Chapter IV: Part 4

He caught her by the lobe of her pretty ear, stretched out the other hand and drew his spouse forward by the waist.

"So, here I am, once more, with both my little doves. Aha, what a happy man!--This fine young cousin now, your aunt's old play-fellow ... you'd heard of him before, eh, Sidonia?"

"Yes, I had," said the child, sturdily. "I knew he was in the country. And you need not pinch my ear like that, Uncle Ludo, I don't like it."

"But it was such a little visit," said the Burgrave. "That was the pity of it. And to think of my having missed the pleasure of so agreeable an acquaintance! Your favourite cousin it was, that's understood, my Betty. And his companion, the old gentleman, who might he be?"

"His companion? Oh, he seemed to be a kind of tutor," returned Betty, with a charming sense of satisfaction to be able to say something at last approaching to the truth.

"Well, my darlings," said the Burgrave, still more jovially--he had slipped his great arm round Sidonia's waist now and held them both embraced--"it is early in the morning yet, and I am sure you will be charmed to hear that there is every chance of my letter finding the distinguished travellers still in the village." Each little figure in the Burgrave's grasp started. "Quite a surprise for you, eh? Come, this gaoler (aha, Betty!) is not such a bear after all! Not so inhospitable as to allow his wife's dear relations to leave the district without discharging his duties of politeness. Yes, I have sent Kurtz, hot foot, hot foot, with an invitation to your cousin, my love, to return, with his companion, to the hospitality of Wellenshausen.... What, not a word of joy from either of you? My little doves, one would think you were displeased. Have I not interpreted your wishes, sweetest Betty? I would fain do so, for you who are so clever in interpreting mine."

"Let me go," cried the little lady, of a sudden goaded to fury. "You are squeezing me to death. Please to remember that, if I am married to a bear, it does not follow that I enjoy his hug!"

The Burgrave released his victims and looked searchingly from one to the other. Both were pale.

"What a festive time we are going to have in the old Burg!" cried he then, with an ugly laugh, and fell to upon the ham and ryebread with fresh gusto.

* * * * *

It was a great folded sheet, and bore, on a huge seal, a spreading coat-of-arms. It was addressed as follows: "To the High-born Graf zu Waldorff-Kielmansegg, at the Silver Stork Inn, Wellenshausen," and contained a brief but courteous message:

"HONOURED SIR,

"I have just returned to my house and hear, with desolation, that I have missed the amiable visit which you have vouchsafed to it. Hoping that you and your tutor may not yet have left the neighbourhood, I send this in haste. Will you not both retrace your steps--if you think our poor hospitality still worth acceptance--and give me the exceeding gratification of calling myself your host for at least a week?

"CHARLES LUDOVIC,
"Burgrave of Wellenshausen."

The young traveller, who, warmed into better spirits by his early walk, had been looking back on his stolen visit to the castle on the peak, and his evening with the ladies sheltered behind its forbidding walls, as an adventure of some spice (though, in its integrity, harmless enough) was seized with disappointment. So much for latter-day romance; so much for the Bluebeard of Wellenshausen; for the husband so ferociously jealous, report said, that he must shut up his Fatima in a tower as tight as St. Barbara's! Why, so far from striking off Fatima's head, he sends in haste to recall the audacious visitor, and craves to be allowed to expend upon him the treasures of an amiable disposition.

"Ah, fiddler, my friend," thought Count Steven, sagely, "you and your music have discoursed much wild nonsense anent the surprises of life, anent the golden rose of youth; ... but the world is a workaday place, drab and dull of hue; and the dreams with which your words have filled my thoughts are but the children of my own fantasy and your own fiddle-bow."

He looked across the inn-yard, through a screen of vine leaves, to where the fiddler was seated on a bench, playing away with a will, eyes beaming upon a ring of dancing children. The heaviness of the morning was clearing; shafts of sunlight pierced the mists. Steven hesitated. The messenger from the castle, a smart Jaeger in a green-and-mulberry uniform, stood on one side with the decorous indifference of his condition, his lips pursed for a voiceless whistle to the tune that made gay the poor inn-yard. A little further away, the young nobleman's travelling-chaise was even now being packed, under the supervision of his lordship's body-servant.... The Burgrave's invitation was banality itself, almost trivial; yet was not the programme for the day's journey more everyday still?

A phrase in the letter, that had escaped notice on his first surprised perusal, now brought an angry flush to his cheek.

"His tutor----" And he, full twenty-three and practically his own master these many years! Was it possible that he could have made no stronger impression upon the Burgravine than that of a kind of schoolboy? As for Sidonia, since she knew the musician so well, she must also have known that he was but a chance acquaintance! Yes, it was evident that he had placed himself in an awkward position by this consorting with a person of inferior degree.

This decided the matter. He owed it to his own dignity, to that of his family. Was not the pretty mistress of yon castle, by her own showing, a kinswoman? He would go back and redress the ridiculous misapprehension.

* * * * *

A bell began to jangle, ugly and persistent. The fiddler drew a long last note, whereat the children raised a shout of protest.

"Schooltime!" cried the musician. He got up and nodded across to Steven. "Has my Lord of the Burg invited you back upon his height?--Don't go."

The man's intuition was positively diabolic.

"How did you know?" gasped Steven.

"Know? Do I not know the candid countenance of my lord Burgrave's Jaeger? Did I not see him accost you? Do you not hold a letter in your hand? O, I thank my Maker that, crazy as my brains are, they can still add one and two and make it three. And, had I not the simple figures before me, the Burgrave's course would still lie plain."

