Chapter XIII The Oubliette
“Furcht bich nicht, du liebes Kindchen,
Bor der bösen Geister Macht!
Tag und Nacht, du liebes Kindchen,
Halten Englein bei dir Wacht!”
HEINE.
The minutes dropped slowly into the hour.
Something raised a blood-curdling screech that went sobbing and echoing through the cavern. If he had not held her, he would have started in frank alarm. She only gave a drowsy laugh.
“’Tis Barbarossa, the old owl,” said she.
And again fell the silence, filled for him with whirling thoughts.
How right had this Geiger-Hans been in his warning! How merciful had Fate been to save him from his own folly! Were he now rolling along the wet Imperial road with the Burgrave’s wife, he would have had, doubtless, to clasp her much as he clasped Sidonia. Precarious as it was, his present situation was infinitely preferable. He felt like a father, holding his pretty child, all warm with tenderness; not like a dishonest, cold lover with the woman he cannot love.
Sidonia’s light breathing grew fainter and more rhythmic. She was asleep. He had longed, but hardly dared to hope, that she could sleep. In his heart he went down on his knees to her and thanked her, stirred by the eternal parent instinct, perhaps, but also by another emotion, tenderer still and more vital—a reverent bending of his whole manhood before the purity and trustfulness that lay in his embrace.
The night progressed with lengthening hours. He had begun to make out some kind of bearings for himself in the dark; to find, by the cold airs that occasionally blew in upon him from one direction, by the guidance of the sounds that grew in the night’s stillness—the gusty increases, the placid subsidence of the rain, the rustle of leaves and twigs—in which quarter of their prison lay that opening to the outer world by which they should escape.
Sometimes his mind wandered far away. Now and again he almost lost himself in a vague dream; but ever he came back with a shock to the present peril and his responsibility.
And the child still slept!
He began to grow weary and cold. His arm became stiff, then numb. The burden that had seemed so light upon it grew almost intolerable. Sometimes drowsiness pressed upon him, he thought himself in a nightmare, from which he must wake to find himself huddled in a corner of his travelling chaise. But he would have died sooner than disturb the sleeper.
Then, at the moment when the tension of enforced immobility brought such a feeling of exasperation and oppression that he almost felt as if his wits were leaving him, he turned his head instinctively in the direction of the air current, and relief came. The rain was over. The clouds had cleared away and a patch of sapphire sky looked in upon him, framed by jagged rocks: it held two or three faint stars. He could see a branch outlined dimly against the translucence, and leaves trembling in outer freedom.
Nothing more than this, and yet it was balm. The torture that gripped him subsided. He gazed and forgot the cramping of his limbs. The first stars passed slowly and vanished; others swam into his vision and formed new shapes in the peep of sky. Some were brighter, some more dim; some twinkled, one burned with a steady glow. They varied in colour, too. He had had no idea that, even through such a miserable hole, the heavens had a pageant to offer of such absorbing interest. And the passing of this pageant gave him a comforting sense of the flow of night towards morn.
Once Sidonia woke with a start and a cry.
“I am here,” he quickly said.
She reared herself from his arm. It was numbed to uselessness; he caught her with the other fiercely. That pit, gaping so close by in the night, had come, during the long hours, to be to him as an unknown monster, watching, waiting for its prey. She, but half awake, gropingly passed her soft hands over his face and breast. “I dreamed you had fallen,” she murmured. And then, so secure in his hold, stretched herself like a weary child, and slid a little further from him so that her head rested on his knee.
His eyes had grown more accustomed to the darkness; or, perhaps, there was already a raising of the deepest veils of night, for he could almost distinguish her form as she lay. He bent over her. She was speaking dreamily: “When you were hurt in the forest, this was how your head rested on my lap.” In another moment she was asleep again. His arms were free—the sense of constraint was gone. And now the time went by almost as quickly as before it had lagged. He saw with surprise that the stars were extinguished, that his patch of sky had grown pearl-grey. Rapid stirrings in the leafage without spoke of an awakening world. A bird piped. The walls of their prison began to take shape.... He saw the white glimmer of her hand in the folds of the cloak.... And then he must, after all, have slept at his post; for the next thing he knew was coming to himself, with a great spasm and seeing, in a shaft of yellow sunlight, grey rock, brown earth, and Sidonia’s golden head upon his knee. And, but a yard from her little sandalled foot, the horrible black chasm. Oh, shame! he had slept, and death lurking for her! The sweat started on his forehead.
A sigh of music was blown into the cavern. Sidonia turned her head and gazed up in his face with wide, bewildered eyes.
