Part 5

"I wonder why you married Uncle Ludo?" mused the girl. Her eyes were dreaming, across the fair plain-land, into the distance. To give your life to some one quite old and quite stout, with a grizzled double chin and veins that swell on a red forehead (ran the fleeting thought), when, about the ways of the forest, a young knight might be met wandering ... a knight with hair that crisped back from forehead of ivory, with eyes that were scornful and full of fire!

"Why did I marry him?" returned the Burgravine, sharply. "Ah, he was very different then, my dear! The monster! how he deceived me! Do you think I should ever have consented if I had not known that he was King Jerome's minister; if he had not promised me that we should live at Cassel; if I had not been told that one was more gay at Cassel now than at Paris itself? And honourably I was served, was I not? Ten days at Cassel, while there was scarce a cat stirring, the King called away by the Emperor, then snatched off to this place, this bald, hateful eagle's crag, at the first hint of any gaiety. Men talk of their honour, my love--a big word behind which they can play any trick upon us poor women their humour may prompt." Her voice broke shrilly. Then she added, with sudden calmness: "And if I had had a silver groschen to my name, you may imagine 'tis not old Wellenshausen's second wife that I should be--but some fine young man's first one. Sidonia, how unfair is fate!" She looked enviously at the girl. "There are you, with all your money, who will never have a suitable notion of what to do with it, while I--I----" She snapped two taper fingers together sharply and twisted a dear little plump shoulder well-nigh free of the fashionable Viennese robe, which looked so oddly out of place in the mediaeval severity of the tower room.

There was silence, while Sidonia reflected. The Burgravine had a way of opening strange perspectives before the young mind that had hitherto known but the simplest and straightest outlook on life. Wonderful customs had the new mistress brought to the old Burg--odd fads of fashion, new hours of meals, new liveries and unknown demands on the servants' attention. A prisoner, she assumed supreme authority within the limits of her prison. It sometimes seemed as if the very stones in the old wall were echoing surprise. Sidonia, who had run wild within them, near seventeen years of happy unexacting childhood, found herself frequently marvelling at a code of morality so startling in its novelty as to range beyond her judgment. She felt that she could as little fit herself to this new aunt's view of existence, as her modest country limbs to one of those outrageous garments of Viennese mode, over which the Burgravine could sigh a whole morning through in rapture and regret--lamenting, with the voluble aid of Mademoiselle Eliza, her French maid, the opportunities lost in this God-forsaken corner of the world.

"And pray," said Bluebeard's wife, after a pause (never a very long one with her, for, if Sidonia had the gift of silence which belongs to all creatures who have lived much with nature, her Aunt Betty possessed it not at all), "and pray, how many days is it since your uncle took the road for Cassel, a-bursting with hypocritical sighs of farewell?"

"I don't know," said Sidonia, starting from her dream. "Ten days?"

"Ten days!" The words were echoed in a high pitch of indignation.

"Three weeks, then," amended the girl, hastily. "I really don't know; time goes so fast."

"Time goes so fast! Oh, you--you...!" Cherry lips of scorn babbled vainly in search of fitting epithet. "You--you're his own niece!"

Yet as life would have been distinctly duller were she to quarrel outright with Sidonia, the Burgravine quickly turned the batteries of her wrath to the old direction.

"Little did I think on that day, when my father, away in our dear Austrian home, bade me hasten to the great salon and pour out coffee for the gentleman from Hanover who had come to buy our horses--little did I think what lay in store for me! 'You must smile on him, child,' said my mother; 'he is an old nobleman, very rich; and if your father sells well, it may mean a month in Vienna for you!' Ach, heavens!" said the Burgravine, "think of me, my Sidonia, smiling, in my innocence, on him--on him! And who was bought and sold? It was poor Betty!"

"I think it is very wrong of Uncle Ludo," asserted Sidonia, severely, a flush rising to her sunburnt cheek. "Why, since he has married you, will he not trust you?"

"Why? Because, having spent most of his life studying our sex, the man now flatters himself upon a wide experience of our frailties. Because, having so often proved how easy it is to break the marriage vow, he can put no confidence in another's keeping it. Because," and her bosom heaved with indignation, "Cassel is the most amusing spot at this moment in the whole of Europe--they say it is gayer than Paris itself--and no husband who respects himself can take his pleasure with any comfort, if he does not feel that his wife is correspondingly bored."

