The Initials. Baroness Jemima Montgomery Tautphoeus
for a confessor merely? But for a friend, a lover, or a husband, you prefer something quite different, don’t you?”
“Perhaps I should,” she answered carelessly.
“Or, perhaps,” said Hamilton, “you think of entering the nunnery here out of pure admiration for that long, gaunt man! There is no accounting for taste.”
“I do not intend to take the veil until you have become a monk.”
“When I become a monk it will not be here; I shall choose a more hospitable place and jolly companions, such as one generally reads of. The incivility of your friend with the austere countenance has greatly disgusted me.”
The buildings on the other island were very extensive. The church had been turned into a brew-house, and not long after its desecration it was burned. “A very proper judgment,” as Madame Rosenberg observed, glancing meaningly towards Zedwitz. Handsome broad marble stairs led to the upper apartments, of which a few have been lately modernized. The carved wood on the doors of the cells and the picture-frames in the refectory were admirable.
“Altogether,” said Hamilton, looking out of one of the windows across the lake, “altogether a place where one could spend a fortnight very agreeably with a gay party.”
“Or with Hildegarde and her sister,” said Zedwitz, in a low voice.
“If Crescenz were not so insipid, with all her prettiness.”
They adjourned to the garden and dined under the trees. Hamilton studiously avoided Crescenz’s vicinity, although he saw she was half disposed to be angry at his neglect. She endeavoured, in her simplicity, to pique him by listening with affected complaisance to Major Stultz’s commonplace remarks. She laughed, and encouraged him to give her brothers beer when her mother was not watching them. This childish conduct, perhaps, Hamilton would have forgotten, had not the consequences been somewhat remarkable. The boys, unaccustomed to drink anything but water or milk, soon became almost intoxicated, and on their way to the boat Fritz, a good-humoured, handsome boy, swaggered, sang, and shouted most boisterously; Gustle became quarrelsome, and pinched and pummelled him unmercifully. It was in vain Madame Rosenberg scolded and threatened punishment; they had not left the shore more than ten minutes when a regular scuffle took place; Gustle flung Fritz’s cap into the water, and Fritz, merely taking time to knock down the offender, leaned over the side of the boat, snapped at his cap, and went heels over head into the lake! The screams of the ladies were beyond all conception piercing; Zedwitz, with an exclamation of horror, and regretting that he could not swim, leaned anxiously and with outstretched arms over the side of the boat. Madame Rosenberg started up and, with clasped hands, called for help in a voice of agony.
The danger was imminent. Hamilton sprang into the water and caught the boy, as he rose for the second time, at some distance from the boat; he was still conscious, and grasped his preserver’s arm manfully. The scene which ensued it is impossible to describe. Gustle was boxed, and Fritz was kissed, and Hamilton was thanked and blessed alternately. He declined entering the boat again, but partly held it and partly swam to the shore, where he heard with some surprise that the fishers who had rowed them, although they had spent half their lives on the lake, could not swim, so that had he not been there Fritz would inevitably have been drowned.
From the commencement of his acquaintance with Madame Rosenberg, she had been disposed to like him; but from this event may be dated a sort of implicit reliance on her part which afterwards caused him occasional qualms of conscience, as he felt that he was trusted sometimes beyond his deserts.
Fritz’s clothes were dried at the inn. Hamilton’s, however, not being composed of such light materials, he was obliged to leave there, and borrow whatever he could get from an obliging old peasant, who was profuse in the offers of his wardrobe. It was amusing to see him in the brown trousers, a “world too wide,” intended to be long, but which, after tugs innumerable, could only be persuaded to half conceal the calves of his legs, whose proportions were rendered somewhat doubtful by the capacious gray worsted stockings in which they were enveloped; a long waistcoat of red cloth, and a remarkably short-waisted, long-tailed coat, in which a second edition of himself could have found place. These garments altogether formed a costume more original than becoming. Crescenz and Major Stultz laughed unrestrainedly; Madame Rosenberg repeated her thanks with a suppressed smile; but Hildegarde, without speaking, made a place for him beside her in the carriage, of which he incontinently took possession. He imagined that she spoke more to him than to Zedwitz on their way home.
Crescenz’s efforts to bring Hamilton back to his allegiance were, for some days, as unremitting as they were various. She would never have succeeded had Hildegarde been one jot less quarrelsome; but either from a naturally irritable temper, or some unaccountable antipathy on her part to Hamilton, they never spoke to each other without saying as many disagreeable things as possible. Hamilton felt that she disliked him and misinterpreted his every word and action, and this conviction, and the fear that she might discover how much he had begun to admire her, made him, perhaps, ready to meet her more than half way when she was disposed for battle. Their conversation generally began civilly on his part, but something in her manner, or some unnecessarily sharp answer, was sure to provoke an ironical remark and a slighting gesture, which invariably led to the commencement of hostilities.
It was after one of these engagements, in which she had exhibited more than usual vehemence, and he had excelled himself in the art of tormenting, that he found Crescenz alone in the garden. The contrast was irresistible for the moment; it was calm and sunshine after a storm! There she sat, busily employed knitting a stocking, which, from its dimensions, might probably be intended for Major Stultz! Her fingers and elbows moved with a rapidity perfectly inconceivable; and as she had for the last four-and-twenty hours been enacting the sentimental and offended, he was allowed to admire her pretty face uninterruptedly as long as he chose, her heightened colour all the time convincing him that she knew he was looking at her. After a few significant coughs, which remained unnoticed, he turned to go away. She looked up and—sighed. This he imagined to be a sort of encouragement; perhaps it was intended for such, as the look which accompanied the sigh was reproachful. He seated himself beside her, while he admired the rapidity with which her work proceeded. The praises were unheeded.
“And who is the happy person destined to wear this?” he asked, playing with the huge piece of work.
“That cannot in any way interest you,” she answered stiffly; but she sighed again.
“Everything concerning you interests me; from the time I first saw you eating roast chicken even to the present moment——”
“You have an odd way of showing your interest, then. Hildegarde says you are always laughing at me!”
“What do you mean?” he exclaimed, though knowing perfectly what she meant, and prepared for the answer which he immediately received, and the implied reproaches for his neglect, which he had expected.
“But, mademoiselle, you have told me yourself of your engagement——”
“Well, and what of that?”
“I could not think of interfering with Major Stultz. I dare not monopolize——”
“But, at least, you might speak to me sometimes.”
“There might be danger for me were I to do so.”
Crescenz looked immensely delighted and flattered, and her fingers moved faster than ever.
“Is it not customary here to consider an engagement almost as binding as a marriage?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, innocently; “I never was engaged until now. But,” she added, hastily, “but we are not yet affianced; that will not be until the day after our arrival in Munich.”
“Then you are still at liberty to amuse yourself with others?”
“Oh, yes.”
“And I may talk to you without Major Stultz having any right to be jealous?”
“Jealous!” she repeated, blushing.