In Silk Attire: A Novel

"But, really – " said Will.

"Now, don't make me angry with you," said Annie, releasing his right arm, which she had tightly held for three minutes. "I should never have forgiven you if you had shot that poor creature, who looked so timid and handsome – "

"I should have given him the chance of running."

"But you would have killed him. Didn't I see the two you sent home, and their pitiful glazed eyes?"

"Then you have come out to stop our shooting altogether, I suppose?" said Will, with a laugh, though he was much more vexed than he chose to show.

But he had his revenge. He had scarcely spoken when a buck, followed by two does, came out of the brushwood some distance farther down, the buck springing lightly and buoyantly over the soft moss, the does running more warily in his wake. Before Annie Brunel could do anything beyond utter a short cry, the contents of Will's right barrel had caught the buck on his shoulder. He rolled over, struggled to his feet again, and then, with a last effort, made a few stumbling steps, and sank unseen among the ferns. Will turned, with a smile, to Miss Brunel. She had covered her face with her hands. Grete, on the other hand, was in a wonderful state of delight.

"You killed him, Herr, I know you did. I saw him fall; and how handsome he was – and his horns, too, they are large; how pleased you will be to have them! My father will get them mounted for you, if you like; and if you would have the deer's feet for pegs, that can be done. Oh, I wish the drive was over, that I might go to see him!"

The drive was very nearly over, for the dogs were heard in the immediate neighbourhood – particularly the low sonorous baying of Rudolph, who had escaped from the leash, and was tearing backwards and forwards through the wood, with foam-flakes lying along his glistening brown coat. But all at once the baying of Rudolph was turned into a terrific yell, subsiding into a howl; and at the same moment the report of a gun was heard at some distance farther along. Immediately afterwards Will caught sight of a doe disappearing through the trees behind him, and from the way it ran he judged that it had a broken leg; while down in front of them came Rudolph, going at full speed, with his tail between his legs, and the front of his mouth covered with blood. The next thing seen was Count Schönstein, who came running to Will in a wonderful state of excitement.

"I've shot him! – I've shot him!" he cried, "but we must go after him!"

"Is it Rudolph you mean?" said Will.

"A buck – a splendid buck – "

"Well, don't point your gun in my face."

"It's on half-cock."

"It isn't; and I don't like the muzzle of a gun staring at me."

"Will that do?" cried the Count, in vexation, dropping the gun on the ferns. "Do come and help me to catch him – "

"Catch a deer! Listen, Miss Brunel – "

But the Count was off in the direction the wounded doe had taken.

The beaters now made their appearance through the brushwood, and Hermann's horn soon brought the keepers to the rendezvous. Will explained to Hermann that the Graf had gone in pursuit of a doe with a broken leg.

"Has he Rudolph with him?"

"No; I believe he shot Rudolph at the same time that he broke the hind-leg of the doe."

"Shot Rudolph!" said Hermann, and then he turned to the keepers: "Where is Rudolph? Who has seen Rudolph? Who allowed Rudolph to escape?"

The only answer he could get was from a messenger, who came up to say that luncheon had arrived, and wished to know where the Herr Graf wanted it placed. This messenger gave Hermann a graphic description of his having seen Rudolph flying in the direction of Schönstein in a state of utter demoralization. Wherewith Hermann sat himself down on the stump of a tree, and said resignedly —

"Spiegelmann, take one of the dogs after the wounded doe, and send back the Herr Graf. As for you, Fritz, ask the lady where luncheon is to be placed."

By the time Count Schönstein and Spiegelmann returned, the latter carrying on his shoulder the doe that the Count had shot, luncheon had been laid out by the servants; and round the large white cloth were placed a series of travelling rugs and other appliances for smoothing down the roughnesses of fern, and stoneberry, and moss. The keepers, Hermann, and the young schoolmaster were seated some little distance off, in picturesque groups, surrounding the dead game, which consisted of two bucks, the Count's doe, a fox shot by Gersbach, and a hare shot by some one else. The men had also their luncheon with them – apples, brown bread, a piece of smoked ham, and a bottle or two of white wine. All the incidents of the drive had now to be recapitulated; and there ensued a perfect Babel of guttural Schwarzwald German.

The Count had ordered out a very nice luncheon indeed; and so pleased was he with his success in having shot something, that he called one of the boys and gave him two bottles of champagne, a drinking-cup, and a lump of ice to take over to the keepers. Indeed, he would have given Hermann and the schoolmaster an invitation to sit down at the white cloth, only he wished to postpone that explanation about Rudolph until Annie Brunel and Will were out of the way. As for Grete Halm, she equally dreaded the thought of sitting with the Count's party, and of having to go alone among the men and boys opposite; and it was only by much coaxing and ordering that she was made to sit down by Miss Brunel, and submit to have the Count himself carve for her, and offer her wine in a beautiful little silver cup.

