At last, alter a long circuit and many enquiries, the goal was gained. The dripping, sorely shaken equipage stopped with two wheels in a ditch filled with rain water, whose overflow flooded the path to the house. The courier and maid seemed to have missed their way, too, for the second carriage was not there. People hurried out of the low doorway shading small flickering candles with their hands. The countess shrank back. What strange faces these peasants had! An old man with a terribly hang-dog countenance, long grey hair, a pointed Jewish beard, sharp hooked nose, and sparkling eyes! And two elderly women, one short and fat, with prominent eyes and black curling hair, the other a tall, thin, odd-looking person with tangled coal-black hair, hooked nose, and glittering black eyes.
In the mysterious shadows cast by the wavering lights upon the sharply cut faces, the whole group looked startlingly like a band of gypsies.
"Oh! are these Ammergau people?" whispered the countess in a disappointed tone.
"Does Gross, the wood-carver, live here?" the prince enquired.
"Yes," was the reply. "Gross, the stone-cutter. Have you engaged rooms here?"
"We wrote from Tegernsee for lodgings. The Countess von Wildenau," answered the prince.
"Oh yes, yes! Everything is ready! The lady will lodge with us; the carriage and servants can go to the old post-house. I have the honor to bid you good evening," said the old man. "I am sorry you have had such bad weather. But we have a great deal of rain here."
The prince alighted--the water splashed high under his feet.
"Oh Sephi, bring a board, quick; the countess cannot get out here!" cried the old man with eager deprecation of the discomfort threatening the lady. Sephi, the tall, thin woman, dragged a plank from the garden, while a one-eyed dog began to bark furiously.
The plank was laid down, but instantly sunk under the water, and the countess was obliged to wade through the flood. As she alighted, she felt as if she should strike her head against the edge of the overhanging roof--the house was so low. Fresco paintings, dark with age, appeared to stretch and writhe in distorted shapes in the flickering light. The place seemed more and more dismal to the countess.
"Shall I carry you across?" asked the prince.
"Oh no!" she answered reprovingly, while her little foot sought the bottom of the pool. The ice-cold water covered her delicate boot to the ankle. She had been so full of eager anticipation, in such a poetic mood, and prosaic reality dealt her a blow in the face. She shivered as she walked silently through the water.
"Come in, your rooms are ready," said the old man cheeringly.
They passed through a kitchen black with myriads of flies, into an apartment formerly used as the workshop, now converted into a parlor. Two children were asleep on an old torn sofa. In one corner lay sacks of straw, prepared for couches, the owners of the house considered it a matter of course that they should have no beds during the Passion. A smoking kerosene lamp hung from, the dark worm-eaten wooden ceiling, diffusing more smoke than light. The room was so low that the countess could scarcely stand erect, and besides the ceiling had sunk--in the dim, smoke-laden atmosphere the beams threatened to fall at any moment.
A sense of suffocation oppressed the new-comer. She was utterly exhausted, chilled, nervous to the verge of weeping. Her white teeth chattered. She shivered with cold and discomfort. Her host opened a low door into a small room containing two beds, a table, an old-fashioned dark cupboard, and two chairs.
"There," he cried in a tone of great satisfaction, "that is your chamber. Now you can rest, and if you want anything, you need only call and one of my daughters will come in and wait upon you."
"Yes, my good fellow, but where am I to lodge?" asked the prince.
"Oh--then you don't belong together? In that case the countess must sleep with another lady, and the gentleman up here."
He pointed to a little stair-case in the corner which, according to the custom in old peasant houses, led from one room through a trap-door into another directly above it.
"But I can't sleep there, it would inconvenience the lady," said the prince. "Have you no other rooms?"
"Why yes; but they are engaged for to-morrow," replied Andreas Gross, while the two sisters stood staring helplessly.
"Then give me the rooms and send the other people away."
"Oh! I can't do that, sir.--They are promised."
"Good Heavens! Ill pay you twice, ten times as much."
"Why, sir, if you paid me twenty times the price, I could not do it; I must not break my promise!" said the old man with gentle firmness.
"Ah," thought the prince, "he wants to screw me--but I'll manage that, Countess, excuse me a few minutes while I look for another lodging."
"For Heaven's sake, try to find one for me, too. I would rather spend the night in the carriage than stay here!" replied the countess in French.
