From these fear-stricken rovings, Markheim's eyes returned to the body
of his victim, where it lay, both humped and sprawling, incredibly small
and strangely meaner than in life. In these poor, miserly clothes, in
that ungainly attitude, the dealer lay like so much sawdust. Markheim
had feared to see it, and, lo! it was nothing. And yet, as he gazed,
this bundle of old clothes and pool of blood began to find eloquent
voices. There it must lie; there was none to work the cunning hinges or
direct the miracle of locomotion; there it must lie till it was found.
Found! ay, and then? Then would this dead flesh lift up a cry that would
ring over England, and fill the world with the echoes of pursuit. Ay,
dead or not, this was still the enemy. "Time was that when the brains
were out," he thought; and the first word struck into his mind. Time,
now that the deed was accomplished--time, which had closed for the
victim, had become instant and momentous for the slayer.

The thought was yet in his mind, when, first one and then another, with
every variety of pace and voice--one deep as the bell from a cathedral
turret, another ringing on its treble notes the prelude of a waltz,--the
clocks began to strike the hour of three in the afternoon.

The sudden outbreak of so many tongues in that dumb chamber staggered
him. He began to bestir himself, going to and fro with the candle,
beleaguered by moving shadows, and startled to the soul by chance
reflections. In many rich mirrors, some of home design, some from Venice
or Amsterdam, he saw his face repeated and repeated, as it were an army
of spies; his own eyes met and detected him; and the sound of his own
steps, lightly as they fell, vexed the surrounding quiet. And still, as
he continued to fill his pockets, his mind accused him with a sickening
iteration, of the thousand faults of his design. He should have chosen
a more quiet hour; he should have prepared an alibi; he should not have
used a knife; he should have been more cautious, and only bound and
gagged the dealer, and not killed him; he should have been more bold,
and killed the servant also; he should have done all things otherwise.
Poignant regrets, weary, incessant toiling of the mind to change what
was unchangeable, to plan what was now useless, to be the architect of
the irrevocable past. Meanwhile, and behind all this activity, brute
terrors, like the scurrying of rats in a deserted attic, filled the more
remote chambers of his brain with riot; the hand of the constable would
fall heavy on his shoulder, and his nerves would jerk like a hooked
fish; or he beheld, in galloping defile, the dock, the prison, the
gallows, and the black coffin.

Terror of the people in the street sat down before his mind like a
besieging army. It was impossible, he thought, but that some rumour
of the struggle must have reached their ears and set on edge their
curiosity; and now, in all the neighbouring houses, he divined them
sitting motionless and with uplifted ear--solitary people, condemned
to spend Christmas dwelling alone on memories of the past, and now
startingly recalled from that tender exercise; happy family parties
struck into silence round the table, the mother still with raised
finger--every degree and age and humour, but all, by their own hearths,
prying and hearkening and weaving the rope that was to hang him.
Sometimes it seemed to him he could not move too softly; the clink of
the tall Bohemian goblets rang out loudly like a bell; and alarmed by
the bigness of the ticking, he was tempted to stop the clocks. And then,
again, with a swift transition of his terrors, the very silence of the
place appeared a source of peril, and a thing to strike and freeze the
passer-by; and he would step more boldly, and bustle aloud among the
contents of the shop, and imitate, with elaborate bravado, the movements
of a busy man at ease in his own house.

But he was now so pulled about by different alarms that, while one
portion of his mind was still alert and cunning, another trembled on the
brink of lunacy. One hallucination in particular took a strong hold
on his credulity. The neighbour hearkening with white face beside
his window, the passer-by arrested by a horrible surmise on the
pavement--these could at worst suspect, they could not know; through the
brick walls and shuttered windows only sounds could penetrate. But
here, within the house, was he alone? He knew he was; he had watched the
servant set forth sweet-hearting, in her poor best, "out for the day"
written in every ribbon and smile. Yes, he was alone, of course; and
yet, in the bulk of empty house above him, he could surely hear a stir
of delicate footing; he was surely conscious, inexplicably conscious
of some presence. Ay, surely; to every room and corner of the house his
imagination followed it; and now it was a faceless thing, and yet had
eyes to see with; and again it was a shadow of himself; and yet again
behold the image of the dead dealer, reinspired with cunning and hatred.

At times, with a strong effort, he would glance at the open door which
still seemed to repel his eyes. The house was tall, the skylight small
and dirty, the day blind with fog; and the light that filtered down
to the ground story was exceedingly faint, and showed dimly on the
threshold of the shop. And yet, in that strip of doubtful brightness,
did there not hang wavering a shadow?

Suddenly, from the street outside, a very jovial gentleman began to beat
with a staff on the shop door, accompanying his blows with shouts and
railleries in which the dealer was continually called upon by name.
Markheim, smitten into ice, glanced at the dead man. But no! he lay
quite still; he was fled away far beyond earshot of these blows and
shoutings; he was sunk beneath seas of silence; and his name, which
would once have caught his notice above the howling of a storm, had
become an empty sound. And presently the jovial gentleman desisted from
his knocking and departed.

