Part 3

Steven thought that the fiddler laughed. There was a faint exclamation. Heavens! did she also laugh? He saw--yes, he saw the inspector's hated outline over hers. She was drawn from the window by the shoulders, the shutters were clapped to in his face and bolted noisily. The yard billowed under his feet. All went red before his eyes. That was her room, and the man had followed her to it! Had he no youth in him, no blood in his veins? ... Why, he could taste it on his tongue! He pivoted round upon himself, made a blind rush for the entrance door, and dashed headlong against Ranger Schmidt's broad chest.

A French oath rang out. Then broken German: "Can the kerl not see where he is going?" Then, in the dark, the fiddler laughed again. Or was it his music? or were there lurking devils taunting, jeering, inciting? The young man never knew exactly what happened till a crack like a pistol-shot sprang upon the night, and he realized that his hand had found the broad, insolent face at last. The sound of that slap cleared the confusion in his own brain as a puff of wind clears a hanging mist. Schmidt gave a roar like a furious bull, but Steven met the onslaught of the uplifted whip with the science learned in London of Gentleman Jackson and there was a grip on either side which began for him in glorious defiance and ended in a struggle of life and death.

The fiddler worked his bow like one possessed. It was a fierce song of fight that now rose, ever shriller, louder, and faster, up towards the placid sky. The air was thick with the curses, blue with the profanity, of Forester Schmidt. But Steven fought like a gentleman, in silence. To his dying day he maintained that he was getting the better of the hulking bully, when his heel caught in an upstanding root, and he fell with a crash, his opponent over him. There was a moment's agony of suffocation, then the gleam before his eyes of a bared blade, gilt-blue in the moonlight, two echoing shouts, a woman's scream. And then Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg lost consciousness, his wits marching away at double-quick time to the lilt of an extraordinarily joyous vulgar little tune.

* * * * *

"Oh, Geiger-Onkel, is he dead?"

The girl with the yellow plaits stood in the light of the lantern; her wide eyes seemed to devour her face, white even in that uncertain glimmer; her parted lips quivered. From the forest house came the sound of loud wrangling voices, dominated presently by rhythmic feminine screams. In the kennels the dogs were barking furiously: it was a distracting clamour.

Yet the stillness of the young man's comely figure, relaxed at its length on the straw, the pallor of his head, thrown back like a sleeping child's against the fiddler's knee, seemed to make its own circle of silence.

"Dead?" echoed the vagrant. "Dead for a crack on the skull!" His tone was contemptuous. Yet his lean hands shook as they busied themselves in loosening Count Steven's very fine stock; and there was concern in his attitude as he bent over the youth's face, cruelly beautiful in its white unconsciousness.

Now Sidonia, the forest-mother's foster-child, remembered Geiger-Hans as far back as she could remember anything, and knew every shade of that sardonic visage. Dark she had often seen it, with a far-away melancholy--a melancholy, it seemed, beyond anything that life could touch. She had known it alight with mockery, softened into a wonderful tenderness that was for her alone, of all human beings, and for all sick or helpless animals. But moved to anxiousness as now, never before. She clasped her hands across the fluttering of her heart. Geiger-Hans glanced at her again and laughed gently. The traveller's befrogged coat was loose at last, the column of his young throat bare, and the musician had slipped a hand between the folds of a shirt finer than the girl's own snowy bodice.

"Why, little Sidonia," said he, as if she was once again the child, "you look as scared as a rabbit in a trap. Dead, this lad? Nay, his English mother, whoever she was, has built him too well for that. Why, here's a heart for you! With decent luck, it should make him swing into his nineties as steadily as the drums of the Old Guard."

As he spoke, he shifted the burden of the languid head to a convenient pile of straw, sprang to his feet and stood laughing again.

"Our wits are not the strongest part of us," he mocked. "They're always like to be the first things we lose." His lips twisted as he glanced downward. "A knock on our pate, and it is all away with them."

"For shame, Geiger-Onkel!" cried the girl. The colour flamed into her face: upon the reaction of her relief, she was glad to find anger, else she must have burst into tears. She knelt down by her ungracious guest, and, on a nearer view, misgiving once more crept upon her. Her little hands hovered. "Oh, Onkel," she cried, "yet he looks like death!"