He came near to the young man, and dropping his voice:

"The poor Burgrave," he went on, "must be slightly befogged in the mist of his lady's diaphanous explanations. He must sorely want to see for himself what there is between you."

"Between us!" Steven stared and then blushed. "Good heavens, what can he think?" he asked.

"Certainly not the truth," answered the fiddler; "it would be too innocent."

He twanged a string, and it seemed to mock. Too innocent...! His smile, too, was mocking, Steven thought. Innocence savoured unpleasantly of that state of tutelage which no mature man of three and twenty could endure to admit. And yet, last night, had he not been rated for something approaching to an immoral tendency? Confound the fellow, there was no pleasing him! Now and again, like the peasant folk, Steven could almost think the vagrant was possessed.

"Don't go," repeated the fiddler, gravely. "Leave the Burgrave and his lady in their fog."

"You advise me not to go!" cried the young man, pettishly. This sober counsel, certes, was quite the last thing he had expected from lips that hitherto had suggested the out-of-the-way step, the fantastic resolve; urged them passionately, in the name of Youth and Opportunity.

"Write a pretty note," continued the other, unmoved. "Send it back by our friend yonder, and make your servants happy by taking the road for Cassel.--Cassel is full of Betties and you can prance there in good company."

He looked familiarly over Steven's shoulder as he spoke, and gave a mirthful ejaculation--

"_Sarpejeu_! I am invited also, I see."

Kurtz, the dapper Jaeger, who had swaggered up for a critical inspection of the traveller's horses, here flung a quick glance at the speaker. Furtive as it was, the musician caught it, and smiled back:

"What," said he, raising his voice and addressing the count, "your tutor, my young friend? Heavens forbid! The counsellor of your youthship, for a brief occasion, I grant it; but for the rest I trust I have more grateful work in the world."

"I do not press you to accompany me. I can quite well go alone," said Steven. "You need not return with me--unless you wish it."

The other made an ironical bow, and the young man dropped his eyelid under the gaze that read his thought as in a written page. Certainly, keen as he had been but the day before for the fiddler's company, it was the last thing he now desired.

"Oh," retorted Geiger-Hans, "never fear, our ways now diverge. Yours is too lofty for me, comrade. You are for the peak, I am for leveller roads. Beware how you fall." He was shaken with laughter--laughter that somehow left Steven more uncomfortable than angry.

Then the wanderer cocked his instrument and set up a wild skirling air, to the rhythm of which he turned and marched out of the courtyard. Ill at ease, Steven watched him go, go.

* * * * *

Count Kielmansegg drove in state to the foot of the crag; and, while his box and valise were loaded upon the mule that was again to climb the rocky path to the feudal nest of granite, he paused to look down at the waters that rushed past the road, so swift and dark, so cruelly cold, from unexplored caverns on the flanks of the mount. As he stood the travelling fiddler overtook him and swung by on the highway.

"We shall meet soon again, I trust, friend," Steven cried after him as he himself turned to ascend the path.

"Who knows?" said the fiddler over his shoulder, even as on their first parting by the edge of the forest, but this time in a grave voice.

The young man glanced up at his destination, black and grim against a pale sky, and a chill came upon him like a sudden shadow.

*CHAPTER XI*

*TANGLED TALES*

"_One lie needs seven to wait upon it._"
(_Wisdom of Nations_).

Steven was scarcely observant by nature: your important, self-centred youth is rarely like to prove so. Yet the Burgrave's welcome at Wellenshausen, cordial to effusion as it was, left upon him a further impression of discomfort.

Jerome's Chancellor had very fine manners, when he chose, and was altogether a finer personality than, somehow, Steven had expected. His joviality was certainly hard to reconcile with that character of tyrant that seemed to be universally ascribed to him. Moreover, Steven had no more reasonable ground of complaint as to the quality of the hospitality proffered to him than as to that of the wines served during the heavy midday meal, for which they soon assembled. His irritable self-esteem, ruffled by the thought of having passed for a young gentleman under control, ought to have been thoroughly soothed by the attentions, the deference, the honours that the Burgrave lavished upon him. And yet----

When he was once more left alone in the great apartments that he had shared with the fiddler on the previous evening, he found himself heartily wishing again for his singular comrade--nay, wishing that he had followed the latter's advice and were still hobnobbing with him, along the wide valley roads or in some vine-hung inn arbour, in safety and independence.

He went discontentedly to the window and flung it wide; it was sunk in some eight feet of solid masonry, and, high as the castle stood, the honest airs of heaven seemed to have no free access into the chamber.

How was it that the vault-like oppression of the place had not struck him yesterday? He stood, pondering, for a while; then gathered himself into the window recess, even as Geiger-Hans had done during last night's watches.

The evening shades were rising apace. Night birds were beginning to circle round the lonely towers; distant lights to twinkle in the village below. How far off lay those comfortable glimmers yonder; how sheer the depth that separated him from them! An owl hooted, and the chill of the stone pressing about him seemed to creep into his marrow. He heard a great clang somewhere beneath and the grinding of iron-bolts. "Pah--the place is like a prison-house!" he cried to himself angrily and scrambled back into the gloomy room.

Then his valet entered with candles. The fellow's face bore a smirk; he, at least, found the Burg (with the fascination of Mademoiselle Eliza) an incomparably more agreeable spot than the Silver Stork.

After him came a rosy-cheeked, bare-footed girl, with a huge faggot in her arms--and presently the great gaping hearth was filled with a roaring blaze. And Steven, in a wadded dressing gown, stretching his limbs to the warmth, began to feel able to review the events of the day with a more settled spirit.

