Chapter X The Burgrave’s Welcome
“I tempted his blood and his flesh,
Hid in roses my mesh,
Choicest cates and the flagon’s best spilth....”
ROBERT BROWNING.
“So you have had visitors, Sidonia, my dove? Eh?” said the Burgrave.
His tone was good-humoured, but the glance he fixed upon the girl was cold. He had very pale grey eyes that could stare by the minute together without blinking, a power somewhat disconcerting (he flattered himself) to those who thought to keep secrets from him. Sidonia had just entered the room and was hastening to greet her uncle, for whom she had a certain placid affection. But instinctively she drew back, affronted, upon meeting that gaze. The words of welcome died on her lips.
“Yes, we’ve had visitors,” she answered defiantly, tilting back her head.—Did Uncle Ludo think to frighten her?
“That was delightful,” said the Burgrave, his unwinking stare upon her.
“It was delightful,” said Betty. She stood behind her husband’s chair, ministering to him after the right Germanic fashion he loved; and small scornful remarks on the number of rummers she was called upon to fill with the yellow wine, on the size of the slices of smoked ham he dealt himself, she did not spare him. Nevertheless she watched his appetite with satisfaction. Surely so large a meal and much jealousy could scarce find room in the same frame. “It was delightful, for me at least,” said Betty, glibly. “I, who had not seen my cousin, my favourite cousin, for so long.”
Her blue eyes rolled warningly at Sidonia, over the top of the Burgrave’s stubble head. The girl gave her aunt a quick look, then walked up to the table.
“Good morning, uncle. I hope you are well,” she said, demurely now, and laid a light kiss on his temple.
The Burgrave burst into a roar of laughter.
“Come, come, one kisses one’s uncle better than that, I hope!”
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 Jäger 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 Jäger? 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 Jäger, 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.