AT BURTSCHEID.
'In five hours--in four--in two,' and so on he reckoned, 'I shall see
her again--my darling! my darling!'
At last the wished-for time came when he was to set forth on that
walk which--he fondly, ardently, and tenderly hoped--was to end in
_her_ presence; but, as he walked down the leafless avenue from the
city, he felt his heart become tremulous, almost sick with anxiety
and fear, lest she should be unable to meet him, even after all the
months of separation undergone; yet his was a heart that never
quailed, even when he faced that battery in the wood--a battery that
was not of cannon, but mitrailleuses!
Anon as he proceeded, something of Ernestine's high and strange
enthusiasm gathered in his breast.
Even if he were fated never to wed her, he felt that she was the one
great passion of his life, a worship almost spiritualized, and that
beyond the trammels of this material world, he would follow her,
faithful and unchanged, into that to come.
Then he almost smiled to think how German the tone of his mind was
becoming.
The evening sky was cloudless, and wore a kind of pale violet tint,
amid which the stars sparkled out brilliantly.
The trees of the avenue between the city and Burtscheid were covered
with rimy frost, which made their branches seem to coruscate and
glitter in myriad prisms. Frost was on the pathway; it shone on the
stems and twigs, on the stalks and blades of the wayside plants; snow
covered all the district, yet the air was far from being cold.
At last the old church of Burtscheid rose before him again. In
another minute or two, he would have clasped her to his breast, where
he had clasped her last--at the altar-rail--when those sad and sweet
and solemn vows were interchanged.
In that moment the campaign in Alsace and Lorraine, danger, duty,
wound, and suffering, were all forgotten; nothing was in his mind but
the intense happiness of the event to come.
He was conscious enough of the tombs and cypresses, the pillars and
obelisks, standing grimly up from the snow-clad graves; of the dusky
outlines of various distant buildings; of red lights streaming from
windows out upon the gloom; and he could see the pale silver crescent
of the new moon peeping sharply up above the black outline of the
Schloss of Frankenburg.
He heard the faint whisper of the ivy leaves on the old wall; but all
as one might do in a dream.'
He threw away the end of his cigar, and thought,
'I should not have been smoking when coming to meet _her_.'
No britzka or other carriage stood before the gate. Heinrich was not
there as escort; neither was the old butler or any other servant
there in attendance.
So, as the evening was clear and fine, she must have come alone to
meet him, that they might have the joy of walking back to the Schloss
together!
He entered the church. It was gaily decorated for the coming
Christmas-eve.
No one was in the church, and Charlie's heart began at once to sink,
when there was a sound behind him, and coming down two steps, from a
door that he had not observed before, was his own Ernestine.
'Carl! Carl! It is thee! Thee, at last!' she exclaimed, in a
piercing voice, and, with innocent self-abandonment and a tenderness
that was irrepressible, but peculiarly her own, she flung herself
into his arms, as on that night in the boudoir.
She was dressed as if for a ball or some great festival; but Carl
remembered that this was Christmas-time, always a season of gaiety at
Frankenburg as elsewhere.
Her dress was white silk, covered with waves of the finest white
lace. A great veil of the latter material enveloped her head and
shoulders.
She wanted but a white wreath to make her look like a lovely bride,
and Charlie's heart throbbed with pride and joy to think that she was
his own.
He thought she looked pale and tired. It might be--nay, doubtless,
it must be--that the months of past anxiety had told upon her system
as on his own.
Yet her eyes had all the tender purity of an angel's in them, though
when she became excited there came over them a strange glitter, a
restless flashing, a sparkling animation, that contrasted strongly
with the languor of her form and actions; but happily there was no
fever flush on her cheek, which was pale--paler than of old, as
Charlie thought.
Long and silent was their embrace ere they spoke in broken accents of
all they had mutually undergone; and, while speaking, her head
nestling as it used to do on Charlie's neck, she shuddered sometimes,
for she seemed to be sorely chilled by the damp cold atmosphere of
the old church.
'Are all well at the Schloss?' asked Charlie suddenly, after a pause,
as the last evening's conversation recurred to him.
'All! Thank Heaven!' replied Ernestine.
'And your father, the Herr Graf?'
'Well, too.'
Charlie was puzzled. He must have been in a dream, or have
misunderstood the remarks of the two barons.
'Is Heinrich with the regiment?' he asked.
'No,' she replied, 'dear Heinrich is at the Schloss, and this morning
put your letter into my hand; and then, after, to tease or please me,
in my bosom. See, it is there now!' she added, in the most engaging
manner.
'You found no difficulty in coming to meet me, dearest?'
'None.'
'How fortunate--how happy we are!'
'My poor Carl!'
'Why poor? I feel to-night the happiest man in Germany.'
