If Youth But Knew/The Melody in the Violets
IV.—THE MELODY IN THE VIOLETS.
THE Burgravine Betty had a curious glitter in those eyes of hers, that generally astonished the stranger by their soft flower-blue in her olive face. Upon cheeks usually colourless she wore a dark flush, yet, withal, she was full of smiles: was it not the wedding morning of the little Baroness Sidonia, her husband's niece?
The old Burg of Wellenshausen, on the top of the crag, had been in a mighty bustle these three days; for singular circumstances, and the bridegroom's unwavering determination—he was in a position to dictate terms and did dictate them—had hurried the date of the ceremony in unprecedented fashion. His desire to see the last of his uncanny host, and to be free from the prying and challenging eyes of his hostess, was second only to the yearning for the dear solitude à deux with his young bride.
Had the neighbours of the Burgrave of Wellenshausen been available (and the heads of the few great houses of the environs were at the Court of Jerome, making merry, regardless of universal war and of brewing sedition), they could hardly have been invited on such scant notice. And yet it was the greatest heiress of the country that was to be married this day; and the man she was to wed, a young Austrian, Graf von Waldorf-Kilmansegg—kinsman of the Burgravine—was no whit her inferior in blood, looks, or purse. For so hasty a union, it was a marvellously fitting one: and the ceremony in the little stone chapel nestling under the frowning walls of the Burg was, if ungraced by guests, charming in its simplicity and earnestness. The bridegroom looked manly and enamoured; the bride was sweet in childish dignity, with a certain dainty composure. The Burgrave looked the "noble father" to the last detail, and shed tears in his moustache, whereat the Burgravine's eyes glittered with a more steely flash than ever.
At breakfast, later, all went with the same smoothness; and, if there was an indecorous absence of response displayed by the young couple, as well as by the gracious mistress of the Castle, when the enthusiastic toasts were proposed (and deeply drunk) by the Burgrave, none could complain of the quality of the glances exchanged by the bride and the bridegroom over their perfunctory libations. As for the Burgravine Betty, she well-nigh matched her lord in tossing the Sillery down her delicate throat.
Yet was she in a strange hurry to get the little new Countess Kilmansegg away from the feast into the privacy of her own turret apartment, ostensibly to robe her for the journey. The bridegroom followed his bride with a long, deep glance; which catching, the Burgravine Betty tossed her head.
Once alone with the girl, she whisked the bridal veil from the yellow head with such feverish and ungentle hands that Sidonia turned round to look upon her in amaze—only to meet a positive glare from the blue eyes.
"Why, Aunt Betty!"
"Why, Sidonia!—forgive, I should say Most High Lady Countess!"
"Have I done anything?" stammered the child, forgetful of her new dignity. "Have I vexed you?" Her young heart was overflowing with tenderness: she fain would part tenderly from all she had known of home.
"Vexed?—I?" quoth the lady.
Here they were interrupted by a frightened-looking tirewoman, whom the Burgravine drove away with actual fierceness.
"I will myself attend to the Countess. Get you gone! Nay, my love," proceeded she, once more addressing her niece, and in a biting tone of sweetness, "wherefore should I be vexed? I may be ashamed for my sex; I am still (I must confess) under the shock of the recent scandal, which has rendered necessary this humiliating marriage, but"
"In Heaven's name!" interrupted the bride, "what is this?" She removed the myrtle wreath with steady fingers from her fair tresses, and then approached with a countenance singularly altered and aged. "You must tell me what you mean, Aunt Betty," she said.
"Were you as innocent as you pretend," retorted the Burgravine, now fairly panting, "it were no kindness to you, child, to let you depart in ignorance of the truth. But you can scarce be blind to the fact that the poor young man below has but wedded you to save your name, your honour."
Sidonia went white to the lips. "I don't understand… …" she faltered. But there was a great horror gathering in her eyes.
"Do you need to be told, then," cried the other, clapping her plump hands together in exasperation, "that if a young girl spends a night in a cave alone with a young man, her reputation is not worth a silver groat?"
The blood raced back to the bride's cheeks.
"Do you taunt me for having saved your life, Aunt Betty? What say I?—saved your reputation! … Nay, I'll not believe you; my husband is not made of such false stuff. He has told me he loves me, he has my faith."
The Burgravine broke into shrill laughter; then, with a sudden change of mood, she folded her niece to her heart hysterically.
"Nay, my poor lamb, I have been hard with you! Go, go in your touching confidence; I will say no further word. It would be cruel to enlighten you a day sooner than necessary."
The new Countess showed more passion upon this display of affection than she had been moved to by the former gibing. She caught the Burgravine's wrists with little hands of steel.
"Now speak your meaning … you shall speak, Aunt Betty!"
"Never!" declared the Burgravine; and in the same breath shrieked and vowed she must give way before such intolerable violence. Then, rubbing one dimpled wrist after another, she whimpered that her heart was broken. "Ungrateful child!" she sobbed; "have I not sacrificed myself to you? A—ah, he has vowed that he loves you" (It is well to lash oneself into passion when it is hard to strike in cold blood.) "Four days ago, on that very turret platform," she dramatically pointed to the gloomy silhouette of the east tower through the deep lancet window, "only four days ago he held me to his heart—this devoted husband of yours—and consecrated his life to me!"
