cuff, for "Little
Brother Jerome" played at being as like big brother
Napoleon as might be.

Market boors plodded by, blue-stockinged,
crimson-waistcoated and wide-hatted; shapeless
country wenches tramped, and fair ladies, reclining in
coaches, flashed past Steven; and quite a swarm
of lackeys, postilions, chasseurs, with all the
insolence of the servants of dissolute masters, elbowed
him aside, or appraised him with open comment.
Had he not been so absorbed in his private anxiety,
he might have noted, in spite of the air of gaiety,
the bustle and the extravagance, certain ominous
signs of impending cataclysm around him—the
swift passage here and there of an urgent courier;
the grave countenances of some officials; the little
groups, whispering together in by-streets, dissolving
at the first hint of approaching police; the singing
defiance of the students; the sullenness of the poorer
burghers; and, above all, the febrile, over-strained
note in the very merriment of the ruling class itself.
There was a tinkling of madcap-bells at the Palace
of Jerome that rang into the town; no one within
those walls had a mind to hearken to the reverberating
echoes of Berlin and Hamburg and Dresden.

Heartily as he despised the sovereign and his
army; careless as he was, in the absorption of
his own vexed affairs, of the dire threat that hung
upon the land, Steven could not but find something
inspiriting in the martial sounds and sights.
Unconsciously his step fell to the measure of some
distant drums.  He had a valiant sense of marching
upon victory as he turned into the palace courtyard.
On the strength of his splendid air, the sentries
saluted him without challenging.  A huge
green-uniformed Swiss porter bowed before him.

The first check—and it was a slight one—was
that no such person as the *Gräfin* Waldorff-Kielmansegg
was known at the Palace.  She had
to be explained as the niece of Chancellor
Wellenshausen, as the young Baroness Sidonia, before
her identity could be established.  Then, once more,
all was smiles and bows.  Nothing could be easier
than to see the gracious *Fräulein*.  He was passed
from Swiss porter to royal French lackey; conducted
by the royal French lackey through several corridors
and up a flight of stairs, then delivered to no less
a person than dapper Kurtz, the Burgrave's own
Jäger.  This latter gave him first a stare, then a
sharp, meaning look, but, nevertheless, introduced
him without demur to a kind of ante-room.  Here
Steven was left; and here he had to wait a length
of time, which seemed to him first ill-omened, then
positively insulting.

It was a quaint room, painted with impossible
nosegays of flowers and cornucopias running over
with gargantuan fruit.  It gave, as did the whole
apartment, on the Bellevue Gardens; and, through
the yellowing trees, he could see distant gleams
of the Fulda, blue under a blue sky.  A merry
party was playing bowls on the *boulingrin*; and,
though it was screened from sight by sundry formal
clipped hedges, Steven could hear the interchange
of voices, ladies' laughter, the banter of men.

As the minutes passed and there came to him
no sound from within the apartment, the tinkling,
irresponsible gaiety without grew to be a personal
irritation.  The very sunshine that had cheered
him on his way was now a mockery; the distant
tunefulness of trumpets, a boding.  More than once
he lifted his hands impatiently towards the
bell-rope, but each time refrained: so much hung in
the balance, he must be patient.  Patient!  He
ground his teeth as he paced the bright, absurd room.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Kurtz brought the message intended for Sidonia
straight to the Burgravine.  He was an astute
young man, and knew the most likely quarter for
promotion.  Betty was at the moment engaged
with the contents of a milliner's box, choosing
a hat to wear with a certain new green redingote
at the review to be held that afternoon.  Something
it must have of the military cock, without
offending the feminine graces.  It was matter of
the deepest moment.  But Betty, it has been hinted,
had a capable mind—a facility for grasping several
issues at the same time.  She rose promptly to the
new situation.

"Bid Baroness Sidonia come to me," she ordered.
Then, tartly recalling her maid, who was edging
towards the door: "Eliza, where are you going?" she cried.

"*Mon Dieu*," said Eliza, innocently, "but to
inform *mademoiselle* that some one is waiting for
her.  And, indeed," she added, seeing by the flash
of her lady's eye that her good-natured intention
was frustrated—"indeed, madam, it is strange
what a foolish habit we have all got into of calling
madam's niece *Mademoiselle*.  It is the young
countess, I should say."

She clasped her hands, and was about to wax
eloquent on the subject of her pleasure at M. le
Comte Kielmansegg's reappearance and of her
rooted conviction that they were *un bien gentil
couple*, divinely destined for each other, when her
mistress peremptorily reduced her to silence.  Kurtz
thereupon vanished in his brisk soldier way.

Betty selected another hat and set it on her curly
head.  It had an adorably impudent tilt and a
bunch of orange cock-feathers.

"That, madame," said the French milliner, her
thin elbows akimbo, her bright, familiar eyes fixed
admiringly on her client—"that, madame, we call
the *Shako à la Saxonne*—it is everything that is
new—an inspiration after the battle of Lützen.
And there is not another lady in Cassel will have
anything like it."

Betty twisted her figure from side to side, and
surveyed herself in the long mirror.  She had donned
the long narrow *redingote* to be sure of her effect,
and the rich dark green of the velvet threw her face
into charming relief.  The orange note of the feather
was the perfecting touch.

"I really think—I really think I will have it."  She
spoke lingeringly: these things do not decide
themselves without reflection.

Sidonia came in slowly.  Betty ran a keen eye
over the girl; the fair hair was rough, and that was
a dreadful little garment of Wellenshausen
manufacture ... pale face, heavy eyes!  Betty broke
into a laugh.  Life was really very amusing at times.

"You sent for me, aunt?"

"Yes, my dear.  Somebody has called to see you,
it seems."

"To see me?"  Sidonia drew her breath quickly.
Crimson rushed to her face.

"Dear child," said the Burgravine, in her most
cooing voice, "do not agitate yourself; you need
not see him unless you wish.  Yes, my love, it is
that tiresome man again—my wretched cousin
Kielmansegg."

Sidonia swayed a little, but caught herself up,
fiercely erect; then the blood began to ebb from
her cheeks.

"I will go to him," she said under her voice.
"Where is he?"

"Perhaps it would be just as well," said the
Burgravine, carelessly.  "You can hurry matters
on about the annulment.  Truly, it is fortunate,"
she laughed, "that we shall not now have to hunt
for him God knows where, in order to free you,
my poor little Sidonia, from this absurd business."

"Aunt!" cried the girl, indignantly, with a
glance at the milliner.—How could Aunt Betty
laugh so heartlessly, how dared she discuss these
most intimate affairs, before a stranger!

"Calm yourself," said the elder lady, "she does
not understand one word of our savage language—too
true a Frenchwoman for that, my dear!
Now, about this traitor.  (There you go white and
red, you silly thing.) ... Everything can be settled
by Yes or No!  Either he wants to carry off his
heiress, or he is content with your decision.  He
has, of course, received your letter.  Heavens,
my dear, did we not discuss it all before?  And,
anyhow, it is not a matter for heroics.  Lord knows,
I don't want to interfere; it is entirely for you to
decide whether you are on or off with the bargain.
For I will lay forty wagers he is here to protest.
Ah, I know my young Viennese gentlemen; they
cannot have too much gold at their back.—Decidedly,
Madame Athenaïs, I keep this hat."

It was too adorable to be taken off her head even
for a moment.

Sidonia stood, clasping and unclasping her hands.
Every word her aunt spoke, dropped apparently
with such heedlessness, but in reality with such subtle
intent, stabbed her to her sore heart.

"Approach, my dear," said Betty, maternally,
"and let me, for heaven's sake, run a comb through
your hair.  Mercy on us, child, what a gown!
Had you not better change it?"

"No," said Sidonia, sullenly.  She went, on
leaden foot, to her aunt's toilet table and gave an
unseeing touch to her hair.

Betty looked over her shoulder; the two faces
were reflected side by side.  Sidonia's reflection
in the glass looked positively ugly—in her own
eyes.  In Betty's, too, apparently, for she cried,
with an air of great generosity and wisdom:

"I would offer to go with you, to support you,
my angel; but after what has passed—I think
it were wiser he should not see me.  After all, who
knows?  You may patch it up.  But, Sidonia, you
really ought to make yourself a little tidy."

Madame Athenaïs, who, if she had that
ignorance of the German language attributed to her
ultra-Parisian nature, had contrived nevertheless
to follow the dialogue pretty closely, here
interposed with the unctuous familiarity of her kind:

"Oh, if the young lady is going to have an
interview of importance, it is certain she should make
some toilet.  See, if *mademoiselle* permits, I will
show her a hat that is the very thing for the occasion.
Something young, young, quite virginal, yet, coquet,
alluring!—something no gentleman of taste could
resist on *mademoiselle's* head!"

Sidonia—she was but seventeen, after all—stamped
her foot.

"Leave me in peace, all of you!" she cried, and
made for the door.

The keenest of all Betty's stabs she carried
away in her heart; that was the vision of Betty
herself, so fair, so distracting in her plumed hat,
beside Sidonia, plain, awkward, ill-dressed—poor
Sidonia whom Steven had married ... without
love!  Betty's words: "It were wiser he should
not see me," sang in her ears to the fierce
accompaniment of her own jealous blood.  She recalled
the smile and the glance at her own reflection in
the mirror, with which Betty had pointed her
concession to wisdom.  Hot-tempered by nature,
Sidonia had yet never even suspected the existence of
such passion as now rent her.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE PERVERSENESS OF WORDS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXV


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE PERVERSENESS OF WORDS

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "Berriet mein blasses Angesicht
   |  Dir nicht mein Liebeswehe?
   |  Und willst du, dass der stolze Mund
   |  Das Bettelwort gestehe?"
   |                              HEINE.

.. vspace:: 2

Steven, stretching a determined hand at last to
the bell, was arrested in the act by the sound of
the opening door.  He turned to see Sidonia
standing in the entrance.

It seemed as if, after all, these two were as
yet unripe for love's fulfilment.  The pride of
each, unchastened, the quick susceptibilities, the
unreasonable expectations and demands of the
crudely young, built frowning barriers between them.

Steven, who but last night had burned with
ardour for his lost bride; who, but this morning,
had set out to win her back, tender, conquering,
almost joyous, felt the fretful impatience of his
ten minutes of waiting leap into positive anger
under the accusing glance of Sidonia's eyes.  Their
looks met—one might almost say, struck—like
steel blades, each quick to feel and resent the other's
attitude.

"Ah, no, he does not love!" cried the girl, in
her heart.  And—

"She never loved me," said the man in his pride.
"I have been a triple fool!"

But did she think that a Waldorff-Kielmansegg
was thus to be played with, made the sport of
heaven knew what ignoble feminine intrigue, a
marriage of convenience, quickly repented of, and
then, farewell?  No, he had his rights as a man,
his honour to defend, and things could not end here.

"What brings you?" asked Sidonia.  Being the
woman, she was the first to speak.

His tone was harsh as he made answer: "Because
it is time this folly should cease.  Because you are
my wife.  Because you bear my name.  Because
your honour is mine, and I will not have you
running about the world—under no better guard than
that of Burgravine Betty."

The contempt of his accents, the doubt, stung
her beyond bearing.

"By all accounts," she cried—and there was
almost a sneer upon her sweet lips—"you had
been willing enough, not so long ago, to trust her
with your own honour."

So the fiddler had been right.  Betty had made
mischief!  The thought danced a moment through
Steven's brain; but in the confusion of anger he
failed to seize its real import.

Sidonia went on, vainly endeavouring to steady
her voice as it throbbed to the beating of her heart:

"You talk of honour!  Is it honourable to speak
of her like this—is it generous?"

"Generous?" he echoed.  "Will you teach
me generosity, you who drove me away, without
explanation—without giving me a chance to
explain?  You, the bride of an hour!"

"Come, then, I am listening now.  Explain."  Her
accent, her air, were passionately peremptory.
Her fingers sought hastily in the reticule
at her side—the tangible evidence of her misfortune
was hidden there.  She laid the note before
him on the table, spreading it and smoothing it
out for him, even as Betty had done for her on the
wedding day, in the turret at Wellenshausen.
"Explain this," she said.

Steven cast a quick glance at the incriminating
document, opened his mouth upon scorn and denial,
then checked himself with a bitter laugh and a
shrug of the shoulders.

