Читать книгу "If Youth but Knew!" - Castle Egerton - Страница 4

As she bent, offering him the green goblet of wine, her heavy plait fell against his shoulder. He drew back haughtily.

"Peste!" cried Geiger-Hans, "how my fingers itch for the strings. But never mind, you shall lose nothing by waiting. Tarteifel! mother, as I live, venison stew! What feasts you good people make in your forest house!"

"My son is hungry when he comes home of nights, and so are his lads.—My little love, will you sit and entertain the gentlemen?"

Sidonia, pouting, drew her chair with great clatter round by that of Geiger-Hans and turned a shoulder on the count, who thus remained isolated, as became his rank. The fiddler drank to her and she filled his glass again. And, as she stretched across him to do so, the violets at her breast fell upon his hand.

"Violets!" cried he, and sat as if turned to stone. His brown face grew ashen. Then he pushed his plate away, took up the flowers and pressed them against his lips, inhaling the scent of them with long deep breaths. Presently the tears ran down his cheeks; his slow-drawn sighs were cut short by a kind of sob. The girl started to the old woman's side and stood, flushed and downcast, while the Forest-mother beat her omelet with a grave countenance. Neither of them looked at the fiddler. Steven, who had stared, suddenly dropped his glance, too, ashamed and uncomfortable. Geiger-Hans got up from his seat.

"I can eat no more to-night," he said, in a broken voice. He walked over to the bench where he had left his fiddle, and, hugging it, went out into the forest.

"Have you ever seen him like that before?" whispered Sidonia of mother Friedel.

"Once," said she, "and it was over the violet-bed in the garden. I doubt he has seen trouble, poor soul! Who has not?"

Sidonia returned to her seat, propped her chin on her hands and fixed the young count absently. Her eyes were not black as he had thought: they were grey and green, green and golden brown, like the waters of the brook in the shadow of the trees.

"Heavens, sir, how you stare!" she said after a while, pettishly.

The young aristocrat, whose thoughts had been all engrossed by this new eccentricity of his road acquaintance, raised his disdainful eyebrows. He stare at a country wench? Then into their sullen silence mother Friedel exclaimed joyfully.

"Hark!" cried she, "here comes my son!"

From far away stole the faint blast of hunting-horns; a dog bayed answer from the kennels, then the call of the horns arose again in the whispering forest depths, closer and louder.

"Yes, yes, it's the 'return home' they're winding," said the old woman, bending her ear.

Without, there now rose a fine clamour: barking and yelping of hounds, tramping of horses, blasting of horns, cheerful shouting of men. The head forester shot half his stalwart figure in at the door and nodded with some mystery to his mother. What could be seen of his green uniform was very grand indeed, with vast display of gilt buttons and royal crowns, frogs and braid. His square, freckled face, made for jollity, was puckered into anxious lines; his eyes roamed uneasily from Sidonia to the stranger. He strode to his mother's side and whispered in her ear.

"Be good to us!" she ejaculated, clapping her hands, all dismay.

"Hush, mother!" warned the forester, finger on lip, and turned towards the door.

Count Steven had finished his plate of venison stew, and was condescending to enjoy a crust of bread with a glass of the tart wine. The sense of expectation about him made him now likewise turn round in his chair—languidly, for the high-born are never openly curious.

Outside, in the night, against a background of flickering leaves and under the glare of a couple of torches, he saw a picturesque group of hounds and huntsmen; two of these last laden each with a murdered roebuck, whose pretty, innocent head hung trailing on the ground. Suddenly the scene dissolved. A man came from the midst of the foresters into the kitchen. The rest disappeared with their booty; hounds and horses were led away towards the distant kennel premises; the woodland glade resumed its peace.

As the new-comer passed him, the head forester made a spasmodic movement, arrested midway, of hand to forehead. His mother swept a dignified curtsey. The peasant girl, her hands clasped at the back of her neck, stared with frank curiosity, her mouth open so that all who cared to look might wonder upon the doubled splendour of her young teeth.

He stood and glanced round upon them all: a slight young man of somewhat low stature and dark, fine-cut face, with hair cropped short at back and side to come down in a curly wave in the middle of his forehead. He had large eyes under thick, straight eyebrows; and his forester's uniform, though ostensibly of the same cut as Friedel's, was of finer cloth and obviously brand new. The collar of the coat rose very high on each side of his chin, which in the centre rested on folds of delicate cambric.

"Positively," thought Steven Lee, Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg, etc., "a gentleman like myself!"

But the hunter's first word dispelled the illusion.

"My friend," said the new-comer to the old dame—he spoke German with a strong foreign accent—"my fellow-forester there, Friedel, has assured me that you would give his brother woodsman hospitality to-night."

