CHAPTER IXHOME-COMING"And then he thought, 'In spite of all my care,For all my pains, poor man, for all my pains,She is not faithful to me....'"(The Marriage of Geraint)."The visitors are but just gone," said Martin, the doorward.He stood, his hand still on the fallen bolt, with expressionless gaze fixed upon the Burgrave, not without secret dismay and misgivings. In truth he had but half believed the fiddler's announcement, had scarce expected his master at all that day—certainly not so early. But, now, one would know whether that mad fellow Geiger-Hans had spoken truth about the invitation to Wellenshausen. If he had not, why, honest Martin might well suffer for his credulity. For Martin knew his lord. It were idle to try and hide from him the blatant fact that there had been visitors at the Burg: idle indeed in a house full of silly servants; idle, above all, with a prying fellow like Kurtz, the Jäger, who had his nose into every pot and his ear at every door.That he, the door-keeper, had admitted a beggar-man to his lord's castle was, however, an exaggeration of the offence which old Martin thought might safely be withheld. Ambrosius, the butler, Niklaus, the valet, and the rest were equally incriminated by having attended upon him, having served him at their master's very table. They would be glad enough to hold their peace on the subject for their own sakes. At the worst, they could all plead ignorance of the visitors' identity. For the rest, had not the Gracious Lady herself given her orders? If the thunderbolt of wrath was to fall on the castle of Wellenshausen, it would fall first and heaviest in the upper chambers.So Martin had settled his treatment of the situation with a certain dogged philosophy; and his first greeting was the blurting forth of the truth."Your Graciousness has just missed the visitors."The Burgrave, rolling past, still puffing from the arduousness of the mount—for though a vigorous man, he was of heavy build—turned with a grunt of astonishment as the words fell upon his ear. He flung back his military cloak—even a chancellor was military at the Court of Jerome—dashed his lace travelling cap from his head and took two steps upon old Martin. His large unshorn chin shone with myriad grey bristles, which had caught the mist in tiny points of moisture. The grizzled, bushy eyebrows, that nearly met across the large fleshy nose (jealous eyebrows), were similarly beaded. Now they were drawn together in a portentous frown.A fine-looking man enough in an elderly, hulking way, but scarcely, even in his best moments, an amiable-looking man. Certainly not at his best now, after a night of hard travelling. And as for amiability, that thunder cloud upon his brow was enough to wilt the very conception of it from the thought of man.Yet it was no unamiable passion that had spurred him along the interminable night-road and up the impossible crags in the wet morn. He was but a six months' husband to his Betty, and he loved her very dearly—after his own Teutonic and rather mediæval fashion."Visitors!" repeated the Burgrave. His voice rang out, echoing and reverberating.Martin's little eyes blinked: that rogue of a Geiger-Hans had lied! So, then, had the noble lady Burgravine herself."Two gentlemen, yes. The Gracious Lady bade me admit them. She said that it was by your Excellency's orders;" here the door-keeper risked a sly glance at his master and had, perhaps, an inward chuckle at the sight of his discomposure."Scamp, had you not my orders?" roared the Burgrave."The Gracious Lady bade me admit them," reasseverated Martin; "the young gentleman being the Gracious Lady's cousin——""The young gentleman! The——"The echoes called out the words again and died into silence. The Burgrave reeled, then steadied himself. Martin saw the empurpled countenance turn to an unwholesome grey."The young gentleman," repeated the husband to himself, in a sort of whisper. Then he wheeled round and, without another word, went, ponderous and slow, up the stone steps, his shoulders bent like those of an old man.* * * * *Betty was seated before her toilet table, in a very ill humour: the while her woman twisted glossy black ringlets to the tune of familiar lamentations, enlivened by spirits of a petulance unwontedly shrewish.Betty had dragged her pretty person from the billows of quilt and feather-bed at an astonishingly early hour, in the hope of carelessly intercepting a farewell from her charming young guest. Mademoiselle Eliza, justly irritated at being aroused from those dreams which, she vowed, were now the only tolerable portion of her existence in this dungeon, had purposely withheld from her mistress, until the psychological moment when she could watch her countenance in the mirror, the news of the departure of the guest. And then she had delivered it with all the gusto of the self-respecting servant who has unpleasant information to impart."Madame has a very sensitive head this morning; it is doubtless the fatigue of last night. Madame is so unaccustomed now to the least excitement. It is hardly worth while to put madame to the pains of much of a coiffure this morning, since there is no one to see her—but the crows. If, indeed, the young gentleman could have remained: strange how anxious he was to leave! Up and away before the dawn! And slinking out of the castle, one might say. Ho, have I hurt madame again? Did Madame la Comtesse say that he was truly her cousin? A singular story, not even a valet with him—nothing but that old beggar tramp, who dined with madame, also, dressed up in the gentleman's clothes——""Hold your tongue!" cried the exasperated lady. She whisked round in her seat, blindly menacing with a brush caught up at haphazard.At this moment the gate bell clanged; the stone hollows of the castle growled to a loud knocking; and then came the groaning of the great bar."Merciful heavens, more visitors!" exclaimed the mistress of Wellenshausen, a lovely geranium flushed into her cheek. Last night's guests back again, perchance. Beau Cousin was too gallant a gentleman, after all, to leave her hospitality in this abrupt fashion.... Perhaps he was wishing to see her again, as much as she was wishing to see him. The little hand with the brush dropped to her side. "Quick, Eliza, who is it?"Even as she spoke the rich cheek faded; her bright eyes grew round in horror. To one man only in the world could belong the raucous tones that granite wall and roof now gave back in pulsating vibration, rolling up even to the turret room."The Burgrave!" she gasped.Eliza's black eyes glinted joyfully: the Burgrave! Not only fresh discomfiture for the mistress; but, for the maid, unexpected comfort: Kurtz the Jäger was quite a smart young man."Heavens, the Burgrave!" cried Betty again; and she began to tremble. Her husband, upon the very stroke of her escapade! What to do, now, what to say?—What indeed!"Eliza," she cried breathlessly—she snatched a gold brooch from her wrapper as she spoke, and thrust it into the girl's hand—"you knew I was expecting my cousin's visit ... by news brought by the last courier from Vienna ... you heard me mention the fact ... you heard me regret my husband's absence from Wellenshausen."There was no time to lose. The Burgrave's step, weighty and ominous as fate itself, was already on the stairs."Bien, Madame la Comtesse," returned Eliza, calmly, even as the latch clicked under her master's hand.Betty von Wellenshausen was a woman of too clever instincts to receive, in this dilemma, her elderly lord and master with exuberant expression of delight. She was not of those who fall into the vulgar error of protesting too much. She settled herself in her chair again and became deeply absorbed in the exact position of a curl. He stood glowering on the threshold. He had to call out in his great voice, before she would condescend to notice him at all. And then it was but a glance over her shoulder."Tiens, it is you? Eliza, decidedly this is not successful."Eliza, deeply enjoying the situation, full of professional admiration for her mistress's handling of the same, was also all solicitude over the rebellious lock."Ten thousand devils, madam!" at last exploded the Burgrave. "I would point out to you that I am returned from a journey.""So I see," said the lady, with another fugitive glance. "And so I hear, too, my friend! Heavens, you make noise enough!"It was such a wonderfully pretty face, of which the husband was given this glimpse; his reception was so cool, so unexpected, that the Burgrave's first murderous rage began to give way to a perplexity not unmixed in some strange way with softer feelings. He closed the door behind him, and then stood, hesitating."It is a pity," said the Burgravine, boldly, "that you do not consider it worth your while, comte, to keep me informed of your movements. Had I but known that we were to have the rapture of your company to-day, I would have kept my cousin Kielmansegg to make your acquaintance."The Burgrave eyed her between rage and amazement."Your cousin!" he echoed huskily. Then his fury, on a sudden gust of jealousy, got the upper hand. "Pray, madam," he thundered, "when did you communicate to me the interesting fact of your relative's proposed visit? And when did I authorize you to receive him?"It was the lady's turn to be astonished; for a moment her quick wits failed to follow his drift."When?" she queried, raising a delicate eyebrow. "This is sheer delirium! And if you must rave, my friend, need you shout? I begin to think that my never-sufficiently-to-be-regretted predecessor must have suffered from deafness in addition to the other trials of her existence."The pupils of the Burgrave's pale eyes contracted to pins' points. He fixed his disobedient spouse with a scarcely human glare."Martin is not wandering in his mind, I take it, when he tells me that you bade him admit your friends in my name! By my wish, madam—by my wish!"The bellow with which, in spite of his Betty's protest, he had begun this indictment, died into a sort of strangled whisper. He struck his palm with his hairy fist. The Burgravine was unpleasantly enlightened."Oh, sir," she exclaimed with biting scorn, and shrugged her shoulders, "how well you are served; I make you my compliments!" Underneath her impertinent airs there was fluttering terror. But, like a bird, she would peck to the last. "And did Martin indeed tell you that I bade him admit my kinsman and his companion in your name?" she pursued, drawing a long breath. Then superbly, "It is true, M. de Wellenshausen. Do you mean me to understand that you would have wished me to refuse the hospitality of your house?"The wave of wrath was again ebbing from the Burgrave's huge frame. He stared blankly at the little creature. Her words had a singular plausibility. She saw her advantage and flew to it."My cousin, Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg, is travelling through this country," said she. "My dear mother announced his arrival in her last letter.""The courier came on Wednesday," interpolated Eliza, pinning the brooch in a slightly less conspicuous position amid the folds of her kerchief."She is most anxious to have personal news of my health ... knowing the delicacy of my chest, and how much I am likely to suffer in these harsh airs where it is your pleasure to immure me."The Burgravine wheeled her chair round to face her lord."It is perhaps dull of me," she went on more boldly still, "not to have understood that I am not the mistress of these barren walls, but rather their prisoner. When I heard that my cousin was below, I had no hesitation in ordering him to be admitted. Yes, sir, I even said that it would be your wish.