Die Diele

by Anne Warner

 

Die Diele

BY ANNE WARNER

The carriage was rolling through the Burger Park. It was February, and the only green in the forest to the left was the green of the moss on the tree trunks. Their branches glinted gray in the wintry sunlight. The decorative pieces of water showed a shivered coating of ice. The air was very cold; there was a sharp wind also.

The wind blew in the carriage window. The man within leaned across the girl and raised the glass. As he did so she drew back—far back—so as to avoid his proximity. A slight look of scorn twisted his lips for an instant—only for an instant—and then his face was immobile again.

He looked from his window and she from hers, and neither the scenery of the Park nor the succeeding villas drew from either a single word.

They were an interesting couple—these two. One would have looked a second time at either—and then a third. The man was perhaps thirty, brown-haired, brown-eyed, brown-moustached, tanned, and bearing the traces of such a life as a gentleman may live in the wilds. The girl was twenty, and blonde, and beautiful, and bitter of lip and eye. She sat as close in her corner as possible and did not permit even a fold of her sleeve to touch her companion.

The strangest fact of all was that the two—despite the difference in their coloring—looked enough alike to have been brother and sister.

After a half-hour’s drive through the suburban avenue the carriage turned in at an open gate and stopped before the broad stone door-sill of one of those vast “peasant-houses” which lie so thickly over the north of Germany. Eighty feet of side wall, window-pierced at regular intervals, and above, some two hundred yards of unbroken thatch sloping down with a great sweep at once shapeless and shapely. The windows were all on the ground-floor—the roof was unbroken by even a single gable. Under its brow the ancient doors, iron-crossed and re-crossed again, were suddenly thrown wide open—an old man appeared between them, and spoke a welcome behind the bend of his respect. They had descended from the carriage in silence; they murmured only some slight acknowledgment of the servant’s courtesy, passed him, and entered.

The girl uttered an exclamation of surprise. And little wonder.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Most gracious,” said the old bowing afresh, “this is die diele.”

“They kept the cows and pigs and chickens and hay here once,” said the young man, with a cold, clear intonation; “the decorators from Bremen will make a fine thing of it before June.”

The girl’s face flushed—the look in her eyes was one of absolute outrage and anger as she glanced up among the wealth of beams that netted their huge strength clear up to where the ridge-pole crowned their effort sturdily to support these tons of interwoven thatch.

“The living rooms are here,” said the old man, leading to the left where three quaint doors peeped out from beneath a wooden gallery. The girl followed him, and the man followed her.

There were three rooms looking forth on a garden of gray shubberies. From the last of these three sprung a tiny stair that twirled twice about its central post and then arrived upstairs. Upstairs was a single large room.

“This can be made into two,” said the man.

The angry flush shot over the girl’s face again.

“You can have all this end of the house for yours,” he continued, the scorn curling his lip again; “there are more at the other end for me.”

She looked from the window and said nothing.

“We shall have the whole of the diele between us.” He paused a second and then in a tone of biting contempt, added, “I will order bolts on every door.”

She turned from the window. Scarlet fury charged her eyes. “They wo’n’t be needed on your doors,” she added hoarsely.

“Nor on yours,” he said with great distinctness. Then he turned suddenly and bade the servant go.

“Why do you do that?” she asked, still burning flame.

“Because I want to speak to you alone; and as this is my first and may be my last chance until the day that we come here, I choose to take advantage of it.”

“Speak,” she said, “only don’t forget that I hate you.” His lip curled again.

“I don’t forget,” he said. “I only want to ask you to remember—to remember—” he hesitated—“It’s rather a rough thing to say to a woman,” he said with an echo of apology behind his voice, “but it is hardly possible that this situation can be as bad for you as it is for me. Unless—” he hesitated again—“unless there is someone else.”

She whirled towards “Is there someone else in your life?” she demanded.

“No,” he said simply.

“I can say the same,” she replied, and turned her back upon him again.

He looked toward her for a minute and his expression was a strange one.

“What I want to say is this,” he said. “A year from now, six months from now all this will appear to you in a very different light. I am not pleading, but I ask you to consider that I am an even more unwilling victim than yourself, and I beg of you to believe me when I say that the future will be brighter if you can but force yourself to some show of courtesy when others are by, for a short period.”