... No doubt there had been several instances at dinner, when he had felt himself in an outrageously false position--allowing (he thought severely) to that mist of lies with which the Burgravine had undoubtedly filled the atmosphere. Triumphantly as her beauty had stood the morning light, exquisitely as her elegance, her fashion, her youth, might have struck any impartial observer by contrast with the gloom of the mediaeval castle, Steven, on the second meeting, had found himself cold to her, ashamed in the recesses of his heart of his previous surrender. He wished women would not think it necessary to deceive.... Why, in the name of common sense, could not the creature have told the simple truth? His visit had been a mere freak--an intrinsically harmless one. She must needs give it an aspect of guilt by an unnecessarily complicated farrago of explanation. It had taken him all his time indeed (and no wonder he could not look back upon that endless repast without a shudder) to parry the Burgrave's point-blank questions concerning people of whose very existence he had no knowledge, and to respond airily to the Burgravine's feverish hints, finding himself, meanwhile, further and further involved in myths and inventions. And, throughout, the Burgrave--what a deuced uncomfortable way of staring was his!--had an eye and a laugh that matched each other very ill.... And the child, Sidonia, with now that look of scorn, now that air of grave rebuke, under which his already irate feelings in regard to her almost merged into active dislike....

Cross-purposes had in truth begun on the very threshold.

"Welcome, Herr Graf," had cried the Burgrave--"welcome both as my wife's kinsman and as a distinguished traveller in my own country!" He had been clasped by two genial hands. So far so good!

"But--your companion, your worthy tutor, where is he?" (His tutor! The man meant Geiger-Hans. This was awkward.)

Steven had no answer ready, nothing but a foolish obvious statement:

"He has not come."

How lame it sounded! The Burgrave had instantly dropped the subject.

Now that he came to think of it, Steven realized that it was here his discomfort took birth. Why had his host dropped the subject? It was a procedure that harmonized neither with the relentless scrutiny of his eyes, nor the ultra-joviality of his manner. And all through the dinner it had been simply variations on the same _motif_. A straight question, an unsatisfactory answer, the complication of the Burgravine's embroidery and over-clever suggestion--and the subject dropped. Thereupon an access of hilarity on the part of his entertainer ... such loud laughter, such unmirthful eyes!

As Steven, staring unseeingly into the fire, repassed the little scenes in his mind, his cheeks flushed.

"Your tutor, Count--by the way, what is his name?"

"Well, he's hardly my tutor, you see."

Here cries from the Burgravine: "A French gentleman!--so charming a person! Nay, Cousin Kielmansegg, I flatter myself I have a good memory, especially for anything French. M. de la Viole, wasn't it?"

"Yes," from Steven, grunting uneasily, "something of that sort."

"Quite an elderly man," hastens to add the Burgravine, with a quick look at her husband.

"Try this Burgundy, Clos-Vougeot, the Emperor's favourite," says the Burgrave, and laughs.

He drinks a good deal of Burgundy himself, does the Chancellor; and gets a fiery countenance: but not a sparkle into the little grey eyes.

"How long may it be since you left Austria, my dear young friend?"

"Oh--years," blurts Steven.

Of course he ought to have looked to the Burgravine for his cue. But, the devil fly away with it, he does not take kindly to these deceits! The Burgrave's gaze shifts suddenly to his wife. The glass trembles in her little hand. She is obliged to lay it down; but her voice does not falter, she is quite ready: "Years? Is it possible? Nay, cousin, have we both grown so old since last we met? But no doubt, in that cold, dull England, the time hung mighty heavy with you. It seems years to you, but--then we corresponded--at least, when I say we, I mean my mother, who loves you as a son."

And, "Oh yes--yes!" says Steven, in miserable acquiescence.

... What will the Burgrave ask next? The merest insistence on his side, and the whole despicable scaffolding of taradiddles must fall to the ground. And then----? Then--no man in his senses would believe the truth. But the Burgrave presses nothing. The stone roof echoes to his huge "Ha-ha's." 'Tis as if the thought of the love of his mother-in-law for his guest was quite a remarkable jest!...

The sweat of shame and anger broke on Steven's forehead as he sat before the fire, immersed in this review of the day's doings.

Two days went by, the heaviest Steven had ever passed in his life. He would have given a year of his life to be able to invent some fitting excuse to take a decent leave. But his tongue, forced to so much petty falseness, could frame here no tale that carried conviction. He had gone so far as to send his servant down into the village, with orders to bring back an imaginary courier. But, at the first hint of intended flight, the Burgrave broke into protestations; his voice was so loud and his gimlet eye so boring, that the plea of urgency withered away from the guest's speech, and he found himself wretchedly concurring in his host's hearty announcement that Wellenshausen had him and Wellenshausen would hold him at least for the allotted week.

He had the further misery of noting that here joy flashed at him from the blue depths of the Burgravine's eyes, and anger from the brown limpidity of Sidonia's. Indeed, he, the least fatuous of youths, had begun to find something disconcerting in the persistence with which the blue eyes were given to seeking him: now in veiled languor, now with a meaning that seemed to claim complicity. Glib in speech and airily indifferent to him in the Burgrave's presence, in the moments when they were alone together--and these were rare, for Steven avoided them; though it would almost seem as if the Burgrave himself fostered the occasions--she was prodigal of sighs, of interrupted sentences capable of strange endings, of little fluttering movements towards him, all of which added supremely to his discomposure; all of which, also after the fashion of man, he felt almost as much ashamed to admit as significant as to repel.

