CHAPTER XI
TANGLED TALES
"One lie needs seven to wait upon it."
(Wisdom of Nations).
Steven was scarcely observant by nature: your important, self-centred youth is rarely like to prove so. Yet the Burgrave's welcome at Wellenshausen, cordial to effusion as it was, left upon him a further impression of discomfort.
Jerome's Chancellor had very fine manners, when he chose, and was altogether a finer personality than, somehow, Steven had expected. His joviality was certainly hard to reconcile with that character of tyrant that seemed to be universally ascribed to him. Moreover, Steven had no more reasonable ground of complaint as to the quality of the hospitality proffered to him than as to that of the wines served during the heavy midday meal, for which they soon assembled. His irritable self-esteem, ruffled by the thought of having passed for a young gentleman under control, ought to have been thoroughly soothed by the attentions, the deference, the honours that the Burgrave lavished upon him. And yet——
When he was once more left alone in the great apartments that he had shared with the fiddler on the previous evening, he found himself heartily wishing again for his singular comrade—nay, wishing that he had followed the latter's advice and were still hobnobbing with him, along the wide valley roads or in some vine-hung inn arbour, in safety and independence.
He went discontentedly to the window and flung it wide; it was sunk in some eight feet of solid masonry, and, high as the castle stood, the honest airs of heaven seemed to have no free access into the chamber.
How was it that the vault-like oppression of the place had not struck him yesterday? He stood, pondering, for a while; then gathered himself into the window recess, even as Geiger-Hans had done during last night's watches.
The evening shades were rising apace. Night birds were beginning to circle round the lonely towers; distant lights to twinkle in the village below. How far off lay those comfortable glimmers yonder; how sheer the depth that separated him from them! An owl hooted, and the chill of the stone pressing about him seemed to creep into his marrow. He heard a great clang somewhere beneath and the grinding of iron-bolts. "Pah—the place is like a prison-house!" he cried to himself angrily and scrambled back into the gloomy room.
Then his valet entered with candles. The fellow's face bore a smirk; he, at least, found the Burg (with the fascination of Mademoiselle Eliza) an incomparably more agreeable spot than the Silver Stork.