Here was a broad hint to hurry what remained to be done, to get forth
from this accusing neighbourhood, to plunge into a bath of London
multitudes, and to reach, on the other side of day, that haven of safety
and apparent innocence--his bed. One visitor had come; at any moment
another might follow and be more obstinate. To have done the deed,
and yet not to reap the profit, would be too abhorrent a failure. The
money--that was now Markheim's concern; and as a means to that, the
keys.

He glanced over his shoulder at the open door, where the shadow was
still lingering and shivering; and with no conscious repugnance of
the mind, yet with a tremor of the belly, he drew near the body of his
victim. The human character had quite departed. Like a suit half-stuffed
with bran, the limbs lay scattered, the trunk doubled, on the floor; and
yet the thing repelled him. Although so dingy and inconsiderable to the
eye, he feared it might have more significance to the touch. He took the
body by the shoulders, and turned it on its back. It was strangely light
and supple, and the limbs, as if they had been broken, fell into the
oddest postures. The face was robbed of all expression; but it was as
pale as wax, and shockingly smeared with blood about one temple. That
was, for Markheim, the one displeasing circumstance. It carried him
back, upon the instant, to a certain fair-day in a fishers' village: a
gray day, a piping wind, a crowd upon the street, the blare of brasses,
the booming of drums, the nasal voice of a ballad singer; and a boy
going to and fro, buried overhead in the crowd and divided between
interest and fear, until, coming out upon the chief place of concourse,
he beheld a booth and a great screen with pictures, dismally designed,
garishly coloured--Brownrigg with her apprentice, the Mannings with
their murdered guest, Weare in the death-grip of Thurtell, and a score
besides of famous crimes. The thing was as clear as an illusion He was
once again that little boy; he was looking once again, and with the same
sense of physical revolt, at these vile pictures; he was still stunned
by the thumping of the drums. A bar of that day's music returned upon
his memory; and at that, for the first time, a qualm came over him,
a breath of nausea, a sudden weakness of the joints, which he must
instantly resist and conquer.

He judged it more prudent to confront than to flee from these
considerations, looking the more hardily in the dead face, bending his
mind to realise the nature and greatness of his crime. So little a while
ago that face had moved with every change of sentiment, that pale mouth
had spoken, that body had been all on fire with governable energies;
and now, and by his act, that piece of life had been arrested, as the
horologist, with interjected finger, arrests the beating of the
clock. So he reasoned in vain; he could rise to no more remorseful
consciousness; the same heart which had shuddered before the painted
effigies of crime, looked on its reality unmoved. At best, he felt
a gleam of pity for one who had been endowed in vain with all those
faculties that can make the world a garden of enchantment, one who had
never lived and who was now dead. But of penitence, no, not a tremor.

With that, shaking himself clear of these considerations, he found the
keys and advanced toward the open door of the shop. Outside, it had
begun to rain smartly, and the sound of the shower upon the roof had
banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house
were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled
with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door,
he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps of
another foot withdrawing up the stair. The shadow still palpitated
loosely on the threshold. He threw a ton's weight of resolve upon his
muscles, and drew back the door.

The faint, foggy daylight glimmered dimly on the bare floor and stairs;
on the bright suit of armour posted, halbert in hand, upon the landing;
and on the dark wood-carvings, and framed pictures that hung against
the yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of the
rain through all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to be
distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the
tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the
counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to
mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of
the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him
to the verge of madness. On every side he was haunted and begirt by
presences. He heard them moving in the upper chambers; from the shop,
he heard the dead man getting to his legs; and as he began with a great
effort to mount the stairs, feet fled quietly before him and followed
stealthily behind. If he were but deaf, he thought, how tranquilly he
would possess his soul! And then again, and hearkening with ever fresh
attention, he blessed himself for that unresting sense which held the
outposts and stood a trusty sentinel upon his life. His head turned
continually on his neck; his eyes, which seemed starting from their
orbits, scouted on every side, and on every side were half rewarded as
with the tail of something nameless vanishing. The four and twenty steps
to the first floor were four and twenty agonies.

On that first story, the doors stood ajar--three of them, like three
ambushes, shaking his nerves like the throats of cannon. He could
never again, he felt, be sufficiently immured and fortified from men's
observing eyes; he longed to be home, girt in by walls, buried among
bedclothes, and invisible to all but God. And at that thought he
wondered a little, recollecting tales of other murderers and the fear
they were said to entertain of heavenly avengers. It was not so, at
least, with him. He feared the laws of nature, lest, in their callous
and immutable procedure, they should preserve some damning evidence of
his crime. He feared tenfold more, with a slavish, superstitious
terror, some scission in the continuity of man's experience, some wilful
illegality of nature. He played a game of skill, depending on the rules,
calculating consequence from cause; and what if nature, as the defeated
tyrant overthrew the chess-board, should break the mould of their
succession? The like had befallen Napoleon (so writers said) when
the winter changed the time of its appearance. The like might befall
Markheim: the solid walls might become transparent and reveal his doings
like those of bees in a glass hive; the stout planks might yield under
his foot like quicksands and detain him in their clutch. Ay, and there
were soberer accidents that might destroy him; if, for instance, the
house should fall and imprison him beside the body of his victim, or the
house next door should fly on fire, and the firemen invade him from all
sides. These things he feared; and, in a sense, these things might be
called the hands of God reached forth against sin. But about God himself
he was at ease; his act was doubtless exceptional, but so were his
excuses, which God knew; it was there, and not among men, that he felt
sure of justice.

