Erlach Court Part 14

"Why, you have had less cause than any of us to enjoy the day. You have cut your foot, have spoiled a very pretty gown, and are in danger, if it goes on pouring thus, of being wet to the skin in spite of your water-proof."

"That is of no consequence," she declares from out the brown hood, her fair dripping face laughing up at him through the rain and the gathering darkness. "Where is the harm in getting a little wet? It is quite delightful."

He is silent. She is to be envied for her gay, happy temperament, and she looks wonderfully pretty in spite of her grotesque wrap.

Not the faintest breath of wind diverts from the perpendicular the downfall of rain. The road leads between two steep wooded heights, whence are wafted woodland odours both sweet and acrid. Intense peace--an unspeakably beneficent repose--reigns around; in grave harmonious accord blend the rushing of the brook, the falling of the rain, and the low whisper and murmur of the dripping leaves, informing the silence with a sense of enjoyment.

"How beautiful! how wonderfully beautiful!" Stella exclaims; her soft voice has a strange power to touch the heart, and in its gayest tones there always trembles something like suppressed tears.

"Yes, it is beautiful," Rohritz admits, "but"--with a glance of mistrust at the wretched hacks--"when we shall reach Wolfsegg heaven alone knows!"

Is he so very anxious to reach Wolfsegg? To be frank, no! He feels unreasonably comfortable in this rain-drenched solitude, beside this pretty fair-haired child; he cannot help rejoicing in this _tete-a-tete_. Since the day when Stella thanked him with perhaps exaggerated warmth for returning her locket, she has never seemed so much at her ease with him as now.

The desire a.s.sails him to probe her pure innocent nature without her knowledge,--to learn something of her short past, of her true self.

Meanwhile, he repeats, "But it is beautiful,--wonderfully beautiful!"

The wretched horses drag along more and more laboriously. Rohritz has much ado to prevent their drooping their gray noses to the ground to crop the dripping gra.s.s that clothes each side of the road in emerald luxuriance.

"Delightful task, the driving of these lame hacks!" he exclaims. "I can imagine only one pleasure equal to it,--waltzing with a lame partner.

This last I know, of course, only from hearsay."

"Did you never dance?" asks Stella.

"No, never since I left the Academy. Have you been to many b.a.l.l.s?"

"Never but to one, in Venice, at the Princess Giovanelli's," Stella replies. "After the first waltz I became so ill that I would not run the risk of fainting and making myself and my partner ridiculous. My enjoyment then consisted in sitting for half an hour between two old ladies on a sofa, and eating an ice to restore me. At twelve o'clock punctually I hurried back, moreover, to the Britannia, for I knew that my poor sick father would sit up to be regaled with an account of my conquests. He was firmly convinced that I should make conquests. Poor papa! You must not laugh at his delusion! The next day the other girls in the hotel pitied me for not having had any partner for the cotillon; they displayed their bouquets to me, as the Indians after a battle show the scalps they have taken. They told me of their adorers, and of the _pa.s.sions funestes_ which they had inspired, and asked me what I had achieved in that direction. And I could only cast down my eyes, and reply, 'Nothing.' And to think that to-day, after all these years, I must give the same answer to the same question,--'Nothing!'"

"You have never danced, then!" Rohritz says, thoughtfully.

Strange, how this fact attracts him. Stella seems to him like a fruit not quite ripened by the sun, but gleaming among cool, overshadowing foliage in absolute, untouched freshness. Such dewy-fresh fruit is wonderfully inviting; he feels almost like stretching out his hand for it. But no, it would be folly,--ridiculous; he is an old man, she a child; it is impossible. And yet----

Both are so absorbed in their thoughts that they do not observe how very dark it has grown, how threatening is the aspect of the skies.

Leaving the ravine, the road now leads along the bank of the Save. The pools on each side grow deeper, the mud splashes from the wheels on Stella's knees: she does not notice it.

"Your last remark was a little bold," Rohritz now says, bending towards her.

"Bold?" Stella repeats, in dismay: 'bold,' for her, means pert, aggressive,--in short, something terrible.

"Yes," he continues, smiling at her agitation; "you a.s.serted something that seems to me incredible,--that you never have inspired any one with a----"

He hesitates.

A brilliant flash quivers in the sky; by its light they see the Save foaming along in its narrow bed, swollen to overflowing by the recent torrents of rain. Then all is dark as night; a loud peal of thunder shakes the air, and the blast of the storm comes hissing as if with repressed fury from the mountains.

The horses tremble, one of them stumbles and falls, the traces break, and down goes the carriage.

"Now we are done for!" Rohritz exclaims, as he jumps down to investigate the extent of the damage.

