Part 10

"True. And we cannot utterly dispute the existence of even other classes of human beings. Literary men, for instance, artists, in whose ranks I belong----"

Fraeulein Gerlinda opened wide her brown eyes and repeated, "Among the artists?"

"Absolutely," Hans said to himself, quite forgetting his elevated rank, "she thinks me a mediaeval specimen too;" and he added, aloud, "Assuredly, Fraeulein Gerlinda, I occupy myself with art, and flatter myself that I have attained a degree of proficiency in it."

The young lady seemed to think such an occupation very derogatory. Fortunately, she recalled the fact that a certain Eberstein, in a certain century, had taken up with astrology, and that partly explained Herr Wehlau Wehlenberg's extraordinary tastes, but she nevertheless felt herself called upon to repeat to him a saying of her father's: "My papa says that a man of an ancient, noble line ought to make no concessions to the present; it is beneath his dignity."

"That is the Herr Baron's opinion," said Hans, with a shrug. "He seems to have been so entirely secluded from the world that he has lost all sympathy with it; others of his rank, however, feel very differently. Look, for example, at the Counts von Steinrueck, whose family is just as old as yours."

"Two hundred years younger," Gerlinda interrupted him, indignantly.

"Quite right; full two hundred years. I remember their ancestors are first met with in the Crusades, while yours date from the eighth century."

"From the tenth."

"Certainly, from the tenth! It was a slip of the tongue; I meant, of course, from the tenth century. But to return to the Steinruecks: Count Michael is a general in command; his son was, I think, attached to our embassy in Paris; his grandson has some official position. They are all men of the present, and would hardly coincide with your father in opinion; and you, too, will differ from him when you have seen something of life and the world."

"I do not want to see anything of them," Gerlinda said, softly and timidly. "I am afraid of them."

Hans smiled; he drew a step nearer, and bent down towards the girl; his voice sounded sweet and tender, as if he were speaking to a child. "That is very natural; you live here in such seclusion, in a fairy world, long since faded from reality, like the palace of the Sleeping Beauty in the fairy-tale. But some time the day will come when the hawthorn hedges will part asunder, and the green walls open, a day when you will awaken from your enchanted sleep; and believe me, Fraeulein Gerlinda, your eyes will open then not upon the dust and mould of centuries, but upon the warm, golden sunshine that floods our present age, in spite of all its conflicts and trials. Ah, you will learn to love it all."

Gerlinda listened in silence, but a faint, happy smile playing about her lips betrayed her knowledge of the story of the Sleeping Beauty. She slowly raised her eyes, only for an instant, and dropped them hastily; that which shone upon her in the young man's gaze might perhaps be a ray of the light he had promised her; she suddenly flushed crimson and turned hastily away.

Muckerl certainly was a very intelligent goat, for she had quietly continued to browse, only glancing gravely now and then towards the pair, and appearing on the whole quite satisfied with the course of the conversation. But the matter now must have begun to look grave to her, for she suddenly left her breakfast and ran to her young mistress, beside whom she placed herself, as if on guard.

"I believe--I ought to go back to the castle," said Gerlinda, scarcely audibly.

"Already?" asked Hans, who had not observed that half an hour had been consumed in talk.

They set out together, Hans carrying the milk, Fraeulein Gerlinda beside him, and Muckerl following, gravely nodding her head from time to time. The affair evidently had a suspicious look to her,--why had the two suddenly fallen silent?

An hour later Hans stood at the foot of the Ebersburg. He had taken leave of the Freiherr and of his daughter without laying aside his incognito, for fear of causing the old gentleman unnecessary annoyance. What mattered it that the Freiherr should continue to regard him as a 'mediaeval specimen'? The adventure was at an end; it was not likely that he should ever again see the Ebersburg.

