Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/265

Charles Dickens] that I kiss thy dear hand after so many, many years!" And it was with a tender and sorrowful earnestness that Albrecht performed that simple act of German reverence.

But from the black bed, now more truly like a grave than ever, came no response, no sound, no sign that a living soul lay there; that the ear heard, or the heart felt the passionate adjuration addressed to it.

Magda, as she looked and listened, felt so ill so utterly bewildered that she could only keep asking herself whether it was not all a dream—whether, in truth, it was her Albrecht whom she saw and heard. Yet, at the window where she lay, the night, with its myriad stars, was gone; the pale opal light of morning was breaking in the east; she could even hear the soft dewy twitter of awakening birds. It was no dream; she could recal it all, the lonely, dreary evening, the terrible night—no, she was not dreaming, and that was her Albrecht, in the flesh, before her. But she felt an aching giddiness in her head; she raised her hand, and withdrew it, covered with blood. In falling she had struck herself, and, concealed by the masses of unrolled hair, the wound had escaped Bettine's attention. The old woman now ran to fetch the necessary means of staunching it, but the loss of blood had been considerable. Magda attempted to raise her head, but the room swam round with her; a film gathered across her eyes, and before Bettine's return, her young mistress had relapsed once more into unconsciousness.

Many hours after, in another and very different room in the schloss, a room surrounded with implements of the chase, the walls bristling with antlers, the polished floor pleasantly islanded with skins of deer and chamois, the young gräfin lay upon the jäger's bed, and her husband sat beside her. He had had her carried there, as being the most cheerful room in the house, and here he had been tending her, and (seeing her weak and excited condition) had enforced absolute silence, after her return to consciousness, and had answered her questions in monosyllables. But now, the day was far spent; the darkness, that season of feverish terror during which she had suffered so acutely twenty-four hours before, was at hand; it was well to tell her all, and to calm her mind by a knowledge of the truth. So there he sat, beside the little bed on which his young wife lay, holding her hand, and with a face on which could be clearly traced the impress of a recent and heavy trouble, he told her his story of the past in these words:

"It is all over now, my Magda—the mystery of our moated schloss—the hope and the despair of my life, which I dared not confide to thee; it is all over now. I can tell thee everything Why did I beseech thee to come here? What end was there to be gained by this? Listen. It is a sad enough story, which has embittered all my life, and the effects of which, in some sort, I shall carry to my grave

"Thou hast heard of poor Louise? She was my only sister, my senior by five years, and my mother's favourite, who doated on this daughter with an intensity which blinded her to every other object, and made her regard even me—strange as it may seem—in the light of an interloper, whose coming to divide the inheritance with her first-born was an injury and a wrong. My father, on the other hand, was very fond of me; but he died when I was nine; and for many years there was only Louise's sweet nature and her love for me to counteract the coldness and neglect of my poor partial mother God knows I never resented this I never ceased to love her; a kind word from her at any time made me as happy as a king and I know now that even at that time, poor soul, her brain was in a measure diseased, and she was suffering under the chronic monomania which afterwards assumed an acute form.

"My sister occupied the tower where you slept last night; her sitting-room below, her bedroom above. A panel behind the arras, and a winding stair cut in the thickness of the wall, lead from these rooms to those that my mother inhabited. Thus she could visit her favourite child at all hours of the day and night without traversing the long corridor and public stair; and of this privilege she availed herself so constantly that I never knew her come to Louise's room by any other way.

"One evening, when I was about fifteen, I was in this room, plaguing my sister while she was dressing, by performing all manner of gymnastic feats, of which I was very proud, but which only alarmed her. At last, I bethought me of a water-pipe outside the window, which ran into the moat, and down which I thought it would be good sport to slide. Before Louise saw what I was about, I sprang on to the window-sill, and, clinging hold of the mullion with one hand, sought the pipe with the