* * * * *The Burgrave was a sorry spectacle. A man may play the mediæval avenger overnight, but in the morning he belongs to his own age and the sense of proportion reasserts itself. The Burgrave's awakening to sobriety, his realization of his own deed, were depressing to the direst degree. Paradoxically, no less terrible was the discovery that his suspicions had been unfounded; that his wife was both virtuous and still of the living; that it was an innocent niece and an innocent guest whom he had precipitated to an awful doom. He almost betrayed himself on meeting the Burgravine."It was Sidonia, then—it was not you, the youth was after, all the time!" he exclaimed, bewildered."Me? After me?" cried the lady, in a virtuous fury. "How dared you think such a thing!"She paused, panting, to measure the whole humiliation of her position.Sidonia was gone—gone with the pretty Austrian boy whom she, Betty, had so determinedly marked as her own. It was an infamous trick, and for Sidonia to play it ... Sidonia! Bah! She, who knew herself so well, should not have placed faith in any woman."The minx was in love with him all the time," she babbled, "and he—he, oh, he well knew, no doubt, that no richer heiress would ever pass his way! I trust, Herr von Wellenshausen, that you have sent widely in pursuit." Her mind was working at a tremendous rate. "You have not let yourself be taken in by this cunning wretch's story—Geiger-Hans, or whatever his name is? Oh, I can tell you something of him, sir. There's an intriguer for you, and in Kielmansegg's confidence from the beginning! God alone knows what infamous bargains they may have made together! It has all been a plot."The Burgrave stood looking at her, an abject mass of bilious misery."I am afraid there may have been an accident," he murmured, moistening his dry lips."Accident?" screamed she, and withered him. "You fool!" Then she turned on him, snarling like an angry little cat. "It is all your fault! Why did you ask him back here, to spy and pry? Yes, if the girl has disgraced us, it is your fault—the fault of your evil mind! You drove them to elope, old jealous fool!"The Burgrave clenched his hands and shook them above his head, fell into a chair, and wept aloud. Elope? If she but knew! Alack, poor Sidonia! Poor little Sidonia! He had always loved the child."I trust you will come to soberness presently," said Betty, with a disgusted look at the row of empty bottles.And it was at this moment that shouts from the courtyard proclaimed the return of the lost ones.The Burgrave's ecstasy of relief, when he heard that hisoubliette, had miscarried, could only be measured by his previous state of misery. He could have leaped and sung. He caught his wife to his breast with fresh tears. Repulsed with scorn, he tottered forth to the great hall, still reeling in his joy, to meet the two so miraculously preserved and restored.The girl faced him, severe as a young Daniel, with pointed finger and flashing eye."You weep now, uncle: you laughed last night! That was your farewell to us; you laughed as you tumbled us down theoubliette!"The Burgrave had stepped back, dismayed afresh. She knew, then, that no mere accident had betrayed them! The wretched lord of the castle flung a look around; met the eyes of Steven, scornful—he knew! Met the fiddler's eyes, horribly mocking—he knew! Met his Betty's gaze, deeply suspicious. In a moment she, too, would know!Out rang Sidonia's clarion tongue. And then the Burgravine did know.Promptly he was delivered into her hands. She threatened him with King and Emperor, with family and justice, prison, madhouse, duel. The Emperor had put divorce in fashion, she reminded her lord. She would divorce him, resoundingly! The last taunt was—since, after all, he loved her in his own fashion—the blow that hit him hardest.Natheless, even under the shock of the discovery that her own precious life had been in danger, and her husband (Bluebeard too well named!) had been her would-be murderer, her wits did not desert her.She intercepted the gaze wherewith Steven followed Sidonia, and was quick to feel that for herself he had now scarce a thought; nay, that she but represented to him three days of intense discomfort and a disagreeable episode ending in death-peril. She must not act in a hurry. She must play what cards she had left in her hand to best purpose. She had a vision of a tamed Bluebeard—and compensation; her turn yet to come in gay Cassel."Herr Graf," said the Burgrave, not without some kind of dignity, though tears still swam in the pale, swollen eyes, and his great hands trembled, a pathetic spectacle, "I stand at your mercy. I have absolutely no excuse to offer you.""Nay, sir," said Steven, "what misfortune Wellenshausen brought on me, Wellenshausen has repaired. Whenever I think," he added, and raised Sidonia's hand to kiss it, "of the night when you planned, and well-nigh encompassed, my death, I will also remember that to the courage of a daughter of this same house I owe my life. Before I take leave of your hospitable door" (he was too young to refrain from the gibe), "may I crave a few words in private?"The Chancellor bowed. Steven pressed Sidonia's hand and followed his host as he shambled across the hall.Had any one told the young man on the previous day that he would be willing—nay, anxious—to bind himself for all the years of his life to the little sunburnt Sidonia, he would have thought the absurdity scarce worth a laugh. And yet, here he was, a suitor for her hand. Her guardian dared not refuse her to him, even if a Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg had not been a match such as hardly could be found for her twice in a lifetime. He was bent on his purpose with all the obstinacy of a nature somewhat slow to move, but firmly set once a resolution taken. It was perhaps hardly love so much that urged him as a kind of passionate chivalry. He had expressed the state of affairs very accurately to Geiger-Hans. He had guarded her in his arms a whole night; now he felt driven by all his manliness to guard her for the rest of her life. Yet, with all this sentimental fervour, there was mixed a shrewd common-sense. In race she was his equal. She had good blood in her veins; and, by heaven, the little creature had shown it! Her courage and pride appealed to his innermost fastidiousness of breeding. And, child as she was, wild creature, free of the wood, sisterly with the people of the soil, he had the intuition that she would bear her new honours not only loyally, but royally. To her fortune he actually gave not a thought. Once or twice, in his hearing, she had been mentioned as a great heiress, but the statement had made no impression. With all his faults, Steven was nothing so little as mercenary—rare enough a virtue with the rich man, even in youth.With his blood-red stare fixed upon him, the Burgrave was uncomfortably and confusedly revolving certain questions connected with his ward's fortune. He had his own reasons for preferring to keep Sidonia unmarried for some years to come. But circumstances had passed out of his control. He could have but one answer for the curt, haughty, well-nigh insolent demand:"Wellenshausen was honoured—they were honoured, honoured——""With the briefest possible delay!" supplemented the lordly youth.And again the Burgrave bowed acquiescence; for there was a threat in Steven's eye, merciless to any hesitation."Of course," cried Wellenshausen, suddenly catching at a straw, "this is subject to my niece's consent."A faint smile came to Steven's lips; not fatuous, but mightily confident."That, your Excellency, is a matter between her and me," he said.The other glowered. This smacked of England, and he disliked English customs. But, again, his helplessness overcame him. With a turn of the head, scarcely a bow, Steven then withdrew. His host, lately so arrogant, looked after him, gnashing his teeth, helpless and furious in his humiliation. The wooer had not approached the subject of the girl's portion, even when he had mentioned his own lordly rentals; an omission so strange that it but added to the Burgrave's general sense of discomfiture.CHAPTER XIVLOVE AMONG THE RUINS"Well—if I bide, lo! This wild flower for me!"(Lancelot and Elaine).It was a glorious day, after a night of rain; and a blazing sun poured its rays down upon the rocks. Some instinct led Steven (he was perhaps already more of a lover than he believed) to the place where Sidonia sat, a ledge on the steep grassy slope which lay just outside the bramble-hidden opening of the cave—the cave that had yielded them back, in the dawn, to a new life.She was alone, seated under the wall, in a child-like attitude, her chin in her hand, wrapt, it seemed, in profound cogitation. The sunshine brought a golden fire about her uncovered hair. Steven flung himself beside her. She did not move her head, merely turned her grave eyes upon him; and, for a while, there was silence between them.The air was full of the humming of busy insects, sweet with the spices of the thousand thymy herbs that flourished in the dry, rocky soil. Above them the ruinous wing of the castle towered into the nebulous blue. Below, far away, the brown roofs of the village lay in shadow. Faint cries rose up from it; and from some unseen pasture, the tinkle of cow-bells—dim little sound, homely, yet so strangely in harmony with the solitudes of nature. The calls of the mountain birds came fitfully; and underlying all was the distant roar of the torrent seeking its issue far away from the secret well. Sidonia spoke at last."You have finished with them all, up there?" she asked."With them all, up there; yes," he answered her; and a joyousness was upon him, for which he could have given no reasons. It was born, perhaps, of his sudden entrance into the power of manhood—for protection, for conquest, for ownership. She, however, saw nothing of the flash in his eye, of the eager trembling of his lip."You could have Uncle Ludo put in prison, of course, but you will not do that. And that is the worst punishment of all. You leave him just with contempt.