her voice were indomitable in their determination. As if her slender
sunburnt hand had struck him a deadly blow, Steven Lee, Count
Kielmansegg, stepped back a couple of paces, and the blood, ebbing from
his face, left it grey. He paused for a while, then made a bow, turned
on his heel, and went to the door. On the threshold he looked back at
her for a second again. It was a farewell look, and bore in it a pride
as high and bleeding as her own, a reproach as keen. She saw that his
lip trembled. Then the door was closed, very gently, between them, and
she heard his steps die away down the winding stone stairs.
She glanced at her new wedding-ring and thought her heart must break,
but yet she sat and made no effort to recall him.
*CHAPTER XVII*
*THE SKIRT OF WAR*
"_And there was mounting, in hot haste, the steed._
_The mustering squadron and the clattering car_
_Went pouring forward with impetuous speed..._"
BYRON.
It was a day of scurrying breezes and dappled skies. Long pools
reflected blue and white in the ruts of his Majesty King Jerome of
Westphalia's neglected highway. Wide and deep ruts they were, tracks of
the "Grand Army" that had been; and even a village child could have told
that great guns and waggons had passed that way before the sweeping by
of the last spring storm.
But the rider, on his big-boned, iron-grey horse, splashed through the
mud at reckless speed. He had no thought for the story of the wounded
country road. Its tragic significance would have left him unmoved had
he understood. Such experience as he had just been through changes the
whole world in a man's eyes: he becomes as one who, a moment before in
perfect health, finds himself shattered by some disabling
accident--nothing in life can ever look, ever feel the same again. He
had wrenched himself free of love's snare as the wild thing of the woods
from the teeth of the springe; but at what vital hurt, how maimed, how
bruised, how deeply marked! What was it to him that the west wind,
dashing against his face, was balmy with the breath of the black
pinewoods on the rising slopes to his right; that the rank meadows that
fell away to the left were colour alive, gold-green in the sunlight;
that shadows swept across them like spirit messages? His ears were deaf
to the organ chant of the pines, to the shrill call of the bird echoing
back from the blue vault. Unmoved, he trotted through the
poverty-stricken villages, by the deserted homesteads, once flourishing,
beside the wasted cornfields. One whom life was treating as evilly as
himself could not be expected to bestow even the alms of a pitying
thought to the peasant soldiers, stiff in the snows of Russia, or
plodding, vanquished at last, in Spanish rocky deserts, nor to the
starving families to whom the breadwinner would never return. He did
not even care whither he was hurrying, so long as he crossed the nearest
frontier of a country to him accursed. To this goal all the passions of
his mind were pointed.
* * * * *
With head bent towards the wind, and fiddle slung on his shoulder, a
wandering musician was breasting the hill, where the high Imperial road
skirting the Thuringian forest bends towards that fertile valley watered
by the Fulda. The sinews of Steven's steed faltered before the
steepness of the ascent, and the mounted traveller, curbing his
impatience to suit the way, found himself level with the humble wayfarer
at a pace that made companionship inevitable. Yet, on the instant that
he had recognized him, the rider would fain have passed unnoticed. It
seemed hard, a perversity of fate, that in this wide, empty country, he
should stumble upon the one man whom he would of all others avoid; the
man who had had so much influence--he now thought for disaster--upon his
life.
Geiger-Hans, the friend, the comrade, had become, in his eyes, the
enemy. To his meddling he owed his present misfortune, the humiliation
that was eating into his soul, the disillusion which made even the soft
west wind bitter to his taste.
The wanderer started as he beheld the young face looking down at him
from over the horseman's cloak.
"You!" he exclaimed.
"I!" said Steven.
The man on foot halted. He on horseback unconsciously reined in. The
two remained gazing at each other, and in the eyes of both was hot
reproach.
Slowly the blood crept back crimson to the countenance of Geiger-Hans,
which had grown livid under its tan.
"And whither set you off alone, bridegroom, on your grey horse?" asked
he at length, in that tone of irony under which he hid most of emotions.
"Anywhere," answered the bridegroom with a pale smile, "so long as I put
space between myself and my bride."
Geiger-Hans drew his brows together into a dark frown. His nostrils
dilated, the corners of his mouth twitched.
_"Peste!_" said he under his voice. Then: "Is it not a little
premature? The joy bells can hardly be silent yet. Had it been a few
months later--but now!"
His tone was cynical, but his eye was stern and anxious.
"Months?" echoed the rider with a laugh. "It took her but the measure of
minutes to decide on my worth."