"I do not believe you," said Sidonia again. But her soft, young face seemed suddenly turned to marble.
"Fool!" shrieked the Burgravine; drew a crumpled billet from her bosom and spread it out before the bride's eyes. "See here, he writes to me—asks me to meet him among the ruins. Read the words: 'All will be ready.' … What do they mean, think you? Why, that his coach was waiting below to whirl us to our own land, to safety, to happiness!"
"Then why did you not go? Why did you send me?" asked Sidonia stonily.
"Because I was a fool!" cried the Burgravine; and set her little teeth upon such savage accents of truth that at last Sidonia believed. She took the crumpled bit of paper from her aunt's shaking hands. Her own shook not at all.
"It is well," she said. "Go you and send him to me. I know now what I have to do." And she thrust the note into the bosom of her bridal frock.
To be thoroughly successful in revenge is always slightly alarming. So thought the Burgravine Betty, as she closed the door upon this unknown, this strange Sidonia. But, having gone too far to retreat, spite resolved to reap the final gratification.
•••••
The bridegroom entered with reverent yet eager joy; then, upon sight of his bride, checked his advance—all amazement.
Sidonia sat in a high-backed chair as on a judgment-seat, with face coldly set yet with eyes blazing unconscious reproach.
"I sent for you, Monsieur de Kilmansegg," she said, with great distinctness of enunciation, "to tell you that I decline to go away with you."
Whither had fled the crystal music of her voice? He had an irritable pride and passionate blood; and withal a brain that was not apt at swift intuition.
"I do not understand," he said, even as she but a few minutes ago, and his tone was that of anger. Perhaps she had expected another attitude—had pictured him, poor child! crying in despair at her feet. Her wounded dignity was reinforced by a revulsion of unknown feelings which suddenly turned almost to hatred. She would not stoop to explain, still less to complain.
"It is sufficient that yon should understand that now we part; I do not go with you. Go you and forget me!"
"'I don't understand …' she faltered."
"Sidonia!" he ejaculated helplessly. He stood staring at her. Then a horrible suspicion sprang upon him. Was it possible this young creature had but played a part with him? Had she feigned sweet maiden love and wedded him, virginally tender, but to save the threatened honour of her name? Nay, more monstrous thought still, was the whole business a hideous conspiracy? And he was shaken with a sudden fury; a crimson tide rushed to his face. In two strides he was beside her, menacingly bending over her.
"You are my wife!" he cried, "You are mine—mine! You belong to me! You must do as I order—as I please!"
His look filled her with new, unknown terrors. Child-woman, she shrank instinctively from something to her nameless, yet infinitely offending. Clasping her hands upon her breast to still the throbbing of her heart, she heard, beneath her fingers, the whisper of Aunt Betty's treacherous billet.
Stung into fresh disdain, she reared her head and measured him with her glance. Baroness Sidonia was not the daughter of a fierce and antique race for nothing.
"You can take my money if you will, all my money—and I am very rich, they tell—so that you only go. Go!"
As if her little sunburnt hand had struck him a deadly blow, Steven Lee, Count von Waldorf-Kilmansegg, stepped back a couple of paces; and the hot young blood, ebbing from his face, left it grey.
He paused for a while; then made a bow, turned on his heel, and went to the door. On the threshold he looked back at her for a second; it was a farewell look, and bore in it a pride as high and bleeding as her own, a reproach as keen. She saw that his lip trembled. Then the door was closed, very gently, between them, and she heard his steps die away down the winding stone stairs.
She glanced at her new wedding-ring and thought her heart must break; but yet she sat and made no effort to recall him.
•••••
It was a day of scurrying breezes and dappled skies. Long pools reflected blue and white in the ruts of His Majesty King Jerome of Westphalia's neglected roads. Wide and deep ruts they were—tracks of the "Grand Army" that had been—and even a village child could have told that great guns and wagons had passed that way before the sweeping by of the last spring storm.
But the rider, on his big-boned, iron-grey horse, splashed through the mud at reckless speed; and if he had had a thought for the testimony of the road, would not have understood it.
A stranger to the land—English by education, by inheritance head of a great Austrian house—he had gone on his travels to train his youthful mind in the study of the tangled politics of nations, as became one entitled by birth to take place some day among the legislators of his country. And, behold! Fate had laid a trap for his unwary heart, and he had fallen.
A man may wrench himself free of love's snare as the wild thing of the woods from the teeth of the springe; but at what vital hurt, how maimed, how bruised, how deeply marked! What was it to Steven Lee, Count Waldorf-Kilmansegg, that the west wind, dashing against his face, was balmy with the breath of the black pine woods on the rising slopes to his right; that the rank meadows that fell away to the left were colour alive, gold-green in the sunlight; that shadows swept across them like spirit messages? His ears were deaf to the organ chant of the pines, to the shrill joy of the lark, echoing back from the blue vault. Unmoved, he trotted through the poverty-stricken villages, by the deserted homesteads, once flourishing, beside the wasted corn-fields. One whom life was treating as evilly as himself could not be expected to bestow even the alms of pitying thought to the peasant soldiers, stiff in the snows of Russia, or plodding vanquished in Spanish rocky deserts, nor to the starving families to whom the breadwinner would never return. He did not even know whither he was hurrying, so long as he crossed the nearest frontier of a country to him accursed. To this all the passion of his mind was bent.
