Chapter IX Home-Coming
“And then he thought, ‘In spite of all my care,
For all my pains, poor man, for all my pains,
She is not faithful to me....’”
(The Marriage of Geraint).
“The visitors are but just gone,” said Martin, the doorward.
He stood, his hand still on the fallen bolt, with expressionless gaze fixed upon the Burgrave, not without secret dismay and misgivings. In truth he had but half believed the fiddler’s announcement, had scarce expected his master at all that day—certainly not so early. But, now, one would know whether that mad fellow Geiger-Hans had spoken truth about the invitation to Wellenshausen. If he had not, why, honest Martin might well suffer for his credulity. For Martin knew his lord. It were idle to try and hide from him the blatant fact that there had been visitors at the Burg: idle indeed in a house full of silly servants; idle, above all, with a prying fellow like Kurtz, the Jäger, who had his nose into every pot and his ear at every door.
That he, the door-keeper, had admitted a beggar-man to his lord’s castle was, however, an exaggeration of the offence which old Martin thought might safely be withheld. Ambrosius, the butler, Niklaus, the valet, and the rest were equally incriminated by having attended upon him, having served him at their master’s very table. They would be glad enough to hold their peace on the subject for their own sakes. At the worst, they could all plead ignorance of the visitors’ identity. For the rest, had not the Gracious Lady herself given her orders? If the thunderbolt of wrath was to fall on the castle of Wellenshausen, it would fall first and heaviest in the upper chambers.
So Martin had settled his treatment of the situation with a certain dogged philosophy; and his first greeting was the blurting forth of the truth.
“Your Graciousness has just missed the visitors.”
The Burgrave, rolling past, still puffing from the arduousness of the mount—for though a vigorous man, he was of heavy build—turned with a grunt of astonishment as the words fell upon his ear. He flung back his military cloak—even a chancellor was military at the Court of Jerome—dashed his lace travelling cap from his head and took two steps upon old Martin. His large unshorn chin shone with myriad grey bristles, which had caught the mist in tiny points of moisture. The grizzled, bushy eyebrows, that nearly met across the large fleshy nose (jealous eyebrows), were similarly beaded. Now they were drawn together in a portentous frown.
A fine-looking man enough in an elderly, hulking way, but scarcely, even in his best moments, an amiable-looking man. Certainly not at his best now, after a night of hard travelling. And as for amiability, that thunder cloud upon his brow was enough to wilt the very conception of it from the thought of man.
Yet it was no unamiable passion that had spurred him along the interminable night-road and up the impossible crags in the wet morn. He was but a six months’ husband to his Betty, and he loved her very dearly—after his own Teutonic and rather mediæval fashion.
“Visitors!” repeated the Burgrave. His voice rang out, echoing and reverberating.
Martin’s little eyes blinked: that rogue of a Geiger-Hans had lied! So, then, had the noble lady Burgravine herself.
“Two gentlemen, yes. The Gracious Lady bade me admit them. She said that it was by your Excellency’s orders;” here the door-keeper risked a sly glance at his master and had, perhaps, an inward chuckle at the sight of his discomposure.
“Scamp, had you not my orders?” roared the Burgrave.
“The Gracious Lady bade me admit them,” reasseverated Martin; “the young gentleman being the Gracious Lady’s cousin——”
“The young gentleman! The——”
The echoes called out the words again and died into silence. The Burgrave reeled, then steadied himself. Martin saw the empurpled countenance turn to an unwholesome grey.
“The young gentleman,” repeated the husband to himself, in a sort of whisper. Then he wheeled round and, without another word, went, ponderous and slow, up the stone steps, his shoulders bent like those of an old man.
Betty was seated before her toilet table, in a very ill humour: the while her woman twisted glossy black ringlets to the tune of familiar lamentations, enlivened by spirits of a petulance unwontedly shrewish.
Betty had dragged her pretty person from the billows of quilt and feather-bed at an astonishingly early hour, in the hope of carelessly intercepting a farewell from her charming young guest. Mademoiselle Eliza, justly irritated at being aroused from those dreams which, she vowed, were now the only tolerable portion of her existence in this dungeon, had purposely withheld from her mistress, until the psychological moment when she could watch her countenance in the mirror, the news of the departure of the guest. And then she had delivered it with all the gusto of the self-respecting servant who has unpleasant information to impart.
