Chapter VIII: Part 8

When they re-entered the room, the musician went instantly to the window and, opening it wide, stood inhaling in deep draughts the clean airs of the woods. It was that most silent, most mysterious hour of the whole circle--the hour before dawn. More silent and more mysterious, this night, it seemed because of the storm that had passed. Nature was exhausted after her passion, merely shaken by a faint reminiscent sigh that came stealing with scarce the quiver of a leaf, as from a tired heart.

The night sky held a strange depth of blue against the garish yellow lamplight within; the stars were paling. With head, thrown back, the wanderer stood gazing upwards. There were moods of his strange comrade that Steven had learned to respect. He therefore neither spoke nor approached; but, after completing the purification of the room by the simple process of turning out all the cans and bottles, he sat down and waited, absorbed in his own painful reflections. At last Geiger-Hans drew a deep breath, and, leaving the window open, sat down facing his companion. The contents of the rifled mail-bag lay between them.

The musician's face looked pale and severe. Still in silence, he began to toss such packets as had escaped violation back into the bag.

"Will you give me my letter, please?" said Steven, dully. Then his youth and hot blood betrayed him into a cry: "Oh, I am miserable!"

The older man glanced at him from under his eyebrows. It was an odd thing--for what was he, after all, but a poor, half-crazed, broken gentleman? yet there was a certain smile of this Geiger-Hans which made the world seem warm to the rich and highborn Steven.

"O blessed unhappiness of youth!" cried the musician in his old manner, mocking yet passionate. "Did you but know it, these pangs, these sighs, will be sweeter to the memory of your old age than your youth's most satisfied ecstasies! Here is your letter, boy. Go, weep and rage upon it, if you will, with all the fury of your checked aspiration.... What, you open your arms, and she is not ready forthwith to fall into them? You condescend to run after her, and she does not instantly stand still to be caught! You thought that to-morrow's sun would see you with your bride in your embrace, and behold! you have yet to woo her? Bewail your hard fate, you are indeed to be pitied!"

"Would you not like your fiddle?" cried Steven, as he caught the half-folded sheet that the musician tossed towards him, "that you may set my folly to a tune? When you want to sermonize, I had rather you did it on the strings, if you don't mind."

For a second Geiger Hans seemed about to resent the pettish speech as an impertinence. A frown gathered; but, with a short laugh, broken by a deep sigh, he resumed his air of sad serenity.

"Nay," said he, stroking the strings of the instrument that Steven pushed towards him, and then laying his hand flat upon them to still their wailing, "did I make music to-night, it would not be music for your youth. Fool!" said Geiger-Hans, fixing his mad, brilliant eyes upon Steven, "is she not living, she whom you love? and you prate to me--to me, of unhappiness!"

Though the words were harsh, his tone was strangely gentle. Had Steven dared, he would have put out his hand to touch the speaker.

The wind was rustling through the trees; there came a stir and a murmur from the woods; the purple-blue depth of the sky seemed to quiver with pallid changes.

"It is the dawn," said the fiddler, in a worn voice. "Get you to that couch again, for you must sleep, and we have a day of action before us. Aye, take that letter with you and lay it under your cheek. If it seem cruel, have not her fingers touched it? Ah, if you but knew from what a wounded heart, perhaps, sprang those reproachful words! Why, if she has pride, man, will she not be the fitter mate for you? And if she will have naught of a loveless marriage, is it not because she would have love? Poor little Sidonia ... who only yesterday was a child! You have awakened a woman's heart in her; see that you know how to meet that heart's measure."

Steven stood by the couch, palpitating to the words, to the golden visions they opened before his fevered eyes.... Sidonia, the child, with her yellow plaits of hair, with her eyes brown and green, clear yet deep, like the brook under the trees.... Sidonia, whose lips he had kissed; who had smiled at him under her bridal veil!

Geiger-Hans had said he would make no music; but it was the music of the gods his words had evoked in the dawn. Presently the older man looked up from his dreary abstraction: Steven, stretched on the sofa in all the abandonment of young fatigue, was sleeping like a child. The watcher's features relaxed.

"_O bella Gioventu_...!" he murmured. Then he looked down at the scattered sheets before him, and his lips twisted in bitter mockery. Here had been a night's work of petty crime under the fine-sounding title of patriotism and national conspiracy. But might not now some good be brought out of it after all? How sound the fellow slept! Not that he, the wanderer, envied any sleeper but him that would never wake.--Well, to work!

He took up, with contemptuous fingers, Burgravine Betty's easy lines of surrender to the royal Don Juan. It was clear that she was vastly flattered at the thought of becoming one of the _mil e tre_. But Betty had a husband...! Yes, the butterfly should be saved, if it were only for the sake of the pure child who had, as yet, no better shelter than those fragile gaudy wings.

He re-read the lines destined to the King, and smiled. Then he turned over the other sheet with his forefinger. The pregnant "Never!" sprang again at him out of the page, in Betty's flourish.

The fiddler smiled again.

* * * * *

Through the open window a shaft of sunlight struck the sleeper's forehead. Geiger-Hans rose to draw the wooden shutter. But Steven frowned and awoke.

Without, the forest was one golden lyric. It was an autumn day of sparkle and scurry. A flock of migrating birds were calling to each other over the yellowing tree-tops. Against the pale, exquisite blue of a sky such as September alone seems to give, the rooks were circling in fantastic squadrons.

From the dappled glades came an unseen stir of soft furred things; things on vibrating wings, busy or merely merry, snatching the last bright hour before the end. Into the middle of a straight forest clearing, all faint amber with fallen pine needles, a stag pricked his way with high and dainty steps; then turned his noble head, caught some scent of danger and leaped into the bracken, which closed in waves over him.... The very spirit of the woods incarnate!

