Steven and his host sat opposite each other, equally mute. After his spurt of hilarity, the Burgrave had gradually fallen into a moodiness fostered by draughts of an alarming variety of wines. Sunk into himself, his heavy chin upon his chest, he glared straight before him with suffused eyes, blood-injected—a sodden mass of helpless resentment.Fastidious Steven, ever more wrapt in disdain and aloofness, had perforce to avert his gaze from the degraded spectacle. How came such a flower as his Sidonia grafted upon so coarse a stock? He rejoiced, with a glow of intimate self-approbation, that he was carrying her away to fitter surroundings. To whom might they not have wedded her? To some sproutling, no doubt, chosen by the Burgrave—by yonder sot! Into what brutal arms might they not have cast her—the pure child of the cave night?Something called him from his musings: it was the measure of an odd little tune, played half-sourdine, half-pizzicato. Suddenly the image of a rosy mountain-side, a gold-dusted plain spreading away towards sunset, the gloom of a forest background, sprang before his mind. He saw in the midst of that scene a gloomy youth seated on a milestone, a disabled chaise, a grey horse ... and up the hill, advancing towards him, the vagabond fiddler. A broken sun ray flashed back from the yellow varnish of his instrument ... a robin sang ... the white horse cropped the leaves of young grass, with contented munching sound. The stream ran tinkling like secret laughter. Oh, what strange things had been brought into this traveller's life through the breaking of a linchpin on the Thuringian highway! He sprang to his feet. Surely Geiger-Hans was calling him!—The Burgrave never even shifted his eyes to watch his new nephew go.Steven found the fiddler at the head of the downward path; and though he was seated, there was an air of travel about him. He was alone. The charm of his music had no power that day at Wellenshausen; fleshpots and drinking cans filled the household mind. The young man's heart contracted; he had learned to feel strange attachment for his strange comrade."I knew you were playing a good-bye," he cried. "Will you not wait and see us go?"The fiddler's eyes flung his glance, uneasily, to where the white road cleared the shadowy green of the fields below and dipped into the dark bluish lap of the forest."No, no; I must go!" he answered, wildly, Steven thought."Without seeing Sidonia again?" exclaimed the young man.The fiddler laughed inconsequently. He was now playing a kind of jig, almost on one string, a restless hopping measure which suddenly made Steven long to be gone likewise."Two fine mules are waiting for you," said the musician, with a quick look. "They have hung Sidonia's with flower-wreaths. And you have red trappings on yours. Hark! you can hear them jingle their bells. They are impatient, they are waiting for you. Hey, bridegroom, why do you delay? You should have been gone as soon as you had made her yours.""She is dressing for the journey," said Steven."Look," said Geiger-Hans, pointing with his bow, "yonder, by the torrent bridge stands your carriage. You can see the sun gleam on the harness. If you had my ears, you would hear your horses stamp. They, too, are impatient. But the bride will cling to the old stones at the last ... and, fie, who would hurry a lady? I shall be far, far away before you two set out. Nay, keep me not back, I am more impatient for the road than even your horses down there, fiery with the week's oats ... than even you, comrade, on your wedding day!""Certainly," thought Steven, uneasily, "if ever I doubted it before, the poor fellow is not as other men. How his eyes burn in their deep sockets—I fear our Geiger-Hans is mad."At this the other nodded to him, with his fantastic intuition."You are right, I am mad," he said, "and I thank God—for it is a dull world for wise fools. And your sanity and wisdom and dulness, Sir Count, have learned something worth the learning of my madness. Aye, and received something better than knowledge too: you will grant that." And as Steven stared, half-offended, half-startled, the fiddler, with his smile upon him and his brilliant eyes, fell to playing again that tune of the road with which he had first greeted him."Here is a dull lad seated upon a mile-stone," he half chanted to the cadence, "and he has nothing better to do with his youth than to jog along the plain's highway, the dusty common road that all may tread ... while behind him runs the green path of the forest, and dear adventure lies in hidden glade for him who cares to seek it—so goodly a youth to waste his golden minutes! ... And here comes a wandering music-maker, and a crazy one into the bargain. And this is his freak: to see if he cannot knock a spark out of the high-born block. Within the youth of this goodly body lurks there no soul to fire? And, behold, it proves a good scholar—a very honest lad! Sparks are struck out of his block head. And there is a soul too, and it can burn with a very brave flame.... And in the forest glade trembles a Wind-Flower; let him pluck it if he can and wear it in his breast, for his is a steady hand and a clean, and it will gather the flower tenderly."The fiddler clapped his hand on the strings and they were mute."Farewell, little comrade," he said, changing his tone, and Steven thought that if the man's eyes had had tears in them, the sadness of them would have been less intolerable. "Haste back to your bride, impatient heart!" added the musician gravely then. "A little impatience is good. But, oh, hear me:—hurry not her virginal dawn, that the sunrise be full golden for you both! If love is to have its exquisite hour, love must be both patient and fierce." He slung his violin over his shoulder, and took a sudden nimble step on the downward rocky way.The half-hour struck, echoing from the gateway clock. A dreary quarter still to wait, according to the Burgravine's warning."Oh, comrade, stay a little yet!" cried the bridegroom.The fiddler merely waved his hand. He was scrambling down the steep way in crazy haste."I have a thousand things to say still," cried Steven again. He curled his hand round his mouth and called: "When shall we meet?"The fiddler halted suddenly. He was already far on his way, for he had gone with incredible speed. But he waved his hat above his head with a fantastic flourish; then he shot behind a big rock and was lost to sight.It seemed to Steven that it was an uncompromising good-bye, and it was with an odd sense of oppression that he turned his own steps back towards the gateway. He would have struck any other man to the earth who had dared once to insult, browbeat, or command him as this poor wanderer had so often done. Where lay the spell? He had power over all that came in contact with him; and—it was true—what marvellous things had he had to give! The young man's heart began to throb as he thought of his bride, and he quickened his step.... The Wind-Flower, that was his at last, his Fair Dawn!The bridegroom entered with eager yet reverent step; but, upon sight of the bride, checked his advance, startled, amazed. Sidonia sat on a high-backed chair as on a judgment-seat, with face coldly set, yet with eyes blazing reproach."I sent for you,Herr Graf," she said, with great distinctness of enunciation, "to tell you that I decline to go away with you."The blood rushed to Steven's brain. "I do not understand," he said, even as she but a little while before; and his tone was that of sudden anger. The revulsion of feeling was too strong, too sudden; his first emotion was overwhelming wrath. "What do you mean?" he demanded.Steel cannot strike steel but the sparks must fly. A fierce pride had they both. Perhaps Sidonia, in her child-heart, had looked for consternation on her bridegroom's face, had pictured him thunderstruck, protesting, falling at her feet; her wounded vanity now was reinforced by a host of unknown feelings which rushed almost for hatred. Under this arrogant eye, to this haughty bidding, she would not stoop to explanation, still less to complaint."It is sufficient that you should understand," she told him, "that now we part. I do not go with you. Go you and forget me!""Sidonia!" he ejaculated, stupefaction for the moment sweeping all other feelings away.Strangely enough, it never dawned upon him to guess at the truth. Men, especially young men who have had practically no dealings with the opposite sex, are very slow to grasp woman's spitefulness, woman's deceit. He had felt shame at his own weakness of compliance in the matter of the Burgravine, but no sense of guilt could remain where he knew all desire to sin to have been so conspicuously absent. He stood staring at Sidonia's little face convulsed with frowns."Oh, sir," she cried, with a disdainful laugh, "you have done all that honour required of you. It is quite enough. We need make no fine phrases for each other's benefit. The situation is very clear, and thereupon we may separate!"At these inconceivable words a horrible suspicion sprang upon him; he did not pause to measure the probabilities, to contrast what he knew with what he did not understand. Was it possible that this young creature had but played a part with him? Had she feigned sweet maiden love and wedded him, virginally tender, only to save the threatened honour of her name? Nay; more monstrous thought still! Was the whole business a hideous conspiracy? He was shaken as by a storm. Crimson rushed to his face. In two strides he was beside her menacing."You are my wife!" he cried. "You are mine—mine! You belong to me! You must do as I order—as I order!"His look filled her with terror. Child-woman, she shrank instinctively from something to her nameless, yet infinitely