"Tell her the naked truth!"  It was the fiddler's
advice.  To tell her upon what a petty rock their
barque was foundering ... it ought to have been
an easy thing!  Yet the man stood, contemptuous,
smiling, silent.  Every instinct of his being revolted
against the girl's haughty command.  His pride
alone would have kept him mute, but there was
something yet stronger, more intimate, to restrain
him.  "Tell her the naked truth!"  Naked enough
was the truth, ugly enough, sordid enough, to be
convincing if he could have brought himself to speak
it!  The truth?  Why, here it would have been:
"Your Aunt Betty offered herself to me, threw
herself upon my protection.  I did not love her,
I did not want her.  She gave me no choice; and
this is her woman's revenge!"

Aye, it is all very well to say: "You are an honest
lad."  But if a gentleman has behind him long
generations of gentlemen, each of whom has planned
his life upon the conventional code of honour among
gentlemen, he cannot easily bring his lips to form
the words that will betray a woman in relation to
himself—least of all, perhaps, where he has been
loved and has not loved in return.

So his lips were silent upon that smile of scorn.
And Sidonia's last hope—how strong it had been,
how dear, she never knew till this moment—agonized
within her.  That he should mock her for
jealousy: that was the supreme insult.

As in a flash of unbearable illumination she saw
herself in his eyes, heavy-lidded, unkempt; saw
the figure that had provoked just now even Betty's
pity; saw beside her, Betty, rich in loveliness,
velvet clad ... it was no wonder that Beau Cousin
Kielmansegg should fix her with this smile, this
contempt.

And Steven, in his *morgue*, who would have
perished rather than condescend to explain—could
he but have known (Ah, if youth but knew!)
that no explanation was really needed of him, that
no words are ever needed in the great crises of life!
Words are our enemies.  The inability to express
the subtleties of wounded feeling, the false witness
that our tongues bear against us, have divided
more lovers secretly yearning for each other than
ever did most adverse circumstances.  One touch
of his hand on hers, one kiss upon her lips, and
Sidonia would have felt the truth, would have
understood that he loved her, and that, to him who loves,
the beloved is queen.  Angry Steven, Steven the
lover, had never even noticed the dishevelment of
her bright hair.  Her face was pale?—it was a pearl
in his eyes.  Her attire was shabby?—it might
have been a garment of state.  Had Betty broken
in on them then, in all her glory, he would have
drawn no comparison, save to the superlative
advantage of the woman who was his choice.

Alas! if youth but knew!

From the bowling green without came a gust
of laughter; then a light voice broke into a stave
of popular song.  They had, in happier moments,
heard that lilt upon the fiddle of wandering Hans;
it struck them poignantly.  Wounded love flamed
into intemperate resentment.

"After all, Aunt Betty but told me the truth,
if a little late—you have nothing to say," said
Sidonia, between teeth clenched upon a sob.

"Only this," replied Steven, arrogantly, from
the height of his disdain, "that I command you,
as your husband, to come with me now."

Sidonia pointed to the door.

"*Herr Graf von Kielmansegg*, my uncle expects
to hear from the judges to-day anent the annulment
of that ill-considered ceremony which made me
nominally your wife.  His lawyers will call upon
you in due course."

"Madam," answered the count, bowing, "I
intend to take up my abode in Cassel—at the *Aigle
Impérial*.  Therefore there will be no difficulty about
my address.  But let me remark that annulments
are not easily concluded without the consent of both
parties."

He closed the door between them upon these words.

"He does not love me—he never loved me!"
said Sidonia to her bursting heart.  "It was all
pride!"

The other unworthy suspicions, which Betty
had so subtly instilled, could not live in her soul
after having come again under the glance of Steven's
eye.  But she had pride too, her woman's pride,
and it showed her what she had to do, even though
it killed her.

"O Geiger-Onkel," cried the poor child, "what
have you brought me to!  Even you have abandoned me!"

.. vspace:: 2

Betty's arrows, shot at spiteful random, occasionally
hit a truer mark than she herself suspected.
When, in her tower prison, she had petulantly
averred that the Burgrave would certainly keep
in his own hands the choosing of Sidonia's husband
(and for very good reasons!) she had unconsciously
struck the gold.  The heiress's guardian did not
intend, if it could be helped, to have his accounts
examined.  Hence, apart from the humiliating
pressure put upon him, against which his elementary
violence rebelled, the young Austrian was the last
person the Burgrave would have desired as
nephew-in-law.  There was a relentlessness in the young
man's eye and a clear penetration, which, whenever
the Burgrave remembered them, sent uncomfortable
chills through his frame.  True, Count Kielmansegg
had never breathed one syllable on the
subject of his bride's fortune; but this very silence
struck the Chancellor as the more ominous.

"I shall have his lawyers on top of me before
I know where I am," he had many a time growled
in those sullen days that followed Sidonia's betrothal,
chiefly at those hours of conscience's activity, the
dull hours before the dawn, when the night's
potations had ceased to stimulate.

It was not that Wellenshausen had ever been
consciously dishonest.  In his fine masculine,
Germanic way, when he had put large sums of his
ward's money to his own uses, he had felt himself
almost in the right.  Was it not against nature that
mere females should have advantages over the
male?  Indeed, he had scarcely taken the trouble
to make memoranda of the expenditure: in Jerome's
kingdom, especially in financial matters, it was
never customary to waste time upon details, and
the sense of impending catastrophe, more particularly
of late, had increased the sense of the value
of the fleeting moment.

Since his second marriage the Burgrave had
certainly taken both hands to Sidonia's treasure.
There was the loan to his Royal Master; a matter
of high diplomacy!  It was well to have a lien
over so slippery a patron.  And, besides, it would
be all to the child's advantage, no doubt, later on.
Practically an investment!  There were Betty's
pearls....  Well, in these uncertain times, might
not jewels also be looked upon as an investment? none
the worse for having gleamed so charmingly
on Betty's shoulders!

And there was this, and there was that....
In the small hours above mentioned, memory
became inconveniently active.  Once or twice the
Burgrave had sat up in his feather-bed to wipe a
clammy forehead; in truth, he did not know how
much the heiress of Wellenshausen, apart from
the lands, was heiress to.  But there was a certain
document of his late brother's, referring, in very
precise terms, to the *Fideicommission*, to the trust.

It was no wonder, then, that when Sidonia had
come to him, on the day of the wedding, where he
sat glowering over his wine-cup and the remains
of the feast, and had told him how she and her
new husband had parted for ever, the relief should
have been so unexpected and so great as completely
to sober him.

In a spasm of paternal affection he had assured
her that such a ceremony could not count, and
that it would be the easiest thing in the world to
release her, since she wished it.

She had looked at him stonily over her bridal
white.  Was that indeed the case? she had asked.
She had thought marriages were for ever.

And he had laughed at her joyously.  "Na,
na, little dove—a marriage of this kind, if one
wishes it, was as good as no marriage at all!"

"Then see to it, please," she had said steadily,
avoiding his embrace.

There was horror in the look she cast upon him
as she turned to leave the room; but he was too
completely absorbed in his joy to see anything but
the deliverance before him.  He never even paused
to wonder, to inquire the reason of the breach—and
this, doubtless, had been well for Betty.

The connubial migration to Cassel, consent to
which had been wrung from him at the expense
of so much mental agony, now became a project
which could not be soon enough, to please him,
put into execution.  For would it not mean the
prompt legal annulment of Sidonia's most inopportune
alliance?  His original jealousy of Beau
Cousin would seem to have been the one thing
really murdered in the *oubliette*; yet, perhaps,
somewhere deep down in his consciousness, there
faintly stirred, beneath all the other reasons for
relief, a satisfaction at the thought that Cousin
Kielmansegg could never again be made welcome
to the house that had sheltered his divorced wife.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE WAYS OF LITTLE COURTS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVI


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE WAYS OF LITTLE COURTS

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*Thinkest thou there is no tyranny but that*
   |  *Of blood and chains?  The despotism of vice—*
   |  *The weakness and the wickedness of luxury—*
   |  *Of sensual sloth—produce ten thousand tyrants.*"
   |                                          BYRON.

.. vspace:: 2

Betty came thoughtfully into her husband's
presence.  The review had not been a success.  In
spite of velvet *redingote* and yellow plumes, she could
not flatter herself that Jerome had singled her out.
She began to have qualms as to the results of that
unexplained and inexplicable mistake in her
correspondence.  She had fully promised herself that the
first glance between her and the King would
delicately give him to understand that her rigour was
not as eternal as the uncompromising "*Never*" might
have led him to believe.

Indeed, with natural optimism, under the rosy
atmosphere evolved between her mirror and the
*shako à la Saxonne*, she had come to tell herself
that the unintended rebuff was, perhaps, not a thing
to be regretted after all.  Kings or chancellors,
or simple Viennese lieutenants, men were much
the same, she took it.  And, as the experienced
French have it, *tenir la dragée haute*, was none too
bad a way to make the creatures yearn for it.  Was
not her own Burgrave a telling proof?

But the fact remained that Jerome had not even
seemed aware of her existence that afternoon.
Something had gone wrong about the review.  At the
last moment it had been found wiser to leave a
certain regiment in barracks, information having
transpired about a leaven of disloyalty.  Jerome's
brow had been thunder black.  There had been
a vast amount of discussion between him and five
or six generals.  And finally the King had left the
field in high displeasure, before the programme of
evolutions had been half concluded.  And it was
a painful fact that none of the populace cheered
him as he went.

Certainly, if he had not looked at her, he had,
at least, looked at no other fair one.  Still, the
day had been a failure for the Burgravine; and,
as she drove back to the Palace, she had actually
some doubts as to the shako.  In her own
apartment a new trouble confronted her.  Sidonia,
who had locked herself up alone after that
momentous interview, now came very calmly to greet her.
She had a smile on her lips, and—thus do we cherish
vipers in our bosom!—Eliza's fingers had obviously
been busy on the yellow head.  The child was
positively *coiffée*!  Yes, and she was dressed, too: a
fashionable creature.  And pretty—undeniably
pretty, in a singular, girlish way of her own.  And
not a word could the most insidious question draw
from her lips.  Betty was forced, in the end, to apply
to Eliza.  The tirewoman shrugged her shoulders.
She knew well enough what had passed, but it was
too much to expect her to gratify her mistress.

"Cannot *madame* see?  Ah, it will not be long
before those two are together again!  If she coquets
a little, *certes*, it will not be *madame* who will blame
her!  Oh, it is not for nothing that *mademoiselle*
is making herself beautiful!  Who knows if she will
not meet him to-morrow night!"

"Heavens!" exclaimed the Burgravine, disagreeably
struck, "you do not mean that she intends to
go to the fête!"

"But, yes, madame; she has been choosing her
dress.  And oh, I know some one who will look
pretty."

"But the deeds are actually drawn up.  The
marriage is as good as annulled already," cried Betty.

Eliza clacked her tongue contemptuously.  "Until
people are divorced, they are still married," she
remarked sagely.  "And it is not the young
gentleman who wants a divorce, I can tell madame.
'Oh, how he is enamoured!' says Kurtz to me.
'He came in like a lion roaring,' says Kurtz.  'That
is love,' he says to me.  'Beautiful!' he says."

Betty snapped herself out of her maid's hands,
flung herself into a wrapper and went to seek the
Burgrave.

As matters stood, the storm-wind of injured vanity
and jealousy blowing very strong, she actually
would rather give up her conquest of Jerome than,
she thought, the sweets of revenge.  In the
Burgrave she had an ally—she never paused to wonder
why, so little did she heed the flight of her arrows.

Before they parted, the sagacious couple, for
once warmly united, were agreed that until Sidonia
were provided with another husband, they could
scarcely feel themselves safe from Kielmansegg's
persecution.  Now, in the court of Jerome, husbands
had been known to be provided for people at the
shortest notice ... things had generally to be
done at short notice at the court of Jerome.

Sidonia was still quite sufficiently an heiress for
the Chancellor (he knew his court) to be quite sure
of being able to find some excellent person who
would take her thankfully from his hands without
daring to request, much less to stipulate, for an
exhibition of figures.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



There was a Court-concert the next night at the
Royal Palace, and it was in the music-room that
Sidonia was, by command, presented to Jerome.

She dropped her curtsey.  Here was a King for
whose royalty, in her sturdy patriotism and her
inherited race tradition, she felt neither allegiance
nor respect.  As she drew herself up from the
perfunctory obeisance, she looked him in the face and
met the well-remembered glance, with its hateful
gleam and flicker.  Turning aside she became
conscious of the gaze of the King's Master of the Horse,
General d'Albignac, as he towered over his dapper
little sovereign.  Steady enough this, something like
the glare with which the beast of prey regards his
quarry.  The girl's heart sank with a double terror.

