vague thought of sending a message to Sidonia, to tell her of her
bridegroom's pass, flashed into his mind, only to be dismissed. The
chances of any communication reaching her were remote. He could not go
himself. And, could he have done so, some inner conviction told him that
here he had best not interfere. Between the tree and the bark let none
put his finger. The lovers must win back to each other without any
further meddling. He was not certain that the separation, the very
anger, misunderstanding and soreness, might not be working for the best.
They all had gone too fast, they had made too sure. Steven had been an
over-confident wooer: little Sidonia too ready to be won.
Geiger-Hans and the Forest-Mother made a tolerable existence for
themselves within those sullen walls that had certainly never before
beheld such free humours as the wanderer's, such cosiness and comfort as
the Frau Ober-Forsterin's. Truth to say, from the instant the sick man
was put into her care, the old dame became possessed of excellent
spirits. Every one has a special ideal of happiness. Nursing chanced to
be hers: nursing of men, be it understood, preferably young men--no harm
if they were good-looking--and wounds her speciality. She had salves
that would, she was proud to say, make the bark grow on a lopped tree.
As for poisoned hurts, had she not, she alone, brought her Friedel round
after he had been gored and trampled upon by the stag? And as for
febrifuges and herb-teas, if she had been willing to sell her secrets,
she had not a doubt about it, she now might be a rich woman.
On the fifth morning, a tan-faced boy, with wild eyes looking from side
to side, like a bird's, came pattering up into the Burg, having defied
the crags with hardened bare feet. He brought a letter which had
reached the Forest-House the night before, addressed to its mistress.
The Forest-Mother took it from the fiddler's hand, with many winks and
pointings towards the great bed whereon her charge lay asleep. She
betook herself to the window and began to peruse, with some labour,
forming each word with her lips as she went on.
The fiddler had recognized Sidonia's characteristic hand, upright and
painstaking. Presently the good woman, shaking her head, folded the
sheet and, coming over to the fiddler with her noiseless yet ponderous
tread, placed the missive back into his hand.
The fiddler read:
"BELOVED LITTLE FOREST-MOTHER,
"I promised to write. I am very well, but I wish I were back with you
in the dear green forest. Greet good Friedel for me. Tell him not to
forget to give the white doe a piece of rye bread from me every day.
And it would be kind of him to take old Belthazar out with him now and
again, if only for a short round. I know he is old and stiff; but the
dear old fellow breaks his heart to be left behind when all the young
dogs are taken out. And, dear Forest-Mother, when you go by the
kennels, will you give him a pat for me? And you might just tell him
that he is worth all the silly young things put together, and that the
kennels had never such a fine dog as he. I am sure he understands, and
it will hearten him up. And, when you see Geiger-Onkel, tell him I
think of him, and that his airs keep playing in my head. But always the
sad ones. And tell him, too, that I never was a fairy princess, but
only a silly country girl. This is a place all streets and houses, and
it is very noisy. Everybody seems running about, but I do not know what
they do. I don't like it, but it is better for me to be here than at the
Burg. Of course we are at the Palace. Aunt Betty did not like Uncle
Ludo's apartment on the ground floor, so we have a great suite of rooms
to ourselves in a wing. It is all gold and silk, and very grand. But,
oh, I would rather have the old Forest-House kitchen, with the rafters
and the little windows, and all the wood presses smelling so good of
bees-wax!
"Aunt Betty says it is very dull at Cassel just now, because the king is
still away. Next week, she says, it will be very different when he
returns. But it seems to me that she is always out at parties. I have no
dresses yet. I am very glad to be left at home. So I am quiet here,
but oh, it is not the quiet of the forest. Thou Forest-Mother, I wish I
could kiss thee.
"SIDONIA.
"I hope the old jackdaw is well."
"Na," said the old lady, who had watched him reading, her arms folded
over her deep bosom, "what manner of letter is this at all for a bride
who has run away from her man? That is verily but a foolish child. She
was too young to be wed, eh, Geiger-Onkel?"
"That is the letter of a suffering woman," quoth Geiger-Hans, softly,
"and the whole letter, Mother Friedel, is one cry towards him."
"Jeminy, and where do you see that?" whispered the dame with a shrug for
the poor loony. "Well," she added, in her cheerful undertone, "we've
had a splendid night, our skin is as cool as a little frog's, and we are
healing as quick as a sapling. I wouldn't say but that in another
couple of weeks we might be quite able to travel."