•••••
With head bent towards the wind, and fiddle slung on his shoulder, a wandering musician was breasting the hill where the high imperial road skirting the Thuringian forest bends towards that fertile valley watered by the Fulda. Even the hard sinews of the grey steed faltered before the steepness of the ascent. The mounted traveller had to curb his impatience to suit his steed, and found himself level with the humble wayfarer at a pace that forced progression side by side. Yet, on the instant he had recognised him and fain would have passed at highest speed. Certes, it seemed hard, that in this wide, empty country, upon the solitary road, he should stumble upon the one man whom he would of all others avoid; the man who had had of late so much influence—he now thought for disaster—upon his life.
These were days when it seemed Fortune turned her wheel in freakish humour, precipitating the mighty, exalting the base-born. What private tragedy had met this vagrant musician in the midst of universal cataclysm? Those who knew him as a wanderer upon high roads, dependent for his bread on the favour that his fiddle found, could only speculate. But his manner was that of one to whom command comes naturally, his temper that of the scholar and the philosopher; he had a singular power over those whom he chose to frequent. To rich and poor he was alike welcome, but no one knew his secret.
Steven, whom Fate seemed freakishly to throw across this strange creature's path, had more than once suffered himself to be led by him, and now, in humiliation and soreness of heart, accused him secretly of evil counsel.
Fiddle-Hans—for so the wanderer was known in the countryside—started as he beheld the young face looking down at him from over the horseman's cloak.
"You?" he exclaimed.
"I!" said Steven.
The man on foot halted, and he on horseback unconsciously reined in. The two remained staring at each other, and in the eyes of both was hot reproach.
"And whither set you off alone, bridegroom, on your grey horse?" asked the musician at length, in that tone of irony under which he hid most of emotions.
"Anywhere," answered the bridegroom with a pale smile, "so long as I put space between myself and my bride."
Fiddle-Hans drew his brows together into a dark frown. His nostrils dilated, the corners of his month twitched.
"Peste!" said he under his voice. Then: "Is it not a little premature? The ceremony took place this morning, I believe. I think I heard the joy-bells from the distance. Had it been a few months later—but now"
His tone was cynical, but his eye was stern and anxious, and his weather-beaten face looked suddenly old and drawn.
"Months?" echoed the rider with a bitter laugh. "It took her but the measure of minutes to decide on my worth."
"Her?" commented Fiddle-Hans with inquiring emphasis.
"Did you think," answered Steven—and though he strove to be cool, the passion of his wrath wrote itself on every line of his usually impassive face and vibrated in his voice like the first mutterings of thunder—"did you think I went through the marriage ceremony for the pure amusement of making a nine days' scandal and deserting my hour-old wife? That would have been a brilliant joke indeed! No, my friend; the situation is of her making. She took her woman's privilege and changed her mind."
"She was a child yesterday," said Fiddle-Hans.
There was pain in Steven's smile as he returned:
"She was no child this morning."
"But, Heavens!" cried the other impatiently, "even so. Did she play the woman, was it not the more reason for you to play the man? You left her, you left her. … is it possible? For a few sharp words, some vulgar misunderstanding! Why, she was yours, man; and you should have carried her with you, were it on the crupper of that high-boned grey."
"Aye," replied Steven. "Even so, as you say. It also dawned upon me, deficient as I am in wits, that the time had come for me to play the man. I actually announced my intention of carrying her away with me by main force—not on the grey, but in the coach prepared for our bridal journey. She reminded me that I took her fortune with her."
"Ah, bah!" said the fiddler, and winced as if he had been struck.
"It seems she is an heiress," said the bridegroom's voice over his head. "She offered me half her fortune—her whole fortune—if I would go without her! Hey! what answer would you have a man make to that? I got the first saddle-horse to be had for money and rode away, leaving her my carriage and horses and my servant—for a Countess Waldorf-Kilmansegg must have her equipage. That episode is closed!" The rider chucked his reins and set the rested horse to his labour up the hill once more.
Fiddle-Hans had been looking down at the stones at his feet; he now roused himself and, bending his head, like a man under the blast of a storm, fell into pace beside the grey. His shoulders were rounded as beneath a burden, yet it was evident that Fate had played him too many scurvy tricks for him to be astonished. After a while he laid his hand upon the dappled neck and looked up at the rider.
"These women," he said, "these children—they insult a man because they do not understand. Mischief has been made here—mischief is always alert when marriage-bells are ringing. Go back to her!"
"I?" cried Steven Lee.
"Go back to her!" said the tramping fiddler again, as he trudged the stony way beside the young lord riding. "Be generous"
Steven laughed out loud; and the fiddler knew that the wound had gone deeper even than he suspected.
"I am for Vienna," said the bridegroom briefly; "but I shall make fit settlements upon her, never fear, and such provisions as may safeguard her honour and my own."