"I am charmed," said the King, "to behold
at last with my own eyes the young heiress of Wellenshausen,
in whose lovely person, I am told, is vested
so much of my territory."

This was spoken in German, with a pronounced
Italian accent.  Then Jerome slid into French to say
caressingly:

"*Mademoiselle de Wellenshausen* is welcome at
my Court."

Betty von Wellenshausen, at Sidonia's side,
stood twittering, awaiting her moment.  Jerome
was once more in high good humour; all trace
of the gloom that had weighted his brow through
yesterday's afternoon was gone.  Betty felt sure
of triumph.  Her entrance had created quite a
flutter in the assembly.  Women had whispered
together behind their fans.  Men's eyes had
followed her with bold, curious looks.  Her Bluebeard
shadowed her with a fierce anxiety which to-night
Betty accepted cheerfully as a further tribute,
confident that she and his sovereign could elude
it when the critical time came.

What, therefore, were her feelings when she
found Jerome's eyes glinting past her—ay, past
Betty von Wellenshausen at her fairest—to rest
with marked interest (if ever the word "rest" could
be applied to Jerome's eyes) upon Sidonia, the
gawky child.  There could be no mistake about it,
she could not soothe herself with the thought that
pique was the cause of his neglect.  His attention
swept by her with no deliberate indifference; she
simply did not exist for him, his interest was vividly
enkindled elsewhere.  In the blasting disillusion of
the experience, the Burgravine turned livid.  Through
the buzzing in her ears she could scarce catch
Sidonia's reply to the King's gracious words.

The child, however, was speaking in clear,
deliberate tones, and what she was saying was
sufficiently remarkable:

"Your Majesty mistakes.  I am the Countess
Waldorff-Kielmansegg."

.. _`What she was saying was sufficiently remarkable: "Your Majesty mistakes"`:

.. figure:: images/img-358.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: What she was saying was sufficiently remarkable: "Your Majesty mistakes.  I am the Countess Waldorff-Kielmansegg."

   *What she was saying was sufficiently remarkable:* "*Your Majesty mistakes.  I am the Countess Waldorff-Kielmansegg.*"

Outward decorum is the rule even at the most
amateur court, yet the sensation created by the
announcement Sidonia could feel to her innermost
nerve.  The countenance of Jerome became as
suddenly and threateningly overcast as that of a spoilt
urchin thwarted.  He flung a look of anger at his
Chancellor.  The veins swelled on the crimsoning
forehead of General d'Albignac.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The rumour that old Wellenshausen had a rich
*nièce à marier* had spread very quickly through the
Palace.  D'Albignac remembered her quite well;
it was she who had struck him over the eyes with
her plaits—that added something to the zest with
which the King's Master of the Horse had sought
an interview that morning with the young lady's
guardian.  It was not unsatisfactory in its results.
Ere they parted, indeed, the two thoroughly
understood each other.  The *ex-chouan* was hardly a
match, perhaps, for a Wellenshausen; but then
there was the coming scandal of the annulment!
Her fortune, on the other hand, might not be now
what it had been on her father's death, but it was
considerable.  And, again, times were bad.  The
Burgrave could guarantee, at any rate, that the
broad lands were intact.  One must make up
one's mind to give and take in this world; and
every one, from King downwards, was more or less
in debt at the Court of Jerome—d'Albignac
distinctly more than less.  Besides, a pretty wife
was always a good speculation at Cassel.  And
when d'Albignac saw Jerome fix his future bride
with a well-known look, he knew that she might
prove a very profitable speculation indeed.  A
prolonged course of "*Pompadourettes*" had begun
to satiate the royal palate; here was a wild,
high-born thing that carried her head like a stag, and
looked out upon them all with fire in her eyes.
By the side of the ogling, mincing bit of
plumpness that the Burgrave had provided himself with,
with all her stage tricks and fireworks, even to the
chouan renegade (who was no eclectic) the contrast
was grateful.  And now there was this nonsense
about a previous marriage to spoil all!  What a
pity he had not been allowed quietly to finish off
the impertinent interloper that night in the forest!

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Betty's voice broke shrilly upon the brooding pause:

"Your Majesty," she cried, "has, I believe,
already received information of the true position
of affairs.  The marriage was no marriage.  A
quixotic piece of nonsense, half-hearted, soon
repented, at least on one side.  The deeds of
annulment are actually drawn up.  Count Kielmansegg's
signature—or I am very much mistaken—will be
promptly affixed now, and it is not to be imagined,
as your Majesty will well believe, that my husband's
niece will then withhold hers.  It would be against
all feminine delicacy, all proper pride."

She shot a look of fury at her niece; then she
nudged the Burgrave, who instantly reasseverated
in his deep bass:

"The deed of annulment is drawn up, sire."

Jerome's good humour returned.  He rubbed his
hands.  In spite of all his royal assumption, much
of the exuberant gesture of the Corsican had stuck
to him, to the distaste of his stolid subjects.

"*Il faut aller vite, vite, alors*.  We must make
haste," he averred.

To make haste and enjoy was, indeed, the rule
of his existence.  Now, a Lent of unexampled
rigour seemed inevitably drawing near him, and
all the more vertiginous was his carnival.  So
vertiginous indeed, that, willingly blind though
she was, the Queen, true German daughter of
Würtemberg, had withdrawn from the whirl, giddy
and panting, to take refuge at Napoleonshöhe till
such time as her spouse would come to sober sense
again.

Jerome considered the girl a moment longer
in silence.  That she should flush and pale beneath
his glance, look anger at him from her deep eyes
and then avert her head with an insulted turn of
the neck, all added so much fuel to his easily kindled
flame.  He wished to go quick, quick; but if she
gave him a bit of a chase, so much the better.  And
now he found a smile for Betty, and a gracious
word, ere he passed on, taking the Burgrave by
the arm.  Betty might do very well for an idle hour,
by-and-by, perhaps; but, heavens, how many
Betties had he not known!

The Burgravine's self-esteem was at once too
profound and too sensitive not to realize the
completeness of her failure.  But vanity has its heroines.
None could have guessed, as she paired off merrily
with d'Albignac, the extent of her mortification.
Yet it was something very little short of torture
that she was enduring as she smiled and coquetted
and fanned herself, and babbled her pretty babble.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE SONG OF THE WOODS`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVII


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE SONG OF THE WOODS

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "Das ist ein Klingen und Dröhnen
   |  Bon Pauken und Schalmei'n
   |  Dazwischen schluchzen und stöhnen
   |  Die guten Engelein."
   |                          HEINE.

.. vspace:: 2

Sidonia slipped away alone to a shadowed
window-recess.  Under the insult of her aunt's
words, the insult of Jerome's gaze, pain and anger
had so burned within her as to exclude all other
feelings.  But in the "solitude of the crowd,"
her brain gradually cleared; and, as she reviewed
the situation, a new feeling, a dread unnamed but
overwhelming, began to take possession of her.
With wits naturally alert, and to-night abnormally
stimulated, she began to notice strange things
about her.  She was in danger—in danger of
what, she knew not, but something horrible,
unspeakable.  The looks the King and d'Albignac
had cast upon her, the glance of intelligence they
had then exchanged, her uncle's obsequious haste
to disclaim her marriage, and her aunt's public
affront to her, were as many lightning flashes that
showed the precipice yawning at her feet.  Not
a friend had she in the world to whom she could
turn, save the man who did not love her, and a
poor, wandering musician, now probably far away
on some Thuringian road, playing gay tunes to the
rhythm of his own incurable melancholy.

Unavowed, even to her own heart, these two
days the thought had haunted her that
perhaps—nay, doubtless—Steven would take the
opportunity of meeting her, which the royal function
afforded him this night.  She knew enough of
the ways of Jerome's court already to be aware
that there would be no difficulty in his being present
at the palace concert should he wish it.  The
Upstart loved to parade his magnificence before
strangers; and to a Waldorff-Kielmansegg the palace
doors would be open *à double battants*.

But, search the throng as she might, there was
no sign of the young disdainful head.  The vision
of it, pale and passionate, had lived in her memory
even as she had seen it at their parting.  He would
have towered above these squat Westphalians,
these popinjays of Frenchmen and Corsicans; his
presence would have shone out among them.  Nay,
she would have marked his glance upon her among
a thousand starers.  She knew well, poor Sidonia,
that she would have felt it in every leaping pulse!
Her heart turned faint: had he cared, he would have
come.  Had he cared even only for her honour,
according to those fine words of his yesterday, he must
have been here to watch, to guard, his wife.  She
pressed her hands against her eyeballs, for the
brilliancy of the lights became unbearable.  And
as she stood between the parted curtains in the
recess, the orchestra, half hidden behind a bank
of flowers, at the end of the room, struck up a
gay French air which added to her sense of misery.

Her uncle's words, "the annulment deed is
already drawn out," seemed to jig in her brain
in time to the measure.  It was almost the same
phrase that she herself had flung at Steven—but
now it bore a sound of cruel reality quite novel
to her.  And when a couple of horns took up the
fiddles' theme, they seemed to be blaring to the
world her unutterable shame: "A quixotic piece
of nonsense, half-hearted, soon repented ... at
least, on one side....  Count Kielmansegg's
signature will be quickly affixed...."

How was it possible for any one to be so
abandoned, so helpless?  Even the small furry things
of the forest at home had their holes to which they
could run and hide when they were hurt....  The
forest at home!  With what longing did her soul
yearn to the thought of the green shelter, the
pine-alleys with their long shadows cutting the yellow
glades; of the great, sombre thickets, where not
the most practised huntsman of the *Revier* could
have tracked a startled hind....  Dawn in the
woods, with pipe of birds waking up ... violets,
blinking dew in the moss, and clean, tart breezes
blowing free....  Eventide in the forest: the
mild sun setting at the end of the valley, through
the clearings, and the thrush chanting his last
anthem on the topmost bough of the stone pine....
The scent of the wood-smoke from the forest
house, where Forest-Mother Friedel was preparing
supper for her hungry lads, where all was so
wholesome, so honest, so homelike; where at this
moment—who knows?—Geiger-Hans might be seated in
the ingleglow, his music, lilt of joy and sorrow
mingled, of humour and tenderness, floating out
through the open door into the forest-aisle....
Sidonia's thoughts began to wander from her own
sorrow.  She saw the sunrise in the forest, she felt
the evening peace.

All at once, in her lonely corner, she started
and opened her eyes; she brushed her hands across
her wet lips.  She was dreaming, surely!  And yet
she could swear that the actual thrill of the
vagabond's violin was in the air, that its piercing
sweetness and incomparable depth of sound were ringing
in her ears.

"*Allons voir danser la grande Jeanne*...."  The
orchestra was braying the trivial French tune
no more.  The jigging and twiddling of fiddles,
the mock laughter of hautboys, the infectious
rhythm of flute and drum, had all given place to a
stealing melody, infinitely apart:—yes, even that
mountain song which had been known between her
and the wanderer as "Sidonia's air"!  Surely if
she were not dreaming, then she was mad!

She stood, holding her breath.  The strain
went on.  Above those clamours of laughter and
voices, yes, it was true ... her song, Sidonia's
air, was calling her, unmistakable, insistent, with
all the urgency of a whispered message.

Scarcely aware of what she was doing, she left
her hiding-place and went swiftly through the
indifferent throng towards the call.  With one
exception the men of the orchestra had left their
platform: behind a high group of palms, a
solitary musician plied his bow softly, secretly, as if
rehearsing to himself.

Sidonia pushed some branches apart.  The player
looked up.  Their eyes met.  Then she forgot to
be astonished.  She thought she had known it all
along.  He had come to save her.  True friend!

"I knew it was you," she said.  She laughed
at him through the green palm-stems, her eyes
sparkled.  How could she ever have thought
Geiger-Hans would fail her?  She had need of
him, and of course he had come!

But Geiger-Hans did not smile back.  His face—so
dark under powdered hair, so odd over the
mulberry uniform, bechained and besilvered, of
Jerome's Court Orchestra—was very grave.

"Little Madam Sidonia," he said, "what are
you doing here?"  He spoke sadly; and under
his unconscious fingers his violin gave a sad
accompaniment to the words.

Sidonia looked at him with her innocent gaze.
She was hurt that he should find fault with
her—the Geiger-Onkel who hitherto had always thought
all she did perfect!  Yet she was pleased that he
should dub her "madam" instead of the whilom
"mamzell."

