THE HOUSE BY THE FLEETHEN.
The abode of Herr Wyburg was situated in the oldest part of Hamburg,
where the streets are narrow, crowded, irregular, and, if
picturesque, squalid. They are generally of great height, built in
the Dutch fashion of brick and wood, and those inhabited by the lower
orders have their narrow windows so near each other as to give them
the aspect of huge manufactories, but with a heavy and gloomy
character about them.
Many of these brick-nogging, tumble-down dwellings are admirable
subjects for the pencil. Numerous canals called _Fleethen_ intersect
this quarter, and run along the backs of the houses, giving the
streets a resemblance to those of Holland. In summer the muddy
exhalations from these are very unwholesome, and might prove
pestilential, were it not for the agitation in them caused by the
current of the Elbe.
In this odious and unsavoury, but picturesque part of the city, which
escaped the great fire of 1842, and which has undergone little change
since the days of the Hanseatic League, the back wall of Herr
Wyburg's house was washed by the waters of the Fleethen, while on one
side it was isolated from the haggard district in which it stood by a
large market-garden.
The original frame of the house had been altogether wood--Baltic
pine--but would seem to have been patched and repaired with bricks.
The arms of Holstein and Schleswig, the nettleleaf and two lions
respectively, were reproduced in various parts of it, for in other
times it had been a residence of the old Counts of Holstein, the
ancient Lords of Hamburg, a dignity claimed by the Kings of Denmark
till 1768; but in rank it had come sorely down in the world, just as
in Scottish towns we find the ancient abodes of nobility, and even of
royalty, now abandoned to the squalid and the poor.
Its walls were in some places panelled with almost black mahogany,
quaintly, if uncouthly, carved, and much discoloured by damp from the
adjacent Fleethen. The windows were high, jealously grated with
iron, and admitted but a foggy kind of light, even by noonday, and
the whole edifice had a general aspect of dreariness and desolation
that sunk like a weight on the young heart of Ellinor Wellwood.
The back windows alone were ungrated, but then they overlooked the
Fleethen, that system of canals and intersecting ditches which
conceal many a crime, and where the body of the murdered--if found
before being swept into the Elbe--passes often for that of a suicide.
When Wyburg withdrew with Sir Redmond, he offered that worthy his
hand, but the latter ignored the action, and did not respond to it.
In this he only acted 'snobbishly,' not because he knew the other to
be a finished rascal; and over the face of the latter there passed a
flush of rage and affront, while a dangerous gleam came into his
watery eyes.
'It is no use, Sir Redmond, your attempting to come the fine or
arrogant gentleman over me,' said Herr Wyburg; 'you and I are too old
acquaintances for that.'
His English was remarkably distinct, though of course the foreign
accent was very marked. He had been a billiard-marker in the Strand,
but had to quit London in some haste, having become too well-known in
the vicinity of 'Lester Square.' Hence it was that he knew English
well, and London too, in all its worst, foreign, and most
disreputable phases.
He was a billiard-marker and gambler still, and ready to do any
rascality for which he was sufficiently paid. His wife--the Frau
Wyburg--had once been a dancer in the Schweitzer Pavilion and
Ambiguity Circus, during her less disreputable days, and was no more
above taking a bribe than himself.
'Sir Redmond,' said he, pocketing the gold by which his services were
to be secured, 'I have seen some pretty faces in my time, but the
fraulein is downright beautiful!' he added, as he thought with
genuine admiration of the clear, creamy skin which so often
accompanies such hair and dark-blue eyes as those of Ellinor.
'This young lady is my wife,' said Sleath, a little emphatically;
'and I wish you and your worthy frau to take all requisite care of
her for me--for a time.'
Herr Wyburg closed one eye, and, with intense cunning in the other,
surveyed the speaker.
'Your wife?' said he.
'Yes.'
'She has no wedding-ring.'
'If it is not on her finger, it ought to be.'
'And you wish us to take care of her--that she does not escape, you
mean?'
'Precisely.'
'Why?'
'Need _you_ ask me why?' said Sleath, with irritation. 'She is
ill--strange,' he added, putting a finger to his forehead. 'Poor
girl--you understand?'
Herr Wyburg winked his cunning eye again. He _did_ understand, and
shrewdly disbelieved that the girl was Sleath's wife; yet her
bearing, her fear, repugnance, and bodily weakness all puzzled him,
and, like his wife, he knew not what to think, save that Sleath's
golden sovereigns were very acceptable, and the latter now prepared
to depart--his droski was still at the door--and he bade Frau Wyburg
'good-night,' after she had recommended him not to insist on again
seeing Ellinor, who had retired to her room.
