Chapter XIV Love among the Ruins
“Well—if I bide, lo! This wild flower for me!”
(Lancelot and Elaine).
It was a glorious day, after a night of rain; and a blazing sun poured its rays down upon the rocks. Some instinct led Steven (he was perhaps already more of a lover than he believed) to the place where Sidonia sat, a ledge on the steep grassy slope which lay just outside the bramble-hidden opening of the cave—the cave that had yielded them back, in the dawn, to a new life.
She was alone, seated under the wall, in a child-like attitude, her chin in her hand, wrapt, it seemed, in profound cogitation. The sunshine brought a golden fire about her uncovered hair. Steven flung himself beside her. She did not move her head, merely turned her grave eyes upon him; and, for a while, there was silence between them.
The air was full of the humming of busy insects, sweet with the spices of the thousand thymy herbs that flourished in the dry, rocky soil. Above them the ruinous wing of the castle towered into the nebulous blue. Below, far away, the brown roofs of the village lay in shadow. Faint cries rose up from it; and from some unseen pasture, the tinkle of cow-bells—dim little sound, homely, yet so strangely in harmony with the solitudes of nature. The calls of the mountain birds came fitfully; and underlying all was the distant roar of the torrent seeking its issue far away from the secret well. Sidonia spoke at last.
“You have finished with them all, up there?” she asked.
“With them all, up there; yes,” he answered her; and a joyousness was upon him, for which he could have given no reasons. It was born, perhaps, of his sudden entrance into the power of manhood—for protection, for conquest, for ownership. She, however, saw nothing of the flash in his eye, of the eager trembling of his lip.
“You could have Uncle Ludo put in prison, of course, but you will not do that. And that is the worst punishment of all. You leave him just with contempt.—It is a great humiliation for Wellenshausen!” she said.
For some moments he made no answer. He was considering with pleasure the delicate ear under the waving sweep of hair, the colour, weight and length of the plaits that, divided, hung on either side of her neck and tipped the ground. He was noticing the shape of the nails in the slight brown hands, the shadow of the eyelashes on the cheek, the arch of the foot, the slender beauty of which even the country shoe could not conceal. How blind he had been on their first meeting! Geiger-Hans had, indeed, been justified in chiding him.... “She? a peasant girl! Then you never looked at her feet, nor at her delicate eyebrow. It is a noble child!”
Those eyes of hers that he had, even at their first meeting, compared to a mountain stream in their depth, their varying colour, were still fixed with gravity upon him.
“You looked for me to say good-bye?” she said simply.
“No,” said Steven.
He drew himself a little closer to her, as he lay his length on the ground. The scent of the crushed weeds, the small aromatic nameless growths beneath him, sprang to his nostrils. He propped himself on his elbows and leaned his chin on his clasped hands, returning her gaze masterfully.
“Mademoiselle Sidonia, it is true that I am going soon, but I do not mean to go away alone. I have told your uncle how unfit I consider him to be your guardian. He cannot dispute the point with me, and he has owned that you ought to have another. Will you trust me to take care of you?” The eyes fixed upon him widened, questioning, innocent, yet profound. “I should call you my wife,” he went on in a low voice, all astonished himself that his heart should suddenly beat so fast. Her glance never wavered, but he could see the scarlet dye her cheek. “Sidonia, will you come with me?” he cried. And now he was on his knees, quite close to her.
“I will go with you,” she replied.
Her child eyes were still upon him and seemed to ask for something yet. And at this, he bent and kissed her, gently, as he would have kissed a child, and did not guess that, at the touch of his lips, Sidonia’s woman’s soul was born.
The autumn month was kind to the short, bewildering time of Steven and Sidonia’s betrothal, and gave them, day after day, a fair sky and joyous sunshine.