When he had got safe into the drawing-room, and shut the door behind
him, he was aware of a respite from alarms. The room was quite
dismantled, uncarpeted besides, and strewn with packing-cases and
incongruous furniture; several great pier-glasses, in which he beheld
himself at various angles, like an actor on a stage; many pictures,
framed and unframed, standing, with their faces to the wall; a fine
Sheraton sideboard, a cabinet of marquetry, and a great old bed, with
tapestry hangings. The windows opened to the floor; but by great
good fortune the lower part of the shutters had been closed, and this
concealed him from the neighbours. Here, then, Markheim drew in a
packing-case before the cabinet, and began to search among the keys. It
was a long business, for there were many; and it was irksome, besides;
for, after all, there might be nothing in the cabinet, and time was on
the wing. But the closeness of the occupation sobered him. With the
tail of his eye he saw the door--even glanced at it from time to time
directly, like a besieged commander pleased to verify the good estate
of his defences. But in truth he was at peace. The rain falling in the
street sounded natural and pleasant. Presently, on the other side, the
notes of a piano were wakened to the music of a hymn, and the voices of
many children took up the air and words. How stately, how comfortable
was the melody! How fresh the youthful voices! Markheim gave ear to it
smilingly, as he sorted out the keys; and his mind was thronged with
answerable ideas and images: church-going children, and the pealing of
the high organ; children afield, bathers by the brookside, ramblers on
the brambly common, kite-flyers in the windy and cloud-navigated sky;
and then, at another cadence of the hymn, back again to church, and the
somnolence of summer Sundays, and the high genteel voice of the parson
(which he smiled a little to recall) and the painted Jacobean tombs, and
the dim lettering of the Ten Commandments in the chancel.

And as he sat thus, at once busy and absent, he was startled to his
feet. A flash of ice, a flash of fire, a bursting gush of blood, went
over him, and then he stood transfixed and thrilling. A step mounted the
stair slowly and steadily, and presently a hand was laid upon the knob,
and the lock clicked, and the door opened.

Fear held Markheim in a vice. What to expect he knew not--whether the
dead man walking, or the official ministers of human justice, or some
chance witness blindly stumbling in to consign him to the gallows. But
when a face was thrust into the aperture, glanced round the room,
looked at him, nodded and smiled as if in friendly recognition, and then
withdrew again, and the door closed behind it, his fear broke loose from
his control in a hoarse cry. At the sound of this the visitant returned.

"Did you call me?" he asked, pleasantly, and with that he entered the
room and closed the door behind him.

Markheim stood and gazed at him with all his eyes. Perhaps there was a
film upon his sight, but the outlines of the new comer seemed to change
and waver like those of the idols in the wavering candle-light of the
shop; and at times he thought he knew him; and at times he thought he
bore a likeness to himself; and always, like a lump of living terror,
there lay in his bosom the conviction that this thing was not of the
earth and not of God.

And yet the creature had a strange air of the commonplace, as he stood
looking on Markheim with a smile; and when he added, "You are looking
for the money, I believe?" it was in the tones of everyday politeness.

Markheim made no answer.

"I should warn you," resumed the other, "that the maid has left her
sweetheart earlier than usual and will soon be here. If Mr. Markheim be
found in this house, I need not describe to him the consequences."

"You know me?" cried the murderer.

The visitor smiled. "You have long been a favourite of mine," he said;
"and I have long observed and often sought to help you."

"What are you?" cried Markheim; "the devil?"

"What I may be," returned the other, "cannot affect the service I
propose to render you."

"It can," cried Markheim; "it does! Be helped by you? No, never; not by
you! You do not know me yet; thank God, you do not know me!"

"I know you," replied the visitant, with a sort of kind severity or
rather firmness. "I know you to the soul."

"Know me!" cried Markheim. "Who can do so? My life is but a travesty and
slander on myself. I have lived to belie my nature. All men do; all men
are better than this disguise that grows about and stifles them. You see
each dragged away by life, like one whom bravos have seized and muffled
in a cloak. If they had their own control--if you could see their faces,
they would be altogether different, they would shine out for heroes
and saints! I am worse than most; myself is more overlaid; my excuse is
known to me and God. But, had I the time, I could disclose myself."

"To me?" inquired the visitant.

"To you before all," returned the murderer. "I supposed you were
intelligent. I thought--since you exist--you would prove a reader of the
heart. And yet you would propose to judge me by my acts! Think of it--my
acts! I was born and I have lived in a land of giants; giants have
dragged me by the wrists since I was born out of my mother--the giants
of circumstance. And you would judge me by my acts! But can you not look
within? Can you not understand that evil is hateful to me? Can you not
see within me the clear writing of conscience, never blurred by any
wilful sophistry, although too often disregarded? Can you not read
me for a thing that surely must be common as humanity--the unwilling
sinner?"

"All this is very feelingly expressed," was the reply, "but it regards
me not. These points of consistency are beyond my province, and I care
not in the least by what compulsion you may have been dragged away,
so as you are but carried in the right direction. But time flies; the
servant delays, looking in the faces of the crowd and at the pictures on
the hoardings, but still she keeps moving nearer; and remember, it is
as if the gallows itself was striding towards you through the Christmas
streets! Shall I help you--I, who know all? Shall I tell you where to
find the money?"