—Ach, Eliza, what a stupid mistress you have! You heard me actually lament, I believe, your master's absence on the occasion!""Madame la Comtesse, indeed, made the remark to me," quoth Eliza, "that it was of the last annoyance that Monsieur le Comte should be absent that evening. It was so trying for Madame la Comtesse to have to receive alone!""And indeed, my poor girl," said the lady, picking up the thread herself, "I could regret that we should thus innocently have infringed the rules of the castle of—I should say the prison of Wellenshausen—for it was to very poor results. Yes, we should have allowed M. de Wellenshausen's doorkeeper—turnkey, I mean—to send the gentlemen down the hill again. My people would have wondered. But,mon Dieu, will they wonder less when my kinsman tells them of these dismal walls, these rude surroundings, this savage solitude? Poor young man! in spite of his affection for me he could not bring himself to face another day of it.—Eliza, my shoe!""Indeed, madame," commented the maid, pursuing the theme from where she knelt to fit each little foot, "the gentlemen would not even tarry for breakfast, so hurried were they to be gone!"The Burgrave listened, was half convinced, then a fresh spasm of suspicious misgiving came over him."Yet, doubtless," he sneered, "not without a satisfying farewell from the hostess! You are strangely early this morning, madame."The Burgravine raised her blue eyes from the contemplation of her foot."You mistake," she said innocently; "our adieux took place last night, shortly after supper. You see, I am not even dressed. And, as to early rising,mon Dieu, my friend, the nights are of such lengths here, that there are times when I think it cannot soon enough be day.""Andma foi," put in the maid pertly, "then it is the days that are so long, up here in the clouds, that it cannot soon enough be night."The two women laughed. He stood between them, a miserable clumsy man; conscious of their subtler wits and quicker tongues, a prey to dark doubts and slowly shaping his own resolve.Betty now jumped to her feet and shook her loose silks and laces about her as a bird shakes its plumage."Eliza, inform the Baroness Sidonia of the Herr Graf's return," she bade in an off-hand tone.The Burgrave thought to catch a meaning glance between mistress and maid. No doubt Sidonia would lie with the other—all women were jades alike. Well! he knew what he had to do; meanwhile Betty was distractingly alluring with all those fal-lals of ribbons and lace, and it was three weeks since he had kissed her. The door had scarcely closed on Mademoiselle Eliza before the Burgrave caught his wife in his arms."Ah,mon Dieu," cried she, pettishly, "and pray, sir, when have you shaved last?"CHAPTER XTHE BURGRAVE'S WELCOME"I tempted his blood and his flesh,Hid in roses my mesh,Choicest cates and the flagon's best spilth...."ROBERT BROWNING."So you have had visitors, Sidonia, my dove? Eh?" said the Burgrave.His tone was good-humoured, but the glance he fixed upon the girl was cold. He had very pale grey eyes that could stare by the minute together without blinking, a power somewhat disconcerting (he flattered himself) to those who thought to keep secrets from him. Sidonia had just entered the room and was hastening to greet her uncle, for whom she had a certain placid affection. But instinctively she drew back, affronted, upon meeting that gaze. The words of welcome died on her lips."Yes, we've had visitors," she answered defiantly, tilting back her head.—Did Uncle Ludo think to frighten her?"That was delightful," said the Burgrave, his unwinking stare upon her."It was delightful," said Betty. She stood behind her husband's chair, ministering to him after the right Germanic fashion he loved; and small scornful remarks on the number of rummers she was called upon to fill with the yellow wine, on the size of the slices of smoked ham he dealt himself, she did not spare him. Nevertheless she watched his appetite with satisfaction. Surely so large a meal and much jealousy could scarce find room in the same frame. "It was delightful, for me at least," said Betty, glibly. "I, who had not seen my cousin, my favourite cousin, for so long."Her blue eyes rolled warningly at Sidonia, over the top of the Burgrave's stubble head. The girl gave her aunt a quick look, then walked up to the table."Good morning, uncle. I hope you are well," she said, demurely now, and laid a light kiss on his temple.The Burgrave burst into a roar of laughter."Come, come, one kisses one's uncle better than that, I hope!"He caught her by the lobe of her pretty ear, stretched out the other hand and drew his spouse forward by the waist."So, here I am, once more, with both my little doves. Aha, what a happy man!—This fine young cousin now, your aunt's old play-fellow ... you'd heard of him before, eh, Sidonia?""Yes, I had," said the child, sturdily. "I knew he was in the country. And you need not pinch my ear like that, Uncle Ludo, I don't like it.""But it was such a little visit," said the Burgrave. "That was the pity of it. And to think of my having missed the pleasure of so agreeable an acquaintance! Your favourite cousin it was, that's understood, my Betty. And his companion, the old gentleman, who might he be?""His companion? Oh, he seemed to be a kind of tutor," returned Betty, with a charming sense of satisfaction to be able to say something at last approaching to the truth."Well, my darlings," said the Burgrave, still more jovially—he had slipped his great arm round Sidonia's waist now and held them both embraced—"it is early in the morning yet, and I am sure you will be charmed to hear that there is every chance of my letter finding the distinguished travellers still in the village." Each little figure in the Burgrave's grasp started. "Quite a surprise for you, eh? Come, this gaoler (aha, Betty!) is not such a bear after all! Not so inhospitable as to allow his wife's dear relations to leave the district without discharging his duties of politeness. Yes, I have sent Kurtz, hot foot, hot foot, with an invitation to your cousin, my love, to return, with his companion, to the hospitality of Wellenshausen.... What, not a word of joy from either of you? My little doves, one would think you were displeased. Have I not interpreted your wishes, sweetest Betty? I would fain do so, for you who are so clever in interpreting mine.""Let me go," cried the little lady, of a sudden goaded to fury. "You are squeezing me to death. Please to remember that, if I am married to a bear, it does not follow that I enjoy his hug!"The Burgrave released his victims and looked searchingly from one to the other. Both were pale."What a festive time we are going to have in the old Burg!" cried he then, with an ugly laugh, and fell to upon the ham and ryebread with fresh gusto.* * * * *It was a great folded sheet, and bore, on a huge seal, a spreading coat-of-arms. It was addressed as follows: "To the High-born Graf zu Waldorff-Kielmansegg, at the Silver Stork Inn, Wellenshausen," and contained a brief but courteous message:"HONOURED SIR,"I have just returned to my house and hear, with desolation, that I have missed the amiable visit which you have vouchsafed to it. Hoping that you and your tutor may not yet have left the neighbourhood, I send this in haste. Will you not both retrace your steps—if you think our poor hospitality still worth acceptance—and give me the exceeding gratification of calling myself your host for at least a week?"CHARLES LUDOVIC,"Burgrave of Wellenshausen."The young traveller, who, warmed into better spirits by his early walk, had been looking back on his stolen visit to the castle on the peak, and his evening with the ladies sheltered behind its forbidding walls, as an adventure of some spice (though, in its integrity, harmless enough) was seized with disappointment. So much for latter-day romance; so much for the Bluebeard of Wellenshausen; for the husband so ferociously jealous, report said, that he must shut up his Fatima in a tower as tight as St. Barbara's! Why, so far from striking off Fatima's head, he sends in haste to recall the audacious visitor, and craves to be allowed to expend upon him the treasures of an amiable disposition."Ah, fiddler, my friend," thought Count Steven, sagely, "you and your music have discoursed much wild nonsense anent the surprises of life, anent the golden rose of youth; ... but the world is a workaday place, drab and dull of hue; and the dreams with which your words have filled my thoughts are but the children of my own fantasy and your own fiddle-bow."He looked across the inn-yard, through a screen of vine leaves, to where the fiddler was seated on a bench, playing away with a will, eyes beaming upon a ring of dancing children. The heaviness of the morning was clearing; shafts of sunlight pierced the mists. Steven hesitated. The messenger from the castle, a smart Jäger in a green-and-mulberry uniform, stood on one side with the decorous indifference of his condition, his lips pursed for a voiceless whistle to the tune that made gay the poor inn-yard. A little further away, the young nobleman's travelling-chaise was even now being packed, under the supervision of his lordship's body-servant.... The Burgrave's invitation was banality itself, almost trivial; yet was not the programme for the day's journey more everyday still?A phrase in the letter, that had escaped notice on his first surprised perusal, now brought an angry flush to his cheek."His tutor——" And he, full twenty-three and practically his own master these many years! Was it possible that he could have made no stronger impression upon the Burgravine than that of a kind of schoolboy? As for Sidonia, since she knew the musician so well, she must also have known that he was but a chance acquaintance! Yes, it was evident that he had placed himself in an awkward position by this consorting with a person of inferior degree.This decided the matter. He owed it to his own dignity, to that of his family. Was not the pretty mistress of yon castle, by her own showing, a kinswoman? He would go back and redress the ridiculous misapprehension.