offending. Clasping her hands upon her breast to still the throbbing of her heart, she heard, beneath her fingers, the whisper of Aunt Betty's billet.Stung afresh to scorn, she reared her head and measured him with her glance. In silence she stood, trying to reason out the tangled problem for herself. With her ignorance of life, her inborn pride, with her passionate woman's heart and her childish mind, she was bound to go far and wide astray.If the marriage on his part was not a mere piece of chivalrous self-sacrifice, an idea unbearably insulting in itself, why should he now wish to keep her against her will, since the conventions were satisfied? What gain could she be to him, since he did not love her? And how could he love her, he who was in love with Betty? As in a vision of red flame, she recalled how he and Betty had danced and coquetted together that first night of all; he had not had even a glance wherewith to recognize the little Sidonia who had waited on him in the forest house. Oh, it was true, he had loved Betty from the beginning. And she, Sidonia, who had let herself be won by a few careless words, was at the best only a sacrifice to the world's idea of high-born, gentlemanly decorum. The memory of these last days, so exquisite to her, was blighted. She had never been anything to him, that was clear. He had been kind to her, indulgent, but he had never once, she remembered now, told her that he loved her. And she, fool! had never realized, even with Betty's example before her, that people could seek to wed each other without love. Out of her own mad abundance she had lent to him. And the poor little coin he had doled out in return to her, she had taken for gold. But now, why should he look at her with those fierce, greedy eyes? Why should this "poor, chivalrous young man," as Betty called him, claim her as his bargain, and in these brutal tones?Once more Betty's voice, with its devilish suggestion, rang in her ears:Of course, my love, there are compensations about you!"You can have my money if you will—and I am very rich, as you know—so that you only go. Go!" she cried suddenly.Sidonia shook from head to foot as she spoke at last. But her eyes and her voice were indomitable in their determination. As if her slender sunburnt hand had struck him a deadly blow, Steven Lee, Count Kielmansegg, stepped back a couple of paces, and the blood, ebbing from his face, left it grey. He paused for a while, then made a bow, turned on his heel, and went to the door. On the threshold he looked back at her for a second again. It was a farewell look, and bore in it a pride as high and bleeding as her own, a reproach as keen. She saw that his lip trembled. Then the door was closed, very gently, between them, and she heard his steps die away down the winding stone stairs.She glanced at her new wedding-ring and thought her heart must break, but yet she sat and made no effort to recall him.CHAPTER XVIITHE SKIRT OF WAR"And there was mounting, in hot haste, the steed.The mustering squadron and the clattering carWent pouring forward with impetuous speed..."BYRON.It was a day of scurrying breezes and dappled skies. Long pools reflected blue and white in the ruts of his Majesty King Jerome of Westphalia's neglected highway. Wide and deep ruts they were, tracks of the "Grand Army" that had been; and even a village child could have told that great guns and waggons had passed that way before the sweeping by of the last spring storm.But the rider, on his big-boned, iron-grey horse, splashed through the mud at reckless speed. He had no thought for the story of the wounded country road. Its tragic significance would have left him unmoved had he understood. Such experience as he had just been through changes the whole world in a man's eyes: he becomes as one who, a moment before in perfect health, finds himself shattered by some disabling accident—nothing in life can ever look, ever feel the same again. He had wrenched himself free of love's snare as the wild thing of the woods from the teeth of the springe; but at what vital hurt, how maimed, how bruised, how deeply marked! What was it to him that the west wind, dashing against his face, was balmy with the breath of the black pinewoods on the rising slopes to his right; that the rank meadows that fell away to the left were colour alive, gold-green in the sunlight; that shadows swept across them like spirit messages? His ears were deaf to the organ chant of the pines, to the shrill call of the bird echoing back from the blue vault. Unmoved, he trotted through the poverty-stricken villages, by the deserted homesteads, once flourishing, beside the wasted cornfields. One whom life was treating as evilly as himself could not be expected to bestow even the alms of a pitying thought to the peasant soldiers, stiff in the snows of Russia, or plodding, vanquished at last, in Spanish rocky deserts, nor to the starving families to whom the breadwinner would never return. He did not even care whither he was hurrying, so long as he crossed the nearest frontier of a country to him accursed. To this goal all the passions of his mind were pointed.* * * * *With head bent towards the wind, and fiddle slung on his shoulder, a wandering musician was breasting the hill, where the high Imperial road skirting the Thuringian forest bends towards that fertile valley watered by the Fulda. The sinews of Steven's steed faltered before the steepness of the ascent, and the mounted traveller, curbing his impatience to suit the way, found himself level with the humble wayfarer at a pace that made companionship inevitable. Yet, on the instant that he had recognized him, the rider would fain have passed unnoticed. It seemed hard, a perversity of fate, that in this wide, empty country, he should stumble upon the one man whom he would of all others avoid; the man who had had so much influence—he now thought for disaster—upon his life.Geiger-Hans, the friend, the comrade, had become, in his eyes, the enemy. To his meddling he owed his present misfortune, the humiliation that was eating into his soul, the disillusion which made even the soft west wind bitter to his taste.The wanderer started as he beheld the young face looking down at him from over the horseman's cloak."You!" he exclaimed."I!" said Steven.The man on foot halted. He on horseback unconsciously reined in. The two remained gazing at each other, and in the eyes of both was hot reproach.Slowly the blood crept back crimson to the countenance of Geiger-Hans, which had grown livid under its tan."And whither set you off alone, bridegroom, on your grey horse?" asked he at length, in that tone of irony under which he hid most of emotions."Anywhere," answered the bridegroom with a pale smile, "so long as I put space between myself and my bride."Geiger-Hans drew his brows together into a dark frown. His nostrils dilated, the corners of his mouth twitched."Peste!" said he under his voice. Then: "Is it not a little premature? The joy bells can hardly be silent yet. Had it been a few months later—but now!"His tone was cynical, but his eye was stern and anxious."Months?" echoed the rider with a laugh. "It took her but the measure of minutes to decide on my worth.""Her?" commented the musician with inquiring emphasis."Did you think," answered Steven—and, though he strove to be cool, the passion of his wrath wrote itself on every line of his face and vibrated in his voice like the first mutterings of thunder—"did you think I went through the marriage ceremony for the pure amusement of making a nine days' scandal and deserting my hour-old wife? That would have been a brilliant jest indeed! No; if you must know, the situation is of her making. She took her woman's privilege ... and changed her mind.""She was a child yesterday," said Geiger-Hans.There was pain in Steven's smile as he returned:"She was no child this morning.""But, heavens!" cried the other impatiently, "even so. Did she play the woman, was it not the more reason for you to play the man? You left her, you left her ... is it possible? For a few sharp words, perhaps, some silly misunderstanding! Why, she was yours, man; and you should have carried her with you, were it on the crupper of that high-boned grey.""Aye," replied Steven. "Even so, as you say. It also dawned upon me, deficient as I am in wits, that the time had come for me to play the man. I actually announced my intention of carrying her away with me by main force—not on this brute, but in the coach prepared for our bridal journey. She reminded me that I took her fortune with her.""Ah, bah!" said the fiddler, and winced as if he had been struck."It seems she is an heiress," continued the bridegroom's voice over his head. "She offered me half her fortune—her whole fortune—if I would go without her! Hey! what answer would you have a man make to that?"It seemed as if the fiddler could not say; even his ready tongue had no reply.Steven had meant to take a more dignified attitude with the vagrant; to assume as gentlemanly a mask of indifference as possible. The unexpected meeting (and Steven had no intention but that it should be the last) should be conducted with a rational regard to the distance between them. His heart was no longer on his sleeve for this wayside jackdaw to peck at. But the old power of the fellow's presence, and also his own youthful pain, were too strong for him. Into the silence he dropped a desperate cry:"Oh, curse you, Geiger-Hans; why could you not have passed me by on the road that evening, and left me to my own life!"The fiddler looked up at him, still mute; but there was something in his look that went straight to the core of Steven's wounded soul, and brought a sense of comfort and of strength. And yet—strange! it actually seemed as