had miscarried, could only be measured by his previous state of misery.
He could have leaped and sung. He caught his wife to his breast with
fresh tears. Repulsed with scorn, he tottered forth to the great hall,
still reeling in his joy, to meet the two so miraculously preserved and
restored.
The girl faced him, severe as a young Daniel, with pointed finger and
flashing eye.
"You weep now, uncle: you laughed last night! That was your farewell to
us; you laughed as you tumbled us down the _oubliette_!"
The Burgrave had stepped back, dismayed afresh. She knew, then, that no
mere accident had betrayed them! The wretched lord of the castle flung
a look around; met the eyes of Steven, scornful--he knew! Met the
fiddler's eyes, horribly mocking--he knew! Met his Betty's gaze, deeply
suspicious. In a moment she, too, would know!
Out rang Sidonia's clarion tongue. And then the Burgravine did know.
Promptly he was delivered into her hands. She threatened him with King
and Emperor, with family and justice, prison, madhouse, duel. The
Emperor had put divorce in fashion, she reminded her lord. She would
divorce him, resoundingly! The last taunt was--since, after all, he
loved her in his own fashion--the blow that hit him hardest.
Natheless, even under the shock of the discovery that her own precious
life had been in danger, and her husband (Bluebeard too well named!) had
been her would-be murderer, her wits did not desert her.
She intercepted the gaze wherewith Steven followed Sidonia, and was
quick to feel that for herself he had now scarce a thought; nay, that
she but represented to him three days of intense discomfort and a
disagreeable episode ending in death-peril. She must not act in a
hurry. She must play what cards she had left in her hand to best
purpose. She had a vision of a tamed Bluebeard--and compensation; her
turn yet to come in gay Cassel.
"_Herr Graf_," said the Burgrave, not without some kind of dignity,
though tears still swam in the pale, swollen eyes, and his great hands
trembled, a pathetic spectacle, "I stand at your mercy. I have
absolutely no excuse to offer you."
"Nay, sir," said Steven, "what misfortune Wellenshausen brought on me,
Wellenshausen has repaired. Whenever I think," he added, and raised
Sidonia's hand to kiss it, "of the night when you planned, and well-nigh
encompassed, my death, I will also remember that to the courage of a
daughter of this same house I owe my life. Before I take leave of your
hospitable door" (he was too young to refrain from the gibe), "may I
crave a few words in private?"
The Chancellor bowed. Steven pressed Sidonia's hand and followed his
host as he shambled across the hall.
Had any one told the young man on the previous day that he would be
willing--nay, anxious--to bind himself for all the years of his life to
the little sunburnt Sidonia, he would have thought the absurdity scarce
worth a laugh. And yet, here he was, a suitor for her hand. Her
guardian dared not refuse her to him, even if a Count
Waldorff-Kielmansegg had not been a match such as hardly could be found
for her twice in a lifetime. He was bent on his purpose with all the
obstinacy of a nature somewhat slow to move, but firmly set once a
resolution taken. It was perhaps hardly love so much that urged him as
a kind of passionate chivalry. He had expressed the state of affairs
very accurately to Geiger-Hans. He had guarded her in his arms a whole
night; now he felt driven by all his manliness to guard her for the rest
of her life. Yet, with all this sentimental fervour, there was mixed a
shrewd common-sense. In race she was his equal. She had good blood in
her veins; and, by heaven, the little creature had shown it! Her
courage and pride appealed to his innermost fastidiousness of breeding.
And, child as she was, wild creature, free of the wood, sisterly with
the people of the soil, he had the intuition that she would bear her new
honours not only loyally, but royally. To her fortune he actually gave
not a thought. Once or twice, in his hearing, she had been mentioned as
a great heiress, but the statement had made no impression. With all his
faults, Steven was nothing so little as mercenary--rare enough a virtue
with the rich man, even in youth.
With his blood-red stare fixed upon him, the Burgrave was uncomfortably
and confusedly revolving certain questions connected with his ward's
fortune. He had his own reasons for preferring to keep Sidonia
unmarried for some years to come. But circumstances had passed out of
his control. He could have but one answer for the curt, haughty,
well-nigh insolent demand:
"Wellenshausen was honoured--they were honoured, honoured----"
"With the briefest possible delay!" supplemented the lordly youth.