"Nay, comrade," interrupted the other, looking up keenly, "such a union as yours—why, 'twould be the easiest contract to annul that ever two young fools repented of."
Steven's hands contracted over the leather.
"Do you think so?" said he, and grew darkly crimson. "O, of course," he said, and laughed, "that would be much the best. Aha! Annul! Well, she has only to wish it."
The musician, observing him, showed now a lighter countenance and presently smiled to himself. Then he shifted his instrument from his back to his breast and began to twang the strings, as if in deep reflection.
She glanced at her new wedding-ring and thought her heart must break; but yet she sat and made no effort to recall him.
"We shall part at the top of the hill," said the rider.
"Shall we?" said the wayfarer, "I think not. Listen, my lord."
The rousing spring wind brought indeed a strange distant rumour on its wings, and the fiddler imposed silence on his restless fingers and stood still himself, leaning his ear.
Once more Steven arrested the grey's climb. There is nothing so infectious as the curiosity of the ear. The flapping breeze fell as they halted; and then the sounds which it had brought to them over the crest of the knoll seemed to be repeated with much greater distinctness from the vale in their rear.
"What is it?" asked the horseman.
It was a sound like the beat of giant storm-rain upon forest leaves, only that it was measured at repeated intervals by rhythmic tingle and clink. Even as he spoke, Steven heard a crisp drumming of hoofs separate itself from the stream of confused sound: then, upon the ring of two words in a commanding voice, the thunder-wave of advance broke itself into silence, in the midst of which silence suddenly pattered a succession of cracking shots close on one another, as beads dropping from a string.
"Stand back!" cried the fiddler. And, suiting the action to the word, he seized the grey by the bit and forced it backwards into the ditch that girt the road on the side of the fields.
"But what is it?" asked Steven once more, as the clamour within the woods rose again in confusion, a hideous medley of human voices wrangling like angry beasts, of plunging and neighing of horses, crackling of boughs, and thud of iron hoofs. The fiddler dilated his nostrils. He stood leaning back against the flank of the grey, his right hand still firmly on the bit. A fine blue vapour, a pungent smell was oozing between the dark firs.
"Have you never smelt it before, you innocent?" said he, looking up at the rider, and his sunburnt face was kindled by stern fires. "Yet there's scarce a square rood of Europe these twelve years that has not known the smoke of this holocaust. It is Battle, man!"
The words were still on his lips when the placid front of the forest before them was suddenly shaken and pierced in a hundred places. Red-coated hussars with flying blue dolmans—bareheaded most, but some with huge shako and plume at a dishevelled angle—broke covert along the whole line, crashing through the underwood, leaping, it seemed, one upon the other, each man inclining in his saddle and wildly spurring towards the downward slope at a tearing gallop.
Steven's grey shivered under him. It had, no doubt in its youth been a charger; certainly it was now seized with martial ardour. Flinging up its head fiercely to shake off the fiddler's grip, it displayed such a strong intention to join in the race—which no doubt it conceived to be a glorious charge—that a less practised rider would have found it hard to keep the saddle.
As it was, Steven could gather but a confused impression of the flying troop as it thundered past—a whirl—bucketing, straining, pumping, clanking, splashing; of men's faces, crimson, distorted, open-mouthed; of bridles slavered with blood and foam; of craning horses' necks, and nostrils afire!
Fiddle-Hans gave a loud laugh.
"The most gallant the Hussars of the Guard of His Majesty Jerome the First, and last—in full rout! And, O shadows of Moscow! here come the pursuers!"
The forest was now alive with hoarse, guttural cries, as if the wooded depths had suddenly released some giant brood of ravens. And then, helter-skelter, even as the last belated hussar, blood streaming from a black gash in his forehead, clattered heavily rearmost of his comrades, reins loose, clinging to the saddle—they came! Huns! Squat riders on squat horses—cattle and man shaggy and unkempt one as the other—with long tags of matted hair bobbing round wild-bearded faces, pointed fur caps drawn down to the eyes, sheepskin-clad knees drawn up almost to the in, stirruped with rope, brandishing rough spears; miscellaneous booty—a goose, a sucking-pig, a frying-pan, maybe a cottage clock—swinging at the saddlebow. They came, shouting their crow-call, exulting, squealing, grunting! they came, filled the road with clamour and clatter and stench. … and were gone before Steven could draw—it seemed to him—the full breath of his amazement!
Like the second gust of the hurricane, they had gathered and broken by them and were past, the clamour of their tempest way rising loud, then growing suddenly faint in the distance, as the valley received them.
"Now," said Fiddle-Hans, looking up, "here is an experience for your English-bred youth. Fate has annihilated the centuries, you have beheld the passage of the Barbarians. Pouah!—what a wild-beast trail they have left behind them! To think that Napoleon should have gone to seek these wolves and jackals in their steppes, and spread the Cossack over the face of Europe!"
He sprang out of the ditch, and the grey, much injured in feeling, snorting and sullenly upheaving its haunches, was induced to follow. A roll of far-off musketry crepitated up to them from the plain. "Do you hear? said Fiddle-Hans. "And do you know what that means?"
"They are fighting on the other side of the hill," said Stephen, spurring towards the crest.
