There is a mill by the Neckar-side, to which many people resort for
coffee, according to the fashion which is almost national in Germany.
There is nothing particularly attractive in the situation of this mill;
it is on the Mannheim (the flat and unromantic) side of Heidelberg.
The river turns the mill-wheel with a plenteous gushing sound; the
out-buildings and the dwelling-house of the miller form a well-kept
dusty quadrangle. Again, further from the river, there is a garden
full of willows, and arbours, and flower-beds not well kept, but very
profuse in flowers and luxuriant creepers, knotting and looping the
arbours together. In each of these arbours is a stationary table of
white painted wood, and light moveable chairs of the same colour and
material.
I went to drink coffee there with some friends in 184—. The stately old
miller came out to greet us, as some of the party were known to him of
old. He was of a grand build of a man, and his loud musical voice, with
its tone friendly and familiar, his rolling laugh of welcome, went well
with the keen bright eye, the fine cloth of his coat, and the general
look of substance about the place. Poultry of all kinds abounded in
the mill-yard, where there were ample means of livelihood for them
strewed on the ground; but not content with this, the miller took out
handfuls of corn from the sacks, and threw liberally to the cocks and
hens that ran almost under his feet in their eagerness. And all the
time he was doing this, as it were habitually, he was talking to us,
and ever and anon calling to his daughter and the serving-maids, to bid
them hasten the coffee we had ordered. He followed us to an arbour, and
saw us served to his satisfaction with the best of everything we could
ask for; and then left us to go round to the different arbours and see
that each party was properly attended to; and, as he went, this great,
prosperous, happy-looking man whistled softly one of the most plaintive
airs I ever heard.
“His family have held this mill ever since the old Palatinate days;
or rather, I should say, have possessed the ground ever since then,
for two successive mills of theirs have been burnt down by the French.
If you want to see Scherer in a passion, just talk to him of the
possibility of a French invasion.”
But at this moment, still whistling that mournful air, we saw the
miller going down the steps that led from the somewhat raised garden
into the mill-yard; and so I seemed to have lost my chance of putting
him in a passion.
We had nearly finished our coffee, and our “kucken,” and our cinnamon
cake, when heavy splashes fell on our thick leafy covering; quicker and
quicker they came, coming through the tender leaves as if they were
tearing them asunder; all the people in the garden were hurrying under
shelter, or seeking for their carriages standing outside. Up the steps
the miller came hastening, with a crimson umbrella, fit to cover every
one left in the garden, and followed by his daughter, and one or two
maidens, each bearing an umbrella.
“Come into the house—come in, I say. It is a summer-storm, and will
flood the place for an hour or two, till the river carries it away.
Here, here.”
And we followed him back into his own house. We went into the kitchen
first. Such an array of bright copper and tin vessels I never saw; and
all the wooden things were as thoroughly scoured. The red tile floor
was spotless when we went in, but in two minutes it was all over slop
and dirt with the tread of many feet; for the kitchen was filled, and
still the worthy miller kept bringing in more people under his great
crimson umbrella. He even called the dogs in, and made them lie down
under the tables.
His daughter said something to him in German, and he shook his head
merrily at her. Everybody laughed.
“What did she say?” I asked.
“She told him to bring the ducks in next; but indeed if more people
come we shall be suffocated. What with the thundery weather, and the
stove, and all these steaming clothes, I really think we must ask leave
to pass on. Perhaps we might go in and see Frau Scherer.”
My friend asked the daughter of the house for permission to go into an
inner chamber and see her mother. It was granted, and we went into a
sort of saloon, overlooking the Neckar; very small, very bright, and
very close. The floor was slippery with polish; long narrow pieces
of looking-glass against the walls reflected the perpetual motion of
the river opposite; a white porcelain stove, with some old-fashioned
ornaments of brass about it; a sofa, covered with Utrecht velvet, a
table before it, and a piece of worsted-worked carpet under it; a
vase of artificial flowers; and, lastly, an alcove with a bed in it,
on which lay the paralysed wife of the good miller, knitting busily,
formed the furniture. I spoke as if this was all that was to be seen
in the room; but, sitting quietly, while my friend kept up a brisk
conversation in a language which I but half understood, my eye was
caught by a picture in a dark corner of the room, and I got up to
examine it more nearly.