"Nay, satisfy yourself, then," said the fiddler, encouragingly; "women are all cousins, even to Mamzell Sidonia."

His tone seemed scornful, but there was something genial, something almost of hope and pleasure, in his eyes as he watched the maid bend over the comely youth, watched her lay a timid touch over his heart.

"It beats," said Sidonia, in a whisper, "it beats." She spoke as of a wonderful thing. A smile came like a dream across her face. Her touch lingered. "How strong!" she said.

"The heart of a young man should be strong," quoth the fiddler.

"And how steady," went on the girl.

And the fiddler answered: "Strength is waste without steadiness."

She crouched, looking up at him, the smile of wonder on her lips. Then she looked down again at the pale face.

"His heart beats beautifully, but when will he wake again?"

"It is to be hoped, not till to-morrow morning. And," added the other more gravely, "he must not be awaked. Nature knows what she is about, and she is rocking her young friend to the tune of her own remedy. Nay, never fear, little mamzell, the lad is but stunned. He will sleep till morning, and wake scarce the worse. Leave him, child, he lies well enough."

"He lies very ill," flashed she. "You were kinder to the old white horse. A pillow he shall have," she scolded, and was gone on her light foot.

The wrangling sounds were now stilled within and without the forest house. The cries of the hounds had fallen into silence. As for the rhythmic hysterics of the travelling lady, they had given place to soft gurgles of laughter. These punctuated the more continuous rumble of a bass undertone; her window was evidently once more open to the night. The musician gazed down at the youth's upturned face.

"What dreams you could have had, you dog, had your foolish wits not taken leave of absence," he murmured. With an unconscious gesture he reached for his fiddle, as if to clothe the thought in its own tune. But he paused before touching a string. "No, sweet friend," he muttered, "thou must be put to baser uses before dawn. And till then thy fancies and mine must sleep."

A twig cracked sharply. With heavy tread, yet noiselessly, in her list slippers, the forest-mother waddled into the barn. There was the gleam of a white basin in her hand, whence arose a sour pungency.

"The good God and His holy mother preserve us this night!" she ejaculated in a creaking whisper. "I have brought a compress for the poor young gentleman's head. Eh, but the gracious one was haughty, and pride will have a fall! But there, my heart goes out to lads, be they high or low. Hey, jeminy," she clacked her tongue, "it's enough to give one a turn to see him lying there!"

Though the words were rueful the tone was almost cheery. She had been witness of many hard knocks in her day; and she knew--none better--the stuff of which solid Kerls are made.

"Keep your vinegar for little gherkins, mother," said the musician, gaily. "We want no more pickle here to-night."

Further gibing was silenced on his lips, for Sidonia came back upon them like a small whirlwind, clasping her pillow by the middle, heedless that one corner of it should knock off the fiddler's hat, the other all but upset the vinegar lotion. But her impetuosity gave place to fairy gentleness as she knelt beside Steven and drew his head into her lap, spreading meanwhile the pillow into its proper place.

"Save us and bless us!" exclaimed the forest-mother. "Sidonia! Here, Geiger-Onkel, take the vinegar!" And, quite flustered, she thrust her basin upon him.

"Foster-mother," said Sidonia, looking up rebukingly, "he must not be awakened." She laid her hand protectingly upon the crisp brown curls.

"But, child," groaned the forest-mother, "this is no work for a--no work for you. _Himmel!_ the strange gentleman's head on your lap; and you--what you are! It is not fitting. It is not maidenly!"

"Tscha!" said the fiddler, testily, and forced back the bowl upon the irate old woman. "Good mother, leave the child alone. See, she has laid the young gentleman's head quite prettily on the pillow, and now she is going straight to bed. It is late, for good children."

Sidonia had leaped to her feet. She came slowly towards the two who were watching her, tossing her head. But, with all her pride, she could not conceal that she was blushing to tears. Suddenly she darted past them into the night, and her feet could be heard pattering up the outside wooden stairs that led to her gable room.