"Yes, it is horrible! but it will not be difficult to find something better. Good-bye!" he answered in the same language.
"Don't leave me alone with these people too long. Come back soon; I am afraid," she added, still using the French tongue.
"Really?" the prince answered, laughing; but a ray of pleasure sparkled in his eyes.
Meanwhile, the little girl who was asleep on the sofa had waked and now came into the room.
The countess requested every one to retire that she might rest, and the peasants modestly withdrew. But when she tried to fasten the door, it had neither lock nor bolt, only a little wire hook which slipped into a loose ring.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, startled. "I cannot lock it."
"You need have no anxiety," replied the old man soothingly, "we sleep in the next room." But the vicinity of those strange people, when she could not lock the door, was exactly what the countess feared.
She slipped the miserable wire hook into its fastening and sat down on one of the beds, which had no mattresses--nothing but sacking.
Covering her face with her hands, she gave free course to indignant tears. She still wore her hat and cloak, which she had not ventured to take off, from a vague feeling of being encompassed by perils whence she might need to fly at any moment. In such a situation, surely it was safer not to lay aside one's wraps. If the worst came, she would remain so all night. To go to bed in a house where the roof might fall and such strange figures were stealing about, was too great a risk. Beside the bed on which the countess sat was a door, which, amid all the terrors, she had not noticed. Now it seemed as though she heard a scraping noise like the filing of iron. Then came hollow blows and a peculiar rattling. Horrible, incomprehensible sounds! Now a blow fell upon the door, whose fastening was little better than the other. And now another.
"The very powers of hell are let loose here," cried the countess, starting up. Her cold, wet feet seemed paralyzed, her senses were on the verge of failing. And she was alone in this terrible strait. Where were the servants? Perhaps they had been led astray, robbed and murdered--and meanwhile the storm outside was raging in all its fury.
There came another attempt to burst the door which, under two crashing blows, began to yield. The countess, as if in a dream, rushed to the workshop and, almost fainting, called to her aid the uncanny people there--one terror against another. With blanched lips she told them that some one had entered the house, that some madman or fugitive from justice was trying to get in.
"Oh! that is nothing," said Andreas, with what seemed to the terrified woman a fiendish smile, and walking straight to the door, while the countess shrieked aloud, opened it, and--a head was thrust in. A mild, big, stupid face stared at the light with wondering eyes and snorted from wide pink nostrils at the strange surroundings. A bay horse--a good-natured cart horse occupied the next room to the Countess Wildenau!
"You see the criminal. He is a cribber, that is the cause of the horrible noises you heard."
The trembling woman stared at the mild, stupid equine face as though it was a heavenly vision--yet spite of her relief and much as she loved horses, she could not have gone to bed comfortably, since as the door was already half broken down by the elephantine hoofs of the worthy brute, there was a chance that during the night, lured by the aromatic odor of the sea-weed, which formed the stuffing of the bed, the bay might mistake the countess' couch for a manger and rouse her somewhat rudely with his snuffing muzzle.
"Oh, we'll make that all right at once," said Andreas. "We'll fasten him so that he can't get free again, and the carter comes at four in the morning, then you will not be disturbed any more."
"After not having closed my eyes all night," murmured the countess, following the old man to see that he fastened the horse securely. Yes, the room which opened from here by a door with neither lock nor threshold was a stable. Several frightened hens flew from the straw--this, too. "When the horse has left the stable the cocks will begin to crow. What a night after the fatigues of the day!" The old man smiled with irritating superiority, and said:
"Yes, that is the way in the country."
"No, I won't stay here--I would rather spend the night in the carriage. How can people exist in this place, even for a day," thought the countess.
"Won't you have something to eat? Shall my daughter make a schmarren?"
"A schmarren! In that kitchen, with those flies." The countess felt a sense of loathing.
"No, thank you." Even if she was starving, she could not eat a mouthful in this place.
The bay was at last tied and, for want of other occupation, continued to gnaw his crib and to suck the air, a proceeding terribly trying to the nerves of his fair neighbor in the next room. At last--oh joy, deliverance--the second carriage rattled up to the house, bringing the maid and the courier.
"Come in, come in!" called the countess from the window. "Don't have any of the luggage taken off. I shall not stay here."
