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.
* * * * *
"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.
*CHAPTER IV*
*PARTING OF THE WAYS*
"_Come like shadows, so depart._"
{_Macbeth_}.
"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.
* * * * *
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!"
* * * * *
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 'Napoleonshoehe,' 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 frere Jerome._"
"'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 Caesar ... 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.
*CHAPTER V*
*THE INVITATION OF THE ROAD*
"_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.
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.