Charles Hamilton Aïdé

“ The young wife was not very keen sighted; she soon forgot the shadow, in the sunshine, artificial though it was; and slept that night the calm sleep of a child, unconscious that her husband never closed his eyes, but lay and watched with a look of intense anxiety, the sweet untroubled face beside him.
He was off by daybreak; and Magda wandered about the house feeling a little lonely, and dreaming old-world dreams in the great desolate rooms, half the day. She drew a spinning-wheel from a dusty corner in one of the rooms, and set it near a window; bravely resolving to employ herself. ”

“ Through the moat—for such the lake was termed—a stream flowed constantly, born among the hills, and growing in its passage through the forest, till it had been widened and deepened by the hand of man into this broad basin, and was then suffered to escape, a dwindled rivulet, and hide itself in the forest once again. Looking down from the windows of the schloss, one saw to the very bottom of the dark green water, where long weeds and grasses, like dusky plumes, swayed to and fro with the current, and the great brown shadow of a fish darted, ever and anon, athwart the mystery of tangled rushes ”

“ I found fair-haired and gentle girls in abundance, but whenever I tried to trace the desired resemblance, it failed; either voice, or face, or manner, or the soul within, was utterly unlike Louise's. It is rare, after all, to find any two human beings cast in moulds that are at all similar. . . . But, at length, my Magda, I found thee; and in thee, to my great joy, a living image of our lost Louise. ”

“ Such thoughts are mighty angels to drive out all idle fear. Be simple, unsuspicious of evil; trustful of the good God; be thyself in short—and all will be well with thee!"
The night passed; and soon after breakfast the next morning, they set off on their strange and melancholy journey, unaccompanied by any servant. As Magda descended the steps of the gloomy old mansion which had seemed to her as little better than a prison the day before, she felt almost a pang of regret; for here, at least, she and Albrecht had been together, and here no mystery had reigned. ”

“ Lower and lower, closer and closer, bent the shadow. And now, indeed, Magda shut her eyes, and felt that life was ebbing fast from her heart; for the corpse-like face touched hers, and those dead lips rained kisses on her cheek. Then, with a great cry, as though something within her had snapped, Magda felt a sudden momentary power given her to spring from the bed, and run shrieking towards the window. It was but momentary; there was another shriek, the piercing echo of her own; she was conscious of the spectre's rushing towards her, white hair flowing, wild arms tossed into the sky ”

“ He consorted but little with men of his own age, he neither gambled nor drank, and he was said to be proof against all the attentions of women. Whether this was really so or not, such a reputation was, in itself, enough to pique curiosity and excite interest in Vienna, where feminine intrigue spreads its endless network among the roots of an aristocratic society. Add to this, the stern, sad expression of the young man's handsome face, and his reluctance ever to talk about himself, and the mystery with which it pleased the Viennese world to invest him, could no longer be a matter of surprise. ”

“ The face was turned away, and it seemed to Magda that she spoke with a certain hesitation; but these were her words, and she added nothing to them, busying herself thenceforward with the recovery of the garment, which had been carried by the current half way round the moat. Magda felt by no means satisfied or reassured. There, at the window, was the stern grey face of Hanne, watching her, she knew; it seemed difficult to believe that so self-contained a woman should have yielded to the weakness of screaming! ”

“ The world selected a very suitable wife for him—a lovely daughter of the princely house of L. He scandalously disappointed the world, and chose a wife for himself. He married a simple burgher's daughter; and the indignation which this outrage upon common decency aroused can only be conceived by those who know what the pride of "caste" in Vienna is. How could his infatuation be accounted for? The girl he fixed on was by no means beautiful. A sweet, pale face, a slender, graceful figure, were all young Magda had to boast of. ”

“ The woven figures came not to life; no sound, not even that of a mouse behind the wainscot, broke the perfect stillness of the night. The imagination, without aliment, cannot keep up for ever at high-pressure pitch; and when youth and health are in the other scale, nature will sooner or later have its way, and claim its right of rest. She fell asleep.
How long she remained so, she never knew; but she started from her sleep with the horrible consciousness that something was near her—something between her and the window—something bending over her, with its face close, close to hers. ”

“ It is a fancy of mine—an absurd fancy, that in the old house where all belongs to another date, another generation, thou shouldst not seem to flout the poor old servants and the pictures on the wall, with thy new fangled clothes. . . . And now farewell, my beloved one! . . . God keep thee! Be of good courage, and Heaven will reward thy going!"
With that, he kissed her with an energy akin to desperation, and leaped from the carriage. The tears forced themselves into her blue eyes, though she tried to smile as she tied on the little old hat, and slipped on the spencer. ”

