With a slight scream, she started up and caught her friend, who was tottering and like to fall in her arms. The old woman had been unable to receive this intelligence all at once. It was too appalling and too sudden; and when at last some intimation of it came home to her mind, she reeled under the shock. She uttered some incoherent words-"_my charge of you_," "_your mother_," "_the future_"-and then she sank quite insensible upon the sofa to which Annie Brunel had half-carried her.
CHAPTER XXIII.
HOME AGAIN.
Count Schonstein was in love. His ponderous hilarity had quite gone out of him. After Miss Brunel"s departure, he moved about the house alone and disconsolate; he was querulous about his meals; he forgot to tell lies about the price of his wines. He ceased to joke about marriage; he became wonderfully polite to the people about him, and above all to Will Anerley; and every evening after dinner he was accustomed to sit and smoke silently in his chair, going over in his mind all the incidents of Annie Brunel"s visit, and hoping that nothing had occurred to offend her.
Sometimes, in a fit of pa.s.sionate longing, he wished he was again a tea-dealer and she the daughter of one of his clerks. He grew sick of his ambitious schemes; inwardly cursed the aristocracy of this and every other country; and prayed for some humble cottage, with Annie Brunel for his wife, and with nothing for himself to do but sit and smoke, and watch the grape-cl.u.s.ters over the verandah.
Twenty years before he had been afflicted by the same visions. They did not alter much his course of life then; nor did he permit them to move him much now-except after dinner, when most people become generously impulsive and talkative. In one of these moods he confessed to Will the pa.s.sion which disturbed his repose.
Will stared at him, for the mere thought of such a thing seemed to him a sort of sacrilege; but the next moment he asked himself what right he had to resent the Count"s affection for Annie Brunel as an insult, and then he was silent.
"Tell me, have I a chance?" said the Count.
"How can I tell you?" he replied.
"You were very friendly with her. You do not imagine there is anybody else in the young lady"s graces?"
"I don"t know of any one whom Miss Brunel is likely to marry; but, as I say, how can I tell?"
"You imagine I have a fair field?" asked the Count, rather timidly.
"Oh, yes!" said Will, with a laugh, in which there was just a touch of bitterness. "But that is not the way you used to talk about women, and marriage, and so forth. Do you remember how you gloated over the saying of that newspaper man who was at the "Juliet" supper-about being "sewn up in a theological sack with a partner for life?" I suppose you were only whistling in the dark, to scare the ghosts away, and now--"
There was no need to complete the sentence. The doleful look on the Count"s rubicund face told its own tale. He shook his head, rather sadly, and contemplatively stirred his Moselle with a bit of biscuit.
"It"s time a man like me was married. I have plenty of money to give my wife her own way: we shan"t quarrel. There"s that big house standing empty; you can"t expect people to come and visit you, if you"ve n.o.body to receive them. Look how perfectly Miss Brunel could do that. Look at the grace of her demeanour, and her courtesy, and all that: why, though she"s ever so little a thing, she looks like an empress when she comes into a room. I never could get elsewhere such a wife as she would make."
"Doubtless not; but the point is to get her," said Will, almost defiantly-he did not know whether to laugh at or be indignant with the Count"s cool a.s.sumption.
"I tell you I would marry her if she was nothing but what she is--" the Count said, vehemently, and then he suddenly paused, with a look of frightened embarra.s.sment on his face.
"How could she be anything else than what she is?" asked Will, carelessly: he had not observed the Count"s trepidation.
"Oh-well-ah-if she were nothing more than an ordinary actress, without the manners of a lady, I should be inclined to marry her, on account of her-her sweetness of disposition, you know."
"What magnanimity!" said Will.
"Laugh as you please," said the Count, with a touch of offended dignity, "there are few men in my position who would marry an actress. If I _should_ marry Miss Brunel, I should consider that while she did me a favour I paid her quite as great a compliment. Look at the estimation in which actresses are held. Look at those women of the -- theatre; at Miss --, and Miss --, and Miss --. Don"t the public know all about them? And the public won"t stop to pick out one respectable actress from the lot, and be just to her. They all suffer for the sins of the majority; and any actress, whatever may be her personal character, ought to know that she lies under the ban of social suspicion, and--"
"Excuse my interrupting you. But you needn"t seek to lower Miss Brunel in _my_ opinion: I am not going to marry her. And I should advise you not to attempt to lower her in her own opinion, if you mean to remain friends with her. You can"t humble a woman into accepting you; you may flatter her into accepting you. If a woman does not think she is conferring a favour in marrying you, she won"t at all-that is, if she is the sort of a woman any man would care to marry."