'I was resolved to meet you, at all risks, my darling. A faith
plighted--a promise made is holy, Carl--holy to God and man. I
promised to be here, Carl, in a dream that I had of you; and by a
strange chance I have been permitted to come--to be here, to see you,
feel your strong but tender arm round me once more. Oh, Carl, kiss
me once again, as you did on that day in the Hoch Munster when first
you said you loved me.'
'Ernestine, what do you mean?' asked Charlie, eyeing her with some
anxiety, and impressed with a strange fear by the solemnity of her
manner.
'I belong no longer to myself.'
'To whom, then? Heavens!' he added, starting, 'you have not become
the wife of that man!'
'Who?'
'Baron Grünthal.'
'Oh, no; how could you think of such a thing for a moment, Carl?' she
said, with a bitter smile, while looking down and playing with a ring
he had given her in other days.
'Then to whom do you belong?' he asked, fondly.
'My love--to you!'
She put up her little face tenderly to his, and then looked away,
with the weary, wistful expression of those who have long lived in
some world of their own, and can never seem to see out beyond the
present.
'We were betrothed together for life and death, Carl.'
'Were--_are_, you mean, Ernestine.'
'Yes, beloved Carl; but time presses--alas! I fear that I must leave
you now.'
'But to meet again----'
'Very soon.'
'I have brought these for you from Lorraine. This is the bullet that
struck me down, and this cross is a trophy of the war.'
'How pretty--nay, it is beautiful and interesting, too,' she
exclaimed, with something of her old gleeful way, as he clasped round
her slender throat a gold necklet he had procured in Aix, and now the
white enamelled cross hung thereat.
She shuddered when she looked at the chassepot ball and took it in
her hand.
'And this actually pierced you, my Carl?'
'Nearly through and through, love. For five days it was in
unpleasant proximity to my lungs.'
'It is indeed a relic,' said she, while placing it in the bosom of
her dress.
'So--so,' said she, sadly, disengaging herself from his arms, 'our
love has been sanctified by danger and death.'
'Great Heavens!' thought Carl, 'sorrow has turned her brain!'
'It has _not_,' she said; 'do not think so.'
'What is not? I did not speak,' said Carl.
'No, but you thought; and I know what you thought, and there is no
living grace or glory like a love so sanctified as ours, Carl.'
He regarded her with a bewilderment not unmixed with alarm.
There was a strange wild and weird beauty in her pale face--a
radiance in her eyes, a brightness all over her such as Charlie had
never before witnessed.
Whence did it come? From the altar-lights?
They were too dim.
What did it mean? Was it her natural beauty only, magnified by the
force of his imagination, and enhanced by his great love for her?
Somehow Charlie was perplexed and startled by her, amid all the
transport and joy of the time.
Suddenly there was a sound of wheels and horses' hoofs without, then
of several feet ringing on the hard and frozen churchyard path.
Ernestine started, and exclaimed in a voice husky, as it seemed, with
alarm--
'They are coming--my father and that dreadful Baron! I must leave
you, beloved Carl--but only for a time; we shall meet again where
even they can separate us no more!'
She turned, and flying like a phantom, hurried through the little
door by which she had entered the church; and Charlie Pierrepont,
feeling certain that their interview had been discovered--that they
had come in pursuit of her in ire and indignation, and that there
would be a scene which he was most anxious to avoid--looked hastily
round the little church for a place of concealment.
There was none; so he resolved to make the best of it, and turned to
the doorway just as the portly old Count of Frankenburg, the Baron
Grünthal, limping as usual with gout, and Heinrich entered the church
together.
CONCLUSION.
They were all in evening costume--that sombre attire in which the
modern gentleman may attend a funeral by day, and a ball by night,
without change; and they all looked pale, harassed, and grave.
'Oh, Herr Graf von Frankenburg, if you have a human heart----'
Charlie was beginning, anxious to propitiate the father of her he
loved so dearly, when the Count, waving his hand, interrupted him,
and said:
'Herr Lieutenant, I can well afford to forgive the past now, and your
rash love for my daughter.'
'Herr Graf, I thank you--I thank you!' exclaimed Charlie, with warmth
and gratitude; for he expected high words, anger, and fierce
reproaches.
'Carl, my dear friend,' said Heinrich, taking his hand kindly in both
of his, while his eyes filled with genuine emotion, 'you here!--you
here after all!'
'You got my letter and gave it to her--to Ernestine?'
'To her--yes; but alas! Carl, it came too late.'
'Too late!--too late! How?'
'Do you not know? have you not heard? Poor Carl! poor Carl!' said
Heinrich, in a voice full of sympathy.
'What do you mean?' asked Charlie, in great perplexity.
'He means, Mein Herr,' said the Count, in a broken voice, 'that our
beloved Ernestine died at noon yesterday.'
Charlie passed a hand across his brow, and looked wildly in their
faces, as if doubting their sanity or his own.
'Died!' he repeated mechanically.