He glanced up once more at the gray pile, taking a last look at the sunny castle-terrace, and the much-lauded present to which he was now returning seemed terribly prosaic compared with the fairy-tale that he had dreamed up there in the midst of the green waving forest, in those ancient ruin? where all around was blooming fair and fresh, with the little Dornroeschen who had retired to her solitude, and was dreaming of the knight who was to break through the hedge and waken the Sleeping Beauty with a kiss from her magic slumber. The young fellow suppressed a sigh, and said, half aloud, as he turned away, "After all, it is a pity that I am not really Hans Wehlau Wehlenberg of the Forschungstein."

* * * * *

A gay company was assembled at Steinrueck, in thorough enjoyment of the hunting season, and of the long sunny autumn days. No one was invited to make a long visit, however, save Gerlinda von Eberstein, who had arrived some days since; but each day new guests made their appearance and others departed. Hertha and Raoul Steinrueck usually formed the centre of this brilliant society. It had long been known that the two were destined for each other, and that the announcement of the betrothal would probably soon take place; therefore when the general issued invitations for a large entertainment every one knew that it would be the occasion for this public announcement.

The evening was at hand, and the entire castle was filled with the activity wont to precede some important festivity. Servants were running to and fro, here and there decorations were being completed, and the reception-rooms were already a blaze of light.

The family, with the exception of Gerlinda and Hertha, had just entered these rooms. Count Steinrueck, with the widowed Countess on his arm, looked unusually cheerful: to-day was to bring him the fulfilment of his dearest wish; the betrothal of the last two scions of his house was to be celebrated at their ancestral castle, and thus the prosperity of his line was assured,--all the Steinrueck possessions would be united under one master.

Hortense, who followed him leaning on her son's arm, also looked proudly content. In her rich and tasteful toilette, and by the artificial light, she looked very beautiful, and far outshone her cousin; that pale, delicate woman was indeed cast into the shade. Raoul was gay and good-humoured; a cloud now and then darkened his brow for a moment, but it quickly vanished, and he lavished the tenderest attentions upon his mother.

"We limited the invitations as much as possible," said Hortense, as she looked through the lighted apartments, "and yet there will scarcely be room for our guests. That is the worst of these old mountain castles, that have no large ball-room and no extended suite of rooms; it is impossible to give an entertainment in them!"

"They were not built for any such purpose," said the general, quietly. "They were intended for a home within, and for protection and defence without. They certainly do not conform to modern requirements, least of all to yours, Hortense; you never loved Steinrueck."

"In that respect I perfectly agree with mamma," Raoul interposed. "What delights me here is the hunting in these mountain forests. The castle itself, with its dim, confined rooms, its endless, echoing corridors, and its steep, dark staircases, always seems to me like a prison. I breathe a sigh of relief when I escape from it."

"You seem entirely to forget that this ancient pile is the cradle of your race, and as such should be dear and sacred to you even if it lay in ruins," said the general, with some acerbity.

Raoul bit his lip at this very distinct reproof. "Pardon me, grandfather, I have all due reverence for our ancestral home, but I cannot possibly think it beautiful. Now, if it were the cheerful sunny castle in Provence, with its Eden-like surroundings, its past so rich in legend and in song, where long ago I used----"

"You mean the castle of Montigny?" Steinrueck interrupted him, in a tone which admonished the young Count to desist.

His mother, however, went on in his stead: "Certainly, papa, he means my lovely sunny home. You can understand that it is as dear to us as yours is to you."

"Us?" the general repeated, in a tone of cold inquiry. "You should speak only for yourself, Hortense. I think it very natural that you should be attached to your paternal home, but Raoul is a Steinrueck, and has nothing to do with Provence. His attachment belongs to his fatherland."

The words sounded half like a threat, and Hortense, irritated, seemed about to reply angrily, when the Countess, her cousin, who perfectly understood the state of feeling in the family, quickly changed the subject. "Our young ladies seem to be late," she remarked. "I begged Hertha to help Gerlinda a little with her toilette; the poor child has not the least idea of how she ought to look."

"The little demoiselle seems to be of a very limited capacity," Raoul said, sarcastically. "She is usually as silent as the tombs of her ancestors, but as soon as you touch the historic spring, she begins to chatter like a parrot, and a whole century comes rattling down upon you with terrific names and endless dates; it, really is fearful."

