"But that means that you have not forgiven me and I ask your pardon with all my heart. It is my pride, my great pleasure to have you consider my place worthy of your attention. Miss Ashton," the young foreigner now turned directly to Betty, "surely you can appreciate and pardon my mistake."
Neither of the other two girls had been paying any special attention to Betty, but at the stranger"s surprising knowledge of her name they turned toward her at once. And both decided that they had never seen her look so pretty or so angry in her life. Apparently she had not spoken before because she had not been willing to trust herself. And Polly had a sudden sense of satisfaction in the knowledge that the Princess did not lose her poise and self-control in her anger, as she so invariably did.
"You ask us to understand and pardon your mistake," Betty now began quietly. "But suppose that the bullet which you fired so carelessly had killed my sister. Would you still have expected us to make the same answer? Of course we are just as much intruders upon your property as if we were men instead of American girls. But I presume that when you fired, thinking that we might be poachers, you would have been indifferent had you wounded one of us. For I believe in Germany it is the fashion for the soldiers who are intended for the defense of their country to have little respect for the lives of their country_men_."
This was a long and bitter speech for a young girl to have made. But remember that Betty Ashton had been living in Germany for the past two years at a time when the army had been frequently criticized and had suffered just as most travelers do from the rudeness of German officers upon the streets and in places of public amus.e.m.e.nt. Moreover, she had not yet recovered from her moment of fright over Esther and was annoyed at having their pleasure so destroyed.
Her accusation so surprised the young man to whom it was addressed that for a moment he did not reply. For evidently he did not often find himself obliged to be placed on the defensive side in a discussion and the position did not please him.
"I regret to have frightened you. And I had no intention of injuring any one," he remarked stiffly. "It was my plan to fire into the air, but I stumbled at the critical moment. However, I did not suppose that the shot came anywhere in your direction. And I am sorry that you should consider this but another instance of the lack of courtesy in His Majesty"s officers."
There was an awkward pause. Betty was holding her big flowered hat pressed close against her white dress, her lips were scarlet and her face so pale that her gray eyes looked almost smoke-colored. The wind and the long walk had loosened her hair until it was curling and blowing about her forehead like tiny red-gold clouds. Honestly no young man could have remained angry with her for any great length of time.
She slipped one arm through Esther"s, as Esther had continued white and nervous, and beckoning Polly with the other to join them, with the merest inclination of her head the Princess started to lead the little company away. But before she had gone more than a few feet she stopped and turned around.
The young man was standing exactly where they had left him with his hat still in his hand and his face and figure rigid.
Betty advanced nearer toward him. "Lieutenant von Reuter," she said, "it is I who must now beg your pardon. You were kind to me once when my maid and I lost our way in trying to find the village of Waldheim. But under no circ.u.mstances should I have said anything that reflected upon you or your friends. I know that you are an officer in the German army, so naturally you must think as little of American courtesy as--" But not knowing just how to end her sentence Betty did the wisest possible thing and smiled.
And at once the young man was figuratively on his knees before her again. "Don"t go away just yet," he pleaded; "you must know that I have been asking my cousin Frederick about you. It is he who has told me your name and he must also have spoken of me to you. You yourselves have said that it was lovely here in my forest and surely you must be weary enough to remain a little time longer. It is not as though we were entire strangers, with Frederick your friend and my relative."
This time Betty laughed outright. "Your cousin is scarcely our friend; we have only boarded in the same pension with him in Berlin while my sister was there studying music." She looked a little more searchingly at Esther. Esther had not been very well for several weeks and now certainly was unfit for the long walk home in the hottest part of the afternoon without more rest.
With an inclination of her pretty head the Princess surrendered.
"If you really are sure that you won"t mind we should like to sit here in the shade a little longer," she confessed. "That is if we will not trouble you. You must not feel that you must remain with us, for I promise that we shall do nothing any harm."
Without replying, Carl von Reuter then led Esther to her discarded tree trunk, the other girls having already found seats.
"If you will be good enough to wait for a few moments I should like very much to bring you some tea. The little house there is my hunting lodge and I have all sorts of bachelor arrangements inside," he announced. And the suggestion was far too welcome for any one of the girls to decline.
Then in the five minutes of the young man"s absence as rapidly as possible Betty sketched the outline of her acquaintance with him and the knowledge of his history which she had since been able to acquire. He was the son of the German count whose stone castle they had seen, and of course the heir to the t.i.tle and estate. He was also, as she had already revealed, a lieutenant in the German army and probably about twenty-two or-three years old. The family was a very old and proud one and although they still owned a great deal of land, they were extremely poor.
But Betty had to cease her confidences abruptly, seeing that their unexpected host was coming toward them with four cups of tea and a tray of small crackers and cakes.
No American man could have performed these small social services with so little embarra.s.sment, but as Carl explained he had had an English mother and had been taught to a.s.sist her with their guests from the time he was a boy.
And by the time the tea had been drunk and the cakes eaten the little company had apparently reached terms of complete friendliness, having already forgotten their uncomfortable earlier meeting.
"I am dreadfully sorry to find that your little house in the woods is nothing but a hunting lodge," Betty confided. "For you see I have been telling my sister and Miss O"Neill that this place was a kind of enchanted forest where "Hansel and Gretel" must once upon a time have lost their way."
However, Carl von Reuter shook his head protestingly. "Why not think of it instead as Siegfried"s forest before he went forth in search of Brunhilde."