"Leave that to me, my boy, leave that to me," said the Count, with a superb smile. "I rather fancy, if flattery is to win the day, that I shall not be far behind."
"And yet I heard you one evening say to Nelly Featherstone that "all pretty women were idiots." How could any woman help being offended by such a remark?"
"Why, don"t you see, you greenhorn, that Nelly isn"t pretty--"
"And you as good as told her so," said Will. "Besides, Nelly, like every other woman, fancies she is pretty in a certain way, and would rather that you had informed her of her idiotcy than of her plainness."
The Count blushed deeply. In making the remark to Miss Featherstone, he had imagined he was exhibiting a most remarkable and subtle knowledge of human weakness; and hoped to console her for the shape of her nose by sneering at the stupidity of prettier women. But the Count was a rich man, and a great favourite of Mr. Melton; and Nelly, being a prudent young woman, pocketed the affront.
A variety of circ.u.mstances now transpired to hasten the return of both Will and the Count to England. The former could do scarcely anything to the business for which he had come, through his inability to use his right arm. There were, besides, certain growing symptoms of irritation in the wounds which he had fancied were slowly healing, which made him anxious to consult some experienced English surgeon. Such were _his_ ostensible reasons.
Under these circ.u.mstances, what pleasure could the Count have in remaining in Schonstein alone? He preferred to have Will"s company on the homeward journey; and besides, he was personally interested in learning whether the injuries his friend had suffered were likely to become more dangerous. Such were _his_ ostensible reasons.
But the crowning thought of both of them, as they turned their back upon Schonstein, was-"I shall soon see Annie Brunel."
As they pa.s.sed through the village, Margarethe Halm came out from under her father"s door, and the driver stopped the carriage.
"You will see the young English lady when you return home?" said Grete to Will, with a blush on her pretty brown face.
"And if I do?"
"Will you give her this little parcel? it is my work."
With that she slipped the parcel into his hand. At this moment Hans Halm came forward and bade both the gentlemen good-bye; and in that moment Grete, unnoticed, timidly handed up to Hermann, who was seated beside the driver, another little parcel. There was a slight quivering of the lips as she did so; and then she turned away, and went up to her own room, and threw herself, sobbing, on the bed in quite a pa.s.sion of grief, not daring to look after the carriage as it rolled away into the forest.
Hermann stealthily opened the packet, and found therein a little gilt _Gebetbuch_, with coloured pictures of the saints throughout it, and a little inscription in front in Grete"s handwriting. Franz Gersbach, having been over at Donaueschingen, had secretly bought the tiny prayer-book for her; and he knew all the time for whom it was intended.
"She is a good girl," said Hermann, "and a good girl makes a good wife.
I will go once more to England, but never after that-no, not if I had seven hundred Counts for my master."
They stopped a day at Strasbourg, and there they found a lot of English newspapers of recent date.
"Look what the people are saying of Miss Brunel!" said Will, utterly confounded by the tone in which the journals spoke of "Rosalind."
The Count took up paper after paper, and eagerly scanned such notices of the pieces as he could find.
"They are not very enthusiastic," said he; "but they are really most complimentary--"
"Complimentary? Yes; but only to Miss Brunel, not to "Rosalind." Don"t you see in every one of them how the writer, wishing to speak as highly as possible of her, scarcely knows how to throw cold water on the play?
And yet cold water is thrown abundantly. The unanimity of these critiques simply says this-that Miss Brunel"s "Rosalind" is a failure."
"How will she bear it?" said the Count.
"She will bear it with the self-possession and sweetness that always cling to her."
For a moment he thought of an old simile of his of her being like an aeolian harp, which struck harshly or softly, by the north wind or the gentle south, could only breathe harmony in return. Would that fine perfection of composure still remain with her, now that her generous artistic aspirations seemed to have been crushed in some way? He knew himself-for the divine light of her face in certain moments had taught him-that there is no joy upon earth to be compared with the joy of artistic creation. He could imagine, then, that the greatest possible misery is that which results from strong desire and impotent faculty.
"It is "Rosalind" that is wrong, not she," he said. "Or she may be suffering from some indisposition-at any rate they may spare their half-concealed compa.s.sion. Let her get a part to suit her-and then!"
He was not quite satisfied. How was it that none of the critics-and some of them were men of the true critical, sensitive temperament, quick to discern the subtle personal relations existing between an artist and his art-dwelt upon the point that the part was obviously unsuited to her? Indeed, did not every one who had seen her in divers parts know that there were few parts which were so obviously suited to her?