"And yet you are always the one to induce Gerlinda to make herself thus ridiculous," the Countess said, reproachfully. "She is much too inexperienced and simple-hearted to suspect a sneer beneath your immense courtesy and extravagant admiration of her acquirements. Can you not leave her in peace?"

"She really provokes ridicule," Hortense interposed. "Good heavens, what toilettes! and what curtsies! And then when she opens her mouth! You must forgive me, my dear Marianne, but it is almost impossible to introduce your _protegee_ into society."

"That is not the poor child's fault," said Marianne. "She was so unfortunate as to lose her mother when she was very little; she has seen nothing of the world, has known no one except her father, and he, in his eccentricity, has absolutely done everything in his power to make the girl unfit for social intercourse."

"I admire your patience, Marianne, in still having anything to do with Eberstein," said Steinrueck, "I went to see him once, long ago, because I pitied him in his isolation, but I think he told me six times in the course of my visit that his family was two centuries older than mine, and there was no getting a sensible word out of him. He seems now to have become almost childish."

"He is old and ill, and it is a hard fate to pine away in poverty and loneliness," the Countess said, gently. "Since he was forced by his gout to retire from the army, he has nothing to live upon save his pension and the old ruins of the Ebersburg. If he could only be persuaded to let Gerlinda leave him for a while, I should like to take her to Berkheim, or to the city, where we shall spend some time this winter; but I suppose it will be impossible to induce him to spare her."

"Selfish old fool!" said the general. "What is to become of the poor child when he closes his eyes? But our young ladies are indeed late; it is time that they were here."

This was true, but no exigencies of the toilette had caused the delay. Hertha was in her room entirely dressed; she had dismissed her maid, and was standing before her mirror gazing steadily into its depths. She might have been supposed to be lost in the contemplation of her own beauty, but her eyes had a strange dreamy look in them, and evidently saw nothing of the image before them; they were gazing abroad into space.

The door was softly opened, and Gerlinda appeared. The two young girls had always been much together whenever the family were at Steinrueck, but there was not the slightest intimacy between them. Gerlinda looked up with timid admiration to the brilliant Hertha, who accorded the girl at most a compassionate toleration, and at times even ridiculed her unmercifully. To-day, too, the 'little demoiselle' gazed at the young Countess with admiration, devoid of the slightest envy of Hertha's bridal loveliness, as she stood before the mirror dressed in white satin falling in soft folds about her perfect figure. A single white rose in her hair was its sole ornament, and a bunch of half-opened buds lay on her dressing-table.

"How beautiful you are!" said Gerlinda, involuntarily.

The young Countess turned with a smile, which, however, was not one of gratified vanity. "I can return the compliment," she replied. "You look most lovely to-night."

The young girl no longer wore the gray Cinderella gown: the Countess had taken care that her god-child should be suitably attired on this occasion; but Gerlinda was evidently oppressed by her unwonted splendour. Perhaps, too, she felt how unsuited she was to this brilliant circle, and this made her still more shy. She stood before Hertha, timid and embarrassed, scarcely daring to raise her eyes.

"Only you must not stand in that ridiculously prim attitude," said Hertha. "On that lonely Ebersburg you absolutely forget how to move about among people. You see no one there but your father, and perhaps the peasants of the village where you attend mass."

Gerlinda was silent and hung her head. No one? She thought of the guest who had arrived in the storm and rain and had departed in the sunshine; but she had never mentioned him hitherto, although his coming had been a great event in her lonely life. An involuntary shyness closed her lips; least of all could she have spoken of it here and now. The memory of the sunny morning dream in the ruinous old castle was not for the ear of the young lady who could so coolly tutor and criticise her little friend.

Hertha turned away, and as she did so she accidentally brushed from her dressing-table her bouquet, without noticing its fall. Gerlinda picked it up.

