Chapter XXII: At Burtscheid

'In five hours--in four--in two,' and so on he reckoned, 'I shall see her again--my darling! my darling!'

At last the wished-for time came when he was to set forth on that walk which--he fondly, ardently, and tenderly hoped--was to end in _her_ presence; but, as he walked down the leafless avenue from the city, he felt his heart become tremulous, almost sick with anxiety and fear, lest she should be unable to meet him, even after all the months of separation undergone; yet his was a heart that never quailed, even when he faced that battery in the wood--a battery that was not of cannon, but mitrailleuses!

Anon as he proceeded, something of Ernestine's high and strange enthusiasm gathered in his breast.

Even if he were fated never to wed her, he felt that she was the one great passion of his life, a worship almost spiritualized, and that beyond the trammels of this material world, he would follow her, faithful and unchanged, into that to come.

Then he almost smiled to think how German the tone of his mind was becoming.

The evening sky was cloudless, and wore a kind of pale violet tint, amid which the stars sparkled out brilliantly.

The trees of the avenue between the city and Burtscheid were covered with rimy frost, which made their branches seem to coruscate and glitter in myriad prisms. Frost was on the pathway; it shone on the stems and twigs, on the stalks and blades of the wayside plants; snow covered all the district, yet the air was far from being cold.

At last the old church of Burtscheid rose before him again. In another minute or two, he would have clasped her to his breast, where he had clasped her last--at the altar-rail--when those sad and sweet and solemn vows were interchanged.

In that moment the campaign in Alsace and Lorraine, danger, duty, wound, and suffering, were all forgotten; nothing was in his mind but the intense happiness of the event to come.

He was conscious enough of the tombs and cypresses, the pillars and obelisks, standing grimly up from the snow-clad graves; of the dusky outlines of various distant buildings; of red lights streaming from windows out upon the gloom; and he could see the pale silver crescent of the new moon peeping sharply up above the black outline of the Schloss of Frankenburg.

He heard the faint whisper of the ivy leaves on the old wall; but all as one might do in a dream.'

He threw away the end of his cigar, and thought,

'I should not have been smoking when coming to meet _her_.'

No britzka or other carriage stood before the gate. Heinrich was not there as escort; neither was the old butler or any other servant there in attendance.

So, as the evening was clear and fine, she must have come alone to meet him, that they might have the joy of walking back to the Schloss together!

He entered the church. It was gaily decorated for the coming Christmas-eve.

No one was in the church, and Charlie's heart began at once to sink, when there was a sound behind him, and coming down two steps, from a door that he had not observed before, was his own Ernestine.

'Carl! Carl! It is thee! Thee, at last!' she exclaimed, in a piercing voice, and, with innocent self-abandonment and a tenderness that was irrepressible, but peculiarly her own, she flung herself into his arms, as on that night in the boudoir.

She was dressed as if for a ball or some great festival; but Carl remembered that this was Christmas-time, always a season of gaiety at Frankenburg as elsewhere.

Her dress was white silk, covered with waves of the finest white lace. A great veil of the latter material enveloped her head and shoulders.

She wanted but a white wreath to make her look like a lovely bride, and Charlie's heart throbbed with pride and joy to think that she was his own.

He thought she looked pale and tired. It might be--nay, doubtless, it must be--that the months of past anxiety had told upon her system as on his own.

Yet her eyes had all the tender purity of an angel's in them, though when she became excited there came over them a strange glitter, a restless flashing, a sparkling animation, that contrasted strongly with the languor of her form and actions; but happily there was no fever flush on her cheek, which was pale--paler than of old, as Charlie thought.

Long and silent was their embrace ere they spoke in broken accents of all they had mutually undergone; and, while speaking, her head nestling as it used to do on Charlie's neck, she shuddered sometimes, for she seemed to be sorely chilled by the damp cold atmosphere of the old church.

'Are all well at the Schloss?' asked Charlie suddenly, after a pause, as the last evening's conversation recurred to him.

'All! Thank Heaven!' replied Ernestine.

'And your father, the Herr Graf?'

