We felt some pity for the lad when we took him abroad with us; but it
must be confessed that at first he was not a very desirable travelling
companion. There was a gloom about him. Despite the eight months that
had elapsed, he professed that his old wound was still open. Tita
treated him with the kindest maternal solicitude, which was a great
mistake; tonics, not sweets, are required in such cases. Yet he was very
grateful, and he said, with a blush, that, in any case, he would not
rail against all women because of the badness of one. Indeed, you would
not have fancied he had any great grudge against womankind. There were
a great many English abroad that autumn, and we met whole batches of
pretty girls at every station and at every _table d’hote_ on our route.
Did he avoid them, or glare at them savagely, or say hard things of
them? Oh no! quite the reverse. He was a little shy at first; and when
he saw a party of distressed damsels in a station, with their bewildered
father in vain attempting to make himself understood to a porter, he
would assist them in a brief and businesslike manner as if it were a
duty, lift his cap, and then march off relieved. But by-and-by he
began to make acquaintances in the hotel; and as he was a handsome,
English-looking lad, who bore a certificate of honesty in his clear gray
eyes and easy gait, he was rather made much of. Nor could any fault be
decently found with his appetite.
So we passed on from Konigswinter to Coblenz, and from Coblenz to
Heidelberg, and from Heidelberg south to Freiburg, where we bade adieu
to the last of the towns, and laid hold of a trap with a pair of ancient
and angular horses, and plunged into the Hollenthal, the first great
gorge of the Black Forest mountains. From one point to another we slowly
urged our devious course, walking the most of the day, indeed, and
putting the trap and ourselves up for the night at some quaint roadside
hostelry, where we ate of roe-deer and drank of Affenthaler, and
endeavoured to speak German with a pure Waldshut accent. And then, one
evening, when the last rays of the sun were shining along the hills and
touching the stems of the tall pines, we drove into a narrow valley and
caught sight of a large brown building of wood, with projecting eaves
and quaint windows, that stood close by the forest.
“Here is my dear inn!” cried Tita, with a great glow of delight and
affection in her face. “Here is _mein gutes Thal! Ich gruss’ dich ein
tausend Mal!_ And here is old Peter come out to see us; and there is
Franziska!”
“Oh, this is Franziska, is it?” said Charlie.
Yes, this was Franziska. She was a well-built, handsome girl of nineteen
or twenty, with a healthy, sunburnt complexion, and dark hair plaited
into two long tails, which were taken up and twisted into a knot behind.
That you could see from a distance. But on nearer approach you found
that Franziska had really fine and intelligent features, and a pair of
frank, clear, big brown eyes that had a very straight look about them.
They were something of the eyes of a deer, indeed; wide apart, soft, and
apprehensive, yet looking with a certain directness and unconsciousness
that overcame her natural girlish timidity. Tita simply flew at her and
kissed her heartily and asked her twenty questions at once. Franziska
answered in very fair English, a little slow and formal, but quite
grammatical. Then she was introduced to Charlie, and she shook hands
with him in a simple and unembarrassed way; and then she turned to one
of the servants and gave some directions about the luggage. Finally she
begged Tita to go indoors and get off her travelling attire, which was
done, leaving us two outside.
“She’s a very pretty girl,” Charlie said, carelessly. “I suppose she’s
sort of head cook and kitchen-maid here.”
The impudence of these young men is something extraordinary.
“If you wish to have your head in your hands,” I remarked to him, “just
you repeat that remark at dinner. Why, Franziska is no end of a swell.
She has two thousand pounds and the half of a mill. She has a sister
married to the Geheimer-Ober-Hofbaurath of Hesse-Cassel. She had visited
both Paris and Munich, and she has her dresses made in Freiburg.”
“But why does such an illustrious creature bury herself in this valley,
and in an old inn, and go about bareheaded?”
“Because there are folks in the world without ambition, who like to
live a quiet, decent, homely life. Every girl can’t marry a
Geheimer-Ober-Hofbaurath. Ziska, now, is much more likely to marry the
young doctor here.”