*CHAPTER IV*

*PARTING OF THE WAYS*

"_Come like shadows, so depart._" {_Macbeth_}.

"Forest-mother," said the fiddler, dryly, "you know a great deal about sturdy forest lads, and you make the best pickles in the country: but you know nothing at all about little maids."

And, as the honest woman stared at him open-mouthed, he took her genially by the shoulders and turned her towards the door.

"Everything the child has done to-night has been right and becoming," he went on, half regretfully, half smilingly, "even because she was a child. But, mark me, from to-night she is child no longer. And all that her heart prompts her to do now will be wrong. Go to bed, mother," he added in a different tone; "and if you hear my fiddle speaking by-and-by and a rumble of carriage-wheels thereafter, why, turn you over on the other ear and think you have dreamed a strange dream."

On her limp slippers the forest-mother trotted a few steps forward, obediently; then she halted, hesitated, and turned back. Her shrewd, kindly face was all puckered in the moonlight.

"Geiger-Hans," she called solemnly. Her tone was so full of mystery and import that he came to her in two steps. She jerked her thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the open window, whence the voice and the soft laughter still crept out upon the forest stillness. "Yonder--in there"--she whispered--"him!"

He interrupted her. "I know: I saw him come, little mother; and I have spoken with Friedel."

"He looked at her a great deal," she insisted.

"At whom? At little Sidonia?"

"Ay; and he took her by the chin."

"Did he so?" said Geiger-Hans. His low voice had a tremor of anger. Then he was silent; and the forest-mother stood waiting, her eyes confidently on him. A fantastic figure in the moonshine, yet this solid peasant woman seemed to leave her anxieties with confidence in his hands.

"I can rid you of your unexpected honours for to-night," said the vagrant musician at last. "But who can guard the fawn in the forest from the cunning hunter? Fritz must take back Mamzell Sidonia home before he goes his rounds to-morrow."

"And she only just come, and so happy, poor lamb!"

But she made no further protest, and went with her vinegar softly back to the house.

* * * * *

The fiddler returned to the barn, and cast once more a look at him who slept so deeply. Thence his light, long, striding step brought him to the shed where the patched coach stood. From its recesses he took the traveller's cloak, and, returning, cast it over the inanimate figure. And, having shifted the shade of the lantern, his restlessness took him back into the night. He was nursing his fiddle as he went.

"What things," he said, addressing it as the court fool of old his bauble (after that singular fashion which led people to call him crazy)--"what things, beloved, could we not converse upon to-night, were we not constrained by sinners? What a song of the call of the spring to last year's fawn--of the dream that comes to the dreamer but once in his life's day, and that before the dawn! Chaste and still as the night, and yet tremulous; shadows, mere shadows, and yet afire--voiceless, formless, impalpable, and yet something more lovely than all the sunshine can show, than all the beauty arms can hold hereafter, than all the music ears shall hear. A prescience not yet a presence, a yearning not yet a desire.... O youth! O love!" sighed the fiddler, and drew from his fiddle a long echo to the sigh. "But when we deal with rascals we must play rascally tunes."

The rapscallion air, to which poor Steven's wits had danced away from him, broke shrilly, almost indecently, upon the beautiful calmness of the midnight hour.

Big Mr. Forester Schmidt, seated comfortably in mother Friedel's elbow-chair, his feet upon the table and a long glass of the straw-coloured wine at his elbow, was aroused from an agreeable somnolence by the sudden screech. Friedel, frankly asleep in a corner, woke with a start, and muttered a not ill-natured curse on the mad fiddler.

At the same time the door leading from the kitchen to the lady's parlour was quickly opened, and the head of Herr Inspector Meyer was thrust through the aperture. This gentleman's good-looking countenance seemed sadly discomfited, his airs of blatant importance shaken.

"_Diavolo_! ... Do you hear that?" he cried to his burly friend. "There it is again! I tell you it means something. It always means something! Remember Brest ... and remember Smolensk!"