On the morning of the third day, Steven, invited to inspect the view from the battlements in an exceptionally clear light, found himself alone with Burgravine Betty on the topmost turret of the Burg. The Burgrave had sent them forward; his laugh was echoing up to them from the inner recesses of the winding stairs.

"O heavens!" said the lady, suddenly.

Steven turned. The cry was tragic; and it answered acutely to his own sensations. The Burgravine's eyes were dry, but there was real terror on her pretty face.

"Why did you come?" she whispered. "In the name of mercy! was it not evident that it was a trap?"

"A trap!" he stammered.

"Yes, yes! Oh, do you not feel it? He is watching us like a cat, a cat going to spring; and I am the wretched mouse waiting--waiting. O, I can stand it no longer! I shall go mad. If only you had not come! What did I tell him? There was nothing to tell, say you; we had done no harm. That is just it! I told him a lie, of course, and he found out it was a lie--that is of course, too. A man who has spies all about his place! And now we are doing nothing but lie, you and I. He knows we are lying, and he is waiting to pounce on us in his own time. O, sir, you might have known! A man who shuts up his wife for jealousy is not seized with such effusive hospitality towards a handsome young stranger without reasons of his own."

The warm olive crept back to her cheek as she spoke. Her eyes beamed. She seemed to sway towards him.

"Then, madam," he cried, quickly stepping back--if there were indeed danger for him between the Burgrave and the Burgravine, he would rather choose to battle with the man--"you are right, I ought not to be here. I will go now. To-day ... this hour!"

"Go?" she echoed in scorn. "Aye, go if you can," she proceeded with a change of tone. "He has got you well in his meshes; you are clogged, sir, and bound. And if you think he will let you go before he has carried out his purpose with us, you little know the Burgrave."

Carried out his purpose with us!--The very vagueness of the suggestion added to its unpleasantness. Steven jerked his head indignantly.

"And what may that be, pray?" he asked.

She glanced at him a second, uplifting lip and eyebrow. To a lady who had graduated in the Court of Vienna, this big young man, with his English stolid simplicity, was a trifle irritating.

"_Mon Dieu!_" she said then, turning aside with a shrug of her shoulder, "how embarrassing you are! Do you know your poets? Well, then, he would like to find us playing at Paolo and Francesca, if you please, that he might play the Malatesta!"

"Great heavens!" cried the horrified youth. He watched the lady hang her head and droop a modest eyelid--it was Scylla and Charybdis! Beyond any doubt, he must walk out of these mad-house precincts at the very earliest opportunity.

They were perched high up in the blue; and, down below, the country lay spread like a green cloth on which a child has set its toys. Yonder white ribbon wandering so far below--there ran his road. Would he were on it! He turned to her, took her soft hand, bent and kissed it.

"Madam," said he, "it is best it should be 'good-bye'--for both of us, it is best."

He spoke very truly, poor young man, but into the touch of his lips and the pathos of his speech her vanity read another meaning.

"Cousin!" she cried suddenly, and clutched at his hands with both of hers. "O, take me with you! Take me back to my own people! If I stay here, he will kill me, or I shall kill myself!"

And, as his troubled face and involuntarily repelling fingers were far from giving her the response they craved, she rushed across and bent over the crumbling parapet.

"Refuse your help," she cried desperately, "and I throw myself down!"

(Had little Sidonia but been at hand, to tell him how well accustomed she was to such threats!)

Steven was quite pale as he caught her back against his shoulders.

"Mercy!" he shivered, thinking of those giddy deeps. She clung to him, her scented head against his shoulders.

"Surely, surely, it is not much I ask!" she murmured faintly. "See how I trust you, kinsman! Only your protection, your escort back to our own people. It is not much to ask!"

It meant his whole life, and he knew it. But what can a young man do with a woman's arms about him and a woman's whisper pleading in his ears?

"Ha-ha-ha!" came the Burgrave's laugh from below. Countess Betty slid out of "Beau Cousin's" arms. She lifted a warning finger. "I will arrange," she whispered, nodding. "Now we must be seen no more alone together."

Sidonia's voice also rang up towards them. "I will write," whispered Betty again, finger on lip.

O heavens! how could she look arch and smile at such a moment?

"My friend, I have been showing our cousin how far your estate extends," said the lady, gaily, tripping across to take the Burgrave's arm with more ease than she had yet displayed with him since his return.

"I trust our cousin has profited by your instruction, and that he realizes the boundaries of my property," said the Burgrave of Wellenshausen, with his genial smile and his icy eye.

Steven's heavy conscience read a hateful significance in the remark. As he turned, his glance fell upon the Baroness Sidonia's pure child face and he felt miserable and ashamed to the core.

* * * * *

The Burgrave's jaunty Jaeger stood and saluted in military fashion. The Burgrave wheeled round in his chair and bent his brows. It was dark in the great stone room but for the single shaded lamp on the writing-table, which flung a pallid circle of light upon his intent countenance. So might some ancestor of his have looked, four hundred years before, as he planned with his henchmen the treachery that should rid him of an enemy.

"I have to report, my lord," said the fellow, "that the Count Kielmansegg's travelling carriage is ordered to be in readiness at the foot of the hill to-night."

"So!" The exclamation was almost triumph.

Kurtz pulled a slip of paper from the breast of his tunic and held it out.

"Will your lordship open it with care?" he remarked imperturbably, as the Burgrave's eye shot flames and he stretched out an eager hand. "The gracious lady has not yet seen it. And I have promised Eliza that it should not be crushed."