Geiger-Hans looked at the bed, at the fine sleeping face, placidly and
wholesomely pale, at the charming languid hand flung in abandonment on
the purple coverlet.
"Mother Friedel," he said, and his voice was none the less decided
because so low pitched, "three days must see us on the road again."
Heedless of her scandalized protest he folded the letter and, thrusting
it into his breast, gave himself up to reflection. A smile,
half-bitter, half-tender, hovered upon his lips. The child ... she had
remembered him--after her old hound.
*CHAPTER XXI*
*AT THE MOCK VERSAILLES*
"_You are just a porcelain trifle, Belle Marquise!_
_Just a thing of puffs and patches,_
_Made for madrigals and catches,_
_Not for heart-wounds, but for scratches..._"
AUSTIN DOBSON.
Viennese Betty was in Cassel; and if ever the right person was in the
right place, it was Betty in Cassel, the Frenchified Cassel at least of
King Jerome. She breathed in its irresponsible, exciting, immoral
atmosphere with rapture. Its tinfoil splendour was utterly satisfying
to her eyes; its jests provoked her charmed laughter; its aims measured
her utmost ambitions. To shine among these doubtful stars; to take the
lead in frivolities, without fear of losing caste--nay, with every
prospect of being lifted upon giddy triumph as the newest and most
influential "_pompadourette_"--even in her dreams Betty had never
devised for herself a more enchanting prospect! To make the thing
complete, her Bluebeard was tame, absolutely at her mercy ... and held
relentlessly at a distance.
At the first sight of a scowl, at the first rumple of that brow that
used to strike terror, at the first threat of breaking through her
imposed barriers, Betty had but to prattle airily of "_oubliettes_"
(strangely inappropriate term for dark doings that never could be
forgotten), or yet to fall into alarming _pamoisons_, into fits of
shuddering, artistically simulated, accompanied by apparently wandering
yet exceedingly suggestive speech--and the Burgrave was forthwith
reduced to a jelly.
The Burgrave was indeed an altered being, went moodily, found his cup
bitter and his food savourless, while the Burgravine, tasting all the
delights of freedom, fluttered through her first week in Cassel like a
butterfly through a flower garden under full sunshine. A butterfly she
was, upon one side of her nature; but, upon another, capable of
determination and deep-seated resentments. True, she had other and, to
her mind, better quarry to pursue now than Beau Cousin Kielmansegg--a
mere rich young nobleman; yet it added not a little to the fulness of
her gratification to know that she had successfully parted him from
Sidonia.
The evening after her visit to Napoleonshoehe found her in the most
delicate of rose-powdered wrappers, seated at her writing-table in the
window of her boudoir, so prodigiously content with herself and
existence that little snatches of song, little trills of laughter,
escaped her, as she pondered over her correspondence.
It was towards the hour of seven, and the gardens beneath her windows
(so satisfying to Betty's taste) with their mock Versailles elaboration,
were bathed in mellow light. The statues took golden hues and flung a
long fantastic shadow. The fountains flashed and tinkled. Some one was
practising French airs on the clarinet in a room below. A gust of
mingled flower-scents rose up to her nostrils: the pungency of clove
pink, the coarser incense of white lilies, and the nearer breath of the
climbing rose-tree that aspired towards her window.
Betty was the last person in the world to be consciously grateful for
any offering of nature; she was merely aware of a general flattering of
the senses which added to her content.
A few days ago, at Napoleonshoehe, she had met Jerome of Westphalia for
the first time. And what a truly charming man! Not a hint of the
plebeian Corsican about him. No--they maligned who said so. What
manners, what courtesy and dash combined! What a delightful smile!
What an eye! It was rumoured that strong men shivered under the glance
of his great imperial brother. If you had asked her, Betty would have
told you that, from all accounts, Napoleon seemed to her a distinctly
overrated individual--a boor, who would chuck a lady under the chin or
take her by the ear, as though she were a grenadier. Bah!--Nay, give
her the agreeable thrill of coming beneath Jerome's meaning gaze. A
delicious recurrence of the sensation crept through her frame as, with
closed eyes, she recalled the moment ... Jerome's first sight of her,
his start, his stare, his flickering smile.