"For what price?" asked Markheim.

"I offer you the service for a Christmas gift," returned the other.

Markheim could not refrain from smiling with a kind of bitter triumph.
"No," said he, "I will take nothing at your hands; if I were dying of
thirst, and it was your hand that put the pitcher to my lips, I should
find the courage to refuse. It may be credulous, but I will do nothing
to commit myself to evil."

"I have no objection to a death-bed repentance," observed the visitant.

"Because you disbelieve their efficacy!" Markheim cried.

"I do not say so," returned the other; "but I look on these things from
a different side, and when the life is done my interest falls. The man
has lived to serve me, to spread black looks under colour of religion,
or to sow tares in the wheat-field, as you do, in a course of weak
compliance with desire. Now that he draws so near to his deliverance, he
can add but one act of service: to repent, to die smiling, and thus
to build up in confidence and hope the more timorous of my surviving
followers. I am not so hard a master. Try me; accept my help. Please
yourself in life as you have done hitherto; please yourself more amply,
spread your elbows at the board; and when the night begins to fall and
the curtains to be drawn, I tell you, for your greater comfort, that you
will find it even easy to compound your quarrel with your conscience,
and to make a truckling peace with God. I came but now from such a
death-bed, and the room was full of sincere mourners, listening to the
man's last words; and when I looked into that face, which had been set
as a flint against mercy, I found it smiling with hope."

"And do you, then, suppose me such a creature?" asked Markheim. "Do you
think I have no more generous aspirations than to sin and sin and sin
and at last sneak into heaven? My heart rises at the thought. Is this,
then, your experience of mankind? or is it because you find me with red
hands that you presume such baseness? And is this crime of murder indeed
so impious as to dry up the very springs of good?"

"Murder is to me no special category," replied the other. "All sins
are murder, even as all life is war. I behold your race, like starving
mariners on a raft, plucking crusts out of the hands of famine and
feeding on each other's lives. I follow sins beyond the moment of their
acting; I find in all that the last consequence is death, and to my
eyes, the pretty maid who thwarts her mother with such taking graces on
a question of a ball, drips no less visibly with human gore than such
a murderer as yourself. Do I say that I follow sins? I follow virtues
also. They differ not by the thickness of a nail; they are both scythes
for the reaping angel of Death. Evil, for which I live, consists not
in action but in character. The bad man is dear to me, not the bad
act, whose fruits, if we could follow them far enough down the hurtling
cataract of the ages, might yet be found more blessed than those of
the rarest virtues. And it is not because you have killed a dealer, but
because you are Markheim, that I offer to forward your escape."

"I will lay my heart open to you," answered Markheim. "This crime
on which you find me is my last. On my way to it I have learned many
lessons; itself is a lesson--a momentous lesson. Hitherto I have been
driven with revolt to what I would not; I was a bond-slave to poverty,
driven and scourged. There are robust virtues that can stand in these
temptations; mine was not so; I had a thirst of pleasure. But to-day,
and out of this deed, I pluck both warning and riches--both the power
and a fresh resolve to be myself. I become in all things a free actor in
the world; I begin to see myself all changed, these hands the agents
of good, this heart at peace. Something comes over me out of the
past--something of what I have dreamed on Sabbath evenings to the sound
of the church organ, of what I forecast when I shed tears over noble
books, or talked, an innocent child, with my mother. There lies my
life; I have wandered a few years, but now I see once more my city of
destination."

"You are to use this money on the Stock Exchange, I think?" remarked
the visitor; "and there, if I mistake not, you have already lost some
thousands?"

"Ah," said Markheim, "but this time I have a sure thing."

"This time, again, you will lose," replied the visitor quietly.

"Ah, but I keep back the half!" cried Markheim.

"That also you will lose," said the other.

The sweat started upon Markheim's brow. "Well then, what matter?" he
exclaimed. "Say it be lost, say I am plunged again in poverty, shall one
part of me, and that the worse, continue until the end to override the
better? Evil and good run strong in me, hailing me both ways. I do
not love the one thing; I love all. I can conceive great deeds,
renunciations, martyrdoms; and though I be fallen to such a crime as
murder, pity is no stranger to my thoughts. I pity the poor; who knows
their trials better than myself? I pity and help them. I prize love; I
love honest laughter; there is no good thing nor true thing on earth but
I love it from my heart. And are my vices only to direct my life, and my
virtues to lie without effect, like some passive lumber of the mind? Not
so; good, also, is a spring of acts."

But the visitant raised his finger. "For six and thirty years that you
have been in this world," said he, "through many changes of fortune and
varieties of humour, I have watched you steadily fall. Fifteen years
ago you would have started at a theft. Three years back you would have
blenched at the name of murder. Is there any crime, is there any cruelty
or meanness, from which you still recoil? Five years from now I shall
detect you in the fact! Downward, downward, lies your way; nor can
anything but death avail to stop you."

"It is true," Markheim said huskily, "I have in some degree complied
with evil. But it is so with all; the very saints, in the mere
exercise of living, grow less dainty, and take on the tone of their
surroundings."