"It means that I'll go and throttle him with his own catgut," cried Schmidt, letting his heavy-booted feet fall upon the floor with a stamp. "Look here, you fellow, you Friedel, here, with your gun, and let us see how you Germans can shoot! Down with that caterwauler ... and his Majesty will make you a present of the hide."

Friedel had gathered his sleepy carcase together upon the appearance of the inspector. He now stood very respectfully at attention. But there was nothing respectful in the small, fierce blue eyes he fixed upon Mr. Schmidt.

"May it please your Excellency," he began. But Mr. Meyer, interrupting him irritably, came down into the room, snapping his fingers, stamping his little feet.

"Hark, hark! Do you hear that?" he cried, and seized Schmidt by the arm. "I tell you, man, you are a fool. Will you say now that this is no warning, no menace? Hark!"

He flung up his head, and his own intentness of listening, something also of his mysterious agitation, seemed to communicate itself to his irate lieutenant. They stood holding their breath; and bewildered Friedel hearkened too.

The fiddler's mocking tune had merged into another theme. The night was vibrating to a deeper sonority, a more noble rhythm. Friedel thought he must be still dreaming, for he seemed suddenly to see serried ranks of soldiers marching down a dusty road, tall fellows, with hollow, tanned cheeks and towering bearskins, their long white legs swinging by him as they tramped. It was not the thin sound of strings that was in his ears, but the bugle's call and the rattle of drums.

"Thunder! It is the chaunt of the Old Guard!" He was scarce aware he had spoken aloud, until the inspector caught up his words in a high key of excitement.

"There," he cried, turning with a sort of feminine frenzy upon his friend, "even that blockhead hears it! I tell you, General, we must out of this. And the woman must go too. 'Tis his will, the big tyrant."

He paused for a moment; and then resumed, well-nigh dancing in his exasperation:

"The carriage, the carriage at once! D'Albignac! Leave that gun alone!" he shrieked. "I won't have the fellow touched. Last time, last time----" he paused again and shook his head.

"I dare not," he said in a low voice. "It is not wholesome!"

* * * * *

Steven opened heavy eyes and stared vacantly at the creeping light, indigo between the wisps of yellow straw; at the large square of shimmering mists and flickering leaves where the barn door stood open to the dawn. He turned his head and found that it lay on a fragrant linen pillow, and also that it ached vaguely in spite of this luxury.

A vulgar, absurd tune was still dancing in his brain. Then he caught within his range of vision the figure of a man sitting cross-legged, putting a fresh string to a fiddle. And memory came back slowly.

"It was the fault of the music, you know," he said.

Geiger-Hans shot a look at him from under his quizzical eyebrows.

"You never got that kiss in after all."

"Ah, but I got in my slap!"

The young man sat up, quite inspirited by the recollection, and discovered that, with the exception of some dizziness and stiffness, there was nothing much amiss with him.

"But some one very nearly got his hunting-knife into you," said Geiger-Hans, dryly, "and there would have been an end of your learning to be young. Nevertheless, you have capabilities--yes, some capabilities." He wound up his string, twanged it, and nodded over it.

A cock crew in the forest farmyard. A robin was singing somewhere amid a babel of chirping birds. The breeze, balm-scented, flew straight in from the pines and fanned Stephen's head and throat. He lifted his hand to his open shirt and looked inquiringly at the musician, who nodded again.

"You were stunned by the fall," said Geiger-Hans, "with that brute on the top of you. Fortunate for you that I caught his hand at the right moment! And thereupon the little man, the Herr Inspector, you know, ran out screaming, 'No bloodshed, d'Albignac!' ... It is his one good point: he is merciful of life."

"The little man? ... D'Albignac?" Steven echoed the words in wonder.

"You measured his cheek charmingly--I mean d'Albignac's," said the fiddler. "We two might do great things together yet. Ay, that was the d'Albignac. I dare say you have heard the name, in Cassel. Chouan once, then renegade, now Grand-Veneur (and Great Pandar) to his Majesty of Westphalia. Such is d'Albignac."

"Majesty? ... King Jerome?"

