SCHOeN-ROHTRAUT.
Do you know the ballad of 'Schoen-Rohtraut'--the king's daughter who
would neither spin nor sew, but who fished, and hunted, and rode on
horseback through the woods, with her father's page for her only
companion? Was there any wonder that the youth grew sad, and inwardly
cried to himself--
"O dass ich doch ein Koenigssohn waer,
Rohtraut, Schoen-Rohtraut lieb' ich so sehr.
Schweig stille, mein Herze!"
One day they rested themselves under a great oak, and the merry
Schoen-Rohtraut laughed aloud at her woe-stricken page, and cried--
"Why do you look at me so longingly? If you have the heart to do it,
come and kiss me, then!"
Whereupon the lad, with a terrible inward tremor, probably, went up and
kissed Schoen-Rohtraut's laughing lips. And they two rode quite
silently home; but the page joyously said to himself, "I do not care now
whether she were to be made Empress to-day; for all the leaves in the
forest know that I have kissed Schoen-Rohtraut's mouth."
There are many of us whose chief consolation it is to know that we have
kissed Schoen-Rohtraut's mouth. The middle-aged man, getting a trifle
grey above the ears, sits by the fire of a winter evening, and thinks of
his own particular Schoen-Rohtraut.
"I did not marry her; but I loved her in the long-bygone time, and that
is enough for me. I had my 'liberal education.' If I had married her,
perhaps I should not be loving her now; and all my tender memories of
her, and of that pleasant time, would have disappeared. But now no one
can dispossess me of the triumphant consciousness that it was my good
fortune to have kissed Schoen-Rohtraut's mouth."
There is much sympathy abroad upon this matter; and I think we men never
get nearer to each other than when we talk, after our wives have gone
upstairs to bed, of our lost loves.
This was partly what Will Anerley said to himself as the little party
sate under the white awning of the _Koenig Wilhelm_, and slowly steamed
up the yellow-green waters of the Rhine. Not without a tremor of
conscience he said it; for he had a vague impression that he had been
wantonly cruel to Dove. In the first moments of remorse after awaking to
a sense of his present position, he had said--
"There remains but one thing to be done. I will at once return to
England, and see Annie Brunel no more."
But a man approaching thirty has taught himself to believe that he has
great fortitude, especially where the tenderer emotions are concerned;
and his next reflection was--
"My sudden departure will only be a revelation to her, and happily she
knows nothing about it. Besides, have I not sufficient strength of mind
to spend a few days in the pleasant society of this young girl, without
committing myself? The mischief is done, and I must suffer for my
carelessness; but----"
But he would go on to Schoenstein all the same, whither the two ladies
had also consented to go. He did not deceive himself when he submitted
to his own conscience this theory. He knew there was no danger of his
disturbing Miss Brunel's peace of mind, and he knew that Dove would have
no further injustice done her. It was he who was to suffer. His
thoughtlessness had permitted the growth of a hopeless passion: it would
never be known to her who had inspired it, nor to her whom it had
dispossessed. He only should carry about with him the scourge; and he
was not without a hope that time and travel would for once accommodate
themselves to an absurd superstition, and cure him of an unfortunate
love.
For the rest, he was almost glad that he had mentally kissed
Schoen-Rohtraut's mouth. The consciousness of this passionate and
hopeless attachment was in itself a pure and elevated feeling--a maiden
delight which had no earthly element mixed with it. It was so different
from the kindly, affectionate interest he took in Dove--so different
from that familiar liking which made him think nothing of kissing the
young girl in an easy fraternal way. To think of kissing Annie Brunel!
The page could only look wonderingly and longingly at his beautiful
mistress, at her pretty lips and nut-white teeth, and say, "Schweig'
stille, mein Herze!"
Quite assured of his own strength of will, he did not seek for a moment
to withdraw himself from her, or raise any subtle barrier between them.
