Part 16

There fell a silence between the two. Geiger-Hans, his lean jaws propped upon his hands, sat staring at the pink sheet. The lawyer fell upon a new pile of letters with monkey-like mischief and activity. The supposed director of the _Cabinet Noir_ was now snoring lustily. Its religious guide and philosopher was still pondering over the perversity of his liquor.

"Ha!" cried the Jurist, with a sudden shout, "another missive from the pink dove--same hand, same paper and cover, and addressed to no less a person than the great Chancellor Wellenshausen! Also at Heiligenstadt. Never draw such angry brows upon me, _Minnesinger_ mine. I tell you, this woman positively cannot seal a letter!"

Steven lifted his head from the pillow. He heard the rustle of the opening sheet in the student's hands; then came another crow:

"Excellent, upon my _cerevies_, excellent! Listen, man. Whatever your faults are, you can laugh:

"'_Palais de Bellevue_, '"Cassel.

"'NEVER! "'Betty, Burgravine of Wellenshausen.'

"Thunder! 'Tis his wife! It is a whole story _a la Kotzebue_. Do you hear, Geiger-Hans? 'Tis his wife. 'Never!' she writes to him. Oh, the dove has claws and beak, and she can peck!"

Without betraying any of the exuberant mirth expected of him, Geiger-Hans leaned over and, with neat decision, plucked the letter from the other's hands. And as the Jurist stared, wavering confusedly upon offence: "Go on with your work, friend," said the musician, smiling. "That second warrant has not yet been discovered. The night is waning. It may be well to be fairly on your road to Goettingen before the hue and cry."

*CHAPTER XXIII*

*THE KING'S MAIL*

"_Ei! Kennt ihr noch das alte Lieb_ _Das einst so wild die Brust burchglueht,_ _Ihr Saiten, dumpf und truebe?_ _Die Engel, die nennen es Himmelsfreud;_ _Die Teufel, die nennen es Hoellenleid;_ _Die Menschen, die nennen es--Liebe!_" HEINE.

Steven, whose mind had become keenly on the alert at the first mention of Betty's name, turned on his hard couch with a general relaxation of mind and body. The consoling news that it was Betty who occupied Jerome's attention fell on his jealous anguish like balm. His thoughts began to wander, rocked on the tide of the ebbing tempest. He must then have fallen into slumber, for he was suddenly back in the old Burg of Wellenshausen, with Sidonia, his little bride. She was sitting in the high-backed chair, in all her wedding finery, even as he had last seen her. But she was smiling upon him.... "_I have your letter. It was all a mistake, a great mistake_," she was saying to him. Then, as he sprang forward to take her in his arms, suddenly, with the fantastic horror of dreams, her face changed, became red, distorted, even as the face of the student. Her voice changed, too; grew raucous, broken with insupportable laughter. "_You never loved me_," it said; "_that is now clear to me. You meant well with me, I know; but it is not right--such a union as ours cannot be right, either before God or man. Had I understood before, I should have died rather than consent. But it is not yet too late. Aunt Betty says our marriage is no marriage, and she knows all about your Austrian law. Uncle Ludo has taken advice of lawyers for me; and very soon we may both be free. No--I will not see you. I will never see you again._"

Steven sat up straight, and even at that moment there was an uproar. Geiger-Hans, creeping round the table like a cat, had fallen silently upon the student and was paralyzing, with a grasp of steel, the hand that held the letter.

The Jurist bellowed as if the executioner were already upon him, and Mossy-Head, waking up, shouted: "Treachery!" while, as if the clamour had given the finishing touch to his instability, the Theologian and the once more empty can fell in a heap on the floor. The Senior flung his drunken bulk blindly against the fiddler. Steven leaped from the couch.

Even with one hand (his left arm was still weak), anything so intoxicated was easily disposed of. He picked the "Sword of the conspiracy" off Geiger-Hans, who thereupon, finding himself free to deal with "the Brain," possessed himself at once of the letter. The musician's thin cheeks were faintly touched with scarlet, and his nostrils worked with quick breathing; otherwise he seemed unmoved. Steven, therefore, was all the more astonished to hear him exclaim with utmost disgust, utmost scorn and anger:

"_Palsambleu!_ but I am weary of this! Drunken swine! Out with them to some sty! Roll your fellow forth, count, and down the stairs. If your shoulder smarts, you have sound legs at least ... and riding-boots!"