* * * * *A bell began to jangle, ugly and persistent. The fiddler drew a long last note, whereat the children raised a shout of protest."Schooltime!" cried the musician. He got up and nodded across to Steven. "Has my Lord of the Burg invited you back upon his height?—Don't go."The man's intuition was positively diabolic."How did you know?" gasped Steven."Know? Do I not know the candid countenance of my lord Burgrave's Jäger? Did I not see him accost you? Do you not hold a letter in your hand? O, I thank my Maker that, crazy as my brains are, they can still add one and two and make it three. And, had I not the simple figures before me, the Burgrave's course would still lie plain."He came near to the young man, and dropping his voice:"The poor Burgrave," he went on, "must be slightly befogged in the mist of his lady's diaphanous explanations. He must sorely want to see for himself what there is between you.""Between us!" Steven stared and then blushed. "Good heavens, what can he think?" he asked."Certainly not the truth," answered the fiddler; "it would be too innocent."He twanged a string, and it seemed to mock. Too innocent...! His smile, too, was mocking, Steven thought. Innocence savoured unpleasantly of that state of tutelage which no mature man of three and twenty could endure to admit. And yet, last night, had he not been rated for something approaching to an immoral tendency? Confound the fellow, there was no pleasing him! Now and again, like the peasant folk, Steven could almost think the vagrant was possessed."Don't go," repeated the fiddler, gravely. "Leave the Burgrave and his lady in their fog.""You advise me not to go!" cried the young man, pettishly. This sober counsel, certes, was quite the last thing he had expected from lips that hitherto had suggested the out-of-the-way step, the fantastic resolve; urged them passionately, in the name of Youth and Opportunity."Write a pretty note," continued the other, unmoved. "Send it back by our friend yonder, and make your servants happy by taking the road for Cassel.—Cassel is full of Betties and you can prance there in good company."He looked familiarly over Steven's shoulder as he spoke, and gave a mirthful ejaculation—"Sarpejeu! I am invited also, I see."Kurtz, the dapper Jäger, who had swaggered up for a critical inspection of the traveller's horses, here flung a quick glance at the speaker. Furtive as it was, the musician caught it, and smiled back:"What," said he, raising his voice and addressing the count, "your tutor, my young friend? Heavens forbid! The counsellor of your youthship, for a brief occasion, I grant it; but for the rest I trust I have more grateful work in the world.""I do not press you to accompany me. I can quite well go alone," said Steven. "You need not return with me—unless you wish it."The other made an ironical bow, and the young man dropped his eyelid under the gaze that read his thought as in a written page. Certainly, keen as he had been but the day before for the fiddler's company, it was the last thing he now desired."Oh," retorted Geiger-Hans, "never fear, our ways now diverge. Yours is too lofty for me, comrade. You are for the peak, I am for leveller roads. Beware how you fall." He was shaken with laughter—laughter that somehow left Steven more uncomfortable than angry.Then the wanderer cocked his instrument and set up a wild skirling air, to the rhythm of which he turned and marched out of the courtyard. Ill at ease, Steven watched him go, go.* * * * *Count Kielmansegg drove in state to the foot of the crag; and, while his box and valise were loaded upon the mule that was again to climb the rocky path to the feudal nest of granite, he paused to look down at the waters that rushed past the road, so swift and dark, so cruelly cold, from unexplored caverns on the flanks of the mount. As he stood the travelling fiddler overtook him and swung by on the highway."We shall meet soon again, I trust, friend," Steven cried after him as he himself turned to ascend the path."Who knows?" said the fiddler over his shoulder, even as on their first parting by the edge of the forest, but this time in a grave voice.The young man glanced up at his destination, black and grim against a pale sky, and a chill came upon him like a sudden shadow.CHAPTER XITANGLED TALES"One lie needs seven to wait upon it."(Wisdom of Nations).Steven was scarcely observant by nature: your important, self-centred youth is rarely like to prove so. Yet the Burgrave's welcome at Wellenshausen, cordial to effusion as it was, left upon him a further impression of discomfort.Jerome's Chancellor had very fine manners, when he chose, and was altogether a finer personality than, somehow, Steven had expected. His joviality was certainly hard to reconcile with that character of tyrant that seemed to be universally ascribed to him. Moreover, Steven had no more reasonable ground of complaint as to the quality of the hospitality proffered to him than as to that of the wines served during the heavy midday meal, for which they soon assembled. His irritable self-esteem, ruffled by the thought of having passed for a young gentleman under control, ought to have been thoroughly soothed by the attentions, the deference, the honours that the Burgrave lavished upon him. And yet——When he was once more left alone in the great apartments that he had shared with the fiddler on the previous evening, he found himself heartily wishing again for his singular comrade—nay, wishing that he had followed the latter's advice and were still hobnobbing with him, along the wide valley roads or in some vine-hung inn arbour, in safety and independence.He went discontentedly to the window and flung it wide; it was sunk in some eight feet of solid masonry, and, high as the castle stood, the honest airs of heaven seemed to have no free access into the chamber.How was it that the vault-like oppression of the place had not struck him yesterday? He stood, pondering, for a while; then gathered himself into the window recess, even as Geiger-Hans had done during last night's watches.The evening shades were rising apace. Night birds were beginning to circle round the lonely towers; distant lights to twinkle in the village below. How far off lay those comfortable glimmers yonder; how sheer the depth that separated him from them! An owl hooted, and the chill of the stone pressing about him seemed to creep into his marrow. He heard a great clang somewhere beneath and the grinding of iron-bolts. "Pah—the place is like a prison-house!" he cried to himself angrily and scrambled back into the gloomy room.Then his valet entered with candles. The fellow's face bore a smirk; he, at least, found the Burg (with the fascination of Mademoiselle Eliza) an incomparably more agreeable spot than the Silver Stork.After him came a rosy-cheeked, bare-footed girl, with a huge faggot in her arms—and presently the great gaping hearth was filled with a roaring blaze. And Steven, in a wadded dressing gown, stretching his limbs to the warmth, began to feel able to review the events of the day with a more settled spirit.... No doubt there had been several instances at dinner, when he had felt himself in an outrageously false position—allowing (he thought severely) to that mist of lies with which the Burgravine had undoubtedly filled the atmosphere. Triumphantly as her beauty had stood the morning light, exquisitely as her elegance, her fashion, her youth, might have struck any impartial observer by contrast with the gloom of the mediæval castle, Steven, on the second meeting, had found himself cold to her, ashamed in the recesses of his heart of his previous surrender. He wished women would not think it necessary to deceive.... Why, in the name of common sense, could not the creature have told the simple truth? His visit had been a mere freak—an intrinsically harmless one. She must needs give it an aspect of guilt by an unnecessarily complicated farrago of explanation. It had taken him all his time indeed (and no wonder he could not look back upon that endless repast without a shudder) to parry the Burgrave's point-blank questions concerning people of whose very existence he had no knowledge, and to respond airily to the Burgravine's feverish hints, finding himself, meanwhile, further and further involved in myths and inventions. And, throughout, the Burgrave—what a deuced uncomfortable way of staring was his!