CHAPTER VIII.

When Berkow left the room in suppressed wrath, he had probably no idea of the embarra.s.sment his sudden departure would cause to the two who remained behind, an embarra.s.sment they had not felt since the evening of their arrival, for never since then had they been alone together.

They had met only in the presence of strangers, or at table when the servants were in constant attendance, and this unexpected tete-a-tete seemed equally unwelcome to both. Arthur, no doubt, felt that he could not exactly follow on his father's heels; he must at least address a few words to his wife first, but several seconds pa.s.sed before he made up his mind what to say, and when at last he was about to speak, Eugenie forestalled him.

"You need not have come to my a.s.sistance," said she coldly. "I should have been able to vindicate my independence and hold my own against your father."

"I do not in the least doubt your independent spirit," answered Arthur in the same cool tone, "but I have misgivings as to my father's delicacy. He was about to bring up a subject, the remembrance of which I wished to spare both you and myself. That was the sole object of my interference."

She was silent and leaned back in her seat, while her husband, standing by the table, took up the fan that was lying there and examined its arabesques with an appearance of much interest. A second and more uncomfortable pause ensued, until at last he began again:

"As to this business with Hartmann, I really do admire the self-abnegation you have shown in it. You, of all people, must feel a strong antipathy to persons of his cla.s.s."

Eugenie opened her large eyes wide, and looked at him sternly.

"I feel an antipathy to nothing but to weakness and vulgarity. I respect any one who has energy thoroughly to fill his place in the world, whether that place be a high or a lowly one."

There was a hard ring in her voice. Arthur's hand, still playing with the fan, moved rather nervously, and there was a slight quiver about his lips. He started a little when she spoke of weakness and vulgarity, though the expression of his face was as indifferent as ever.

"A most elevated view of the matter," said he carelessly. "But I am afraid you would modify it in some degree, if you were to be brought in nearer contact with the rough wild sort of life which often obtains in the lowly places."

"But this young miner is something out of the common," declared Eugenie decidedly. "He may be wild and untamed, like one of Nature's elements which grow to be a danger when not properly directed. I did not find him rough."

She had involuntarily spoken with some warmth. The latent, half-stifled fire in Arthur's eyes gleamed out again, as he fixed them on her.

"You appear to exercise a marvellous degree of authority over this 'wild untamed element of Nature.' It was on the point of breaking out in an unseemly manner before my father. You had but to raise your fan, and the angry lion became as gentle as a lamb." Here the said fan was so violently opened and closed by the young man's slender white fingers that the costly toy was in serious danger, while he went on half mocking. "And in what a knightly manner he bent over your hand! If we had not come in, I believe he would have ventured to kiss it like a real preux chevalier."

Eugenie rose hastily. "I fear, Arthur, this man may force from you and your father something more than a mere sneer, and I do not know whether Herr Berkow does wisely to drive his people into an opposition, which is constantly growing, and the consequences of which may one day recoil on his own head."

Her husband's gaze was riveted on her as she stood before him, and yet her rustling silks and airy laces, her roses and soft pearls, were nothing new to him, any more than the proud and beautiful head with its dark indignant eyes. Perhaps he was struck by her earnest championship of her protege. He preserved the same careless, half-mocking tone in which he had spoken hitherto, but it concealed a feeling of suppressed irritation, and the fan he held in his hands met with decided ill-luck.

The delicately carved ivory was broken in two as he flung, rather than threw, it on to a chair.

"Our deliverer has been reading you a lecture on socialism, I am sorry I missed it. But this Hartmann is certainly remarkable in one way. He has accomplished that which nothing had hitherto achieved, he has actually led us into a lively conversation. But the interest of this theme must be pretty well exhausted by this time, do not you think so?"

The entrance of a servant with a message brought the conversation to an end. Arthur availed himself of the pretext to depart, taking leave of his wife in the cold, ceremonious manner which marked all their intercourse. Hardly had the servant closed the door and left her alone, when Eugenie began to pace up and down the room in evident agitation.