"I will propound to you one simple question," said the other; "and as
you answer I shall read to you your moral horoscope. You have grown
in many things more lax; possibly you do right to be so; and at any
account, it is the same with all men. But granting that, are you in any
one particular, however trifling, more difficult to please with your own
conduct, or do you go in all things with a looser rein?"

"In any one?" repeated Markheim, with an anguish of consideration. "No,"
he added, with despair; "in none! I have gone down in all."

"Then," said the visitor, "content yourself with what you are, for
you will never change; and the words of your part on this stage are
irrevocably written down."

Markheim stood for a long while silent, and, indeed, it was the visitor
who first broke the silence. "That being so," he said, "shall I show you
the money?"

"And grace?" cried Markheim.

"Have you not tried it?" returned the other. "Two or three years ago
did I not see you on the platform of revival meetings, and was not your
voice the loudest in the hymn?"

"It is true," said Markheim; "and I see clearly what remains for me by
way of duty. I thank you for these lessons from my soul; my eyes are
opened, and I behold myself at last for what I am."

At this moment, the sharp note of the door-bell rang through the house;
and the visitant, as though this were some concerted signal for which he
had been waiting, changed at once in his demeanour.

"The maid!" he cried. "She has returned, as I forewarned you, and there
is now before you one more difficult passage. Her master, you must
say, is ill; you must let her in, with an assured but rather serious
countenance; no smiles, no overacting, and I promise you success!
Once the girl within, and the door closed, the same dexterity that has
already rid you of the dealer will relieve you of this last danger in
your path. Thenceforward you have the whole evening--the whole night,
if needful--to ransack the treasures of the house and to make good your
safety. This is help that comes to you with the mask of danger. Up!"
he cried; "up, friend. Your life hangs trembling in the scales; up, and
act!"

Markheim steadily regarded his counsellor. "If I be condemned to evil
acts," he said, "there is still one door of freedom open: I can cease
from action. If my life be an ill thing, I can lay it down. Though I be,
as you say truly, at the beck of every small temptation, I can yet, by
one decisive gesture, place myself beyond the reach of all. My love of
good is damned to barrenness; it may, and let it be! But I have still my
hatred of evil; and from that, to your galling disappointment, you shall
see that I can draw both energy and courage."

The features of the visitor began to undergo a wonderful and lovely
change: they brightened and softened with a tender triumph, and, even
as they brightened, faded and dislimned. But Markheim did not pause
to watch or understand the transformation. He opened the door and went
downstairs very slowly, thinking to himself. His past went soberly
before him; he beheld it as it was, ugly and strenuous like a dream,
random as chance medley--a scene of defeat. Life, as he thus reviewed
it, tempted him no longer; but on the further side he perceived a quiet
haven for his bark. He paused in the passage, and looked into the shop,
where the candle still burned by the dead body. It was strangely silent.
Thoughts of the dealer swarmed into his mind, as he stood gazing. And
then the bell once more broke out into impatient clamour.

He confronted the maid upon the threshold with something like a smile.

"You had better go for the police," said he; "I have killed your
master."




QUEEN TITA'S WAGER, by William Black




I--FRANZISKA FAHLER

It is a Christmas morning in Surrey--cold, still and gray, with a frail
glimmer of sunshine coming through the bare trees to melt the hoar-frost
on the lawn. The postman has just gone out, swinging the gate behind
him. A fire burns brightly in the breakfast-room; and there is silence
about the house, for the children have gone off to climb Box Hill before
being marched to church.

The small and gentle lady who presides over the household walks sedately
in, and lifts the solitary letter that is lying on her plate. About
three seconds suffice to let her run through its contents, and then she
suddenly cries:

"I knew it! I said it! I told you two months ago she was only flirting
with him; and now she has rejected him. And oh! I am so glad of it! The
poor boy!"

The other person in the room, who had been meekly waiting for his
breakfast for half an hour, ventures to point out that there is nothing
to rejoice over in the fact of a young man having been rejected by a
young woman.

"If it were final, yes! If these two young folks were not certain to go
and marry somebody else, you might congratulate them both. But you know
they will. The poor boy will go courting again in three months' time,
and be vastly pleased with his condition."

"Oh, never, never!" she says. "He has had such a lesson! You know I
warned him. I knew she was only flirting with him. Poor Charlie! Now I
hope he will get on with his profession, and leave such things out of
his head. And as for that creature--"

"I will do you the justice to say," observes her husband, who is still
regarding the table with a longing eye, "that you did oppose this
match, because you hadn't the making of it. If you had brought these
two together they would have been married ere this. Never mind; you can
marry him to somebody of your own choosing now."

"No," she says, with much decision; "he must not think of marriage. He
cannot think of it. It will take the poor lad a long time to get over
this blow."

"He will marry within a year."

"I will bet you whatever you like that he doesn't," she says,
triumphantly.

"Whatever I like! That is a big wager. If you lose, do you think you
could pay? I should like, for example, to have my own way in my own
house."

"If I lose you shall," says the generous creature; and the bargain is
concluded.

