its "honour gate" to the ancestral chapel with so little ceremony.
Great carouse had there been at the castle on similar occasion, loud
ringing of joy bells, and belching of powder smoke from the ramparts,
wide flaunting of the old blue and yellow banner over the belfry. High
folk, thickly gathered in Wellenshausen's Burg, had drunk deep on the
height; low folk in Wellenshausen Dorf, on the plain, had vied
successfully with their betters. The glories of the weddings at
Wellenshausen had been retailed from father to son. Yet this last bride
of the house, heiress as she was to most of its honours, slipped from
her chamber to the altar-steps with scarce the tinkling of the
chapel-bell to mark her passage, and only the cries of one or two
village children, hot from their scramble up the crag, to acclaim her,
the smiles, tearful, motherly and portentous, of the forest-mother to
brace her for the great plunge into the unknown. Such was the haste and
privacy with which the compact was carried out. The imperious
bridegroom had willed it so. Nevertheless, if ungraced by pomp and
unwitnessed by honoured guests, the ceremony was impressive enough in
the simplicity and earnestness of the two chiefly concerned.
So thought the musician, who knelt hidden, all in the dust, between the
tomb of the greatest of the old Wellenshausens and the chapel wall. He
had refused the post of honoured guest, the prominent seat prepared by
Sidonia herself, the proffer of Steven's dark suit and purple stockings.
"I shall be with you all the same, my children," he had promised them.
And from his place of concealment nothing escaped his watchful anxiety.
It did his heart good to catch a glimpse of the bridegroom's face as it
was turned upon the bride. Never, it seemed to him, had Sidonia looked
more completely the child. She went through the ordeal with a blithe
serenity; he knew that the music he had made for her that morning, at
the misty dawn, was singing in her heart.
At the sight of her golden head under the bridal veil, the vagabond
closed his restless eyes for a minute. An inner vision of poignant
tenderness rose upon him. "O Love, O Death, how the wheel turns with
us!"
To the bowing snuff-coloured notary from Helmstadt, the Burgrave in his
glittering Chancellor's uniform was a very awe-inspiring person: he
quailed under the unblinking gaze of His Excellency, beneath the jealous
eyebrows. Far indeed was he from suspecting that the merest glint of
the Burgravine's blue orbs--so youthful, so affable an apparition to the
dusty man of law--sufficed to make Wellenshausen, the terrible, quail in
his tall boots.
Kurtz the Jaeger whistled between his teeth, with an impudent eye on the
wedding procession, as, in company with Mademoiselle Eliza, he beheld it
pass out.
"It is your mistress whose little game has fallen through," said he,
tauntingly, to the French girl.
"Ah, no, _par exemple_," retorted she. "It is your master, _mon bel
oiseau_, who wears the fool's cap this time. Oh!"--she clapped her
sallow hands together--"how we shall amuse ourselves at Cassel!"
It could hardly be said that the wedding repast was a convivial event.
Steven took upon himself a great air of condescension over this first
breaking of bread at the table of his would-be executioner. His
politeness was something quite overpowering. The Burgrave, after a
bumper of Sillery to the health of the happy pair, essayed to carry
matters with a high-handed joviality; the effect of it, against Steven's
glacial indulgence, was ghastly. But, when bridegroom and bride
conferred together, were it upon the merest trifle, the irresponsible
youth and joy of them was not to be hidden. And Burgravine Betty
watched with a glance that grew ever more steely.
She had sat down to the board in a fairly good humour, for her amber
gown was becoming, and the water gardens, the statued alleys of Cassel
Palace, were growing into nearer perspective. But Cousin Kielmansegg
positively treated her in much the same high-horse manner as he treated
his host. The most alluring twists of her shoulder, the most killing
ogles, were received with odious civility; nay--and her vanity was
pierced to the core--she actually caught in him a look of boredom, when
he had perforce to turn and give his attention to a delicate whisper,
reminiscent innuendo, sigh for the might-have-been.
Fury rose in her, sudden as a mountain whirlwind. She gripped her
wineglass: the sweetness turned acid on her lips. Loud rang her laugh;
and the Burgrave, glancing at her, felt a satisfaction in the
ever-doubtful growling depth of his heart that his Betty should be so
merry at her Beau Cousin's wedding. But Sidonia flung her aunt a
startled look. The Burgravine sprang to her feet with a peremptory
gesture:
"Come with me," she said.