It was that of a young girl of extreme beauty; evidently of middle
rank. There was a sensitive refinement in her face, as if she almost
shrank from the gaze which, of necessity, the painter must have fixed
upon her. It was not over-well painted, but I felt that it must have
been a good likeness, from this strong impress of peculiar character
which I have tried to describe. From the dress, I should guess it
to have been painted in the latter half of the last century. And I
afterwards heard that I was right.
There was a little pause in the conversation.
“Will you ask Frau Scherer who this is?”
My friend repeated my question, and received a long reply in German.
Then she turned round and translated it to me.
“It is the likeness of a great-aunt of her husband’s.” (My friend was
standing by me, and looking at the picture with sympathetic curiosity.)
“See! here is the name on the open page of this Bible, ‘Anna Scherer,
1778.’ Frau Scherer says there is a tradition in the family that this
pretty girl, with her complexion of lilies and roses, lost her colour
so entirely through fright, that she was known by the name of the
Grey Woman. She speaks as if this Anna Scherer lived in some state
of life-long terror. But she does not know details; refers me to her
husband for them. She thinks he has some papers which were written by
the original of that picture for her daughter, who died in this very
house not long after our friend there was married. We can ask Herr
Scherer for the whole story if you like.”
“Oh yes, pray do!” said I. And, as our host came in at this moment to
ask how we were faring, and to tell us that he had sent to Heidelberg
for carriages to convey us home, seeing no chance of the heavy rain
abating, my friend, after thanking him, passed on to my request.
“Ah!” said he, his face changing, “the aunt Anna had a sad history.
It was all owing to one of those hellish Frenchmen; and her daughter
suffered for it—the cousin Ursula, as we all called her when I was a
child. To be sure, the good cousin Ursula was his child as well. The
sins of the fathers are visited on their children. The lady would
like to know all about it, would she? Well, there are papers—a kind
of apology the aunt Anna wrote for putting an end to her daughter’s
engagement—or rather facts which she revealed, that prevented cousin
Ursula from marrying the man she loved; and so she would never have
any other good fellow, else I have heard say my father would have been
thankful to have made her his wife.” All this time he was rummaging in
the drawer of an old-fashioned bureau, and now he turned round, with a
bundle of yellow MSS. in his hand, which he gave to my friend, saying,
“Take it home, take it home, and if you care to make out our crabbed
German writing, you may keep it as long as you like, and read it at
your leisure. Only I must have it back again when you have done with
it, that’s all.”
And so we became possessed of the manuscript of the following letter,
which it was our employment, during many a long evening that ensuing
winter, to translate, and in some parts to abbreviate. The letter
began with some reference to the pain which she had already inflicted
upon her daughter by some unexplained opposition to a project of
marriage; but I doubt if, without the clue with which the good miller
had furnished us, we could have made out even this much from the
passionate, broken sentences that made us fancy that some scene between
the mother and daughter—and possibly a third person—had occurred just
before the mother had begun to write.
“Thou dost not love thy child, mother! Thou dost not care if her heart
is broken!” Ah, God! and these words of my heart-beloved Ursula ring in
my ears as if the sound of them would fill them when I lie a-dying. And
her poor tear-stained face comes between me and everything else. Child!
hearts do not break; life is very tough as well as very terrible. But
I will not decide for thee. I will tell thee all; and thou shalt bear
the burden of choice. I may be wrong; I have little wit left, and never
had much, I think; but an instinct serves me in place of judgment, and
that instinct tells me that thou and thy Henri must never be married.
Yet I may be in error. I would fain make my child happy. Lay this paper
before the good priest Schriesheim; if, after reading it, thou hast
doubts which make thee uncertain. Only I will tell thee all now, on
condition that no spoken word ever passes between us on the subject. It
would kill me to be questioned. I should have to see all present again.
My father held, as thou knowest, the mill on the Neckar, where thy
new-found uncle, Scherer, now lives. Thou rememberest the surprise with
which we were received there last vintage twelvemonth. How thy uncle
disbelieved me when I said that I was his sister Anna, whom he had
long believed to be dead, and how I had to lead thee underneath the
picture, painted of me long ago, and point out, feature by feature, the
likeness between it and thee; and how, as I spoke, I recalled first to
my own mind, and then by speech to his, the details of the time when it
was painted; the merry words that passed between us then, a happy boy
and girl; the position of the articles of furniture in the room; our
father’s habits; the cherry-tree, now cut down, that shaded the window
of my bedroom, through which my brother was wont to squeeze himself, in
order to spring on to the topmost bough that would bear his weight; and
thence would pass me back his cap laden with fruit to where I sat on
the window-sill, too sick with fright for him to care much for eating
the cherries.