—had an eye and a laugh that matched each other very ill.... And the child, Sidonia, with now that look of scorn, now that air of grave rebuke, under which his already irate feelings in regard to her almost merged into active dislike....Cross-purposes had in truth begun on the very threshold."Welcome, Herr Graf," had cried the Burgrave—"welcome both as my wife's kinsman and as a distinguished traveller in my own country!" He had been clasped by two genial hands. So far so good!"But—your companion, your worthy tutor, where is he?" (His tutor! The man meant Geiger-Hans. This was awkward.)Steven had no answer ready, nothing but a foolish obvious statement:"He has not come."How lame it sounded! The Burgrave had instantly dropped the subject.Now that he came to think of it, Steven realized that it was here his discomfort took birth. Why had his host dropped the subject? It was a procedure that harmonized neither with the relentless scrutiny of his eyes, nor the ultra-joviality of his manner. And all through the dinner it had been simply variations on the samemotif. A straight question, an unsatisfactory answer, the complication of the Burgravine's embroidery and over-clever suggestion—and the subject dropped. Thereupon an access of hilarity on the part of his entertainer ... such loud laughter, such unmirthful eyes!As Steven, staring unseeingly into the fire, repassed the little scenes in his mind, his cheeks flushed."Your tutor, Count—by the way, what is his name?""Well, he's hardly my tutor, you see."Here cries from the Burgravine: "A French gentleman!—so charming a person! Nay, Cousin Kielmansegg, I flatter myself I have a good memory, especially for anything French. M. de la Viole, wasn't it?""Yes," from Steven, grunting uneasily, "something of that sort.""Quite an elderly man," hastens to add the Burgravine, with a quick look at her husband."Try this Burgundy, Clos-Vougeot, the Emperor's favourite," says the Burgrave, and laughs.He drinks a good deal of Burgundy himself, does the Chancellor; and gets a fiery countenance: but not a sparkle into the little grey eyes."How long may it be since you left Austria, my dear young friend?""Oh—years," blurts Steven.Of course he ought to have looked to the Burgravine for his cue. But, the devil fly away with it, he does not take kindly to these deceits! The Burgrave's gaze shifts suddenly to his wife. The glass trembles in her little hand. She is obliged to lay it down; but her voice does not falter, she is quite ready: "Years? Is it possible? Nay, cousin, have we both grown so old since last we met? But no doubt, in that cold, dull England, the time hung mighty heavy with you. It seems years to you, but—then we corresponded—at least, when I say we, I mean my mother, who loves you as a son."And, "Oh yes—yes!" says Steven, in miserable acquiescence.... What will the Burgrave ask next? The merest insistence on his side, and the whole despicable scaffolding of taradiddles must fall to the ground. And then——? Then—no man in his senses would believe the truth. But the Burgrave presses nothing. The stone roof echoes to his huge "Ha-ha's." 'Tis as if the thought of the love of his mother-in-law for his guest was quite a remarkable jest!...The sweat of shame and anger broke on Steven's forehead as he sat before the fire, immersed in this review of the day's doings.Two days went by, the heaviest Steven had ever passed in his life. He would have given a year of his life to be able to invent some fitting excuse to take a decent leave. But his tongue, forced to so much petty falseness, could frame here no tale that carried conviction. He had gone so far as to send his servant down into the village, with orders to bring back an imaginary courier. But, at the first hint of intended flight, the Burgrave broke into protestations; his voice was so loud and his gimlet eye so boring, that the plea of urgency withered away from the guest's speech, and he found himself wretchedly concurring in his host's hearty announcement that Wellenshausen had him and Wellenshausen would hold him at least for the allotted week.He had the further misery of noting that here joy flashed at him from the blue depths of the Burgravine's eyes, and anger from the brown limpidity of Sidonia's. Indeed, he, the least fatuous of youths, had begun to find something disconcerting in the persistence with which the blue eyes were given to seeking him: now in veiled languor, now with a meaning that seemed to claim complicity. Glib in speech and airily indifferent to him in the Burgrave's presence, in the moments when they were alone together—and these were rare, for Steven avoided them; though it would almost seem as if the Burgrave himself fostered the occasions—she was prodigal of sighs, of interrupted sentences capable of strange endings, of little fluttering movements towards him, all of which added supremely to his discomposure; all of which, also after the fashion of man, he felt almost as much ashamed to admit as significant as to repel.On the morning of the third day, Steven, invited to inspect the view from the battlements in an exceptionally clear light, found himself alone with Burgravine Betty on the topmost turret of the Burg. The Burgrave had sent them forward; his laugh was echoing up to them from the inner recesses of the winding stairs."O heavens!" said the lady, suddenly.Steven turned. The cry was tragic; and it answered acutely to his own sensations. The Burgravine's eyes were dry, but there was real terror on her pretty face."Why did you come?" she whispered. "In the name of mercy! was it not evident that it was a trap?""A trap!" he stammered."Yes, yes! Oh, do you not feel it? He is watching us like a cat, a cat going to spring; and I am the wretched mouse waiting—waiting. O, I can stand it no longer! I shall go mad. If only you had not come! What did I tell him? There was nothing to tell, say you; we had done no harm. That is just it! I told him a lie, of course, and he found out it was a lie—that is of course, too. A man who has spies all about his place! And now we are doing nothing but lie, you and I. He knows we are lying, and he is waiting to pounce on us in his own time. O, sir, you might have known! A man who shuts up his wife for jealousy is not seized with such effusive hospitality towards a handsome young stranger without reasons of his own."The warm olive crept back to her cheek as she spoke. Her eyes beamed. She seemed to sway towards him."Then, madam," he cried, quickly stepping back—if there were indeed danger for him between the Burgrave and the Burgravine, he would rather choose to battle with the man—"you are right, I ought not to be here. I will go now. To-day ... this hour!""Go?" she echoed in scorn. "Aye, go if you can," she proceeded with a change of tone. "He has got you well in his meshes; you are clogged, sir, and bound. And if you think he will let you go before he has carried out his purpose with us, you little know the Burgrave."Carried out his purpose with us!—The very vagueness of the suggestion added to its unpleasantness. Steven jerked his head indignantly."And what may that be, pray?" he asked.She glanced at him a second, uplifting lip and eyebrow. To a lady who had graduated in the Court of Vienna, this big young man, with his English stolid simplicity, was a trifle irritating."Mon Dieu!" she said then, turning aside with a shrug of her shoulder, "how embarrassing you are! Do you know your poets? Well, then, he would like to find us playing at Paolo and Francesca, if you please, that he might play the Malatesta!""Great heavens!" cried the horrified youth. He watched the lady hang her head and droop a modest eyelid—it was Scylla and Charybdis! Beyond any doubt, he must walk out of these mad-house precincts at the very earliest opportunity.They were perched high up in the blue; and, down below, the country lay spread like a green cloth on which a child has set its toys. Yonder white ribbon wandering so far below—there ran his road. Would he were on it! He turned to her, took her soft hand, bent and kissed it."Madam," said he, "it is best it should be 'good-bye'—for both of us, it is best."He spoke very truly, poor young man, but into the touch of his lips and the pathos of his speech her vanity read another meaning."Cousin!" she cried suddenly, and clutched at his hands with both of hers. "O, take me with you! Take me back to my own people! If I stay here, he will kill me, or I shall kill myself!"And, as his troubled face and involuntarily repelling fingers were far from giving her the response they craved, she rushed across and bent over the crumbling parapet."Refuse your help," she cried desperately, "and I throw myself down!"(Had little Sidonia but been at hand, to tell him how well accustomed she was to such threats!)Steven was quite pale as he caught her back against his shoulders."Mercy!" he shivered, thinking of those giddy deeps. She clung to him, her scented head against his shoulders."Surely, surely, it is not much I ask!" she murmured faintly. "See how I trust you, kinsman! Only your protection, your escort back to our own people. It is not much to ask!"It meant his whole life, and he knew it. But what can a young man do with a woman's arms about him and a woman's whisper pleading in his ears?"Ha-ha-ha!" came the Burgrave's laugh from below. Countess Betty slid out of "Beau Cousin's" arms. She lifted a warning finger. "I will arrange," she whispered, nodding. "Now we must be seen no more alone together."Sidonia's voice also rang up towards them. "I will write," whispered Betty again, finger on lip.O heavens! how could she look arch and smile at such a moment?"My friend, I have been showing our cousin how far your estate extends," said the lady, gaily, tripping across to take the Burgrave's arm with more ease than she had yet displayed with him since his return."I trust our cousin has profited by your instruction, and that he realizes the boundaries of my property," said the Burgrave of Wellenshausen, with his genial smile and his icy eye.Steven's heavy conscience read a hateful significance in the remark. As he turned, his glance fell upon the Baroness Sidonia's pure child face and he felt miserable and ashamed to the core.
CHAPTER IX
HOME-COMING
"And then he thought, 'In spite of all my care,For all my pains, poor man, for all my pains,She is not faithful to me....'"(The Marriage of Geraint).
"And then he thought, 'In spite of all my care,For all my pains, poor man, for all my pains,She is not faithful to me....'"(The Marriage of Geraint).
"And then he thought, 'In spite of all my care,
For all my pains, poor man, for all my pains,
She is not faithful to me....'"
(The Marriage of Geraint).
(The Marriage of Geraint).
"The visitors are but just gone," said Martin, the doorward.