if Steven's sorrow were nothing to the sorrow of Geiger-Hans, this hour. They were enemies no more—they were comrades, struck by the same misfortune. But Geiger-Hans was brave; he knew how to bear his share. Steven felt suddenly ashamed."And so you rode away?" said the musician then, laying his hand on the horse's shoulder.It was to Steven as if that lean hand had kindly touched himself."Aye—I got the first nag to be had for money, and rode away, leaving her my carriage and horses and servants. For a Countess Waldorff-Kielmansegg must have her equipage! That episode is closed!"The rider chucked his reins and set the rested horse to his labour up the hill once more.Geiger-Hans had remained a second, gazing at the stones in the road; then he roused himself, and caught up the rider in a couple of quick strides. His shoulders were rounded as beneath a burden. Yet Fate had played him too many scurvy tricks for him to indulge in the astounded rebellion of youth. After a while he looked up and spoke again."These women," he said, "these children—they insult a man because they do not understand. Mischief has been made—mischief is always alert somewhere when marriage-bells are ringing. Go back to her!""I!" cried Steven Lee."Go back to her!" said the fiddler again, as he trudged the stony way. "Be generous——"Steven laughed out loud; and Geiger-Hans knew that the wound had gone deeper even than he suspected."I am for Vienna," said the bridegroom briefly. "But I shall make fit settlements upon her, never fear, and such provisions as may safeguard her honour ... and my own. And as——""Nay, comrade," interrupted the other, sharply, "such a union as yours—why, 'twould be the easiest contract to annul that ever two young fools repented of."Steven's hands contracted over the leather."Do you think so?" said he, and grew darkly crimson. "Oh, of course," he said, and laughed, "that would be much the best. Aha! Annul! Well, she has only to wish it."The musician, observing him, showed now a lighter countenance, and presently smiled to himself. Then he shifted his instrument from his back to his breast and began to twang the strings, as if in deep reflection."We shall part at the top of the hill," said the rider."Shall we?" said the wayfarer. "I think not. Listen, my lord."The rousing autumn wind brought indeed a strange distant rumour on its wings, and the fiddler imposed silence on his restless fingers and stood still himself, leaning his ear.Once more Steven arrested his horse. There is nothing so infectious as the curiosity of the ear. The flapping gust fell as they halted; and then the sounds which it had carried over the crest of the knoll seemed to be repeated with much greater distinctness from the vale in their rear."What is it?" asked he.It was a sound like the beat of giant storm-rain upon forest leaves, only that it was measured at repeated intervals by rhythmic jingle and clink. Even as he spoke, Steven heard a crisp drumming of hoofs separate itself from the confusion; then, upon the ring of a commanding voice, the thunder-wave of advance broke itself into silence. And in the midst of this silence a succession of cracking shots suddenly pattered close on one another, as beads dropping from a string."Stand back!" cried the fiddler. And, suiting the action to the word, he seized the horse by the bit and forced it backwards into the ditch that girt the road on the side of the fields."But what is it?" asked Steven once more, as clamour within the woods rose again: a hideous medley of human voices wrangling like angry beasts, of plunging and neighing of horses, crackling of boughs and thud of iron hoofs. The fiddler dilated his nostrils. He stood leaning against the flank of the grey, his right hand still firmly on the bit. A fine blue vapour, pungent of smell, was oozing between the dark firs."Have you never smelt it before, you innocent?" said he, looking up at the rider, and his sunburnt face was kindled by stern fires. "Yet there's scarce a square rood of Europe, these twelve years, that has not known the smoke of this holocaust. It is war, man!"The words were still on his lips when the placid front of the forest before them was shaken and pierced and rent in a hundred places. Red-coated hussars, with flying blue dolmans—bareheaded most, but some with huge shako and plume at a dishevelled angle—broke covert along the whole line, crashing through the underwood, leaping, it seemed, one upon the other, each man inclining in his saddle and spurring towards the downward slope at a mad gallop.Steven's horse shivered under him. It had, no doubt, in its youth been a charger: it was now seized with martial ardour, and flinging up its head to shake off the fiddler's grip, displayed such a strong intention to join in the race—which no doubt it conceived to be a glorious charge—that a less practised rider would have found it hard to keep the saddle.As it was, Steven could gather but a confused impression of the flying troop as it thundered past—of a whirl, bucketing, straining, pumping, clanking, splashing; of men's faces, crimson, distorted, open-mouthed; of bridles slavered with blood and foam; of craning horses' necks, and nostrils afire!Geiger-Hans gave a shrill laugh:"The most gallant the Hussars of the Guard of His Majesty Jerome the First (and last!) in full rout! And, oh, shadow of Moscow! who are the pursuers?"CHAPTER XVIIITHE RAID"List his discourse of war, and you shall hearA fearful battle rendered you in music."(King Henry V.).The forest was now alive with hoarse, guttural cries, as if the wooded depths had released some giant brood of ravens. And then, helter-skelter, even as the last belated hussar, blood streaming from a black gash in his forehead, clattered heavily rearmost of his comrades, reins loose, clinging to the saddle—they came! Squat riders on squat horses—cattle and man as shaggy and unkempt one as the other—with long tags of hair bobbing round wild-bearded faces, pointed fur caps drawn down to the eyes, sheepskin-clad knees up almost to the chin, stirruped with rope, brandishing rough spears; miscellaneous booty—a goose, a sucking-pig, a frying-pan, maybe a cottage clock—swinging at the saddle-bow! They came, shouting their crow-call, exulting, squealing, grunting! They came, filled the road with clamour and clatter, and stench ... and were gone before Steven could draw, it seemed to him, the full breath of his amazement!Like the second gust of the hurricane, they had gathered, broken past them, and were lost; the clamour of their tempest way rising loud, then growing swiftly faint in the distance, as the valley received them."Now," said Geiger-Hans, looking up, "here is an experience for your English-bred youth. Fate has annihilated the centuries; you have beheld the passage of the Huns!Pouah!what a wild-beast trail they have left behind them! To think that Napoleon should have gone to seek these wolves and jackals in their steppes, and spread the Cossack over the face of Europe!"He sprang out of the ditch; and the grey, much injured in feeling, snorting and sullenly upheaving its haunches, was induced to follow. A roll of far-off musketry crepitated up to them from the plain."Do you hear?" said Geiger-Hans. "And do you know what that means?""They are fighting on the other side of the hill," said Steven, spurring towards the crest."Yes, it is perhaps worth your youthship's attention. Do not, however, flatter yourself that you are viewing a battle. A mere skirmish,un combat, nothing more; one of the hundred or so that takes place now, week in, week out, on the marches of the mighty conqueror's lands. For a small kingdom, little brother Jerome can flatter himself to have gathered to it, from without and within, a considerable collection of enemies—Cossacks hanging like jackals on the flanks of the great army; Prussians from the north, Saxons from the east, peasants and students from his own villages and cities. This raid is scarce like to appear in theGazette, but it is enough, for the combatants! The dead yonder are as dead as though they had fallen at Austerlitz or the Moskowa. Hark, at the snap of the musket—that is the sound of the Empire cracking! 'Tis the Empire cracking," repeated the musician, running alongside, his hand at the stirrup-leather. "And the little House of Westphalia is doomed to fall, as the cottage falls on the hillside from the earthquake that has wrecked the city.... A back-wave from Moscow have we here to-day."They had halted on the crest, and their gaze plunged into the open valley. A canopy of blue smoke hung over the fields that spread between their knoll and a little town, some half-mile distant. The mist was pierced with slow-moving lines of bayonets which flashed back the sunshine; it was traversed with colour.Geiger-Hans ran a knowing eye over the scene:"Aha! What did I tell you? Those are Prussians, holding the townlet," said he. "Contrast their sober uniform with Jerome's scarlets and greens, his plumes and gold lace. There go our runaways! See them draw up behind yonder crimson platoon—Brother Jerome's Grenadiers of the Guard, for he must ape big brother Napoleon.... Look, our friends the Cossacks roll back together like a swarm of hornets at the foot of the hill; they find themselves cut off from their Prussian allies—and if the Hussars but rally in time, we may see therôlesof the drama reversed in a minute."He fell abruptly silent: something had flown between his head and Steven's as the latter bent towards him from his saddle—something that droned a strange song as it passed and puffed a cold breath on their cheeks."What was that?" asked Steven, starting."That was a stray Death," said the musician, placidly. "What say you—shall we seek cover?""Let us see the thing out!" cried Steven."There will be more lead loose," said Geiger-Hans, glancing up with an odd expression. "Death flies on a capricious wing when this sort of game is played.""Why, then," answered the bridegroom, with his smile of bitterness, "that might be the simplest solution of all; at least, I should not be deeply mourned.""If that be your mind towards bullets," said the fiddler, with a shadow of sarcasm, "for once your youth and my age are in harmony. But what if you were to tie your horse behind some forest trees? There is no need of offering him up also to our altar of despair—and he might be of use to one of us, when the day is over."Steven admitted the suggestion without a word. Presently both men sat upon a high bank, their legs dangling into space."How inspiring!" said the fiddler. He unslung his instrument. "Did you hear that volley? It came from troops trained under Bonaparte, I'll wager my fiddle-bow. Here the insurgents respond. See those puffs of white smoke in and out of the line under the village wall! Not a gun together. Loose shooting ... but good hatred! I'll back it in the long run! Drums! shouts! The bayonet charge. What did I tell you? here come our Huns back again ... what's left of them. I am inspired! Hark you, this is the song of the fight.... First come the Grenadiers, cool and scornful, musket on breast, arms folded; they march like one man. 