"Her?" commented the musician with inquiring emphasis.
"Did you think," answered Steven--and, though he strove to be cool, the
passion of his wrath wrote itself on every line of his face and vibrated
in his voice like the first mutterings of thunder--"did you think I went
through the marriage ceremony for the pure amusement of making a nine
days' scandal and deserting my hour-old wife? That would have been a
brilliant jest indeed! No; if you must know, the situation is of her
making. She took her woman's privilege ... and changed her mind."
"She was a child yesterday," said Geiger-Hans.
There was pain in Steven's smile as he returned:
"She was no child this morning."
"But, heavens!" cried the other impatiently, "even so. Did she play the
woman, was it not the more reason for you to play the man? You left
her, you left her ... is it possible? For a few sharp words, perhaps,
some silly misunderstanding! Why, she was yours, man; and you should
have carried her with you, were it on the crupper of that high-boned
grey."
"Aye," replied Steven. "Even so, as you say. It also dawned upon me,
deficient as I am in wits, that the time had come for me to play the
man. I actually announced my intention of carrying her away with me by
main force--not on this brute, but in the coach prepared for our bridal
journey. She reminded me that I took her fortune with her."
"Ah, bah!" said the fiddler, and winced as if he had been struck.
"It seems she is an heiress," continued the bridegroom's voice over his
head. "She offered me half her fortune--her whole fortune--if I would
go without her! Hey! what answer would you have a man make to that?"
It seemed as if the fiddler could not say; even his ready tongue had no
reply.
Steven had meant to take a more dignified attitude with the vagrant; to
assume as gentlemanly a mask of indifference as possible. The
unexpected meeting (and Steven had no intention but that it should be
the last) should be conducted with a rational regard to the distance
between them. His heart was no longer on his sleeve for this wayside
jackdaw to peck at. But the old power of the fellow's presence, and
also his own youthful pain, were too strong for him. Into the silence
he dropped a desperate cry:
"Oh, curse you, Geiger-Hans; why could you not have passed me by on the
road that evening, and left me to my own life!"
The fiddler looked up at him, still mute; but there was something in his
look that went straight to the core of Steven's wounded soul, and
brought a sense of comfort and of strength. And yet--strange! it
actually seemed as if Steven's sorrow were nothing to the sorrow of
Geiger-Hans, this hour. They were enemies no more--they were comrades,
struck by the same misfortune. But Geiger-Hans was brave; he knew how
to bear his share. Steven felt suddenly ashamed.
"And so you rode away?" said the musician then, laying his hand on the
horse's shoulder.
It was to Steven as if that lean hand had kindly touched himself.
"Aye--I got the first nag to be had for money, and rode away, leaving
her my carriage and horses and servants. For a Countess
Waldorff-Kielmansegg must have her equipage! That episode is closed!"
The rider chucked his reins and set the rested horse to his labour up
the hill once more.
Geiger-Hans had remained a second, gazing at the stones in the road;
then he roused himself, and caught up the rider in a couple of quick
strides. His shoulders were rounded as beneath a burden. Yet Fate had
played him too many scurvy tricks for him to indulge in the astounded
rebellion of youth. After a while he looked up and spoke again.
"These women," he said, "these children--they insult a man because they
do not understand. Mischief has been made--mischief is always alert
somewhere when marriage-bells are ringing. Go back to her!"
"I!" cried Steven Lee.
"Go back to her!" said the fiddler again, as he trudged the stony way.
"Be generous----"
Steven laughed out loud; and Geiger-Hans knew that the wound had gone
deeper even than he suspected.
"I am for Vienna," said the bridegroom briefly. "But I shall make fit
settlements upon her, never fear, and such provisions as may safeguard
her honour ... and my own. And as----"
"Nay, comrade," interrupted the other, sharply, "such a union as
yours--why, 'twould be the easiest contract to annul that ever two young
fools repented of."
Steven's hands contracted over the leather.
"Do you think so?" said he, and grew darkly crimson. "Oh, of course,"
he said, and laughed, "that would be much the best. Aha! Annul! Well,
she has only to wish it."
The musician, observing him, showed now a lighter countenance, and
presently smiled to himself. Then he shifted his instrument from his
back to his breast and began to twang the strings, as if in deep
reflection.
"We shall part at the top of the hill," said the rider.
"Shall we?" said the wayfarer. "I think not. Listen, my lord."
The rousing autumn wind brought indeed a strange distant rumour on its
wings, and the fiddler imposed silence on his restless fingers and stood
still himself, leaning his ear.