He stood, his hand still on the fallen bolt, with expressionless gaze fixed upon the Burgrave, not without secret dismay and misgivings. In truth he had but half believed the fiddler's announcement, had scarce expected his master at all that day—certainly not so early. But, now, one would know whether that mad fellow Geiger-Hans had spoken truth about the invitation to Wellenshausen. If he had not, why, honest Martin might well suffer for his credulity. For Martin knew his lord. It were idle to try and hide from him the blatant fact that there had been visitors at the Burg: idle indeed in a house full of silly servants; idle, above all, with a prying fellow like Kurtz, the Jäger, who had his nose into every pot and his ear at every door.
That he, the door-keeper, had admitted a beggar-man to his lord's castle was, however, an exaggeration of the offence which old Martin thought might safely be withheld. Ambrosius, the butler, Niklaus, the valet, and the rest were equally incriminated by having attended upon him, having served him at their master's very table. They would be glad enough to hold their peace on the subject for their own sakes. At the worst, they could all plead ignorance of the visitors' identity. For the rest, had not the Gracious Lady herself given her orders? If the thunderbolt of wrath was to fall on the castle of Wellenshausen, it would fall first and heaviest in the upper chambers.
So Martin had settled his treatment of the situation with a certain dogged philosophy; and his first greeting was the blurting forth of the truth.
"Your Graciousness has just missed the visitors."
The Burgrave, rolling past, still puffing from the arduousness of the mount—for though a vigorous man, he was of heavy build—turned with a grunt of astonishment as the words fell upon his ear. He flung back his military cloak—even a chancellor was military at the Court of Jerome—dashed his lace travelling cap from his head and took two steps upon old Martin. His large unshorn chin shone with myriad grey bristles, which had caught the mist in tiny points of moisture. The grizzled, bushy eyebrows, that nearly met across the large fleshy nose (jealous eyebrows), were similarly beaded. Now they were drawn together in a portentous frown.
A fine-looking man enough in an elderly, hulking way, but scarcely, even in his best moments, an amiable-looking man. Certainly not at his best now, after a night of hard travelling. And as for amiability, that thunder cloud upon his brow was enough to wilt the very conception of it from the thought of man.
Yet it was no unamiable passion that had spurred him along the interminable night-road and up the impossible crags in the wet morn. He was but a six months' husband to his Betty, and he loved her very dearly—after his own Teutonic and rather mediæval fashion.
"Visitors!" repeated the Burgrave. His voice rang out, echoing and reverberating.
Martin's little eyes blinked: that rogue of a Geiger-Hans had lied! So, then, had the noble lady Burgravine herself.
"Two gentlemen, yes. The Gracious Lady bade me admit them. She said that it was by your Excellency's orders;" here the door-keeper risked a sly glance at his master and had, perhaps, an inward chuckle at the sight of his discomposure.
"Scamp, had you not my orders?" roared the Burgrave.
"The Gracious Lady bade me admit them," reasseverated Martin; "the young gentleman being the Gracious Lady's cousin——"
"The young gentleman! The——"
The echoes called out the words again and died into silence. The Burgrave reeled, then steadied himself. Martin saw the empurpled countenance turn to an unwholesome grey.
"The young gentleman," repeated the husband to himself, in a sort of whisper. Then he wheeled round and, without another word, went, ponderous and slow, up the stone steps, his shoulders bent like those of an old man.
* * * * *
Betty was seated before her toilet table, in a very ill humour: the while her woman twisted glossy black ringlets to the tune of familiar lamentations, enlivened by spirits of a petulance unwontedly shrewish.
Betty had dragged her pretty person from the billows of quilt and feather-bed at an astonishingly early hour, in the hope of carelessly intercepting a farewell from her charming young guest. Mademoiselle Eliza, justly irritated at being aroused from those dreams which, she vowed, were now the only tolerable portion of her existence in this dungeon, had purposely withheld from her mistress, until the psychological moment when she could watch her countenance in the mirror, the news of the departure of the guest. And then she had delivered it with all the gusto of the self-respecting servant who has unpleasant information to impart.
"Madame has a very sensitive head this morning; it is doubtless the fatigue of last night. Madame is so unaccustomed now to the least excitement. It is hardly worth while to put madame to the pains of much of a coiffure this morning, since there is no one to see her—but the crows. If, indeed, the young gentleman could have remained: strange how anxious he was to leave! Up and away before the dawn! And slinking out of the castle, one might say. Ho, have I hurt madame again? Did Madame la Comtesse say that he was truly her cousin? A singular story, not even a valet with him—nothing but that old beggar tramp, who dined with madame, also, dressed up in the gentleman's clothes——"
"Hold your tongue!" cried the exasperated lady. She whisked round in her seat, blindly menacing with a brush caught up at haphazard.
At this moment the gate bell clanged; the stone hollows of the castle growled to a loud knocking; and then came the groaning of the great bar.
"Merciful heavens, more visitors!" exclaimed the mistress of Wellenshausen, a lovely geranium flushed into her cheek. Last night's guests back again, perchance. Beau Cousin was too gallant a gentleman, after all, to leave her hospitality in this abrupt fashion.... Perhaps he was wishing to see her again, as much as she was wishing to see him. The little hand with the brush dropped to her side. "Quick, Eliza, who is it?"
Even as she spoke the rich cheek faded; her bright eyes grew round in horror. To one man only in the world could belong the raucous tones that granite wall and roof now gave back in pulsating vibration, rolling up even to the turret room.
"The Burgrave!" she gasped.
Eliza's black eyes glinted joyfully: the Burgrave! Not only fresh discomfiture for the mistress; but, for the maid, unexpected comfort: Kurtz the Jäger was quite a smart young man.
"Heavens, the Burgrave!" cried Betty again; and she began to tremble. Her husband, upon the very stroke of her escapade! What to do, now, what to say?—What indeed!
"Eliza," she cried breathlessly—she snatched a gold brooch from her wrapper as she spoke, and thrust it into the girl's hand—"you knew I was expecting my cousin's visit ... by news brought by the last courier from Vienna ... you heard me mention the fact ... you heard me regret my husband's absence from Wellenshausen."
There was no time to lose. The Burgrave's step, weighty and ominous as fate itself, was already on the stairs.
"Bien, Madame la Comtesse," returned Eliza, calmly, even as the latch clicked under her master's hand.
Betty von Wellenshausen was a woman of too clever instincts to receive, in this dilemma, her elderly lord and master with exuberant expression of delight. She was not of those who fall into the vulgar error of protesting too much. She settled herself in her chair again and became deeply absorbed in the exact position of a curl. He stood glowering on the threshold. He had to call out in his great voice, before she would condescend to notice him at all. And then it was but a glance over her shoulder.
"Tiens, it is you? Eliza, decidedly this is not successful."
Eliza, deeply enjoying the situation, full of professional admiration for her mistress's handling of the same, was also all solicitude over the rebellious lock.
"Ten thousand devils, madam!" at last exploded the Burgrave. "I would point out to you that I am returned from a journey."
"So I see," said the lady, with another fugitive glance. "And so I hear, too, my friend! Heavens, you make noise enough!"
It was such a wonderfully pretty face, of which the husband was given this glimpse; his reception was so cool, so unexpected, that the Burgrave's first murderous rage began to give way to a perplexity not unmixed in some strange way with softer feelings. He closed the door behind him, and then stood, hesitating.
"It is a pity," said the Burgravine, boldly, "that you do not consider it worth your while, comte, to keep me informed of your movements. Had I but known that we were to have the rapture of your company to-day, I would have kept my cousin Kielmansegg to make your acquaintance."
The Burgrave eyed her between rage and amazement.
"Your cousin!" he echoed huskily. Then his fury, on a sudden gust of jealousy, got the upper hand. "Pray, madam," he thundered, "when did you communicate to me the interesting fact of your relative's proposed visit? And when did I authorize you to receive him?"
It was the lady's turn to be astonished; for a moment her quick wits failed to follow his drift.
"When?" she queried, raising a delicate eyebrow. "This is sheer delirium! And if you must rave, my friend, need you shout? I begin to think that my never-sufficiently-to-be-regretted predecessor must have suffered from deafness in addition to the other trials of her existence."
The pupils of the Burgrave's pale eyes contracted to pins' points. He fixed his disobedient spouse with a scarcely human glare.
"Martin is not wandering in his mind, I take it, when he tells me that you bade him admit your friends in my name! By my wish, madam—by my wish!"
The bellow with which, in spite of his Betty's protest, he had begun this indictment, died into a sort of strangled whisper. He struck his palm with his hairy fist. The Burgravine was unpleasantly enlightened.
"Oh, sir," she exclaimed with biting scorn, and shrugged her shoulders, "how well you are served; I make you my compliments!" Underneath her impertinent airs there was fluttering terror. But, like a bird, she would peck to the last. "And did Martin indeed tell you that I bade him admit my kinsman and his companion in your name?" she pursued, drawing a long breath. Then superbly, "It is true, M. de Wellenshausen. Do you mean me to understand that you would have wished me to refuse the hospitality of your house?"