—It is a great humiliation for Wellenshausen!" she said.For some moments he made no answer. He was considering with pleasure the delicate ear under the waving sweep of hair, the colour, weight and length of the plaits that, divided, hung on either side of her neck and tipped the ground. He was noticing the shape of the nails in the slight brown hands, the shadow of the eyelashes on the cheek, the arch of the foot, the slender beauty of which even the country shoe could not conceal. How blind he had been on their first meeting! Geiger-Hans had, indeed, been justified in chiding him.... "She? a peasant girl! Then you never looked at her feet, nor at her delicate eyebrow. It is a noble child!"Those eyes of hers that he had, even at their first meeting, compared to a mountain stream in their depth, their varying colour, were still fixed with gravity upon him."You looked for me to say good-bye?" she said simply."No," said Steven.He drew himself a little closer to her, as he lay his length on the ground. The scent of the crushed weeds, the small aromatic nameless growths beneath him, sprang to his nostrils. He propped himself on his elbows and leaned his chin on his clasped hands, returning her gaze masterfully."Mademoiselle Sidonia, it is true that I am going soon, but I do not mean to go away alone. I have told your uncle how unfit I consider him to be your guardian. He cannot dispute the point with me, and he has owned that you ought to have another. Will you trust me to take care of you?" The eyes fixed upon him widened, questioning, innocent, yet profound. "I should call you my wife," he went on in a low voice, all astonished himself that his heart should suddenly beat so fast. Her glance never wavered, but he could see the scarlet dye her cheek. "Sidonia, will you come with me?" he cried. And now he was on his knees, quite close to her."I will go with you," she replied.Her child eyes were still upon him and seemed to ask for something yet. And at this, he bent and kissed her, gently, as he would have kissed a child, and did not guess that, at the touch of his lips, Sidonia's woman's soul was born.The autumn month was kind to the short, bewildering time of Steven and Sidonia's betrothal, and gave them, day after day, a fair sky and joyous sunshine.It was something of a strange business. Steven ascended the crag at least twice in the twelve hours to meet his little bride, up in the blue, among the rocks or the ruins. He had decided not to break bread again with the Burgrave, not even to enter the Burg until the wedding morning; and Sidonia approved this stern decision. And so their wooing had for its setting the barren crags, the scanty verdure, the keen airs of Wellenshausen heights; its only witnesses the great ravens, and occasionally some soaring hawk, cruising watchful and keen, pirate of the high seas of blue. Thus Sidonia became associated in Steven's mind with the pungent scents of all mountain herbs, the briskness of all mountain breezes. He could have sworn that about her small person itself there was a myrtle fragrance.Her presence became as grateful as the wild nature about him, and made as few demands upon him. Of love-making, in the accepted sense, there was none between them. He touched her still as reverently as he had touched the sleeper in theoubliette. He could not disabuse himself of the feeling that she was under his protection; that he must guard her, innocent, confident, maiden, sprite, child; guard her even from himself, from his man's knowledge, his man's power. It was instinct, not calculation, that kept him within such idyllic bounds. But, as it was, he felt mightily pleased with himself and consequently with her. Through some vein of idealism—richest treasure of youth as yet unrealized—his whole nature was flattered with the sense of his own chivalry, with the delicacy of the poem. Never for an instant did he repent his impulsive bargain.So long as there was such content in his eyes, there was content deep and full in Sidonia's heart. Her confidence in him was unlimited. He had asked her to be his wife: therefore he loved her, and his way of love was perfect in her mind. His parting and meeting kiss—often enough laid fugitively upon her eyelids—was to her the utmost and happiest expression of tenderness.* * * * *So passed these odd, quiet, yet all-important hours of courtship. And then the day came, eve of the morrow when they were to be united up in yonder bare stone chapel of the Burg, that was never used save for the baptism, the burial, or the wedding of a Wellenshausen.Again Sidonia sat among the rocks and the wild herbs, but alone: Steven was engaged in conclave with the ruddy-faced pastor of the hamlet, who was to ride up on his mule in the morning and conduct the ceremony. She smiled happily, as she pictured the interview in her mind. Presently she became aware that she was no longer by herself. From the black shadow of the rock, across the patch of sward opposite to her, eyes were watching her from a lean, sharp-featured face. She gave a small, low laugh."I see you," she said.And Geiger-Hans came forward with a kind of leap from the rocky gloom. He sat cross-legged in the full sunshine before her, his arms folded. His fiddle was slung at his back; his garments were powdered with dust; he looked tired and travel-worn, as if he had come from a long distance. But he was smiling at her."Truly, it is a curious thing," he said, as if taking up the thread of some interrupted conversation, "that the first time we ever met, little Mamzell Sidonia, you addressed me in just these very words.""That must have been very long ago, Onkel," said Sidonia, "for I always remember you.""Nay, it was an epoch to me. You see, mamzell, I was not then Geiger-Onkel to the country-side, the Geiger-Onkel whom the children run up to, whom the silly maids and youths consult, and the old wives like to gossip with—the old, crazy fellow, who makes merry music and does nobody any harm. I had black misery in my heart in those days, and black misery on my face. And I can well believe," said the fiddler, after a pause, "that I seemed to shed a black curse about me as I passed. I was a restless mortal, and went about, hither, thither, at a terrible pace. The people took me for a wandering devil! And, upon my soul, I don't blame them." He gave a laugh, and the sound of it hurt Sidonia. She had always known, of course, that it was some fearful sorrow that had driven her old friend to his life of wandering."Oh, poor Geiger-Onkel!" she cried; the caress of her eyes was infinitely soft."Yes, the women crossed themselves when they saw me!" He laughed again. "The men jeered—the children ran screaming from my path.... That day when I saw you first, mamzell, I was tired and angry. A stone had been flung at me and caught me on the ankle, and I went lame. The day was very hot; I had been a long way; I could go no further, and I was hungry. I sat outside the forest-house, waiting to ask for a crust. I had heard you laughing and calling behind the garden hedges, and I was afraid of frightening you.... Aye, it was weary work, going through the world making the children cry! I knew that, when the sun sank, somebody would put you to bed. 'And then I shall knock,' I said to myself.... But, all at once, little Mamzell Sidonia, as I sat, oh, so glum, so black-hearted, so forlorn a wretch, I heard you call me. You had popped your head out of the garden gate, and were peeping at me, gurgling with laughter. 'I see you,' you said." His voice broke. He twisted himself and lay out-stretched, supporting himself on one arm, his face turned towards the ground, idly picking at the small herbs. "Your little head was all over golden curls ... some one I had known had hair of that colour ... and you looked at me, it seemed, with eyes I had known also. You were not in the least frightened; you thought, I believe, that I was a very good game. But to me, to me, Mamzell Sidonia—you see I was even madder then than I am now—you were a something sent to me from one I loved once."Sidonia held her breath. She did not dare speak. This was not the Geiger-Onkel she had known. His very voice was changed utterly. She could not see his face as he lay, but instinctively she turned her eyes away from the prone figure."If we had had a child," said the fiddler, in a sort of whisper, "she would have looked like you ... she would have looked like you!"It seemed to Sidonia that the lean figure was shaken, and she had a terror lest he should be weeping. But, all at once, with those singular, quick movements of his, so startling to those who did not know him, he was sitting once more cross-legged; and the eyes that fixed her were dry and wildly brilliant."Now, if only the Burgrave was here, and could have heard me," he cried, mocking, "would he not be justified in calling for those whips and dogs with which I have been threatened? The Baroness Sidonia von Wellenshausen compared with the brat of a crazy beggarman!"Sidonia exclaimed indignantly: "Whips and dogs! He would never dare!""Well, hardly just now," said the other, whimsically. "His Excellency will dare very little for some time to come. Hey, what a game have the Fates played with him; aye, and with us all, mamzell, even with me, who thought to guide them! But they played my game in the end," he added, edging a little closer to her. "Well, little sleeping beauty with the golden hair, did I not do well to bring you to your forest bower this gallant young prince? You had to be awakened,Princesse Sidonie au bois dormant; for the end of the spell was near at hand. And if you had been awakened by the wrong