"Thanks," said Hertha, indifferently, as she took the flowers. They seemed to have been but loosely put together, for one of the roses had become detached from its sister buds and lay directly at the feet of the young Countess, who looked down at it with a rather strange expression. Perhaps she was thinking of that other evening when just such a fragrant half-opened bud had fallen from her hand, only to perish beneath the tread of an iron heel.

"Let it alone," she said, as Gerlinda was about to stoop again. "What does a single rose matter? I have enough here."

"But it is your lover's gift," said the young girl.

"I am going to carry these this evening, and Raoul cannot ask anything more. If the formal congratulations were only over! It is so deadly tiresome to listen to the same thing from everybody, and to have to respond to all those conventional phrases. I am not at all in the mood for it to-night."

The words sounded impatient, and there was nervous impatience in the way in which she began to pace the room to and fro. Gerlinda's eyes, opening wide with amazement, followed the proud, queenly figure in the trailing satin robe; she could not understand how a girl at her betrothal should not be in the mood to receive congratulations, and she asked, naively, "Do you not like Count Raoul?"

Hertha paused suddenly. "That's an odd question. What put it into your head? Certainly I like him; we have been brought up for each other. I knew when I was a child that he was to be my husband. He is handsome, gallant, amiable, my equal in name and rank; why should I not like him? I suppose you think that there ought to be in a marriage of to-day all the romance of your old chronicles, where the lover had to fight and struggle for his bride. You told us such a story yesterday about some Gertrudis----"

"Gertrudis von Eberstein and Dietrich Fernbacher," Gerlinda hastily began, as if the name had been a cue. "But she could not marry him, because he was not of knightly descent, but only the son of a merchant."

"She could not?" said Hertha, tossing her head. "Perhaps she would not; probably she felt a repugnance at the idea of exchanging the ancient name of her race for that of a wealthy tradesman. Can't you understand that, Gerlinda? What would you do if, for example, you loved a man beneath you in rank?"

"It would be dreadful!" said the little demoiselle, with all the horror natural to an offshoot of the tenth century, adding, with entire conviction in her tone, "My papa says that could not happen."

"But it has happened, and in your own race. How did the affair end? did your ancestress give up her Dietrich?"

Poor Gerlinda was not in the least aware that she was continually the butt of Hertha's and Raoul's sarcasm, and that they were always inducing her to make herself ridiculous. She was desirous of showing her gratitude for the hospitality extended to her, and she supposed in her ignorance and innocence that every one at Steinrueck was interested in the stories which to her were so vastly important. So she clasped her hands gravely, and began to recite, in her usual manner, an extract from her family chronicles, which did not on this occasion end with a happy marriage, as in the case of Kunrad von Eberstein and Hildegund von Ortenau, but with a parting. The story was long, and there was an endless succession of the noble names and the dates which Raoul found so terrible, but the young Countess was not in a mocking mood to-day. She had gone to the window, and stood there motionless, looking out, until Gerlinda concluded: "And so Gertrudis was married to the noble lord of Ringstetten, and Dietrich Fernbacher went on a crusade against the infidels and never returned."

"And never returned,--never!" Hertha's lips uttered the words softly and dreamily, while again the strange expression appeared in her eyes which seemed to be gazing at something in the far distance, beyond the mist and gloom that veiled the landscape outside.

There was a long silence, which Gerlinda hardly dared to break; but at last she said, gently, "Hertha, I think it is time."

Hertha looked up as if awaking from a dream. "Time? For what?"

"For us to go down; they are expecting us."

"True, true; I had forgotten! Go first, Gerlinda. I will come immediately; I have a trifle to arrange about my dress. Pray go!"

The words sounded so like a command that the young girl obeyed without further delay, and she had hardly reached the staircase leading to the lower story when she was met by a servant whom the general had sent to beg that the young Countess would make haste, since the first carriage had just driven into the courtyard.

Gerlinda turned to deliver the message herself; her footfall was noiseless, and she opened the door of Hertha's room as noiselessly, but paused in dismay upon the threshold.

