THE REUSS HOUSE.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 953, 14 July 1877, Page 3

THE REUSS HOUSE.

By Mrs Jerome Mercier.

A plain woman aud a pink cotton handkerchief are not the m st promising materials for a picture. But Mary Cromford, though plain, had a graceful figure, and the pink handkerchief which she was hemming formed a pretty contrast to her while dress as she sat on the edge of a little chasm in a Swiss valley. The chasm was formed by a gushing, foaming brook ; the Avooden bridge and part of the road had been torn away by an avalanche ; the blackened snow lay in masses across the water, and some dozen of workmen were busy below with pickaxe aud spade to renew that which the white monster had devoured. Mary looked up from her Avork to watch them from time to time. The shade of the fir-trees lay about her. Yellow foxgloves rang their silent bells by her side, and the gentian, like a spot dropped from the profoundest heaven, dotted the turf on which she sat. She was a healthy, sweet, graceful English girl, aud she and her bit of pink cotton formed no unworthy centre to the scene of hill and dale.

Fraulein Muller, her former governess, sat beside her. The stiff, tight dress, the hair primly lard over the ears, the broad hat tied with a big bow under the chin, bespoke her nationality. ‘Louise,’ said Miss Cromford, suddenly, ‘ I finished La Croix de Berny this morning,’ ‘ So ? ’ responded the Fraulein. ‘ Have you read it ? ’ ‘No. Ido not read French novels.’ ‘ It is proper enough, you know, and very clever. It is written by four people, Madame de Girardin, Theophile Gautier, Jules bandeau, and Mery,’ ‘ So ? ’ said Fraulein again, in the tone of one who did not care to pursue the subject. ‘ Yes, so and so. lam going to tell you the story : it is very silly, and very interesting. The heroine is an heiress who is engaged to a prince, but she does not know her own mind, and thinks the prince is not her ideal after all. So she runs away in disguise as a shabby-genteel sort of young person, and falls in the way of another lover, very wild and eccentric and poetical, to whom she rather inclines, while the poor prince is rushing hither and thither after her. At last, however, she really does meet her ideal, ami d sort of beneficent young man, and marries him before the other two know what is going on. Then, of course, they challenge the husband and kill him, the girl dies of a broken heart on the spot, the two rejected ones are visited by remorse, and there is an end of them all, neater than Hamlet,’ Fraulein had laid down her knitting, forgotten her prej udices, and was listening with absorption. ‘ How sad ! ’ she said, ‘ and, my dear, how like you ! ’ Mary laughed slightly : she had a pleasant, honest laugh. ‘ Well, I fancied there were some points about it like me, and to tell the truth, I felt ashamed to have made myself into a sort of French novel. But then there are great differences ; I am not engaged.’ ‘But you will be—you will be! That handsome Mr Manton,’ cried Fraulein, in an ineffable tone, scratching her head elegantly with a knitting pin in her emotion. ‘That handsome Mr Manton is not my ideal, unfortunately,’answered the girl, with rather a constrained laugh, ‘ Hark ! ’

A distant sound as of a little brook running down over its stones from a mountain height. ‘ The goats are coming to be milked : let us go to tne little level and see them.’ 'i he two ascended the stream till they reached an open space of turf strewn with huge boulders. To this spot the goats were running down the slopes in a herd of some two hundred, their little bells had made that brook like tinkling sound. The leader stopped at sight of the strangers, looking shrewdly and suspiciously at them, nor would he give the sign of command to advance until they were hidden behind a stone. Then the quaint creatures came on, dividing as they came into little bands, each around its own particular possessor, among the women who stood awaiting them with their wooden pails. When they were assembled, the women took from their aprons each a bag of salt, and gave to every goat the treat of a lick with its nose inside that beloved bag. Then began the milking. It was pretty to see the little groups of goats lying down and chewing the cud at their ease, their slow Satyrine jaws grinding one upon another. Only the one goat, whose turn would come next, stood always behind her mistress, caressing her shoulder gently with head and horns. Some ‘ kidlings blithe and merry,’ whose milking days had not yet come, skipped about upon the stones, and had little struggles for the envied position on the summit, where it seemed to be the desire of each to make itself as like as possible to the little goats carved in wood, which every one brings home from Switzerland, A pretty but very dirty little girl had helped to drive the goats from the mountains, and was now helping, or pretending to help, in the milking. Mary called the girl. c My child,’ she said in German, ‘do you like this handkerchief ? ’