It seemed shame to be sullenly sleepy on such a morning. Steven breathed the bright air, and his ill-humour vanished.

"That is well," said Geiger-Hans, as if the young man had spoken. "Nature sets us the example: what work she has to do, she does happily. Be brisk, comrade; we have also a task before us, and an immediate. The mail-bag is ready. We must now start master courier again on his interrupted duty. Heaven knows in what state we shall find the clown; we shall doubtless have to pump on him! ... Then, to Cassel!"

Melodious snores were yet intercrossing each other in the locked bedroom as they passed down the stairs. But the postilion was awake. He lay full length on the bench, with face upturned to the rafters, staring stupidly at a bunch of herbs immediately above him, his eyes totally devoid of speculation.

Early as it was, the household of that solitary house was astir. A fire was crackling in the hearth, and a fresh sound of water came from an inner room. The host of The Three Ways stood in the wide-open house-door looking into the empty road. He turned quickly at the sound of their steps and grinned in greeting as he saw Geiger-Hans.

"Good morning, Mr. Host," said the musician. "Fine doings have you had here the night!"

"Students' tricks, students' tricks," said the host, suddenly uncomfortable, and slouching back into the kitchen as he spoke. His small eyes blinked furtively away from the sight of the mail-bags which Geiger-Hans now heaved on the table. "Bah!" pursued he, "I knew nothing! I busy not my head over gentry's doings or students' pranks. I go to sleep. They concern me not." Then he burst into a chuckle. "Popped him into a wine-cask, they did, in the backyard of The Bunch of Grapes, down at Cassel, where the fellow takes his nip before going his round. And they sat on the cask, the three of them, singing and smoking their pipes--drove past the French soldiers who looked on and laughed--out of the town gates, and not a finger lifted to stop them! Upon my soul, it was a fine joke! The cart is out yonder, and the cask, too!" he added, and chucked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the sunlit yard, shaking the while with a laugh that might have struck the observer as a trifle forced.

"Your jokers are still enjoying the sleep of a blameless conscience," said Geiger-Hans. "They lie in your best bedroom, Mr. Landlord. I locked them in, lest your good wine should lead their innocence and lightheartedness into new jokes ... that might be less excellent." He took the key from his pocket and tossed it on the table. "Release the birds when you think fit," he added.

The landlord took up the key with alacrity. Geiger-Hans remained awhile musingly fixing the outstretched form of the postilion; then a faint laugh shook him in his turn.

"In a wine cask," commented he. "A right old German jest, not without its gross humour...! He did aver they had kidnapped him: the creature spoke truth!"

Mine host almost perpetrated a wink, but checked himself and coughed.

"Oh, these students!" he reiterated vaguely.

"No wonder the beast smells like a bottle-brush," cried Steven, curling up his nose. Here, then, was the explanation of that stench of wine which had sickened him the night before, and which even now the sweeping breeze could scarcely conquer.

"The High-Born has perfect reason," cried the innkeeper, "for the rascal is sopped, within and without. If you squeezed him, he would run vinegar.--Well, so long as I am paid!..." was the philosophic parenthesis. "But the wife has shaken him in vain. There he lies, and it were perhaps as wholesome he should jog." His glance moved uneasily towards the mail-bag. "And what is to be done with that?" it seemed to ask.

"Quite so," said Geiger-Hans, gravely. "Has he not his letters to deliver? They will be one post late; but in Westphalia, nowadays, we are not so mighty particular, are we? He must be freshened up, I think. Here, friend, I and my comrade will bring him to the trough, and you shall do the pumping. We'd better off with his jacket first. Never look so doubtful, Mr. Landlord. If his Majesty hears of it, you may be decorated. Think of that!"

"Saints forbid!" said the host, turning pale. "If Jerome heard of it, I might be shot."

"Nay," said Geiger-Hans, cheerfully, "you may take my word for it; the days are counted within which there will be either decorations or executions in the name of Jerome. But, meanwhile, to our duty! Never look so disgusted, little comrade. This is a vile beast, as you said; but in a minute we shall have him purified."

* * * * *

It was, indeed, a purified courier, a chastened and subdued mail-bearer, who trotted his way on through the forest, astride that self-same horse that had dragged him forth in his reeking prison the night before. He had the great bag on his back (undiminished save for two warrants and one private missive--one, indeed, that had already reached its proper destination), a gold piece in his pocket, and a plausible tale of violence and rescue to tell, should it ever be required of him.

*CHAPTER XXIV*

*PORTENTS*

"Huet bich, mein Freund, vor schwarzen, alten Kasen,
Doch schlimmer sind die weissen, jungen Kaeschen....!"
HEINE.

There was brilliant sunshine as Steven rode in at the gate of Cassel. The fiddler walked beside him; but, once within the town, he halted, waved his hand, and called out:

"Good-bye."

"How?" cried Steven, drawing rein, his heart sinking at this unexpected parting.

"Ah, little bridegroom!" said Fiddler Hans, "it is even so. And a pretty figure," he said, "should I be, to shadow your lordship's magnificence in this fashionable city!"

He stepped across the cobbles, laid his hand on the horse's neck, and looked up at the young man; all mockery fled out of his eyes.

"You are an honest lad," he said, "and you love her--go, tell her the naked truth."

* * * * *

In her pink-hung bed at the Bellevue Palace, Betty von Wellenshausen opened a sleepy eye upon her surroundings. She yawned and stretched herself. It was good to wake up in Cassel and feel the bustle of life about her, the gay and ceaseless movement, instead of the rarefied loneliness of Wellenshausen on the crags, where the morning might find her higher than the clouds themselves, with perhaps scarce the beat of a bird's wing across the awful stillness.