On the table lay the very rose he had presented to her with such a curve
of slender olive fingers; with so happy a phrase, so graceful an
inclination. Betty had handled the flower a good deal since, had sniffed
and caressed it a vast number of times; the pretty leaves were blighted,
but never did flower excite such admiration in the Burgravine's regard.
She had met the King but a day or two ago; they had exchanged but a
glance, a word, a courtesy--and behold! Betty's morning courier had
brought her a letter from the monarch. A love letter, if you please,
neither more nor less. A request, a demand, for a rendezvous. _Peste!_
he lost no time, the little King! But were there not royal privileges?
Had he not the same blood as the Conqueror in his veins? Moreover, was
not this very haste the best compliment that could be paid a woman?
Not, indeed, that Betty had any notion of allowing herself to go too
cheaply. Perhaps, indeed, she had no very clear idea of letting herself
go at all; but to dally with an exciting situation, to tantalize, to
reign, to fire, and then dash cold water.... Stay, such coarse
expressions ill applied to the Burgravine's delicate methods: to spray,
very gently, with cold rose-water; not sufficiently to drown the lover's
ardour, but just enough to produce a little fizz and splutter--to reign,
in fact, chief of the many sultanas by reason, perhaps, of her very
refusal to qualify for the post! And only to yield at last when ... But
here Betty was glad to allow the prospect to be veiled in a kind of
luminous mist. The immediate programme was quite sufficiently
absorbing.
No wonder she nibbled the feathers of her pen. Her answer to the kingly
missive must be a work of art. The "_rendezvous_" itself must not be
denied, whatever else it might deny. Betty had the instinct of her
species, the born coquette. Too much virtue, at the beginning, is
fatal. Many twigs are required for the lighting of a proper fire.
It stood complete at last, a most dainty little note, indited on pink
paper, duly folded and enclosed in a French envelope, wafered with
mauve--Betty was of the last mode, these days, even to her writing
paper.
The congenial task concluded, she had another to perform. The courier
from Heiligenstadt, whither the King had repaired on a tour of military
inspection, had brought her a second letter--also a love cry, or it
might better be described as a love-bellow. The Burgrave, away on duty
with his sovereign, appealed from a distance to his obdurate wife.
He was filled with amorous longing, jealousy, despair. How long was he
to be exiled from her favour? The situation was past endurance! He
implored, groaned, rebelled, threatened, and was abject again--all in a
few frenzied lines. The gist of the whole was in the last phrase: "When
am I to be forgiven? Am I not your husband?"
The answer to this effusion required but a flourish of the pen. Yet, as
the lady planted a green wafer upon the second envelope, there was a
triumphant smile upon her lip, a vindictive gleam of pleasure in her
eye. The despatching of her morning budget had been altogether
pleasurable.
* * * * *
Close by, in the little chamber allotted to her, Sidonia, behind locked
doors, was engaged upon a similar task; for to her the courier had also
brought a letter demanding instant acknowledgment. It was a very short
one, and by no means so loverlike as either of Betty's billets.
"I have been slightly indisposed" (wrote Steven) "and unable to travel
for a few days; but I trust to be in Cassel within the week, and shall
seek you in the Palace. It must be clear to you that you owe me at
least an explanation. It is impossible that we can part for ever thus.
"STEVEN."
Not a word of love! Not a hint of despair! Not even reproach! It was
all cold, cruel business. As Sidonia wrote her reply, the tears dripped
so quickly that she could scarce see the paper.
Eliza, very brisk and tripping, who had the charge of posting the three
letters, studied the superscriptions very carefully before committing
them to the royal mail. Her eyes grew round at sight of the
pink-wafered note. _Diable!_ If the mistress had such correspondence,
it might become a question whether Jaeger Kurtz would continue to be
good enough for the maid. She smiled vindictively at sight of the green
wafer. If she knew her lady, the Chancellor was far from being fully
paid out yet. "And serve him right," said she, who would herself be long
before she forgave Burg-Wellenshausen for the horrors of its tedium.
The old-fashioned sheet that bore Sidonia's childish scrawl she weighed
awhile reflectively in her hand. Madame la Burgravine would doubtless
give something to see the contents of _that_ letter.... Then, with a
shrug of her shoulders, she sent it on its voyage with the rest. The
service of her lady had its advantages; and Eliza, pining in the Burg,
had stuck to it with unerring prescience of better days. But it did not
follow that she held no opinions of her own. And she had even a kind of
good-nature that did quite as well as a conscience, as far as her
neighbours were concerned, and was far more agreeable for herself.