In fact, he mockingly explained to himself, that as compensation for the
pain which he would afterwards have to suffer, he would now sup to the
full the delicious enjoyment of her society. He would study as much as
he chose the fine artistic head, the beautiful, warm, Italian colour of
her face, and her charming figure; and he would gaze his fill into the
deep-grey eyes, which were always brightened up by an anticipatory
kindliness when he approached. He remarked, however, that he had never
seen them intensified by that passionate glow which he had observed on
the stage--the emotional earnestness which belonged to what she called
her "real life;" there was in the eyes merely a pleased satisfaction and
good nature.
"When shall we get away from the Rhine?" she asked, as they were sailing
past the black Loreleiberg.
"To-night," said the Count, "we shall stop at Mayence, and go on by rail
to Freiburg to-morrow. Then we shall be away from the line of the
tourists."
This was an extraordinary piece of generosity and concession on the part
of Count Schoenstein; for there was scarcely anything he loved more
dearly on earth than to linger about the well-known routes, and figure
as a German Count before the Cockney-tourists who crowded the railway
stations and _tables d'hote_.
"I am so glad," said Miss Brunel. "I cannot bear to be among those
people. I feel as if I were a parlourmaid sitting in a carriage with
her master and mistress, and fancying that she was being stared at for
her impertinence by every passer-by. Don't tell me it is absurd, Mr.
Anerley; for I know it is absurd. But I cannot help feeling so all the
same. When anybody stares at me, I say to myself, 'Well, perhaps you've
paid five shillings to stare at me in the theatre, and you think, of
course, you have the same right here.'"
Will was very vexed to hear her speak so, partly because he knew that no
reasoning would cure her of this cruel impression, and partly because he
knew that she had some ground for speaking as she did. Continually,
along that insufferably Cockney route, he had seen her stared at and
ogled by lank youths from Oxford Street or Mincing Lane, who had got a
holiday from counter or desk, and had hoisted a good deal of bunting to
celebrate the occasion--bright green ties, striped collars,
handkerchiefs marked with Adelina Patti's portrait, white sun hats with
scarlet bands, yellow dust-coats and skin gloves. In the intervals
between their descents to the cabin, where they drank cognac in
preference to "that beastly sour wine," they would sit at a little
distance, suck fiercely at their cheap cigars, and stare at the young
actress as they were accustomed to stare at the baboons in the
Zoological Gardens, or at the Royal Family, or at their favourite
barmaid. Then would follow confidential communications to Tom or 'Arry
that she was very like "Miss Trebelli," and another head or tails for
another "go" of brandy.
"If these creatures were to get to heaven," said Anerley to the Count,
in a moment of jealous spleen, "they would ask their nearest way to the
Holborn Casino."
It was partly this semi-Bohemian feeling which drew the young artiste
towards Count Schoenstein and Will Anerley, and allowed her to relish
the society of people "out of the profession." Of the personal history
of the Count she had got to know something; and while she tolerated his
self-sufficiency, and admired his apparent good-nature and even temper,
she almost sympathised with him in his attitude towards society. It was
the same people whom she had been taught to distrust, who were in league
against the poor Count. They would not permit him to mix in their
society, because, like herself, he was an adventurer, a person whose
position was not secured to him by an ancient royal grant. Will she
looked upon in another fashion.
"You have been so much abroad, and mixed with so many people, that you
seem not to belong to England. There is nothing English about
you--nothing of vanity, and self-importance, and suspicion of
outsiders."
But against this praise, as against the whole tone of her mind on the
subject, he had uttered many a serious protest.
"You blame us English with the impertinences of a few boys out for a
holiday. You have heard stories of actors and actresses having received
injuries from persons out of the profession; and you necessarily think
there must be a mutual antagonism between the classes."
"I don't think anything about it," she used to say; "I only know what my
impression is, however it has been taught me. And I know that there is
no sympathy between me and the people whom I try to amuse, and that they
despise me and my calling. I don't blame them for it; but how can you
expect me to like them? I don't say they are narrow-minded, or
prejudiced; but I know that an English lady would not sit down to dinner
with an actress, that an English mother would think her son lost if he
married an actress; and that a girl in good society who marries an actor
is thought to have done something equivalent to running away with her
father's footman."