The wine, which had seemed so long merely to stimulate him, here suddenly took melting effect upon the student of law. He twisted in the fiddler's grasp, flung both his arms round his neck, and, embracing him with the ejaculation: "O thou dear, ancient one!" showed an instant inclination to slumber on his shoulder.

"Pah!" exclaimed Geiger-Hans, and disengaged himself with what seemed to Steven surprising vindictiveness. He then trundled his man into the passage. The door of an empty bedroom, flooded with moonlight, stood suggestively open; here he cast the creature from him; threw sword, scabbard and pipe on top of the grunting body.

Steven, in perfect gravity, followed his friend's example; but, with more mercy, deposited his burden on the billows of the feather bed.

"There is yet another," quoth the fiddler, dusting his hands. Disgust was upon him. He was Geiger-Hans no longer, but a _grand seigneur_ with a vengeance, offended in all his Versailles refinement. He led Steven back into the room. "We shall have to carry the hog. Take you his feet, while I his greasy poll."

The Theologian had not even a grunt. They spread him beside the Jurist in the moonlight--with a certain effect of symmetry, like fish on a slab.

Geiger-Hans locked the door on the outside and pocketed the key. A second, then he and Steven stood together in the darkness of the landing. Except for the snores from within the room and for similar sounds rising from the kitchen below, the inn of The Three Ways was wrapped in stillness.

Outside, the gale, which had long been waning, had now fallen.

"That is the courier, I take it," said the wanderer. "Did I not say, my noble friend, that I would bring you into the company of heroes? Listen to them! Thus do we conspire in Westphalia!"

When they re-entered the room, the musician went instantly to the window and, opening it wide, stood inhaling in deep draughts the clean airs of the woods. It was that most silent, most mysterious hour of the whole circle--the hour before dawn. More silent and more mysterious, this night, it seemed because of the storm that had passed. Nature was exhausted after her passion, merely shaken by a faint reminiscent sigh that came stealing with scarce the quiver of a leaf, as from a tired heart.

The night sky held a strange depth of blue against the garish yellow lamplight within; the stars were paling. With head, thrown back, the wanderer stood gazing upwards. There were moods of his strange comrade that Steven had learned to respect. He therefore neither spoke nor approached; but, after completing the purification of the room by the simple process of turning out all the cans and bottles, he sat down and waited, absorbed in his own painful reflections. At last Geiger-Hans drew a deep breath, and, leaving the window open, sat down facing his companion. The contents of the rifled mail-bag lay between them.

The musician's face looked pale and severe. Still in silence, he began to toss such packets as had escaped violation back into the bag.

"Will you give me my letter, please?" said Steven, dully. Then his youth and hot blood betrayed him into a cry: "Oh, I am miserable!"

The older man glanced at him from under his eyebrows. It was an odd thing--for what was he, after all, but a poor, half-crazed, broken gentleman? yet there was a certain smile of this Geiger-Hans which made the world seem warm to the rich and highborn Steven.

"O blessed unhappiness of youth!" cried the musician in his old manner, mocking yet passionate. "Did you but know it, these pangs, these sighs, will be sweeter to the memory of your old age than your youth's most satisfied ecstasies! Here is your letter, boy. Go, weep and rage upon it, if you will, with all the fury of your checked aspiration.... What, you open your arms, and she is not ready forthwith to fall into them? You condescend to run after her, and she does not instantly stand still to be caught! You thought that to-morrow's sun would see you with your bride in your embrace, and behold! you have yet to woo her? Bewail your hard fate, you are indeed to be pitied!"

"Would you not like your fiddle?" cried Steven, as he caught the half-folded sheet that the musician tossed towards him, "that you may set my folly to a tune? When you want to sermonize, I had rather you did it on the strings, if you don't mind."

For a second Geiger Hans seemed about to resent the pettish speech as an impertinence. A frown gathered; but, with a short laugh, broken by a deep sigh, he resumed his air of sad serenity.