"'Tis the Empire cracking," said the musician, running alongside, his hand at the stirrup-leather. "These are the little cracks by which the little House of Westphalia is doomed to fall, as the cottage falls on the hillside from the earthquake that has wrecked the city. It is the back-wave from Moscow which assails us here to-day."
They had halted on the crest, and their gaze plunged into the open valley which lay outstretched in the sunshine. A canopy of blue smoke hung over the fields that spread between their knoll and little town, some half-mile distant. The mist was pierced with slow-moving lines of bayonets which flashed back the sunshine; traversed with colour—on the one side the greens and reds and greys of marching companies, and on the other, solid masses of dark blue.
Fiddle-Hans ran a knowing eye over the scene. "Aha! The Prussians hold the town," said he. "Contrast their sober uniform with Jerome's scarlets and greens, his plumes and gold lace. Ah! there go our runaways! They have found their support. See them draw up behind yonder crimson platoon—our little brother Jerome's Grenadiers of the Guard, for he must ape big brother Napoleon and his Old Guard! Look, look, our friends the Cossacks roll together like a swarm of hornets at the foot of the hill; they find themselves cut off from their Prussian allies—and if the Hussars but rally in time, we shall see the rôles of the drama reversed in a minute!"
He fell abruptly silent: something had flown between his head and Steven's as the latter bent towards him from his saddle to listen and to look—something that droned a strange song as it passed, and puffed a cold breath on their cheeks.
"What was that?" asked Steven, looking round.
"That was a stray Death," said the musician placidly. "What say you—shall we seek cover?"
"Let us see the thing out!" cried Steven; the fire of a fighting race was in his eye.
"There will be more lead flying," said Fiddle-Hans, glancing up with an odd expression. "Death flies on a capricious wing when this sort of game is played."
"Why, then," answered the bridegroom with his smile of bitterness, "that might be the simplest solution of all to my difficulty; at least I should not be deeply mourned."
"If that be your mind towards bullets," said the fiddler, with a shadow of sarcasm, "for once your youth and my age are in harmony. But what if you were to tie your grey behind some forest trees? There is no need of offering him up also to our altar of despair—and he might be of use when the day is over."
Steven admitted the suggestion without a word; and presently both men sat upon a high bank, their legs dangling into space.
"This is inspiring," said the fiddler. He unslung his instrument. "Did you hear that volley? Those are troops trained under Bonaparte, I'll wager my fiddle-bow. Hear how the Prussian insurgents respond. (Peasants, students; deserters from Jerome—the Patriots, in short!) See those puffs of white smoke, in and out of the line under the village wall? Not a gun together—loose shooting, but good hatred; I'll back it in the long run! Drums! shouts!—'tis the bayonet charge; what did I tell you? Here come our Huns back again … what's left of them. I am inspired! Hark you: this is the song of the fight … First come the Grenadiers, cool and scornful, musket on breast, arms folded; they march like one man. 'I have served under the Eagle; I have been of the Guard of the Great Emperor. To Moscow I have been—and back: to-day it is sunshine: it is child's play, but I would rather be back in the ice with my Emperor. To me he is the Little Corporal: I am one of the old lot. It is I and mine who put the crown on his head. To Jena we went singing:—
"'We'll go and bring a kingdom home
To give little brother Jerome.
He said little brother should have a little kingdom of his own—what is this rabble that would undo his work? It was warm work at Jena, comrade—O, and it was cold at Moscow!' … Aim at the Old Guard, kerls,' says the Prussian to his volunteer gunners. 'Hurl down the Guard, and the field is ours!" … Hurl down the Guard, aha!
"'I have to come out to fight for the Fatherland,' says the peasant lad; 'my mother put a green sprig in my shako. I shall put a notch on my musket-stock for every Frenchman I have killed, and shall show it to my children when Gretel and I marry. O, but the Old Guard shoots steady! Green sprig is down on the meadow; his comrades jump over him, one steps on his hand, but he feels nothing. Poor little Patriot; he has not even struck one blow for the Fatherland, but his red blood is sinking into the soil! How bright will bloom the flower of liberty in the land thus watered!
The Grenadier—home from Russia—is smiling. He is flat on the ground, and his eyes look to the sky. It is cold, cold, he is in the snow; what cares he?—he is with his Emperor.
The fiddler wielded his bow with a kind of frenzy, and above the rattle and the clamour of the distant combat, the scramble and clatter of the Cossacks up the hills, their defiant calls and grunts, his battle-music rose—proud, passionate, tragic.
The remnant of the Cossack horde had reached the summit again in wild disorder, seeking the forest shelter at the first available point. A flight of bullets came singing through the air among them: the little company of grenadiers, marking the routed enemy against the sky-line, had flung a last contemptuous volley after them. The savages squealed and ducked, clinging to their shaggy steeds in fantastic attitudes; a few were struck; one fell, his nearest comrade caught up the reins of his mount and, with exultant yell, led it away with him. The dead man was dragged a few yards till his inert foot fell loose of the hempen stirrup, and he lay, a heap of discoloured rags among the stones. Fear was on no man's face, but grins of defiance undaunted. Their war-cry was still of triumph.