She was in a prodigious hurry, all at once, to get the new Countess
Kielmansegg away from the table into the privacy of her own turret
apartment, ostensibly to robe her for the journey. The bridegroom
followed his bride with a long glance; noting which, the Burgravine
tossed her head.
"You must have a little patience," she cried to him insolently. "She
will be ready in an hour."
Once alone with the girl, she whisked the bridal veil from her head with
such feverish and ungentle hands that Sidonia turned round to look upon
her in amazement, only to meet a positive glare.
"Why, Aunt Betty!"
"Why, Sidonia!--forgive, I should say: Most High Lady Countess!"
"What is the matter with you?" cried Sidonia.
She was never one to take hostility in meekness. The colour sprang to
her cheek.
"Why do you look at me like that? What has vexed you?" she insisted.
"Vexed?--I?" quoth the lady. Here they were interrupted by Eliza, all
flounce and bounce and smile, with pink bows to her apron and a jaunty
new cap. Her mistress turned upon her fiercely. "Get out of this!
When you are wanted you shall be called," she cried. Then: "Nay, my
love," she proceeded, once more addressing her niece, now in a biting
tone of sweetness (a diabolic inspiration had come to her: if Satan can
never unmake, he can at least mar) "nay, wherefore should I be vexed? I
may be ashamed for my sex; I am still, I must confess, under the shock
of the recent scandal, which has rendered necessary this humiliating
marriage, but----"
Sidonia went white to the lips. "I don't understand----" she cried
boldly; but there was horror gathering in her eyes.
"Do you need to be told, then," asked the other, clapping her plump
hands together in exasperation, "that if a young girl spends a night in
a cave alone with a young man, her reputation is not worth a silver
groat?"
The blood raced back to the bride's cheeks. "Do you taunt me for having
saved your life, Aunt Betty? What say I?--saved _your_ reputation....
But what does it matter; how does this concern me now? My husband loves
me; he has my faith."
The Burgravine broke into shrill laughter. Then, with a sudden change
of tactics, she folded her niece to her heart with hysterical
tenderness.
"Nay, my poor lamb, I am wrong! Go, go in your touching confidence; I
will say no further word. It would be cruel to enlighten you a day
sooner than necessary, and----"
"I think you're mad," interrupted the bride. "I cannot imagine what you
mean." With steady fingers she removed the myrtle wreath from her head,
then approached her aunt with a countenance singularly altered. "You
must explain yourself, Aunt Betty," she said.
The Burgravine rushed again into passion. "Were you the innocent you
pretend to be," retorted she, panting, "it would be no kindness to let
you depart in ignorance of the true state of your affairs. But, for all
your baby pose, you cannot make me believe, my love, that you are blind
to the fact that this poor, chivalrous young man has only wedded you,
all said and done, to save your name, your honour. A--ah, he has vowed,
and you believe him, that he loves you?" (It is well to lash oneself
into blind anger when it is difficult to strike in cold blood.) "Ten
days ago, on that very turret platform," she dramatically pointed
through the window to the silhouette of the east tower, "only ten days
ago he held me to his heart--this devoted lover of yours--and
consecrated his life to me!"
"I do not believe you," said Sidonia, again. But her soft, young face
seemed suddenly turned to marble. "If he loves you, what does he want
with me?" The girl spoke slowly. She had been shaken, but she was not
convinced. "I don't believe it, Aunt Betty," she resumed. "Nobody
would have said any harm of me. Every one knows me here!
Wellenshausen," cried the child, in angry common-sense, "is not Vienna,
nor yet Cassel!"
Betty, who possessed the faculty of changing her mind with ease, had no
bashfulness at all in eating her own words when occasion offered.
Indeed, so accommodating was her disposition that she was quite ready to
believe her own hasty concoctions, however contradictory, at a moment's
notice. Shrewish blew the gusts of the jealous temper.
"Well, _mon coeur_, is it not better to think him an excellent
chivalrous person than to try and seek for less noble motives? 'Tis
granted, isn't it, that since he loved me at nine o'clock in the
evening, loved me to the point of elopement, he could hardly be ready to
love you very devotedly at eight the next morning? We will not think
that my Bluebeard dropped him a hint of your money bags.... The
situation was delicate, you see, and if the Burgrave, who is fond of you
after all, my dear, and who, no doubt, wanted to repair the damage he
had wrought, failed to move the young gentleman by one plea, he may have
succeeded in another. There are compensations about you: that is a
fact. It was after their private conversation, remember, my little
angel, that Beau Cousin proposed...."