“I do treat you with courtesy,” she said sharply. He stood behind her and spoke steadily—distinctly—

“I was poor—I had nothing except good blood and one chance of greatness. Because of my kinship and that possibility—that chance that might come—your father had me educated and gave me opportunities. I worked hard—I won much—I stood a show of being an especially fortunate and happy man,—if only—” he paused. There was silence “If my brother had not died!” she said at last as if impelled thereto.

“Yes,” he said, with one single, deep-drawn breath, “if only that heavy blow had not fallen. I was summoned away from the land that is home to me, called to assume a title that is meaningless to me, and forced upon a woman who cares no more for me than I care for her—in fact, who hates me.” He stopped.

“Yes, I do hate you,” said the girl, her whole body trembling with feeling as she spoke, “I hate you and always will hate you. It is terrible that a man like you can come from anywhere and be forced upon me in this way.”

“But it is not my fault,” said the man. “I am a victim of the law of entail, just as you are yourself. And—and—I do assure you—if you will have a little patience—”

She turned quickly—“You think you can make me love you?” she exclaimed in a fresh passion—“never—never—”

He looked a little white.

“Not that—” he said—“I didn’t say that—I didn’t hope that.”

She went towards the stair. At its head she stopped and looked coolly at him. “I will attempt to be courteous,” she said, “but do not presume.”

The slight sneer curled his lip again, “I shall be grateful for the courtesy,” he told her, “and I have no inclination ever to presume.”

They entered the diele again.

“It will be a good place for pistol practice,” he remarked, as they crossed it on their way to the door, “it is rather too spacious for anything else.”

She glanced about again as she had before. “It is not too spacious to lie between your rooms and mine,” she said and her words were steel and poison, “Heaven bless the diele.”

They went to the carriage where the old servant waited to open its door for them.

A minute later they were rolling back toward Bremen. The place in which the honeymoon was to be spent had been approved by both the prospective, happy lovers.

Now it was the turn of the decorators from Bremen.

 

In the days of an earlier civilization, with whose simple customs we have now little sympathy and still less understanding, the diele in a house as large as the one which we have seen was a place of great importance. Perhaps the needs of daily life pressed so closely each hour that the companionship of spirit between man and beast was of a stronger nature; perhaps the greater danger from that terrible enemy—the winter’s cold—drove all who had warm blood to stand against it side by side; perhaps only convenience and economy of labor and material, led to the putting of one great roof over all that one man owned. At any rate, it was so—and it is still so in many country districts—and life is cleaner and fresher than you might expect, there behind those walls, where on one side of a stone partition two or three feet thick the cow and the calf, the sheep and the lambs, sleep nightly, while on the other the farmer’s wife tucks her many babies each in its own warm box of a bed.

If there is trouble in the diele when it storms without, the master is quickly on the spot. If the weather is bad for many days a hundred timely tasks lie close at hand without the need of facing the wet and sleet. As it is, so it was, and as all others were, so was it with ours. For more than four hundred years the old house had stood unchanged, and then—when the wonderful spirit of the wonderful Nineteenth Century had revolutionized the world even to Bremen—it had altered this particular place but slightly.

It had first moved the horses and cows and hay and laid a wood floor over the diele, then it had ruined the descendant of four centuries of thrift and put his ancestor’s home and his on the market for sale. The fashionable world was building villas in that direction, and some of the fashionables were remodeling the quaint old houses instead of erecting new ones. There was something marvelously delightful about the effect of such a piece of the Fifteenth Century, when set in this correct landscape gardening and fitted with plumbing and electric lights. It became à la mode to preserve all that was possible of the old style,—and that was largely the fortune of the decorators from Bremen.

They were skillful men—those decorators of Bremen—they looked about and measured somewhat and then they went to work in a manner at once deft and mysterious. Everything was completed by June. The day that the wedding was taking place in St. George’s the florist was finishing his task outside the walls, and breezes from the ocean to the Weser were carrying the last faint odor of paint out of the diele. It was a transformed spot now. Its beams were a royal blue, picked out in golden traceries, the blue fading lighter and lighter as the shadows climbed up in the roof, and down from the cross supports hung long forked banners of silken tapestry. The side walls were wainscoted, and above ran a script of ancient lettering. Over the long chimney shelf of the Bremen peasant house was enblazoned the escutcheon of an English nobleman. On the floor of the old, old room spread a vast and splendid Persian carpet. Down its middle stood a dining-table of carved black oak, with twelve chairs forming an interlacing screen-work around its sides. On the table towered a glass vase and two great wrought bronze candelabra. The next day when the Dover-Calais channel steamer was heading toward France they were bringing from Bremen the last piece of the furnishing for the house, namely—the little round breakfast table which was to be arranged behind the huge screen in the corner of the diele—arranged for the bride and groom.