It was something of a strange business. Steven ascended the crag at least twice in the twelve hours to meet his little bride, up in the blue, among the rocks or the ruins. He had decided not to break bread again with the Burgrave, not even to enter the Burg until the wedding morning; and Sidonia approved this stern decision. And so their wooing had for its setting the barren crags, the scanty verdure, the keen airs of Wellenshausen heights; its only witnesses the great ravens, and occasionally some soaring hawk, cruising watchful and keen, pirate of the high seas of blue. Thus Sidonia became associated in Steven’s mind with the pungent scents of all mountain herbs, the briskness of all mountain breezes. He could have sworn that about her small person itself there was a myrtle fragrance.
Her presence became as grateful as the wild nature about him, and made as few demands upon him. Of love-making, in the accepted sense, there was none between them. He touched her still as reverently as he had touched the sleeper in the oubliette. He could not disabuse himself of the feeling that she was under his protection; that he must guard her, innocent, confident, maiden, sprite, child; guard her even from himself, from his man’s knowledge, his man’s power. It was instinct, not calculation, that kept him within such idyllic bounds. But, as it was, he felt mightily pleased with himself and consequently with her. Through some vein of idealism—richest treasure of youth as yet unrealized—his whole nature was flattered with the sense of his own chivalry, with the delicacy of the poem. Never for an instant did he repent his impulsive bargain.
So long as there was such content in his eyes, there was content deep and full in Sidonia’s heart. Her confidence in him was unlimited. He had asked her to be his wife: therefore he loved her, and his way of love was perfect in her mind. His parting and meeting kiss—often enough laid fugitively upon her eyelids—was to her the utmost and happiest expression of tenderness.
So passed these odd, quiet, yet all-important hours of courtship. And then the day came, eve of the morrow when they were to be united up in yonder bare stone chapel of the Burg, that was never used save for the baptism, the burial, or the wedding of a Wellenshausen.
Again Sidonia sat among the rocks and the wild herbs, but alone: Steven was engaged in conclave with the ruddy-faced pastor of the hamlet, who was to ride up on his mule in the morning and conduct the ceremony. She smiled happily, as she pictured the interview in her mind. Presently she became aware that she was no longer by herself. From the black shadow of the rock, across the patch of sward opposite to her, eyes were watching her from a lean, sharp-featured face. She gave a small, low laugh.
“I see you,” she said.
And Geiger-Hans came forward with a kind of leap from the rocky gloom. He sat cross-legged in the full sunshine before her, his arms folded. His fiddle was slung at his back; his garments were powdered with dust; he looked tired and travel-worn, as if he had come from a long distance. But he was smiling at her.
“Truly, it is a curious thing,” he said, as if taking up the thread of some interrupted conversation, “that the first time we ever met, little Mamzell Sidonia, you addressed me in just these very words.”
“That must have been very long ago, Onkel,” said Sidonia, “for I always remember you.”
“Nay, it was an epoch to me. You see, mamzell, I was not then Geiger-Onkel to the country-side, the Geiger-Onkel whom the children run up to, whom the silly maids and youths consult, and the old wives like to gossip with—the old, crazy fellow, who makes merry music and does nobody any harm. I had black misery in my heart in those days, and black misery on my face. And I can well believe,” said the fiddler, after a pause, “that I seemed to shed a black curse about me as I passed. I was a restless mortal, and went about, hither, thither, at a terrible pace. The people took me for a wandering devil! And, upon my soul, I don’t blame them.” He gave a laugh, and the sound of it hurt Sidonia. She had always known, of course, that it was some fearful sorrow that had driven her old friend to his life of wandering.
“Oh, poor Geiger-Onkel!” she cried; the caress of her eyes was infinitely soft.