"Did you think," said Geiger-Hans, compassionately, "that Meyer and Schmidt were usual names for Frenchmen? Why, the precious _incognito_ would not have deceived a cat."

The dawn was growing softly outside, but there was sudden vivid light in Steven's brain.

"Then--then," he stammered, struggling to his feet--"the lady----"

"The lady, my poor young friend, is naught but a dancing girl from Genoa, whom that wise and powerful man, the Emperor Napoleon, sent two emissaries to remove--it is not the first time he has had to attend to such matters--from her charming apartments in 'Napoleonshoehe,' where her presence conduced neither to the King's dignity, nor to the Queen's. The great Napoleon is mighty particular about her Westphalian Majesty's dignity. Our ardent little sovereign, however, determined to snatch a last meeting; hence the romantic attack and rescue--the casual meeting!"

"O Lord!" said Steven, and passed his hand across his mouth, as if the shadow of the yearned-for kiss polluted it.

"And so that Meyer fellow is----"

"Our brother Jerome--yes."

The fiddler lifted a sweet, worn voice, while his bow danced lightly on the strings and chanted to the absurd lilt--

"_Nous allons chercher un royaume_ _Pour not' p'tit frere Jerome._"

"'Twas the song of the soldiers before Jena," he explained. "_Pardi!_ a taking ragamuffin tune! When our friends last night heard it, comrade, they took to their heels."

And as Steven stared with ever-increasing wonder, Geiger-Hans proceeded, in his mocking voice:

"'The wicked flee when none pursueth!' If there is one person the kinglet here is afraid of, 'tis of the great Emperor. Many a merry prank have I played on King Jerome's nerves! He holds to his high gilt throne, and knows that the mighty hand that placed him on it can pick him off it again. Big brother, on his side, knows how to punish too, when little brother passes the bounds. And the small man thinks the big man has spies on him at every corner. He has his own way of knowing things, has Caesar ... if not the ways yonder gingerbread monarch fancies."

"And he thought you were the Emperor's spy?" hazarded Steven, and looked with some doubt at his companion. A mystery the man certainly was!

"Many things have I been, comrade," said the fiddler, answering the look, "but never in any man's pay, be assured of that. Nevertheless, the Kingmaker keeps an eye on his puppets from the midst of victory--many eyes on him, indeed. And Jerome has taken into his head that your humble servant is the most cunning of Napoleon's eyes. The mistake is amusing enough, and I make it serve my own use at times. I had but to play such a simple air, you see, and his Majesty of Westphalia--his choice circle----" He made a wide gesture and a sound mimicking a flutter of wings: "Phew! Gone, scared like frightened sparrows!"

"Gone?" echoed Steven; and though she was but a dancing-girl from Genoa, and a baggage at that, his heart sank.

"Gone," said the fiddler--"gone before the dawn. So is Sidonia! Aha, Sir Count, short skirts, it seems to you, make the peasant, and fine jewels, no doubt, the great lady! Ha, ha! to see your lordship draw away from the touch of her tresses! She brought you her own pillow last night, and wept over you and thought you were dead--till I bid her put her hand over your heart and feel its solid beating. 'Tis a noble child--and a greater race you will never meet in your travels. Why, 'tis the heiress of the country. Oh, there were no lies about her! The girl visits her foster-mother for a holiday and a treat now and then. You never looked at her foot or her delicate eyebrow: she was but a peasant girl, _pardi_! Jerome has a keener eye----"

"Jerome!" echoed Steven, and, he knew not why, the fiercest spasm of anger he had yet felt seized him then.

"Jerome pinched her chin, as you saw," said the fiddler, "and, therefore, back we packed her, Friedel and I, to her own castle, for safety.... Meanwhile you slept. Come, come, never look so downcast," he went on with sudden change of tone. "Is it not instructive to know how the ruler of Westphalia passes his time while all the best manhood of his country is warring for the Empire--burnt in Spain, frozen in Russia? And, at any rate, have you not had a night you will remember out of all your dull, regulated youth? Come forth and I will show you something I warrant me you have never seen before--sunrise in the forest."

The yard seemed very silent and empty. They were all gone--gone like a dream!