“It is Geiger-Hans,” she murmured, and rubbed her eyes, as though she thought she were still dreaming. Then she sat up, looked round, and memory leaped back. She smiled, yawned, and drew herself together. “Well,” she said, with a sidelong glance at the pit-mouth, “we have had luck, you and I! Don’t you want to get out of this, Herr von Kielmansegg?” she asked briskly, as he sat wondering at her. “Or do you think it would be a nice place to turn hermit in? See, this is the way,” said she, and pointed to a narrow and most insecure ledge skirting the deep; “we shall have to crawl on hands and knees. And, sir, I think our cloaks must be sacrificed.”
As she spoke, she gathered them together and pushed them from her. They rolled down, and Steven almost called aloud as he heard their heavy plunge into the ambushed waters: it sounded as if some living thing had gone to its death.
“I will lead,” said she.
Sunshine, sky, grass, wide airs! Till that moment Steven had never known what these things could mean to man. He sat on a sun-warmed rock by the side of the precipitous, all but obliterated pathway that led zigzag upwards to the broken rampart. Sidonia stood shaking and pruning herself like a bird, her hair glinting in the light. By tacit consent both paused upon this moment of physical relief before considering their next course. From above, the plaintive strain they had heard within their prison was again borne down towards them on the breeze. Sidonia’s fingers, busy in her tresses, stopped. She bent her ear.
“It is Geiger-Hans. And that is my tune. He is seeking me!”
She curved her hands round her mouth and gave a long mountain cry. It rang clear and sweet, cleaving the pure morning air like the call of a bird. Instantly the restless melody stopped; and, as they stood looking up in expectation, they saw the figure of Geiger-Hans emerge on the rocks over their heads. Holding his fiddle high in the air, he came clambering down to them with the agility of a goat.
“Thank God!” he exclaimed, as, breathless, he drew near. “Cruel children, what a fright you have given me!”
His cheek was pale under its bronze. Yet, in spite of its severity, his haggard eye was quick to note that these two were torn and dishevelled, that their smiles had the pallor which has faced death.
“What has happened?” cried he, in changed accents.
Sidonia broke into passionate complaint. A great lassitude was upon Steven; he did not wish to stir or speak; he listened in silence, as she poured forth the story tersely, yet with the vividness of her passion.
“And it was Uncle Ludo did it!” she ended, with a fresh gust of anger. “We heard him laugh as we fell. And Count Kielmansegg his guest!” Her pride could not stomach the thought; it was less to her, evidently, that her relative should have endeavoured to compass the death of wife as well as guest, for her anger dropped into mere shuddering pity as she added: “Poor Aunt Betty! Just think, if she had not sent me!”
Many expressions passed over Geiger-Hans’ countenance as the drama unrolled itself before his quick mental vision. Thunder of anger, clouds of fear and doubt, tender admiration. He shot one lightning glance of inquiry at Steven; his brow cleared before the frank answering look.
As the girl finished, the two men sought silent intercourse with each other. The eyes of both had grown soft. For herself, the little fearless creature still had no thought, far less words.
“Well, friends,” said the fiddler at last, sitting down on the slope and wiping his forehead with his sleeve, “you may flatter yourselves that you’ve given me no better night than your own. First, Sir Count, having a word to say to you, I made so bold as to take a seat in your carriage, as it waited down yonder. A moist time I had of it, in company with your lordship’s horses and postilion. (By the way, this same postilion hath a varied choice of oaths.) Towards the small hours our relations became strained, and we parted; he back to the Silver Stork, and I—I will not conceal it—to wandering once more in the purlieus of this hospitable strong-house. For, although nothing was more natural than that a guest should have altered his intention of departing at the last moment, my mind misgave me.”
“Poor Geiger-Onkel!” said Sidonia. “How wet you must be!”
“Nay, the night had turned fine then; it was the least of my hardships. But at dawn this restless spirit of mine set me to rousing the castle—and a fine time of it I have given them! His Excellency, however, was found dead drunk in his hall, so that I could get little out of him. The lady is convinced that you, comrade, have eloped with her niece, by some devious road——”
“Devious enough,” said Steven, with a short laugh.
But Sidonia had become grave. “I am glad, at least, that he was drunk,” she said, with judicial air.
“I left my Lady Burgravine planning hysterics. But I have given orders in the household, as if I were master of all. No flogging of Geiger-Hans now, nor setting of dogs upon him! ’Tis I command this morning. I have marshalled his Excellency’s servants: there are some half-dozen fellows searching the rocks already. And here, by the way, comes one bright youth. Observe how he looks under the brambles and the bushes. He will not leave a mouse-hole unprodded for your corpses.”
