Chapter XVI ’Twixt Cup and Lip
“Warum sind benn die Rosen so blass?
* * * * *
Mein liebes Liebchen, sprich,
D sprich, mein herzallerliebstes Lieb,
Warum verliessert du mich?”
HEINE.
Steven and his host sat opposite each other, equally mute. After his spurt of hilarity, the Burgrave had gradually fallen into a moodiness fostered by draughts of an alarming variety of wines. Sunk into himself, his heavy chin upon his chest, he glared straight before him with suffused eyes, blood-injected—a sodden mass of helpless resentment.
Fastidious Steven, ever more wrapt in disdain and aloofness, had perforce to avert his gaze from the degraded spectacle. How came such a flower as his Sidonia grafted upon so coarse a stock? He rejoiced, with a glow of intimate self-approbation, that he was carrying her away to fitter surroundings. To whom might they not have wedded her? To some sproutling, no doubt, chosen by the Burgrave—by yonder sot! Into what brutal arms might they not have cast her—the pure child of the cave night?
Something called him from his musings: it was the measure of an odd little tune, played half-sourdine, half-pizzicato. Suddenly the image of a rosy mountain-side, a gold-dusted plain spreading away towards sunset, the gloom of a forest background, sprang before his mind. He saw in the midst of that scene a gloomy youth seated on a milestone, a disabled chaise, a grey horse... and up the hill, advancing towards him, the vagabond fiddler. A broken sun ray flashed back from the yellow varnish of his instrument... a robin sang... the white horse cropped the leaves of young grass, with contented munching sound. The stream ran tinkling like secret laughter. Oh, what strange things had been brought into this traveller’s life through the breaking of a linchpin on the Thuringian highway! He sprang to his feet. Surely Geiger-Hans was calling him!—The Burgrave never even shifted his eyes to watch his new nephew go.
Steven found the fiddler at the head of the downward path; and though he was seated, there was an air of travel about him. He was alone. The charm of his music had no power that day at Wellenshausen; fleshpots and drinking cans filled the household mind. The young man’s heart contracted; he had learned to feel strange attachment for his strange comrade.
“I knew you were playing a good-bye,” he cried. “Will you not wait and see us go?”
The fiddler’s eyes flung his glance, uneasily, to where the white road cleared the shadowy green of the fields below and dipped into the dark bluish lap of the forest.
“No, no; I must go!” he answered, wildly, Steven thought.
“Without seeing Sidonia again?” exclaimed the young man.
The fiddler laughed inconsequently. He was now playing a kind of jig, almost on one string, a restless hopping measure which suddenly made Steven long to be gone likewise.
“Two fine mules are waiting for you,” said the musician, with a quick look. “They have hung Sidonia’s with flower-wreaths. And you have red trappings on yours. Hark! you can hear them jingle their bells. They are impatient, they are waiting for you. Hey, bridegroom, why do you delay? You should have been gone as soon as you had made her yours.”
“She is dressing for the journey,” said Steven.
“Look,” said Geiger-Hans, pointing with his bow, “yonder, by the torrent bridge stands your carriage. You can see the sun gleam on the harness. If you had my ears, you would hear your horses stamp. They, too, are impatient. But the bride will cling to the old stones at the last... and, fie, who would hurry a lady? I shall be far, far away before you two set out. Nay, keep me not back, I am more impatient for the road than even your horses down there, fiery with the week’s oats... than even you, comrade, on your wedding day!”
“Certainly,” thought Steven, uneasily, “if ever I doubted it before, the poor fellow is not as other men. How his eyes burn in their deep sockets—I fear our Geiger-Hans is mad.”
At this the other nodded to him, with his fantastic intuition.
“You are right, I am mad,” he said, “and I thank God—for it is a dull world for wise fools. And your sanity and wisdom and dulness, Sir Count, have learned something worth the learning of my madness. Aye, and received something better than knowledge too: you will grant that.” And as Steven stared, half-offended, half-startled, the fiddler, with his smile upon him and his brilliant eyes, fell to playing again that tune of the road with which he had first greeted him.
“Here is a dull lad seated upon a mile-stone,” he half chanted to the cadence, “and he has nothing better to do with his youth than to jog along the plain’s highway, the dusty common road that all may tread... while behind him runs the green path of the forest, and dear adventure lies in hidden glade for him who cares to seek it—so goodly a youth to waste his golden minutes!... And here comes a wandering music-maker, and a crazy one into the bargain. And this is his freak: to see if he cannot knock a spark out of the high-born block. Within the youth of this goodly body lurks there no soul to fire? And, behold, it proves a good scholar—a very honest lad! Sparks are struck out of his block head. And there is a soul too, and it can burn with a very brave flame.... And in the forest glade trembles a Wind-Flower; let him pluck it if he can and wear it in his breast, for his is a steady hand and a clean, and it will gather the flower tenderly.”
The fiddler clapped his hand on the strings and they were mute.
“Farewell, little comrade,” he said, changing his tone, and Steven thought that if the man’s eyes had had tears in them, the sadness of them would have been less intolerable. “Haste back to your bride, impatient heart!” added the musician gravely then. “A little impatience is good. But, oh, hear me:—hurry not her virginal dawn, that the sunrise be full golden for you both! If love is to have its exquisite hour, love must be both patient and fierce.” He slung his violin over his shoulder, and took a sudden nimble step on the downward rocky way.
The half-hour struck, echoing from the gateway clock. A dreary quarter still to wait, according to the Burgravine’s warning.
“Oh, comrade, stay a little yet!” cried the bridegroom.
The fiddler merely waved his hand. He was scrambling down the steep way in crazy haste.