These were the bitter precepts which the Marchioness of Knottingley had
left with her daughter; and they had been instilled into the girl at a
time when beliefs become part of our flesh and blood.
"There are ignorant and ill-educated women who think so," said Will,
calmly; "but you do an injustice to women of education, and good taste,
and intelligent sympathies, when you suppose that every one----"
"Let us take your own mother," said Annie Brunel, hastily. "Would she
be anxious, supposing she knew me, to introduce me to the rest of her
acquaintances? Would she ask me to visit her? Would she be willing that
I should be a companion to that pretty little Dove?"
"I think I have answered all these questions before," said Will. "I
tell you I can't answer for all the women of England; but for those of
them whom I respect I can answer, and my mother is one of them. Has she
not already allowed Dove to make your acquaintance?"
"Because I was a curiosity, and she was allowed to come and look at me
in my cage," said the actress, with that cruel smile on her lips.
"Miss Brunel," said Will, simply and frankly, "you are exhibiting far
more prejudice than you will find in the women you speak about. And I
don't know whether you will forgive my saying that it seems a pity one
of your years should already possess such suspicions and opinions of
other people----"
Wherewith she looked him straight in the face, with a clear searching
glance of those big and honest eyes of hers, which would have made a
less disinterested advocate falter.
"Are you telling me what you believe to be true?" she said.
"Could I have any object in deceiving you?"
"You believe that your mother, a carefully pious and correct lady, who
has lived all her life in the country, would dare to avow that she knew
an actress?"
"She would be proud to avow it."
"Would she take me to church with her, and give me a seat in her pew,
before all her neighbours?"
"Certainly she would."
"And what would they think?"
"Perhaps the parish clerk's wife," said Will, with a mental glance at
Mrs. Bexley, "and the vet.'s wife, and a few women of similar extraction
or education, might be shocked; but the educated and intelligent of them
would only be envious of my mother. Wherever you go, you will find
people who believe in witches, and the eternal damnation of unconverted
niggers, and the divine right of the nearest squire; but you don't
suppose that we are all partial idiots? And even these people, if you
went into the St. Mary-Kirby Church, would only have to look at you----"
"You said something like that to me before," she replied, with the same
nervous haste to exhibit every objection--was it that she the more
wished them to be explained away?--"and I told you I did not think much
of the charity that was only extended to me personally because my face
was not old and haggard. Suppose that I were old and painted, and----"
"But if you were old, you would not be painted."
"I might."
"In that case, all the women would have some ground to be suspicious of
you; and many of them would be angry because you were allowed a luxury
denied them by their husbands. Really, Miss Brunel, you do the
'outsiders' an injustice," he added, warming to his work. "Stupid
people and uneducated people do not care for nice discriminations. They
have always decided opinions. They like to have clear lines of thought
and positive decisions. They ticket things off, and stick to their
classifications through thick and thin, as if they were infallible. But
you do wrong to care for the opinion of the stupid and uneducated."
"I should like to believe you; but how can I? If, as you say, we have
fallen so low as even to earn the contempt of the stupid----"
"My darling," he said, and then he stopped as if a bullet had gone
through him, "I--I beg your pardon; but I really fancied for the moment
I was quarrelling with some of Dove's nonsense----"
She smiled in such an easy way at the mistake, however, that he saw she
put no importance upon it.
"I was going to say--how could stupid people exist if they did not
despise their superiors in wit, and intellect, and artistic perception?
There is a man at my club, for instance, who is intellectually, as he is
physically, a head and shoulders taller than any of his brother members.
