"When you are gone, Brentwood and I mean to live together, to console one another."
"My dear, are you coming in?" said Mrs. Buckley. "Here is a letter for you, which I ought to have given you before."
The Major went in and received the mysterious epistle which the captain had brought the night before. When he saw it he whistled.
They sat waiting to know the contents. He was provokingly long in opening it, and when he did, he said nothing, but read it over twice with a lengthening visage. Now also it became apparent that there was another letter inside, at the superscription of which the Major having looked, put it in his pocket, and turning round to the mantel-piece, with his back to the others, began drumming against the fender with his foot, musingly.
A more aggravating course of proceeding he could not have resorted to.
Here they were all dying of curiosity, and not a word did he seem inclined to answer. At last, Mrs. Buckley, not able to hold out any longer, said,--
"From the Governor, was it not, my love?"
"Yes," he said, "from the Governor. And very important too," and then relapsed into silence.
Matters were worse than ever. But after a few minutes he turned round to them suddenly, and said,--
"You have heard of Baron Landstein."
"What," said Sam, "the man that the Doctor"s always abusing so? Yes, I know all about him, of course."
"The n.o.ble Landstein," said Alice. "In spite of the Doctor"s abuse he is a great favourite of mine. How well he seems to have behaved at Jena with those two Landwehr regiments."
"Landsturm, my love," said the Major.
"Yes, Landsturm I mean. I wonder if he is still alive, or whether he died of his wounds."
"The Doctor," said Sam, "always speaks of him as dead."
"He is not only alive," said the Major, "but he is coming here. He will be here to-day. He may come any minute."
"What! the great Landstein," said Sam.
"The same man," said the Major.
"The Doctor will have a quarrel with him, father. He is always abusing him. He says he lost the battle of Jena, or something."
"Be quiet, Sam, and don"t talk. Watch what follows."
The Doctor was seen hurrying up the garden-walk. He put down his gun outside, and bursting open the gla.s.s door, stepped into the room, holding aloft a black bird, freshly killed, and looking around him for applause.
"There!" he said; "I told you so."
The Major walked across the room, and put a letter in his hand, the one which was enclosed in the mysterious epistle before mentioned. "Baron,"
he said, "here is a letter for you."
The Doctor looked round as one would who had received a blow, and knew not who smote him. He took the letter, and went into the window to read it.
No one spoke a word. "This, then, my good old tutor," thought Sam, "turns out to be the great Landstein. Save us, what a piece of romance." But though he thought this, he never said anything, and catching Alice"s eye, followed it to the window. There, leaning against the gla.s.s, his face buried in his hands, and his broad back shaking with emotion, stood Doctor Mulhaus. Alas! no. Our kindly, good, hearty, learned, irritable, but dearly-beloved old friend, is no more. There never was such a man in reality: but in his place stands Baron von Landstein of the Niederwald.
What the contents of the Doctor"s (I must still call him so) letter, I cannot tell you. But I have seen the letter which Major Buckley received enclosing it, and I can give it you word for word. It is from the Governor himself, and runs thus:--
"MY DEAR MAJOR,
"I am informed that the famous Baron von Landstein has been living in your house for some years, under the name of Dr. Mulhaus. In fact, I believe he is a partner of yours. I therefore send the enclosed under cover to you, and when I tell you that it has been forwarded to me through the Foreign Office, and the Colonial Office, and is, in point of fact, an autograph letter from the King of P---- to the Baron, I am sure that you will ensure its safe delivery.
"The Secretary is completely "fixed" with his estimates. The salaries for the Supreme Court Office are thrown out. He must resign. Do next election send us a couple of moderates.
"Yours, &c., G.G."
This was the Major"s letter. But the Doctor stood still there, moved more deeply than any had seen him before, while Alice and Sam looked at one another in blank astonishment.
At length he turned and spoke, but not to them, to the empty air. Spoke as one aroused from a trance. Things hard to understand, yet having some thread of sense in them too.
"So he has sent for me," he said, "when it seems that he may have some use for me. So the old man is likely to go at last, and we are to have the golden age again. If talking could do it, a.s.suredly we should. He has n.o.ble instincts, this young fellow, and some sense. He has sent for me. If H----, and B----, and Von U----, and myself can but get his ear!
"Oh, Rhineland! my own beloved Rhineland, shall I see you again? Shall I sit once more in my own grey castle, among the vineyards, above the broad gleaming river, and hear the noises from the town come floating softly up the hillside! I wonder are there any left who will remember--"
He took two short turns through the room, and then he turned and spoke to them again, looking all the time at Sam.
"I am the Baron von Landstein. The very man we have so often talked of, and whose character we have so freely discussed. When the French attacked us, I threw myself into the foremost ranks of my countrymen, and followed the Queen with two regiments which I had raised almost entirely myself.
"I fled away from the blood-red sun of Jena, wounded and desperate.
That sun," I thought, "has set on the ruins of Great Frederick"s kingdom. Prussia is a province of France: what can happen worse than this? I will crawl home to my castle and die.
"I had no castle to crawl to. My brother, he who hung upon the same breast with me, he who learnt his first prayer beside me, he who I loved and trusted above all other men, had turned traitor, had sold himself to the French, had deceived my bride that was to be, and seized my castle.
"I fled to England, to Drumston, Major. I had some knowledge of physic, and called myself a doctor. I threw myself into the happy English domestic life which I found there, and soon got around me men and women whom I loved full well.
"Old John Thornton and his sister knew my secret, as did Lord Crediton: but they kept it well, and by degrees I began to hope that I would begin a new life as a useful village apothecary, and forget for ever the turmoils of politics.
"Then you know what happened. There was an Exodus. All those I had got to love, arose, in the manner of their nation, and went to the other end of the earth, so that one night I was left alone on the cliff at Plymouth, watching a ship which was bearing away all that was left me to love in the world.
"I went to Prussia. I found my brother had made good use of his prosperity, and slandered me to the King. His old treachery seemed forgotten, and he was high in power. The King, for whom I had suffered so much, received me coldly, and leaving the palace, I spoke to my brother, and said,--"Send me so much yearly, and keep the rest for a time." And then I followed you, Major, out here."
"Shall I tell you any more, Sam?"
"No!" said Sam, smiting his fist upon the table. "I can tell the rest, Baron, to those who want to know it. I can tell of ten years" patient kindness towards myself. I can tell--I can tell--"
Sam was the worst orator in the world. He broke down, sir. He knew what he meant very well; and so I hope do you, reader, but he couldn"t say it. He had done what many of us do, tried to make a fine speech when his heart was full, and so he failed.
But Alice didn"t fail,--not she, though she never spoke a word. She folded up her work; and going up to the good old man, took both his hands in hers and kissed him on both his cheeks. A fine piece of rhetorical action, wasn"t it? And then they all crowded round him, and shook hands with him, and kissed him, and G.o.d-blessed him, for their kind, true, old friend; and prayed that every blessing might light upon his n.o.ble head, till he pa.s.sed through them speechless and wandered away to his old friend, the river.
About the middle of this week, there arrived two of our former friends, Frank Maberly and Captain Desborough, riding side by side. The Elders, with the Doctor, were outside, and detained the Dean, talking to him and bidding him welcome. But Captain Desborough, pa.s.sing in, came into the room where were a.s.sembled Alice, Sam, and Jim, who gave him a most vociferous greeting.
They saw in a moment that there was some fun in the wind. They knew, by experience, that when Desborough"s eyes twinkled like that, some absurdity was preparing, though they were quite unprepared for the mixture of reality and nonsense which followed.