"Süsse an die Süssen," said he, gallantly, as he poured out the champagne; and Grete's soft black eyes looked puzzled.

"Look at the boy in the red blouse," said Annie Brunel, "lying beside the two deer. I believe the Count has got the whole scene made up in imitation of a hunting-picture, and that the boy knows well enough how fine his brown face and red smock-frock are in the sunlight. Then see how that deer's head lies back, precisely as if it were in a lithograph; and the streaks of sunlight falling across the green dress of the keepers and the stretched-out dogs – and Hermann, there, cutting an apple with a dagger, his hair all matted with perspiration – the schoolmaster sitting on the trunk of the tree, looking vaguely at the fox before him – "

"Wondering," observed Will, "what sort of chemical change has occurred within the last half-hour, or why life should go out of an organism when lead goes in."

"That is a German picture, and here are we making a French picture – only that Grete is such a thorough Black Forester, with her bodice, and white sleeves, and head-dress."

The Count was intensely flattered and pleased by her admiration of the impromptu pictures. He had been striving hard to interest and amuse her – most of all had he tried to charm her with the delights which he held at his own command; and here were the very sunlight, and the colours of the forest, and the shape of deers' necks aiding him!

"You don't see the like of that in England, do you?" he said, with his mouth full of cold chicken. "I hope, Miss Brunel, you and Mrs. Christmas will make your stay with us as long as ever you can."

"I should be very glad," she said; "but I must see what Lady Jane says in a day or two – whether she finds herself getting better. If she should prefer the cooler air of mountain scenery, we may go on to Switzerland."

"But don't you dread the idea of travelling alone – looking after your own luggage, and what not?" asked the Count, with his mouth this time full of some other animal's tongue.

"It was not entirely on a pleasure excursion we came," she said, quietly.

"And then," said Will, "you can get plenty of cool mountain air in the Black Forest. You can go and live comfortably on the top of the Feldberg, about 5000 feet high, with a dozen mountains all round you over 4000 feet. In the meantime, don't trouble yourself with thoughts of change; but let me give you some of this jelly. You are very fond of sweets, I know."

"I am. You have been watching me."

He had been watching her too much, he thought. The intense curiosity with which he had regarded the singular change in the girl's nature so soon as she left the stage, with the study of her pretty superficial carelessness, her frank audacious manner, and her quaint, maternal, matter-of-fact attitude towards himself, had wrought its inevitable work; and at the very moment when she was thinking that Mr. Anerley took a friendly pleasure in her society, he was longing to get away from it as from a torture too heavy to be borne – longing to get away, and unable to go. He might easily have avoided her on this very day, for example, by pleading business occupations; instead, he had looked with impatience for her arrival all the morning and forenoon.

And if he had any intellectual pleasure in studying the curious shades of the young actress's character, it was well that he improved his time; for this was the last day on which she should ever appear to him that enigmatical compound of a childlike gaiety and mimicry, with a matronly air which was quite as amusingly unnatural. From this period henceforth, the reader who takes the trouble to follow Annie Brunel's history will find her a changed woman – drawing nearer to that beautiful ideal which one who knew her mother would have expected to find in Annie Napier's only child.

At present she was chiefly concerned with the various sweets which Count Schönstein's cook had sent, and also in trying the effect of squeezing the juice of different kinds of fruit into the iced champagne which she sipped from time to time. She came to the conclusion that sliced apple added to champagne and iced water greatly improved its flavour; and she appealed to Grete Halm, who had tried all her different specifics, the two drinking out of the same glass. Grete began to fancy that English ladies, though they were very beautiful and had magnificent hair, were little better than children, to amuse themselves with such nonsense.

"I see that Hermann is getting dreadfully impatient," said Miss Brunel, at last; "let us go."

"Pardon, mademoiselle," said Will. "Let us have an understanding first."

She laughed a bright and merry laugh that puzzled the Count extremely.

"Was gibt's, Grete?" said he.

Grete began to explain, with a demure smile, how the Fräulein had held the Herr's arm when a buck was going past; but the Count soon lost the thread of the story, and had to beg Will for a translation.

"I really can't bear to see any one else shoot when I am looking on," said Miss Brunel. "But if I were myself shooting, I dare say I shouldn't care."

"Come, then," said Will, "will you take my gun during the next drive? I will teach you how to hold it and fire – "

"I know that already," she said. It was not the first time she had fired a gun – on the stage.

