Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/239

Charles Dickens] we have a great opportunity; in Carey-street we have a compromise and a failure.

The whole question must be reconsidered in the House of Commons, when the money grant is asked for. It is to be hoped that, for once, a metropolitan improvement will be carefully and wisely discussed, and that the right course may be adopted.

was the object of some attention in the winter of '44, when he appeared, for the first time, in the salons of Vienna. He was the head of an old Bohemian family; rich, not much past thirty, and handsome. He was, moreover, unmarried. Little was known about him, except that he had large estates, and more than one schloss, where he never resided; that his father had died when he was very young, and his only sister had been drowned, by accident, many years before; and that, left without kith or kin, since the age of eighteen, he had led a wandering life on the face of the globe, never remaining for many months in the same place. He consorted but little with men of his own age, he neither gambled nor drank, and he was said to be proof against all the attentions of women. Whether this was really so or not, such a reputation was, in itself, enough to pique curiosity and excite interest in Vienna, where feminine intrigue spreads its endless network among the roots of an aristocratic society. Add to this, the stern, sad expression of the young man's handsome face, and his reluctance ever to talk about himself, and the mystery with which it pleased the Viennese world to invest him, could no longer be a matter of surprise.

The world selected a very suitable wife for him—a lovely daughter of the princely house of L. He scandalously disappointed the world, and chose a wife for himself. He married a simple burgher's daughter; and the indignation which this outrage upon common decency aroused can only be conceived by those who know what the pride of "caste" in Vienna is. How could his infatuation be accounted for? The girl he fixed on was by no means beautiful. A sweet, pale face, a slender, graceful figure, were all young Magda had to boast of. He saw her first in one of the Lust-Gartens of the town, and from that moment his infatuation began. He followed her home; he never rested until he had made the good citizen's acquaintance; he called at the house daily during holy week, and on Easter Monday he asked Magda to become his wife. The girl was almost frightened. It was scarce a fortnight since she had first met the count's intense and searching gaze bent upon her; since she had been conscious of his following her and her mother home; scarce ten days since he first called, that cold March morning, when Magda's hands were red from the household washing, and she felt ashamed of them, as she knitted with downcast eyes, and replied in monosyllables to the questions of the deep-eyed, melancholy Graf. It had all passed like a dream, so fantastic and unreal it seemed. She was still a little afraid of him. He was very handsome and charming, no doubt; and no young maiden could be insensible to the devotion of such a knight; but his gravity and the difference of their rank a little oppressed her. She had scarcely accustomed herself to his daily visit, scarcely felt at ease in his presence, when he startled her by laying all he possessed at her feet. And with some trembling, some unaccountable misgiving at heart, she faltered "Yes."

The cackling this event caused throughout all classes (for high and low were equally interested therein) was increased by the haste with which the marriage was hurried on. Of course, it was said the poor young man had been entrapped into it; there were hints that he had been made drunk; there were even darker hints thrown out, without one shadow of foundation; but these lies had scarcely time to permeate society, when the news burst like a bomb into the midst of it that the ceremony had actually taken place in private, and that Count von Rabensberg and his bride had left Vienna.

The count's conduct was no less strange after marriage than it had been before. He worshipped his young wife with a passionate curiosity, so to speak, which seemed allied to some other mysterious feeling, deep-seated and unexplained. Now and again he would lie at her feet for hours, gazing into her eyes, as Hamlet may have done into Ophelia's, with a silent, half-sorrowful ecstasy, rising on a sudden, with a wild rapture, to cast his arms about her and cover her with kisses. By degrees she became used to his ways, more at ease under his long silences, less startled by his sudden passionate outbursts. There were times, too, when he would talk with an eloquence, the like of which she had never