A queen of curds and cream

Front matter

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Chapter I. The Inheritance

On an April afternoon of the year 1880, three men were holding a serious and somewhat perplexed consultation in the best bedroom of the ^ Golden Sun.’ The ‘ Golden Sun ’ was the only inn of Glockenau, and Glockenau was an Austrian mountain village.

The best bedroom in question had a carpetless floor of clean scrubbed deal boards, a low ceiling supported by dark wooden rafters, whitewashed walls adorned with a few glaring prints of Saints, and, in one corner, a bracket bearing a figure of the Madonna with a bunch of blue hepaticas in a green marbled earthenware jar at its foot.

The two small square windows stood wide open, the well-starched white curtains being pinned back, as though the room were gasping for breath. A little while ago the atmosphere in here had been oppressive; it was heavy still with the scent of wax candles that had not long been extinguished, of violets that had faded in the stifling air, of a censer that had been swung and of which the fumes were now slowly floating out into the village street. The bed, a primitive construction of painted deal, had been dragged into the center of the room. A black cloth covered it ; it was bare now of all but a few crushed violetheads, but the cloth was disordered and the indenture on the pillow showed that a head had pressed it not long ago. There were marks of heavy hob-nailed boots clearly printed off on the white deal boards, leading from the bed to the

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door. They were the footsteps of the coffin bearers ; for scarcely an hour ago a man had been carried from this room to his grave. Pine-needles and single flower-petals which had been shaken from the funeral wreaths still strewed the floor.

The event had caused great stir in the village. It was only six days ago that the Stellwageit^ which lumbered up to the door of the ‘ Golden Sun ’ every evening, and which generally lumbered on again as empty as it had come, had brought two unexpected visitors to Glockenau : an elderly gentleman and a young girl, his daughter. They had been bound for a further point, but the father had been taken seriously ill between this station and the last and could proceed no further. He leant heavily on his daughter as he descended from the Stellwagen, and but for the stout arm of the landlord, who recovered from his astonishment at the sight of so unusual a visitor just barely in time to come to his assistance, he would assuredly have fallen to the ground. The doctor, summoned in haste from the town, pronounced it to be a case of paralysis ; neither did it appear to be a first stroke. The stranger’s constitution was obviously undermined, and from the first there had been little hope of recovery. He lingered on for four days, unremittingly watched over by his daughter. On the evening of the fourth day he died. It was his closed coffin which had been carried out of this room an hour ago.

The funeral was over. The three men now drawn round the table in deep debate had all been present at it ; one of them had in fact conducted it, for the village priest was of the trio. The two others were the landlord of the inn and the notary commissioned by the nearest Bezirksgericht with the execution of all requisite legal formalities.

Though neither the landlord nor the priest wore the peasant dress, both were unmistakably peasants. The landlord was an overgrown boy of about fifty, under whose chubby chin the bib of a pinafore would somehow have appeared more in place than the satin cravat which covered his breast. His face had been scrubbed that morning, at least as energetically as any of the deal boards in his scrupulously clean house, and his hair had been so

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generously oiled and so conscientiously combed that the marks of the horn-teeth were still clearly visible, like the marks of a rake on a well-kept garden-bed. Altogether so exhaustive had been the attention paid to his personal appearance that day, that some of his best friends had failed to recognize him at the funeral. As the master of the house, in which a stranger — and obviously not a common stranger — had been so condescending as to breathe his last, he had felt this elaborate toilet to be both his duty and his right.

The cast of the priest’s features had originally, no doubt, been very much the same as those of the landlord. It was the usual peasant type of that district of Austria — a succession of round curves repeated in eyebrows, eyes, and chin ; a short, broad nose, a wide mouth that did not seem to have the faculty of closing tightly, and which made up for its ungainly width by its readiness to smile on the smallest provocation. These features the two men had in common, but here the likeness ceased. No one could suspect the landlord of ever having been hungry in his life, while to look at the priest was to doubt whether he had ever had quite enough to eat. The result was a curious sort of refinement of the originally rudely cut features, a falling-in of the aggressively round curves, a toning down of that all too healthily bucolic complexion, a shrinking away of the superfluous flesh on the massive figure. Old age had done the rest. Forty years ago the priest’s hands had very likely been as plump and certainly had been as clumsy as those which the landlord had now planted with widely outspread fingers upon either knee, and his hair in all probability had once been as bushy and brown ; the hands were not smaller now and the hair had not become of finer fibre, but the former had bleached almost to whiteness and shrunk to a truly pathetic thinness, and the hair had grown so spare and so silvered that it lay with the dignity of a halo round those sunken temples. Even the awkward peasant slouch of the man of fifty had in the man of seventy become a venerable stoop.

