CHAPTER XV.
SCHÖN-ROHTRAUT
Do you know the ballad of 'Schön-Rohtraut' – the king's daughter who would neither spin nor sew, but who fished, and hunted, and rode on horseback through the woods, with her father's page for her only companion? Was there any wonder that the youth grew sad, and inwardly cried to himself —
"O dass ich doch ein Königssohn wär,
Rohtraut, Schön-Rohtraut lieb' ich so sehr.
Schweig stille, mein Herze!"
One day they rested themselves under a great oak, and the merry Schön-Rohtraut laughed aloud at her woe-stricken page, and cried —
"Why do you look at me so longingly? If you have the heart to do it, come and kiss me, then!"
Whereupon the lad, with a terrible inward tremor, probably, went up and kissed Schön-Rohtraut's laughing lips. And they two rode quite silently home; but the page joyously said to himself, "I do not care now whether she were to be made Empress to-day; for all the leaves in the forest know that I have kissed Schön-Rohtraut's mouth."
There are many of us whose chief consolation it is to know that we have kissed Schön-Rohtraut's mouth. The middle-aged man, getting a trifle grey above the ears, sits by the fire of a winter evening, and thinks of his own particular Schön-Rohtraut.
"I did not marry her; but I loved her in the long-bygone time, and that is enough for me. I had my 'liberal education.' If I had married her, perhaps I should not be loving her now; and all my tender memories of her, and of that pleasant time, would have disappeared. But now no one can dispossess me of the triumphant consciousness that it was my good fortune to have kissed Schön-Rohtraut's mouth."
There is much sympathy abroad upon this matter; and I think we men never get nearer to each other than when we talk, after our wives have gone upstairs to bed, of our lost loves.
This was partly what Will Anerley said to himself as the little party sate under the white awning of the König Wilhelm, and slowly steamed up the yellow-green waters of the Rhine. Not without a tremor of conscience he said it; for he had a vague impression that he had been wantonly cruel to Dove. In the first moments of remorse after awaking to a sense of his present position, he had said —
"There remains but one thing to be done. I will at once return to England, and see Annie Brunel no more."
But a man approaching thirty has taught himself to believe that he has great fortitude, especially where the tenderer emotions are concerned; and his next reflection was —
"My sudden departure will only be a revelation to her, and happily she knows nothing about it. Besides, have I not sufficient strength of mind to spend a few days in the pleasant society of this young girl, without committing myself? The mischief is done, and I must suffer for my carelessness; but – "
But he would go on to Schönstein all the same, whither the two ladies had also consented to go. He did not deceive himself when he submitted to his own conscience this theory. He knew there was no danger of his disturbing Miss Brunel's peace of mind, and he knew that Dove would have no further injustice done her. It was he who was to suffer. His thoughtlessness had permitted the growth of a hopeless passion: it would never be known to her who had inspired it, nor to her whom it had dispossessed. He only should carry about with him the scourge; and he was not without a hope that time and travel would for once accommodate themselves to an absurd superstition, and cure him of an unfortunate love.
For the rest, he was almost glad that he had mentally kissed Schön-Rohtraut's mouth. The consciousness of this passionate and hopeless attachment was in itself a pure and elevated feeling – a maiden delight which had no earthly element mixed with it. It was so different from the kindly, affectionate interest he took in Dove – so different from that familiar liking which made him think nothing of kissing the young girl in an easy fraternal way. To think of kissing Annie Brunel! The page could only look wonderingly and longingly at his beautiful mistress, at her pretty lips and nut-white teeth, and say, "Schweig' stille, mein Herze!"
Quite assured of his own strength of will, he did not seek for a moment to withdraw himself from her, or raise any subtle barrier between them. In fact, he mockingly explained to himself, that as compensation for the pain which he would afterwards have to suffer, he would now sup to the full the delicious enjoyment of her society. He would study as much as he chose the fine artistic head, the beautiful, warm, Italian colour of her face, and her charming figure; and he would gaze his fill into the deep-grey eyes, which were always brightened up by an anticipatory kindliness when he approached. He remarked, however, that he had never seen them intensified by that passionate glow which he had observed on the stage – the emotional earnestness which belonged to what she called her "real life;" there was in the eyes merely a pleased satisfaction and good nature.
"When shall we get away from the Rhine?" she asked, as they were sailing past the black Loreleiberg.
"To-night," said the Count, "we shall stop at Mayence, and go on by rail to Freiburg to-morrow. Then we shall be away from the line of the tourists."
This was an extraordinary piece of generosity and concession on the part of Count Schönstein; for there was scarcely anything he loved more dearly on earth than to linger about the well-known routes, and figure as a German Count before the Cockney-tourists who crowded the railway stations and tables d'hôte.