"But uncle has his Chancellor's duty," resumed Sidonia, after pondering upon these enlightening remarks.

"Chancellor's duties!" The lady drummed on the diamond panes. "Oh, yes, my love, King Jerome requires onerous duties of his ministers, and I've no doubt that Ludovic performs his _con amore_.--How soon will you be eighteen?" she cried suddenly.

"In four months," said Sidonia.

"Four months--an eternity! Alas, my love, long before that I shall have been laid in that hateful chapel of yours; in that very vault, no doubt, where lies my predecessor--that fool of a woman who resisted such a life as this for twenty years, and yet had the inconceivable want of tact to die at the very moment when I was ripe to fall a prey to the monster."

"Poor Aunt Hedwige!" said Sidonia, reflectively; "she was very fat and never unkind, and I don't think she was unhappy."

"Ha!" muttered the Burgravine, vindictively, "I'll warrant he might have brought her to Cassel with impunity."

"He didn't, though," said Sidonia.

"No, child," pursued the other, with much rancour, "woman's place is at home, you see, while the man is abroad--aha!" She set her teeth and growled behind them like an angry Persian kitten. Then she snapped at her niece: "And you haven't even the intelligence to be eighteen yet, and be of some use for once in your life! Yes, never look so astonished; you're not a fool, child; you know that when you are eighteen, you will be free, and the richest woman in Thuringia--owner of half the wretched little province; free, girl, free to do as you like, to live where you like, to have your own establishment, to spend your own money--and then there'd be a chance for me! Ah, but you would not give it to me. You would let dear uncle manage as he's always managed, and dole you out a thaler here and a louis there, and let him choose you a nice husband ... who would not look too much into the accounts, I'll warrant."

"Aunt Betty!" panted Sidonia. The Burgravine stopped, slightly abashed by the fire that flashed in the child's glance. "If you can't forgive Uncle Ludo for being your husband, don't forget that he is a man of honour...."

"Oh, patatata!" said the lady, with a shrug, "here's mighty fine talk! Manage your own affairs, my dear. I'll say no more."

She leaned her plump arms on the window-sill again and turned her back on her niece with an air of determined sullenness.

Sidonia was very angry. She sat down on the high-backed chair and set the ancient spinning wheel whirring with a hand that trembled.

"One thing is certain," she resumed in a choked voice, "if I ever do marry, Aunt Betty, I shall choose my own husband."

"Of course, among the crowds that besiege the gay Burg of Wellenshausen, up in the clouds, my sweet creature," said the Burgravine, without turning her head, "you will have only _l'embarras du choix_ and then----" But here she interrupted herself with a sharp ejaculation. Her fingers ceased their angry tune. She swung back the window a trifle wider and leaned out further than she had ventured upon her threat of suicide. "Look, look!" she cried in altered tones. "Do you see? There are two men coming up the road with a pack-horse. No, 'tis a donkey!"

Sidonia sprang up and leaned out eagerly across her aunt's shoulder. They were but a pair of children of different ages, when all was said and done.

"It can only be the miller's boy and the gardener ... or the shepherd," opined she.

"Oh, yes, the very outline of humpback John and the swing of bandy Peperl!" (This was sarcastic.) "To the hangman with these evening mists! Now, now, see! a gentleman, or I'm a goose-girl ... a young man, or I'm a grandmother! Poor things, how they toil!"

"Why, 'tis Geiger-Hans!" exclaimed the lady's niece, in amazement. But it was not, surely, the sight of Geiger-Hans which brought such crimson to her cheek.

"And who may Geiger-Hans be?" cried the Burgravine.

"My dear friend, everybody's friend, Geiger-Hans the roadside player," said the girl. "Why, you have heard me speak of him many a time. If he were young and wore a plume and a dagger, people would call him a minnesinger. And his music--ah! it moves the heart like----"

"Why, the creature's a beggar, child!" interrupted the lady, peering down. "But the other----"

She drew back from the window in great fluster. "It's quite clear that you and I have company at last. Oh, for once I will be mistress here! They shall be admitted, _maugre_ my ogre! Call Eliza! Get you into a decent gown, for Heaven's sake! My rose taffeta--it shall be my rose taffeta. And you?--Wear anything but white at your peril!"