The notary had nothing in common with his two companions ; he was small and nimble, with a little bit of a yel-

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low sharp-nosed face that might have been fashioned out of a scrap of shrivelled leather. There was something of the cheerfulness, the decision, and rapidity of a sparrow about his manner and his movements ; also something of a sparrow’s inquisitiveness. He had entered the inn on the morning after the stranger’s death, and, in his character of representative of the law, had put the legal seal upon the possessions of the deceased. One large travelling-trunk, on whose surface it would have been hard to discover an inch not covered by the remnants of red or yellow stationlabel, and a leather portmanteau which had evidently seen better days formed the whole that was visible of these possessions. The seals had now been removed in the presence of the priest and the landlord, who acted as witnesses. By rights the daughter of the deceased should have been present at this act, but the notary had a long drive before him, and so, after having waited what was considered a reasonable time for the return of the young girl whom they had left in the churchyard, it was decided to go through the formalities without further delay.

It had not taken very long to muster the contents of the trunk and portmanteau ; they were few, but they were incongruous and surprising. Although the stranger had evidently come from far, he had apparently been travelling with no more than two shirts, which, though repeatedly darned and patched, were of the softest and most delicate fabric. The boots he had had upon his feet when he staggered from the Stellwagen to the inn door bore the mark of a first-class Vienna shop, and yet neither in box nor portmanteau was a second pair to be discovered. Again, there was a dressing-case with silver-topped though badly chipped crystal bottles, one of which was half filled with the then so popular Chypre scent.

But other things more perplexing still had come to the light of day: — several packs of gold-edged but well-fingered playing cards, for instance ; an old blue military looking coat, of the shape of those worn by the hussar officers, but from which the gold cording had long since been removed, and which to all appearances had latterly served as a smoking-jacket. The small sparrow of a notary

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was beside himself with excited curiosity ; he had spent the last twenty minutes in hopping backwards and forwards between the trunk and the table, poking his beak, as it were, into every hole, and chirruping with delight over each new object which he laid out before the amazed eyes of the two witnesses. Out of the last recesses of the portmanteau he had unearthed his most important prize, a heavy gold seal-ring set with a singularly handsome agate on which was engraved a coat of arms surmounted by a nine-pointed crown. There could be no doubt about the number of the points, they had been counted at least half-a-dozen times over by each of the three men in the room. The ring had been passed from hand to hand and now lay on the table, gazed at by three pairs of awe-stricken and somewhat incredulous eyes. A pause of deep reflection was taking place.

‘ That would mean,’ the notary had said, ^ of course only supposing that the ring belonged to him — that would mean that he was a Count.’ And then had followed the pause.

‘ And are you quite sure, Herr Prell,’ the priest timidly inquired, recovering after a minute, ‘ Are you sure that it is only Counts that use nine-pointed crowns ?’

‘ Five for the nobility, seven for a Baron, nine for a Count,’ briskly responded Herr Prell, becoming himself again.

‘ But a Count with one pair of boots ? ’ said the landlord, with a ponderous head shake. ^Are there Counts of that sort ? ’

‘There are Counts of all sorts,’ answered the notary cautiously. He was not quite so familiar with the subject as he wished his companions to believe. ‘ Besides, I said if the ring belonged to him. A word with the daughter will clear that up. It is peculiar that she should have designated her father at the inquest as plain Emil Eldringen. But stop, there are the papers ; we may find all we want to know there,’ and the notary suddenly swooped down upon some bundles of papers tied up with narrow yellow ribbon which a connoisseur would have recognised as having come off packets of Havanna cigars.

He could make nothing of the first bundle. Obviously they were all letters, and old letters too, to judge by_ the

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date, the only thing he could decipher ; they might have been French, Spanish, or Italian, for aught he knew. He did not wish to commit himself beyond asserting that they were not German. When the old priest had, after a little hesitation, expressed his belief that neither were they Latin, it appeared that the chances of enlightenment were exhausted, for the landlord contented himself with respectfully laying back the letters on the table. He had been to school, it is true, but that was forty years ago, and every art requires to be kept in practice if it is not to fall into decay.

The notary took up a second bundle and untied it ; more letters, but German characters this time. He looked at the first and gave another chirrup of satisfaction ; it was addressed quite plainly to ‘ Count Emil Eldringen.’