"I am so glad," said Miss Brunel. "I cannot bear to be among those people. I feel as if I were a parlourmaid sitting in a carriage with her master and mistress, and fancying that she was being stared at for her impertinence by every passer-by. Don't tell me it is absurd, Mr. Anerley; for I know it is absurd. But I cannot help feeling so all the same. When anybody stares at me, I say to myself, 'Well, perhaps you've paid five shillings to stare at me in the theatre, and you think, of course, you have the same right here.'"
Will was very vexed to hear her speak so, partly because he knew that no reasoning would cure her of this cruel impression, and partly because he knew that she had some ground for speaking as she did. Continually, along that insufferably Cockney route, he had seen her stared at and ogled by lank youths from Oxford Street or Mincing Lane, who had got a holiday from counter or desk, and had hoisted a good deal of bunting to celebrate the occasion – bright green ties, striped collars, handkerchiefs marked with Adelina Patti's portrait, white sun hats with scarlet bands, yellow dust-coats and skin gloves. In the intervals between their descents to the cabin, where they drank cognac in preference to "that beastly sour wine," they would sit at a little distance, suck fiercely at their cheap cigars, and stare at the young actress as they were accustomed to stare at the baboons in the Zoological Gardens, or at the Royal Family, or at their favourite barmaid. Then would follow confidential communications to Tom or 'Arry that she was very like "Miss Trebelli," and another head or tails for another "go" of brandy.
"If these creatures were to get to heaven," said Anerley to the Count, in a moment of jealous spleen, "they would ask their nearest way to the Holborn Casino."
It was partly this semi-Bohemian feeling which drew the young artiste towards Count Schönstein and Will Anerley, and allowed her to relish the society of people "out of the profession." Of the personal history of the Count she had got to know something; and while she tolerated his self-sufficiency, and admired his apparent good-nature and even temper, she almost sympathised with him in his attitude towards society. It was the same people whom she had been taught to distrust, who were in league against the poor Count. They would not permit him to mix in their society, because, like herself, he was an adventurer, a person whose position was not secured to him by an ancient royal grant. Will she looked upon in another fashion.
"You have been so much abroad, and mixed with so many people, that you seem not to belong to England. There is nothing English about you – nothing of vanity, and self-importance, and suspicion of outsiders."
But against this praise, as against the whole tone of her mind on the subject, he had uttered many a serious protest.
"You blame us English with the impertinences of a few boys out for a holiday. You have heard stories of actors and actresses having received injuries from persons out of the profession; and you necessarily think there must be a mutual antagonism between the classes."
"I don't think anything about it," she used to say; "I only know what my impression is, however it has been taught me. And I know that there is no sympathy between me and the people whom I try to amuse, and that they despise me and my calling. I don't blame them for it; but how can you expect me to like them? I don't say they are narrow-minded, or prejudiced; but I know that an English lady would not sit down to dinner with an actress, that an English mother would think her son lost if he married an actress; and that a girl in good society who marries an actor is thought to have done something equivalent to running away with her father's footman."
These were the bitter precepts which the Marchioness of Knottingley had left with her daughter; and they had been instilled into the girl at a time when beliefs become part of our flesh and blood.
"There are ignorant and ill-educated women who think so," said Will, calmly; "but you do an injustice to women of education, and good taste, and intelligent sympathies, when you suppose that every one – "
"Let us take your own mother," said Annie Brunel, hastily. "Would she be anxious, supposing she knew me, to introduce me to the rest of her acquaintances? Would she ask me to visit her? Would she be willing that I should be a companion to that pretty little Dove?"
"I think I have answered all these questions before," said Will. "I tell you I can't answer for all the women of England; but for those of them whom I respect I can answer, and my mother is one of them. Has she not already allowed Dove to make your acquaintance?"
"Because I was a curiosity, and she was allowed to come and look at me in my cage," said the actress, with that cruel smile on her lips.
"Miss Brunel," said Will, simply and frankly, "you are exhibiting far more prejudice than you will find in the women you speak about. And I don't know whether you will forgive my saying that it seems a pity one of your years should already possess such suspicions and opinions of other people – "
Wherewith she looked him straight in the face, with a clear searching glance of those big and honest eyes of hers, which would have made a less disinterested advocate falter.
"Are you telling me what you believe to be true?" she said.
"Could I have any object in deceiving you?"
"You believe that your mother, a carefully pious and correct lady, who has lived all her life in the country, would dare to avow that she knew an actress?"
"She would be proud to avow it."
"Would she take me to church with her, and give me a seat in her pew, before all her neighbours?"
"Certainly she would."
"And what would they think?"
