'Yes. The poor old Graf!' said Grünthal, with a sigh.
Charlie felt startled—almost inclined to speak and discover himself, but restrained the inclination, and listened intently, thinking, 'Well, the poor old veteran of Ligny and Waterloo could not be expected to live for ever.'
'He has never suffered more, I think,' said Rhineberg, after taking a long pull at his pipe, and watching the smoke thoughtfully as it ascended in concentric rings towards the lofty ceiling of the speise-saal, 'never, since that morning when the devilishExtra Blatthad in it the mutilated telegram concerning the capture of Heinrich by the Francs-Tireurs.'
'And the severe wounding—was it not mortally?—of the Englander, Herr Pierrepont,' added Grunthal, with something in his throat that sounded, as Charlie thought, exceedingly like a chuckle of satisfaction.
But Heinrich, his dear friend and comrade, had been taken by the Francs-Tireurs! Knowing, from experience, how the Francs-Tireurs and the Prussians were in the habit of handling each other, this was an event to cause him anxiety, but, as it happened, only for a few minutes.
Would the death of the Count in any way release Ernestine from parental thraldom? Though he felt genuine sympathy for her natural grief, he could not very much regret the event; 'and yet,' thought Charlie, 'the poor old fellow was always kind to me.'
'It is most fortunate,' said Rhineberg, after a little pause, 'that the young Graf Heinrich is at home during such a terrible crisis.'
'Most fortunate for his mother, and all.'
So Heinrich was at Frankenburg, and not with the old 95th before the walls of Paris! This was indeed most welcome news for Charlie! More than once he had been on the verge of speaking, as his curiosity had been keenly excited, but repressed the inclination; he did not wish that his presence in Aix should be known to the Countess, and to address Grünthal, his acknowledged rival, or competitor, rather, was altogether an intolerable idea, so quitting the speise-saal softly, he hastened to his own room.
Then he wrote rapidly a long and explanatory letter to Ernestine, full of all the deepest, most tender, and passionate thoughts of his heart, telling her of his presence at Aix, and beseeching her to meet him. He recalled the dream in which she had asked him to meet him at Burtscheid.
'At Burtscheid, be it,' he wrote, 'at the same hour, dear, dear Ernestine, when last we met there; and I shall give you a strange souvenir of the war—the bullet that pierced my breast, and has been the means, perhaps, of keeping me so long from you. At Burtscheid, then, my darling.'
This letter he despatched under cover to Heinrich, and felt more happy and composed than he had been since last he saw her.
He knew that his letter would be delivered by the post at Frankenburg in the morning.
Probably Heinrich would visit his hotel during the day, and he knew that at all risks—unless something most extraordinary intervened—Ernestine, who had such strength of will, would contrive to meet him in the old church.
All the following day Charlie lingered about the Grand Monarque, but Heinrich never came; doubtless the business or calamity to which the Barons referred had detained him.
Then a fear came over Charlie that the same event might prevent Ernestine meeting him, as she might be deprived of her brother's escort.
But if she failed to come, a messenger of some kind might meet him at Burtscheid.
'In five hours—in four—in two,' and so on he reckoned, 'I shall see her again—my darling! my darling!'
At last the wished-for time came when he was to set forth on that walk which—he fondly, ardently, and tenderly hoped—was to end inherpresence; but, as he walked down the leafless avenue from the city, he felt his heart become tremulous, almost sick with anxiety and fear, lest she should be unable to meet him, even after all the months of separation undergone; yet his was a heart that never quailed, even when he faced that battery in the wood—a battery that was not of cannon, but mitrailleuses!
Anon as he proceeded, something of Ernestine's high and strange enthusiasm gathered in his breast.
Even if he were fated never to wed her, he felt that she was the one great passion of his life, a worship almost spiritualized, and that beyond the trammels of this material world, he would follow her, faithful and unchanged, into that to come.
Then he almost smiled to think how German the tone of his mind was becoming.
The evening sky was cloudless, and wore a kind of pale violet tint, amid which the stars sparkled out brilliantly.
The trees of the avenue between the city and Burtscheid were covered with rimy frost, which made their branches seem to coruscate and glitter in myriad prisms. Frost was on the pathway; it shone on the stems and twigs, on the stalks and blades of the wayside plants; snow covered all the district, yet the air was far from being cold.
