protecting action of man for woman, he was aware that the slender thing
in his arms could not be the Burgravine. But at the same instant they
were sliding; and before he could do aught but throw himself backwards
to avoid crushing her, they were shot with giddy swiftness down a steep
incline. With a shock, his feet struck level ground; he lay dazed and
breathless, her weight across his breast. Stars danced before his eyes.
Vaguely, as from a great distance, he heard overhead the echo of a
laugh; then a thud, and once more the grinding sound, as of heavy, rusty
bars. It was the laugh that brought him to his senses; too often,
lately, had that laugh rung in his ears!
She raised herself in his arms.
"Are you hurt?" he cried as he lay.
"No," she answered quickly. "Don't get up!" He knew by the sudden
change in her voice that she had flung the muffling hood from her head.
"Don't get up! don't stir! I must find out where we are."
He recognized now the young, clear tones. It was Sidonia, but he was
past surprise. One thing alone stood clear out of his confusion:
whatever it might be that had brought this about, he was glad, to the
heart of him he was glad, it was not Countess Betty.
He felt the girl struggle to her feet, heard her grope with her hands
above his head. There came a moment of great stillness: he knew she was
listening. Unconsciously he hearkened too, and then there grew upon
them, out of the solid darkness, the cry of waters, rising up with a
sort of cavernous echo as from a great depth. And, with a flash, his
mind leaped back to that fearsome race of brown river that swirled so
strangely from the foot of the Burg-crag, just above the village bridge.
He felt his hair bristle. But when she spoke again, the sound of her
voice, with its extraordinary accent of decision, roused him like a
stimulant.
"We are safe if we but keep where we are," she said. "You may sit up if
you like, but do not attempt to stand." And then she added: "You do not
know the place; I do."
She sat down beside him, and in the dark he felt her close presence once
more with gladness.
"What is this place, then?" he asked, unconsciously whispering.
She answered him with a simplicity which almost made him laugh:
"It is the old _oubliette_."
Vague cruel memories of mediaeval romance awoke in his brain.
_Oubliette_! The word itself was suggestive, and not agreeably so.
"An _oubliette_ is----?" he asked.
"The secret trap by which the castellan of old quietly got rid of
enemies or of inconvenient prisoners. You see," she proceeded, with her
astounding composure, "through this tower, in former days, was the
sally-port--there used to be no other way; and were any one whose
existence interfered with the views of the Lord of Wellenshausen,
passing out or in, it was easy to set the machinery in motion, with the
result----" She broke off.
"Of landing him in our enviable situation," he finished pettishly.
"Not at all," retorted she. "It is the mercy of heaven for us that time
and storm have been at work in these forgotten regions and provided us
with so opportune a ledge----"
"What would have happened else?" he asked in a tone that strove to
emulate her coolness.
"Sit quietly and listen."
He felt her reach for a stone, felt the tension of her vigorous young
body as she flung it. He heard the missile strike the rock sharply,
rebound and then rebound again. Then, after a silence, rose a faint
sound, the ghost of a splash, the gulp of greedy, far-off waters,
infinitely sinister. He shuddered.
"No one knows how deep it is," said she, "nor what lies hidden there. I
can tell you, when I first discovered this pit, it terrified me. Old
Martin had told me of its legends, but I had laughed at him. One day,
some months ago, I scrambled in from the outside, for the old tower is
falling in ruin, and explored the place. But I had no notion the old
trap-stone in the sally-port still worked. Now I remember," she cried
with sudden sharpness, "seeing Uncle Ludo wandering about the place this
evening----" She stopped suddenly, struck by a new thought.
"But," exclaimed the young man, "in heaven's name, what have I done,
to...?" And then his uneasy conscience whipped him silent.
"It is a horrible trick," resumed the girl, now with a passionate ring
in her voice, "you, his guest----"
An indignant sob caught her in the throat. "You his guest!" she
repeated. "Oh, whatever he thought of you, he should have remembered
that! I can never forgive him."
The guest who had meditated, however unwillingly, the betrayal of his
host, blushed painfully under the cloak of blackness. He heard her
swallow her tears and knew that she clenched her hands. After a while
she went on more quietly:
"How wise it was of Aunt Betty to tell you to go away! And, oh, how
glad I am that she sent me instead of coming herself to bid you
'Good-bye.'"
Steven opened his mouth, and then closed it again dumbly.
"You would both have been killed," she went on, sinking her voice.