And again the Burgrave bowed acquiescence; for there was a threat in
Steven's eye, merciless to any hesitation.
"Of course," cried Wellenshausen, suddenly catching at a straw, "this is
subject to my niece's consent."
A faint smile came to Steven's lips; not fatuous, but mightily
confident.
"That, your Excellency, is a matter between her and me," he said.
The other glowered. This smacked of England, and he disliked English
customs. But, again, his helplessness overcame him. With a turn of the
head, scarcely a bow, Steven then withdrew. His host, lately so
arrogant, looked after him, gnashing his teeth, helpless and furious in
his humiliation. The wooer had not approached the subject of the girl's
portion, even when he had mentioned his own lordly rentals; an omission
so strange that it but added to the Burgrave's general sense of
discomfiture.
*CHAPTER XIV*
*LOVE AMONG THE RUINS*
"_Well--if I bide, lo! This wild flower for me!_"
(_Lancelot and Elaine_).
It was a glorious day, after a night of rain; and a blazing sun poured
its rays down upon the rocks. Some instinct led Steven (he was perhaps
already more of a lover than he believed) to the place where Sidonia
sat, a ledge on the steep grassy slope which lay just outside the
bramble-hidden opening of the cave--the cave that had yielded them back,
in the dawn, to a new life.
She was alone, seated under the wall, in a child-like attitude, her chin
in her hand, wrapt, it seemed, in profound cogitation. The sunshine
brought a golden fire about her uncovered hair. Steven flung himself
beside her. She did not move her head, merely turned her grave eyes
upon him; and, for a while, there was silence between them.
The air was full of the humming of busy insects, sweet with the spices
of the thousand thymy herbs that flourished in the dry, rocky soil.
Above them the ruinous wing of the castle towered into the nebulous
blue. Below, far away, the brown roofs of the village lay in shadow.
Faint cries rose up from it; and from some unseen pasture, the tinkle of
cow-bells--dim little sound, homely, yet so strangely in harmony with
the solitudes of nature. The calls of the mountain birds came fitfully;
and underlying all was the distant roar of the torrent seeking its issue
far away from the secret well. Sidonia spoke at last.
"You have finished with them all, up there?" she asked.
"With them all, up there; yes," he answered her; and a joyousness was
upon him, for which he could have given no reasons. It was born,
perhaps, of his sudden entrance into the power of manhood--for
protection, for conquest, for ownership. She, however, saw nothing of
the flash in his eye, of the eager trembling of his lip.
"You could have Uncle Ludo put in prison, of course, but you will not do
that. And that is the worst punishment of all. You leave him just with
contempt.--It is a great humiliation for Wellenshausen!" she said.
For some moments he made no answer. He was considering with pleasure
the delicate ear under the waving sweep of hair, the colour, weight and
length of the plaits that, divided, hung on either side of her neck and
tipped the ground. He was noticing the shape of the nails in the slight
brown hands, the shadow of the eyelashes on the cheek, the arch of the
foot, the slender beauty of which even the country shoe could not
conceal. How blind he had been on their first meeting! Geiger-Hans
had, indeed, been justified in chiding him.... "She? a peasant girl!
Then you never looked at her feet, nor at her delicate eyebrow. It is a
noble child!"
Those eyes of hers that he had, even at their first meeting, compared to
a mountain stream in their depth, their varying colour, were still fixed
with gravity upon him.
"You looked for me to say good-bye?" she said simply.
"No," said Steven.
He drew himself a little closer to her, as he lay his length on the
ground. The scent of the crushed weeds, the small aromatic nameless
growths beneath him, sprang to his nostrils. He propped himself on his
elbows and leaned his chin on his clasped hands, returning her gaze
masterfully.
"Mademoiselle Sidonia, it is true that I am going soon, but I do not
mean to go away alone. I have told your uncle how unfit I consider him
to be your guardian. He cannot dispute the point with me, and he has
owned that you ought to have another. Will you trust me to take care of
you?" The eyes fixed upon him widened, questioning, innocent, yet
profound. "I should call you my wife," he went on in a low voice, all
astonished himself that his heart should suddenly beat so fast. Her
glance never wavered, but he could see the scarlet dye her cheek.