Sidonia set her teeth in her trembling lip. Every word was a dagger
wound to pride and love and maidenliness. Then all her loyalty
revolted. Her knight of the forest, so base? Never! And if the
Burgravine was false in the one instance, why not in all?
"Aunt Betty," she said deliberately, "this is all a lie."
"Fool," snapped Betty. She ran from the room like a fury, to return
with incredible quickness. She shook a crumpled note before the bride's
eyes, then spread it with frenzied fingers upon the table.
"See here! Read! read what he writes to me--to me! Ah, you know his
handwriting by this time! Read, read! He asks me to meet him among the
ruins. 'All will be ready!' What does that mean, think you? Why, that
his coach was waiting ready for us at the foot of the hill, to whirl us
two to our own land, to safety, to happiness!"
The girl reeled and pressed her hands to her eyes.
"Why, my dear," cried the other, pursuing her advantage mercilessly,
"did he ever blink at you, I ask, before that disgraceful night in the
dark? And indeed, how could fine young men such as he, I should like to
know, find anything to fall in love with in you, you poor little
country, weather-beaten thing? No, my poor child, no, you had best take
it that he's just doing the recognized high-born, gentlemanly thing by
you; but it will do you no harm to remember that it was me, me, that he
wanted to take away from Wellenshausen, not you!"
"Then why did you not go--why did you send me to him, with your
good-bye?" asked Sidonia at last, almost voiceless.
"Because I was a fool," exploded the Burgravine, in all the
inconsequence of her envy.
At this particular moment it seemed to her that in her virtuous decision
she had indeed missed the opportunity of her life. And she set her
teeth upon such savage accents of truth that, at last, Sidonia believed.
She took the crumpled bit of paper from the table. Stunned amid the
ruins of her fair edifice of happiness, she had as yet hardly realized
her aunt's position, even though so shamelessly trumpeted. Now, with
this proof of Steven's real feelings in her hand, Betty's guilt suddenly
leaped, hideous, into shape before her.... The Burgravine von
Wellenshausen, a married woman, ready to break her marriage vows,
listening to words of love from the guest under her husband's roof! The
bride was very innocent, but innocence is perhaps the severest judge of
all. She turned eyes of horror upon her uncle's wife.
"It is well," she said, after a pause. "Leave me; I must think out what
I have to do."
As she spoke she thrust the note into the bosom of her bridal frock.
To be thoroughly successful in revenge is always slightly alarming. So
thought the Burgravine as she closed the door upon this unknown, this
strange Sidonia. But, having gone too far to retreat, spite now
resolved to reap the final gratification.
*CHAPTER XVI*
*'TWIXT CUP AND LIP*
"Warum sind benn die Rosen so blass?
* * * * *
Mein liebes Liebchen, sprich,
D sprich, mein herzallerliebstes Lieb,
Warum verliessert du mich?"
HEINE.
Steven and his host sat opposite each other, equally mute. After his
spurt of hilarity, the Burgrave had gradually fallen into a moodiness
fostered by draughts of an alarming variety of wines. Sunk into
himself, his heavy chin upon his chest, he glared straight before him
with suffused eyes, blood-injected--a sodden mass of helpless
resentment.
Fastidious Steven, ever more wrapt in disdain and aloofness, had
perforce to avert his gaze from the degraded spectacle. How came such a
flower as his Sidonia grafted upon so coarse a stock? He rejoiced, with
a glow of intimate self-approbation, that he was carrying her away to
fitter surroundings. To whom might they not have wedded her? To some
sproutling, no doubt, chosen by the Burgrave--by yonder sot! Into what
brutal arms might they not have cast her--the pure child of the cave
night?
Something called him from his musings: it was the measure of an odd
little tune, played half-sourdine, half-pizzicato. Suddenly the image
of a rosy mountain-side, a gold-dusted plain spreading away towards
sunset, the gloom of a forest background, sprang before his mind. He
saw in the midst of that scene a gloomy youth seated on a milestone, a
disabled chaise, a grey horse ... and up the hill, advancing towards
him, the vagabond fiddler. A broken sun ray flashed back from the
yellow varnish of his instrument ... a robin sang ... the white horse
cropped the leaves of young grass, with contented munching sound. The
stream ran tinkling like secret laughter. Oh, what strange things had
been brought into this traveller's life through the breaking of a
linchpin on the Thuringian highway! He sprang to his feet. Surely
Geiger-Hans was calling him!--The Burgrave never even shifted his eyes
to watch his new nephew go.