"Perhaps the parish clerk's wife," said Will, with a mental glance at Mrs. Bexley, "and the vet.'s wife, and a few women of similar extraction or education, might be shocked; but the educated and intelligent of them would only be envious of my mother. Wherever you go, you will find people who believe in witches, and the eternal damnation of unconverted niggers, and the divine right of the nearest squire; but you don't suppose that we are all partial idiots? And even these people, if you went into the St. Mary-Kirby Church, would only have to look at you – "
"You said something like that to me before," she replied, with the same nervous haste to exhibit every objection – was it that she the more wished them to be explained away? – "and I told you I did not think much of the charity that was only extended to me personally because my face was not old and haggard. Suppose that I were old and painted, and – "
"But if you were old, you would not be painted."
"I might."
"In that case, all the women would have some ground to be suspicious of you; and many of them would be angry because you were allowed a luxury denied them by their husbands. Really, Miss Brunel, you do the 'outsiders' an injustice," he added, warming to his work. "Stupid people and uneducated people do not care for nice discriminations. They have always decided opinions. They like to have clear lines of thought and positive decisions. They ticket things off, and stick to their classifications through thick and thin, as if they were infallible. But you do wrong to care for the opinion of the stupid and uneducated."
"I should like to believe you; but how can I? If, as you say, we have fallen so low as even to earn the contempt of the stupid – "
"My darling," he said, and then he stopped as if a bullet had gone through him, "I – I beg your pardon; but I really fancied for the moment I was quarrelling with some of Dove's nonsense – "
She smiled in such an easy way at the mistake, however, that he saw she put no importance upon it.
"I was going to say – how could stupid people exist if they did not despise their superiors in wit, and intellect, and artistic perception? There is a man at my club, for instance, who is intellectually, as he is physically, a head and shoulders taller than any of his brother members. What reputation has he? Simply that of being 'an amusing young fellow, but – but very shallow, don't you know.' The empty-headed idiots of the smoking-room sit and laugh at his keen humour, and delicate irony, and witty stories; and rather patronise and pity him in that he is weak enough to be amusing. A dull man always finds his refuge in calling a man of brighter parts than himself 'shallow.' You should see this friend of mine when he goes down into the country to see his relations; how he is looked upon at the dinner-table as being only fit to make the women smile; and how some simpering fool of a squire, with nothing more brilliant in his library than a pair of hunting-boots, will grin compassionately to some other thick-headed boor, as though it were a ludicrous thing to see a man make himself so like a woman in being witty and entertaining."
"And you think the women in these country-houses more intelligent and amusing than the men?"
"God help country-houses when the women are taken out of them!"
"What a large portion of my life have I wasted over this abominable Bradshaw!" said Count Schönstein, coming up at that moment, and their conversation was for the present stopped.
But Will now recognised more firmly than ever the invisible barrier that was placed between her and the people among whom his life had been cast; and, perhaps, for Dove's sake, he was a little glad that he could never look upon this too-charming young actress but as the inhabitant of another world. And sometimes, too, he involuntarily echoed Dove's exclamation, "You are too beautiful to be an actress?"
When, after a pleasant little supper-party in the Mayence Hotel, at which they stopped, they parted for the night, Will congratulated himself on the resolution he had taken in the morning. It had been such a pleasant day; and who was the worse for it? He was sick at heart when he thought the time would come in which he could no more enjoy the keen pleasure of sitting near this tender creature, of watching her pretty ways, and listening to her voice. The love he felt for her seemed to give him a right of property in her, and he thought of her going for ever away from him as an irreparable and painful loss. There was a quick, anxious throbbing at his heart as he attempted to picture that last interview; for he had resolved that after their return to England, he would not permit himself to see her again. He thought of her going away from him without once knowing of that subtle personal link which seemed to unite them in a secret friendship. She would be quite unconscious of the pain of that parting; she might even think that he had yielded to the prejudices of which she had spoken, and had become ashamed of her friendship.
"That, too, must be borne," he said, with a sigh. "I cannot explain why I should cease to see her; and yet we must never meet again after we return to England. If it were not for Dove, I should look out for some appointment abroad, and so get an excuse; for it is hard to think that I must wound the self-respect of so gentle a creature by appearing to refuse her proffered friendship without a cause."
Then he sat down and wrote a long letter to Dove; and for the first time he felt a great constraint upon him in so doing. He was so anxious, too, that she should not notice the constraint, that he wrote in a more than usually affectionate strain, and strove to impress her with the necessity of their being married very soon.
"Once married," he said to himself, "I shall soon forget this unhappy business. In any case, we must all suffer more or less; and it is entirely owing to my carelessness in enjoying Miss Brunel's society without looking at what it might lead to. But how should a man of my years have anticipated such a thing? Have I not been intimate with as pretty and as accomplished women in all parts of the world, without ever dreaming of falling in love with them?"