Now, as he smiled, his handsome face assumed a trivial, almost inane, expression, which destroyed its look of breeding and caused Count Steven to return to his bread and wine with a mental shrug.

"Any friend of my son is welcome here," said the old lady, smiling doubtfully.

Friedel himself grew suddenly scarlet, gulped, blinked and looked as uncomfortable as any fish out of water.

"I see I must introduce myself," cried the little man, laughing heartily and clapping him on the shoulder. "I am Mr. Forester—ahem!—Meyer, at your service, madame."

"I wish," said Steven, "that you would shut the door behind my back, good people."

"Hey la!" said Mr. Forester Meyer, with a sudden imperious note in his voice, "whom have we here?"

"A guest, sir, like yourself," said the hostess somewhat dryly, hieing to her pans; while the young nobleman in question turned his heavy chair round again to supplement her inadequate description.

"An Austrian gentleman, my man, if it imports you to know," said he. "You are yourself, perhaps," he went on with more friendliness, struck by an obvious explanation of certain signs about the new-comer that had puzzled him, "the inspector of these forests on your rounds. I notice you speak with authority, and your accent is not of the country—a countryman of this King Jerome?"

Mr. Forester Meyer broke again into loud laughter.

"Hey! what perspicacity has the gentleman!" cried he, jovially. "(Friend Friedel, shut the door!) Nay, truly, sir, you are perfectly right. I see it would be quite hopeless to maintain an incognito before you. It is true, sir, I do inspect for this King Jerome occasionally. Ha, ha!"

"Ha, ha!" echoed Sidonia, catching the infection of mirth, as a child will, without reason.

"Hey la! And whom have we there?"

Mr. Forest-Inspector repeated the phrase in very different tones. There came a curious flicker into his eye as he ran it up and down the girl's figure, from crown of yellow head to scarlet ankle and back again, with appreciative pauses on the way.

"Eh, eh!" said he, meaningly. He took her chin between his finger and thumb, and chuckled as he raised the crimsoning face to the light.

"We do not hold with French ways here," said Dame Friedel, rebukingly, over her pan.

Steven, catching the gesture of warning which her son instantly addressed to her, felt a vast contempt for the fellow's slavish fear of his little superior.

The wine, thin and fragrant, must have gone somewhat fantastically to the young nobleman's brain. He began to feel defiant, in a humorous sort of way, and to wish the fiddler back with his music. With his violin to accompany the song of the amber drink, it seemed as if that youthship of his (on which yonder fantastic rogue laid such stress) might find some zest in a quarrel with Master Forester Meyer, whose eyes danced so unpleasantly as they looked at this peasant child; who had so irritating a French shrug and so mean a smile.

Now, if he had an eye to a pretty girl, the inspector seemed to have also an ear for a poacher. The distant crack of shots, reverberating from the forest, now made him start and listen acutely. Yet as Friedel, with a frowning countenance, made a lurch for his gun in the corner, Mr. Meyer smiled and restrained him. Then he himself went to the door, set it ajar and hearkened. His smile widened as he closed it again and returned to the table.

"Doubtless he has plans of his own for trapping the trespassers," thought Steven. It was the obvious explanation. And yet he felt a kind of mystery brooding around him, almost as if that adventure which the fiddler's music had boded were about to take place. And, in the long silence which succeeded, the impression deepened. The Frenchman seemed overcome by an uncontrollable restlessness. He paced the room from end to end, compared the merry-faced clock with his watch, stared out of the window and drummed on the pane. He was evidently keenly on the alert for something: and, as Steven vainly cudgelled his not very quick wits to conjecture, behold, it was at hand!

Shouts without, steps … a tremendous rat-tat at the door! …

"'Tis not possible," cried mother Friedel, with some distress, "that Heaven has sent us more guests?"

This was, in truth, precisely what Heaven was doing, if, indeed, it were fair to hold Heaven responsible. Two new visitors walked into the forest home without so much as a word of parley. A hulking man, also in forester's uniform ("By Saint Hubert," said Steven Lee to himself, "his Westphalian Majesty's rangers seem thick as leaves hereabouts!"), and a lady clinging to his arm. … Yes, a lady, and a fair! Steven rose to his feet.

The inspector and the burly new-comer interchanged a rapid glance. Then, cracking the whip he held in his hand, the latter burst into the most execrable German, interspersed by volleys of French oaths. It was evident that King Jerome held to servants of his own nationality.

Morbleu! quoth he, it was a mercy to see decent shelter! Devil take all, he had thought that he and the lady would have had to spend the night in the forest!