And at length Fritz gave way, and believed me to be his sister Anna,
even as though I were risen from the dead. And thou rememberest how
he fetched in his wife, and told her that I was not dead, but was
come back to the old home once more, changed as I was. And she would
scarce believe him, and scanned me with a cold, distrustful eye, till
at length—for I knew her of old as Babette Müller—I said that I was
well-to-do, and needed not to seek out friends for what they had to
give. And then she asked—not me, but her husband—why I had kept silent
so long, leading all—father, brother, every one that loved me in my own
dear home—to esteem me dead. And then thine uncle (thou rememberest?)
said he cared not to know more than I cared to tell; that I was his
Anna, found again, to be a blessing to him in his old age, as I had
been in his boyhood. I thanked him in my heart for his trust; for were
the need for telling all less than it seems to me now I could not speak
of my past life. But she, who was my sister-in-law still, held back
her welcome, and, for want of that, I did not go to live in Heidelberg
as I had planned beforehand, in order to be near my brother Fritz, but
contented myself with his promise to be a father to my Ursula when I
should die and leave this weary world.
That Babette Müller was, as I may say, the cause of all my life’s
suffering. She was a baker’s daughter in Heidelberg—a great beauty, as
people said, and, indeed, as I could see for myself. I, too—thou sawest
my picture—was reckoned a beauty, and I believe I was so. Babette
Müller looked upon me as a rival. She liked to be admired, and had no
one much to love her. I had several people to love me—thy grandfather,
Fritz, the old servant Kätchen, Karl, the head apprentice at the
mill—and I feared admiration and notice, and the being stared at as the
“Schöne Müllerin,” whenever I went to make my purchases in Heidelberg.
Those were happy, peaceful days. I had Kätchen to help me in the
housework, and whatever we did pleased my brave old father, who was
always gentle and indulgent towards us women, though he was stern
enough with the apprentices in the mill. Karl, the oldest of these, was
his favourite; and I can see now that my father wished him to marry me,
and that Karl himself was desirous to do so. But Karl was rough-spoken,
and passionate—not with me, but with the others—and I shrank from him
in a way which, I fear, gave him pain. And then came thy uncle Fritz’s
marriage; and Babette was brought to the mill to be its mistress. Not
that I cared much for giving up my post, for, in spite of my father’s
great kindness, I always feared that I did not manage well for so
large a family (with the men, and a girl under Kätchen, we sat down
eleven each night to supper). But when Babette began to find fault with
Kätchen, I was unhappy at the blame that fell on faithful servants;
and by-and-by I began to see that Babette was egging on Karl to make
more open love to me, and, as she once said, to get done with it, and
take me off to a home of my own. My father was growing old, and did
not perceive all my daily discomfort. The more Karl advanced, the more
I disliked him. He was good in the main, but I had no notion of being
married, and could not bear any one who talked to me about it.
Things were in this way when I had an invitation to go to Carlsruhe to
visit a schoolfellow, of whom I had been very fond. Babette was all for
my going; I don’t think I wanted to leave home, and yet I had been very
fond of Sophie Rupprecht. But I was always shy among strangers. Somehow
the affair was settled for me, but not until both Fritz and my father
had made inquiries as to the character and position of the Rupprechts.
They learned that the father had held some kind of inferior position
about the Grand-duke’s court, and was now dead, leaving a widow, a
noble lady, and two daughters, the elder of whom was Sophie, my friend.
Madame Rupprecht was not rich, but more than respectable—genteel. When
this was ascertained, my father made no opposition to my going; Babette
forwarded it by all the means in her power, and even my dear Fritz had
his word to say in its favour. Only Kätchen was against it—Kätchen
and Karl. The opposition of Karl did more to send me to Carlsruhe
than anything. For I could have objected to go; but when he took upon
himself to ask what was the good of going a-gadding, visiting strangers
of whom no one knew anything, I yielded to circumstances—to the pulling
of Sophie and the pushing of Babette. I was silently vexed, I remember,
at Babette’s inspection of my clothes; at the way in which she settled
that this gown was too old-fashioned, or that too common, to go with
me on my visit to a noble lady; and at the way in which she took upon
herself to spend the money my father had given me to buy what was
requisite for the occasion. And yet I blamed myself, for every one else
thought her so kind for doing all this; and she herself meant kindly,
too.