knight? Heaven preserve us, what a catastrophe!""Oh, Geiger-Onkel, I am not a child any more to be talked to in fairy tales. I am going to be married to-morrow!" Then, with a sudden change of tone, the girl cried inconsequently, "It is true, you did bring him to me. Perhaps you're a kind of wizard uncle, after all!""Why—and have you ever doubted it?" said he, menacing her with his finger. "Have I not watched you all these years? When you wanted me for anything—for the white doe that was lost, or for Liserl in the village, when she had no news of her lad, or when Aunt Hedwige kept you too close—had not you but to wish for me?""It is true," she pondered, and looked at him doubtfully, unable to make out if he were in jest or in earnest."And so, when I met this fine young Prince Errant on the roadway, I knew he was meant for you."But suddenly she accused him, shaking her little finger in mimicry of his own gesture."But you vanished very quickly, the other morning, after you played us out of theoubliette, Geiger-Onkel. And my prince had to face the wicked guardian all by himself, and you were not even there to tell the princess what she was to say. You have not been near us all these days.""But, did you want me?" cried the fiddler, and gave a screech of laughter. It rang harshly. "Did you want me? That is the question."She found nothing to answer. Truthfully, she had, these days, forgotten his very existence. He chuckled to himself, and hitched his violin round."Listen," said he, and began to play a dainty measure—so exquisitely tender-gay a measure that it made Sidonia, all in her young happiness, feel quite sad. "Listen; this is the first tune you ever danced to, little mamzell. That was how your steps went, and how you clapped your hands.... Oh, I have something better for you still to play to you.... But you must wait for it. It is the song of your bridal morning!"The sun fell full on his face as he played. How weary he looked, how aged, how haunted, and yet how gentle—poor Geiger-Hans!CHAPTER XVFURENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT"Et, dans leurs jalousies, vous trouverez toujoursLeurs vanités blessées plutôt que leurs amours."DESTOUCHES.The mind of Burgravine Betty was a weather-vane, gilt and fantastically wrought, that veered in ever contrary directions, as blew the wind of her mood. Of constant purposes she knew but one, that of her own pleasure. But what course of action would best minister to this was a matter of perpetual indecision. She had amused herself with rare gusto, after months of enraging dulness, with the handsome stranger who had so impertinently sought the hospitality of Wellenshausen. And though a sermon from that crazy person the fiddler—no doubt a gentleman in masquerade, or Betty was no judge of such point—had left her momentarily abashed, sentimental over rocking cradles and wifely duty and such-like unprofitable conventions, the next morning the little shining vane was setting straight for the soft west of dalliance, and she fully meant to cheat her Bluebeard by as complete anaffaire de coeuras circumstances would permit. Nay, while apparently taking virtuous farewell over night of the unexpected kinsman, she had already planned heaven knows what secret assignations, palpitating meetings in the shadow of the ruins, descents into the forest-land and green picnics in discreet glades, yea, even excursions into the deepest of the woods. But the secret departure of the degenerate Kielmansegg and the unwelcome appearance of a tactless husband had shattered these agreeable projects. And Betty's vane had flown to north again: cold virtue in an injured wife, most wrongfully suspected. Next, by her husband's odious tricks of suspicion, thrown once again into the company of good looks and young manhood, what a succession of small hot and cold breezes kept the weather-cock shifting east, south-east and south, back to west again! Positively driven to elope, by sheer dread of the fate of Desdemona under her own cushions, what better choice could be made than this Steven von Waldorff-Kielmansegg—rich, high-born, and so vastly personable? And in Vienna, these times, people scarcely could look askance at adivorcée.Yet, a rainy night, and some more of that ubiquitous fantastic musician's nonsense, and hey for a new quarter of the compass again! She could scarcely, however, regret the chill wind of reason that had shifted her purpose at the last hour—a night in theoubliette, even with a charming companion, coincided by no means with Betty's ideas of enjoyment. And then, not having the knowledge of the murderous locality acquired by that climbing kid Sidonia, she and Count Steven might well be swirling, this sunny moment, in undesired comradeship under the black waters of the pit. Betty shuddered in every fibre of her ease-loving body.Now, during these days of Sidonia's brief betrothal, the Burgravine was in a more than usually undecided and dissatisfied frame of mind. Nevertheless, her mood pointed steadily for Cassel. As a Bluebeard, there could be no doubt of it, the Burgrave's occupation was gone. He was abject under his Betty's sandal. And Betty's foot, for so little a one, could stamp curiously hard. Henceforth the husband who would have compassed her murder had (the Burgravine fondly believed) no choice but to be his wife's slave. Dared he but thwart the smallest of her wishes, she knew well now how to reduce him to obedience. Cassel it was to be. Cassel, so soon as this absurd wedding was over.A very sulky shoulder did the Burgravine turn upon the whole ridiculous affair. An errant squire of dames, dull, undiscriminating, ill-mannered youth, who, when a Betty was within the same horizon, could have the poor taste even to look at a Sidonia; to take up a hoyden, sun-burnt as a peasant child, and with as much idea of the refinements of life as the village chits with whom she was wont to make so free! A pretty show would she make of herself in Vienna!The Burgravine had a curious glitter in those eyes of hers, that generally astonished the stranger by their flower-blue in her olive face; yet, withal, she was full of smiles. Was it not the wedding-day of the Baroness Sidonia, her husband's niece?Never had the Burg, on its dominating height, seen a bride go forth from its "honour gate" to the ancestral chapel with so little ceremony. Great carouse had there been at the castle on similar occasion, loud ringing of joy bells, and belching of powder smoke from the ramparts, wide flaunting of the old blue and yellow banner over the belfry. High folk, thickly gathered in Wellenshausen's Burg, had drunk deep on the height; low folk in Wellenshausen Dorf, on the plain, had vied successfully with their betters. The glories of the weddings at Wellenshausen had been retailed from father to son. Yet this last bride of the house, heiress as she was to most of its honours, slipped from her chamber to the altar-steps with scarce the tinkling of the chapel-bell to mark her passage, and only the cries of one or two village children, hot from their scramble up the crag, to acclaim her, the smiles, tearful, motherly and portentous, of the forest-mother to brace her for the great plunge into the unknown. Such was the haste and privacy with which the compact was carried out. The imperious bridegroom had willed it so. Nevertheless, if ungraced by pomp and unwitnessed by honoured guests, the ceremony was impressive enough in the simplicity and earnestness of the two chiefly concerned.So thought the musician, who knelt hidden, all in the dust, between the tomb of the greatest of the old Wellenshausens and the chapel wall. He had refused the post of honoured guest, the prominent seat prepared by Sidonia herself, the proffer of Steven's dark suit and purple stockings."I shall be with you all the same, my children," he had promised them. And from his place of concealment nothing escaped his watchful anxiety. It did his heart good to catch a glimpse of the bridegroom's face as it was turned upon the bride. Never, it seemed to him, had Sidonia looked more completely the child. She went through the ordeal with a blithe serenity; he knew that the music he had made for her that morning, at the misty dawn, was singing in her heart.At the sight of her golden head under the bridal veil, the vagabond closed his restless eyes for a minute. An inner vision of poignant tenderness rose upon him. "O Love, O Death, how the wheel turns with us!"To the bowing snuff-coloured notary from Helmstadt, the Burgrave in his glittering Chancellor's uniform was a very awe-inspiring person: he quailed under the unblinking gaze of His Excellency, beneath the jealous eyebrows. Far indeed was he from suspecting that the merest glint of the Burgravine's blue orbs—so youthful, so affable an apparition to the dusty man of law—sufficed to make Wellenshausen, the terrible, quail in his tall boots.Kurtz the Jäger whistled between his teeth, with an impudent eye on the wedding procession, as, in company with Mademoiselle Eliza, he beheld it pass out."It is your mistress whose little game has fallen through," said he, tauntingly, to the French girl."Ah, no,par exemple," retorted she. "It is your master,mon bel oiseau, who wears the fool's cap this time. Oh!"