On the Cross Part 4

"Stop, woman," called the prince, "you cannot possibly go out; the rain is pouring in torrents, and another shower is rising."

"Yes, stay," cried the countess, "wait till the storm is over."

"Oh, no! lodgings are being taken every minute, we must not lose an instant." The next moment she threw a shawl over her head and left the house. She was just running past the low window--a vivid flash of lightning illumined the room, making the little bent figure stand forth like a silhouette. A peal of thunder quickly followed.

"The storm is just over us," said the prince with kindly anxiety. "We ought not to have let her go."

"Oh, it is of no consequence," said the old man smiling, "she is glad to do it."

"Tell me about these strange people," the prince began, but the countess motioned to him that the child understood French. He looked at her with a comical expression as if he wanted to say: "These are queer 'natives' who give their children so good an education."

The countess went to the window, gazing uneasily at the raging storm. A feeling of self-reproach stole into her heart for having let the kind creature go out amid this uproar of the elements. Especially when these people would take no compensation and therefore lost a profit, if another lodging was found.

It was her loss, and yet she showed this cheerful alacrity.

The little party had now entered the living room. The countess sat on the window sill, while flash after flash of lightning blazed, and peal after peal crashed from the sky. She no longer thought of herself, only of the poor woman outside. The little girl wept softly over her poor mother's exposure to the storm, and slipped to the door to wait for her. The prince, shivering, sat on the bench by the stove. Gross, noticing it, put on more fuel "that the gentleman might dry himself." A bright fire was soon crackling in the huge green stove, the main support of the sunken ceiling.

"Pray charge the fuel to me," said the prince, ashamed.

The old man smiled.

"How you gentle-folks want to pay for everything. We should have needed a fire ourselves." With these words he left the room. The thin sister now thought it desirable not to disturb the strangers and also went out.

"Tell me, Countess," the prince began, leaning comfortably against the warm stove, "may I perfume this, by no means agreeable, atmosphere with a cigarette?"

"Certainly, I had forgotten that there were such things as cigarettes in the world."

"So it seems to me," said the prince, coolly. "Tell me, _chere amie_, now that you have duly enjoyed all the tremors of this romantic situation, how should you like a cup of tea?"

"Tea?" said the countess, looking at him as if just roused from a dream, "tea!"

"Yes, tea," persisted the prince. "My poor friend, you must have lived an eternity in this one hour among these 'savages' to have already lost the memory of one of the best products of civilization."

"Tea," repeated the countess, who now realized her exhaustion, "that would be refreshing, but I don't know how to get it, I sent the maid away."

"Yes, I met the dismissed couple in a state of utter despair. And I can imagine that my worshipped Countess Madeleine--the most pampered and spoiled of all the children of fortune and the fashionable world--does not know how to help herself. I am by no means sorry, for I shall profit by it. I can now pose as a kind Providence. What good luck for a lover! is it not? So permit me to supply the maid's place--so far as this is _practicable_. I have tea with me and my valet whom, thank Heaven, I was not obliged to send away, is waiting your order to serve it."

"How kind you are, Prince. But consider that kitchen filled with flies."

"Oh, you need not feel uncomfortable on that score. You are evidently unused to the mountains. I know these flies, they are different from our city ones and possess a peculiar skill in keeping out of food. Try it for once."

"Yes, but we must first ascertain whether I can get the other room,"

said the countess, again lapsing into despondency.

"My dearest Countess, does that prevent our taking any refreshment?

Don't be so spiritless," said the prince laughing.

"Oh, it's all very well to laugh. The situation is tragical enough, I a.s.sure you."

"Tragical enough to pay for the trouble of developing a certain grandeur of soul, but not, in true womanly fashion, to lose all composure."

The prince shook the ashes from his cigarette and went to the door to order the valet to serve the tea. When he returned, the countess suddenly came to meet him, held out her hand, and said with a bewitching smile:

"Prince, you are charming to-day, and I am unbearable. I thank you for the patience you have shown."