Yes, it was _du dernier agreable_ in the _Residenz_--Betty's thoughts ran naturally to French--to be aroused to the prospect of a day full of the most new and diverting experience.... Positively, Jerome was a charming fellow!...

... It was, perhaps, a trifle strong to ask for a secret rendezvous on the strength of one meeting; but Betty did not regret her answer. Without being at all prepared to yield--gracious powers, was one not to enjoy oneself a little? ... after three years of Wellenshausen!

In the midst of these gossamer resolves, the door creaked apart.

The Burgravine rubbed her eyes and thought she must be still dreaming, for through the aperture peered the heavy countenance, the bristling head of her husband--actually of the Burgrave of Wellenshausen himself!

She sat up, her lace cap awry upon the starting dark curls, her cherry mouth open, her eyes round, the very image of astonished indignation. With ponderous tip-toe tread, not unlike that of a wild boar stepping out of covert, the husband entered the room. He closed the door behind him and stood smiling, half timidly, half fatuously. Betty's clenched hands flew up in the air and down again on the sheets.

"How dare you!" she gasped. "Did I not forbid you----?"

"Oh, come now, Betty, my little wife, my little dove, I've frightened you. You were asleep, angel? But when I got your letter, last night, I lost not an instant. His Majesty gave me leave--urgent private affair. Post haste I came from Heiligenstadt. In Cassel with the dawn--a mouthful of breakfast to while away the time--a little toilet, and here I am. Shaved, my treasure! Your dear little letter----"

"My ... my dear little letter?" Betty shrieked, eyes rounder, curls more startled than ever. She sat rigid. "My dear little letter!" she repeated under her breath once more. Then, as she recalled the missive in question, she was shaken with an irresistible giggle. Her face dimpled. The Burgrave, gazing on her amorously, thought her the most ravishing, the most maddening being ever created for the delight or torment of man.

"Your letter, my Betty, to Heiligenstadt," he murmured, drew a pink sheet from his breast pocket, and carried it to his lips. "What wonder that, upon receipt of this, I could not delay coming to my sweet Betty a minute longer!" He held the note at arm's length. "Your wifely, your dutiful words: '_I should indeed be disloyal to persist in rebellion against my lawful lord._'"

Now, at a flash, the situation was laid clear before her:--by some inconceivable carelessness she had put her correspondence of two days ago in the wrong covers! ... A plague on this new-fangled French invention of envelopes!

She shut her lips with a snap and swallowed down the cry that rose to them. Rapidly she tried to recall that elegant reply to the royal importunities which had given her so much satisfaction; and then all other feelings were lost in a gush of gratitude to the Providence that had suggested those ambiguous terms which saved the situation--saved Betty, Burgrave of Wellenshausen, from premature discovery, irreparable disgrace.

She turned and smiled adorably on the Burgrave.

"Monster," she murmured, "do you deserve forgiveness?"

* * * * *

Steven halted at the first inn on his way, at the sign of the _Aigle Imperial_--a new French sign upon an old and solidly Germanic house. Here he put up his horse and engaged a room.

The best he could obtain was on the second floor. The town was full of officers--a regular military citadel now, and Cassel, that used to be a quiet _Residenz_.... Honourable guests could no longer be entertained as was their due, mine host informed him with a shrug of the shoulders. Steven, however, was indifferent enough; it was not his purpose to remain an hour longer in Jerome's capital than he could help. Indeed, he dropped some words concerning the equipage he would probably require--it might be that very evening--which gave the landlord an insight into a long purse and magnificent habits of travel.

This worthy, therefore, sped the stranger towards the Royal Palace with far greater urbanity than he had displayed on his arrival, and stood staring after him with some curiosity:--unattended, upon a bony old horse, and airs of a prince withal ... a sable cloak than which the King himself wore no better ... and we want, if you please, a travelling carriage and four of the best horses obtainable. We don't mind buying if they are not to be hired.... _Oho, ei, ei!_

"The town is turned into a citadel." The words recurred to Steven as he swung down the ill-paved street. The very air throbbed to military rhythm. In the fields, without the walls and on the new ramparts, everywhere, levies were being exercised, to judge by the tramp of feet, the calls and counter calls of bugles, the distant blare of marching bands, the beat of drums, cries of command, rattle of sham fire. The little brown town itself was filled with the most heterogeneous throng--Hanoverian and Westphalian hangers-on of the Court; French and Corsican adventurers; soldiers of as varied nationalities as were the uniforms of Jerome's fretful fancy; grenadiers, late of his brother, briefly royal of Holland, in their red coatees; wonderful blue hussars (French most of them) very gallant, with a wealth of jangle, whether ahorse or afoot--these same wonderful blue hussars, some of whom Steven had seen driven by the sheep-skin Cossacks like wrack before the storm; _dragons d'Espagne_, in green and orange, stern, lean and war-worn (unscrupulously intercepted, these, on their way to rejoin their imperial leader, and here disdainful of pinchbeck king and petty service); stolid Westphalian recruits lounging along the cobbles with the slouch of discontent; astounding diplomats driving about, clad in astounding embroideries; academicians, too, with the green palm on coat-tail and cuff, for "Little Brother Jerome" played at being as like big brother Napoleon as might be.