*CHAPTER VII*

*GUESTS OF CHANCE*

"_'Twould be a wildish destiny_ _If we, who thus together roam_ _In a strange land and far from home,_ _Were in this place the Guests of Chance!_ _Yet who would stop or fear to advance...?_" WORDSWORTH.

"The Lord Burgrave is not at the castle. The gracious Lady Burgravine never receives visitors."--Thus Martin the gatekeeper, thrusting his ugly head out of the _vasistas_ of the great nail-studded door.

The last of the sunlight had faded. Grey and sheer rose the Burg walls and turrets above the visitors' heads; sheer and grey fell the mountainside away at their feet.

"Mark now, comrade, for here are we back in the Middle Ages," whispered Geiger-Hans to his companion. Aloud he cried to the porter, who was slowly withdrawing his countenance: "Half a minute, friend, and let us examine your statement. That the Lord Burgrave is away, I am aware; but that your lady does not receive has still to be proved. How if we two come upon the invitation of His Excellency himself? Consider me that."

Through the gathering gloom Steven peered at the musician's mocking features. Martin the doorward stared in silence for a moment; then, with a great groaning of bars and grinding of keys, set the heavy door ajar--not to admit them, indeed, but that he might stare the closer.

"Martin," pursued the fiddler, gravely, "your name had better have been Thomas: you were born an unbeliever."

"My orders are," said Martin, in surly tones, "to admit no one."

"Fellow," said the fiddler, "a servant's orders, I take it, are not like the Ten Commandments, but subject to variations according to another's pleasure. What if I tell you that, knowing your master----"

"You? Know my master!" The doorward's teeth showed like an old dog's in a grin, half scorn, half doubt.

"Aye, we have but recently parted. By the same token, friend, he is now at Halberstadt and may be here to-morrow. Meanwhile, as it is damp and night falls, admit us to your stone hall and let us sit, for you will be wise to gaze at us a while longer before you take upon yourself to drive off the lord Burgrave's friend and the lady Burgravine's kinsman from doors to which they have been invited. Look at that gentleman. There is a gentleman for you, from the crown of his noble head to the sole of his high-born foot! And look at me! Ah, you know me! Geiger-Hans, am I not? Beware, Martin, great people have their disguises."

Martin showed signs of agitation and yielding. Geiger-Hans, keeping him under the raillery of his glance, pursued his argumentative advantage:

"Now, cease scratching that grey stubble, and I will tell thee what to do to save thee from a false step. Go thou to the gracious lady, and ask her if her lord has not advised her of the probable visit of two travellers, and request of her whether (these two gentlemen having presented themselves) it is not her wish, in obedience to her lord, that they should be admitted. Meanwhile, we shall sit on this bench, and I shall beguile my noble companion's weariness with a little air of music."

The porter withdrew slowly, without another word, but not without casting backward glances of doubt upon the new-comers.

"How do you dare?" asked Steven, fixing almost awestruck eyes upon Geiger-Hans, who, nursing his instrument upon one knee, was coolly winding up the strings.

"Dare, I?" He twanged the cord, shook his head, and fell to screwing again. "Why should I not dare? What have I to fear? What have I to lose? We are sure of a welcome, I tell you--of a supper, and of a good joke."

"Your magnificent audacity!" said Steven, sitting gingerly down at the end of the bench, and looking at the other's lean figure as if it had been that of the Prince of Lies himself. "Positively, I myself could hardly believe you were not speaking the truth."

"And so I was," said the other, composedly. "Not one word but was solemn verity."

"Oh, but stay! How come I to be kinsman to the Burgravine?"

"You are Austrian," quoth the musician. "So is she, as I happen to know. Both the finest flower of the Empire's aristocracy. If you're not related somewhere ... I'll eat my fiddle."

"Upon my word!" ejaculated Steven, opening his eyes very wide. "I suppose it is on the same kind of plea that you have your acquaintance with the Burgrave. An intimate acquaintance?"