"Do you know what sort of a place this is?"
pursued the fiddler, with ever-increasing severity.
"Do you know with what people you are surrounded?
Have you not heard the common saying, that if
it be doubtful whether an honest woman—save
the unhappy Queen—ever crossed these palace
doors, to a certainty no honest woman ever went
forth from them?  Why are you not with your
husband?—with your husband," he repeated
sharply.

Sidonia, who had hung her head, ashamed—for
in truth she felt the evil about her in every
fibre—reared it on the last words.

"Geiger-Onkel," she cried, "I have no husband,
and you know it.  That is past and done with."  Then
her heart began to beat very fast and the
smarting tears gathered in her eyes.  "From what
motives I was married, I know not; but that it
was all a cheat, I do know.  He does not want me.
He never cared for me.  First it was pity, perhaps,
I think; now it is pride with him.  On such terms
I will be no man's wife.  I will have none of
it—rather death!"

"Oh, death!" said the fiddler, and struck his
strings, "death is the least of evils.  Nay, the
release of a clean, proud soul ... that is joy.
The worst end of life is not death.  Beware, little
madam!"  He had another change of tone: never
had Sidonia been rated with such sternness.  "Why,
what a child you are!  Yet none so childish but
that you know full well this is no child's mischief,
but woman's danger!  With what anxiety am I
here to save you from yourself; at what
trouble! ... Only that the rats are flying already from
the falling house; only that I happened to meet
the second violin of Jerome's orchestra, an
acquaintance of old—a musical rat in full scuttle!—I
might still be racking my brains for means to come
near you!  Here am I this hour, wearing the livery
of the Upstart, not knowing if I shall be given the
necessary minute for speech.  The prisons are
stuffed full to-night, and Jerome always was afraid
of me.  Let but his eye, or that of his spies, turn
this way and recognize me, and it is to the lock-up
with Geiger-Hans!  Oh, then, what of Madam
Sidonia?  Home to your husband!  Home, I say!
You know where to find him.  You toss your head
at me?  It was through pride the angel fell—and
he was Star of the Morning!"

"I don't know what you mean," said Sidonia.

"Nay," said Geiger-Hans; "you know too
much already.  Fie, what a dance will there be
here before the house falls!  Even now Jerome
is plotting his last gratification.  Did not his eye
fall upon you?  Your husband's name, his sacred
Austrian nationality—that is your only safeguard.
And that name you are not to keep long.  You are
to become Madame d'Albignac."

"D'Albignac!" cried Sidonia.  "I—Madame
d'Albignac?  You are mad, Geiger-Onkel!"

But, even as she spoke, she felt a cold sweat upon her.

"And d'Albignac will not be for a long engagement,"
pursued the fiddler, relentlessly.  "The
puppet King has very little time left, as his lieutenant
knows, and he, d'Albignac, will be but too eager to
save something out of the ruins—and, besides,
they are amicably agreed already."

"I don't understand," said Sidonia again.  She
went white, then red, trembled, and caught at the
prickly stem of the palm.

"Take me away with you," she broke out of a
sudden, piteously.  "Save me!"

"I cannot save you," answered the wanderer.
His voice was harsh, yet it faltered.  "No one
can save you but your husband.  Go home to him."

Then he began to tune his fiddle with fury, for
his fellow-players were straggling back.  Some of
them looked curiously at the fine lady who was
speaking to their unknown comrade so familiarly.
Sidonia turned.  Many of the great company were
looking at her, too.  Right across the room she saw
Jerome and his equerry talking together; and, as
they talked, their eyes (or so she fancied) ever and
anon sought her.

Panic seized her.  But, even in panic, Sidonia
was loyal.  She must not speak again to Geiger-Hans,
lest she bring him into deeper danger.  Geiger-Hans
her friend, the wild wanderer, in prison!  In
prison for her!  That would be terrible.

She wheeled round; and then, like a hunted
thing, pushed her way blindly through the throng,
determined to retire to the Burgravine's apartment.
People nudged each other as she passed.  At the
door, an old lady, with white hair and a soft,
pink-and-white face, detained her by the skirt:

"Who are you, my dear, and whither so fast?"

"Oh, please," panted the girl, "let me go!  I am
Sidonia of Kielmansegg."  Even in her agitation
she did not forget the name that was her shield.
"I must go back to my aunt, the Burgravine of
Wellenshausen."

The old lady nodded.  "That is all right," she
said.  "But you seem frightened, child.  There is
nothing to be frightened at.  And if you want any
advice, my dear, or help, you have only to ask for
*Madame la Grande Maréchale de la Cour*—that is
myself.  I am very fond of girls."

Her voice was purring, her smile was comfortable.
As Sidonia moved away, she felt vaguely reassured.
If her own kindred failed her, there might yet be
salvation—salvation other than the inadmissible
humiliation of that return to the man she loved but
who did not love her ... all that Geiger-Hans
(so suddenly, unaccountably unkind!) would devise
for her.

In the Chancellor's apartment she found bustle
and confusion.  A footman staggered past her,
bringing in trunks.  A couple of the new Cassel
maids were running to and fro with folded packets
of lace and silk.

For a second Sidonia stared amazed; then her
heart leaped with sudden joy.  These preparations
for departure could have but one significance: the
Chancellor had got wind of the infamous plot against
his niece, ... by his orders Betty was already
preparing to take her into safety.  Ah, how could she
have doubted her kinsman's sense of family honour?
Had not even his desperate intention, in the matter
of the *oubliette*, shown him a true Wellenshausen?
She had ceased to blame him since she had
understood: rather slay than be dishonoured!  Cassel
was no place for honest women; in his decision to
keep his wife away from it, he had been right, a
thousand times!  And who, better than Sidonia,
knew how his hand had been forced before he
consented to bring them thither?  But, in this
emergency, he would be master once more—and she
was safe.

She burst into the room: yes, there was her aunt,
already engaged in donning a travelling garb, and
ever and anon clapping jewels into their cases
with fervid haste.  Betty looked up and her olive
face grew thunder-dark as she recognized her niece.

"Geiger-Hans has told me all!" cried the-girl
from the door.  "Did you look for me?  How
horrible it all is.  But I shall be ready in a minute!
Where are we going?"

The Burgravine was silent for a second, fixing
her with cold eyes.  Then she spoke, with an acid
composure:

"*I* am going back to Austria.  I have done with
Westphalia and all that belongs to it.  I do not
know what your plans may be, but they concern me
no longer."

She closed the case she held in her hand; the snap
seemed to give final emphasis to her words.  Sidonia
stood, aghast.

"I have done with your Westphalia, my love,"
pursued the Burgravine: "done with your uncle,
my Bluebeard, *en premier lieu*, and with Jerome,
that plebeian, that upstart!"

Intense was the scorn with which she spoke the words.

Apart from this, the irredeemable wound that
her vanity had received to-night from the "little
Corsican," Betty had another reason for her
sudden determination.  Flighty she might be, but she
was a woman of business instincts where her
self-esteem was concerned.  She had met a countryman
of hers at the concert, an elderly diplomat, a man
of standing.  He had breathed certain information
into her little ear....  He had received a courier.
Napoleon had been finally vanquished at Leipzig.
The news had not yet reached Jerome, but it spelt
"the End" this time!  Himself intended to take
the high-road, *sans tambour ni trompette*, the very
next morning.  He was getting on in years, and he
would prefer not to be caught in the *débandade*.
And, as he had parted from her, he had pressed her
hand, and discreetly trusted that she might soon be
paying her relatives in Vienna a visit, and that they
might meet again there.

The obvious hint had not been wasted.  Excellent
M. de Puffendorff—he would be toiling his
elderly, quiet way homewards by the next sunshine.
What was to keep Betty from starting that very
night?  The Burgrave had put it out of his own
power to resent anything she did.  And, whatever
should betide between them, she was sure of a
comfortable pension.  To leave at once was certainly
her best course, since this ludicrous Cassel had
nothing to offer her but the discomfort of a
*révolution pour rire*.  To be involved in the stampede of
the Westphalian court would for ever cover her with
ridicule.  She shuddered as she thought of her escape
from the unpardonable absurdity, from the madness
she had actually contemplated—a *liaison* with
M. Jérome Buonaparte!

As for Wellenshausen, the horses were not foaled
(she swore) that would take her back to that prison.
It was hey for Vienna this time, and in earnest!

She laughed out loud now, as her eye rested
upon Sidonia's bewildered face.  Here, in sooth,
was Fate avenging her with unexpected completeness.

"Fortunately, I have my own people to go to,"
she remarked airily.  "You will, I think, see pretty
things before long in your Cassel.  But, there, you
have a feeling heart, my dear.  You can wipe your
little monarch's tears first, and make up to
M. d'Albignac for the loss of his pension afterwards.
*C'est un beau rôle*, and you have your uncle's blessing
upon it."

D'Albignac again!  An odious, open threat.
Yet, though it inspired horror, Sidonia scarcely
felt fear of its execution.  No one could force her
into such a marriage.  But the other allusion,
because of its very mystery, brought the former
anguished sense of approaching evil upon the
girl; a dread of something unspeakable, and so
secret that she knew not where it might lurk for her,
or at what moment it might seize her.

"You are a wicked woman," she said, dropping
her words slowly.

Betty laughed.  In the forcing-house atmosphere
of Jerome's mock Versailles, it had not required
long for the flowers of Betty's nature to develop in
strange luxuriance.

"*Ecoutez, ma chère*," said she, brazen, "the only
act of virtue I ever perpetrated (and, by the way,
you were my instrument in it) I have regretted
ever since.  Bah! the *oubliette* would have opened
its old jaws in vain, for Kielmansegg and I would
have been far away, on the wings of love, before
my amiable husband had had time to set the ancient
machinery in motion.  Of course you stood
haranguing each other, for poor Steven could not
believe that I meant to fail him.  Anyhow,"
pursued the speaker, with her inimitable logic, "there
is no reason why I should have been killed any more
than you.  I suppose Steven could have nursed me
in his arms all night as safely as he did you.  (Poor
boy, it might have made the time seem shorter to
him.)  So much for virtue....  How you stare,
my love!  It is one comfort that to repent of being
good is so much easier than to repent of being
wicked—and so much more successful, as a rule!
My journey back to Vienna has only been postponed, you see."

Countess Kielmansegg stood stonily.  The
Burgravine, running from place to place like a mouse,
halted now in the middle of the room.  Their
eyes met, and their thoughts flashed at each other.

"And do you go alone?" asked Sidonia.

In her own ears her voice sounded strange; her
heart was gripped as by iron fingers.  Oh, if Betty
would only not laugh like that!

The Burgravine suddenly ceased laughing.  An
idea had struck her.  Why should she go alone,
indeed, if there was a chance of the excellent
company of a well-favoured, rich, and noble youth?
What a magnificent culmination to her dull career
as Burgravine von Wellenshausen!  And what a
double vengeance!  It seemed as if it must have
been predestined, so perfect was it.  It was worth
trying for; and, at any rate, the pleasure of
tormenting Sidonia was worth a fib or two.  Betty laughed
again.

"Who knows?" she answered.  "I may perchance
find an escort.  Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg
will have signed by now a certain precious
document of yours, which I hear they bring him
to-night.  Then it will be '*Hop-la, postilion!*'
with him also, I suppose.—He is my cousin,"
giggled pretty Betty.  "So, if I accept his
protection, it will be perfectly right and proper."

Sidonia gave a quiver like a startled hind.  Then
she turned and fled, even as flies the hind with the
hunt on her traces, and Betty's laugh pursued her
like to the note of the horn.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`A TREACHEROUS HAVEN`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXVIII


.. class:: center medium bold

   A TREACHEROUS HAVEN

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*While some, whose souls the old serpent long had drawn*
   |  *Down ... hissed each at other's ear*
   |  *What shall not be recorded—women they,*
   |  *Women, or what had been those gracious things....*"
   |                                      (*Geraint and Enid*).

.. vspace:: 2

She ran headlong down the passage, and struck
against the burly figure of the Burgrave himself.
The omen of trunks had not yet met him.  He
was in high good humour.  Indeed, he was of
those that have no scent for omens.  His kinglet,
but now, had promised him, for no special reason
that appeared yet, territorial honour and rich
regard, and he had no doubt of the royal power.

"Whither so fast, my maid?" he inquired,
holding her not unkindly.

