CHAPTER X.
Now has there happened to me one of the strangest adventures of my strange life, and before I sleep I have determined to note it down, for no other reason than this: that my waking thoughts to-morrow will refuse to credit mere memory, without some such corroboration. Nay, I have another witness—this glove!
Were it not for this, I should have chronicled our féte which really was far more successful than such things usually are. Not only was there no contretemps, but all went off well and pleasantly. The men were witty and good-tempered; the women—albeit many of them handsome—were aimable, and disposed to be pleased; the weather and the champagne were perfect. They who could eat—which I couldn’t—say, that Gougon was admirable; and the band played some of Donizetti’s pieces with great precision and effect. Ainsi, the elements were all favourable; each instrument filled its part; and the ensemble was good—rather a rare event where people come out expressly bent on enjoyment, and determined to take pleasure by storm. Premeditated happiness, like marriage for love, is often too much premeditated. Here, however, “the gods were propitious.” Unlike most picnics, there neither was rain nor rancour; and considering that we had specimens of at least half-a-dozen different nationalities, and frequently as many different languages going at once, there was much amusing conversation, and a great deal of pleasant, gossip-ping anecdote: not that regular story-telling which depends upon its stage-effect of voice and manner, but that far more agreeable kind of narrative that claims interest from being about people and places that we know beforehand, conveying traits of character and mind of well-known persons, always amusing and interesting.
There was a French secretary of legation for Berne, a most pleasant convive; and the Austrian general was equally amusing. Some of his anecdotes of the campaign of 1805 were admirable: by the way, he felt dreadfully shocked at his own confession that he remembered Wagram. The Countess Giordani came late. We were returning from our ramble among rocks and cliffs when she appeared.
I did not wish to be presented; I preferred rather the part of observing her, which acquaintance would have prevented. But old Lady B—— did not give me the choice: she took my arm, and, after a little tour through the company, came directly in front of the Countess, saying, with a bluntness all her own,—
“Madame la Comtesse, let me present a friend whose long residence in your country gives him almost the claim of a countryman:—M, Templeton.”
If I was not unmoved by the suddenness of this introduction—appealing as it did, to me at least, to old memories—the Countess was composure itself: a faint smile in acknowledgment of the speech, a gentle expression of easy satisfaction on meeting one who had visited her country, were all that even my prying curiosity could detect.
“What part of Sicily have you seen?” said she to me.
“My friend Lady B——,” said I, “has made me a greater traveller than I can pretend to be: I have been no further south than Naples.”
“Oh! I am not Neapolitan,” said she, hastily, and with an air like disappointment.
I watched her closely as she spoke, and at once said to myself, “No! this is not, this cannot be, Caroline Graham.”
We conversed but little during dinner. She evidently did not speak French willingly, and my Italian had been too long in rust for fluency. Of English she shewed not the least knowledge. There were stories told in her hearing, at some of which to avoid laughter would have been scarcely possible, and still she never smiled once. If I wanted any additional evidence that she was not of English origin, chance presented one, as she was referred to by the Russian for the name of a certain Sicilian family where a “vendetta” had been preserved for two entire centuries; and the Countess replied, with a slight blush, “The Marquis of Bianconetti—my uncle.”
I own that, while it was with a sense of relief I learned to believe that the Countess was not the sister of my poor friend, I still could not help feeling something akin to disappointment at the discovery. I felt as though I had been heaping up a store of care and anxiety around me for one I had never seen before, and for whom I could really take no deep interest. One husbands their affections as they grow older. The spendthrift habit of caring for people without even knowing why, or asking wherefore, which is one of the pastimes—and sometimes a right pleasant one, too—of youth, becomes rarer as we go further on in life, till at last we grow to be as grudging of our esteem as of our gold, and lend neither, save on good interest and the best security. Bad health has done for me the work of time, and I am already oppressed and weary of the evils of age.
Something, perhaps, of this kind—some chagrin, too, that the Countess was not my old acquaintance» though, Heaven knows, it had grieved me far more to know she had been—some discontent with myself for being discontented—or “any other reason why,”—but so was it, I felt what in fashionable slang is called “put out,” and, in consequence, resolved to leave the party and make my way homeward at the first favourable opportunity. Before setting out I had determined, as the night would be moonlit, to make a slight détour, and thus avoid all the fracas and tumult of driving home in a mob; and, with this intention, had ordered my phaeton to meet me in the Mourg-Thal, at a small inn, whither I should repair on foot, and then make my tour back by the Castle of Eberstein.
A move of the company to take coffee on a rock beside the Waterfall gave me the opportunity I desired, and I sauntered along a little path which in a few moments led me into the Pine Forest, and which, from the directions I had received, I well knew conducted over the mountain, and descended by a series of steep zigzags into the valley of the Mourg.