At last I quitted the mill by the Neckar-side. It was a long day’s
journey, and Fritz went with me to Carlsruhe. The Rupprechts lived
on the third floor of a house a little behind one of the principal
streets, in a cramped-up court, to which we gained admittance through a
doorway in the street. I remember how pinched their rooms looked after
the large space we had at the mill, and yet they had an air of grandeur
about them which was new to me, and which gave me pleasure, faded as
some of it was. Madame Rupprecht was too formal a lady for me; I was
never at my ease with her; but Sophie was all that I had recollected
her at school: kind, affectionate, and only rather too ready with her
expressions of admiration and regard. The little sister kept out of
our way; and that was all we needed, in the first enthusiastic renewal
of our early friendship. The one great object of Madame Rupprecht’s
life was to retain her position in society; and as her means were much
diminished since her husband’s death, there was not much comfort,
though there was a great deal of show, in their way of living; just
the opposite of what it was at my father’s house. I believe that my
coming was not too much desired by Madame Rupprecht, as I brought with
me another mouth to be fed; but Sophie had spent a year or more in
entreating for permission to invite me, and her mother, having once
consented, was too well bred not to give me a stately welcome.
The life in Carlsruhe was very different from what it was at home. The
hours were later, the coffee was weaker in the morning, the pottage was
weaker, the boiled beef less relieved by other diet, the dresses finer,
the evening engagements constant. I did not find these visits pleasant.
We might not knit, which would have relieved the tedium a little; but
we sat in a circle, talking together, only interrupted occasionally by
a gentleman, who, breaking out of the knot of men who stood near the
door, talking eagerly together, stole across the room on tiptoe, his
hat under his arm, and, bringing his feet together in the position we
called the first at the dancing-school, made a low bow to the lady he
was going to address. The first time I saw these manners I could not
help smiling; but Madame Rupprecht saw me, and spoke to me next morning
rather severely, telling me that, of course, in my country breeding I
could have seen nothing of court manners, or French fashions, but that
that was no reason for my laughing at them. Of course I tried never to
smile again in company. This visit to Carlsruhe took place in ’89, just
when every one was full of the events taking place at Paris; and yet
at Carlsruhe French fashions were more talked of than French politics.
Madame Rupprecht, especially, thought a great deal of all French
people. And this again was quite different to us at home. Fritz could
hardly bear the name of a Frenchman; and it had nearly been an obstacle
to my visit to Sophie that her mother preferred being called Madame to
her proper title of Frau.
[Illustration p. 17: Monsieur de la Tourelle.]
One night I was sitting next to Sophie, and longing for the time when
we might have supper and go home, so as to be able to speak together,
a thing forbidden by Madame Rupprecht’s rules of etiquette, which
strictly prohibited any but the most necessary conversation passing
between members of the same family when in society. I was sitting, I
say, scarcely keeping back my inclination to yawn, when two gentlemen
came in, one of whom was evidently a stranger to the whole party, from
the formal manner in which the host led him up, and presented him to
the hostess. I thought I had never seen any one so handsome or so
elegant. His hair was powdered, of course, but one could see from his
complexion that it was fair in its natural state. His features were as
delicate as a girl’s, and set off by two little “mouches,” as we called
patches in those days, one at the left corner of his mouth, the other
prolonging, as it were, the right eye. His dress was blue and silver.
I was so lost in admiration of this beautiful young man, that I was as
much surprised as if the angel Gabriel had spoken to me, when the lady
of the house brought him forward to present him to me. She called him
Monsieur de la Tourelle, and he began to speak to me in French; but
though I understood him perfectly, I dared not trust myself to reply to
him in that language. Then he tried German, speaking it with a kind of
soft lisp that I thought charming. But, before the end of the evening,
I became a little tired of the affected softness and effeminacy of his
manners, and the exaggerated compliments he paid me, which had the
effect of making all the company turn round and look at me. Madame
Rupprecht was, however, pleased with the precise thing that displeased
me. She liked either Sophie or me to create a sensation; of course
she would have preferred that it should have been her daughter, but
her daughter’s friend was next best. As we went away, I heard Madame
Rupprecht and Monsieur de la Tourelle reciprocating civil speeches with
might and main, from which I found out that the French gentleman was
coming to call on us the next day. I do not know whether I was more
glad or frightened, for I had been kept upon stilts of good manners all
the evening. But still I was flattered when Madame Rupprecht spoke as
if she had invited him, because he had shown pleasure in my society,
and even more gratified by Sophie’s ungrudging delight at the evident
interest I had excited in so fine and agreeable a gentleman. Yet, with
all this, they had hard work to keep me from running out of the salon
the next day, when we heard his voice inquiring at the gate on the
stairs for Madame Rupprecht. They had made me put on my Sunday gown,
and they themselves were dressed as for a reception.