"Sidonia, will you come with me?" he cried. And now he was on his
knees, quite close to her.
"I will go with you," she replied.
Her child eyes were still upon him and seemed to ask for something yet.
And at this, he bent and kissed her, gently, as he would have kissed a
child, and did not guess that, at the touch of his lips, Sidonia's
woman's soul was born.
The autumn month was kind to the short, bewildering time of Steven and
Sidonia's betrothal, and gave them, day after day, a fair sky and joyous
sunshine.
It was something of a strange business. Steven ascended the crag at
least twice in the twelve hours to meet his little bride, up in the
blue, among the rocks or the ruins. He had decided not to break bread
again with the Burgrave, not even to enter the Burg until the wedding
morning; and Sidonia approved this stern decision. And so their wooing
had for its setting the barren crags, the scanty verdure, the keen airs
of Wellenshausen heights; its only witnesses the great ravens, and
occasionally some soaring hawk, cruising watchful and keen, pirate of
the high seas of blue. Thus Sidonia became associated in Steven's mind
with the pungent scents of all mountain herbs, the briskness of all
mountain breezes. He could have sworn that about her small person
itself there was a myrtle fragrance.
Her presence became as grateful as the wild nature about him, and made
as few demands upon him. Of love-making, in the accepted sense, there
was none between them. He touched her still as reverently as he had
touched the sleeper in the _oubliette_. He could not disabuse himself
of the feeling that she was under his protection; that he must guard
her, innocent, confident, maiden, sprite, child; guard her even from
himself, from his man's knowledge, his man's power. It was instinct,
not calculation, that kept him within such idyllic bounds. But, as it
was, he felt mightily pleased with himself and consequently with her.
Through some vein of idealism--richest treasure of youth as yet
unrealized--his whole nature was flattered with the sense of his own
chivalry, with the delicacy of the poem. Never for an instant did he
repent his impulsive bargain.
So long as there was such content in his eyes, there was content deep
and full in Sidonia's heart. Her confidence in him was unlimited. He
had asked her to be his wife: therefore he loved her, and his way of
love was perfect in her mind. His parting and meeting kiss--often
enough laid fugitively upon her eyelids--was to her the utmost and
happiest expression of tenderness.
* * * * *
So passed these odd, quiet, yet all-important hours of courtship. And
then the day came, eve of the morrow when they were to be united up in
yonder bare stone chapel of the Burg, that was never used save for the
baptism, the burial, or the wedding of a Wellenshausen.
Again Sidonia sat among the rocks and the wild herbs, but alone: Steven
was engaged in conclave with the ruddy-faced pastor of the hamlet, who
was to ride up on his mule in the morning and conduct the ceremony. She
smiled happily, as she pictured the interview in her mind. Presently
she became aware that she was no longer by herself. From the black
shadow of the rock, across the patch of sward opposite to her, eyes were
watching her from a lean, sharp-featured face. She gave a small, low
laugh.
"I see you," she said.
And Geiger-Hans came forward with a kind of leap from the rocky gloom.
He sat cross-legged in the full sunshine before her, his arms folded.
His fiddle was slung at his back; his garments were powdered with dust;
he looked tired and travel-worn, as if he had come from a long distance.
But he was smiling at her.
"Truly, it is a curious thing," he said, as if taking up the thread of
some interrupted conversation, "that the first time we ever met, little
Mamzell Sidonia, you addressed me in just these very words."
"That must have been very long ago, Onkel," said Sidonia, "for I always
remember you."
"Nay, it was an epoch to me. You see, mamzell, I was not then
Geiger-Onkel to the country-side, the Geiger-Onkel whom the children run
up to, whom the silly maids and youths consult, and the old wives like
to gossip with--the old, crazy fellow, who makes merry music and does
nobody any harm. I had black misery in my heart in those days, and black
misery on my face. And I can well believe," said the fiddler, after a
pause, "that I seemed to shed a black curse about me as I passed. I was
a restless mortal, and went about, hither, thither, at a terrible pace.
The people took me for a wandering devil! And, upon my soul, I don't
blame them." He gave a laugh, and the sound of it hurt Sidonia. She
had always known, of course, that it was some fearful sorrow that had
driven her old friend to his life of wandering.
