Chapter IV: Charlie in Love

That night, at the very time the three gentlemen were in the smoking-room busy with their china-bowled pipes, and with silver tankards of beer before them--Heinrich full of happy dreams about his fair-haired cousin and the trick they had played her; the old Count full of memories of Waterloo and the coming war, French insolence, the Vaterland, and all the rest of it; Charlie thinking how divinely Ernestine sang and played, how sweet her downcast lashes looked, how bright her upward glances, how lovely were the white hands that wandered over the ivory keys, and made the said keys look very dark and yellow by comparison, and while to him and Heinrich it seemed that life at Frankenburg would be almost insupportable without the two 'belles' thereof. While all this was being thought of in the smoking-room, we say, the two young ladies were comparing their notes in their mutual dressing-room before retiring for the night to their beds--those most uncomfortable couches which, in 'the Vaterland,' are mere wooden boxes with pillows half-way down, and so arranged that one can neither sit nor lie at full length therein.

That Charlie was handsome, agreeable, pleasant, and so forth, was voted and carried _nem. con._, and Ernestine was full of fun and pleasure at the success of her scheme--for with her it originated--for luring Herminia into love with her brother by having him introduced to her as a stranger.

'But oh, Herminia!' she exclaimed, 'to think of you getting the start of me!'

'In what way?' asked Herminia, putting the whitest of feet into the daintiest of slippers.

'In getting engaged _first_; it is most unkind!' continued Ernestine, laughing, as she let down the masses of her dark silky hair.

'You forget, dear cousin, that I was engaged when in my cradle or berceaunette.'

Then the two girls, now nearly half-undressed, laughed as only young and happy girls can laugh, and with two snowy arms upheld, and dimpled elbows shown, Ernestine went on brushing out that thick, dark silky hair of hers.

'I declare, Herminia, I _do_ think I am pretty,' said she, suddenly pausing and surveying herself in her laced night-robe in the long cheval glass.

'You are too beautiful not to be quite aware of it,' replied Herminia.

'I wonder if Carl Pierrepont admired me?'

'Why?'

'Because--I should like him to do so.'

'Who could fail to admire you?' responded the happy Herminia.

'How sweetly he sang that song with me.'

'Heinrich tells me he is poor,' was the suggestive remark of Herminia.

'Alas!' after a pause, the former said, smiling.

'Herr Pierrepont scarcely took his gaze off you all the night; when you sang alone he seemed entranced, and when with you, in those duets, his voice became tender and tremulous.'

'Herminia, do you really think so, or do you jest?'

'I do not jest; hence my suggestion about his being poor, for that man is loving you at first sight.'

'Your own sudden happiness, and the revulsion of feeling consequent to the great _dénouement_ of to-day, lead you to think so,' replied Ernestine, her smile brightening nevertheless, for she liked the idea.

'Nay, nay, his visit is to last some time; and time will prove that I am right,' persisted Herminia, twisting up her coils of golden brown hair.

Ernestine sat for a time toying with a velvet slipper half on and half off her pretty foot, and then suddenly she said--

'Oh, Herminia, how can such a man care for me?'

'Why not, cousin dear? who would not, or could not, fail to care for you?'

'But he seems so proud and cold, and so very English.'

'You quite mistake, and only wish to hear me contradict you. He is much less so than your special admirer, Baron Grünthal, the Director of the Upper Consistorial Court.'

'A hideous old frump!' said Ernestine, tossing her head.

'Old! He is only forty.'

'But that is more than twice my age. My husband must be young and handsome.'

'Like Carl Pierrepont?'

'Yes, like Carl Pierrepont.'

'He certainly seems to have impressed you,' said Herminia.

'You forget how often and how much Heinrich has written of him in his letters to me. He seems quite like an old friend. How strange it would be,' continued the girl, while a dreamy expression stole into her beautiful dark eyes, as she sat with her slender fingers interlaced over her knees, 'how very strange it would, if in him I should have met--met----'

'What, cousin?

