Chapter XXI: At Aix Once More

So, like Heinrich, Charlie had fallen into the 'enemy's hands;' but fortunately for him, they were the soft and gentle ones of little Célandine de Caillé.

The passage of the ball had seriously injured him internally; thus he was long in recovering, and the winter of the year was almost at hand ere he could venture to travel; but it now seemed imperative to Charlie that he should trespass on his host and hostess no longer.

'You would spoil any man with kindness, Mademoiselle de Caillé,' said he, one day; 'or any dog, too.'

'Often the most loving animal of the two,' replied the French girl, laughing.

During that protracted convalescence how often, in the waking hours of the night, had he thought of Ernestine, and strove to sleep in the hope to dream of her; of their moonlight walks in the garden of the old Schloss, when she had held his arm, with her little hands interlaced so confidingly on his sleeve, and he used to pet and caress them as she leant with all her weight upon his wrist; or of the mad gallops they were wont to have through the glades and dingles of the lovely Reichswald, when the green woods seemed to sleep under the dusky purple of the summer sky; but one night he had a dream that startled, and, like that one in the bivouac, made a deep impression upon him by its vividness and the sense of pain it left.

In imagination she bent over him sadly and caressingly; her dark eyes were tender and beautiful as of old; but the rose-leaf tint had left her cheeks, as if for ever. Her smile was full of sweetness. Then a change came suddenly over her; the soft light died out of her eyes; her cheeks became hollow, her lips pallid; her whole expression and aspect painful and ghastly; the grasp of her hands became cold and chilling, and her voice grew faint and husky, as she said,

'At Burtscheid, dearest Carl; meet me at Burtscheid, where last we met.'

Then she seemed to melt away from before him, and Charlie started and awoke, to find it was happily but a mere dream, born too probably of his nervous and enfeebled condition, yet one so vivid, we have said--so terrifically vivid and painful, that he was trembling in every limb, a cold perspiration covered his whole frame; and by some strange association of ideas, the dying curse, if curse it was, of the French captain came rushing on his memory.

And now the time came when he was to leave the Chateau de Caillé.

'And you go, you go to her,' said Célandine, making a great effort to appear calm, on the day of his departure.

'To her whose miniature I showed you, dear friend yes.'

'Oh, may you both be happy--very, very happy!'

'I thank you, dear Célandine; you will ever have her gratitude, as well as mine; but there are many things to oppose, many interests to thwart our happiness.'

'Alas!' said the French girl, sadly; 'but remember that nothing is _impossible_.'

And so when Charlie Pierrepont left his kind friends and that charming part of Lorraine, he little knew that he left behind a warm girlish heart that yearned for him, and him only, and thought nothing of Monsieur Adolphe, with all his thousands of francs, her father's choice; and keenly she envied her--the unknown lady--whose miniature was in Charlie's heart.

From the surgeon of a Prussian regiment at Saarbrück, Charlie Pierrepont got a medical certificate, to the effect that he was incapable of rejoining the Thuringians, or of serving for some time. Leave was given him by the general in command, and he took the train from Saarbrück to Aix, to be near Frankenburg and her, of whom he had heard nothing for all those months, that seemed like so many ages now; for Charlie was so much of a lover, that to breathe the same atmosphere with her was a source of joy.

Yet it was a cold and frosty atmosphere now, for Christmas was close at hand, the time when Christmas trees are lighted, when arcades and toyshops, fruiterers and pastry-cooks drive a roaring trade, when circles long separated are reunited, and happy parents sit at the head of happy tables surrounded by shining faces.

The Reichswald was leafless and bare now, and a mantle of snow covered all those heights that surround Aix, which seems to lie in 'a fertile bowl surrounded by bold hills;' and ice lay in masses about the boats of the pontoon bridge of the Rhine. It was on the evening of the third Thursday before the great festival of the Christian year that Charlie found himself in the brilliant speise-saal of the Grand Monarque.

He was now within a very short distance of Frankenburg; but how was he to communicate with Ernestine? See her he must before Christmas-eve, or she could not meet him then; and the hunger, the craving of his heart, was too great to be endured long. He feared to write to Herminia, lest his handwriting might be recognised by the Countess, and to write to Ernestine would too probably be useless, as her correspondence was too probably under her mother's supervision.

What if she should now be the Baroness Grünthal? For months no one had known anything of his existence. All might have believed him to be dead, and she, perhaps yielding to the influences around her; but no, no--he thrust that thought aside, and recalled the solemnity of their vows interchanged at Burtscheid.

Had she not then, and on that eventful night in the boudoir, promised to be faithful to him in life and death? and Charlie smiled at his momentary doubt.

