In Silk Attire Part 21

From the door by which Grete had disappeared, there issued a faint murmur of voices and a strong odour of tobacco-smoke. Hermann went forward and opened this door, meeting there a picture with which he was quite familiar, but which it is wholly impossible to describe. The chief room of the inn, monopolising all the ground-floor, and lighted by ten or twelve small windows, was almost filled with a cloud of pale-blue smoke, in which picturesque groups of men were seen seated round the long narrow tables. Brown-faced, bearded men, they wore the foresters'

dress of green and grey, with a tall beaver hat in which were stuck some capercailzie feathers, with a large cartridge-pouch of roe-skin slung over their shoulder by a green strap, with a horn slung round their neck by means of a twisted green cord with tattered ta.s.sels, and with a long killing-knife lying on the table before them, with which they from time to time cut a lump off the brown loaf. All round the low-roofed room, forming a sort of cornice, ran a row of deers' horns, tastefully mounted, each marked with the date on which the animal had been shot.

These were, for the most part, the product of Hans Halm's personal skill; though the finest pair had been presented to him by Hermann.

Besides the under-keepers, there were one or two villagers, and in a corner sat young Gersbach, his spectacles firmly fixed on the book before him, except when Margarethe Halm happened to pa.s.s before him, as she brought in fresh chopins of white wine to the swarthy, sinewy, picturesque foresters.

Of course Hermann's entrance was the signal for a general uproar, all the keepers starting from the benches and crowding round him to bid him welcome. At last he managed to get clear of them, and then he sat down on one of the benches.

"Listen, friends!" he said, in a loud voice, bringing down his hand with a bang on the table.

There was instant silence.

"The Herr Graf and his friend go shooting to-morrow morning. Every man will be here by four o'clock-four o'clock, do you understand? In placing the guns, you will take care that the Herr Graf, and the other Englander, have the _Haupt-platz_ alternately. Four o'clock, every one of you, remember. And now, in G.o.d's name, Hans Halm, let us have some of your white wine, that I haven't tasted for many a day!"

The Haupt-platz is the point at which the deer are most likely to break cover, and therefore the best position for the sportsman.

There are generally one or two of those good places, which are invariably given, as a compliment, to strangers.

There was a new life in the big forester, now that he had sniffed the resinous odour of his native woods, and was once more among his own people. He languished in the dull solitude of Kent; here he knew his business, he was respected of men, and he speedily showed that there was none of the old swing and vigour gone out of him.

He had scarcely spoken of the wine, when Grete came up with it in a tall white measure, a modest and pleased smile on her face.

"She does not smile like that to the young Mr. Schoolmaster," whispered one keeper to another. "Our Gretchen has her favourites."

"G.o.d give her courage if she marries Hermann!" said the other. "He will drive her as we drive the roe."

"Nonsense! Hermann Lowe is an infant with women. You should see how his sister-in-law in Donaueschingen manages him."

At this moment the schoolmaster, whom n.o.body had noticed, came forward and said to his rival-

"How do you find yourself, Hermann Lowe?"

"Ah, right well, Herr Schulmeister," replied the other, giving him a hearty grasp of the hand. "And I'll tell you what I've got for you in my box. I looked for all the beetles, and creeping things, and b.u.t.terflies I could in England, and all the strange ones I have brought for you, with a fine big pin run through their body."

"You are very kind, Hermann Lowe."

"No, I'm not. You did a good turn to my sister-in-law's child when he was nearly dead with eating those berries-that's all. And do you still read as much, and gather beetles yourself? Now, look here-I must have all the lads in the neighbourhood to drive for me in the morning, and they'll have to work hard, for the Herr Graf is not a patient man, and he gets angry if there are not plenty of bucks; and so, if the boys are too tired to go to the evening school-you understand?"

Gersbach nodded.

"And the Herr Graf will be pleased if you come with us yourself, Gersbach," added Hermann.

Later in the evening the Count's party came round to visit the inn. By this time Hermann had gone; but there still remained a few of the keepers, who, on seeing the Count, politely rose from their seats.

"Nein," said the Count, in a lordly way, "eh-ah-sitzen sie, gute freundin-eh, freunde-und wie sind Sie, Herr Halm und sein Tochter?"

Halm, with admirable gravity, replied to the Count as if his highness's manner and grammar had quite impressed the poor innkeeper.

"Very well indeed, Herr Graf; and Grete, she will be here this moment.

I understand you are going to shoot to-morrow morning, Herr Graf; I hope you will have much sport."

"He says the deer are very plentiful," observed the Count, oracularly, to Annie Brunel. "So you really must come with us to-morrow and see our luck."

"Are these roe-deers' horns?" the young lady asked. "Pray ask him how he came to have so many. Did he shoot them all himself?"

The Count turned, with rather an uncomfortable expression, towards the innkeeper, and said (in German)-

"The lady loves to know if-you have-everything shot."