The two servants entered with flushed faces.
"Where in the world have you been so long?" asked their mistress, imperiously, glad to be able, at last, to vent her ill-humor on some one.
"The driver missed the way," stammered the courier, casting a side glance at the blushing maid. The countess perceived the situation at a glance and was herself again. Fear and timidity, all her nervous weakness vanished before the pride of the offended mistress, who had been kept waiting an hour, at whose close the tardy servants entered with faces whose confusion plainly betrayed that so long a delay was needless.
She drew herself up to her full height, feminine fears forgotten in the pride of the lady of rank.
"Courier, you are dismissed--not another word!"
"Then I beg Your Highness to discharge me, too," said the excited maid, thus betraying herself. A contemptuous glance from the countess rested upon the culprit, but without hesitation, she said, quietly:
"Very well. You can both go to the steward for your wages. Good evening."
Both left the room pale and silent. They had not expected this dismissal, but they knew their mistress' temper and were aware that not another word would be allowed, that no excuse or entreaty would avail. The countess, too, was in no pleasant mood. She was left here--without a maid. For the first time in her life she would be obliged to wait upon herself, unpack all those huge trunks and bags. How could she do it? She was so cold and so weary, too, and she did not even know which of the numerous bags contained dry shoes and stockings. Was she to pull out everything, when she must do the repacking herself? For now she must certainly go to another house, among civilized people, where she could have servants and not be so utterly alone. Oh, if only she had not come to this Ammergau--it was a horrible place! One would hardly purchase the salvation of the world at the cost of such an evening. It was terrible to be in this situation--and without a maid!
And, as trivial things find even the loftiest women fainthearted because they are matters of nerve, and not of character, the lady who had just confronted her servants so haughtily sank down on the bed again and wept like a child.
Some one tapped lightly on the door of the workshop. The countess opened it, and the short, stout sister timidly entered.
"Pardon me, Your Highness, we have just heard that you have discharged your maid and courier, so I wanted to ask whether my sister or I could be of any service? Perhaps we might unpack a little?"
"Thank you--I don't wish to spend the night here and hope that my companion will bring news that he has found other accommodations. I will pay whatever you ask, but I can't possibly stay. Ask your father what he charges, I'll give whatever you wish--only let me go."
The old man was summoned.
"Why certainly, Countess, you can be entirely at ease on that score; if you don't like staying with us, that need not trouble you. You will have nothing to pay--only you must be quick or you will find no lodgings, they are very hard to get now."
"Yes, but you must have some compensation. Just tell me what I am to give."
"Nothing, Countess. We do not receive payment for what is not eaten!" replied Andreas Gross with such impressive firmness that the lady looked at him in astonishment. "The Ammergau people do not make a business of renting lodgings, Countess; that is done only by the foreign speculators who wish to make a great deal of money at this time, and alas! bring upon Ammergau the reputation of extortion! We natives of the village do it for the sake of having as many guests witness the play as possible, and are glad if we meet our expenses. We expect nothing more."
The countess suddenly saw the "hang-dog" face in a very different light! It must have been the dusk which had deceived her. She now thought it an intellectual and noble one, nay the wrinkled countenance, the long grey locks, and clear, penetrating eyes had an aspect of patriarchal dignity. She suddenly realized that these people must have had the masks which their characters require bestowed by nature, not painted with rouge, and thus the traits of the past unconsciously became impressed upon the features. In the same way, among professional actors, the performer who takes character roles can easily be distinguished from the lover.
"Do you act too?" she asked with interest.
"I act Dathan, the Jewish trader," he said proudly. "I have been in the Play sixty years, for when I was a child three years old I sat in Eve's lap in the tableaux." The countess could not repress a smile and old Andreas' face also brightened.
The little girl, a daughter of the short, plump woman, peeped through the half open door, gazing with sparkling eyes at the lovely lady.
"Whose child is the little one?" asked the countess, noticing her soft curb and beaming eyes.
"She is my grand-daughter, the child of my daughter, Anna. Her father was a foreigner. He ran away, leaving his wife and two children in poverty. So I took them all three into my house again."
The countess looked at the old man's thin, worn figure, and then at the plump mother and child.
"Who supports them?"
