Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/244

234[February 6, 1869] head—a more effective close to her sentence than any spoken words.

"What is your name?" asked Magda, after a pause, during which her heart seemed to stand still. "And whereabouts do you sleep? Is it anywhere near me?"

"My name is Bettine I sleep a long way off, in another tower. But Hanne sleeps close at hand to the gracious lady. She is the head. All the gracious lady's orders must be given to her. I am but the second I was kammermädchen to the Fräulein Louise, and so I have remained here."

Magda went to the window and looked out. Twilight was slowly creeping up over the black wood in front of her; the frogs were croaking on the edges of the moat below; there was no song of birds, no brisk barking of dogs, or lowing of cattle; no cheerful sound of other living thing. The stillness, broken only by that horrible hoarse music, was almost unbearable. She said to her attendant:

"Is it always like this? Is there never any noise? Does no one ever come here?"

Bettine shook her head for all reply.

Then Magda descended the turret again slowly, and returned to the parlour. One of the white-haired men was waiting to serve her at supper, and so she sat down, and made a semblance of eating. When this ceremony had been gone through, the night was fast closing in; the shadows deepened in the corners of the old room; a purple bar widened and spread over the gold floor of Heaven. Perhaps it was then that the young Gräfin felt her loneliness to the full for the first time. She opened the old piano; she passed her fingers over the loose, yellow notes of the hand-board. What dreamy old waltzes it had known in times when that dance was not the mad whirl it has now become, but a slow, swimming measure! What Ländlers and wild Bohemian tunes, which had now passed away into the realm of things forgotten! No doubt the hands that once loved to wander over those notes were long since still. Had it the gift of speech, how much that old piano could tell her!

She turned to the table, and opened one of the books.

was written in faded ink. Who was this Louise, of whom everything here seemed to speak? No doubt, that elder sister of Albrecht's whom he had never named, but of whom Magda had heard as having been drowned twenty years ago. Why was Bettine forbidden to speak of her? What was the mystery concerning this dead daughter of the house of Rabensberg? And was it connected in any way with that "fatal spell" Albrecht had spoken of? His words had been incomprehensible to her at the time; she racked her brain in trying now to determine what definite construction they would bear; and, above all, in trying to find an answer to that question of far closer personal interest, What was the meaning of her being sent here? How could it be given to the humble burgher's daughter to remove any mysterious shadow that hung over the proud old family?

She had once read that to the pure and holy in heart the spiritual world has no terrors; that the weapons of the powers of darkness fall harmless before the innocence of a little child. Could it be that because Albrecht had called her "good," because he believed her to be thus pure and spotless at heart, that he had sent her here to drive out by her presence the dark spirit that hovered over his house?

Alas! alas! if so, she much feared the test would fail. How many sins did not her conscience reproach her with! How often had she been slothful over the house work at home, and negligent of the washing! How much more had she thought of looking neat and pretty when she went to mass, than of the holy service! How reluctant to confess these very sins to Father Paulus, when she had found herself behind the grating in the Ludwig's Kirche! Alas! if it depended on an immaculate conscience!

A clock in one of the towers struck nine. The servants brought in, with much pomp and ceremony, two massive silver candlesticks, which they lighted, and then departed. The gloom was only more oppressive than before; an island of pale yellow light was diffused just round the candles, and an impenetrable darkness swallowed up the rest of the room. Magda shivered, and went to the window. The moon had risen, and was pouring a flood of silver upon the little bridge, and the trembling reeds and sedges on the bank, and driving back reflections, like knives, into the heart of the steel-blue moat, and waking into a mystery of splendour the crests and shafts