The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales Part 10

"Pray, sir," continued Tubbs, "did you come out in the last coach?"

"I did, sir."

"Was there a lady in the coach?"

"There was, sir. I recollect a lady sat next to me."

"_You scoundrel! what did you mean by insulting my wife_?"

This question was followed by a blow, which sent the young gentleman sprawling on the floor. Tubbs stood him up, and knocked him down again and again, like a man practising on a single pin in a bowling alley.

The sufferer showed some fight, but Tubbs's blood was up, and he hammered down all opposition. The drivers looked on in admiration to see "Old Tubbs vollop the chap as had insulted his wife," and so he had it all his own way. He dragged the offender out of the office, and finished him off on the sidewalk. He was engaged in this laudable occupation, when his better half, tired of mounting guard over the wheelbarrow, appeared upon the field.

"Mr. Tubbs!" she screamed.

"Wait a minute, my dear. I've only done one side of his head."

"But, Mr. Tubbs! _That wasn't the man_!"

Tubbs suspended operations, and stood fixed in horror. The remains of the injured individual were taken into the hourly office. Then came remorse and apologies unaccepted and unacceptable--a lawyer's letter--an action for a.s.sault and battery, and heavy damages. The real offender had escaped, and was never heard of; the victim was the well-behaved young gentleman, who had sat on Mrs. Tubbs's right. Her description, which had answered for both, had occasioned the dilemma, which, while it proved an expensive lesson to Mr. Tubbs, was also an effectual one, and saved him from many a rash and hasty action, and induced him ever afterwards to adopt Colonel Crockett's golden maxim, "_Be always sure you're right, then go ahead_."

THE CASTLE ON THE RHINE.

In one of those old feudal castles, which, perched, like eagle nests, upon the picturesque hills that overhang

"The wide and winding Rhine,"

and with their crumbling and ivy-grown towers, arrest the eyes of the delighted traveller, as he views them from the deck of the gliding steamer, there dwelt, some years ago, the Baron Von Rosenburg and his lady Mathilde. The baron was a very proud man, and continually boasting of his descent from a "long and n.o.ble line of martial ancestors," gentlemen who were wont, in the "good old times," to wear steel on head, back, and breast, and each of whom supported a score of retainers in his feudal castle. Where the money comes from to support a princely housekeeping, when the head of the family has no property or employment, is sometimes a mystery nowadays; but no such doubt attached to the resources of the baron's ancestors. These gentlemen, when short of provisions, would sally forth at the head of their followers, and capture the first drove of cattle they encountered, without stopping to inquire into the owners.h.i.+p. Sometimes they made excursions on the river, and levied contributions on the little barks of traders who often carried valuable cargoes from one Rhine town to another.

But the privileges of the robber knights and bandit n.o.bles were sadly shorn by the progressive spirit of modern civilization. With a total disregard of the immunities of chivalry, modern legislators declared that it was as great a crime for a baron to seize on a herd of cattle as for a peasant to steal a sheep. Hence the great families along the Rhine went into decay. The castles were dismantled, many n.o.ble names died out, very few remained, the representatives of the ancestral glory of olden times.

Among them was the baron. He had been a soldier and a courtier in his youth, had spent some time abroad, and was about forty when he married a lady of the same age, and settled down in the old family castle of Rosenberg. Here he lorded it over the surrounding valley, the simple inhabitants of which, though exempt from all feudal obligations, yet in some sort regarded themselves as va.s.sals of the baron. They made him presents of fish, accompanied him to the chase, and lent him a willing hand, whenever he required a.s.sistance at the castle.

The baron, though he had the wherewithal to live comfortably enough, was yet a poor representative of the race he sprang from. His army consisted of a few farm servants, his cavalry of a ploughboy on a cart-horse, and his navy of a fis.h.i.+ng boat. But, on the whole, he was happy. He pa.s.sed his days either in tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his vines or hunting, and his evenings in poring over mildewed parchments or books of heraldry, hunting up long pedigrees, and puffing a monstrous meerschaum till the atmosphere was as dense as the interior of a smokehouse. The lady Mathilde embroidered from morning till night.

They had, however, a common source of grief. Fate had not blessed them with children. The lady yearned for the companions.h.i.+p of a daughter; the baron mourned at the prospect of the extinction of his name for want of a male heir.

It was while pondering on this subject one day, as they were strolling out together, that the baron and his lady came upon the cottage of an old soldier named Karl Mueller, who cultivated a little vineyard not far from the castle.

The old man was seated on a bench before his door, smoking, and so deeply plunged in revery, that he was not aware of the approach of visitors till the baron touched him on the shoulder.

"In a brown study, Karl?" said the baron.

"I have enough to think about," returned the soldier "I'm getting old, and one thing troubles me."

"What's that, my good fellow?"

"Why, you see, baron, I'm not alone here."

"Not alone?"

"No, sir--I--have--I have a little child here."

"I never knew you were married, Karl."