'I have served, under the Eagle; I have been of the Guard of the Great Emperor. To Moscow I have been ... and back: to-day it is sunshine: it is child's play, but I would rather be back on the ice with my Emperor. To me he is the Little Corporal: I am one of the old lot. It is I and mine who put the crown on his head. To Jena we went singing:"'"We'll go and bring a kingdom home,To give little brother Jerome."He said little brother should have a little kingdom of his own—well, what is this rabble that would undo his work? ... It was warm work at Jena, comrade—oh, and it was cold at Moscow!'..."'Aim at the Old Guards, kerls' (says the Prussian to his gunners). 'Hurl down the Guard, and the field is ours! ... Hurl down the Guard, aha!'"'I have to come out to fight for the Fatherland' (says the peasant lad); 'my mother put a green sprig in my hat. I shall put a notch on my musket-stock for every Frenchman I have killed, and shall show it to my children when Gretel and I marry.' ...Oh, but the Old Guard shoots steady! Green sprig is down on the meadow; his comrades jump over him, one steps on his hand, but he feels nothing. Poor little Patriot; he has not even struck one blow for the Fatherland, but his red blood is sinking into the soil! How bright will bloom the flower of liberty in the land thus watered!"The fiddler wielded his bow with a kind of frenzy, and his battle music rose above the clamour of the distant combat, the scramble and clatter of the Cossacks up the hills, their defiant calls and grunts.The remnant of the wild horde had reached the summit again in mad disorder, seeking the forest shelter at the first available point. A flight of bullets came singing through the air among them: the company of grenadiers, marking the routed enemy against the sky-line, had flung a last contemptuous volley after them. The savages squealed and ducked, clinging to their shaggy steeds in fantastic attitudes; a few were struck; one fell; his nearest comrade caught up the reins of his mount and, with exultant yell, led it away with him. The dead man was dragged a few yards till his inert foot fell loose of the hempen stirrup and he lay, a heap of discoloured rags, among the stones. Fear was on no man's face, but grins of defiance undaunted. Their war-cry was still of triumph.Geiger-Hans sprang to his feet on the bank. He waved his bow, then drove it across the strings to a new song, shrill and mocking—a song of scorn for the fugitive:"Spread your dark wings and fly, obscene birds! Yet exult as you go: the scent of Death is in the air. In a little while you may gorge—but to-day the stricken Eagle can still beat back the carrion crows. Fly, flap your wings—caw—caw!"[image]"Spread your dark wings, obscene birds! ... the scent of Death is in the air. In a little while you may gorge! ... Fly, flap your wings—caw—caw!"Steven stared amazed at his companion, and listened spellbound. The musician was like a man possessed. His grizzled locks seemed to stand out from his face, his left hand danced along the strings, his right arm worked with fury. If ever catgut and wood mocked and insulted, that possessed instrument of Geiger-Hans' did so that day of the combat of Heiligenstadt, in the teeth of the defeated Kalmuck. "Caw, caw!" it shrieked, catching the very guttural of the last belated Cossack, who struggled in rear of his comrades on a wounded horse. The man turned back in his sheepskin saddle, fury in his bloodshot eyes, poised his weapon over his head, measuring his distance."Take care!" cried Steven, leaping from the bank. But louder and shriller played Geiger-Hans. The savage hurled the lance; and Steven, flinging himself forward, with arms extended, caught the blow. He rolled back upon the player and both came to the ground together. The music fell mute. Shouting victory, the Cossack forced his bleeding nag into the brushwood.* * * * *"If Madame Sidonia were here," said the fiddler, with emphasis on the married title, "what a hero you would be to her!"He had bound Steven's shoulder—the wound was an ugly gash enough—ministered to him with the wine of the country from a flask of his own, and water from the brook. The contest for the village, between King Jerome's troops and the raiders, was yet undecided, and fitful sounds of battle were still growling in the valley.The winds blustered in the tree-tops; they had swept the sky from west to east more blue than there is colour to describe. There was a wonderful pulse of growing things about them. Every grass-blade shook in lusty individual life. The leafage was full of bright-eyed, feathered broods, planning the autumn flitting. The whole forest hummed with the minute creatures of Nature's fecundity.... In the plain, openly and with tumult, the masters of earth were strewing its fair face with Death."If Madame Sidonia were here!" repeated the fiddler, and cast a sly look at the young man's face over the last knot of his bandage.Steven frowned and was silent."They will go on tearing each other to pieces down there till night. What say you? Shall not grey steed retrace his steps and carry Master Bridegroom back where he should be?""No!" cried the other, scarlet leaping to his livid face. "A thousand times no! I am not yet the base thing she deems me."The musician subdued a sigh."What a noble thing is true pride!" quoth he, picked up his fiddle and began to examine it carefully.—"Heavens!" he cried, "if you had broken it! Can a man fling himself upon another in such inconsiderate fashion when there's a Stradivarius between them!""Had it not been for my want of consideration," said Steven, with some pique, "I think the precious instrument would hardly have known the touch of your fingers again."The fiddler laughed out loud, as if the boyish outcry had pleased him; then, as suddenly, grew grave."My friend," said he, "the steel has not been tempered, I fear, the lead has not been cast, that will reach this heart.... Ah, Lord!"It was an exclamation of uttermost weariness. He picked at his strings and tightened them with absent fingers. Then he flashed a smile at his companion:"You are amazed, are you not, at my ingratitude? What! Here have I, Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg, preserved the existence of this wretched tramp at the risk of my noble, valuable one—here have I shed my blue blood to save his muddy fluid, and the creature has not even a 'Thank you'! ... Comrade," went on the musician, and his eye dilated, his countenance assumed a lofty mien, "I would not shame myself and you by such a word as 'Thanks'! The creature that would not give himself to save his fellow-creature when he can is not worth the name of man."Steven, abashed that he had indeed thought himself heroic, blushed again and, looking down, began idly plucking with his unhurt right hand the wood-violets that grew in patches on the bank. The fiddler followed his movements, then his eye suddenly grew fixed, his jaw dropped. Slowly the healthy colour ebbed from his cheek and left it ashen. Steven, looking at him, was astonished and alarmed."For heaven's sake!" he cried, "are you ill?"The fiddler stretched out his hand and culled the posy from the other's grasp. The touch of his fingers was as cold as death."Violets!" said he, in a sort of whisper. "There is blood on them!" He shuddered from head to foot."Perhaps all the mystery is but that he is a poor mad gentleman," thought Steven, It was an idea which could not fail to recur to him in the company of this fantastic being; but never had it seemed so justified.
Steven and his host sat opposite each other, equally mute. After his spurt of hilarity, the Burgrave had gradually fallen into a moodiness fostered by draughts of an alarming variety of wines. Sunk into himself, his heavy chin upon his chest, he glared straight before him with suffused eyes, blood-injected—a sodden mass of helpless resentment.
Fastidious Steven, ever more wrapt in disdain and aloofness, had perforce to avert his gaze from the degraded spectacle. How came such a flower as his Sidonia grafted upon so coarse a stock? He rejoiced, with a glow of intimate self-approbation, that he was carrying her away to fitter surroundings. To whom might they not have wedded her? To some sproutling, no doubt, chosen by the Burgrave—by yonder sot! Into what brutal arms might they not have cast her—the pure child of the cave night?