Here the lady, in spite of very pink cheeks and bright eyes, became so faint that she had to be assisted to a chair by mother Friedel and her foster-child. Steven darted to present a glass of water, but was arrogantly forestalled by Mr. Meyer.

"Such a scandal on his Majesty's high-road!" went on he of the whip: "this lady's coach attacked by ruffians!"

"His Majesty will be exceedingly displeased," said Mr. Meyer, gravely, sitting down by the side of the distressed one and stripping off her glove to consult a delicate wrist.

"Her escort shot at—— By all the devils!"

"Monstrous," quoth the inspector, in quiet indignation. "A little wine, madam?"

"The escort—sacred swine, confound them!—took flight and basely abandoned their charge."

"Shocking—shocking!" said Mr. Meyer, relinquishing one pretty hand to receive the empty glass from the other.

"If I had not happened to hear the shots and rush to the spot, what might not have happened?"

"It makes me shiver to contemplate it," asserted the inspector.

"My brave deliverer," murmured the lady, in a dulcet voice. "Single-handed, he——"

She suddenly buried her face in her hands and quivered from head to foot.

The inspector looked up at mother Friedel with an air of grave compassion.

"Hysterical," said he; "ah, no wonder!"

Dame Friedel began to loosen the lady's handsome claret-coloured travelling-mantle, whilst Sidonia drew a velvet, white-plumed hat from the loveliest dark head in all the world.

"Well … ah!—Schmidt," said Inspector Meyer, "his Majesty will hear of your conduct."

"Thank you, Mr.—ah!—Meyer," rejoined the burly Schmidt, with an unaccountably waggish grin.

"Ah, ha, ha!" cried the lady. She flung back her head and flung down her hands; the tears were streaming upon her uncovered cheeks. It might be hysterics, but Steven thought it was the most becoming combination of emotions he had ever beheld.

She wiped her eyes and sprang up as lightly as a bird. Emerging from the folds of her cloak, she displayed a clinging robe of pale blue, fastened under the bust by a belt of amethysts set in gold. She had an exquisite roundness of form; an open, smiling mouth. Her eyes were innocent and dark and deep. She was (Steven felt) a revelation. And withal, what a great lady! What an air of breeding! What elegance! An Austrian gentleman knows the value of jewels. Heavens, what rings on her fingers! What pearls in her ears!

"Ah, Dio mio!" she cried, "but I am hungry!"

Italian, then. There was a strange medley of nationalities in this German forest corner.

The fixity of the young man's gaze suddenly drew the lady's attention. She looked at him: surprise, interest, then an adorable smile appeared on her countenance. It was almost an invitation. Besides, was it not meet that the only gentleman of the party should entertain the only lady? With his heart beating in his throat, he took two steps forward. The three foresters had drawn apart and were whispering together with furtive glances in his direction; but he was not likely to notice this when such lovely eyes were upon him. She dropped her handkerchief. He rushed to pick it up. As she took it from his fingers, he gave them ever so slight a pressure.

(Oh, Geiger-Hans, Singer of Youth, hadst thou foreseen this rapturous moment?)

"A thousand graces," murmured she. The graces! they were all her own.

"Permit me to introduce myself," he stammered.

But the inspector cut him short with a strident voice.

"The gentleman must be fatigued," he cried.

Steven started angrily. To one side of him stood Forester Schmidt, to the other, Forester Friedel.

"I will show the gracious gentleman the way to his repose," said the latter in his ear, with subdued, yet warning tone.

"And I will give you my help to the door, tonnerre de Brest!" exclaimed the other, and caught the Count's arm under his with a grip of iron.

Steven wrenched himself free. Yet a man has not sober English blood in him for nothing. Humiliating as was the position, a moment's reflection convinced him that resistance and futile struggle would but render him ridiculous. Ridiculous, in the light of those dark eyes!

"Lead, then, fellow," said he to Friedel; and, after bowing low to the lady, followed his escort with what dignity he could muster towards the door opening on the forest.

There was such a seething of rage in his brain, such an itching in his palm to feel it against yonder insolent Schmidt's full cheek, that it was not till he found himself on the threshold of a dimly lighted wooden building, gazing blankly in upon heaps of straw, that he realized that a barn was considered good enough for the night's lodging of a Count Waldorff-Kielmansegg.

"May you rest you sweetly, sir," said Friedel, and tramped away.

CHAPTER III

GREEN ADVENTURE

"Non ego hoc ferrem, calidus juventa,

Consule Planco."

HORACE.

"Comrades again!"

Turning round with a start, Steven beheld the crazy musician at his elbow.