‘ At the risk of causing inconvenience,’ the letter began, ‘ I must request you to lose no further delay in repaying to me the sum of six hundred florins which you borrowed from me last autumn, on the expressed stipulation that I was to be reimbursed before spring.’ With a face grown suddenly attentive, the notary took up a second letter. This one began with ^Geehrter Herr Graf ! ’ and was signed with an unmistakably Jewish name, but the drift was much the same and the sum referred to was larger. He took up a third, a fourth letter, more still, and cast a glance into each, and then he leant back in his chair and whistled ; the letters were all from unsatisfied creditors, and they all bore quite recent dates.

‘ There seems to be as little doubt about the title as about the — the embarrassed circumstances,’ pronounced Herr Prell, having cast about in his mind for an expression which in presence of that nine-pointed crown would appear sufficiently respectful.

The landlord’s ruddy face had gradually become clouded. At every fresh quotation with which Herr Prell had regaled his auditors he had changed the position of his outspread fingers upon his knees. He began to wonder how much the articles in the trunks would fetch, supposing it should come to a compulsory sale.

‘But the girl, the — the Countess very likely had the

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ready money about her/ he said aloud, following his own train of thought.

‘ Very likely, and besides people don’t travel about like snails with all their worldly goods packed on their backs ; all I assert is that the gentleman does not appear to have been prosperous ; but, as I say, a word with the daughter — there she comes at last,’ and the notary sprang from his chair and gave one hop towards the door. Before he had time to give a second hop the door was opened and a tall young woman advanced into the room.

Of the three men present the notary was, probably, the only one who had any distinct idea about rising in the presence of ladies. In this case he happened to be on his feet already, so that it was not owing to his example that the priest and the landlord, after exchanging a* glance of hurried consultation, simultaneously rose from their places. More likely they were acting under the influence of that signet ring on the table, or, more likely still, it was the bearing of the girl herself which influenced them.

She was a magnificent figure, tall, broad-shouldered, developed to perfect womanhood, and with limbs round which the flimsy stuff of her black gown clung just sufficiently to betray their perfect moulding. Had she not been haggard with watching and red-eyed with weeping her face would probably be beautiful, — so much dawned upon the three men who, until this moment, had had no more than cursory and unsatisfactory glimpses of the stranger. It may have dawned upon them too, though more dimly, that it was not the weeping and the watching alone which had given to the face the peculiar stamp it wore. Those lines on the white forehead and about the tightly closed lips had not been drawn by a grief that was only two days old.

It was scarcely to be called a youthful face, there was nothing either girlish in the expression or uncertain in the glance ; rather it was the face of a woman who had learnt a lesson and borne a burden far beyond her years. That the burden had not crushed her was to be guessed by the bearing of her head, that she did not intend it to crush her was to be read in the expression of the eyes. Even from under their swollen lids these eyes looked out upon the

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world with a glance of steady defiance which millions of hot tears had not sufficed to quench. Of the eyes there could be no doubt that they were beautiful, — of a clear flawless grey set in a distinct rim of black which enhanced their clearness, and, being distinguishable only under a full light, made them appear darker than they actually were. The eyebrows were almost straight and perfectly black, the thick, smooth hair, which she wore in a heavy coil upon her neck, of the very deepest shade of pure brown. The hand with which she held the hat which she had removed from her aching head as she mounted the staircase was of a noble shape, but in its coloiu* and its general appearance it showed that it was a hand which had worked in the literal sense of the word.

At sight of the three men awaiting her she stopped short and looked at each in turn with an astonished question in her eyes. They had not resumed their seats, and the priest and the landlord looked at the notary for assistance. Presently the notary came to the rescue; the reflection that he was in all probability standing in the presence of a real, born Countess had numbed him for a minute, but his eyes chanced to fall on a dam upon the sleeve of her black dress, and with the reflection that the Countess was badly off his confidence had returned. He explained the reason of his presence and that of his companions, and then the question which was torturing him came out with a burst that was no longer to be restrained. . He held the signet ring towards her.

‘ Was that your father’s property ? ’

‘ Certainly it was his property.’

She spoke in a rich, low voice, looking down upon the little notary in undiminished surprise.

‘Then his name was — his title — he was Count Eldringen ? ’

‘ That was his name, yes,’ said the girl indifferently.

‘ And your name then is — your — ’

‘ Ulrica Eldringen.’