Something called him from his musings: it was the measure of an odd little tune, played half-sourdine, half-pizzicato. Suddenly the image of a rosy mountain-side, a gold-dusted plain spreading away towards sunset, the gloom of a forest background, sprang before his mind. He saw in the midst of that scene a gloomy youth seated on a milestone, a disabled chaise, a grey horse ... and up the hill, advancing towards him, the vagabond fiddler. A broken sun ray flashed back from the yellow varnish of his instrument ... a robin sang ... the white horse cropped the leaves of young grass, with contented munching sound. The stream ran tinkling like secret laughter. Oh, what strange things had been brought into this traveller's life through the breaking of a linchpin on the Thuringian highway! He sprang to his feet. Surely Geiger-Hans was calling him!—The Burgrave never even shifted his eyes to watch his new nephew go.
Steven found the fiddler at the head of the downward path; and though he was seated, there was an air of travel about him. He was alone. The charm of his music had no power that day at Wellenshausen; fleshpots and drinking cans filled the household mind. The young man's heart contracted; he had learned to feel strange attachment for his strange comrade.
"I knew you were playing a good-bye," he cried. "Will you not wait and see us go?"
The fiddler's eyes flung his glance, uneasily, to where the white road cleared the shadowy green of the fields below and dipped into the dark bluish lap of the forest.
"No, no; I must go!" he answered, wildly, Steven thought.
"Without seeing Sidonia again?" exclaimed the young man.
The fiddler laughed inconsequently. He was now playing a kind of jig, almost on one string, a restless hopping measure which suddenly made Steven long to be gone likewise.
"Two fine mules are waiting for you," said the musician, with a quick look. "They have hung Sidonia's with flower-wreaths. And you have red trappings on yours. Hark! you can hear them jingle their bells. They are impatient, they are waiting for you. Hey, bridegroom, why do you delay? You should have been gone as soon as you had made her yours."
"She is dressing for the journey," said Steven.
"Look," said Geiger-Hans, pointing with his bow, "yonder, by the torrent bridge stands your carriage. You can see the sun gleam on the harness. If you had my ears, you would hear your horses stamp. They, too, are impatient. But the bride will cling to the old stones at the last ... and, fie, who would hurry a lady? I shall be far, far away before you two set out. Nay, keep me not back, I am more impatient for the road than even your horses down there, fiery with the week's oats ... than even you, comrade, on your wedding day!"
"Certainly," thought Steven, uneasily, "if ever I doubted it before, the poor fellow is not as other men. How his eyes burn in their deep sockets—I fear our Geiger-Hans is mad."
At this the other nodded to him, with his fantastic intuition.
"You are right, I am mad," he said, "and I thank God—for it is a dull world for wise fools. And your sanity and wisdom and dulness, Sir Count, have learned something worth the learning of my madness. Aye, and received something better than knowledge too: you will grant that." And as Steven stared, half-offended, half-startled, the fiddler, with his smile upon him and his brilliant eyes, fell to playing again that tune of the road with which he had first greeted him.
"Here is a dull lad seated upon a mile-stone," he half chanted to the cadence, "and he has nothing better to do with his youth than to jog along the plain's highway, the dusty common road that all may tread ... while behind him runs the green path of the forest, and dear adventure lies in hidden glade for him who cares to seek it—so goodly a youth to waste his golden minutes! ... And here comes a wandering music-maker, and a crazy one into the bargain. And this is his freak: to see if he cannot knock a spark out of the high-born block. Within the youth of this goodly body lurks there no soul to fire? And, behold, it proves a good scholar—a very honest lad! Sparks are struck out of his block head. And there is a soul too, and it can burn with a very brave flame.... And in the forest glade trembles a Wind-Flower; let him pluck it if he can and wear it in his breast, for his is a steady hand and a clean, and it will gather the flower tenderly."
The fiddler clapped his hand on the strings and they were mute.
"Farewell, little comrade," he said, changing his tone, and Steven thought that if the man's eyes had had tears in them, the sadness of them would have been less intolerable. "Haste back to your bride, impatient heart!" added the musician gravely then. "A little impatience is good. But, oh, hear me:—hurry not her virginal dawn, that the sunrise be full golden for you both! If love is to have its exquisite hour, love must be both patient and fierce." He slung his violin over his shoulder, and took a sudden nimble step on the downward rocky way.
The half-hour struck, echoing from the gateway clock. A dreary quarter still to wait, according to the Burgravine's warning.
"Oh, comrade, stay a little yet!" cried the bridegroom.
The fiddler merely waved his hand. He was scrambling down the steep way in crazy haste.
"I have a thousand things to say still," cried Steven again. He curled his hand round his mouth and called: "When shall we meet?"
The fiddler halted suddenly. He was already far on his way, for he had gone with incredible speed. But he waved his hat above his head with a fantastic flourish; then he shot behind a big rock and was lost to sight.
It seemed to Steven that it was an uncompromising good-bye, and it was with an odd sense of oppression that he turned his own steps back towards the gateway. He would have struck any other man to the earth who had dared once to insult, browbeat, or command him as this poor wanderer had so often done. Where lay the spell? He had power over all that came in contact with him; and—it was true—what marvellous things had he had to give! The young man's heart began to throb as he thought of his bride, and he quickened his step.... The Wind-Flower, that was his at last, his Fair Dawn!
The bridegroom entered with eager yet reverent step; but, upon sight of the bride, checked his advance, startled, amazed. Sidonia sat on a high-backed chair as on a judgment-seat, with face coldly set, yet with eyes blazing reproach.
"I sent for you,Herr Graf," she said, with great distinctness of enunciation, "to tell you that I decline to go away with you."
The blood rushed to Steven's brain. "I do not understand," he said, even as she but a little while before; and his tone was that of sudden anger. The revulsion of feeling was too strong, too sudden; his first emotion was overwhelming wrath. "What do you mean?" he demanded.
Steel cannot strike steel but the sparks must fly. A fierce pride had they both. Perhaps Sidonia, in her child-heart, had looked for consternation on her bridegroom's face, had pictured him thunderstruck, protesting, falling at her feet; her wounded vanity now was reinforced by a host of unknown feelings which rushed almost for hatred. Under this arrogant eye, to this haughty bidding, she would not stoop to explanation, still less to complaint.
"It is sufficient that you should understand," she told him, "that now we part. I do not go with you. Go you and forget me!"
"Sidonia!" he ejaculated, stupefaction for the moment sweeping all other feelings away.
Strangely enough, it never dawned upon him to guess at the truth. Men, especially young men who have had practically no dealings with the opposite sex, are very slow to grasp woman's spitefulness, woman's deceit. He had felt shame at his own weakness of compliance in the matter of the Burgravine, but no sense of guilt could remain where he knew all desire to sin to have been so conspicuously absent. He stood staring at Sidonia's little face convulsed with frowns.
"Oh, sir," she cried, with a disdainful laugh, "you have done all that honour required of you. It is quite enough. We need make no fine phrases for each other's benefit. The situation is very clear, and thereupon we may separate!"
At these inconceivable words a horrible suspicion sprang upon him; he did not pause to measure the probabilities, to contrast what he knew with what he did not understand. Was it possible that this young creature had but played a part with him? Had she feigned sweet maiden love and wedded him, virginally tender, only to save the threatened honour of her name? Nay; more monstrous thought still! Was the whole business a hideous conspiracy? He was shaken as by a storm. Crimson rushed to his face. In two strides he was beside her menacing.
"You are my wife!" he cried. "You are mine—mine! You belong to me! You must do as I order—as I order!"
His look filled her with terror. Child-woman, she shrank instinctively from something to her nameless, yet infinitely offending. Clasping her hands upon her breast to still the throbbing of her heart, she heard, beneath her fingers, the whisper of Aunt Betty's billet.
Stung afresh to scorn, she reared her head and measured him with her glance. In silence she stood, trying to reason out the tangled problem for herself. With her ignorance of life, her inborn pride, with her passionate woman's heart and her childish mind, she was bound to go far and wide astray.