Market boors plodded by, blue-stockinged, crimson-waistcoated and wide-hatted; shapeless country wenches tramped, and fair ladies, reclining in coaches, flashed past Steven; and quite a swarm of lackeys, postilions, chasseurs, with all the insolence of the servants of dissolute masters, elbowed him aside, or appraised him with open comment. Had he not been so absorbed in his private anxiety, he might have noted, in spite of the air of gaiety, the bustle and the extravagance, certain ominous signs of impending cataclysm around him--the swift passage here and there of an urgent courier; the grave countenances of some officials; the little groups, whispering together in by-streets, dissolving at the first hint of approaching police; the singing defiance of the students; the sullenness of the poorer burghers; and, above all, the febrile, over-strained note in the very merriment of the ruling class itself. There was a tinkling of madcap-bells at the Palace of Jerome that rang into the town; no one within those walls had a mind to hearken to the reverberating echoes of Berlin and Hamburg and Dresden.

Heartily as he despised the sovereign and his army; careless as he was, in the absorption of his own vexed affairs, of the dire threat that hung upon the land, Steven could not but find something inspiriting in the martial sounds and sights. Unconsciously his step fell to the measure of some distant drums. He had a valiant sense of marching upon victory as he turned into the palace courtyard. On the strength of his splendid air, the sentries saluted him without challenging. A huge green-uniformed Swiss porter bowed before him.

The first check--and it was a slight one--was that no such person as the _Graefin_ Waldorff-Kielmansegg was known at the Palace. She had to be explained as the niece of Chancellor Wellenshausen, as the young Baroness Sidonia, before her identity could be established. Then, once more, all was smiles and bows. Nothing could be easier than to see the gracious _Fraeulein_. He was passed from Swiss porter to royal French lackey; conducted by the royal French lackey through several corridors and up a flight of stairs, then delivered to no less a person than dapper Kurtz, the Burgrave's own Jaeger. This latter gave him first a stare, then a sharp, meaning look, but, nevertheless, introduced him without demur to a kind of ante-room. Here Steven was left; and here he had to wait a length of time, which seemed to him first ill-omened, then positively insulting.

It was a quaint room, painted with impossible nosegays of flowers and cornucopias running over with gargantuan fruit. It gave, as did the whole apartment, on the Bellevue Gardens; and, through the yellowing trees, he could see distant gleams of the Fulda, blue under a blue sky. A merry party was playing bowls on the _boulingrin_; and, though it was screened from sight by sundry formal clipped hedges, Steven could hear the interchange of voices, ladies' laughter, the banter of men.

As the minutes passed and there came to him no sound from within the apartment, the tinkling, irresponsible gaiety without grew to be a personal irritation. The very sunshine that had cheered him on his way was now a mockery; the distant tunefulness of trumpets, a boding. More than once he lifted his hands impatiently towards the bell-rope, but each time refrained: so much hung in the balance, he must be patient. Patient! He ground his teeth as he paced the bright, absurd room.

* * * * *

Kurtz brought the message intended for Sidonia straight to the Burgravine. He was an astute young man, and knew the most likely quarter for promotion. Betty was at the moment engaged with the contents of a milliner's box, choosing a hat to wear with a certain new green redingote at the review to be held that afternoon. Something it must have of the military cock, without offending the feminine graces. It was matter of the deepest moment. But Betty, it has been hinted, had a capable mind--a facility for grasping several issues at the same time. She rose promptly to the new situation.

"Bid Baroness Sidonia come to me," she ordered. Then, tartly recalling her maid, who was edging towards the door: "Eliza, where are you going?" she cried.

"_Mon Dieu_," said Eliza, innocently, "but to inform _mademoiselle_ that some one is waiting for her. And, indeed," she added, seeing by the flash of her lady's eye that her good-natured intention was frustrated--"indeed, madam, it is strange what a foolish habit we have all got into of calling madam's niece _Mademoiselle_. It is the young countess, I should say."

She clasped her hands, and was about to wax eloquent on the subject of her pleasure at M. le Comte Kielmansegg's reappearance and of her rooted conviction that they were _un bien gentil couple_, divinely destined for each other, when her mistress peremptorily reduced her to silence. Kurtz thereupon vanished in his brisk soldier way.

Betty selected another hat and set it on her curly head. It had an adorably impudent tilt and a bunch of orange cock-feathers.

"That, madame," said the French milliner, her thin elbows akimbo, her bright, familiar eyes fixed admiringly on her client--"that, madame, we call the _Shako a la Saxonne_--it is everything that is new--an inspiration after the battle of Luetzen. And there is not another lady in Cassel will have anything like it."

Betty twisted her figure from side to side, and surveyed herself in the long mirror. She had donned the long narrow _redingote_ to be sure of her effect, and the rich dark green of the velvet threw her face into charming relief. The orange note of the feather was the perfecting touch.

"I really think--I really think I will have it." She spoke lingeringly: these things do not decide themselves without reflection.

Sidonia came in slowly. Betty ran a keen eye over the girl; the fair hair was rough, and that was a dreadful little garment of Wellenshausen manufacture ... pale face, heavy eyes! Betty broke into a laugh. Life was really very amusing at times.

"You sent for me, aunt?"

"Yes, my dear. Somebody has called to see you, it seems."

"To see me?" Sidonia drew her breath quickly. Crimson rushed to her face.

"Dear child," said the Burgravine, in her most cooing voice, "do not agitate yourself; you need not see him unless you wish. Yes, my love, it is that tiresome man again--my wretched cousin Kielmansegg."

Sidonia swayed a little, but caught herself up, fiercely erect; then the blood began to ebb from her cheeks.

"I will go to him," she said under her voice. "Where is he?"

"Perhaps it would be just as well," said the Burgravine, carelessly. "You can hurry matters on about the annulment. Truly, it is fortunate," she laughed, "that we shall not now have to hunt for him God knows where, in order to free you, my poor little Sidonia, from this absurd business."