At last the old church of Burtscheid rose before him again. In another minute or two, he would have clasped her to his breast, where he had clasped her last—at the altar-rail—when those sad and sweet and solemn vows were interchanged.
In that moment the campaign in Alsace and Lorraine, danger, duty, wound, and suffering, were all forgotten; nothing was in his mind but the intense happiness of the event to come.
He was conscious enough of the tombs and cypresses, the pillars and obelisks, standing grimly up from the snow-clad graves; of the dusky outlines of various distant buildings; of red lights streaming from windows out upon the gloom; and he could see the pale silver crescent of the new moon peeping sharply up above the black outline of the Schloss of Frankenburg.
He heard the faint whisper of the ivy leaves on the old wall; but all as one might do in a dream.'
He threw away the end of his cigar, and thought,
'I should not have been smoking when coming to meether.'
No britzka or other carriage stood before the gate. Heinrich was not there as escort; neither was the old butler or any other servant there in attendance.
So, as the evening was clear and fine, she must have come alone to meet him, that they might have the joy of walking back to the Schloss together!
He entered the church. It was gaily decorated for the coming Christmas-eve.
No one was in the church, and Charlie's heart began at once to sink, when there was a sound behind him, and coming down two steps, from a door that he had not observed before, was his own Ernestine.
'Carl! Carl! It is thee! Thee, at last!' she exclaimed, in a piercing voice, and, with innocent self-abandonment and a tenderness that was irrepressible, but peculiarly her own, she flung herself into his arms, as on that night in the boudoir.
She was dressed as if for a ball or some great festival; but Carl remembered that this was Christmas-time, always a season of gaiety at Frankenburg as elsewhere.
Her dress was white silk, covered with waves of the finest white lace. A great veil of the latter material enveloped her head and shoulders.
She wanted but a white wreath to make her look like a lovely bride, and Charlie's heart throbbed with pride and joy to think that she was his own.
He thought she looked pale and tired. It might be—nay, doubtless, it must be—that the months of past anxiety had told upon her system as on his own.
Yet her eyes had all the tender purity of an angel's in them, though when she became excited there came over them a strange glitter, a restless flashing, a sparkling animation, that contrasted strongly with the languor of her form and actions; but happily there was no fever flush on her cheek, which was pale—paler than of old, as Charlie thought.
Long and silent was their embrace ere they spoke in broken accents of all they had mutually undergone; and, while speaking, her head nestling as it used to do on Charlie's neck, she shuddered sometimes, for she seemed to be sorely chilled by the damp cold atmosphere of the old church.
'Are all well at the Schloss?' asked Charlie suddenly, after a pause, as the last evening's conversation recurred to him.
'All! Thank Heaven!' replied Ernestine.
'And your father, the Herr Graf?'
'Well, too.'
Charlie was puzzled. He must have been in a dream, or have misunderstood the remarks of the two barons.
'Is Heinrich with the regiment?' he asked.
'No,' she replied, 'dear Heinrich is at the Schloss, and this morning put your letter into my hand; and then, after, to tease or please me, in my bosom. See, it is there now!' she added, in the most engaging manner.
'You found no difficulty in coming to meet me, dearest?'
'None.'
'How fortunate—how happy we are!'
'My poor Carl!'
'Why poor? I feel to-night the happiest man in Germany.'
'I was resolved to meet you, at all risks, my darling. A faith plighted—a promise made is holy, Carl—holy to God and man. I promised to be here, Carl, in a dream that I had of you; and by a strange chance I have been permitted to come—to be here, to see you, feel your strong but tender arm round me once more. Oh, Carl, kiss me once again, as you did on that day in the Hoch Munster when first you said you loved me.'
'Ernestine, what do you mean?' asked Charlie, eyeing her with some anxiety, and impressed with a strange fear by the solemnity of her manner.
'I belong no longer to myself.'
'To whom, then? Heavens!' he added, starting, 'you have not become the wife of that man!'
'Who?'
'Baron Grünthal.'
'Oh, no; how could you think of such a thing for a moment, Carl?' she said, with a bitter smile, while looking down and playing with a ring he had given her in other days.
'Then to whom do you belong?' he asked, fondly.
'My love—to you!'
She put up her little face tenderly to his, and then looked away, with the weary, wistful expression of those who have long lived in some world of their own, and can never seem to see out beyond the present.