'My fate.'

'Let him take heed, that, in meeting you, he has not met with his own,' said Herminia merrily.

'I have been longing to go to a wedding, and yours more than all, dear Herminia; for being aware of your betrothal, it was one to which I always looked forward. I shall be one of the bridesmaids, of course; and the two daughters of the Justiz-rath, and the two girls from Rheinberg, though their toilettes are odious, and Hermangilda's hair is always muffled up like a mop.'

'A golden mop, though; but, dearest cousin, how your tongue does run on! Does it never occur to you that no marriage can take place with this French war--oh, meine Gott!--before us?'

And her eyes of violet blue suddenly filled with tears as she spoke, as vague images of death and battle rose before her.

'Forgive me, Herminia. Yet I was not jesting.'

'Forgive you, dear? Yes. I may as well do so,' replied the other girl, kissing her cousin on both cheeks; 'for to you and aunt I owe the love that Heinrich bears me--the love that I bear him.'

'And which Herr Mansfeld so nearly carried off!'

'And now, as we have our prayer's to say, good-night.'

Herminia was right; the girl, indeed, a close observer, was seldom wrong in her deductions, for 'Herr Carl Pierrepont' was hopelessly smitten at last by Ernestine, who, like the lively blonde, her cousin, was rich in those charms, and mere than all, those pretty mannerisms, or tricks of women, that win and secure a man's love for ever.

Charlie was neither proud nor reserved--only a little shy at first; he had been engaged in many _affaires du coeur_, but a genuine attack of the tender passion was new to him. He soon found himself regularly installed and adopted, an _ami du maison_, with this delightful family at Frankenburg. As an Englishman, his natural love of hunting, shooting, and fishing won him the friendship of the old Count, with whom he drank as many flasks of Rhine wine and jugs of beer as he wished; but he had one blot in the eyes of the latter--he could never take cordially to _saur kraut_.

He was a prime favourite with the Countess from his general _bonhommie_ of manner; and with Ernestine--ah! well, with Ernestine--he speedily became more of a favourite than the girl would have dared to acknowledge even to herself.

Society at Frankenburg was narrow and monotonous; most of the visitors who came, especially Baron Grünthal and the Justiz-rath, spoke only of politics, of Bismarck's plans, and the coming war, which did not interest the ladies, save in so far as the 95th Thuringians were concerned.

The days were devoted to rides and rambles amid the beautiful scenery around the old Schloss; the evenings to music, to singing, and frequently to dancing when the daughters of the Justiz-rath, or those of Baron Rhineberg, were present; and then our two 95th men were always in full uniform, _à la Prussien_; and the ladies were all unanimous that Charlie looked _so_ handsome.

Those epaulettes! those epaulettes! To many a young English officer the pride and glory of wearing them was only secondary to the kiss of the first girl he loved; and where are they _now_?

So Charlie was proud of his epaulettes.

Heinrich had fairly won his lovely cousin--under 'false colours,' certainly; but, nevertheless, he _had_ won her; perhaps, from the girl's peculiar temperament and pride, he might never have done so otherwise; but having so won her, he was compelled to be thankful, for with this odious French war on the _tapis_--a war which, but for his love, he would have hailed with genuine German ardour, and the 95th under 'orders of readiness' for the Rhine--marriage, as Herminia herself had said, was not to be thought of: so they had but to trust to time and wait.

The Countess being always busy about the management of her household, the Count having frequently to visit Aix about a lawsuit in one of the courts there, and Heinrich being usually much with his _fiancée_, threw Charlie and the young Grafine so much together that their hearts were hopelessly entangled; yet no word of love escaped the latter: he knew too well his lack of civil rank, and how many, or rather how _few_, kreutzers he had per diem as a Prussian lieutenant of infantry. He could but abandon himself to the witchery of her society, to dream of the joy of loving and being loved by her, and drift away on the tide, too well aware that the charm of such a life and the tender influences of such society could not last for ever.