Steven found the fiddler at the head of the downward path; and though he
was seated, there was an air of travel about him. He was alone. The
charm of his music had no power that day at Wellenshausen; fleshpots and
drinking cans filled the household mind. The young man's heart
contracted; he had learned to feel strange attachment for his strange
comrade.
"I knew you were playing a good-bye," he cried. "Will you not wait and
see us go?"
The fiddler's eyes flung his glance, uneasily, to where the white road
cleared the shadowy green of the fields below and dipped into the dark
bluish lap of the forest.
"No, no; I must go!" he answered, wildly, Steven thought.
"Without seeing Sidonia again?" exclaimed the young man.
The fiddler laughed inconsequently. He was now playing a kind of jig,
almost on one string, a restless hopping measure which suddenly made
Steven long to be gone likewise.
"Two fine mules are waiting for you," said the musician, with a quick
look. "They have hung Sidonia's with flower-wreaths. And you have red
trappings on yours. Hark! you can hear them jingle their bells. They
are impatient, they are waiting for you. Hey, bridegroom, why do you
delay? You should have been gone as soon as you had made her yours."
"She is dressing for the journey," said Steven.
"Look," said Geiger-Hans, pointing with his bow, "yonder, by the torrent
bridge stands your carriage. You can see the sun gleam on the harness.
If you had my ears, you would hear your horses stamp. They, too, are
impatient. But the bride will cling to the old stones at the last ...
and, fie, who would hurry a lady? I shall be far, far away before you
two set out. Nay, keep me not back, I am more impatient for the road
than even your horses down there, fiery with the week's oats ... than
even you, comrade, on your wedding day!"
"Certainly," thought Steven, uneasily, "if ever I doubted it before, the
poor fellow is not as other men. How his eyes burn in their deep
sockets--I fear our Geiger-Hans is mad."
At this the other nodded to him, with his fantastic intuition.
"You are right, I am mad," he said, "and I thank God--for it is a dull
world for wise fools. And your sanity and wisdom and dulness, Sir Count,
have learned something worth the learning of my madness. Aye, and
received something better than knowledge too: you will grant that." And
as Steven stared, half-offended, half-startled, the fiddler, with his
smile upon him and his brilliant eyes, fell to playing again that tune
of the road with which he had first greeted him.
"Here is a dull lad seated upon a mile-stone," he half chanted to the
cadence, "and he has nothing better to do with his youth than to jog
along the plain's highway, the dusty common road that all may tread ...
while behind him runs the green path of the forest, and dear adventure
lies in hidden glade for him who cares to seek it--so goodly a youth to
waste his golden minutes! ... And here comes a wandering music-maker,
and a crazy one into the bargain. And this is his freak: to see if he
cannot knock a spark out of the high-born block. Within the youth of
this goodly body lurks there no soul to fire? And, behold, it proves a
good scholar--a very honest lad! Sparks are struck out of his block
head. And there is a soul too, and it can burn with a very brave
flame.... And in the forest glade trembles a Wind-Flower; let him pluck
it if he can and wear it in his breast, for his is a steady hand and a
clean, and it will gather the flower tenderly."
The fiddler clapped his hand on the strings and they were mute.
"Farewell, little comrade," he said, changing his tone, and Steven
thought that if the man's eyes had had tears in them, the sadness of
them would have been less intolerable. "Haste back to your bride,
impatient heart!" added the musician gravely then. "A little impatience
is good. But, oh, hear me:--hurry not her virginal dawn, that the
sunrise be full golden for you both! If love is to have its exquisite
hour, love must be both patient and fierce." He slung his violin over
his shoulder, and took a sudden nimble step on the downward rocky way.
The half-hour struck, echoing from the gateway clock. A dreary quarter
still to wait, according to the Burgravine's warning.
"Oh, comrade, stay a little yet!" cried the bridegroom.
The fiddler merely waved his hand. He was scrambling down the steep way
in crazy haste.
"I have a thousand things to say still," cried Steven again. He curled
his hand round his mouth and called: "When shall we meet?"
The fiddler halted suddenly. He was already far on his way, for he had
gone with incredible speed. But he waved his hat above his head with a
fantastic flourish; then he shot behind a big rock and was lost to
sight.
It seemed to Steven that it was an uncompromising good-bye, and it was
with an odd sense of oppression that he turned his own steps back
towards the gateway. He would have struck any other man to the earth
who had dared once to insult, browbeat, or command him as this poor
wanderer had so often done. Where lay the spell? He had power over all
that came in contact with him; and--it was true--what marvellous things
had he had to give! The young man's heart began to throb as he thought
of his bride, and he quickened his step.... The Wind-Flower, that was
his at last, his Fair Dawn!
