Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/242

232[February 6, 1869] Albrecht stooped, and drew out a box from under the seat of the carriage. He then unlocked and took from it, to Magda's infinite surprise, a queer little hat, and still queerer little garment, the like of which Magda had never seen, but which she subsequently learnt had been called in former days, "a spencer." Moreover, there was a short and narrow skirt of silk, having an absurd little flounce round the bottom, such as Magda believed her mother to have worn years ago. She asked, with a smile of wonder, what all this meant.

"Thou dear heart!" cried Albrecht, embracing her, "it means that here we must part, and that I beg, as a further favour to me, that thou wilt exchange thy pretty hat and mantle for these faded old-fashioned ones: nay, if it be possible, thy skirt also. Do not ask any questions. It is a fancy of mine—an absurd fancy, that in the old house where all belongs to another date, another generation, thou shouldst not seem to flout the poor old servants and the pictures on the wall, with thy new fangled clothes And now farewell, my beloved one! God keep thee! Be of good courage, and Heaven will reward thy going!"

With that, he kissed her with an energy akin to desperation, and leaped from the carriage. The tears forced themselves into her blue eyes, though she tried to smile as she tied on the little old hat, and slipped on the spencer. The carriage was then rolling on, and she blew him kisses, and sent him April smiles through her tears, as long as he was in sight. Then when the carriage turned sharply to the left, and she could no longer see him, the sun went in, and the shower was heavy. The poor child felt that she was now, indeed, alone. A moment afterwards the carriage drew up on the edge of a small square lake, in the centre of which, without an inch of earth to spare on any side, rose an equally square grey stone building with a high red-tiled roof, and innumerable towers, turrets, and pinnacles, breaking the sky line. Through the moat—for such the lake was termed—a stream flowed constantly, born among the hills, and growing in its passage through the forest, till it had been widened and deepened by the hand of man into this broad basin, and was then suffered to escape, a dwindled rivulet, and hide itself in the forest once again. Looking down from the windows of the schloss, one saw to the very bottom of the dark green water, where long weeds and grasses, like dusky plumes, swayed to and fro with the current, and the great brown shadow of a fish darted, ever and anon, athwart the mystery of tangled rushes; and carrying the eye on towards the bank, one caught moreover a confused outline of crawling animal life, wherewith the black ooze teemed. It was like looking down into a human heart (if such a thing could be), and watching its network of multifarious miseries and desires, drifted by the secret currents of passion—the swift thought darting across it—the crawling meanness lurking in the impurity of its muddy places.

A long-disused portcullis showed that that there had once been a drawbridge: but a narrow one, for foot-passengers only, had supplanted it, some time in the preceding century, and had already acquired a respectable air of antiquity.

Two old men, in liveries of a strangely old-fashioned make, were standing on the bridge. They were evidently waiting for Magda, and as the calèche drew up, they let down the steps, and handed her out. The postilion had received his orders, no doubt, beforehand. The grey-headed men had no sooner lightened the carriage of its human freight, and cut the cord of the valises that hung behind, than, without a word, he turned his horses' heads, and drove off into the forest by the way he had come. To poor Magda, it seemed as if the last link that held her to the dear outer world—that held her to her Albrecht, was now severed. She looked up at the stern unfriendly building and down at its black shadow in the moat, and she shuddered as she passed under the iron teeth of its portcullis, and heard the gate locked behind her. She found herself in a low stone hall, the groined roof of which rested on arches. At the further end was a winding stair, which led to the dwelling-rooms.

A woman, past middle-age, stood expectant in the middle of the hall, and came forward to kiss Magda's hand, after the old German custom, as her new mistress entered. But though there was no want of alacrity shown in rendering this conventional act of respect—as there was no want of alacrity, indeed, in anything the woman did—nothing of pleasure was evinced. One might have thought that the greeting a pretty young creature to that grim old place, tenanted hitherto only by grim old servants, might have brought some spark of cordiality into their eyes—which foreign servants are not afraid to let light up their faces. But it was not so here. The old