She clung to him with passion: "O, Uncle Ludo,
take me away from this place!  Take me away
to-night, this hour, at once!  Let us go back to
the dear old Burg!"

"Why, what is this?"  He pushed her from
him, good-humoured, bantering, fuddled with the
royal Sillery.  His sovereign and he had pledged
a bumper to the heiress of Wellenshausen's altered
prospects.  "Na, na," said the Burgrave, and
wagged his head jocosely.  "Somebody would not
be in such a hurry to run away if somebody knew
what her old uncle had planned for her.  Ha, my
dear, that hasty marriage was never more to my
liking than to yours; and now we have a new
husband for you.  Aye, and a place at court!  Hey,
little Sidonia!  Such a fine husband, such a fine
position!"

The girl raised her eyes and desperately scanned
his empurpled countenance.  Again the Burgrave
archly shook his head, and laughter rumbled in
his huge body.—Aye, aye, it was the way of women
to feign coyness, but men knew what was good for
them.  One must humour them from time to time,
but never yield.—She read something implacable
in the stupidity of his eye.  She thought of the old
wild boars in the forest: as well might she try to
appeal to one of those!

He clutched her hands in his hot grasp; a faintness
came over her.

"Aunt Betty is packing," she cried wildly,
inspired by woman's wit.  "Don't you know? ... She
is going back to Austria."

"What?" roared the Burgrave.  He released her
and cantered sidelong down the passage to Betty's
room.

It was blow upon blow.  Sidonia stood, trying
to collect her scattered thoughts.  Suddenly Eliza
came upon her, tripping from the outer door upon
gay sandalled foot.  She flung her shawl from her
head at sight of Sidonia, and her eyes danced under
dishevelled curls.

"We are going to Vienna, mademoiselle," she
announced breathlessly, "and no later than
to-night.  I have just ordered the post-chaise for
madame.  One cannot trust that Kurtz.  It is a
great secret.  Will not mademoiselle come with us?
One is so happy at Vienna!  And mademoiselle
will probably meet the young count quite easily
there—or somebody else just as handsome," added
Eliza.  Her eyes rollicked.

Sidonia looked at the gleeful, unscrupulous,
excited face and recoiled.  Wine flowed as freely
in the menials' hall, on fête nights, at the Palace
of Bellevue as in the salons.  And Eliza was one
who would profit of the occasion.  But now the
Burgrave's voice rose from the inner room with
sudden clangour.  The maid, suddenly sobered,
caught Sidonia's wrist.

"Ah, *ciel*," she cried, "what is passing within
there?  And we, who thought monsieur safe away,
in attendance of the King! ... Why, mademoiselle,
how white you are, and how you tremble!"  Immoral
she might be, like her mistress; but, unlike
her, she was kind.  "Ah, he was not there, then,
to-night," she proceeded with rapid intuition.
"Listen, Mademoiselle Sidonia, since he won't
come, if I were you I should just go to him....
And quick, quick, before he signs.  He can't turn
you away ... even if he wanted it.  *Sapristi*,
but you are still his wife."

A fresh outburst of wrangling voices in Betty's
rooms here drew her curiosity in another direction.

"I must go and be with poor madame," she
exclaimed; the twinkle in her eye, over the delight
of witnessing the marital scene, contrasted oddly
with the pious devotion of her tone.

"*Tu verras que cela va rater encore cette fois*," she
was telling herself philosophically, as she hurried
away.

.. vspace:: 2

"If you want help," had said the soft-voiced
old lady, "ask for *la Grande Maréchale de la Cour*."  If
ever a poor daughter of Eve wanted help, it was
surely Sidonia, standing between the Scylla of
nameless evil and the Charybdis of dire humiliation.

A refuge for the night, the loan of a small sum,
to enable her to gain the Forest House—for
Sidonia was still kept like a child and had no purse
of her own—surely, it was small assistance that
she required.  She paused but to catch up a
travelling cloak in her room; then, seeking the outer
corridor again, bade the first valet on her way
guide her to the apartment of Madame la Grande
Maréchale.  She would wait, she planned, for the
great lady's return from festivity.  There must be
safety where such gentle old age presided; and good
counsel; perchance even an escort, forthcoming on
the morrow for her journey back to the Thuringian
forest.

The Maréchale's apartments were on the ground
floor, and Sidonia thought fortune favoured her
when the porter informed her that "Her Excellency"
herself had that instant entered.  Still more
at ease felt she when the pretty old lady received
her with open arms and cooing words of welcome:

"*Ma belle enfant*, this is well!  I had presentiments.
I expected you.  That great bear of a
Chancellor, your uncle, and the little minx of a
wife he has ... (linnet-head, wasp-temper,
ferret-heart—I know the kind!  One look at her, *ma
chère*, it was enough): that was no place for you.
Nay, you wanted a friend, and it is well you came
to me, very well."  She nodded; and the bird-of-paradise
plume in her gauzy turban quivered over
her white curls.

Sidonia had to struggle with rising tears; but
they were tears of gratitude, of relief.  Madame
la Maréchale patted her on the shoulder, stooped to
embrace her; there was about her a delicate
atmosphere of Parma powder and amber-scented laces.

"It is good, my child," she murmured, "to have
a friend at court—some one who knows the ways
of it.  *Ma petite*, you and I, we'll do great things
together!  Nay, but we will talk no more now.
A little supper would not come amiss.  Hey, what
have you eaten to-day?"

She rang a silver bell, and a smart *soubrette*
appeared, who stared with bold, black eyes at the
visitor.

"Bettine, my good girl," said the suave lady,
"take ... mademoiselle into my chamber, and
arrange me her coiffure before supper.—We must
be beautiful," she added, turning pleasantly again
to Sidonia, "for we may have a guest."

"This way, mademoiselle," said Bettine, briefly.

As she led Sidonia across the threshold of a
violet-scented, violet-hued bower, the lady's dulcet tones
called after her—

"And then, Bettine, return to me here.  I have
to speed thee with a little note."

"It is well, madame," answered the French girl.
(There was no "fashion" in Westphalia without
Gallic handmaids.)

Sidonia looked around, and then at the girl's
hard face as she closed the door.  It seemed to her
as if a bog quivered under her feet where she had
thought to find firm footing.  Her ears had been
first disagreeably struck by the word "mademoiselle,"
and the emphasis that the old lady had placed on it.
*Mademoiselle!*—to her who had so clearly introduced
herself as the wife of Count Kielmansegg.
The reference to an expected visitor next filled her
with inchoate suspicion, which the order concerning
a note intensified.  She now read an insolent
meaning in Bettine's eyes as they appraised her.

"Whom does your mistress expect to supper?"
she asked, with sharpness.

The girl shrugged her shoulders.  "Madame la
Maréchale's supper-parties are very amusing," she
replied familiarly in her fluent but strangely accented
German.  "Little suppers—very amusing, very
discreet.  Mademoiselle will amuse herself to-night
... oh, she may be sure she will amuse herself
*royally*!"  She paused on the word with an odious
smile, then pursued familiarly: "The great thing
is that mademoiselle should be beautiful.  Voyons,
we must off with this cloak.  Will mademoiselle
sit down?  Oh, how lovely is mademoiselle's
figure! but her hair—mademoiselle forgives?—her hair
done in despite of all sense!"

Sidonia had felt it before she had the certainty into
what a trap she had walked.  Now she knew; and
with the clearness of her conviction, she also knew
what she had to do.  She sat down silently, as bidden;
and, while the distasteful touch of the Maréchale's
maid played in her hair, made a steady inventory
of the room.  There was no door but the one
leading back into the boudoir; great windows were
curtained away behind the dressing-table.

"Oh, how much better is mademoiselle like this!"
cried Bettine, falling back to admire her work.

Sidonia gave her own reflection an anxious
scrutiny.  One word, one look, one sign of weakness,
and her hastily formed plan might be frustrated....
Beyond that possibility was the horror upon
which she could not look, ... upon which she would
never look!  For, at the worst, there was still a
refuge.  The fiddler's words—"The release of a
clean, proud soul—that is joy!" came to her ever
and again as upon a strain of his own music, and ever
with fresh strength and comfort.

"Oh, how beautiful is mademoiselle!" cried
Bettine again, this time with genuine enthusiasm.
"Positively, it is flames she has in her glance, and
no rouge could beat me the colour of those cheeks."

"Bettine...!" rose the Maréchale's silver
voice from the next room; and Sidonia, flinging
herself into her part with the instinct of the defenceless,
smiled gaily on the girl as she bade her go.

"Mademoiselle will not forget 'tis I who has
adorned her—when she is in power?" insinuated
the Maréchale's maid.

"I shall not forget," said Sidonia between her
teeth.  She seized the handle of the door as it
closed between them: fortunately the Maréchale
liked discreet hinges, and Sidonia was able, noiselessly,
to draw it the necessary fraction of an inch
apart that she might listen.  There was not a tremor
in her hands; she held her breath lest a rustle of
silk should betray her.  The strong spirit rises to
the great situation.

There was whispering within.  The ear of the
heiress of Wellenshausen had been trained in forest
glades, full of the small sounds of lesser lives.  She
caught a word here, a word there.

"... The note ... in his Majesty's own
hands....  Thou hast well understood, my girl?"

"Yes, Excellence."

Bettine's whisper carried far.  But now the
Maréchale made a softer communication, of which
the listener could gather no import, but Bettine's
answer again gave the dreadful clue.  It was emitted
with a laugh.  "Oh, no; your Excellency is wrong—we
are not so scared as all that, believe me!"

A dulcet titter joined the note of the servant's
mirth.

"At any rate, the little bird is in the cage," said
the Maréchale, as she laughed.

It was more than enough.  Sidonia closed the
door.  She found a bolt which moved willingly
under her fingers.  Then a frenzy of haste came
upon her.  The cloak over her pale dress—the
hood over Bettine's fine coiffure!  And now the
window!  People who shut up a little bird in a
cage should make sure that the bars are close
enough to keep it safe; for the bird has wings, and
its heart beats towards freedom, towards the mate,
towards the nest!  The Maréchale's apartments were
on the *rez-de-chaussée*; but had they been on the
top-most floor, that window would yet have been the way
of Sidonia's flight.

Oh, how deliriously the chill, pure air beat upon
her face after that evil hothouse atmosphere!  By
the stillness and the fragrance, by the soft earth
under her feet, she knew she had alighted into the
palace garden.  It was a murky night, and the rain
was falling; the distant lights of the park gates
glimmered fitfully.

Sidonia had no idea whither to turn; but the
intention of her heart was undeviating as the flight
of the homing bird.  There was only one refuge
for her, only one place for her—her husband's
arms.  Her road was clear: she was going to Steven,
and, after that, nothing would ever matter again.

She set off running in the direction of the
gateway lamps.  In a minute her light ball-slippers
were soaked with wet, clogged with mud; her
narrow skirts clung against her silk stockings; now
she brushed against low bushes, now nearly fell.
She could run no more; she must grope her way.

But presently her eyes became more accustomed
to the dimness.  A double row of marble statues,
mounting ghostly guard on each side of the great
alley, showed white through the trees.  She knew
her bearings now.  Yonder fantastic group of lights
in front was the Orangerie, illumined in honour of
the royal fête.  Fortunately for her, the skies
to-night were not such as to tempt guests to al fresco
rambling.  Further, to the left, twinkled the lamps
of the town, reflected through the branches in the
waters of the Kleine-Fulda, which ran parallel to
the Avenue, as she knew.

From the Friedrichsthor—the great gate of the
palace grounds—came distant sounds of voices,
laughter and calls.  Through that issue she dared
hardly venture.  Even as she stood, hesitating, the
rumble of an approaching carriage grew out of the
night.  She turned and fled in the opposite
direction—there must be minor exits from the park,
surely, and, so long as she was within the precincts
of the palace, terror would dog her steps.

Her feet once on the firm sand of the alley, she
girded up her impeding skirts.  The dim stone
figures on each side seemed, to her excited fancy,
to move their heads and bend over to stare in wonder,
to bid her haste away, wise in old knowledge of the
guilty secrets of such a court.  Somehow, these
silent figures were company to her and she missed
their presence when she plunged into the first
turning which, she trusted, would lead towards the
town.  Yet, the darkness of the trees closing about
her brought a new sense of protection.  She was not
of those who feel the night-horror of the woods;
the trees were her friends from childhood; they
knew her and she them.  The softness and damp
smell of the autumn leaves beneath her tread were
grateful to her senses.  The sound of the Kleine-Fulda
on her stony bed guided her way to a narrow
Chinese bridge over the ribbon of water.  Soon she
had to advance more slowly once again and feel her
way: here the ground began to ascend, the trees to
give place to shrubs; the path doubled and twisted
suddenly.  A blank wall sprang at her out of the
gloom.  She drew a quick breath.  An illumined
window-pane blinked:—it was the hoped-for gate
of her escape, could she now but elude the sentry's
challenge or carry herself with such assurance as to
be allowed a passage.