"Uncle Ludovic must be mad--mad with his ridiculous jealousy ... and
he's been drinking overmuch. Ah, dear Lord! If I had not been with
you----"
She gave a shudder. He, on his side, had no words. He was silent in
shame before the exquisite innocence; silent in admiration before the
self-forgetting courage of this slip of a creature, who thought nothing
of her own danger. "Here, indeed, is good blood--here is the spirit of
race!" he thought, touched in his most sensitive chord.
Presently, however, the humour of the grim situation struck him, and he
laughed. There was Thistledown Betty, incapable even of acting up to
her own unfaithfulness, snug in her bower, doubtless; and there was the
outraged husband, gloating over his mediaeval vengeance: Steven wished
he could be present at their next conjugal meeting! Sidonia, childlike,
echoed his laugh softly beside him in the dark. It struck him serious
on the instant. The morrow seemed a terribly long way off.
"And now," said he, "what are we to do?"
"Hey, good sir!" said she, "nothing but wait. We shall not die this
time, Herr von Kielmansegg; for my poor uncle"--she laughed in scorn and
triumph--"he does not know, I warrant, that there is a way out of this
old death-trap, since there is a way in. A way other than by the hidden
lake and the barque of ancient Charon. But, till the daylight comes,
sir----"
"Daylight!" he exclaimed, and knew not whether he were glad or sorry at
the whole night's prospect.
"Till daylight comes, we must take patience here. For one false step
would send our bodies to join the bones of the forgotten enemies of
Wellenshausen."
"So, then----"
"Then, I should say, the best thing we can do is ... to go to sleep."
Again he was mute, pierced to the innermost fibre of his manliness. It
was as if her child-heart had been suddenly revealed to him--its
trustfulness, its simplicity, its courage.
"If you move a little to the right, carefully," she said, after a pause,
"you will find it softer, I think. The earth has grown up there, and
there are, I remember, ferns. You will really not be too
uncomfortable."
The girl was positively doing the honours of the family _oubliette_!
There came a tender smile to his lips, and almost a mist of tenderness
to his eyes.
"But you," said he, "good fairy, guardian angel, do you never think of
yourself?--Will you lean against me?" he went on, timidly.
He gathered her to him. What a slight, warm thing she was! She
trembled as he passed his arms round her, and he instantly desisted.
"Would you rather not?"
"I don't know," she whispered. He thought there was a quaver as of
tears catching her breath.
All the chivalry in him leaped to her service. He drew back. With some
difficulty he unwound his heavy cloak from himself. He was stiff and
bruised, and the uncertainty of his balance in the blackness gave him an
eerie sensation as of precipices yawning for him on every side.
"What are you doing?" she cried severely.
"Let me put this over you," he pleaded. "And then you can roll up your
own mantle and make a pillow of it--against me, thus."
"But you--but you----"
She struggled against his covering hands so impetuously that he caught
her with a grip of alarm. And the sound of the rock crumbling away and
leaping into the gulf gave its significant warning.
"You must keep quiet," said he, for the first time asserting the
leadership. "And you must let me hold you and cover you. It is my duty
to serve you, Mademoiselle Sidonia, my right to protect you. Sleep if
you can. You will be safe, for I shall watch."
She remained motionless a minute and then submitted without a word. He
placed his arm about her; her head drooped to his shoulder; there fell
silence. In time he felt her rigidity relax, heard her quick breath
grow calm and regular.
"You are afraid no more," he said gently.
"I don't think I was afraid," she answered him. Her voice had grown
lazy; and, subtly, by the tone of it, he knew that she smiled. He felt
ineffably proud of her confidence, ineffably protective towards her.
[Illustration: _Meanwhile, up in his chamber, the Burgrave sat in sodden
brooding._]
*CHAPTER XIII*
*THE OUBLIETTE*
"Furcht bich nicht, du liebes Kindchen,
Bor der boesen Geister Macht!
Tag und Nacht, du liebes Kindchen,
Halten Englein bei dir Wacht!"
HEINE.
The minutes dropped slowly into the hour.
* * * * *
Something raised a blood-curdling screech that went sobbing and echoing
through the cavern. If he had not held her, he would have started in
frank alarm. She only gave a drowsy laugh.
"'Tis Barbarossa, the old owl," said she.
And again fell the silence, filled for him with whirling thoughts.
