In Silk Attire: A Novel

"Better? He is quite better now. I think he might come down and see us this morning, unless you would prefer paying him a visit."

Immediately after breakfast Miss Brunel went over to the inn, and there she found Hans Halm and his daughter.

"Grete," she said, "could you go to the Feldberg to-day?"

"Yes," said Grete.

"Could you be ready to start by twelve o'clock?"

"My father's wagen has gone to Donaueschingen, mademoiselle," she said.

"The Count will lend us a carriage, and you must come with me."

The matter having been arranged, she returned to the Count, and told him of her intention, firmly and quietly. A week previous he would have laughed, and pooh-poohed the notion; now he was excessively courteous, and, though he regretted her decision, he would do everything in his power, &c.

"Will you let Hermann come with us as far as the Feldberg?"

"I devote Hermann entirely to your service for a week – a month – as long as you choose," said the Count.

English Polly was got up from the kitchen – where she had established a species of freemasonry between herself and the German servants – to assist in the packing; and while she and Mrs. Christmas were so engaged, Annie Brunel sate down, and wrote these lines on a slip of paper:

"I am glad to hear you are letter. You wished us not to meet again, and as it is easier for me to go than you, I leave here in an hour. You will forgive me for having caused you so much pain. Good-bye.

A.B."

She put the paper in an envelope, and took it down to the Count.

"I have written a note to Mr. Anerley, explaining our going away so abruptly. Will you please send it to him?"

"I will take it to him myself," said the Count, and he took it.

A few minutes afterwards, when the Count returned, she was seated at the window, looking out with vague absent eyes on the great undulations of the black-green forest, on the soft sunlight that lay upon the hills along the horizon, and on the little nook of Schönstein with the brown houses, the white church, and the large inn. She started slightly as he entered. He held another envelope in his hand.

"I have brought a reply," he said, "but a man does not write much with his left hand, in bed."

On a corner of the sheet of paper she had sent, there were written these words, "I thank you heartily. God bless you! – W.A." And her only thought as she read them was, "Not even in England – not even in England."

Grete appeared, blushing in her elaborate finery. Her violet bodice was resplendent, with its broad velvet collar embroidered with gold; her snow-white sleeves were full-blown and crimp; and her hair was braided, and hung down in two long tails from underneath the imposing black head-dress, with its ornamentation of gold beads. Grete had manufactured another of those embroidered miracles, which she was now carrying in her trunk to Aenchen Baumer. It was with a little sob of half-hysteric delight that she drove out of the stone courtyard, and realised the stupendous fact that Hermann Löwe was to accompany them to the Feldberg.

Mrs. Christmas, studying the strange expression of her adopted daughter's face, thought she was becoming remarkably like the Annie Napier whom she knew long ago.

"May she have a very different fate!" said the old woman to herself, as she thought of the weary and solitary life-struggle, the self-denial, the heroic fortitude of those bygone and bitter days.

CHAPTER XX.

HOMEWARDS

"If mademoiselle chooses," said Grete, "we can walk along the side of the Titi See, and allow the carriage to go on by itself. The road is very pretty from the lake onwards to the Feldberg."

Mademoiselle was in that frame of mind when any change involving action was a delicious relief, and she gladly embraced the proposal.

"If the old lady prefers to drive all the way," said Grete, with a touch of maidenly pride, "Hermann ought to accompany her. I can find the way for us two, mademoiselle."

That also was agreed to, the distance being too great for Mrs. Christmas to walk. And so Annie Brunel and Grete Halm set out upon the winding path, or rather track, which runs along the shore of the beautiful Titi See – here skirting the edge of the rocky promontories which jut out into the still blue lake, there cutting through the dense coppices lying in the sunshine along the foot of the hills, or again passing some deep-roofed and sleepy farmhouse, with its small stone chapel standing in the yard. Grete reverentially crossed herself every time they passed one of these numerous private chapels; and her companion, peeping in through the wooden bars, generally saw within the sanctuary a large framed lithograph of the Virgin Mary in red and blue, with a vast number of little gilt trinkets and other pious offerings lying on the altar. Some of these chapels had forms within capable of accommodating a congregation of from twelve to twenty persons. One or two people had built no chapel at all, but had hollowed out a niche in the wall surrounding their garden, and had placed therein a wooden crucifix, more or less painted, exhibiting the details of the Crucifixion with mediæval exactitude. And Grete, being a good girl, crossed herself as she saw these humble memorials of a devout faith.

"Why did you send Hermann away, Grete?" said Annie Brunel, as they walked along.

"Because, mademoiselle, I wished him to know that I could do without him," said Grete Halm.

"You are very fond of him, are you not?"

"Yes, mademoiselle, but – "

"And he of you?"

"He is very fond of me, I know," said Grete, simply.

"I don't wonder at it; but have you ever asked yourself why he is fond of you?"

"Why, mademoiselle? Because – because I am a girl and he is a man, and he wants to be married."

Annie Brunel laughed; it was the first smile her companion had seen on her face for some days.

"But suppose he did not want to be married – suppose he could not be married to you – would he be fond of you? Or suppose you knew, Grete, that he was to marry some one else, what would you do?"

"I should do nothing, mademoiselle; I should be miserable."

"You would not cease to love him?"

"If I could, yes; if not, – "

"If not, you would only be miserable."

The tone in which the words were uttered caused Grete to look up suddenly in her companion's face. She saw nothing there but the inwardly-reflecting eyes, the beautiful, pale, dark complexion, and the placid sweetness of the unkissed lips.

"In England, Grete, I am an actress. They say that an actress must never reflect, that she lives for immediate gratification, that she educates impulses, and that she cannot pause, and regard her position, and criticise herself. If I cease to feel any pleasure in immediate gratifications, if I feel ill at ease and dissatisfied with myself, and fancy that the stage would no longer give me any pleasure – must I cease to be an actress?"

"Is mademoiselle in earnest?"

Grete Halm could not believe that her companion was an actress. Had she ever seen, even in Carlsruhe itself, an actress with such a noble air, with such a face, and such a manner?

"I am in earnest, Grete. I have been an actress all my life; I feel as if I were one no longer."

"What has changed you, mademoiselle, may I be permitted to ask?"

"I do not know myself, Grete. But I have turned an old woman since I came to the Black Forest; and I shall go back to England with a sort of fear, as if I had never been there before."

Since she came to the Black Forest. For a moment a suspicion crossed Grete's mind that she must be miserable through loving some one; but so completely had she been imbued with the idea of her companion being some mysteriously beautiful and noble creature, who could not be moved by the meaner loves and thoughts of a girl like herself, that she at once dismissed the supposition. Perhaps, she thought, the shock of severely injuring her friend still affected her, and had induced a temporary despondency. Grete therefore resolved, in her direct way, to be as amusing as possible; and she never tired of directing her companion's attention to the beautiful and wonderful things they saw on their way – the scarlet grasshoppers which rattled their wings among the warm grass, the brilliantly-coloured beetles, the picturesque crucifixes by the wayside, or the simultaneous splash of a lot of tiny fish among the reeds as some savage pike made a rush at them from the deeper water.