"And I will fix the gun so that you need have no trouble."

"Agreed," she said; while Grete, who was about to remain behind to assist in packing up the luncheon things, assured her that the holding of the gun was quite easy, and that she would be sure to kill a splendid deer.

They had to walk nearly half a mile before they came to the next beat; and by that time they had arrived at a sort of broad ravine or hollow, the hill leading down to which was covered with tall, branchless pines. Down in the valley commenced a tract of young trees and brushwood, which was supposed to be full of deer. While the beaters were drawing a circle round this tract of brushwood, Hermann posted the guns and courteously gave Will the Hauptplatz, understanding that the young lady was about to try her luck. At this point there was a mass of earth and roots which had been torn up by the falling of a pine – a little embankment some five feet high, over which one could easily command the whole line of brushwood lying in front. This was the spot where Will posted Annie Brunel. He placed the barrel of the gun on the edge of this natural rampart, and then showed her how, whenever she saw a deer spring out into the sunlight down below in the valley, she was noiselessly to point the gun, keep the stock well against her shoulder, and fire.

"Only take care," said he, "that it isn't a clog or a boy that comes out of the bushes."

"What if I shoot you?" she said.

"You can't shoot me, any more than you can shoot yourself. I shall go up the hill a bit to overlook you, and if it should be a dog, I'll shout out before you murder him."

Here the long, low, steady call of Spiegelmann's horn was heard, with Hermann's reply.

"When the next horn calls, you may begin to look out. Hold out your hand."

She held out her right hand, wonderingly, and showed him the small white fingers.

"It is quite steady; but your heart beats."

"It generally does," she said, with a smile. "It is a weakness, I know, but – "

Here the fine anticipatory flourish of the keeper's bugle again came echoing through the trees. Will gave over the gun to her, told her to take time and not be afraid, and then retired somewhat farther up the hill. He ensconced himself behind a tall grey pine, whence, without being seen, he could command a view of the entire length of brushwood, and of Miss Brunel in her place of concealment.

"If she only remains cool," he thought, "she is certain to be successful."

Once only she looked round and up the hill towards him, and there was a sort of constrained smile about her lips.

"I am afraid she is getting frightened," he thought now.

The intense sultry silence of the place certainly heightened her nervous expectation, for she could distinctly hear her heart thumping against her side. Expectancy became a positive pain – an agony that seemed to be choking her; but never for a moment did she think of abandoning her post.

Meanwhile Will's experienced eye failed to detect the least motion among the bushes, nor could he hear the faintest noise from the dogs. Yet Hermann had told him that this was one of the best beats in the neighbourhood; and so he patiently waited, knowing that it was only a matter of time.

At length one of the dogs was heard to bellow forth his joyous discovery. Will's breath began to come and go more quickly, in his intense anxiety that his pupil should distinguish herself at the approaching crisis. Then it seemed to him that at some distance off he saw one or two of the young firs tremble, when there was not a breath of wind to stir them.

He watched these trees and the bushes adjoining intently, but they were again quite motionless; the dog, too, only barked at intervals. All at once, however, he saw, coming down a lane in the brushwood, two branched yellow tips, which paused and remained stationary, with only a single bush between them and the open space fronting Miss Brunel. They were the horns of a deer which now stood there, uncertain by which way to fly from the dogs behind him.

"If she could only catch sight of these horns," he said to himself, "and understand to fire through the bush, she would kill him to a certainty."

Evidently, however, she did not see the horns; perhaps her position prevented her. So, with his own heart beating rapidly now, Will waited for the moment when the dogs would drive the deer out into the clear sunlight, immediately underneath the muzzle of her gun.

A sharp bark from one of the beagles did it. Will saw the light spring of the deer out into the open, and the same glance told him that Annie Brunel had shrunk back with a light cry, and that the gun, balanced for a moment on the edge of the mass of roots, was about to fall on the ground.

At the same moment he received an astounding blow on the side that nearly knocked him over; and his first instinct was that of an Englishman – to utter an oath, clench his fist, and turn round to find a face to strike at. But before the instinct had shaped itself into either thought or action, the sudden spasm passed into a sort of giddiness; he fancied the pine-tree before him wavered, put out his hand to guard himself, and then fell, with a loud noise in his ears.

When Miss Brunel saw the gun tumble on the ground and heard the report, she clasped her hands over her eyes in a vague instantaneous horror of any possible result. The next moment she looked up, and there was a black mass lying on the ground behind the tall tree. Her only thought was that he lay dead there as she ran to him, and knelt down by him, and caught him round the neck. White-lipped, trembling in every limb, and quite unconscious of what she did, she put her head down to his, and spoke to him. There were three words that she uttered in that moment of delirious pity, and self-reproach, and agony, which it was as well he did not hear; but uttered they were, never to be recalled.