“Madame has a very sensitive head this morning; it is doubtless the fatigue of last night. Madame is so unaccustomed now to the least excitement. It is hardly worth while to put madame to the pains of much of a coiffure this morning, since there is no one to see her—but the crows. If, indeed, the young gentleman could have remained: strange how anxious he was to leave! Up and away before the dawn! And slinking out of the castle, one might say. Ho, have I hurt madame again? Did Madame la Comtesse say that he was truly her cousin? A singular story, not even a valet with him—nothing but that old beggar tramp, who dined with madame, also, dressed up in the gentleman’s clothes——”
“Hold your tongue!” cried the exasperated lady. She whisked round in her seat, blindly menacing with a brush caught up at haphazard.
At this moment the gate bell clanged; the stone hollows of the castle growled to a loud knocking; and then came the groaning of the great bar.
“Merciful heavens, more visitors!” exclaimed the mistress of Wellenshausen, a lovely geranium flushed into her cheek. Last night’s guests back again, perchance. Beau Cousin was too gallant a gentleman, after all, to leave her hospitality in this abrupt fashion.... Perhaps he was wishing to see her again, as much as she was wishing to see him. The little hand with the brush dropped to her side. “Quick, Eliza, who is it?”
Even as she spoke the rich cheek faded; her bright eyes grew round in horror. To one man only in the world could belong the raucous tones that granite wall and roof now gave back in pulsating vibration, rolling up even to the turret room.
“The Burgrave!” she gasped.
Eliza’s black eyes glinted joyfully: the Burgrave! Not only fresh discomfiture for the mistress; but, for the maid, unexpected comfort: Kurtz the Jäger was quite a smart young man.
“Heavens, the Burgrave!” cried Betty again; and she began to tremble. Her husband, upon the very stroke of her escapade! What to do, now, what to say?—What indeed!
“Eliza,” she cried breathlessly—she snatched a gold brooch from her wrapper as she spoke, and thrust it into the girl’s hand—“you knew I was expecting my cousin’s visit... by news brought by the last courier from Vienna... you heard me mention the fact... you heard me regret my husband’s absence from Wellenshausen.”
There was no time to lose. The Burgrave’s step, weighty and ominous as fate itself, was already on the stairs.
“Bien, Madame la Comtesse,” returned Eliza, calmly, even as the latch clicked under her master’s hand.
Betty von Wellenshausen was a woman of too clever instincts to receive, in this dilemma, her elderly lord and master with exuberant expression of delight. She was not of those who fall into the vulgar error of protesting too much. She settled herself in her chair again and became deeply absorbed in the exact position of a curl. He stood glowering on the threshold. He had to call out in his great voice, before she would condescend to notice him at all. And then it was but a glance over her shoulder.
“Tiens, it is you? Eliza, decidedly this is not successful.”
Eliza, deeply enjoying the situation, full of professional admiration for her mistress’s handling of the same, was also all solicitude over the rebellious lock.
“Ten thousand devils, madam!” at last exploded the Burgrave. “I would point out to you that I am returned from a journey.”
“So I see,” said the lady, with another fugitive glance. “And so I hear, too, my friend! Heavens, you make noise enough!”
It was such a wonderfully pretty face, of which the husband was given this glimpse; his reception was so cool, so unexpected, that the Burgrave’s first murderous rage began to give way to a perplexity not unmixed in some strange way with softer feelings. He closed the door behind him, and then stood, hesitating.
“It is a pity,” said the Burgravine, boldly, “that you do not consider it worth your while, comte, to keep me informed of your movements. Had I but known that we were to have the rapture of your company to-day, I would have kept my cousin Kielmansegg to make your acquaintance.”
The Burgrave eyed her between rage and amazement.
“Your cousin!” he echoed huskily. Then his fury, on a sudden gust of jealousy, got the upper hand. “Pray, madam,” he thundered, “when did you communicate to me the interesting fact of your relative’s proposed visit? And when did I authorize you to receive him?”
It was the lady’s turn to be astonished; for a moment her quick wits failed to follow his drift.
“When?” she queried, raising a delicate eyebrow. “This is sheer delirium! And if you must rave, my friend, need you shout? I begin to think that my never-sufficiently-to-be-regretted predecessor must have suffered from deafness in addition to the other trials of her existence.”