When he was gone away, Madame Rupprecht congratulated me on the
conquest I had made; for, indeed, he had scarcely spoken to any one
else, beyond what mere civility required, and had almost invited
himself to come in the evening to bring some new song, which was all
the fashion in Paris, he said. Madame Rupprecht had been out all
morning, as she told me, to glean information about Monsieur de la
Tourelle. He was a propriétaire, had a small château on the Vosges
mountains; he owned land there, but had a large income from some
sources quite independent of this property. Altogether, he was a
good match, as she emphatically observed. She never seemed to think
that I could refuse him after this account of his wealth, nor do I
believe she would have allowed Sophie a choice, even had he been as
old and ugly as he was young and handsome. I do not quite know—so many
events have come to pass since then, and blurred the clearness of my
recollections—if I loved him or not. He was very much devoted to me; he
almost frightened me by the excess of his demonstrations of love. And
he was very charming to everybody around me, who all spoke of him as
the most fascinating of men, and of me as the most fortunate of girls.
And yet I never felt quite at my ease with him. I was always relieved
when his visits were over, although I missed his presence when he did
not come. He prolonged his visit to the friend with whom he was staying
at Carlsruhe, on purpose to woo me. He loaded me with presents, which
I was unwilling to take, only Madame Rupprecht seemed to consider me
an affected prude if I refused them. Many of these presents consisted
of articles of valuable old jewellery, evidently belonging to his
family; by accepting these I doubled the ties which were formed around
me by circumstances even more than by my own consent. In those days we
did not write letters to absent friends as frequently as is done now,
and I had been unwilling to name him in the few letters that I wrote
home. At length, however, I learned from Madame Rupprecht that she had
written to my father to announce the splendid conquest I had made, and
to request his presence at my betrothal. I started with astonishment.
I had not realized that affairs had gone so far as this. But when she
asked me, in a stern, offended manner, what I had meant by my conduct
if I did not intend to marry Monsieur de la Tourelle—I had received
his visits, his presents, all his various advances without showing
any unwillingness or repugnance—(and it was all true; I had shown no
repugnance, though I did not wish to be married to him,—at least, not
so soon)—what could I do but hang my head, and silently consent to the
rapid enunciation of the only course which now remained for me if I
would not be esteemed a heartless coquette all the rest of my days?
There was some difficulty, which I afterwards learnt that my
sister-in-law had obviated, about my betrothal taking place from home.
My father, and Fritz especially, were for having me return to the mill,
and there be betrothed, and from thence be married. But the Rupprechts
and Monsieur de la Tourelle were equally urgent on the other side; and
Babette was unwilling to have the trouble of the commotion at the mill;
and also, I think, a little disliked the idea of the contrast of my
grander marriage with her own.
So my father and Fritz came over to the betrothal. They were to stay
at an inn in Carlsruhe for a fortnight, at the end of which time the
marriage was to take place. Monsieur de la Tourelle told me he had
business at home, which would oblige him to be absent during the
interval between the two events; and I was very glad of it, for I did
not think that he valued my father and my brother as I could have
wished him to do. He was very polite to them; put on all the soft,
grand manner, which he had rather dropped with me; and complimented us
all round, beginning with my father and Madame Rupprecht, and ending
with little Alwina. But he a little scoffed at the old-fashioned church
ceremonies which my father insisted on; and I fancy Fritz must have
taken some of his compliments as satire, for I saw certain signs of
manner by which I knew that my future husband, for all his civil words,
had irritated and annoyed my brother. But all the money arrangements
were liberal in the extreme, and more than satisfied, almost surprised,
my father. Even Fritz lifted up his eyebrows and whistled. I alone
did not care about anything. I was bewitched,—in a dream,—a kind of
despair. I had got into a net through my own timidity and weakness, and
I did not see how to get out of it. I clung to my own home-people that
fortnight as I had never done before. Their voices, their ways were all
so pleasant and familiar to me, after the constraint in which I had
been living. I might speak and do as I liked without being corrected
by Madame Rupprecht, or reproved in a delicate, complimentary way by
Monsieur de la Tourelle. One day I said to my father that I did not
want to be married, that I would rather go back to the dear old mill;
but he seemed to feel this speech of mine as a dereliction of duty
as great as if I had committed perjury; as if, after the ceremony of
betrothal, no one had any right over me but my future husband. And yet
he asked me some solemn questions; but my answers were not such as to
do me any good.
