Chapter X: The House by the Fleethen

The abode of Herr Wyburg was situated in the oldest part of Hamburg, where the streets are narrow, crowded, irregular, and, if picturesque, squalid. They are generally of great height, built in the Dutch fashion of brick and wood, and those inhabited by the lower orders have their narrow windows so near each other as to give them the aspect of huge manufactories, but with a heavy and gloomy character about them.

Many of these brick-nogging, tumble-down dwellings are admirable subjects for the pencil. Numerous canals called _Fleethen_ intersect this quarter, and run along the backs of the houses, giving the streets a resemblance to those of Holland. In summer the muddy exhalations from these are very unwholesome, and might prove pestilential, were it not for the agitation in them caused by the current of the Elbe.

In this odious and unsavoury, but picturesque part of the city, which escaped the great fire of 1842, and which has undergone little change since the days of the Hanseatic League, the back wall of Herr Wyburg's house was washed by the waters of the Fleethen, while on one side it was isolated from the haggard district in which it stood by a large market-garden.

The original frame of the house had been altogether wood--Baltic pine--but would seem to have been patched and repaired with bricks.

The arms of Holstein and Schleswig, the nettleleaf and two lions respectively, were reproduced in various parts of it, for in other times it had been a residence of the old Counts of Holstein, the ancient Lords of Hamburg, a dignity claimed by the Kings of Denmark till 1768; but in rank it had come sorely down in the world, just as in Scottish towns we find the ancient abodes of nobility, and even of royalty, now abandoned to the squalid and the poor.

Its walls were in some places panelled with almost black mahogany, quaintly, if uncouthly, carved, and much discoloured by damp from the adjacent Fleethen. The windows were high, jealously grated with iron, and admitted but a foggy kind of light, even by noonday, and the whole edifice had a general aspect of dreariness and desolation that sunk like a weight on the young heart of Ellinor Wellwood.

The back windows alone were ungrated, but then they overlooked the Fleethen, that system of canals and intersecting ditches which conceal many a crime, and where the body of the murdered--if found before being swept into the Elbe--passes often for that of a suicide.

When Wyburg withdrew with Sir Redmond, he offered that worthy his hand, but the latter ignored the action, and did not respond to it. In this he only acted 'snobbishly,' not because he knew the other to be a finished rascal; and over the face of the latter there passed a flush of rage and affront, while a dangerous gleam came into his watery eyes.

'It is no use, Sir Redmond, your attempting to come the fine or arrogant gentleman over me,' said Herr Wyburg; 'you and I are too old acquaintances for that.'

His English was remarkably distinct, though of course the foreign accent was very marked. He had been a billiard-marker in the Strand, but had to quit London in some haste, having become too well-known in the vicinity of 'Lester Square.' Hence it was that he knew English well, and London too, in all its worst, foreign, and most disreputable phases.

He was a billiard-marker and gambler still, and ready to do any rascality for which he was sufficiently paid. His wife--the Frau Wyburg--had once been a dancer in the Schweitzer Pavilion and Ambiguity Circus, during her less disreputable days, and was no more above taking a bribe than himself.

'Sir Redmond,' said he, pocketing the gold by which his services were to be secured, 'I have seen some pretty faces in my time, but the fraulein is downright beautiful!' he added, as he thought with genuine admiration of the clear, creamy skin which so often accompanies such hair and dark-blue eyes as those of Ellinor.

'This young lady is my wife,' said Sleath, a little emphatically; 'and I wish you and your worthy frau to take all requisite care of her for me--for a time.'

Herr Wyburg closed one eye, and, with intense cunning in the other, surveyed the speaker.

'Your wife?' said he.

'Yes.'

'She has no wedding-ring.'

'If it is not on her finger, it ought to be.'

'And you wish us to take care of her--that she does not escape, you mean?'

'Precisely.'

'Why?'

'Need _you_ ask me why?' said Sleath, with irritation. 'She is ill--strange,' he added, putting a finger to his forehead. 'Poor girl--you understand?'

Herr Wyburg winked his cunning eye again. He _did_ understand, and shrewdly disbelieved that the girl was Sleath's wife; yet her bearing, her fear, repugnance, and bodily weakness all puzzled him, and, like his wife, he knew not what to think, save that Sleath's golden sovereigns were very acceptable, and the latter now prepared to depart--his droski was still at the door--and he bade Frau Wyburg 'good-night,' after she had recommended him not to insist on again seeing Ellinor, who had retired to her room.