"Nay," said he, stroking the strings of the instrument that Steven pushed towards him, and then laying his hand flat upon them to still their wailing, "did I make music to-night, it would not be music for your youth. Fool!" said Geiger-Hans, fixing his mad, brilliant eyes upon Steven, "is she not living, she whom you love? and you prate to me--to me, of unhappiness!"

Though the words were harsh, his tone was strangely gentle. Had Steven dared, he would have put out his hand to touch the speaker.

The wind was rustling through the trees; there came a stir and a murmur from the woods; the purple-blue depth of the sky seemed to quiver with pallid changes.

"It is the dawn," said the fiddler, in a worn voice. "Get you to that couch again, for you must sleep, and we have a day of action before us. Aye, take that letter with you and lay it under your cheek. If it seem cruel, have not her fingers touched it? Ah, if you but knew from what a wounded heart, perhaps, sprang those reproachful words! Why, if she has pride, man, will she not be the fitter mate for you? And if she will have naught of a loveless marriage, is it not because she would have love? Poor little Sidonia ... who only yesterday was a child! You have awakened a woman's heart in her; see that you know how to meet that heart's measure."

Steven stood by the couch, palpitating to the words, to the golden visions they opened before his fevered eyes.... Sidonia, the child, with her yellow plaits of hair, with her eyes brown and green, clear yet deep, like the brook under the trees.... Sidonia, whose lips he had kissed; who had smiled at him under her bridal veil!

Geiger-Hans had said he would make no music; but it was the music of the gods his words had evoked in the dawn. Presently the older man looked up from his dreary abstraction: Steven, stretched on the sofa in all the abandonment of young fatigue, was sleeping like a child. The watcher's features relaxed.

"_O bella Gioventu_...!" he murmured. Then he looked down at the scattered sheets before him, and his lips twisted in bitter mockery. Here had been a night's work of petty crime under the fine-sounding title of patriotism and national conspiracy. But might not now some good be brought out of it after all? How sound the fellow slept! Not that he, the wanderer, envied any sleeper but him that would never wake.--Well, to work!

He took up, with contemptuous fingers, Burgravine Betty's easy lines of surrender to the royal Don Juan. It was clear that she was vastly flattered at the thought of becoming one of the _mil e tre_. But Betty had a husband...! Yes, the butterfly should be saved, if it were only for the sake of the pure child who had, as yet, no better shelter than those fragile gaudy wings.

He re-read the lines destined to the King, and smiled. Then he turned over the other sheet with his forefinger. The pregnant "Never!" sprang again at him out of the page, in Betty's flourish.

The fiddler smiled again.

* * * * *

Through the open window a shaft of sunlight struck the sleeper's forehead. Geiger-Hans rose to draw the wooden shutter. But Steven frowned and awoke.

Without, the forest was one golden lyric. It was an autumn day of sparkle and scurry. A flock of migrating birds were calling to each other over the yellowing tree-tops. Against the pale, exquisite blue of a sky such as September alone seems to give, the rooks were circling in fantastic squadrons.

From the dappled glades came an unseen stir of soft furred things; things on vibrating wings, busy or merely merry, snatching the last bright hour before the end. Into the middle of a straight forest clearing, all faint amber with fallen pine needles, a stag pricked his way with high and dainty steps; then turned his noble head, caught some scent of danger and leaped into the bracken, which closed in waves over him.... The very spirit of the woods incarnate!

It seemed shame to be sullenly sleepy on such a morning. Steven breathed the bright air, and his ill-humour vanished.

"That is well," said Geiger-Hans, as if the young man had spoken. "Nature sets us the example: what work she has to do, she does happily. Be brisk, comrade; we have also a task before us, and an immediate. The mail-bag is ready. We must now start master courier again on his interrupted duty. Heaven knows in what state we shall find the clown; we shall doubtless have to pump on him! ... Then, to Cassel!"

Melodious snores were yet intercrossing each other in the locked bedroom as they passed down the stairs. But the postilion was awake. He lay full length on the bench, with face upturned to the rafters, staring stupidly at a bunch of herbs immediately above him, his eyes totally devoid of speculation.