"Intimate. I have said so. The Burgrave of Wellenshausen is a type that is true to itself."

"And he has invited us to visit the Burg?" Steven's tones broke into mirth.

"Indubitably." The player raised his fiddle and drew a long note from it that was a musical mockery of the young man's high key. "The husband who locks up a light-hearted wife alone in a solitary tower invites in terms most positive every gentleman of heart and spirit in the country to come and console her. M. de Wellenshausen is at Halberstadt, on the King's business--I was playing at the Crown Hotel. He will be here to-morrow. And he said to me: 'Friend'--mark you, _friend_ (the Burgrave had dined satisfactorily; the wine is excellent at the Crown), 'you must come and play that tune at my castle.' He's fond of music, you see. 'Twas a promise. And the only person who will lie in the whole matter to-day is the noble lady Burgravine. She is dying by inches of _ennui_, and she will--be quite certain of it!--she will assure the porter that our visit has indeed been announced to her. 'Tis to be regretted, but such is the way of women who eat their hearts away in lonely strong houses."

He caught his fiddle to his breast: liquid melody flowed out into the empty hall, and went echoing down long passages and up into vaulted roofs. Like rabbits from a warren, now a scullion popped a head out of some dark corner, now a rosy wench half opened a side door and peeped, smiling. There awoke all about the sleepy castle a sound of skirmishing and tittering; now a patter of bare feet; now the tramp of boots that no precautions could hush. At length the majestic form of the major-domo himself appeared before the vagrants, magnificent in his silver chain and silk stockings and buckle shoes. Geiger-Hans hushed his music and leaned over to Steven to whisper in his ear:

"See, he has been putting on his grand garb of ceremony to deliver his lady's little lie."

"The high-born, my mistress, had not expected you before to-morrow," said the butler, with a deep bow to Steven. He cast a fish-like eye of astonishment upon the fiddler, but, nevertheless, pursued: "Will your honour follow me to your apartment?" Again he stared at the musician, who nimbly rose and bowed.

"My honour will also follow," he said blandly. "Our valise is on the donkey's back, at the door; see to it, my man."

* * * * *

If Geiger-Hans were surprised at his own success, it was only the humorous twitch of his eyebrows that betrayed the fact. He was of those, apparently, whose talent for seizing opportunities generally evoke the belief that they have created them.

"Comrades should share and share alike," said he presently, laying down Steven's brush, which he had been wielding dexterously on his own locks--"lend me a black ribbon for my queue--it is out of mode, but I am of the old stock. I have been shaved _a velours_ to-day--'twas an inspiration! A cloud of powder would complete me, but you new-century bucks know not of these refinements. Nay, but here is a pot of the finest Parma, as I live! For the chin and cheek of _milord_ after the razor, no doubt? Now shall you see how it became the countenance of a better-looking generation.--I think that black suit of yours so neatly folded in the corner of our valise is, perhaps, what would best grace my gravity. Yes. And a ruffle shirt.... Thank you. Ah! ... And those violet silk stockings."

Steven stood hypnotized.

"Your eyes will positively drop out," said the fiddler, "if you stare any more." He drew a snuff-box from his discarded coat, and tapped it with his finger. "A pinch is but a poor thing, if a man has not a frill to his wrist," he said. And he was apparently not ill-pleased to see how Steven marvelled at the grace with which he swung his borrowed laces, the air with which he flipped an invisible atom from his cuff. He took a step, as though his legs had never known but silk. Steven's suit, if a little large, hung on his figure with a notable fitness.

"As I live!" cried Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg, with a loud laugh of discovery, "a gentleman, after all!"

Geiger-Hans drew his black brows together with his swift frown.

"Your equal, you mean, doubtless?" said he, dryly. "You do me too great honour." Then his eyes softened again, as in his turn he surveyed his companion. "Come," said he, "I would give all my superior years for some of your youthful disabilities. I cherish no illusions as to which of us the fair Burgravine will deem the better worth her notice."

And, indeed, when the two were ushered into the long, dim, tapestry-hung saloon, the bright eyes of the lady of the castle merely swept Geiger-Hans, amazingly distinguished as he was in his borrowed plumes, to rest with complacency on the youth who followed him.