"Aunt!" cried the girl, indignantly, with a glance at the milliner.--How could Aunt Betty laugh so heartlessly, how dared she discuss these most intimate affairs, before a stranger!

"Calm yourself," said the elder lady, "she does not understand one word of our savage language--too true a Frenchwoman for that, my dear! Now, about this traitor. (There you go white and red, you silly thing.) ... Everything can be settled by Yes or No! Either he wants to carry off his heiress, or he is content with your decision. He has, of course, received your letter. Heavens, my dear, did we not discuss it all before? And, anyhow, it is not a matter for heroics. Lord knows, I don't want to interfere; it is entirely for you to decide whether you are on or off with the bargain. For I will lay forty wagers he is here to protest. Ah, I know my young Viennese gentlemen; they cannot have too much gold at their back.--Decidedly, Madame Athenais, I keep this hat."

It was too adorable to be taken off her head even for a moment.

Sidonia stood, clasping and unclasping her hands. Every word her aunt spoke, dropped apparently with such heedlessness, but in reality with such subtle intent, stabbed her to her sore heart.

"Approach, my dear," said Betty, maternally, "and let me, for heaven's sake, run a comb through your hair. Mercy on us, child, what a gown! Had you not better change it?"

"No," said Sidonia, sullenly. She went, on leaden foot, to her aunt's toilet table and gave an unseeing touch to her hair.

Betty looked over her shoulder; the two faces were reflected side by side. Sidonia's reflection in the glass looked positively ugly--in her own eyes. In Betty's, too, apparently, for she cried, with an air of great generosity and wisdom:

"I would offer to go with you, to support you, my angel; but after what has passed--I think it were wiser he should not see me. After all, who knows? You may patch it up. But, Sidonia, you really ought to make yourself a little tidy."

Madame Athenais, who, if she had that ignorance of the German language attributed to her ultra-Parisian nature, had contrived nevertheless to follow the dialogue pretty closely, here interposed with the unctuous familiarity of her kind:

"Oh, if the young lady is going to have an interview of importance, it is certain she should make some toilet. See, if _mademoiselle_ permits, I will show her a hat that is the very thing for the occasion. Something young, young, quite virginal, yet, coquet, alluring!--something no gentleman of taste could resist on _mademoiselle's_ head!"

Sidonia--she was but seventeen, after all--stamped her foot.

"Leave me in peace, all of you!" she cried, and made for the door.

The keenest of all Betty's stabs she carried away in her heart; that was the vision of Betty herself, so fair, so distracting in her plumed hat, beside Sidonia, plain, awkward, ill-dressed--poor Sidonia whom Steven had married ... without love! Betty's words: "It were wiser he should not see me," sang in her ears to the fierce accompaniment of her own jealous blood. She recalled the smile and the glance at her own reflection in the mirror, with which Betty had pointed her concession to wisdom. Hot-tempered by nature, Sidonia had yet never even suspected the existence of such passion as now rent her.

*CHAPTER XXV*

*THE PERVERSENESS OF WORDS*

"Berriet mein blasses Angesicht
Dir nicht mein Liebeswehe?
Und willst du, dass der stolze Mund
Das Bettelwort gestehe?"
HEINE.

Steven, stretching a determined hand at last to the bell, was arrested in the act by the sound of the opening door. He turned to see Sidonia standing in the entrance.

It seemed as if, after all, these two were as yet unripe for love's fulfilment. The pride of each, unchastened, the quick susceptibilities, the unreasonable expectations and demands of the crudely young, built frowning barriers between them.

Steven, who but last night had burned with ardour for his lost bride; who, but this morning, had set out to win her back, tender, conquering, almost joyous, felt the fretful impatience of his ten minutes of waiting leap into positive anger under the accusing glance of Sidonia's eyes. Their looks met--one might almost say, struck--like steel blades, each quick to feel and resent the other's attitude.

"Ah, no, he does not love!" cried the girl, in her heart. And--

"She never loved me," said the man in his pride. "I have been a triple fool!"

But did she think that a Waldorff-Kielmansegg was thus to be played with, made the sport of heaven knew what ignoble feminine intrigue, a marriage of convenience, quickly repented of, and then, farewell? No, he had his rights as a man, his honour to defend, and things could not end here.

"What brings you?" asked Sidonia. Being the woman, she was the first to speak.

His tone was harsh as he made answer: "Because it is time this folly should cease. Because you are my wife. Because you bear my name. Because your honour is mine, and I will not have you running about the world--under no better guard than that of Burgravine Betty."

The contempt of his accents, the doubt, stung her beyond bearing.

"By all accounts," she cried--and there was almost a sneer upon her sweet lips--"you had been willing enough, not so long ago, to trust her with your own honour."

So the fiddler had been right. Betty had made mischief! The thought danced a moment through Steven's brain; but in the confusion of anger he failed to seize its real import.

Sidonia went on, vainly endeavouring to steady her voice as it throbbed to the beating of her heart:

"You talk of honour! Is it honourable to speak of her like this--is it generous?"

"Generous?" he echoed. "Will you teach me generosity, you who drove me away, without explanation--without giving me a chance to explain? You, the bride of an hour!"

"Come, then, I am listening now. Explain." Her accent, her air, were passionately peremptory. Her fingers sought hastily in the reticule at her side--the tangible evidence of her misfortune was hidden there. She laid the note before him on the table, spreading it and smoothing it out for him, even as Betty had done for her on the wedding day, in the turret at Wellenshausen. "Explain this," she said.