She was revolted at the coldness and heartlessness shown about Ulric's brave deed, but it was not that alone which made her steps so hasty and drove the angry colour to her cheeks.

Why could she not meet her husband with that thorough contempt she found so easy towards his father? Was it possible he could be worthy of better things? There was something in Arthur's boundless indolence which parried every blow, and even gave him at times a secret superiority over the proud, pa.s.sionate woman, carried away but too often by her warmth of temper. On that first evening when, with terrible candour, she had disclosed to him the truth, he must have felt himself a deeply humiliated man; to-day, when she had shown him how falsely he had judged his deliverer and hers, the wrong was clearly on his side; and yet on both occasions he had confronted her with a dignity which was not crushed and annihilated by her contempt.

She would not recognise this, would not confess to herself how it wounded her that never, since the explanation between them, had he made the slightest attempt to temper the coldness of their relations, even by a word. She would certainly have repulsed any such attempt with all the disdainful pride at her command, but that she should never be called on to do so, that he should never take the trouble to go one step beyond that which appearances absolutely required, vexed her in spite of herself.

Eugenie was prompt with her love as with her hate, and her feeling towards her husband had been of a decided nature even before she gave him her hand--but it was not possible to look down on him from a lofty eminence, as she could look down on his father. She felt that vaguely, though she could give no account to herself of what had compelled this feeling within her.

Arthur, going through the corridors, met the Director and the chief-engineer who had been detained to confer on some business matter with Berkow and were now about to leave the house. The young heir stopped all at once.

"May I ask, sir, why Hartmann's refusal to take the money offered him was immediately communicated to Lady Eugenie and to her alone? Why did I hear nothing of it?" asked he sharply.

"Well," said the Director rather confused, "I really did not know you attached any importance to it, Herr Berkow. You declined all personal interference in the matter so decidedly, and her ladyship showed from the first so much interest in it, that I thought myself bound"----

"Oh, indeed!" interrupted Arthur, with the same nervous little twitch about his lips. "Well, her ladyship's wishes should be complied with certainly, but I must beg of you, in all such matters of business"--he laid an emphasis on the last word--"not quite to overlook me another time. I expressly desire that I may be the first to be acquainted with them in future."

So saying, he left the astonished officials, pa.s.sing on to his own rooms. The Director looked at his colleague.

"What do you say to that?"

The chief-engineer laughed. "Signs and wonders are to be seen! Herr Arthur begins to take an interest in matters of business! Herr Arthur desires to be acquainted with them! Such a thing has never happened before since I have known him."

"But this is not a business matter at all," said the Director irritably. "It is a mere private transaction, and I can guess how it has been. Hartmann has behaved to the lady in that delightfully amiable manner of his we know so well. I thought it was rather odd that she should send for him. Fancy him in a drawing-room, with his savage reckless ways! He is quite capable of telling her what he told me this morning in the office: he does not want any payment, and he did not risk his life for the sake of money. The lady has been indignant at his insolence and her husband also, and now there will be some nice pleasant things for me to hear from Herr Berkow, because I allowed the interview to take place."

"Well, it will be the first time Herr Arthur has ever been indignant at anything that concerns his wife," said the other indifferently, as they went down the steps. "It seems to me that the glacier-temperature about this married couple is extending gradually to all around them. You feel the ice in the air directly you come near them, does it not strike you?"

"It struck me that Lady Eugenie looked admirably handsome. She was rather cool, certainly, but still admirably handsome!"

The chief-engineer made a comic little grimace expressive of horror.

"For Heaven's sake, do not adopt Wilberg's style! You are getting on into the fifties, you know. Talking of Wilberg, he is already head over ears in romantic adoration, but I doubt whether he, or his inevitable verses, will excite much jealousy in high quarters. Herr Arthur seems as little inclined to worship his wife as she to be worshipped.

