In Silk Attire: A Novel

There was Polly Hastings – she played 'Geraldine' then – came to me after that last night, and said, solemnly, that she would give herself over to the devil if he would only make her able to sing the ballad as Miss Annie sung it that night. The people in the pit – "

"Mrs. Christmas will go on romancing all the evening, Mr. Anerley, if you don't stop her," said Miss Brunel.

"And poor Tom Mulloney – he played 'Wild Murtogh' for me – do you remember, Miss Annie, that morning at rehearsal when they came and told him that his wife and the little boy were drowned? He didn't speak a word – not a word; he only shook a little, and was like to fall; then he walked out, and he was never on the boards of a theatre again. He took to drinking as if he was mad; and he was put in an asylum at last; and they say he used to sing all his old songs at the amateur concerts in the place, you know, better nor ever he had sung them in the theatre – that was 'The Dance on the Flure,' and 'The Jug o' Punch,' and 'Savourneen Deelish,' and 'The Coulin' – "

"The Coulin!" said Will, with a sort of chill at the heart; he had forgotten all about Dove, and St. Mary-Kirby; and the remembrance of them, at that moment, seemed to reproach him somehow.

"Do you know 'The Coulin'?" asked Miss Brunel, wondering at his sudden gravity.

"Yes," said he, with an affectation of carelessness. "It is one of Dove's favourite airs. But she won't accept the modern words as representing the song; she will have it that the melody describes the parting of two friends – "

"Come, then," said the Count, briskly, "dinner is ready. Miss Brunel, you shall play us the – the what, did you say? – to-morrow, after the man has come from Donaueschingen to tune the piano. Not a bad piano, either, as you'll see; and now I don't grudge having bought it along with the rest of the furniture, when I find that you will charm us with an occasional song. Four hundred florins, I think it was; but I don't know."

As they retired into the long dining-saloon, where a sufficiently good dinner was placed on the table, Hermann came out into the courtyard, surrounded by a lot of yelping little beagles, with short stumpy legs, long ears, long noses, and sagacious eyes. Further, there was a huge brown mastiff, with long lithe limbs, and tremendous jaws, at sight of which Grete shrank back, for the brute was the terror of the village.

"Go down, then, thou stupid dog, thou worthless follow! seest thou not the young lady is afraid? Ah, du guter Hund, du Rudolph, and so thou knowest me again? Come along, Grete, he won't touch you; and we'll go to see your father."

"You won't tell him I was waiting for you, Hermann?" said the girl, shyly.

Hans Halm stood at the door of his châlet-looking hostelry, in a thin white coat and a broad straw hat, with a complacent, benevolent smile on his stout visage and shrewd blue eyes. Sometimes he looked up and down the road, wondering what had become of Grete, who, Frau Halm being dead, had taken her mother's place in the management of the inn. Perhaps Hans suspected where his tender-hearted, black-eyed daughter had gone; at least, he was in nowise surprised to see her coming back with Hermann, Rudolph joyously barking by their side. The two men shook hands heartily, and kissed each other; for had they not, some years before, pledged themselves solemnly to call each other "du," and sworn eternal friendship, and drank a prodigious quantity of Affenthaler over that ceremony?

"Gretchen, get you indoors; the house is quite full, and you can't expect your grandmother to do everything."

Hermann looked into the passage. On the pegs along the wall were hung a number of guns – nearly all of them double-barrelled breechloaders; with white barrels, and broad green straps for the slinging of them over the shoulder.

"My men are within, nicht wahr?" he said.

"Listen, and you will hear," said Hans Halm.

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 tassels, 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 pass 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[2 - 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.]alternately. Four o'clock, every one of you, remember. And now, in God's name, Hans Halm, let us have some of your white wine, that I haven't tasted for many a day!"

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."

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

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

At this moment the schoolmaster, whom nobody had noticed, came forward and said to his rival —

"How do you find yourself, Hermann Löwe?"

"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 butterflies 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 Löwe."

"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 embarrassment 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 glasses, 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.