Early as it was, the household of that solitary house was astir. A fire was crackling in the hearth, and a fresh sound of water came from an inner room. The host of The Three Ways stood in the wide-open house-door looking into the empty road. He turned quickly at the sound of their steps and grinned in greeting as he saw Geiger-Hans.

"Good morning, Mr. Host," said the musician. "Fine doings have you had here the night!"

"Students' tricks, students' tricks," said the host, suddenly uncomfortable, and slouching back into the kitchen as he spoke. His small eyes blinked furtively away from the sight of the mail-bags which Geiger-Hans now heaved on the table. "Bah!" pursued he, "I knew nothing! I busy not my head over gentry's doings or students' pranks. I go to sleep. They concern me not." Then he burst into a chuckle. "Popped him into a wine-cask, they did, in the backyard of The Bunch of Grapes, down at Cassel, where the fellow takes his nip before going his round. And they sat on the cask, the three of them, singing and smoking their pipes--drove past the French soldiers who looked on and laughed--out of the town gates, and not a finger lifted to stop them! Upon my soul, it was a fine joke! The cart is out yonder, and the cask, too!" he added, and chucked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the sunlit yard, shaking the while with a laugh that might have struck the observer as a trifle forced.

"Your jokers are still enjoying the sleep of a blameless conscience," said Geiger-Hans. "They lie in your best bedroom, Mr. Landlord. I locked them in, lest your good wine should lead their innocence and lightheartedness into new jokes ... that might be less excellent." He took the key from his pocket and tossed it on the table. "Release the birds when you think fit," he added.

The landlord took up the key with alacrity. Geiger-Hans remained awhile musingly fixing the outstretched form of the postilion; then a faint laugh shook him in his turn.

"In a wine cask," commented he. "A right old German jest, not without its gross humour...! He did aver they had kidnapped him: the creature spoke truth!"

Mine host almost perpetrated a wink, but checked himself and coughed.

"Oh, these students!" he reiterated vaguely.

"No wonder the beast smells like a bottle-brush," cried Steven, curling up his nose. Here, then, was the explanation of that stench of wine which had sickened him the night before, and which even now the sweeping breeze could scarcely conquer.

"The High-Born has perfect reason," cried the innkeeper, "for the rascal is sopped, within and without. If you squeezed him, he would run vinegar.--Well, so long as I am paid!..." was the philosophic parenthesis. "But the wife has shaken him in vain. There he lies, and it were perhaps as wholesome he should jog." His glance moved uneasily towards the mail-bag. "And what is to be done with that?" it seemed to ask.

"Quite so," said Geiger-Hans, gravely. "Has he not his letters to deliver? They will be one post late; but in Westphalia, nowadays, we are not so mighty particular, are we? He must be freshened up, I think. Here, friend, I and my comrade will bring him to the trough, and you shall do the pumping. We'd better off with his jacket first. Never look so doubtful, Mr. Landlord. If his Majesty hears of it, you may be decorated. Think of that!"

"Saints forbid!" said the host, turning pale. "If Jerome heard of it, I might be shot."

"Nay," said Geiger-Hans, cheerfully, "you may take my word for it; the days are counted within which there will be either decorations or executions in the name of Jerome. But, meanwhile, to our duty! Never look so disgusted, little comrade. This is a vile beast, as you said; but in a minute we shall have him purified."

* * * * *

It was, indeed, a purified courier, a chastened and subdued mail-bearer, who trotted his way on through the forest, astride that self-same horse that had dragged him forth in his reeking prison the night before. He had the great bag on his back (undiminished save for two warrants and one private missive--one, indeed, that had already reached its proper destination), a gold piece in his pocket, and a plausible tale of violence and rescue to tell, should it ever be required of him.

*CHAPTER XXIV*

*PORTENTS*

"Huet bich, mein Freund, vor schwarzen, alten Kasen, Doch schlimmer sind die weissen, jungen Kaeschen....!" HEINE.

There was brilliant sunshine as Steven rode in at the gate of Cassel. The fiddler walked beside him; but, once within the town, he halted, waved his hand, and called out:

"Good-bye."

"How?" cried Steven, drawing rein, his heart sinking at this unexpected parting.

"Ah, little bridegroom!" said Fiddler Hans, "it is even so. And a pretty figure," he said, "should I be, to shadow your lordship's magnificence in this fashionable city!"