The twinkling eyes replied. ‘ Will you wa h your face and comb your hair every day if I give you this to wear ou your head V ’ ‘Jo,’ answered the girl, in the GermanSwiss manner.

The bargain was struck. e I shall come sometimes and see that you have kept your promise That will be an act of charity indeed if I can make one of diem cleaner, ’ said Miss Cromford. ‘ Shall we go now, Louise? It is nearly dinner time ’

So they went down the little turfy, stony oaths, poor Fraulein sighing and groaning and tripping as she went, and Mary Cromford thinking neither of the goats nor the sighs, but of something or someone faraway. At a sudden turn they came in sight of the little village where, for the time, they had their home, and of the mountains and the gorge beyond it. “Mary awoke suddenlyjfrom her dream and raised ner hand.

‘ Oh’ look ! how glorious !’ she cried. Forth from the mouth of the dark and awful gorge were streaming wreaths of cloud, full and white aud dense, streaming up, up, and clothing all the grand green slopes and grey jagged peaks beside the gorge in garments of vestal beauty and regal richness. It was a noble and an awful sight. ‘ Ach Himmel!’ suddenly shrieked Fraulein, aud rushed from Mary’s side down the path. It was not the spectacle of the clouds which drew that shriek from her, but the sight of an unkempt, untidy child which had climbed to the top of a cartload of wood, and at some movement of the horse had fallen to the ground, and Avas lying there screaming, but probably rather more frightened than hurt. When Mary appeared on the spot, Fraulein was kissing and soothing the dirty little mite, and offering it bon-bons from a private box which she [always carried, and of which she said the contents were good for the nerves. The bon-bons were received more cordially than the kisses. The tears soon ceased, and the small person trotted along by Fraulein’s side with an occasional sob, the subsidence of the storm, and a continual contented sucking at the bon-bons, like a chewing of the cud. * It is one of that poor doctor’s children,’ said Fraulein, indignantly. ‘ Oh, that wicked old woman, to neglect the poor creatures so 1 I will leave the child at the house and tell her what I think of it. ’

Mary smiled a quiet and significant smile, and walked silently beside her indignant companion till they reached the centre of the village. There an old lichen covered bridge spanned a torrent, beside which stood a dilapidated house that had seen better days. The richly wrought iron knocker, which would make the joy of Eastlake, the carvings and half-obliterated painting above the windows, the texts, also half obliterated, running along every story, bespoke the reverence with which one regards a dignified but faded beauty. Mary Cromford seated herself on the stones of the bridge, looking down, still with her amused smile, into the dashing stream below, admiring its inimitable colour, like a mass of jade half covered pile by a of lace. Meanwhile Fraulein, concealing a certain nervousness under the appearance of great valour, dashed at the ancient knocker with a loud peal. It had to be repeated before ‘that wicked old woman’—old, certainly, whatever her title to the other epithet—appeared with a frowning countenance, and received the child and the oration, which were simultaneously delivered, with a stolid silence. Fraulein |was still bubbling over with small ejaculations, like a kettle going off the boil, when the two ladies entered their hotel. It was precisely opposite to the bridge and to the old house, the Keuss House as it was called, taking its name from the stream beside which it stood. A cleanlypainted little inn of two stories, (.with geraniums and pinks in the window. Mary had added one little prettiness or comfort after another until her parlour was an abidingplace of no mean attractions, cool, clean, and home-like. But Mary sighed as she entered it. And why ? Because it was an exile to her, a prison, though a self chosen one. She was not happy, for half her being was in England ; she was in love, and like Irene in La Croix de Berny, she had run away from her lover.

(To be continued.')