How right had this Geiger-Hans been in his warning! How merciful had
Fate been to save him from his own folly! Were he now rolling along the
wet Imperial road with the Burgrave's wife, he would have had,
doubtless, to clasp her much as he clasped Sidonia. Precarious as it
was, his present situation was infinitely preferable. He felt like a
father, holding his pretty child, all warm with tenderness; not like a
dishonest, cold lover with the woman he cannot love.
Sidonia's light breathing grew fainter and more rhythmic. She was
asleep. He had longed, but hardly dared to hope, that she could sleep.
In his heart he went down on his knees to her and thanked her, stirred
by the eternal parent instinct, perhaps, but also by another emotion,
tenderer still and more vital--a reverent bending of his whole manhood
before the purity and trustfulness that lay in his embrace.
* * * * *
The night progressed with lengthening hours. He had begun to make out
some kind of bearings for himself in the dark; to find, by the cold airs
that occasionally blew in upon him from one direction, by the guidance
of the sounds that grew in the night's stillness--the gusty increases,
the placid subsidence of the rain, the rustle of leaves and twigs--in
which quarter of their prison lay that opening to the outer world by
which they should escape.
Sometimes his mind wandered far away. Now and again he almost lost
himself in a vague dream; but ever he came back with a shock to the
present peril and his responsibility.
And the child still slept!
He began to grow weary and cold. His arm became stiff, then numb. The
burden that had seemed so light upon it grew almost intolerable.
Sometimes drowsiness pressed upon him, he thought himself in a
nightmare, from which he must wake to find himself huddled in a corner
of his travelling chaise. But he would have died sooner than disturb
the sleeper.
Then, at the moment when the tension of enforced immobility brought such
a feeling of exasperation and oppression that he almost felt as if his
wits were leaving him, he turned his head instinctively in the direction
of the air current, and relief came. The rain was over. The clouds had
cleared away and a patch of sapphire sky looked in upon him, framed by
jagged rocks: it held two or three faint stars. He could see a branch
outlined dimly against the translucence, and leaves trembling in outer
freedom.
Nothing more than this, and yet it was balm. The torture that gripped
him subsided. He gazed and forgot the cramping of his limbs. The first
stars passed slowly and vanished; others swam into his vision and formed
new shapes in the peep of sky. Some were brighter, some more dim; some
twinkled, one burned with a steady glow. They varied in colour, too. He
had had no idea that, even through such a miserable hole, the heavens
had a pageant to offer of such absorbing interest. And the passing of
this pageant gave him a comforting sense of the flow of night towards
morn.
Once Sidonia woke with a start and a cry.
"I am here," he quickly said.
She reared herself from his arm. It was numbed to uselessness; he
caught her with the other fiercely. That pit, gaping so close by in the
night, had come, during the long hours, to be to him as an unknown
monster, watching, waiting for its prey. She, but half awake, gropingly
passed her soft hands over his face and breast. "I dreamed you had
fallen," she murmured. And then, so secure in his hold, stretched
herself like a weary child, and slid a little further from him so that
her head rested on his knee.
His eyes had grown more accustomed to the darkness; or, perhaps, there
was already a raising of the deepest veils of night, for he could almost
distinguish her form as she lay. He bent over her. She was speaking
dreamily: "When you were hurt in the forest, this was how your head
rested on my lap." In another moment she was asleep again. His arms
were free--the sense of constraint was gone. And now the time went by
almost as quickly as before it had lagged. He saw with surprise that
the stars were extinguished, that his patch of sky had grown pearl-grey.
Rapid stirrings in the leafage without spoke of an awakening world. A
bird piped. The walls of their prison began to take shape.... He saw
the white glimmer of her hand in the folds of the cloak.... And then he
must, after all, have slept at his post; for the next thing he knew was
coming to himself, with a great spasm and seeing, in a shaft of yellow
sunlight, grey rock, brown earth, and Sidonia's golden head upon his
knee. And, but a yard from her little sandalled foot, the horrible
black chasm. Oh, shame! he had slept, and death lurking for her! The
sweat started on his forehead.
* * * * *
A sigh of music was blown into the cavern. Sidonia turned her head and
gazed up in his face with wide, bewildered eyes.
"It is Geiger-Hans," she murmured, and rubbed her eyes, as though she
thought she were still dreaming. Then she sat up, looked round, and
memory leaped back. She smiled, yawned, and drew herself together.
"Well," she said, with a sidelong glance at the pit-mouth, "we have had
luck, you and I! Don't you want to get out of this, Herr von
Kielmansegg?" she asked briskly, as he sat wondering at her. "Or do you
think it would be a nice place to turn hermit in? See, this is the
way," said she, and pointed to a narrow and most insecure ledge skirting
the deep; "we shall have to crawl on hands and knees. And, sir, I think
our cloaks must be sacrificed."