Once more Steven arrested his horse. There is nothing so infectious as
the curiosity of the ear. The flapping gust fell as they halted; and
then the sounds which it had carried over the crest of the knoll seemed
to be repeated with much greater distinctness from the vale in their
rear.
"What is it?" asked he.
It was a sound like the beat of giant storm-rain upon forest leaves,
only that it was measured at repeated intervals by rhythmic jingle and
clink. Even as he spoke, Steven heard a crisp drumming of hoofs separate
itself from the confusion; then, upon the ring of a commanding voice,
the thunder-wave of advance broke itself into silence. And in the midst
of this silence a succession of cracking shots suddenly pattered close
on one another, as beads dropping from a string.
"Stand back!" cried the fiddler. And, suiting the action to the word,
he seized the horse by the bit and forced it backwards into the ditch
that girt the road on the side of the fields.
"But what is it?" asked Steven once more, as clamour within the woods
rose again: a hideous medley of human voices wrangling like angry
beasts, of plunging and neighing of horses, crackling of boughs and thud
of iron hoofs. The fiddler dilated his nostrils. He stood leaning
against the flank of the grey, his right hand still firmly on the bit. A
fine blue vapour, pungent of smell, was oozing between the dark firs.
"Have you never smelt it before, you innocent?" said he, looking up at
the rider, and his sunburnt face was kindled by stern fires. "Yet
there's scarce a square rood of Europe, these twelve years, that has not
known the smoke of this holocaust. It is war, man!"
The words were still on his lips when the placid front of the forest
before them was shaken and pierced and rent in a hundred places.
Red-coated hussars, with flying blue dolmans--bareheaded most, but some
with huge shako and plume at a dishevelled angle--broke covert along the
whole line, crashing through the underwood, leaping, it seemed, one upon
the other, each man inclining in his saddle and spurring towards the
downward slope at a mad gallop.
Steven's horse shivered under him. It had, no doubt, in its youth been
a charger: it was now seized with martial ardour, and flinging up its
head to shake off the fiddler's grip, displayed such a strong intention
to join in the race--which no doubt it conceived to be a glorious
charge--that a less practised rider would have found it hard to keep the
saddle.
As it was, Steven could gather but a confused impression of the flying
troop as it thundered past--of a whirl, bucketing, straining, pumping,
clanking, splashing; of men's faces, crimson, distorted, open-mouthed;
of bridles slavered with blood and foam; of craning horses' necks, and
nostrils afire!
Geiger-Hans gave a shrill laugh:
"The most gallant the Hussars of the Guard of His Majesty Jerome the
First (and last!) in full rout! And, oh, shadow of Moscow! who are the
pursuers?"
*CHAPTER XVIII*
*THE RAID*
"_List his discourse of war, and you shall hear_
_A fearful battle rendered you in music._"
(_King Henry V._).
The forest was now alive with hoarse, guttural cries, as if the wooded
depths had released some giant brood of ravens. And then,
helter-skelter, even as the last belated hussar, blood streaming from a
black gash in his forehead, clattered heavily rearmost of his comrades,
reins loose, clinging to the saddle--they came! Squat riders on squat
horses--cattle and man as shaggy and unkempt one as the other--with long
tags of hair bobbing round wild-bearded faces, pointed fur caps drawn
down to the eyes, sheepskin-clad knees up almost to the chin, stirruped
with rope, brandishing rough spears; miscellaneous booty--a goose, a
sucking-pig, a frying-pan, maybe a cottage clock--swinging at the
saddle-bow! They came, shouting their crow-call, exulting, squealing,
grunting! They came, filled the road with clamour and clatter, and
stench ... and were gone before Steven could draw, it seemed to him, the
full breath of his amazement!
Like the second gust of the hurricane, they had gathered, broken past
them, and were lost; the clamour of their tempest way rising loud, then
growing swiftly faint in the distance, as the valley received them.
"Now," said Geiger-Hans, looking up, "here is an experience for your
English-bred youth. Fate has annihilated the centuries; you have beheld
the passage of the Huns! _Pouah!_ what a wild-beast trail they have
left behind them! To think that Napoleon should have gone to seek these
wolves and jackals in their steppes, and spread the Cossack over the
face of Europe!"
He sprang out of the ditch; and the grey, much injured in feeling,
snorting and sullenly upheaving its haunches, was induced to follow. A
roll of far-off musketry crepitated up to them from the plain.