Further progress is out of the question. He succeeds by a violent effort in dragging to his feet the exhausted horse, then unharnesses both animals and ties them as well as he can to a picket-fence, the accident having occurred close to an isolated cottage with an adjacent garden. Rohritz knocks at its doors and windows in vain; no one appears. In the deep recess of one of the doors is a step affording a tolerable seat. He spreads a plaid over it, and then, going to Stella, he says, "Allow me to lift you down; I must drag the carriage aside from the road. There! you are not quite sheltered yet from the rain; move a little farther into the corner,--so."

"Oh, I don't in the least mind getting wet," Stella a.s.sures him; "but what shall we do? We cannot sit here all night long in hopes that some chance pa.s.sers-by may fish us out of the wet."

"If you could walk, there would be no difficulty. The inn this side of the ferry is only a quarter of a mile off, and we could easily hire a couple of horses there. Can you stand on your foot?"

"It gives me a great deal of pain to stand, and, since Uncle Jack has my other shoe in his pocket, how am I to walk?"

"That is indeed unfortunate."

"You had better go for help to the inn of which you speak," Stella proposes.

"Then I should have to leave you here alone," says Rohritz, shaking his head.

"I am not afraid," she declares, with the hardihood of utter inexperience.

"But I am afraid for you; I cannot endure the thought of leaving you here alone on Sunday, when all the men about are intoxicated. One of the roughest of them might chance to pa.s.s by."

"In all probability no one will pa.s.s," says Stella. "Go as quickly as you can, that we may get away from here."

"In fact, she is right," Edgar says to himself. He turns to go, then returns once more, and, taking his mackintosh from his shoulders, wraps it about her.

He is gone. How slowly time pa.s.ses when one is waiting in the dark!

With monotonous force, in a kind of grand rhythmical cadence the rain pours down to the accompaniment of the swirling Save. No other sound is to be heard. Stella looks round at the horses, which she can dimly discern. One is lying, all four legs stretched out, in the mud, in the position in which artists are wont to portray horses killed on a battle-field; the other is nibbling with apparent relish at some greenery that has grown across the garden fence. From time to time a flash of lightning illumines the darkness. Stella takes out her watch to note the time by one of these momentary illuminations. It must have stopped,--no, it is actually only a quarter of an hour since Edgar's departure.

Hark! the rolling of wheels mingles with the rush of the Save and the plash of the rain. The sound of a human voice falls upon the girl's ear. She listens, delighted. Is it Rohritz? No, that is not his voice: there are several voices, suspiciously rough, peasants rolling past in a small basket-wagon, trolling some monotonous Slav melody. By a red flash of lightning the rude company is revealed, the driver mercilessly plying his whip upon the back of a very small horse, that is galloping through the mire with distended nostrils and fluttering mane.

Stella's heart beats, her boasted courage shrivels up to nothing. A few more minutes pa.s.s, and now she hears steps. Is he coming? No; the steps approach from the opposite direction, stumbling, dragging steps,--those of a drunkard.

A nameless, unreasoning dread takes possession of her. Ah! she hears the quick firm rhythm of an elastic tread.

"Baron Rohritz!" she screams, as loud as she can. "Baron Rohritz!"

The step quickens into a run, and a moment later Rohritz is beside her.

"For G.o.d's sake, what is the matter?" he says, much distressed.

"Oh, nothing, nothing,--only a drunken man. My courage oozed away pitifully. Heaven knows whether, if you had not appeared, I might not have plunged into the Save from sheer cowardice. But all is well now.

Is a vehicle coming?"

"Unfortunately, there was none to be had. I could only get a peasant-lad to take care of the horses. If there was the slightest dependence to be placed upon these confounded brutes I could put you on the least broken-down of them and lead him slowly to the inn. But, unfortunately, I am convinced that the beast could not carry you: he would fall with you in the first pool in the road. With all the desire in the world to help you, I cannot. You must try to walk as far as the inn. I have brought you one of the ferryman's wife's shoes."

And while Stella is putting the huge patent-leather shoe on her bandaged foot, Rohritz directs the peasant-lad to fish his plaid and rugs out of the mud and to lead the horses slowly to the inn. As he walks away with Stella they hear the boy's loud drawling 'Hey!' 'Get up,' with which he seeks to inspirit the miserable brutes.

Leaning on the arm of her escort, Stella does her best to proceed without yielding to the pain which every minute increases, but her movements grow slower and more laboured, and finally a low moan escapes her lips.

"Let me rest just one moment," she entreats, piteously, ashamed of a helplessness of which a normally const.i.tuted woman would have made capital.

"Do not walk any farther," he rejoins, and, bending over her, he says, with decision, "I pray you put your right arm around my neck, clasp it well: treat me absolutely as a _porte-faix_."