Although I had quitted the party long before sunset, the moon was high and bright ere I reached the spot where my carriage awaited me. Exhilarated by the unwonted exertion—half-gratified, too, by the consciousness of supporting a degree of fatigue I had been pronounced incapable of,—I took my seat in good spirits, to drive back to Baden. As I ascended the steep road towards Eberstein, I observed that lights were gleaming from the windows of the large salon of the castle, that looks towards the glen. I knew that the Grand Ducal family were at Carlsruhe, and was therefore somewhat surprised to see these signs of habitation in one of the state apartments of the château.
Alternately catching glimpses of and again losing these bright lights, I slowly toiled up the steep acclivity, which, to relieve my ponies, I ascended on foot. We were near the top, the carriage had preceded me some fifty yards or so, and I, alone, had reached a deeply-shaded spot, over which an ancient outwork of the castle threw a broad shadow, when suddenly I was startled by the sound of voices, so close beside me that I actually turned to see if the speakers were not following me; nor was it till they again spoke that I could believe that they were standing on the terrace above me. If mere surprise at the unexpected sound of voices was my first sensation, what was it to that which followed, as I heard a man’s voice say,—
“But how comes this M. Templeton to be of any consequence in the matter? It is true he was a witness, but he has no interest in troubling himself with the affair. He is an invalid besides—some say, dying.”
“Would he were dead!” interrupted a lower voice; but, although the accents were uttered with an unusual force, I knew them—at once I recognised them. It was the Countess spoke.
“Why so, if he never recognised you?”
“How am I certain of this?” said she again. “How shall I satisfy my own fears, that at every instant are ready to betray me? I dread his reserve more than all.”
“If he be so very inconvenient,” interposed the man, in a half-careless tone, “there may surely be found means to induce him to leave this. Invalids are often superstitious. Might not a civil intimation that his health was suffering from his séjour incline him to depart?”
The Countess made no reply: possibly the bantering tone assumed by her companion displeased her. After a brief silence, he resumed,—
“Does the man play? does he frequent the Saal? There surely are a hundred ways to force a quarrel on him.”
“Easier than terminate it with advantage,” said she, bitterly.
I heard no more; for, although they still continued to speak, they had descended from the terrace and entered the garden. I was alone. Before me, at the turn of the road, stood my servant, waiting with the horses. All was still as the grave. Was this I had heard real? were the words truly spoken, or were they merely some trick of an overwrought, sickly imagination! I moved into the middle of the road, so as to have a better view of the old “Schloss;” but, except a single light in a remote tower, all was shrouded in darkness: the salon, I believed to have been lit up, lay in deepest shadow. There was nothing I had not given, at that instant, to be able to resolve my doubts.
I walked hurriedly on, eager to question my servant both as to the voices and the lights; and as I went my eye fell upon an object before me in the road. I took it up—it was a glove—a lady’s glove! How came it there, if it had not fallen from the terrace?
With increased speed I moved forward, my convictions now strengthened by this new testimony.
My servant had neither seen nor heard any thing; indeed his replies to me were conveyed in a tone that shewed in what light he regarded my questioning. It was scarcely possible that he could not have been struck with the bright glare that illuminated a portion of the castle, yet he had not seen it; and as to voices, he stoutly averred that, although he could distinctly note the clatter of the mill in the valley below us, he had heard no human sound since we left the little inn.
It was to no purpose that I questioned and cross-questioned. I soon saw that my eagerness was mistaken by him for evidence of wandering faculties; and I perceived, in his anxiety that I should return, a fear, that my malady had taken some new turn. So far, too, was he right. My head was, indeed, troubled—strange fancies and shadowy fears crossing my excited mind as I went; so that, ere I reached my inn, I really was unable to collect my faculties, and separate the dream-land from the actual territory of fact. And now it is with painful effort I write these lines, each moment doubting whether I should not erase this, or insert that. Were it not for this glove, that lies on my paper before me, I should believe all to be mere illusion. What a painful struggle this is, and how impossible to allay the fears of self-deception! At one moment I am half resolved to order a saddle-horse and return to Eberstein—for what?—with what hope of unravelling the mystery? At the next I am determined to repair to the Countess’s villa near the town, and ask if she has returned; but how shall I venture on such a liberty? If my ears had not deceived me, she is and must be Caroline Graham; and yet would I not rather believe that my weary brain had wandered, than that this were so?
But what are these sounds of voices in the antechamber? I hear Guckhardt’s voice!
Yes: my servant had thought it prudent to fetch the doctor, and he has been here and felt my pulse, and ordered cold to my temples, and a calming draught. It is clear, then, that I have been ill, and I must write no more!