If the marriage on his part was not a mere piece of chivalrous self-sacrifice, an idea unbearably insulting in itself, why should he now wish to keep her against her will, since the conventions were satisfied? What gain could she be to him, since he did not love her? And how could he love her, he who was in love with Betty? As in a vision of red flame, she recalled how he and Betty had danced and coquetted together that first night of all; he had not had even a glance wherewith to recognize the little Sidonia who had waited on him in the forest house. Oh, it was true, he had loved Betty from the beginning. And she, Sidonia, who had let herself be won by a few careless words, was at the best only a sacrifice to the world's idea of high-born, gentlemanly decorum. The memory of these last days, so exquisite to her, was blighted. She had never been anything to him, that was clear. He had been kind to her, indulgent, but he had never once, she remembered now, told her that he loved her. And she, fool! had never realized, even with Betty's example before her, that people could seek to wed each other without love. Out of her own mad abundance she had lent to him. And the poor little coin he had doled out in return to her, she had taken for gold. But now, why should he look at her with those fierce, greedy eyes? Why should this "poor, chivalrous young man," as Betty called him, claim her as his bargain, and in these brutal tones?
Once more Betty's voice, with its devilish suggestion, rang in her ears:Of course, my love, there are compensations about you!
"You can have my money if you will—and I am very rich, as you know—so that you only go. Go!" she cried suddenly.
Sidonia shook from head to foot as she spoke at last. But her eyes and her voice were indomitable in their determination. As if her slender sunburnt hand had struck him a deadly blow, Steven Lee, Count Kielmansegg, stepped back a couple of paces, and the blood, ebbing from his face, left it grey. He paused for a while, then made a bow, turned on his heel, and went to the door. On the threshold he looked back at her for a second again. It was a farewell look, and bore in it a pride as high and bleeding as her own, a reproach as keen. She saw that his lip trembled. Then the door was closed, very gently, between them, and she heard his steps die away down the winding stone stairs.
She glanced at her new wedding-ring and thought her heart must break, but yet she sat and made no effort to recall him.
CHAPTER XVII
THE SKIRT OF WAR
"And there was mounting, in hot haste, the steed.The mustering squadron and the clattering carWent pouring forward with impetuous speed..."BYRON.
"And there was mounting, in hot haste, the steed.The mustering squadron and the clattering carWent pouring forward with impetuous speed..."BYRON.
"And there was mounting, in hot haste, the steed.
The mustering squadron and the clattering car
Went pouring forward with impetuous speed..."
BYRON.
BYRON.
It was a day of scurrying breezes and dappled skies. Long pools reflected blue and white in the ruts of his Majesty King Jerome of Westphalia's neglected highway. Wide and deep ruts they were, tracks of the "Grand Army" that had been; and even a village child could have told that great guns and waggons had passed that way before the sweeping by of the last spring storm.
But the rider, on his big-boned, iron-grey horse, splashed through the mud at reckless speed. He had no thought for the story of the wounded country road. Its tragic significance would have left him unmoved had he understood. Such experience as he had just been through changes the whole world in a man's eyes: he becomes as one who, a moment before in perfect health, finds himself shattered by some disabling accident—nothing in life can ever look, ever feel the same again. He had wrenched himself free of love's snare as the wild thing of the woods from the teeth of the springe; but at what vital hurt, how maimed, how bruised, how deeply marked! What was it to him that the west wind, dashing against his face, was balmy with the breath of the black pinewoods on the rising slopes to his right; that the rank meadows that fell away to the left were colour alive, gold-green in the sunlight; that shadows swept across them like spirit messages? His ears were deaf to the organ chant of the pines, to the shrill call of the bird echoing back from the blue vault. Unmoved, he trotted through the poverty-stricken villages, by the deserted homesteads, once flourishing, beside the wasted cornfields. One whom life was treating as evilly as himself could not be expected to bestow even the alms of a pitying thought to the peasant soldiers, stiff in the snows of Russia, or plodding, vanquished at last, in Spanish rocky deserts, nor to the starving families to whom the breadwinner would never return. He did not even care whither he was hurrying, so long as he crossed the nearest frontier of a country to him accursed. To this goal all the passions of his mind were pointed.
* * * * *
With head bent towards the wind, and fiddle slung on his shoulder, a wandering musician was breasting the hill, where the high Imperial road skirting the Thuringian forest bends towards that fertile valley watered by the Fulda. The sinews of Steven's steed faltered before the steepness of the ascent, and the mounted traveller, curbing his impatience to suit the way, found himself level with the humble wayfarer at a pace that made companionship inevitable. Yet, on the instant that he had recognized him, the rider would fain have passed unnoticed. It seemed hard, a perversity of fate, that in this wide, empty country, he should stumble upon the one man whom he would of all others avoid; the man who had had so much influence—he now thought for disaster—upon his life.
Geiger-Hans, the friend, the comrade, had become, in his eyes, the enemy. To his meddling he owed his present misfortune, the humiliation that was eating into his soul, the disillusion which made even the soft west wind bitter to his taste.
The wanderer started as he beheld the young face looking down at him from over the horseman's cloak.
"You!" he exclaimed.
"I!" said Steven.
The man on foot halted. He on horseback unconsciously reined in. The two remained gazing at each other, and in the eyes of both was hot reproach.
Slowly the blood crept back crimson to the countenance of Geiger-Hans, which had grown livid under its tan.
"And whither set you off alone, bridegroom, on your grey horse?" asked he at length, in that tone of irony under which he hid most of emotions.
"Anywhere," answered the bridegroom with a pale smile, "so long as I put space between myself and my bride."
Geiger-Hans drew his brows together into a dark frown. His nostrils dilated, the corners of his mouth twitched.
"Peste!" said he under his voice. Then: "Is it not a little premature? The joy bells can hardly be silent yet. Had it been a few months later—but now!"
His tone was cynical, but his eye was stern and anxious.
"Months?" echoed the rider with a laugh. "It took her but the measure of minutes to decide on my worth."
"Her?" commented the musician with inquiring emphasis.
"Did you think," answered Steven—and, though he strove to be cool, the passion of his wrath wrote itself on every line of his face and vibrated in his voice like the first mutterings of thunder—"did you think I went through the marriage ceremony for the pure amusement of making a nine days' scandal and deserting my hour-old wife? That would have been a brilliant jest indeed! No; if you must know, the situation is of her making. She took her woman's privilege ... and changed her mind."
"She was a child yesterday," said Geiger-Hans.
There was pain in Steven's smile as he returned:
"She was no child this morning."
"But, heavens!" cried the other impatiently, "even so. Did she play the woman, was it not the more reason for you to play the man? You left her, you left her ... is it possible? For a few sharp words, perhaps, some silly misunderstanding! Why, she was yours, man; and you should have carried her with you, were it on the crupper of that high-boned grey."
"Aye," replied Steven. "Even so, as you say. It also dawned upon me, deficient as I am in wits, that the time had come for me to play the man. I actually announced my intention of carrying her away with me by main force—not on this brute, but in the coach prepared for our bridal journey. She reminded me that I took her fortune with her."
"Ah, bah!" said the fiddler, and winced as if he had been struck.
"It seems she is an heiress," continued the bridegroom's voice over his head. "She offered me half her fortune—her whole fortune—if I would go without her! Hey! what answer would you have a man make to that?"
It seemed as if the fiddler could not say; even his ready tongue had no reply.
Steven had meant to take a more dignified attitude with the vagrant; to assume as gentlemanly a mask of indifference as possible. The unexpected meeting (and Steven had no intention but that it should be the last) should be conducted with a rational regard to the distance between them. His heart was no longer on his sleeve for this wayside jackdaw to peck at. But the old power of the fellow's presence, and also his own youthful pain, were too strong for him. Into the silence he dropped a desperate cry:
"Oh, curse you, Geiger-Hans; why could you not have passed me by on the road that evening, and left me to my own life!"
The fiddler looked up at him, still mute; but there was something in his look that went straight to the core of Steven's wounded soul, and brought a sense of comfort and of strength. And yet—strange! it actually seemed as if Steven's sorrow were nothing to the sorrow of Geiger-Hans, this hour. They were enemies no more—they were comrades, struck by the same misfortune. But Geiger-Hans was brave; he knew how to bear his share. Steven felt suddenly ashamed.
"And so you rode away?" said the musician then, laying his hand on the horse's shoulder.
It was to Steven as if that lean hand had kindly touched himself.