Fiddle-Hans sprang to his feet on the bank. He waved his bow, then drove it across the strings to a new song, shrill and mocking, a song of scorn for the fugitive:
"His big-boned, iron-grey horse, splashed through the mud at reckless speed."
"Spread your dark wings and fly, obscene birds! Yet exult as you go: the scent of Death is in the air. In a little while you may gorge—but to-day the stricken Eagle can still beat back the carrion crows. Fly, flap your wings—caw—caw!"
Steven stared amazed at his companion and listened spell-bound. The musician was like a man possessed. His grizzled locks seemed to stand out from his face, his left hand danced along the strings, his right arm worked with fury. If ever catgut and wood mocked and insulted, that possessed instrument of Fiddle-Hans' did so that day of the combat of Heiligenstadt, in the teeth of the defeated Kalmuck. Caw, caw! it shrieked, catching the very guttural of the last belated Cossack, who struggled in rear of his comrades on a wounded horse. The man turned back in his sheepskin saddle, fury in his bloodshot eyes, raised his rough weapon over his head, measuring his distance.
"Take care!" cried Steven, leaping from the bank. Louder and shriller played Fiddle-Hans.
The savage hurled the lance, and Steven, flinging himself forward, with arms extended, caught the blow. He rolled back upon the player, and both came to the ground together. The music fell mute. Shouting victory, the Cossack drove his bleeding steed into the brushwood.
•••••
"If Madame Sidonia were here," said the fiddler, with emphasis on the married title, "what a hero you would be to her!"
He had bound Steven's shoulder—the wound was an ugly gash enough—ministered to him with the wine of the country from a flask of his own, and water from the brook. The contest for the village, between King Jerome's troops and the raiders, was still undecided, and fitful sounds of battle were growling in the valley.
The happy May winds blustered in the tree-tops; they had swept the sky from west to east, more blue than there is colour to describe. There was a wonderful pulse of striving, growing things about them. Every grass-blade shook in lusty individual life. The leafage was full of the bright-eyed, feathered broods of first, spring wooings. The whole forest hummed in delicate rumour with the secret joys of Nature's fecundity. … In the plain, openly and with tumult the masters of earth were strewing its fair face with Death.
"If Madame Sidonia were here," had said the fiddler, and cast a sly look at the young man's face over the last knot of his bandage.
Steven frowned and was silent.
"They will go on tearing each other to pieces down there till night. What say you? Shall not grey steed retrace his steps and carry Master Bridegroom back where he should be?"
"No!" cried the other, the blood leaping to his livid face. "A thousand times no! I am not yet the base thing she deems me."
The musician subdued a sigh.
"What a noble thing is true pride!" quoth he, picked up his fiddle and began to examine it carefully. "Heavens!" he cried, "if you had broken it! Does a man fling himself upon another in such inconsiderate fashion when there's a Stradivarius between them?"
"Had it not been for my want of consideration," said Steven, with some pique. "I think the precious instrument would hardly have known the touch of your fingers again."
"My friend," said the fiddler gravely, "the steel has not been tempered, the lead has not been cast, that will reach this heart. Ah, Lord!"
It was an exclamation of uttermost weariness. He picked at his strings and tightened them with absent fingers. Then he flashed a sudden smile at his companion.
"Steven's grey shivered under him."
"You are amazed, are you not, at my ingratitude? What! Here have I, Count Waldorf-Kilmansegg, preserved the existence of this wretched tramp at the risk of my noble, valuable one—here have I shed my blue blood to save his muddy fluid, and the creature has not even a 'Thank you!' … Comrade," went on the musician, and his brilliant eye dilated, his countenance assumed a lofty, dignified mien, "I would not shame myself and you by such a word as 'Thanks'! The creature that would not give himself to save his fellow-creature when he can is not worth the name of man."
Steven, abashed that he had indeed thought himself heroic, blushed again and, looking down, began idly plucking with his unhurt right hand the wood-violets that grew in patches on the bank. The fiddler followed his movements, then his eye suddenly grew fixed, his jaw dropped. Slowly the healthy colour ebbed from his cheek and left it ashen. Steven, looking at him, was astonished and alarmed.
"For Heavens sake!" he cried, "are you ill?"
The fiddler stretched out his hand and culled the posy from the other's grasp. The touch of his fingers was as cold as death.
"Violets!" said he in a sort of whisper. "There is blood on them!" He shuddered from head to foot.
"Perhaps all the mystery is but that he is a poor mad gentleman," thought Steven, and looked where his grey was cropping the young grass, and wondered if he could mount unaided.
Then Fiddle-Hans laid the flowers on his knee and, still staring at them with the same eye of mingled horror and grief, gathered his instrument to his embrace and drew from it a strain the like of which Steven had never heard. Low and simple it was, with even a delicate lilt, as to the shadow-dance of bygone joys, yet so heartrending that after a moment or two, the listener, with tears rising to his eyes and a catch at his throat, cried on his companion to stop.
The musician laid down his fiddle and turned his drawn countenance upon the youth.
"That is the melody in the violets, the melody that is never silent in my soul, night or day. You cannot bear it; why, then, you must listen to the story.