“Oh, indeed! and live here all her days. She couldn’t do better. Happy
Franziska!”
We went indoors. It was a low, large, rambling place, with one immense
room all hung round with roe-deers’ horns, and with one lesser room
fitted up with a billiard-table. The inn lay a couple of hundred yards
back from Huferschingen; but it had been made the headquarters of the
keepers, and just outside this room there were a number of pegs for them
to sling their guns and bags on when they came in of an evening to have
a pipe and a chopin of white wine. Ziska’s uncle and aunt were both
large, stout, and somnolent people, very good-natured and kind, but a
trifle dull. Ziska really had the management of the place, and she was
not slow to lend a hand if the servants were remiss in waiting on us.
But that, it was understood, was done out of compliment to our small
Queen Tita.
By-and-by we sat down to dinner, and Franziska came to see that
everything was going on straight. It was a dinner “with scenery.” You
forgot to be particular about the soup, the venison, and the Affenthaler
when from the window at your elbow you could look across the narrow
valley and behold a long stretch of the Black Forest shining in the red
glow of the sunset. The lower the sun sank the more intense became the
crimson light on the tall stems of the pines; and then you could see the
line of shadow slowly rising up the side of the opposite hill until only
the topmost trees were touched with fire. Then these too lost it, and
all the forest around us seemed to have a pale-blue mist stealing over
it as the night fell and the twilight faded out of the sky overhead.
Presently the long undulations of fir grew black, the stars came out,
and the sound of the stream could be heard distantly in the hollow; and
then, at Tita’s wish, we went off for a last stroll in among the soft
moss and under the darkness of the pines, now and again starting some
great capercailzie, and sending it flying and whirring down the glades.
When we returned from that prowl into the forest, we found the inn dark.
Such people as may have called in had gone home; but we suspected that
Franziska had given the neighbours a hint not to overwhelm us on our
first arrival. When we entered the big room, Franziska came in with
candles; then she brought some matches, and also put on the table an odd
little pack of cards, and went out. Her uncle and aunt had, even before
we went out, come and bade us good-night formally, and shaken hands all
round. They are early folk in the Black Forest.
“Where has that girl gone now?” says Charlie. “Into that lonely
billiard-room! Couldn’t you ask her to come in here? Or shall we go and
play billiards?”
Tita stares, and then demurely smiles; but it is with an assumed
severity that she rebukes him for such a wicked proposal, and reminds
him that he must start early next morning. He groans assent. Then she
takes her leave.
The big young man was silent for a moment or two, with his hands in his
pockets and his legs stretched out. I begin to think I am in for it--the
old story of blighted hopes and angry denunciation and hypocritical
joy, and all the rest of it. But suddenly Charlie looks up with a
businesslike air and says:
“Who is that doctor fellow you were speaking about! Shall we see him
to-morrow?”
“You saw him to-night. It was he who passed us on the road with the two
beagles.”
“What! that little fellow with the bandy legs and the spectacles?” he
cries, with a great laugh.
“That little fellow,” I observe to him, “is a person of some importance,
I can tell you. He--”
“I suppose his sister married a Geheimer-Ober-under--what the dickens is
it?” says this disrespectful young man.
“Dr. Krumm has got the Iron Cross.”
“That won’t make his legs any the straighter.”
“He was at Weissenburg.”
“I suppose he got that cast in the eye there.”
“He can play the zither in a way that would astonish you. He has got a
little money. Franziska and he would be able to live very comfortably
together.”
“Franziska and that fellow?” says Charlie; and then he rises with a
sulky air, and proposes we should take our candles with us.
But he is not sulky very long; for Ziska, hearing our footsteps, comes
to the passage and bids us a friendly good-night.
“Good-night, Miss Fahler!” he says, in rather a shamefaced way; “and
I am so awfully sorry we have kept you up so late. We sha’n’t do it
again.”
You would have thought by his manner that it was two o’clock, whereas it
was only half-past eleven!