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: _Ca ira, Ca 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 "_Ca 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!
* * * * *
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.
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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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.
* * * * *
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."
*CHAPTER IX*
*HOME-COMING*
"_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_).
"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 Jaeger,
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 mediaeval 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.
* * * * *
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.