—she clapped her sallow hands together—"how we shall amuse ourselves at Cassel!"It could hardly be said that the wedding repast was a convivial event. Steven took upon himself a great air of condescension over this first breaking of bread at the table of his would-be executioner. His politeness was something quite overpowering. The Burgrave, after a bumper of Sillery to the health of the happy pair, essayed to carry matters with a high-handed joviality; the effect of it, against Steven's glacial indulgence, was ghastly. But, when bridegroom and bride conferred together, were it upon the merest trifle, the irresponsible youth and joy of them was not to be hidden. And Burgravine Betty watched with a glance that grew ever more steely.She had sat down to the board in a fairly good humour, for her amber gown was becoming, and the water gardens, the statued alleys of Cassel Palace, were growing into nearer perspective. But Cousin Kielmansegg positively treated her in much the same high-horse manner as he treated his host. The most alluring twists of her shoulder, the most killing ogles, were received with odious civility; nay—and her vanity was pierced to the core—she actually caught in him a look of boredom, when he had perforce to turn and give his attention to a delicate whisper, reminiscent innuendo, sigh for the might-have-been.Fury rose in her, sudden as a mountain whirlwind. She gripped her wineglass: the sweetness turned acid on her lips. Loud rang her laugh; and the Burgrave, glancing at her, felt a satisfaction in the ever-doubtful growling depth of his heart that his Betty should be so merry at her Beau Cousin's wedding. But Sidonia flung her aunt a startled look. The Burgravine sprang to her feet with a peremptory gesture:"Come with me," she said.She was in a prodigious hurry, all at once, to get the new Countess Kielmansegg away from the table into the privacy of her own turret apartment, ostensibly to robe her for the journey. The bridegroom followed his bride with a long glance; noting which, the Burgravine tossed her head."You must have a little patience," she cried to him insolently. "She will be ready in an hour."Once alone with the girl, she whisked the bridal veil from her head with such feverish and ungentle hands that Sidonia turned round to look upon her in amazement, only to meet a positive glare."Why, Aunt Betty!""Why, Sidonia!—forgive, I should say: Most High Lady Countess!""What is the matter with you?" cried Sidonia.She was never one to take hostility in meekness. The colour sprang to her cheek."Why do you look at me like that? What has vexed you?" she insisted."Vexed?—I?" quoth the lady. Here they were interrupted by Eliza, all flounce and bounce and smile, with pink bows to her apron and a jaunty new cap. Her mistress turned upon her fiercely. "Get out of this! When you are wanted you shall be called," she cried. Then: "Nay, my love," she proceeded, once more addressing her niece, now in a biting tone of sweetness (a diabolic inspiration had come to her: if Satan can never unmake, he can at least mar) "nay, wherefore should I be vexed? I may be ashamed for my sex; I am still, I must confess, under the shock of the recent scandal, which has rendered necessary this humiliating marriage, but——"Sidonia went white to the lips. "I don't understand——" she cried boldly; but there was horror gathering in her eyes."Do you need to be told, then," asked the other, clapping her plump hands together in exasperation, "that if a young girl spends a night in a cave alone with a young man, her reputation is not worth a silver groat?"The blood raced back to the bride's cheeks. "Do you taunt me for having saved your life, Aunt Betty? What say I?—savedyourreputation.... But what does it matter; how does this concern me now? My husband loves me; he has my faith."The Burgravine broke into shrill laughter. Then, with a sudden change of tactics, she folded her niece to her heart with hysterical tenderness."Nay, my poor lamb, I am wrong! Go, go in your touching confidence; I will say no further word. It would be cruel to enlighten you a day sooner than necessary, and——""I think you're mad," interrupted the bride. "I cannot imagine what you mean." With steady fingers she removed the myrtle wreath from her head, then approached her aunt with a countenance singularly altered. "You must explain yourself, Aunt Betty," she said.The Burgravine rushed again into passion. "Were you the innocent you pretend to be," retorted she, panting, "it would be no kindness to let you depart in ignorance of the true state of your affairs. But, for all your baby pose, you cannot make me believe, my love, that you are blind to the fact that this poor, chivalrous young man has only wedded you, all said and done, to save your name, your honour. A—ah, he has vowed, and you believe him, that he loves you?" (It is well to lash oneself into blind anger when it is difficult to strike in cold blood.) "Ten days ago, on that very turret platform," she dramatically pointed through the window to the silhouette of the east tower, "only ten days ago he held me to his heart—this devoted lover of yours—and consecrated his life to me!""I do not believe you," said Sidonia, again. But her soft, young face seemed suddenly turned to marble. "If he loves you, what does he want with me?" The girl spoke slowly. She had been shaken, but she was not convinced. "I don't believe it, Aunt Betty," she resumed. "Nobody would have said any harm of me. Every one knows me here! Wellenshausen," cried the child, in angry common-sense, "is not Vienna, nor yet Cassel!"Betty, who possessed the faculty of changing her mind with ease, had no bashfulness at all in eating her own words when occasion offered. Indeed, so accommodating was her disposition that she was quite ready to believe her own hasty concoctions, however contradictory, at a moment's notice. Shrewish blew the gusts of the jealous temper."Well,mon coeur, is it not better to think him an excellent chivalrous person than to try and seek for less noble motives? 'Tis granted, isn't it, that since he loved me at nine o'clock in the evening, loved me to the point of elopement, he could hardly be ready to love you very devotedly at eight the next morning? We will not think that my Bluebeard dropped him a hint of your money bags.... The situation was delicate, you see, and if the Burgrave, who is fond of you after all, my dear, and who, no doubt, wanted to repair the damage he had wrought, failed to move the young gentleman by one plea, he may have succeeded in another. There are compensations about you: that is a fact. It was after their private conversation, remember, my little angel, that Beau Cousin proposed...."Sidonia set her teeth in her trembling lip. Every word was a dagger wound to pride and love and maidenliness. Then all her loyalty revolted. Her knight of the forest, so base? Never! And if the Burgravine was false in the one instance, why not in all?"Aunt Betty," she said deliberately, "this is all a lie.""Fool," snapped Betty. She ran from the room like a fury, to return with incredible quickness. She shook a crumpled note before the bride's eyes, then spread it with frenzied fingers upon the table."See here! Read! read what he writes to me—to me! Ah, you know his handwriting by this time! Read, read! He asks me to meet him among the ruins. 'All will be ready!' What does that mean, think you? Why, that his coach was waiting ready for us at the foot of the hill, to whirl us two to our own land, to safety, to happiness!"The girl reeled and pressed her hands to her eyes."Why, my dear," cried the other, pursuing her advantage mercilessly, "did he ever blink at you, I ask, before that disgraceful night in the dark? And indeed, how could fine young men such as he, I should like to know, find anything to fall in love with in you, you poor little country, weather-beaten thing? No, my poor child, no, you had best take it that he's just doing the recognized high-born, gentlemanly thing by you; but it will do you no harm to remember that it was me, me, that he wanted to take away from Wellenshausen, not you!""Then why did you not go—why did you send me to him, with your good-bye?" asked Sidonia at last, almost voiceless."Because I was a fool," exploded the Burgravine, in all the inconsequence of her envy.At this particular moment it seemed to her that in her virtuous decision she had indeed missed the opportunity of her life. And she set her teeth upon such savage accents of truth that, at last, Sidonia believed.She took the crumpled bit of paper from the table. Stunned amid the ruins of her fair edifice of happiness, she had as yet hardly realized her aunt's position, even though so shamelessly trumpeted. Now, with this proof of Steven's real feelings in her hand, Betty's guilt suddenly leaped, hideous, into shape before her.... The Burgravine von Wellenshausen, a married woman, ready to break her marriage vows, listening to words of love from the guest under her husband's roof! The bride was very innocent, but innocence is perhaps the severest judge of all. She turned eyes of horror upon her uncle's wife."It is well," she said, after a pause. "Leave me; I must think out what I have to do."As she spoke she thrust the note into the bosom of her bridal frock.To be thoroughly successful in revenge is always slightly alarming. So thought the Burgravine as she closed the door upon this unknown, this strange Sidonia. But, having gone too far to retreat, spite now resolved to reap the final gratification.CHAPTER XVI'TWIXT CUP AND LIP"Warum sind benn die Rosen so blass?* * * * *Mein liebes Liebchen, sprich,D sprich, mein herzallerliebstes Lieb,Warum verliessert du mich?"HEINE.
* * * * *
The Burgrave was a sorry spectacle. A man may play the mediæval avenger overnight, but in the morning he belongs to his own age and the sense of proportion reasserts itself. The Burgrave's awakening to sobriety, his realization of his own deed, were depressing to the direst degree. Paradoxically, no less terrible was the discovery that his suspicions had been unfounded; that his wife was both virtuous and still of the living; that it was an innocent niece and an innocent guest whom he had precipitated to an awful doom. He almost betrayed himself on meeting the Burgravine.
"It was Sidonia, then—it was not you, the youth was after, all the time!" he exclaimed, bewildered.
"Me? After me?" cried the lady, in a virtuous fury. "How dared you think such a thing!"