He stepped across the cobbles, laid his hand on the horse's neck, and looked up at the young man; all mockery fled out of his eyes.

"You are an honest lad," he said, "and you love her--go, tell her the naked truth."

* * * * *

In her pink-hung bed at the Bellevue Palace, Betty von Wellenshausen opened a sleepy eye upon her surroundings. She yawned and stretched herself. It was good to wake up in Cassel and feel the bustle of life about her, the gay and ceaseless movement, instead of the rarefied loneliness of Wellenshausen on the crags, where the morning might find her higher than the clouds themselves, with perhaps scarce the beat of a bird's wing across the awful stillness.

Yes, it was _du dernier agreable_ in the _Residenz_--Betty's thoughts ran naturally to French--to be aroused to the prospect of a day full of the most new and diverting experience.... Positively, Jerome was a charming fellow!...

... It was, perhaps, a trifle strong to ask for a secret rendezvous on the strength of one meeting; but Betty did not regret her answer. Without being at all prepared to yield--gracious powers, was one not to enjoy oneself a little? ... after three years of Wellenshausen!

In the midst of these gossamer resolves, the door creaked apart.

The Burgravine rubbed her eyes and thought she must be still dreaming, for through the aperture peered the heavy countenance, the bristling head of her husband--actually of the Burgrave of Wellenshausen himself!

She sat up, her lace cap awry upon the starting dark curls, her cherry mouth open, her eyes round, the very image of astonished indignation. With ponderous tip-toe tread, not unlike that of a wild boar stepping out of covert, the husband entered the room. He closed the door behind him and stood smiling, half timidly, half fatuously. Betty's clenched hands flew up in the air and down again on the sheets.

"How dare you!" she gasped. "Did I not forbid you----?"

"Oh, come now, Betty, my little wife, my little dove, I've frightened you. You were asleep, angel? But when I got your letter, last night, I lost not an instant. His Majesty gave me leave--urgent private affair. Post haste I came from Heiligenstadt. In Cassel with the dawn--a mouthful of breakfast to while away the time--a little toilet, and here I am. Shaved, my treasure! Your dear little letter----"

"My ... my dear little letter?" Betty shrieked, eyes rounder, curls more startled than ever. She sat rigid. "My dear little letter!" she repeated under her breath once more. Then, as she recalled the missive in question, she was shaken with an irresistible giggle. Her face dimpled. The Burgrave, gazing on her amorously, thought her the most ravishing, the most maddening being ever created for the delight or torment of man.

"Your letter, my Betty, to Heiligenstadt," he murmured, drew a pink sheet from his breast pocket, and carried it to his lips. "What wonder that, upon receipt of this, I could not delay coming to my sweet Betty a minute longer!" He held the note at arm's length. "Your wifely, your dutiful words: '_I should indeed be disloyal to persist in rebellion against my lawful lord._'"

Now, at a flash, the situation was laid clear before her:--by some inconceivable carelessness she had put her correspondence of two days ago in the wrong covers! ... A plague on this new-fangled French invention of envelopes!

She shut her lips with a snap and swallowed down the cry that rose to them. Rapidly she tried to recall that elegant reply to the royal importunities which had given her so much satisfaction; and then all other feelings were lost in a gush of gratitude to the Providence that had suggested those ambiguous terms which saved the situation--saved Betty, Burgrave of Wellenshausen, from premature discovery, irreparable disgrace.

She turned and smiled adorably on the Burgrave.

"Monster," she murmured, "do you deserve forgiveness?"

* * * * *

Steven halted at the first inn on his way, at the sign of the _Aigle Imperial_--a new French sign upon an old and solidly Germanic house. Here he put up his horse and engaged a room.

The best he could obtain was on the second floor. The town was full of officers--a regular military citadel now, and Cassel, that used to be a quiet _Residenz_.... Honourable guests could no longer be entertained as was their due, mine host informed him with a shrug of the shoulders. Steven, however, was indifferent enough; it was not his purpose to remain an hour longer in Jerome's capital than he could help. Indeed, he dropped some words concerning the equipage he would probably require--it might be that very evening--which gave the landlord an insight into a long purse and magnificent habits of travel.