Nothing further is said about this matter for the moment. The children
return from Box Hill, and are rigged out for church. Two young people,
friends of ours, and recently married, having no domestic circle of
their own, and having promised to spend the whole Christmas Day with
us, arrived. Then we set out, trying as much as possible to think that
Christmas Day is different from any other day, and pleased to observe
that the younger folk, at least, cherish the delusion.

But just before reaching the church I say to the small lady who got the
letter in the morning, and whom we generally call Tita:

"When do you expect to see Charlie?"

"I don't know," she answers. "After this cruel affair he won't like to
go about much."

"You remember that he promised to go with us to the Black Forest?"

"Yes; and I am sure it will be a pleasant trip for him."

"Shall we go to Huferschingen?"

"I suppose so."

"Franziska is a pretty girl."

Now you would not think that any great mischief could be done by the
mere remark that Franziska was a pretty girl. Anybody who had seen
Franziska Fahler, niece of the proprietor of the "Goldenen Bock" in
Huferschingen, would admit that in a moment. But this is nevertheless
true, that our important but diminutive Queen Tita was very thoughtful
during the rest of our walk to this little church; and in church, too,
she was thinking so deeply that she almost forgot to look at the effect
of the decorations she had nailed up the day before. Yet nothing could
have offended in the bare observation that Franziska was a pretty girl.

At dinner in the evening we had our two guests and a few young fellows
from London who did not happen to have their families or homes there.
Curiously enough, there was a vast deal of talk about travelling, and
also about Baden, and more particularly about the southern districts
of Baden. Tita said the Black Forest was the most charming place in the
world; and as it was Christmas Day, and as we had been listening to
a sermon all about charity and kindness and consideration for others,
nobody was rude enough to contradict her. But our forbearance was put to
a severe test when, after dinner, she produced a photographic album and
handed it round, and challenged everybody to say whether the young lady
in the corner was not absolutely lovely. Most of them said that she was
certainly very nice-looking; and Tita seemed a little disappointed.

I perceived that it would no longer do to say that Franziska was a
pretty girl. We should henceforth have to swear by everything we held
dear that she was absolutely lovely.




II--ZUM "GOLDENEN BOCK"

We felt some pity for the lad when we took him abroad with us; but it
must be confessed that at first he was not a very desirable travelling
companion. There was a gloom about him. Despite the eight months that
had elapsed, he professed that his old wound was still open. Tita
treated him with the kindest maternal solicitude, which was a great
mistake; tonics, not sweets, are required in such cases. Yet he was very
grateful, and he said, with a blush, that, in any case, he would not
rail against all women because of the badness of one. Indeed, you would
not have fancied he had any great grudge against womankind. There were
a great many English abroad that autumn, and we met whole batches of
pretty girls at every station and at every _table d'hote_ on our route.
Did he avoid them, or glare at them savagely, or say hard things of
them? Oh no! quite the reverse. He was a little shy at first; and when
he saw a party of distressed damsels in a station, with their bewildered
father in vain attempting to make himself understood to a porter, he
would assist them in a brief and businesslike manner as if it were a
duty, lift his cap, and then march off relieved. But by-and-by he
began to make acquaintances in the hotel; and as he was a handsome,
English-looking lad, who bore a certificate of honesty in his clear gray
eyes and easy gait, he was rather made much of. Nor could any fault be
decently found with his appetite.

So we passed on from Konigswinter to Coblenz, and from Coblenz to
Heidelberg, and from Heidelberg south to Freiburg, where we bade adieu
to the last of the towns, and laid hold of a trap with a pair of ancient
and angular horses, and plunged into the Hollenthal, the first great
gorge of the Black Forest mountains. From one point to another we slowly
urged our devious course, walking the most of the day, indeed, and
putting the trap and ourselves up for the night at some quaint roadside
hostelry, where we ate of roe-deer and drank of Affenthaler, and
endeavoured to speak German with a pure Waldshut accent. And then, one
evening, when the last rays of the sun were shining along the hills and
touching the stems of the tall pines, we drove into a narrow valley and
caught sight of a large brown building of wood, with projecting eaves
and quaint windows, that stood close by the forest.

"Here is my dear inn!" cried Tita, with a great glow of delight and
affection in her face. "Here is _mein gutes Thal! Ich gruss' dich ein
tausend Mal!_ And here is old Peter come out to see us; and there is
Franziska!"

"Oh, this is Franziska, is it?" said Charlie.

Yes, this was Franziska. She was a well-built, handsome girl of nineteen
or twenty, with a healthy, sunburnt complexion, and dark hair plaited
into two long tails, which were taken up and twisted into a knot behind.
That you could see from a distance. But on nearer approach you found
that Franziska had really fine and intelligent features, and a pair of
frank, clear, big brown eyes that had a very straight look about them.
They were something of the eyes of a deer, indeed; wide apart, soft, and
apprehensive, yet looking with a certain directness and unconsciousness
that overcame her natural girlish timidity. Tita simply flew at her and
kissed her heartily and asked her twenty questions at once. Franziska
answered in very fair English, a little slow and formal, but quite
grammatical. Then she was introduced to Charlie, and she shook hands
with him in a simple and unembarrassed way; and then she turned to one
of the servants and gave some directions about the luggage. Finally she
begged Tita to go indoors and get off her travelling attire, which was
done, leaving us two outside.

"She's a very pretty girl," Charlie said, carelessly. "I suppose she's
sort of head cook and kitchen-maid here."