The Burgrave held the note to the light. It was in French, and very terse:

"All is arranged. I will wait for you at the entrance of the east tower at nine o'clock."

The Burgrave stared at the words for an appreciable time. An apoplectic wave of blood rushed to his forehead, and the veins thereon swelled like cords. Then he folded the paper again with minute precaution and handed it back.

"Return it to the wench, and bid her deliver it," he said briefly. "Well, what now?"

"I beg pardon, my lord, but this has cost me my watch-chain to-day. And I took upon myself to promise her further two gold pieces."

"Fool!" said the Burgrave, harshly. "Could you not have done as much by love-making and never cost me a kreutzer? Young men like you are scarce in these parts."

The Jaeger shrugged his shoulders. "She took the kisses as well," he said cynically. "What would his lordship have? Women are like that!"

The other flung the coins across the table with an oath. Those were better days, of old, when a man could have his bidding done in his own castle without any such bargainings. But, as the servant wheeled and swung towards the door, his master recalled him.

"You have left my orders in the village? If that fiddling beggar dares present himself near my doors again, I shall have him flogged till the skin hangs in strips, and then ... and then set the dogs upon him. The miserable rapscallion; the impudent cur, to dare to play his tricks as high as my very table, to dare to break bread with my wife!"

The Burgrave struck the table so that the rummer of Burgundy at his elbow splashed red upon his hand; the Jaeger glanced at the empty bottle and then at his lord's inflamed countenance, and gave his soldierly response:

"_Zu Befehl._" Then he added, the insolence of the servant who feels superior to his employer in coolness and clear-headedness piercing through his well-drilled air of subordination: "May it please your Excellency, the folk about here believe the fiddler to be some great person in disguise."

The Burgrave's eyes were bloodshot this evening; the Jaeger was minded of the glare of an old boar at bay.

"It is quite likely," he proceeded jauntily, "that the gentleman was similarly deceived."

"The gentleman--the gentleman? What gentleman, you rascal?"

"The gracious young gentleman, the cousin of her Excellency."

The Burgrave gave a savage growl:

"Out of my sight!"

With some additional briskness of gait, Kurtz drew the solid oak door between himself and the Chancellor.

Alone, Betty's husband yielded himself to a convulsion of rage. Again he beat the table with his hands, anon tore at his bristling hair; suffocating, he wrenched the stock from his throat; broken words, curses, threats, ejaculations of self-pity escaped him. When at length he recovered his senses in some fashion, he was shaking as if from an ague. He caught up the last glassful of wine and drained it at a draught. Then he subsided heavily into his chair, and drawing unmeaning signs with his fingers through the spilt wine upon the polished oak, began slowly to repeat, half aloud, the words of the letter Kurtz had brought him.

"The entrance of the east tower, at nine o'clock."

Suddenly a shout of laughter escaped him.

"The entrance of the east tower. You have chosen well, my turtle doves!"

He let his head drop between his hands and sat in sodden brooding.

*CHAPTER XII*

*THE BURGRAVE'S FAREWELL*

"_--What means this, my lord?_
_--Marry, this is miching mallecho; it means mischief._"
(_Hamlet_).

Countess Betty had the megrims and declined to appear at supper. For a sufferer, however, she had a bright eye, and she moved about her room with the alacrity of a busy bird. She was alone, some belated notion of prudence having bade her dismiss her handmaiden during the final preparation. Her eyes were taking in wistfully the dimensions of the small travelling-bag (which was all that, in conscience, she could allow herself, since Cousin Kielmansegg would have to carry it himself down the precipitous roads) and the numberless objects which, at the last moment, seemed to her indispensable, when there came a tap at her window. She started--and only the sense of unacknowledged guilt weighing on her soul kept her from screaming aloud for help--when she perceived, pressed against the uncurtained pane, a man's face. The next instant, however, she had recognized the wandering fiddler. She hurried towards him.

"A message?" she cried eagerly, as she opened the casement.

The man swung himself in and sat on the deep window-seat. His face was wet with rain. He gazed upon her for a second, quizzically, and when he spoke it was not in reply.

"Here I come," said he, "by the ivy, at the risk of my neck, I, whom your worthy lord and master threatened to have flogged and thrown to the dogs, if he caught me up here again! What a foolish plight should I be in, had I counted upon your tender heart sparing a tremor for my perils! It is enough to make a man desire to walk in by the door for the rest of his life!"

"But, in heaven's name," she exclaimed, having but a matter-of-fact spirit, in spite of its dainty envelope, "you did climb up all the way to tell me something. Was it not a message?"

He bowed.

"From him?"

He laid his hand on his heart. "From myself," he answered.

She glanced at him and then at her bolted door in renewed alarm. He read her thought.

"God forbid!" quoth he, smiling with an air that put him, in his poor raiment, at an extraordinary distance above her. "I should not so presume, madam.--Are you aware," he pursued in another tone, "that your husband's confidential Jaeger was in intimate conversation with Count Kielmansegg's postilion in the village to-day?"

"Mercy!" she cried, reading the portent.

"After which, my dear madam, he climbed the hill in a company that lightened the way for him, having, in fact, his arm round the trim waist of your own handmaiden."

Countess Betty sank on a couch, white to her lips.

"Your trusted handmaiden," repeated the fiddler, emphatically.

"Alas! if I had hesitated," said the lady, piously turning up her eyes to the vaulted ceiling, "this would decide it; I dare not risk another night in this castle."