As she spoke, she gathered them together and pushed them from her. They
rolled down, and Steven almost called aloud as he heard their heavy
plunge into the ambushed waters: it sounded as if some living thing had
gone to its death.
[Illustration: _Steven almost called aloud as he heard their heavy
plunge into the ambushed waters: it sounded as if some living thing had
gone to its death._]
"I will lead," said she.
Sunshine, sky, grass, wide airs! Till that moment Steven had never
known what these things could mean to man. He sat on a sun-warmed rock
by the side of the precipitous, all but obliterated pathway that led
zigzag upwards to the broken rampart. Sidonia stood shaking and pruning
herself like a bird, her hair glinting in the light. By tacit consent
both paused upon this moment of physical relief before considering their
next course. From above, the plaintive strain they had heard within
their prison was again borne down towards them on the breeze. Sidonia's
fingers, busy in her tresses, stopped. She bent her ear.
[Illustration: _Sidonia stood, shaking and pruning herself like a bird,
her hair glinting in the light._]
"It is Geiger-Hans. And that is my tune. He is seeking me!"
She curved her hands round her mouth and gave a long mountain cry. It
rang clear and sweet, cleaving the pure morning air like the call of a
bird. Instantly the restless melody stopped; and, as they stood looking
up in expectation, they saw the figure of Geiger-Hans emerge on the
rocks over their heads. Holding his fiddle high in the air, he came
clambering down to them with the agility of a goat.
"Thank God!" he exclaimed, as, breathless, he drew near. "Cruel
children, what a fright you have given me!"
His cheek was pale under its bronze. Yet, in spite of its severity, his
haggard eye was quick to note that these two were torn and dishevelled,
that their smiles had the pallor which has faced death.
"What has happened?" cried he, in changed accents.
Sidonia broke into passionate complaint. A great lassitude was upon
Steven; he did not wish to stir or speak; he listened in silence, as she
poured forth the story tersely, yet with the vividness of her passion.
"And it was Uncle Ludo did it!" she ended, with a fresh gust of anger.
"We heard him laugh as we fell. And Count Kielmansegg his guest!" Her
pride could not stomach the thought; it was less to her, evidently, that
her relative should have endeavoured to compass the death of wife as
well as guest, for her anger dropped into mere shuddering pity as she
added: "Poor Aunt Betty! Just think, if she had not sent me!"
Many expressions passed over Geiger-Hans' countenance as the drama
unrolled itself before his quick mental vision. Thunder of anger,
clouds of fear and doubt, tender admiration. He shot one lightning
glance of inquiry at Steven; his brow cleared before the frank answering
look.
As the girl finished, the two men sought silent intercourse with each
other. The eyes of both had grown soft. For herself, the little
fearless creature still had no thought, far less words.
"Well, friends," said the fiddler at last, sitting down on the slope and
wiping his forehead with his sleeve, "you may flatter yourselves that
you've given me no better night than your own. First, Sir Count, having
a word to say to you, I made so bold as to take a seat in your carriage,
as it waited down yonder. A moist time I had of it, in company with
your lordship's horses and postilion. (By the way, this same postilion
hath a varied choice of oaths.) Towards the small hours our relations
became strained, and we parted; he back to the Silver Stork, and I--I
will not conceal it--to wandering once more in the purlieus of this
hospitable strong-house. For, although nothing was more natural than
that a guest should have altered his intention of departing at the last
moment, my mind misgave me."
"Poor Geiger-Onkel!" said Sidonia. "How wet you must be!"
"Nay, the night had turned fine then; it was the least of my hardships.
But at dawn this restless spirit of mine set me to rousing the
castle--and a fine time of it I have given them! His Excellency,
however, was found dead drunk in his hall, so that I could get little
out of him. The lady is convinced that you, comrade, have eloped with
her niece, by some devious road----"
"Devious enough," said Steven, with a short laugh.
But Sidonia had become grave. "I am glad, at least, that he was drunk,"
she said, with judicial air.
"I left my Lady Burgravine planning hysterics. But I have given orders
in the household, as if I were master of all. No flogging of
Geiger-Hans now, nor setting of dogs upon him! 'Tis I command this
morning. I have marshalled his Excellency's servants: there are some
half-dozen fellows searching the rocks already. And here, by the way,
comes one bright youth. Observe how he looks under the brambles and the
bushes. He will not leave a mouse-hole unprodded for your corpses."