“Shall we not bid him get breakfast for us all?” cried Sidonia, gaily. “’Tis the least Wellenshausen can do for you this morning, Herr Graf!”
She sprang upwards lightly, her small face, wan with fatigue, laughing back at them over her shoulder. The fiddler and Steven stood side by side watching her.
“Well,” said the former, after a pause, “are you inclined to go and break bread again in the house whose stones plotted your death? Or will you take the safe way down the mountain to the cushions of your berline, and cry: ‘Drive on, postilion’?”
Steven regarded the speaker a moment or two before replying. It seemed to the young man as if that long, black night had cut him off from his own purblind youth. He felt himself years older, weighted with life.
“I am going back to the Burg,” he said, and set off climbing.
“Hey, comrade, hey, what haste?” panted the other at his ear. “What is your purpose up there? You’ve been there once too often.” There was a certain anxiety under the speaker’s mocking air.
“My purpose——” began Steven, coldly. He was about to add, “concerns you not,” but on second thought he wheeled round, and all that had been gathering in his heart this night escaped in words of fire. “Why do you ask?” he cried. “You know! What! are you the man to whom the souls of others lie bare? Are you a man like myself, and do you think I can leave that child now? With her little hand she held me from death. She lay in my arms and slept and trusted me. Do you think I could endure myself if I thought I had left her unprotected here? If I give my whole life to the mere guardianship of her, shall I do more than my duty? Man!” cried Steven, catching the fiddler’s sunburnt wrist and shaking him, “I tell you, the child lay in my arms all night.”
“She is indeed a child,” said the musician, quietly.
“And it is even for that!” exclaimed Steven. “Oh, I thought you would have understood!”
“Let us go up to the heights, then,” said the fiddler.
“What, no music?” cried Sidonia, gaily, as she watched them coming, from the doorstep. “I expected to hear your fiddle chanting the song of delivery!”
“I have enough music in my soul this morning,” replied the wanderer.
The Burgrave was a sorry spectacle. A man may play the mediæval avenger overnight, but in the morning he belongs to his own age and the sense of proportion reasserts itself. The Burgrave’s awakening to sobriety, his realization of his own deed, were depressing to the direst degree. Paradoxically, no less terrible was the discovery that his suspicions had been unfounded; that his wife was both virtuous and still of the living; that it was an innocent niece and an innocent guest whom he had precipitated to an awful doom. He almost betrayed himself on meeting the Burgravine.
“It was Sidonia, then—it was not you, the youth was after, all the time!” he exclaimed, bewildered.
“Me? After me?” cried the lady, in a virtuous fury. “How dared you think such a thing!”
She paused, panting, to measure the whole humiliation of her position.
Sidonia was gone—gone with the pretty Austrian boy whom she, Betty, had so determinedly marked as her own. It was an infamous trick, and for Sidonia to play it... Sidonia! Bah! She, who knew herself so well, should not have placed faith in any woman.
“The minx was in love with him all the time,” she babbled, “and he—he, oh, he well knew, no doubt, that no richer heiress would ever pass his way! I trust, Herr von Wellenshausen, that you have sent widely in pursuit.” Her mind was working at a tremendous rate. “You have not let yourself be taken in by this cunning wretch’s story—Geiger-Hans, or whatever his name is? Oh, I can tell you something of him, sir. There’s an intriguer for you, and in Kielmansegg’s confidence from the beginning! God alone knows what infamous bargains they may have made together! It has all been a plot.”
The Burgrave stood looking at her, an abject mass of bilious misery.
“I am afraid there may have been an accident,” he murmured, moistening his dry lips.
“Accident?” screamed she, and withered him. “You fool!” Then she turned on him, snarling like an angry little cat. “It is all your fault! Why did you ask him back here, to spy and pry? Yes, if the girl has disgraced us, it is your fault—the fault of your evil mind! You drove them to elope, old jealous fool!”
The Burgrave clenched his hands and shook them above his head, fell into a chair, and wept aloud. Elope? If she but knew! Alack, poor Sidonia! Poor little Sidonia! He had always loved the child.
“I trust you will come to soberness presently,” said Betty, with a disgusted look at the row of empty bottles.
And it was at this moment that shouts from the courtyard proclaimed the return of the lost ones.
The Burgrave’s ecstasy of relief, when he heard that his oubliette, had miscarried, could only be measured by his previous state of misery. He could have leaped and sung. He caught his wife to his breast with fresh tears. Repulsed with scorn, he tottered forth to the great hall, still reeling in his joy, to meet the two so miraculously preserved and restored.