'Ah,' said the frau, with one of her detestable but would-be suave smiles, 'the Fraulein has got what the French call a _migrain_--perhaps it is periodical--any way the kindness and love of mein Herr,' she added, curtseying, 'will soon make it pass away.'

Ellinor felt intense relief when Sir Redmond drove away, and strove to hope that he had wearied or repented of his persecution, and would really discover the address of Mrs. Deroubigne; but how was she to travel without money, and she had scarcely a trinket about her!

She was left, with a slipshod girl in attendance, in a tolerably comfortable little room, with panelled walls, and having in one corner a pretty little bed (with one of those enormous square pillows peculiar to Germany), in another corner a tall cylindrical iron stove, in which a fire was glowing redly across the polished floor and on the panels of an antique clothes wardrobe.

She looked from the casement window, and saw the lights in houses opposite about fifty yards distant, and between them the still, deep, and gloomy Fleethen ditch, or canal, in which these lights were tremulously reflected; and something in the chill aspect of the water, or what it suggested, as it lay just beneath her window, made her shudder involuntarily.

She was soon to find that she was snared, and more a helpless prisoner than she had been when on board the _Flying Foam_; for Sir Redmond had placed her in this abode, knowing where he could find her again when he chose, and where, if he did _not_ choose, she might disappear, as so many entrapped English girls do on the Continent, and never be heard of again; and in gambling, dissipated, and dissolute Hamburg the muddy waters of its Fleethen hide many an unknown crime and many a secret sorrow.

Lenchen (or Ellen), the girl who attended her, if slipshod, was pretty and rosy, but saucy and flippant, though clad, like the usual Hamburg housemaid, with a piquant lace cap, her white arms bare to above the elbow, always scrupulously clean, and when she went to market wore long kid gloves and the gayest of shawls, so disposed under the arm as to conceal the basket, which is always shaped unpleasantly like a child's coffin, but containing butter, cheese, eggs, or whatever has been purchased.

Ignorant of the German language, and ignorant also, as yet, of the true character of the Frau Wyburg and her attendant Lenchen, and as their broken English gave--as it always rather absurdly seems to do--an idea of childish innocence even to the most rascally foreigner, Ellinor became inspired by a new sense of protection in the presence of these females--especially of Lenchen; but this confidence might have received a shock had she seen how that young lady comported herself with Rolandsburg's uhlans, and other _soldaten_ in the vicinity of the Dammthor Wall and the _Burger Militair Kauslie_.

Three days passed, during which she saw and heard nothing of Sir Redmond. The truth was, that worthy member of the 'upper ten' and his Fidus Achates--his friend Dolly Dewsnap--having, through the tipsy insolence of the latter, become involved in a street row at night with a member of the _Neidergericht_, or Inferior Court, to avoid the police, who 'wanted them,' had remained closely on board the yacht in the Binnenhafen, where she was now remasted, and fast becoming ready for sea in Ringbolt's skilful hands.

As the evening of the third day was approaching, Ellinor, feeling stronger and more impatient of action and restraint, attired herself for the street in the best of the garments found for her in the yacht.

'For what purpose?' asked Frau Wyburg, angrily.

'To have a walk in the city,' replied Ellinor.

'Mein Got, alone! and for what reason?'

'To make some inquiries for myself at the post-office, or elsewhere.'

'It cannot be permitted!' said Herr Wyburg, emphatically, and with knitted brows, as he interposed.

'Why?'

'The Herr Sleath has forbidden such; moreover, it is not safe!'

'Not safe in the streets of Hamburg?' questioned Ellinor, while tears started to her eyes. 'I am not a child!'

'Then why?'

There were disturbances abroad, he told her trade-union mobs were about, and the uhlans from the Dammthor were patrolling the streets with lance and carbine.

This was not true, but Ellinor was compelled to believe it, and relinquished the attempt with a sigh of bitterness and disappointment.

Lenchen daily brought her fresh flowers from market, as she said, by order of _Herr Sleet_.

The latter had often heard Ellinor say at Birkwoodbrae that she was never dull or lonely if she only had flowers about her.

But his gifts of flowers were unheeded now, she loathed them as if their petals exhaled not fragrance but poison.

Yet once she could not resist toying with some of them--the Dijon roses especially, and with their odour across the tide of memory there stole gently and subtly a memory of the past.

Who has not some association of this kind?

Ellinor's were of happy years at Birkwoodbrae and Robert Wodrow, and a torrent of tears came with the memory, and a kind of lethargic despair came over her as the little hope that dawned upon her began to die again--the hope that Sleath had relented and really meant to relinquish his persecution and restore her to her friends.