"Shall we not bid him get breakfast for us all?" cried Sidonia, gaily.
"'Tis the least Wellenshausen can do for you this morning, Herr Graf!"
She sprang upwards lightly, her small face, wan with fatigue, laughing
back at them over her shoulder. The fiddler and Steven stood side by
side watching her.
"Well," said the former, after a pause, "are you inclined to go and
break bread again in the house whose stones plotted your death? Or will
you take the safe way down the mountain to the cushions of your berline,
and cry: 'Drive on, postilion'?"
Steven regarded the speaker a moment or two before replying. It seemed
to the young man as if that long, black night had cut him off from his
own purblind youth. He felt himself years older, weighted with life.
"I am going back to the Burg," he said, and set off climbing.
"Hey, comrade, hey, what haste?" panted the other at his ear. "What is
your purpose up there? You've been there once too often." There was a
certain anxiety under the speaker's mocking air.
"My purpose----" began Steven, coldly. He was about to add, "concerns
you not," but on second thought he wheeled round, and all that had been
gathering in his heart this night escaped in words of fire. "Why do you
ask?" he cried. "You know! What! are you the man to whom the souls of
others lie bare? Are you a man like myself, and do you think I can
leave that child now? With her little hand she held me from death. She
lay in my arms and slept and trusted me. Do you think I could endure
myself if I thought I had left her unprotected here? If I give my whole
life to the mere guardianship of her, shall I do more than my duty?
Man!" cried Steven, catching the fiddler's sunburnt wrist and shaking
him, "I tell you, the child lay in my arms all night."
"She is indeed a child," said the musician, quietly.
"And it is even for that!" exclaimed Steven. "Oh, I thought you would
have understood!"
"Let us go up to the heights, then," said the fiddler.
"What, no music?" cried Sidonia, gaily, as she watched them coming, from
the doorstep. "I expected to hear your fiddle chanting the song of
delivery!"
"I have enough music in my soul this morning," replied the wanderer.
* * * * *
The Burgrave was a sorry spectacle. A man may play the mediaeval
avenger overnight, but in the morning he belongs to his own age and the
sense of proportion reasserts itself. The Burgrave's awakening to
sobriety, his realization of his own deed, were depressing to the direst
degree. Paradoxically, no less terrible was the discovery that his
suspicions had been unfounded; that his wife was both virtuous and still
of the living; that it was an innocent niece and an innocent guest whom
he had precipitated to an awful doom. He almost betrayed himself on
meeting the Burgravine.
"It was Sidonia, then--it was not you, the youth was after, all the
time!" he exclaimed, bewildered.
"Me? After me?" cried the lady, in a virtuous fury. "How dared you
think such a thing!"
She paused, panting, to measure the whole humiliation of her position.
Sidonia was gone--gone with the pretty Austrian boy whom she, Betty, had
so determinedly marked as her own. It was an infamous trick, and for
Sidonia to play it ... Sidonia! Bah! She, who knew herself so well,
should not have placed faith in any woman.
"The minx was in love with him all the time," she babbled, "and he--he,
oh, he well knew, no doubt, that no richer heiress would ever pass his
way! I trust, Herr von Wellenshausen, that you have sent widely in
pursuit." Her mind was working at a tremendous rate. "You have not let
yourself be taken in by this cunning wretch's story--Geiger-Hans, or
whatever his name is? Oh, I can tell you something of him, sir.
There's an intriguer for you, and in Kielmansegg's confidence from the
beginning! God alone knows what infamous bargains they may have made
together! It has all been a plot."
The Burgrave stood looking at her, an abject mass of bilious misery.
"I am afraid there may have been an accident," he murmured, moistening
his dry lips.
"Accident?" screamed she, and withered him. "You fool!" Then she turned
on him, snarling like an angry little cat. "It is all your fault! Why
did you ask him back here, to spy and pry? Yes, if the girl has
disgraced us, it is your fault--the fault of your evil mind! You drove
them to elope, old jealous fool!"
The Burgrave clenched his hands and shook them above his head, fell into
a chair, and wept aloud. Elope? If she but knew! Alack, poor Sidonia!
Poor little Sidonia! He had always loved the child.
"I trust you will come to soberness presently," said Betty, with a
disgusted look at the row of empty bottles.
And it was at this moment that shouts from the courtyard proclaimed the
return of the lost ones.