Steven cast a quick glance at the incriminating document, opened his mouth upon scorn and denial, then checked himself with a bitter laugh and a shrug of the shoulders.

"Tell her the naked truth!" It was the fiddler's advice. To tell her upon what a petty rock their barque was foundering ... it ought to have been an easy thing! Yet the man stood, contemptuous, smiling, silent. Every instinct of his being revolted against the girl's haughty command. His pride alone would have kept him mute, but there was something yet stronger, more intimate, to restrain him. "Tell her the naked truth!" Naked enough was the truth, ugly enough, sordid enough, to be convincing if he could have brought himself to speak it! The truth? Why, here it would have been: "Your Aunt Betty offered herself to me, threw herself upon my protection. I did not love her, I did not want her. She gave me no choice; and this is her woman's revenge!"

Aye, it is all very well to say: "You are an honest lad." But if a gentleman has behind him long generations of gentlemen, each of whom has planned his life upon the conventional code of honour among gentlemen, he cannot easily bring his lips to form the words that will betray a woman in relation to himself--least of all, perhaps, where he has been loved and has not loved in return.

So his lips were silent upon that smile of scorn. And Sidonia's last hope--how strong it had been, how dear, she never knew till this moment--agonized within her. That he should mock her for jealousy: that was the supreme insult.

As in a flash of unbearable illumination she saw herself in his eyes, heavy-lidded, unkempt; saw the figure that had provoked just now even Betty's pity; saw beside her, Betty, rich in loveliness, velvet clad ... it was no wonder that Beau Cousin Kielmansegg should fix her with this smile, this contempt.

And Steven, in his _morgue_, who would have perished rather than condescend to explain--could he but have known (Ah, if youth but knew!) that no explanation was really needed of him, that no words are ever needed in the great crises of life! Words are our enemies. The inability to express the subtleties of wounded feeling, the false witness that our tongues bear against us, have divided more lovers secretly yearning for each other than ever did most adverse circumstances. One touch of his hand on hers, one kiss upon her lips, and Sidonia would have felt the truth, would have understood that he loved her, and that, to him who loves, the beloved is queen. Angry Steven, Steven the lover, had never even noticed the dishevelment of her bright hair. Her face was pale?--it was a pearl in his eyes. Her attire was shabby?--it might have been a garment of state. Had Betty broken in on them then, in all her glory, he would have drawn no comparison, save to the superlative advantage of the woman who was his choice.

Alas! if youth but knew!

From the bowling green without came a gust of laughter; then a light voice broke into a stave of popular song. They had, in happier moments, heard that lilt upon the fiddle of wandering Hans; it struck them poignantly. Wounded love flamed into intemperate resentment.

"After all, Aunt Betty but told me the truth, if a little late--you have nothing to say," said Sidonia, between teeth clenched upon a sob.

"Only this," replied Steven, arrogantly, from the height of his disdain, "that I command you, as your husband, to come with me now."

Sidonia pointed to the door.

"_Herr Graf von Kielmansegg_, my uncle expects to hear from the judges to-day anent the annulment of that ill-considered ceremony which made me nominally your wife. His lawyers will call upon you in due course."

"Madam," answered the count, bowing, "I intend to take up my abode in Cassel--at the _Aigle Imperial_. Therefore there will be no difficulty about my address. But let me remark that annulments are not easily concluded without the consent of both parties."

He closed the door between them upon these words.

"He does not love me--he never loved me!" said Sidonia to her bursting heart. "It was all pride!"

The other unworthy suspicions, which Betty had so subtly instilled, could not live in her soul after having come again under the glance of Steven's eye. But she had pride too, her woman's pride, and it showed her what she had to do, even though it killed her.

"O Geiger-Onkel," cried the poor child, "what have you brought me to! Even you have abandoned me!"

Betty's arrows, shot at spiteful random, occasionally hit a truer mark than she herself suspected. When, in her tower prison, she had petulantly averred that the Burgrave would certainly keep in his own hands the choosing of Sidonia's husband (and for very good reasons!) she had unconsciously struck the gold. The heiress's guardian did not intend, if it could be helped, to have his accounts examined. Hence, apart from the humiliating pressure put upon him, against which his elementary violence rebelled, the young Austrian was the last person the Burgrave would have desired as nephew-in-law. There was a relentlessness in the young man's eye and a clear penetration, which, whenever the Burgrave remembered them, sent uncomfortable chills through his frame. True, Count Kielmansegg had never breathed one syllable on the subject of his bride's fortune; but this very silence struck the Chancellor as the more ominous.

"I shall have his lawyers on top of me before I know where I am," he had many a time growled in those sullen days that followed Sidonia's betrothal, chiefly at those hours of conscience's activity, the dull hours before the dawn, when the night's potations had ceased to stimulate.

It was not that Wellenshausen had ever been consciously dishonest. In his fine masculine, Germanic way, when he had put large sums of his ward's money to his own uses, he had felt himself almost in the right. Was it not against nature that mere females should have advantages over the male? Indeed, he had scarcely taken the trouble to make memoranda of the expenditure: in Jerome's kingdom, especially in financial matters, it was never customary to waste time upon details, and the sense of impending catastrophe, more particularly of late, had increased the sense of the value of the fleeting moment.

Since his second marriage the Burgrave had certainly taken both hands to Sidonia's treasure. There was the loan to his Royal Master; a matter of high diplomacy! It was well to have a lien over so slippery a patron. And, besides, it would be all to the child's advantage, no doubt, later on. Practically an investment! There were Betty's pearls.... Well, in these uncertain times, might not jewels also be looked upon as an investment? none the worse for having gleamed so charmingly on Betty's shoulders!