But in Jerome's kingdom it was the unexpected
that usually happened.  By the gate stood, indeed,
the inevitable sentry-box; but as, with her heart
beating in her throat, Sidonia approached tiptoe
with endless precautions, behold, it was empty!
The gate itself was open.  From within the
guardian's lodge, behind that blinking window, came a
merry burst of song and laughter.  Clearly it was
"like master like man."  If Jerome thought that
the enjoyment of the hour was the most urgent
business of existence, so did his servants, including his
park sentries.  There was no doubt of the
wholeheartedness of the entertainment in the side lodge
of the royal garden that night.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`THE HOMING BIRD`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXIX


.. class:: center medium bold

   THE HOMING BIRD

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "*Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper,*
   |  *Thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee....*"
   |                             (*The Taming of the Shrew*).

.. vspace:: 2

The street into which she stepped was ill-lighted,
and contained but a few poor houses facing the park
walls.  It seemed to lead downwards to the open
country and upwards to the heart of the town.

Lifting her torn and draggled skirts as neatly as
she could, and pulling the folds of her hood and
cloak more closely about her, she started with
decision on the upward way.  Here she must go sedately,
though the hammering of her own pulses seemed
like the footsteps of pursuers and a mad impulse,
ever and anon, seized her to run.  The gloom of the
park had been infinitely less terrible than the town
with its staring belated wayfarers, its circles of light
under the hanging oil lamps, its nauseous strips of
darkness where the miserable houses seemed to
touch each other above her head, and where gutters
mingled in noisomeness down the middle of the
street.  She looked back on the solitude, with its
clean pine breath, as a haven of shelter.  But she
tramped unfalteringly the maze of dirty streets,
only pausing twice to inquire the way.

The first time she was kindly answered by the
poor faded woman she had stopped....  The
Hôtel de l'Aigle Impérial was in the Koenig's Platz.
To reach it one must take to the left, then to the
right, till one crossed the Friedrich's Platz; then,
keeping along the Obere Koenig's Gasse, one
would find herself by the Hotel....  The woman
wrapped her thin shawl closer about her shoulders,
smiled vaguely in response to Sidonia's thanks and
sped on—God knows to what miserable home.
Trying to follow her instructions, Sidonia, chilled,
fatigued and bewildered, soon began to doubt again,
and requested the help of the next reputable-looking
being of her sex on her path.  This was a stout,
red-faced dame, followed by a serving wench with
a lantern; some excellent business woman on the
way to fetch her man from the beerhouse, doubtless.
She measured Sidonia from head to foot, caught
the gleam of the muddied satin of her skirts, of the
pearls at her throat, and suddenly, instead of
replying to the meek question, began to rate her in round
dialect for a trollop and a strumpet: "*Du, mein
Jott*, and she so young, too!"

Most of the epithets were meaningless to Sidonia;
but voice and eye were not.  And when the virtuous
dame proceeded to threats of night-watch and lock-up,
the girl fairly took to her heels and ran blindly.

When labouring heart and panting lungs forced
a halt upon her, she found herself in the very region
of her seeking.  By the wide space around her, the
better lighting, the statue dominating in the centre
of the tree-planted square, this could be no other
than the Friedrich's Platz.  But even as she paused
to draw a quieter breath, before proceeding again,
a new alarm was upon her.

Reeling as they advanced, linked together arm
in arm, roaring out a chorus, the real tune of which
was a matter of conjecture, three fantastic figures
turned into the square from a side street, and
suddenly confronted her.  Students they were
proclaimed in every long lock of hair, every extravagant
item of attire; in the high boots and the spurs,
the scarves, the clanking rapiers.

The Platz, with its staid burgherlike respectability,
was filled with tipsy clamour.  Judging by the
colours profusely displayed and the bellowed words of
the chorus, a bellicose patriotism was the night's
inspiration.  But, not content with wine-jug and
harmony, the singers were not proof against lighter
relaxation, as became evident upon their catching
sight of the girl under the shadow of the trees.

"A prize, a prize!" shouted he who seemed to
be the leader of the three, a red-headed Hercules.
He took a lurching run in front of his companions,
seized Sidonia playfully by the shoulders, and pulled
her under the light of the nearest lamp.

The furious gesture with which she flung him off
revealed again the ill-timed splendour of her attire.
For a moment the three students stood staring
open-mouthed.  Then he who seemed the soberest of the
party—he had a sleek impertinent face and an
air of jocose solemnity—broke into cackling
laughter:

"Positively, a bird from the tyrant's aviary," he
cried.  "A foreign, French bird!  By all the laws
of civilized warfare, a prize of the captor! ... Matam!"
he pursued; in a vile French, bowed
extravagantly, seized Sidonia's hand and tucked it
against his side.  "Matam, fly to the guardianship
of the Law."

.. _`"Positively, a bird from the tyrant's aviary," he cried.  "A foreign, French bird!"`:

.. figure:: images/img-394.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "Positively, a bird from the tyrant's aviary," he cried.  "A foreign, French bird!  By all the laws of civilized warfare, a prize of the captor!"

   "*Positively, a bird from the tyrant's aviary,*" *he cried.*  "*A foreign, French bird!  By all the laws of civilized warfare, a prize of the captor!*"

"Nay, take refuge within the bosom of the Church,"
interrupted the third, intoning the words: "Raise
your glances heavenwards!"  He shot out a black
arm and lifted her chin with two dank fingers
reeking of canaster.

Sidonia, who had been paralyzed with fright and
the sense of her own helplessness, here once more
struck herself free—this time with a wild cry for
the watch.  Her cry was answered by shouts and
cat-calls; and now, with a mighty clatter of spurred
boots, a fresh detachment of *Studiosi* joined the
advance party.  As in a nightmare, Sidonia found
herself the centre of a struggling drunken laughing
babel, which presently resolved itself into a circle
that wheeled, stamping and jingling in time to a
ribald chorus.

One of the dancers suddenly broke the ring; a
flaring bearded face was thrust forward.

"A kiss, matamazell, and long live Westphalia!"

At this last insult the terror of the girl gave place
to overpowering anger.  She struck the coarse face
so valiant a blow with her open palm, that, already
none too steadily balanced, the red-haired giant
staggered and would have fallen but for an officious
comrade.  A howl of laughter rose from the rest of
the gang.

But as Sidonia, tossing back her hood, broke into
vigorous German, silence succeeded to clamour.
The sight of that head, so extraordinarily young,
so golden in the lamp-shine, struck the group with
overwhelming surprise.  And upon surprise came
shame, as the meaning of the words that fell
indignantly from Sidonia's lips, pierced to the fuddled
brains.  Wild, dissipated boys they were, but not
vicious at the core of their German hearts.

Here was a girl, a lady—more, a country-woman
of their own; and, in their own tongue, she was
telling them what she thought of them.  She had
always been so proud of being a German, and now
she was ashamed, ashamed to think that Germans
could so behave to a woman!  Students, too,
"nobles of learning," patriots, they called themselves,
and to offer such a spectacle to the *Welsch*!  She
had fled from the palace down there because she had
thought it not the right place for a good German
woman: now she knew she would have been safer
among the French....

Here a groan escaped a youth less tipsy or more
susceptible than the rest, the quickest at any rate to
catch the galling significance of this reproach.  It
was echoed here and there from the listening circle,
by sounds of remorse and dismay.  The ring melted
apart; one or two caps were lifted, there was a
shuffling of feet, as the most abashed slunk away.
She stood, a flaming spot on each cheek, head held
high, still flashing scorn and fury upon the remainder,
when, with the perpetual irony of fate, the help that
would have been so valuable to her a few minutes
ago, and now unneeded, arrived upon the scene.

A burly watchman, bearing a lantern in one hand,
and in the other a halbert with which he struck the
pavement at rhythmic intervals, came striding upon
them.

"Come, sirs, come, sirs, this is no manner of
behaviour!  No scandal in the streets, I beg.  Honest
folk should be in bed this hour!  Disperse, disperse,
*meine Herren*!  And as for the *Mädel* there——"

He flung the light upon Sidonia's face and stopped,
he also astounded.  But she had caught in his words
the music of a well-beloved and familiar accent.

"*Ach, Gott, Freund!*" she cried, in his own speech,
flinging out both hands towards him, "do you come
from my Thuringia?  Then I am safe!  By these
Westphalians to-night, I, an unprotected woman,
have been cruelly insulted."

Thuringian wits are not specially quick; but
Thuringian hearts are sound, as Sidonia knew, and
the appeal of the home language went straight to the
watchman's.  He flung himself before the girl, and
turned threateningly upon her molesters, raising
his halbert in a fashion which in any other
circumstances would have been fiercely resented by
students as against their academic privileges.

But to-night the situation was hardly one that
admitted of academic haughtiness.  The over-cheerful
band scattered like night birds, here and
there a shamefaced youth lifting his ridiculous
head-gear before vanishing.

Sidonia and her countryman were alone.  Then
he, a stout veteran, grey-whiskered, with a comfortable
fatherly presence, turned a shrewd, kind, yet
grave scrutiny upon her:

"Na, child!" he exclaimed; "and what, in the
name of God, brings you in the streets at this hour?"

She told him the bare truth, down to her name:
how she had left the palace to seek the protection
of her husband, who was at an inn in the town.

The old man nodded two or three times
comprehendingly.  He knew the Chancellor, as small
people know the great; knew Wellenshausen, as
who did not know the noble name on the marches
of Thuringia; knew that a Thuringian lady was
wise to leave that place yonder—with a jerk of his
lantern.  But why came she apart from her husband
at all—how had he left her there?

"It was against his will; but I was angry with
him," said Sidonia, ingenuously.  She looked up at
the old face, like a child, and tears welled into her
eyes.

The good man gave a chuckle.  A great lady was
the daughter of Wellenshausen, the greatest lady
in his own country; but to him, in very truth,
to-night only a foolish child under his guardianship.
He shook his head at her and began to chide in
homely fashion.

Aye, aye, it was very wrong for a woman to
disobey her husband.  All good German women were
submissive to their lords.  Now she saw what dangers
surrounded rebellious wives!  She was right to go
back to him.  She must be humble and ask forgiveness.
Aye, aye, he would guide her to the hotel
door.  Certainly!  Was it likely indeed that he
would leave her till he had seen her safe within?

He shifted his lantern into the hand that held
the halbert, and gladly Sidonia felt his rough fingers
close on her wrist.  She went beside him, weak now
and shaken, and listened in meekness to his homily.
By-and-by, finding her in such good disposition, he
endeavoured to beguile the way with more general
topics.  The Thuringian dialect became broader
and broader as he foretold the clean-out of honest
Germany from the *Welsch* intruders; the downfall
of the monkey tyrant, and the approaching good
days when true-minded folk would come by their
own again in Westphalia.  Eh, it would not be long,
he added mysteriously.  Na, he knew what he knew.
It was a good thing she was out of the French palace,
for more reasons than one—aye, aye.

Sidonia could have cried for joy when, emerging
upon the little round Koenig's Platz, she saw the
gilt eagle, illumined by a red lamp, shine out in
sanguinary grandeur from the front of the old
German house.  On the doorstep she once again
offered both her hands to the watchman; he shook
them cordially.

"Thank you, thank you!" she said.  "Oh, I
wish I had something to give you to remember me
by! ... I have not any money."  She made a
hesitating gesture towards a ring on her finger.
He interrupted her:

"Let that alone, child—I shall not forget you.
Good night ... and be good!"

He knocked for her; stood firmly planted on the
pavement, watching her entrance and smiling into
his whiskers.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



"I am the Countess Kielmansegg," said Sidonia
to the sleepy porter.  "Show me to the count's room."

Her tone was imperious.  The man stared sullenly
a moment, then swallowed a yawn; he had
but just been roused from a comfortable nap to
take up the night work, and the only perception
awake in him was an acute sense of injury.  Without
a word, he turned and led the way up the square,
dark stairs to the second floor.  Before Steven's
door his slouch came to a halt; he lifted a hand to
knock, but she arrested him.