‘Countess Ulrica Eldringen?’ tentatively. ‘If your father was a Count you must be a — ’

‘ A Countess ; yes, I have that misfortune.’

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At that moment her glance fell upon the empty bed with its crumpled black cover and crushed flower-heads. She looked away with a shudder, closing her eyes for an instant. Then, as though by a strong effort of will, she deliberately turned back her head and gazed steadily on the spot.

The three men had required this respite to recover from the shock caused by the misapplication of the word ‘ misfortune.’

‘ What made you conceal the title at the inquest? ’ the notary presently asked.

‘ I was asked for my father’s name, not for his title ; I gave his name, I supposed that was sufficient. If I had been proud of his title I would have given that too.’

With a shrug of his shoulders, Herr Prell abandoned that point. There was a whole string of questions which it was his duty as well as his delight to ask. She answered them briefly, with a touch of impatience. Had she any brothers or sisters? No. She was then the only child of the deceased? His only child. Was the widow living? No ; she had been dead for many years.

‘ You are then the only person with a claim to the deceased’s property ? ’ concluded the notary, having reached the point towards which he had been working.

She assented with a movement of her head.

The notary cleared his throat.

‘ I must call your attention to the fact that the property actually here present is of so slight a value that its equivalent in money would scarcely suffice to cover the cost of the funeral, or of other expenses incurred,’ he added, catching the anxious eye of the landlord. ‘ But doubtless there is other property elsewhere ? ’

' My father possessed no other property,’ said the girl, steadily, ‘ beyond the contents of those two boxes and the clothes he had on his back.’

‘ But surely property in some shape ? ’

‘ No property in any shape whatever.’

'But doubtless you are in possession of some readymoney!’

She took a shabby leather purse from her pocket, and, lO

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Stepping up to the table, emptied out its entire contents. They consisted of a little over forty florins, in paper and in silver, besides a few copper-pieces.

‘ This is every penny of the money I possess in the world,’ she said, speaking with unnecessary and almost harsh distinctness. ‘ I presume that this will cover the cost of the funeral ? ’

There was something in the way she said it which made the three men shrink back, as though the words had been an accusation hurled in their faces, instead of the proclamation of her own beggary. An undefinable sound, something between a whistle and a distressed chirrup, escaped from between Herr Prell’s screwed-up lips, and the landlord passed his hand recklessly through his hair, to the utter destruction of its well pomaded symmetry. The old priest was shaking his head pitifully, and tears of compassion stood in his eyes.

‘ My child,’ he said eagerly, laying an unsteady hand upon the girl’s arm, ‘ do not let the thought of the expenses distress you, the funeral need not cost anything ; I can arrange it so that the expense is defrayed by the parish — we have the right, you know — ’ but here he stopped short, startled by the blazing eyes that were suddenly flashed upon him.

‘ Do I look so much a beggar that you must offer me alms ? ’ she broke out, with fierce suddenness. ‘ Do you imagine that I could ever again eat or sleep if my father were lying in a pauper’s grave? Every penny — do you hear ? — every penny shall be paid ; and you need not try to deceive me, I shall find out what the customary price is, and I shall pay all, all, down to the last wax candle and the last bunch of violets — do you hear? Distressed? Who says I look distressed? Does this money here on the table suffice to cover the costs of the funeral or not? That is all I require to know.’

‘ Amply, amply ; it more than suffices,’ stammered the old priest, sinking back on to his seat. ‘ There is more than enough for the funeral ; but my child, my poor child, how are you to live ? ’

‘ By work,’ she answered briefly. ' And as for what I

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owe you,’ she was now looking at the landlord, ' you too shall be paid, you need have no fear. Should the money not suffice, there is my father’s watch ; it is old, but I think the quality of the gold is good, and there are besides the silver-headed bottles in the dressing-case, which will fetch something, and in the worst case there is the ring. I presume that these things are mine now, since my father has left no other heirs, — or will be mine when this fact is proved ? ’

The notary cleared his throat again. ‘ With regard to this question of inheritance,’ he observed, * it is my duty to point out to you that the situation you are in is somewhat peculiar. I must explain to you that according to Austrian law there are two distinct fashions after which an inheritance can be entered on — the conditional and the unconditional. A person who declares himself to be the unconditional heir to the property of any person deceased becomes thereby liable for all claims left unsatisfied by said deceased and for all — ’

‘ Who says that my father has left unsatisfied claims ? ’ She glanced at the litter of things on the table, and perceiving the unfastened bundles of letters a deep-red stain mounted to her cheek.

