“lam very glad to hear you say so, my dear love,” he replied, with a look of very great satisfaction. “Magnificent is exactly the word which I should like to have applied to every part of my property; for the remembrance that you are to inherit it, my dear child, gives everything a greater value and importance in my eyes now than it ever had before. Come into the library with me now, Gertrude. I should like to see what has been done there.”
The effect produced upon the noble master of the castle on entering this fine room, arranged and decorated with equal taste and industry as it now was, by the trio who for many weeks past had devoted all their time and talents to its embellishment, was much greater than they had either of them hoped to produce, and his approbation was signified in a manner intended to be very gratifying to them all.
To his lady he made a speech of considerable length, signifying his entire approval of everything she had done, and hinting, in a whisper, not intended to reach the ears of Rupert, that however well she might have been assisted by the lad whom he had so fortunately fixed upon as his librarian, it was quite evident that nothing but the taste and judgment of a person as nobly born as herself, could have suggested the different alterations which had given so noble an air to the apartment.
He turned to Gertrude, who was on the other side of him as he said this, and added, “I now perfectly understand, my dear child, what you meant when you said the room was magnificent. It is magnificent, Gertrude, and your mother, as well as yourself, have shown, on this occasion, as I am quite sure you will on all others, the invariable result of being descendants from a noble race.”
This harangue was listened to with a smile, pretty equally made up of satisfaction and fun. She was exceedingly well pleased at finding “dear papa” so perfectly contented with all the hold innovations by which they had so greatly altered the aspect of the room, and infinitely amused at the idea that these alterations had been achieved by the vis inertiae of a noble pedigree.
But Gertrude had something more in her head at that moment, than the powers of a noble pedigree or the beauty of a fine room; and having set her heart upon obtaining a very particular favour from her clear papa, she permitted neither fun, nor anything else, to turn her from her purpose; and having respectfully waited till he had completed his speech, by the solemn repetition of his conviction, that he should consider himself as guilty of great impiety could he doubt that it had been the especial purpose of Heaven in bestowing strength and courage upon Rupert Odenthal, to save the life of the heiress of Schwanberg, she quietly replied, “Yes, papa, he must indeed have been very strong, and very courageous, or he never could have done it; and I have been thinking, papa, that it would only be acting like your dear, kind self, if you were to buy a nice little horse for poor Rupert, that he might have a holiday sometimes, and ride out with us.”
“You are a noble-minded, generous young lady, my dear Gertrude,” replied the baron, looking at her very approvingly; “and if every high-born nobleman did his duty towards the race from which he sprung, as scrupulously as I did mine, Gertrude, when I took your mother for my wife, we should probably see many more instances than we do of young ladies as high-minded and generous as yourself. Your very proper suggestion shall be immediately attended to, Gertrude; and it would doubtless have occurred to me before, as a proper thing to be done, had not the multitude of affairs, which every man in my exalted position is obliged to attend to, occupied me too completely to leave me as much leisure as I would wish to attend to minor concerns.”
So the nice little horse was bought for poor Rupert, who thenceforward became not only as well mounted a cavalier as could easily be found in the land wherein he dwelt, but a fearless and graceful one into the bargain.
But if the gratitude of the baron thus led him, in the strength and fearlessness of his greatness, to bestow favours upon the lowborn boy with no more caution than he would have thought, necessary in petting a poodle; the baroness, on her side, displayed a still more perilous want of forethought; for whereas the baron only mounted him upon a well-bitted little horse, the paces of which might he displayed without danger to anybody, his lady had the rashness not only to encourage by every means in her power the cultivation of his fine and powerful intellect, but to lead him, solely as it seemed for her own gratification, to display in familiar, daily intercourse with herself and her young daughter, the very brilliant faculties with which Nature had endowed him.
And this went on from month to month, and from year to year, without any thought of possible mischief from it, ever entering her head for a moment!
But Gertrude was not, by any means, so thoughtless a child as her mother imagined her to be. So much, indeed, did she think, and so justly did she reason, that it is highly probable the danger which now threatened would, to her, have brought no peril at all, had her own judgment been her only guide; but it was not so.
Had her father made it less evident that he considered his young secretary as no more belonging to the same class of beings as himself, than was the horse on which he had mounted him, neither the heart nor the intellect of Gertrude would have rebelled, as they now did, against the impious absurdity of so classing him; while on the other hand, she never would have ventured to place him, upon the authority of her own judgment alone, so greatly above the generality of his fellow-mortals, as she was now disposed to do.
In short, every individual of the four who now formed the domestic circle at Schloss Schwanberg, was in a false position, excepting only the young librarian himself.
He was permitted to eat at their table, because, as the baron told him, his being nephew to the holy man who had been appointed confessor to the castle, made it extremely fitting and proper that he should pronounce grace at its owner’s table; and having once been told that he was to dine there, and for the especial reason so stated, he thought no more about it, but took it for granted, that it was perfectly right and proper that he should do so; and his common sense, to which he alone applied for counsel on the occasion, made him feel that being thrown into the domestic society of his patron’s family, it was desirable that he should, as much as possible, both in dress and demeanour, assimilate himself to them.