"I am not hard-hearted like madame, look you," said the maid to herself.
"The child is a nice child, as young ladies go, and she should have her
chance."
* * * * *
The spirits of spring and autumn are akin, although the one journeys
towards the fulness of life, and the other to the cold sleep, death.
Across the dividing months they seem to meet each other, to serve you
smiles and tears, skies of a tenderness unknown to summer, gales of
wind, soft as milk, mighty as love. These come chanting with the voices
of the ocean, the mountain and the forest, great songs of glory; seize
you by the way in resistless arms, tell you wondrous things, and set
your blood leaping as they pass. They set, if autumn it be, the yellow
leaves awhirl in a death dance; or, if spring, every baby bud rocking on
its sappy spray.
The travellers, one riding, the other afoot, went side by side along the
road towards Cassel. It was a south-west wind that buffeted them. Even
in the heart of the inland it seemed to sing of distant seas; to bear on
its pinions airs at once untamable and mild, balmy and salt. The forest
trees roared under it as with the voice of waters. It gathered from
them drifts of yellowing leaves, even as, leagues behind, it had churned
spray from Mediterranean waves. In the young traveller's heart storm
answered to storm; its breath in his nostrils maddened him, for he had
fever in his veins, and he was balked in love.
But to the other traveller, whose hair was grey, who tramped along with
the even measure of him who has learned to ignore fatigue, the autumn
lament was charged with the hopelessness of the grave. It told him how
all that is born must die, and how the beautiful die first. In the
choiring of the forest he heard the dirge of waning life. In each gust
of pungent fragrance he could smell the bitter graves of yesteryear.
The horseman was clothed in fine and fashionable garments. He who
trudged was but a vagrant player, who made music for his daily bread and
rarely knew in the morning where he would lay his head at night.
They went in silence. Steven's heart was heavy. Robbed of his bride
well-nigh on the altar-steps, he was now seeking her, in an impatience
which repeated disappointment had fed to frenzy. And Geiger-Hans was
his guide.
At a certain spot the forest began to press closer upon the imperial
road. The overarching boughs flung a swaying, premature night upon
them; and, as the woodland enfolded them, it seemed to draw them into a
great sanctuary. Let the gale rage without, here was protection and an
inner stillness all the deeper in contrast to the outer turmoil.
Instinctively the travellers drew closer to each other, and their
tongues were loosened.
The rider struck his saddle-bow with a passionate hand, at which the
plodding grey faintly started.
"To think of her, at Cassel, under the devil flicker of that imperial
puppet's glance! Sidonia, my wife, at the Court of Jerome!"
"A waterlily may defy the ooze," observed Geiger-Hans, sententiously.
But the simile was hateful to the youth--a water-lily, a flower that
flourishes, in atrocious beauty, upon the very slime! Then he cursed
his wound for its slow healing, and his blood for its ill-timed fever,
and the length of the road, and the perversity of women.
"And the wrong-headedness of young men!" added the musician, drily.
But thereafter, in tones of consolation, for dudgeon reigned on the
saddle above him, he pointed to a light far off through the dark flicker
of leaf and shadowy march of trees.
"See, yonder shall we sup and sleep, and thence, rested, start in the
brisk dawn. And to-morrow----"
"To-morrow!" interrupted the bridegroom, impatiently. "No; I shall be
in Cassel to-night."
"You forget the times we live in, comrade," came the fiddler's answer.
"Why, here is my nobility afoot; and yours, all wounded, upon a sorry
steed, because any less notable progression were to court suspicion,
putting aside the fact that your worship's carriage and horses (Sidonia
would have none of them, and if you were not otherwise matched you two
would be one by pride, comrade) have been requisitioned for the use of
the State. And Frantz fled with his master's dressing set, his English
pistols, and his second portmanteau! Court suits I make no doubt, tut,
tut. The fellow was a rogue. I saw it at half a blink. And worthy
Peter, our postilion, bitten with the war fever and passed over to the
Prussians! Nay, but 'tis a riddance that suits me. And here we go as I
love, at our own free will, save, indeed, that we enter not Cassel
to-night. Have you already forgotten that we are at war, in Westphalia?