“Dost thou know any fault or crime in this man that should prevent
God’s blessing from resting on thy marriage with him? Dost thou feel
aversion or repugnance to him in any way?”
And to all this what could I say? I could only stammer out that I
did not think I loved him enough; and my poor old father saw in this
reluctance only the fancy of a silly girl who did not know her own
mind, but who had now gone too far to recede.
So we were married, in the Court chapel, a privilege which Madame
Rupprecht had used no end of efforts to obtain for us, and which she
must have thought was to secure us all possible happiness, both at the
time and in recollection afterwards.
We were married; and after two days spent in festivity at Carlsruhe,
among all our new fashionable friends there, I bade good-by for ever
to my dear old father. I had begged my husband to take me by way of
Heidelberg to his old castle in the Vosges; but I found an amount of
determination, under that effeminate appearance and manner, for which
I was not prepared, and he refused my first request so decidedly that
I dared not urge it. “Henceforth, Anna,” said he, “you will move in a
different sphere of life; and though it is possible that you may have
the power of showing favour to your relations from time to time, yet
much or familiar intercourse will be undesirable, and is what I cannot
allow.” I felt almost afraid, after this formal speech, of asking my
father and Fritz to come and see me; but, when the agony of bidding
them farewell overcame all my prudence, I did beg them to pay me a
visit ere long. But they shook their heads, and spoke of business at
home, of different kinds of life, of my being a Frenchwoman now. Only
my father broke out at last with a blessing, and said, “If my child is
unhappy—which God forbid—let her remember that her father’s house is
ever open to her.” I was on the point of crying out, “Oh! take me back
then now, my father! oh, my father!” when I felt, rather than saw, my
husband present near me. He looked on with a slightly contemptuous air;
and, taking my hand in his, he led me weeping away, saying that short
farewells were always the best when they were inevitable.
It took us two days to reach his château in the Vosges, for the roads
were bad and the way difficult to ascertain. Nothing could be more
devoted than he was all the time of the journey. It seemed as if he
were trying in every way to make up for the separation which every
hour made me feel the more complete between my present and my former
life. I seemed as if I were only now wakening up to a full sense of
what marriage was, and I dare say I was not a cheerful companion on
the tedious journey. At length, jealousy of my regret for my father
and brother got the better of M. de la Tourelle, and he became so
much displeased with me that I thought my heart would break with the
sense of desolation. So it was in no cheerful frame of mind that we
approached Les Rochers, and I thought that perhaps it was because I was
so unhappy that the place looked so dreary. On one side, the château
looked like a raw new building, hastily run up for some immediate
purpose, without any growth of trees or underwood near it, only the
remains of the stone used for building, not yet cleared away from the
immediate neighbourhood, although weeds and lichens had been suffered
to grow near and over the heaps of rubbish; on the other, were the
great rocks from which the place took its name, and rising close
against them, as if almost a natural formation, was the old castle,
whose building dated many centuries back.