"Oh, we help one another," replied Andreas evasively. "We all work together. My son, the drawing teacher, does a great deal for us, too. We could not manage without him." Then interrupting himself with a startled look, as if he might have been overheard, he added, "but I ought not to have said that--he would be very angry if he knew."
"You appear to be a little afraid of your son," said the countess.
"Yes, yes--he is strict, very strict and proud, but a good son."
The old man's eyes sparkled with love and pride.
"Where is he?" asked the countess eagerly.
"Oh, he never allows strangers to see him if he can avoid it."
"Does he act, too?"
"No; he arranges the tableaux, and it needs the ability of a field marshal, for he is obliged to command two or three hundred people, and he keeps them together and they obey him as though he was a general."
"He must be a very interesting person."
At that moment the prince's step was heard in the sitting-room.
"May I come in?"
"Yes, Prince."
He entered, dripping with rain.
"I found nothing except one little room for myself, in a hut even worse than this. All the large houses are filled to overflowing. Satan himself brought us among these confounded peasants!" he said angrily in French.
"Don't speak so," replied the countess earnestly in the same language. "They are saints." The little girl whispered to her mother.
"Please excuse me, Sir; but my child understands French and has just told me that you could get no room for the lady," said Andreas' daughter timidly. "I know where there is one in a very pretty house near by. I will run over as quickly as I can and see if it is still vacant. If you could secure it you would find it much better than ours." She hurried towards the door.
"Stop, woman," called the prince, "you cannot possibly go out; the rain is pouring in torrents, and another shower is rising."
"Yes, stay," cried the countess, "wait till the storm is over."
"Oh, no! lodgings are being taken every minute, we must not lose an instant." The next moment she threw a shawl over her head and left the house. She was just running past the low window--a vivid flash of lightning illumined the room, making the little bent figure stand forth like a silhouette. A peal of thunder quickly followed.
"The storm is just over us," said the prince with kindly anxiety. "We ought not to have let her go."
"Oh, it is of no consequence," said the old man smiling, "she is glad to do it."
"Tell me about these strange people," the prince began, but the countess motioned to him that the child understood French. He looked at her with a comical expression as if he wanted to say: "These are queer 'natives' who give their children so good an education."
The countess went to the window, gazing uneasily at the raging storm. A feeling of self-reproach stole into her heart for having let the kind creature go out amid this uproar of the elements. Especially when these people would take no compensation and therefore lost a profit, if another lodging was found.
It was her loss, and yet she showed this cheerful alacrity.
The little party had now entered the living room. The countess sat on the window sill, while flash after flash of lightning blazed, and peal after peal crashed from the sky. She no longer thought of herself, only of the poor woman outside. The little girl wept softly over her poor mother's exposure to the storm, and slipped to the door to wait for her. The prince, shivering, sat on the bench by the stove. Gross, noticing it, put on more fuel "that the gentleman might dry himself." A bright fire was soon crackling in the huge green stove, the main support of the sunken ceiling.
"Pray charge the fuel to me," said the prince, ashamed.
The old man smiled.
"How you gentle-folks want to pay for everything. We should have needed a fire ourselves." With these words he left the room. The thin sister now thought it desirable not to disturb the strangers and also went out.
"Tell me, Countess," the prince began, leaning comfortably against the warm stove, "may I perfume this, by no means agreeable, atmosphere with a cigarette?"
"Certainly, I had forgotten that there were such things as cigarettes in the world."
"So it seems to me," said the prince, coolly. "Tell me, chere amie, now that you have duly enjoyed all the tremors of this romantic situation, how should you like a cup of tea?"
"Tea?" said the countess, looking at him as if just roused from a dream, "tea!"
"Yes, tea," persisted the prince. "My poor friend, you must have lived an eternity in this one hour among these 'savages' to have already lost the memory of one of the best products of civilization."
"Tea," repeated the countess, who now realized her exhaustion, "that would be refreshing, but I don't know how to get it, I sent the maid away."
"Yes, I met the dismissed couple in a state of utter despair. And I can imagine that my worshipped Countess Madeleine--the most pampered and spoiled of all the children of fortune and the fashionable world--does not know how to help herself. I am by no means sorry, for I shall profit by it. I can now pose as a kind Providence. What good luck for a lover! is it not? So permit me to supply the maid's place--so far as this is practicable. I have tea with me and my valet whom, thank Heaven, I was not obliged to send away, is waiting your order to serve it."