The bridegroom entered with eager yet reverent step; but, upon sight of
the bride, checked his advance, startled, amazed. Sidonia sat on a
high-backed chair as on a judgment-seat, with face coldly set, yet with
eyes blazing reproach.
"I sent for you, _Herr Graf_," she said, with great distinctness of
enunciation, "to tell you that I decline to go away with you."
The blood rushed to Steven's brain. "I do not understand," he said,
even as she but a little while before; and his tone was that of sudden
anger. The revulsion of feeling was too strong, too sudden; his first
emotion was overwhelming wrath. "What do you mean?" he demanded.
Steel cannot strike steel but the sparks must fly. A fierce pride had
they both. Perhaps Sidonia, in her child-heart, had looked for
consternation on her bridegroom's face, had pictured him thunderstruck,
protesting, falling at her feet; her wounded vanity now was reinforced
by a host of unknown feelings which rushed almost for hatred. Under
this arrogant eye, to this haughty bidding, she would not stoop to
explanation, still less to complaint.
"It is sufficient that you should understand," she told him, "that now
we part. I do not go with you. Go you and forget me!"
"Sidonia!" he ejaculated, stupefaction for the moment sweeping all other
feelings away.
Strangely enough, it never dawned upon him to guess at the truth. Men,
especially young men who have had practically no dealings with the
opposite sex, are very slow to grasp woman's spitefulness, woman's
deceit. He had felt shame at his own weakness of compliance in the
matter of the Burgravine, but no sense of guilt could remain where he
knew all desire to sin to have been so conspicuously absent. He stood
staring at Sidonia's little face convulsed with frowns.
"Oh, sir," she cried, with a disdainful laugh, "you have done all that
honour required of you. It is quite enough. We need make no fine
phrases for each other's benefit. The situation is very clear, and
thereupon we may separate!"
At these inconceivable words a horrible suspicion sprang upon him; he
did not pause to measure the probabilities, to contrast what he knew
with what he did not understand. Was it possible that this young
creature had but played a part with him? Had she feigned sweet maiden
love and wedded him, virginally tender, only to save the threatened
honour of her name? Nay; more monstrous thought still! Was the whole
business a hideous conspiracy? He was shaken as by a storm. Crimson
rushed to his face. In two strides he was beside her menacing.
"You are my wife!" he cried. "You are mine--mine! You belong to me!
You must do as I order--as I order!"
His look filled her with terror. Child-woman, she shrank instinctively
from something to her nameless, yet infinitely offending. Clasping her
hands upon her breast to still the throbbing of her heart, she heard,
beneath her fingers, the whisper of Aunt Betty's billet.
Stung afresh to scorn, she reared her head and measured him with her
glance. In silence she stood, trying to reason out the tangled problem
for herself. With her ignorance of life, her inborn pride, with her
passionate woman's heart and her childish mind, she was bound to go far
and wide astray.
If the marriage on his part was not a mere piece of chivalrous
self-sacrifice, an idea unbearably insulting in itself, why should he
now wish to keep her against her will, since the conventions were
satisfied? What gain could she be to him, since he did not love her?
And how could he love her, he who was in love with Betty? As in a
vision of red flame, she recalled how he and Betty had danced and
coquetted together that first night of all; he had not had even a glance
wherewith to recognize the little Sidonia who had waited on him in the
forest house. Oh, it was true, he had loved Betty from the beginning.
And she, Sidonia, who had let herself be won by a few careless words,
was at the best only a sacrifice to the world's idea of high-born,
gentlemanly decorum. The memory of these last days, so exquisite to
her, was blighted. She had never been anything to him, that was clear.
He had been kind to her, indulgent, but he had never once, she
remembered now, told her that he loved her. And she, fool! had never
realized, even with Betty's example before her, that people could seek
to wed each other without love. Out of her own mad abundance she had
lent to him. And the poor little coin he had doled out in return to her,
she had taken for gold. But now, why should he look at her with those
fierce, greedy eyes? Why should this "poor, chivalrous young man," as
Betty called him, claim her as his bargain, and in these brutal tones?
Once more Betty's voice, with its devilish suggestion, rang in her ears:
_Of course, my love, there are compensations about you!_
"You can have my money if you will--and I am very rich, as you know--so
that you only go. Go!" she cried suddenly.