"Is that the room?  You may go," she said.

She waited till his heavy foot had tramped the
whole downward way, then, with a sudden
overwhelming feeling that if she hesitated now her
courage would after all fail her, she turned the
handle of the door and went quickly in.

The room was deserted.  As she realized this,
Sidonia's heart seemed to empty itself of the hopes,
the yearnings, even the terror, which had so filled it
these last hours.  All became a blank, a void.
Never for a moment had she contemplated the
possibility of Steven's absence.  She closed the door
and sank dully on the first chair.  Presently the
sense of shelter, the warmth about her, the serenity
of the silence and solitude, began to soothe her into
comfort.  She lifted her head and looked around.
The room was lighted by an oil lamp on the table;
fire was lapping in the china stove; sundry chattels
of Steven's were scattered about; his valise gaped,
still open, in a corner.  No fear, then, but that he
would return to-night.

The vague fragrance of the lavender scent he
liked brought his presence suddenly and vividly to
her.  The little bride melted into tears.  She was
worn out; her aching feet stung her as she held
them against the warm porcelain of the stove.  Her
whole being seemed melted, her spirit broken; but
there was a balm sweeter than triumph in this hour
of her woman's surrender.  All Betty's words, her
gibes and threats, even what had seemed to be
actual proofs of Steven's deceit, passed from her
mind, as if washed away by these healing tears.
There are moments when the soul can see beyond facts.

Presently, in the general relaxation of mind and
body, the exhaustion consequent on the fatigues and
emotions of the day overcame her.  She sank into
vague brief sleeps, to awake, her heart beating in
her throat with reminiscences of past alarms.  Thus
she started at length from a vivid dream that the
Burgrave, Betty, d'Albignac and Jerome had
tracked her and were carrying her back to the palace.
She came to full consciousness of solitude, but could
not still the wild fear at her heart....  Betty's
cunning was as a sleuth-hound's—Betty would well
know where to trace her....  Sidonia had given
her name to the porter.  It would be bootless to
lock the door, for one thrust of the Burgrave's
shoulder would dispose of sounder defences.  They
would be dragging her away; Steven would return
and never know! ... She rose, shaking in every
limb, and looked desperately round.

Then a thought sprang into her brain, quaint
and childish, yet to her an inspiration of angels.
The great old German bed in the alcove was hung
with curtains; she would creep into its shelter and
draw the yellow damask folds close around her.
There would she be safe as a bird in her nest in the
leaves—in a room within a room.  And, hidden,
she could listen for her husband's step.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`DAWN MUSIC`:

.. class:: center large bold

   CHAPTER XXX


.. class:: center medium bold

   DAWN MUSIC

.. vspace:: 2

..

   |  "Wir fuhren allein im dunkeln
   |  Postwagen die ganze nacht;
   |  Wir ruhten einander am Herzen,
   |  Wir haben gescherzt und gelacht...
   |  Doch als es morgen tagte,
   |  Mein kind, wie staunten wir!
   |  Denn zwischen uns sass Amor,
   |  Der blinde Passagier...."
   |                          HEINE.

.. vspace:: 2

The previous day, after his interview with Sidonia,
Steven had spent most of his time searching for the
fiddler.  At first he had hunted for him, on the
impulse of his anger, more for the mere relief of
upbraiding him and of railing to some one upon the
perversity of his bride, than for the sake of counsel.
But later, as temper gave place to more serious
thought, and the young man's better nature asserted
itself, he longed for his friend that he might discuss
with him the means of meeting this most untoward
trick of fate, of safeguarding the headstrong child
they both loved from the danger of her surroundings.

It was chiefly the old quarters of the town that
saw his disconsolate roaming.  There was not a
homely wine-garden, not a poor beer-house, where
he did not stop and inquire.  Had he been in the
mood to notice such things, he might have been
struck by the strange atmosphere of ferment brooding
everywhere, especially in the purlieus beyond
the river.  There was a buzz about Cassel, like the
hum of the swarming hive; as yet inarticulate, but
ominous of wrath.  It was perhaps, however, this
very unconsciousness that preserved him from some
danger on his vain quest.  Once or twice he was
followed; in most places he was looked at askance.
One truculent host met his question with another:
what did he want of Geiger-Hans?  But the
simplicity of the answer disarmed suspicion:

"He is my friend; I want his help."

The master of "The Great Tun" became immediately
pleasant and conversational.—No, Geiger-Hans
had not been about here for many weeks,
more was the pity; he was wanted.

Disheartened and tired out, at last Steven
returned to his hotel; but not to rest.  He indited a
letter to the Burgrave, demanding his wife in the
name of the law of every country, and ending up
with a scarcely veiled threat as to his power of making
himself unpleasant to the Lord of Wellenshausen.
Then, after having devoted some special attention
to his attire, he again sought the palace gates.  When
he had left his letter with the porter, together with a
gratuity so noble that it could not fail to buy the
promptitude of delivery he desired, he demanded
audience of one of the chamberlains.

On receipt of the fine coroneted card, the
distinguished traveller was courteously entertained by
Jerome's official, who volunteered to send him a
formal invitation to the court concert on the morrow.
Steven accepted with alacrity, and the urbane
chamberlain further promised personally to introduce
Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg to his royal master on
the occasion.  They parted with civilities on both
sides, and Steven, feeling that the way was
unexpectedly smoothed before him, passed the evening
in more cheerful mood.  Some instinct, rather than
any set reason, had kept him from mentioning his
connection with the Lord of Wellenshausen.

The next day he had the trivial, yet by no means
easy, task to accomplish of procuring fitting
garments for a court function.  A misgiving at the
non-appearance of the promised invitation began to
press upon him as the day waned; and though he
rated himself for being as nervous as a woman, and
found a thousand good reasons to explain away the
omission, it was with a boding heart that he set out,
full early, for the palace.  The Burgrave had treated
his letter with contemptuous silence.  Was it
possible that there was a connection here with the
non-fulfilment of the chamberlain's offered civility?  If
so, Steven had mightily blundered.

The uninvited guest had planned to march boldly
into the palace without further ado.  But,
somewhat to his surprise, and much to his discomfiture,
there was an unusual and severe watch at Jerome's
doors to-night.  He was checked, questioned, his
card was demanded of him, and on the representation
that he had been verbally invited by the chamberlain,
he was sent from pillar to post, and finally
landed in a small ante-room, at the door of which a
couple of lackeys presently stationed themselves
as if to keep watch upon him.  With burning
indignation and an inexpressible sense of helplessness,
he heard the music strike up far away; heard the
gay passage of luckier guests without; in the intervals,
the whispers and muffled laughter of the servants.

After prolonged delay, a majestic individual,
with a gilt chain round his neck, entered and
informed *M. le Comte* that his excellency the
chamberlain deeply regretted his error of the previous
day, but that the lists had already been closed.  It
had been deemed that, not receiving the card, *M. le
Comte* would have fully understood.

Steven rose to his feet, turned a white face and
blazing eyes on the official; the amazing slight to
himself, conveyed by the flimsy and improbable
excuse, sank into insignificance before the sense of
the trickery that must have prompted it.

"Fetch me ink and paper," he demanded; "the
matter does not end here."

With that suavity which, opposed to passion,
becomes impertinence, the old man bowed and
disappeared.  Shortly afterwards the same porter
whom Steven had interviewed the day before sidled
into the room, bearing the required writing materials.
As he bent across the young man, he whispered in
friendly tones, one eye warily upon the watchers at
the door:

"The gracious one would do well to be gone
at his best speed.  Should he give more trouble he
may be arrested; odd orders are given at the palace
to-night, please his graciousness."

It did not need long reflection to show Steven
the wisdom of taking the hint.  He had a sudden
maddening vision of himself imprisoned, helpless,
and Sidonia unprotected here.  No one attempted
to stop him; he passed out, unmolested, into the wet
night.  Long and restlessly he roamed the park, and
then the streets, revolving endless and impossible
plans of action.  No plan, no solution, reached, he at
last took his moody way back to the Friedrich's Platz.

Perhaps Geiger-Hans might have been inspired
of their need!  Perhaps, faint hope, he might find
him waiting at the Aigle Imperial.

A very different personality sat in expectation
of his return, feeding patience with cognac in the
public room.  It was General d'Albignac, the
King's Master of the Horse.

At sight of Steven this worthy sprang to his feet
and saluted with a great air of cordiality, running
over the Austrian's name and title, and announcing
his own in French, all glib affability.

"We have met before, sir," sternly said Steven,
who was in fine humour for destruction.

"I think not," answered the equerry.  His eyes
had a red glitter which denied his smile.  "I think
not, *M. le Comte*.  Nay, I am positive it is the first
time I have had the pleasure of addressing you."

Steven shrugged his shoulders.

"Have it so," he said contemptuously, and glanced
at the cheek against which his hand had once
exulted.  "After all, it is you who had the more
striking cause to remember.—What do you want with
me?" he added, with British bluntness.

D'Albignac's smile was stiff over his white teeth;
his fingers twitched upon the bundle of papers he
had pulled out of his sabretasche.  But the Master
of the Horse had no illusions as to the length of
Jerome's power; and, on the other hand, that
document, once properly endorsed, meant his own future
prosperity.  It was worth a minute's urbanity
towards one whom otherwise it would have been
relief to hew down.

"I have business with you—business of delicacy,
sir; I trust, easily despatched.  A short
private conversation between us."  He cast a meaning
look at the French officers playing piquet and
tric-trac in their proximity.

"I can conceive no business," said Steven,
"between us, sir, but one.  Nevertheless, come to my
room.  I can promise you that my answer will be
of quick despatch."

So he walked up the ill-lit stairs, with d'Albignac
clanking at his heels, and pushed his way into his
bed chamber before him—the creature should not
be treated otherwise than as the dog he was.

"Shut the door," said he, "and say your say."

Again d'Albignac successfully fought his own fury.

"A matter of delicacy, as I said, my dear sir....
*Mademoiselle de Wellenshausen* is, you are aware,
now at the palace?"

"Are you speaking of Countess Waldorff-Kielmansegg?"
put in Steven, threatening.

"Immaterial, now!" deprecated the other.  "The
marriage, I understand, is regretted on both sides.
Your signature here, and we see to the rest."

Steven listened with outward calmness.

"We?" echoed he.  "What have you to say to
this, Colonel d'Albignac?"

It is not always by weight of hand or stroke of
sword that man can have his sweetest vengeance
upon man.  D'Albignac, as he replied, knew that he
was at last paying off scores:

"The King," he said—"my King, His Majesty
Jerome, takes an interest in the lady."

Jerome...!  This then explained all, explained
the non-appearance of the card, the hostile
reception at the palace.  Sidonia, the child who had
lain in his arms, and Jerome!  Steven felt suddenly
as if the clasps of his cloak were strangling him.  He
tore them apart, falling back two or three steps,
that he might fling the burden on the bed.  After
that first flaming revelation there came to him a
deadly calmness.  He did not in the least know
what he was about to do; it was quite possible that
he might have to execute justice upon Jerome's
dog before reaching Jerome himself; in any case, he
must have his limbs free.  The grating voice went on:

"It is my sovereign's desire that the young heiress
of Wellenshausen should espouse a member of his
own household.  And his Majesty's choice has
fallen upon your servant here.  I may say the
charming creature herself is not unwilling."

In that dangerous white mood of passion which
can simulate highest composure, Steven heard
without wincing.—Mechanically he gathered his
cloak into a bundle and laid his hand on the curtain
of his bed.—Then he stood silent, as if stricken,
staring through the narrow opening of the damask
folds, his back turned to his enemy.

D'Albignac rubbed his hands and chuckled.
Was not all this better than the most sounding
return slap in the face?  Better even than feeling
the easy steel run through flesh, grate against bone?

"And when my royal master," he pursued, "has
a notion in his head, *mille tonnerres*, he is no more to
be kept back than his Imperial brother from victory.
Oh, he is of an impetuosity; *d'une fougue, d'une
verve!* ... more eager even than myself, the
lucky bridegroom, to have these papers executed.
'If you wait till to-morrow, d'Albignac, my friend,'
he said to me, 'the count may be gone, and that
may mean delay....  Intolerable!'  Hence, *M. le
Comte*, my unceremonious visit, and at this undue
hour—already excused, no doubt!  Your signature,
please, here.  I can be witness.  One stroke of the
pen, and you make three people happy ... not
to speak of yourself!"

The cloak glided from Count Kielmansegg's
arm on to the floor.  He closed the curtains
delicately and faced his visitor.