She paused, panting, to measure the whole humiliation of her position.
Sidonia was gone—gone with the pretty Austrian boy whom she, Betty, had so determinedly marked as her own. It was an infamous trick, and for Sidonia to play it ... Sidonia! Bah! She, who knew herself so well, should not have placed faith in any woman.
"The minx was in love with him all the time," she babbled, "and he—he, oh, he well knew, no doubt, that no richer heiress would ever pass his way! I trust, Herr von Wellenshausen, that you have sent widely in pursuit." Her mind was working at a tremendous rate. "You have not let yourself be taken in by this cunning wretch's story—Geiger-Hans, or whatever his name is? Oh, I can tell you something of him, sir. There's an intriguer for you, and in Kielmansegg's confidence from the beginning! God alone knows what infamous bargains they may have made together! It has all been a plot."
The Burgrave stood looking at her, an abject mass of bilious misery.
"I am afraid there may have been an accident," he murmured, moistening his dry lips.
"Accident?" screamed she, and withered him. "You fool!" Then she turned on him, snarling like an angry little cat. "It is all your fault! Why did you ask him back here, to spy and pry? Yes, if the girl has disgraced us, it is your fault—the fault of your evil mind! You drove them to elope, old jealous fool!"
The Burgrave clenched his hands and shook them above his head, fell into a chair, and wept aloud. Elope? If she but knew! Alack, poor Sidonia! Poor little Sidonia! He had always loved the child.
"I trust you will come to soberness presently," said Betty, with a disgusted look at the row of empty bottles.
And it was at this moment that shouts from the courtyard proclaimed the return of the lost ones.
The Burgrave's ecstasy of relief, when he heard that hisoubliette, had miscarried, could only be measured by his previous state of misery. He could have leaped and sung. He caught his wife to his breast with fresh tears. Repulsed with scorn, he tottered forth to the great hall, still reeling in his joy, to meet the two so miraculously preserved and restored.
The girl faced him, severe as a young Daniel, with pointed finger and flashing eye.
"You weep now, uncle: you laughed last night! That was your farewell to us; you laughed as you tumbled us down theoubliette!"
The Burgrave had stepped back, dismayed afresh. She knew, then, that no mere accident had betrayed them! The wretched lord of the castle flung a look around; met the eyes of Steven, scornful—he knew! Met the fiddler's eyes, horribly mocking—he knew! Met his Betty's gaze, deeply suspicious. In a moment she, too, would know!
Out rang Sidonia's clarion tongue. And then the Burgravine did know.
Promptly he was delivered into her hands. She threatened him with King and Emperor, with family and justice, prison, madhouse, duel. The Emperor had put divorce in fashion, she reminded her lord. She would divorce him, resoundingly! The last taunt was—since, after all, he loved her in his own fashion—the blow that hit him hardest.
Natheless, even under the shock of the discovery that her own precious life had been in danger, and her husband (Bluebeard too well named!) had been her would-be murderer, her wits did not desert her.
She intercepted the gaze wherewith Steven followed Sidonia, and was quick to feel that for herself he had now scarce a thought; nay, that she but represented to him three days of intense discomfort and a disagreeable episode ending in death-peril. She must not act in a hurry. She must play what cards she had left in her hand to best purpose. She had a vision of a tamed Bluebeard—and compensation; her turn yet to come in gay Cassel.
"Herr Graf," said the Burgrave, not without some kind of dignity, though tears still swam in the pale, swollen eyes, and his great hands trembled, a pathetic spectacle, "I stand at your mercy. I have absolutely no excuse to offer you."
"Nay, sir," said Steven, "what misfortune Wellenshausen brought on me, Wellenshausen has repaired. Whenever I think," he added, and raised Sidonia's hand to kiss it, "of the night when you planned, and well-nigh encompassed, my death, I will also remember that to the courage of a daughter of this same house I owe my life. Before I take leave of your hospitable door" (he was too young to refrain from the gibe), "may I crave a few words in private?"
The Chancellor bowed. Steven pressed Sidonia's hand and followed his host as he shambled across the hall.
Had any one told the young man on the previous day that he would be willing—nay, anxious—to bind himself for all the years of his life to the little sunburnt Sidonia, he would have thought the absurdity scarce worth a laugh. And yet, here he was, a suitor for her hand. Her guardian dared not refuse her to him, even if a Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg had not been a match such as hardly could be found for her twice in a lifetime. He was bent on his purpose with all the obstinacy of a nature somewhat slow to move, but firmly set once a resolution taken. It was perhaps hardly love so much that urged him as a kind of passionate chivalry. He had expressed the state of affairs very accurately to Geiger-Hans. He had guarded her in his arms a whole night; now he felt driven by all his manliness to guard her for the rest of her life. Yet, with all this sentimental fervour, there was mixed a shrewd common-sense. In race she was his equal. She had good blood in her veins; and, by heaven, the little creature had shown it! Her courage and pride appealed to his innermost fastidiousness of breeding. And, child as she was, wild creature, free of the wood, sisterly with the people of the soil, he had the intuition that she would bear her new honours not only loyally, but royally. To her fortune he actually gave not a thought. Once or twice, in his hearing, she had been mentioned as a great heiress, but the statement had made no impression. With all his faults, Steven was nothing so little as mercenary—rare enough a virtue with the rich man, even in youth.
With his blood-red stare fixed upon him, the Burgrave was uncomfortably and confusedly revolving certain questions connected with his ward's fortune. He had his own reasons for preferring to keep Sidonia unmarried for some years to come. But circumstances had passed out of his control. He could have but one answer for the curt, haughty, well-nigh insolent demand:
"Wellenshausen was honoured—they were honoured, honoured——"
"With the briefest possible delay!" supplemented the lordly youth.
And again the Burgrave bowed acquiescence; for there was a threat in Steven's eye, merciless to any hesitation.
"Of course," cried Wellenshausen, suddenly catching at a straw, "this is subject to my niece's consent."
A faint smile came to Steven's lips; not fatuous, but mightily confident.
"That, your Excellency, is a matter between her and me," he said.
The other glowered. This smacked of England, and he disliked English customs. But, again, his helplessness overcame him. With a turn of the head, scarcely a bow, Steven then withdrew. His host, lately so arrogant, looked after him, gnashing his teeth, helpless and furious in his humiliation. The wooer had not approached the subject of the girl's portion, even when he had mentioned his own lordly rentals; an omission so strange that it but added to the Burgrave's general sense of discomfiture.
CHAPTER XIV
LOVE AMONG THE RUINS
"Well—if I bide, lo! This wild flower for me!"(Lancelot and Elaine).
"Well—if I bide, lo! This wild flower for me!"(Lancelot and Elaine).
"Well—if I bide, lo! This wild flower for me!"
(Lancelot and Elaine).
(Lancelot and Elaine).
It was a glorious day, after a night of rain; and a blazing sun poured its rays down upon the rocks. Some instinct led Steven (he was perhaps already more of a lover than he believed) to the place where Sidonia sat, a ledge on the steep grassy slope which lay just outside the bramble-hidden opening of the cave—the cave that had yielded them back, in the dawn, to a new life.
She was alone, seated under the wall, in a child-like attitude, her chin in her hand, wrapt, it seemed, in profound cogitation. The sunshine brought a golden fire about her uncovered hair. Steven flung himself beside her. She did not move her head, merely turned her grave eyes upon him; and, for a while, there was silence between them.
The air was full of the humming of busy insects, sweet with the spices of the thousand thymy herbs that flourished in the dry, rocky soil. Above them the ruinous wing of the castle towered into the nebulous blue. Below, far away, the brown roofs of the village lay in shadow. Faint cries rose up from it; and from some unseen pasture, the tinkle of cow-bells—dim little sound, homely, yet so strangely in harmony with the solitudes of nature. The calls of the mountain birds came fitfully; and underlying all was the distant roar of the torrent seeking its issue far away from the secret well. Sidonia spoke at last.
"You have finished with them all, up there?" she asked.
"With them all, up there; yes," he answered her; and a joyousness was upon him, for which he could have given no reasons. It was born, perhaps, of his sudden entrance into the power of manhood—for protection, for conquest, for ownership. She, however, saw nothing of the flash in his eye, of the eager trembling of his lip.
"You could have Uncle Ludo put in prison, of course, but you will not do that. And that is the worst punishment of all. You leave him just with contempt.—It is a great humiliation for Wellenshausen!" she said.