Hertha was sitting, or rather lying, in an arm-chair by the window, with hands clasped convulsively and head thrown back, while from beneath her closed eyelids tear after tear coursed down her cheeks, and her breast rose and fell with wild, passionate sobs. The young girl was weeping,--weeping as violently and painfully as the child had wept formerly when the white Alpine roses, snatched from her destructive hands, had perished in the flames.

"Hertha, dear Hertha, what is the matter?" Gerlinda exclaimed, hastening to her side.

The girl sprang up, her eyes flashing with anger. "What do yon want? Why did you come back? Can I never be one moment alone?"

"I wanted--I came only to get you," said the young girl, retreating timidly. "Count Steinrueck begs you to come down; the guests are beginning to arrive."

Hertha arose and passed her handkerchief across her eyes. In a moment all trace of tears had vanished, and the young Countess stood calmly before her mirror, to give a last glance of inspection, as she took up her bouquet. "Let us go, then."

They went; the satin train rustled over the stairs, and a few minutes later they entered the reception-room, where Countess Hertha was awaited with impatience.

Carriage after carriage rolled into the court-yard; the guests began to fill the rooms, and at the end of an hour all were assembled, and General Steinrueck announced in due form the betrothal of his grandson to the Countess Hertha.

Every cloud had vanished from Raoul's brow, he had eyes only for his betrothed, standing proud, beautiful, and triumphant at his side, with a smile for every congratulation, for every compliment. All thought this very natural, as was the beaming content on the face of the general, whose special work this betrothal was. He had with a firm hand united those which birth, name, and wealth should of right join together, and what a handsome, happy couple they made!

* * * * *

A dull October sky hung above the endless sea of houses of the capital, extending more widely with every year. There was the usual bustle in the principal streets, where the crowd, the noise, and the rattling of carriages were confusing enough to any one coming from the quiet seclusion of the mountains to plunge into this flood of life.

General Steinrueck had his apartments in the military public buildings, where he occupied a suite of rooms on the first floor. Its arrangement was, so far as the Countess Hortense's apartments were concerned, comfortable, and even luxurious. Steinrueck conformed to his daughter-in-law's taste in this regard, and let her have her own way in all outward matters, although otherwise he kept a tight rein on his family affairs. His position enabled him to live expensively, in spite of the comparatively small income derived from his estates.

The general's special rooms, on the contrary, were plainly furnished, and his study was almost Spartan in its simple arrangement. No tender half-light reigned here, as in the Countess's drawing-room; there were no soft rugs or Oriental hangings; even the artistic decoration of pictures and statuary was lacking. The daylight entered broad and clear through the tall windows, papers, letters, and books were carefully arranged upon the writing-table, the furniture of light oak, destitute of carving and covered with dark leather, could not have been plainer, and the pictures on the walls were evidently of value only as family relics or as mementos. The room was made for labour and not for luxury, and in its strict simplicity it corresponded perfectly with the character of its occupant.

Steinrueck was seated at his writing-table, talking with his grandson, who had just returned from Berkheim, whither he had escorted his betrothed and her mother. Raoul really looked like a happy lover; his face was all sunshine as he told of his journey; and the Count's stern features too were lit up by a smile; the fulfilment of his favourite scheme made him gentler and more accessible than was his wont.

They had been talking of the visit which Hertha and her mother were to pay them, and of the marriage which was to take place in the coming summer, and Raoul said at last, "You will have to dismiss me, grandfather; this is the time for your military audience."

"Not yet," the general replied, with a glance at the clock. "We have a quarter of an hour yet, and, moreover, there is nothing special for to-day,--only a few introductions and reports from younger officers."

He took a written list from his writing-table and looked over it. Suddenly his face darkened, and he muttered, half aloud, "Ah, to-day, then."

Raoul, who was standing beside his grandfather's chair, had also glanced at the list, and had noticed a name with which he was acquainted. "Lieutenant Rodenberg. Has he been appointed staff-officer?"

"Do you know him?" asked Steinrueck, turning hastily.