The pupils of the Burgrave’s pale eyes contracted to pins’ points. He fixed his disobedient spouse with a scarcely human glare.
“Martin is not wandering in his mind, I take it, when he tells me that you bade him admit your friends in my name! By my wish, madam—by my wish!”
The bellow with which, in spite of his Betty’s protest, he had begun this indictment, died into a sort of strangled whisper. He struck his palm with his hairy fist. The Burgravine was unpleasantly enlightened.
“Oh, sir,” she exclaimed with biting scorn, and shrugged her shoulders, “how well you are served; I make you my compliments!” Underneath her impertinent airs there was fluttering terror. But, like a bird, she would peck to the last. “And did Martin indeed tell you that I bade him admit my kinsman and his companion in your name?” she pursued, drawing a long breath. Then superbly, “It is true, M. de Wellenshausen. Do you mean me to understand that you would have wished me to refuse the hospitality of your house?”
The wave of wrath was again ebbing from the Burgrave’s huge frame. He stared blankly at the little creature. Her words had a singular plausibility. She saw her advantage and flew to it.
“My cousin, Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg, is travelling through this country,” said she. “My dear mother announced his arrival in her last letter.”
“The courier came on Wednesday,” interpolated Eliza, pinning the brooch in a slightly less conspicuous position amid the folds of her kerchief.
“She is most anxious to have personal news of my health... knowing the delicacy of my chest, and how much I am likely to suffer in these harsh airs where it is your pleasure to immure me.”
The Burgravine wheeled her chair round to face her lord.
“It is perhaps dull of me,” she went on more boldly still, “not to have understood that I am not the mistress of these barren walls, but rather their prisoner. When I heard that my cousin was below, I had no hesitation in ordering him to be admitted. Yes, sir, I even said that it would be your wish.—Ach, Eliza, what a stupid mistress you have! You heard me actually lament, I believe, your master’s absence on the occasion!”
“Madame la Comtesse, indeed, made the remark to me,” quoth Eliza, “that it was of the last annoyance that Monsieur le Comte should be absent that evening. It was so trying for Madame la Comtesse to have to receive alone!”
“And indeed, my poor girl,” said the lady, picking up the thread herself, “I could regret that we should thus innocently have infringed the rules of the castle of—I should say the prison of Wellenshausen—for it was to very poor results. Yes, we should have allowed M. de Wellenshausen’s doorkeeper—turnkey, I mean—to send the gentlemen down the hill again. My people would have wondered. But, mon Dieu, will they wonder less when my kinsman tells them of these dismal walls, these rude surroundings, this savage solitude? Poor young man! in spite of his affection for me he could not bring himself to face another day of it.—Eliza, my shoe!”
“Indeed, madame,” commented the maid, pursuing the theme from where she knelt to fit each little foot, “the gentlemen would not even tarry for breakfast, so hurried were they to be gone!”
The Burgrave listened, was half convinced, then a fresh spasm of suspicious misgiving came over him.
“Yet, doubtless,” he sneered, “not without a satisfying farewell from the hostess! You are strangely early this morning, madame.”
The Burgravine raised her blue eyes from the contemplation of her foot.
“You mistake,” she said innocently; “our adieux took place last night, shortly after supper. You see, I am not even dressed. And, as to early rising, mon Dieu, my friend, the nights are of such lengths here, that there are times when I think it cannot soon enough be day.”
“And ma foi,” put in the maid pertly, “then it is the days that are so long, up here in the clouds, that it cannot soon enough be night.”
The two women laughed. He stood between them, a miserable clumsy man; conscious of their subtler wits and quicker tongues, a prey to dark doubts and slowly shaping his own resolve.
Betty now jumped to her feet and shook her loose silks and laces about her as a bird shakes its plumage.
“Eliza, inform the Baroness Sidonia of the Herr Graf’s return,” she bade in an off-hand tone.
The Burgrave thought to catch a meaning glance between mistress and maid. No doubt Sidonia would lie with the other—all women were jades alike. Well! he knew what he had to do; meanwhile Betty was distractingly alluring with all those fal-lals of ribbons and lace, and it was three weeks since he had kissed her. The door had scarcely closed on Mademoiselle Eliza before the Burgrave caught his wife in his arms.
“Ah, mon Dieu,” cried she, pettishly, “and pray, sir, when have you shaved last?”