"Aye—I got the first nag to be had for money, and rode away, leaving her my carriage and horses and servants. For a Countess Waldorff-Kielmansegg must have her equipage! That episode is closed!"
The rider chucked his reins and set the rested horse to his labour up the hill once more.
Geiger-Hans had remained a second, gazing at the stones in the road; then he roused himself, and caught up the rider in a couple of quick strides. His shoulders were rounded as beneath a burden. Yet Fate had played him too many scurvy tricks for him to indulge in the astounded rebellion of youth. After a while he looked up and spoke again.
"These women," he said, "these children—they insult a man because they do not understand. Mischief has been made—mischief is always alert somewhere when marriage-bells are ringing. Go back to her!"
"I!" cried Steven Lee.
"Go back to her!" said the fiddler again, as he trudged the stony way. "Be generous——"
Steven laughed out loud; and Geiger-Hans knew that the wound had gone deeper even than he suspected.
"I am for Vienna," said the bridegroom briefly. "But I shall make fit settlements upon her, never fear, and such provisions as may safeguard her honour ... and my own. And as——"
"Nay, comrade," interrupted the other, sharply, "such a union as yours—why, 'twould be the easiest contract to annul that ever two young fools repented of."
Steven's hands contracted over the leather.
"Do you think so?" said he, and grew darkly crimson. "Oh, of course," he said, and laughed, "that would be much the best. Aha! Annul! Well, she has only to wish it."
The musician, observing him, showed now a lighter countenance, and presently smiled to himself. Then he shifted his instrument from his back to his breast and began to twang the strings, as if in deep reflection.
"We shall part at the top of the hill," said the rider.
"Shall we?" said the wayfarer. "I think not. Listen, my lord."
The rousing autumn wind brought indeed a strange distant rumour on its wings, and the fiddler imposed silence on his restless fingers and stood still himself, leaning his ear.
Once more Steven arrested his horse. There is nothing so infectious as the curiosity of the ear. The flapping gust fell as they halted; and then the sounds which it had carried over the crest of the knoll seemed to be repeated with much greater distinctness from the vale in their rear.
"What is it?" asked he.
It was a sound like the beat of giant storm-rain upon forest leaves, only that it was measured at repeated intervals by rhythmic jingle and clink. Even as he spoke, Steven heard a crisp drumming of hoofs separate itself from the confusion; then, upon the ring of a commanding voice, the thunder-wave of advance broke itself into silence. And in the midst of this silence a succession of cracking shots suddenly pattered close on one another, as beads dropping from a string.
"Stand back!" cried the fiddler. And, suiting the action to the word, he seized the horse by the bit and forced it backwards into the ditch that girt the road on the side of the fields.
"But what is it?" asked Steven once more, as clamour within the woods rose again: a hideous medley of human voices wrangling like angry beasts, of plunging and neighing of horses, crackling of boughs and thud of iron hoofs. The fiddler dilated his nostrils. He stood leaning against the flank of the grey, his right hand still firmly on the bit. A fine blue vapour, pungent of smell, was oozing between the dark firs.
"Have you never smelt it before, you innocent?" said he, looking up at the rider, and his sunburnt face was kindled by stern fires. "Yet there's scarce a square rood of Europe, these twelve years, that has not known the smoke of this holocaust. It is war, man!"
The words were still on his lips when the placid front of the forest before them was shaken and pierced and rent in a hundred places. Red-coated hussars, with flying blue dolmans—bareheaded most, but some with huge shako and plume at a dishevelled angle—broke covert along the whole line, crashing through the underwood, leaping, it seemed, one upon the other, each man inclining in his saddle and spurring towards the downward slope at a mad gallop.
Steven's horse shivered under him. It had, no doubt, in its youth been a charger: it was now seized with martial ardour, and flinging up its head to shake off the fiddler's grip, displayed such a strong intention to join in the race—which no doubt it conceived to be a glorious charge—that a less practised rider would have found it hard to keep the saddle.
As it was, Steven could gather but a confused impression of the flying troop as it thundered past—of a whirl, bucketing, straining, pumping, clanking, splashing; of men's faces, crimson, distorted, open-mouthed; of bridles slavered with blood and foam; of craning horses' necks, and nostrils afire!
Geiger-Hans gave a shrill laugh:
"The most gallant the Hussars of the Guard of His Majesty Jerome the First (and last!) in full rout! And, oh, shadow of Moscow! who are the pursuers?"
CHAPTER XVIII
THE RAID
"List his discourse of war, and you shall hearA fearful battle rendered you in music."(King Henry V.).
"List his discourse of war, and you shall hearA fearful battle rendered you in music."(King Henry V.).
"List his discourse of war, and you shall hear
A fearful battle rendered you in music."
(King Henry V.).
(King Henry V.).
The forest was now alive with hoarse, guttural cries, as if the wooded depths had released some giant brood of ravens. And then, helter-skelter, even as the last belated hussar, blood streaming from a black gash in his forehead, clattered heavily rearmost of his comrades, reins loose, clinging to the saddle—they came! Squat riders on squat horses—cattle and man as shaggy and unkempt one as the other—with long tags of hair bobbing round wild-bearded faces, pointed fur caps drawn down to the eyes, sheepskin-clad knees up almost to the chin, stirruped with rope, brandishing rough spears; miscellaneous booty—a goose, a sucking-pig, a frying-pan, maybe a cottage clock—swinging at the saddle-bow! They came, shouting their crow-call, exulting, squealing, grunting! They came, filled the road with clamour and clatter, and stench ... and were gone before Steven could draw, it seemed to him, the full breath of his amazement!
Like the second gust of the hurricane, they had gathered, broken past them, and were lost; the clamour of their tempest way rising loud, then growing swiftly faint in the distance, as the valley received them.
"Now," said Geiger-Hans, looking up, "here is an experience for your English-bred youth. Fate has annihilated the centuries; you have beheld the passage of the Huns!Pouah!what a wild-beast trail they have left behind them! To think that Napoleon should have gone to seek these wolves and jackals in their steppes, and spread the Cossack over the face of Europe!"
He sprang out of the ditch; and the grey, much injured in feeling, snorting and sullenly upheaving its haunches, was induced to follow. A roll of far-off musketry crepitated up to them from the plain.
"Do you hear?" said Geiger-Hans. "And do you know what that means?"
"They are fighting on the other side of the hill," said Steven, spurring towards the crest.
"Yes, it is perhaps worth your youthship's attention. Do not, however, flatter yourself that you are viewing a battle. A mere skirmish,un combat, nothing more; one of the hundred or so that takes place now, week in, week out, on the marches of the mighty conqueror's lands. For a small kingdom, little brother Jerome can flatter himself to have gathered to it, from without and within, a considerable collection of enemies—Cossacks hanging like jackals on the flanks of the great army; Prussians from the north, Saxons from the east, peasants and students from his own villages and cities. This raid is scarce like to appear in theGazette, but it is enough, for the combatants! The dead yonder are as dead as though they had fallen at Austerlitz or the Moskowa. Hark, at the snap of the musket—that is the sound of the Empire cracking! 'Tis the Empire cracking," repeated the musician, running alongside, his hand at the stirrup-leather. "And the little House of Westphalia is doomed to fall, as the cottage falls on the hillside from the earthquake that has wrecked the city.... A back-wave from Moscow have we here to-day."
They had halted on the crest, and their gaze plunged into the open valley. A canopy of blue smoke hung over the fields that spread between their knoll and a little town, some half-mile distant. The mist was pierced with slow-moving lines of bayonets which flashed back the sunshine; it was traversed with colour.
Geiger-Hans ran a knowing eye over the scene:
"Aha! What did I tell you? Those are Prussians, holding the townlet," said he. "Contrast their sober uniform with Jerome's scarlets and greens, his plumes and gold lace. There go our runaways! See them draw up behind yonder crimson platoon—Brother Jerome's Grenadiers of the Guard, for he must ape big brother Napoleon.... Look, our friends the Cossacks roll back together like a swarm of hornets at the foot of the hill; they find themselves cut off from their Prussian allies—and if the Hussars but rally in time, we may see therôlesof the drama reversed in a minute."
He fell abruptly silent: something had flown between his head and Steven's as the latter bent towards him from his saddle—something that droned a strange song as it passed and puffed a cold breath on their cheeks.