"If you will leave the deed, General," said he,
"I will peruse it to-night, and you can have it back
in the morning."

He took the paper with marked courtesy from
d'Albignac's hand.  His face was paler than
before, but there was a singular smile upon it, a
singular light in the eyes.  The youth's composure
completely deceived and imposed upon d'Albignac, who,
indeed, was none of the subtle-witted.

"An annulment is easier to secure than a divorce,
and makes less of a scandal, does it not?" he said,
with an insufferable air of intelligence.

"I am quite of your opinion," answered Steven.

"*Sacrebleu*, and the girl is the greatest heiress
in Westphalia!  What a morgue these Austrians
have! ... The merest hint, it is enough with
them!" thought the General as he drew a noisy
breath of laughter and relief.  "Enchanted," he went
on aloud, "enchanted, my young friend, to find you so
reasonable.  I see you take me——  Ah, yes; these
are sad times; and the soldier of fortune (such as I
am) cannot afford to be squeamish.  Hey! the King
sups with Countess Kielmansegg....  Nay, shall
we not say ... *Mademoiselle de Wellenshausen?*
... to-night, at this very moment!"

Steven's smile flashed broadly a second.  "He
would grin on the rack," thought d'Albignac.

"*A demain*, General," said Steven, "but not
before noon, please."

His tone was quiet, even soft.  He advanced
without hurry towards his visitor, tapped him
lightly on the shoulder and pointed to the door.

The two stood looking, eye into eye; and the
fighting brute rose again clamouring in d'Albignac's
huge body.  But something inscrutable in Steven's
glance, its fire, almost its gaiety, made him quail.
He felt that here he was more than matched, and
broke ground with a clumsy bow—failure for irony.
His great boots resounded down the wooden stairs.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Steven parted the curtains and stood looking
down upon the sleeping figure.

So the bird had come home, after all!  Sidonia
lay like the weary child she was, wrapped in so
profound a slumber, the slumber of exhaustion, that
even d'Albignac's noisy presence had failed to
disturb her.  Her slender arms were outflung, her
hands faintly curled in an attitude of utter
relaxation.  Through parted lips her breath came as
placidly as an infant's.  The yellow hair sprang in
tangled masses round the little pale face.  Never
had her extreme youth so utterly betrayed itself.
But how wan she seemed; how worn out through
all the placidity of her repose!  The narrow satin
skirts were frayed and sodden; one little silk-clad
foot out-thrust, shoeless, was stained with
mud—aye, and streaked with blood.

His child-wife...!

Over what rough ways had she come to him?
Skirting what chasm, blacker, deeper, more relentless
than the Burgrave's *oubliette*!  Slowly, hardly
wotting what he did, Steven went down on his knees
beside her, unconsciously still clutching d'Albignac's
paper.  Over and above the old protective tenderness,
an infinite tide of love flooded his whole being.—His
child-wife!

The watchman was chanting the tale of the first
morning hour, when, close upon a peremptory knock
at the door, Geiger-Hans broke hurriedly into the
room.  He halted, though his mission was urgent,
at sight of Steven's countenance.

.. _`His child-wife! ... The watchman was chanting the tale of the first morning hour`:

.. figure:: images/img-414.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: His child-wife...!  The watchman was chanting the tale of the first morning hour, when, close upon a peremptory knock, Geiger-Hans broke into the room.

   *His child-wife...!  The watchman was chanting the tale of the first morning hour, when, close upon a peremptory knock, Geiger-Hans broke into the room.*

"Aha, all is well, then," he cried sharply, as the
young man rose from his knees and came forward
to meet him, and his own haggard features were
suddenly illumined as by a reflection of the joy
marked in the other's eyes.  And then, it was no
surprise to him that Sidonia, waking, should
presently thrust out her rosy face between the curtains:
he had already known, through Steven's eyes, that
the children he loved were together.

"Steven!" cried Sidonia.

"Ah, Sidonia...!"

He ran to her.  And, regardless of Geiger-Hans,
they clasped each other, the deed of annulment
dropping between them.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



"Now, children!" said Geiger-Hans, briskly—he
was laughing, but the tears, which few had ever
seen before in them, glittered in his eyes—"you
will have plenty of time by and by; now it is haste,
haste, haste!  I have a carriage for you waiting
below.  Ha, little Madame Sidonia, laugh with me!
It is the Burgravine's own carriage—nothing less!
Nay, German wives do not so easily escape their
husbands, even at Jerome's court.  My Lady
Burgravine makes no journeying to-night, or ever, if
I may prophesy, away from her lord!  A *berline*
and four good posthorses ... 'twere pity to waste
them!  Quick, children!  For I tell you night may
not be over ere the storm break on this town!"

Sidonia had little preparation to make.  She put
on her cloak.  From the depths of her hood, her
happy eyes looked inquiringly at the fiddler.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Where?" replied the wanderer, "where, but to
the forest, to the green arms that will hold your love
so safely, so discreetly?  To the quiet and peace of
the forest, before you shape your way together,
children, into the great noisy world.  To the
simplicity of the forest, you, young magnate, that you
may for ever afterwards have a memory of love as the
breath of nature itself to haunt you in your grandeur.
To the Forest House, you, little madam, whither I
once brought a youth who was missing his springtime
and had lost his way, that he might find them both."

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



The fiddler sat on the box, and the horses went
roundly.  The rain had given place to a heavy autumnal
mist, soaking, all encompassing.  It muffled every
sound, the drumming of the hoofs in the mud, the roll
of the wheels, the very clack of the whip.  But he
drove with extraordinary sureness and speed in spite
of the gloom, and the lamps of the *berline* soon cast
their flashes out upon the flying ghosts of the poplars
on the desert country road.  It seemed as if the night,
the whole world, connived at the lovers' flight,
gathered round them in screening mystery and silence.

Sidonia lay on her husband's shoulder, half
dreaming again in happy weariness, lulled by the
monotonous movement and rhythm.  It was from a profound
sleep that she started suddenly with a faint cry:

"What was that?"—A dull boom was still
droning in her ears.

"That was cannon," said Steven.

At this moment the carriage drew up, and they
could hear the fiddler calling to them.  Steven put
his head out of the window and saw the dark face
with its sardonic smile, lit up by the carriage-lamp,
looking down at him.

"Did you mark that, comrade?—and again!
Ha, there goes little brother Jerome's little throne!
Hey, what a scuttle there be yonder now!  My
children, you have not run away together one hour
too soon.  That will no doubt be Csernischeff and
his Cossacks; they have made good use of the first
autumn fog.  It is in with them by the Leipzig
gate, no doubt—of ill omen!  And few of our
honest Westphalians will care to turn out to-night
and be spitted or shot for the sweet eyes of Jerome.
It is the end this time—meet that it should be our
friends the Huns that do the scavenging....
You remember them, Count Steven, the carrion
crows on the trail...?"

Sidonia pulled her husband back that she might
look out in her turn.  The red glow of some distant
conflagration was beginning to be faintly perceptible
behind them in the pall of fog.  She had heard the
fiddler's explanation, and rejoiced in her young,
unforgiving heart.  Yet already Cassel and its
terrors were fading from her mind.  She sniffed the
wet air as a doe might; and while the fiddler gazed
down at her, an air of tender amusement driving
the scorn from his face, she strained her ear as though
to catch some secret sounds.

"Yes, child," said he, nodding at her; "yes, it
is the woods you smell, the trees you hear.  Yonder
is the inn of The Three Ways, and presently we shall
turn into the forest road."

Sidonia sank back beside Steven, a smile upon
her lips.  Then they both became aware that they
could see each other in a strange glimmer that was
scarcely yet light.  Without, the mist was now white,
torn ever and anon by swaying streaks of faint blue.

"It is the new day," said she under her breath.

"The day that is ours," said Steven.  And as
they kissed, the horses' hoofs struck upon the ascent
and the great trees sprang up about them.

.. vspace:: 2

By sunset they reached the Forest House.

And when the Forest-Mother beheld them, she
clapped her hands and laughed, and called on
heaven and all the saints, and then kissed them all
three—a freedom she never could recall afterwards
without amazement—and, finally, she flung her
blue embroidered apron over her head and wept
aloud in gladness.

But nothing could hamper the preparation of
the finest supper that ever the Forest House had seen;
and about it there drew together such a happy
company as even its happy walls had never held before.

By and by they sat round the great hearth.  Some
one asked Geiger-Hans for music.  But he shook
his head.  And spells of silence ever more frequent
and prolonged began to fall between the talking
and laughing; the great peace of the forest was
drawing about the lovers and holding them close
even as he had prophesied.  As the light of the fire
played upon the musician's face it showed a great
serenity.  It was a blessed evening.

"You will always live with us, dear Geiger-Hans,"
said Sidonia over and over again.  And each time
he made no answer, but smiled as if content.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 1



Now, in the wonderful dawn of the forest, Steven
awoke; and though his heart was as a bird's in
spring for happiness, yet was there a sense of trouble,
of anxiety, upon him which had seemed woven into
his dreams.

They had left their window open to the
moonlight, and it had flooded in upon them, but the
dawn mystery without held aloof, veiled from sight
like an Eastern bride.  Thin grey vapours hung as a
curtain before the open casement.  Steven sat up,
his pulses beating fast.  He strained his ear;
heard flutter of leaves, drip of dew, chirp of
awakening birds ... then a faint strain of music that
seemed as if it passed through a dream.  The
melody grew more distinct, though still subdued;
it rose, softly plaintive; it was joyous and yet sad,
secret and yet an appeal.  And through it all there
was a rhythm as of restless feet:—it was a melody
of love, of farewell, of wandering.  Fainter it grew,
and was lost once more in the whispers of the woods.
At last it was silent, yet still it seemed to sing.

A sudden pain gripped Steven's heart.  He knew
that Geiger-Hans had gone out of their lives for ever.

.. _`The End`:

.. figure:: images/img-421.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: The End

   *The End*

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center

   The End

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center white-space-pre-line

   \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*      \*

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large bold

   THE PRIDE OF JENNICO

.. class:: center medium

   *Being a Memoir of Captain Basil Jennico*

.. class:: center medium

   By AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

YOUNG APRIL

.. class:: center medium 

By EGERTON CASTLE

.. class:: center medium 

Author of "The Pride of Jennico"

.. class:: center medium 

*Illustrated by A. B. Wenzell*

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

HEART'S DESIRE

.. class:: center medium white-space-pre-line

THE STORY OF A CONTENTED TOWN, CERTAIN PECULIAR
CITIZENS, AND TWO FORTUNATE LOVERS

.. class:: center medium 

By EMERSON HOUGH

.. class:: center medium 

Author of "The Mississippi Bubble," etc., etc.

.. class:: center medium 

*With Illustrations by F. B. Masters*

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

YOLANDA

.. class:: center medium 

MAID OF BURGUNDY

.. class:: center medium 

By CHARLES MAJOR

.. class:: center medium white-space-pre-line

Author of "Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall,"
"When Knighthood was in Flower," etc.

.. class:: center medium 

*Illustrated by Charlotte Weber Ditzler*

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

LADY BALTIMORE

.. class:: center medium 

By OWEN WISTER

.. class:: center medium 

Author of "The Virginian," etc., etc.

.. class:: center medium 

*With Numerous Illustrations*

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large bold

FAIR MARGARET

.. class:: center medium 

A PORTRAIT

.. class:: center medium 

By F. MARION CRAWFORD

.. class:: center medium white-space-pre-line

Author of "Saracinesca," "Whosoever Shall Offend,"
"In the Palace of the King," etc., etc.

.. class:: center medium 

*With six full-page Illustrations by Horace T. Carpenter*

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large medium 

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

.. class:: center medium 

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center large medium 

By Agnes & Egerton Castle

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

ROSE OF THE WORLD
FRENCH NAN
THE STAR DREAMER
THE PRIDE OF JENNICO
THE SECRET ORCHARD
THE BATH COMEDY
INCOMPARABLE BELLAIRS
THE HOUSE OF ROMANCE

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: center large medium 

By Egerton Castle

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

YOUNG APRIL
THE LIGHT OF SCARTHEY
CONSEQUENCES
MARSH FIELD the OBSERVER
LA BELLA AND OTHERS

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

SCHOOLS AND MASTERS OF FENCE
ENGLISH BOOK-PLATES
THE JERNINGHAM LETTERS
LE ROMAN DU PRINCE OTHON

.. vspace:: 6

.. pgfooter::