"Comrades on the straw—eh! What a bed for his lordship. Misérables! they have no conception of the importance of rank, these benighted forest folk. Yet give me the clean, yellow straw, smelling in the dark of sunshine and whispering of the fields, rather than your stuffy German mountains of feathers."

"Geiger-Onkel! Geiger-Onkel!" came a shrill cry into the night.

The fiddler turned with a bound and ran into the middle of the moonlit yard, staring up at the house that stood outlined against the pale sky. From some distant regions, where Friedel's underlings kennelled near their hounds, rose shouts of boorish laughter and the chorus of a drinking song.

A yellow tongue of flame appeared in a wooden balcony, hanging under the roof. Sidonia bent over, shielding her candle from the forest airs.

"Are you there, Geiger-Onkel?"

"Yes, child."

"Oh, I am glad. … Geiger-Onkel"—she leaned over still further; her tresses hung down, one shone ruddy with the candle-gleam and one silver in the moonlight; her voice was broken with angry tremors—"he tried to kiss me!"

"Mort de ma vie—who?"

"The big man with the whip. He caught me by the waist. I had nothing to hit him with but my plaits. I lashed him in the face. They caught him across the eyes——"

"Caught him across the eyes," cried the fiddler, clapping his hands. "Ah, brava, little mamzell!"

"They whistled like a rope"—the girl was laughing and crying together—"I think I have half-blinded him. Mayn't I come down to you, Onkel? I want to talk … and I want music."

"Better not," said fiddler Hans, after a moment's reflection; and then from the shadow Steven stepped out beside him. (It was terrible to think of the dark-eyed lady in the company of such ruffians!) Sidonia, with a cry, drew back at sight of the new shadow.

"Nay, never be afraid of him. It is my comrade. As for the others—why, go in, child; bolt your door," said the fiddler. "Go to bed and sleep in peace. I shall watch."

"But you will play for me?" she asked over her shoulder.

"Presently, I may," said he; "such a tune, little mamzell, that will make some people dance! But to you it shall give sweet sleep."

As the girl disappeared, Geiger-Hans turned upon Steven. He laughed as he addressed the young man, but his eyes were fierce as some wild beast's in the dim light.

"Did you hear?" said he. "The maid struck him; but you—oh you—you let yourself be turned out! Oh, to see you trot away like a lamb. Steven Lee, Graf zu Waldorff-Kielmansegg, turned out of doors by two low-bred foresters! What, then, runs in your veins? What, turnip-juice instead of blood? The fellow, Schmidt so-called, laid hands on you, did he not? And you a youth! By the blood of my fathers, had the creature touched me, old man as I am, he had felt the weight of his own whip! But the fellow has muscles. Nay, you were right, sir, right. Let us be prudent, by all means. Only that mask of yours lies, that smooth cheek, that crisp curl—all lies. Young, yes. Only your heart is not young. 'Tis like the kernel of a blind nut—dry dust. While I—there is more of God's youth left in my worn and waning body——"

"Confusion!" interrupted Steven, trembling in every limb, hurt to the marrow of his pride; "it was before the lady."

"Oh, the lady … !" echoed the other, with a mocking trail of laughter.

During the vehemence of his speech the musician had advanced on the lad, who had unconsciously drawn back until he stood against the wall of the house. Now a window close to him was unlatched; and the sound of a sigh, rather than a voice, was breathed forth into the night.

"Ah, Dio!"

"Your cue!" mocked the fiddler into his ear, and melted away into the darkness.

The window was that of a room on the ground floor; the lady leaned out, her elbows on the sill; her face caught a slanting ray of moonlight. Was it possible for anything mortal to be so beautiful?

"Madam!" cried Steven, and that heart of his which was supposed to be but dry dust began to thump in hitherto unknown fashion.

"Hush, hush!" she whispered, a taper finger on her lip. "Ah, is it you, sir?"

He advanced into the ray that held her. He was not aware that he also looked goodly and romantic. Somewhere, in the darkness close by, the fiddler's bow crept over the strings. It was a sound so attenuated that it seemed to have no more substance than the light of the moon itself; it stole upon their ears so gently that it was as if they heard it not. His hand met her warm fingers—the fragrance from her curls mounted to his nostrils; she looked up at him and her eyes glistened.

Oh, fiddler, what bewitching music is this? What sweetness does it insinuate, what mysterious audacity counsel? There were those parted lips of hers, with white teeth gleaming through, and here was this youth who had never touched a woman's lips in love. Such a little way between his bent head and her upturned face … !

A door crashed behind her. She started from his timid hand. The thread of the music was broken like a floating gossamer.

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!"