'Well, too.'

Charlie was puzzled. He must have been in a dream, or have misunderstood the remarks of the two barons.

'Is Heinrich with the regiment?' he asked.

'No,' she replied, 'dear Heinrich is at the Schloss, and this morning put your letter into my hand; and then, after, to tease or please me, in my bosom. See, it is there now!' she added, in the most engaging manner.

'You found no difficulty in coming to meet me, dearest?'

'None.'

'How fortunate--how happy we are!'

'My poor Carl!'

'Why poor? I feel to-night the happiest man in Germany.'

'I was resolved to meet you, at all risks, my darling. A faith plighted--a promise made is holy, Carl--holy to God and man. I promised to be here, Carl, in a dream that I had of you; and by a strange chance I have been permitted to come--to be here, to see you, feel your strong but tender arm round me once more. Oh, Carl, kiss me once again, as you did on that day in the Hoch Munster when first you said you loved me.'

'Ernestine, what do you mean?' asked Charlie, eyeing her with some anxiety, and impressed with a strange fear by the solemnity of her manner.

'I belong no longer to myself.'

'To whom, then? Heavens!' he added, starting, 'you have not become the wife of that man!'

'Who?'

'Baron Grünthal.'

'Oh, no; how could you think of such a thing for a moment, Carl?' she said, with a bitter smile, while looking down and playing with a ring he had given her in other days.

'Then to whom do you belong?' he asked, fondly.

'My love--to you!'

She put up her little face tenderly to his, and then looked away, with the weary, wistful expression of those who have long lived in some world of their own, and can never seem to see out beyond the present.

'We were betrothed together for life and death, Carl.'

'Were--_are_, you mean, Ernestine.'

'Yes, beloved Carl; but time presses--alas! I fear that I must leave you now.'

'But to meet again----'

'Very soon.'

'I have brought these for you from Lorraine. This is the bullet that struck me down, and this cross is a trophy of the war.'

'How pretty--nay, it is beautiful and interesting, too,' she exclaimed, with something of her old gleeful way, as he clasped round her slender throat a gold necklet he had procured in Aix, and now the white enamelled cross hung thereat.

She shuddered when she looked at the chassepot ball and took it in her hand.

'And this actually pierced you, my Carl?'

'Nearly through and through, love. For five days it was in unpleasant proximity to my lungs.'

'It is indeed a relic,' said she, while placing it in the bosom of her dress.

'So--so,' said she, sadly, disengaging herself from his arms, 'our love has been sanctified by danger and death.'

'Great Heavens!' thought Carl, 'sorrow has turned her brain!'

'It has _not_,' she said; 'do not think so.'

'What is not? I did not speak,' said Carl.

'No, but you thought; and I know what you thought, and there is no living grace or glory like a love so sanctified as ours, Carl.'

He regarded her with a bewilderment not unmixed with alarm.

There was a strange wild and weird beauty in her pale face--a radiance in her eyes, a brightness all over her such as Charlie had never before witnessed.

Whence did it come? From the altar-lights?

They were too dim.

What did it mean? Was it her natural beauty only, magnified by the force of his imagination, and enhanced by his great love for her?

Somehow Charlie was perplexed and startled by her, amid all the transport and joy of the time.

Suddenly there was a sound of wheels and horses' hoofs without, then of several feet ringing on the hard and frozen churchyard path.

Ernestine started, and exclaimed in a voice husky, as it seemed, with alarm--

'They are coming--my father and that dreadful Baron! I must leave you, beloved Carl--but only for a time; we shall meet again where even they can separate us no more!'

She turned, and flying like a phantom, hurried through the little door by which she had entered the church; and Charlie Pierrepont, feeling certain that their interview had been discovered--that they had come in pursuit of her in ire and indignation, and that there would be a scene which he was most anxious to avoid--looked hastily round the little church for a place of concealment.

There was none; so he resolved to make the best of it, and turned to the doorway just as the portly old Count of Frankenburg, the Baron Grünthal, limping as usual with gout, and Heinrich entered the church together.