The impudence of these young men is something extraordinary.

"If you wish to have your head in your hands," I remarked to him, "just
you repeat that remark at dinner. Why, Franziska is no end of a swell.
She has two thousand pounds and the half of a mill. She has a sister
married to the Geheimer-Ober-Hofbaurath of Hesse-Cassel. She had visited
both Paris and Munich, and she has her dresses made in Freiburg."

"But why does such an illustrious creature bury herself in this valley,
and in an old inn, and go about bareheaded?"

"Because there are folks in the world without ambition, who like to
live a quiet, decent, homely life. Every girl can't marry a
Geheimer-Ober-Hofbaurath. Ziska, now, is much more likely to marry the
young doctor here."

"Oh, indeed! and live here all her days. She couldn't do better. Happy
Franziska!"

We went indoors. It was a low, large, rambling place, with one immense
room all hung round with roe-deers' horns, and with one lesser room
fitted up with a billiard-table. The inn lay a couple of hundred yards
back from Huferschingen; but it had been made the headquarters of the
keepers, and just outside this room there were a number of pegs for them
to sling their guns and bags on when they came in of an evening to have
a pipe and a chopin of white wine. Ziska's uncle and aunt were both
large, stout, and somnolent people, very good-natured and kind, but a
trifle dull. Ziska really had the management of the place, and she was
not slow to lend a hand if the servants were remiss in waiting on us.
But that, it was understood, was done out of compliment to our small
Queen Tita.

By-and-by we sat down to dinner, and Franziska came to see that
everything was going on straight. It was a dinner "with scenery." You
forgot to be particular about the soup, the venison, and the Affenthaler
when from the window at your elbow you could look across the narrow
valley and behold a long stretch of the Black Forest shining in the red
glow of the sunset. The lower the sun sank the more intense became the
crimson light on the tall stems of the pines; and then you could see the
line of shadow slowly rising up the side of the opposite hill until only
the topmost trees were touched with fire. Then these too lost it, and
all the forest around us seemed to have a pale-blue mist stealing over
it as the night fell and the twilight faded out of the sky overhead.
Presently the long undulations of fir grew black, the stars came out,
and the sound of the stream could be heard distantly in the hollow; and
then, at Tita's wish, we went off for a last stroll in among the soft
moss and under the darkness of the pines, now and again starting some
great capercailzie, and sending it flying and whirring down the glades.

When we returned from that prowl into the forest, we found the inn dark.
Such people as may have called in had gone home; but we suspected that
Franziska had given the neighbours a hint not to overwhelm us on our
first arrival. When we entered the big room, Franziska came in with
candles; then she brought some matches, and also put on the table an odd
little pack of cards, and went out. Her uncle and aunt had, even before
we went out, come and bade us good-night formally, and shaken hands all
round. They are early folk in the Black Forest.

"Where has that girl gone now?" says Charlie. "Into that lonely
billiard-room! Couldn't you ask her to come in here? Or shall we go and
play billiards?"

Tita stares, and then demurely smiles; but it is with an assumed
severity that she rebukes him for such a wicked proposal, and reminds
him that he must start early next morning. He groans assent. Then she
takes her leave.

The big young man was silent for a moment or two, with his hands in his
pockets and his legs stretched out. I begin to think I am in for it--the
old story of blighted hopes and angry denunciation and hypocritical
joy, and all the rest of it. But suddenly Charlie looks up with a
businesslike air and says:

"Who is that doctor fellow you were speaking about! Shall we see him
to-morrow?"

"You saw him to-night. It was he who passed us on the road with the two
beagles."

"What! that little fellow with the bandy legs and the spectacles?" he
cries, with a great laugh.

"That little fellow," I observe to him, "is a person of some importance,
I can tell you. He--"

"I suppose his sister married a Geheimer-Ober-under--what the dickens is
it?" says this disrespectful young man.

"Dr. Krumm has got the Iron Cross."

"That won't make his legs any the straighter."

"He was at Weissenburg."

"I suppose he got that cast in the eye there."

"He can play the zither in a way that would astonish you. He has got a
little money. Franziska and he would be able to live very comfortably
together."

"Franziska and that fellow?" says Charlie; and then he rises with a
sulky air, and proposes we should take our candles with us.

But he is not sulky very long; for Ziska, hearing our footsteps, comes
to the passage and bids us a friendly good-night.

"Good-night, Miss Fahler!" he says, in rather a shamefaced way; "and
I am so awfully sorry we have kept you up so late. We sha'n't do it
again."

You would have thought by his manner that it was two o'clock, whereas it
was only half-past eleven!




III--DR. KRUMM

There was no particular reason why Dr. Krumm should marry Franziska
Fahler, except that he was the most important young man in
Huferschingen, and she was the most important young woman. People
therefore thought they would make a good match, although Franziska
certainly had the most to give in the way of good looks. Dr. Krumm was
a short, bandy-legged, sturdy young man, with long, fair hair, a tanned
complexion, light-blue eyes not quite looking the same way, spectacles,
and a general air of industrious common sense about him, if one may use
such a phrase. There was certainly little of the lover in his manner
toward Ziska, and as little in hers toward him. They were very good
friends, though, and he called her Ziska, while she gave him his
nickname of Fidelio, his real name being Fidele.