The wave of wrath was again ebbing from the Burgrave's huge frame. He stared blankly at the little creature. Her words had a singular plausibility. She saw her advantage and flew to it.
"My cousin, Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg, is travelling through this country," said she. "My dear mother announced his arrival in her last letter."
"The courier came on Wednesday," interpolated Eliza, pinning the brooch in a slightly less conspicuous position amid the folds of her kerchief.
"She is most anxious to have personal news of my health ... knowing the delicacy of my chest, and how much I am likely to suffer in these harsh airs where it is your pleasure to immure me."
The Burgravine wheeled her chair round to face her lord.
"It is perhaps dull of me," she went on more boldly still, "not to have understood that I am not the mistress of these barren walls, but rather their prisoner. When I heard that my cousin was below, I had no hesitation in ordering him to be admitted. Yes, sir, I even said that it would be your wish.—Ach, Eliza, what a stupid mistress you have! You heard me actually lament, I believe, your master's absence on the occasion!"
"Madame la Comtesse, indeed, made the remark to me," quoth Eliza, "that it was of the last annoyance that Monsieur le Comte should be absent that evening. It was so trying for Madame la Comtesse to have to receive alone!"
"And indeed, my poor girl," said the lady, picking up the thread herself, "I could regret that we should thus innocently have infringed the rules of the castle of—I should say the prison of Wellenshausen—for it was to very poor results. Yes, we should have allowed M. de Wellenshausen's doorkeeper—turnkey, I mean—to send the gentlemen down the hill again. My people would have wondered. But,mon Dieu, will they wonder less when my kinsman tells them of these dismal walls, these rude surroundings, this savage solitude? Poor young man! in spite of his affection for me he could not bring himself to face another day of it.—Eliza, my shoe!"
"Indeed, madame," commented the maid, pursuing the theme from where she knelt to fit each little foot, "the gentlemen would not even tarry for breakfast, so hurried were they to be gone!"
The Burgrave listened, was half convinced, then a fresh spasm of suspicious misgiving came over him.
"Yet, doubtless," he sneered, "not without a satisfying farewell from the hostess! You are strangely early this morning, madame."
The Burgravine raised her blue eyes from the contemplation of her foot.
"You mistake," she said innocently; "our adieux took place last night, shortly after supper. You see, I am not even dressed. And, as to early rising,mon Dieu, my friend, the nights are of such lengths here, that there are times when I think it cannot soon enough be day."
"Andma foi," put in the maid pertly, "then it is the days that are so long, up here in the clouds, that it cannot soon enough be night."
The two women laughed. He stood between them, a miserable clumsy man; conscious of their subtler wits and quicker tongues, a prey to dark doubts and slowly shaping his own resolve.
Betty now jumped to her feet and shook her loose silks and laces about her as a bird shakes its plumage.
"Eliza, inform the Baroness Sidonia of the Herr Graf's return," she bade in an off-hand tone.
The Burgrave thought to catch a meaning glance between mistress and maid. No doubt Sidonia would lie with the other—all women were jades alike. Well! he knew what he had to do; meanwhile Betty was distractingly alluring with all those fal-lals of ribbons and lace, and it was three weeks since he had kissed her. The door had scarcely closed on Mademoiselle Eliza before the Burgrave caught his wife in his arms.
"Ah,mon Dieu," cried she, pettishly, "and pray, sir, when have you shaved last?"
CHAPTER X
THE BURGRAVE'S WELCOME
"I tempted his blood and his flesh,Hid in roses my mesh,Choicest cates and the flagon's best spilth...."ROBERT BROWNING.
"I tempted his blood and his flesh,Hid in roses my mesh,Choicest cates and the flagon's best spilth...."ROBERT BROWNING.
"I tempted his blood and his flesh,
Hid in roses my mesh,
Choicest cates and the flagon's best spilth...."
ROBERT BROWNING.
ROBERT BROWNING.
"So you have had visitors, Sidonia, my dove? Eh?" said the Burgrave.
His tone was good-humoured, but the glance he fixed upon the girl was cold. He had very pale grey eyes that could stare by the minute together without blinking, a power somewhat disconcerting (he flattered himself) to those who thought to keep secrets from him. Sidonia had just entered the room and was hastening to greet her uncle, for whom she had a certain placid affection. But instinctively she drew back, affronted, upon meeting that gaze. The words of welcome died on her lips.
"Yes, we've had visitors," she answered defiantly, tilting back her head.—Did Uncle Ludo think to frighten her?
"That was delightful," said the Burgrave, his unwinking stare upon her.
"It was delightful," said Betty. She stood behind her husband's chair, ministering to him after the right Germanic fashion he loved; and small scornful remarks on the number of rummers she was called upon to fill with the yellow wine, on the size of the slices of smoked ham he dealt himself, she did not spare him. Nevertheless she watched his appetite with satisfaction. Surely so large a meal and much jealousy could scarce find room in the same frame. "It was delightful, for me at least," said Betty, glibly. "I, who had not seen my cousin, my favourite cousin, for so long."
Her blue eyes rolled warningly at Sidonia, over the top of the Burgrave's stubble head. The girl gave her aunt a quick look, then walked up to the table.
"Good morning, uncle. I hope you are well," she said, demurely now, and laid a light kiss on his temple.
The Burgrave burst into a roar of laughter.
"Come, come, one kisses one's uncle better than that, I hope!"
He caught her by the lobe of her pretty ear, stretched out the other hand and drew his spouse forward by the waist.
"So, here I am, once more, with both my little doves. Aha, what a happy man!—This fine young cousin now, your aunt's old play-fellow ... you'd heard of him before, eh, Sidonia?"
"Yes, I had," said the child, sturdily. "I knew he was in the country. And you need not pinch my ear like that, Uncle Ludo, I don't like it."
"But it was such a little visit," said the Burgrave. "That was the pity of it. And to think of my having missed the pleasure of so agreeable an acquaintance! Your favourite cousin it was, that's understood, my Betty. And his companion, the old gentleman, who might he be?"
"His companion? Oh, he seemed to be a kind of tutor," returned Betty, with a charming sense of satisfaction to be able to say something at last approaching to the truth.
"Well, my darlings," said the Burgrave, still more jovially—he had slipped his great arm round Sidonia's waist now and held them both embraced—"it is early in the morning yet, and I am sure you will be charmed to hear that there is every chance of my letter finding the distinguished travellers still in the village." Each little figure in the Burgrave's grasp started. "Quite a surprise for you, eh? Come, this gaoler (aha, Betty!) is not such a bear after all! Not so inhospitable as to allow his wife's dear relations to leave the district without discharging his duties of politeness. Yes, I have sent Kurtz, hot foot, hot foot, with an invitation to your cousin, my love, to return, with his companion, to the hospitality of Wellenshausen.... What, not a word of joy from either of you? My little doves, one would think you were displeased. Have I not interpreted your wishes, sweetest Betty? I would fain do so, for you who are so clever in interpreting mine."
"Let me go," cried the little lady, of a sudden goaded to fury. "You are squeezing me to death. Please to remember that, if I am married to a bear, it does not follow that I enjoy his hug!"
The Burgrave released his victims and looked searchingly from one to the other. Both were pale.
"What a festive time we are going to have in the old Burg!" cried he then, with an ugly laugh, and fell to upon the ham and ryebread with fresh gusto.
* * * * *
It was a great folded sheet, and bore, on a huge seal, a spreading coat-of-arms. It was addressed as follows: "To the High-born Graf zu Waldorff-Kielmansegg, at the Silver Stork Inn, Wellenshausen," and contained a brief but courteous message:
"HONOURED SIR,
"I have just returned to my house and hear, with desolation, that I have missed the amiable visit which you have vouchsafed to it. Hoping that you and your tutor may not yet have left the neighbourhood, I send this in haste. Will you not both retrace your steps—if you think our poor hospitality still worth acceptance—and give me the exceeding gratification of calling myself your host for at least a week?
"Burgrave of Wellenshausen."
The young traveller, who, warmed into better spirits by his early walk, had been looking back on his stolen visit to the castle on the peak, and his evening with the ladies sheltered behind its forbidding walls, as an adventure of some spice (though, in its integrity, harmless enough) was seized with disappointment. So much for latter-day romance; so much for the Bluebeard of Wellenshausen; for the husband so ferociously jealous, report said, that he must shut up his Fatima in a tower as tight as St. Barbara's! Why, so far from striking off Fatima's head, he sends in haste to recall the audacious visitor, and craves to be allowed to expend upon him the treasures of an amiable disposition.
"Ah, fiddler, my friend," thought Count Steven, sagely, "you and your music have discoursed much wild nonsense anent the surprises of life, anent the golden rose of youth; ... but the world is a workaday place, drab and dull of hue; and the dreams with which your words have filled my thoughts are but the children of my own fantasy and your own fiddle-bow."
