In Silk Attire: A Novel

THE COUNT DISTINGUISHES HIMSELF

In the dusk of the early morning the keepers, drivers, and dogs had assembled 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, pronounced 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 Schönstein 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 attitude 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 passed 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 Schönstein 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 – "

"My friend," said Will, "why didn't you leave your dolls behind you in the nursery? Or is this typical Englishman one of your university puppets? You know there is no such thing as a typical Englishman, or typical Frenchman, or typical German; and I have almost come to believe that there is no such thing as national character. The most reckless prodigals I have met have been Scotchmen; the keenest business-men I have met have been Irishmen; the dullest and most melancholy, Frenchmen – "

"And the Germans?" asked Gersbach, with a laugh.

"The Germans are like anybody else, so far as disposition goes, although they happen to be educationally and intellectually a little ahead of other nations. And as for the poor Graf, I don't think you, for example, would make half as good a man as he is if you were in his position."

"Perhaps not; but why?"

"I can't exactly explain it to you in German; but doctrinairism is not the first requisite in a landlord; and if you were the Graf, you would be for coercing the people under you and about you, into being logical, and you would withdraw yourself from people who opposed you, and you would gradually weaken your influence and destroy your chances of doing good. Why are our Tory country gentlemen always better liked by the people than the Radical proprietors? Why are Tories, as a rule, pleasanter companions than Radicals? I am a Radical; but I always prefer dining with a Tory?"

"Is the Count a Tory?" asked the Schulmeister.

"Yes. Men who have been in business and earned, or gained, a lot of money, almost invariably become fierce Tories. It is their first passport to respectability; and there is no step one can take so cheaply as that of changing one's political theories."

"What a singular social life you have in England!" cried Gersbach, blinking with a curious sort of humour behind his big spectacles. "There is the demi-monde, for example. Why, you talk of that, and your writers speak of it, as if there was an acknowledged rivalry openly carried on between the members of it and your married women."

"But our married women," said Will, "are going to form a trades-union among themselves in order to crush that institution."

At which Franz Gersbach looked puzzled: these English were capable of trying any mad expedient; and somehow their devices always worked well, except in such matters as popular education, military efficiency, music, scholarship, and so forth. As for a trades-union of any kind, it was sure to flourish in England.

They had now reached the edge of the forest, and here Hermann called the party around him, and gave his orders in a loud peremptory tone, which had the effect of considerably frightening his master; the Count hoped that he would do nothing inaccurate.

"You, Herr Schulmeister, will accompany the drivers, and Spiegelmann will give you one of the return-posts. Falz, you will go down to the new-cut road – Greef on your right, Beigel further along. Spiegelmann will sound his horn when you are all posted, and the second horn when the drive commences. Forward, then, in God's name, all of us!"

And away trooped the lads under the surveillance of the venerable Spiegelmann, who had a couple of brace of leashed beagles pulling and straining and whining to get free into the brushwood. Hermann, Will, and the Count at once dived into the twilight of the tall pines, that almost shut out the red flames of the morning over their peaks. The soft, succulent yellow moss was heavy with dew, and so were the ferns and the stoneberry bushes. A dense carpet of this low brushwood deadened the sound of their progress; and they advanced, silent as phantoms, into the dim recesses of the wood. Here and there occurred an opening or clearance, with a few felled trees lying about; then they struggled through a wilderness of younger fir and oak, and finally came into a tract of the forest where nothing was to be seen, as far as the eye could reach, but innumerable tall trunks, coated with the yellow and grey lichens of many years, branchless almost to their summit, and rising from a level plain of damp green moss. There was not even the sound of a bird, or of a falling leaf, to break the intense silence of the place; nor was there the shadow of any living thing to be seen down those long narrow avenues between the closely-growing stems of the trees.

"Count Schönstein," said Will, in a whisper, as they drew near the Haupt-platz, "what gun is that you have with you?"

"My ordinary breech-loader."

"Carries far?"

"I should think so. Shoots hard and close as a rifle."

"Will it kill at fifty yards?"

"It might."

"Hermann," said Will, turning to the head-keeper, "I insist on being posted eighty yards distant from the Count."

"You think that is a joke," said the Count peevishly.

"I don't think it a joke at all," said Will. "Breech-loaders have a wonderful faculty of going off when nobody expects them; and though you may explain the thing satisfactorily afterwards, that won't remove a few buck-shot out of your leg."

"I am not in the habit of letting my gun go off accidentally," said the Count, grandly. "Indeed, I flatter myself that few men better understand the use of – "

"The Haupt-platz, Herr," said Hermann, unceremoniously breaking in upon his master. "The Herr Graf will be stationed farther down this path; you must not shoot in that direction. You may shoot in front as the deer comes to you, or after them when they have passed; not along this line, only."

"Danke schön, Hermann, and tell the same thing to the Count."

He now found himself opposite a tall tree, which had a cross in red paint traced upon the trunk. The Count and Hermann passed on, and when the three were posted, each held out his arm, and signalled that he understood his immediate neighbour's position, and would remember it.

Scarcely had they done so when a long and loud tantara! from Spiegelmann's horn told them that the drivers were ready. A faint echo now came from the other side of the strip of forest, showing that there the keepers were posted; and finally a return-blast from Hermann's horn proclaimed that all were waiting.