What reputation has he? Simply that of being 'an amusing young fellow,
but--but very shallow, don't you know.' The empty-headed idiots of the
smoking-room sit and laugh at his keen humour, and delicate irony, and
witty stories; and rather patronise and pity him in that he is weak
enough to be amusing. A dull man always finds his refuge in calling a
man of brighter parts than himself 'shallow.' You should see this
friend of mine when he goes down into the country to see his relations;
how he is looked upon at the dinner-table as being only fit to make the
women smile; and how some simpering fool of a squire, with nothing more
brilliant in his library than a pair of hunting-boots, will grin
compassionately to some other thick-headed boor, as though it were a
ludicrous thing to see a man make himself so like a woman in being witty
and entertaining."
"And you think the women in these country-houses more intelligent and
amusing than the men?"
"God help country-houses when the women are taken out of them!"
"What a large portion of my life have I wasted over this abominable
Bradshaw!" said Count Schoenstein, coming up at that moment, and their
conversation was for the present stopped.
But Will now recognised more firmly than ever the invisible barrier that
was placed between her and the people among whom his life had been cast;
and, perhaps, for Dove's sake, he was a little glad that he could never
look upon this too-charming young actress but as the inhabitant of
another world. And sometimes, too, he involuntarily echoed Dove's
exclamation, "You are too beautiful to be an actress?"
When, after a pleasant little supper-party in the Mayence Hotel, at
which they stopped, they parted for the night, Will congratulated
himself on the resolution he had taken in the morning. It had been such
a pleasant day; and who was the worse for it? He was sick at heart when
he thought the time would come in which he could no more enjoy the keen
pleasure of sitting near this tender creature, of watching her pretty
ways, and listening to her voice. The love he felt for her seemed to
give him a right of property in her, and he thought of her going for
ever away from him as an irreparable and painful loss. There was a
quick, anxious throbbing at his heart as he attempted to picture that
last interview; for he had resolved that after their return to England,
he would not permit himself to see her again. He thought of her going
away from him without once knowing of that subtle personal link which
seemed to unite them in a secret friendship. She would be quite
unconscious of the pain of that parting; she might even think that he
had yielded to the prejudices of which she had spoken, and had become
ashamed of her friendship.
"That, too, must be borne," he said, with a sigh. "I cannot explain why
I should cease to see her; and yet we must never meet again after we
return to England. If it were not for Dove, I should look out for some
appointment abroad, and so get an excuse; for it is hard to think that I
must wound the self-respect of so gentle a creature by appearing to
refuse her proffered friendship without a cause."
Then he sat down and wrote a long letter to Dove; and for the first time
he felt a great constraint upon him in so doing. He was so anxious,
too, that she should not notice the constraint, that he wrote in a more
than usually affectionate strain, and strove to impress her with the
necessity of their being married very soon.
"Once married," he said to himself, "I shall soon forget this unhappy
business. In any case, we must all suffer more or less; and it is
entirely owing to my carelessness in enjoying Miss Brunel's society
without looking at what it might lead to. But how should a man of my
years have anticipated such a thing? Have I not been intimate with as
pretty and as accomplished women in all parts of the world, without ever
dreaming of falling in love with them?"
But no, there was no woman so pretty and charming as _this_ one, he
reflected. No one at all. And so, counting up in his mind, like a
miser counting his guineas, one by one, the few days he would yet have
to spend in the torturing delight of being near to her, he got him to
bed, and did _not_ dream of St. Mary-Kirby.
The next day they reached Freiburg, and here the Count had a carriage
awaiting them, with a couple of swarthy Schwarzwalders in his somewhat
ostentatious livery.
"Now we are getting home," he said, with a bland laugh to Mrs.
Christmas; "and you must have a very long rest after so much travelling.
We shall see what the air of Schoenstein will do for you, and a little
of the Schoenstein wine--eh, eh?"
Their entrance to the Black Forest was inauspicious. It was towards the
afternoon before they left Freiburg; and the air was oppressively hot
and sultry. Just as they were approaching the Hollenthal--the Valley of
Hell--a strange noise attracted Will's attention; and, looking over the
back of the open carriage, he saw behind them a great red cloud, that
entirely shut out the landscape. Two minutes afterwards a sudden gust
of wind smote them with the violence of a tornado; they were enveloped
in a dense lurid pall of sand; and before they could cover over the
carriage, great drops of rain began to fall. Then the far-off rumbling
of thunder, and an occasional gleam of reflected lightning, told what
was coming.