The girl faced him, severe as a young Daniel, with pointed finger and flashing eye.
“You weep now, uncle: you laughed last night! That was your farewell to us; you laughed as you tumbled us down the oubliette!”
The Burgrave had stepped back, dismayed afresh. She knew, then, that no mere accident had betrayed them! The wretched lord of the castle flung a look around; met the eyes of Steven, scornful—he knew! Met the fiddler’s eyes, horribly mocking—he knew! Met his Betty’s gaze, deeply suspicious. In a moment she, too, would know!
Out rang Sidonia’s clarion tongue. And then the Burgravine did know.
Promptly he was delivered into her hands. She threatened him with King and Emperor, with family and justice, prison, madhouse, duel. The Emperor had put divorce in fashion, she reminded her lord. She would divorce him, resoundingly! The last taunt was—since, after all, he loved her in his own fashion—the blow that hit him hardest.
Natheless, even under the shock of the discovery that her own precious life had been in danger, and her husband (Bluebeard too well named!) had been her would-be murderer, her wits did not desert her.
She intercepted the gaze wherewith Steven followed Sidonia, and was quick to feel that for herself he had now scarce a thought; nay, that she but represented to him three days of intense discomfort and a disagreeable episode ending in death-peril. She must not act in a hurry. She must play what cards she had left in her hand to best purpose. She had a vision of a tamed Bluebeard—and compensation; her turn yet to come in gay Cassel.
“Herr Graf,” said the Burgrave, not without some kind of dignity, though tears still swam in the pale, swollen eyes, and his great hands trembled, a pathetic spectacle, “I stand at your mercy. I have absolutely no excuse to offer you.”
“Nay, sir,” said Steven, “what misfortune Wellenshausen brought on me, Wellenshausen has repaired. Whenever I think,” he added, and raised Sidonia’s hand to kiss it, “of the night when you planned, and well-nigh encompassed, my death, I will also remember that to the courage of a daughter of this same house I owe my life. Before I take leave of your hospitable door” (he was too young to refrain from the gibe), “may I crave a few words in private?”
The Chancellor bowed. Steven pressed Sidonia’s hand and followed his host as he shambled across the hall.
Had any one told the young man on the previous day that he would be willing—nay, anxious—to bind himself for all the years of his life to the little sunburnt Sidonia, he would have thought the absurdity scarce worth a laugh. And yet, here he was, a suitor for her hand. Her guardian dared not refuse her to him, even if a Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg had not been a match such as hardly could be found for her twice in a lifetime. He was bent on his purpose with all the obstinacy of a nature somewhat slow to move, but firmly set once a resolution taken. It was perhaps hardly love so much that urged him as a kind of passionate chivalry. He had expressed the state of affairs very accurately to Geiger-Hans. He had guarded her in his arms a whole night; now he felt driven by all his manliness to guard her for the rest of her life. Yet, with all this sentimental fervour, there was mixed a shrewd common-sense. In race she was his equal. She had good blood in her veins; and, by heaven, the little creature had shown it! Her courage and pride appealed to his innermost fastidiousness of breeding. And, child as she was, wild creature, free of the wood, sisterly with the people of the soil, he had the intuition that she would bear her new honours not only loyally, but royally. To her fortune he actually gave not a thought. Once or twice, in his hearing, she had been mentioned as a great heiress, but the statement had made no impression. With all his faults, Steven was nothing so little as mercenary—rare enough a virtue with the rich man, even in youth.
With his blood-red stare fixed upon him, the Burgrave was uncomfortably and confusedly revolving certain questions connected with his ward’s fortune. He had his own reasons for preferring to keep Sidonia unmarried for some years to come. But circumstances had passed out of his control. He could have but one answer for the curt, haughty, well-nigh insolent demand:
“Wellenshausen was honoured—they were honoured, honoured——”
“With the briefest possible delay!” supplemented the lordly youth.
And again the Burgrave bowed acquiescence; for there was a threat in Steven’s eye, merciless to any hesitation.
“Of course,” cried Wellenshausen, suddenly catching at a straw, “this is subject to my niece’s consent.”
A faint smile came to Steven’s lips; not fatuous, but mightily confident.
“That, your Excellency, is a matter between her and me,” he said.
The other glowered. This smacked of England, and he disliked English customs. But, again, his helplessness overcame him. With a turn of the head, scarcely a bow, Steven then withdrew. His host, lately so arrogant, looked after him, gnashing his teeth, helpless and furious in his humiliation. The wooer had not approached the subject of the girl’s portion, even when he had mentioned his own lordly rentals; an omission so strange that it but added to the Burgrave’s general sense of discomfiture.