But no, there was no woman so pretty and charming as this one, he reflected. No one at all. And so, counting up in his mind, like a miser counting his guineas, one by one, the few days he would yet have to spend in the torturing delight of being near to her, he got him to bed, and did not dream of St. Mary-Kirby.
The next day they reached Freiburg, and here the Count had a carriage awaiting them, with a couple of swarthy Schwarzwalders in his somewhat ostentatious livery.
"Now we are getting home," he said, with a bland laugh to Mrs. Christmas; "and you must have a very long rest after so much travelling. We shall see what the air of Schönstein will do for you, and a little of the Schönstein wine – eh, eh?"
Their entrance to the Black Forest was inauspicious. It was towards the afternoon before they left Freiburg; and the air was oppressively hot and sultry. Just as they were approaching the Hollenthal – the Valley of Hell – a strange noise attracted Will's attention; and, looking over the back of the open carriage, he saw behind them a great red cloud, that entirely shut out the landscape. Two minutes afterwards a sudden gust of wind smote them with the violence of a tornado; they were enveloped in a dense lurid pall of sand; and before they could cover over the carriage, great drops of rain began to fall. Then the far-off rumbling of thunder, and an occasional gleam of reflected lightning, told what was coming.
The Count looked much alarmed.
"The Hollenthal is a fearful place," said he, to the ladies: "overhanging rocks, dark as pitch, precipices, you know – and – and hadn't we better return to Freiburg? That is, if you think you will be afraid. For myself, I'd rather go on to-night, and save a day."
"Don't think of turning on our account," said Annie Brunel. "Mrs. Christmas and I have been together in a good many storms."
So they went on, and entered that gloomy gorge, which is here the gateway into the Black Forest. They had just got themselves closed in by the mighty masses of rock, when the storm thoroughly broke over their head. It was now quite dark, and the thin white shafts of lightning shot down through the ravine, lighting up the fantastic and rugged sides of the pass with a sudden sharpness. Then the thunder crackled overhead, and was re-echoed in hollow rumbles, as if they were in a cavern with huge waves beating outside; and the rain fell in torrents, hissing on the road, and swelling the rapid stream that foamed and dashed down its rocky channel by their side. Every flash whitened the four faces inside the carriage with a spectral glare; and sometimes they got a passing glance down the precipice, by the side of which the road wound, or up among the overhanging blocks and crags of the mountains.
Mrs. Christmas had been in many a thunderstorm, but never in the Hollenthal; and the little woman was terrified out of her life. At every rattling report of the thunder she squeezed Miss Brunel's hand the more tightly, and muttered another sentence of an incoherent prayer.
"Unless you want to kill your horses, Count," said Will, "you'll stop at the first inn we come to; that is about a mile farther on. I can tell by the sound of the wheels that the horses are dragging them through the mud and ruts by main force; and up this steep ascent that won't last long."
"Think of poor Mary and Hermann," said Annie Brunel. "Where must they be?"
"I'll answer for Hermann coming on to-night, if he's alive," said the Count. "And I hope that he and the luggage and Mary won't be found in the morning down in that tremendous hole where the stream is. Bless my life, did any mortal ever see such a place, and such a night! What a flash that was!"
It was about midnight when they reached the Stern inn; and very much astonished were the simple people, when they were woke up, to find that a party of visitors had ventured to come through the Hell Valley on such a night.
"And the hired carriage from Freiburg, Herr Graf," said the chief domestic of the little hostelry; "it won't come up the valley before the morning."
"What does the fool say?" the Count inquired of Will.
"He says that the trap with the luggage won't come up to-night."
"Bah!" said the Count, grandly. "Sie wissen nicht dass mein Förster kommt; und er kommt durch zwanzig – durch zwanzig – zwanzig – damme, get some supper, and mind your own business."
"Yes, eef you please, my lord," said the man, who knew a little English.
The Count was right. Hermann did turn up, and Mary, and the luggage. But the hired vehicle had been a badly-fitting affair, and the rain had got in so copiously that Mary was discovered sitting with Hermann's coat wrapped round her, while the tall keeper had submitted to be drenched with the inevitable good-humour of six-feet-two. Some of the luggage also was wet; but it was carried into the great warm kitchen, and turned out and examined.
At supper, the Count, who was inclined to be merry, drank a good quantity of Affenthaler, and congratulated Mrs. Christmas on her heroic fortitude. Annie Brunel was quiet and pleasant as usual – a trifle grave, perhaps, after that passage through the Hollenthal. Will was at once so happy and so miserable – so glad to be sitting near the young Italian-looking girl, so haunted by the dread of having to separate from her in a short week or two – that he almost wished the storm had hurled the vehicle down into the bed of the stream, and that there he and Schön-Rohtraut might have been found dead together in the grey morning.