"How kind you are, Prince. But consider that kitchen filled with flies."
"Oh, you need not feel uncomfortable on that score. You are evidently unused to the mountains. I know these flies, they are different from our city ones and possess a peculiar skill in keeping out of food. Try it for once."
"Yes, but we must first ascertain whether I can get the other room," said the countess, again lapsing into despondency.
"My dearest Countess, does that prevent our taking any refreshment? Don't be so spiritless," said the prince laughing.
"Oh, it's all very well to laugh. The situation is tragical enough, I assure you."
"Tragical enough to pay for the trouble of developing a certain grandeur of soul, but not, in true womanly fashion, to lose all composure."
The prince shook the ashes from his cigarette and went to the door to order the valet to serve the tea. When he returned, the countess suddenly came to meet him, held out her hand, and said with a bewitching smile:
"Prince, you are charming to-day, and I am unbearable. I thank you for the patience you have shown."
"Madeleine," he replied, controlling his emotion, "if I did not know your kind heart, I should believe you a Circe, who delighted in driving men mad. Were it not for my cold, sober reason, which you always emphasize, I should now mistake for love the feeling which makes you meet me so graciously, and thus expose myself to disappointment. But reason plainly shows that it is merely the gratitude of a kind heart for a trivial service rendered in an unpleasant situation, and I am too proud to do, in earnest, what I just said in jest--profit by the opportunity."
The countess, chilled and ashamed, drew her hand back. There spoke the dry, prosaic, commonplace man. Had he now understood how to profit by her mood when, in her helpless condition, he appeared as a deliverer in the hour of need, who knows what might have happened! But this was precisely what he disdained. The experienced man of the world knew women well enough to be perfectly aware how easily one may be won in a moment of nervous depression, desperate perplexity and helplessness, yet though ever ready to enjoy every piquant situation, nevertheless or perhaps for that very reason he was too proud to owe to an accident of this kind the woman whom he had chosen for the companion of his life. The countess felt this and was secretly glad that he had spared her and himself a disappointment.
"That is the way with women," he said softly, gazing at her with an almost compassionate expression. "For the mess of pottage of an agreeable situation, they will sell the birthright of their most sacred feelings."
"That is a solemn, bitter truth, such as I am not accustomed to hear from your lips, Prince. But however deep may be the gulf of realism whence you have drawn this experience, you shall not find it confirmed in me."
"That is, you will punish me henceforth by your coldness, while you know perfectly well that it was the sincerity of my regard for you which prompted my act, Countess, that vengeance would be unworthy; a woman like you ought not to sink to the petty sensitiveness of ordinary feminine vanity."
"Oh, Prince, you are always right, and, believe me, if I carried my heart in my head instead of in my breast, that is, if we could love with the intellect, I should have been yours long ago, but alas, my friend, it is so far from the head to the heart."
The Prince lighted another cigarette. No one could detect what was passing in his mind. "So much the worse for me!" he said coldly, shrugging his shoulders.
At that moment a sheet of flame filled the room, and the crashing thunder which followed sounded as if the ceiling had fallen and buried everything under it. The countess seemed bewildered.
"Mother, mother!" shrieked a voice outside. People gathered in the street, voices were heard, shouts, hurrying footsteps and the weeping of the little girl. The prince sprang out of the window, the countess regained her consciousness--of what?
"Some one has been struck by lightning." She hastened out.
A senseless figure was brought in and laid on the bench in the entry. It was the kind-hearted little creature whom her caprice had sent into the storm--perhaps to her death. There she lay silent and pale, with closed lids; her hands were cold her features sharp and rigid like those of a corpse, but her heart still throbbed under her drenched gown. The countess asked the prince to bring cologne and smelling salts from her satchel and skillfully applied the remedies; the prince helped her rub the arteries while she strove to restore consciousness with the sharp essences. Meanwhile the other sister soothed the weeping child. Andreas Gross poured a few drops of some liquid from a dusty flask into the sufferer's mouth, saying quietly, "You must not be so much frightened, I am something of a doctor; it is only a severe fainting fit. The other is worse."
"Were two persons struck?" asked the countess in horror.