For some moments he made no answer. He was considering with pleasure the delicate ear under the waving sweep of hair, the colour, weight and length of the plaits that, divided, hung on either side of her neck and tipped the ground. He was noticing the shape of the nails in the slight brown hands, the shadow of the eyelashes on the cheek, the arch of the foot, the slender beauty of which even the country shoe could not conceal. How blind he had been on their first meeting! Geiger-Hans had, indeed, been justified in chiding him.... "She? a peasant girl! Then you never looked at her feet, nor at her delicate eyebrow. It is a noble child!"
Those eyes of hers that he had, even at their first meeting, compared to a mountain stream in their depth, their varying colour, were still fixed with gravity upon him.
"You looked for me to say good-bye?" she said simply.
"No," said Steven.
He drew himself a little closer to her, as he lay his length on the ground. The scent of the crushed weeds, the small aromatic nameless growths beneath him, sprang to his nostrils. He propped himself on his elbows and leaned his chin on his clasped hands, returning her gaze masterfully.
"Mademoiselle Sidonia, it is true that I am going soon, but I do not mean to go away alone. I have told your uncle how unfit I consider him to be your guardian. He cannot dispute the point with me, and he has owned that you ought to have another. Will you trust me to take care of you?" The eyes fixed upon him widened, questioning, innocent, yet profound. "I should call you my wife," he went on in a low voice, all astonished himself that his heart should suddenly beat so fast. Her glance never wavered, but he could see the scarlet dye her cheek. "Sidonia, will you come with me?" he cried. And now he was on his knees, quite close to her.
"I will go with you," she replied.
Her child eyes were still upon him and seemed to ask for something yet. And at this, he bent and kissed her, gently, as he would have kissed a child, and did not guess that, at the touch of his lips, Sidonia's woman's soul was born.
The autumn month was kind to the short, bewildering time of Steven and Sidonia's betrothal, and gave them, day after day, a fair sky and joyous sunshine.
It was something of a strange business. Steven ascended the crag at least twice in the twelve hours to meet his little bride, up in the blue, among the rocks or the ruins. He had decided not to break bread again with the Burgrave, not even to enter the Burg until the wedding morning; and Sidonia approved this stern decision. And so their wooing had for its setting the barren crags, the scanty verdure, the keen airs of Wellenshausen heights; its only witnesses the great ravens, and occasionally some soaring hawk, cruising watchful and keen, pirate of the high seas of blue. Thus Sidonia became associated in Steven's mind with the pungent scents of all mountain herbs, the briskness of all mountain breezes. He could have sworn that about her small person itself there was a myrtle fragrance.
Her presence became as grateful as the wild nature about him, and made as few demands upon him. Of love-making, in the accepted sense, there was none between them. He touched her still as reverently as he had touched the sleeper in theoubliette. He could not disabuse himself of the feeling that she was under his protection; that he must guard her, innocent, confident, maiden, sprite, child; guard her even from himself, from his man's knowledge, his man's power. It was instinct, not calculation, that kept him within such idyllic bounds. But, as it was, he felt mightily pleased with himself and consequently with her. Through some vein of idealism—richest treasure of youth as yet unrealized—his whole nature was flattered with the sense of his own chivalry, with the delicacy of the poem. Never for an instant did he repent his impulsive bargain.
So long as there was such content in his eyes, there was content deep and full in Sidonia's heart. Her confidence in him was unlimited. He had asked her to be his wife: therefore he loved her, and his way of love was perfect in her mind. His parting and meeting kiss—often enough laid fugitively upon her eyelids—was to her the utmost and happiest expression of tenderness.
* * * * *
So passed these odd, quiet, yet all-important hours of courtship. And then the day came, eve of the morrow when they were to be united up in yonder bare stone chapel of the Burg, that was never used save for the baptism, the burial, or the wedding of a Wellenshausen.
Again Sidonia sat among the rocks and the wild herbs, but alone: Steven was engaged in conclave with the ruddy-faced pastor of the hamlet, who was to ride up on his mule in the morning and conduct the ceremony. She smiled happily, as she pictured the interview in her mind. Presently she became aware that she was no longer by herself. From the black shadow of the rock, across the patch of sward opposite to her, eyes were watching her from a lean, sharp-featured face. She gave a small, low laugh.
"I see you," she said.
And Geiger-Hans came forward with a kind of leap from the rocky gloom. He sat cross-legged in the full sunshine before her, his arms folded. His fiddle was slung at his back; his garments were powdered with dust; he looked tired and travel-worn, as if he had come from a long distance. But he was smiling at her.
"Truly, it is a curious thing," he said, as if taking up the thread of some interrupted conversation, "that the first time we ever met, little Mamzell Sidonia, you addressed me in just these very words."
"That must have been very long ago, Onkel," said Sidonia, "for I always remember you."
"Nay, it was an epoch to me. You see, mamzell, I was not then Geiger-Onkel to the country-side, the Geiger-Onkel whom the children run up to, whom the silly maids and youths consult, and the old wives like to gossip with—the old, crazy fellow, who makes merry music and does nobody any harm. I had black misery in my heart in those days, and black misery on my face. And I can well believe," said the fiddler, after a pause, "that I seemed to shed a black curse about me as I passed. I was a restless mortal, and went about, hither, thither, at a terrible pace. The people took me for a wandering devil! And, upon my soul, I don't blame them." He gave a laugh, and the sound of it hurt Sidonia. She had always known, of course, that it was some fearful sorrow that had driven her old friend to his life of wandering.
"Oh, poor Geiger-Onkel!" she cried; the caress of her eyes was infinitely soft.
"Yes, the women crossed themselves when they saw me!" He laughed again. "The men jeered—the children ran screaming from my path.... That day when I saw you first, mamzell, I was tired and angry. A stone had been flung at me and caught me on the ankle, and I went lame. The day was very hot; I had been a long way; I could go no further, and I was hungry. I sat outside the forest-house, waiting to ask for a crust. I had heard you laughing and calling behind the garden hedges, and I was afraid of frightening you.... Aye, it was weary work, going through the world making the children cry! I knew that, when the sun sank, somebody would put you to bed. 'And then I shall knock,' I said to myself.... But, all at once, little Mamzell Sidonia, as I sat, oh, so glum, so black-hearted, so forlorn a wretch, I heard you call me. You had popped your head out of the garden gate, and were peeping at me, gurgling with laughter. 'I see you,' you said." His voice broke. He twisted himself and lay out-stretched, supporting himself on one arm, his face turned towards the ground, idly picking at the small herbs. "Your little head was all over golden curls ... some one I had known had hair of that colour ... and you looked at me, it seemed, with eyes I had known also. You were not in the least frightened; you thought, I believe, that I was a very good game. But to me, to me, Mamzell Sidonia—you see I was even madder then than I am now—you were a something sent to me from one I loved once."
Sidonia held her breath. She did not dare speak. This was not the Geiger-Onkel she had known. His very voice was changed utterly. She could not see his face as he lay, but instinctively she turned her eyes away from the prone figure.
"If we had had a child," said the fiddler, in a sort of whisper, "she would have looked like you ... she would have looked like you!"
It seemed to Sidonia that the lean figure was shaken, and she had a terror lest he should be weeping. But, all at once, with those singular, quick movements of his, so startling to those who did not know him, he was sitting once more cross-legged; and the eyes that fixed her were dry and wildly brilliant.
"Now, if only the Burgrave was here, and could have heard me," he cried, mocking, "would he not be justified in calling for those whips and dogs with which I have been threatened? The Baroness Sidonia von Wellenshausen compared with the brat of a crazy beggarman!"
Sidonia exclaimed indignantly: "Whips and dogs! He would never dare!"
"Well, hardly just now," said the other, whimsically. "His Excellency will dare very little for some time to come. Hey, what a game have the Fates played with him; aye, and with us all, mamzell, even with me, who thought to guide them! But they played my game in the end," he added, edging a little closer to her. "Well, little sleeping beauty with the golden hair, did I not do well to bring you to your forest bower this gallant young prince? You had to be awakened,Princesse Sidonie au bois dormant; for the end of the spell was near at hand. And if you had been awakened by the wrong knight? Heaven preserve us, what a catastrophe!"
"Oh, Geiger-Onkel, I am not a child any more to be talked to in fairy tales. I am going to be married to-morrow!" Then, with a sudden change of tone, the girl cried inconsequently, "It is true, you did bring him to me. Perhaps you're a kind of wizard uncle, after all!"