“Yes, the women crossed themselves when they saw me!” He laughed again. “The men jeered—the children ran screaming from my path.... That day when I saw you first, mamzell, I was tired and angry. A stone had been flung at me and caught me on the ankle, and I went lame. The day was very hot; I had been a long way; I could go no further, and I was hungry. I sat outside the forest-house, waiting to ask for a crust. I had heard you laughing and calling behind the garden hedges, and I was afraid of frightening you.... Aye, it was weary work, going through the world making the children cry! I knew that, when the sun sank, somebody would put you to bed. ‘And then I shall knock,’ I said to myself.... But, all at once, little Mamzell Sidonia, as I sat, oh, so glum, so black-hearted, so forlorn a wretch, I heard you call me. You had popped your head out of the garden gate, and were peeping at me, gurgling with laughter. ‘I see you,’ you said.” His voice broke. He twisted himself and lay out-stretched, supporting himself on one arm, his face turned towards the ground, idly picking at the small herbs. “Your little head was all over golden curls... some one I had known had hair of that colour... and you looked at me, it seemed, with eyes I had known also. You were not in the least frightened; you thought, I believe, that I was a very good game. But to me, to me, Mamzell Sidonia—you see I was even madder then than I am now—you were a something sent to me from one I loved once.”
Sidonia held her breath. She did not dare speak. This was not the Geiger-Onkel she had known. His very voice was changed utterly. She could not see his face as he lay, but instinctively she turned her eyes away from the prone figure.
“If we had had a child,” said the fiddler, in a sort of whisper, “she would have looked like you... she would have looked like you!”
It seemed to Sidonia that the lean figure was shaken, and she had a terror lest he should be weeping. But, all at once, with those singular, quick movements of his, so startling to those who did not know him, he was sitting once more cross-legged; and the eyes that fixed her were dry and wildly brilliant.
“Now, if only the Burgrave was here, and could have heard me,” he cried, mocking, “would he not be justified in calling for those whips and dogs with which I have been threatened? The Baroness Sidonia von Wellenshausen compared with the brat of a crazy beggarman!”
Sidonia exclaimed indignantly: “Whips and dogs! He would never dare!”
“Well, hardly just now,” said the other, whimsically. “His Excellency will dare very little for some time to come. Hey, what a game have the Fates played with him; aye, and with us all, mamzell, even with me, who thought to guide them! But they played my game in the end,” he added, edging a little closer to her. “Well, little sleeping beauty with the golden hair, did I not do well to bring you to your forest bower this gallant young prince? You had to be awakened, Princesse Sidonie au bois dormant; for the end of the spell was near at hand. And if you had been awakened by the wrong knight? Heaven preserve us, what a catastrophe!”
“Oh, Geiger-Onkel, I am not a child any more to be talked to in fairy tales. I am going to be married to-morrow!” Then, with a sudden change of tone, the girl cried inconsequently, “It is true, you did bring him to me. Perhaps you’re a kind of wizard uncle, after all!”
“Why—and have you ever doubted it?” said he, menacing her with his finger. “Have I not watched you all these years? When you wanted me for anything—for the white doe that was lost, or for Liserl in the village, when she had no news of her lad, or when Aunt Hedwige kept you too close—had not you but to wish for me?”
“It is true,” she pondered, and looked at him doubtfully, unable to make out if he were in jest or in earnest.
“And so, when I met this fine young Prince Errant on the roadway, I knew he was meant for you.”
But suddenly she accused him, shaking her little finger in mimicry of his own gesture.
“But you vanished very quickly, the other morning, after you played us out of the oubliette, Geiger-Onkel. And my prince had to face the wicked guardian all by himself, and you were not even there to tell the princess what she was to say. You have not been near us all these days.”
“But, did you want me?” cried the fiddler, and gave a screech of laughter. It rang harshly. “Did you want me? That is the question.”
She found nothing to answer. Truthfully, she had, these days, forgotten his very existence. He chuckled to himself, and hitched his violin round.
“Listen,” said he, and began to play a dainty measure—so exquisitely tender-gay a measure that it made Sidonia, all in her young happiness, feel quite sad. “Listen; this is the first tune you ever danced to, little mamzell. That was how your steps went, and how you clapped your hands.... Oh, I have something better for you still to play to you.... But you must wait for it. It is the song of your bridal morning!”
The sun fell full on his face as he played. How weary he looked, how aged, how haunted, and yet how gentle—poor Geiger-Hans!