"Nor was I, your honor. For I always thought an infantry soldier ought to be in marching order, and never have more baggage than he could carry in his knapsack. No, no; the child is none of mine."

"But it is related to you," said the baroness.

"It is my grandchild, madam," replied the soldier, fixing his eyes on the lady; "and the child of as brave a man as ever faced the fire of the enemy. He might have been a field marshal, for the matter of that.

I saw him at Oberstadt when the hussars went down to charge the enemy's light cavalry. Faith, madam, they made daylight s.h.i.+ne through their ranks. Their curved sabres cut them up as the sickle does the corn. I saw him, the girl's father, madam, go into that affair with the hussars; but he came not out safe. It was pitiful to see his uniform all dabbled with blood, as he lay on the ground, and to see his pale lips quivering, as he prayed for water. I gave him the last drop in my canteen, and I swore I'd protect the child. But I fear I'm getting too old for the task."

The baroness, whose eyes were filled with tears, turned to her husband, and asked,--

"Shall we not give a shelter to the child of a brave man?"

The baron nodded, and the proposal was accepted by Karl, who retired into his cottage, and immediately reappeared, bringing forth a beautiful girl of ten, with fair hair and blue eyes, and a form of graceful symmetry.

"A girl! nonsense!" said the baron, in a tone of disappointment. But the baroness folded the child in her arms with rapture. The child responded to the caresses of the lady with equal ardor.

So the little Adelaide was soon domesticated in the castle which her frolic spirit filled with gayety. The baroness renewed her youth in gazing upon hers, and the baron never scolded her, even when she took his pipe out of his mouth, or rummaged among his parchments.

As she grew up to womanhood, she became more serious and thoughtful.

She was anxious to learn every thing touching her father, but on this subject the baroness could give her no information; and Karl, her grandfather, seemed equally averse to speaking of it. When hard pressed, he promised to speak out at some future time.

One day she was summoned in great haste to the cottage of old Karl.

The old man had suddenly been taken ill, and required the presence of his granddaughter. It was evident, at a glance, that he was on his death bed.

"Adelaide," said he, "forgive me, before I die, that I may depart in peace."

"Forgive you, dear grandfather! am I not deeply indebted to you?"

"I should have reposed more confidence in you; I should have spoken to you about your parents."

"My father?" asked Adelaide.

"Was a brave and good man. But of your mother--your good mother--she was--"

Here a spasm interrupted his utterance, and he lay back on his pillow gasping for breath. After a brief s.p.a.ce he seemed to revive again, and made strong efforts to express himself, but his breath failed him. He motioned to Adelaide to fetch him writing materials, and while she held a sheet of paper on a book before him, he essayed with feeble fingers to trace a sentence with a pen. But the rapid approach of death foiled all his endeavors to communicate a secret that evidently lay close to his heart; and while the young girl bent over him in an agony of grief, he gently sighed away his last. The baron and baroness found their _protegee_, an hour afterwards, still sorrowing by the bedside of her early friend and protector. With gentle violence they removed her from the chamber of death, and took her home to the castle, where they gave directions to the proper persons to take charge of the old soldier's remains, and inter them with that decent respect which was due to his character and station. Among his effects was found a will, in which he made Adelaide his heiress, bequeathing to her his little landed estate, and a small sum in gold, the produce of his toil and frugality. This event cast a gloom over the spirits of the young maiden, from which, however, her religious persuasions, the attention of her friends, and the elasticity of her youth, eventually relieved her.

The old castle on the Rhine was gay once more, when Rudolph Ernstein, a nephew of the baron, a gay young captain of hussars, whose gallantry and beauty had given him reputation at Vienna, came to pay a long visit to his uncle. He was a high-spirited and accomplished young man, had served with distinction, was a devoted admirer of the ladies, and one of those military Adonises who are born to conquest. He was charmed to find domesticated beneath the old roof tree so fair and lovable a girl as Adelaide, and of course did his best to render his society agreeable to her. He sang to her songs of his own writing, to airs of his own composition, accompanied on his guitar; he told her tales of strange lands that he had visited, of cavalry skirmishes in which he had partic.i.p.ated, sketched her favorite scenes in pencil, and offered to teach her the newest dances in vogue at Vienna. He was a dangerous companion to a young girl whose imagination needed but a spark to kindle it, and for a time she indulged in the wild hope that she had made a conquest of Rudolph. But then her reason told her, that even if he loved her, it would be impossible for a young man of family to offer his hand to an almost portionless girl, about whose origin a veil of mystery seemed wrapped. The names of her parents, even, had never been disclosed to her, by the lips of probably the only man who knew her history, and those lips were now cold and mute in death.

Hence the little gleam of suns.h.i.+ne which had for a moment penetrated her heart was speedily quenched in a deeper darkness than that which reigned in it before, and she could not help viewing the visit of Rudolph as an ominous event.

One morning, she was witness to a scene which dashed out the last faint glimmering of hope. They were all seated at a huge oaken table, from which the servants had just removed the apparatus of the morning meal.