The newly engaged German servants were all excitement as the hour of arrival drew near. The old haus meister mustered them carefully to their places. Twice carriage wheels drew near—and it was not the expected carriage. The third time the carriage turned in between the freshly trimmed hedges and stopped at the door. The haus meister was on the step bowing low. The other servants stood within, bowing and courtesying. There was a great bouquet to hand to the bride. She took it with a murmured word and no smile. She was a pale bride, and the bridegroom was even paler. They both looked very tired—very bored, too.

They never raised their eyes to look at the splendid room, nor its decorations,—nor its flowers. They never noticed the line of maids and men. They turned from each other within the diele and went, she to the left and he to the right, to those rooms on either side which had been fitted up with equal care if not with equal splendor.

They closed the doors after them. The servants stood as if turned to stone for a few seconds. Then they went softly away.

And the diele was left empty of all but its splendor.

The honeymoon had begun.

 

The next morning, about eleven o’clock, the bride came out into the garden. She had on a simple white frock, and carried a book in her left hand, but she did not seem inclined to read. Instead she wandered to and fro and then finally paused beside a tiny, splashing fountain, and stared down into its pearls and bubbles with cold and miserable eyes.

While she stood there, the man whom she had married came out of the house and down towards her. The noise of the trickling water prevented her from hearing his footsteps, and suddenly she was in his arms and had been kissed.

She screamed as she freed herself, and he—he laughed aloud. His face was bright and smiling—hers white with anger. She glanced quickly towards the house, and a form shrank back from the window.

“Some one saw!” she cried furiously.

He put his arm around her and turned so that her back was towards the house.

“I hope so,” he said calmly. “Would I be likely to kiss except for the purpose of having it public?”

Her lips parted in astonishment.

“It was agreed—” she began.

But he interrupted quickly.

“It was agreed to put up a good front to the world until the problem could be adjusted. I promised you a speedy adjustment. I still promise it. But you forget that these servants are a part of the world. They must be somewhat imposed upon. “The diele,” he hesitated, “the diele is so very wide,” he added.

She flushed afresh. “What do you mean?” she asked haughtily. He laughed again. He could see another form at the other window.

“Only this,” he said gaily, “only this,—that if you want to spare yourself, (not me, observe—only yourself!) you will show mercy today and be a little kind to me so that they all may see how well we do together.”

She flashed a look of biting doubt into his eyes. He smiled, (the form was still outlined against the curtain), but inside he caught his lip in his teeth.

“Lady Angela,” he said, “how am I to blame for being the last male heir? Do you think I would not rather be dead than submit to the circumstances which surround me?” She looked at the ground.

“Everything in me rises in hate against you,” she said, but back of the harshness there stirred a note of apology.

He laughed merrily and put his arm about her again.

“Come, let us go down behind the shrubberies,” he said, “and there, where no one can see us, we can sit apart in silence and in peace wish that we had never been born.”

They moved away and his arm stayed about her until the pink flowers of a great blooming azalea hid them from view. But the instant that the azalea screened them she flung herself free.

“I submitted,” she said, “‘but I do not understand and your touch teaches me afresh how I loath you.”

There was no laughter on his lips then. He looked somberly at her agitation.

“I am unable to explain,” he said with a gesture of helplessness. “I can only implore your consideration and swear to you that you will never regret such a kindness shown me.”

There was deep appeal in his voice. She seemed touched.

“For how long?” she asked.

He shrugged his shoulders slightly and shook his head.

“I will endeavor to treat you politely for one day,” she said at last. Then, turning shortly, she added, “but don’t presume.” It was the old humiliating phrase.

The look of scorn crossed his face again.

“I will remember,” he said, through set teeth.

They took luncheon quite pleasantly together that day, and went to drive afterwards (without a groom), and the old haus meister decided that it was but their cold English ways that made them as they were, and not some deep-seated enmity which was quite beyond the pale of his understanding.

When they returned from the drive milord went into his rooms and brought out a target and a case of pistols.