As to the many very busy, and also very delightful hours, which he passed in the great room on the other side of the castle, he certainly found nothing at all likely to puzzle him in any of them. The vocation for which he was expressly hired, seemed to make him part and parcel of the library; and as we are told, that men are sometimes so placed, that “their talk is of bullocks,” so with him, it was quite as inevitable that his talk should be of books. And so it certainly was — and being so, it speedily became more amusing and more interesting to the ill-matched baroness than any she had listened to for years.
Never once did it occur to her as possible, that there could be anything wrong or mischievous, in listening to the eager, ardent criticisms of the intelligent lad, as he dashed on from one gifted page to another. Never once did it enter her head as a thing possible, that what she listened to with pleased amusement, might steal into the heart and soul of her young daughter with an effect as lasting as it was delightful.
In short, a more false, or, at least, a more mistaken, position than that of Madame de Schwanberg, when presiding over the occupations of her quiet library, cannot easily be imagined.
As to the poor baron, his little greatness, and his great littleness, have already been dwelt upon too fully, to require any further description here. But amidst all this blundering, it was the unfortunate Gertrude who was the most likely to stumble outright, for she was really led to believe that she was not only displaying, but feeling, the very noblest sentiments, while cherishing precisely the thoughts and feelings which both her parents would have the most deeply deplored, could they have been made aware of them.
And on — and on — and on — went weeks and months, and the noble inmates of Schloss Schwanberg took little heed of them. Gertrude grew tall, and taller, and very tall; but the eye whic
h first seemed to take note of this, as well as of the bright dawn of the beauty which every day seemed bringing to perfection; the eye which first seemed to think this dawning beauty worthy of especial note, was not within the castle walls, but seven miles beyond them.
The young Count Adolphe von Steinfeld was the son and heir of one of the noblest and richest of the neighbouring proprietors, and was almost considered, even by the baron himself, as having a right to associate with him on terms of equality.
This young Count Adolphe it was, whose eyes and heart first did homage to the beauty of Gertrude von Schwanberg.
The two families had been upon friendly visiting terms before Gertrude was born; but it was not in the nature of the Baron von Schwanberg to be intimate with any one, and nothing less active and less daring in its nature than the “sweet passion of love,” could even have led to an intercourse so nearly approaching intimacy, as that which had lately grown up between the castles of Schwanberg and Steinfeld.
Love is not only active and daring, but wonderfully ingenious; not all the good qualities of the young Count Adolphe, and he had very many such, would even have availed in obtaining for him the easy access he now enjoyed to the library at Schwanberg, if he had not continued to run up a very familiar and intimate friendship with its young librarian.
I should, however, be doing both the young men injustice, if I left it to be supposed that the feeling on both sides, which brought them so frequently together, was not originally that of mutual and very cordial liking; but it may be fairly doubted, if this alone would so very frequently have caused Count Adolphe’s steed to be stabled at Schwanberg, as was now the case.
This young son and heir of the wealthy and right noble Count von Steinfeld was, in many respects, a good deal out of the ordinary routine of character commonly found among the young aristocracy of Southern Germany. Accident had made him a scholar; for it was to accident he owed the having been almost wholly educated by an English tutor; and his natural temperament had led him to be a reader; a peculiarity less common in his class and country, than in any other upon earth, who have made equal advances, in other respects, towards civilization.
It was during a long riding excursion that these two young men first fell into a conversation together, sufficiently long, and sufficiently unrestrained, to make them both feel that they had got hold of something out of the common way, and that they should like to have a little more of it.
One must have been resident in such lands, and familiar with their inhabitants, before any such freemasonry as this can be comprehended.
In Southern Europe it is possible (and a good deal more than possible) to live for years in habits of constant friendly association with a great variety of well-born persons, moving in the very highest society, without having your intelligence once called upon, or in the least degree awakened, to the consciousness of being in the society of persons au courant of the age in which we live.
To those (whether foreign or native) whom accident has jostled out of this routine, every collision with persons who have been equally lucky, is exceedingly agreeable; and thus it was with the highly-born Adolphe and the lowly-born Rupert.
More than once in the course of that same ride, the stately horse of the young Count might have been seen pacing with enforced condescension beside the clever little steed of Rupert; and if the young plebeian was less startled, and less excited, by the tone and pith of the young nobleman’s remarks than his well-pleased companion was by those he himself uttered, it was only because the relish with which one listens to truth, was less new to him.
The consequence of this was, that the young Count, upon coming to Schloss Schwanberg, and inquiring for Herr Rupert Odenthal, was shown into the library.
All that followed was so pretty nearly inevitable, that it scarcely needs recounting.