Now on this, the first morning of our stay in Huferschingen, all the
population had turned out at an early hour to see us start for the
forest; and as the Ober-Forster had gone away to visit his parents in
Bavaria, Dr. Krumm was appointed to superintend the operations of
the day. And when everybody was busy renewing acquaintance with us,
gathering the straying dogs, examining guns and cartridge-belts, and
generally aiding in the profound commotion of our setting out, Dr. Krumm
was found to be talking in a very friendly and familiar manner with
our pretty Franziska. Charlie eyed them askance. He began to say
disrespectful things of Krumm: he thought Krumm a plain person. And
then, when the bandy-legged doctor had got all the dogs, keepers, and
beaters together, we set off along the road, and presently plunged into
the cool shade of the forest, where the thick moss suddenly silenced our
footsteps, and where there was a moist and resinous smell in the air.

Well, the incidents of the forenoon's shooting, picturesque as they
were, and full of novelty to Tita's protege, need not be described. At
the end of the fourth drive, when we had got on nearly to luncheon-time,
it appeared that Charlie had killed a handsome buck, and he was so
pleased with this performance that he grew friendly with Dr. Krumm, who
had, indeed, given him the _haupt-stelle_. But when, as we sat down to
our sausages and bread and red wine, Charlie incidentally informed our
commander-in-chief that, during one of the drives, a splendid yellow fox
had come out of the underwood and stood and stared at him for three or
four seconds, the doctor uttered a cry of despair.

"I should have told you that," he said, in English that was not quite so
good as Ziska's, "if I had remembered, yes! The English will not shoot
the foxes; but they are very bad for us; they kill the young deer. We
are glad to shoot them; and Franziska she told me she wanted a yellow
fox for the skin to make something."

Charlie got very red in the face. He _had_ missed a chance. If he had
known that Franziska wanted a yellow fox, all the instinctive veneration
for that animal that was in him would have gone clean out, and the fate
of the animal--for Charlie was a smart shot--would have been definitely
sealed.

"Are there many of them?" said he, gloomily.

"No; not many. But where there is one there are generally four or five.
In the next drive we may come on them, yes! I will put you in a
good place, sir, and you must not think of letting him go away; for
Franziska, who has waited two, three weeks, and not one yellow fox not
anywhere, and it is for the variety of the skin in a--a--I do not know
what you call it."

"A rug, I suppose," said Charlie.

I subsequently heard that Charlie went to his post with a fixed
determination to shoot anything of yellow colour that came near him. His
station was next to that of Dr. Krumm; but of course they were invisible
to each other. The horns of the beaters sounded a warning; the gunners
cocked their guns and stood on the alert; in the perfect silence each
one waited for the first glimmer of a brown hide down the long green
glades of young fir. Then, according to Charlie's account, by went two
or three deer like lightning--all of them does. A buck came last, but
swerved just as he came in sight, and backed and made straight for the
line of beaters. Two more does, and then an absolute blank. One or two
shots had been heard at a distance; either some of the more distant
stations had been more fortunate, or one or other of the beaters had
tried his luck. Suddenly there was a shot fired close to Charlie; he
knew it must have been the doctor. In about a minute afterward he saw
some pale-yellow object slowly worming its way through the ferns; and
here, at length, he made sure he was going to get his yellow fox. But
just as the animal came within fair distance, it turned over, made a
struggle or two, and lay still. Charlie rushed along to the spot:
it was, indeed, a yellow fox, shot in the head, and now as dead as a
door-nail.

What was he to do? Let Dr. Krumm take home this prize to Franziska,
after he had had such a chance in the afternoon? Never! Charlie fired
a barrel into the air, and then calmly awaited the coming up of the
beaters and the drawing together of the sportsmen.

Dr. Krumm, being at the next station, was the first to arrive. He found
Charlie standing by the side of the slain fox.

"Ha!" he said, his spectacles fairly gleaming with delight, "you have
shotted him! You have killed him! That is very good--that is excellent!
Now you will present the skin to Miss Franziska, if you do not wish to
take it to England."

"Oh no!" said Charlie, with a lordly indifference. "I don't care about
it. Franziska may have it."

Charlie pulled me aside, and said, with a solemn wink:

"Can you keep a secret?"

"My wife and I can keep a secret. I am not allowed to have any for
myself."

"Listen," said the unabashed young man; "Krumm shot that fox. Mind you
don't say a word. I must have the skin to present to Franziska."

I stared at him; I had never known him guilty of a dishonest action.
But when you do get a decent young English fellow condescending to do
anything shabby, be sure it is a girl who is the cause. I said nothing,
of course; and in the evening a trap came for us, and we drove back to
Huferschingen.

Tita clapped her hands with delight; for Charlie was a favourite of
hers, and now he was returning like a hero, with a sprig of fir in his
cap to show that he had killed a buck.

"And here, Miss Franziska," he said, quite gaily, "here is a yellow fox
for you. I was told that you wanted the skin of one."

Franziska fairly blushed for pleasure; not that the skin of a fox was
very valuable for her, but that the compliment was so open and marked.
She came forward, in German fashion, and rather shyly shook hands with
him in token of her thanks.