"Taking risk for risk," said the musician, carelessly, "if I were timid, I should prefer the waiting hazard."

"You mean?" she panted, round-eyed, in quick apprehension.

"I mean," said he, "that it is raining exceedingly hard, and that between this and the foot of the crag you will get wet, madam; so wet as to extinguish for ever the most ardent flame."

The Burgravine rose with dignity. "I will have you know, sir, that I am merely accepting Count Kielmansegg's protection back to my own family, because I know I can trust to his honour."

"Quite so," said Geiger-Hans, in a soothing voice. "And it is, of course, infinitely preferable to set forth by night in secret, with a handsome young man, than to summon any more aged or nearer relative to your help! A father, maybe--or a brother? But it is raining, as I say, madam, very hard. So much for the start. And I am afraid when you arrive in Austria your noble family may consider your journey ill-managed."

Her bosom heaved.

"It is very unjust," she moaned, "that you men can do everything, whereas we poor women----" She paused on the brink of tears.

"Ah!" he retorted, "you women are the crystal cups that hold the honour of the house! That is why we must set you in a shrine, madam. To-night it is still sanctuary in your presence, and I can still kneel before you. To-morrow----?"

The colour rushed into her face. She tried to speak with haughtiness, but her voice faltered.

"To-morrow--what then?"

"It is inconceivable how much wiser it would be for you to remain under a husband's roof on such a night!"

There came a knock at the door. With squirrel nimbleness the fiddler twisted round and vanished. The Burgravine took a rapid survey of the room, whisked the bag into a cupboard, the jewel-cases on the top of it, and went to the window to close it.

"One moment, one moment!" she called, as the knocking was discreetly repeated, and paused with her hand on the casement. Certainly it was most uncomfortable weather! Then she opened the door. Sidonia entered.

"Little aunt, is your head better?"

"Yes, child, yes. You have supped? Is it so late?" Before the girl could answer, the bell of the castle clock began to boom nine strokes. "Nine o'clock!" shrieked the Burgravine. "What's to be done?" She struck her forehead with a distraught air. "I dare not trust that false Eliza," she murmured in her mind. Then her eye met Sidonia's candid gaze, and she caught her hand. "Listen, child; you shall do something for me. Count Kielmansegg is going away to-night."

The girl's pupils widened, her face grew paler, but she did not speak.

"'Twas I bade him leave. Your uncle's causeless jealousy ..."

The girl nodded. The Burgrave, in truth, had been no pleasant companion that night. He had drunk heavily, and alternated between glowering spells of silence and loud and almost offensive pleasantries aimed at his guest, both of which had, not unnaturally, considerably embarrassed Count Kielmansegg.

"'Twas my duty!" (Oh, how virtuous felt the Burgravine of Wellenshausen!) "I had promised him (poor youth, he is my cousin!) that I would bid him 'Good-bye.' But now"--(positively Countess Betty thought her niece must perceive the halo growing round her head)--"now it has struck me that if your uncle heard of it, he might misconstrue---- My dear, you must go and tell Count Steven from me----"

"I?" cried Sidonia, and started.

"You must," insisted the lady, harshly. "He is waiting in the east tower. Tell him this: 'My aunt has sent me to say "Good-bye" for her; it is better so.... It is better so.' Do not forget to say that. What are you waiting for, girl? Go! Perhaps you are afraid of the rain!" cried the Burgravine, scornfully, and seized the travelling-cloak that was lying ready on the bed. "Here, put this on; wrap the hood over your head. Now run, there is not a moment to be lost."

There was, perhaps, more urgency, more fear, in her voice and manner than she had been aware of, for Sidonia, after a quick look at her, gathered the folds of the cloak about her and fled upon her errand. The Burgravine drew a long sigh of relief, then rang her hand-bell sharply.

"Eliza," said she to the responsive damsel, and, on the spot, froze her with a glance for the impertinent air of confederacy with which she had entered, "light up a fire and serve supper to me. My head is better. Trim the candles and give me '_La Nouvelle Heloise_? How you stare, wench! Have you fallen in love, perhaps, that you do your work so ill to-day?"

Steven's reflections, as he waited in the best-sheltered corner of the deserted tower, listening to the beat and gurgle of the rain, were of an unsatisfactory description. The folly of weakness is the worst of follies, the realization of it the most galling. He was about--no use in trying to blink the fact--he was about to ruin his own life; to take upon himself an intolerable burden; to commit, technically at least, a crime against hospitality; to put a stain upon his ancient name; and all without receiving in return the slightest gratification or being able to proffer, even to himself, the exoneration of any approach to passion. The mere thought of the long, intimate drive was a bore; the prospect of a possible life-long companionship with the Burgravine intolerable.

Geiger-Hans, mysterious wretch that he was, had much to answer for. And yet, had Steven followed his advice (he had, in honesty, to admit this) things would not be at this pass.

* * * * *

She came in upon him with a rapid step and a rustle of wet garments, stopped at the mouth of the passage, and said in a loud whisper:

"Are you there, _Herr Graf_?"

As he went forward, she clutched his wrist with a cold hand.

"Hush," she cried, "I think I heard steps behind me!"

Both listened, not daring to breathe. Oh, what a situation for a youth whose pride it had been to hold his head high in the world!

Nothing was heard, however, save the wild, dismal murmur of the rain over the land, and the nearer drip and patter.

"No, there is nothing," he said, and reluctantly passed a limp arm round her shoulders. To his surprise, they were jerked from his touch with resentment. The next moment, however, by a mutual movement, they caught at each other; for there came an unaccountable grinding about their ears, and almost immediately the solid ground gave way under their feet.