With all the tact of her charming manners, and all the kindness of her womanly heart, the baroness immediately contrived to put the two young men at their ease together, under circumstances which, had the baron been present in her stead, would have been exceedingly embarrassing; but, while giving Adolphe a very cordial reception as a family friend, she took care to make it evident that she understood his visit to be intended for Rupert; a fact which had been made evident to her by the servant, who had proclaimed, when he announced him, that he inquired for the Herr Rupert.
As to Gertrude, though this unwonted occurrence did not suggest to her the necessity of “looking beautiful with all her might,” she very civilly laid her book aside, and so far joined in the conversation as to listen to it, and even “to speak when she was spoken to.”
This was quite enough, and no great wonder, either, to convince Count Adolphe that she was not only the most beautiful, but the most intelligent girl he had ever seen; and what with the aspect of the room, which set him longing for something like it at his home, and what with the friendly kindness of the baroness, and the unaffected ease and spirit with which Rupert sustained the conversation (for, not having a particle of vanity, the feeling of shyness was, of course, unknown to him), — what with all this together, the Count Adolphe thought of little else, as he rode home, than of the finding some good excuse for speedily repeating his visit, which most assuredly was, for some cause or other, by far the most agreeable he had ever made in his life.
CHAPTER XV.
COUNT ADOLPHE VON STEINFELD was a warm-hearted, ardent-tempered young man, with fewer faults than might have been expected from one who had undergone so much of the spoiling process, as handsome young sons, heirs, who have no younger brothers to rival them, are usually exposed to.
It was decidedly a very strong proof of the goodness of his nature, that, before he gave himself up wholly and entirely to the “soft passion of love” for the beautiful Gertrude, he determined to find out whether the extremely probable circumstance of his new friend Rupert’s having fallen in love with her also, might not already have taken place. This was the more generous, because he was quite aware that he would himself he considered as a match in every way desirable and proper, even for the heiress of Schwanberg, whereas he could not doubt that it would he quite sufficient for Rupert to he caught looking at her with the eyes of affection, in order to ensure his being turned out of his present paradise without an hour’s delay.
But his perfect conviction that in thus thinking he made no mistake, had a precisely contrary effect upon him, from what it probably would have had upon most other people.
If he had believed himself as superior in talent, or even as superior in the less important advantage of good looks, as he truly believed himself to he the reverse, he would have been vastly more inclined to take advantage of it, even at the cost of sacrificing his newly-formed friendship to his newly-felt love; but the idea that, if both fairly weighed together, Rupert could only be found wanting in weight of metal, was repugnant to him, even though that metal was gold.
It required no great time to enable him to decide irrevocably against running the risk which might endanger the happiness of all, from any such rivalry; but it took him rather longer, before he could make up his mind as to what would be the best method of proceeding, in order to ascertain whether, in truth, Rupert were as much in love as himself.
That he should have lived in the same house with Gertrude, and escaped being so, certainly seemed to him to be pretty nearly impossible; but, nevertheless, he determined to have better authority than this, before he decided upon what his own conduct should be.
The result of all his meditations on the subject, was his writing and sending the following letter: —
“MY DEAR ODENTHAL,
“Though we have so well managed our pleasant rides as to get more talk amidst our gallopings than, I believe, most people could have done, and though the friendship thus began between us took a very vigorous step onward during my unconscionably long visit in the Schwanberg library yesterday, I still feel that I want to know you better yet; and I am inclined to think that a good long tête-à-tête w
alk together, would be one of the most agreeable modes of attaining my object. What say you? I know that you are not such an idle, useless fellow as myself — I don’t believe I should have liked you so well if you had been — It must he for you, therefore, to fix the day and hour that will best suit your convenience for our ramble; I shall hold myself in readiness to meet you when and where you please.
“Believe me,
“Dear Odenthal,
“Very sincerely yours,
“ADOLPHE STEINFELD.”
The receipt of this note surprised Rupert Odenthal a good deal, but it pleased him considerably more. He had been, for the last year or two of his life, much too busy a personage to have had any time to spare for day-dreams; but, had he indulged in such, the offered friendship of such a man as the young Count von Steinfeld, would decidedly have been of the number.
But though his service was a very easy one, he felt at that moment more decidedly, perhaps, than he had ever before done, that he was not quite so free a man as he might wish to be. But ere he had positively breathed a sigh as he remembered this, he threw down, his pen, with a smile, as he remembered, also, that it was to the lady of the castle, and not to its lord, that it was necessary to apply for permission to accept the very agreeable proposal which the note contained.
It was with a flushed cheek, and a brightly sparkling eye, that he approached his ever-kind patroness, and placed the note in her hand.
He had no sooner done so, than Gertrude, with her accustomed unchecked impetuosity, sprung from her own table to that at which her mother was sitting.
“It is not a secret, I suppose, mamma, is it?” said she, bending over her mother’s shoulder, with the very evident intention of reading the note she held.
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