When he came to himself, he saw a white face bending over him, and had but a confused notion of what had occurred. With a vigorous effort, however, mental and physical, he pulled himself together and got into a sitting posture.

"I must have given you such a fright through my stupidity," he said; but all the time he wondered to see a strange look in her eyes – a look he had never seen there before off the stage– as she knelt by him and held his hand in hers. She did not speak; she only looked at him, with a vague absent delight, as if she were listening to music.

"Poor creature!" he thought, "she does not know how to say that she is sorry for having hurt me."

So he managed to get up a quite confident smile, and struggled to his feet, giving her his hand to raise her also.

"I suppose you thought you had killed me," he said, with a laugh, "but it was only the fright knocked me over. I am not hurt at all. Look here, the charge has lodged in the tree."

He showed her a splinter or two knocked off the bark of the tree, and a few round holes where the buck-shot had lodged; but at the same time he was conscious of a warm and moist sensation creeping down his side, and down his arm likewise. Further, he pretended not to see that there was a line of red blood trickling gently over his hand, and that her dress had already caught a couple of stains from the same source.

"What's that?" she said, with a terrified look, looking from her own hand, which was likewise stained, to his. "It is blood – you have been hurt, and you won't tell me. Don't be so cruel," she added, piteously; "but tell me what I am to do, for I know you are hurt. What shall I do? Shall I run to Hermann? Shall I go for the Count? There is no water about here – "

"Sit down on those ferns – that's what you must do," said Will, "and don't distress yourself. I suppose one of the spent shot has scratched me, or something like that; but it is of no importance, and you mustn't say anything about it. When the drive is over, I shall walk home. If I had only a little – a little – "

By this time he had sate down, and as he uttered the words, another giddiness came over him, and ha would have fallen back had she not hastily caught him and supported him.

"It is the blood," he said, angrily; "one would think I couldn't afford to lose as much as the scratch of a penknife would let. Will you allow me to take off my coat? – and if you could tie a handkerchief tightly round my arm – "

"Oh, why did you not ask me to do so before?" she said, as she helped to uncover the limb that was by this time drenched in blood.

"Think of what the deer would have suffered, if you had hit him instead of me," said Will, with a ghastly smile. "He was a dozen yards nearer you. You seem to like long shots."

But there was a mute pleading look in her eyes that seemed to appeal against his banter. She seemed to say to him by that dumb expression, "You wrong me. You try to make us strangers by that assumed fun. You do it to cheer me; but you make me a stranger to you, for you are not honest with me."

And somehow he read the meaning of her face; and said to her, in a low voice —

"Shall I be frank with you? This accident is likely to make us too close friends; and it is better I should return to England, if you remain here."

For a moment their eyes met – on his side revealing a secret which she inwardly shuddered to read there – on hers repeating only that mystic, unfathomable expression which he remembered to have seen when he awakened out of his dream.

That was all of explanation that passed between them. She knew now his secret, and by the sudden light of the revelation she looked swiftly back over some recent occurrences, and saw the purport of them written in words of fire. Her eyes fell; her own secret was safe; but this new burden of consciousness was almost as difficult to bear.

At this moment the Count and Hermann came up, followed by the nearest keepers and beaters.

"There has been a slight accident," said Will, briefly. "Get some one to carry my gun; and I'll walk back to Schönstein."

"If you would like to ride," said Hermann – who, with the others, was quite deceived by Will's manner – "you can get Hans Halm's wagen, that was waiting for the baskets and things. Spiegelmann will show you the way. You are not badly hurt?"

"Not at all; not at all. Miss Brunel, will you continue with the party?"

"No," she said, firmly; "I am going back to Schönstein."

"And I," said the Count. "I can't allow you to go unattended. I don't care about any more shooting – "

"Nonsense," said Will (with an inward conviction that two minutes' more talking would find him stretched on the ground); "go on with your sport; and I'll come out to meet you in the evening."

Fortunately, when they reached the shaky old travelling-carriage outside the forest, they found some wine, a good draught of which somewhat revived the wounded man. The hampers and other things were speedily thrown out, and, Spiegelmann having returned to the shooting-party, Will and Miss Brunel got into the vehicle and were driven homewards.

Neither spoke a single word all the way. Once, and quite inadvertently, her hand touched his; and she drew it away. The next moment she looked into his face, and perhaps saw some slight shade of vexation there, for she immediately covered his stained fingers with her own. It was as though she said, "I know your sad secret, but we may at least continue friends."