Now has there happened to me one of the strangest adventures of my
strange life, and before I sleep I have determined to note it down, for
no other reason than this: that my waking thoughts to-morrow will refuse
to credit mere memory, without some such corroboration. Nay, I have
another witness--this glove!
Were it not for this, I should have chronicled our _féte_ which really
was far more successful than such things usually are. Not only was there
no _contretemps_, but all went off well and pleasantly. The men were
witty and good-tempered; the women--albeit many of them handsome--were
_aimable_, and disposed to be pleased; the weather and the champagne
were perfect. They who could eat--which I couldn’t--say, that Gougon
was admirable; and the band played some of Donizetti’s pieces with great
precision and effect. _Ainsi_, the elements were all favourable; each
instrument filled its part; and the _ensemble_ was good--rather a rare
event where people come out expressly bent on enjoyment, and determined
to take pleasure by storm. Premeditated happiness, like marriage for
love, is often too much premeditated. Here, however, “the gods were
propitious.” Unlike most picnics, there neither was rain nor rancour;
and considering that we had specimens of at least half-a-dozen different
nationalities, and frequently as many different languages going at
once, there was much amusing conversation, and a great deal of pleasant,
gossip-ping anecdote: not that regular story-telling which depends upon
its stage-effect of voice and manner, but that far more agreeable kind
of narrative that claims interest from being about people and places
that we know beforehand, conveying traits of character and mind of
well-known persons, always amusing and interesting.
There was a French secretary of legation for Berne, a most pleasant
_convive_; and the Austrian general was equally amusing. Some of his
anecdotes of the campaign of 1805 were admirable: by the way, he felt
dreadfully shocked at his own confession that he remembered Wagram. The
Countess Giordani came late. We were returning from our ramble among
rocks and cliffs when she appeared.
I did not wish to be presented; I preferred rather the part of observing
her, which acquaintance would have prevented. But old Lady B---- did not
give me the choice: she took my arm, and, after a little tour through
the company, came directly in front of the Countess, saying, with a
bluntness all her own,--
“Madame la Comtesse, let me present a friend whose long residence in
your country gives him almost the claim of a countryman:--M, Templeton.”
If I was not unmoved by the suddenness of this introduction--appealing
as it did, to me at least, to old memories--the Countess was composure
itself: a faint smile in acknowledgment of the speech, a gentle
expression of easy satisfaction on meeting one who had visited her
country, were all that even my prying curiosity could detect.
“What part of Sicily have you seen?” said she to me.
“My friend Lady B----,” said I, “has made me a greater traveller than I
can pretend to be: I have been no further south than Naples.”
“Oh! I am not Neapolitan,” said she, hastily, and with an air like
disappointment.
I watched her closely as she spoke, and at once said to myself, “No!
this is not, this cannot be, Caroline Graham.”
We conversed but little during dinner. She evidently did not speak
French willingly, and my Italian had been too long in rust for fluency.
Of English she shewed not the least knowledge. There were stories told
in her hearing, at some of which to avoid laughter would have been
scarcely possible, and still she never smiled once. If I wanted any
additional evidence that she was not of English origin, chance presented
one, as she was referred to by the Russian for the name of a certain
Sicilian family where a “vendetta” had been preserved for two entire
centuries; and the Countess replied, with a slight blush, “The Marquis
of Bianconetti--my uncle.”
I own that, while it was with a sense of relief I learned to believe
that the Countess was not the sister of my poor friend, I still could
not help feeling something akin to disappointment at the discovery. I
felt as though I had been heaping up a store of care and anxiety around
me for one I had never seen before, and for whom I could really take
no deep interest. One husbands their affections as they grow older.
The spendthrift habit of caring for people without even knowing why, or
asking wherefore, which is one of the pastimes--and sometimes a right
pleasant one, too--of youth, becomes rarer as we go further on in life,
till at last we grow to be as grudging of our esteem as of our gold, and
lend neither, save on good interest and the best security. Bad health
has done for me the work of time, and I am already oppressed and weary
of the evils of age.
Something, perhaps, of this kind--some chagrin, too, that the Countess
was not my old acquaintance» though, Heaven knows, it had grieved me
far more to know she had been--some discontent with myself for being
discontented--or “any other reason why,”--but so was it, I felt what in
fashionable slang is called “put out,” and, in consequence, resolved
to leave the party and make my way homeward at the first favourable
opportunity. Before setting out I had determined, as the night would be
moonlit, to make a slight _détour_, and thus avoid all the _fracas_ and
tumult of driving home in a mob; and, with this intention, had ordered
my phaeton to meet me in the Mourg-Thal, at a small inn, whither I
should repair on foot, and then make my tour back by the Castle of
Eberstein.
A move of the company to take coffee on a rock beside the Waterfall gave
me the opportunity I desired, and I sauntered along a little path
which in a few moments led me into the Pine Forest, and which, from the
directions I had received, I well knew conducted over the mountain, and
descended by a series of steep zigzags into the valley of the Mourg.