It was not large nor grand, but it was strong and picturesque,
and I used to wish that we lived in it rather than in the smart,
half-furnished apartment in the new edifice, which had been hastily
got ready for my reception. Incongruous as the two parts were, they
were joined into a whole by means of intricate passages and unexpected
doors, the exact positions of which I never fully understood. M. de
la Tourelle led me to a suite of rooms set apart for me, and formally
installed me in them, as in a domain of which I was sovereign. He
apologised for the hasty preparation which was all he had been able
to make for me, but promised, before I asked, or even thought of
complaining, that they should be made as luxurious as heart could wish
before many weeks had elapsed. But when, in the gloom of an autumnal
evening, I caught my own face and figure reflected in all the mirrors,
which showed only a mysterious background in the dim light of the
many candles which failed to illuminate the great proportions of the
half-furnished salon, I clung to M. de la Tourelle, and begged to be
taken to the rooms he had occupied before his marriage, he seemed angry
with me, although he affected to laugh, and so decidedly put aside
the notion of my having any other rooms but these, that I trembled in
silence at the fantastic figures and shapes which my imagination called
up as peopling the background of those gloomy mirrors. There was my
boudoir, a little less dreary—my bedroom, with its grand and tarnished
furniture, which I commonly made into my sitting-room, locking up the
various doors which led into the boudoir, the salon, the passages—all
but one, through which M. de la Tourelle always entered from his own
apartments in the older part of the castle. But this preference of mine
for occupying my bedroom annoyed M. de la Tourelle, I am sure, though
he did not care to express his displeasure. He would always allure me
back into the salon, which I disliked more and more from its complete
separation from the rest of the building by the long passage into
which all the doors of my apartment opened. This passage was closed
by heavy doors and portières, through which I could not hear a sound
from the other parts of the house, and, of course, the servants could
not hear any movement or cry of mine unless expressly summoned. To a
girl brought up as I had been in a household where every individual
lived all day in the sight of every other member of the family, never
wanted either cheerful words or the sense of silent companionship, this
grand isolation of mine was very formidable; and the more so, because
M. de la Tourelle, as landed proprietor, sportsman, and what not, was
generally out of doors the greater part of every day, and sometimes for
two or three days at a time. I had no pride to keep me from associating
with the domestics; it would have been natural to me in many ways
to have sought them out for a word of sympathy in those dreary days
when I was left so entirely to myself, had they been like our kindly
German servants. But I disliked them, one and all; I could not tell
why. Some were civil, but there was a familiarity in their civility
which repelled me; others were rude, and treated me more as if I were
an intruder than their master’s chosen wife; and yet of the two sets I
liked these last the best.
The principal male servant belonged to this latter class. I was very
much afraid of him, he had such an air of suspicious surliness about
him in all he did for me; and yet M. de la Tourelle spoke of him
as most valuable and faithful. Indeed, it sometimes struck me that
Lefebvre ruled his master in some things; and this I could not make
out. For, while M. de la Tourelle behaved towards me as if I were some
precious toy or idol, to be cherished, and fostered, and petted, and
indulged, I soon found out how little I, or, apparently, any one else,
could bend the terrible will of the man who had on first acquaintance
appeared to me too effeminate and languid to exert his will in the
slightest particular. I had learnt to know his face better now; and to
see that some vehement depth of feeling, the cause of which I could
not fathom, made his grey eye glitter with pale light, and his lips
contract, and his delicate cheek whiten on certain occasions. But all
had been so open and above board at home, that I had no experience to
help me to unravel any mysteries among those who lived under the same
roof. I understood that I had made what Madame Rupprecht and her set
would have called a great marriage, because I lived in a château with
many servants, bound ostensibly to obey me as a mistress. I understood
that M. de la Tourelle was fond enough of me in his way—proud of my
beauty, I dare say (for he often enough spoke about it to me)—but
he was also jealous, and suspicious, and uninfluenced by my wishes,
unless they tallied with his own. I felt at this time as if I could
have been fond of him too, if he would have let me; but I was timid
from my childhood, and before long my dread of his displeasure (coming
down like thunder into the midst of his love, for such slight causes
as a hesitation in reply, a wrong word, or a sigh for my father),
conquered my humorous inclination to love one who was so handsome, so
accomplished, so indulgent and devoted. But if I could not please him
when indeed I loved him, you may imagine how often I did wrong when I
was so much afraid of him as to quietly avoid his company for fear of
his outbursts of passion. One thing I remember noticing, that the more
M. de la Tourelle was displeased with me, the more Lefebvre seemed to
chuckle; and when I was restored to favour, sometimes on as sudden
an impulse as that which occasioned my disgrace, Lefebvre would look
askance at me with his cold, malicious eyes, and once or twice at such
times he spoke most disrespectfully to M. de la Tourelle.
I have almost forgotten to say that, in the early days of my life at
Les Rochers, M. de la Tourelle, in contemptuous indulgent pity at my
weakness in disliking the dreary grandeur of the salon, wrote up to
the milliner in Paris from whom my corbeille de mariage had come, to
desire her to look out for me a maid of middle age, experienced in the
toilette, and with so much refinement that she might on occasion serve
as companion to me.