"Madeleine," he replied, controlling his emotion, "if I did not know your kind heart, I should believe you a Circe, who delighted in driving men mad. Were it not for my cold, sober reason, which you always emphasize, I should now mistake for love the feeling which makes you meet me so graciously, and thus expose myself to disappointment. But reason plainly shows that it is merely the grat.i.tude of a kind heart for a trivial service rendered in an unpleasant situation, and I am too proud to do, in earnest, what I just said in jest--profit by the opportunity."

The countess, chilled and ashamed, drew her hand back. There spoke the dry, prosaic, commonplace man. Had he _now_ understood how to profit by her mood when, in her helpless condition, he appeared as a deliverer in the hour of need, who knows what might have happened! But this was precisely what he disdained. The experienced man of the world knew women well enough to be perfectly aware how easily one may be won in a moment of nervous depression, desperate perplexity and helplessness, yet though ever ready to enjoy every piquant situation, nevertheless or perhaps for that very reason he was too proud to owe to an accident of this kind the woman whom he had chosen for the companion of his life.

The countess felt this and was secretly glad that he had spared her and himself a disappointment.

"That is the way with women," he said softly, gazing at her with an almost compa.s.sionate expression. "For the mess of pottage of an agreeable situation, they will sell the birthright of their most sacred feelings."

"That is a solemn, bitter truth, such as I am not accustomed to hear from your lips, Prince. But however deep may be the gulf of realism whence you have drawn this experience, you shall not find it confirmed in me."

"That is, you will punish me henceforth by your coldness, while you know perfectly well that it was the sincerity of my regard for you which prompted my act, Countess, that vengeance would be unworthy; a woman like you ought not to sink to the petty sensitiveness of ordinary feminine vanity."

"Oh, Prince, you are always right, and, believe me, if I carried my heart in my _head_ instead of in my breast, that is, if we could love with the _intellect_, I should have been yours long ago, but alas, my friend, it is so _far_ from the head to the heart."

The Prince lighted another cigarette. No one could detect what was pa.s.sing in his mind. "So much the worse for me!" he said coldly, shrugging his shoulders.

At that moment a sheet of flame filled the room, and the crashing thunder which followed sounded as if the ceiling had fallen and buried everything under it. The countess seemed bewildered.

"Mother, mother!" shrieked a voice outside. People gathered in the street, voices were heard, shouts, hurrying footsteps and the weeping of the little girl. The prince sprang out of the window, the countess regained her consciousness--of what?

"Some one has been struck by lightning." She hastened out.

A senseless figure was brought in and laid on the bench in the entry.

It was the kind-hearted little creature whom her caprice had sent into the storm--perhaps to her death. There she lay silent and pale, with closed lids; her hands were cold her features sharp and rigid like those of a corpse, but her heart still throbbed under her drenched gown. The countess asked the prince to bring cologne and smelling salts from her satchel and skillfully applied the remedies; the prince helped her rub the arteries while she strove to restore consciousness with the sharp essences. Meanwhile the other sister soothed the weeping child.

Andreas Gross poured a few drops of some liquid from a dusty flask into the sufferer's mouth, saying quietly, "You must not be so much frightened, I am something of a doctor; it is only a severe fainting fit. The other is worse."

"Were two persons struck?" asked the countess in horror.

"Yes, one of the musicians, the first violin."

A sudden thought darted through the countess' brain, and a feeling of dread stole over her as if there was in Ammergau a beloved life for which she must tremble. Yet she knew no one.

"Please bring a shawl from my room," she said to the prince, and when he had gone, she asked quickly: "Tell me, is the musician tall?"

"Oh, yes."

"Has he long black hair?"

"No, he is fair," replied the old man.

The countess, with a feeling of relief, remained silent, the prince returned. The sick woman opened her eyes and a faint moan escaped her lips.

"Here will be a fine scene," thought the prince. "Plenty of capital can be made out of such a situation. My lovely friend will outweigh every tear with a gold coin."