At the Councillor's; or, A Nameless History

by E. Marlitt

A loud footfall behind her made her look around. Franz the miller, with an iron crowbar over his shoulder, was passing by, to look after the upper weir, he said. His presence sent the blood to her cheeks and scared her from her post of observation. While Franz hurried on she walked slowly along the bank of the stream. She could not yet make up her mind to return to the villa; her toilette for the evening would be completed long before Henriette, who was determined to be present at the fête, had half finished the adornments which were to make the ravages of disease less conspicuous.

The solitude here was so delicious; there was no one to see how red her eyes were, or how angrily her wayward heart was battling with the sinful desires that had urged her hither,—yes, they had been the cause of her coming. She would not spare herself or lie to her own soul! She had not come to see the quiet house, and the dear old friend whose home it was, and she had not been sure that he was not there. She had hoped—what? And when another face than his had appeared at the window the whole place had been to her lonely and deserted.

Franz had vanished in the distance. She was approaching the ruin. The circle of water about it glistened, and through the shrubbery she could see the graceful bridge spanning the ditch. At the moment a man was crossing it from the tower. A thick reddish beard covered the lower part of his face; he wore a labourer's blouse, and was driving two roes before him with his stick. They leaped across the bridge and fled into the recesses of the park.

Kitty would have paid the man no especial attention—workmen were continually employed in and about the tower—if his conduct had not seemed strange to her. The councillor was very fond of these roes; he was provoked when they strayed into the park, and here this stranger was intentionally chasing them across the ditch! Was he one of the discontented crowd of factory-hands who envied the rich man and wrought mischief to his possessions whenever they could? He turned into a path leading through the park-gates out upon the high-road; she followed him with her eyes until he was lost in the thicket. The resemblance was wonderful! In his carriage and height, in his whole make, indeed, the man in the blouse might have been the councillor's twin brother.

She stood involuntarily rooted to the spot, looking towards the tower whence he had come. How charmingly the landscape here harmonized with the structure! How well the modern architect had known how to spare and now to efface so as to weave about the old ruin a romantic charm!

Silence reigned again; no sound was heard but the faint flapping of the doves' wings; those graceful sailors of the air were floating in the crimson evening light, slipping through the interstices of the mural crown of the tower as it showed clear against the western sky—No, it was no mural crown! in a flash it was a burning crater, vomiting forth with a noise like thunder a cloud of pitchy vapour into the serene skies. The ground seemed to be torn from beneath the girl's feet. She was dashed to the earth and in an instant immersed in the cool waters of the fosse.

What was it? Every one came running from the villa to take refuge in the garden. The house tottered from foundation to roof-tree. An earthquake? As if bereft of all sense, the members of the household stood still in the open air as though expecting to see the earth yawn at their feet. Little rills of water were trickling through the grass of the lawn. The air began to be filled with smoke, and to scatter everywhere on the gravel walks particles of burned material. The panes of plate-glass in the windows were broken; and in the ball-room the huge mirror stretching from floor to ceiling lay shattered into a thousand pieces, the silk and velvet draperies had dropped from their fastenings around the stage, and the workmen had with difficulty escaped injury from the falling framework.

Passers-by rushed in from the road, among them Anton, who was just returning from town. "There! there!" they cried to the Frau President, who was leaning half fainting upon Flora's arm, and as they spoke they pointed to the distant portion of the park. There was a fire in that direction, and huge volumes of smoke were pouring upwards so thickly that the sparks showed in its pitchy blackness like rockets in a dark night.

"The powder in the tower has exploded!" a voice cried from the midst of the throng.

"Nonsense!" Anton replied, with an attempt at a laugh, although his teeth were chattering in his head with terror. "That old stuff has long been past exploding, and the few pinches of fresh which the Herr Councillor had stored there in jest could not have stirred a tile from its place."