"Oh, poor Geiger-Onkel!" she cried; the caress of her eyes was
infinitely soft.
"Yes, the women crossed themselves when they saw me!" He laughed again.
"The men jeered--the children ran screaming from my path.... That day
when I saw you first, mamzell, I was tired and angry. A stone had been
flung at me and caught me on the ankle, and I went lame. The day was
very hot; I had been a long way; I could go no further, and I was
hungry. I sat outside the forest-house, waiting to ask for a crust. I
had heard you laughing and calling behind the garden hedges, and I was
afraid of frightening you.... Aye, it was weary work, going through the
world making the children cry! I knew that, when the sun sank, somebody
would put you to bed. 'And then I shall knock,' I said to myself....
But, all at once, little Mamzell Sidonia, as I sat, oh, so glum, so
black-hearted, so forlorn a wretch, I heard you call me. You had popped
your head out of the garden gate, and were peeping at me, gurgling with
laughter. 'I see you,' you said." His voice broke. He twisted himself
and lay out-stretched, supporting himself on one arm, his face turned
towards the ground, idly picking at the small herbs. "Your little head
was all over golden curls ... some one I had known had hair of that
colour ... and you looked at me, it seemed, with eyes I had known also.
You were not in the least frightened; you thought, I believe, that I was
a very good game. But to me, to me, Mamzell Sidonia--you see I was even
madder then than I am now--you were a something sent to me from one I
loved once."
Sidonia held her breath. She did not dare speak. This was not the
Geiger-Onkel she had known. His very voice was changed utterly. She
could not see his face as he lay, but instinctively she turned her eyes
away from the prone figure.
"If we had had a child," said the fiddler, in a sort of whisper, "she
would have looked like you ... she would have looked like you!"
It seemed to Sidonia that the lean figure was shaken, and she had a
terror lest he should be weeping. But, all at once, with those
singular, quick movements of his, so startling to those who did not know
him, he was sitting once more cross-legged; and the eyes that fixed her
were dry and wildly brilliant.
"Now, if only the Burgrave was here, and could have heard me," he cried,
mocking, "would he not be justified in calling for those whips and dogs
with which I have been threatened? The Baroness Sidonia von
Wellenshausen compared with the brat of a crazy beggarman!"
Sidonia exclaimed indignantly: "Whips and dogs! He would never dare!"
"Well, hardly just now," said the other, whimsically. "His Excellency
will dare very little for some time to come. Hey, what a game have the
Fates played with him; aye, and with us all, mamzell, even with me, who
thought to guide them! But they played my game in the end," he added,
edging a little closer to her. "Well, little sleeping beauty with the
golden hair, did I not do well to bring you to your forest bower this
gallant young prince? You had to be awakened, _Princesse Sidonie au
bois dormant_; for the end of the spell was near at hand. And if you
had been awakened by the wrong knight? Heaven preserve us, what a
catastrophe!"
"Oh, Geiger-Onkel, I am not a child any more to be talked to in fairy
tales. I am going to be married to-morrow!" Then, with a sudden change
of tone, the girl cried inconsequently, "It is true, you did bring him
to me. Perhaps you're a kind of wizard uncle, after all!"
"Why--and have you ever doubted it?" said he, menacing her with his
finger. "Have I not watched you all these years? When you wanted me
for anything--for the white doe that was lost, or for Liserl in the
village, when she had no news of her lad, or when Aunt Hedwige kept you
too close--had not you but to wish for me?"
"It is true," she pondered, and looked at him doubtfully, unable to make
out if he were in jest or in earnest.
"And so, when I met this fine young Prince Errant on the roadway, I knew
he was meant for you."
But suddenly she accused him, shaking her little finger in mimicry of
his own gesture.
"But you vanished very quickly, the other morning, after you played us
out of the _oubliette_, Geiger-Onkel. And my prince had to face the
wicked guardian all by himself, and you were not even there to tell the
princess what she was to say. You have not been near us all these
days."
"But, did you want me?" cried the fiddler, and gave a screech of
laughter. It rang harshly. "Did you want me? That is the question."
She found nothing to answer. Truthfully, she had, these days, forgotten
his very existence. He chuckled to himself, and hitched his violin
round.