He looked across the inn-yard, through a screen of vine leaves, to where the fiddler was seated on a bench, playing away with a will, eyes beaming upon a ring of dancing children. The heaviness of the morning was clearing; shafts of sunlight pierced the mists. Steven hesitated. The messenger from the castle, a smart Jäger in a green-and-mulberry uniform, stood on one side with the decorous indifference of his condition, his lips pursed for a voiceless whistle to the tune that made gay the poor inn-yard. A little further away, the young nobleman's travelling-chaise was even now being packed, under the supervision of his lordship's body-servant.... The Burgrave's invitation was banality itself, almost trivial; yet was not the programme for the day's journey more everyday still?
A phrase in the letter, that had escaped notice on his first surprised perusal, now brought an angry flush to his cheek.
"His tutor——" And he, full twenty-three and practically his own master these many years! Was it possible that he could have made no stronger impression upon the Burgravine than that of a kind of schoolboy? As for Sidonia, since she knew the musician so well, she must also have known that he was but a chance acquaintance! Yes, it was evident that he had placed himself in an awkward position by this consorting with a person of inferior degree.
This decided the matter. He owed it to his own dignity, to that of his family. Was not the pretty mistress of yon castle, by her own showing, a kinswoman? He would go back and redress the ridiculous misapprehension.
* * * * *
A bell began to jangle, ugly and persistent. The fiddler drew a long last note, whereat the children raised a shout of protest.
"Schooltime!" cried the musician. He got up and nodded across to Steven. "Has my Lord of the Burg invited you back upon his height?—Don't go."
The man's intuition was positively diabolic.
"How did you know?" gasped Steven.
"Know? Do I not know the candid countenance of my lord Burgrave's Jäger? Did I not see him accost you? Do you not hold a letter in your hand? O, I thank my Maker that, crazy as my brains are, they can still add one and two and make it three. And, had I not the simple figures before me, the Burgrave's course would still lie plain."
He came near to the young man, and dropping his voice:
"The poor Burgrave," he went on, "must be slightly befogged in the mist of his lady's diaphanous explanations. He must sorely want to see for himself what there is between you."
"Between us!" Steven stared and then blushed. "Good heavens, what can he think?" he asked.
"Certainly not the truth," answered the fiddler; "it would be too innocent."
He twanged a string, and it seemed to mock. Too innocent...! His smile, too, was mocking, Steven thought. Innocence savoured unpleasantly of that state of tutelage which no mature man of three and twenty could endure to admit. And yet, last night, had he not been rated for something approaching to an immoral tendency? Confound the fellow, there was no pleasing him! Now and again, like the peasant folk, Steven could almost think the vagrant was possessed.
"Don't go," repeated the fiddler, gravely. "Leave the Burgrave and his lady in their fog."
"You advise me not to go!" cried the young man, pettishly. This sober counsel, certes, was quite the last thing he had expected from lips that hitherto had suggested the out-of-the-way step, the fantastic resolve; urged them passionately, in the name of Youth and Opportunity.
"Write a pretty note," continued the other, unmoved. "Send it back by our friend yonder, and make your servants happy by taking the road for Cassel.—Cassel is full of Betties and you can prance there in good company."
He looked familiarly over Steven's shoulder as he spoke, and gave a mirthful ejaculation—
"Sarpejeu! I am invited also, I see."
Kurtz, the dapper Jäger, who had swaggered up for a critical inspection of the traveller's horses, here flung a quick glance at the speaker. Furtive as it was, the musician caught it, and smiled back:
"What," said he, raising his voice and addressing the count, "your tutor, my young friend? Heavens forbid! The counsellor of your youthship, for a brief occasion, I grant it; but for the rest I trust I have more grateful work in the world."
"I do not press you to accompany me. I can quite well go alone," said Steven. "You need not return with me—unless you wish it."
The other made an ironical bow, and the young man dropped his eyelid under the gaze that read his thought as in a written page. Certainly, keen as he had been but the day before for the fiddler's company, it was the last thing he now desired.
"Oh," retorted Geiger-Hans, "never fear, our ways now diverge. Yours is too lofty for me, comrade. You are for the peak, I am for leveller roads. Beware how you fall." He was shaken with laughter—laughter that somehow left Steven more uncomfortable than angry.
Then the wanderer cocked his instrument and set up a wild skirling air, to the rhythm of which he turned and marched out of the courtyard. Ill at ease, Steven watched him go, go.
* * * * *
Count Kielmansegg drove in state to the foot of the crag; and, while his box and valise were loaded upon the mule that was again to climb the rocky path to the feudal nest of granite, he paused to look down at the waters that rushed past the road, so swift and dark, so cruelly cold, from unexplored caverns on the flanks of the mount. As he stood the travelling fiddler overtook him and swung by on the highway.
"We shall meet soon again, I trust, friend," Steven cried after him as he himself turned to ascend the path.
"Who knows?" said the fiddler over his shoulder, even as on their first parting by the edge of the forest, but this time in a grave voice.
The young man glanced up at his destination, black and grim against a pale sky, and a chill came upon him like a sudden shadow.
CHAPTER XI
TANGLED TALES
"One lie needs seven to wait upon it."(Wisdom of Nations).
"One lie needs seven to wait upon it."(Wisdom of Nations).
"One lie needs seven to wait upon it."
(Wisdom of Nations).
(Wisdom of Nations).
Steven was scarcely observant by nature: your important, self-centred youth is rarely like to prove so. Yet the Burgrave's welcome at Wellenshausen, cordial to effusion as it was, left upon him a further impression of discomfort.
Jerome's Chancellor had very fine manners, when he chose, and was altogether a finer personality than, somehow, Steven had expected. His joviality was certainly hard to reconcile with that character of tyrant that seemed to be universally ascribed to him. Moreover, Steven had no more reasonable ground of complaint as to the quality of the hospitality proffered to him than as to that of the wines served during the heavy midday meal, for which they soon assembled. His irritable self-esteem, ruffled by the thought of having passed for a young gentleman under control, ought to have been thoroughly soothed by the attentions, the deference, the honours that the Burgrave lavished upon him. And yet——
When he was once more left alone in the great apartments that he had shared with the fiddler on the previous evening, he found himself heartily wishing again for his singular comrade—nay, wishing that he had followed the latter's advice and were still hobnobbing with him, along the wide valley roads or in some vine-hung inn arbour, in safety and independence.
He went discontentedly to the window and flung it wide; it was sunk in some eight feet of solid masonry, and, high as the castle stood, the honest airs of heaven seemed to have no free access into the chamber.
How was it that the vault-like oppression of the place had not struck him yesterday? He stood, pondering, for a while; then gathered himself into the window recess, even as Geiger-Hans had done during last night's watches.
The evening shades were rising apace. Night birds were beginning to circle round the lonely towers; distant lights to twinkle in the village below. How far off lay those comfortable glimmers yonder; how sheer the depth that separated him from them! An owl hooted, and the chill of the stone pressing about him seemed to creep into his marrow. He heard a great clang somewhere beneath and the grinding of iron-bolts. "Pah—the place is like a prison-house!" he cried to himself angrily and scrambled back into the gloomy room.
Then his valet entered with candles. The fellow's face bore a smirk; he, at least, found the Burg (with the fascination of Mademoiselle Eliza) an incomparably more agreeable spot than the Silver Stork.
After him came a rosy-cheeked, bare-footed girl, with a huge faggot in her arms—and presently the great gaping hearth was filled with a roaring blaze. And Steven, in a wadded dressing gown, stretching his limbs to the warmth, began to feel able to review the events of the day with a more settled spirit.
... No doubt there had been several instances at dinner, when he had felt himself in an outrageously false position—allowing (he thought severely) to that mist of lies with which the Burgravine had undoubtedly filled the atmosphere. Triumphantly as her beauty had stood the morning light, exquisitely as her elegance, her fashion, her youth, might have struck any impartial observer by contrast with the gloom of the mediæval castle, Steven, on the second meeting, had found himself cold to her, ashamed in the recesses of his heart of his previous surrender. He wished women would not think it necessary to deceive.... Why, in the name of common sense, could not the creature have told the simple truth? His visit had been a mere freak—an intrinsically harmless one. She must needs give it an aspect of guilt by an unnecessarily complicated farrago of explanation. It had taken him all his time indeed (and no wonder he could not look back upon that endless repast without a shudder) to parry the Burgrave's point-blank questions concerning people of whose very existence he had no knowledge, and to respond airily to the Burgravine's feverish hints, finding himself, meanwhile, further and further involved in myths and inventions. And, throughout, the Burgrave—what a deuced uncomfortable way of staring was his!—had an eye and a laugh that matched each other very ill.... And the child, Sidonia, with now that look of scorn, now that air of grave rebuke, under which his already irate feelings in regard to her almost merged into active dislike....