“I am going to teach you to shoot,” he told milady with a smile, and began to fasten the target up against the old oak carven wainscoting of the diele.

Milady watched him with interest. He looked at her and nodded, laughing. “It’s been rather a jolly day, don’t you know!” he said, throwing her a kiss. “I’m very grateful to you.”

She felt suddenly startled—and glanced quickly towards him. He was loading the pistol.

“My lady Angela,” he said, looking through the sights and taking careful aim, “the law gives all to you when the last male heir is dead.” Then he turned the pistol suddenly upon his own heart and fired.

The noise of the report seemed to rend the roof from the diele. The servants had expected nothing so loud as that when they had understood that milord was going to practice with his pistol. They hurried before they heard the single piercing shriek of the wretched young wife, and then they all came at once into the great hall where a man lay in a pool of blood, with a woman fainting on his bosom.

 

Autumn was drifting down from the north and in from the sea, the ocean was restless, even the Weser was more or less troubled along its placid length. Day after day the birds took flight for the southland, the dry brown leaves fled over the ground as if they, too, were birds seeking warmer spots to shelter in. The busy dawn of winter life hummed in the streets of Bremen, the smoke rose up from chimneys, the carts moving in and out of the city creaked on the hardened roads. The flowers in the garden were dead, the fountain in one garden had ceased to splash, and a great fire of logs burned bright in the huge fireplace of the diele. It was late in the afternoon, and the sunset was staining the floor with all the colors that shone in the emblazoned windows. There was a man before the fire, and his eyes were cast on the brightness of the colors. He smiled as he looked.

Then the rosy cheeked maid who offered the bouquet to the bride in June, crossed from behind with a teatray to the rooms beyond, and vanished between the draperies that hung in front of an open door. A moment after she returned and courtsied deeply.

“Excellenz,” she said, with her eyes on the floor, “the tea is served.”

The man smiled again; he went towards the draperies, parted them with his right hand and entered.

Milady was waiting. She had on a loose gown of shining, shimmering silk; it was as blue as her eyes, and her eyes shone brighter than its radiance—a thousand times brighter. She raised them to his and then cast them quickly down upon the tea-table. Her hand shook and her voice shook.

“I hope you took no cold going out,” she said hurriedly.

“No,—no cold,” he told her, and then he laughed. “Why I’m quite well now—quite well, you know.”

She started to pour the tea and her hand shook so that she spilt it in quite a sad manner.

“Let me pour it,” he said, coming beside her. “I have a good arm left—worth more than your two, I do believe.”

Her lip quivered.

He poured the tea.

“Come and sit down,” he said, taking up his cup and going towards a little cushioned corner that had a convenient tabouret beside it. She followed him, carrying her own cup.

“I ought to take yours, too,” he said apologetically, “but you know, I can’t.”

She put her cup down, hid her face in her hands and began to cry.

“Oh,” she sobbed, “I cannot bear it—I cannot bear it. It was not the pistol that maimed you for life, it was I—it was I—it was I. And I might have been your murderess, too, so easily, so easily.”

He turned his face toward her and laid his hand upon her arm,

“Angela,” he said, very gently, “not that—never that.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, sobbing still harder, “I can understand everything now. Because of what my father had done for you, you had to marry me, and then, and then when you saw how cold and cruel I was you—you—”

His arm was around her waist—his lips upon her forehead. She continued “You wanted to rid me of you and you deliberately—deliberately—deliberately—”

A very low sweet laugh sounded from his lips.

“My darling,” he said, “I wo’n’t have you torment yourself,—I’m not the hero you suppose. If I had been I should have killed myself before I ever saw you. But the soldier in me was strong and cried for a fighting chance at life, and—as a matter of fact—I—well, I aimed well above my heart. Do you despise me afresh now?”

“Despise you!” she was looking up at him in a wonder of joy,—“I think it was so very clever in you. Only why did you shatter your shoulder if you were planning it all.”

He kissed her—laughing. “I’m afraid I was a bit nervous after all,” he confessed.

They sat still and the tea grew cold untasted.

“It was such a nasty mess,” he said at last, “a title and a wife, and no way to hold either except in law.”

She turned toward him and clasped her two arms close around his neck.

“But you hold them other ways now,” she said, and kissed him, with all her heart, upon his lips.

The haus meister was crossing the diele; he heard the echo of the kiss and smiled.

In point of fact, there was no longer any diele, only a country seat with a large hall.