'We were betrothed together for life and death, Carl.'
'Were—are, you mean, Ernestine.'
'Yes, beloved Carl; but time presses—alas! I fear that I must leave you now.'
'But to meet again——'
'Very soon.'
'I have brought these for you from Lorraine. This is the bullet that struck me down, and this cross is a trophy of the war.'
'How pretty—nay, it is beautiful and interesting, too,' she exclaimed, with something of her old gleeful way, as he clasped round her slender throat a gold necklet he had procured in Aix, and now the white enamelled cross hung thereat.
She shuddered when she looked at the chassepot ball and took it in her hand.
'And this actually pierced you, my Carl?'
'Nearly through and through, love. For five days it was in unpleasant proximity to my lungs.'
'It is indeed a relic,' said she, while placing it in the bosom of her dress.
'So—so,' said she, sadly, disengaging herself from his arms, 'our love has been sanctified by danger and death.'
'Great Heavens!' thought Carl, 'sorrow has turned her brain!'
'It hasnot,' she said; 'do not think so.'
'What is not? I did not speak,' said Carl.
'No, but you thought; and I know what you thought, and there is no living grace or glory like a love so sanctified as ours, Carl.'
He regarded her with a bewilderment not unmixed with alarm.
There was a strange wild and weird beauty in her pale face—a radiance in her eyes, a brightness all over her such as Charlie had never before witnessed.
Whence did it come? From the altar-lights?
They were too dim.
What did it mean? Was it her natural beauty only, magnified by the force of his imagination, and enhanced by his great love for her?
Somehow Charlie was perplexed and startled by her, amid all the transport and joy of the time.
Suddenly there was a sound of wheels and horses' hoofs without, then of several feet ringing on the hard and frozen churchyard path.
Ernestine started, and exclaimed in a voice husky, as it seemed, with alarm—
'They are coming—my father and that dreadful Baron! I must leave you, beloved Carl—but only for a time; we shall meet again where even they can separate us no more!'
She turned, and flying like a phantom, hurried through the little door by which she had entered the church; and Charlie Pierrepont, feeling certain that their interview had been discovered—that they had come in pursuit of her in ire and indignation, and that there would be a scene which he was most anxious to avoid—looked hastily round the little church for a place of concealment.
There was none; so he resolved to make the best of it, and turned to the doorway just as the portly old Count of Frankenburg, the Baron Grünthal, limping as usual with gout, and Heinrich entered the church together.
They were all in evening costume—that sombre attire in which the modern gentleman may attend a funeral by day, and a ball by night, without change; and they all looked pale, harassed, and grave.
'Oh, Herr Graf von Frankenburg, if you have a human heart——' Charlie was beginning, anxious to propitiate the father of her he loved so dearly, when the Count, waving his hand, interrupted him, and said:
'Herr Lieutenant, I can well afford to forgive the past now, and your rash love for my daughter.'
'Herr Graf, I thank you—I thank you!' exclaimed Charlie, with warmth and gratitude; for he expected high words, anger, and fierce reproaches.
'Carl, my dear friend,' said Heinrich, taking his hand kindly in both of his, while his eyes filled with genuine emotion, 'you here!—you here after all!'
'You got my letter and gave it to her—to Ernestine?'
'To her—yes; but alas! Carl, it came too late.'
'Too late!—too late! How?'
'Do you not know? have you not heard? Poor Carl! poor Carl!' said Heinrich, in a voice full of sympathy.
'What do you mean?' asked Charlie, in great perplexity.
'He means, Mein Herr,' said the Count, in a broken voice, 'that our beloved Ernestine died at noon yesterday.'
Charlie passed a hand across his brow, and looked wildly in their faces, as if doubting their sanity or his own.
'Died!' he repeated mechanically.
'It is incomprehensible your being here,' said the Count, in a still more broken voice, and few could have seen that old man weeping unmoved, 'as her last words were, "Meet me at Burtscheid—at Burtscheid, dearest Carl."'
'And Ihavemet her, seen her, spoken with her not two minutes since.'
'My poor friend,' said Heinrich, 'grief, or your wound, has turned your brain.'
'What madness is this?' asked Charlie, with a kind of bitter laugh in his voice, as he felt in no humour for jesting. 'Herr Graf, Herr Baron, Heinrich, my friend, Ernestine has been here with me, in this lonely church, for fully two hours!'