"What was that?" asked Steven, starting.
"That was a stray Death," said the musician, placidly. "What say you—shall we seek cover?"
"Let us see the thing out!" cried Steven.
"There will be more lead loose," said Geiger-Hans, glancing up with an odd expression. "Death flies on a capricious wing when this sort of game is played."
"Why, then," answered the bridegroom, with his smile of bitterness, "that might be the simplest solution of all; at least, I should not be deeply mourned."
"If that be your mind towards bullets," said the fiddler, with a shadow of sarcasm, "for once your youth and my age are in harmony. But what if you were to tie your horse behind some forest trees? There is no need of offering him up also to our altar of despair—and he might be of use to one of us, when the day is over."
Steven admitted the suggestion without a word. Presently both men sat upon a high bank, their legs dangling into space.
"How inspiring!" said the fiddler. He unslung his instrument. "Did you hear that volley? It came from troops trained under Bonaparte, I'll wager my fiddle-bow. Here the insurgents respond. See those puffs of white smoke in and out of the line under the village wall! Not a gun together. Loose shooting ... but good hatred! I'll back it in the long run! Drums! shouts! The bayonet charge. What did I tell you? here come our Huns back again ... what's left of them. I am inspired! Hark you, this is the song of the fight.... First come the Grenadiers, cool and scornful, musket on breast, arms folded; they march like one man. 'I have served, under the Eagle; I have been of the Guard of the Great Emperor. To Moscow I have been ... and back: to-day it is sunshine: it is child's play, but I would rather be back on the ice with my Emperor. To me he is the Little Corporal: I am one of the old lot. It is I and mine who put the crown on his head. To Jena we went singing:
"'"We'll go and bring a kingdom home,To give little brother Jerome."
"'"We'll go and bring a kingdom home,To give little brother Jerome."
"'"We'll go and bring a kingdom home,
To give little brother Jerome."
He said little brother should have a little kingdom of his own—well, what is this rabble that would undo his work? ... It was warm work at Jena, comrade—oh, and it was cold at Moscow!'...
"'Aim at the Old Guards, kerls' (says the Prussian to his gunners). 'Hurl down the Guard, and the field is ours! ... Hurl down the Guard, aha!'
"'I have to come out to fight for the Fatherland' (says the peasant lad); 'my mother put a green sprig in my hat. I shall put a notch on my musket-stock for every Frenchman I have killed, and shall show it to my children when Gretel and I marry.' ...Oh, but the Old Guard shoots steady! Green sprig is down on the meadow; his comrades jump over him, one steps on his hand, but he feels nothing. Poor little Patriot; he has not even struck one blow for the Fatherland, but his red blood is sinking into the soil! How bright will bloom the flower of liberty in the land thus watered!"
The fiddler wielded his bow with a kind of frenzy, and his battle music rose above the clamour of the distant combat, the scramble and clatter of the Cossacks up the hills, their defiant calls and grunts.
The remnant of the wild horde had reached the summit again in mad disorder, seeking the forest shelter at the first available point. A flight of bullets came singing through the air among them: the company of grenadiers, marking the routed enemy against the sky-line, had flung a last contemptuous volley after them. The savages squealed and ducked, clinging to their shaggy steeds in fantastic attitudes; a few were struck; one fell; his nearest comrade caught up the reins of his mount and, with exultant yell, led it away with him. The dead man was dragged a few yards till his inert foot fell loose of the hempen stirrup and he lay, a heap of discoloured rags, among the stones. Fear was on no man's face, but grins of defiance undaunted. Their war-cry was still of triumph.
Geiger-Hans sprang to his feet on the bank. He waved his bow, then drove it across the strings to a new song, shrill and mocking—a song of scorn for the fugitive:
"Spread your dark wings and fly, obscene birds! Yet exult as you go: the scent of Death is in the air. In a little while you may gorge—but to-day the stricken Eagle can still beat back the carrion crows. Fly, flap your wings—caw—caw!"
[image]"Spread your dark wings, obscene birds! ... the scent of Death is in the air. In a little while you may gorge! ... Fly, flap your wings—caw—caw!"
[image]
[image]
"Spread your dark wings, obscene birds! ... the scent of Death is in the air. In a little while you may gorge! ... Fly, flap your wings—caw—caw!"
Steven stared amazed at his companion, and listened spellbound. The musician was like a man possessed. His grizzled locks seemed to stand out from his face, his left hand danced along the strings, his right arm worked with fury. If ever catgut and wood mocked and insulted, that possessed instrument of Geiger-Hans' did so that day of the combat of Heiligenstadt, in the teeth of the defeated Kalmuck. "Caw, caw!" it shrieked, catching the very guttural of the last belated Cossack, who struggled in rear of his comrades on a wounded horse. The man turned back in his sheepskin saddle, fury in his bloodshot eyes, poised his weapon over his head, measuring his distance.
"Take care!" cried Steven, leaping from the bank. But louder and shriller played Geiger-Hans. The savage hurled the lance; and Steven, flinging himself forward, with arms extended, caught the blow. He rolled back upon the player and both came to the ground together. The music fell mute. Shouting victory, the Cossack forced his bleeding nag into the brushwood.
* * * * *
"If Madame Sidonia were here," said the fiddler, with emphasis on the married title, "what a hero you would be to her!"
He had bound Steven's shoulder—the wound was an ugly gash enough—ministered to him with the wine of the country from a flask of his own, and water from the brook. The contest for the village, between King Jerome's troops and the raiders, was yet undecided, and fitful sounds of battle were still growling in the valley.
The winds blustered in the tree-tops; they had swept the sky from west to east more blue than there is colour to describe. There was a wonderful pulse of growing things about them. Every grass-blade shook in lusty individual life. The leafage was full of bright-eyed, feathered broods, planning the autumn flitting. The whole forest hummed with the minute creatures of Nature's fecundity.... In the plain, openly and with tumult, the masters of earth were strewing its fair face with Death.
"If Madame Sidonia were here!" repeated the fiddler, and cast a sly look at the young man's face over the last knot of his bandage.
Steven frowned and was silent.
"They will go on tearing each other to pieces down there till night. What say you? Shall not grey steed retrace his steps and carry Master Bridegroom back where he should be?"
"No!" cried the other, scarlet leaping to his livid face. "A thousand times no! I am not yet the base thing she deems me."
The musician subdued a sigh.
"What a noble thing is true pride!" quoth he, picked up his fiddle and began to examine it carefully.—"Heavens!" he cried, "if you had broken it! Can a man fling himself upon another in such inconsiderate fashion when there's a Stradivarius between them!"
"Had it not been for my want of consideration," said Steven, with some pique, "I think the precious instrument would hardly have known the touch of your fingers again."
The fiddler laughed out loud, as if the boyish outcry had pleased him; then, as suddenly, grew grave.
"My friend," said he, "the steel has not been tempered, I fear, the lead has not been cast, that will reach this heart.... Ah, Lord!"
It was an exclamation of uttermost weariness. He picked at his strings and tightened them with absent fingers. Then he flashed a smile at his companion:
"You are amazed, are you not, at my ingratitude? What! Here have I, Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg, preserved the existence of this wretched tramp at the risk of my noble, valuable one—here have I shed my blue blood to save his muddy fluid, and the creature has not even a 'Thank you'! ... Comrade," went on the musician, and his eye dilated, his countenance assumed a lofty mien, "I would not shame myself and you by such a word as 'Thanks'! The creature that would not give himself to save his fellow-creature when he can is not worth the name of man."
Steven, abashed that he had indeed thought himself heroic, blushed again and, looking down, began idly plucking with his unhurt right hand the wood-violets that grew in patches on the bank. The fiddler followed his movements, then his eye suddenly grew fixed, his jaw dropped. Slowly the healthy colour ebbed from his cheek and left it ashen. Steven, looking at him, was astonished and alarmed.
"For heaven's sake!" he cried, "are you ill?"
The fiddler stretched out his hand and culled the posy from the other's grasp. The touch of his fingers was as cold as death.
"Violets!" said he, in a sort of whisper. "There is blood on them!" He shuddered from head to foot.
"Perhaps all the mystery is but that he is a poor mad gentleman," thought Steven, It was an idea which could not fail to recur to him in the company of this fantastic being; but never had it seemed so justified.