Part 30 (2/2)
The man a.s.sented grudgingly. Gamekeepers are first-cla.s.s grumblers. But the soldiers were not many. For his part he could do without them altogether. They were such terrible poachers to have about the place, he declared. But what they would do for beaters without them, he didn't know ... they were very short of beaters ... that was a fact.
”I am staying at Cleves,” I said, ”and I'm out of a job. I am not long from hospital, and they've discharged me from the army. I wouldn't mind earning a few marks as a beater, and I'd like to see the sport. I used to do a bit of shooting myself down on the Rhine where I come from.”
The man shrugged his shoulders and shook his head. ”That's none of my business, getting the beaters together,” he replied. ”Besides, I shall have the head gamekeeper after me if I go bringing strangers in....”
I ordered another drink for both of us, and won the man round without much difficulty. He pouched my five mark note and announced that he would manage it ... the Frau Grafin was to see some men who had offered their services as beaters after dinner at the Castle that evening. He would take me along.
Half an hour later I stood, as one of a group of s.h.a.ggy and bedraggled rustics, in a big stone courtyard outside the main entrance to the Castle. The head gamekeeper mustered us with his eye and, bidding us follow him, led the way under a vaulted gateway through a ma.s.sive door into a small lobby which had apparently been built into the great hall of the Castle, for it opened right into it.
We found ourselves in a splendid old feudal hall, oak-lined and oak-raftered, with lines of dusty banners just visible in the twilight reigning in the upper part of the vast place. The modern generation had forborne to desecrate the fine old room with electric light, and ma.s.sive silver candlesticks shed a soft light on the table set at the far end of the hall, where dinner, apparently, was just at an end.
Three people were sitting at the table, a woman at the head, who, even before I had taken in the details I have just set down, I knew to be Monica, though her back was towards me. On one side of the table was a big, heavy man whom I recognized as Clubfoot, on the other side a pale slip of a lad in officer's uniform with only one arm ... Schmalz, no doubt.
A servant said something to Monica, who, asking permission of her companions by a gesture, left the table and came across the hall. To my surprise, she was dressed in deepest black with linen cuffs. Her face was pale and set, and there was a look of fear and suffering in her eyes that wrung my very heart.
I had shuffled into the last place of the row in which the head keeper had ranged us. Monica spoke a word or two to each of the men, who shambled off in turn with low obeisances. Directly she stopped in front of me I knew she had recognized me--I felt it rather, for she made no sign--though the time I had had in Germany had altered my appearance, I dare say, and I must have looked pretty rough with my three days' beard and muddy clothes.
”Ah!” she said with all her languor _de grande dame_, ”you are the man of whom Heinrich spoke. You have just come out of hospital, I think?”
”Beg the Frau Grafin's pardon,” I mumbled out in the thick patois of the Rhine which I had learnt at Bonn, ”I served with the Herr Graf in Galicia, and I thought maybe the Frau Grafin ...”
She stopped me with a gesture.
”Herr Doktor!” she called to the dinner-table.
By Jove! this girl had grit: her pluck was splendid.
Clubfoot came stumping over, all smiles after his food and smoking a long cigar that smelt delicious.
”Frau Grafin?” he queried, glancing at me.
”This is a man who served under my husband in Galicia. He is ill and out of work, and wishes me to help him. I should wish, therefore, to see him in my sitting-room, if you will allow me....”
”But, Frau Grafin, most certainly. There surely was no need ...”
”Johann!” Monica called the servant I had seen before, ”take this man into the sitting-room!”
The servant led the way across the hall into a snugly furnished library with a dainty writing-desk and pretty chintz curtains. Monica followed and sat down at the desk.
”Now tell me what you wish to say ...” she began in German as the servant left the room, but almost as soon as he had gone she was on her feet, clasping my hands.
”Francis!” she whispered in English in a great sob, ”oh, Francis! what have they done to you to make you look like that?”
I gripped her wrist tightly.
”Frau Grafin,” I said in German, still in that hideous patois, ”you must be calm.” And I whispered in English in her ear:
<script>