"Gracious Powers! is the tower falling?" cried he.

Even as he clasped the figure beside him, with the instinctive, protecting action of man for woman, he was aware that the slender thing in his arms could not be the Burgravine. But at the same instant they were sliding; and before he could do aught but throw himself backwards to avoid crushing her, they were shot with giddy swiftness down a steep incline. With a shock, his feet struck level ground; he lay dazed and breathless, her weight across his breast. Stars danced before his eyes. Vaguely, as from a great distance, he heard overhead the echo of a laugh; then a thud, and once more the grinding sound, as of heavy, rusty bars. It was the laugh that brought him to his senses; too often, lately, had that laugh rung in his ears!

She raised herself in his arms.

"Are you hurt?" he cried as he lay.

"No," she answered quickly. "Don't get up!" He knew by the sudden change in her voice that she had flung the muffling hood from her head. "Don't get up! don't stir! I must find out where we are."

He recognized now the young, clear tones. It was Sidonia, but he was past surprise. One thing alone stood clear out of his confusion: whatever it might be that had brought this about, he was glad, to the heart of him he was glad, it was not Countess Betty.

He felt the girl struggle to her feet, heard her grope with her hands above his head. There came a moment of great stillness: he knew she was listening. Unconsciously he hearkened too, and then there grew upon them, out of the solid darkness, the cry of waters, rising up with a sort of cavernous echo as from a great depth. And, with a flash, his mind leaped back to that fearsome race of brown river that swirled so strangely from the foot of the Burg-crag, just above the village bridge. He felt his hair bristle. But when she spoke again, the sound of her voice, with its extraordinary accent of decision, roused him like a stimulant.

"We are safe if we but keep where we are," she said. "You may sit up if you like, but do not attempt to stand." And then she added: "You do not know the place; I do."

She sat down beside him, and in the dark he felt her close presence once more with gladness.

"What is this place, then?" he asked, unconsciously whispering.

She answered him with a simplicity which almost made him laugh:

"It is the old _oubliette_."

Vague cruel memories of mediaeval romance awoke in his brain. _Oubliette_! The word itself was suggestive, and not agreeably so.

"An _oubliette_ is----?" he asked.

"The secret trap by which the castellan of old quietly got rid of enemies or of inconvenient prisoners. You see," she proceeded, with her astounding composure, "through this tower, in former days, was the sally-port--there used to be no other way; and were any one whose existence interfered with the views of the Lord of Wellenshausen, passing out or in, it was easy to set the machinery in motion, with the result----" She broke off.

"Of landing him in our enviable situation," he finished pettishly.

"Not at all," retorted she. "It is the mercy of heaven for us that time and storm have been at work in these forgotten regions and provided us with so opportune a ledge----"

"What would have happened else?" he asked in a tone that strove to emulate her coolness.

"Sit quietly and listen."

He felt her reach for a stone, felt the tension of her vigorous young body as she flung it. He heard the missile strike the rock sharply, rebound and then rebound again. Then, after a silence, rose a faint sound, the ghost of a splash, the gulp of greedy, far-off waters, infinitely sinister. He shuddered.

"No one knows how deep it is," said she, "nor what lies hidden there. I can tell you, when I first discovered this pit, it terrified me. Old Martin had told me of its legends, but I had laughed at him. One day, some months ago, I scrambled in from the outside, for the old tower is falling in ruin, and explored the place. But I had no notion the old trap-stone in the sally-port still worked. Now I remember," she cried with sudden sharpness, "seeing Uncle Ludo wandering about the place this evening----" She stopped suddenly, struck by a new thought.

"But," exclaimed the young man, "in heaven's name, what have I done, to...?" And then his uneasy conscience whipped him silent.

"It is a horrible trick," resumed the girl, now with a passionate ring in her voice, "you, his guest----"

An indignant sob caught her in the throat. "You his guest!" she repeated. "Oh, whatever he thought of you, he should have remembered that! I can never forgive him."

The guest who had meditated, however unwillingly, the betrayal of his host, blushed painfully under the cloak of blackness. He heard her swallow her tears and knew that she clenched her hands. After a while she went on more quietly:

"How wise it was of Aunt Betty to tell you to go away! And, oh, how glad I am that she sent me instead of coming herself to bid you 'Good-bye.'"

Steven opened his mouth, and then closed it again dumbly.

"You would both have been killed," she went on, sinking her voice. "Uncle Ludovic must be mad--mad with his ridiculous jealousy ... and he's been drinking overmuch. Ah, dear Lord! If I had not been with you----"

She gave a shudder. He, on his side, had no words. He was silent in shame before the exquisite innocence; silent in admiration before the self-forgetting courage of this slip of a creature, who thought nothing of her own danger. "Here, indeed, is good blood--here is the spirit of race!" he thought, touched in his most sensitive chord.

Presently, however, the humour of the grim situation struck him, and he laughed. There was Thistledown Betty, incapable even of acting up to her own unfaithfulness, snug in her bower, doubtless; and there was the outraged husband, gloating over his mediaeval vengeance: Steven wished he could be present at their next conjugal meeting! Sidonia, childlike, echoed his laugh softly beside him in the dark. It struck him serious on the instant. The morrow seemed a terribly long way off.

"And now," said he, "what are we to do?"