With all their exalted and somewhat absurd ideas of their own family, their rank and antiquity, the household of the Count and Countess Von Frankenburg was a homely and kindly one; and, after his garrison life, there was, to Charlie, a wonderful charm in accompanying the cousins, Ernestine especially, to see the plough and carriage horses taken to water at a certain pond below the old Schloss, to feed the peacocks on the terrace, to throw corn to the hens, and watch them picking and pecking between the stones in the yard at the home farm.

And Ernestine was to him the Eve of this Eden!

But for the soft and gentle influences under which Charlie and his friend were at Frankenburg, they would certainly, like Prussian officers in general (though gaming is strictly forbidden in the army), have spent many an hour at the New Redoute, or Gaming House, in the Comphausbad-Strasse, where games of hazard, rouge-et-noir, roulette, and so forth, are played from morning till midnight.

In lieu of this dissipation, they had quiet walks in the woods or visits to old ruins in the neighbourhood; and Ernestine, who was German enough to have a strong love of the mystic, the ethereal, and the romantic, and a desire to dabble with the unseen world, told Charlie many a strange weird story; and though with all an Englishman's mistrust of such things, it was impossible not to be charmed by her earnestness, the modulation of her voice, the bright expression of the dilated hazel eye, and the occasional but perfectly innocent pressure of her pretty hand upon his arm, when she sought to impress him by some remarkable episode.

In the old ivied tower at Frankenburg she showed him the window of the room in which the third wife of Charlemagne, Fastrada, daughter of Count Raoul, died, while the Emperor was absent at Frankfort; and told how he caused her body, which was so fair and beautiful, to the end that it might never decay, to be enclosed in a coffin of the purest crystal, which he kept in that chamber, and he never quitted it by day or by night, neglecting his empire and government, and forgetting all the concerns of war or peace, till Turpin the Wise resolved to cure him.

Watching his opportunity, while the Emperor slept, he opened the coffin, and took the golden wedding-ring from the finger of Fastrada, and cast it into the lake below the castle, and thus broke Charles' spell of sorrow. From that day the great lake into which the magic ring was cast, and which quite surrounded the Schloss, began to shrink, and nothing of it remained but the tiny horse-pond already mentioned.

And while she was telling this legend, a little grey owl sat in the window of the ruin, winking and blinking in the sunshine, as if he was weary of having heard the story so often.

The ruin, too, was haunted by the spectre of a former Count of Frankenburg, who, resolving to get rid of his Countess, to the end that he might marry again, invited her to share a dish of love-apples with him. These he divided with a silver-knife poisoned on one side; but by some mistake, he ate all the poisoned halves himself, and so fell dead at the table; and there in the upper story of the tower, his cries of pain and despair were sometimes heard on the wind in the stormy nights of winter.

So, amid this sweet intercourse--like one gathering beautiful flowers on the brink of a giddy precipice--did Charlie Pierrepont drift into a deep and hopeless passion.

He never spoke of it, but surely his eyes must have told, and his manner too, that he loved her. Oh yes, how he loved her, this earnest and warm-hearted young Englishman, yet was silent. He dared not seek to lead her into a promise to wait till the sun of Fortune shone on him, to waste her young and happy life till slow promotion came: and even were he a colonel, the Count might--nay, would--look for wealth or rank, or both; and while he--Charlie--was thus waiting, could he ask a girl so lovely to trust to the doctrine of chances, for a lucky spoke in the wheel of the blind goddess, and to grow _fade_ and withered with the sickness of hope deferred?

Yet the sweet face, the dark shining hair, the tender, bright eyes, the pretty winning ways--oh, those pretty winning ways, that twine so round the heart of a man!--haunted him in the waking hours of the night, and in his tormenting, yet delicious, dreams by day.