Halm looked aghast. Was the Count going to impeach him with having thinned the neighbouring woods during the owner's absence? He immediately broke into a long explanation and description of all the drives they had had that season, and told how the deer were so plentiful that the people were complaining bitterly of having their fields and gardens eaten up, and so forth, and so forth. But the embarra.s.sment of the Count's face only deepened, and still further deepened, until, in a querulous tone, he cried out-

"I say, Anerley, I think you'd better come and listen to what he says about the sport you're likely to get to-morrow, rather than waste time in showing Mrs. Christmas things she doesn't care about!"-this with a hot face and an excited air.

"If you listen, isn't that enough?" said Anerley.

"But, damme, I can't understand a word he says-he talks like an engine, and all in that horrid _patois_-Herr Halm, I comprehend; but do you know, the lady loves to drink your white wine." (This in German.)

"Some white wine, Herr Graf?"

"Yes. Not many. We wish to drink all-four gla.s.ses, you understand."

"It is so difficult," continued the Count, addressing Miss Brunel, "to get these people to understand German, if you don't speak their barbarous form of it. However, I have told him we all wished to taste the white wine they drink here-not a bad wine, and remarkably cheap."

"Let me introduce you, Miss Brunel," said Will, "to Miss Grete Halm, who says she speaks French, and will be delighted to escort you to-morrow at any time you may wish to join us. Grete says she once shot a deer herself; but I suspect somebody else pulled the trigger while she held the gun."

Gretchen came forward with a warm blush on her brown cheek; and then it was arranged (she speaking French fluently enough, but with a Schwarzwald accent) that she and Annie Brunel would seek out the shooting party towards the forenoon of the following day.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE COUNT DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF.

In the dusk of the early morning the keepers, drivers, and dogs had a.s.sembled in the large room of Hans Halm's inn. Hermann was there too, with the great-jawed Rudolph; and Margarethe, with a shadowy reminiscence of recent dreams in her soft black eyes, stood quietly on one side, or brought some beer to this or that gruff forester, who had perhaps walked a dozen miles that morning to the place of rendezvous.

The dogs lay under the chairs, the guns and deerskin pouches of the men were on the table before them, by the side of their tall feathered beavers; and if the whole scene did not look as if it had been cut out of an opera, it was because the picturesque trappings of the keepers had been sobered in colour by the rain and sun of many years, and because there dwelt over the party an austere silence. The excitement of the day had not commenced.

When the Count and Will arrived at the place of meeting, a faint flush of rose-colour was beginning to steal along the dark violet of the dawn; and as the whole party set out, in straggling twos and threes along the grey road, daylight began to show itself over the fields and the mist-covered woods.

Hermann, who led the way, was accompanied by a little old man with a prodigious black moustache, twinkling eyes, and comical gravity of face, who was captain over the drivers, and named Spiegelmann. The venerable Spiegelmann, with his tall hat and slung horn, was a man of importance; and he had already, with much seriousness, p.r.o.nounced his opinion on the direction of the wind, and on the necessity for beginning the driving some considerable distance further on.

Then came Will Anerley, who had made friends with the young schoolmaster, Gersbach, and was very anxious to know how life was to be made tolerable if one lived at Schonstein all the year round. Indeed, Anerley's having travelled so much, and among so many different people, combined with a certain natural breadth of sympathy, gave him a peculiar interest in trying to imagine himself in the position of almost every man whom he met. How did those men regard the rest of the world? What had they to look forward to? What was their immediate aim-their immediate pleasure? Anerley would take as much interest in the affairs of an applewoman, and talk as gravely and freely to her about them, as he would in the more ambitious projects of an artist or a man of letters. The gratifying of this merely intellectual curiosity was a constant habit and source of satisfaction to him; and while it offended some people by the frankness of speech, and charmed others by the immediate generosity and self-denial which were its natural results, it promised to leave him, sooner or later, in the att.i.tude of negative criticism and social isolation which his father exhibited. Fortunately, he had inherited from his mother a certain warmth of heart and impulse, which corrected his transmitted tendency to theorize: it was this side of his temperament which had brought upon him his present misfortune, while he had been engaged, out of pure curiosity, in studying Annie Brunel's character, and endeavouring to enter into her views of the people and things around her. In fact, the pursuit of which I speak, though extremely enticing and pleasant, should never be attempted by an unmarried man who has not pa.s.sed his fortieth year.

In the present case the young Herr Schulmeister took an instant liking for the grave, cheerful, plain-spoken man beside him, who seemed to concern himself about other people, and was so ready with excuses for them.

"I should not take you to be an Englishman," said Gersbach.

"Why?"

"You have none of the English character. Count Schonstein is an Englishman-a typical Englishman-conceited, bigoted in his own opinions, generous when it is permitted to him to be ostentatious, dull and stupid, and jealous of people who are not so--"