"Hey, good sir!" said she, "nothing but wait. We shall not die this time, Herr von Kielmansegg; for my poor uncle"--she laughed in scorn and triumph--"he does not know, I warrant, that there is a way out of this old death-trap, since there is a way in. A way other than by the hidden lake and the barque of ancient Charon. But, till the daylight comes, sir----"

"Daylight!" he exclaimed, and knew not whether he were glad or sorry at the whole night's prospect.

"Till daylight comes, we must take patience here. For one false step would send our bodies to join the bones of the forgotten enemies of Wellenshausen."

"So, then----"

"Then, I should say, the best thing we can do is ... to go to sleep."

Again he was mute, pierced to the innermost fibre of his manliness. It was as if her child-heart had been suddenly revealed to him--its trustfulness, its simplicity, its courage.

"If you move a little to the right, carefully," she said, after a pause, "you will find it softer, I think. The earth has grown up there, and there are, I remember, ferns. You will really not be too uncomfortable."

The girl was positively doing the honours of the family _oubliette_! There came a tender smile to his lips, and almost a mist of tenderness to his eyes.

"But you," said he, "good fairy, guardian angel, do you never think of yourself?--Will you lean against me?" he went on, timidly.

He gathered her to him. What a slight, warm thing she was! She trembled as he passed his arms round her, and he instantly desisted. "Would you rather not?"

"I don't know," she whispered. He thought there was a quaver as of tears catching her breath.

All the chivalry in him leaped to her service. He drew back. With some difficulty he unwound his heavy cloak from himself. He was stiff and bruised, and the uncertainty of his balance in the blackness gave him an eerie sensation as of precipices yawning for him on every side.

"What are you doing?" she cried severely.

"Let me put this over you," he pleaded. "And then you can roll up your own mantle and make a pillow of it--against me, thus."

"But you--but you----"

She struggled against his covering hands so impetuously that he caught her with a grip of alarm. And the sound of the rock crumbling away and leaping into the gulf gave its significant warning.

"You must keep quiet," said he, for the first time asserting the leadership. "And you must let me hold you and cover you. It is my duty to serve you, Mademoiselle Sidonia, my right to protect you. Sleep if you can. You will be safe, for I shall watch."

She remained motionless a minute and then submitted without a word. He placed his arm about her; her head drooped to his shoulder; there fell silence. In time he felt her rigidity relax, heard her quick breath grow calm and regular.

"You are afraid no more," he said gently.

"I don't think I was afraid," she answered him. Her voice had grown lazy; and, subtly, by the tone of it, he knew that she smiled. He felt ineffably proud of her confidence, ineffably protective towards her.

*CHAPTER XIII*

*THE OUBLIETTE*

"Furcht bich nicht, du liebes Kindchen,
Bor der boesen Geister Macht!
Tag und Nacht, du liebes Kindchen,
Halten Englein bei dir Wacht!"
HEINE.

The minutes dropped slowly into the hour.

* * * * *

Something raised a blood-curdling screech that went sobbing and echoing through the cavern. If he had not held her, he would have started in frank alarm. She only gave a drowsy laugh.

"'Tis Barbarossa, the old owl," said she.

And again fell the silence, filled for him with whirling thoughts.

How right had this Geiger-Hans been in his warning! How merciful had Fate been to save him from his own folly! Were he now rolling along the wet Imperial road with the Burgrave's wife, he would have had, doubtless, to clasp her much as he clasped Sidonia. Precarious as it was, his present situation was infinitely preferable. He felt like a father, holding his pretty child, all warm with tenderness; not like a dishonest, cold lover with the woman he cannot love.

Sidonia's light breathing grew fainter and more rhythmic. She was asleep. He had longed, but hardly dared to hope, that she could sleep. In his heart he went down on his knees to her and thanked her, stirred by the eternal parent instinct, perhaps, but also by another emotion, tenderer still and more vital--a reverent bending of his whole manhood before the purity and trustfulness that lay in his embrace.

* * * * *

The night progressed with lengthening hours. He had begun to make out some kind of bearings for himself in the dark; to find, by the cold airs that occasionally blew in upon him from one direction, by the guidance of the sounds that grew in the night's stillness--the gusty increases, the placid subsidence of the rain, the rustle of leaves and twigs--in which quarter of their prison lay that opening to the outer world by which they should escape.

Sometimes his mind wandered far away. Now and again he almost lost himself in a vague dream; but ever he came back with a shock to the present peril and his responsibility.

And the child still slept!

He began to grow weary and cold. His arm became stiff, then numb. The burden that had seemed so light upon it grew almost intolerable. Sometimes drowsiness pressed upon him, he thought himself in a nightmare, from which he must wake to find himself huddled in a corner of his travelling chaise. But he would have died sooner than disturb the sleeper.

Then, at the moment when the tension of enforced immobility brought such a feeling of exasperation and oppression that he almost felt as if his wits were leaving him, he turned his head instinctively in the direction of the air current, and relief came. The rain was over. The clouds had cleared away and a patch of sapphire sky looked in upon him, framed by jagged rocks: it held two or three faint stars. He could see a branch outlined dimly against the translucence, and leaves trembling in outer freedom.

Nothing more than this, and yet it was balm. The torture that gripped him subsided. He gazed and forgot the cramping of his limbs. The first stars passed slowly and vanished; others swam into his vision and formed new shapes in the peep of sky. Some were brighter, some more dim; some twinkled, one burned with a steady glow. They varied in colour, too. He had had no idea that, even through such a miserable hole, the heavens had a pageant to offer of such absorbing interest. And the passing of this pageant gave him a comforting sense of the flow of night towards morn.

Once Sidonia woke with a start and a cry.

"I am here," he quickly said.