“ By-and-by, on the bridge, she again watched thee stealthily; but could not repress a scream when the mantle fell over the parapet—it looked (Hanne says) from the window like a body falling into the water! Her excitement increased as night advanced; yet it seemed as though she doubted, and would test thy identity before approaching thee openly. Instead of going to Louise's room, as usual, every evening, she waited till night was fully come, when she stole up (followed by Hanne) , and stood behind the arras, watching thee until thou wert asleep. ”

“ The world has long believed my mother to be dead; the poor faithful servants here alone have tended and guarded their old mistress, seeing that she came to no harm, and keeping me regularly informed of the state of her health. She never left the schloss, but wandered to and from Louise's room, by day and night, folding and unfolding her child's clothes, looking at her books in a vacant way, and careful that every little article that had belonged to her should be kept in the very place where Louise left it. ”

“ She glanced round once more, and shook her head—a more effective close to her sentence than any spoken words.
"What is your name?" asked Magda, after a pause, during which her heart seemed to stand still. "And whereabouts do you sleep? Is it anywhere near me?"
"My name is Bettine. . . . I sleep a long way off, in another tower. But Hanne sleeps close at hand to the gracious lady. She is the head. All the gracious lady's orders must be given to her. I am but the second. ”

“ How could it be given to the humble burgher's daughter to remove any mysterious shadow that hung over the proud old family?
She had once read that to the pure and holy in heart the spiritual world has no terrors; that the weapons of the powers of darkness fall harmless before the innocence of a little child. Could it be that because Albrecht had called her "good," because he believed her to be thus pure and spotless at heart, that he had sent her here to drive out by her presence the dark spirit that hovered over his house? ”

“ Introduce her into the schloss, as nearly as possible under the same circumstances as your sister . . . see what that will do. . . . It may open the sluices of all the poor lady's tender maternal feelings, and thus work a cure. Any way, it can do no harm. I will answer for it, she will not dislike, or try to harm the girl.' . . .
"To comprehend my intense anxiety on this subject, Magda, and the earnest longing wherewith I set about my search, thou must try and enter into my feelings during all these years. ”

“ One might have thought that the greeting a pretty young creature to that grim old place, tenanted hitherto only by grim old servants, might have brought some spark of cordiality into their eyes—which foreign servants are not afraid to let light up their faces. But it was not so here. The old men looked grave—grave and rather sad, it seemed to Magda. ”

“ Then Magda descended the turret again slowly, and returned to the parlour. One of the white-haired men was waiting to serve her at supper, and so she sat down, and made a semblance of eating. When this ceremony had been gone through, the night was fast closing in; the shadows deepened in the corners of the old room; a purple bar widened and spread over the gold floor of Heaven. Perhaps it was then that the young Gräfin felt her loneliness to the full for the first time. She opened the old piano ”

“ Count Albrecht von Rabensberg was the object of some attention in the winter of '44, when he appeared, for the first time, in the salons of Vienna. He was the head of an old Bohemian family; rich, not much past thirty, and handsome. He was, moreover, unmarried. Little was known about him, except that he had large estates, and more than one schloss, where he never resided; that his father had died when he was very young, and his only sister had been drowned, by accident, many years before ”

“ The road shot like an arrow through the pines, whose tall red stems, in a serried mass, rose to an intolerable height, before they stretched forth their sinuous arms, clasping their hard dark fingers so closely as almost to shut out the blue face of heaven. ”

“ Bettine was bending over her with sal-volatile, when she opened her eyes. Hanne stood by the bed, whereon something black lay stretched.
"Mein Gott! sie ist todt!" were the first words Magda heard. They came from the lips of the grim Hanne. The door opened quickly at the same moment, and Magda found herself in Albrecht's arms.
But the next minute he turned towards the bed. Hanne and he interchanged looks; it was enough; and then, leaving Magda to Bettine's care, he ran towards the bed, and threw himself on his knees beside it. . . . Too late! too late! ”

“ Then it was that my poor sister, in her nervous terror, bent her whole body out of the window, and, stretching forth both hands, she lost her balance, and fell, with one wild scream, headlong into the moat below! ”

“ But at the end of this passage was a door, which the woman unlocked from a bunch of keys hanging at her side; and after this all was simple enough. A short flight of steps led into one of the many towers which Magda had seen from the bridge. This tower—that portion of it, at least, into which Magda was now taken—contained two good-sized rooms, one over the other, a winding stair communicating. The lower room was oak panelled, and in it were an old piano, a harp, a few direfully bad prints of the House of Hapsburg, in the beginning of this century, and one of the Retreat from Moscow. ”

“ The young gräfin turned away with a shudder, she scarce knew why, and walked slowly to the further end of the bridge. And here her eye was attracted by something white on the furthest stone of the parapet, upon which the moonlight fell. She stooped; it was a piece of paper, on which some pebbles had been placed, to prevent the wind's carrying it away. She took it up, and read easily, in the clear moonlight, these words:
"Be of good courage, for my sake. ”