Eliza's black eyes glinted joyfully: the Burgrave! Not only fresh
discomfiture for the mistress; but, for the maid, unexpected comfort:
Kurtz the Jaeger 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.
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?"
*CHAPTER X*
*THE BURGRAVE'S WELCOME*
"_I tempted his blood and his flesh,_
_Hid in roses my mesh,_
_Choicest cates and the flagon's best spilth...._"
ROBERT BROWNING.
"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.
* * * * *
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:
"HONOURED SIR,
"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?
"CHARLES LUDOVIC,
"Burgrave of Wellenshausen."
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 Jaeger 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.
* * * * *
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
Jaeger? 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 Jaeger, 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.
* * * * *
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.
*CHAPTER XI*
*TANGLED TALES*
"_One lie needs seven to wait upon it._"
(_Wisdom of Nations_).
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
mediaeval 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....