'Andspokenwith you?' said the Count, in an excited tone. 'Oh, if it should be that she still lives!'
'Lives!—great Heaven! Herr Graf—she was here with me, and I gave her a French cross with the bullet that wounded me.'
'He raves!' said the Baron Grunthal, with anger in his tone.
'She is there—in that room off the church.'
'In that room sure enough. It is the Dead Chamber,' said the Count, approaching the door.
'She fled there for concealment on hearing your approach.'
'Man,' said the old Count, pausing, 'are you not mad to tell me that she is there now, and yet was here but a minute ago?'
'As I have Heaven to answer to—she was!'
'Follow me, then.'
On entering the room, Charlie Pierrepont reeled, and would have fallen had not Heinrich supported him.
We scarcely know how to write of the episode that follows, and can but tell the tale as it was told by those who were cognisant of it.
In a purple velvet coffin, mounted with silver, and supported on trestles, the lid being open, lay Ernestine, dressed as we have described her—dead, stone-dead, cold and pale as marble, her lips a pale blue streak, her long eyelashes closed for ever.
Dead, beyond a doubt, was the girl he had clasped in his arms as a living being, but a few minutes before living and full of volition and life, love and energy; the lips he had kissed closed thus for ever; the hands he had caressed, snow-white now, disposed upon her bosom, the upper one holding the cross he had given her!
'Dead! What miracle of heaven; what magic of hell is here!' he exclaimed, as he staggered to the side of the coffin, pale as the girl who lay in it, the bead-like drops oozing from his temples as he grasped the locks above them. 'Speak! oh, speak, Heinrich!'
How terribly now came back to memory some of the strange things Ernestine had said to him, and more than all, those dying words of the French captain in the Chateau de Colombey, which sounded like something between a prophecy and a curse!
'Compose yourself, Carl,' said Heinrich, full of pity.
'My letter to her—written after she was dead,' said Charles, in a voice like a whisper—'she—she——'
'I placed it in her coffin ere she was brought here from the Schloss,' said Heinrich, who was now weeping freely; 'it is there now—and heavens, father! shehasround her neck the cross of which Carl spoke.'
There are many things but imperfectly known in 'our philosophy,' and certainly this seemed one of them.
'She died talking of you—not raving—the poor angel,' said the old Count, as he bent fondly over the coffined girl, 'but smiling sweetly, and saying earnestly, again and, again, that she would meet you at Burtscheid.'
* * * * *
The gloomy half-lighted chamber in which this scene took place, and where the dead girl lay, looking so sweetly placid in her coffin, was one of those, where, in conformity with the police regulations of Germany in general, the bodies of persons deceased are placed within twelve hours after death—there to await interment.
In many places, more particularly at Frankfort, to guard against the chances of burial in cases of suspended animation, the fingers of the dead are placed in the loops of a bell-rope, attached to an alarm clock, which is fixed in the apartment of the attendant appointed to be on the watch.
The least pulsation in the body would give the alarm, when medical aid would instantly be called in.
Ernestine had a watcher in an adjoining room! but that worthy was found in the enjoyment of a profound slumber, and so had neither heard nor seen anything.
This strange story found its way into theAix Gazetteand theExtra Blatt.
Some averred that Charlie Pierrepont, on discovering her body in the chamber of Death, had gone mad and had imagined the whole interview in the church; others, that it was really a case of suspended animation, and that she had recovered for a time, and actually kept her tryst; but the former idea was the predominant one.
Certain it is that for many weeks after the event Charlie seemed to hover between life and death, sanity and insanity, at the Grand Monarque; and when he rejoined the Thuringianas before the walls of Paris, he had become so haggard, grey-haired, and old-looking, that his former comrades scarcely recognised him, so much had he undergone by a fever of the mind, rather than of the body.
When these dreadful events were soothed by time, though not forgotten at Frankenburg, and when the summer flowers were blooming over Charlie's grave—a grave which he found under the guns of Mont Valerien—the young Graf Heinrich was married to his cousin Herminia by the Herr Pastor Von Puffenvörtz, in the church of Burtscheid, when, as if no sorrow had preceded the ceremony, all indeed went merrily as a 'marriage bell.'
THE END.
BILLING AND SONS, PRINTERS, GUILDFORD AND LONDON.