'It is incomprehensible your being here,' said the Count, in a still
more broken voice, and few could have seen that old man weeping
unmoved, 'as her last words were, "Meet me at Burtscheid--at
Burtscheid, dearest Carl."'
'And I _have_ met her, seen her, spoken with her not two minutes
since.'
'My poor friend,' said Heinrich, 'grief, or your wound, has turned
your brain.'
'What madness is this?' asked Charlie, with a kind of bitter laugh in
his voice, as he felt in no humour for jesting. 'Herr Graf, Herr
Baron, Heinrich, my friend, Ernestine has been here with me, in this
lonely church, for fully two hours!'
'And _spoken_ with you?' said the Count, in an excited tone. 'Oh, if
it should be that she still lives!'
'Lives!--great Heaven! Herr Graf--she was here with me, and I gave
her a French cross with the bullet that wounded me.'
'He raves!' said the Baron Grunthal, with anger in his tone.
'She is there--in that room off the church.'
'In that room sure enough. It is the Dead Chamber,' said the Count,
approaching the door.
'She fled there for concealment on hearing your approach.'
'Man,' said the old Count, pausing, 'are you not mad to tell me that
she is there now, and yet was here but a minute ago?'
'As I have Heaven to answer to--she was!'
'Follow me, then.'
On entering the room, Charlie Pierrepont reeled, and would have
fallen had not Heinrich supported him.
We scarcely know how to write of the episode that follows, and can
but tell the tale as it was told by those who were cognisant of it.
In a purple velvet coffin, mounted with silver, and supported on
trestles, the lid being open, lay Ernestine, dressed as we have
described her--dead, stone-dead, cold and pale as marble, her lips a
pale blue streak, her long eyelashes closed for ever.
Dead, beyond a doubt, was the girl he had clasped in his arms as a
living being, but a few minutes before living and full of volition
and life, love and energy; the lips he had kissed closed thus for
ever; the hands he had caressed, snow-white now, disposed upon her
bosom, the upper one holding the cross he had given her!
'Dead! What miracle of heaven; what magic of hell is here!' he
exclaimed, as he staggered to the side of the coffin, pale as the
girl who lay in it, the bead-like drops oozing from his temples as he
grasped the locks above them. 'Speak! oh, speak, Heinrich!'
How terribly now came back to memory some of the strange things
Ernestine had said to him, and more than all, those dying words of
the French captain in the Chateau de Colombey, which sounded like
something between a prophecy and a curse!
'Compose yourself, Carl,' said Heinrich, full of pity.
'My letter to her--written after she was dead,' said Charles, in a
voice like a whisper--'she--she----'
'I placed it in her coffin ere she was brought here from the
Schloss,' said Heinrich, who was now weeping freely; 'it is there
now--and heavens, father! she _has_ round her neck the cross of which
Carl spoke.'
There are many things but imperfectly known in 'our philosophy,' and
certainly this seemed one of them.
'She died talking of you--not raving--the poor angel,' said the old
Count, as he bent fondly over the coffined girl, 'but smiling
sweetly, and saying earnestly, again and, again, that she would meet
you at Burtscheid.'
* * * * *
The gloomy half-lighted chamber in which this scene took place, and
where the dead girl lay, looking so sweetly placid in her coffin, was
one of those, where, in conformity with the police regulations of
Germany in general, the bodies of persons deceased are placed within
twelve hours after death--there to await interment.
In many places, more particularly at Frankfort, to guard against the
chances of burial in cases of suspended animation, the fingers of the
dead are placed in the loops of a bell-rope, attached to an alarm
clock, which is fixed in the apartment of the attendant appointed to
be on the watch.
The least pulsation in the body would give the alarm, when medical
aid would instantly be called in.
Ernestine had a watcher in an adjoining room! but that worthy was
found in the enjoyment of a profound slumber, and so had neither
heard nor seen anything.
This strange story found its way into the _Aix Gazette_ and the
_Extra Blatt_.
Some averred that Charlie Pierrepont, on discovering her body in the
chamber of Death, had gone mad and had imagined the whole interview
in the church; others, that it was really a case of suspended
animation, and that she had recovered for a time, and actually kept
her tryst; but the former idea was the predominant one.
Certain it is that for many weeks after the event Charlie seemed to
hover between life and death, sanity and insanity, at the Grand
Monarque; and when he rejoined the Thuringianas before the walls of
Paris, he had become so haggard, grey-haired, and old-looking, that
his former comrades scarcely recognised him, so much had he undergone
by a fever of the mind, rather than of the body.
When these dreadful events were soothed by time, though not forgotten
at Frankenburg, and when the summer flowers were blooming over
Charlie's grave--a grave which he found under the guns of Mont
Valerien--the young Graf Heinrich was married to his cousin Herminia
by the Herr Pastor Von Puffenvörtz, in the church of Burtscheid,
when, as if no sorrow had preceded the ceremony, all indeed went
merrily as a 'marriage bell.'
THE END.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD AND LONDON.