"I was once as young as you are—and had also a very noble pride—I had nearly as much reason," said Fiddle-Hans, his pale lips writhing in a smile of bitterest self-scorn; "but as men differ, their same passions vary in motive. It was of little moment to me that I came of an ancient house—(Ah! it pleases you to know so much! You have always guessed it, else had you not frequented me. Let it pass, friend, lest I should blush for you.) No, my pride was the pride of intellect. I knew a vast amount! I learned to lisp English that I might study Bacon and Locke, and to chew German that I might wrangle over Fichte and Kant. I was the friend of Helvetius and Diderot, the rival of Holbach. We worshipped Voltaire. Reason was our God! In short, I was one of those they called the Encyclopædists; we dreamed of doing away with old Abuses and replacing all established things by brand-new Perfections. 'Humanity and Freedom!' was our war-cry. With sweet-oil and rose-water our revolution was to be accomplished. You know what we did for France and the world. We set the first stone rolling, a quarter-century ago, and," with a tragic smile he pointed to the valley, "you can hear the echo of it still reverberating down yonder! Freedom we preached; and the whole world is enslaved as never it was before! Reason was our lodestar; and the State was handed over to the lowest intellects to guide it according to their brute passions! Humanity was our watchword; and France was drenched in blood from end to end, and her sons have brought blood and fire to every land in Europe! The blood of that wretched son of the steppes blackening yonder on the road, the bloodshed in yonder bullet-riddled village by that very volley that shakes us as we sit, is all offered to the honour of that same trinity of our invention: Freedom, Humanity, and Reason! O, glorious was the path we opened! Had we not just cause for pride?"
He fell silent a second; and Steven dared not speak, so corrosive was the bitterness of his every word, so poignant the emotion written on every furrow of his countenance.
"O, it was a golden time!" he resumed. "We philosophised up to the steps of Versailles. Louis made beautiful locks; Marie Antoinette tended snowy sheep; the roses bloomed at Trianon. … and not the wisest of us ever saw the precipice yawn. As for me—even the greatest minds are subject to the everyday passions of humanity"—his lips parted upon an ironic smile—"I fell in love, neither more nor less than the most elementary youngster of the land. She" He hesitated; then, steadying his voice, proceeded in tones which betrayed the effort of speech: "she was of an old-fashioned Breton stock, and her ideas and mine were as the poles asunder. But upon one common ground, and a fair pasture it was to me, we met and were equal: we loved."
He paused, his breath came quick. "Heaven!" he said, and it seemed as if he knew not that he spoke, "how I loved her!"
He picked up a violet from the heap on his knees, and passed his fingers over it caressingly; his whole countenance softened. When he began again, it was in gentler accents than Steven had ever heard him use:
"When two people love each other, young man, and one believes the other to be mistaken in some cardinal point of judgment, the dearest thought each cherishes is to bring the Beloved to the truth. I had no doubt but that I could open her mind; she, but that she would redeem my perverted soul. I have told you what a fine pride I had. So noble it was that I was proud of my pride. And being an apostle of Liberty, the idea that a woman should resist her husband, that the weaker vessel should not give way to the stronger, never dawned on my emancipated mind! If we had loved each other less; if we had not cared so intensely that the one should be worthy of the other's ideal! … Well, well—we quarrelled! The fault was mine; could I not have been content to worship her in her sweet faith? She had a high spirit. I wounded her in a thousand ways. Women have susceptibilities that we, thick-hided, thick-witted, dream not of. Even when we touch them to caress, we bruise them. And then, when their pain is intolerable and they turn and strike at us, our wound is that of the most innocent, the most injured! O, when my measure was full against her, she insulted me, if you like—much as your little bride this morning insulted your High-mindedness. She said words that my exquisite pride could not endure. My nobility of soul was such that it left me no choice but to desert the woman whom I had vowed to protect; to make parade of my manhood by leaving her to live her own life alone; to cast the frail and lovely thing I had held in my arms away from my love and guardianship. No doubt, no doubt I made some very generous dispositions as regards my fortune (even as you now propose towards Madame Sidonia), and she had her people to go to, even as your wife has—those whom she had given up to come to me. But when the day came that I had to look into my heart and read the truth, what did I see?—Look into your heart now and learn the baseness of your own motives. Why do you leave your bride? Why did I leave mine? For what reason, but that she might weep and mourn for me; that she might learn how precious was the jewel she had not appreciated! To be revenged, revenged on the Beloved!"
He flung himself back against the bole of the fir that rose behind him and closed his eyes.
"I left her," he went on, "left France, left Europe. I went to America, the new home of Freedom, the only country on the face of the earth where the goddess was worshipped as she should be. Well, I had vowed not to return till recalled: I was summoned by a voice terribly different from hers. It took three months before the noise of the storm reached me on that far-off shore; and I knew that it must take me at least a month more ere I could reach her. And she was in danger! I think it was then I began to go mad—for it is understood that I am mad, is it not?"
He opened his bright eyes and fixed them suddenly on Steven, who became so extremely embarrassed that the fiddler broke into unmirthful laughter.
"Mad!" he repeated. His gaze flickered. If truth be told, he looked none too reassuringly sane. Then he sank his head between his hands with a groan. "If I were only a little madder!" he exclaimed.