"Do you hear?" said Geiger-Hans. "And do you know what that means?"
"They are fighting on the other side of the hill," said Steven, spurring
towards the crest.
"Yes, it is perhaps worth your youthship's attention. Do not, however,
flatter yourself that you are viewing a battle. A mere skirmish, _un
combat_, nothing more; one of the hundred or so that takes place now,
week in, week out, on the marches of the mighty conqueror's lands. For
a small kingdom, little brother Jerome can flatter himself to have
gathered to it, from without and within, a considerable collection of
enemies--Cossacks hanging like jackals on the flanks of the great army;
Prussians from the north, Saxons from the east, peasants and students
from his own villages and cities. This raid is scarce like to appear in
the _Gazette_, but it is enough, for the combatants! The dead yonder
are as dead as though they had fallen at Austerlitz or the Moskowa.
Hark, at the snap of the musket--that is the sound of the Empire
cracking! 'Tis the Empire cracking," repeated the musician, running
alongside, his hand at the stirrup-leather. "And the little House of
Westphalia is doomed to fall, as the cottage falls on the hillside from
the earthquake that has wrecked the city.... A back-wave from Moscow
have we here to-day."
They had halted on the crest, and their gaze plunged into the open
valley. A canopy of blue smoke hung over the fields that spread between
their knoll and a little town, some half-mile distant. The mist was
pierced with slow-moving lines of bayonets which flashed back the
sunshine; it was traversed with colour.
Geiger-Hans ran a knowing eye over the scene:
"Aha! What did I tell you? Those are Prussians, holding the townlet,"
said he. "Contrast their sober uniform with Jerome's scarlets and
greens, his plumes and gold lace. There go our runaways! See them draw
up behind yonder crimson platoon--Brother Jerome's Grenadiers of the
Guard, for he must ape big brother Napoleon.... Look, our friends the
Cossacks roll back together like a swarm of hornets at the foot of the
hill; they find themselves cut off from their Prussian allies--and if
the Hussars but rally in time, we may see the _roles_ of the drama
reversed in a minute."
He fell abruptly silent: something had flown between his head and
Steven's as the latter bent towards him from his saddle--something that
droned a strange song as it passed and puffed a cold breath on their
cheeks.
"What was that?" asked Steven, starting.
"That was a stray Death," said the musician, placidly. "What say
you--shall we seek cover?"
"Let us see the thing out!" cried Steven.
"There will be more lead loose," said Geiger-Hans, glancing up with an
odd expression. "Death flies on a capricious wing when this sort of
game is played."
"Why, then," answered the bridegroom, with his smile of bitterness,
"that might be the simplest solution of all; at least, I should not be
deeply mourned."
"If that be your mind towards bullets," said the fiddler, with a shadow
of sarcasm, "for once your youth and my age are in harmony. But what if
you were to tie your horse behind some forest trees? There is no need of
offering him up also to our altar of despair--and he might be of use to
one of us, when the day is over."
Steven admitted the suggestion without a word. Presently both men sat
upon a high bank, their legs dangling into space.
"How inspiring!" said the fiddler. He unslung his instrument. "Did you
hear that volley? It came from troops trained under Bonaparte, I'll
wager my fiddle-bow. Here the insurgents respond. See those puffs of
white smoke in and out of the line under the village wall! Not a gun
together. Loose shooting ... but good hatred! I'll back it in the long
run! Drums! shouts! The bayonet charge. What did I tell you? here come
our Huns back again ... what's left of them. I am inspired! Hark you,
this is the song of the fight.... First come the Grenadiers, cool and
scornful, musket on breast, arms folded; they march like one man. '_I
have served, under the Eagle; I have been of the Guard of the Great
Emperor. To Moscow I have been ... and back: to-day it is sunshine: it
is child's play, but I would rather be back on the ice with my Emperor.
To me he is the Little Corporal: I am one of the old lot. It is I and
mine who put the crown on his head. To Jena we went singing:_
"'"We'll go and bring a kingdom home,
To give little brother Jerome."
_He said little brother should have a little kingdom of his own--well,
what is this rabble that would undo his work? ... It was warm work at
Jena, comrade--oh, and it was cold at Moscow!'..._
"'_Aim at the Old Guards, kerls_' (says the Prussian to his gunners).