Once more a brilliant trill from Spiegelmann – this time an audacious and elaborate effort, full of noisy anticipation – came through the wood; and then were heard the faint and far-off sounds of yelping dogs, and shouting men, and sticks being beaten against the stumps of the trees. The drive had commenced. Count Schönstein began to tremble; his heart went faster and faster, as his excited brain peopled all the dim vistas of the trees with living forms. He could scarcely breathe with absolute fear. Again and again he looked at his triggers, and the hammers, and the little spikes of brass which he hoped would strike death into the ribs of some splendid buck. He began to assure himself that he could not tell a buck from a doe if the animal ran quickly; that he must shoot at once, and trust to Providence keeping the tender feminine members of the herd out of the way. Indeed, he had already framed an excuse for having shot a doe, and he was busily picturing his assumed regret, and his inner delight at being able to shoot anything, when —

By this time a dead silence had intervened. The first joyous yelping of the dogs had quite died down; and now the broad-footed, stump-legged, big-headed little animals were wiring themselves through the brushwood, and jumping over the soft moss, with an occasional toss of their long ears or a slight whine. The only sound to be heard was the occasional rattling of sticks by the beaters, accompanied by their peculiar guttural cry.

Suddenly – and the whole empty space of the wood seemed to quiver for a moment with this instantaneous throb of life – Will caught a glimpse of a light shimmer of brown away at the end of one of the long avenues. For a moment the apparition was lost; when it reappeared, it was evident that the deer was bearing down upon Count Schönstein's position. The next second, a fine lithe, thin-limbed, supple, and handsome buck came along in a light easy canter into the grey light of the opener space. He had no thought of danger before him; he only thought of that behind; and for a brief space he stood right in front of the Count, apparently listening intently for the strange sounds from which he fled.

In despair, and rage, and amazement, Will saw him pause there, out of the range of his shot, and yet without an effort being made to secure the fine pair of horns which graced the animal's head. Will now saw that the Count's gun was levelled, and that he was apparently pulling at the trigger, but no puff of smoke came out of the barrel. Almost at the same moment the deer must have seen the Count; for all at once he shrank back on his limbs, as if he had been struck, shivered lightly through his entire frame, and then, with a sudden leap, he was off and away out of sight, in the direction of Hermann!

In that brief moment of time the Count had taken down his gun, looked at the hammers, found they were on half-cock, cocked them, and put up his gun again; and then, as the deer was just vanishing, bang! bang! went both the barrels. Of course the buck was quite untouched; but the next moment Will heard the sharp crack of a gun in the neighbourhood of Hermann's post; and he knew what that meant.

Even at that distance he could hear the Count breathing out incomprehensible curses at his own stupidity, as he put another couple of cartridges into the barrels. Doubtless, in his excitement, he had been trying so often whether the hammers were on full-cock – pulling at them, letting them down, and so forth – that accidentally they remained at half-cock, and so spoiled for him the easiest shot he was likely to get that day.

The silence which had been broken by the report of the guns now fell again over the forest. The sun came out, too; and soon there were straggling lanes of gold running down into the blue twilight of the distance; while the heat seemed to have suddenly awakened a drowsy humming of insect life. Now and then a brightly-plumaged jay would flash through the trees, screaming hoarsely; and then again the same dead, hot stillness prevailed. It was in this perfect silence that a living thing stole out of some short bushes, and softly made its way over the golden and green moss until it caught sight of Will. Then it cocked up its head, and calmly regarded him with a cold, glassy, curious stare. The moment it lifted its head he saw that it was a fox, not reddish-brown, but blackish-grey, with extraordinarily bright eyes; and as they had been specially invited to shoot foxes – which are of no use for hunting purposes, and do much damage, in the Black Forest – he instinctively put up his gun. As instinctively, he put it down again.

"My old prejudices are too strong," he said; wherewith he contented himself with lifting a lump of dried wood and hurling it at the small animal, which now slunk away in another direction.

Then burst out the joyous howl of the beagles – here and there, as if every one of them had started his own particular game; the yelping bark rising at times sharp and clear as if in the immediate neighbourhood, at other times fading away into the distance. The fun had commenced. First there came trotting along a long-necked, thin-legged doe, with a little fawn by her side; and these, catching sight of Will, made a sharp turn to the right and bore down upon the Count. The latter, either too frightened or too savage to care for distinctions of sex or age, again blazed both barrels into the air, with what effect Will was too much occupied to see.

For at the same moment there came down the line, transversely, crossing in front of the Count, a fine buck which Hermann had taken a long shot at and missed. The deer was going at full speed, careless of anything in front, his whole energy bent on speeding from the danger behind, and every thew and muscle of his body straining its utmost. As he passed, Will fired his right barrel into the flashing streak of brown – not a hair was touched! The next moment the buck, seeing that no further enemy stood in front, wheeled round and made off to cross the path on which Will stood, at some distance farther down. Just as the shoulder of the animal appeared before the lane of trees, the other barrel was sent after him; there was a shrill scream, the buck leapt a dozen feet into the air and fell, without a parting groan in him, head-foremost on the soft moss.

"There is one pair of horns, at least, for Miss Brunel," thought Will, hastily pushing in two more cartridges.

The Count had certainly plenty of good fortune, so far as the deer were concerned. One particularly handsome buck which had been running straight at him, without seeing him, he received with a hurriedly-aimed shot which did no damage. The animal, however, got such a fright that it turned and galloped right back and through the ring of the beaters, escaping a parting shot which old Spiegelmann aimed at him. Here and there a shot had been heard round the sides of the drive; but as yet no one knew what the other had done. In a few minutes, however, the dogs and then the boys began to show themselves, approaching through the trees. That particular drive was over.

Will hastened up to the Count.

"What have you shot?"