"Why—and have you ever doubted it?" said he, menacing her with his finger. "Have I not watched you all these years? When you wanted me for anything—for the white doe that was lost, or for Liserl in the village, when she had no news of her lad, or when Aunt Hedwige kept you too close—had not you but to wish for me?"
"It is true," she pondered, and looked at him doubtfully, unable to make out if he were in jest or in earnest.
"And so, when I met this fine young Prince Errant on the roadway, I knew he was meant for you."
But suddenly she accused him, shaking her little finger in mimicry of his own gesture.
"But you vanished very quickly, the other morning, after you played us out of theoubliette, Geiger-Onkel. And my prince had to face the wicked guardian all by himself, and you were not even there to tell the princess what she was to say. You have not been near us all these days."
"But, did you want me?" cried the fiddler, and gave a screech of laughter. It rang harshly. "Did you want me? That is the question."
She found nothing to answer. Truthfully, she had, these days, forgotten his very existence. He chuckled to himself, and hitched his violin round.
"Listen," said he, and began to play a dainty measure—so exquisitely tender-gay a measure that it made Sidonia, all in her young happiness, feel quite sad. "Listen; this is the first tune you ever danced to, little mamzell. That was how your steps went, and how you clapped your hands.... Oh, I have something better for you still to play to you.... But you must wait for it. It is the song of your bridal morning!"
The sun fell full on his face as he played. How weary he looked, how aged, how haunted, and yet how gentle—poor Geiger-Hans!
CHAPTER XV
FURENS QUID FEMINA POSSIT
"Et, dans leurs jalousies, vous trouverez toujoursLeurs vanités blessées plutôt que leurs amours."DESTOUCHES.
"Et, dans leurs jalousies, vous trouverez toujoursLeurs vanités blessées plutôt que leurs amours."DESTOUCHES.
"Et, dans leurs jalousies, vous trouverez toujours
Leurs vanités blessées plutôt que leurs amours."
DESTOUCHES.
DESTOUCHES.
The mind of Burgravine Betty was a weather-vane, gilt and fantastically wrought, that veered in ever contrary directions, as blew the wind of her mood. Of constant purposes she knew but one, that of her own pleasure. But what course of action would best minister to this was a matter of perpetual indecision. She had amused herself with rare gusto, after months of enraging dulness, with the handsome stranger who had so impertinently sought the hospitality of Wellenshausen. And though a sermon from that crazy person the fiddler—no doubt a gentleman in masquerade, or Betty was no judge of such point—had left her momentarily abashed, sentimental over rocking cradles and wifely duty and such-like unprofitable conventions, the next morning the little shining vane was setting straight for the soft west of dalliance, and she fully meant to cheat her Bluebeard by as complete anaffaire de coeuras circumstances would permit. Nay, while apparently taking virtuous farewell over night of the unexpected kinsman, she had already planned heaven knows what secret assignations, palpitating meetings in the shadow of the ruins, descents into the forest-land and green picnics in discreet glades, yea, even excursions into the deepest of the woods. But the secret departure of the degenerate Kielmansegg and the unwelcome appearance of a tactless husband had shattered these agreeable projects. And Betty's vane had flown to north again: cold virtue in an injured wife, most wrongfully suspected. Next, by her husband's odious tricks of suspicion, thrown once again into the company of good looks and young manhood, what a succession of small hot and cold breezes kept the weather-cock shifting east, south-east and south, back to west again! Positively driven to elope, by sheer dread of the fate of Desdemona under her own cushions, what better choice could be made than this Steven von Waldorff-Kielmansegg—rich, high-born, and so vastly personable? And in Vienna, these times, people scarcely could look askance at adivorcée.
Yet, a rainy night, and some more of that ubiquitous fantastic musician's nonsense, and hey for a new quarter of the compass again! She could scarcely, however, regret the chill wind of reason that had shifted her purpose at the last hour—a night in theoubliette, even with a charming companion, coincided by no means with Betty's ideas of enjoyment. And then, not having the knowledge of the murderous locality acquired by that climbing kid Sidonia, she and Count Steven might well be swirling, this sunny moment, in undesired comradeship under the black waters of the pit. Betty shuddered in every fibre of her ease-loving body.
Now, during these days of Sidonia's brief betrothal, the Burgravine was in a more than usually undecided and dissatisfied frame of mind. Nevertheless, her mood pointed steadily for Cassel. As a Bluebeard, there could be no doubt of it, the Burgrave's occupation was gone. He was abject under his Betty's sandal. And Betty's foot, for so little a one, could stamp curiously hard. Henceforth the husband who would have compassed her murder had (the Burgravine fondly believed) no choice but to be his wife's slave. Dared he but thwart the smallest of her wishes, she knew well now how to reduce him to obedience. Cassel it was to be. Cassel, so soon as this absurd wedding was over.
A very sulky shoulder did the Burgravine turn upon the whole ridiculous affair. An errant squire of dames, dull, undiscriminating, ill-mannered youth, who, when a Betty was within the same horizon, could have the poor taste even to look at a Sidonia; to take up a hoyden, sun-burnt as a peasant child, and with as much idea of the refinements of life as the village chits with whom she was wont to make so free! A pretty show would she make of herself in Vienna!
The Burgravine had a curious glitter in those eyes of hers, that generally astonished the stranger by their flower-blue in her olive face; yet, withal, she was full of smiles. Was it not the wedding-day of the Baroness Sidonia, her husband's niece?
Never had the Burg, on its dominating height, seen a bride go forth from its "honour gate" to the ancestral chapel with so little ceremony. Great carouse had there been at the castle on similar occasion, loud ringing of joy bells, and belching of powder smoke from the ramparts, wide flaunting of the old blue and yellow banner over the belfry. High folk, thickly gathered in Wellenshausen's Burg, had drunk deep on the height; low folk in Wellenshausen Dorf, on the plain, had vied successfully with their betters. The glories of the weddings at Wellenshausen had been retailed from father to son. Yet this last bride of the house, heiress as she was to most of its honours, slipped from her chamber to the altar-steps with scarce the tinkling of the chapel-bell to mark her passage, and only the cries of one or two village children, hot from their scramble up the crag, to acclaim her, the smiles, tearful, motherly and portentous, of the forest-mother to brace her for the great plunge into the unknown. Such was the haste and privacy with which the compact was carried out. The imperious bridegroom had willed it so. Nevertheless, if ungraced by pomp and unwitnessed by honoured guests, the ceremony was impressive enough in the simplicity and earnestness of the two chiefly concerned.
So thought the musician, who knelt hidden, all in the dust, between the tomb of the greatest of the old Wellenshausens and the chapel wall. He had refused the post of honoured guest, the prominent seat prepared by Sidonia herself, the proffer of Steven's dark suit and purple stockings.
"I shall be with you all the same, my children," he had promised them. And from his place of concealment nothing escaped his watchful anxiety. It did his heart good to catch a glimpse of the bridegroom's face as it was turned upon the bride. Never, it seemed to him, had Sidonia looked more completely the child. She went through the ordeal with a blithe serenity; he knew that the music he had made for her that morning, at the misty dawn, was singing in her heart.
At the sight of her golden head under the bridal veil, the vagabond closed his restless eyes for a minute. An inner vision of poignant tenderness rose upon him. "O Love, O Death, how the wheel turns with us!"
To the bowing snuff-coloured notary from Helmstadt, the Burgrave in his glittering Chancellor's uniform was a very awe-inspiring person: he quailed under the unblinking gaze of His Excellency, beneath the jealous eyebrows. Far indeed was he from suspecting that the merest glint of the Burgravine's blue orbs—so youthful, so affable an apparition to the dusty man of law—sufficed to make Wellenshausen, the terrible, quail in his tall boots.
Kurtz the Jäger whistled between his teeth, with an impudent eye on the wedding procession, as, in company with Mademoiselle Eliza, he beheld it pass out.
"It is your mistress whose little game has fallen through," said he, tauntingly, to the French girl.
"Ah, no,par exemple," retorted she. "It is your master,mon bel oiseau, who wears the fool's cap this time. Oh!"—she clapped her sallow hands together—"how we shall amuse ourselves at Cassel!"
It could hardly be said that the wedding repast was a convivial event. Steven took upon himself a great air of condescension over this first breaking of bread at the table of his would-be executioner. His politeness was something quite overpowering. The Burgrave, after a bumper of Sillery to the health of the happy pair, essayed to carry matters with a high-handed joviality; the effect of it, against Steven's glacial indulgence, was ghastly. But, when bridegroom and bride conferred together, were it upon the merest trifle, the irresponsible youth and joy of them was not to be hidden. And Burgravine Betty watched with a glance that grew ever more steely.