Although I had quitted the party long before sunset, the moon was
high and bright ere I reached the spot where my carriage awaited me.
Exhilarated by the unwonted exertion--half-gratified, too, by the
consciousness of supporting a degree of fatigue I had been pronounced
incapable of,--I took my seat in good spirits, to drive back to Baden.
As I ascended the steep road towards Eberstein, I observed that lights
were gleaming from the windows of the large salon of the castle, that
looks towards the glen. I knew that the Grand Ducal family were at
Carlsruhe, and was therefore somewhat surprised to see these signs of
habitation in one of the state apartments of the château.
Alternately catching glimpses of and again losing these bright lights,
I slowly toiled up the steep acclivity, which, to relieve my ponies,
I ascended on foot. We were near the top, the carriage had preceded me
some fifty yards or so, and I, alone, had reached a deeply-shaded spot,
over which an ancient outwork of the castle threw a broad shadow, when
suddenly I was startled by the sound of voices, so close beside me that
I actually turned to see if the speakers were not following me; nor was
it till they again spoke that I could believe that they were standing on
the terrace above me. If mere surprise at the unexpected sound of voices
was my first sensation, what was it to that which followed, as I heard a
man’s voice say,--
“But how comes this M. Templeton to be of any consequence in the matter?
It is true he was a witness, but he has no interest in troubling himself
with the affair. He is an invalid besides--some say, dying.”
“Would he were dead!” interrupted a lower voice; but, although the
accents were uttered with an unusual force, I knew them--at once I
recognised them. It was the Countess spoke.
“Why so, if he never recognised you?”
“How am I certain of this?” said she again. “How shall I satisfy my own
fears, that at every instant are ready to betray me? I dread his reserve
more than all.”
“If he be so very inconvenient,” interposed the man, in a half-careless
tone, “there may surely be found means to induce him to leave this.
Invalids are often superstitious. Might not a civil intimation that his
health was suffering from his _séjour_ incline him to depart?”
The Countess made no reply: possibly the bantering tone assumed by her
companion displeased her. After a brief silence, he resumed,--
“Does the man play? does he frequent the Saal? There surely are a
hundred ways to force a quarrel on him.”
“Easier than terminate it with advantage,” said she, bitterly.
I heard no more; for, although they still continued to speak, they had
descended from the terrace and entered the garden. I was alone. Before
me, at the turn of the road, stood my servant, waiting with the horses.
All was still as the grave. Was this I had heard real? were the words
truly spoken, or were they merely some trick of an overwrought, sickly
imagination! I moved into the middle of the road, so as to have a better
view of the old “Schloss;” but, except a single light in a remote tower,
all was shrouded in darkness: the salon, I believed to have been lit
up, lay in deepest shadow. There was nothing I had not given, at that
instant, to be able to resolve my doubts.
I walked hurriedly on, eager to question my servant both as to the
voices and the lights; and as I went my eye fell upon an object before
me in the road. I took it up--it was a glove--a lady’s glove! How came
it there, if it had not fallen from the terrace?
With increased speed I moved forward, my convictions now strengthened by
this new testimony.
My servant had neither seen nor heard any thing; indeed his replies
to me were conveyed in a tone that shewed in what light he regarded my
questioning. It was scarcely possible that he could not have been struck
with the bright glare that illuminated a portion of the castle, yet he
had not seen it; and as to voices, he stoutly averred that, although he
could distinctly note the clatter of the mill in the valley below us, he
had heard no human sound since we left the little inn.
It was to no purpose that I questioned and cross-questioned. I soon
saw that my eagerness was mistaken by him for evidence of wandering
faculties; and I perceived, in his anxiety that I should return, a fear,
that my malady had taken some new turn. So far, too, was he right. My
head was, indeed, troubled--strange fancies and shadowy fears crossing
my excited mind as I went; so that, ere I reached my inn, I really was
unable to collect my faculties, and separate the dream-land from the
actual territory of fact. And now it is with painful effort I write
these lines, each moment doubting whether I should not erase this, or
insert that. Were it not for this glove, that lies on my paper before
me, I should believe all to be mere illusion. What a painful struggle
this is, and how impossible to allay the fears of self-deception! At
one moment I am half resolved to order a saddle-horse and return to
Eberstein--for what?--with what hope of unravelling the mystery? At the
next I am determined to repair to the Countess’s villa near the town,
and ask if she has returned; but how shall I venture on such a liberty?
If my ears had not deceived me, she is and must be Caroline Graham; and
yet would I not rather believe that my weary brain had wandered, than
that this were so?
But what are these sounds of voices in the antechamber? I hear
Guckhardt’s voice!
Yes: my servant had thought it prudent to fetch the doctor, and he
has been here and felt my pulse, and ordered cold to my temples, and
a calming draught. It is clear, then, that I have been ill, and I must
write no more!