'Ah,' said the frau, with one of her detestable but would-be suave
smiles, 'the Fraulein has got what the French call a
_migrain_--perhaps it is periodical--any way the kindness and love of
mein Herr,' she added, curtseying, 'will soon make it pass away.'
Ellinor felt intense relief when Sir Redmond drove away, and strove
to hope that he had wearied or repented of his persecution, and would
really discover the address of Mrs. Deroubigne; but how was she to
travel without money, and she had scarcely a trinket about her!
She was left, with a slipshod girl in attendance, in a tolerably
comfortable little room, with panelled walls, and having in one
corner a pretty little bed (with one of those enormous square pillows
peculiar to Germany), in another corner a tall cylindrical iron
stove, in which a fire was glowing redly across the polished floor
and on the panels of an antique clothes wardrobe.
She looked from the casement window, and saw the lights in houses
opposite about fifty yards distant, and between them the still, deep,
and gloomy Fleethen ditch, or canal, in which these lights were
tremulously reflected; and something in the chill aspect of the
water, or what it suggested, as it lay just beneath her window, made
her shudder involuntarily.
She was soon to find that she was snared, and more a helpless
prisoner than she had been when on board the _Flying Foam_; for Sir
Redmond had placed her in this abode, knowing where he could find her
again when he chose, and where, if he did _not_ choose, she might
disappear, as so many entrapped English girls do on the Continent,
and never be heard of again; and in gambling, dissipated, and
dissolute Hamburg the muddy waters of its Fleethen hide many an
unknown crime and many a secret sorrow.
Lenchen (or Ellen), the girl who attended her, if slipshod, was
pretty and rosy, but saucy and flippant, though clad, like the usual
Hamburg housemaid, with a piquant lace cap, her white arms bare to
above the elbow, always scrupulously clean, and when she went to
market wore long kid gloves and the gayest of shawls, so disposed
under the arm as to conceal the basket, which is always shaped
unpleasantly like a child's coffin, but containing butter, cheese,
eggs, or whatever has been purchased.
Ignorant of the German language, and ignorant also, as yet, of the
true character of the Frau Wyburg and her attendant Lenchen, and as
their broken English gave--as it always rather absurdly seems to
do--an idea of childish innocence even to the most rascally
foreigner, Ellinor became inspired by a new sense of protection in
the presence of these females--especially of Lenchen; but this
confidence might have received a shock had she seen how that young
lady comported herself with Rolandsburg's uhlans, and other
_soldaten_ in the vicinity of the Dammthor Wall and the _Burger
Militair Kauslie_.
Three days passed, during which she saw and heard nothing of Sir
Redmond. The truth was, that worthy member of the 'upper ten' and
his Fidus Achates--his friend Dolly Dewsnap--having, through the
tipsy insolence of the latter, become involved in a street row at
night with a member of the _Neidergericht_, or Inferior Court, to
avoid the police, who 'wanted them,' had remained closely on board
the yacht in the Binnenhafen, where she was now remasted, and fast
becoming ready for sea in Ringbolt's skilful hands.
As the evening of the third day was approaching, Ellinor, feeling
stronger and more impatient of action and restraint, attired herself
for the street in the best of the garments found for her in the yacht.
'For what purpose?' asked Frau Wyburg, angrily.
'To have a walk in the city,' replied Ellinor.
'Mein Got, alone! and for what reason?'
'To make some inquiries for myself at the post-office, or elsewhere.'
'It cannot be permitted!' said Herr Wyburg, emphatically, and with
knitted brows, as he interposed.
'Why?'
'The Herr Sleath has forbidden such; moreover, it is not safe!'
'Not safe in the streets of Hamburg?' questioned Ellinor, while tears
started to her eyes. 'I am not a child!'
'Then why?'
There were disturbances abroad, he told her trade-union mobs were
about, and the uhlans from the Dammthor were patrolling the streets
with lance and carbine.
This was not true, but Ellinor was compelled to believe it, and
relinquished the attempt with a sigh of bitterness and disappointment.
Lenchen daily brought her fresh flowers from market, as she said, by
order of _Herr Sleet_.
The latter had often heard Ellinor say at Birkwoodbrae that she was
never dull or lonely if she only had flowers about her.
But his gifts of flowers were unheeded now, she loathed them as if
their petals exhaled not fragrance but poison.
Yet once she could not resist toying with some of them--the Dijon
roses especially, and with their odour across the tide of memory
there stole gently and subtly a memory of the past.
Who has not some association of this kind?
Ellinor's were of happy years at Birkwoodbrae and Robert Wodrow, and
a torrent of tears came with the memory, and a kind of lethargic
despair came over her as the little hope that dawned upon her began
to die again--the hope that Sleath had relented and really meant to
relinquish his persecution and restore her to her friends.