She had sat down to the board in a fairly good humour, for her amber gown was becoming, and the water gardens, the statued alleys of Cassel Palace, were growing into nearer perspective. But Cousin Kielmansegg positively treated her in much the same high-horse manner as he treated his host. The most alluring twists of her shoulder, the most killing ogles, were received with odious civility; nay—and her vanity was pierced to the core—she actually caught in him a look of boredom, when he had perforce to turn and give his attention to a delicate whisper, reminiscent innuendo, sigh for the might-have-been.
Fury rose in her, sudden as a mountain whirlwind. She gripped her wineglass: the sweetness turned acid on her lips. Loud rang her laugh; and the Burgrave, glancing at her, felt a satisfaction in the ever-doubtful growling depth of his heart that his Betty should be so merry at her Beau Cousin's wedding. But Sidonia flung her aunt a startled look. The Burgravine sprang to her feet with a peremptory gesture:
"Come with me," she said.
She was in a prodigious hurry, all at once, to get the new Countess Kielmansegg away from the table into the privacy of her own turret apartment, ostensibly to robe her for the journey. The bridegroom followed his bride with a long glance; noting which, the Burgravine tossed her head.
"You must have a little patience," she cried to him insolently. "She will be ready in an hour."
Once alone with the girl, she whisked the bridal veil from her head with such feverish and ungentle hands that Sidonia turned round to look upon her in amazement, only to meet a positive glare.
"Why, Aunt Betty!"
"Why, Sidonia!—forgive, I should say: Most High Lady Countess!"
"What is the matter with you?" cried Sidonia.
She was never one to take hostility in meekness. The colour sprang to her cheek.
"Why do you look at me like that? What has vexed you?" she insisted.
"Vexed?—I?" quoth the lady. Here they were interrupted by Eliza, all flounce and bounce and smile, with pink bows to her apron and a jaunty new cap. Her mistress turned upon her fiercely. "Get out of this! When you are wanted you shall be called," she cried. Then: "Nay, my love," she proceeded, once more addressing her niece, now in a biting tone of sweetness (a diabolic inspiration had come to her: if Satan can never unmake, he can at least mar) "nay, wherefore should I be vexed? I may be ashamed for my sex; I am still, I must confess, under the shock of the recent scandal, which has rendered necessary this humiliating marriage, but——"
Sidonia went white to the lips. "I don't understand——" she cried boldly; but there was horror gathering in her eyes.
"Do you need to be told, then," asked the other, clapping her plump hands together in exasperation, "that if a young girl spends a night in a cave alone with a young man, her reputation is not worth a silver groat?"
The blood raced back to the bride's cheeks. "Do you taunt me for having saved your life, Aunt Betty? What say I?—savedyourreputation.... But what does it matter; how does this concern me now? My husband loves me; he has my faith."
The Burgravine broke into shrill laughter. Then, with a sudden change of tactics, she folded her niece to her heart with hysterical tenderness.
"Nay, my poor lamb, I am wrong! Go, go in your touching confidence; I will say no further word. It would be cruel to enlighten you a day sooner than necessary, and——"
"I think you're mad," interrupted the bride. "I cannot imagine what you mean." With steady fingers she removed the myrtle wreath from her head, then approached her aunt with a countenance singularly altered. "You must explain yourself, Aunt Betty," she said.
The Burgravine rushed again into passion. "Were you the innocent you pretend to be," retorted she, panting, "it would be no kindness to let you depart in ignorance of the true state of your affairs. But, for all your baby pose, you cannot make me believe, my love, that you are blind to the fact that this poor, chivalrous young man has only wedded you, all said and done, to save your name, your honour. A—ah, he has vowed, and you believe him, that he loves you?" (It is well to lash oneself into blind anger when it is difficult to strike in cold blood.) "Ten days ago, on that very turret platform," she dramatically pointed through the window to the silhouette of the east tower, "only ten days ago he held me to his heart—this devoted lover of yours—and consecrated his life to me!"
"I do not believe you," said Sidonia, again. But her soft, young face seemed suddenly turned to marble. "If he loves you, what does he want with me?" The girl spoke slowly. She had been shaken, but she was not convinced. "I don't believe it, Aunt Betty," she resumed. "Nobody would have said any harm of me. Every one knows me here! Wellenshausen," cried the child, in angry common-sense, "is not Vienna, nor yet Cassel!"
Betty, who possessed the faculty of changing her mind with ease, had no bashfulness at all in eating her own words when occasion offered. Indeed, so accommodating was her disposition that she was quite ready to believe her own hasty concoctions, however contradictory, at a moment's notice. Shrewish blew the gusts of the jealous temper.
"Well,mon coeur, is it not better to think him an excellent chivalrous person than to try and seek for less noble motives? 'Tis granted, isn't it, that since he loved me at nine o'clock in the evening, loved me to the point of elopement, he could hardly be ready to love you very devotedly at eight the next morning? We will not think that my Bluebeard dropped him a hint of your money bags.... The situation was delicate, you see, and if the Burgrave, who is fond of you after all, my dear, and who, no doubt, wanted to repair the damage he had wrought, failed to move the young gentleman by one plea, he may have succeeded in another. There are compensations about you: that is a fact. It was after their private conversation, remember, my little angel, that Beau Cousin proposed...."
Sidonia set her teeth in her trembling lip. Every word was a dagger wound to pride and love and maidenliness. Then all her loyalty revolted. Her knight of the forest, so base? Never! And if the Burgravine was false in the one instance, why not in all?
"Aunt Betty," she said deliberately, "this is all a lie."
"Fool," snapped Betty. She ran from the room like a fury, to return with incredible quickness. She shook a crumpled note before the bride's eyes, then spread it with frenzied fingers upon the table.
"See here! Read! read what he writes to me—to me! Ah, you know his handwriting by this time! Read, read! He asks me to meet him among the ruins. 'All will be ready!' What does that mean, think you? Why, that his coach was waiting ready for us at the foot of the hill, to whirl us two to our own land, to safety, to happiness!"
The girl reeled and pressed her hands to her eyes.
"Why, my dear," cried the other, pursuing her advantage mercilessly, "did he ever blink at you, I ask, before that disgraceful night in the dark? And indeed, how could fine young men such as he, I should like to know, find anything to fall in love with in you, you poor little country, weather-beaten thing? No, my poor child, no, you had best take it that he's just doing the recognized high-born, gentlemanly thing by you; but it will do you no harm to remember that it was me, me, that he wanted to take away from Wellenshausen, not you!"
"Then why did you not go—why did you send me to him, with your good-bye?" asked Sidonia at last, almost voiceless.
"Because I was a fool," exploded the Burgravine, in all the inconsequence of her envy.
At this particular moment it seemed to her that in her virtuous decision she had indeed missed the opportunity of her life. And she set her teeth upon such savage accents of truth that, at last, Sidonia believed.
She took the crumpled bit of paper from the table. Stunned amid the ruins of her fair edifice of happiness, she had as yet hardly realized her aunt's position, even though so shamelessly trumpeted. Now, with this proof of Steven's real feelings in her hand, Betty's guilt suddenly leaped, hideous, into shape before her.... The Burgravine von Wellenshausen, a married woman, ready to break her marriage vows, listening to words of love from the guest under her husband's roof! The bride was very innocent, but innocence is perhaps the severest judge of all. She turned eyes of horror upon her uncle's wife.
"It is well," she said, after a pause. "Leave me; I must think out what I have to do."
As she spoke she thrust the note into the bosom of her bridal frock.
To be thoroughly successful in revenge is always slightly alarming. So thought the Burgravine as she closed the door upon this unknown, this strange Sidonia. But, having gone too far to retreat, spite now resolved to reap the final gratification.
CHAPTER XVI
'TWIXT CUP AND LIP
"Warum sind benn die Rosen so blass?* * * * *Mein liebes Liebchen, sprich,D sprich, mein herzallerliebstes Lieb,Warum verliessert du mich?"HEINE.
"Warum sind benn die Rosen so blass?* * * * *Mein liebes Liebchen, sprich,D sprich, mein herzallerliebstes Lieb,Warum verliessert du mich?"HEINE.
"Warum sind benn die Rosen so blass?
* * * * *
* * * * *
Mein liebes Liebchen, sprich,
D sprich, mein herzallerliebstes Lieb,
Warum verliessert du mich?"
HEINE.
HEINE.
HEINE.