"Yes, one of the musicians, the first violin."
A sudden thought darted through the countess' brain, and a feeling of dread stole over her as if there was in Ammergau a beloved life for which she must tremble. Yet she knew no one.
"Please bring a shawl from my room," she said to the prince, and when he had gone, she asked quickly: "Tell me, is the musician tall?"
"Oh, yes."
"Has he long black hair?"
"No, he is fair," replied the old man.
The countess, with a feeling of relief, remained silent, the prince returned. The sick woman opened her eyes and a faint moan escaped her lips.
"Here will be a fine scene," thought the prince. "Plenty of capital can be made out of such a situation. My lovely friend will outweigh every tear with a gold coin."
After a short time the woman regained sufficient consciousness to realize her surroundings and tried to lift her feet from the bench. "Oh, Countess, you will tax yourself too much. Please go in, there is a strong draught here."
"Yes, but you must come with me," said the countess, "try whether you can use your feet."
It was vain, she tried to take a step, but her feet refused to obey her will.
"Alas!" cried the countess deeply moved. "She is paralyzed--and it is my fault."
Anna gently took her hand and raised it to her lips. "Pray don't distress yourself, Countess, it will pass away. I am only sorry that I have caused you such a fright." She tried to smile, the ugly face looked actually beautiful at that moment, and the tones of her voice, whose tremor she strove to conceal, was so touching as she tried to comfort and soothe the self-reproach of the woman who had caused the misfortune that tears filled the countess' eyes.
"How wise she is," said the prince, marvelling at such delicacy and feeling.
"Come," said the countess, "we must get her into the warm rooms."
Andreas Gross, and at a sign from the prince, the valet, carried the sick woman in and laid her on the bench by the stove. The countess held her icy hand, while tears streamed steadily down the sufferer's cheeks.
"Do you feel any pain?" asked the lady anxiously.
"No, oh no--but I can't help weeping because the Countess is so kind to me--I am in no pain--no indeed!" She smiled again, the touching smile which seeks to console others.
"Yes, yes," said the old man, "you need not be troubled, she will be well to-morrow."
The child laid her head lovingly on her mother's breast, a singularly peaceful atmosphere pervaded the room, a modest dignity marked the bearing of the poor peasants. The prince and the countess also sat in thoughtful silence. Suddenly the sick woman started up, "Oh dear, I almost forget the main thing. The lady can have the lodgings. Two very handsome rooms and excellent attendance, but the countess must go at once as soon as the shower is over. They will be kept only an hour. More people will arrive at ten."
"I thank you," said the countess with a strange expression.
"Oh, there is no need. I am only glad I secured the rooms, and that the countess can have attendance," replied the sick woman joyously. "I shall soon be better, then I'll show the way."
"I thank you," repeated the countess earnestly. "I do not want the rooms, I shall stay here."
"What are you going to do?" asked the prince in amazement.
"Yes, I am ashamed that I was so foolish this evening. Will you keep me, you kind people, after I have done you so much injustice, and caused you such harm."
"Oh! you must consult your own pleasure. We shall be glad to have you stay with us, but we shall take no offence, if it would be more pleasant for you elsewhere," said the old man with unruffled kindness.
"Then I will stay."
"That is a good decision, Countess," said the prince. "You always do what is right." He beckoned to Sephi, the thin sister, and whispered a few words. She vanished in the countess' room, returning in a short time with dry shoes and stockings, which she had found in one of the travelling satchels. The prince went to the window and stood there with his back turned to the room. "We must do the best that opportunity permits," he said energetically. "I beg your highness to let this lady change your shoes and stockings. I am answerable for your health, not only to myself, but to society."
The countess submitted to the prince's arrangement, and the little ice-cold feet slid comfortably into the dry coverings, which Sephi had warmed at the stove. She now felt as if she was among human beings and gradually became more at ease. After Sephi had left the room she walked proudly up to the prince in her dry slippers, and said: "Come, Prince, let us pace to and fro, that our chilled blood may circulate once more."
The prince gracefully offered his arm and led her up and down the long work-shop. Madeleine was bewitching at that moment, and the grateful expression of her animated face suited her to a charm.
"I must go," he thought, "or I shall be led into committing some folly which will spoil all my chances with her."