"The story is nearly finished," he went on in a new, toneless voice. "When I landed in France, all the powers of the Hell my superior intellect denied were let loose in the land—Danton, Marat, and Robespierre represented the trilogy of Liberty, Reason, and Humanity! The prisons were full, the guillotine everywhere restless … this was our Golden Age! A fortnight I looked for her. Have you ever sought in vain one you had loved, even for an hour? Dante never devised a more exquisite torture for his deepest circle. My house in Paris had been confiscated for the nation's soldiers; her fathers castle in Lorraine had been burnt to the ground. At my old home at Nancy at last I found a trace. She had refused, it seemed, to join in the flight of her people across the Rhine, but when trouble became threatening, had taken up her post on my estate. That was like her. She had been arrested—so dangerous an enemy of the people! She was in the infamous prison at Nancy. She" He flung his battered old hat from his head, dashed back his hair, loosened the wide collar at his throat. Breath seemed to fail him. A dark wave of blood rushed to his forehead. "All, all had abandoned her, save one poor girl—a peasant from our farm, whose people were of the local patriots. … She was allowed access to the cells. I met this girl at the prison gates, where my frenzied search had brought me at length. She knew me—though I was a tramp already. At sight of my face, she clapped her hands and broke into wild sobs. I was too late! That morning. … Why do you look at me like that? Do you wonder that I am still alive? That is where the God I denied has His vengeance of me, you see. I cannot die. O, I could kill myself, of course! But, mark how deep has the Encyclopædist fallen. … —I dare not, dare not, lest I lose my chance of meeting her again …!—Ah! there is great pity in your eyes … Her little delicate head—she held it like a queen's. Under the powder her hair was gold. (I have not even one lock of her hair). I used to clasp her slender throat between both my hands. … The peasant girl had kept by her to the end. She had stood at the foot of the scaffold, that a last friendly glance might speed her lovely soul. 'She smiled to me,' said the poor creature, sobbing. My eyes were dry. … Then she drew from her bosom a bunch of violets—and said: 'Madame les avait à son corsage' …"
Fiddle-Hans gathered up the flowers scattered on his knees and crushed them against his face. "She always loved violets," he murmured. "These have no scent," he went on dreamily; "but hers, hers—O, they were sweet!"
"Ah, friend!" cried Steven, and had no further word. Infinite pity indeed was in the look he turned upon the unhappy musician. It seemed as if the latter wandered as he spoke again.
"There was blood on the violets," said he, dropping his hands; "her blood and mine—for the man that was I died, too, then, murdered in his youth, even as she." His face had grown livid again; his eyes were bright and restless in their orbit. "The something that lived on, the miserable carcass, the old man—call it myself, if you will—this self that is before you now—it took the violets and began to walk away. … And it has walked ever since!" He gave a laugh, and the sound of it was mad. "No place could be home to me again—no land could be country, France least of all. But the skies and the trees are kind; they understand my sorrow, they take it into themselves, and sometimes they give me back peace. And then there's the music. … I was always a musician. One, a village priest, found out by accident that the mad tramp he had sheltered played better on his old Strad than he did himself. The fiddle was to him as his child, but he gave it to me: for he had compassion on me. And so was born Fiddle-Hans. And Fiddle-Hans and his fiddle will walk until one day he can walk no more—and then he will lie down on the kind, brown earth and turn his face to the skies … perhaps!"
He thrust the flowers into his breast. Then he leaned forward, his elbow on his knees, sheltering his eyes in his hands, and there was silence. The valley below had sunk into stillness.
While Steven had listened to the story of one man's defeat in life, a combat, where the fate of hundreds had been decided, had been fought and won. And now they were picking up the dead yonder, in the evening calm of the plain. The wind had fallen with the fall of the day, and only the topmost branches of the pines swayed and whispered in scarcely perceptible airs. The light was growing golden mellow; the shadows were lengthening. Thrush and blackbird began fitfully to pipe the first notes of their vesper song. Steven remembered his wound.
The fiddler turned and spoke. It was with composure.
"Well," said he, "which way shall it he, back or forward?"
"I do not know," said Steven in a low voice, and dropped his eyelids as if ashamed.
The fiddler stretched out his hand and helped the other to rise, with a vigorous grasp. As they stood side by side, he suddenly cast his arm round the young man's shoulders.
"The child," said he, "Sidonia …! I would like her to be happy. When her soul looks out of her clear eyes, when she moves her head with its golden burden … she has a trick of speech, a laugh … O, it is like a refrain of old music to me, a sighing strain from a lost life! Her little slender throat—I could hold it in both my hands … Go back to her … If I knew her happy, my restless spirit would no longer haunt the ways that hold her. Ah! you think it will be hard? I tell you it will not. You do not know a woman's heart. Forget that your pride is hurt. Remember that you are young. O, if you but knew! Life has one unsurpassable flower for youth—take it now, lest a breath from Heaven scatter its bloom. Its scent is for you! The love of your youth; go, gather it"
"I will go back," said Steven, and his lips trembled.
Silently Fiddle-Hans loosened the grey horse, helped the wounded man to mount and led the way down the hill.