The notary appeared to collapse to half his size. ‘ It was impossible to read these letters even cursorily without concluding — ’

‘ And who gave you the right to read these letters ? ’

‘ It was my duty, I swear it to you ; any one of those papers might have been a will of the deceased, and to ascertain whether a will exists or not — ’

‘I understand; that will do.’ She bit her lip. ‘You can go on with your explanation.’

The notary proceeded to put her situation before her. Briefly it was as follows : She had the choice of becoming her father’s heiress conditionally or unconditionally. In the former case her father’s debts would indeed remain unpaid, but no one of his creditors would have the power to molest her ; she would be able to start on her new existence, penniless indeed but unfettered. In the latter case she would have forfeited not only all she possessed at this

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moment, but also any fortune she might chance to possess in the future, — up to the exact extent of all claims still extant against her father.

She listened attentively to the explanation. ^Well?’ she said, when the notary had done speaking, opening her grey eyes full upon him.

‘ I presume that your choice is made. It was merely as a matter of form that I felt it right to make the point clear.’

‘ Certainly my choice is made.’

‘You are right, it requires no reflection, I have never known a simpler case. When the liabilities amount to several thousand florins and the value of the property probably not to much over a hundred, it would indeed be madness — ’

‘ Do you call it madness ? I call it common honesty.’

The notary stared a little. ‘ You don’t mean to say that you — ’

‘That I intend to clear my father’s name of any reproach that otherwise would rest upon it? Yes, that is what I mean to do ; I believe I am strong enough for this.’

‘ But what prospect — what remote chance — do you know what you are undertaking ? ’ cried Herr Prell, aghast. ‘ I believe I cannot have explained myself sufiiciently. I said — ’

‘ I know what you said ; the explanation was quite plain ; ’ and she repeated the statement he had made almost word for word. ‘ And my answer is that I wish to enter , on the inheritance unconditionally.’ i

‘ But you can only do so if you are over age. I don’t believe that you are twenty-four years of age.’ j

‘ I am nineteen, but I am of age before the law ; my | father took the necessary steps a year ago, when he had his j first attack. It can easily be proved.’ \

‘ All the same I entreat you to commit yourself to nothing until you have taken counsel with your relations.’

‘ I have no relations with whom I could take counsel.’

‘Your friends then, — every one has friends — ■

‘ I have none.’ j

‘ But you will at least reflect.’

FANNY BADL.

‘Yes, reflect, my child, reflect,’ burst out the old priest, who had been listening in considerable bewilderment to the conglomeration of legal terms used, and had not been able to come to any more definite conclusion than that this evidently impetuous young woman was on the point of committing some act which Herr Prell considered foolish and which he therefore, on Herr Prell’s authority, accepted as being foolish. ‘ Your father is in his grave and cannot be harmed by what people say, while you have your life before you.’

Again he stopped short, silenced by the flash of her eyes.

The notary spoke again, and the old priest murmured a few more entreaties to ‘ reflect,’ but it altered nothing in the case. The girl adhered to her resolution.

In this way it was that Ulrica Eldringen, aged nineteen, came to be declared the heiress of forty-two florins, some twenty and odd kreutzers in Austrian money, a gold watch, an engraved signet ring, six silver-topped crystal bottles, an old hussar uniform coat minus the cords, one travelling-trunk, one portmanteau, and various other articles, valued all in all at between one hundred and twenty and one hundred and fifty florins.

It was with this capital at her command that she had pledged herself to pay off the debts left by her father, and which amounted to a sum about half-way between three and four thousand florins.

Chapter II. Fanny Badl

Somewhat more than twenty years oefore the day on which Ulrica Eldringen entered upon this her inheritance, the 17th Hussars were celebrating the advent of a new comrade, fresh from the capital.

To the gallant officers who, for the last ten years, had been dozing away in their little provincial hole, Captain Emil Eldringen’s appearance was almost as startling as that of a brilliant meteor might be to drowsy eyes. Brilliant was the adjective that best described him. Everything about him sparkled and shone and glittered so blindingly that it was by no means easy to make quite sure of how much depth lay beneath this bright surface. He was brilliantly vivacious, brilliantly gay, and was generally considered to be a brilliant conversationist, though even his most ardent admirers were apt to feel perplexed when asked to produce from their memory a specimen of his conversation.

Added to all this Captain Eldringen was brilliantly handsome.