How many people there are in this world who treasure up and con over and over again an impossible day-dream that may never come to pass! Charlie thought of this as, from the hotel windows, he gazed moodily into the snow-covered street, with all its bustle and lamps, and shrank from the passing fear that his aspirations after Ernestine might only be an impossible and unrealizable longing; but see her again he must, even if he went to the Schloss--but no, that would never do after the treatment he had experienced there, and the epithets applied to him by the Countess.

Suddenly he observed near him, while lingering over his wine in the speise-saal, which had emptied of guests, the Baron Rhineberg and, of all men in the world, Baron Grünthal, busy with their meerschaums and tankards of beer. Both seemed very quiet and taciturn; they had been speaking very little, which perhaps was the reason that, in his abstraction, they had hitherto been unnoticed by Charlie, who now held up the _Staats Anzeiger_ between them and him, as he had no wish to be recognised by either. However, they were a link between him and Frankenburg, so he could not help listening intently to whatever they said.

They were talking at slow intervals of some recent sorrow they had sustained; but so great was the slaughter of the French war, that everyone in Germany then was wearing crape or mourning for the loss of some friend.

'Ach Gott--yes,' said Rhineberg; 'it is certainly a great calamity even to the city of Aachen.'

'When I saw the black flag flying on the old Schloss,' responded Grunthal, 'and the hatchment with its sixteen quarters over the gate, I--I knew that the dreaded event had taken place at last.'

'That we had lost a dear friend?'

'Yes. The poor old Graf!' said Grünthal, with a sigh.

Charlie felt startled--almost inclined to speak and discover himself, but restrained the inclination, and listened intently, thinking, 'Well, the poor old veteran of Ligny and Waterloo could not be expected to live for ever.'

'He has never suffered more, I think,' said Rhineberg, after taking a long pull at his pipe, and watching the smoke thoughtfully as it ascended in concentric rings towards the lofty ceiling of the speise-saal, 'never, since that morning when the devilish _Extra Blatt_ had in it the mutilated telegram concerning the capture of Heinrich by the Francs-Tireurs.'

'And the severe wounding--was it not mortally?--of the Englander, Herr Pierrepont,' added Grunthal, with something in his throat that sounded, as Charlie thought, exceedingly like a chuckle of satisfaction.

But Heinrich, his dear friend and comrade, had been taken by the Francs-Tireurs! Knowing, from experience, how the Francs-Tireurs and the Prussians were in the habit of handling each other, this was an event to cause him anxiety, but, as it happened, only for a few minutes.

Would the death of the Count in any way release Ernestine from parental thraldom? Though he felt genuine sympathy for her natural grief, he could not very much regret the event; 'and yet,' thought Charlie, 'the poor old fellow was always kind to me.'

'It is most fortunate,' said Rhineberg, after a little pause, 'that the young Graf Heinrich is at home during such a terrible crisis.'

'Most fortunate for his mother, and all.'

So Heinrich was at Frankenburg, and not with the old 95th before the walls of Paris! This was indeed most welcome news for Charlie! More than once he had been on the verge of speaking, as his curiosity had been keenly excited, but repressed the inclination; he did not wish that his presence in Aix should be known to the Countess, and to address Grünthal, his acknowledged rival, or competitor, rather, was altogether an intolerable idea, so quitting the speise-saal softly, he hastened to his own room.

Then he wrote rapidly a long and explanatory letter to Ernestine, full of all the deepest, most tender, and passionate thoughts of his heart, telling her of his presence at Aix, and beseeching her to meet him. He recalled the dream in which she had asked him to meet him at Burtscheid.

'At Burtscheid, be it,' he wrote, 'at the same hour, dear, dear Ernestine, when last we met there; and I shall give you a strange souvenir of the war--the bullet that pierced my breast, and has been the means, perhaps, of keeping me so long from you. At Burtscheid, then, my darling.'

This letter he despatched under cover to Heinrich, and felt more happy and composed than he had been since last he saw her.

He knew that his letter would be delivered by the post at Frankenburg in the morning.

Probably Heinrich would visit his hotel during the day, and he knew that at all risks--unless something most extraordinary intervened--Ernestine, who had such strength of will, would contrive to meet him in the old church.

All the following day Charlie lingered about the Grand Monarque, but Heinrich never came; doubtless the business or calamity to which the Barons referred had detained him.

Then a fear came over Charlie that the same event might prevent Ernestine meeting him, as she might be deprived of her brother's escort.

But if she failed to come, a messenger of some kind might meet him at Burtscheid.