"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.
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.
* * * * *
The Burgrave's jaunty Jaeger 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 Jaeger 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 Jaeger 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 Jaeger 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.
*CHAPTER XII*
*THE BURGRAVE'S FAREWELL*
"_--What means this, my lord?_
_--Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief._"
(_Hamlet_).
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 Jaeger 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 Heloise_? How you stare,
wench! Have you fallen in love, perhaps, that you do your work so ill
to-day?"
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.
* * * * *
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.