Not, I grant you, that it signifies much to our pretty monarch--so long
as it does not interfere with his amusements at home. He has thought it
wise, nevertheless, to make a little fortress of his
capital--breastworks and glacis where lay the orchards and cottage
gardens; posterns and _corps de garde_ at all road entrances, and
everything closed at the setting of the watch, an hour after sundown!"
Steven the lover had, in his mind's eye, seen his pilgrimage ended
before the fall of the day; seen himself dashed or crowned. Crowned!
Upon the vision the surge rose in his heart till it overpowered him
well-nigh to swooning.
Geiger-Hans, with his diabolic insight, chose this moment to draw from
his fiddle a sudden strain.
"Oh, stop!" panted the young man. "I cannot bear it."
And the player fell silent, musing upon the ways of men and women and of
love. Let a bride but elude her lover's embrace, what surer road shall
she find to a revealing of his ardour?
*CHAPTER XXII*
*THE CABINET NOIR*
"_Good even, sir,_
_But what, in faith, make you from Wittenberg?_"
(_Hamlet_).
Night had completely fallen. A full moon was forging up the sky, like
some superb ship beating up the wind, all sail spread and defying the
tumultuous seas of cloud, when the comrades emerged from the woodland
and halted before the inn.
"The Three Ways," for a poor roadside house, held unwontedly merry
company to-night, to judge by the medley of shout and song that rang out
from its upper windows.
The fiddler, mounting the steps that led to the door, gave a few knocks
with special emphasis. To this there was no response. Laughing
silently, he waited awhile, then suddenly betook himself to his violin,
at its highest pitch. Too much engrossed with their own music,
unhearing, perhaps, through the rolling of the wind, the first-floor
revellers paid no heed to knocks or notes; but below there was immediate
stirring. The bolts screeched under a hasty hand.
"Ach! you, Geiger-Onkel!" cried the hostess, as she stood revealed on
the threshold. "You will have your joke! ... We thought it was the
police commissary's rap! Ah, heavens, what times these are! One's
heart is in one's throat all day, all night."
She clasped her hands upon her flat bosom, but suddenly catching sight
of the rider, forgot to pant that she might the better stare.
"'Tis but a new brother of mine," said the fiddler, carelessly. "Send
the kerl for his horse.--So you have some of the boys here? Well, I
bring news for them. Come, comrade, you must be weary."
In the kitchen, amid otherwise pleasing surroundings, their nostrils
were offended by an extraordinary reek of stale wine, presently
traceable, it seemed, to a postilion in dilapidated uniform, who was
ensconced within the glow of the hearth.
The man's high collar and braided jacket were open for the freer
intercourse of throat and can; he winked impudently at Geiger-Hans, and
had a truculent roll of the eyes for Steven.
"Interception of the King's mail--_lese majeste_--crime of the first
category--punishment capital," observed he, with some pride, in answer
to the young man's astonished look.
"The punishment includes all accessory to the act," suggested
Geiger-Hans, pleasantly.
"Not the victim of coercion," stated the postilion, with indifference.
He turned his tankard upside down as a hint to the hostess. She, poor
thing, seemed to regard these doings as a hare may the trap that
clutches her pad.
"The gentlemen are upstairs," she said, and wiped the dampness from her
lip with the corner of her apron.
The gentlemen upstairs continued to make their presence uproariously
patent.
"The Brotherhood are apparently having a little argument," quoth
Geiger-Hans, with a slight smile.
"For heaven's sake, Onkel, go up and quiet them, if you can! We shall
have the patrol upon us!" groaned the hostess.
"Now, comrade," said the fiddler to Steven, one foot upon the narrow
stairs, "I will now introduce you into nobler company than ever! I have
made you known to one of the newest kings and to one of the oldest
Burgraves in the land. To-night you shall become acquainted with the
offspring of a nation in chains--heroes, my little count, no less.
Patriots of the first water!"
Count Kielmansegg was conscious that the corners of his highborn lips
drooped. The patriotism of Westphalia--convulsions of a tin kettle on a
mere corner of the vast Napoleonic fire, pot-house heroes that roared
their enthusiasm into the night to the clink of the can.... Bah!
There was a twinkle in the musician's eye that mocked his words. He
went nimbly up the stair, and his companion followed with the heavy foot
of fatigue.