And there was this, and there was that.... In the small hours above mentioned, memory became inconveniently active. Once or twice the Burgrave had sat up in his feather-bed to wipe a clammy forehead; in truth, he did not know how much the heiress of Wellenshausen, apart from the lands, was heiress to. But there was a certain document of his late brother's, referring, in very precise terms, to the _Fideicommission_, to the trust.

It was no wonder, then, that when Sidonia had come to him, on the day of the wedding, where he sat glowering over his wine-cup and the remains of the feast, and had told him how she and her new husband had parted for ever, the relief should have been so unexpected and so great as completely to sober him.

In a spasm of paternal affection he had assured her that such a ceremony could not count, and that it would be the easiest thing in the world to release her, since she wished it.

She had looked at him stonily over her bridal white. Was that indeed the case? she had asked. She had thought marriages were for ever.

And he had laughed at her joyously. "Na, na, little dove--a marriage of this kind, if one wishes it, was as good as no marriage at all!"

"Then see to it, please," she had said steadily, avoiding his embrace.

There was horror in the look she cast upon him as she turned to leave the room; but he was too completely absorbed in his joy to see anything but the deliverance before him. He never even paused to wonder, to inquire the reason of the breach--and this, doubtless, had been well for Betty.

The connubial migration to Cassel, consent to which had been wrung from him at the expense of so much mental agony, now became a project which could not be soon enough, to please him, put into execution. For would it not mean the prompt legal annulment of Sidonia's most inopportune alliance? His original jealousy of Beau Cousin would seem to have been the one thing really murdered in the _oubliette_; yet, perhaps, somewhere deep down in his consciousness, there faintly stirred, beneath all the other reasons for relief, a satisfaction at the thought that Cousin Kielmansegg could never again be made welcome to the house that had sheltered his divorced wife.

*CHAPTER XXVI*

*THE WAYS OF LITTLE COURTS*

"_Thinkest thou there is no tyranny but that_
_Of blood and chains? The despotism of vice--_
_The weakness and the wickedness of luxury--_
_Of sensual sloth--produce ten thousand tyrants._"
BYRON.

Betty came thoughtfully into her husband's presence. The review had not been a success. In spite of velvet _redingote_ and yellow plumes, she could not flatter herself that Jerome had singled her out. She began to have qualms as to the results of that unexplained and inexplicable mistake in her correspondence. She had fully promised herself that the first glance between her and the King would delicately give him to understand that her rigour was not as eternal as the uncompromising "_Never_" might have led him to believe.

Indeed, with natural optimism, under the rosy atmosphere evolved between her mirror and the _shako a la Saxonne_, she had come to tell herself that the unintended rebuff was, perhaps, not a thing to be regretted after all. Kings or chancellors, or simple Viennese lieutenants, men were much the same, she took it. And, as the experienced French have it, _tenir la dragee haute_, was none too bad a way to make the creatures yearn for it. Was not her own Burgrave a telling proof?

But the fact remained that Jerome had not even seemed aware of her existence that afternoon. Something had gone wrong about the review. At the last moment it had been found wiser to leave a certain regiment in barracks, information having transpired about a leaven of disloyalty. Jerome's brow had been thunder black. There had been a vast amount of discussion between him and five or six generals. And finally the King had left the field in high displeasure, before the programme of evolutions had been half concluded. And it was a painful fact that none of the populace cheered him as he went.

Certainly, if he had not looked at her, he had, at least, looked at no other fair one. Still, the day had been a failure for the Burgravine; and, as she drove back to the Palace, she had actually some doubts as to the shako. In her own apartment a new trouble confronted her. Sidonia, who had locked herself up alone after that momentous interview, now came very calmly to greet her. She had a smile on her lips, and--thus do we cherish vipers in our bosom!--Eliza's fingers had obviously been busy on the yellow head. The child was positively _coiffee_! Yes, and she was dressed, too: a fashionable creature. And pretty--undeniably pretty, in a singular, girlish way of her own. And not a word could the most insidious question draw from her lips. Betty was forced, in the end, to apply to Eliza. The tirewoman shrugged her shoulders. She knew well enough what had passed, but it was too much to expect her to gratify her mistress.

"Cannot _madame_ see? Ah, it will not be long before those two are together again! If she coquets a little, _certes_, it will not be _madame_ who will blame her! Oh, it is not for nothing that _mademoiselle_ is making herself beautiful! Who knows if she will not meet him to-morrow night!"

"Heavens!" exclaimed the Burgravine, disagreeably struck, "you do not mean that she intends to go to the fete!"

"But, yes, madame; she has been choosing her dress. And oh, I know some one who will look pretty."

"But the deeds are actually drawn up. The marriage is as good as annulled already," cried Betty.

Eliza clacked her tongue contemptuously. "Until people are divorced, they are still married," she remarked sagely. "And it is not the young gentleman who wants a divorce, I can tell madame. 'Oh, how he is enamoured!' says Kurtz to me. 'He came in like a lion roaring,' says Kurtz. 'That is love,' he says to me. 'Beautiful!' he says."

Betty snapped herself out of her maid's hands, flung herself into a wrapper and went to seek the Burgrave.

As matters stood, the storm-wind of injured vanity and jealousy blowing very strong, she actually would rather give up her conquest of Jerome than, she thought, the sweets of revenge. In the Burgrave she had an ally--she never paused to wonder why, so little did she heed the flight of her arrows.

Before they parted, the sagacious couple, for once warmly united, were agreed that until Sidonia were provided with another husband, they could scarcely feel themselves safe from Kielmansegg's persecution. Now, in the court of Jerome, husbands had been known to be provided for people at the shortest notice ... things had generally to be done at short notice at the court of Jerome.