Marriages of convenience are made up every day, it is true, but I can't help having a sort of feeling about this one, as if it could not take quite the usual course, as if beneath all the ice there lay something like a volcano, which will burst out one fine day with thunder and lightning, and give us a bit of an earthquake and a catastrophe on a small scale. That would certainly 'shed some poetry on the arid steppes of our everyday life,' as Wilberg would observe, supposing always the eruption spared him and his guitar. But here we are below, good night!"

CHAPTER IX.

More than a month had pa.s.sed since the festivities. Herr Berkow, coming down "to surprise his children," as he said, had scarcely found the pleasure he had hoped for in his visit, which was certainly rather premature. He had gone back to the city after a few days to settle the arrears of business awaiting him there, and now he was expected to return to the chateau, for a second and, this time, for a longer stay.

Nothing was changed in the life of the young people; it was, if anything, more divided, colder, more "aristocratic" than at first. On both sides the end of the honeymoon was looked forward to with considerable longing; it had been arranged that they should stay in their country retreat until such time as the fine summer weather should make a longer journey desirable. They would return from their travels in the autumn, and definitively take up their residence in the capital, where their future abode had already been prepared for them by Berkow with much lavish expenditure.

The morning shift was just finished, and Ulric Hartmann was on his way back to his father's house. He had been obliged to moderate his usual swift pace, for at his side walked Herr Wilberg, also going home from his office. This gentleman had been lucky enough to catch Ulric up, and had attached himself to him. It was rather surprising to see one of the officials on such familiar terms with the Deputy Hartmann, who enjoyed but little sympathy among his superiors; still more surprising was it that such familiarity should come from Herr Wilberg, unless indeed the old saying that "extremes meet" be taken as an explanation.

There was, however, another reason here. The chief-engineer little knew what his jokes had brought about, but his laughing hints as to the subject-matter for a ballad had, unfortunately, fallen on a too receptive soil. Wilberg had made up his mind to treat the subject poetically, but he was still in doubt as to whether the masterpiece should be in the form of a ballad, an epic, or a drama. At present one thing only was settled, namely, that it should unite in itself the combined excellences of all three styles.

Unhappily for Ulric, his energetic and courageous act had awakened in the future author's mind the notion that the miner was exactly fitted for a hero of tragedy, and Wilberg now dogged his footsteps perpetually, in order to study this most interesting character. When Ulric further took it into his head to refuse the considerable sum offered him with a disdainful pride which abashed even the Director, the romantic halo about him grew so strong in the poet's eyes that nothing could shake or diminish his admiration, not even the inconsiderate rudeness of the object of it, nor the cutting remarks of those in authority, who hardly approved of such an intimacy.

Ulric could not be said to meet him half-way, or in any manner to facilitate his "studies;" he tried often impatiently to shake off the company thus forced upon him, as one tries to free one's self from a troublesome fly, but it availed him little. Herr Wilberg was determined to see in him a hero, a rough, wild, undisciplined sort of hero, it is true, but still a hero; and the more this view of him was justified by his behaviour, so much the better pleased was the would-be author, who only studied him the more closely for each such fresh development of character.

At last the young miner shrugged his shoulders, and resigned himself to the inevitable. Custom did its work, and there grew up at length between the two a sort of familiarity, not over respectful on Ulric's part.

The wind was still blowing rather cold from the north. Herr Wilberg prudently b.u.t.toned up his coat, and tied the ends of his thick woollen scarf carefully together, as he said with a sigh,

"What a lucky fellow you are, Hartmann, with your health and strength of iron! You can go up and down the shafts from heat to cold, and come out afterwards into this biting wind, whilst I have to protect myself from every variation of temperature. And I get so nervous, so shaken, so irritable! That is the way when the spirit gains too great dominion over the body. Yes, Hartmann, it is the press of thought and feeling that does it!"

"I think, Herr Wilberg, it is more likely your everlasting tea-drinking that is the cause of it," replied Ulric, with a rather compa.s.sionate glance at his weakly little companion. "If you go on swallowing that hot, thin stuff morning and evening, you will never get strong."

Wilberg glanced up aloft at his adviser with a look of infinite superiority.