“I have a thousand things to say still,” cried Steven again. He curled his hand round his mouth and called: “When shall we meet?”
The fiddler halted suddenly. He was already far on his way, for he had gone with incredible speed. But he waved his hat above his head with a fantastic flourish; then he shot behind a big rock and was lost to sight.
It seemed to Steven that it was an uncompromising good-bye, and it was with an odd sense of oppression that he turned his own steps back towards the gateway. He would have struck any other man to the earth who had dared once to insult, browbeat, or command him as this poor wanderer had so often done. Where lay the spell? He had power over all that came in contact with him; and—it was true—what marvellous things had he had to give! The young man’s heart began to throb as he thought of his bride, and he quickened his step.... The Wind-Flower, that was his at last, his Fair Dawn!
The bridegroom entered with eager yet reverent step; but, upon sight of the bride, checked his advance, startled, amazed. Sidonia sat on a high-backed chair as on a judgment-seat, with face coldly set, yet with eyes blazing reproach.
“I sent for you, Herr Graf,” she said, with great distinctness of enunciation, “to tell you that I decline to go away with you.”
The blood rushed to Steven’s brain. “I do not understand,” he said, even as she but a little while before; and his tone was that of sudden anger. The revulsion of feeling was too strong, too sudden; his first emotion was overwhelming wrath. “What do you mean?” he demanded.
Steel cannot strike steel but the sparks must fly. A fierce pride had they both. Perhaps Sidonia, in her child-heart, had looked for consternation on her bridegroom’s face, had pictured him thunderstruck, protesting, falling at her feet; her wounded vanity now was reinforced by a host of unknown feelings which rushed almost for hatred. Under this arrogant eye, to this haughty bidding, she would not stoop to explanation, still less to complaint.
“It is sufficient that you should understand,” she told him, “that now we part. I do not go with you. Go you and forget me!”
“Sidonia!” he ejaculated, stupefaction for the moment sweeping all other feelings away.
Strangely enough, it never dawned upon him to guess at the truth. Men, especially young men who have had practically no dealings with the opposite sex, are very slow to grasp woman’s spitefulness, woman’s deceit. He had felt shame at his own weakness of compliance in the matter of the Burgravine, but no sense of guilt could remain where he knew all desire to sin to have been so conspicuously absent. He stood staring at Sidonia’s little face convulsed with frowns.
“Oh, sir,” she cried, with a disdainful laugh, “you have done all that honour required of you. It is quite enough. We need make no fine phrases for each other’s benefit. The situation is very clear, and thereupon we may separate!”
At these inconceivable words a horrible suspicion sprang upon him; he did not pause to measure the probabilities, to contrast what he knew with what he did not understand. Was it possible that this young creature had but played a part with him? Had she feigned sweet maiden love and wedded him, virginally tender, only to save the threatened honour of her name? Nay; more monstrous thought still! Was the whole business a hideous conspiracy? He was shaken as by a storm. Crimson rushed to his face. In two strides he was beside her menacing.
“You are my wife!” he cried. “You are mine—mine! You belong to me! You must do as I order—as I order!”
His look filled her with terror. Child-woman, she shrank instinctively from something to her nameless, yet infinitely offending. Clasping her hands upon her breast to still the throbbing of her heart, she heard, beneath her fingers, the whisper of Aunt Betty’s billet.
Stung afresh to scorn, she reared her head and measured him with her glance. In silence she stood, trying to reason out the tangled problem for herself. With her ignorance of life, her inborn pride, with her passionate woman’s heart and her childish mind, she was bound to go far and wide astray.
If the marriage on his part was not a mere piece of chivalrous self-sacrifice, an idea unbearably insulting in itself, why should he now wish to keep her against her will, since the conventions were satisfied? What gain could she be to him, since he did not love her? And how could he love her, he who was in love with Betty? As in a vision of red flame, she recalled how he and Betty had danced and coquetted together that first night of all; he had not had even a glance wherewith to recognize the little Sidonia who had waited on him in the forest house. Oh, it was true, he had loved Betty from the beginning. And she, Sidonia, who had let herself be won by a few careless words, was at the best only a sacrifice to the world’s idea of high-born, gentlemanly decorum. The memory of these last days, so exquisite to her, was blighted. She had never been anything to him, that was clear. He had been kind to her, indulgent, but he had never once, she remembered now, told her that he loved her. And she, fool! had never realized, even with Betty’s example before her, that people could seek to wed each other without love. Out of her own mad abundance she had lent to him. And the poor little coin he had doled out in return to her, she had taken for gold. But now, why should he look at her with those fierce, greedy eyes? Why should this “poor, chivalrous young man,” as Betty called him, claim her as his bargain, and in these brutal tones?
Once more Betty’s voice, with its devilish suggestion, rang in her ears: Of course, my love, there are compensations about you!
“You can have my money if you will—and I am very rich, as you know—so that you only go. Go!” she cried suddenly.
Sidonia shook from head to foot as she spoke at last. But her eyes and her voice were indomitable in their determination. As if her slender sunburnt hand had struck him a deadly blow, Steven Lee, Count Kielmansegg, stepped back a couple of paces, and the blood, ebbing from his face, left it grey. He paused for a while, then made a bow, turned on his heel, and went to the door. On the threshold he looked back at her for a second again. It was a farewell look, and bore in it a pride as high and bleeding as her own, a reproach as keen. She saw that his lip trembled. Then the door was closed, very gently, between them, and she heard his steps die away down the winding stone stairs.
She glanced at her new wedding-ring and thought her heart must break, but yet she sat and made no effort to recall him.