The Count looked much alarmed.
"The Hollenthal is a fearful place," said he, to the ladies:
"overhanging rocks, dark as pitch, precipices, you know--and--and hadn't
we better return to Freiburg? That is, if you think you will be afraid.
For myself, I'd rather go on to-night, and save a day."
"Don't think of turning on our account," said Annie Brunel. "Mrs.
Christmas and I have been together in a good many storms."
So they went on, and entered that gloomy gorge, which is here the
gateway into the Black Forest. They had just got themselves closed in by
the mighty masses of rock, when the storm thoroughly broke over their
head. It was now quite dark, and the thin white shafts of lightning
shot down through the ravine, lighting up the fantastic and rugged sides
of the pass with a sudden sharpness. Then the thunder crackled
overhead, and was re-echoed in hollow rumbles, as if they were in a
cavern with huge waves beating outside; and the rain fell in torrents,
hissing on the road, and swelling the rapid stream that foamed and
dashed down its rocky channel by their side. Every flash whitened the
four faces inside the carriage with a spectral glare; and sometimes they
got a passing glance down the precipice, by the side of which the road
wound, or up among the overhanging blocks and crags of the mountains.
Mrs. Christmas had been in many a thunderstorm, but never in the
Hollenthal; and the little woman was terrified out of her life. At
every rattling report of the thunder she squeezed Miss Brunel's hand the
more tightly, and muttered another sentence of an incoherent prayer.
"Unless you want to kill your horses, Count," said Will, "you'll stop at
the first inn we come to; that is about a mile farther on. I can tell
by the sound of the wheels that the horses are dragging them through the
mud and ruts by main force; and up this steep ascent that won't last
long."
"Think of poor Mary and Hermann," said Annie Brunel. "Where must they
be?"
"I'll answer for Hermann coming on to-night, if he's alive," said the
Count. "And I hope that he and the luggage and Mary won't be found in
the morning down in that tremendous hole where the stream is. Bless my
life, did any mortal ever see such a place, and such a night! What a
flash that was!"
It was about midnight when they reached the Stern inn; and very much
astonished were the simple people, when they were woke up, to find that
a party of visitors had ventured to come through the Hell Valley on such
a night.
"And the hired carriage from Freiburg, Herr Graf," said the chief
domestic of the little hostelry; "it won't come up the valley before the
morning."
"What does the fool say?" the Count inquired of Will.
"He says that the trap with the luggage won't come up to-night."
"Bah!" said the Count, grandly. "Sie wissen nicht dass mein Foerster
kommt; und er kommt durch zwanzig--durch zwanzig--zwanzig--damme, get
some supper, and mind your own business."
"Yes, eef you please, my lord," said the man, who knew a little English.
The Count was right. Hermann did turn up, and Mary, and the luggage.
But the hired vehicle had been a badly-fitting affair, and the rain had
got in so copiously that Mary was discovered sitting with Hermann's coat
wrapped round her, while the tall keeper had submitted to be drenched
with the inevitable good-humour of six-feet-two. Some of the luggage
also was wet; but it was carried into the great warm kitchen, and turned
out and examined.
At supper, the Count, who was inclined to be merry, drank a good
quantity of Affenthaler, and congratulated Mrs. Christmas on her heroic
fortitude. Annie Brunel was quiet and pleasant as usual--a trifle grave,
perhaps, after that passage through the Hollenthal. Will was at once so
happy and so miserable--so glad to be sitting near the young
Italian-looking girl, so haunted by the dread of having to separate from
her in a short week or two--that he almost wished the storm had hurled
the vehicle down into the bed of the stream, and that there he and
Schoen-Rohtraut might have been found dead together in the grey morning.