Cross-purposes had in truth begun on the very threshold.
"Welcome, Herr Graf," had cried the Burgrave—"welcome both as my wife's kinsman and as a distinguished traveller in my own country!" He had been clasped by two genial hands. So far so good!
"But—your companion, your worthy tutor, where is he?" (His tutor! The man meant Geiger-Hans. This was awkward.)
Steven had no answer ready, nothing but a foolish obvious statement:
"He has not come."
How lame it sounded! The Burgrave had instantly dropped the subject.
Now that he came to think of it, Steven realized that it was here his discomfort took birth. Why had his host dropped the subject? It was a procedure that harmonized neither with the relentless scrutiny of his eyes, nor the ultra-joviality of his manner. And all through the dinner it had been simply variations on the samemotif. A straight question, an unsatisfactory answer, the complication of the Burgravine's embroidery and over-clever suggestion—and the subject dropped. Thereupon an access of hilarity on the part of his entertainer ... such loud laughter, such unmirthful eyes!
As Steven, staring unseeingly into the fire, repassed the little scenes in his mind, his cheeks flushed.
"Your tutor, Count—by the way, what is his name?"
"Well, he's hardly my tutor, you see."
Here cries from the Burgravine: "A French gentleman!—so charming a person! Nay, Cousin Kielmansegg, I flatter myself I have a good memory, especially for anything French. M. de la Viole, wasn't it?"
"Yes," from Steven, grunting uneasily, "something of that sort."
"Quite an elderly man," hastens to add the Burgravine, with a quick look at her husband.
"Try this Burgundy, Clos-Vougeot, the Emperor's favourite," says the Burgrave, and laughs.
He drinks a good deal of Burgundy himself, does the Chancellor; and gets a fiery countenance: but not a sparkle into the little grey eyes.
"How long may it be since you left Austria, my dear young friend?"
"Oh—years," blurts Steven.
Of course he ought to have looked to the Burgravine for his cue. But, the devil fly away with it, he does not take kindly to these deceits! The Burgrave's gaze shifts suddenly to his wife. The glass trembles in her little hand. She is obliged to lay it down; but her voice does not falter, she is quite ready: "Years? Is it possible? Nay, cousin, have we both grown so old since last we met? But no doubt, in that cold, dull England, the time hung mighty heavy with you. It seems years to you, but—then we corresponded—at least, when I say we, I mean my mother, who loves you as a son."
And, "Oh yes—yes!" says Steven, in miserable acquiescence.
... What will the Burgrave ask next? The merest insistence on his side, and the whole despicable scaffolding of taradiddles must fall to the ground. And then——? Then—no man in his senses would believe the truth. But the Burgrave presses nothing. The stone roof echoes to his huge "Ha-ha's." 'Tis as if the thought of the love of his mother-in-law for his guest was quite a remarkable jest!...
The sweat of shame and anger broke on Steven's forehead as he sat before the fire, immersed in this review of the day's doings.
Two days went by, the heaviest Steven had ever passed in his life. He would have given a year of his life to be able to invent some fitting excuse to take a decent leave. But his tongue, forced to so much petty falseness, could frame here no tale that carried conviction. He had gone so far as to send his servant down into the village, with orders to bring back an imaginary courier. But, at the first hint of intended flight, the Burgrave broke into protestations; his voice was so loud and his gimlet eye so boring, that the plea of urgency withered away from the guest's speech, and he found himself wretchedly concurring in his host's hearty announcement that Wellenshausen had him and Wellenshausen would hold him at least for the allotted week.
He had the further misery of noting that here joy flashed at him from the blue depths of the Burgravine's eyes, and anger from the brown limpidity of Sidonia's. Indeed, he, the least fatuous of youths, had begun to find something disconcerting in the persistence with which the blue eyes were given to seeking him: now in veiled languor, now with a meaning that seemed to claim complicity. Glib in speech and airily indifferent to him in the Burgrave's presence, in the moments when they were alone together—and these were rare, for Steven avoided them; though it would almost seem as if the Burgrave himself fostered the occasions—she was prodigal of sighs, of interrupted sentences capable of strange endings, of little fluttering movements towards him, all of which added supremely to his discomposure; all of which, also after the fashion of man, he felt almost as much ashamed to admit as significant as to repel.
On the morning of the third day, Steven, invited to inspect the view from the battlements in an exceptionally clear light, found himself alone with Burgravine Betty on the topmost turret of the Burg. The Burgrave had sent them forward; his laugh was echoing up to them from the inner recesses of the winding stairs.
"O heavens!" said the lady, suddenly.
Steven turned. The cry was tragic; and it answered acutely to his own sensations. The Burgravine's eyes were dry, but there was real terror on her pretty face.
"Why did you come?" she whispered. "In the name of mercy! was it not evident that it was a trap?"
"A trap!" he stammered.
"Yes, yes! Oh, do you not feel it? He is watching us like a cat, a cat going to spring; and I am the wretched mouse waiting—waiting. O, I can stand it no longer! I shall go mad. If only you had not come! What did I tell him? There was nothing to tell, say you; we had done no harm. That is just it! I told him a lie, of course, and he found out it was a lie—that is of course, too. A man who has spies all about his place! And now we are doing nothing but lie, you and I. He knows we are lying, and he is waiting to pounce on us in his own time. O, sir, you might have known! A man who shuts up his wife for jealousy is not seized with such effusive hospitality towards a handsome young stranger without reasons of his own."
The warm olive crept back to her cheek as she spoke. Her eyes beamed. She seemed to sway towards him.
"Then, madam," he cried, quickly stepping back—if there were indeed danger for him between the Burgrave and the Burgravine, he would rather choose to battle with the man—"you are right, I ought not to be here. I will go now. To-day ... this hour!"
"Go?" she echoed in scorn. "Aye, go if you can," she proceeded with a change of tone. "He has got you well in his meshes; you are clogged, sir, and bound. And if you think he will let you go before he has carried out his purpose with us, you little know the Burgrave."
Carried out his purpose with us!—The very vagueness of the suggestion added to its unpleasantness. Steven jerked his head indignantly.
"And what may that be, pray?" he asked.
She glanced at him a second, uplifting lip and eyebrow. To a lady who had graduated in the Court of Vienna, this big young man, with his English stolid simplicity, was a trifle irritating.
"Mon Dieu!" she said then, turning aside with a shrug of her shoulder, "how embarrassing you are! Do you know your poets? Well, then, he would like to find us playing at Paolo and Francesca, if you please, that he might play the Malatesta!"
"Great heavens!" cried the horrified youth. He watched the lady hang her head and droop a modest eyelid—it was Scylla and Charybdis! Beyond any doubt, he must walk out of these mad-house precincts at the very earliest opportunity.
They were perched high up in the blue; and, down below, the country lay spread like a green cloth on which a child has set its toys. Yonder white ribbon wandering so far below—there ran his road. Would he were on it! He turned to her, took her soft hand, bent and kissed it.
"Madam," said he, "it is best it should be 'good-bye'—for both of us, it is best."
He spoke very truly, poor young man, but into the touch of his lips and the pathos of his speech her vanity read another meaning.
"Cousin!" she cried suddenly, and clutched at his hands with both of hers. "O, take me with you! Take me back to my own people! If I stay here, he will kill me, or I shall kill myself!"
And, as his troubled face and involuntarily repelling fingers were far from giving her the response they craved, she rushed across and bent over the crumbling parapet.
"Refuse your help," she cried desperately, "and I throw myself down!"
(Had little Sidonia but been at hand, to tell him how well accustomed she was to such threats!)
Steven was quite pale as he caught her back against his shoulders.
"Mercy!" he shivered, thinking of those giddy deeps. She clung to him, her scented head against his shoulders.
"Surely, surely, it is not much I ask!" she murmured faintly. "See how I trust you, kinsman! Only your protection, your escort back to our own people. It is not much to ask!"
It meant his whole life, and he knew it. But what can a young man do with a woman's arms about him and a woman's whisper pleading in his ears?
"Ha-ha-ha!" came the Burgrave's laugh from below. Countess Betty slid out of "Beau Cousin's" arms. She lifted a warning finger. "I will arrange," she whispered, nodding. "Now we must be seen no more alone together."
Sidonia's voice also rang up towards them. "I will write," whispered Betty again, finger on lip.
O heavens! how could she look arch and smile at such a moment?
"My friend, I have been showing our cousin how far your estate extends," said the lady, gaily, tripping across to take the Burgrave's arm with more ease than she had yet displayed with him since his return.
"I trust our cousin has profited by your instruction, and that he realizes the boundaries of my property," said the Burgrave of Wellenshausen, with his genial smile and his icy eye.
Steven's heavy conscience read a hateful significance in the remark. As he turned, his glance fell upon the Baroness Sidonia's pure child face and he felt miserable and ashamed to the core.