'_Hurl down the Guard, and the field is ours! ... Hurl down the Guard,
aha!_'
"'_I have to come out to fight for the Fatherland_' (says the peasant
lad); '_my mother put a green sprig in my hat. I shall put a notch on
my musket-stock for every Frenchman I have killed, and shall show it to
my children when Gretel and I marry._' ... _Oh, but the Old Guard shoots
steady! Green sprig is down on the meadow; his comrades jump over him,
one steps on his hand, but he feels nothing. Poor little Patriot; he has
not even struck one blow for the Fatherland, but his red blood is
sinking into the soil! How bright will bloom the flower of liberty in
the land thus watered!_"
The fiddler wielded his bow with a kind of frenzy, and his battle music
rose above the clamour of the distant combat, the scramble and clatter
of the Cossacks up the hills, their defiant calls and grunts.
The remnant of the wild horde had reached the summit again in mad
disorder, seeking the forest shelter at the first available point. A
flight of bullets came singing through the air among them: the company
of grenadiers, marking the routed enemy against the sky-line, had flung
a last contemptuous volley after them. The savages squealed and ducked,
clinging to their shaggy steeds in fantastic attitudes; a few were
struck; one fell; his nearest comrade caught up the reins of his mount
and, with exultant yell, led it away with him. The dead man was dragged
a few yards till his inert foot fell loose of the hempen stirrup and he
lay, a heap of discoloured rags, among the stones. Fear was on no man's
face, but grins of defiance undaunted. Their war-cry was still of
triumph.
Geiger-Hans sprang to his feet on the bank. He waved his bow, then
drove it across the strings to a new song, shrill and mocking--a song of
scorn for the fugitive:
"_Spread your dark wings and fly, obscene birds! Yet exult as you go:
the scent of Death is in the air. In a little while you may gorge--but
to-day the stricken Eagle can still beat back the carrion crows. Fly,
flap your wings--caw--caw!_"
[Illustration: "_Spread your dark wings, obscene birds! ... the scent of
Death is in the air. In a little while you may gorge! ... Fly, flap
your wings--caw--caw!_"]
Steven stared amazed at his companion, and listened spellbound. The
musician was like a man possessed. His grizzled locks seemed to stand
out from his face, his left hand danced along the strings, his right arm
worked with fury. If ever catgut and wood mocked and insulted, that
possessed instrument of Geiger-Hans' did so that day of the combat of
Heiligenstadt, in the teeth of the defeated Kalmuck. "_Caw, caw!_" it
shrieked, catching the very guttural of the last belated Cossack, who
struggled in rear of his comrades on a wounded horse. The man turned
back in his sheepskin saddle, fury in his bloodshot eyes, poised his
weapon over his head, measuring his distance.
"Take care!" cried Steven, leaping from the bank. But louder and
shriller played Geiger-Hans. The savage hurled the lance; and Steven,
flinging himself forward, with arms extended, caught the blow. He
rolled back upon the player and both came to the ground together. The
music fell mute. Shouting victory, the Cossack forced his bleeding nag
into the brushwood.
* * * * *
"If Madame Sidonia were here," said the fiddler, with emphasis on the
married title, "what a hero you would be to her!"
He had bound Steven's shoulder--the wound was an ugly gash
enough--ministered to him with the wine of the country from a flask of
his own, and water from the brook. The contest for the village, between
King Jerome's troops and the raiders, was yet undecided, and fitful
sounds of battle were still growling in the valley.
The winds blustered in the tree-tops; they had swept the sky from west
to east more blue than there is colour to describe. There was a
wonderful pulse of growing things about them. Every grass-blade shook
in lusty individual life. The leafage was full of bright-eyed,
feathered broods, planning the autumn flitting. The whole forest hummed
with the minute creatures of Nature's fecundity.... In the plain,
openly and with tumult, the masters of earth were strewing its fair face
with Death.
"If Madame Sidonia were here!" repeated the fiddler, and cast a sly look
at the young man's face over the last knot of his bandage.
Steven frowned and was silent.
"They will go on tearing each other to pieces down there till night.
What say you? Shall not grey steed retrace his steps and carry Master
Bridegroom back where he should be?"
"No!" cried the other, scarlet leaping to his livid face. "A thousand
times no! I am not yet the base thing she deems me."
The musician subdued a sigh.
"What a noble thing is true pride!" quoth he, picked up his fiddle and
began to examine it carefully.--"Heavens!" he cried, "if you had broken
it! Can a man fling himself upon another in such inconsiderate fashion
when there's a Stradivarius between them!"
"Had it not been for my want of consideration," said Steven, with some
pique, "I think the precious instrument would hardly have known the
touch of your fingers again."