Sidonia was still quite sufficiently an heiress for the Chancellor (he knew his court) to be quite sure of being able to find some excellent person who would take her thankfully from his hands without daring to request, much less to stipulate, for an exhibition of figures.

* * * * *

There was a Court-concert the next night at the Royal Palace, and it was in the music-room that Sidonia was, by command, presented to Jerome.

She dropped her curtsey. Here was a King for whose royalty, in her sturdy patriotism and her inherited race tradition, she felt neither allegiance nor respect. As she drew herself up from the perfunctory obeisance, she looked him in the face and met the well-remembered glance, with its hateful gleam and flicker. Turning aside she became conscious of the gaze of the King's Master of the Horse, General d'Albignac, as he towered over his dapper little sovereign. Steady enough this, something like the glare with which the beast of prey regards his quarry. The girl's heart sank with a double terror.

"I am charmed," said the King, "to behold at last with my own eyes the young heiress of Wellenshausen, in whose lovely person, I am told, is vested so much of my territory."

This was spoken in German, with a pronounced Italian accent. Then Jerome slid into French to say caressingly:

"_Mademoiselle de Wellenshausen_ is welcome at my Court."

Betty von Wellenshausen, at Sidonia's side, stood twittering, awaiting her moment. Jerome was once more in high good humour; all trace of the gloom that had weighted his brow through yesterday's afternoon was gone. Betty felt sure of triumph. Her entrance had created quite a flutter in the assembly. Women had whispered together behind their fans. Men's eyes had followed her with bold, curious looks. Her Bluebeard shadowed her with a fierce anxiety which to-night Betty accepted cheerfully as a further tribute, confident that she and his sovereign could elude it when the critical time came.

What, therefore, were her feelings when she found Jerome's eyes glinting past her--ay, past Betty von Wellenshausen at her fairest--to rest with marked interest (if ever the word "rest" could be applied to Jerome's eyes) upon Sidonia, the gawky child. There could be no mistake about it, she could not soothe herself with the thought that pique was the cause of his neglect. His attention swept by her with no deliberate indifference; she simply did not exist for him, his interest was vividly enkindled elsewhere. In the blasting disillusion of the experience, the Burgravine turned livid. Through the buzzing in her ears she could scarce catch Sidonia's reply to the King's gracious words.

The child, however, was speaking in clear, deliberate tones, and what she was saying was sufficiently remarkable:

"Your Majesty mistakes. I am the Countess Waldorff-Kielmansegg."

Outward decorum is the rule even at the most amateur court, yet the sensation created by the announcement Sidonia could feel to her innermost nerve. The countenance of Jerome became as suddenly and threateningly overcast as that of a spoilt urchin thwarted. He flung a look of anger at his Chancellor. The veins swelled on the crimsoning forehead of General d'Albignac.

* * * * *

The rumour that old Wellenshausen had a rich _niece a marier_ had spread very quickly through the Palace. D'Albignac remembered her quite well; it was she who had struck him over the eyes with her plaits--that added something to the zest with which the King's Master of the Horse had sought an interview that morning with the young lady's guardian. It was not unsatisfactory in its results. Ere they parted, indeed, the two thoroughly understood each other. The _ex-chouan_ was hardly a match, perhaps, for a Wellenshausen; but then there was the coming scandal of the annulment! Her fortune, on the other hand, might not be now what it had been on her father's death, but it was considerable. And, again, times were bad. The Burgrave could guarantee, at any rate, that the broad lands were intact. One must make up one's mind to give and take in this world; and every one, from King downwards, was more or less in debt at the Court of Jerome--d'Albignac distinctly more than less. Besides, a pretty wife was always a good speculation at Cassel. And when d'Albignac saw Jerome fix his future bride with a well-known look, he knew that she might prove a very profitable speculation indeed. A prolonged course of "_Pompadourettes_" had begun to satiate the royal palate; here was a wild, high-born thing that carried her head like a stag, and looked out upon them all with fire in her eyes. By the side of the ogling, mincing bit of plumpness that the Burgrave had provided himself with, with all her stage tricks and fireworks, even to the chouan renegade (who was no eclectic) the contrast was grateful. And now there was this nonsense about a previous marriage to spoil all! What a pity he had not been allowed quietly to finish off the impertinent interloper that night in the forest!

* * * * *

Betty's voice broke shrilly upon the brooding pause:

"Your Majesty," she cried, "has, I believe, already received information of the true position of affairs. The marriage was no marriage. A quixotic piece of nonsense, half-hearted, soon repented, at least on one side. The deeds of annulment are actually drawn up. Count Kielmansegg's signature--or I am very much mistaken--will be promptly affixed now, and it is not to be imagined, as your Majesty will well believe, that my husband's niece will then withhold hers. It would be against all feminine delicacy, all proper pride."

She shot a look of fury at her niece; then she nudged the Burgrave, who instantly reasseverated in his deep bass:

"The deed of annulment is drawn up, sire."

Jerome's good humour returned. He rubbed his hands. In spite of all his royal assumption, much of the exuberant gesture of the Corsican had stuck to him, to the distaste of his stolid subjects.

"_Il faut aller vite, vite, alors_. We must make haste," he averred.

To make haste and enjoy was, indeed, the rule of his existence. Now, a Lent of unexampled rigour seemed inevitably drawing near him, and all the more vertiginous was his carnival. So vertiginous indeed, that, willingly blind though she was, the Queen, true German daughter of Wuertemberg, had withdrawn from the whirl, giddy and panting, to take refuge at Napoleonshoehe till such time as her spouse would come to sober sense again.