"Won"t you tell us the story of Siegfried?" Polly asked. "I have never heard the opera and it has been such a long time since I read it."
Carl laughed. "I am a soldier, not a poet," he explained, "and the legend is too long and too complicated for me to repeat all of it to you. Besides, you are sure to recall it as soon as I begin. Siegfried, you remember, was the son of Siegmund and Sieglinde and the youth who knew no fear. He is brought up in a forest by a wicked dwarf named Mime, who desires that Siegfried wrest the magic treasure of the Nibelung from the giant Fafnir who guards it in the gaping cave of the Niedhole. With the sword of his father Siegfried goes forth and destroys the giant and then appears wearing the glittering tarn helmet, the invincible armor and the magic ring. From the blood of the dead Fafnir, with which Siegfried touches his lips, he is enabled to understand the voices of birds. And when one of these sings to him of a maiden surrounded by flames who can be won only by the man who knows no fear, Siegfried sets out in search of Brunhilde. On a gra.s.sy mound he discovers a sleeping figure clad in armor and surrounded by flames.
Removing the shield and helmet, he sees a flood of red-gold hair rippling around the form of a sleeping woman."
The story teller stopped and Esther inquired:
"You know the story of Siegfried so well, I wonder if you sing?"
"Not very well," the young man replied. And then, as though to disprove his own words and without further urging, he began singing in a fine, clear tenor, glancing now and then toward Betty Ashton, the beautiful song of Siegfried"s that awakens the sleeping Brunhilde:
"No man it is!
Hallowed rapture Thrills through my heart; Fiery anguish Enfolds my eyes.
My senses wander And waver.
Whom shall I summon Hither to help me?
Mother, mother!
Be mindful of me."
Later in the afternoon when they had almost reached their own cottage in the woods, Betty suddenly slipped an arm across her older sister"s shoulder. Polly had already said good-by.
"After all we did discover a kind of enchanted forest, didn"t we, Esther?" she whispered.
But Esther was tired and annoyed. "Lieutenant von Reuter was an agreeable enough fellow for a foreigner, if that is what you mean, Betty," she returned. "But I got rather tired of his telling us the story of Siegfried which I certainly knew perfectly well. Besides, it seemed to me that he was trying to make an impression upon us. And I shall never, never be able to understand how you can like these German youths so much. I should feel a great deal happier about you and so would your brother if you were safely back in Woodford."
"Don"t be a goose, dear," was Betty"s only answer.
CHAPTER XII
The Uncertain Future
"Have you ever wished some days that you were nine years old instead of nineteen, Miss Adams--Margaret?" Polly O"Neill corrected herself hastily.
The girl and the older woman were sitting out in the yard in front of their funny little German cottage one afternoon just before twilight.
Polly had been reading aloud until the dusk had settled down too thickly, and since then had been silent, gazing pensively at the far line of hills toward the west.
Margaret Adams looked closely at the girl before replying. For the past few days she had seen that there was something unusual weighing upon Polly"s mind, since she was never able to conceal her emotions, and had wondered whether she was feeling homesick or if something had occurred to worry her. But she only answered lightly: "No, Polly, I am afraid when one is thirty-five one is more apt to wish to be nineteen than nine. But would you like to tell me, dear, what special objection there is to your present age? Don"t, if you feel that you would rather not, or if you would be betraying a confidence."
But Polly gave a characteristic shrug. "No," she returned, "I would not be betraying a confidence, only an imagination, and since the imagination happens to be my own, I suppose I have the right to betray it."
Not comprehending exactly what the younger girl was trying to say and yet understanding that she would make herself plain later on, the woman quietly waited. She was interested in the processes of Polly"s mind and liked to see them work themselves out.
"Do you like foreign men?" was the girl"s next apparently irrelevant question.
But by this time Miss Adams had begun to have a faint suspicion of what might be at the end of her companion"s confession. For in the past two weeks since Polly"s, Betty"s and Esther"s visit to the German forest, she too had become interested in some of its consequences. Yet she answered with entire truthfulness:
"Why, of course, Polly child, I like foreign men. Why should not one? It is absurd and prejudiced to like or dislike a person because of his nationality; it is the man"s own character that counts."
"Oh, yes, I know that is what one should feel and say. I don"t mean to be rude," Polly added quickly, blushing over her fatal habit of saying whatever was uppermost in her mind. "I was just wondering whether it was actually true. Don"t most of us really in the end like best the kind of people and life to which we have been accustomed. Now, for example, just suppose that we take a girl who has been brought up in the United States almost all her life, where she has had boy acquaintances and friends whom she has known in a simple, intimate way, without thinking of any one of them seriously. Then bring her to a foreign country, take Germany, just when she is about grown. All of a sudden imagine a young fellow turning up entirely unlike her old boy friends, handsome, charming and behaving as though he were falling in love with her. Do you believe that the girl could honestly care for him? Don"t you think that it would just be a mistaken fancy on her part and that some day when she grew older she would want her old friends and a.s.sociations again. Why, she might even meet one of her former acquaintances and find that she liked him best, because after all he was also an American and thought about life and women and lots of other things more in the way that she did."
Margaret Adams covered both ears with her hands. "My dear Polly," she began, "if you think I have imagination enough to follow all those supposings and all those mixed-up sentences and ideas, you must consider me cleverer than I am. But as long as I happen to be able to guess whom you are talking about, don"t you think we might be straightforward. We will never speak of it to any one else, nor to each other if it seems wiser not. But of course you mean----"