"Listen," said he, and began to play a dainty measure--so exquisitely
tender-gay a measure that it made Sidonia, all in her young happiness,
feel quite sad. "Listen; this is the first tune you ever danced to,
little mamzell. That was how your steps went, and how you clapped your
hands.... Oh, I have something better for you still to play to you....
But you must wait for it. It is the song of your bridal morning!"
The sun fell full on his face as he played. How weary he looked, how
aged, how haunted, and yet how gentle--poor Geiger-Hans!
*CHAPTER XV*
*FURENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT*
"_Et, dans leurs jalousies, vous trouverez toujours_
_Leurs vanites blessees plutot que leurs amours._"
DESTOUCHES.
The mind of Burgravine Betty was a weather-vane, gilt and fantastically
wrought, that veered in ever contrary directions, as blew the wind of
her mood. Of constant purposes she knew but one, that of her own
pleasure. But what course of action would best minister to this was a
matter of perpetual indecision. She had amused herself with rare gusto,
after months of enraging dulness, with the handsome stranger who had so
impertinently sought the hospitality of Wellenshausen. And though a
sermon from that crazy person the fiddler--no doubt a gentleman in
masquerade, or Betty was no judge of such point--had left her
momentarily abashed, sentimental over rocking cradles and wifely duty
and such-like unprofitable conventions, the next morning the little
shining vane was setting straight for the soft west of dalliance, and
she fully meant to cheat her Bluebeard by as complete an _affaire de
coeur_ as circumstances would permit. Nay, while apparently taking
virtuous farewell over night of the unexpected kinsman, she had already
planned heaven knows what secret assignations, palpitating meetings in
the shadow of the ruins, descents into the forest-land and green picnics
in discreet glades, yea, even excursions into the deepest of the woods.
But the secret departure of the degenerate Kielmansegg and the unwelcome
appearance of a tactless husband had shattered these agreeable projects.
And Betty's vane had flown to north again: cold virtue in an injured
wife, most wrongfully suspected. Next, by her husband's odious tricks
of suspicion, thrown once again into the company of good looks and young
manhood, what a succession of small hot and cold breezes kept the
weather-cock shifting east, south-east and south, back to west again!
Positively driven to elope, by sheer dread of the fate of Desdemona
under her own cushions, what better choice could be made than this
Steven von Waldorff-Kielmansegg--rich, high-born, and so vastly
personable? And in Vienna, these times, people scarcely could look
askance at a _divorcee_.
Yet, a rainy night, and some more of that ubiquitous fantastic
musician's nonsense, and hey for a new quarter of the compass again!
She could scarcely, however, regret the chill wind of reason that had
shifted her purpose at the last hour--a night in the _oubliette_, even
with a charming companion, coincided by no means with Betty's ideas of
enjoyment. And then, not having the knowledge of the murderous locality
acquired by that climbing kid Sidonia, she and Count Steven might well
be swirling, this sunny moment, in undesired comradeship under the black
waters of the pit. Betty shuddered in every fibre of her ease-loving
body.
Now, during these days of Sidonia's brief betrothal, the Burgravine was
in a more than usually undecided and dissatisfied frame of mind.
Nevertheless, her mood pointed steadily for Cassel. As a Bluebeard,
there could be no doubt of it, the Burgrave's occupation was gone. He
was abject under his Betty's sandal. And Betty's foot, for so little a
one, could stamp curiously hard. Henceforth the husband who would have
compassed her murder had (the Burgravine fondly believed) no choice but
to be his wife's slave. Dared he but thwart the smallest of her wishes,
she knew well now how to reduce him to obedience. Cassel it was to be.
Cassel, so soon as this absurd wedding was over.
A very sulky shoulder did the Burgravine turn upon the whole ridiculous
affair. An errant squire of dames, dull, undiscriminating, ill-mannered
youth, who, when a Betty was within the same horizon, could have the
poor taste even to look at a Sidonia; to take up a hoyden, sun-burnt as
a peasant child, and with as much idea of the refinements of life as the
village chits with whom she was wont to make so free! A pretty show
would she make of herself in Vienna!
The Burgravine had a curious glitter in those eyes of hers, that
generally astonished the stranger by their flower-blue in her olive
face; yet, withal, she was full of smiles. Was it not the wedding-day
of the Baroness Sidonia, her husband's niece?