Steven held his head high, after the fashion of your shy, self-conscious fellow. But his head being one upon which Nature had set a noble stamp, this became it well. If there was pride in the arch of his eyebrow and the curl of his lip, there was, likewise, race to justify it. Betty, the Burgravine, could note as much between two flickers of her long eyelashes; note, too, that (thank goodness!) he wore none of those new, odious Cossack trousers, but kept to the fashion which made it worth while for a man to have a good line to his limb; note, furthermore, that plum-colour frac, maize waistcoat, and dove-grey kerseymeres make excellent harmony with rose taffeta. The lady had been created for courts, and even now, perched like a humming bird in the eyrie of a mountain eagle, moved in a gay, trifling atmosphere of her own. And, as he returned her gaze, Count Steven, who had also been constructed for the high places of life, felt that he was in his element once more.

"The--the gentlemen!" announced Niklaus, with a nervous giggle. He knew Geiger-Hans--as who did not that belonged to the country-side? But familiarity had not so far bred contempt, and neither he nor his compeers would have ventured to question anything the mysterious being chose to do. Had the fiddler desired himself to be announced as the Archangel Michael, or Prince Lucifer, or the Emperor Napoleon, or the Wandering Jew, Niklaus would scarcely have been surprised.

The rose-red lady advanced a sweet little sandal and made a profound curtsey. Her classic top-knot of curls was richly dark, and so was the olive velvet of her cheek; but as she looked up slowly from her inclination, Steven was quite startled to find that her eyes opened blue as forget-me-nots.

"Gentlemen!" ejaculated she, translating Niklaus' clumsy Saxon German into tripping French--it being the tone of German Courts to speak French. The blue flowers of her eyes widened in surprise upon Geiger-Hans. She had not known there were two _gentlemen_ when she looked forth from the window; only the goodly youth and his roadside guide. But this elderly person was a gentleman, no doubt about that, and a fine one, too.... Only, so old!

And now he took the lead, as became his years.

"Madame la Comtesse," responded he; and even Steven, in spite of his Anglo-Austrian ear, could note the exquisite purity of his Gallic accent, "permit two travellers to express their gratitude for the generous alacrity with which you have granted them hospitality. We had lost our way----"

"Lost your way!" interrupted the lady; and an irrepressible smile curved her lips upwards.

"Yes, madam," pursued the other, imperturbably; "and, with the night coming on, in this wild and mountainous district, Heaven knows what might not have happened to us!"

"I know not what your destination may be, sir," answered she, drawing back with a faint air of haughtiness, "but surely yours is a strange itinerary that took an isolated crag on the road."

"Madame," said he, "we gave ourselves infinite pains to attain this height."

The glance towards herself, the touch at his heart, the bow, made of these words a delicate compliment. The line of her mouth began once more to waver.

"To have gone down again, madam, would have been impossible. Our itinerary, as you say, is perhaps difficult to explain. If I were to tell you that we took a wrong turning, my friend here would correct me, for he is convinced, madam, it was the right turning, since it brought him to your feet."

Here Steven could do nothing but bow in his turn. This he did, however, with such youthful grace and so ardent a look, that his hostess melted outright into smiles.

"Sir--!" said she, coyly; and the young man felt he had been eloquent indeed.

"Count Steven Lee zu Waldorff-Kielmansegg," introduced Geiger-Hans, with a wave of his arm.

"Lee? ... Waldorff?" quoth she, surprised.

"Steven Lee in England, Waldorff-Kielmansegg in Austria," said the fiddler, blandly.

"_O du mein lieber Oesterreich!_" she exclaimed, singing; and the forget-me-not eyes became suffused with the tear of sensibility.

"Waldorff-Kielmansegg of Waldeck," enumerated the master of ceremonies; while Steven stood in dignity, conscious of his honours.

"Then we are cousins!" She clapped her soft palms; the rising emotion was forgotten in laughter. "Positively we are cousins. I am Schwartzenberg--Betty von Schwartzenberg--and my mother's second cousin, Rezy Luetzow, married Tony Kielmansegg. You are welcome, my cousin."